The Book Of Ian Watson, page 32
HOTEMTEP: My tongue will speak more smoothly
After it touches yours.
YVONNE: Indeed? Why not?
(They embrace. But after a few moments YVONNE pulls away in puzzlement. For HOTEMTEP stands paralysed. …)
What’s wrong? Why don’t you move?
Stop pretending to be a statue!
CURTAIN
ACT 5. SCENE TWO.
(The same, except that YVONNE is now apparently alone. On the carpet Hotemtep’s shirt, trousers, and shoes lie mixed up in a pile of debris prominent among which are many bones. YVONNE bits her lip and digs her fingernails into her palms to ward off hysteria. Enter, from the corridor, MARIANNE and HARRY.)
YVONNE: He kissed me, and he fell to pieces.
HARRY: What?
MARIANNE: My child!
YVONNE: It’s true.
As soon as we kissed, he stiffened.
He froze. Not icily. More like stone
Or marble. Suddenly cracks ran across him …
And he crumbled—into this heap, my Hotemtep.
HARRY: Femme fatale, eh? That didn’t happen
When we kissed …! You are joking,
Of course.
YVONNE: No, no, no, no, no!
HARRY: Oh.
MARIANNE:
(She kneels to sift the rubble.)
Here’s one Ushabti. Here’s another.
Three, four, more.
HARRY: (Helping.) They’re dead.
Inanimate. Just figurines of clay.
(As MARIANNE disinters still more, HARRY lays them out in a line on the carpet.)
YVONNE: Maman … Harry … He was alive,
And now he’s dust.
HARRY: His golden secret
Must have been fool’s gold.
YVONNE: I’m shattered.
HARRY: (Grimly.) Nothing compared to him!
MARIANNE: But what do we do now?
HARRY: A bag:
I’ll fetch a bag, and we’ll pop them in.
(He dashes to the bedroom, to return with a leather travelling bag and a couple of newspapers.)
MARIANNE:
(She counts hastily as she sorts.) … Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight,
And here’s the lute-player at long last.
That’s sixty-nine.
YVONNE: Show me her!
Yes, it’s me; still me … But look:
She isn’t wearing anything round her neck.
Nor are any of them!
MARIANNE: You’re right. …
Their amulets have all disappeared:
Those broken chips stuck to gold thread.
HARRY: Sixty-nine, did you say? That’s odd.
There were sixty-nine to start with,
Weren’t there?
YVONNE: Oui, soizante-neuf.
HARRY: But one of them got left behind
In the exodus: the one the scorpion stung,
Which disintegrated subsequently
In Ted Peck’s beefy grasp.
MARIANNE: I must have counted one of them twice.
HARRY: You must have done.
(Kneeling, he tears off squares of newspaper, wraps each Ushabti up individually in a paper twist, and lays them in the bag.)
Hmm, like boiled sweets.
But beware of swallowing. Who knows
What effect they might have on a fellow’s
Constitution! I’ll get Tom to dispose
Of the rags and bones and dust.
(He reaches for the lute-player, which YVONNE has taken from her mother and still holds)
Please?
YVONNE: You arid Anglo-Saxon pragmatist,
You stiff upper lip. He just kissed me,
A moment ago.
HARRY: I know. And I loved
Her—impractically, after my fashion.
Frankly, of a sudden I feel cured
Of that particular intoxication.
(YVONNE releases the tiny figure; HARRY wraps it.)
MARIANNE: What do we do next? Take them
Back to the museum?
YVONNE: No! Ted Peck would stop
At nothing, to make them move again.
HARRY: And obviously they never will.
I wonder. … I’m sure a psychoanalyst
Would tell us that everything was caused
By guilt and sex and infantile repressions. …
I wonder, did we all hallucinate?
Did we three together steal the Ushabti
Unconsciously, and bring them here
In a sack full of bones and stuff—
Then suddenly become sane again?
MARIANNE: When a poet becomes sane, he’s finished.
HARRY: Or else he matures.
YVONNE: To administer
His estate? To take his rightful seat
In that House of Nobles at Westminster?
Why do you say with such certainty
That they’ll never move again?
HARRY: The secret was fool’s gold. Dross.
It fell apart. Thanks to a kiss,
From reality. Just like the Sleeping Beauty,
In reverse. And you are my reality, Yvonne;
Reality is you. Will you be my wife?
Will you be the Lady of Castle Dundalk?
The Countess?
YVONNE: Me? But I’m a Jew.
HARRY: Who cares about Hitler’s prejudices?
MARIANNE: You ought to!
HARRY: I should let Adolf Hitler
Rule my life? Not likely. Listen, Yvonne,
You must marry me. We have to be
The custodians of the Ushabti, you and I.
(He picks up the travelling bag for a moment, then sets it down.)
The guardians of Pandora’s box.
MARIANNE: Also in reverse.
HARRY: How’s that?
YVONNE: Yes, how?
MARIANNE: Hotemtep has fallen apart. The Ushabti
Let him crack up—I’m sure of it.
They have hidden away inside themselves,
Unlike Pandora’s imps. But why?
What prompted them? Surely not a kiss.
Maybe I should be lucky to hide away
For the next hundred years or so.
Maybe millions of people would be lucky.
HARRY: Don’t worry, there’ll never be another war
In Europe—not while the British Empire
Lasts. (Gallantly.) And the French Empire too.
MARIANNE: At least Yvonne will be safely
Out of it. Perhaps. For a while.
He’s right, Yvonne, you ought to wed him,
And take the Ushabti with you.
Why shouldn’t you build them a tomb
In Ireland, like the one they came from?
Milord the Duke of Hamilton did so
On his estate, in Eighteen-Fifty or about.
When he died he had himself embalmed
And placed in a genuine sarcophagus.
Have a copy of a sarcophagus made,
Harry. Lay them to rest in it.
HARRY: Along with a copy of a mummy?
Or should it be the corpse
Of a faithful Irish wolf-hound
To puzzle future archeologists?
Ah, there won’t be any of those.
MARIANNE: There won’t?
HARRY: Unless civilization ends!
And that can’t happen nowadays.
MARIANNE: Egypt fell; Carthage fell; Rome fell.
HARRY: Yes, but those were isolated places.
There may be a few more wars to endure
Here and there, but believe me
From now on the whole world’s continuous,
All one from Tasmania to Timbuctoo,
From Madras to Marseilles to Mexico.
As are you and I, Yvonne. Continuous.
YVONNE: Really?
HARRY: Yes. I’ll get Tom to clear up.
YVONNE: No. I shall do it. With my own hands.
HARRY: There’s enough to fill a suitcase or two.
YVONNE: Fetch two. We’ll buy new ones.
We’ll take his remains and drop them
Into the Nile. Together, shall we, Harry?
HARRY: Yes, but we’ll sink them from a houseboat
Off Gezira. I’ll hire a houseboat
For our engagement party. Fireworks
And champagne and dancing—we’ll waltz
And lancer! There’ll be photographers.
We’ll release a hundred white doves
With streamers bearing good-will greetings.
MARIANNE: Won’t guests be puzzled about the suitcases?
HARRY: We’ll say … what shall we say? We’ll say
That we’re throwing our old lives overboard.
YVONNE: Bravo! At last you’re learning to be
A poet—of life.
HARRY: Thanks, Yvonne.
Incidentally, I think I’ll never shoot
A lion again. I’ve lost the need, I fancy.
I’ll never shoulder another gun—
Not if I live to be as old as Hotemtep.
MARIANNE: Hitler and Mussolini …
HARRY: Champagne and fireworks!
FINAL CURTAIN
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Also by Ian Watson
Novels
Under Heaven’s Bridge (1981) (with Michael Bishop)
Black Current
1. The Book of the River (1984)
2. The Book of the Stars (1984)
3. The Book of Being (1985)
Mana
1. Lucky’s Harvest (1993)
2. The Fallen Moon (1994)
Other Novels
The Embedding (1973)
The Jonah Kit (1975)
Orgasmachine (2010)
The Martian Inca (1977)
Alien Embassy (1977, 2006)
Miracle Visitors (1978)
God’s World (1979)
The Gardens of Delight (1980, 2007)
Deathhunter (1981)
Chekhov’s Journey (1983)
Converts (1984)
Queenmagic, Kingmagic (1986, 2009)
The Power (1987)
The Fire Worm (1988)
Whores of Babylon (1988, 2004)
Meat (1988)
The Flies of Memory (1990)
Hard Questions (1996)
Oracle (1997)
Mockymen (2000, 2004)
Collections
The Very Slow Time Machine (1979)
Sunstroke: And Other Stories (1982)
Slow Birds: And Other Stories (1985)
Evil Water: And Other Stories (1987)
Salvage Rites: And Other Stories (1989)
Stalin’s Teardrops: And Other Stories (1991)
The Coming of Vertumnus: And Other Stories (1994)
The Great Escape (2002)
The Butterflies of Memory (2005)
The Beloved of My Beloved (2009) (and Roberto Quaglia)
The Book of Ian Watson (1985)
Acknowledgements
‘The Flags of Africa’ and ‘Imaginary Cricket’ first appeared in London Magazine; ‘Shrines and Ratholes’, Towards an Alien Linguistics’, ‘Hype, Hype, Hoorah!’, ‘April in Paris’ and ‘Some Cultural Notes, and Pest Control’ first appeared in Vector; ‘Roof Garden Under Saturn’ first appeared in New Worlds; ‘The False Braille Catalogue’ and The Big Buy’ first appeared in Ad Astra; The Crudities of SF’, ‘UFOs, Science, and the Inexplicable’, ‘Down the Mine’ and ‘Up the Poll’ first appeared in Arena; ‘Who can Believe in the Hero(ine)?’ and ‘Some Sufist Insights into the Nature of Inexplicable Events’ first appeared in SFWA Bulletin; ‘Showdown on Showdown’ first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science fiction Magazine; ‘Dome of Whispers’ first appeared in Imagine; ‘A Cage for Death’ first appeared in Omni.
Ian Watson (1943 – )
Ian Watson was born in England in 1943 and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a first class Honours degree in English Literature. He lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish SF with “Roof Garden Under Saturn” for the influential New Worlds magazine in 1969. He became a full-time writer in 1976, following the success of his debut novel The Embedding. His work has been frequently shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and he has won the BSFA Award twice. From 1990 to 1991 he worked full-time with Stanley Kubrick on story development for the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence, directed after Kubrick's death by Steven Spielberg; for which he is acknowledged in the credits for Screen Story. Ian Watson lives in Northamptonshire, England.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Ian Watson 1985
All rights reserved.
The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11485 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
* (The silence has now been tentatively broken. After a mere six months. Immediately a new and greater Woman factory blooms in my mind, with a larger and even more dramatic plot, which I could fully commit myself to, as a fresh writing experience within science fiction. Will there now be another silence, equally long?)
(Footnote, added three years later. And lo, the novel was rewritten, and bought enthusiastically by Playboy Paperbacks. And lo, the Playboy empire lost its gambling license in London, and got rid of PP to Berkley; who refused to publish. Currently, publishers are passing the typescript from one to t’other like a hot potato or live hand grenade, warmly wishing it luck elsewhere, and murmuring that if they published it, they would get their lungs torn out.)
* Have you noticed that in Britain candidates stand for office; but in America they run?
Ian Watson, The Book Of Ian Watson
