all we know).
[The Golden Gulag mentioned by the Originator appears to be his personal invention. Despite the claim made above, the Originator does later elaborate this invention at length, claiming in the course of such elaboration to reveal the Truth which lies hidden behind the veils of the Days of Wrath. Yet an exhaustive search of the Archives for collaboration of these tales of the Gulag uncovers no mention of it whatsoever. In truth, scholarship knows virtually nothing of humanity’s mode of existence before the wars of the Days of Wrath. This Insertion by Order of Indorjed, Archivist Superior.]
[The naive should note that the unrelenting labours of the world’s best scholars have failed to produce even so much as a definitive date for the Days of Wrath. They are generally supposed to have taken place between 9,000 and 20,000 years Before Present; it is generally agreed that no closer dating can be arrived at. The airy exactitude of the Originator should be seen against this background. This Insertion by Order of Than, Chronologer Superior.]
[Here seventeen spurious Insertions by various hands have been deleted. One suspects that Insertions by some are valued for their own sake. That some see careers in terms of the creation of quantity rather than quality. The over-ambitious younger generation must learn that, in scholarship as in other things, continence is a virtue. By Order, Jonquiri 0, Disiciplinarian Superior.]
Well, then.
You have seen the start of our history.
A malign Power of some description — most probably a hideous demon in the process of breaking through into our innocent and unsuspecting world from the World Beyond — has subjected Injiltaprajura to a massive energy drain. Shabble, the bright-voiced imitator of suns, has been forced to flee Downstairs lest this energy drain end Shabble’s life entirely.
What now?
Why, the tale of the wishstone and the wonderworkers begins, and proceeds to its conclusion.
You know the setting and the scope of the action. If then you deem our history to be worthy of your attention, read on. If not, then may the mephitic stench of a million dead scorpions enfold you, may cesspool fevers rack your bones for the next five thousand years, may worms the colour of mastic ooze from your ears, and may your flesh decay until it becomes soft as a mango lost for a month in a dungheap.
And may you dwell in the house of your mother-in-law forever.
CHAPTER TWO
Chegory Guy was a knifefighter. Perhaps that is not entirely accurate. If truth be told, he had never been in a knife fight in his life. Yet it is still far from misleading to describe him as a knifefighter since he owned a number of blades and had been trained to kill with them. Furthermore, he trained with his weapons on a daily basis, practising feinting, shifting, slashing and slicing, stabbing and hacking.
Once you know this, you will not be surprised to hear that he was an Ebrell Islander. These people are, of course, notorious for their violence. Such generalisations are, or so we are told by the Ashdan liberals, odious, untrue and misleading; nevertheless, it would be hard to make sense of the world without them, and in the case of Chegory Guy they make a great deal of sense.
This dangerous young man dwelt in the fair city of Injiltaprajura (or, shall we say, the bloodstone- complexioned city of Injiltaprajura?). To be precise, he was domiciled in the Dromdanjerie.
The Dromdanjerie.
What and where?
What is easy. The Dromdanjerie is the lunatic asylum of Injiltaprajura. It is a huge building fabricated from the native bloodstone of Untunchilamon. It has 2 kitchens, 27 showers, 44 stench holes, 6 high-security cells and 19 dormitories. One of the many fountains sourced Downstairs has been linked directly to the plumbing. This provides unlimited fresh (potable!) water for the showers with their floors of glistening green tiles, for the sluice rooms, for the kitchens gay with sun-faced representations of flowers, and for swabbing out those filthy dormitories so drearily painted in institutional brown and grey.
The Dromdanjerie, then.
What of it?
Does my acquaintance with the place seem too intimate? If so, know this: the Brin think me normal enough. Though what is ‘normal’ if one metabolises silicon, as do the Brin? Never mind. Enough of that. Let us not return to it again. Let us return to Chegory Guy. And to the action:
As Shabble was sliding down a drainpipe to escape the massive energy drain which threatened Shabbleself’s very' existence, the Dromdanjerie was waking. All the lights had gone out, waking those many who could not sleep in the dark. They screamed as if they had swallowed acid. They raved as if fresh-returned from hell. This set off most of the others. The dogs in the Dog Worshipper’s Temple at the back of the Dromdanjerie began barking and howling. So, with uproar rising to heights unendurable, the staff of the Dromdanjerie was waking.
Chegory Guy was not on the staff — he was in fact a rock gardener who worked on the island of Jod — but as he boarded in the Dromdanjerie’s staff quarters he too was wakened by the racket.
He kindled fire, then helped light (or, as the case may be, relight) lanterns by the dozen. Jon Qasaba took the first dozen, and, carrying them on a bablobrokmadorni stick, strode away into the depths of the bedlam. Guy loaded a second bablobrokmadorni stick for Qasaba’s daughter.
Olivia.
Olivia Qasaba. She of the uncertain moods, at one moment a playful gamine, then on an instant a sophisticated ice lady, as remote and as distant as the stars. A female creature who was suffering that confusion of the blood which besets a girl who is in the process of becoming a woman. There are several symptoms of this confusion, the most notable being a propensity for slamming doors and a tendency to burst into tears upon provocation which should by rights produce (at the very most) no more than the briefest of scowls.
Chegory Guy was at least in part responsible for her erratic emotional weather. What did he do? He was there! That was enough. Sometimes Olivia wished to romp with him like a boy at play with a peer, giving expression to simple high spirits and the natural ebullience of youth. At other times, she imagined him as an ardent suitor into whose arms she could swoon in a waking dream of passion.
Either way, Chegory disappointed her, for he daily grew more remote. Why? Because he had a nice regard for his own safety. He sensed her confusion. (He sensed it: but to most of the other people in the Qasaba household that confusion needed no sensing whatsoever, as it was clearly written in the girl’s every action.) He feared that if he let her within his guard, she would one day go further than she was ready to, and would then scream rape. Or, alternatively, that she would go hardly any distance at all, and that he would then yield to temptation and rape her in truth.
Why did the young man take this business of rape so seriously? He was not one of those earnest young philosophers who pass through a phase of diligent asceticism at the age of eighteen. No: it was a survivor’s caution which governed his flesh.
Chegory Guy was, as we have said already, an Ebrell Islander. By breeding at least, though not by birth. Yes, though Chegory Guy had been born on Untunchilamon, his parents had both been of Ebrell Island stock. Now the Ebrell Islanders are a race of drunkards, knifefighters and fornicators cursed by a genetic tendency to wanton dissipation. You doubt this? Are you then one of these Ashdan liberals who hold that hereditary traits are but illusory, and who believe (or at least claim to believe) that all things are possible for all people? Read on! And you will be enlightened.
The Ebrell Islanders had long been a troublesome minority on Untunchilamon. They had always been for the most part unemployed. Gambling, drug abuse, violence and venereal disease were rife amongst them. They were customarily involved in smuggling, theft, prostitution, extortion and organised crime. They were a cancerous blotch upon civilisation.
Therefore, when Chegory Guy was but nine years of age, the wise and magnanimous Wazir Sin had organised a pogrom against the Ebbies. The slaughter had been efficient in the extreme, and only a few of the underpeople had escaped into the wilderness. Among those few were the nine-year-old Chegory Guy, his father, his uncle
