Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  We know he had a somewhat troubled childhood. We know he was very close to his childhood friend, Nanše. We know as a boy he showed a talent for boxing, and was almost tempted towards a career in the sport before his mother intervened. We know that he was almost put into a permanent coma by an accident while sparring with his father. We know he dropped out of the expensive academy his mother sent him to and embarked on his first Grand Tour, seeking fame and fortune. He found it as a critic via the CloudCast forum Five Stars or Less Fewer. His stealth attacks earned him a nickname, the Tomahawk. Proprietors have come to live in terror of his pen. Publishers have engaged in brutal bidding wars for his work. Fans have sent him mountains of ardent letters, wincingly explicit poems and eye-watering photoprints. (On the day he left for the Fair he received two notable packages. The first was a film reel from a young woman. She wore a frail negligee as she slowly ate a cream dessert while staring into the lens with an expression she probably meant to be erotic, but which made her seem like a jilted night-binger. The second package contained the sender’s severed middle finger, the finger formerly belonging to a formerly renowned chef.)

  The Tomahawk enjoys a grand gesture. That’s why he came to the Fair. His recent acrimonious split with Five Stars or Less Fewer had done nothing to dim his star. The publishing giant Rother, Dinger, Nue had offered him a staggering sum for an autobiography – contingent on a publicity appearance at the venue he’d allegedly once called: ‘The place I’d visit if I wanted to lose my mind.’ Could he have had any idea how prophetic these words would become?

  His visit to the Fair started well. He did signings, gave a lecture on gustatory ideasthesia. (He claims his gifts for culinary appreciation come from a rare form of ideasthesia which allows him to share a profound personal connection with each dish. He claims to have discovered he had this gift after waking from his coma. He has never allowed this “gift” to be scientifically tested.)

  Things unravelled quickly after his lecture. He caused a scene at a lucrative competitive banquet when he hauled a young sauce chef, Nanše Monsterat, from her kitchen so he could publicly destroy her. (Years earlier he’d forced her popular restaurant to close with one of his patented eviscerations. It’s a strange vendetta to have for your childhood friend. Some speculate she shunned him romantically. Others say his father knew her mother intimately, that Jonathan and Nanše were siblings as well as lovers, and that he carried out this vendetta because he was filled with shame. Some say his review was sabotaged. The truth is foggy.)

  Things get even foggier after the banquet. Tamberlain allegedly sent a bizarre letter to all the major papers announcing his intention to assassinate an Eastern dictator. (Although most sensible people agree that such a masterful prose stylist could hardly have written lines like this: ‘I am the Tomahawk, you know. I have plotted to put a bomb on board a yacht belonging to a famous dictator (wink) who is having a decadent celebration this very evening, people!’)

  The dictator referred to in the letter was the Kaukassian despot Vlada Yinknokov, better known as the Great Butcher, and the decadent celebration was the lavish masked ball held aboard her luxury yacht, The Huntress. Political relations between the two hemispheres had begun to thaw in the past few years. But it was still a great surprise when the Butcher announced that she’d be personally attending the Fair. Her appearance looked set to overshadow even that of the Tomahawk.

  But this is a man who won’t be upstaged. Before leaving for the party the Tomahawk took the time to put on his best evening suit, and to shoot his interim assistant, Lance, in the leg with a small-bore pistol. (Many say it was Lance who sent the letter to the papers, and this might have been why Tamberlain shot him. Lance did not press charges.) After shooting his assistant, the Tomahawk went calmly off to party, leaving Lance to bleed out on the elk-skin rug of their chalet in Alpine Village. There are no reliable eyewitness accounts of what happened at the party, but the next morning all the guests, including the Butcher, were found dead from inhalation of a powerful nerve gas. All, that is, but one. The rescue team discovered a lone guest wandering the corridors among the rigid corpses, still dressed in his evening suit and a gas mask. He was promptly arrested. He left the Fair a prisoner of the Kaukassian Security Service, his career and reputation in tatters, more than a thousand powerful people dead, and our Cloud inching towards a cataclysmic transhemispheric war.

  Which brings us almost up to date. At the time of publication, Jonathan Tamberlain has been returned from his incarceration in the East. No one seems to know why. No Western agencies will admit to petitioning for his release. Because he had no papers or identification he was sent to a hospital for refugees. His exposure to trace amounts of nerve gas, and his subsequent interrogation, had sent him into a coma which lasted either days, or weeks, or months, depending on your source. It’s some kind of miracle his agent, Daniel Woodbine, was able to find him at all. He is broke. His sponsors, collaborators and patrons have vanished like rats departing a doomed yacht. He is in the care of Mr Woodbine. At least, many speculate, until the last of the Tomahawk’s money runs out. He is the target of an astonishing 7,486 lawsuits – mostly from the families of the people who died aboard The Huntress. The Internal Securities Bureau has seized his apartment, impounded his possessions. A judge, upon learning of the significant number of restricted books in Tamberlain’s collection, ordered his entire library destroyed. Tamberlain is a hunted man, a wanted man, and also, paradoxically, an unwanted man. Even his biggest fans seem curiously muted when his name comes up. He was easier to love when he was capable of harm. They say he hardly knows his own name now; that he lives day to day, moving from hotel to hotel to evade his pursuers; that he sends long, deranged letters to former associates; that a man matching his description has been seen distributing cheaply made leaflets printed with incomprehensible screeds outside the Museum of Western Culture; that he claims to be receiving psychotherapeutic treatment from an imaginary doctor; that he’s still obsessively searching for a famous Near Eastern hotel which was blown up by the Great Butcher more than two decades ago. Who can separate truth from fiction? Tamberlain has become a totem to the modern condition: that in our age of critical information density it’s impossible to sift truth from fiction. To this day no one can say for certain what really happened aboard The Huntress that night, and what drove this stratospherically successful man to such a catastrophic implosion. But the broad facts are this: when Jonathan Tamberlain went to the Fair, he had the world. When he left, he had nothing.

  – From ‘Mr Tamberlain Goes to the Fair’, Colette Pacifique, SquireBurst Magazine

  … to Coma, to the Lower Reaches, to the Amygdala …

  … to the Black Districts, to the Blue Districts, to the seas of Oblivion …

  When he finally swims up from the primordial ooze, finding his old familiar form – the weather-beaten skeleton, the raw beast baked from doughy flesh – and hauls his frame onto the muddy banks of the shores of the land of the living, he wonders if all of him has returned. He finds he can’t feel his legs, or open his eyes. His eyes are glued shut by a cement of lacrimals and oily lipids. He thinks he might feel sunlight, a breeze. He senses someone.

  … ‘Who’s there? Are you a doctor?’ To a black-lipped shadow as it passes.

  ‘No doctor. Am nurse.’

  ‘Androni?’

  ‘No Androni. Am Pietrov.’ He hears a plastic tub set down, the slosh of water. A cleaner, maybe? Can’t be a nurse. He squints through the slit between his eyelids at the buzzing shadow with the black circumflex above its lip. This shadow smells like a gigolo. But the place smells like a hospital. A hospital for gigolos, maybe.

  ‘Is this a hospital?’

  ‘Hrozpital, yes.’

  And food. He can smell food coming. It isn’t fit for humans. It smells like something which came out of a human. Still blind. But this food monster is an internally visible presence. It’s coming down the hall.

  ‘Can you please close the door?’


  ‘No door. Is curtain.’

  A curtain? What kind of hospital is this?

  ‘Can I please have a sponge? For my eyes?’

  ‘Yes. I sponge now.’

  He feels the stiff sheets fly back, cool air. A sodden slab of sponge smacks against his chest … piloted across his badly bruised torso by rough hands … ‘No, I mean for my eyes!’ … the warm, wet sponge finds its way between his legs like the muzzle of an eager dog. Has no strength in his arms. He feels hairy knuckles graze his inner thighs … ‘A sponge for my eyes!’

  ‘No sponge for eyes. Soap is stinging eyes.’ Clicks his tongue, matronly, and diligently sponges.

  ‘A cloth then. Please. Please stop.’

  He hears the squawking wheels of a cart. The food monster is just outside his door. Or, as it were, his curtain.

  … And that was just the first day. He feels such a sense of loss and shame that for now he can only bear to think of himself in the Third Person.

  But the suns are shining. Somewhere. He can smell it. Burnt biscuits. Neutrinos smell of burnt biscuits. We learned that in school. Did we learn that in school? He can’t remember.

  … A bruised Lamolite hospital cabinet. Disfigured walls. A vase of long-dead flowers from a long-dead – maybe? – patient. A book. The same book which was waiting for him on his bedside table when he woke on The Huntress the morning after the gas attack. The first copy had a hotel laundry ticket stuck between the pages. The smell of death. His eyes have finally come unstuck.

  I smell death.

  I know.

  For a while all he has for company is himself. Himself lurks around and peers at things. Did we buy a book? When could we have bought a book?

  We didn’t buy a book.

  There’s a man’s face on the cover.

  Oh?

  He has a beard.

  A big one?

  Yes.

  I know him. He’s called Rubin. We met him in Coma.

  You sound depressed.

  Of course I’m depressed.

  Your face looks awful.

  I don’t want to look at my face. Not yet.

  You definitely shouldn’t. Not if you’re depressed.

  He doesn’t care. The suns are shining somewhere. Heat Death is a long way off. A distant future. Even perfectly black bodies emit a radiation. ‘Neutrinos are leptons, along with charged electrons muons, taus. Sunlight smells like burnt biscuits.’

  What are you talking about?

  We learned it in school. Did we learn that in school?

  No we did not.

  I’ll ask him later.

  Ask who later?

  The Bearded One.

  We can’t trust him.

  Who?

  The Bearded One.

  A few seconds ago you didn’t even know him.

  Whatever. His book looks insane. ‘… Why our great-grandchildren might not even need bodies’?

  … bruises will fade … no disfigurement …

  Why would we not need a body?

  You don’t even have a body.

  Yes I do. I share yours.

  You’re just a voice.

  And what are you?

  The nurses with moustaches will come again soon.

  We need to get out of here.

  Our legs don’t work.

  That is a problem.

  Beast will come.

  He won’t find us here.

  He’ll come. He has to.

  We can’t rely on him.

  Yes we can. He’ll find us.

  … ‘Lawsuit. Do you understand that word? I will crush you. I will close this hell-pit down.’ A quiet voice and a booming voice from the hall. ‘Who am I? Who am I? I’m Daniel Fucking Woodbine. And that man in there, the one you’ve been abusing, that’s John Tamberlain. The question you should ask yourself is who the fuck are you, and how much do you like your balls, because I am going to take them from you, and I’m going to put them under my shoe, and I’m going to crush them. Do you understand? … Well, I do apologise, I did not realise you were a woman.’

  … I can bear to look at myself now. And I can bear to think of myself in the first person. But that’s roughly all I can do. I lie there watching the bag expel its fluid into the vein of my arm. A shape kneels beside my bed. ‘John, it’s Beast. I don’t know how much you remember, or if you know what’s happening. You’ve been in an incident. At the Fair. You were interrogated. You’ve been in a coma. You’ve been returned from the East and sent to a hospital for refugees. But I’ll get you out of here, John. You don’t have to worry about a thing. These thugs’ll be sponging each other in prison by the time I’ve finished with them. Man, those are some mean bruises. Holy fuck, your chest. The fuck did they do to you?’

  ‘Electricity.’

  ‘Holy fuck.’

  ‘I need Doctor Rubin. I need you to find Doctor Rubin.’

  ‘I haven’t seen a Doctor Rubin here, John.’

  ‘I met him in Coma. He seems like a decent man. Grew up inside a computer.’

  ‘What’s that, Boss?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’

  … Lifted from my sweaty bed to a gurney by hairy knuckled hands. Whispers in my ear, the tickle of a moustache. ‘Why you say you don’t like spongey-sponge?’ Spongey-sponge. Is that what we were doing? I’m taken elsewhere. Not a great elsewhere. A better elsewhere. St Elsewhere’s Hospital. There are splits in the plastered ceiling which look like surgical incisions. The white, pocked skin peeled back to reveal layers of insulating fat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Boss. They cancelled your insurance.’

  ‘I understand, Beast. This place is fine.’

  ‘My uncle is on the Board of Administration here. He’ll get you special treatment.’

  ‘It’ll do fine.’

  ‘But no one can know you’re here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And when I sue that other hospital you’ll be back in green.’

  Beast has almost given up, I can tell. It’s hopeless. I overhear his phone calls. This decline is more than even he can handle. But he’s sticking around because he has a shred of loyalty. And guilt. He feels guilty about choosing Lance as my interim assistant. There is a muddy imperfection of spreading damp on the ceiling; it looks like a nipple. He imagines a resting giant with his torso pressed into the square frame of the ceiling. That is to say, I imagine it. It gets so I can imagine the ceiling breathing in and out. It has been some months since I saw sunlight. But vitamin D is the least of my problems … There’s a book on my table. Same one. It was there when I woke up.

  ‘Beast, has Doctor Rubin been to visit?’

  ‘Uh … no, Jonathan. Doctor Rubin hasn’t been here.’

  ‘Well, then who put this book here?’

  Gently. ‘I don’t know, John. Didn’t you bring it?’

  ‘Nope. I was separated from my luggage, Beast, remember?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how it got there. Maybe one of the staff?’

  He’s lying. He must have brought it. Who else?

  ‘I can get you some other books if you want to read.’

  ‘I don’t want to read.’

  ‘John, I think you’re strong enough to know, they took your apartment. A judge ordered all your books destroyed.’

  ‘I don’t care, Beast.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I don’t care about books. Take this one and burn it too.’

  … To the Royal Orchid, finally. A hotel. Hotels will never let you down. They’ll never judge you, or neglect you, or try to sponge you against your will.

  But here’s that fucking book again. This time in the bedside drawer. No holy book. No guide to local eateries. Infinity Remastered: Engineering the Post-Human Species (and Why Our Great-Grandchildren Might Not Even Need Bodies), by Dr Rubin Difflaydermaus, BBDSM. We made no reservation here. We came off the street. And I made sure to decline the first room they offered. So how the fuck does this book keep finding me? I told the bea
rdy fucker I’d read the thing. When I’m better. Why does he have to be so pushy? And who keeps bringing it to wherever I stay? Can’t be Rubin. He’s too nebulous. He’s ‘shunned geotypicality’. Whatever that means.

  … to the All Seasons, the Fantasia, the Royal Centaur …

  … then the Imperial Firebird, Aboukir Bay, the Nibelung …

  … then the Palomar, the Peninsula, Hotel Cerberus….

  Salmander. I don’t know if Esmeralda has been trying to contact me. I’ve been changing hotels frequently. It’s essential I keep moving. The vultures are circling. I know she won’t speak to me directly, so I’m hoping to reach her through you. My scheduled visit to the Fair, as you would have heard, went less well than expected. My unscheduled visit to the Near East, on the other hand, went better than expected, in that I did not die. I was in a coma for some weeks, but I am mending. My memory is returning. I am out of hospital, at a cheap but reasonable hotel, though given my situation I can’t divulge which one. (Can you ask, incidentally, if Esmeralda happens to remember my mature height in feet and inches? Because I’m sure I was always six and six, but the doctors at St Elsewhere’s tried to tell me I’m now six and four. I’ve lost a lot. Weight. Pride. A fortune. All my luggage. But they can’t take my verticality from me, surely.)

  There are some damaging rumours floating around. In the interests of family unity I wanted to put some of the worst to sleep. I will put these down calmly, clearly and without emotion. I hope you will pass them on, along with my best regards, and my birthday wishes, of course, and assure her that despite appearances all is well. To summarise:

  1. I have not been part of an international conspiracy to assassinate the Butcher and bring about another Great War between the hemispheres.