The Meat Tree
Page 6
Inspector of Wrecks
If I were a literary critic, I’d note the repetition of the word shame here. And underline the gesture of covering up, both in Aranrhod’s words (what is shame’s gesture but a covering of the blushing face?) and in Gwydion’s action in hiding the little something in his clothes and in his chest until it grew up into this boy.
Apprentice
You did tell me at the beginning not to be afraid of noting my reactions, however subjective. Does that still hold?
Inspector of Wrecks
More than ever. You might as well, as we’re no closer to knowing what’s going on.
Apprentice
Well this reminds me of being a very young child, with my brother. You know, before you can really tell each other apart.
Inspector of Wrecks
As if the characters weren’t wholly differentiated from each other. That happens in the dreamlike early human myths and in this one. Think of it – men turn into animals, siblings are lovers, wild animals are princes. All the categories bleed.
Apprentice
I’m looking at Gwydion with a creative hatred, waiting for a chance to get back at him.
Inspector of Wrecks
More flowery language now, as if rage required elaborate courtesy from Gwydion: ‘By my confession to God, you are a wicked woman. It is because of him you are angry, since you are no longer called a virgin. Never again will you be called a virgin.’
Apprentice
Infuriating man! I used to be his favourite, all those loving words in secret corners, the flattery I was stupid enough to believe and now I’ve lost everything. He trumped me in public.
This is Nona talking now, not Aranrhod. Isn’t it just typical that Gwydion doesn’t think at all about his role in this shame? He’s only concerned about how things look on the surface.
Inspector of Wrecks
That’s a magician for you. Impression is all in the confidence trick of illusion.
Apprentice
Well, as a mother I still have some power left. The power to withhold.
Inspector of Wrecks
You wouldn’t dare.
Apprentice
I would. If you’re not going to acknowledge your part in this, then I refuse to be mother. I’ll go further, I’ll be our son’s worst enemy. Just watch me.
‘Gwydion. What is your boy’s name?’
Inspector of Wrecks
‘God knows. He has no name yet.’
Apprentice
‘Well. I will swear a destiny that he shall not get a name until he gets one from me.’
I condemn him to limbo. To be blotted out in the pixel dust. To be nothing.
Inspector of Wrecks
I wish you wouldn’t do this.
Apprentice
To have no independent existence of your own, but to be a pawn in others’ games. To have no face…
Inspector of Wrecks
Nona, I think this is violating the style of the game. The first bit was enough for Aranrhod’s part.
Apprentice
So you take on the features of whoever is strongest beside you. May you never know your own mind, but be always swayed by the latest argument.
Inspector of Wrecks
Nona, calm down!
Apprentice
So you change with the wind and have no core. No solid ground under you. May you hate yourself…
Inspector of Wrecks
Your heartbeat’s gone crazy. Nona! You need to leave. Now, this minute.
Apprentice
You shall have no self.
Inspector of Wrecks
I’m using the Emergency Exit switch and taking you with me. One, two, now!
*
Synapse Log 6 Feb 2210, 09:45
Inspector of Wrecks
She’s with me, crying. I hold her awkwardly in zero gravity. Pat her back. I’ve never seen a person exceed their role like that. The Mastermind of this programme didn’t design a pre-set role to withstand that kind of internal boost. It was clearly dangerous to her. Breathing’s shallow but she’s calming down. Waving me away, telling me she’s sorry and that she’s fine.
I look dubious but she says she’s OK and wants to go back. I say, take ten.
I’ve heard of hysteria like this before. I forgot she’s not a qualified professional, because it seemed to come so easily to her. It takes years to learn where your weak spots are, not to let the scenarios trigger them. What a fool I was, I’ve pushed her too far…
*
Joint Thought Channel 6 Feb 2210, 10:00
Inspector of Wrecks
Are you sure you want to go back in? You don’t have to.
Apprentice
I want to. I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.
Inspector of Wrecks
I don’t know if I should let you.
Apprentice
Oh please! Don’t you see that my reaction might mean that we’re getting somewhere? You said that everything was information. Well, let’s just log it and move on.
Inspector of Wrecks
That’s a pretty mature way of looking at your emotional life.
Apprentice
Look, I’m a grown-up and I want in. I can’t go home without knowing what happened. I’d always wonder. Please let me carry on.
Inspector of Wrecks
I’m just as keen to work this out.
OK. I won’t push you about what happened to you. I don’t need the details or even the outline. But I do need to know if you get close to feeling like that again. So I’ll let you back in on one condition. That you promise to bale out before you reach that point.
Apprentice
I promise. I can do it.
Inspector of Wrecks
Don’t make me regret this, or make a mess of my last assignment before I retire. You could ruin my blameless record, my good name forever…
This time you take Gwydion and I’ll be the dame. Again. I’m beginning to think you don’t like playing women.
That’s better, a smile. Take some glucose and a protein drink and we’ll try again.
*
Joint Thought Channel 6 Feb 2210, 10:10
Inspector of Wrecks
Let me do the lion’s share of this visit.
Apprentice
Fine.
Inspector of Wrecks
So I’m Aranrhod and I’m in my fort, brooding. I fancy this palace is made of dark glass. She looks out on the world with the clarity of rage.
I know that Gwydion’s part of this scene, but he’s nowhere in evidence. You stand back, and we’ll take it from Aranrhod’s point of view. I want you to keep your mind alert to notice if there’s anything strange about the characters’ relation to the child.
Apprentice
Do you have a special reason for that?
Inspector of Wrecks
I do. But I haven’t got time to explain now. I discovered something last night that makes me think that kids are the key.
Apprentice
You look very beautiful, like the Wicked Stepmother in Snow White.
Inspector of Wrecks
You know that film? I am surprised. I suppose there’s a Seven Dwarves neuro game.
Apprentice
You got it.
Inspector of Wrecks
I look out of the window at the sea. It sparkles, like my hatred. There are porpoises rolling in the bay. And a ship. A Spanish vessel by the look of her.
I watch her anchor in the lee and wonder what goods they have aboard. I’m hungry for figs, fine wines or satin for dresses.
Apprentice
You’re getting really good at being a woman!
Inspector of Wrecks
Behave, or I’ll make you be her again.
Apprentice
I’ll be quiet.
Inspector of Wrecks
Not too quiet, I hope. I need a woman’s eye on this to make sure I don’t miss a nuance or fact to do with being female.
I have a telescope at the window and I train the lens on the caravel with her bright, trailing flags. Two men are working on deck. What are they doing? Are they making clothes? I ask the servants.
Shoemakers from Seville, they say.
Go out to see them, ask what they have that would interest a lady.
So out they row. I watch the Spaniards talking as, slowly, the ship turns with the tide. Back comes a servant, with a bundle of something clutched to his chest.
Cordovan leather, so finely cured it folds like silk. It’s tooled with gold.
Apprentice
Any girl with sense would kill for a pair of handmade Spanish shoes. Put your bare foot on a piece of paper, trace the outline and send it to the shoemakers with your choice of texture and colour.
Inspector of Wrecks
Back to the telescope. I watch the pantomime of servants rowing out with the tide. Up on deck. Long conversation with the craftsmen, who set to work with great flourish.
Servants row back. Ah! My shoes.
Apprentice
They look very big, as if they were for a man. Try them on, but I’m certain.
Inspector of Wrecks
There’s plenty of room…
Apprentice
Far too big. They should be snug here. And here. If you’re paying for handmade shoes, I shouldn’t be able to put my thumb in between your heel and the shoe.
Inspector of Wrecks
They do slip when I walk.
Apprentice
Send them back, no question. Make them do it again.
Inspector of Wrecks
You do learn some unexpected things on this job. OK, I do what you say. Servant comes back. The shoes had better be right this time, or else.
That’s better. Bit of a struggle to put them on. They look good!
Apprentice
Come here. Let me look. Can you feel your big toe against the end of the shoe?
Inspector of Wrecks
Yes.
Apprentice
They’re too small. These shoes will never keep their shape. Walk over to the wall. Are they comfortable?
Inspector of Wrecks
No. The heel’s digging in at the back.
Apprentice
Hopeless! These guys are amateurs. Only one thing to do. Go out to the ship yourself.
Inspector of Wrecks
Come with me, will you? I need your opinion. Come on! Before evening falls. Remind me, Nona, which part are you?
Apprentice
I thought I was Gwydion. But there’s been nothing to do. Might as well come along with you until I get the cue.
Inspector of Wrecks
Row, row, row out to the caravel. Take an imperious tone of voice with the shoemakers. Tell them the shoes are all wrong. Here, they can measure my feet. I’ll wait while they work.
The old man’s bowed over his work and the fair-headed boy stands, restless beside him. The kid toys with a bow and arrow.
I hear the trickle of the tide soothing under the hull. Late afternoon sun, low in the sky, makes me drowsy. The breeze tugs the fine hairs at the nape of my neck.
Suddenly a tiny bird – a wren – lands on a stanchion.
Apprentice
Campion, look out, I’ve found my part.
Inspector of Wrecks
Be quiet or you’ll startle the bird.
Apprentice
Campion, you need to know…
Inspector of Wrecks
Don’t speak unless spoken to. I’m watching, entranced.
Apprentice
But…
Inspector of Wrecks
When, suddenly confident, no longer slouching, the boy stands up straight, like a man, and shoots an arrow which hits the wren not in its tiny torso but between the tendon and the bone of its leg.
‘Bravo! The blond has a skilful hand!’
Apprentice
I tried to warn you. Aranrhod, look round. Gwydion was disguised as the cobbler. You’ve given the boy his name.
Inspector of Wrecks
It’s a trick.
Apprentice
I heard you call him Lleu Llaw Gyffes, which means Light has a Skilful Hand. The boy’s been sanctioned by his mother.
Inspector of Wrecks
I’m sweating now. Light is the enemy in space. It’s heat, corrosion, speed and age. I survive by shielding myself from light and now we’ve let it into the heart of the ship.
Apprentice
Campion, don’t panic. It’s only a name.
Inspector of Wrecks
No, it’s not. It’s the cumulative radiation that will kill me with cancer soon after I retire. Sometimes, the light’s so bright I feel there’s nothing I can’t perceive. Then, from a slightly different angle, my helmet becomes opaque and I’m blind because I see nothing but myself.
*
Synapse Log 6 Feb 2210, 19:00
Apprentice
In a way, it’s a relief to see that it wasn’t just me who can freak in VR, that Campion’s human. It’s odd that the story’s hit sore spots in both of us. I hope he doesn’t note my panic in his report back to the Department. Now that it’s happened to him too, I think it’s less likely.
This part of the VR’s more straightforward than the forest sections. Aranrhod issues her curse, Gwydion finds a way around it, curse avoided. It’s obvious that there are going to be three tasks, as in all fairy tales. We already know the second. When Gwydion revealed himself and Lleu – got to get used to that strange name for the boy – Aranrhod spat out that the child would never get arms until she gave him weapons herself and this she swore she’d never do.
Inspector of Wrecks
If I didn’t think I was being paranoid, I’d say that Nona and I were being sussed out by the programme. What happened to me back there was strange. As if the name of the boy set off a note that vibrated deep inside me, waking some atavistic memories in me. A boy named Light…
She
He probably thinks that I was raped, and that’s why I went apeshit. Well I was, but not physically. Don’t want to say too much for the log. But you try being raised as a child without your own story, just an afterthought in somebody else’s. The speeches all theirs and never yours. The choices always going one way, your view counting for nothing. How you learn to hide, not to show what you want so it can’t be ignored. Till you no longer know what a person like you could possibly have desired in the first place.
Nothing like it for making you want to crawl into any story going, in order to lose yourself. You become addicted to narratives. Not your own, but other people’s. He wasn’t to know that I’m in recovery. For me VR is already dangerous ground. But who would have foreseen this? Six months of technical logs and facts as a cure for having no borders at all to my self. I was expecting to read surges in circuits and biometric stats and draw my own conclusions. Instead of which I have to dig deep not to scream when I’m caught up in a work of art that doesn’t have my welfare at heart, that needs my mind, but couldn’t care less about the rest. Still, it feels familiar, which is why I’m good at the playing. Concentrate on the role that’s required, whatever that is. But some parts can be dangerous to me. This one’s worming its way under my skin and if today was anything to go by, Campion’s feeling it as well.
He
Think, think what happened.
I was standing on the fake caravel’s deck, lulled by the sea breeze and the glare reflected up from the water, watching the boy shoot at the wren. I felt that suddenly a beam was shone into me. It came from him, the way he reflected my own being back at me. But there was more, I was being scanned. Something was reaching inside my brain, searching and questing. For what, I don’t know but it was being done by an entity much more complex than any of the characters in the game.
I’m tired. What started as a curiosity of a wreck is proving more difficult than I ever thought. Hell, I used to solve cases like this all the time, didn’t find them so hard. I must be get
ting old. Probably no bad thing that I’m retiring. I haven’t got what it takes any more.
It was like being snow blind. I used to think that meant that your pupils opened so wide you were dazzled. What happens is the opposite. They contract to pinpricks and never want to open again because the light outside is such a threat. So, at the very moment when you’re staggering around, fully illuminated, your eyes are confined to their own private blackness.
What am I missing while I’m dark in the light?
10
Arms
Synapse Log 7 Feb 2210, 15:00
Apprentice
Short day today. Did the second curse, the armour. As expected, straightforward.
He told me about the cassette tape last night. Campion thinks that it holds the key to the wreck. That the VR is an imaginative version of what happened to the crew. Long voyage. Boredom. Relations take on a dynamic of their own, unforeseen by the planners. Someone screwed someone they shouldn’t have. Illicit relations. A child born, his mother not happy. Et cetera.
What’s wrong is the time frame. What if, I asked, they came not from Earth but from another direction? What if they came from a planet so remote that it took a whole generation for them to travel here? That gives them plenty of time to conceive and bear children. Might that be why the VR’s so obsessed with young ones of every kind – fawns, piglets, wolf cubs, boys?