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  He climbed all the way up to the airlock and knocked on it. Spong’s client opened it, flinging him off the ship and plunging him to his doom on the red rock below.

  Spong let himself back into the habitat. Miss Fatima Montgolfière yawned and stretched on her sofa. He said, ‘The Federation has extended you a one-time offer of marriage. I have brought with me an eligible bachelor. Do you accept?’

  ‘OK. As long as we can get it all done in time for Coronation Station.’

  #

  Spong had few personal effects apart from the contents of his pack. It was an easy matter to vacate his old ship so he could give it as a wedding gift to the happy couple. He had expected it to be as little used as all such gifts; he was pleasantly surprised when, in his last glimpse of the newlyweds, they were lying on the airbed looking through the porthole at the quiescent volcano. It seemed a shame to disturb them, even to read them the panegyric he had written as his main gift.

  The bride had given him her rubbish sack and he took it with him aboard his new, roomier ship. As he had expected, there was an airbed aboard. He squashed it experimentally and found that it did not leak. He folded it up and put it in his pack. He was very pleasantly surprised to discover the ship was a recent model capable of taking off and landing without any intervention from him.

  He went through the ship’s files and discovered that, if he was any judge, the dead man’s Federal authorisation to marry Spong’s clients was perfectly genuine. He wondered what High Command was playing at, sending two valuable employees to do one man’s work. They wouldn’t have done that in the good old days of Zero Population Growth. The admirals were no longer the same men who had beaten back the Quangans and brought endless peace and limitless choice to the universe.

  In the name of limitless choice, Spong was contractually obligated to dispose of any matter habitatholders did not wish to consign to their recyclers. Accordingly his next stop was a nearby planetfill, where he dumped three black bags.

  Tools

  The Captain was a crazy man. The Padre was the only one who understood, and even he only listened because he had to.

  ‘Would you say he intended to hit you?’ the Padre asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ Cooper said.

  ‘You don’t think it could have been a mistake? He is human after all, and we all make mistakes. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t need God.’

  ‘I don’t need God,’ Cooper said without thinking. The Padre winced, and so did Cooper. It was one of those slips of the tongue you never quite recover from, like when you tell your parents maybe they aren’t the greatest parents who ever lived.

  What the hell, if God could forgive Cooper the Padre would have to do likewise. So suck it up.

  ‘You may not realise how badly you need him, but that’s just part of your sickness. Your sin. God could be your rock, if only you’d let him.’

  ‘Sure,’ Cooper said. ‘Tell me something, Padre: do you think people on this base pay any attention to you?’

  ‘It’s not unusual for people to react badly when they hear God is displeased with them. Remember, the darkness hates the light. Runs from it, more often than not.’

  ‘Do you think you would have been allowed on this mission, if not for your belief in God?’

  ‘I expect not. But pastoral care is a discipline, just the same as any of the so-called hard sciences.’

  ‘It needs a specialist, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But a specialist needs tools, and the only tools you’ve got are those bloody awful biscuits.’

  ‘Would you define yourself as depressed?’

  ‘I’d define myself as someone with a proper job who has to put up with a lunatic for a boss and a freeloader for company.’

  ‘I’m sure there are many people back on Earth who feel the same way you do.’

  ‘I’m sure there are, but the main reason I signed up for this was to leave them behind.’

  ‘You hoped that by separating yourself from your fellows, you’d find solace? That isn’t how it works. God made people to rejoice in community. We are called to love and serve other people.’

  ‘Then how come you shut yourself away for hours on end to pray? Why don’t you do it out in the connecting tube, where everyone can see you? Has God given you special dispensation to be alone with him? Or are you just playing with yourself?’

  ‘I think we’d better take a break and resume this conversation when you’re in a better frame of mind,’ the Padre said.

  ‘If I were in a better frame of mind, we wouldn’t need to be having this conversation. Or eating these damned biscuits. What I think is, you got sent here because no-one wanted you back home. And now you’re here, you find it suits you and the last thing you want is to get sent back. So you’re going round antagonising us all, keeping us at each other’s throats, just so you have some problems to solve.’

  Cooper was on his feet. He went on, ‘I’ve got good news for you. I don’t want to be part of your crazy scheme. I’m just a ground engineer, and that’s all. Maybe when all our structures are up, I’ll have outlived my usefulness and have to go home. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. What I won’t do is build deliberately unsound structures just to keep myself important to the mission. I want it to succeed, with or without me, and I’d sleep better if I could convince myself you felt the same way.’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re not sleeping. Maybe I could get you some pills.’

  ‘I don’t want any of your pills. And I sure as hell don’t want your fake professional sympathy.’

  ‘What you really need is a friend. But I don’t know how you’re going to make any when you insist on being so confrontational.’

  Cooper didn’t know what to say to that. He walked out.

  It was standard practice for the Padre to record all his conversations. When Hansen, Chief of Security, came to tell him the Captain had been killed when the solar energy plant collapsed, the Padre offered Hansen a biscuit and played Cooper back.

  Insulating Roll

  I do not think my wife and I are the only couple who argue about turning the central heating on. What makes this mundane debate especially piquant in our household is that my wife is an ecowarrior. To her, the soft creaking of the radiator pipes is the last breath of some tree somewhere.

  Since she is also a feminist, I knew she would be pleased when I found an advert in the local services directory for an all-female plumbing team. I suggested we get them round to take a look at how we might keep warm.

  She came home early from work and found the four of us wrapped in a roll of insulation. We were nice and toasty.

  Above My Station

  It was just bad luck, I suppose, what happened to me in the elf factory. You must understand this was a long time ago, when the phrase ‘Health and Safety’ did not elicit the near-Pavlovian obedience it commands today. Back then, the management was interested only in producing elves, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Any concern they showed the staff was purely incidental.

  Gretchen said she thought she could get used to my new look, and at the time I believed her.

  At first she tried to pretend everything was normal, but that got wearing after the shortest time. There was a period when I turned a blind eye to all the other guys she was seeing, which was professionally difficult for me. I might have gone on doing that; it was probably the best thing I ever did, killing one of them by accident. After that Gretchen’s mother wouldn’t let her come near me. I did apologise, but nobody believed me. They would probably have punished me, if only they had had any idea how to enforce their verdict. The victim’s family just had to suck it up and scrape him up.

  I’m not sure Gretchen’s family ever really liked me. The elf factory is neither the most glamour (that would be the witches’ keep, to which no man but the Overseer is admitted) nor the fattest pay packet in town. Gretchen’s old man was always asking me whether there was a promotion in the offing. Deep down I think he wanted me
out of the factory into the fresh air. Which is what he got: after my accident I couldn’t go in anymore, partly because the management doesn’t like to be reminded of its off-days, but mainly because I no longer fitted through the door.

  Old folks have peculiar ideas about work. They were lucky enough to be of working age in the good times, while the Fire King was away getting crowned in a far country. When he came back, the economy took a turn for the worse. Personally I believe the good times are all gone, but there’s no point trying to persuade the old-timers. They’d say I was all doom and gloom purely because of what happened to me—but I know better than anyone that the times they are a-changin’.

  Even before my swim in the vat, I didn’t fancy my chances of getting a good job. My parents brought me up to believe talent was what counted, which is balderdash. What counts is being born into one of the few families that run things around here. They all kept mighty quiet while the Fire King was away, but whatever scandals the tabloids might have stirred up I don’t believe any of their eligible young married beneath them or even fooled around. The idea of equality swept the land, but it blew away with the ashes of the communist delegation and the manifesto they were foolhardy enough to present to the returned King.

  These days it is just plain laughable to expect a nobody like me to get one of those sinecures that were created and remain reserved for spurious sons of the Fantlers or the Beauculs or the Daramalabonts. But I swear my parents believed it was possible, that they were feeling the birth pangs of a brand new and better world.

  All they’re feeling nowadays is the pinch.

  Nobody had told the management of the elf factory they were supposed to be gearing up for a new and better world. For generations they stood by their alchemical equipment, because the old ways worked perfectly well. They declined to install a refectory, because they didn’t want the workers eating when they could be working. They briefly considered honouring the return of the Fire King by closing down for half a day, but concluded they did him greater honour by remaining open and affirming his own preference for hard work.

  And so it was that I clocked in on the day of my undoing, instead of staying in bed as did my contemporaries who were apprenticed to traditional trades. And so it was that I exchanged the same old witticisms with my colleagues, as someone turned over the calendar and we snatched a few moments to admire the artist’s impression of the witches’ sabbat.

  Other than my accident, I have trouble distinguishing the events of that day from any other. My plunge stands out like the fire at the centre of a sabbat while all around is dark. I suppose I read the dials without reading them, for by then I was working the levers as a craftsman might work his wood. The craft of elf making reached its zenith independently of the traditions that for long had sought to control the dissemination of skill. The management, deriving their authority not from knowledge but from ownership, had no interest in retarding their workers artificially. If there were an obstacle to one’s learning on the factory floor, without a shadow of a doubt it was naturally occurring, belonging properly to the learning process and efficiently resolved by a blow from the foreman.

  I needed to relieve myself. I left my levers, stepped on to the gantry over the growth vat and unbuttoned my trousers. They were newly made by my mother and I must have leaned a little far forward in my attempt not to sprinkle them.

  I had no more idea how to comport myself in liquid than at court. Once upon a time it had been integral to village life for adolescents to bathe and swim together; this was the only part of my parents’ past that I genuinely would have enjoyed. Courtship as I knew it took place in dark corners of the factory, soft screams lost under the sloshing of the fluids and the squeaking of the pulleys that dunked latticed crates of nascent elves into the succession of chemicals.

  Swimming was so foreign to me that I had not even the wit to grab hold of the immersed crate and haul myself out.

  I was lucky: had I fallen into the womb tank, I should have drowned in the amniotic fluid before anyone got to me. As it was, the growth vat burst before my lungs did, depositing me and a slew of stunted elves on to the filthy straw.

  Someone had the good sense to send to the witches’ keep for the Overseer, but most people were content to abandon work—since I had spoiled the current batches and prevented the conception of any more that day—and stand and smoke and gawp at me.

  The Overseer came huffing on to the factory floor, naked to the waist and sweating from his professional efforts. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked up at me. I tried to sit up and almost took my eye out on one of the few chandeliers. I shifted my elbow and struck the womb tank a blow that cleft it in twain. The workers cheered. The Overseer winced.

  He instructed me not to move a muscle, having the good sense to shout at the top of his voice so I stood a chance of hearing him. He requisitioned every last one of the dozen carts in Eddo’s livery that were drawn up at the rear loading bay to dispose of the factory’s rejects. By dint of a great many instructions he managed to get me to sprawl across them and allow myself to be hauled out of the factory without doing it any more damage. I believe my sheer weight caused several of the horses to expire, at the time or shortly afterwards, though their owner never made a formal complaint.

  The carts dumped me outside my parents’ house, where Gretchen and I had been living in an outbuilding made available by the advent of inside toilets. Gretchen dashed out to see what was going on, as did everyone in the street. It was a while before she realised it was her own beloved, whereupon she fell in a dead faint. It fell to my father to figure out how to accommodate me. He instructed my mother to conjoin many blankets that I might use as a sort of tarpaulin. It was greatly to my advantage that my accident happened at the height of summer.

  I knew things would be difficult with Gretchen even before she came round. In the same way I had always known my day at work would be a drag, yet still I attended religiously for as long as I was small enough to fit through the door.

  When she picked herself up, Gretchen went back to her parents’ house and refused to talk to me.

  I tried everything. I even offered to take her to Eddo’s for a burger I could ill afford, but though she loved Eddo’s more than she had ever loved me, she still declined. Old people said no good would come of any but the most traditional food, but Gretchen paid them no heed.

  Gretchen’s father persuaded her to give me another chance. Perhaps he thought to make money exhibiting me as a freak, but there was little chance to monetise my huge size. Anyone who wanted could come and stare at me free of charge.

  Lacking employment, I soon ran out of money. That was the last nail in my coffin as far as Gretchen was concerned. I remarked as much to Wrathgaw the carpenter’s boy, who squeaked and fled at the mere thought of having to fashion a coffin big enough for me.

  It was my father who thought of a new job for me.

  ‘People keep saying knowledge is power. Frankly I don’t know what they’re talking about, but then I’m no longer sure of anything, not these days. You knew where you were with the guilds, but these managers are capricious above all things. I don’t see how a rational man can commit his fate into the hands of anyone who hasn’t walked the same path he is asking others to go.’

  My father stood by my ear as I lay on the ground and let him holler all these things. I had to concentrate just to hear his little voice.

  ‘If knowledge really is power, you are uniquely placed to provide it.’

  I had long since abandoned the use of my voice for the sake of nearby buildings, but I signed to my father to indicate the only knowledge I possessed was that of an artisanal worker in the elf factory. I found it hard to see either how I could resume employment there or how I could make money from my autobiography, which apart from the most recent segment would make for dull, dull reading.

  ‘Think about it,’ my father yelled. ‘You can see foreign armies and navies coming from a long way away. They would hardly h
ave set out on their campaign before you spotted them and told the Fire King to mobilise his troops.’

  I thought that sounded like a perfectly decent idea and I liked the idea of getting fed and maybe even housed for much less onerous work than I had been expected to do at the factory. I also realised I was costing my father a fortune in food and could not stay in his house forever. He and my mother had been getting thinner as the nights drew in.

  So the next day I set off for the court of the Fire King.

  Ordinarily it would have been several days’ ride. I lengthened my stride and arrived at dusk. Since I had not figured out any means of announcing my intentions—my father had promised to write to the King and put my case, but the courier would still be on his way—the elves were not pleased to see me. They had pricked me with a great many arrows and spears, and singed the odd hair off my arm with their fire arrows, before I could prevail on them to stop. This I did by killing a few and hoping the King would not mind. I picked off the ones who were loitering away from the fight, standing around with mugs that were no more than thimbles as I raged down on them.

  Once things settled down, I tried to communicate using the system of signs my family had worked out. The court did not seem interested in learning the lingo; they were just glad to have fought me to a standstill. I thought it wise to let them believe I had yielded to force of arms rather than the need of gainful employment.

  After several days a letter from my father did arrive. Thoughtfully he had included a summary of the more significant signs, so that we could begin to parley.

  The Fire King himself appeared briefly in the courtyard, though he did not condescend to make signs to me himself nor to raise his voice to what would have been unregal levels. Yet that was enough to convince me he was interested: that he wanted to see me for himself. In fairness he could hardly avoid seeing me, should he choose to look out of any of his north- or west-facing windows.