The Book Of Ian Watson, page 26
As the thin moonlight touched her cheek through the window Polly also wept, for the harmony and beauty of it all. For the world had turned in its orbit towards Spring. The year had turned, and the five-year cycle too.
Polly turned upon her side, and before very long she was sung to sleep by an inner lullaby from far away.
IMMORTAL
As dessert to this miscellaneous bill of fare, here’s a tale set in the Egyptian desert where I once rode a camel, though not for very long. Here’s a story which, to my surprise, turned itself into a blank verse drama. But then, surprises are what writing is all about …
The Pharaoh
and the Mademoiselle
A river of aether flowed from God’s empty skull to his feet, then back again. Its route took it along the left side of the spine, through the pelvis, down the narrow valley between the legs. The river was in two layers. The upper one journeyed towards the feet; the lower layer returned in the opposite direction. So we built a boat of carved bone to ply back and forth. Hull and steering oars rested in the understream; linen sails flew in the upper. Judicious use of sails and oars propelled the boat from skull to heel, from heel to skull.
We built the vessel because Ho and Emtep were boatmen, and what else could they do but sail? Even though our world was only the length of all seventy of us lying head to toe.
Yet the opening of the river to navigation seemed to broaden our horizons. In the old days when God’s dead body occupied most of the space in our world, life was much tighter.
That was before we snipped and burrowed and dug and sawed, converting God’s substance to other uses. We made tunnels then caverns then quite emptied him out. We mined him, accumulating wealth in the process. What we didn’t need we tossed into the stream, which dissolved loose soft substances. Of course all this activity took a long while—more than sixty million turnings of the sand-glass of Ote the Timekeeper.
The boat would not dissolve. It was sawed from God’s shoulder-blade, which was hard. Besides, Otem the Priest had laid a binding spell upon the vessel by carving God’s name on the hull. (That was before Otem took a revulsion against the boat and began to loathe it.)
Let me list our wealth; for was I not Tep the Treasurer?
We gained many things from God. From his scalp: hair to braid into rope. From his jaw: the ivory of a false tooth together with the gold wire holding it. From up his rectum we extracted cedar oil and honey; from inside his head other oils and balms. Body fats, wax, carbon, black paste, oil of turpentine, bitumen, mercury: all these things from his flesh, and many more.
Sheets of leather lay upon his shoulders. Rugs of gazelle skin hid God’s ulcer scars. From his wrappings we gained cotton and saffron cloth and linen.
When we first became aware of our existence, we were all enmeshed in that linen and could hardly move. It took unmeasurable time to bite and claw our way free. And cut; fortunately some of us clutched sharp tools in our hands.
We also obtained glass, lapis lazuli, and silex; gold and silver and copper; jewels and rare iron.
From God’s chest and belly we excavated straw and wadding and salts. We threw most of the straw and wadding into the river. God was spacious to live in after that.
We disposed of most of God’s flesh likewise, but we left the muscles of one arm and thigh intact. On the arm we grew the little mushrooms which glowed with so bright a light. Whenever we felt hungry, which was very seldom, we ate some mushroom. We absorbed it into our faces. Its light entered us, letting us see clearly into the deepest nook.
On the thigh we nurtured a few beetles and mosquito eggs and puppae which—just as seldom—we ate. We cut the wings off the two adult mosquitoes of each generation which we allowed to mature. We hamstrung the beetles by breaking their legs.
We drank by bathing in the aether stream.
But enough of this bragging of our wealth! I did not let it obsess me merely because I was the Treasurer. (In the way that Ho and Emtep were obsessed by the need for a boat to sail.)
God’s name was Hotemtep. We knew this because his name was carved on every one of us. According to Otem we were supposed to serve the God after his death. It seemed to me that Hotemtep served us instead; we were his maggots.
We were all black of body. All of us, with the exception of Em the Musician, had the same face—which must have been the face of the God Hotemtep, though his own huge countenance had been burned away by an excess of caustic unguents. Our eyes were small, close-set; our cheekbones prominent; our noses thin and long and slightly hooked. Our jaws were strong and powerful. Our lips were thick. Our ears protruded.
As for Em, her countenance was a smooth blank. Maybe the God forgot to give her a face before he died. Maybe a musician did not need a face, since her character was manifest in her music. She had ears, and experienced no difficulty in hearing her way around our world.
I loved Em in her scanty lutist’s costume. I loved her music, which was voice enough. On my abacus I tallied her golden notes. On her lute she plucked the tally of our treasure. To me her facelessness suggested wax craving the impress of my own face: my nose, my lips, the orbits of my eyes, my tongue. But of course my face was just like anyone else’s.
We people weren’t meant to recognize each other by our faces. What distinguished us was the cut of our clothes and the kind of implements we bore, announcing our function: the stonemason’s mallet, the weaver’s bobbin, the smith’s hammer.
But we learned to put our tools down. We discovered how to detach them from our hands. So to avoid confusion we adopted personal names, which we took from the lexicon of Hotemtep’s own name as inscribed upon us. Priest Otem said that since each of us was only part of Hotemtep it was fitting that we should each bear only part of his name.
When I met someone I announced who I was. “I am Tep,” I said. In reply he or she announced their name. Consequently our sense of being different individuals was reinforced.
When we saw each other’s faces with our own selves reflected so many times over, surely we were meant to reflect that we were all the same—that we were all parts of another, who was dead and torn apart by us. Instead we felt that we were all unique.
We grew apart and altered. We found love and hate. We learned rage and laughter. We smiled and frowned. We helped one another; sometimes we conspired or argued or deceived. Generally we had work to keep us occupied, but we also had leisure. Leisure gives the opportunity to cultivate oneself. That’s because in leisure you find yourself to be a mystery, a taunt, a hollow demanding to be filled.
Otem, as Priest, was our source of secret knowledge. He it was who first taught us to read God’s name. Even so, his knowledge was limited—as became obvious.
One time a number of us were sitting perched on the phalange bones of Hotemtep’s right hand. I was there, and Otem, and Te the Mason and Carpenter Hote, and Em with her lute, and Timekeeper Ote forever turning his sand-glass, recording within him the number of turns since time began.
Otem announced that our world was a wooden box.
“Beyond the box is the land of life. But not immediately. The land of life is too far away for us to reach, unless we first die like the God.”
“How can we die?” I asked. “What is dying?”
Otem frowned.
“We’ve no idea,” said Timekeeper Ote, “and neither have you.”
“It is the long sleep,” said Otem.
“What is sleep?” asked Ote.
Otem made no reply.
But if sleep and dying were a puzzle, we certainly knew what a box was! Carpenter Hote had built boxes to store treasure in. And Hote was fast becoming a humourist.
“If our world’s a box,” he said, “it has two sides.”
“No, boxes have six sides,” said Te.
“Aha! I mean an inside—and an outside.”
“If the land of life isn’t immediately outside the box,” I asked Otem, “then what is?”
“Another box,” replied Otem. “A bigger wooden box enclosing the first box.”
“And beyond that?”
‘A third box, and maybe a fourth box.”
“Oh yes? And beyond?”
“A box made of stone not wood.”
“I see. After which, we find a still bigger stone box?”
“Made of granite, the hardest stone of all.”
Te tapped out a rhythm with a chisel on God’s finger-bone. He matched the strummings of Em’s lute, and this made me feel a surge of resentment at him, which I named jealousy.
“Hmm,” he said. “Even the hardest stone can be split by lighting a fire against it then quenching the fire suddenly with moisture—and repeating the process many times. I know that because I’m a mason. Silex struck on stone will make a spark. The spark will inflame wadding soaked in oil; be thankful we saved some wadding. And if the idea of moisture is inside me, then so is moisture itself. I could spill it from my eyes, weeping. I could spit it from my lips, in contempt at the granite.”
Otem seemed put out by this display of knowledge to which he wasn’t privy. He began lecturing us.
“Our world is a hollow concealed within increasingly hard shells!”
Te spat. A blob of moisture stained God’s bone, though it soon dried. This was an example of contempt.
“Beyond the hardest shell is the land of life where the demons dwell!”
“What are demons?” demanded Te.
“Demons are terrible beings. Appalling, abominable, abhorrent. Cruel, vile and wicked. We must not rouse those demons. If we do, we’ll be destroyed. Within our hollow here we are safe. Yet every time that boat’s prow bumps the wall before turning, a tiny noise travels forth through shell after shell.” (This was when Otem first became consumed with hatred of the boat.) “One time a demon might notice. And tear the shells apart!”
“According to you,” Te reminded him, “the outer granite shell is ever so hard.”
“Demons are strong beyond belief! Hotemtep died so that he could protect us here within; so that he would be a world unto us.”
“Then Hotemtep must have been a demon.” Te struck a glancing blow with his chisel at the finger-bone, breaking free a flake.
“Hotemtep was a God, you fool! Gods are not demons.” And Otem strode off angrily.
I tugged Em by the hand. “Come with me. I’m Tep. I’ve had an idea.”
We walked together under the femur of God’s unfleshed thigh till we reached the pelvic arch by the side of the river.
My idea concerned two things. One was the blob of moisture which Te had produced from out of his mouth. The other was the way we absorbed food into ourselves. Perhaps something could pass between Em and me.
“Lie down, Em.” She lay; and I lay down upon her. “I love you,” I said.
As I rested on top of Em I felt a swelling and glowing sensation deep down in me, and began to squirm. The hot swelling intensified into a fire—a blaze which must somehow be quenched. Yet the fire didn’t hurt; or if so, the hurt was a pleasure.
Em must have felt similarly. She was writhing and tearing at her lute with polished nails, twanging the strings loudly, making wild music.
Of a sudden I felt a boiling release, of part of my own being which was absorbed into Em.
We lay still a while then I helped her to stand. Briefly she cradled her blank face against my shoulder. Softly, as though we might melt into one another.
“I name this sex,” I said. “It is the finest treasure of our treasury. It is the diamond.”
We both went on our way, she to strum about our discovery, I to speak.
Soon many people were enjoying sex together in their leisure time. But now that our world had become so well organised, leisure was on the increase. Sex generally occupied no more than fifteen or twenty turns of the sand-glass; and we discovered that we had to wait several hundred turns before our diamond was sharp and bright again. Thus there was still leisure time to fill—otherwise the dispute between Otem and Te and me (and by extension the boatmen) might have been forgotten.
It certainly wasn’t forgotten by Otem, who in his pride didn’t know when to leave well alone. Some time later when the boat was tied up to one of God’s ribs and Ho and Emtep had just swum ashore, Otem arrived and denounced the boatmen. He accused them of urinating over the side of their boat. This would pollute the aether, said he.
This accusation was a lie. True, some of us had begun to urinate—though seldom. Whenever we did so, our beads of urine were trapped in our robes, there to dry sweetly. But Otem had conceived a loathing for the boat, which suggested the possibility of travel to some place else. So he who had once blessed the vessel now sought a scapegoat in its crew.
“Pissers! Polluters!” he shouted.
Emtep wasn’t to be browbeaten. “We did no such thing,” he asserted stoutly.
Otem stamped his foot. He pounded his rod of office on the ground.
Emtep wouldn’t back down. Emtep clenched and unclenched his fists. Suddenly Otem lashed out with his rod, catching Emtep a violent blow across the shoulder.
Amazingly, Emtep’s arm snapped off. His right arm sheared away cleanly and dryly at the shoulder and tumbled, tunic sleeve and all. It lay on the ground with the fist still opening and closing. Many eyes stared from the scar to the arm, from the arm to the Priest’s cruel rod.
Then Emtep’s partner, Ho, howled and launched himself at Otem. He wrested the rod from the Priest’s grasp and beat Otem fiercely with it. Ho’s labours on the river had made his muscles mighty. His first blow smashed off Otem’s right arm. The second blow, his left arm. A third blow cracked the Priest’s head off at the neck. Blow followed blow. Ho belaboured Otem till he had demolished him into a dozen large pieces. Still the boatman wasn’t satisfied. He thrashed the pieces of Otem as they lay on the ground, reducing them still further.
Finally Emtep stayed his partner’s hand. “Enough. I name this fury. You’ll wear yourself out.”
Discarding the rod, Ho picked up Emtep’s severed limb. He was careful how he held it in case the flexing fingers closed blindly on his own hand, trapping it. Ho fitted the top of the arm to Emtep’s scar and held the two together for a good few turns, but the arm stayed loose and unjoined. Ho sighed deep in his chest.
“I’m Te,” said Te. “A mason joins stones by chipping till two blocks fit perfectly.” He flourished his chisel.
“The join is already perfect,” said Ho. “Can’t you see?”
“Simpler buildings use mud to bind the straw bricks together. Maybe some of God’s mud would help?”
Carpenter Hote pushed forward. “I could drive a nail through. But the sharp point might shatter the hard flesh.”
“I know mud,” said Gardener Hoë. “Spittle may be better.”
“Wait,” I cried. “We must call for Ep the Nurse, with her salves!”
“Of course!” chorused everyone. Now that I had pointed this out, it was obvious. The situation had simply never arisen before.
Immediately a loud call went out for Ep. In the silence which ensued I was the first to notice the squeaking of many tiny voices. Stooping and cupping a hand to my ear, I stepped among the scattered ruins of the Priest.
“Beware demons!” squealed a toe.
“The land of life,” piped a nose.
“Boxes within boxes,” muttered an ankle.
All the pieces of the Priest were talking, with a noise in proportion to their size. From ear and shoulder-chunk and elbow, Otem continued to nag and curse and instruct us.
“It seems to me,” said I, “that our voice isn’t of our lips alone, even though it sounds that way. It is of our whole being. Ho hasn’t rid us of Otem—he has multiplied the nuisance.”
“Aye, but at least I quietened him! And he can’t wander around any more.”
If our voice was of our whole being, why couldn’t Em speak? I resolved to ask her this. But meanwhile Nurse Ep had arrived bearing her tray of jars. No one had needed these, and Ep had put her tray down long ago and turned her hands to other things; but when the call came, Ep found the tray soon enough.
She assessed Emtep’s injury competently then uncapped a jar. ‘
“Sticky honey from the God is what’s needed.” She smeared the sweet thick ooze upon limb and scar alike then held both together for a while. Soon the honey set, and Emtep was healed.
“Thanks, Ep!” Gleefully Emtep clapped his hands. And we all discussed what to do with the Priest.
Ep said, “If you sort all his parts into the right order, I can fix him together.”
Hote said mischievously, “What if we get him in the wrong order, so that his nose grows on his knee?”
“No!” Ho barked out. “I say we should throw his parts in the river like rubbish. The God’s name, carved on him, is broken apart. So the aether may dissolve him. We’ll be rid of him forever.”
Mason Te spoke up, cunningly. “His being might flow through the end of the world.”
“And betray our presence?” Emtep asked.
“I don’t believe in demons. What would you give, Emtep, to be able to sail that boat of yours through the end of the world into the land of life, to explore?”
“If only … but it’s impossible!”
“In a boat—quite. In that case we must creep.”
“Creep?”
“Aye, creep through the tunnel which Hote and I will bore and drill through the shells of wood and stone. Of course, we’ll need assistance.”
Hote and Te must have been plotting privately. Never mind! As treasurer I was fully convinced that our time should be used to gain something of value. This scheme would certainly solve the problem of excess leisure.
“That’s a good plan,” I said. “I support it. We must invest our time and treasure.”
“But this might take millions of turns,” said Timekeeper Ote.
“So what?” I countered. “It’s a bold and excellent plan. And a fine insult to our cringing, bullying Priest.”
“What about his parts?” Nurse Ep reminded us.
