The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  “I will show you five places, one here and four in the city; if only you would do two important things: kill me in the same way you killed the Lord, but before this you will tell me all about the lorry of wooden gold,” said Father Vea with conviction, struggling onto his feet. The traditional priest had appeared on the hills watching everything in the valleys. And without warning, with the dusk dead to the evening, the hard traveller crushed the dog’s head with his foot to signify the agreement. “Shame to your violence!” the traditional priest shouted down. The traveller looked to the hills with contempt and slept there standing up.

  The dawn couldn’t catch the traveller, for he had already left with Father Vea towards the city. Bishop Bawa and the traditional priest had already gathered the crowd, and they had all sworn to prepare for the giant’s destruction, this killer of eternity. They had decided to take the lorry of wooden gold, to get it to help them. Surely anything golden was good….“This lorry is not better than its master, I tell you sharp,” warned the little girl.

  There was a threat, even damnation, in the air on the road to the city. Father Vea had tried kicks, chops, and trips in surprise on the skytraveller, but the strength of the latter was incredible. These attempts only angered the bronzling, thus creating a mood of ruthlessness that did not seem to belong here on Earth. When this giant urinated he created a stream that went on forever. Vea soldiered on, tripping and panting and rebelling simultaneously in front of the wooden golden man. The sun had given the city a yellow look.

  “You evil African bronzeman, I will show you the mortuary, the seat of government, the courtroom, and the historical room. The fifth place will be the church of the shrine back in the town. I hope you survive this,” Father said to the bronzeman, who had taken on that intense concentration again…as if he were expecting something. “Sometimes I feel the spirit of the Lord, so the sooner I replace the body of the dead Jesus the clearer my mind will be….I have enemies from other galaxies. I am the first evil galactic African bronzeman; and before I arrive at simpler places like the Earth, I send false images of beauty and peace before me by a secret process of osmosis….” “Why are you filling me fat with all this information before you kill me in the same way you killed Jesus…?” complained Father Vea, with no trace of fear. The bronzeman continued regardless, with the birds back at his head, “My lorry of wooden gold has its own mind, created through a new type of computer. Back in the galaxies we call the Lord the Spiriter!” He laughed a deep preset laugh at his own words. But Father Vea stumbled on the thought, his legs bleeding from the scratching of ivy bush-green and blackberry. “We will go to the mortuary first, but we need permission…,” Vea said. “I will break the doors down even from a distance,” was the curt reply from the bronze mouth.

  Father Vea stopped running before the giant strides of the giantman, and asked, “Why is the mortuary one of the three places you want to see? How can the dead apply for the post of Jesus here?…” Giantman wasn’t paying attention, and had rather taken on a sudden concentration. He boomed out, “There are two tanks hidden near the doorway….” And the tanks’ cannons fired at once, the bombs bouncing off his chest almost as if they were small stones. He gave out his huge laughter as he broke the mortuary door down, saying, “Sometimes the better people are dead. If I find someone suitable to fill the vacancy, I’ll take him back and resurrect him through deep ice plus the manipulation of time….” He was still laughing as he crushed the tracks of the tanks and walked into the house of the dead, with the officials and attendants scattering in fear. “Would you like to meet any literary men?” Father Vea ventured, with the giant laughter still in progress, and Vea regretting his intuition that he should have learnt a better karate since no one anticipated an invincible man.

  The atmosphere had changed with the afternoon yellowing through the opaque windows. Father Vea had not been able to get a word from the bronzeman as the latter, callous and casual, went among the dead both frozen and unfrozen, on the postmortem tables and off them. Vea was shaking with uncontrollable anger as the dead were desecrated, and had tried his useless karate kicks again. He said a quick formal prayer and then bellowed to the giantman, as if in a trance, “Leave that cool face alone, the poor man died only last week from a broken heart and diabetes, since his children had become ashamed of his old face, his stammer, and his poverty; and the last straw was when his eldest daughter got married without his knowledge. His wife had been helping this filial hate along…and that woman had died in an accident. Are you allowing women applying to be Jesus, if not please leave her alone! Judging these lives is incidental to you, and I am telling their lives out of the need to defend them from you. I know you think I’m giving you information, how stupid!” The blow that Father Vea received knocked him out altogether.

  Father Vea woke to these words from his adversary. “I have selected two potential candidates. They are on the floor at the moment. Carry them into the golden lorry outside. I called it here.” Vea caught himself doing exactly as he was told. This obedience was what he would have to fight against, voluntary and involuntary slavery. Yet one part of his mind remained free and full of disjointed prayers. The birds were no longer around the wooden gold lorry, and its guavas of bribery were rotten. “But one of them is a woman,” exclaimed Vea, knowing full well that he could get the answer that the new Jesus-to-be could be a woman. He received no answer as the lorrygold drove off by itself to put the bodies where it first landed, the valley now deserted except for the echoing sounds of intense activity in the churches and the shrines. Only the same little girl stood by her finished shades.

  “There is joy in using an ancestral laser gun, arrived at from centuries of experiments sustained by gari, herbs, bones, and metal. The galaxies are very ancestral, hence the killing and the search for the Lord. If there is no spirit beyond the gadgets then the gadgets take over…,” said the giantman with a silly smile on his face, pushing Father Vea brutally towards the next place of visit: the courtrooms. “I believe the spirit can be evil as well as good,” panted Vea, trying to correct the hate in his heart for this galactic man with his prestidigitatory mammy truck. “The means always justifies the end in the galaxies,” shouted giantman, now not only smiling but laughing between the pushing of the priest. Vea stopped abruptly, and then said as he was prodded forward again, “I see you don’t have real intelligence up there….”

  Bronzeman’s laughter went from the mortuary right into the courtrooms, where the yellow atmosphere continued through the fan and the floor of ochre terrazzo. The afternoon was old. But the laughter continued to be new as it pierced through the back of Father Vea. And what was strange about the court was that the judge and everyone else behaved as if the giantman and the Father hadn’t entered at all. The case under trial continued through the presence of the man of the galaxies. “I am used to attention,” he roared, raising his hands so that they almost touched the high court ceiling. “I get attention among the planets, and I demand it here as of right.” The lawyers continued to argue their cases, and the witnesses came. Father Vea, now totally exhausted, was sitting staring on the court floor. “I have come here to fill the vacancy for the post of Jesus Christ, and I will take by force anyone I consider a suitable candidate….”

  “My lord, I believe the learned counsel has misread the point I am trying to make in connection with the third witness for the defence….” The court continued to ignore the giantman as Father Vea, regaining his breath, at last looked around in amazement.

  To the surprise and enragement of the man of wooden gold, the judge started to speak directly to him. “I am happy that you as the accused have now been apprehended, but I demand that you comport yourself properly in court. I may have to hold you in contempt. We in this city have been waiting for centuries to put you on trial for your criminal destruction of the spirit in space, of which the killing of the son of the Master of the universe is the biggest symbol. We are not afraid of your brutal power. The trial will continue w
hether you kill us all together or one by one.” There was complete silence as Bishop Bawa walked into the court and stood defiantly below the judge. He had pepper in one hand and rice in the other. He said to the hard-faced wooden golding, “After you have finished in the courtrooms, the governing rooms and the churches and shrines, we will be waiting for you in the historical rooms…where we assure you that you will get all the candidates you need for the vacancy of the Lord.” The giantman killed a bailiff with one blow, shouting, “Show me the governing places, my patience is wearing thin!” And in his own mind he had only left the life of the judge intact because he could be a live candidate for the astral vacancy. Giantman had not forgotten Father Vea: he pulled him along, as Bishop Bawa rushed back towards the town, with a grim look on his face.

  At first the cabinet rooms smelt of the same old politics: the half-truth, the slant, the cynical, the secret, the sabotage, the murder, the brazen, the corrupt, the thievery, the apathy, the sycophantic, the lie, the totally broken contract, the recreation, the assertion, the favour, and the annihilation, could either form wholes to the left or wholes to the right…depending, Father Vea thought, on whether the new changes came from internal or external necessity. “I am looking for the most rotten man in politics,” asserted the giantman, “for when I get him, I will purify him, and make him the favourite for the new Jesus Christ.” And the ministers seemed to be dancing a history-hip dance, for the giantman was giving them a deep vindication: he was not coming to destroy the leaders, but only those under them. And to manoeuvre in governing was to show ability, and above all to create value: for how else could they be chosen candidates for the biggest post in the skies? Was God not the most tremendous political arranger in the world? All the same, bronzeman pulverised the belly of one minister with short sharp blows and left him for dead. “The dead minister was the most rotten least principled man among us,” one minister said with regret: if only he could be the boss of the skies instead! “Where is your leader?” the aerial visitor with the murderous hands demanded. “He has gone looking for you at the valleys to strike a deal for the whole country.” Everything has an end, Father Vea caught himself whispering in exhaustion. “I will add the leader to the dead minister as another two candidates,” stated bronzeman, dragging Vea along with him again. The lorry of wooden gold had already come and taken the dead man to the valleys. What old old eyes the giantman had, as he wiped the blood on his hand. His broad knees could hit any metal freely and survive. “I am completely neutral to your life and to your death,” he said with a snort into the sky.

  One tree received the shade of another and Father Vea and the bronzeman went back towards the town, out of the yellow city with its stunned crowds helpless against the driver of lorrygold. All of Father Vea’s African Gonja karate was finished, and he could hardly walk. Neither were his bruised knees allowed to pray. “But I am also a religious man,” the Greatgold Driver was saying, “and the only difference between your religion and mine is distance. From the galaxies your worshipping at the shrine and at the altar looks ridiculously small, and you have nothing of real power to look back at us on an equal basis. And it was the unending sympathy of the Lord—do you know that he was at first a warrior of the stars?—that led me to kill him. Too much spirit for a man of power and gadgets!” The giant laughter had come again, but when he laughed his eyes remained neutral, his dark tight skin getting tighter with its glowing.

  No one man, no one people will ever control the universe, Father Vea thought, limping in and out of his utter despair. If anyone succeeds in the process of doing so, then we could all see the terrible narrowness of the galaxies, see the desire to murder the spirit. But the spirit will live and make for another corner of the stars. Father Vea stopped, and looked curiously at the giantman. He said to the giant, “There’s no need to convert any of us into a spirit to fill the vacancy of the Lord, for the spirit of the Lord is indivisible…and if you rule the universe alone, you will only be trapped in your own inventions. We are not afraid of exclusive and powerful people of the skies, and as we raise the level of the spirit, you will find us dangerous in your narrow world, and impossible to destroy!”

  Bishop Bawa was standing waiting for giantman and Father Vea at the outskirts of the town, among the neem leaves and the snake-plants. He was with the little girl of shades and the shrine herbalist. Giantman stopped in anger. “We have come with a new spirit to defeat you, to show you that no matter how powerful you are, we know your secret: spirit for us and spirit for a man of the galaxies is the same, is indivisible.” The giant took his look of intense concentration, for he could not see nor make radio contact with the wooden gold lorry. He marched forward with his huge strides to slap Father Vea, but Vea had crawled swiftly to the side of the small party with the bishop at the head of it.

  “You can’t kill anyone again in this town! Your power to kill is finished for a year because you have overused it…,” shouted the little girl, with her head in her hands and herbs on her neck. And Father Vea shouted, “The biggest secret that you have and you don’t want to tell us is that the flesh is not the home of the spirit! Spirit is the indivisible atom, the atom’s atom’s atom!” The herbal man was outstaring the bronzeman, and holding roots together. The giant’s face looked more and more intense, and he looked as if he were rooted to the spot. “And owura Giant,” screamed the little girl, “look up at the sky! Don’t you see your lorry of wooden gold being pulled up the sky? It is climbing its own rope without you!” “Yes!” added Bishop Bawa. “You came to us as the master of the skies and so, dear master, where is your mastery now!” “But we haven’t defeated him yet, we haven’t defeated him yet. He is trying to ask for extra energy from his originator! But the originators hate energy asked for in advance! So we will not dance too soon!” shouted the herbal man.

  “Give him images and strange but true stories! Fill his mind with our world, for that is the only way of defeating his concentration.” The bishop was running about with hands held high. Father Vea shouted as the lorry of wooden gold continued to rise into the skies, “We know your secret experiments that speak about spiritual vacancies, the lizard burst before its own white eggs, we have layers of air that carry a lorry that obeys its originators for the right reasons but wrong in the eyes of the masters, we have never seen in the galaxies the honeysuckle under the heel of wild wired men from other planets, the sense of irrepressible birds forming one line and one wing all the way to the real master of the universe who does not boast of his masters, and all we needed was a child of the tropics with insights that travel through evil, VACANCY FOR THE POST OF JESUS CHRIST INDEED!”

  And the giantman was shrinking, but he shrank only two inches, for his will was only enough for his height; but this will was never enough to keep the lorrygold. “But where’s the historical room?” bronzeman asked, his voice less neutral now, full of the tones of doubt. “It’s an open-air room right here in the presence of the different generations standing before you,” Father Vea answered. “Will the dead you murdered remain dead?” asked the herbal shrine man. “Look, look, look up on top of the lorrygold almost gone see something!” the shade girl shouted.

  Up there among the few guavas left at the back of the truck stood, still alive, the victims of the anger of the giantman. And they were waving. And who was that dusky bearded man in the white robes, immediately above the lorrygold, the man just jumped down from a sudden cross in the sky, and looking with wonder at the nailmarks on his hands? “Lord!” shouted Father Vea in a trance. “I knew you would come from the freest most difficult part of the universe! Only your humility in the helicopter! I knew you would arrive in this proud and clean tropical land….” The little girl of shades and spirit asked the disappearing dark Jesus, “Please, O son of the universal Controller, can you please show us your appointment letter from God?” The cynical raised their eyebrows, the wise nodded, the poor and the rich had one reaction, and the animals were free…and the giantman groaned, almost human no
w. But had he found his peace?

  The Universe of Things

  GWYNETH JONES

  Gwyneth Jones (1952– ) is an award-winning English science fiction and fantasy writer and critic born in Manchester. She received her education at a convent school and received her undergraduate degree in European history at the University of Sussex. In addition to her work for adults, Jones has written almost twenty young adult and children’s books under the name Ann Halam. Jones’s works are mostly science fiction and near-future high fantasy with themes often connected to gender and feminism. She has won two World Fantasy Awards, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award.

  Her first novel for adults, Divine Endurance (1984), remains one of her most widely admired. It is set in a ruined Earth governed by a matriarchy. No dates are given, but Jones’s enormously complex Southeast Asia venue has a Vance-ian Dying Earth tonality, and the matriarchal society she depicts is riven by profound ambivalences. The hard melancholy and sustained density of the book are unique in recent science fiction.

  Other of her novels include Water in the Air (1977), Escape Plans (1986), White Queen (1991), and Bold as Love (2001). Her short fiction has been collected in, among others, Identify the Object (1993) and Grazing the Long Acre (2009).

  “The Universe of Things,” published in New Worlds 3 in 1993, is a unique tale of alien contact in that it is about not the fate of the world but of quieter and yet more profound matters.