Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  Arriving at school, I placed the world carefully on my desk so that it wouldn’t roll off. The other kids watched me curiously yet no one rushed over mischievously to shove or snatch. We weren’t like that nowadays. Even so, they couldn’t have harmed my world or taken it unless I let them.

  Miss Perry eyed me. ‘What was that about, Joan?’

  I smiled. Today’s my birthday, Miss. My Mum and Dad have given me the world. Here it is.’ I lifted it, and set it down again. Only a few of my classmates tittered.

  ‘Honest?’ asked Jimmy Taylor. ‘Can I hold it for a mo?’ Before Miss Perry could react Jimmy had left his desk. He placed his hands where mine had been.

  ‘Hey, it is too! I feel it. Like a balloon, in’ it?’ He tried to lift it, but couldn’t, and frowned.

  Miss Perry descended upon us. Jimmy skipped back to his seat. She faltered; her hands fluttered like birds caught in a net. ‘May I?’

  When I nodded, Miss Perry spread her hands wide as the desk itself. At first her palms came together ever so slowly as if she was apprehensive that she might touch… either something, or alternatively nothing. Next, she seemed about to clap a mosquito between those two hands of hers as if her hands were a spring trap which might fly together, triggered by a tickle, exploding my birthday present, popping it with a smack of flesh on flesh. She might imagine she was assessing whether to burst my dream for my sake, or whether to let me keep it, also for my sake. Oh she might imagine this, but I saw deeper: all the way inside her to her fearful desire for Jimmy to have been serious, not spoofing, to her yearning for this truly to be the world, and her fear that it wasn’t, and her twin fear: that it was. Her hands stalled just where I knew the surface of the world to be.

  ‘It’s,’ she murmured. ‘Yes it is, it is.’ At that moment she too had opened a door in herself and had discovered, within, a nothing which possessed more substance than she could have thought possible five minutes earlier. All my other classmates came and touched the world, with cautious wonder. I suspected one or two of pretending so as not to seem empty inside. Once everyone had returned to their seats, and Miss Perry to the front, I lifted my world fussily to reposition it. Before, I had hardly noticed the slightest weight, if any. Now my world seemed a bit heavy.

  At mid-morning break we spilled out into the marketplace, bathed in cool April sunshine, me with my world. Word about it spread quickly through the school population. Soon a stream of kids were coming up to me. ‘Joan, Joan, may we?’ Seniors proved shyer than juniors -afraid, as Miss Perry had been afraid at first.

  Those older kids who missed their chance seized it at lunch time. That day, the school canteen was dishing up bowls of thick pea and ham soup with wedges of wholemeal bread. I had to balance the world on my head to carry the meal back to the classroom, stooping when I stepped through a doorway. I was stopped by so many seniors wanting to reach above my head that my soup was luke-warm by the time I got down to it.

  When school ended, colour was fast fading from the sky and some rainy-looking clouds were arriving to wash the afternoon away. The market had already packed up. Would a world balanced upon my head act as an umbrella? Probably not, on account of the shape. Rain would run around in little seas and soak my crown. Raindrops might simply pass straight through like radiation because they couldn’t notice the world in their way.

  During a shower you mightn’t notice rain slicking the world, but how about when the year rolled round to winter and snow fell? Would the flakes cling? Would I wear a great cold snowball on my head, the world in a new ice age?

  Jimmy offered to carry the world back home for me but of course I couldn’t let him. With all the kids touching it, the weight had grown noticeably. Yet I wasn’t struggling. The world wasn’t a pail, empty to start with and now half full of water. I felt no physical strain, just a sense of increase. As if to compensate, my hands were buoyed up.

  Earlier in the day, when I was new to having a world, perhaps I could have let Jimmy take it. Not now, no longer. I should have loathed for the skin to be torn from his hands, and burned, for his foot to be crushed by the fall of the world. He walked with me, chatting about how fine it must be to have such a Mum and Dad.

  ‘If only mine would give me…’ he began. ‘I guess they can’t. Yours is the only one.’

  ‘How was it at school today?’ Dad had been watching some film about Romans and gladiators which he now switched off. His tone was light yet I heard the underlying anxious note. Mum waited too, either to wreathe her face in smiles, or be sad.

  I lowered the world gently on to my bunk, where it didn’t make a hollow in the bedding, though that didn’t matter. The blanket couldn’t feel the weight of the world the way I could.

  ‘It was so wonderful!’ I told them. ‘Everyone touched my world. Miss Perry, everybody.’

  My parents’ faces swelled with joy, each like some toddler’s crayon drawing of a radiant, beaming sun. We hugged, all three of us.

  By the end of the following day most of the adults in the camp appeared to have heard the news. During break, at least fifty grown-ups asked to touch. Though no traders were present that day, the market place was packed with people after school. It took me ages to get home. Families and stray individuals kept knocking at our caravan for a couple of hours more. I had to lift the world dozens of times and carry it to the door. My world seemed as heavy as a horse by now, though somehow it continued to be no burden.

  Most people’s reaction was one of calm delight. A few shed tears, which was embarrassing. One or two grumbled. Maybe those were the grumbling sort – and they’d come to me, hadn’t they? Nobody asked stupid questions, or made wishes on the world, or tried to hog it longer than others. They touched, and went away satisfied.

  Our final callers were the vicar, Reverend Mumfats, and the mayor of our camp, Joe Wibbits. Since it was pitch-dark by now, Dad invited these special visitors inside, even though we would be cramped. I brought the world from my bunk yet again, and both the vicar and the mayor rested their palms against it, so I could tell that they weren’t intending to act in a heavy-handed style.

  Reverend Mumfats sniffed; he had a cold. ‘Where did you get it from, Joan?’

  ‘From Mum and Dad, as a birthday gift.’

  ‘Ah, but where did they get it from? Where, Mr Archer, Mrs Archer, where? And how? Was it from God?’

  Mum didn’t believe in Mumfats’ God yet she didn’t wish to offend, so she chose her words.

  ‘It came into our minds to give it to Joan. So we did. At the time we gave it, you’d hardly have known it was there.’

  ‘Now it is,’ growled Mr Wibbits. ‘Oh yes. I felt it, same as you did, Vicar. Joan, we really called here to ask… not about your plans, oh no.’ He barked a laugh. ‘Wouldn’t wish to use that word, would we? What I’m saying –’

  ‘A moment,’ interrupted Mumfats. ‘Does it… progress, would you say, from day to day? Similar to, um, a pregnancy? An egg underneath a hen?’

  I nodded. ‘The more people who touch it, the heavier it grows. Yes, it gets heavier all the time.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mum looked concerned. This was the first time I’d mentioned the weight.

  I explained. ‘It isn’t your usual heaviness like a big bag of carrots being heavier than a little bag. I know it’s heavier, you see, but I can still hold it easily so long as I feel right about holding it. Feeling right is… well, it’s as if something’s flowing through me to support it. The heavier it gets, the more flows through me.’

  ‘More power of the spirit?’ suggested Mumfats.

  ‘Energy, that’s what!’ said Dad.

  ‘What I’m saying,’ resumed Mr Wibbits, ‘is there’s a bus service into town on Saturdays, if you take my meaning.’

  Personally I suspected that my world might be immune to the ‘empty room’ effect. Mr Wibbits wasn’t taking chances by making dramatic pronouncements, nevertheless the Saturday morning bus was over half full, to the surprise of the driver. Mr Wibbits himself wa
s on board, and the vicar, and my Mum and Dad, and Jimmy and his Dad, and oh, a good thirty others. I sat by Dad with the world in my lap as the bus lurched along the potholed road past fields grazed by sheep, rooted by pigs, or gone to wilderness. We picked up a few extra passengers from villages en route. Of course I had to let them touch the world.

  For once, town wasn’t depressing and colourless, even when the day grew overcast and a chilly wind blew from the north. Miss Perry had turned out with friends to greet us. Myself, Mum and Dad, and half a dozen others established ourselves at the bus station where there was ample open space, a sheltered arcade, and a coffee stall. The others dispersed through the streets to spread the word. By the time our bus departed at the end of the day hundreds and hundreds more people had laid their hands on the world.

  I felt it was a start.

  How did it feel to sleep with the world every night, to bunk up with it? I could have stowed it on the floor but I preferred to stay in contact. Sometimes I kept the world down at the bottom of my bed, with my blanketed feet splayed on either side. Sometimes I curled myself around it, knees-up-fashion. Mostly I had it up by my pillow and rested my cheek against it. When I lay in this position I thought I could hear the faintest humming sound. Not that my world was any spinning top! Even if it had been revolving at the same rate as Planet Earth, turning on its axis only once a day, I’m sure I should still have felt its slow slide against my face. Maybe the murmur was inside my own ears. I wasn’t aware of my world having a temperature other than my own. Certainly it wasn’t hot around the equator and cold at the poles.

  Did a moon the size of an apple orbit my world invisibly and intangibly fifty feet away, swinging slowly around our caravan in the night? No, the moon was stone dead. The aliens didn’t affect the moon, where nothing happened anyway.

  * * *

  Miss Perry suggested that I skip school on Wednesday and go into town again on the bus; which I did, accompanied by Mum and Dad, Mr Wibbits, and others. More and more townsfolk touched the world.

  Again on Saturday. By the Monday a restless new feeling was stirring in me because fresh people weren’t constantly touching the world every single day. At our camp everyone had already done so. My parents and I held a confab with Miss Perry, the upshot of which was that Miss Perry invited me to come and stay with her in town in the house which she was sharing with three other teachers. Every morning she would drive me to school. I could lunch with Mum and Dad, so as to see them. Afterwards she would return me to town. Longer evenings were approaching. I’d be able to put in several hours of world-showing at the bus station, which was proving such a popular venue.

  Within a week of this new schedule commencing, most of the town must have turned up and numbers were tailing off from thousands into hundreds. Queues still stretched around the parking apron, yet what would once have seemed an overwhelming demand was beginning to frustrate me just a tad. My world continued to grow in weight, but I could always hold it without any bother. Invitations were arriving from other town and cities, spurred by travellers who had touched my world before departing and who witnessed what was happening.

  A party of four scientists, from the remnants of the university twenty miles south, turned up at Miss Perry’s house in a minibus packed with equipment to test my world and me; and I imagine that if TV stations had any longer transmitted news, or if newspapers still flourished, I might have been besieged by reporters as in those old movies.

  Their measuring devices told them next to nothing about my world, or myself, yet they couldn’t easily argue with its existence. Giles Collyweston, the team’s leader, grew downright excited. He was in his sixties, with snowy hair, and his colleagues weren’t much younger. Doris Dobey, a stout woman, was determined to play devil’s advocate.

  ‘This is an alien artefact,’ she suggested. She wore a tweed suit belted about her waist, and scuffed old brogues on her feet. I imagined her striding across a moor trying to shoot pheasants. We were in the shared lounge of the house, where the peeling purple and gold-striped wallpaper suggested a spectrum of heathers, while the easy chairs were soft brown boulders. Dr Dobey’s thatch of grey hair might have been self-trimmed, using a pudding-basin as a guide.

  ‘At last they have sent something down to Earth – an enigma to raise false hopes and make fools of us. Or worse! When people touch this thing, it registers them. It stores their imprint. Many more people will touch it. One day it will reach out and touch them and, I don’t know, control them, suck their personality and free will away. It’s an alien weapon.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ I told her. The pendant lamp, glass cups branching from brass arms, flickered, and shone more dimly from then on.

  ‘How can you be sure, Joan?’

  ‘Because it’s mine.’

  ‘Has a voice been whispering in your dreams?’

  ‘No, Mum and Dad told me. First our vicar asks if God has anything to do with it. Now you’re wanting to know if aliens have been talking to me.’

  ‘It’s a fair question,’ allowed Collyweston.

  I shook my head. ‘I hear no voices in my head. I have my world, and I know how to hold it and believe in it. I want everyone to touch it.’ This was when I finally understood the sheer extent, the enormity of what I might need to do.

  ‘Soon, we shan’t be able to stop her, shall we?’ asked John Imbow. A tubby effervescent fellow, he didn’t seem to mind this prospect too much, though his phrasing worried me.

  Doris Dobey certainly minded. ‘Exactly, John! Soon there’ll be too much popular momentum behind her, because this seems the only hope. It’s deadly dangerous.’

  Who would they report back to? What could they do to stop me?

  ‘You daren’t believe any longer,’ I accused Dobey. ‘That’s why you’re scared. It’s better for you if life just fades away.’

  I was afraid too. A few weeks ago would I have argued – really argued – with a grown-up? Now if necessary I had to withstand grown-ups, however important they might be. I was also afraid because I guessed that if I didn’t continue to carry my world to people an anguish would well up inside me, a trickle of pain at first, then an unbearable torrent. I didn’t dare let myself be too aware of this, otherwise I might have wavered. I might have asked myself, ‘Could my world really be a trap?’ and lost my trust in it so that suddenly it would weigh as much as I sensed that it weighed, and it would crash through my hands, through carpet, through floorboards, burying itself deep in the foundations of the teachers’ house, impossible ever to lift again. Because… I had let it down.

  The fourth member of the team, Iris Ackroyd, hadn’t committed herself to an opinion. Middle-aged and scrawny, her eyes had a certain predatory gleam; yet she refrained from comment. Since the other didn’t press her, perhaps this was her usual manner: to spend a long time hovering like a hawk, spying every last detail, before swooping down.

  Luckily Giles Collyweston disagreed strongly with the devil voice.

  ‘Life,’ he said, ‘creates order; whilst the universe proceeds towards disorder. These aliens are forcing entropy upon us. I believe they’re exploiting our world as a power source, a battery which will end up flat. They’re drawing negentropy from the battery of human life.’

  ‘Personally I think entropy’s over-rated,’ remarked John Imbow mildly. ‘The universe is creative. Order evolves out of chaos. Organization emerges.’

  ‘We’ve heard this kind of thing from you before, Giles,’ Dobey said. ‘What are they doing with this stolen energy, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know. Accumulating it in their mini-moon? Building up the potential for a stargate, a tunnel through superspace by which they can come here in person? To take our world away from us confused enfeebled monkeys? Maybe their probes go out slowly to promising star systems, taking hundreds of years, and where they find life they leach the life-force of that planet by switching its world-line so that nothing energetic ever happens.’

  ‘Doesn’t that activity require power, Giles?
Doesn’t it demand an almost Godlike power on their part to start with?’

  ‘They may draw that power from the sun, or from the fabric of space-time itself. Yet to create a tunnel which can be travelled by conscious beings might demand – what they are doing to us. Perhaps it’s a necessary sacrifice on our part, for which they’ll apologize when they finally arrive here. Perhaps they’ll compensate us. Maybe their coming will boost us all back again into a greater cosmic history. I misdoubt this. Oh I do. We’re being drained, as Africa was of its slaves, as the third world was of its raw materials and its sweated labour. Now the whole Earth’s a third world, weak and poor and helpless. Yet at last the flow is reversing! Energy starts to stream back into our system through you, Joan, and your world. How, I don’t know. There’s a science at work here that’s a thousand years beyond ours –’

  ‘And this invisible mini-world of Joan’s is a product of it,’ stated Dobey.

  ‘No! I trust it. We must trust. A power, a counterforce has arisen from the human spirit.’

  The tweeded woman shook her head. ‘You’re no longer a scientist, Giles. You’re a dupe. You’re a silly fish rising to a bright fly with a hook hidden in it. What shape is the hook? That’s all I wonder.’

  Miss Perry had been sitting in on the investigation. Now my teacher erupted from one of the enveloping, camouflaging chairs like a red fox breaking cover when challenged by a hound. She rushed to the cold fireplace, whirled, and faced my interrogators.

  ‘Joan can’t stay here much longer. She needs to travel – to let everyone touch her world! Will you take her back to the city with you, Professor Collyweston? Will you lodge her for a while?’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ said Dobey.

  ‘Good way to keep an eye on her,’ suggested John Imbow. ‘Else, we’ll miss the real start of her snowball.’