regime.
‘Blow out the light, you nuk!’ screamed an angry fishwife. ‘I blow out not,’ said Shabble. ‘I’m a candle not.’ Torrential abuse followed, as if Fistavlir had ended and the long-awaited trade winds had brought downfalling curses rather than downfalling water. Shabble, entirely unperturbed by this onslaught, darted about the temple, seeking friends.
‘Oh, there you are, there you are,’ said Shabble, shining sun-bright light on a comatose Ivan Pokrov.
The head of the Analytical Institute woke. Stared at Shabble. Mumbled incoherently. Then Artemis Ingalawa said, in very wide awake tones:
‘Shabble! Get out of here! Vanish!’
She Who Must Be Obeyed was obeyed. Shabble’s light dimmed immediately to nothing and the demonic one soared up, up, up into the night sky. The humid darkness of Injiltaprajura and of the polluted Laitemata fell away below. All Untunchilamon came in sight, a mass of dark within dark, reaching away for league upon league from Justina’s capital to the desolations of the north.
Higher and still higher yet flew Shabble, ascending imaginary mountains in nary more than a couple of heartbeats. Exulting in pure speed flew Shabble. So does the dolphin exult when from the water it explodes in joy shimmering. So does the dragon rejoice when in its strength it holds the heights then plunges, diving with a scream, with power ferocious, with speed controlled and absolute precision, terror matched to beauty as it stoops. Up rose Shabble in such triumph until the very curvature of the planetary surface was clearly to be perceived, and the sun also, the sun of the new day.
Then sang Shabble, then Shabble sang, louder and then louder yet, pouring out music unheard for twenty thousand years, rejoicing in the Symphony of the Sun, a song of joy to exult and honour all those who argue with mortality, a paean of praise for the will to be and to become, for ambition unlimited, audacity vaulting and the triumph of the moment.
Shabble rose yet higher. Singing singing singing to the rising sun, the local star, the star itself delighting as it sang with a song fiercer and braver yet than any known to creatures of the flesh, its joy a blaze of energy unleashed, exploding light outburning in vacuum wastelands a hundred million luzacs distant.
Glory to life!
Glory to us and our becoming!
And to the sun, glory!
And to the rising sun, glory!
Thus Shabble, singing as if to rival the sun itself.
Non servium.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘What’s this?’ said Log Jaris, holding aloft a lantern.
No answer came from Chegory Guy who was deep in dream. At that very moment his noncqnscious fantasising was modulating from horror ad nauseum to mere absurdity. He dreamt of an acanaceous cabbage with thaumaturgic tendencies multiplying onyx and zircon to the lapidarian delight of a quivering grannam.
‘What is cabbage but a form of aliment?’ said Chegory, imagining (in his dream) that he had never seen such except in woodblock prints of foreign origin, though in point of fact he knew cabbage well enough since it grew (albeit poorly) in the market gardens of Injiltaprajura.
‘Cabbage is god,’ said cabbage.
Already the cabbage was inimically exerting its granitic will to crush him, all goodwill gone, just badwill remaining, its cassava cyanide, its perfume dung. Crushed, he fell. Yattering ants mocked his valour useless, his courage absurd, his pride misjudged, his skin tarnished with undeniable Ebrell Island red.
‘Wake up, boy,’ said Log Jaris, outside his dream.
‘I am awake,’ said Chegory (or imagined he said) within the dimensions of dream.
Where his unicorn speared her, where she moulded his mangos soft in her hands, her fingers palpating, his banana vomiting, his ants talking the language of sea slugs and carrots as they crawled across her nipples, her hair trailing across his cheeks as Varazchavardan aped monkey in the blue-stained topsails of a coconut tree.
‘Must I kick you awake?’ said Log Jaris.
Answer came there none.
So he kicked.
Not too hard, but hard enough.
Young Chegory Guy snorted, gasped, jerked awake, remembered his knife and grabbed for it, only it was the wrong boot he grabbed for.
‘A blade?’ said Log Jaris, observing the empty boot sheath by lamplight. ‘No blade there, boy! Who are you?’ Slowly Chegory got to his feet. Looked Log Jaris full in the face. Then turned away.
‘Don’t turn your back on me, boy!’ said Log Jaris, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him round. ‘I’m not that ugly.’
‘You’re a hallucination,’ said Chegory calmly.
Quite a reasonable assumption, under the circumstances. For Log Jaris was a monster with the body of a man but the head and horns of a bull.
‘What?’ said Log Jaris in startlement. ‘I’m a what?’
‘A hallucination. I don’t believe in you.’
‘You don’t believe in me!’ said Log Jaris, slapping a heavy hand on Chegory’s shoulder. His heavy hand gripped hard then shook the boy. Not much — but enough. ‘You don’t believe in me? What about this? Do you believe in this?’ Log Jaris grasped Chegory’s collar bone between thumb and finger. He increased the pressure. ‘Hurts, doesn’t it? You’re awake, right? Not dreaming! But drunk, perhaps. Are you drunk, my boy?’
‘I’ve dosed on zen,’ said Chegory.
‘You’ve what?’
‘The temple. Temple of Elasmokarcharos. There was zen, zen, burning, huge amphorae, you know, drugs in smoke, in clouds, clouds of it. And… I don’t have to argue with you. You’re a flashback. You don’t exist.’
‘I wish I didn’t!’ said Log Jaris. ‘It would make life that much simpler. All right, come along, boy. Indulge an old hallucination for a bit and let your story keep him company till he’s got the truth out of you.’
Chegory looked hard at Log Jaris. He was in sharp focus. The yellow candlelight shining shining through the lantern’s windows wavered ever so slightly but the shadow-mass bulk of the bullman did not. Tentatively Chegory dared his fingertips forward. The bullman grunted with displeasure as Chegory fingered the black bullhair. Chegory flattened his hand against the coarse hairs. Felt the warmth of living meat beneath. Pushed. Encountered unyielding mass, bulk, weight, inertia.
The bullman was huge.
A huge unyielding mass smelling of bullsweat. Hot breath outsnorted across Chegory’s face as he withdrew his hand from the bullman’s hide. Gold gleamed bright in the quivering moistness of the bullman’s nostrils. The outthrust ears, which looked a little like black tubes of hair with their ends sliced off along a diagonal, twitched as the bullman attended to some distant sound. Chegory raised his gaze to the huge ivory horns uplifted high.
For a hallucination, the thing was impressively detailed and uncommonly stable.
‘Are you quite finished?’ said the bullman. ‘My patience is great, but not infinite.’
‘You look real,’ said Chegory slowly. ‘I mean, you’re not wavery at the edges or anything. You feel real. You smell real. You talk as if you were real. But, if you are real — how do you explain yourself?’
The bullman snorted.
‘You’re the one who’s got some explaining to do,’ said the monster. ‘This is my cellarage, after all. So I suggest you get on with it, lest I obtruncate your loathsome corpse without ceremony further.’
Chegory had no wish to be obtruncated, whatever obtruncation was, since it sounded as if it might be painful. He had already learnt that the pain of hallucinations can be at least equal to that of physical existence. So he had best placate the monster whether it was a free-willed entity in its own right or merely a projection of his own psyche.
