The Power

by Ian Watson

  “The big challenge is, you had to grow enough food in half a year or so to last your cows and sheep a full twelve months. Apart from your hay and straw you’d need man-golds and kale for cattle, and turnips to carry the sheep through, and barley and buckwheat and stuff for the pigs and chickens. And protein peas, and what else? Keep and carrots for horses. Lots of modern cattle cake’s got imported things in it, and pig and chicken food’s usually bought in these days. That’s to say…used to be,

  “You’d have to feed yourself through the winter too. Oats for porridge, vegetables, barley for beer. Come the autumn, you’d have to work out how many animals you had surplus to the provisions you’d managed to store. You’d have to slaughter all the extra mouths….”

  Miss Samuels stood up, as if triggered. Ah yes, she had been slaughtered, thought Mitzi; and so had all her pupils. The woman shuffled over to the cue-sheets of hymns. Class over? Time to praise? She just stood there lamely.

  “Getting back to the subject of grass,” said Bert, “it used to be a proverb: to break a pasture makes a man, but to make a pasture breaks him. What that meant was, if you ploughed up a pasture you’d get rich harvests for the next few years – but to resow a decent pasture’s a back-breaking task. There’s getting the seed, for a start. It’s not just grass seed. Leafy perennial rye is fine for your grazing and silage, but it isn’t deep-rooting so it misses the minerals. Nowadays we’d top-dress with nitrogen and stuff. Our forefathers would mix in clover that fixes nitrogen and herbs like chicory and yarrow and dandelion that root deep; or else you’d soon have an exhausted pasture.”

  So Nell’s “good earth” wasn’t all that good, unless you in turn knew how to be good to it. Mitzi stuck her hand up.

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “It’d be nice if someone does.”

  “Could a village like this one become self-sufficient, and organic and whatnot?”

  “Aside from its people and animals being corpses, you mean? Aside from nothing green showing signs of growing?” Bert sighed. “Can you turn back the clock?”

  “If things were more normal?”

  “I’d like to know how! Self-sufficient’s a bit of romantic moonshine, to my mind. It’s an idea that townsfolk have. No bit of the country has been really that for the last fifty years. What you’re talking is subsistence, like in a mud hut village in Africa. I’m afraid we’re going over the heads of this lot here.” He snorted.

  “We used to grow lettuce easily enough at the peace camp.”

  “Rabbit food! You can’t digest lettuce!”

  “Nonsense. We ate a lot of lettuce.”

  “Surprised you didn’t starve, then. Lettuce is cellulose. People don’t have the right chemicals inside them to break it down and get any nourishment. It goes straight through and out the backside.”

  Miss Samuels began to sing wheezingly:

  “Let us with a gladsome mind

  “Praise the Lord for he is kind –”

  No one joined in.

  Twenty-six

  And at last (and at first) Gareth stomped to his rendezvous with the village committee….

  “Wey, we could organize a beauty contest, Aa suppose!”

  “Us in our knickers, is that it?” Mitzi tugged a loop in her sweater. “Sorry, I didn’t bring my bikini to this holiday camp. I quite forgot.”

  “Na, not youse lasses. The deed. A contest o’corpses.”

  “That’s sick.” Sheri wrinkled her little nose and jutted her jaw, an insulted high school cheerleader. “Gross gross gross.”

  “It wouldn’t be wor criteria of beauty, pet. What Aa’m gettin’ at is, mebbe we could excite the Power to show us what’s on its mind. Aa had a sort o’ dream aboot this. How we’d have a parade in front of yor hall, with lots o’ bunting, an’ the dead would choose the Queen o’ the village an’ they’d crown her, then everyone would dance the conga roond the houses wavin’ crêpe streamers, an’ –” He shut up.

  To Jeni, this dream of Jack’s bore a hideous similarity …to what else?

  To that goosing chain of degraded nude bodies prancing out of the church of the medieval village in her video-vision! Led by that inhuman monk. Once long ago.

  “Did you dream something more?” she asked Jack urgently.

  “Wey…now that Aa recall, the deed was like geet big squashy maggots or caterpillar chrysalises, an’ as they danced their pattern roond aboot the lanes an’ over the green, gannin’ this way an’ that, they started…splittin’ an’ peelin’ open…an’ oot of the corpses skipped bairns fresh as daisies! Aye, that was it. An’ Aa heerd music.” Jack whistled the opening bars of Boys and Girls Come out to Play. “Played on a squeeze-box.”

  Bert frowned. “That’s what used to happen every May Day. Did Jeni tell you?”

  “Na. So what used te happen?”

  “Old Mr Donaldson; he retired last year, and moved to Thrushby –”

  “That’s how the school house went vacant,” interrupted Jeni.

  “Very traditional chap, Raymond Donaldson –”

  “You aren’t kidding.”

  Donaldson had been headmaster for going on thirty years, running the little primary school as though the date was still 1950-something. Or even 1940. He believed in rote teaching of the 3 Rs, and pupil politeness, and was passionate about music. Increasingly out of date! – though that could sometimes be a strength as much as a shortcoming.

  “ – even if he did sometimes hold May Day in June on account of the weather. The school maypole was always set up on the green. The kids would march through the streets with posies. He’d play his accordion while they danced the ribbons round the pole, after they’d crowned the King and Queen. Boys and Girls. Amo Amas. Then there’d be dancing up and down the green for kids and parents too. The eightsome reel, the Dashing White Sergeant – just like fifty years ago, I’d say. That new Miss Samuels was planning to have the kids do some pageant in the school instead. Robin Hood or King Arthur. That’s because she couldn’t play the accordion, and you can hardly push the school piano all the way to the green.”

  “So Aa was dreamin’ aboot reality.”

  “Yes, and I wonder why.” Bert mused. “Our new vicar always gave Donaldson’s May Days the cold shoulder. Boycotted them, he did. He’d never bless the crowd the way old Ashley-Usher used to before him. Now he was a character, was Ashley-Usher. He’d join in the dances, kicking up his skirts.”

  “When Bert says ‘new’,” explained Jeni, “he means six or seven years gone by.”

  During her own years in Melfort she had never noticed that Partridge was opposed to the school’s May Day celebration. He never said a word about the subject at governors’ meetings; none she attended, anyway. She couldn’t recall him showing a flicker of interest, which was perhaps significant. Donaldson must have squashed the vicar’s objections flat, well before her own time, and Partridge knew he would get nowhere till Donaldson retired. Might Miss Samuels’ pageant owe as much to some Christian words from the vicar as to her own incapacity on the accordion? Could Partridge have leaned on the new head teacher?

  Partridge was deadly scared of pagan evils, right? And May Day was an innocent, gentle hangover from paganism; the rural May Day, not the red flag May Day. May Day was a tame residue from the time of earth spirits and corn gods, sacrifices and lusty ritual matings to fructify the fields, the time of witches…and dark power.

  Mustn’t concentrate on the vicar!

  “Weel, it occurs te me that mebbe wor gettin’ some sort o’ message from this Power, so mebbe if we was te –”

  “To have the corpses crown their beauty queen?” cried Nell. “Their princess of ugliness and pus and worms and disfigurement? A Monarch of muck? The rightful ruler of this village – is that it? For what purpose, Jack, for what purpose? Did your dream tell you that too?”

  “Mebbe we’d be giving it a message. A one-finger message. Aa divven’t knaa. Aa’m just followin’ an instinct…but mebbe Aa’m sick mese
lf, like Sheri says. Sick in the heed. It was only a suggestion.”

  If only, thought Jeni, she had started sleeping with Jack; maybe he would never have dreamt such a thing. His nocturnal energies might have been drained. Apparently the Power was getting to Jack, winkling its way into his imagination while he lay at a three a.m. low ebb. She felt a surge of paranoia.

  No need, no need! Jack was made of stouter stuff than dead Gareth. Self-centered, and now soft-centered Gareth. Rotten-centered.

  Just then, came a series of thumps upon Jeni’s front door. In the next moment everyone must have glanced at everyone else, counting heads.

  “Ye knaa that joke aboot the last man in the world? He was sittin’ in his room twiddlin’ his thumbs, an’ he heard this knock on the door –”

  “Ta-dee! And it was the last woman in the world,” said Sheri brightly.

  Thump…Thump.

  “Must be someone from the village,” said Bert. “They divven’t have the gumption.”

  “Maybe,” Nell said hesitantly, “it’s somebody from outside?”

  “They wouldn’t use their fist when there’s a door knocker,” Mitzi pointed out.

  Jack stood up. “Aa’ll answer if nobody else is willin’. Afore the poor bugger gives up an’ gans home, while we’re aal still bletherin’.”

  It was Gareth at the door, his pulpy upraised fist leaking juices.

  “Wey, it’s just yor landlord cum to collect the rent!”

  Corpse-Gareth shambled on into the living room, a gangrenous toe poking through a hole in his thick, torn sock like a green-shelled snail. He turned full circle as if the raised arm was the rudder of a mobile windmill, till he oriented on Jeni; slowly he lowered his arm towards her and opened his fist, palm upward.

  He said, “You-bring-the-key-you-took-to-the-door-of-the-church-where-the-iron-cage-that-held-”

  “He sounds like that Welsh railway station!” Jeni commented as loudly as she could. “You know the one I mean: Llan-Fair-Pwll-Go-Go-Whatnot! It means something like – how does it go now? – the chapel beside the fountain half way down the hill where the deer, oh I can’t remember, they just invented the name to attract tourists, did you know that?”

  “Hwisht, pet! He’s tryin’ te communicate.”

  “Oh it’s any old words pouring out of him. You know these Welsh windbags –”

  “Had your gob, will ye?” Jack said roughly. “What’s your problem, Taff?”

  Gareth’s hand jerked. “She-locked-the-church-with-the-vicar-inside-the-cage –”

  “Hadaway, man! Aa found the vicar lyin’ deed in the chorchyard. We wheeled him to his house.”

  “Not-his-head-you-didn’t. His-head-will-preach-now-he – has-a-new-throat-bone-and – the – shit – is – out-of-his-system –”

  “His heed’s inside the chorch? An’ it’s still sermonizin’ – is that what ye mean?”

  “Jeneeee-must-bring-the-key.” Gareth looked distressed, as though those weren’t his own words and he knew it. They were the words of an imp with a speech impediment inhabiting his ulcerated tongue, hurting it at every twist.

  Jack swung around. “Have ye been straight with us, Jen? Dee ye knaa somethin’ Aa divven’t knaa?”

  Desperately Jeni addressed the dead man. “Is that you talking, Gareth? Or is it the Power?”

  Something happened behind Gareth’s eyes.

  “Who do you think it is; Lloyd George?” replied the corpse. “Bloody shame Swansea thrashed Cardiff, eh boyo?”

  “We mustn’t let ourselves be manipulated, Jack. It’s trying to manipulate you.”

  “Ye divven’t want us te knaa aboot something in the chorch. Give us the key, Jen. Now.”

  “I agree,” said Bert. “We’re a committee. We can’t keep secrets from each other, even if they’re awful ones.”

  “You’ve kept secrets from us,” echoed Mitzi. “Why?” She looked about to fly at Jeni.

  “You hand the key over,” said Nell, “then we can all go to the church together, and see what’s going on. Safety in numbers.”

  Gareth gurgled with what might have been laughter, and chanted encouragingly:

  “I prefer the dear vicar,

  “He’s longer and thicker;

  “Besides, he comes quicker than you!”

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Sheri.

  Jeni tried to explain, “It’s just a limerick – a dirty one. Rugby locker room stuff.”

  “Uh-uh.” Sheri shook her head. “Vicar. Come quick. What is it with you and the vicar?”

  “Well,” said Jeni, losing heart, and afraid of losing her only friends, the only friends there could be for her in the world ever again. “Well–”

  Twenty-seven

  The people had hooked the mesh door back and the heavy main door, unlocked, yawned wide; but Bess the labrador refused to sneak inside. She hung about the porch, growling quietly and fretfully, waiting for her people to quit this pursuit of the awful smell of death, hoping that they would rush out again soon. If they started floundering in the cold vibrating sea of air in this grim stone place she doubted if she could dive in to haul them to safety.

  For under the waves in the gloom lurked vast ghastly things.

  As Bess blinked into that gloom, in her mind’s eye suddenly she glimpsed the hounds of Cromwell’s men peeing interestingly against the ends of pews. Even when the tang of their urine tickled her nose, she wouldn’t be lured.

  Another blink. This time she saw a nativity: a thatched wooden manger with straw and stiff white paper angels. Chicks cheeped in a wire cage. A spindly lamb a-baaing and a rompy puppy, which might have been one of her own, were tethered to the manger. In the crib, the basket for the human pup, a china doll lay wrapped in a lacework shawl. A crowd of people all in their best clothes were singing, while a man in a black robe with the collar of a dog presided from the little stone tower up front. The puppy whined to attract Bess, but she wouldn’t be drawn. She wouldn’t be invited.

  For beneath the scene, beneath the stone floor and the crust of the world: vast black ghastly things.

  She shied away.

  The visitors barely glanced at the vases of withered daffodils, the commonplace stained glass, memorial plaques like dull golden slices through some solid eternity.

  The reliquary upon the shit-stained floor…the padlocked cage … staring from the gloom, the mad impossible head.

  Which began to churn its jaw about, to ungum its lips.

  Gareth had been left way behind; maybe he was no longer following.

  “Kneel!” the head shrieked.

  Bert immediately got down on his knees, either out of obedience or because that way he felt he presented less of a target. Shari copied him, though she looked distressed at her reduced ability to escape. The others ignored the order. Enough clerks of court had told peace people to stand up when they were being charged with obstruction, criminal damage, or whatever else had been pulled out of the lucky dip of the law. In a court of oppression you stayed sitting down. If this cleric wanted them on their knees, they’d stand.

  The head spoke in a more reasonable tone. “My message is uncomfortable. And so am I. Why should you be comfortable?”

  “Why not kneel?” muttered Bert. “And hear what it has to say. No point in irritating it.”

  “Oh very well.” With a sigh Nell lowered herself. Glancing at her, Mitzi followed suit.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Yer bugger.” Jack tugged Jeni down beside him. It seemed as if they were all now set to worship the head, to receive foul communion from its black swollen tongue.

  “Thank you,” said the head. “Thank you. I have some things to teach you, my children. Some words to say, in a language not my own.”

  The vicar’s head began to address them in that voice which was and wasn’t Partridge’s; and as it spoke the listeners’ knees and then their hearts grew numb.

  “Let’s speak of language, shall we? There was such a babel of language
s till recently – until they all expired abruptly! Those were all essentially the same language under the skin, with the same bones – if in different positions. So much for your human babble.

  “Next there’s the language of…for want of a better word, creation. That’s the universe. Its words are matter, such as dust and rocks and gas, stars and worlds. Its syntax is physical law: gravity and electricity and nuclear forces, the play of particles and radiation.”

  “Is that…the language of God?” whispered Sheri.

  “Call it so in your human babble, if you care to. Oh how amusing under present circumstances to hear nuclear forces and radiation called by such a name!”

  “Which you daren’t even pronounce?” she dared to ask.

  The only answer to that from the caged head was a chuckle that chilled them.

  “And there is, or was until recently, a language of the living world: a language of fields and forests, seasons, wind and waves. That’s the language which all birds and animals heeded, and were part of. It has now become a dead duck, children, thanks to your nuclear games.”

  It was on the tip of Jeni’s tongue to ask: “How about elsewhere?” How about the southern hemisphere? How about black Africa and Australia and Argentina? Why should the head tell them the truth, even if it did know the answer? What was it: a genuine oracle? Besides, she already knew the answer. Inevitably the nuclear winter would have spread south. The sun would have vanished from the Pacific and Antarctic. Outlook: bleak, and black. By now the whole world seen from space must resemble a dirty version of Venus, cloaked in clouds of muck and poison.

  “Lastly,” said Partridge’s head, “there is the language of evil, a language of the dire night. The gibbering, the screaming.

  “Its terms are terror, nausea, pain, filth, and worse, always worse. Terms, do I say? Say rather: poisonous seductions, the kiss of the grave, the gropings of insane ghosts, eruptions from under the earth. And always: power, twists of twisted power like a clever torturer’s knots.

  “The language of evil only has a few principal terms: such as ghoul and vampire and zombie, torment and evisceration, genie and damnation. This is the speech in which the nightmare zone, the beast, talks to itself.