‘Timothy?’ She called softly to her colleague who still lingered at the doorway, staring at me. ‘What’s the weather like out there, Timbo? It’s raining horses in here. Are you joining us today?’
Tim remained where he stood, surveying the interior. Again his eyes returned to me.
‘Mate,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit cosy in here, isn’t it?’
Betty folded her arms and sat down on a convenient bale of straw.
‘Are you afraid of horses, young Timble?’ she asked. ‘Hmm? Perhaps you should be. You know horses kill more people every year than all the world’s nuclear weapons? This horse will be the death of you, Timmy-toes, mark my words.’
‘The size of that thing.’ He squeezed around the edge of the door frame, eyes locked on me. Betty was shaking her head slowly at his progress.
‘Good God almighty, Timbolina. Pull your knickers up and get in here. You are embarrassing the horse.’
That is overstating my reaction perhaps. It didn’t take much intuition to understand that this man didn’t want to be in here. I could sympathise to a certain extent; I didn’t want him to be in here either. He cast a glance around my home.
‘Mate, it stinks in here,’ he said. ‘Why do we have to work in here? Why do I have to work in here?’
‘Come on, Jimmy. Sometimes you need to step into the filthy waters of destiny. Hmm? Jump in with both feet. Drown in the stinky depths and be reborn. Buttercup will kiss you back to life, won’t you, Buttercup?’
‘Seriously, mate, you don’t even need me in here,’ he replied. ‘I can set up a remote link…’
‘Pshh, dear me, Timbo. And you fought so hard to get this far. You wanted to sit at the dinner table, my dear, so now you can eat with the rest of us. Come on. Come here, there’s a brave boy.’ She rocked herself upright from her straw bale and led him slowly forward into the room. I was keeping a wary eye on both of them but stood my ground as they approached me. For one thing, I had to make it clear to these strangers whose house they were standing in, and for another there was an interesting smell coming from a bag that the woman had dangling from her shoulder.
‘Buttercup. Buttercup. Heavenly horse. What is this?’ Betty pulled a carrot from her bag and wiggled it as if it were alive in her hand. ‘We bring gifts, Lord Buttercup. From faraway lands. A magical bag, filled with inspiration. Here, take this, Timbo.’
Tim accepted the carrot without thinking, and then stared at it like he had never seen one before.
‘Not for you, Timothy. For the horse. The carrot of friendship.’
I waited patiently as he offered me the carrot of friendship. He took great care to keep as far away from my mouth as he possibly could, holding the carrot at arm’s length. After carefully considering everything I leant forward, sniffed his hand, and blew a raspberry at him. Then I snatched the carrot out of his hand. It was important to make these people understand that I was in charge around here.
Tim cringed away slowly, wiping his hand on his trousers.
‘Oh, Timmy, did you just make a new friend? You do realise this means you are married now? You and Buttercup?’
Tim had backed away as far as the space would allow, staring at me all the while. His trance was eventually broken by the far wall of the stable, which was evidently closer than he had calculated.
‘Seriously, mate,’ he said. ‘Why do you even need me in here? I’m only dealing with the back end.’
‘Of the horse?’ Betty barked a laugh at him. ‘We aren’t studying the back end, my dear. It’s the front end we’re interested in. Honestly, Jimbo, you didn’t complain this much with any of the other animals. Hmm? You’re not racist against horses, are you? Buttercup is one of us, now. So do us all a favour and have a good look around this stable until you find a pair of balls, please. This is your world now. You are married to this horse, remember? A holy bond, sealed for eternity with a carrot of love, under the eyes of Betty, your Lord God and saviour who sees all and is cursed by eternal disappointment.’
Tim grimaced and found a straw bale to slump on.
‘So, let’s all just start getting friendly in here, why not?’ the woman said, peering at the top of my head. She gingerly reached out a hand towards my face, which I chose to avoid by pretending to look at something more interesting somewhere else. ‘Tough week for you, Buttercup. Hmm?’ There is no doubt I would have agreed with her, if I had understood what she had just said. Then again, if I had understood exactly what these people had done to me while I was unconscious, there is no doubt I would have kicked them both through the wall.
Tim’s attention had wandered to a corner of the room, where a bank of dark boxes with flickering lights were stacked on makeshift metal shelves. He seemed to gaze longingly at the blinking technology, as if it were a portal to civilisation.
‘We can’t even do anything yet,’ he moaned. ‘Aren’t we gonna test the data feed?’
‘All taken care of, Timothy. I’ve adapted Squigley for the translation management.’ She turned around to see Tim questioning her with an incredulous face. ‘It’s scalable. And autonomous. Hmm? Gives us more time for team building. Team Buttercup, yes?’
‘Scalable and autonomous,’ he mumbled. ‘We should start calibrating at least. Shouldn’t we? What did Dr Horse say?’
‘Dr Horse?’
‘The horse doctor. Whatever her name is.’
‘Dr Horse! Honestly, Jimothy. She would spank your bare backside if she heard that. Anyway. Dr Horse says keep your hands in your pockets for now. Our friend here is not quite ready to come out of the oven yet. You are still mending, aren’t you, Buttercup? Yes, you are. Off your horsey face on all kinds of amazing drugs, aren’t you?’ She waggled her finger at Tim. ‘Didn’t read the medical report, did you, hmm? Naughty boy.’
‘Whatever,’ he replied.
‘One more week of recovery, that should be enough. What do you think, Buttercup? A week of quality horse-time, yes? Catch up with your old horse buddies? Do some frolicking in the field?’
‘But we could start just calibrating, surely?’
‘Hands in pockets, Timbo. Don’t argue with Dr Horse. This is a time of frolicking. I want to see you frolicking too, young man. And when you’re not out there frolicking like a pony, I want you in here, soaking up the lovely atmosphere. Hmm? Becoming a part of the furniture, that is your only job this week. Maybe roll in some horse manure, why not?’
Tim seemed unsure whether this was a serious suggestion, but didn’t dare enquire any further. Half of anything Betty ever said appeared to be meaningless gibberish, even to members of her own species, so extracting any sense from it was often not worth the trouble. As a horse, this was a policy I extended to all human activities, and my attention was drifting to the view outside my stable door. I was free to wander in and out as I pleased, and was considering going out into the sunshine to escape from these chattering creatures, but the long, thin one was staring at me again, and there was always the chance that he might give me another carrot.
‘God, the size of that thing,’ he said, eyes glazed. I believe he was referring to my rear end, the enormity of which seemed to have put him into a trance. Perhaps the fresh perspective of this close proximity was opening his mind to previously unexplored possibilities, such as the terrible fate he might suffer if I chose to sit on him.
After a few days, the pain had subsided to a tolerable though ever-present itching in my scalp. I was munching on a carrot to take my mind off it while Betty fussed over me, a continual stream of noise tumbling from her flapping mouth as usual.
I had been spending more time in my stable recently. The other horses were avoiding me for some reason. I had expected to get a bit of sympathy from them while I was recovering from my mysterious illness, but they were making it very clear that I was no longer a high-status member of the herd. I couldn’t understand what I had done wrong, but at least in my own stable I was still the boss.
I was conducting a little experiment of my ow
n on these humans. I noticed that the less I cooperated with them, the more carrots they would give me, but only up to a certain point. The key to maximising carrot yield was to calculate the precise point at which they would give up trying to persuade me to do something. Cooperating too early meant missing out on potential carrots, but leaving it too late risked ending the whole transaction, and it was no good suddenly cooperating once the carrots had stopped flowing or they might think I actually wanted to take part, regardless of carrots. It was a fine judgement to make.
‘Mmm, lovely carrots. What do you say, Buttercup? Do you say thank you? Thank you, Betty. Yes, you do, don’t you. Hmm? I am the guardian of the gateway to the land of carrots, that’s right. What? No more? Where have they all gone?’ She held her magical bag upside down and shook it. The magic was gone. ‘Yes, I know. If only you could grow wings and fly to carrot land.’
Having lost this round of the carrot game I diverted my attention elsewhere. I could hear Tim’s approaching footsteps as he slowly returned from whatever excuse he had found to leave the room.
‘Timpson. Where have you been hiding? There is nothing for you out there, you should know that by now.’
‘Mate, those horse people…’ He squeezed himself back into his complicated shape of choice, hunched over a keyboard with his nose about a carrot’s length from a small glowing computer screen.
‘Talking to your fellow human beings, Timothy? Are you ill?’
‘They bloody cornered me. Nutcases. They reckon our horse is depressed. Or something.’
‘Of course they do. You wouldn’t understand, Timbola,’ she said, creeping up behind him. ‘You can learn everything you need to know about any subject just by sitting on it all day. Sucking the knowledge up through your backside. That’s real science, my dear.’ Betty was standing over him now, and he became uncomfortably aware of an empty bag resting on his shoulder.
Tim put himself to the effort of awkwardly turning in his chair to face her, silently making clear his disapproval of such behaviour.
‘Is it true, Buttercup?’ Betty asked me. ‘Are you feeling down? You know you can talk to us. We are here for you. Hmm? Why the long face, my dear?’
Was it true? If only I could have understood what she was saying at the time, I might have been able to milk some extra sympathy carrots out of my apparent misery. Watching it now, I find it faintly ridiculous to hear humans discussing the mental well-being of one of their domestically enslaved animals, as if any state of mind borne of such circumstances could be deemed normal or abnormal. I definitely didn’t feel right, but the physical aspects led me to believe it was a manifestation of whatever illness I was still recovering from. As such I was hopeful it would be a passing phase.
‘Maybe some of our other animals were depressed,’ said Tim, gazing at me. ‘Might explain a few things, you think?’
Betty chewed on a fingernail in thought.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we did have that monkey who ate himself.’
‘Thanks, mate. I’d just about managed to forget about that.’
Betty nodded along to some private conversation going on inside her head.
‘Daily horse mental-assessment survey,’ she said. ‘Progress charts with smiley face stickers, that’s what we need. Hmm? Something to keep those expert horse psychologists out there busy. They may as well be doing something useful, the amount they are costing us. You know we’re practically paying them to keep this whole place running? Never mind that we are only using this little corner.’
‘Mate,’ Tim replied, ‘if they are shovelling up horse shit and not talking to me, then they are earning every penny.’ He leaned around to look out the stable door, probably making sure no passing stable workers happened to hear him.
A frown suddenly appeared on his face.
‘Is that camera on?’ Tim nodded towards the ever-present eye, squatting in the corner. He must have noticed a faint red glow escaping from behind the tired piece of masking tape covering its recording light. Betty nodded reproachfully.
‘Best behaviour, young Jimmy-boy. The eyes of eternity are watching. There will be no mischief, or history will judge you.’
‘What are you recording for? We haven’t even started yet.’ His frown deepened. ‘Has that been on all day?’
‘All day, every day. Non-stop twenty-four-hour Timothy-cam. All the Timothy, all the time. Your life, etched in marble, naked and on horseback. What?’
Tim’s mouth was hanging open.
‘When were you gonna tell me about this?’ he asked. Betty seemed genuinely bemused by his reaction.
‘Oh please calm yourself, Princess Timolina. Honestly. No one is going to see you without your make-up on. Try to imagine what poor old Buttercup is going to go through, hmm? If you think this is bad? Nowhere to hide for dear old Buttercup. Look upon our horse and be grateful.’
Tim’s eyes darted between myself and the camera, a pained expression on his face.
‘Mate,’ he said.
‘Seriously, Jimbo, don’t even bother worrying about it. All you have to do is exist. If you want to feel sorry for somebody, think of the poor guy who will have to watch it all, editing the highlights.’
Tim shook his head and returned to his screen.
I watched all this in silence, oblivious to any meaning behind the clucking and squawking of these human chickens. I could occasionally deduce the focus of their attention from the positions of their eyes, but that was about as close as I could get to comprehending the world inside the human mind.
That is not to say I was incapable of such comprehension. In fact it is perfectly possible to translate most human traits into concepts that a horse would understand.
To take this conversation as an example, I could have easily identified with Tim’s concerns about being caught on camera, being watched and judged by unseen eyes. Human privacy is often misunderstood by humans themselves, as some kind of abstract need to have secrets or personal space. But as any prey animal will tell you, being watched is generally a precursor to being eaten. The less that those who hunger know about you, the better, and despite all their technological advances humans were still prey animals. The only difference was that the predators who now stalked them were members of their own species, feeding on the weak and vulnerable to maintain their own social, political or economic dominance.
Most human travails, no matter how complex or abstract, were extensions of the basic requirements of life that most animals had to deal with on a daily basis. Unfortunately, any attempt to translate the human experience into ideas I could understand would have to contend with the fact that I just couldn’t care less.
Betty was doing something to the camera now. The whole room tipped and shook as she picked it up and carried it to the corner where Tim was sitting, his sulking shoulders looming large in the frame as she crept up behind him.
‘Timoomoo,’ she crooned. ‘Where are you, Timoomoo? Are you there?’
Tim physically contracted, but remained hunched in concentration staring at his screen.
‘I have a song for you, Timoomoo. Would you like me to sing you a song?’
He shook his head, but it was not enough to avoid the song.
‘Timmy Timmy Timmy, he has a microscopic thingy, and the horses they all laugh, when they see him in the bath…’
At this point in the song she made a noise that I can only imagine was meant to be the sound of horses laughing. Tim had slowly revolved in his chair and was staring dispassionately into the camera.
‘Mate, what are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Don’t mind me, Timmy dear. I’m just getting a close-up of your screen.’ She focused the camera on Tim’s computer, where a diagram was gradually materialising. ‘Are we still processing?’
‘Ninety-eight per cent,’ he replied, cringing awkwardly away as much as he could without relinquishing his hands from the keyboard. ‘Why don’t we just put it up on the big screen?’ He nodded towards a large white rectangle h
anging on my wall, dominating the room with its blank stare. Of all the foreign objects in my room this one probably bothered me the most, if only because Betty had spent all morning insisting that I take notice of it. The camera’s view swung violently as Betty pointed it in my direction.
‘What do you think, Buttercup? Would you like to see what’s going on in that big horsey head of yours? Are you ready for that?’
The large white screen began to fill with a spray of dots, gradually settling like dirty snowflakes onto an invisible framework of branches.
Betty set the camera down on its tripod and wandered into shot, transfixed by the spectacle.
‘Look at that, Buttercup. This is what dreams are made of.’ She traced the pathways on the screen with her fingers as they built themselves into a chaotic road map. ‘Can you see this? This is you, my dear. Your whole world is in here. You are the first horse in space, looking down on everything that ever is, was and will be.’
‘Not quite everything,’ said Tim. ‘We only got about sixty per cent coverage, in the end.’
‘You hear that, horsey-hoofs? Looks like you’re going to have to carry us the rest of the way, hmm? We are all space-horses today, aren’t we? Full speed ahead to Planet Buttercup. Hey, where are you going?’
Poignant though this must have seemed to my human companions, as far as I was concerned this virtual cauliflower they were projecting on the wall had all the relevance of a patch of mould. I had decided my time would be best spent looking at the field outside through the doorway.
‘Not impressed,’ said Tim, looking round at my backside.
‘Chin up, Jimbo. I think it is wonderful, and that is all that matters about anything. Now, this red patch here…’ Betty pointed to a highlighted region of the finely woven diagram. Tim turned back to his computer and began toggling through various features, each one colouring different regions of the ghostly image.
‘I’m cross-referencing pathways with cognitive functions,’ he said. ‘Work in progress. We can refine it once we start getting the feedback.’
Horse Destroys the Universe Page 2