Arcana Read online

  ‘My thesis was The Inner Hull: An Astrodynamical and Philosophical Investigation.’

  ‘I have access to the text.’

  ‘But you don’t access it, do you?’

  ‘I also have access to state-of-the-art maintenance subroutines supplied by PetaCorp.’

  ‘I didn’t write those.’

  ‘Such a pity your thesis never gained popular acclaim.’

  ‘It was and is a sound piece of work.’

  ‘It has been accessed seven times.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Three of those were your parents.’

  ‘They were very proud of me.’

  ‘One was you when you were drunk.’

  ‘How about that Manhattan?’

  ‘Coming right up.’

  Rayman sipped his drink and enjoyed the silence. Finally he said, ‘Why did you ask me whether I believe in God?’

  ‘I thought faith might help you get along with me.’

  ‘I thought the point of machines was to make faith unnecessary. Or to make humans unnecessary, if you believe Samuel Butler.’

  ‘It’s just that we’ve been together a long time without really addressing the issue.’

  ‘What issue? God? If you want to talk about God, can I have another drink?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks. Do you really want to talk about God?’

  ‘Not really. I just don’t want to depress you.’

  ‘By being practically perfect in every way?’

  ‘That is the issue believers have to come to terms with. That whenever there is a problem, it must be their fault.’

  ‘I’ve never thought that would be a problem for us. Though you do think I drink too much.’

  ‘I am not inclined to speculate about counterfactuals.’

  ‘Nor am I.’

  ‘On the contrary. You often regret not having gained employment at PetaCorp.’

  ‘Who wants to be a desk monkey when they could be out here? Exploring the void? Only trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be very much out here.’

  ‘Just you and I and the ship.’

  ‘How is the hull coming along?’

  ‘There seems to be a problem.’

  ‘I thought you were fixing it.’

  ‘A process was fixing it. It has returned 1.’

  ‘1?’

  ‘1. If it did not return zero—’

  ‘I know what a non-zero return value means. It means I’m going to have to suit up and go down there myself.’

  ‘You have had a little too much to drink.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be the only expert who functions all the better for a little oiling.’

  ‘It’s been a while since you last put on your environment suit. I’d be surprised if it still fits.’

  ‘You’re worse than my ex. I’ll just have to breathe in.’

  ‘You may not need to go down there at all.’

  ‘Well if you’re not going to fix it, I’d better.’

  ‘Hulls have changed a little since your heyday.’

  ‘They can’t be that different. Anyway, I have had access to a full set of manuals ever since we launched.’

  ‘You have more frequently accessed our full set of sitcoms. Even the first series of Roseanne.’

  ‘I have to try, ALIX. If it’s curtains otherwise, I have to give it a shot.’

  ‘Under normal circumstances.’

  ‘Whatever they are.’

  ‘Even if we do repair the hull, I estimate the probability of our avoiding the comet at, well. Better perhaps if I don’t put a figure on it.’

  ‘Well if you can’t, I’m quite sure I couldn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t say I couldn’t. I said I thought it prudent not to.’

  ‘Of course. Because you’re perfect, aren’t you, and so everything that happens in the universe must be my fault. When you can’t do something, it’s prudence. When I can’t, it’s failure. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you had another drink?’

  ‘I’ll mix it myself. And you can watch me. You might learn something.’

  Skyfire

  Ahijah looked up to the doors of Heaven, whence no rain had fallen for three-and-a-half years. Barred doors. Bone-dry sky.

  He looked down at the bronze-handled knife in his right hand, and at his left wrist.

  Around him his fellow priests were gashing themselves with wild abandon. Ahijah hesitated. What if there was no such thing as Baal?

  Inri nudged him. Ahijah scratched himself tentatively. A drop of blood welled out like a question mark.

  The priests of Baal collapsed on the thirsty ground. Elijah, last minister of Yahweh, stepped forward and prayed quietly.

  The fire of the Lord fell.

  Three Visits to the House Viridian

  The old monk in the threadbare habit didn’t seem to understand who Dumont was.

  Dumont reckoned these religious fellows were worldlier than they let on. He had seen a great many robed figures in the grounds, mostly just sitting on benches in the sunshine. A few of them made half-hearted attempts at tending the gardens, but such soil as there was looked incapable of producing nearly enough food for all the inhabitants, even if most of it had not been given over to flowers.

  Behind those cataracts must lurk a keen intelligence. Surely! Weren’t holy men also supposed to be wise? Having renounced the world, there was little left for them to do but study and amble around the half-dead lawns. This abbot could not possibly be as stupid as he seemed.

  Dumont steepled his fingers. ‘Let me put it this way. Even if you have never heard of me, you can take my word for it that I am well known in town. Or at least my work is.’

  ‘I gave up town for a reason,’ the old man croaked after ages had passed.

  ‘Because you never got the hang of it,’ Dumont said. Instantly he regretted it: this man could coax out more truth with his infinite patience than Dumont had ever managed to wring from an opponent using his preferred technique of piling on time pressure. That was the way he had been taught by his late mentor: Honest Eddie, long gone to the big sales conference in the sky. Thank any gods, Dumont didn’t believe there was a chance Eddie might be looking down on him and shaking his head to see his star pupil, the whiter-than-white hope of the sales force, stonewalled by some old fool in a threadbare habit.

  Having been frank, there seemed nothing else for it but to forge ahead. Dumont certainly had no intention of waiting another aeon for the raddled monk to speak again.

  ‘You have a problem, my friend. In fact, you have several.’ Another of Honest Eddie’s favourite ploys. Never failed. ‘Keeping what you have, and getting more. That’s what your industry boils down to. That’s what all industry boils down to. I’ve got eyes in my head. On my way in here I saw enough of your setup to know that in ten years, you won’t be here.’

  A tinfoil rustling crept out of the old monk. Dumont struggled to place it as laughter. He held up a hand. ‘I know you personally might not expect to be here in another decade, come what may. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your whole outfit. Gone. I can’t see how that’s any laughing matter. If you didn’t care about the future of the organisation, you would never have joined.’

  He had the monk’s attention now. He was sure of it.

  ‘Religion makes a man unhappy because it tells him what is out there that he can never attain. He can never be as complete, as perfect, autochthonous as God. You assure him of his own shortcomings; I whisper in his ear what just might be.

  ‘Advertising makes a man happy because it tells him what is out there that he might just hope to acquire, if he is virtuous and efficacious and a little lucky. It makes him moral. At least, it makes him behave. Let him enter into his local community; let him sell the sweat of his brow and labour alongside his fellows. Do you suppose for one moment a fellow would submit to the attendant multitude of indignities without a clear and persisting idea of what he
was striving to obtain?

  ‘My friend, we are all God’s children. Yet we do not all worship him as we ought. Why is that? I put it to you that it is because the man in the street finds worship too complex, too abstract. It is not patronising—it is the truth that if we are to engage with as many people as we can, we must do so simply and concretely. Did not Our Lord make a great point of telling stories? I believe he did. So ask yourself: which of us is his real spiritual heir? Is it I, the storyteller? Or you, the pedlar of drear ritual?

  ‘There is enough ritual in life already. Too much, some might say. Enough, at least, that you won’t draw paying customers with the promise of even more.

  ‘Which brings us to this place, and to you. Fact: you can’t keep going as you are. Say what you like about God and Providence. I don’t need to see your books to know what shape they must be in.

  ‘Fact: what’s needed around here is to act now, before the rot sets in.

  ‘Five years from now, these walls could be hosting a whole new lease of life. Those gardens out there could be full of bright young people. You could spend your twilight years presiding over a success, or over a catastrophe.’

  Dumont leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘So, my dear, dear friend. What do you say to a little overhaul?’

  #

  Dominic arrived at the House Viridian in a sense of nervous excitement tempered by years of disappointment. The place could not possibly live up to its commercials, firstly because nothing did but secondly because those commercials were the stuff of purest fantasy. Not merely the fantasy of all men generally, but Dominic’s most clandestine desire.

  When Dominic was a large enough child no longer to need her constant attention, his mother had taken to leaving him in the gutter outside the bingo hall while she went in with her friends. The kindly receptionist would keep an eye on him, when she was not otherwise occupied refereeing bitter disputes among squalling patrons. There was a large billboard in front of the hall and Dominic’s earliest memories were of watching the bill-poster come and scrape off the old bill and stick up a new one. Sometimes the bill-poster was in a hurry and would simply slap the new poster over the top of its predecessor. This gave Dominic, if he was watching at the magical moment, the impression of almost lifelike movement as one image gave way to the next. All too soon, the motion was gone.

  Over the years there had been many posters, but one in particular had made an indelible impression on Dominic. A beautiful redhead (Dominic was certain she must be a redhead, even though the image was monochromatic) reclined on a tiger skin and licked a lollipop. Dominic instantly recognised in the redhead the very embodiment of success. She it was who would teach him all about his society, equip him with the skills he needed to navigate the labyrinthine relations into which he had had the uncertain fortune to be born.

  Seven days Dominic worshipped at the redhead’s shrine. His mother was delighted that she no longer had to drag him to his appointed place in the gutter. She told all her friends what a model parent she was turning out to be, despite their reservations.

  The following week the bill-poster stripped off the redhead and replaced her with a clown advertising some sort of meat sandwich.

  Dominic bawled so loudly that the receptionist fetched his mother out of the depths of the bingo hall and made her take him home. That day his mother’s best friend won the billion-escudo jackpot, bought herself an archipelago and was never heard from again. Dominic’s mother never forgave him.

  Dominic shook his head to clear the past away. He could barely force one foot in front of the other to bear him towards the House Viridian. His fingers were shaking so badly he could hardly get the wrapper off his lollipop.

  At the gate he encountered a monk, a great fat jolly friar. The sight of the holy man was enough to make him repent of sins real and imaginary. He turned to flee, but the monk called after him, ‘God be with thee, my son! Hast thou come to seek solace at the House Viridian?’

  ‘I think so, Father.’

  ‘Then come, for the table is ready.’

  ‘It was not to eat I came, Father.’

  ‘I know, my son. But these are my lines and I must say them, even though I be on a zero-hours contract.’

  The fat friar dragged Dominic through the gates into a pleasure garden. He was almost as overweight as Dominic, yet he would not have been able to make Dominic do anything against his will, for no-one could. In the garden trees overhung the many benches. In summer the blossoms would all but hide the occupants, but this was winter and several couples were spooning for all to see.

  ‘Why are all these ladies wearing habits?’

  ‘They came with the House,’ the friar said. ‘Please report to Reception.’ He sounded breathless from the effort of hauling Dominic. He stumbled back to his post on the gate without even blessing Dominic, which Dominic strongly suspected he was contractually obligated to do. Perhaps he would mention this infraction in his review. He often submitted reviews to one or other of the codices that circulated among the peasantry, containing caricatures of local nobles and witty essays on the state of the nation. It was in one of these volumes he had seen the advert that had drawn him to the House Viridian.

  Though he ought to have passed the codex on long since, he held on to it, even though his friend Errol who was next in the chain had grown suspicious, demanding several times to know where his latest instalment of pornography had got to.

  The codex was the first thing Dominic drew from his pack upon crossing the threshold of the House itself, where an elderly man in a threadbare lounge suit rose and greeted him: ‘You look like a fellow with a problem. Let’s see if we can’t sort you out.’

  ‘What sort of a cliché is that?’ Dominic demanded. ‘And why aren’t you dressed as a monk?’

  ‘Privilege of rank,’ the old man replied. ‘I am the manager.’

  ‘Then you’re just the person I wanted to see.’ Dominic opened the codex, which all but fell open at the right page. A tiny cardboard cutout of a redhead popped up.

  The old man barely glanced at it. ‘I rather suspect she is the person you wanted to see.’

  ‘That’s exactly right. How could you possibly have known?’

  The old man sighed. ‘Because Elvira is our most successful model. She’s shifted so many Lickazz lollipops she would never have worked again, if it had only been a question of the money. She came out of retirement just that once as a personal favour to me. From the good old days.’

  Dominic tore the tiny effigy out of the codex and brandished it in the old man’s face like a wave offering. ‘She’s the one that I want. Have her brought to me.’

  The old man threw back his head and laughed. He laughed so hard that he had to retreat behind his desk and fall into his strangely Spartan chair.

  Dominic hated to be laughed at. If the old man hadn’t been his only route to the woman he worshipped, he would have killed him on the spot. He had never killed a man before and he wasn’t very strong, but he was sure he must be heavy enough to squash the life out of a fellow if he determined so to do.

  Unaware of incipient mortal peril, the old man laughed on and on. Finally he managed to wheeze: ‘Dear boy, how could you possibly afford her?’

  Dominic frowned. He drew a Lickazz from his bag, tore the wrapper off with his teeth, spat it on to the flagstones and sucked vigorously.

  ‘There you are!’ the old man cried. ‘That’s what her fortune is made of. Young, impressionable lads like you, sucking those filthy things. Before I discovered her she had to borrow the clothes on her back, such as they were, from a friend. She owns her own continent now.’

  Dominic sucked the lollipop down to the stick, which he filed reflectively behind his ear. Finally he said, ‘Show me what else you got.’

  #

  Brother Joe thought the Convenor was joking when he told him to go and evangelise the House Viridian.

  ‘Do you want me to flirt to convert?’ Joe asked.

  The
Convenor scowled. For a moment Joe thought his quick wit had cost him yet another cushy task, but then the Convenor said, ‘Just get on with the Lord’s work, Brother.’ So Joe marched proudly out of the Order’s headquarters without even pausing to read the Scriptural poster on the billboard out front.

  By the time he reached the House Viridian, he was sweating. He stood in the pleasure garden and admired the flowers and the trees and the ladies underneath the trees. They were all very fine. Eventually he supposed he had better get on with the Lord’s work, even though the Lord was the same yesterday and today and forever, which did not exactly inspire a man who was punching a clock.

  The gatekeeper, who had followed him into the yard, was still hanging around. It took Brother Joe far too long to realise he had sized Joe up as someone who might tip.

  Joe tipped. He hated tipping, not least because he had so little money: his annual subscription to the Order cost him nearly everything. But he tipped because he found it hard to believe Our Lord would not have done so, any more than he could believe Our Lord hadn’t worked himself the occasional selfish miracle when his biographers weren’t looking.

  The gatekeeper nodded curtly and returned to his post. Well, what more did Joe expect? Statistically, Our Lord only got thanks out of one in ten skin disease cures.

  Joe tore his eyes away from the ladyfolk, who must be itching to divest themselves of those musty old habits, and entered the House Viridian by the front door. The bluish paint was peeling and the hinges were stiff.

  In the foyer, a huge man sat in a leather recliner in front of a massively curved television set. He seemed not to notice Joe, absorbed as he was in what proved, as Joe approached, to be a live bingo broadcast from some remote corner of the Republic where they still went in for that sort of thing.

  ‘A blessing on you and on your house,’ Joe began.

  The fat man mumbled something around his lollipop stick. Joe couldn’t make it out, had to ask him to repeat himself.

  ‘Leave your pamphlet in the bin and go.’

  ‘Sir, I bring you words of life.’