Mordechai understood that all time was one instant, all space one point — that only God had the privilege of extension, and his creation was only the very tip of a claw — that any appearance to the contrary was just a sort of stereoscopic illusion. And so, like every Troodonian, he struggled with the paradox of how it could be that in the time of the half-fish, God wanted them to fight, and yet in the time of the apes, God had wanted them to humble themselves as shrunken quadrupeds, when the two periods were of course not only equivalent but simultaneous. Nonetheless, he knew that God did now want them to fight, and God did now want them to win. And that was why he, Mordechai, had abandoned his comrades and trudged across a continent to this lagoon. Whatever their clerisy might say, the Troodonians were losing the war, and if they ever hoped to drive the half-fish back into the sea, they would need either a direct intercession from God or some unimaginable new weapon. Since he did not dare rely on the former, Mordechai had come to these temples to look for the latter. The apes hadn’t understood much, but they’d understood fighting. There might be something here, forgotten in the ruins, an accidental legacy from an unmourned and intestate species. The chances were laughably slim. But he had to try, because no one else would. He was lost in these thoughts, and in the rhythm of his rowing, when his boat was flipped over like a dried peapod.
Smashed into the water, limbs flailing, bubbles streaming from his snout because he was too surprised to hold his breath, Mordechai stared for a moment into the eel’s monstrous right eye. Most of its gigantic body was dark grey, but its belly was a mottled orange not unlike the colour of his own intertarsal scales. He began a prayer that he knew he wouldn’t have time to finish.
Except that, somehow, he did finish. He opened his eyes and he wasn’t dead.
And then he realised that perhaps to this beast he was neither a threat nor a meal. The eel wouldn’t go to the trouble to fire its voltage organ just because it had bumped against something on its way up for air. Thank God he’d lost the oar when he went under, or he might have been stupid enough to try to use it as a weapon. He held as still as he could without sinking any further down, and just as the grinding of his empty lungs was becoming unendurable, the eel swam off into the cloudy water, its long anal fin rippling like shadow congealed into a dainty membrane. Mordechai’s knitted skullcap twirled in its wake and then was also lost to sight. Not since the half-fish themselves had he come across a creature that so obviously owed allegiance to Dagon-Ryujin as this long gullet with a face.
He floated, panting and retching, at the surface until he’d regained enough strength to right the stolen boat. The hull had sprung a small leak, he had nothing to row with, and he’d badly grazed his elbow climbing up over the side. But there wasn’t that much further to go until the temples. Cursing himself for coming here in such a puny craft, cursing the gondolier for being so correct, cursing the sun for being so plump, he began to paddle.
And that was when he saw it. The lone figure standing on the roof of the nearest temple on his right like a soliloquist on a raised stage. An animal that hadn’t walked God’s earth for more than eight times eight times eight generations.
An ape.
Mordechai began to paddle as fast as he could, his elbow stinging with every splash of brine. As he drew closer, he could make out the ape in more detail. It had a bald, pink, snoutless face, with sparse grey fur only on the top of its head, and like a Troodonian cantor it wore woven clothing that covered almost its entire body. The fabric of the clothing looked soaked through, but at low tide the lagoon here wasn’t nearly up to the level of the roof, so the ape must have ascended from some lower section of the temple. And instead of a left eye the ape had a meaty tunnel — although Mordechai had no way to be sure if that was a wound or just a characteristic of its species — a collateral sense organ or supplementary orifice.
The ape was barking loudly, and of course the noise itself meant nothing to Mordechai. But by the time the prow of his boat bumped up against the cracked and barnacled wall of the temple, he was close enough to hear the relict mammal in his own head.
‘I don’t know where I am,’ the ape was thinking. ‘I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am.’
About the Author
Ned Beauman was born in London and studied at Cambridge. His writing has appeared widely, including in
Also by Ned Beauman
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Sceptre
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Ned Beauman 2012
The right of Ned Beauman to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. 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 written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-848-94502-9
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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