Christmas on a Rational Planet

by Lawrence Miles

  buggery.

  A charred muscle ground against a shattered bone. String nerves twitched. Words began to form in a throat full of rusty nails.

  Matheson Catcher recited a formula of thanks. Isaac Penley opened his eyes and howled like the Devil.

  There was a sun, somewhere up there, but it was black, an impossible fluorescent black, turning the desert into a great bruise-coloured shadow that stretched to the horizon and vanished over the edge of the world...

  Chris gaped. For a while, he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked Marielle. She was standing just a few feet away, her back turned, as if watching the horizon.

  – Exactly where we were, she said, and her voice was somehow more than it had been. More than just a voice. Chris shook his head. Was he hearing echoes?

  ‘There was a... I don’t know. A place of execution. A city. Looked kind of old-fashioned. French, I think.’ He looked around, shaded his eyes against the black sun. ‘Where did all that go?’

  – It’s still here, somewhere, said the voice. But Marielle is looking at it differently now.

  ‘ "Marielle"? What d’you mean, "Marielle"? You’re –’

  And then she turned to him, a slight smile on her face. Her face... it was Marielle’s face, but just like the voice, it was something else as well. It shifted. Altered. Changed its mind about how the features should be perceived.

  ‘You’re not her,’ said Chris, unnecessarily.

  – Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’m not. Marielle is acting as my... my interface, if you like. Just like your TARDIS, I’m really too difficult for one individual to understand. No offence, Christopher Cwej.

  Chris stared at her. Then he stared at the desert. Then he ran out of places to stare.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  – Ahh. I thought you’d never ask.

  The woman (that was the only way to think of her, as the woman) spread her arms wide, and they made tiny and beautiful echoes of light in the air around her.

  – I’m the one who starts the carnivals, Christopher Cwej. The one who makes the music that plays when civilizations fall. Sister to superstitions, grandmother of gynoids. The spirit imprisoned in every piece of clockwork. Matheson Catcher would call me the enemy of all humanity, which seems funny, when you consider how long he’s been under my spell.

  There was a moment’s pause, and in that moment a billion possible new universes were born.

  – Call me Cacophony. Call me the Carnival Queen. And I’m very, very happy that Marielle has let me back into the rational universe.

  PART THREE

  DAMAGED GODS

  ‘Have you seen what’s happening in India? Magic’s very big there, as you know Gurus and spirit-healers, some of them get treated like pop stars. There are these groups of men calling themselves "rationalists" who travel from town to town in these great big buses, debunking the medicine-men wherever they go. Trying to teach the people that witchcraft is baloney. They’re amazing to watch... when they’re on the road, [they] chant these battle-cries about how wonderful rationalism is. They practically sing rationalist hymns. They don’t see anything odd in that at all... sometimes I think this "rational" planet has forgotten what superstition means.’

  – Miles de Selby, Letters from Earth (1993)

  ‘As I once told the reigning monarch of er, of a small nation in the former Soviet Union... there’s nothing "only" about being a girl.’

  – Sarah-Jane Morley, from her

  speech to the Nobel Academy (1998)

  9

  Bogeywomen

  ‘Ah, well, there are lots of Hells. As many Hells as there are stories about Hell, I should think.

  ‘Across the universe, you see, people were dying. Protracted illnesses, motor accidents, alien invasions, failing bodies and weakened spirits. You know. The usual things. Every second, millions of souls were experiencing that moment of confusion as they were shoved off this mortal coil and taken...

  ‘...somewhere. Anywhere. No, I don’t know for certain. Yes, I knew you’d ask me that. Well, they say that when a child of the Age of Reason dies, her guilty spirit can find itself lost in Null-Space, where its phobias and anxieties feed on smaller and – oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? – less vindictive souls. Yes, that’s it. Perhaps some of them grow up to be Eternals. Perhaps some of them are snatched from Null-Space and turned into terrible psychic weapons by... by certain unscrupulous persons who shall remain nameless.

  ‘No, don’t laugh. This is a fairy-tale, you know.

  ‘Anyway, you’re distracting me from the story. What I’m saying is that the traffic of souls must have stopped that night. Just for a while, I mean, just for a few curious moments. Even Death must have stopped whatever she was doing and looked to the heavens... yes, I wish I could have seen the look on her face when she realized what was happening. His face. All right, its face. Every tortured soul in every nook and cranny of purgatory must have fallen silent, looked up, and peered into the far corners of creation.

  ‘They must have seen it coming. They must have wondered if it would make any difference to them.

  ‘What do you mean, when was this? Time is relative, I told you that when you joined me. That’s the most important thing a traveller... yes, yes, I know. Oh, very well. Let’s just say that it wasn’t all that long ago, on the cosmic scale of things. I looked quite different then, of course.

  ‘But you’re distracting me again. I was trying to tell you about what happened to Woodwicke. About what happened to everything, as a matter of fact...

  It was a test. Obviously, it was all a test.

  Everything had been planned from the beginning. Cogs were pushing together through time in directions that he couldn’t possibly imagine because IMAGINATION IS BAD FOR THE SOUL and it was quite clear QUITE QUITE CLEAR that Isaac Penley should have been shot WE SAY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOT just so Catcher could have the chance to put him back together again, thus demonstrating the superior skills of –

  Of –

  Of –

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaagh,’ said Matheson Catcher as something warm and wet and organic plopped onto his shoulder from the ceiling.

  This was all part of the test. Wasn’t it? YES, OBVIOUSLY. The Watchmakers were exposing him to the handiwork of Cacophony, seeing if he could stay in one piece NOT LIKE ISAAC HA HA without going entirely mad. OR EVEN JUST A BIT MAD. Now the room was falling to pieces and the walls were sagging, and the floor was imprinted with the footprints he’d made when he’d stumbled back into the cellar once he’d finished putting Penley back together A TRUE TESTAMENT to the power TO THE POWER OF of OF of the Watchmakers.

  It was time TIME AT LAST the time when the WATCHMAKERS that’s WATCHMAKERS would manifest themselves and TURN the world into a place of HARMONY AND MACHINERY YES HARMONY AND MACHINERY he could feel it and he could feel them coming THE SKY IS FALLING no, the sky was opening up, he felt it in every cell in his body, the sky was opening and HERE THEY COME HERE COME THE WATCHMAKERS HERE COMES THE TRUE AGE OF REASON –

  The screen on the wall belched and bubbled, finally showing him the world outside. Catcher saw the thunderheads opening over Paris Street, and found himself staring into the darkness.

  Reason? Was that meant to be Reason? But it looked (CLICK)

  It looked like (CLICK)

  It looked like (CLICK)

  It looked CLEAN IT UP CLEAN IT ALL UP CLEAN IT UP CLEAN IT ALL UP CLEAN IT

  Chris caught himself reaching for his belt. His gun wasn’t there, of course. Even if it had been, what would he have done with it? Pointed it at Marielle’s face? He tried to imagine what he could possibly say. ‘Okay, sister. Get out of the chick’s body or you get it right between her eyes.’

  – Something wrong, Christopher? asked the Carnival Queen, out of Marielle’s mouth. – No, not Marielle’s mouth. This isn’t Marielle, Christopher, I told you.

  ‘You did this,’ Chris said, gesturing at the univers
e-in-general when he said ‘this’. ‘You ... did whatever it was you did... to the TARDIS. You brought me here. Us here.’

  – Yes. I’m responsible for everything. I confess. She was smiling, smiling a hundred different smiles at once...

  Chris gritted his teeth. He was having trouble telling where the woman’s words ended, and her actions began. Was she saying ‘yes’, or was she nodding? Was she smiling, or was she describing a smile?

  ‘What are you?’ he tried, lamely. ‘I mean, what? You’re an alien, right? Like the Charon or something. Something extra-dimensional.’

  – Christopher, Christopher, please. Just watch.

  ‘What? Watch what? I –’

  Then Chris looked into her face, and saw things there. Many, many things. It was as though the lines of her face and the flickers of her eyes were describing things to him, showing him whole new worlds.

  – We all have our stories, Christopher, and we wear our stories like masks. Every frown has an unhappy ending to tell. Every raised eyebrow is encoded with years of experience. Each face tells the story of a lifetime, if you can read it. Do you want to hear my story? It’s all here. All in the eyes, all in the lips.

  ‘I...’ Chris began, then realized that there really wasn’t much he could say. ‘Yeah, okay.’

  – Well. Once upon a time, she began... and Chris tumbled into the universe on the other side of her smile.

  ‘What is it?’

  There were sounds of running, there were sounds of crying, and terrible stories were trapped inside the raindrops. Somewhere nearby, a man was rolling around in the middle of the street, screaming about a pain in his spine and claiming that things were growing out of it.

  Roz Forrester, huddled inside the overturned carriage on Hazelrow Avenue, didn’t much care about any of these things. The carriage had been tipped onto its side and its roof had been torn off, letting her and Daniel shelter from the storm inside the cabin, with the seats behind them and the side-door above their heads. Roz was screaming so hard that she couldn’t even hear it, so hard that it had just become background noise. Something was still pushing its way out of her wrist, a string of bone and muscle that congealed into an ugly, dark-skinned shape on the ground in front of her. At first, she’d thought the tissue spewing from the wound had been her own, but if that had been true, her arm would have been an empty sausage-skin by now. She had no idea where the stuff was coming from, but she didn’t much care.

  ‘What is it?’ Daniel shrieked.

  But the shape was already starting to develop arms and legs, and a head tore its way out of the biomass, growing teeth and hair and cheekbones. The thing raised a hand to its face, using its fingernails to punch holes in the skin for eyes.

  Abruptly, the pain stopped. Roz gulped back a sob, and looked up. Daniel had crawled out from the shelter of the carriage and found himself a weapon, a sharp spoke snapped from one of the wheels. He was standing out in the rain now, pointing the spoke at the shape’s head and trying his best to look threatening, but the thing was already rolling out into the middle of the road and pulling itself upright. Roz heard joints and muscles pop into place.

  ‘Roslyn Inyathi Forrester?’ it asked.

  Roz met its gaze. Daniel glanced between her and the shape, as if comparing them.

  ‘Sheol,’ said Roz. ‘My wrist. I should’ve realized...’

  The shape nodded.

  ‘My wrist contains my identification implant. I never had it taken out when I left home, did I?’

  ‘The presence of an ID implant in the anatomy of an Imperial citizen is mandatory under the Sixteenth Criminal Justice Empowerment, except in those cases outlined in the Corporate Faiths Amendment of 2939,’ decreed the shape. ‘Or had you forgotten?’

  ‘Forrester –’ began Daniel.

  ‘The amaranth,’ said Roz, ignoring him ‘The amaranth rebuilds things using whatever information’s available. Like, for instance, the information in my implant. Genetic data, personality matrices. Adjudication codes. The amaranth grew you out of the implant like it was a seed or something.’

  ‘Forrester?’ said Daniel. ‘I don’t understand. Is she you?’

  The shape frowned at him ‘I’m nothing like her. She’s a fugitive, she’s wanted by the Order of Adjudicators in the thirtieth century. And, come to think of it, I’m definitely not the kind who’d open fire on an innocent bystander just because he has the same surname as a future president.’

  That stung.

  ‘This cow used to be a good Adjudicator,’ continued the Roz-shaped shape. ‘Well, maybe an okay Adjudicator. But there’s nothing worse than a bent cop. Now she’s just a traitor.’

  ‘Oh, and you’re not?’ growled Roz.

  Her dopplegänger shook her head. ‘Nope. I’m based on the data from your implant, remember. Old data. From before you started hanging out with alien lowlife. From the time when you called yourself Roslyn Sarah Forrester, because you didn’t want to have to keep explaining what "Inyathi" meant and you didn’t want to talk about your family because everyone would figure out how much more successful your sister was. It’s all in the implant.’ Roz-2 touched her chest, where the heart should be.

  ‘I get the idea,’ said Roz. ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Why are you pointing that thing at me?’

  Roz-2’s finger brushed the trigger-stud of her flenser gun. ‘Like I said, you’re a wanted criminal I’m just doing my job. The same way you used to. Nothing personal, Roz.’

  ‘I haven’t had a fair trial,’ Roz protested.

  ‘Yeah, right. When did that ever stop you?’ Roz-2 shrugged. ‘See, we used to have a lot in common, but we just don’t talk any more.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Aren’t we forgetting something?’

  ‘Yeah? What?’

  Before Roz-2 even finished speaking, Roz leapt out of the carriage, sliding ever-so-slightly on the wet cobblestones and hurling herself towards the gun. Roz-2 jumped backwards – an instinctive reaction, and exactly the kind of thing that Roz would have expected herself to do – then found her bearings and pushed the trigger-stud.

  Roz kept her head down. The energy cone from the gun twisted the air molecules above her into peculiar patterns, but missed her entirely and stripped the leather from the seats of the carriage. Roz crashed into her duplicate, who toppled over awkwardly, her gun hand trapped under her body.

  ‘We’re lousy shots,’ said Roz, grabbing Daniel by the shoulder.

  They vanished around the nearest convenient corner. Behind them, the energy cone of a flenser gun turned the surface of a brick wall to powder.

  A shadow fell across Paris Street. A kite flew overhead. Raphael looked up, wondering who but the crazed Benjamin Franklin would fly a kite in a storm like this, and saw that it had arms and legs. It was making sickly gurgling sounds in the back of its throat.

  It was all around him. The madness, the work of the caillou. Rain splashed screaming peasants, and where the water touched them they changed, in ways too subtle even for an agent of the Directory to properly grasp. Baptized in chaos.

  ‘What did you do?’ Raphael croaked.

  ‘Do?’ The caillou’s voice was all innocence. ‘I didn’t do anything. I told you, Raphael. I’m not the one you want. I’m not the enemy here.’

  Raphael closed his eyes. He tried to remember the training. He pictured himself, in the days when he still had an identity to call his own, strapped into a chair in a room with leaden walls. Symbols were being flashed in front of his eyes. Codes of resistance. How to overcome a caillou’s influence.

  ‘You-are-caillou.’

  But there was no reply. Around him, the sounds of Woodwicke blurred together and became one long death-rattle. The scalpel shook in his hands.

  Raphael opened his eyes. The caillou was gone, of course. Vanished. The scalpel wasn’t content, though, and it whirled Raphael around, forcing him to focus on the townspeople. Rioters found their weapons blending into their arm
s, growing fingers of steel and thick new limbs of wood. Their victims bled onto the pavements, and the blood-stains formed letters that spelled out messages from deceased and forgotten gods. A world of the caillou. A world of the impossible.

  Raphael’s scalpel turned him around, faster and faster, trying to guide him towards his first target without knowing what that target should be. So many monsters. Where to begin?

  There was a city, buildings carved into gigantic tusks of ivory that sprouted from the ground and formed arches a mile high, great arcs laced with crystalline clouds. The streets were made of cobweb, glittering pathways spun by mechanical spiders, and between them hung enchanted gardens tended by men of stone. Down on the ground walked the skeletons of mammoths, their ribcages stuffed with steam-powered engines, scholars and philosophers riding on their backs.

  Chris had seen enough in his travels to know that a great many unlikely things were possible. Aliens could look like pixies, bio-machines could be made to resemble dragons, cities could be built out of sound... but there were things in this place he couldn’t even name, things he had no experience of, that seemed at odds with even the most exotic of alien technologies. Things that were impossible. Yeah. Impossible. Things even the Doctor couldn’t have shown him.

  He was seeing it all in the face of the Carnival Queen.

  – Once upon a time, she said, this was your universe. Long before your time, before any time that you could measure. A place of endless miracles, non? No harsh sciences here, no mundane little laws of physics, no guiding principles. There was just possibility. An infinity of possibility. Now. Look.

  Chris wasn’t watching the city any more. There was a different world etched into the Carnival Queen’s expression now, a world inhabited by people; people he could recognize as people, not monsters or automatons. The cities were just as large, but there were less of the impossible things. The planet looked... well, reasonable. Sort of.