Theatre of the Gods (18 page)

The Gentrifaction are a frightening trio of painted monsters. Hideous, fatuous and cruel. The poet was shrieking on the deck today that someone stole his watch. One of the children said, ‘This watch, sir?’ and the poet snatched it, saying, ‘Of course this watch. Did you pilfer it from my quarters?’

‘Oh no,’ said the child, ‘you left it on the ledge outside the botanist’s window.’

Tonight I saw the most frightening thing of all.

When I was returning from the stalls I heard the poet arguing with someone in his quarters, but his antagonist was a voice I had not heard, high-pitched, gurgling and ghostly, like the final whisper from a sick man’s throat.

‘You call yourself an artist?’ the voice softly said. ‘You have the nerve to cast yourself among the greats? You are nothing.’

‘Oh stop, I care not for your critiques tonight.’

‘Oh no, you never do. You are content to churn out slimy verse unfit for dogs to piss on.’

‘Oh stop, brother, enough.’

… Brother?

‘You can’t call the feckless sputum that bilges from your pathetic brain poetry. He who writes the shipping news has a finer pen than you.’

‘Oh stop, I beg you!’

‘And here you prepare for bed, like a man who has earned his rest. You think you have done enough to sleep?’

‘Oh, Alfredo, no. Please let me rest. I’ve worked so hard today, and I promise tomorrow you’ll see my masterwork. I am in pain!’

I noticed then a shaft of light coming from a small slit in the curtains of his room and crept carefully up, being careful not to wake the boards outside. The poet was sprawled on his bed, a pen in his left hand, a glass of liquor in his right, his sheets were wet with tears and ink. His shirt was unbuttoned and drawn back, and on his side, just above the protruding bone of his hip, was a face, a twisted, toothy face with straggled tufts of hair. A brother, no doubt, one who partly formed with him inside the womb.

‘Pain? Pain?’ That voice, so sick and nasty. ‘Oh, Herbert, if only you knew the pain of living day by day upon the hip of mediocrity.’ And as Herbert began to quietly weep, I swear the creature turned his eyes and bore straight into mine, taking the breath from out my very soul, and it was all that I could do to stop from screaming out. I ran as quick as I could back to my room, and I locked the door, and I lay awake all night, with my mind churning and my heart racing, just as the poet must do every night of his poor, sad life.

And so here we are: on a ship of fools piloted by a dangerously unstable teenager and carrying a host of monsters and rum-addled hypochondriacs.

I have not even asked yet where this ship is headed.

I will tomorrow.

*

From the journal of Captain Lambestyo

The months we’ve spent at sea feel like years and I cannot explain it. I have always loved the sea, but this boat is being driven by dark forces. A big amount of our rum has become unstable. And what I mean is it is liable to explode when exposed to heat or heavy bumps. You would almost swear the makers
of this rum WANTED us to blow up. When I said we were to dump our dangerous tonic into space there was almost a mutiny. Someone wrote: ‘The captain is a bad man!’ in the galley. I strapped the ringleader, Mylie, to a strut and left him there two nights, even when he cried and said, ‘I hate you! I wish I had ne’r been born!’ Then I took pity and cut him loose, and there was not any talk of mutiny again. Although we still have all the rum.

And then there is this mysterious woman we found. I went to interrogate her today, but she said that twice was enough. So I took my wine and left.

And then there are the children whom we found eating our precious bats. A burned-out urchin and a girl with no past. It makes perfect sense. Doesn’t it? No, I am being sarcastic. The boy cannot tell us his name, so we have called him Roberto. Roberto makes me fearful. He is a boy who is always in motion. Always are his eyes restlessly moving, looking for danger, or something to mess with. He is always interfering with the old man’s things. He seems to have the plans for every instrument stuck inside his head. The old man stands back with his hands on his hips and laughs with delightment when the boy is able to operate a complicated device. But the fool doesn’t laugh when the boy pulls out his Magic Eighth Ball. This is a very popular novelty device that when you shake it gives an answer to a question you have: Will I find love? Where is my hat? Etx. He always has it out, and when he does the old man yells at him, saying, ‘Roberto, put that piece of nonsense away!’

He has also a pet starfish. How strange is this? It is small and greenish gold with flecks of silver which catch the light. I see him talking to it. He cannot even hear!

The other day I yelled at him on deck for getting under my boots. Later that evening I went to use my radio receiver and I found that the frequency had been locked to a channel playing
experimental sea shanties. I hate experimental sea shanties.

Right now, I hate everything.

*

From the diary of Miss Maria Fritzacopple

We have finally managed to catch up with our fleet. This evening the fleet commander, Descharge, came across for dinner. He has announced that as it is the day of the crossing tomorrow he will stay with us tonight, then return to his ship before we jump. I assume that I will travel back to the Empire with the waste ships. First I must take care of one or two things.

During dinner the surgeon called Fabrigas to task, saying, ‘Sir, you do not eat the pork?’

He replied, ‘No, I am vegetarian.’

To which the surgeon sniffed: ‘But surely you, as a man of science, would know the health issues associated with eschewing meat.’

‘Health issues?’ he replied. ‘My boy, I am more than a thousand years old.’ And everyone laughed.

‘But what of the study by the esteemed researcher Hammond May-Clarkson which proved that a lack of meat causes a man to lean towards a feminine disposition?’ said Shatterhands.

‘I have read it.’

‘And?’

‘All it proved was that too much meat rots the brain.’

All laughed again.

‘And so,’ said the cook wryly, ‘you take out all your frustrations on these poor vegetables.’

‘If the plants wish to seek their revenge and dine on me, then I welcome it,’ he replied.

‘But to eat meat is the natural order,’ said Descharge. ‘It is
why we have incisors,’ and the delicate servo motors in his fingers whirred as he tapped his own long incisor.

‘I have nipples, too,’ said the old man, ‘yet I’m hardly tempted to let babies suckle at me.’ More laughter. ‘If it is the natural order,’ continued Fabrigas, ‘then it is an order which is costing us a great deal. We snuffed four great suns last year to get the energy to power the factories that make the meat for the Empire. More than a billion children work in the meat factories.’

‘When I was a boy I did my time in the factories, now look at me,’ said the cook, as he shoved a large spoonful of peas into his maw.

‘You must have sympathies, certainly,’ said Descharge to Fabrigas, his lips pulling back across his teeth. ‘After all, you yourself were an … orphan, if my intelligence is correct?’ He had chosen the word carefully, cruelly. To use the word ‘orphan’ is to suggest an absolute lack of status. An orphan is all but a non-person in the Empire. Without at least one parent, who would pay for the mechanical augmentations which make a person truly unique? The old man withered visibly under the question. ‘An orphan from another universe,’ continued Descharge. ‘Or so you claim. A cosmic orphan, no less.’

‘I had an aunt and an uncle who had a uranium mine on a moon in the outer reaches of my own universe. We went there when I was a boy and played beside the sea. My father gave their daughter two pet serpents he had brought back from one of his trips. I tried for a long time to find the moon again. Perhaps I still have family there. I would very much like to find out one day.’

The surgeon, sensing the sudden cloud across the room, cut in: ‘In any event, these slaveys are well cared for. Without the Workhouse Act they’d starve as orphans. Is that preferable? When the young bee is old enough to serve it does so. That is a natural order.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ I interjected. ‘I studied the bee for years. The bee is very nurturing. The young bee stays by its queen and eats her royal jelly until it grows big and strong. I would never say so beyond this ship, but what we’re doing to these children is despicable.’

Fabrigas nodded slowly, eyes on his meal. ‘There are no children now-days,’ he said. ‘There are no innocents any more.’

Descharge smiled. ‘And what of you, Captain?’ he said. ‘This conversation puts you in a delicate position. No longer a child, not quite a man, and certainly not an innocent.’ The captain cocked his head impertinently as the commander turned his eyes to him. ‘Once a soldier, now a mercenary, almost a free man, but soon to be a prisoner. Do you think the children should be free?’

The captain put down his fork and said, ‘My mother was a noble prostitute. My father, an officer in the navy. I know what it is like to be an orphan. My mother died before I knew her. My father disowned me. He sent me to a naval school when I was one.’

‘It was a fine military school … if my intelligence is correct.’

‘It was an orphanage. A cruel place.’

‘Would you rather he’d left you on the street?’ A sunrise of crimson had appeared below the commander’s stiff collar. ‘My own father was a cruel man, but look what I’ve become. It takes a chisel to carve a hero. How would your life have been without his actions?’

‘I don’t know. But I think I would choose to take that life again. Who needs a father when you have the universe? An orphan is hungry, but he is free.’ The table was silent. And it was fitting that at that point the only thing we could hear was the sound of the slaveys singing themselves to sleep.

GOD THE WORM

An orphan is hungry, but he is free. Free to wander, free to steal; free to make the street his bed, the rat his meal, the strangers in dark places his friends, the depths his playground, the dens his school, this sweet hell his heaven; free to go into the friendly deep, where the worms and princes softly sleep; free to rise up, free to laugh at this unholy mess, free to sing himself to sleep.

The boy went up. He went up proudly now. He was a prince of the city. The shadows and the noises no longer frightened him. He went up into the night-dens. You know the rest, in outline, but here are the finer points. One night he helped a drunkard double his money. ‘Boy, what mean god led you here?’ said the drunkard. ‘The same monster who brought me, I expect. What a life!’

‘No god brought me,’ said the boy, ‘since I don’t believe one exists. And I would rather he not exist if he’s a monster.’

‘The creator is ineffable, boy, and since all of us lack the ability to describe his awesomeness, it would do just as well to call him a monster. Some call him “God the angelic beast with the face of a lion”. Since these are just pretty words, why not call him “God the Worm”?’

‘If God is just Word why call him at all?’

The drunkard laughed. He withheld the boy’s cut and said, ‘Now see here, boy, you’re better than this game. I can tell, because I was once somebody. I won’t give you a single bit tonight, but I’ll give
you something better. Now look here.’ And he gave the boy a crumpled piece of paper. And on the scrap was written …

THE DARK FRIARS INVITE TO YOU TO SOLVE THE UNSOLVABLE.

We care not about where you were born, or what your family is worth. Solve the problem below and you will be one of us. We will give you a place at our academy for scholarly monks.

‘This problem has defeated the greatest minds in the Empire,’ said the drunkard. ‘If you can help me solve it and win a place at the Academy I’ll pay you a thousand pieces. Those monks have a grand life. They laze their days away, pondering the infinity of their navels. Once I’m in with them, I’ll be set.’

‘I could solve this problem myself,’ said the boy, ‘in two nights.’

The drunkard roared again. ‘Boy, if you can solve this in two nights I’ll pay you ten thousand pieces, and take you to the Friars myself!’

Little Fabrigas worked through the night; the next day, the next night; he built himself a fort of books so that he could block out everything but the problem. By the second morning his solution was written in chalk on the floor in his attic, so he had to pull up a board and drag it to the night-den. The drunkard was there, glazed stupid, but was amazed to see the boy, and even more amazed to see his solution. He took the boy and his board to a brother called Provius who, smiling all the while, took the youngster through a series of increasingly difficult problems before finally declaring, ‘For the first time in my life, I am amazed. Boy, with your mind you will be able to achieve anything you set your heart towards.’

‘All I want,’ said the boy, ‘is to find my father. He has gone to a moon where my aunt and uncle live.’

‘My boy,’ said Provius, ‘to be a Dark Friar is to give up all attachments. Family, friends, love: these mean nothing when you are unravelling the secrets of the cosmos. We will not help you find your
father. Instead we’ll give you the universe.’

‘I don’t want the universe,’ said the boy. ‘And I don’t want to join your Academy. All I want is to have my old life back. I used your puzzle to pass two lonely nights – which was sweet – and to get this man’s money – which was even sweeter. Now that I have it I am closer to having coin to charter a ship to find my father. And so now, goodbye.’

And the boy left the two men dazed, went back through the oily tunnels, past the faces of the drowned men. He found an orphan onion wedged in the spokes of a wheel. ‘This is a lucky sign,’ he said to himself. He kissed it, and slipped it into his pocket. An onion was all he needed for the night, and it had been given to him. He arrived home at the high walls of his mansion just before Ten Bells dropped the city into darkness.

Here in ships, we feel so safe,

We feel the safest of all.

(H’ray!)