Sacrifice of Fools

by Ian McDonald

He wants to say all this and shake this thing in front of him back into the Eamon Donnan he knew. But he does nothing. He doesn’t know why this angers him so much. He doesn’t like to think that he is jealous that Eamon Donnan has found the courage to do and be what he desires most.

  ‘Good of you to see me,’ Gillespie says lamely. He declines the offer of an empty stool and squats down to sit uncomfortably cross-legged.

  ‘Hey, you know… Any time.’

  ‘How long do you have to stay in here?’

  ‘I don’t have to stay anywhere. I want to stay here.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Five days. I think the hahndahvi will be coming soon. I’ve seen things, on the edges of my dreams.’

  ‘How does that work? I thought you had to have the dream language passed on in the womb.’

  ‘Yes, normally. But Thetherrin reckons that because I have — we have — the structure of Narha imprinted, the dream language could be grown around that grammar. They’re both language-like structures, they both share the universal grammar. The sacred space stimulates archetype formation in the subconscious, and they crystallize around the language structure. This is the first English I’ve spoken in six months, Andy.’

  ‘We can talk Narha if you like.’

  ‘It’s all right. But watch your dreams, Andy. You got given it too. What are you here for, Andy? Not pretty talk about linguistics.’

  ‘You know.’

  Donnan shrugs. Human shrug. ‘Everyone knows. No one’s talking about anything else. What have you been told?’

  ‘They aren’t talking to me. They won’t say anything to me. But they’re split; right down the middle. Even the Nations are split. Goes all the way down to the Holds. Even this one, I think. Most of all this one, maybe. If the Harridis are divided, everyone is divided.’

  ‘I didn’t think they would tell you anything,’ Donnan says. ‘You’re a threat.’ He sits back on his contemplation stool. The illumination from the veils of coloured lights shifts. He looks very alien. His eyes are the most alien.

  ‘Me? The Welcome Centre? Humans?’

  Donnan, by saying nothing, implies all three. And more.

  ‘Can you think of anywhere more typically human than this country?’ he says. ‘They know they’re an experiment. Some think your Harridis and their movement for integration into human society is premature.’

  ‘You’re telling me Shian could have done this to their own kind?’

  ‘If they won’t tell you, I can’t tell you. What do the police think?’

  ‘They think I did it.’

  Donnan looks at Gillespie. A long look, that Gillespie can’t read because it means two things in two languages of looking.

  ‘They think I’m the link man in a weapons-running operation to the paramilitaries. They think the Welcome Centre found out, and I kept them quiet. They’ve someone following me. This bitch. She’ll be out there now, in the rain.’

  The silence at the heart of the sacred space is palpable. Gillespie hears his voice speaking in it: flat and dull and lifeless.

  ‘The police are fools,’ Eamon Donnan says.

  ‘They’ve got a man in from the university. Some Shian expert. Littlejohn.’

  Donnan blinks his eyes slowly. A smile. Gillespie leaves him space but he does not speak.

  ‘He thinks it’s some kind of psycho,’ he goes on. ‘Serial killer. The police don’t want to hear that. They want a quick result. A serial killer has to strike again before they can begin to get a pattern.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I agree with Littlejohn.’

  ‘Littlejohn knows nothing,’ Donnan says. Then, in Narha: — Littlejohn is a fool.

  − Am I a fool then, too? Gillespie asks.

  − You don’t know what you’re saying. Donnan snaps back into English. ‘The police, Doctor Robert Littlejohn, you: you don’t know anything. The rules are different, Andy. You don’t even know what pitch you’re playing on, let alone where the goals are. Leave it, Andy.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Playing fucking Andy Hero again, isn’t that it? Just like in the Maze. You couldn’t stop it happening then, you can’t stop it happening now. And you cannot live with that. Hand the man his staff and stones and give him a pair of tights and a big black cape to dress up in and watch him leap from rooftop to rooftop. Play-acting Andy. You aren’t the Masked Avenger. You see all this stuff about defending rights and personal commitment to pursue justice, but the Shian Law isn’t the Lone Ranger. There’s a price to it. Maybe you won’t pay it this case, maybe not for ten years, twenty years, but every Shian lawyer knows that in the end it will cost them everything. Justice isn’t free.’

  ‘You think I don’t understand this?’

  ‘I think you don’t understand that there is no word in Narha for guilt. Shian lawyers don’t take cases because they can’t bear feeling guilty.’

  His friends say there are many unexpected things about Andy Gillespie. One is that you never know what he is going to do until he does it. Another is that, for a broad man, he moves very fast. Almost as fast as a Shian. His left hand is clutching a fistful of soft jacket, his right drawn back to strike, before Eamon Donnan can throw himself off the contemplation stool to safety.

  Donnan looks at the hands.

  Gillespie looks at the hands.

  Gillespie looks at Eamon Donnan. Striking distance is as close and intimate as loving distance. Gillespie feels the body under his fingers. He sees its muscles move. He smells its sweats and its perfumes. He breathes them in. Chemistry is identity to the Shian. The thing in his grip does not smell human. This is not an ape in a costume, pretending to be a man. This is not a man. To hit this would be like hitting a woman. A totally different violence. It would be as incomprehensible as hitting a Shian.

  A third thing Andy Gillespie’s friends know about him is that his anger burns hot and fast and soon goes to ash.

  He rubs the back of his hand across his forehead.

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry.’

  Donnan rearranges his clothing, adjusts his position on the contemplation stool. Beyond the curtains of coloured lights, God waits.

  ‘Do you remember what you said the day you got out, Andy?’

  ‘I remember saying I was going to do something with what I’d been given. Use it to make sure the same thing never happened to another Outsider.’

  ‘Not that, Andy. What I remember is you saying that you were going to hold on to your kids. Whatever. They were the most important thing you had. The most important thing any man could have. You were going to go out and try to be a proper family. I remember that because I wanted it. You had what I wanted, but I couldn’t have it. I’d have killed you if I could’ve had that.’

  ‘It didn’t work. Outside, it’d changed too much.’

  ‘We’re all looking for something to belong to in this country. Protestant, Catholic, Irish, British, Unionist, Nationalist; human, Shian, we have to be a part of something. We’re not allowed to exist outside. Independent. We’re not allowed to be ourselves, alone. I’ve found where I belong, Andy. I’ve got my family. My proper family. What you had, I’ve got now. In the Maze I saw men at their most typical. Men at their most man. I hated them. They were fucking animals. I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to be a man any more. It sickened me. Male, but not a man. Can you understand that, Andy?’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I won’t tell you what you want to know. What the Shian are scared of. They’re my family. Even if they’re wrong. I won’t go against them. No more than you would do something against your children, Andy.’

  ‘Is that all you can tell me? I came all the way here for this?’

  Donnan nods his head. The human nod. Gillespie stands. The sides of his knees ache from sitting cross-legged. Old bones. A tall shadow waits in the divine light beyond the protecting veil around the sanctuary: Thetherrin Harridi, to guide him back to
the mundane world.

  ‘I can tell you one thing, but you already know it.’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘The Shian do not die for love, but they will kill without thinking to protect their children.’

  Andy Gillespie shivers, though it is not cold in the quiet place in the eye of God.

  The dripping sprinkler in the corridor is one of those annoyances that you never think about when you are not around them, but when you are you wonder how anyone could forget something so intensely aggravating. Of course they haven’t fixed it. And some clown has put a metal waste-bin under it to catch the drips, when anyone with a functioning cerebellum would know that a resonant plop is much more infuriating than a flat splat on cigarette-cratered vinyl floor tile.

  Not enough money to fix it. But enough to reprint every form in two languages and bilingually sign everything down to the bogs and stick up pictures of the Blessed Saint Mary Robinson on the wall next to not-so-Bonnie King Charlie. Always enough money for window dressing. Always enough money for politics.

  A single desk light in the room of shadowy geometrical furniture. The red eye of the coffee machine is open. Dunbar recognizes Littlejohn’s hairy hands on the lit desk-top.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Awaiting the fruit of your unrivalled professional insight.’

  He’s got it from serial killer books and TV cop shows; this Wayward But Brilliant Police Consultant repartee. Do you know what they’re calling you? Littledick. But if you get me a coffee, I won’t call you it to your face.

  He pours two coffees.

  ‘Non-dairy creamer?’

  ‘Yah.’ She fishes in her overcoat pocket for the sweeteners. Police-plan Diet. Sell a million copies: pig out on takeaway food in your car, then salve your conscience with Diet Coke and sweeteners.

  ‘Still wearing that ghastly Arpège.’ Littlejohn sniffs as he sets down the mug. It has a faded print of ex-Princess Diana on the side.

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘It’s important. It’s like you doing door to door wearing a Mickey Mouse mask.’

  She can still hear that bloody drip. Plop. Plop.

  ‘I did remember not to smile.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too hard for the NIPS.’ He lingers over the components of the acronym. ‘So, what did the shifty Mr Gillespie do this day?’

  Her palmtop is unfolded, the stylus in her hand, the empty report document open on the grey screen.

  ‘I really do have to make this report.’

  ‘Come on. We’re on the same side. No “I” in team.’ She looks at him. He smiles through his black beard. ‘Heard it on an American sit-com. I know you don’t buy the gun-running theory any more than I do. Where did he go, who did he see, what did he say?’

  Littledick, she thinks. OK, I’ll talk. If it will stop him being chummy. Save me from intimacy. It’s better when he’s a supercilious bastard.

  ‘Down to Queen’s Island.’

  ‘Ah. Our friends the Harridis.’

  ‘He went to an old Harland and Wolff dock they’ve turned into some kind of church.’

  ‘Sacred space. Police literary style has sadly declined since the days of “I was proceeding along Victoria Street in a westerly direction when at nine-thirty-three precisely I perceived a certain gentleman…” ’

  ‘Do you want to hear this? I don’t have to tell you any of this.’

  He holds up his hands.

  Plip goes the leaky sprinkler.

  ‘Does the name Eamon Donnan mean anything to you?’

  Littlejohn purses his lips, twirls a strand of beard between thumb and forefinger, shakes his head.

  ‘He’s living with the Outsiders. Wears the clothes, got the Mohican, talks the language. He’s gone native.’

  ‘It happens. There must be a couple of dozen sub-cultures have grown up around the Shian. Most of them are kids; the kind would’ve ended up as New Age Travellers ten years ago. They set up these parodies of Shian Holds, try to live like them in mutual harmony and understanding. Of course, they don’t understand that the Shian aren’t just tall thin people with nice colour skins and funny haircuts. They are not human. Nothing like human. Sexual jealousy usually kills these communities in six months dead. We can’t live their way.’

  ‘This Eamon Donnan seems to be trying.’

  ‘It’s the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual. One wants to be like the opposite sex. The others wants to be the opposite sex. Same with your friend. For some it’s not enough to be like them, like those kids you see going around town with their heads shaved Shian-style. It’s not even enough to want to fuck them, like the frooks. Some want to be them. There’re a lot of folk out there know they’re aliens trapped in human bodies. There’re operations they can do to bring the alien out. Of course, their surgery is centuries ahead of anything we’re capable of. Bone grafts for the extra height, eye-jobs — whole new irises. Various cosmetic rearrangements of the facial features; they can even implant smell receptors in the nasal passages. They can reprogramme the melanin in the dermal cells. Like sun-tan, only it stays. That’s all surface stuff. For the more radical transformations, they implant nanotech hormone pumps in the pituitary gland. Twice a year, when the season changes, so do you. They’ll also redesign your personal plumbing so you can actually do it with them. Oh, it’s mighty impressive stuff. Then there’s all the psychological business as well; language implants — like your friend Gillespie got from his buddy in the Maze.’

  ‘Donnan has one too. He and Gillespie were inside together. He got out three months after Gillespie and went straight to the Peace in the Valley Hold in Glenarm.’

  ‘And now Gillespie’s checking up on his old cell-mate. What was Donnan in for?’

  ‘Possession with intent to supply.’

  ‘They still bust people for that? I can see your mind working, Detective Sergeant Roisin Dunbar.’ The liquid metronome in the hall ticks off moments of significance. Little. Dick. Little. Dick. Little. Dick. ‘The old paramilitary and the insider ex-pusher? Setting up the deal? Checking his supply?’

  Dunbar twiddles the palmtop stylus. The screen wakes from its saver of Next Generation Starship Enterprises. Go away. Don’t want you. It’s cold in the office, despite her street coat. The heat went off hours ago. Beyond the plip, plop she can hear robot polishing machines waltzing each other up and down the corridors. She shrugs.

  ‘I thought you were on my side, Rosh.’

  Christ, he’s trying to come on to me.

  Littlejohn holds his left hand up in the desk light, wiggles his fingers.

  ‘How many fingers does he have, this Eamon Donnan? It’s the first step, amputation of the minor metacarpal.’

  ‘I didn’t get to see him. Some Outsider told me he was in meditation in the sacred space and could not be disturbed.’

  ‘Allowed Gillespie to see him, though. Did the Shian tell you what Gillespie and this Eamon Donnan talked about?’

  ‘Didn’t. Wouldn’t.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, you smelling like that. At least you didn’t smile. You want my opinion?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Pull Donnan in.’

  ‘What grounds?’

  ‘He’s your boy.’

  ‘I thought Gillespie was your boy.’

  ‘Eamon Donnan is more my boy than Gillespie.’

  ‘What’s your evidence?’

  ‘With humans, everything comes down to what you want to fuck or be fucked by. My dear, you take a kid. A boy. Ordinary enough. Well brought up. Brighter than average. Good at school. Friends. Popular. You take his father away one day. Just like that. Gone. Maybe it’s a car smash somewhere, or his heart, or the big C. Most likely a divorce, a separation. One day, Dad’s just not there any more and the kid’s asking, where my father, what’s happened to him? When’s he coming back? He’s never coming back, his mother tells him, and that’s where it starts. He begins to feel responsible. They broke up becaus
e of him. He’s bad. He’s strange. He carries this terrible secret around with him: I’m the little boy who made his father disappear. He’s different inside. He’s horrible. Then one day the horrible inside begins to come out. It comes out as one single, thick, black pube. Jesus help me! he thinks. I’m turning into a monster. I’m weird. But he can’t tell anyone. And to make matters worse, he’s in love with the pretty boy in his class — we all were, at that age — and all of a sudden there’s the pet lizard he keeps down his pants that won’t stay still when he’s sitting on the bus, or sharing crisps with his pretty boyfriend, and in the school changing room he’s got half the Matto Grosso in his groin while the others are as smooth and pure as Dresden china and he wants this pretty boy more than anything but he knows the pretty boy is going to be repelled by him. He’s a monster. He’s an ogre. He repels himself. He wants, but can’t have. And later, when it comes to women, it’s worse. You have to talk to them. But he can’t talk. He’s a hairy monster. And anyway, they’ve got these lumpy bits, and that sucking-in, biting-off bit — that’s really scary. They don’t have the smoothness he wants. Not the flatness, the Dresden china perfection. He fantasizes about racing cyclists. He buys albums by androgynous bands. He shaves off his body hair and panics when it won’t flush down the toilet and has to scoop it all out and hide it where his mum won’t find it. But it doesn’t make the women want him, because the monster is inside, always growing outwards. And now the men he once fancied like mad are all hair and balls and testosterone and team games. They disgust him. He disgusts himself. There’s nothing, no one, like him. He’s absolutely alone.

  ‘Then the Outsiders come. They’re tall. They’re thin. They’re smooth. They’ve got no nasty pulpy or dangly bits and you can’t tell the boys from the girls. People like me, our man says. Schwing! Instant stiffy. But there’s one big problem. He wants them, but they don’t want him. Intellectually, he knows it’s the chemicals — he knows everything there is to know about these folk, he keeps scrap-books on them, for God’s sake — but emotionally, it’s another rejection. The perfect lust object, and it doesn’t want him. He’s still a monster. So he tries to make himself like them, so they won’t be afraid of him and reject him. Gets the look. Buys the clothes — a real turn-on, clothing fetishism’s one of the best, maybe some day he’ll have the courage to go out on the street dressed. It’s not enough. He learns the accent, maybe even the language. Goes to clubs, tries to get close to them. Still not enough. Maybe if I lived among them, that would be close enough. No. Doesn’t do it. Because it’s not enough now to be with them, or even like them. He wants to be them. And he can never be that. He doesn’t want to fuck them any more. He wants them to fuck him. He wants them to get inside him. He wants to take, not give. And of course, they can’t fuck him. It’s absolutely impossible. They don’t even possess the idea. He’s come this far, he’s done all this, and still they don’t want him.