Sacrifice of Fools

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Yes, that is the rule.’

  He’s never heard anything as flat and reasonable as the Fool Slayer’s soft contralto.

  ‘Now, we really must get on. Do you wish to die before your children, or do you wish them to be eliminated first?’

  Anything. Do anything, try anything, say anything. He can’t think of anything. Not a deed, not a word, not a thought. Except one name, and the thought of that makes his balls freeze.

  ‘Karen!’

  The Outsider tilts her head to one side.

  ‘Ah. This is the mother of the children.’

  Shit. Fuck. Shit.

  ‘We’re divorced, we don’t live together. She has a separate life.’

  ‘Has she reproduced with another since you?’

  ‘Why should I fucking tell you a thing? You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?’

  ‘I most assuredly am.’ She slides a hooked knife out of the lining of her leather jacket. ‘However, the length and painfulness of your children’s death is entirely dependent on you.’

  ‘Fuck you, you fucking Sheenie bitch. Fuck you to hell. Fuck you in hell.’

  ‘Please, what is her address, this ex-wife of yours?’

  — You owe me an explanation, Gillespie says in Cool Narha. Our rules are that the hunter owes the hunted the reason why.

  — You have given the explanation in your question, the Fool Slayer says. You have something that is ours inside your head. You are not entitled to this, it is not for humans, it is ours, we demand its surrender.

  — This was given me by Mehishhan Harridi, genro of the Shian law. His decision, his gift.

  — It was not his to give. Mehishhan Harridi. Another Harridi. Their foolishness grieves me.

  — Mehishhan Harridi is dead.

  — Good. I can only hope that his dangerous foolishness died with him.

  — Foolishness? Gillespie says. Suddenly he doesn’t care that he is going to die. It doesn’t matter that his head is going to explode; it’ll be quick, he’ll never know. What matters is that he is angry, blazing angry, more angry than he has ever been in his life, and he is fucking well going to let this Fool Slayer know how angry he is before he dies. I am going to die at the hands of an eleven-year-old, the same age as Stacey here, and I am bloody angry about that.

  — Who are you talking to about dangerous foolishness? I am not the threat to the Shian Nations. I am not the one stirring up fear and resentment among humans, I am not the one sowing mistrust between the species, I am not setting Shian against Shian, dividing the Nations, dividing the Holds. Who is the fool here? You think that you can make the Shian Nations safe from humans? Eighty thousand Shian to a million and a half humans? That is a foolish idea. You are going to kill every human you feel threatens the Shian? Only a fool would think that. There are a million and a half humans in this country, all of them a potential threat to the Shian species. Are you going to kill them all? What kind of a foolish idea is that? Who is the fool? Where are you going to stop? How many will be enough? If anyone is the dangerous fool, it’s you. We don’t know the rules of your Fool Hunt. We don’t play by them. We are hunting you, we will find you and stop you. Because do you know what your biggest foolishness is? That you imagine you can get away with it. That you imagine we won’t find out what is happening, what you are, what you represent, and when that happens the Shian are going to be in real danger. Because of you.

  ‘Ironic that the Fool Slayer is the biggest fool of all,’ Gillespie says in English. ‘Doubly ironic that Narha can’t express the concept of irony.’

  The Fool Slayer blinks slowly. A smile for the dying.

  ‘Thank you for your diatribe, Mr Gillespie. You have made some intriguing philosophical points. I shall ponder them in future. Now, I have spent altogether too much time on this hunt. Have you decided the death order?’

  ‘No,’ Gillespie says. ‘You decide.’

  The Fool Slayer tilts her head back, flares her nostrils, levels the maser. She smiles.

  It’s useless, but Gillespie raises the genro staff.

  And her head explodes.

  Every glass and dish and cup on Andy Gillespie’s drainer shatters. The back window blows out. The door panes fly to shards. Stacey and Talya won’t stop screaming. Gillespie pants, helpless with shock, claws blood off his face with his fingers. There’s something moving in the living room he has to see.

  ‘Gillespie?’

  His ears are still ringing. Did something call his name?

  ‘Andy Gillespie?’

  ‘Shut up!’ he yells.

  The kids go quiet.

  A second Shian enters the kitchen. It moves careful as a cat, nostrils flared, maser held ready against chest. It steps in its black cowboy boots to the thing on the floor in front of the fridge-freezer. It studies the body, head tilted first to the left, then to the right. Then it turns to Gillespie and his children. A flick of the fingers folds the maser into a flat rectangle. The Shian folds the rectangle in two, then in two again and slips the weapon in the hip pocket of its PVC jeans.

  ‘Andy?’

  The Shian has a Belfast accent.

  I have gone insane, Andy Gillespie thinks. I have died and these are the final hallucinations of my brain as its circuitry flies apart at the speed of light.

  But there is something familiar about the Shian assassin in his kitchen.

  ‘Oh, my good God.’

  The Shian smiles the human smile. The tooth smile.

  ‘Bout ye, Andy. Sorry if I scared the kids. They swore those nanoprocessors would eat out any lock in fifteen seconds. More like thirty.’

  ‘What the fuck have you done to yourself, Eamon?’

  Eamon Donnan spreads his hands. They each have three fingers. He touches his body.

  ‘It’s amazing what they can do, Andy. The bone grafts still hurt a bit if I walk too fast or try to run, and they warned me not to expose the melanin to strong sunlight for a few weeks. It’s a real shame that the best stuff is all internal: they fitted me with these nanotech hormone processors tied to a solar rhythm. Near as shit kesh. Jesus, you have no idea what it’s like, Andy. Like being on speed all the time, speed and poppers and ecstasy too. The surge of energy; you can’t sit still, you want to dance all night, you want to fuck anything and everything that moves.’ He sounds like a fan boy orgasmic over a new techno toy. ‘You’re living at about a million miles per hour, Andy. Vanilla sex, human sex, that’s nothing. Nothing. Dead. Cold. Human.’

  Gillespie hears the words, but he sees the planha at Annadale, and the bodies arranged in the inelegant geometries of high violence. Ananturievo Soulereya. Cold. Dead. Nothing. Ounserrat Soulereya, shielding her child behind her life. Cold. Human. Human sex. Human affection. Human love.

  The Shian don’t trade, but they have a price for everything.

  With an inarticulate cry, Gillespie swings the genro staff. Donnan steps back. The staff sweeps cereals, toaster, kettle, dish rack to the kitchen floor.

  ‘You fucking fuck! You took their filthy wee deal. We’ll make you one of us, but first there’s a couple of wee jobs we’d like you to do, a couple of loose ends to snip off.’

  Genro staff gripped in both hands, Gillespie waves the weapon in Donnan’s face. He’s shaking with fury.

  ‘You don’t understand the Shian way,’ Donnan says.

  ‘I understand you killed Ananturievo Soulereya, and near killed Ounserrat.’

  Gillespie lunges with the staff, driving Donnan into the living room.

  ‘And killed the Fool Slayer,’ Donnan says. ‘My mission is accomplished. The hunt is over. Now Eamon Donnan will disappear, and all there will be is Serrasoun Harridi.’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Gillespie shouts. ‘They’ve got you talking like them. You aren’t a Shian, Eamon, you never can be a Shian. You’re a fake. You’re a wee Belfast glipe done up in fancy dress. Serrasoun Harridi. Fuck! You’re a man. You’re human. If you were Shian, I’d be dead. You would have let the Fool Slayer kil
l me, kill Stacey and Talya, and then blown her away, but you didn’t. You couldn’t, because you’re human, and you couldn’t do that to a mate. And you can’t do it to children. You couldn’t let that happen to Stacey and Talya, you couldn’t do it to Ounserrat’s kid, Graceland.’

  He shakes the genro staff at Donnan. Eamon Donnan smacks it away with his hand, Gillespie swings it back to bear, point aimed between Donnan’s eyes. Donnan hits it away again, again it returns.

  ‘Don’t push it, Andy.’

  ‘Pissing you off, am I? Getting you angry? Getting on your tits — have they done those too, will it swell up and you can feed some wee Shian sprog pure cream of fucking ambrosia? Want to try to stop me? What about it then? Come on, I know it’s in there, I can see it in your eyes. You want to ram this fucking thing down my throat. You’re thinking, I can take this bastard, he’s older, smaller, fatter, slower. I can fucking take him no bother. Male violence, Eamon. Male aggression. Road rage. One-on-one competition. So, did they do it down there too? Wee tucks and folds, a wee stitch here, a wee flap pulled down there, cock and balls all nicely hidden away? So where’s all this testosterone coming from? I can smell it off you like fucking Chanel, Eamon. You’re not Shian.’

  Eamon Donnan roars. The Shian surgeons have boosted his reactions: a blur of movement and the maser is out of his hip pocket, unfolded, aimed at the middle of Andy Gillespie’s forehead.

  ‘And that proves it, Eamon,’ Andy Gillespie says calmly, evenly. ‘The prosecution rests its case.’

  Eamon Donnan grimaces. It’s the deep soul pain of a creature stripped bare of faith and self. He is neither human nor Shian, and those are all the identities the universe allows. He tries, though.

  ‘No. No. I know why you’re doing this, Andy. I know what this is about. It’s not me; it’s all of us. You fucked up your own family, you fucked up your own life, so you turned to the Shian for a new family and a new life. Something to belong to that won’t let you down. And we gave it to you, and you took it just as it came, without asking yourself, am I seeing just what I want to see, am I like those wise blind men and the elephant? You thought we were like angels, like gods, that we were a better people, without violence, without the basic biological inequalities of humans. Saner. Better. No sin. No demons haunting us. No dark side of the soul. And now that’s all been fucked to hell. We let you down. You put your trust in us, and we weren’t what you thought we were. We have our demons. We have our darknesses. We aren’t fucking Shirley Temples. We didn’t ask for you to make us gods, we didn’t ask for your faith and your hope. What right have you to make these expectations of us, and then be angry when we don’t live up to them? Are you God, that everyone has to live up to your moral standards? Who has fallen from grace with who, here?’

  Andy Gillespie smiles. The staff is mighty heavy in his hands now, but he holds it firm and straight and erect and steady.

  ‘Yeah, well, happens there’s a grain in truth in what you say, Eamon, but the real reason I’m angry, so angry I want to tear your eyes out and jump up and down on them, is because I have been lied to, betrayed, cheated on, suspected, called any number of perverts by the police. My children have been threatened, my life put in danger, people I care about maimed, my best friend is a transspecies assassin and I. Have. Had. Enough. You get that? I have had a fucking bellyful.’

  A noise in the hall. Gillespie stops, turns. The flat door flies open.

  Driving thoughts of DS Roisin Dunbar. This car, this rain, this intent expression of my face is something absolutely awful about to happen; I must look like Janet Leigh in Psycho.

  Once thought, she can’t get those all-string qheee, qheee, qheees out of her head.

  The mobile rings.

  ‘Yes.’

  Kev. The Europa Hotel reports that Sinkayang Huskravidi didn’t arrive for work today. No phone call, no explanation, no show. No job, now. Also, they’re taking the room apart — the floorboards are up, the plasterboards down: not a dead cockroach, let alone a maser and a Cloak of Shadows. Fool Slayer’s out a-hunting.

  ‘Kev, get any weapons units you can spare over to Gillespie’s place. Tell them to prepare for a siege.’

  She’s at the street door when it occurs to her. What the hell are you doing here, on your own, one policeperson against an invisible enemy with a silent, sure-kill weapon?

  Being gutsy and heroic and dramatic. Being good and useful and a martyr. Proving Roisin Dunbar is worth something in Mikey’s and my parents’ currencies.

  Martyr.

  Don’t think about that word.

  Hero. Being a Clarice Starling. Did she ever feel that she was about to wet her pants with fear?

  Something has turned the street door lock to the goo that leaks out of dead batteries. The door swings open at her touch.

  Gun out. Two-fisted grip. Deep breath. Keep to the wall. Stealthy advance. Her handbag keeps swinging around to obstruct her shooting arm. The mountain bike. Watch the mountain bike. You do not want to fall face forward through the door.

  There’s a hell of a din coming from the flat. She recognizes Andy Gillespie’s rough-edged syllables.

  The door is open a crack. This could be a good or a bad thing. She won’t have to kick it in. She’s not sure she could kick a four-panel Edwardian door in.

  She presses herself against the door-frame. Where are you, Willich? Hurry up, just bloody hurry up.

  There is a second voice in the room that Dunbar doesn’t recognize. Jesus, they sound like they’re about to tear each other apart in there. If you’re going, you have to go now.

  One more deep breath. She shudders with tension as she inhales.

  Go go go.

  The door flies open.

  There is Andy Gillespie with a big stick. Facing him across the hearth rug is a Shian aiming a black object at Gillespie’s head.

  ‘Police! Drop your weapon!’

  The Shian turns. Its mouth is open in astonishment. The maser wavers, hunting from Gillespie to Dunbar to Gillespie. To Dunbar.

  ‘No!’ Gillespie shouts.

  She shoots. She keeps shooting. She can’t stop. She empties all six chambers. The Shian jerks, spasms, flaps its hands as the bullets tear through it. The look of surprise, then sadness on its face is almost human. It hits the wall. It falls. It is still. The black maser spins across the floor. Slowly, deliberately, it goes flat and folds itself in half, and half again.

  Roisin Dunbar realizes that she is screaming, short, shrill, furious screams. She was screaming those screams as she was shooting. She pants, breathing the screaming out of her, like birth breathing.

  ‘You stupid fucking bitch!’ Andy Gillespie shouts. ‘My kids are here. My kids. My kids.’

  He drops the staff, strides to Roisin Dunbar panting, shuddering, and hits her. He hits her with his fist. He hits her hard, with all his fear and pain and man rage in the blow.

  ‘My kids!’ he shouts again. ‘It was over, it was all over. It’s in the kitchen. The one you wanted. The Fool Slayer. The fucking Fool Slayer.’

  Roisin Dunbar sprawls back, legs apart, stunned. She can’t move. She can’t do a thing but hold on to this hideous gun like it has grown out of her bones.

  A face peers round the kitchen door. A little girl’s face.

  ‘Daddy?’ she asks. ‘Can we come in now?’

  There are sirens in the near distance, fast approaching.

  April

  TWO POUNDS FIFTY FOR forty-five minutes seems steep for an adventure playground to Andy Gillespie, even if it is a complete forest fort with five levels and underground tunnels and death-slides. At least parents get in free. When no one’s looking he might have a wee go on it himself. Why does no one have the courage to come out and build one of these for grown-ups?

  ‘Daddy! Look at me!’ Talya’s hanging upside down from the trapeze bars on the middle level of the wooden castle. Don’t think about a four-foot drop on to the crown of her skull, Gillespie tells himself. The therapist says that the ch
ildren must be allowed to take risks. They’ve had a severe trauma, but if the parents over-protect them they’ll never properly heal.

  Trust them, the therapist says. Trust Talya’s innate agility. Trust the impact-absorbent play surface. Trust you’re a good father.

  That one will take time.

  That’s another thing the therapist says. It will take time. She says a lot, this therapist. At least she insists that Gillespie and Karen both participate in the therapy process, and that Stacey and Talya must have free access to their father, to break the association with the bad thing. The trauma. The killings. You should say it, the therapist says. You need to be able to say it.

  Eamon’s death.

  It will take him time to be healed of that. His body is putting itself back together; the bruises are fading, the doctors say the limp will go but he may have trouble with rheumatism in that knee and his fingers in the coming years.

  The coming years. He glances at the paper on the bench beside him that he brought to read but is so much less interesting than watching his children play. News heals with time, too. The Fool Killer scare has been relegated to the inside pages by the UDF/Dee Pee blackmail scandal. The party is disintegrating. Inspectors and accountants are peeling open Faith Tabernacle and exposing the maggots within to the sun. Peterson will go down. This world really isn’t your kind of place, Gavin. Get back to the Maze, to a world you can control and live in.

  Stacey’s clambering purposefully to the very pinnacle of the fort. She balances herself on the battlements, carefully raises her arms in triumph.

  ‘I’m the King of the Castle! I can see for miles and miles from up here! I can see all the docks, and the other side of the lough, and Holywood, and there’s boats coming in.’

  It is a damn fine adventure playground, Gillespie thinks. The view alone is probably worth two fifty. The designers have built it into the castle park on the side of Cave Hill; even from his safe parent’s seat, Gillespie can appreciate the sweep of his city laid out before him. It is a soft April day; shower clouds move fast and threatening, they cast their rain shadows over other parts of the city but they miss Cave Hill. She is some queen bitch, this city, he thinks. She’s ugly, she’s small, she’s mean, she treats you like shit, but you can’t leave her, you keep coming back to her. She fucks you like nothing else. She’s not even faithful, she fucks everyone who comes to her.