Ratbird, page 3
Inside, I was barely able to stand upright at the highest point, for I was head and shoulders taller than my sinister host; and it did not escape my notice that the roof at its highest point was infested with cobwebs, in the corners of which sat large square spiders. Also, when he gestured to me to sit down on the mats which covered the floor, I could not but observe two fairly fresh (tuskless) skulls above the door by which we had entered. Catching my glance, Mr White Face asked, ‘Do you speak Dutch?’
‘Do they — now?’ I asked, with sarcasm.
But he had a response. ‘On the night of the full moon they do speak. I cannot silence them. You shall hear them by and by, and become familiar with the eloquence of death.’
We then engaged in philosophical discourse, while a servant woman, cringing as she served us, brought a dark drink like tea in earthenware bowls which fitted neatly between Mr White Face’s tusks.
After two hours of conversation, during which he questioned me closely concerning Ouspensky, he apologized that his wife (he used a different word) was not present. It appeared that she was about to deliver a son.
I congratulated him.
‘I have twelve sons already,’ he said. ‘Though this one is special, as you may see. A miraculous son who will further our most powerful ambitions, a wizard of words. So it is written ... Now let us discuss how the end, closure and abridgement of your world may be brought about, since we are in agreement that such an objective is desirable.’
Although I was less ready than before to agree that such an objective was desirable, I nevertheless found myself entering into his plans. (The dark drink had its effect.) The plans were — to me at least — elaborate and confusing. But the horrifying gist of his argument was that Homo sapiens might be extinguished by pantun. I understood that pantun was a form of Malayan poetry, and could not grasp how this might annihilate anything; but, as he continued, I began to see —
or I thought in that dazed state I saw — that he believed all human perceptions to be governed by words and, indeed, distorted and ultimately betrayed by words. Betrayed was the word he used. This, he said, was the weakness of Homo sapiens: words had weakened the contract with nature that guaranteed mankind’s existence. (All our spiritual ills were evidence of this deteriorating state of affairs.)
There were ways by which all Homo sapiens could be reduced —
abridged—into a story, a kind of poem. Those who live by the word die by the word. So he said. We could end as a line of pantun.
I cannot reduce this plan of his into clear words. It was not delivered to me in clear words, but in some sort of squeaky Other Side music with which he aided my understanding. All I can say is that there in that creepy hut, I came to believe it was perfectly easy to turn the whole story of the world I knew into a world of story.
As we were getting into the how of it—and drinking more of that dark liquid—the servant hurried in with an apology and squeaked something. White Face rose.
‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘My wife [he used the different word] is about to bring forth the thirteenth son.’
‘Will she mind my presence?’
‘Not at all. Indeed, your presence is essential. Without your presence, you can have no absence, isn’t that so?’ (Whatever that meant. If that is truly what he said.)
In we went, into curtained-off quarters at the far end of the longhouse. All misty with scented things burning and jangling instruments being played by two long-tusked men.
His wife lay on the floor on a mat, attended by the servant girl. Her stomach did not appear extended. She was entirely naked, no embroidered band round her middle. For the first time, I saw—with what sense of shock I cannot explain - that she had no navel. Nor was this some kind of unique aberration. The servant girl —
perhaps in honour of the occasion—was also nude and without the customary middle band. She also had no navel. I was struck as by an obscenity, and unprepared for what followed. (Tusks I could take; lack of navel implied a different universe of being.)
‘Now the birth begins,’ said Mr White Face, as his wife lifted one leg, ‘and you will find all will go according to plan. The story of your species will become a kind of Mobius strip, but at least you will have had a role in it, Dr Sigmoid.’
He had never used my name previously. I knew myself in his power; as never before I felt myself powerless, a thin be-navelled creature without understanding. I had believed these strange people of the Other Side to be distant descendants of a kind of rodent ancestor. But that was a scientific illusion built on evolutionary terminology. The truth was different, more difficult, less palatable. As the woman lifted her leg, an egg emerged from her womb.
An egg not of shell like a bird’s: leathery rather, like a turtle’s. An egg! A veritable egg, ostrich-sized.
A terrible rushing noise beset me. The longhouse flew away. I was surrounded by bright sunlight, yet in total darkness, as foretold. Even worse — far worse — I was not I. The terror of wonderment, real understanding, had changed all. Only the egg remained.
With a sense of destiny, I leaned forward and tapped upon it with an invisible finger. It split.
* * * *
At the miracle of my birth, I came forth when my father summoned me. A star was set upon my forehead. I am unique. The gods that make their careless journeys across the world, playing with science or magic as they will, create thousands of everything, of sea almonds, of waves, of days — of words. Yet there is only one Dishayloo. No navel, and a star in the middle of his forehead.
Born to shine in a world of story.
Brian W. Aldiss, Ratbird
