Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  ‘Let’s move along and see what we call a hyperpig, shall we?’ He chuckled awkwardly. ‘Can’t have all our cages full of tigers! Big fierce animals are rare, eh?’

  It was a fair walk to the next cage. We had to position hyperfìelds a safe distance apart, which accounted for the great size of the hall. This was a further disincentive to streams of eager visitors, once the first honeymoon rapture was over. Most people like to flip quickly from channel to channel as regards experiences.

  While we were walking, Sonya said, ‘Dr Riggers? Were angels and abominable snowmen some sort of hyperape? So will there be hyperpeople in the Fourworld too? I mean, we have animals in our own world but we got people as well. Might we see bits of fourpeople as ghosts – appearing then vanishing?’

  ‘I’m inclined to doubt that, Miz Svensen.’ Riggers did his best not to sound patronizing. ‘You see, the complexities of Fourspace must be such that I doubt you’d get any sort of gratuitous free-ranging speculative intelligence having a look-in evolutionarily. The fourbrain must be pretty fully occupied simply processing the, uh, complexities. Anyway, in our own case the evolution of intelligence was such a set of long-shot random chances that I doubt you’d get any repetition of the process. The odds are way against. Did you know that the eye evolved as an organ independently forty times – but intelligence only evolved once? Once! So: hypercreatures, sure. But not hyperhumans. Your ghosts and whatnot are glimpses of hyperbeasts which our minds try to rationalize. Except now we can pin ’em down. Here’s our Fourpig.’

  I guess the ugliest type of pig hitherto known to the human race had got to be the Vietnamese black pig, of which two gross specimens lolled elsewhere in the zoo. However, this 3-D slice of 4-D bacon had the Vietnamese b.p. left at the starting line. Today it was a wallowing cluster of greasy grey hairy sacs. Embedded in the mess was what might have been a giant fly’s compound eye, squinting out. Oink.

  ‘Isn’t there anything beautiful in your zoo?’ complained Mrs T-S.

  ‘Ah, well, yes… we have what I call the hyperpeacock yonder. Let’s go see if it’s displaying, hmm?’

  Riggers hustled her away diplomatically from the four-oink.

  ‘Er, but Doctor,’ persisted Sonya, if you get fourpigs paralleling threepigs, and so on, why can’t you have fourpeople paralleling threepeople?’

  ‘Because those names are just analogies. We don’t know enough yet. We need the funding to be able to four-D a person to go and take a look. If that’s possible. Most things are possible with big enough funding. And then just imagine the possibilities! When the first atom was split people thought it could have no practical applications. Were they wrong! Well hell – if you’ll pardon my French, Mrs Tarkington-Svensen – we already have the core of a 4-D zoo. Maybe in the Four-universe it’s easier to travel from planet to planet. Maybe a fourperson in a fourrocket could reach Mars or Jupiter much faster and easier. I mean, the analogies of Mars and Jupiter, so long as those exist. Then you’d switch off the hyperfield, become 3-D again, and land. Never mind Jupiter, we might get to the stars. It all depends on the topology of fourspace, if you’ll forgive my being technical – the way it’s connected together. Oh yes,’ he rhapsodized, ‘I can see hypernauts one day. Hyperastronauts.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs T-S. ‘Ah!’

  ‘With enough funding.’

  The hyperpeacock was a fluttering, waxing and waning mandala of shades of blue. Cobalt, ultramarine, robin’s egg, and electric blue. Some streaks of violet, almost ultraviolet. ‘Eyes’ of green. You could easily see how someone spotting that in our sky could think they were watching a UFO.

  Whether Mrs T-S’s exclamation of delight related to the visible segment of fourbird, or to the prospect of hyperastronauts stepping out on to one of the larger moons of Jupiter, I never determined. At that moment Sonya – who had been lagging – screamed shrilly.

  My gun was in my hand a moment later, though I didn’t yet thumb the safety off.

  Sonya was staring back at the fourpig pen. Something very large was hovering over the topmost glow-bars, something analogous to a free-floating furry octopus equipped with fat stubby tentacles. Or vaguely analogous to a hairy hand. Which was pulling at the glow-bars, bending them outward, opening a rather large gap.

  A second monstrous hyperhand – or aspect thereof -was drifting towards us.

  ‘Something’s escaped!’ shrilled Mrs T-S. ‘Shoot at it! Protect me.’

  ‘I don’t have fourbullets,’ I told her.

  ‘I don’t care how many you have! Why don’t you load your gun up properly? You don’t have to shoot at each finger.’ Oh, so she too could see the analogy.

  ‘Let’s just run!’ cried Sonya. Suiting her actions to her words, she scampered away towards the distant exit. ‘Come on, Adelle!’ she called back.

  Surely nothing had escaped; though the fourpig looked likely to, soon. In which case something had arrived – to open our cages.

  ‘Discretion is the better part of –’ said Riggers. He cauhgt Mrs T-S’s arm and began urging her along as fast as he could. I paced fast alongside, keeping an eye on the hyperhand behind us; but this seemed to be shrinking, thank goodness.

  Oh well, we reached the exit and got into the ordinary part of the zoo. More modest animal houses, compounds, restaurant, popcorn stall, cityscape beyond with office blocks, university hill to our right. Parties of visiting schoolkids – and ourselves a moment later – were all staring at the shape that bestrode the city.

  How to describe it? Can’t. There’s no good analogy.

  I guess in the Fourworld intelligence indeed developed, but in a different class of creatures: more like walking hairy squids, with everbranching tentacles and frogspawn eggs – though that was only an aspect.

  Maybe more important: a 4-D world is a hell of a lot larger than a 3-D world. It packs in a whole lot more, and if you could sort of unfold it alongside ours – which you can’t – it would occupy a far vaster amount of space. The scale’s different, quite different.

  So the big boys of the Fourworld are noticeably bigger than any human being. Or rhino. Or whale.

  What Riggers had in his zoo, I realized, wasn’t hyper-tigers and hyperpigs. The captive creatures had to be bits of, well, 4-D shrews or dormice or dinky little hummingbirds. Nature’s miniatures. Maybe as humble as bugs.

  Compared to the masters of the Fourworld, us Three-people led a very superficial life. To a 4-D eye we were flat and paper-thin. But more than that, we were also pretty tiny. Easy to miss noticing. Until we built ourselves a hyperfield, on which the Fourthings could at least stub a toe. Until we made a 4-D intrusion which stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Shortly after, the ripping began. The city kind of screeched like parcel tape being torn free. I don’t mean that the world bent up in the air or that buildings toppled or anything. Everything stayed put. Yet at the same time it was being… parted from the rest of 3-D country, shifted, moved over somewhere else.

  These days there’s a blank at the city limits. And nothing beyond. Absolutely nothing.

  Up in the sunless, though bright, sky there are large things like clouds of frogspawn that seem to look at us.

  The power’s off, so we can’t play any more hypergames, and provisioning the population is going to be a swine before long. We’re still feeding the normal zoo animals, but we’ll have to kill them and eat them all, even if we do have the last rhinos in existence. That should spin out food stocks for about one extra day. Come to the great zoo barbecue! Hippoburger. Loin of lion. Parrot kebabs. Buckets of blood to make sausages.

  As if we didn’t have enough problems, the 4-D mob play games with our Threeworld, stretching bits of it out so that a hundred-yard walk takes an hour, interposing barriers in our way, and making loose scenery and people disappear then putting them back into the Threeworld somewhere else; as often as not in mirror image so that a truck will suddenly have its steering wheel on the right and a mole on your right cheek will now be on your left cheek.
Seeing what’ll happen. How it’ll affect us. Stirring the ants’ nest up a little.

  Though to my own senses I’m solid and three-dimensional the same as everything else around, I can’t help feeling convinced that I’m flat – and that other people are flat, and the whole of the city is flat. I feel that I’m part of a photograph. It’s an action-photograph, as it were; a living photograph. People can move around, climb stairs, enter rooms; no problem. But the photo has edges beyond which no one can stray. And compared with whatever 4-D intelligence is examining this photograph, I’m just a flat picture.

  If we’re flat, how do we go inside a building? How does our frogspawn spy us inside a room? Well, our inside and our outside don’t make a scrap of difference to the masters of the Fourworld. It’s all the same flat surface to them. Er, by analogy. Always by analogy.

  I’ve been snatched and reversed left to right and put back in a different place once already. This happens without

  any warning

  a sudden dizzying rush, though it seems to last longer this time taking me to

  the brown bear compound. Oops, I’m inside it. Grass and bushes and funlogs, a dirty pool, and the tall wall sloping inwards so that no Bruin can claw its way up and out.

  Maybe they think people with clothes on look pretty much like bears, especially when the three bears are up on their hind legs like now, sniffing the air and squinting at me.

  Up on their hind legs, before dropping back on all fours to lumber towards me.

  What happens if you put a spider in an ant’s nest, or stick an ant in a spider’s web? Hey, let’s see.

  Good thing I’m an armed security guard. Bad thing for the bears. No choice, really. We would have had to shoot them soon.

  Out with the gun, off with the safety.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Oh my God, something has taken the cartridges from inside of the clip. A 4-D creature can reach inside a shut-up room, a locked box, with no bother at all. Or reach inside a gun and empty it. Bit fiddly on this scale, but they must have used some tiny 4-D tools. Or grown extra tiny branch-tentacles. Micro-fingers. No bother.

  Click.

  ‘Help me!’

  There’s a clump of frogspawn overhead, watching.

  Letters from the Monkey Alphabet

  A

  * * *

  Mr Zoo Director,

  READ THIS! I am a reincarnated human being! Call your Keepers off!

  B

  * * *

  That’s better. I was scared you might think I’m the sort of monkey that types out Hamlet by accident once in a zillion years.

  I know I’m a chimp – not a monkey. I was making a joke. You need a sense of humour in my position. How would you like being locked up in a cage?

  Okay, so I kept on trying to escape from Chimp Island. But you might have realized there was something odd about me when I swam the moat. Again and again. Chimps don’t like water, eh?

  And later on you might have given me some paper and paints or something to amuse the crowds. That way we could have got into communicating a bit sooner.

  Oh, so you noticed I was in the habit of making funny signs? How was I supposed to know the American Sign Language? When I was a human woman I wasn’t dumb. Meaning deaf and dumb.

  And talking of dumb in the stupid-clever sense, is that why you farmed me out to the Lab for the pregnancy experiment? Because I looked and acted above average intelligence, and they wanted a chimp with a high IQ to inseminate? Or were you just getting rid of a nuisance who was always trying to pick the lock?

  Well, the Lab sent me back. I got away from those idiots who were uncrating me. This time I’ve reached a keyboard.

  Goodness, man, bathe in my reflected glory! Enjoy! This zoo’s going to have a zillion visitors tomorrow. Just as soon as the news gets out. I’m the living proof that people are reincarnated when they die.

  C

  * * *

  I want to know about my baby, too. They wouldn’t even let me hold him. They just whisked him away in case I ate him or something. I suppose he was worth more than gold to them. Though why anyone should want to crossbreed chimps and humans, I don’t know.

  He is okay, isn’t he? They didn’t just dissect him, or something?

  They passed him over to a human foster mother, right? That’s why they sent me back.

  D

  * * *

  Why has no animal ever before upped and said, ‘I used to be a human being’? Well, I believe that hardly any people ever get reborn as any of the higher animals – let alone as people. Most people get reborn much lower down the scale. As rats. Or fish. Or worms. That’s all they deserve.

  Maybe I’m the only person whose karma was good enough to rise even this high up the rebirth ladder. That’s what I think.

  What do you mean: people mightn’t like to know that?

  E

  * * *

  Of course I can prove it. My name as a human was Doris Hoffman. I lived in the Sambala Commune just by Lake Chabot in Alameda County, California. I think I can still remember my Social Security number. Here goes…

  F

  * * *

  What do you mean: some people might think a teenage runaway drop-out deserved to be reborn as a chimp?

  Let me tell you mister, I was twenty-two when the VW went over the cliff. Okay, so we were high at the time. I’m four years older now. I’ve had a lot of time to think: on Chimp Island, then in the cage. I’ve matured. And I’m a mother too. Even if I was zonked out with chloroform when I got fertilized. I’ve given birth.

  G

  * * *

  What do you mean: people mightn’t like to think that my sort of person is higher up the evolutionary scale? I lived a spiritual life in Shambala. Jesus was born in a grubby stable and he lived like a drop-out most of the time… Of course I’m not comparing myself with Jesus!

  Nor with Mary, either! Even if I have just experienced a sort of virgin birth.

  No, I am not saying that the new Messiah has just been born in a primate lab!

  What do you mean: ‘Beast’? Don’t you lay any of that occult crap on me. You’ve been watching too many horror movies. Let’s talk sense. Please.

  H

  * * *

  When I was reborn, I thought, ‘Wow!’ because I knew at once. All my memories came through: parents, high school, all that crap. Then running away to Shambala. I thought I was going to focus my eyes and see a doctor holding me; and boy, would I amaze him when I spoke out!

  But it was my Mom-chimp holding me instead. And I couldn’t speak. Wrong sort of windpipe and vocal chords. Anyway, she wouldn’t have understood. I could only squeak and hang on to her fur.

  My baby never even got a chance to hang on to me.

  I

  * * *

  I didn’t get much chance to communicate in the Lab, either. Those dudes were into biology, not linguistics. And I was sick a lot of the time. Or drugged. They had their work cut out to stop me from aborting.

  Oh, I did have a TV set to amuse me when I wasn’t feeling poorly. Not that they noticed anything significant about my viewing patterns. And toys, too: I had a stack of toys. As if I was the baby.

  But no paints or crayons. Must have thought I might swallow them.

  Why crossbreed chimps and humans, anyway? What does the public think about it?

  J

  * * *

  The public don’t know anything, do they?

  K

  * * *

  Do they?

  L

  * * *

  Why’s that? What does the Lab want chimphumans for? Just out of curiosity?

  Or as industrial slaves?

  Or house slaves?

  Or to crew spaceships?

  M

  * * *

  I guess not. What does that leave?

  War. It leaves war, doesn’t it? They want chimphumans in orbital battle stations, because chimphumans are more expend
able? Or maybe chimps can take years of zero gravity better than people do; but chimps on their own aren’t brainy enough?

  That can’t be it. They could never risk a monkey pushing the button.

  Oh, I get it. It’s to test out new germs and viruses. They need humans who aren’t legally human for test subjects.

  Who’s funding the Lab, anyway? Department of Defence?

  Just because I’m a ‘drop-out’ don’t assume I’m unpatriotic. I’ll remind you that caring about your country doesn’t mean agreeing with every damn thing. First of all it means loving the land.

  N

  * * *

  You won’t tell me, will you? Okay, so you won’t.

  But that has nothing to do with The Main Thing: I’m the first person in the whole history of the human race to be reincarnated, and able to prove it.

  I guess it’s lucky in a way I was reborn as a chimp. Otherwise supposing I’d been reborn as a human child remembering my past life as Doris Hoffman, you could have tried to explain me away as a mutation, with strange mental powers. The power to speak at birth. The power, in the womb, to pick up the vibes of Doris Hoffman and take her memories over. As if my mind took a photograph of her mind, since I didn’t have any other identity going for me at that stage. Yes, you’d say that I imprinted telepathically on dying Doris.

  But you can’t argue with the facts, when I’m visibly a chimp. I can see that in the mirror.