Arcana Read online

  Behold! If I could bathe with her awhile

  In those twin glows, for that I’d voyage far.

  Spong wasn’t convinced these lines were quite up to the job in hand. If that were true, the fault lay with the difficulty of his enterprise, not with any shortcomings in his versifying. The hallmark of the professional poet was a good editor. Spong could recite, and often did, while the ship was on cruise control and the next call was a good way away, the names of poets who would never have amounted to anything but for some lucky break or other suspension of the laws of nature, the strict observance of which would never, ever, get anybody anywhere.

  The landing was a rocky one. Spong didn’t care. Landing spacecraft was neither his forte nor his métier. Poetry was his racket. If only it paid.

  Spong suited up and set off to his next appointment.

  It was a long trek. Splendid isolation was a perk to a poet, though Spong was a little concerned about the risk of pneumonia, even with his heating cranked all the way up.

  Behold! This icy wasteland may

  Devour me. Yet one of these days

  Must prove my last, and spent with thee

  That day might e’en a blessing be.

  The client’s habitat was on the side of a mountain, supported by a wing, a prayer and some sketchy cantilevers. Spong had brought plenty of pitons. He clung to them with the tenacity of someone who is not ready to die until he has mastered iambic tetrameter. The clashing of ‘may’ against ‘days,’ worse by far than that of ignorant armies by night, occupied him all the way to the habitat’s front door.

  The letterbox said, ‘No junk mail. No circulars. No Watchtowers.’

  ‘Pipe down,’ Spong said, but it insisted on repeating its dour litany until he pranged it with a piton.

  Spong knocked on the door and waited. After a very long time, the door opened. Spong went into the airlock. When he was not obliged to speak, he whistled a high note without moving his lips.

  An intercom said, ‘I’ve been telling you to eff off for the last five minutes. Are you deaf?’

  ‘Sorry. Your external speaker is malfunctioning.’ Spong closed the airlock behind him. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘I don’t open the door to strangers. Especially when there’s a match on.’

  ‘You could pause it and resume it later. I shouldn’t need more than ten minutes of your time.’

  ‘Ten minutes? I’ve got better things to do than talk to you over this wretched intercom. It seems to be playing up.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could let me in.’

  A deep sigh bloomed from the intercom. The inner hatch swung open.

  Few clients were curious in either sense of the word. This one was not curious about what Spong wanted, nor did he look exceptional. Like most people, he wore a vest and a pair of jogging bottoms, neither of which he had troubled to recycle for some time. Like most habitats, his was decorated in the style in which it had originally been built. The recycler would have provided ornaments on request, but ornaments were for visitors and Spong was the only visitor this fellow would ever have—unless Spong was successful in one of the many missions that had brought him here.

  ‘Here,’ the man said. He picked up a black bin liner, full to the point of tearing, and gave it to Spong. He had not troubled to tie off the neck.

  Spong accepted the sack and put it down. He was always disappointed when clients wanted to start there.

  ‘Is your recycler working?’

  ‘Are you saying that’s too much rubbish? Isn’t there room in the cosmos for one more bag?’

  ‘Please, sir, I am obliged to read from my script, just as if I were in a call centre.’

  ‘What are they going to do to you? You’ll be dead before the CCTV goes anywhere near your manager.’

  ‘I have known people pulled out of retirement and disciplined.’

  ‘What are they going to do to retired folks? They let old crooks get away with all kinds of things. Why not old bin men?’

  ‘Sir, there’s more to my job than that. Please may I continue?’

  The man waved an indifferent hand. He shuffled back to his sofa and lay down in front of the match. Spong trailed after him.

  ‘Have there been any deaths here I need to record?’

  ‘How many people does the census say?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘How many people do you see here, not counting yourself?’

  Spong hesitated. ‘One.’

  ‘There you are then.’ The man laughed a laugh that had not been let out in a long time.

  ‘Have there been any births here?’

  ‘How do you think I’d manage that, all by myself?’

  Since the client was conscious of his own solitude, Spong decided to skip the advertising messages and cut to the part of the job he really enjoyed. The CCTV would pick up his omission, but as the client had already pointed out, what were they going to do to him?

  ‘Have there been any marriages here?’

  ‘That was one hell of a goal. Did you see that? They’ll play it back. Here. Would you look at that?’

  Spong looked dutifully. Then he repeated his question.

  ‘No. There have not been any marriages. I always recycle the doll when I’m done.’ The client looked guilty, as though Spong had never heard such an admission in his long career. Spong thought about reassuring him on that score, remembered the bulging bin liner and stuck to his script.

  ‘Have you ever considered marriage?’

  ‘Yeah, every time Porscha Pendleton comes on to read the headlines I consider it. What’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘Did you know the Federation has lifted its ZPG policy?’

  ‘No, I did not know that. I thought my letterbox told you: no commercials. This sounds like a party political broadcast to me.’

  On the screen, the match was interrupted by a commercial for deodorant. Spong and his client watched as a breezy fellow younger and more handsome than either of them ran out of space on his planet because so many eligible young women were trying to land on it.

  Spong considered reciting his party political script, but he hadn’t finished reworking it as blank verse. The next election wasn’t for another fifty years. Making them less frequent hadn’t, as proponents had claimed, improved the turnout.

  ‘Did you know that as well as a dentist and a barber for those whose claustrophobia prevents them using the recycler, I am also licensed to perform marriages?’

  ‘Have you got Porscha’s planet number?’

  ‘No, but the Federation has furnished me with the co-ordinates of an eligible female.’

  ‘Did they give you her vital stats too?’ The match resumed. The client’s glance didn’t waver from the screen.

  ‘The Federation has authorised me to tender both of you an offer of marriage.’

  There was a long pause, filled by some inconsequential exchanges in midfield. Finally Spong said, ‘Would you like to take up the offer?’

  The client grunted.

  Spong had known from the moment he crossed the threshold that he had got his work cut out. He said softly,

  ‘Solar wind, when wilt thou blow

  That the meteorites may rain?

  Jove, that my love were in my arms

  And I in my pod again.’

  He hated pastiche, but in the heat of the moment it was the best he could come up with. In any event it seemed to instill in his client a certain sense of melancholy, fostered by the fact that, as Spong deduced from a tear bobbing at the corner of his eye, his team had just been defeated.

  Another commercial came on. ‘Your habitat is not a home without its own LepeRug. Each skin is uniquely patterned.’

  The client spoke so softly that Spong had to intuit his meaning using his own romantic nature.

  ‘Has she got all her own teeth? Because Porscha has.’

  #

  As a trained nutritionist, Spong thought it best to delay their departure three months, in
order to minister to his client.

  This proved no mean feat. The client should have been shedding weight like a ship jettisoning rubbish on to a planetfill; instead he seemed to grow more rotund. Spong almost despaired: the fellow would have made a better fatted calf than bridegroom.

  Spong soon got to the bottom of this apparent physics defiance. The client was getting midnight snacks from the recycler while Spong was asleep on the airbed he had brought with him. He always carried the airbed and was always disappointed: the only hat he got to wear for his clients was that of dustman. He was overjoyed to be planning a wedding at last, even though at some point in all its years of disuse the airbed had sprung a leak. That turned out to be a heavily-disguised blessing: the airbed tipped him on to the floor at the very moment the client was biting into an illicit beefishburger.

  Moments later the burger was cast into the recycler, the client admonished all the way back to his sofa and Spong was once more on his airbed, far too pensive to consider sleep. The first wedding of his career was so close he could still taste it despite the pervasive smell of the banished burger—why hadn’t he spotted that before? The client must have been too idle to go and stand under the bathroom extractor.

  There was going to be a wedding, and what a wedding needed above all was verse. An ode to the bride, an encomium for the groom and many stanzas in praise of the institution of marriage.

  I remember that night when the lovelight

  Shone in her eyes, in the eyes of my prize.

  On the shore there was spume, in the stars a vacuum

  The only human beings there beneath the empyrean...

  Resolving not to be seduced again by the meretricious allure of the internal rhyme, Spong fell asleep.

  He woke in the knowledge that today was the day. There was no point lingering longer: though the client would thank Spong later for drawing his attention to the value of a balanced diet, it was only icing on the cake if the groom looked half-decent. The Federation had proffered their blessing: they would not give it again. The bride would give her consent in an instant. Spong knew it in his poet’s soul.

  Today was not the day. It was a further week before the client was slim enough to fit into his suit.

  But the moment came when the airlock finally closed behind the two of them. It was a moment Spong wanted to savour, and nothing was fit to stop him, certainly not the client’s whining. Spong understood grooms were liable to get cold feet. In the present case there was a straightforward remedy: Spong drew an Allen key from his toolkit and opened the valves in the client’s suit a little wider so the heat would circulate.

  The client looked ruefully back towards the airlock and said, ‘I’ve forgotten my access code.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now. You, my friend, have a wedding to attend.’

  The client grunted. Spong made him lead the way: he didn’t want him doing an ill-advised runner across the tundra the minute they got down the mountain.

  They arrived back at Spong’s ship in poor shape. The client was hopelessly out of condition; Spong had had to carry him much of the way, in addition to all his equipment and the sack of rubbish, and felt exhausted himself. This aspect of love’s young dream was not mentioned, as far as he could recall, in romantic verse. Granted, it was a key part of the poet’s duty to occlude all but the salient features of the subject matter. Even so, Spong would have appreciated some warning from his forebears.

  They stumbled aboard and slept where they fell. Spong hated taking off nearly as much as he hated landing. There were long intervals between opportunities to practise either, and it seemed to Spong that every time he instantly forgot what he had just done right.

  Despite his misgivings, Spong got off the ground. A storm blew up and whisked them into the air more quickly than he had intended. He decided that was a good omen.

  Once the cruise control was safely on, Spong tried to entertain his passenger with plans for the wedding.

  ‘Of course as groom you don’t have very much say in most matters, but if you do have any preferences just let me know and I’ll see if I can’t sway your good lady.’

  ‘Can we time the ceremony so it doesn’t clash with the semi-finals?’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re really entering into the spirit of this.’

  ‘Why haven’t you got a picture of this here bint?’

  ‘The Federation used to provide an image. They have since changed their policy. They remind you they will not be making any further offers, barring unforeseen population calamities.’

  ‘Where’s your TV?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Is it far to her planet?’

  ‘The Federation has taken the distance between your planets in mind. It shouldn’t take us longer than eight weeks.’

  ‘Eight weeks at a time without TV? No wonder you’ve got a screw loose.’

  Had he been alone, Spong would have spent those eight weeks playing chess against the computer. As it was, he spent those eight weeks playing chess against the computer while the client inflated Spong’s airbed and lay down on it and watched the porthole.

  #

  Spong spotted trouble as they came in to land. A ship larger than his own sat beside the habitat.

  Even though Spong had given the ship’s recycler strict instructions, the client had managed to put much of his weight back on. Spong left him watching the view from the porthole, which showed a rather spectacular and reassuringly distant volcano erupting, and went to see what was going on.

  He already knew, not that he would have admitted it even to himself.

  The Quangans in their serried ranks took and gave no quarter

  Till the brave young Federation blues showed them they hadn’t oughter.

  Spong approached the habitat from an angle such that he couldn’t be seen from the bay window. No habiteer worth her salt would ever look out of her window. It was clear, so clear Spong would have had difficulty denying it, that he knew who else was there.

  There was such a thing as professional courtesy, and it was violated the moment the voice blared out of the airlock speaker: ‘Don’t come any closer!’

  Spong shouted, ‘You’ve got an awfully deep voice, Miss Fatima Montgolfière!’

  ‘Get back in your ship and go away and leave my client alone.’

  ‘The Federation has authorised me—’

  The habitat airlock opened and something whizzed past Spong’s head. It was going at a fair clip, but he was reasonably sure it had been a piton. The airlock slammed shut.

  Federation High Command, as Spong’s client had helpfully reminded him, was a long way away.

  Spong retreated. He took cover behind a dusty red rock and considered his alternatives. The way he saw it, he didn’t have any more than the Federation had had when the Quangans started acting up.

  He reached into his pack and took out the components of his drone lawnmower.

  The airlock opened again, long enough to emit a second piton. This time Spong could be sure it was a piton, because it caromed off his rock, peppering his head with red dust.

  Spong assembled the lawnmower. This was not the first time he had done so under fire. He never ceased to be amazed how easily stung was the average habiteer’s pride at the suggestion their grass needed cutting.

  Though it pained him to do it, he ordered the lawnmower to its doom.

  The lawnmower set off with an unthinking obedience that struck Spong as an excellent subject for a eulogy. He must compose one when he found the time.

  The airlock door sprang open and a volley of pitons pierced the hapless lawnmower, cutting it in pieces. The door snapped shut, but by then Spong was already inside.

  It was dark inside the airlock: the cunning fellow had switched off the light. Spong was blind, coming out of the fierce daylight into feral shadows. Hands sought his throat, but his suit collar thwarted them. Spong switched on his helmet spotlight. Now the fellow wrestling with him was blinder than he. He h
ad not had time to suit up: he was wearing his helmet over his ship one-piece. Spong wrenched one hand free and cut his opponent’s oxygen pipe with the blade he had not fitted to the lawnmower. His other hand came free and he felt for the airlock release.

  You did not die in vain. Your valiant blade

  Mattered in the end, and all the difference made.

  When they drink to you at HQ, let them say:

  ‘We made him, but he made himself that way.’

  His adversary groped the inner door open and stumbled backwards into the habitat, triggering a recorded announcement: ‘We do not buy from callers at the door or audit carol-singers. We have our own life insurance and prefer to take our chances with anything post-eschatological. We do not require garden furniture, cleaning products or double glazing. We have already given to your charity.’

  Spong kept his lawnmower blade swooshing as he advanced, to heighten the katana effect. The impression was rather spoiled when he tripped over the LepeRug and fell headlong.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Miss Fatima Montgolfière said. She was lying on her sofa wearing a white dress. ‘I’m trying to watch Fifty Shades of Static.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Spong said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Spong’s foe said. He offered Spong a hand up off the rug, which Spong accepted gratefully. The two of them retreated out of the way of the television and resumed trying to kill each other.

  Spong’s enemy was strong, but Spong was in excellent shape from having carried his client across the icy wilderness. He managed to get his antagonist’s head into the recycler and nudge the button with his cheek, but the recycler only permed the fellow’s hair and spat him out again.

  ‘Keep your hands off my clients,’ Spong ordered.

  ‘They’re mine,’ the fellow spluttered.

  ‘I assure you my documentation is all in order.’

  ‘So is mine. Let me show you.’

  Like any good government man, Spong could never resist the offer of paperwork. His grip slackened, and that was all the rascal needed to break free and flee through the airlock. Spong snatched up his blade and gave chase, but the bounder had stolen Spong’s helmet, leaving him the one with the severed pipe. By the time Spong had recycled it into a working unit and begun pursuit, his nemesis was scaling the hull of Spong’s ship, a baggy morning suit on a hanger dangling off his back.