Bethlehem and Others: Collected Stories

by Peter Watts

  And suddenly, with an almost audible click, the whole world drops into focus. I look around, surprised; nobody else seems to have noticed the change. On the surface, nothing has changed. My family is blissfully unaware of the epiphany that has just occurred.

  But I understand something now. It wasn’t really my fault.

  Go down far enough, and we’re all running the same program. Each cell holds the complete design; the framework, the plumbing, the wiring diagrams, all jammed into a spiral thread of sugars and bases that tells us what to be. What blind stupid arrogance, to think that a few campfire songs could undo four million years of evolution. Morally wrong, we chant; politically incorrect, socially unacceptable. But our genes aren’t fooled. They’re so much wiser than we are. They know: we have met the enemy, and he is not us. Evolution, ever patient, inspires us to self-defense.

  My enmity is hardwired. Am I to blame if the plan calls for something that hates?

  • • •

  WHAT’S THIS? They’ve changed the bait again?

  It can’t be an easy job, trying to bribe us into literacy. Each week they put a new display in the lobby, easily visible through the glass to passers-by, some colourful new production meant to lure the great unwashed into the library.

  Wasted on me; I’m in here for something else entirely. Although, what the hell, the newspaper section doesn’t close for hours. And today’s offering is a tad more colourful than usual. Let’s see…

  A crayon drawing of crude stick figures, red and yellow, black and white, holding hands in a ring. Posters, professionally crafted but no less blatant, showing Chinese and Caucasians wearing hard hats and smiling at each other. The air is thick with sugary sweetness and light; I feel the first stirrings of diabetes.

  I move closer to the display. A sign, prominently displayed: “Sponsored by the B.C. Human Rights Commission”.

  They know. They have their polls, their barometers, they can feel the backlash building and they’re fighting it any way they can.

  I wander the exhibit. I feel a bit like a vampire at church. But the symbols here are weak; the garlic and the holy signs have an air of desperation about them. They’re losing, and they know it.

  This feeble propaganda can’t change how we feel.

  Besides, why should they care what we think? In another few years we won’t matter any more.

  There’s a newspaper clipping tacked up on one corner of the nearest board. From an old 1986 edition of the Globe and Mail: “Reagan Assured Gorbachev of Help Against Space Aliens”, the headline says.

  Is this for real?

  Yes indeed. Then-president Reagan, briefly inspired, actually told Gorbachev that if the Earth were ever threatened by aliens, all countries would pull together and forget their ideological differences. Apparently he thought there was a moral there somewhere.

  “One of the few intelligent things Reagan ever said,” someone says at my elbow. I turn. She’s overdressed; wears a BC government pin on one lapel and a button on the other. The button shows planet Earth encircled by the words “We’re all in this together”.

  But at least she’s one of us.

  “But he was right,” I reply. “Threaten the whole human race and our international squabbling seems so petty.”

  She nods, smiling. “That’s why I put it up. It’s not really part of the presentation, but I thought it fit.”

  “Of course, we don’t have space aliens to hate. But not to worry. There’s always an enemy, somewhere.”

  Her smile falters a bit. “What do you mean?”

  “If not space aliens, the Russians. If not the Russians, the local ethnics. I stayed on an island once where the lobstermen on the south end all hated the herring fishermen on the north. They all seemed the same to me, a lot of them were even related, but they had to be able to hate someone somewhere.” She clucks and shakes her head in cynical accord.

  “Of course, both sides banded together to hate all offislanders,” I add.

  “Of course.”

  “A single human being, the whole damn species, or any level in between, and the pattern’s the same, isn’t it? It’s like hatred is —”

  I see galaxies within galaxies.

  “—scale-invariant,” I finish slowly.

  She looks at me, a bit strangely. “Uh—”

  “But of course, there are also a lot of positive things happening. People can co-operate when they have to.”

  Her smile reinflates. “Exactly.”

  “Like the natives. Banding together to save their cultures, forgetting their differences. The Haidas even stopped taking slaves from other tribes.”

  She isn’t smiling at all now. “The Haida,” she says, “haven’t taken slaves for generations.”

  “Oh, that’s right. We put a stop to that about—I guess it was even before we banned the potlatch, wasn’t it? But eventually they’ll want to start up again. I mean, slavery was integral to their culture, and we simply must protect the integrity of everyone’s culture here, mustn’t we?”

  “I don’t think you’ve got all your facts straight,” she says slowly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were multicultural. I thought Canadians were supposed to—” I spy some bold print a few boards down— “to allow different cultures to flourish side by side without imposing our own moral and ethical standards on them.”

  “Within the law,” she says. I wait, but she’s wary now, unwilling to speak further.

  So I do. “Then as a woman, I’m sure you’re pleased that Muslim men won’t have to stop the traditional subjugation of their wives when they come here. As long as they keep it in the home, of course.”

  “Excuse me.” She turns her back to me, takes a step along the display.

  “You’re lying to us,” I say, raising my voice. A couple of bystanders turn their heads.

  She faces me, mouth open to speak. I pre-empt her: “Or perhaps you’re lying to them. But you can’t have it both ways, and you can’t change the facts no matter how many bad classroom cartoons you force on us.”

  There’s a part of me that hasn’t enjoyed provoking the anger in her face. A few days ago, it might even have been the biggest part. But it’s only a few thousand years old, tops, and the rest of me really doesn’t give a shit.

  I lift my arm in a gesture that takes in the whole display. “If I were a racist,” I tell her, “this wouldn’t begin to convince me.”

  I bare my teeth in a way that might be mistaken for a smile. I turn and walk deeper into the building.

  • • •

  HERE IT IS: on the back page of Section C, in a newspaper almost two weeks old. Didn’t even make it to the airwaves, I guess. What difference does one more battered Asian make, after all the gang warfare going down in Chinatown? No wonder I missed it.

  He had a name. Wai Chan. Found unconscious at a North Van housing development owned by Balthree Properties, where he was—

  (Balthree Properties? They’re local, aren’t they?)

  —where he was employed as a night watchman. In stable condition after being attacked by an unknown assailant. No motive. No suspects.

  Bullshit. Half the fucking city is suspect, we’ve all got motive, and they know it.

  Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they believe all the stories they feed us that say Hey, High-Density Living Good For You, Crime Rate Unconnected To Population Size, Massive Immigration Keeps Us Safe From America, hurrah hurrah! Nothing like giving yourself a mild case of cancer to cure the measles, and every time somebody projects that the lower mainland will be sixty percent Chinese by 2010 the news is buried in a wave of stories about international goodwill and the cultural mosaic. Maybe they don’t know what it’s like to go back to the place you grew up and find it ripped to the ground, some offshore conglomerate’s turned it into another hive crammed with pulsing yellow grubs, perhaps Balthree Properties isn’t run out of Hong Kong after all but I didn’t know that then, did I? That used to be my home, there were trees there onc
e, and childhood friends, and now just mud and lumber and this ugly little Chink yammering at me, barely even speaks the fucking language and he’s kicking me out of my own back yard—

  Once I felt guilty about what I did to him. I was sick with remorse. That was stupid, woolly thinking. My guilt doesn’t spring from the one time I let the monster out. No sirree. It springs from all the other times I didn’t.

  • • •

  THE INDIANS ARE ON THE WARPATH. From the endowment lands on east, they’re blocking us. We’re on their land, they say. They want justice. They want retribution. They want autonomy.

  Don’t tell me, noble savage. So do I.

  Traffic moves nose-to-bumper like a procession of slugs. At this rate it’ll be hours before I even get out of town, let alone home. There was a time when I could afford to live in town. There was even a time when I wanted to. Now, all I want to do is scream.

  There’s a group of Indian kids at the roadside, enjoying the chaos their parents have wrought. I bear them no ill will; the natives are a conquered people, drunk and unemployed, no threat to anyone. I sympathise. I honk my horn in support.

  Thunk! A spiderweb explodes across my windshield, glassy cracks dividing and redividing into a network too fine to for my eyes to follow, I can barely see through—

  Jesus! That sonofabitch threw a rock at me! There he is, winding up for another—no, he’s after someone else this time, our ancestors weren’t nice to their ancestors and this brat thinks that gives him some god-given moral right to trash other people’s property—

  I don’t have to take this. I didn’t take their fucking land away from them. Get off to the side, onto the shoulder—now floor it! Watch the skid, watch the skid—and look at those punks scrambling out of the way! One of them isn’t quite fast enough; catches my eye as he rolls off the hood, and holy shit did his sneer vanish in a hurry! I do believe he already regrets the rashness of his actions, and we’ve barely started dancing yet.

  I turn off the ignition. I pocket the keys.

  I get out of the car.

  There are people shouting somewhere very far away, and horns honking. They sound almost the same. Someone gets up off the pavement in front of me, nursing his leg. He doesn’t look so tough now, does he? Like it’s just dawned on him that they lost Oka years ago. Where did all your friends go, fucker? Where’s Lasagna when you need him?

  Okay, you want to wail about oppression? I’ll show you oppression, you greasy Indian brat. I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t ever forget.

  My muscles are knotted so tightly I wonder why my own ligaments haven’t been torn out at the roots. I’m dimly aware that this is more or less normal for me now.

  But I know that I’ll feel better soon. ■

  A Word for Heathens

  I AM THE HAND OF GOD.

  His Spirit fills me even in this desecrated place. It saturates my very bones, it imbues my sword-arm with the strength of ten. The cleansing flame pours from my fingertips and scours the backs of the fleeing infidels. They boil from their hole like grubs exposed by the dislodging of a rotten log. They writhe through the light, seeking only darkness. As if there could be any darkness in the sight of God—did they actually think He would be blind to the despoiling of a place of worship, did they think He would not notice this wretched burrow dug out beneath His very altar?

  Now their blood erupts steaming from the blackened crusts of their own flesh. The sweet stink of burning meat wafts faintly through my filter. Skin peels away like bits of blackened parchment, swirling in the updrafts. One of the heathens lurches over the lip of the hole and collapses at my feet. Look past the faces, they told us on the training fields, but today that advice means nothing; this abomination has no face, just a steaming clot of seared meat puckered by a bubbling fissure near one end. The fissure splits, revealing absurdly white teeth behind. Something between a whine and a scream, barely audible over the roar of the flames: Please, maybe. Or mommy.

  I swing my truncheon in a glorious backhand. Teeth scatter across the room like tiny dice. Other bodies crawl about the floor of the chapel, leaving charred bloody streaks on the floor like the slime trails of giant slugs. I don’t think I’ve ever been so overpowered by God’s presence in my life. I am Saul, massacring the people of Amolek. I am Joshua butchering the Amorites. I am Asa exterminating the Ethiopians. I hold down the stud and sweep the room with great gouts of fire. I am so filled with divine love I feel ready to burst into flame myself.

  “Praetor!”

  Isaiah claps my shoulder from behind. His wide eyes stare back at me, distorted by the curve of his faceplate. “Sir, they’re dead! We need to put out the fire!”

  For the first time in what seems like ages I notice the rest of my guard. The prefects stand around the corners of the room as I arranged them, covering the exits, the silver foil of their uniforms writhing with fragments of reflected flame. They grip not flamethrowers, but dousers. Part of me wonders how they could have held back; how could anyone feel the Spirit in this way, and not bring down the fire? But the Spirit recedes in me even now, and descending from that peak I can see that God’s work is all but finished here. The heathens are dead, guttering stick-figures on the floor. Their refuge has been cleansed, the altar that once concealed it lies toppled on the floor where I kicked it just— Was it only a few minutes ago? It seems like forever.

  “Sir?”

  I nod. Isaiah gives the sign; the prefects step forward and spray the chapel with fire-suppressants. The flames vanish; the light goes gray. Crumbling semicremated corpses erupt in clouds of wet hissing steam as the chemicals hit.

  Isaiah watches me through the smoky air. It billows around us like a steam bath. “Are you all right, sir?” The sudden moisture lends a hiss to his voice; his respirator needs a new filter.

  I nod. “The Spirit was so—so…” I’m lost for words. “I’ve never felt it so strong before.”

  There’s a hint of a frown behind his mask. “Are you—I mean, are you sure?”

  I laugh, delighted. “Am I sure? I felt like Trajan himself!”

  Isaiah looks uncomfortable, perhaps at my invocation of Trajan’s name. His funeral was only yesterday, after all. Yet I meant no disrespect—if anything, I acted today in his memory. I can see him standing at God’s side, looking down into this steaming abattoir and nodding with approval. Perhaps the very heathen that murdered him lies here at my feet. I can see Trajan turning to the Lord and pointing out the worm that killed him.

  I can hear the Lord saying, Vengeance is mine.

  • • •

  AN OUTCAST HUDDLES at the far end of the Josephus platform, leaning across the barrier in a sad attempt to bathe in the tram’s maglev field. The action is both pointless and pitiful; the generators are shielded, and even if they weren’t the Spirit moves in so many different ways. It never ceases to amaze me how people can fail at such simple distinctions: shown that electromagnetic fields, precisely modulated, can connect us with the divine, they somehow conclude that any coil of wire and energy opens the door to redemption.

  But the fields that move chariots are not those that grace us with the Rapture. Even if this misguided creature were to get his wish, even if by some perverse miracle the shielding were to vanish around the tram’s coils, the best he could hope for would be nausea and disorientation. The worst—and it happens more than some would admit, these days—could be outright possession.

  I’ve seen the possessed. I’ve dealt with the demons who inhabit them. The outcast is luckier than he knows.

  I step onto the tram. The Spirit pushes the vehicle silently forward, tied miraculously to a ribbon of track it never touches. The platform slides past; the pariah and I lock eyes for a moment before distance disconnects us.

  Not shame on his face: dull, inarticulate rage.

  My armor, I suppose. It was someone like me who arrested him, who denied him a merciful death and left his body lingering in the world, severed from its very soul.


  A pair of citizens at my side point at the dwindling figure and giggle. I glare at them: they notice my insignia, my holstered shockprod, and fall silent. I see nothing ridiculous in the outcast’s desperation. Pitiful, yes. Ineffective. Irrational. And yet, what would any of us do, cut off from grace? Would any straw be too thin to grasp, for a chance at redemption?

  Everything is so utterly clear in the presence of God. The whole universe makes sense, like a child’s riddle suddenly solved; you see forever, you wonder how all these glorious pieces of creation could ever have confused you. At the moment, of course, those details are lost to me. All that remains is the indescribable memory of how it felt to have understood, absolutely and perfectly… and that memory, hours old, feels more real to me than now.

  The tram glides smoothly into the next station. The newsfeed across the piazza replays looped imagery of Trajan’s funeral. I still can’t believe he’s dead. Trajan was so strong in the Spirit we’d begun to think him invulnerable. That he could be bested by some thing built in the Backlands—it seems almost blasphemous.

  Yet there he rests. Blesséd in the eyes of God and Man, a hero to both rabble and elite, a commoner who rose from Prefecthood to Generalship in under a decade: killed by an obscene contraption of levers and pellets and explosions of stinking gas. His peaceful face fills the feed. The physicians have hidden all signs of the thing that killed him, leaving only the marks of honorable injury for us to remember. The famous puckered line running down forehead to cheekbone, the legacy of a dagger than almost blinded him at twenty-five. The angry mass of scars crawling up his shoulder from beneath the tunic: a lucky shockprod strike during the Essene Mutiny. A crescent line on his right temple—a reminder of some other conflict whose name escapes me now, if indeed I ever knew it.