Had not he himself, half awake on so many mornings riding the public rapid transit, eyed off the bare, stockinged or hinted legs of unknown women, trim thighs, under the most favorable conditions, disappearing only at the last moment into the shadow of their skirts? And chatted in a meaningless haze of lust at parties? Randy in the bug laboratory? Known the need to know the bodies of the myriad females who crossed and recrossed the daily circle of his sight? Here is Ben the unsure—but, he asked himself, unsure of what?
Not his “style” or his potency or his capacity. Indeed Anla has said he’s very good at it, and she is not without the yardstick of comparison.
Nor does he dread the loss of face at having his advances rejected; he could hardly be rejected by those who plainly propositioned him, which had happened often enough. Ben decided, as often before, to screw the next available wom(an)(en).
I wish the fucking pest would just piss off. He rose without a word to wander about the beach.
§
Theri, her feet leaving minimal impression on the sand, wondered what would have happened had Catsize been present. Some stunt to goad Ben or Kael into action? Or an intervention on his own behalf? Outings sans Catsize usually seemed to go off at half-cock.
The four of them had “found” Catsize one evening not long after the marriage.
In the center of a recently-sprinkled common, the Revived Christer Commandos stood bearing witness to the new scientifically established date for their god’s return. The prima facie issue was whether the millennium began on 1 Jan 4000 or the same day of 4001; a subsidiary question concerned the symmetry which supported 4004 as the specified date.
The troops were a semi-circle of blue and gold spangled with the gleam of silver harps. A massive bellied man stood ready to thump a drum that protruded from his waist like a tumor of heroic proportions. On a floater in the center of the arc their green-faced leader was beseeching the crowd in conclusion:
“...and if there are any of you here who wish to repent your sins, do not hesitate to kneel down and offer up your souls to Christ Jesus as many billions have done before this benighted era. Salvation in the bosom of Christ the Charioteer....”
The four of them joined the incredulous crowd around the band, bringing attendance up to two dozen, if you counted the buzzed-out pair of drunks swaying in hallucination. No likely converts here, unless one of the drunks was the type that saw God in his stone. Ben peered into the gaping mouth of a trombone clutched by a buxom commando lass with jaunty tendrils. In her free hand she held a library.
“...and now we shall sing hymn number two hundred and ten, Angels of grace Thy Chariots fly. Those of you who wish to join in, do not hesitate to do so.”
The band addressed their instruments and punched their score codes, ready to blast and strum and tinkle forth. From the front of the crowd a petulant voice enquired: “Hey, Commander, how can we join in the songs if we don’t know the words, eh?”
The leader turned to face the crowd, looking down from his floater at the petitioner. Catsize gazed up earnestly: “How can we praise the Lord our God if we haven’t the words of the songs, Commander?”
“I take your point. I shall read you a couple of verses aloud—better still, maybe you’d like to read them out so everyone can hear.”
The commander stepped from his floater and borrowed the library held by the buxom lass. He handed it to Catsize, who cleared his throat and prepared to speak, suddenly had a better thought and climbed onto the Christer’s floater. Catsize began to read, earnestly, devoutly, slowly getting caught up by the spirit of the thing:
“O hear us when we cry to Thee for those in peril on the sea and on the land too, friends, as the tectonic plates creak on the foundations of the deep, and for those in the air like the fowl of the field and the hounds of the Baskervilles and all things bright and beautiful are called unto the Lord thy manufacturer for ever and ever or whichever comes earlier, yea verily. For lo and behold I say unto you, did he who made the lamb make thee? Answer me that if you can, you sinners and blasphemers, you godless, whoremongering scoundrels, for verily, verily, comrades and friends, I am the way and the light and don’t you bloody forget it. For the time has come for a terrible fire to be on the land and visions come to me of the arsehole of the universe farting forth a mighty thunder. For Moses begat Jacob who begat Sodom who begat Tomorra and all creeping things, and let you who are without stones come forth and be multiplied. And if there’s any of you here with sin in your hearts and minds, well, you just kneel down on the common like the man told you to, pronto quicksmart if I was you, there isn’t much time left, you dunderheads.”
During this diatribe the band stared in a mixture of shock and anger at the arrogator on the floater. The commander essayed a number of ineffectual exhortations of the that-will-do-you’ve-had-your-say-now type. Now he placed a restraining grip on Catsize’s arm.
“Look you here, Generalissimo, you just unhand me, zinger, for verily I am a truth sayer come out of Andromeda, man, to clear away the light and broadcast the memes of wisdom in the hearts of all humankind, and woe betide any who cast me out of their temples. And let it not be said that the holy rolling shock troops stood in the way of the redemption of their fellow man, cobber. For look you here, there’s a right band of fornicators and idlers that needs the word like a desert needs phosphate. For the rich man builded his house upon the eye of the needle that it might walk forty days upon the water....”
Under this onslaught, delivered at a steadily rising rate of words/min, the commando stood back. Catsize swung to face the crowd. The spirit of repentence was upon him:
“Now then, you lot, bend the knee, you rabble. On your knees you balling, blasphemous, uncharitable tax-gatherers and publicans groaning to God from Bolte. For the Lord will send lightnings and Egyptian ruth-resistant tumors before the night’s out if there’s no unstiffening of necks here, comrades. For the Lord thy God is an envious old bugger, visiting the sins of the living zingers on the bones of their forefathers, though since it’s a Y-carried retribution the foremothers will generally be spared. You lot repent and look smart about it—”
By this time the burly drummer had unshouldered his instrument and was in consultation with the chief. They advanced as a thundercloud upon the prating little man. Just before they could lay hands on him, however, first Ben and then Kael fell to his knees on the common. Catsize pointed an accusing finger at the penitents:
“Yeah, that’s right, you sinners, you just get down there and open up your hearts to de Man. Coz der ain’t no way but de narrow way dat leads to glory, frens. All dem ot’er paths dey just lead up dat ole garden path fulla dem ole debbel weeds and thistles right to dem fary pits. Hallelujah! Holy Moley, king a de Empire, sold his wife for a gimbled gyre. For Thine is the Empire, the way, and the—”
Kael and Ben raised their faces to Catsize the redeemer, salvation shining in their eyes. Commander and drummer, taken aback by the precipitate conversions, finally closed on Catsize, hefted him bodily into the air and carried him out of the semicircle, to the cheers of the crowd. Catsize all the while continued to preach:
“...the transportation of the hosts, for on the third day he is risen, and the blood of the lamb streams in the infirmary like the gentle rain which droppeth not, neither doth it spin.”
His words cut off the instant his feet touched the ground, a deactivated robot. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, handed the library back to the commando woman and waved a depreciative hand at Ben and Kael.
“Well, I’ve bagged a brace for you. I’ve seen better in my time but you’ll have to make do.”
Catsize disappeared. Kael and Ben stood up, rubbed at the grassy stains on their knees, and rejoined Anla and Theri. Slowly, still laughing in contagious gusts, they made their way across the common, turning by common consent into the first pub they came to.
“Have you no shame?” The prophet stared in outraged surprise. “Offering yourselves to God one minute and sl
inking into a common buzz house the next!”
Kael fought his way to the bar while the others, grinning with delight, sat down with the preacher, introducing themselves. Catsize had just come down from the tropics; he had been sleeping in his skite and was in need of somewhere to stay. He spent that night on the Griffiths’ sofa. In the morning he started to clean out the ancient laundry, offering liberal use of his skite in lieu of rent.
§
Theri sat on a log thrown up by some particularly high tide. The wood was rough and coarse-grained, bleached almost white by the action of sun and salt.
It really was incredible that so many planets throughout the universe were so perfectly adapted to human life. You couldn’t account for it on statistical grounds; there were just too many divergent ways for stellar and planetary evolution to jump. These worlds had been planted, as the Aorist Closures had been planted.
Not built, but directed with consummate skill and care in the direction that would suit Homo sapiens sapiens when his own home was wheezing under the strain. Ergo, the intervention of deity?
There seemed to be some outrageous theory doing the rounds at the moment that the Charioteers were humans from the deep future, supernally puissant, reaching back to the universal dawn with tachyon instruments akin to those that drove the Teleports, forging the foundations of their own history. Crazy stuff. But better than that vile Christer rubbish.
She ran her hand over the log’s solid, abrasive surface. Thinking about Catsize had dissolved her anger; she felt detached from her friends, fatalistic about the outcome of their mutual relations.
She sought to divine the future for Anla and Ben, for Kael and herself, but no prediction came to her. Pity memetic biosis can’t forecast individual lives. She shivered. No, no, no; that stochastic limitation was their only margin of freedom.
If anyone knew the future it would be Catsize, attune to intuitive rather than mathematical networks. She resolved vaguely to ask him sometime.
A kilometer away, Ben was walking slowly towards her. Theri looked at the sea and listened to the boom and roar of the surf. She would be glad of Ben’s company, she realized, by the time he reached her, happy to talk to him if he were in the mood for talk, content to walk in silence if he were not.
She thought again of Catsize. He had been with Ben and Anla ever since that night. Sometimes he was employed, running freelance projections on his library, piloting a freighter, driving cleaning equipment at night. She was sure he could be wealthy if he felt like it. Sometimes he had short poems taken by Databank, and occasionally someone consulted them and he was paid his royalty. Usually he was on the dole.
Once he had disappeared and returned a few months later, brown and affluent. He had taken them all out to dinner, bought a handsome stash of premier intoxicants and some expensive clothes, “loaned” impoverished friends exchange-credit, paid for somebody’s gene-job, and seemed pleasantly surprised to find himself broke within a month.
He appeared to do most of the cooking in the Griffith establishment. Certainly he was a better chef than Anla, whose culinary highpoint had been William Wool, and Ben—for all his theories about marinated polyped—would be hard pressed to sear an egg. He was a sort of human enzyme, a catalyst.
Catsize had helped found an inferential theatre troupe and eventually Ben had become a member, on a sporadic basis.
As Kael had pointed out, it was during his feuds with Anla that Ben took to acting, working it all out on the boards. Kael also maintained that Catsize had saved Ben and Anla’s relationship. Maybe, Theri thought; a strange and strained salvation.
§
In the dunes, Kael, Anla and the body-skier continued to sit around the dead ashes of the fire.
Little was said. Anla had withdrawn into herself, finding no need at the moment for either of her companions; their times would come. Kael addressed the odd word to the skier, but seemed more interested in the maze-running abilities of a beetle for whom he had constructed, between his outstretched legs, a labyrinth in the sand.
The oaf, a man of few words and fewer interests, was nevertheless not one to relish reflective silences. Sensing no further point in hanging around, he spoke the formula of a hearty goodbye, glanced with a display of optic nudges at Anla, and made his way over the sand to the faulty Skyhog. A waterproof pocket of his heat-suit contained his library, in which, doubtless, were stored the ones and zeroes of Anla’s code.
Moments later the Hog’s modified drive sounded faintly above the noise of the waves and was gone.
Kael placed his forefinger a centimeter in front of the beetle, drew one decisive route to freedom through the imprisoning walls, and stood up.
Anla accepted his proffered hand. Together, they went in search of Theri and Ben.
PART SIX
1.
Two sub-graduates approached post-luncheon Kael from the far end of the corridor, the girl proctor and one of the lesser lights in the hierarchy, a boy from a well-placed bureaucratic Clan, their garments neat and wrinkle-free, their hair the hue prescribed by their genes, insignia of probity gleaming on the well-upholstered breast, the manly chest.
Ah, so, love in the corridors while the underlings cavort in the healthy urban air? Yearning glances in the uncommon stillness of the deserted labs?
Kael watched the highly glossed shoes walking in step towards him, while his own frontiersman’s boots squeaked gently on the plast parquetry.
Alas, no. The girl proctor looked at Kael, seeking audience. He stopped. Young educer conferring wisely with senior pupils.
“Sensei, it’s Con Ephores and his friends.”
“What about them?”
“They won’t go out, sensei.”
“Well, they probably don’t want to go out.”
“But they’re not supposed to be inside during luncheon.”
“But you’re inside during luncheon.”
“But we are the proctors on duty.”
“And it’s your job to throw people like Con out?”
“Well, yes, sensei. They can only stay in if they have an educer’s permission.”
“Maybe they have.”
“They can’t have, they’re in the holographic lab, writing visuals on the computer.”
“Well, that’s doing something isn’t it? They’re not breaking the place up, are they?”
“Sensei, they won’t say what they’re programming.”
Kael tried not to laugh. “Look, if anyone objects, Con and his friends have my express permission to use the down-time facilities during luncheon. It’s probably the only chance they get. They obviously have authorization for the running time or they wouldn’t have been able to log in.”
“If you say so, sensei.”
Kael walked on down the corridor, past the den of iniquity. Con sat on a programmer’s stool like a holly producer, leaning forward, expounded to Alexi. Two other boys Kael did not recognize, and the tubby little red-haired girl he’d seen at the Alliance, were bent over control panels.
A small monitor cube swirled with color, and a stiff cartoon figure solidified briefly. Kael thought he recognized the jerking manikin, and stifled a guffaw.
He waved as he passed; Con waved back and went on with his directing.
Kael entered the Sciences Staff room, an altogether more palatial establishment than the soft folks’ room downstairs, bright, airy and smelling faintly of reagents. Two physicists were playing starwar on a console lanned to the same computer from which Con et al were stealing cycles. Neither was the man Kael wanted. They beckoned him over, and he drew up a stool.
He had all his battlecraft volatilized without scoring a point.
§
Kael retraced his steps, glanced again inside the media room. He paused at the door, watching in silence. Bathed in laser light, Anla stood flanked by the sub-graduate politburo. With firm professional authority she was saying, “If you haven’t got permission, Con, I’m afraid you will have to go outside.”
&n
bsp; Con rested on his elbows, a man totally relaxed and at home in his world, despite the spartan comforts of his programmer’s stool. The other three boys sat upright and uncomfortable, looking to their spokesman. The girl was running their work into a crystal; she’d turned the monitor cube off.
Con answered in his own time. “Madam Griffith, nobody else wishes to use the holo-system right now. It is fascists who prevent people from creating art. I thought you were meant to be a libertarian.”
Anla over-reacted. “I couldn’t care less about your tinkering. You can hire time on your home libraries whenever you like. Now go outside.”
“On Kurd they burn people who seek access to the media of public expression. On Kurd, who will commune freely with a networked library when a secret policeman echelons each one?” Con gestured contemptuously at the proctors.
Anla spoke with a hard note of anger: “Con, will you and your friends go out now? It’s a rule that you can’t be inside the building at luncheon, and that’s got nothing to do with what goes on in Kurd. Anyway, I’m very concerned about Kurd, I was almost arrested for petitioning last year,” she ended rather lamely, “but that’s got nothing to do with you lot being in here now.”
Con slumped even further over the console, resting chin in cupped hand.
“Madam Griffith, you have all the political consciousness of a spayed grundle.”
Anla took two quick steps into the room and glared down on Con, who assumed the demeanor of a man basking under a pleasant G-zero sun.
“Get out. Get out now!”
The rest of the group blinked in confusion; the girl, holding her programmed crystal protectively, glanced nervously at the proctors, who stared in righteous outrage at Con, who languidly raised an arm in salute to Kael.
Anla turned suddenly. Relief showed on her flushed face, replaced quickly for the benefit of the proctors by a look of competence and justified anger. The girl proctor’s face revealed nervous embarrassment.
“Mr. Ponchard, will you tell Con and his friends to leave the building immediately.”
Valencies: A Science Fiction Novel Page 14
