The Meat Tree (9 page)

Inspector of
Wrecks

You know that film? I am surprised. I suppose there's a
Seven Dwarves
neuro game.

Apprentice

You got it.

Inspector of
Wrecks

I look out of the window at the sea. It sparkles, like my hatred. There are porpoises rolling in the bay. And a ship. A Spanish vessel by the look of her.

I watch her anchor in the lee and wonder what goods
they have aboard. I'm hungry for figs, fine wines or satin
for dresses.

Apprentice

You're getting really good at being a woman!

Inspector of
Wrecks

Behave, or I'll make you be her again.

Apprentice

I'll be quiet.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Not too quiet, I hope. I need a woman's eye on this to make sure I don't miss a nuance or fact to do with being female.

I have a telescope at the window and I train the lens on the caravel with her bright, trailing flags. Two men are working on deck. What are they doing? Are they making clothes? I ask the servants.

Shoemakers from Seville, they say.

Go out to see them, ask what they have that would
interest a lady.

So out they row. I watch the Spaniards talking as, slowly, the ship turns with the tide. Back comes a servant, with a bundle of something clutched to his chest.

Cordovan leather, so finely cured it folds like silk. It's tooled with gold.

Apprentice

Any girl with sense would kill for a pair of handmade Spanish shoes. Put your bare foot on a piece of paper, trace the outline and send it to the shoemakers with your choice of texture and colour.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Back to the telescope. I watch the pantomime of servants rowing out with the tide. Up on deck. Long conversation with the craftsmen, who set to work with great flourish.

Servants row back. Ah! My shoes.

Apprentice

They look very big, as if they were for a man. Try them on, but I'm certain.

Inspector of
Wrecks

There's plenty of room…

Apprentice

Far too big. They should be snug here. And here. If you're paying for handmade shoes, I shouldn't be able to put my thumb in between your heel and the shoe.

Inspector of
Wrecks

They do slip when I walk.

Apprentice

Send them back, no question. Make them do it again.

Inspector of
Wrecks

You do learn some unexpected things on this job. OK, I do what you say. Servant comes back. The shoes had better be right this time, or else.

That's better. Bit of a struggle to put them on. They
look good!

Apprentice

Come here. Let me look. Can you feel your big toe against the end of the shoe?

Inspector of
Wrecks

Yes.

Apprentice

They're too small. These shoes will never keep their shape. Walk over to the wall. Are they comfortable?

Inspector of
Wrecks

No. The heel's digging in at the back.

Apprentice

Hopeless! These guys are amateurs. Only one thing to do. Go out to the ship yourself.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Come with me, will you? I need your opinion. Come on!
Before evening falls. Remind me, Nona, which part are you?

Apprentice

I thought I was Gwydion. But there's been nothing to do. Might as well come along with you until I get the cue.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Row, row, row out to the caravel. Take an imperious tone of voice with the shoemakers. Tell them the shoes are all wrong. Here, they can measure my feet. I'll wait while they work.

The old man's bowed over his work and the fair-headed boy stands, restless beside him. The kid toys with a bow and arrow.

I hear the trickle of the tide soothing under the hull. Late afternoon sun, low in the sky, makes me drowsy. The breeze tugs the fine hairs at the nape of my neck.

Suddenly a tiny bird – a wren – lands on a stanchion.

Apprentice

Campion, look out, I've found my part.

Inspector of
Wrecks

Be quiet or you'll startle the bird.

Apprentice

Campion, you need to know…

Inspector of
Wrecks

Don't speak unless spoken to. I'm watching, entranced.

Apprentice

But…

Inspector of
Wrecks

When, suddenly confident, no longer slouching, the boy stands up straight, like a man, and shoots an arrow which hits the wren not in its tiny torso but between the tendon and the bone of its leg.

‘Bravo! The blond has a skilful hand!'

Apprentice

I tried to warn you. Aranrhod, look round. Gwydion was disguised as the cobbler. You've given the boy his name.

Inspector of
Wrecks

It's a trick.

Apprentice

I heard you call him Lleu Llaw Gyffes, which means Light
has a Skilful Hand. The boy's been sanctioned by his mother.

Inspector of
Wrecks

I'm sweating now. Light is the enemy in space. It's heat,
corrosion, speed and age. I survive by shielding myself from light and now we've let it into the heart of the ship.

Apprentice

Campion, don't panic. It's only a name.

Inspector of
Wrecks

No, it's not. It's the cumulative radiation that will kill me with cancer soon after I retire. Sometimes, the light's so bright I feel there's nothing I can't perceive. Then, from a slightly different angle, my helmet becomes opaque and I'm blind because I see nothing but myself.

*

Synapse Log 6 Feb 2210, 19:00

Apprentice

In a way, it's a relief to see that it wasn't just me who can freak in VR, that Campion's human. It's odd that the story's hit sore spots in both of us. I hope he
doesn't note my panic in his report back to the
Department. Now that it's happened to him too, I think it's less likely.

This part of the VR's more straightforward than the forest sections. Aranrhod issues her curse, Gwydion finds a way around it, curse avoided. It's obvious that there are going to be three tasks, as in all fairy tales. We already know the second. When
Gwydion revealed himself and Lleu – got to get
used to that strange name for the boy – Aranrhod spat out that the child would never get arms until she gave him weapons herself and this she swore she'd never do.

Inspector of
Wrecks

If I didn't think I was being paranoid, I'd say that
Nona and I were being sussed out by the programme.
What happened to me back there was strange. As if the name of the boy set off a note that vibrated deep inside me, waking some atavistic memories in me.
A boy named Light…

She

He probably thinks that I was raped, and that's why I went apeshit. Well I was, but not physically. Don't want to say too much for the log. But you try being
raised as a child without your own story, just an
afterthought in somebody else's. The speeches all theirs and never yours. The choices always going one way, your view counting for nothing. How you learn
to hide, not to show what you want so it can't be
ignored. Till you no longer know what a person like you could possibly have desired in the first place.

Nothing like it for making you want to crawl
into any story going, in order to lose yourself.
You become addicted to narratives. Not your own,
but other people's. He wasn't to know that I'm in
recovery. For me VR is already dangerous ground. But who would have foreseen this? Six months of
technical logs and facts as a cure for having no
borders at all to my self. I was expecting to read surges in circuits and biometric stats and draw my own conclusions. Instead of which I have to dig deep not to scream when I'm caught up in a work of art that doesn't have my welfare at heart, that needs my mind, but couldn't care less about the rest. Still, it feels
familiar, which is why I'm good at the playing.
Concentrate on the role that's required, whatever that is. But some parts can be dangerous to me. This one's worming its way under my skin and if today was anything to go by, Campion's feeling it as well.

He

Think, think what happened.

I was standing on the fake caravel's deck, lulled by the sea breeze and the glare reflected up from the water, watching the boy shoot at the wren. I felt that suddenly a beam was shone into me. It came from him, the way he reflected my own being back at me. But there was more, I was being scanned. Something was reaching inside my brain, searching and questing. For what, I don't know but it was being done by an
entity much more complex than any of the characters
in the game.

I'm tired. What started as a curiosity of a wreck is proving more difficult than I ever thought. Hell, I used to solve cases like this all the time, didn't find them so hard. I must be getting old. Probably no bad
thing that I'm retiring. I haven't got what it takes
any more.

It was like being snow blind. I used to think that meant that your pupils opened so wide you were dazzled. What happens is the opposite. They contract to pinpricks and never want to open again because
the light outside is such a threat. So, at the very
moment when you're staggering around, fully
illuminated, your eyes are confined to their own
private blackness.

What am I missing while I'm dark in the light?

10

Arms

Synapse Log 7 Feb 2210, 15:00

Apprentice

Short day today. Did the second curse, the armour.
As expected, straightforward.

He told me about the cassette tape last night. Campion thinks that it holds the key to the wreck.
That the VR is an imaginative version of what
happened to the crew. Long voyage. Boredom.
Relations take on a dynamic of their own, unforeseen by the planners. Someone screwed someone they shouldn't have. Illicit relations.
A child born, his mother not happy. Et cetera.

What's wrong is the time frame. What if, I asked,
they came not from Earth but from another direction?
What if they came from a planet so remote that it took a whole generation for them to travel here? That gives them plenty of time to conceive and bear children. Might that be why the VR's so obsessed with young ones of every kind – fawns, piglets, wolf cubs, boys?

Inspector of
Wrecks

Of course, it's ridiculous. It can't possibly explain how an old-fashioned vessel, full of Earth culture, could come from somewhere else. It doesn't make sense. Only time-wise. The whole thing refuses to add up.

Second curse was straightforward. Aranrhod: no arms for the boy. So Gwydion and Lleu – I still have a hard time thinking that name – go away to ponder. I made Nona take the Gwydion part, as I wanted to try something without her noticing.

She

So Gwydion's a master of disguises, yes? So I change our appearance and present ourselves to Aranrhod's court as two poets. Not my idea of entertainment, but I suppose in those days they were desperate.

He

Aranrhod does the usual medieval thing and invites
them in. That night, at the feast, Gwydion enter­
tains her.

They have a good time, as they're a match for each other. For every story that Gwydion tells, Aranrhod knows another. And it gets very late and the drink is flowing. You know the kind of night. When the sugar in the booze keeps you up, more awake than you've been all day and life is funny and fits neatly into your stories. Then everything's suddenly unbearably sad,
and a song is called for. Then more alcohol until
even your drunkenness is in tatters, you could go on forever, except that your eyes… and when you lie down, the room whirls around you.

She

Except that I've only been pretending to drink, keeping pace with Aranrhod.

We go to bed, the lad and I, and then I get busy.

He