The Power

by Ian Watson

  Mitzi licked her lips. “And when you crack, what’ll be inside? What’ll hatch out?”

  Jack said loudly, “Let’s talk aboot these rehearsals, shall we?”

  Thirty-five

  Came the day which the Power identified as May Day, the procession of dead schoolkids shambled in reasonable order around the streets and lanes of Melfort, shepherded by Nell and Mitzi, with Bess woofing and pretending to nip heels. The boys and girls had been decorated with bright ribbons pillaged from a dozen sewing baskets. By way of song they managed to hum like bees or moan like distant cattle.

  Jeni trudged along too, feeling as though a rope was around her neck, choking her onward towards faggots which awaited.

  The procession started from the school. En route a score of dead grown-ups and teenagers joined the march, which ended circuitously at the green. There, the rest of the population all awaited. Even the most decayed and doddery had dragged themselves or somehow prevailed on a fellow corpse to act as crutch, to lend an arm. Jack and Bert, as marshals, hardly had a thing to do beyond maintaining a large clear circle around the pole which now dangled its plastic streamers loosely, a tall anorexic’s skirt. The dead villagers pressed together patiently. When the juvenile troop entered the circle, Bert switched on the cassette tape – of folk dances, folk songs.

  Clutched in the numb hands of lurching children, the red, green, blue, and yellow streamers unwound in and out one more time, till a dozen dead girls and boys came to a halt. They stood like numbers on a clock dial designed by Dali: twelve slumped, mouldering hours linked by floppy plastic hands to the central spike so that it was everything o’clock. Never o’clock. The crowd moaned. The cassette player seemed to have stopped, just like the child dancers.

  Jeni’s mind itched and her calves twitched to kick her forward; a frog’s legs galvanized by an electric wire.

  “Wrong number!” she exclaimed. “Must dial a different number.”

  “What’s that, pet?”

  “Thirteen o’clock! That’s the hour of the coven. The hour of the Power.” Helplessly Jeni advanced across the grass, ducking under a yellow streamer held by the youngest Boxall girl whose face was almost unrecognizably rotted.

  “Don’t let her!” cried Mitzi. Bert held Mitzi. Mitzi struggled.

  “We have to let this happen,” Jeni heard Bert saying fiercely. “Whatever it is! Otherwise it’ll be something else another day. Something worse. It could happen to you next – don’t you understand?”

  Jeni stood with her back up against the naked wooden pole, the stake stripped bare. The throng of dead sighed – and music recommenced. A recorded voice began to sing lustily:

  “I had four sisters sailed across the sea

  Pery mery winkle domome

  And each of them sent a present unto me

  Partrum quartrum paradise lostum

  Pery mery winkle domome!”

  Could this song really be on the tape? The dead kids stumbled in and out around the pole, loosely wrapping the top with their streamers. One circuit.

  “The first brought a chicken without a bone

  The second brought a cherry without a stone

  Partrum quartrum paradise lostum

  Pery mery winkle domome!”

  The second circuit brought the plastic streamers down to touch Jeni’s hair.

  “How can there be a chicken without a bone?

  How can there be a cherry without a stone?

  Partrum quartrum paradise lostum

  Pery mery winkle domome!”

  As the streamers covered Jeni’s face she knew she was posed exactly like some Joan of Arc in any of a dozen old films, being bound round by the executioners with coil after coil of rope or chain in fetishistic bondage, as prelude to those men setting fire to the faggots piled at her feet to roast her alive, the witch. She could no longer see because of the bandages, could only just breathe, couldn’t cry out through the gag. The cocoon of streamers still let her hear the song.

  “When the chicken’s in the egg it has no bone –”

  One streamer held her by the throat. Another crossed her breast, pulling her tight.

  “When the cherry’s in the flower it has no stone – ”

  Now her waist! She tried to shuffle her feet to kick away faggots if any were piled around them now, but she could hardly move – her legs were paralysed.

  The music slowed to a stately largo, and each word of the dog-Latin chorus came out like ecclesiastic plain-chant…or like an invocation.

  “Par–trum!

  Quart–rum!

  Par–ad–ise!

  Lost–um – ”

  What was this chorus? Some parody Latin hymn? Some…exorcism?

  “Per–y!

  Mery–y!

  Win–kle!

  Dom–om–e!”

  She could hear things ripping – but what? The fabric of the world sounded as though it was tearing, thread by thread. She felt hot. Burning hot. Just as utter panic was about to seize her she felt the lowest ribbon unwind, to begin to release her.

  Many other distorted voices took up the chorus – the dead villagers were singing. Only, they were singing the words in reverse order:

  “Domome winkle mery pery

  Lostum paradise quartrum partrum!”

  Her chest was loose, her throat was free, her mouth unbound.

  And now the dead were singing nonsense.

  “Emomod!

  “Elkwin –!”

  No, they weren’t. They were reversing the words themselves. They were chanting the dog-Latin and bits of English backwards.

  “Yrem!

  Yrep!”

  How could they manage to sing backwards? The new words sounded like the names of demons.

  The plastic band across her eyes flew away, and she saw: the corpse kids hobbling rottenly in and out around her, unwinding their long streamers from her head, from the pole – as the massed dead of Melfort mooed out powerfully:

  “MUT–SOL!

  ES–IDA–RAP!

  MUR–TRAK!

  MUR–TRAP!”

  Ghastly sinister words suggesting trap and murder, or mur for wall and sol for sun or soil and mutant and rape and meurt for dying. Death trap. Wall of death.

  That wasn’t the worst. During the time while her eyes had been blindfolded the dead had done their best to tear off their own rotten garments, or each other’s. That was the noise she had heard: The green was littered with torn soiled rags and tatters, discarded shoes. Now the villagers only wore stray loops, patches of cloth which had adhered to them, half-sleeves, quarter vests, odd socks, knickers stained brown and yellow ripped into holes. Even the kids with the streamers in one hand had managed mostly to denude themselves. The near nakedness of these dead people was so much more monstrous than the piggish nudity of those other villagers, crazed and lustful and compelled, capering behind that monk before rooting in the mud. At least those had been whole, sound bodies to begin with. This flabby nudity was foul with sores and cancers, inflammations, skin diseases, peeling rotting seeping flesh, squirming nests of maggots.

  As the dead child dancers reached the limits of their streamers they began to flop down one by one – not at all gracefully as in a curtsey, but like puppets whose strings have suddenly been dropped. Yet those strings still jerked their fallen bodies spasmodically.

  One by one, then two by two, then three by three the dead villagers began to groan, to cry out bestially, and tumble to the ground – where they did not lie still, oh no; they writhed, contorted, wallowed. Within a minute only Jeni herself and her fellow survivors were left standing, surrounded by a mass of jerking, shuddering, heaving corrupted cadavers. Ghastly nude. A great herd of seals being slaughtered by an invisible, acid-spraying hand.

  Then one of the corpses – was that Harry Blesworth? – began to split open. His blotched codfish legs and his poxed trunk and his raddled arms: they crevassed as though a butcher’s knife had sliced deep along them. Foul liquids welled as
the man burst apart in an oozing of ichor. His skull cracked open.

  Struggling out of the corpse, fumbling free, came an arm, a leg, a head…

  …of a naked boy.

  The boy crawled free, stood up, and wailed – from the shock and terror of it? or to be able to breathe?

  Seven years old, maybe eight. The boy was smeared with the stains of his emergence from that…chrysalis of rot and death. But that was only superficial mess. In other respects he looked sound in wind and limb. His features bore a strong resemblance to Harry Blesworth; Harry as the boy he must once have been.

  “Hoorah!” cried the boy.

  As if his cry was a signal, the other dead burst open, disgorging boys and girls from inside themselves. The stench was appalling, the noise a chaos. Most of those emerging sounded joyful. How they shouted with glee – whoopee! – and skipped about amidst the discarded piles of blubber and offal, milling, giggling at each other’s nakedness. None appeared stupid…unless they’d been stupid originally. None seemed mad or damaged. They looked perfect again. Boyish, girlish perfect. They had become as little children.

  And the maypole dancers and all the other dead kids were also splitting open where they lay – to reveal wailing, fist-flapping babies.

  Oh yes, a grown-up body could contain, could hatch, a boy or a girl. A boy or girl could only hatch an infant.

  “Get them babbies free!” bellowed Jack. “Afore they stifle!”

  His shout broke the spell which had fallen over the original survivors. Within moments the five of them were burrowing into the oozing, cleaved carcasses of those dead kids like a team gutting plucked turkeys to bring out the babies and lay them safely on the side-lines. A stretch of free grass became a squalling maternity ward. None too soon – for the heaps of foul discarded body tissue and organs were already becoming no firmer than beached jellyfish, great bruised purple jellyfish that dripped, melted, flowed, slowly drained into the ground, even the bones dissolving waxily. Very soon the rescuers were wading ankle-deep through an amorphous stinking gluey pond to snatch the last babies. Boys and girls were joining in, to help. They were conscious, bright again! “Mister, can I help?” “Here, give it me!” “Turn her over!” “Hold him upside down!”

  A few babies, they failed to save. Nostrils and throats had clogged. The lungs had stopped breathing, the faces gone blue. No amount of thumping or sucking or kiss of life helped.

  The tethered goat-corpse had also collapsed. Even now it was giving birth to its younger self – in the shape of a frisky kid….

  Thirty-six

  “Please all keep together!” cried Mitzi. “And please stop asking things! Please let us sort out what’s best!”

  “I’m hungry,” complained wee George Vaux, “and I’m chairman of the Parish Council too.”

  “There’s a new committee nowadays, of public security!” snapped Jack.

  “Says who?” demanded little Dennis Ainsworth. “I need to see to my porkers. I could have two hundred piglets squealing for feed, and fighting and biting. With all the filth, they’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “Yes! Wait!”

  “The goat got reborn, didn’t it? Why shouldn’t I have piglets?”

  And the dead ducks on the pond had also been reborn as ducklings.

  The babies were squalling for attention. Enid Jackson, girl again, with the merest hint of a goitre now, clutched her hands over her crotch.

  “Those poor mites have to be wrapped and fed. And so do I. It’s shameful, this. I don’t know how I’ll hold up my head. Babies come before piglets, any day. Right now – not in half an hour, either.”

  “Yes! Hold on!”

  Enid Jackson indeed held on, to her crotch.

  “We must all get some clothes on,” she insisted.

  “In time!”

  “What a wonderful miracle,” enthused Clare Fox, a mere mouse of a girl though with a light of glory in her eyes.

  “Oh god, oh god,” groaned Nell, “how can we cope?”

  Voices babbled from all around.

  “Quiet, please!” Mitzi shrieked. “Patience!”

  “Wey, at least they aren’t aal reborn as what the philosopher called tabulous razors – with no notions in their heeds!”

  “Apart from the babies,” Bert observed. “Missus J’s right on their account. Girls! Girls!” He clapped his hands. “You, you, and you – yes, yes. Start carrying the babies inside the White Lion. Carefully, mind – one at a time. Get them swaddled. Wrap them in curtains, pillowcases, anything to keep them warm. Please be in charge of that, Missus Jackson.” Unable to help himself, he giggled at the title.

  “Don’t you mock me, Bert Morris.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Do it, will you?”

  “Since it stands to reason, certainly. Would you kindly tell me how you propose to feed the little ones? Typical of a man to forget that.”

  “There’s a few tins o’ powdered milk in the inventory,” Jack called over, “an’ some cans of evaporated.”

  “Almost useless,” little girl Enid retorted. “Babies need proper milk. Good rich fresh milk. Will there be any of that, if the cows are all little calves?”

  Bert slapped his brow. “We’ll use sheep formula milk. There’ll be enough stocks on the different farms.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No! Orphan lambs thrive on it. Sheep milk’s richer than cows’ milk. The powder will need diluting more, and it’ll go further.”

  “We’ll see about that.” And little Enid Jackson began browbeating a squad of baby-nurses from amongst the crowd of naked girls.

  “I’ll pitch in,” piped an American voice. That must be Mary Kuzka. Girl, again. “Where’d Ed? Where are you, Ed?” she called.

  “Right here, honey.” A gangly boy approached.

  And their daughter Carol too; she’d been old enough and big enough to become a little girl. She ran up and hugged…what could have been her sister and her brother.

  Enid Jackson frowned. “No men are needed, thank you.”

  Carol Kuzka planted hands on hips. “You gonna be sexist about this? Kids and kitchen for the women?”

  “Bloody hell,” said Bert, “the last thing we need is a political discussion.”

  Enid Jackson smirked. “I’ve been put in charge, so we’ll do it my way. Girls! Get on with it!” And, miraculously, girls began to carry the screaming babies away.

  “We need aboot a hunderd discussions,” said Jack dully, “in five seconds flat.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nell, who had just caught the tail end. “Everything’s coming back to life. What’s wrong?”

  “Wey, isn’t it obvious? Does the Power give free lunches? Eh, Jeni, does it?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Aa think yor more likely to knaa than any other bugger, since ye knew what to do at the maypole to bring aal this aboot!”

  “I didn’t know – oh never mind.”

  “Listen, an’ aal tell youse.” He ushered them a few paces away from curious ears. “How we gannin’ te eat now there’s hundreds o’ mouths to feed, eh? Unless ye have any devil-manna laid on, Jen, we can aal storve te death inside a month or so. Oh, Aa suppose we can kill aal the piglets an’ whatnot te spin it oot longer – providin’ they’ve been reborn like that pushy little snot thinks.”

  “He’s Dennis Ainsworth,” said Bert, who looked distinctly unhappy.

  “An’ what dee we torn to afterwards? Cannibalism?”

  “Chicks’ll grow into hens, and lay,” Bert muttered.

  “Wey aye, an’ how do we look after aal these livin’ animals?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “We had wor work cut oot when they were deed! Aa’ll tell ye: we’ll have slave labour, that’s what.” He swung round on Jeni. “Yor goovernment emergency powers was gannin’ to involve child labour gangs, worn’t they? Well, we’d best stort learnin’ to be slave-masters pretty quick. Good thing we’re twice the size of any o’ the slaves!
It’s gannin’ to be a dictatorship here, just like it would have been after a normal bloody nuclear war. Slavery, dawn to bloody dusk – it’s not gannin’ to be any picnic, an’ we’ll probably still starve. Suffer little children, eh? We’ll need te make them suffer to keep them in line, an’ aal for nothin’ in the long run likely. The Power must be laughin’ its heed off. Ye dangle a smidgeon o’ hope, an’ as soon as ye gulp it doon it’s shit in yor gob.”

  Nell turned to Bert for another opinion, but he didn’t have one.

  Even so, she began, “We must believe that the Power genuinely wants to help. That it’s doing its best to save nature, because it’s part of nature. That – ”

  “Aye, exactly,” Jack interrupted, “but would ye buy a used car from it?”

  Jeni cleared her throat. “We should ask. Ask the vicar. What its intentions are.”

  A couple of naked boys were loitering close by, contriving to eavesdrop. She realized that one was Gareth, visibly bubbling with intentions, schemes. A chunky lad. His companion – a skinny lad overtopping him – was familiar too; he just had to be Andy. Andy’s face twitched as if a colony of fleas inhabited it. He looked way over the edge. Nuts. He’d been losing his marbles before the war; death hadn’t given any marbles back to him.

  “Jen!” Not “Jen-eeee,” now, but plain Jen. Gareth the boyo stepped forward, accompanied by his batty batman Andy. So where was Nancy? Ferrying babies and swaddling them, perhaps? At long last, a baby in her arms!

  “Old comrades stick together, don’t they now?” said Gareth. “Right through thick and thin. Old comrades share political know-how, that’s why. I’ll help you sort out the work in a proper socialist style. Won’t I?” he demanded.

  An image invaded her mind of Trotsky, when he was in power before the old Party comrades quarrelled, using the Red Army as a rod of iron to control dissenting farmers and others.

  “Gareth…do you remember what you did to me?”