The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies

by Brian Stableford

  I prickled at the indelicacy of the remark. I couldn’t manage a reply.

  “It could be worse, lad,” the second male said, coming to my rescue. “Better to be turning back into the Living than some other kind of Dead. Imagine turning into a zombie! I’m Wilhelm Schiller—Billy to my friends.”

  Billy didn’t seem to my admittedly-untutored eye to be that much further along than I was; his flesh hadn’t yet taken on the same distinction as Helen’s. It still looked more like undifferentiated goo rather than functional tissue. There were bare patches on his arms and legs where attempts had been made to scour it away.

  He saw me looking at the raw patches, and added: “Yes, I’m the volunteering type—try anything, I will. Once, anyway.” He used his left index-finger to point to his right forearm. “This here’s straightforward scraping—hurts like hell, and the effect hardly lasts an hour.” He pointed at his left leg with the same finger. “This is sulfuric acid,” he said. “Same problems, and it also turns good calcined bone to something more like translucent plastic. The other leg’s quicklime—just as painful, and it takes all the spring out of the connective sinews. Helen, Lysy, Jill and a few of the guys upstairs have tried some of the same things, and a few others besides, but we’re running out of options. You look like a sensible lad who’ll take other people’s word for things, though—wish I was! Don’t let them try anything crazy on you.”

  “Crazy’s all we have left to try,” the other female said. “Mind you, doing nothing at all’s no better than scrubbing away with wire wool once the itching starts. I thought I knew what an itch was before, but until you’ve felt flesh itch you haven’t really Lived. Joke. My name’s Jillian, by the way, not Jill, although it does start with a J. I’ve been here—the city, that is, not this dump—almost as long as Lysander, but Helen’s right, isn’t she? You’re a lot younger than Billy—which might mean that you’re strong enough to beat this thing, if anyone can. Piano player, are you? That’s good. Do you think you can get us a piano, Doc? Young Peterkin can entertain us, when the depression gets too much to bear.”

  Dr. Setlow had been waiting patiently behind me while the introductions were completed, but now he stepped forward. “Peterkin had an unfortunate experience on Saturday night,” he said, cutting straight to the chase. “He thinks he might have been scared to life. Anyone else here like to confirm the hypothesis?”

  Nobody laughed. “Sorry, lad,” Lysander said. “Theory won’t fly in my case. Unless a combination of world-weariness and chronic arthritis has the same effect as terror.”

  “Nor mine,” said Billy. “Whatever kind of excess I had, it wasn’t being scared.

  “Oh, hush,” Jillian said. “You poor thing—what happened to you, Peterkin?”

  “Zombie gang wired me to the railway track when the last cross-town passenger train was due,” I said. I was able to speak laconically about it now that I had something worse to worry about. “Got loose just in time, but this wrist was still bound to the track—it got wrenched and squeezed when the engine’s wheels cut through the wire.” I held up my poulticed wrist.

  “I came down on a Monday too,” Helen observed. “You weren’t at the Palais Saturday night, by any chance?”

  “Of course he was,” Jillian said, before I could nod my head. “We all were, the weekend before we started showing—along with six or seven hundred other people. If we’d picked it up there, or if dancing were enough to set it off, everybody would have come down with it. There’d be no bony folk left”

  “So why us?” said Lysander, mournfully, “Why us? And what are you going to do about it, Dr. Setlow—apart from bringing in shrinks to assure us that it won’t be as bad as we think? You’ll soon be inviting flesh-folk to send spokespersons round, I suppose, to give us lectures on the Art of Living.”

  I could tell by the way Dr Setlow looked shiftily sideways that the idea had crossed his mind, but it was Helen who frowned—actually frowned—and said: “What they’ll tell us is that we aren’t sick at all. They’ll say we’re getting better. They’ll never be able to understand that once you’ve joined the bony folk, you never want to go back.”

  I was uncomfortably reminded of the zombie teen’s resentful allegation that skellies thought they were a cut above everybody else. Perhaps, I thought, this was a judgment on me for pusillanimously trying to deny the fact.

  “We need to do something about this,” I murmured, resolutely, “before it’s too late.”

  “Damn right,” said Billy. “Don’t think we haven’t been trying, lad. Already too late for us, I dare say—but maybe not for you. Learning more every day.” The way he pronounced the final sentence suggested that he didn’t believe it. I realized that a skelly who’d spent the last few days being scraped with butchers’ knives and scrubbed with all manner of chemical reagents was actually trying to reassure me, altruistically desirous of keeping my spirits up.

  “How many more people are going to come down with this before we get it sorted, doc?” Lysander wanted to know. “Are the rest of them immune, do you think? Or is it just taking its time to pick us off one by one? Are we just freaks, or is it just playing with us while it wipes us all out at its leisure, savoring every moment?”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Lysander,” Dr. Setlow said. “Every osteopath in the city is working on it—but we’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s totally alien to our experience. There’s nothing in the textbooks—the medical textbooks, that is. Even in the history books, the last time the disease was commonplace was the fourteenth century, before proper record-keeping began. In medical school, we were taught that it as just a legend, symbolic of our servitude to the Living. We’re talking five hundred years since the last case was even rumored. Even if we’re not breaking new ground here, we’re starting from scratch.”

  “You can say that again,” Bully said, fingering his bare arm.

  “We’ll lick it, given time,” the osteopath said, firmly. “If our ancestors could get rid of it, so can we.”

  “Except that they forgot to leave us the recipe,” Lysander retorted. “In the meantime, we’ll soon be able to lick things literally. Will we be still be able to talk normally, do you think, when we have real tongues? Or will we have to go back to doing even that the hard way?”

  “You’re scaring poor Peterkin,” Jillian said, reprovingly. “Dr. Setlow didn’t bring him here to be frightened half to life.”

  “No,” Lysander muttered. “He brought him here to hide him away, just like the rest of us.”

  “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, Lysander,” Dr. Setlow said, sharply. “You can go home any time you like. You’re a free skelly—just like me, or Uncle Paulus, or young Peterkin here.”

  By the time I thought about reminding Jillian that I’d already been frightened, apparently more than half to life, it was too late even to qualify as a weak joke. Immediately afterwards, though, I was struck by a different thought. I said to the osteopath: “Have you thought that you might be bringing in the wrong consultants? I mean, the problem is flesh, so maybe we need doctors who are used to dealing with flesh, rather than osteopaths and psychiatrists.”

  Dr. Setlow shook his head violently. The thought of an honest osteopath having to consult some miserable germ-fiddler was anathema to him “No point,” he said, briskly, “As Jillian observed, they’d take the view that you’re getting better—that this is some kind of miracle cure. They’d be interested to study it, I dare say, but only in the hope that they might be able to learn how to treat their own patients with it—not that that’s possible, of course. In the Living, the zest already manifests itself in the generation and sculpting of flesh. As far as we’re concerned, the point is to find a way to stop it doing that”

  “Right,” I said, gritting my teeth slightly at the way my apparently-not-so-brilliant suggestion had been so casually stamped on. “Even so, if they could figure out the cause....” I stopped as another idea struck me, even more brilliant
than the first. I realized that there was a significant gap in the argument I’d just put to the doctor—but this time, I decided, I was going to protect my potential brilliance from his deadening scorn. “Hang on a minute,” I said. “I’ve got a crazy idea, but...well, it might just work.”

  “What is it?” the osteopath demanded.

  I reached behind me and pulled the hood of my cape back over my head. “I think I’d better look into it myself,” I said.

  “You do that, son,” Billy said. “I admire a chap who’s prepared to take matters into his own hands—as you can plainly see. You will come back and tell us what happened, though, won’t you? Even failed experiments add to the sum of skelly knowledge.”

  “Better check with the Doc what’s already been tried,” Helen put in. “Billy’s only done the obvious ones, but some of the guys and gals upstairs have scars that put his to shame—which won’t do them a lot of good, if they’re permanently stuck with the flesh they’ve grown.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “This one...well, let’s just say that I don’t think anyone in this part of town will have tried it. I’ll come back and tell you all about it—even if it doesn’t work.”

  If it didn’t work, I expected to be coming back for good—but I didn’t want to make my fellow sufferers any more depressed than they were already. I was glad that Dr. Setlow had brought me, though; it really had done me good to see that I wasn’t the only person in the world in my predicament. A monster I might be, but a freak I wasn’t. It was just a disease, just an accident of fate. Apparently, it had happened all the time back in the olden days. It wasn’t my fault.

  I went out, hurrying in case I suddenly realized that my idea was stupid and that I couldn’t really help at all. I nodded and smiled at the cosmetically-enhanced nurse as I went to the main door and bravely pulled it open.

  It wasn’t until I’d already stepped outside that I began to realize the implications of what I was planning to do.

  I went a little weak at the knees—but I consoled myself with the thought that it was very thoroughly bony sort of weakness; my legs hadn’t yet begun to turn to jelly.

  * * * * * * *

  The zombie brothers were still hanging around the street outside their own house. It was broad daylight, so they hadn’t yet joined up with the rest of the gang to make nocturnal mischief. There was no one they needed to impress, for the moment.

  They made as if to walk away again, but I was much quicker over the ground than they were, and they didn’t want to seem like the kind of zombies who’d run away from a mere skelly.

  “I very nearly got run over by that train last night,” I said to the younger one.

  It was the older one who answered: “Didn’t know there was a train coming,” he whined. “Thought you’d ’ave plenty of time to get free. It was just a joke.”

  “Good,” I said. “It worked. Scared me to Life. Did you know that bony folk can be scared back to Life?”

  I lowered my hood, secure in the knowledge that they weren’t going to be horrified by the sight of a thin layer of something that still looked more like paint than flesh growing on a skelly’s cheekbones.

  “That’s just an urban legend,” the younger zombie said. “It can’t really happen. The Dead can’t go back to Life.”

  “T’ain’t natural,” added the older of the two.

  “Strange things happen to all kinds of folk,” I told him. “Even to zombies. Do you know any zombies that strange things have happened to?”

  “What’s it to you?” the younger zombie demanded, suspiciously. “It’s no skin off your nose, is it? If you had a nose, that is, and skin.” The additions were made with a frown rather than a grin; the kid wasn’t getting any smarter, but he was still smart enough to know that he was losing his ability even to see jokes, let alone make them.

  “Well, that’s true,” I said. “I don’t have a nose, or skin. You two have a fine pair of noses—but there are zombies that don’t, aren’t there? There are zombies who don’t have much in the way of skin, either.”

  “Is there a point to all this?” the younger brother asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, not wanting to seem too eager. “I figure that you owe me one, for nearly getting me killed, and it just so happens that there’s a favor you might be able to do me. A very tiny favor. I can do without, if need be, but it would save me a little time if you were to point me in the right direction, and I thought it might make you rest a little easier in your consciences.

  The older brother couldn’t follow that at all, and probably hadn’t enough conscience left to stir a feather, but the younger one could see my point. He was the one who’d nearly got me killed, and he knew that it hadn’t been a neighborly thing to do, given that we really were all Dead together, and that even zombies didn’t want to live in a neighborhood so exclusive that the only other folk willing to share it with them were ghouls.

  “What it is that you want from us?” the younger zombie enquired, tiredly.

  I told him.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” the younger brother said, dubiously, at exactly the same moment as his brother said: “Oh, sure. Dead easy,” and laughed. The younger of the two nearly spoke sharply to him, but contented himself with a sorrowful shake of the head. His sibling, realizing that he’d committed some kind of gaffe, added: “Won’t get much sense out of her, though.”

  “I understand that,” I assured him, after the barest hesitation over the fact that he’d said she rather than he. “Just give me the address, will you?”

  The older brother looked puzzled, as if he’d forgotten what an address was. The younger told me without any further ado, though, adding: “This makes us even, right—whether you get what you’re expecting or not. No hard feelings.”

  “None at all,” I assured him, insincerely.

  I didn’t go down the hill immediately; first I went into the house to have a wash. There were three messages waiting on the answerphone, but I didn’t play them back. When the phone actually rang as I came out of the bathroom carrying a couple of empty salt-jars, though, I picked it up.

  “Peterkin?” said Melissa’s voice. “Are you all right? Did the doctor give you something to take care of that stuff?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “It’s being taken care of. Don’t worry about me.” There was a pregnant pause, and I added: “Don’t worry about yourself, either. It’s not catching. It seems to be a random thing. I still think I might have brought it on myself by getting traumatized last night, in spite of what Dr. Setlow says. There must be other ways it can be brought on, but contact with other victims doesn’t seem to be one of them. It’s some kind of existential crisis—a sign of the times. You’ll be fine.”

  “It’s you I was worried about,” she said, defensively. “You’re having a really bad time just now. We’re friends, after all.”

  “Yes, we’re friends,” I assured her. “Good friends. Dancing partners. If I get through this....” I realized too late that I shouldn’t have said if.

  “I’m sure it’ll work out, Peterkin,” she said. “I’ll call again to see how you are. Every day.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sincerely. “That means a lot.”

  “We’ll probably see you at the Palais next Saturday.”

  “Maybe not,” I said—but was quick to add: “The Saturday after is a distinct possibility, though. We’ll keep in touch in the meantime. Every day.”

  “It’ll all work out,” she repeated.

  “Yes it will,” I agreed. After all, I didn’t add, if mad science doesn’t work in the city, where can it work? I went to look for a sharp knife, and a bag to carry the jars in.

  It didn’t take me long to walk down to the very bottom of the hill; it was a good deal closer than the Palais de Danse Macabre, and the necessary strides were less effortful. Even so, it felt like a different world. There were no skellies living way down here, and precious few ghouls. Even the healthier zombies—insofar as you could
describe any zombie as healthy—didn’t like coming down here. When the older of the two brothers was reduced to the condition of the local inhabitants, his younger sibling wouldn’t make a habit of visiting him. Unlike many of the Dead, zombies still have kinship ties, but they aren’t strong enough to overcome the worst of zombie fears.

  I found the address the teen had given me without any difficulty. There was no answer to my knock on the door, but there was no lock on the door so I just went in.

  The tenant was in bed. I drew back the curtains to let the light in. She didn’t blink—but her eyes did move in their sockets, to demonstrate that the zest was still working away inside her useless flesh.

  I sat down on the chair beside the bed, resolutely ignoring the condition of the upholstery—not to mention the condition of the bedcover, the carpet and the grimy walls. I couldn’t help remembering the younger of the brothers saying “no skin off my nose” in the faint hope of insulting my nature. As I’d pointed out by way of reply, zombies weren’t always capable of preserving their own noses, or their own skin. This one hadn’t much more flesh left than poor Helen had grown, and what she had was in much worse condition. It was still possible to make out muscles and blood vessels, but the distinction was fading. Most zombies come in various shades of grey, but this one was a very particular purple color.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Peterkin.” Then I stopped, realizing that I couldn’t do what I’d come to do—not, at least, in the way I’d planned to do it. I remembered a phrase that Dr. Setlow had used: informed consent. The foundation-stone of medical ethics, he’d called it. Well, I thought, this is a medical matter. I’m a researcher now, if not a fully-fledged Mad Scientist.

  It wasn’t an entirely serious thought, but it was serious enough. Even though I was a skelly and she was a zombie—the kind of zombie that even other zombies wouldn’t go near—I still needed her consent, and her informed consent at that. It didn’t matter that she was a mindless flesh-eating monster, or that a gang of her fresher cousins had wired me to a railway track in the early hours of Sunday morning. It didn’t even matter that I couldn’t do her any actual bodily harm, and might be reckoned to be doing her a favor, albeit one as tiny as the one the teen had done for me. I still had to ask.