Watson, Ian - Novel 08 (13 page)

 
          
“That
poor woman back there in the ditch . . .”

 
          
“You’ve
really been wreaking mayhem, haven’t you?”

 
          
“It
seemed . . . right. It still does, damn it!” She advanced on Sean but then she
bit her lip and stuck the prongs of her fork into the soil instead.

 
          
“Possibly
you’ve never really analyzed your life, Muthoni?” he ventured. “Not deeply.
Denise hasn’t either. Few people have. Oh, we always find such fine reasons for
what we do! But they aren’t the
real
reasons. So people work evil, on the automaton level. Lack of knowledge
is
evil, Muthoni. Lack of understanding
is.
For us, anyway.
Of couse, for a dinosaur or a
tiger it’s plain survival. Hell’s where that evil can come out into the open so
that we can know it. The machines here: they’re automata too—automata trying to
become something more.
Valiant
machines—struggling, but haying to do evil to become more than mere automata.”

 
          
“I
didn’t see any machines.
Unless a frying pan’s a machine.”

 
          
“You
will.”

 
          
Muthoni
groaned. “So what do we do? Go round doing
good
? Or
let it all hang out? Like de Sade? Till we know what ‘it’ all is?”

 
          
“We
find purpose in evil. We reconstruct ourselves. We get reborn. We seek the seed
of unity.” Though Sean was far from sure . . .

 
          
“Reborn?
Where, in
Eden
?” asked Denise.

 
          
“I
don’t know. I suppose, if we know, that determines where. In the meantime we
have to harrow Hell. We might find that seed of unity in the Hell-ground we
harrow.”

 
          
“I
don’t want to harrow Bosch’s Hell.” Denise whimpered. “It’s one hell of a
place.” She began to laugh hysterically.

 
          
“Jeremy
might be able to help us. Muthoni, you said Jeremy . . . you said you—!”

 
          
Muthoni
tossed her head. “He’s back there.
Round that hillock.
I was . . . beside myself. I might have killed him! Maybe I did!”

 
          
Sean’s
backside was roasting now. He stood, and laid a black hand on her piebald arm.
“We’ll go and see.”

 
          
“Should
I bring the pitchfork?”

 
          
“Maybe
we’ll need it,” he nodded. “Devils a lot wilder than you could be prowling
around.”

 
          
Jeremy still lay
where Muthoni had left
him, clutching his belly, keeping very still. She examined the wound she had
made.

 
          
Denise
asked lamely, “How do you feel?”

 
          
Jeremy
glared at her. “I’m
hurting
.”

 
          
“Will
he die?” she whispered.

 
          
“Not
from this,” snapped Jeremy. “It’ll just
gouge
me for a long time. Especially when I eat or drink! And I’m getting damn
thirsty right now.”

 
          
His
own lips and throat were parched, Sean realized. He’d been ignoring this aspect
of pain . . .

 
          
“Do
we still have to
eat
and
drink
in Hell?” butted in Muthoni before
Sean could make a fool of himself with the same question.

 
          
“When
you can find stuff to eat and drink! These are bodies. Bodies need energy.”

 
          
“Oh,
I thought ...”

 
          
“You
thought wrong. We aren’t fed by magical infusions.”

 
          
“But
what
is
there to eat? There isn’t
even a blade of grass. Does fruit grow in Hell?”

 
          
“Hell’s
carnivorous, dear. You’ve got to catch something and kill it. Or barter.”

 
          
“Barter?”

 
          
Jeremy
ground his teeth together. A spasm passed. “Nice serviceable bodies you’ve got,
eh? You’ll find plenty of, what d’you call them, polymorphous perverts in Hell.
Now go find me a chunk of ice to suck on, huh? It’s either ice or hot water or
blood. Avoid the local wine.
Releases your inhibitions.
If you’ve got any.”

 
          
“You
know, I really am very sorry,” said Muthoni.

 
 
          
“Well,
well. And so am I! I suppose you did come back before some rooting pig or
cannibal devil found me . . . Where’s that fucking ice got off to?”

 
          
“I’ll
get some,” said Muthoni.

 
          
The
piebald woman departed with her pitchfork—soon to be an ice-cutter—in the
direction Denise indicated to her.

 
          
She
returned a while later, on the run, holding some nuggets of ice which hadn’t
yet succumbed to the heat. They all sucked them gratefully, though presently
Jeremy writhed as the liquid flowed into the leaking acids of his punctured
stomach.

 
          
Mooing
resumed in the ditch. By now the fat woman was attached by the back of her head
to another flabby half-sized cow. And though it had never chewed the cud,
either, its breath reeked—even from where they were—as though it was on the
point of decomposition. The fat woman hummed happily to herself.

 
          
“She
said it’s her dream, her beautiful dream,” explained Muthoni.

 
          
“Beautiful?”
cried Denise.

 
          
“She
can’t see what it really looks like. I don’t think we’d be doing her any favor
if we told her.”

 
          
“A dream . . . projection?”
Sean muttered to himself.
“Proiectio?
Is
that
it? What did old Carl Gustav say?
‘So long as the content remains in a projected state it is inaccessible . . .’”

 
          
“Eh?”

 
          
“Nothing . . . Just a thought.”

 
          
Before
he could expand on his thought, even to himself, three men and a woman jumped
out of hiding from behind a boulder. They charged along the ditch, gibbering
like a band of apes. All of them were armed with long cleavers, and all were
naked—except for the leader. He wore clanking knight’s armor.

 
          
The
knight posted himself between the travelers and the fat woman. At once his
companions started to hack at the half-formed dream-cow with their cleavers.

 
          
“Stop
that!” screamed Muthoni. She ran down at them with her pitchfork leveled, only
to be intercepted by the knight. His breast-plate crashed into the tines of her
fork, snapping off one of the blades and bending another. He swung his cleaver
at Muthoni. She stumbled backward, parrying.

 
          
Working
feverishly, the knight’s troops sheared and hauled sections of the carcass off,
leaving trails of gluey blood. Not to be cheated of his meal by their
absconding, the knight directed one last hasty lunge at Muthoni and beat a
quick retreat.

 
          
The
fat woman cursed volubly for a while. Then she subsided. A few bloody spare
ribs attached to hide, and a hoof or two, were all that remained. She reached
out a fat hand to pick up and examine these butcher’s remains, as though the
wild band had actually brought them to her as an offering. Stuffing meat into
her mouth, she began to gnaw.

 
          
“I’d
rather starve,” said Denise unsteadily.

 
          
“Oh
really?” laughed Muthoni. “It’s only her dream she’s eating. I wish I could
dream up a bite to eat.”

 
          
What
kind of reality
is
this? Sean
puzzled. Are there directions in Hell? Does it have separate parts? What sort
of place could have no ‘separate parts’?

 
          
Well,
the answer seemed fairly obvious now. Hell was a zone which coincided
indiscriminately with itself everywhere, where contents were indistinguishably
mixed. The ego must be swallowed up in the darkness, the invisibility of this
non-place. Why? To perceive the preconscious psychic life
which
made an ‘ego’ possible in the first place.

 
          
So here stand I—Ego—amid a to and fro of psychic forces, where egos
are incoherently acting out the old preconscious ways.
He stood looking
over the landscape ... of the subconscious.
Lust,
aggression, cannibalism, darkness.
He and his three companions seemed to
lead a relatively charmed existence within it, though.
Relatively
charmed.

 
          
“Jeremy
says we’ll have to carry him,” called Denise.

 
          
“Mvivu!
Lazy
bugger!”
Immediately Muthoni
looked regretful. “If we could make a stretcher ...” She surveyed the
wasteland. “Maybe back at those . . . factories.”

 
          
Hell’s
kitchens, she remembered . . . where people were cooked.

 
          
Even
with her damaged pitchfork, she could defend her friends! But she didn’t really
want the pitchfork in her hands. It was too much like the enchanted broom that
operated the sorcerer’s apprentice . . .

 
          
“Tell
me something, Jeremy,” said Sean. “If there’s a God in human form in
Eden
, is there a corresponding Devil in Hell?”

 
          
Jeremy
smiled thinly. “Always chasing somebody else, aren’t you?
Someone
who’s got the key to it all.
You haven’t served time yet, friend. You’ve
only just arrived.”

 
          
“But
we’ve been promoted. I’m nigredo. Why would that be?” (Muthoni darted a jealous
glance at Sean.)

 
          
“I
don’t know, maybe He’s appalled by all this. Maybe He wants to wind up Hell,
and plant His gardens all over. I don’t know what He’d do for light, though.
Spin the planet on its axis? Pretty big, isn’t it—a God who can halt a world or
spin it?
Bye-bye, conservation of momentum.”

 
          
“Does
He ever visit Hell? Or ... is He here
already?
As the chief Devil?”

 
          
“Yes,
of course there’s one. Don’t you remember the chief—” Jeremy writhed in
momentary pain “—devil in the painting? Sitting with a bird’s head, gobbling
souls . . . shitting them into a pit through a bubble of fart.”

 
          
“Why
were you translated over here along with us, Jeremy? Do you know? You aren’t
playing a double game, by any chance?”

 
          
“How
can I play any sort of game with three holes in my stomach?”

 
          
“Answer
me, Jeremy—or I swear we’ll leave you here.”
“Oh, the merry
unrestraint of Hell!
Leave me by all means. Go on, leave me. I should
starve in a couple of weeks.
Unless someone eats me first.”

 
          
“You’re
damn well coming with us if we have to drag you,” said
Muthoni.         ,

 
          
“So
drag me. Treat me like a sack of potatoes.”

 
          
Muthoni
and Sean hoisted Jeremy between them. As a burden he was bearable.
Though the heat didn’t help.
Sweat laved their hands; every
now and then an arm or a leg slipped from their grasp. Denise brought up the
rear, guarding with the pitchfork.

 
          
Flaring
kilns, furnaces, broken towers and windmills with wings of flame were a center
of insane activity: a town of the mad, of preconsciousness rampant. The town
appeared to be under siege, across the bridge-causeway leading over the
blood-dark lake. One naked band was trying to fight its way in, opposed by
another naked band trying to fight its way out. So no one got anywhere. But
this was not the only means of access. One could, for instance, easily have
walked across open ground into the town. That was the way by which Muthoni had
come bounding out. The causeway was simply the preferred route, preferred to
the point of obsession. They too were heading, for some reason, toward the
warring bands upon the causeway. There must be some advantage to be gained
there! Why else did everyone compete? Reflexes are in charge, thought Sean;
they rule the roost.

 
          
Coincidentally,
they all heard the cry of a rooster.

 
          
“Trouble
with the human race,” grunted Jeremy, reclining between them, “is that’s what
it is—a
race.
Everyone’s so busy
tripping each other up, no wonder they never win it!”

 
          
“Win
what?” panted Muthoni.

 
          
“The race, dummy!”

 
          
“You
wouldn’t like a whip to crack over our backs, by any chance?”

 
          
The
strident call came again.
“
Cocorico!
Cocorico!”

 
          
The
cockerel stood upon a steaming dunghill in their path, crowing bravely though
no hens were anywhere about.

 
          
Denise
shifted the balance of the pitchfork. She bared her teeth. “Dinner!” she
hissed. “That’s more like it.”

 
          
“You
must be kidding,” groaned Jeremy.

 
          
“Put
him down, you two. Spread out.
If we’ve got to live off the
land—!”
Denise began to stalk the rooster, whose proud red feathers were
a darker version of her own hair. It crowed defiantly at her. The tines of the
fork might be damaged but they could still impale a fowl . . .

 
          
“Go
on, go on! Kill it!” jeered Jeremy faintly. “Shoot first, ask questions later.”

 
          
Sean,
Muthoni and Denise were all consumed by pangs of hunger now, actually
salivating in anticipation. Ignoring Jeremy, they penned the cockerel in. The
cockerel flapped his wings.