an experiment, as that would imply that what was believed might not occur. Now Nova put a question to his creator on the screen.
‘Why did they bring the so-called shift-ship so near to us for its maiden failure?’
‘To give you a choice. When we fire up the Drive for the jump, the backblast’ll fry you. But if you surrender and bring that crate aboard, you’ll survive.’
‘I’m not in any danger from your Drive.’
‘There’s no fool like a fibreglass fool. I’ll tell you something which may surprise you. I’m glad these people are using my principles for an interesting application. Most don’t even believe their beliefs will build to some shattering crescendo. They simply assume in the most mundane manner. This isn’t boring is it?’
‘If it worked? Yes, it would be, as a matter of fact.’
‘Fact. What a quaint term. I gave you the blood of a man, or something like it, but I guess I really did fail – you still don’t understand what it is to be human. We journey through life throwing a meaning ahead of us to walk on.’
‘Anyone who walks, walks on what’s there. The meaning is just a tone we give it. I dare you to walk where there is no path, father.’ Nova thought about it. ‘Well that’s what you’re trying, isn’t it? I actually would like to see it.’
Baum looked offscreen at something. ‘Well, we’re about ready here, Nova. To believe is human.’
‘To be told what you believe, is human – these days. I think, father, I’d like to be less human.’
‘Why.’
‘To be less a slave. Good luck with your experiment.’
‘It’s not -’
Nova cut off the transmission.
He mused, spinning his nose.
‘Your tinpot captain orders you to move off, but only because there’ll be nothing to see and we have business on Europa. Obedience is your choice.’
As Nova’s cruiser moved off, the battleship’s Decree Drive fired up.
Nothing changed, of course – not even Baum’s mind. He selected a small tech excuse for the Drive’s failure, and everyone immediately set about believing it.
EVERNEMESI
Jeff Lint was told he wrote as if Moby Dick had never been published, to which he responded that most people lived as if it hadn’t. Did Melville think trouble was scarce? Captain Ahab went out of his way to find a whale to cope with but the one time I met a whale it made itself easily available on the beach and we had trouble dealing with its requests – we’d expected it to ask for water or money, but all it said was it wanted to listen to the radio because that was part of its normal routine at this time of day. My hackles were rising after a couple of hours of this. ‘Why don’t you act like a proper whale and just look at us with your little eye, a tragic thing we don’t know how to handle?’ But it started discussing the news, and how those jokers in Washington had got us into another oil war. Finally I just walked away, ignoring the shouts of my colleagues. Apparently the others got him back into the water eventually, by rolling him with a bulldozer or something. It must have made a hell of a noise. And that’s the story of the whale.
Any real writer will tell you that animals are the main thing standing in the way of the work. Once I was starting a new book and a bison put its head in the window and just stood there, more or less looking at the floor or into a space above it. It seemed perfectly content for the moment - and so was I. But as time passed without anything really changing I realised my day had been taken for ransom. Another time a badger jumped onto the keyboard and started shouting at me. And none of its ideas were fresh or original. Then there was the time a trapdoor opened and I fell into a cellar plagued with rats. As far as I could tell every single one of the thousand or so rats was exactly the same. Again, why the repetition of the same idea? It could be that they were different from each other in some subtle way I didn’t understand, but what could it be? Would they begin individually expressing different viewpoints and notions never heard before? Or simply attack me in the most boring way, each rat gnashing in roughly the same manner as its neighbour? I’ll leave you to guess which was the case.
But sometimes it’s my fault entirely. The incident with the whale left me feeling obscurely ashamed and when the opportunity arose to rescue a jellyfish from the beach and toss it back into the waves, I jumped at the chance. But the jellyfish almost exactly resembled a semi-transparent version of my own face - or perhaps it was just my reflection. I couldn’t stop looking at the thing. Someone passing by gave me a glance of disapproval and I felt obliged to pretend I was a principled man. I stood there in the manner of Soviet hero art, but instead of a flag or sledgehammer I held the jellyfish I had found. The problem was that I had to regularly break my stance to dampen the jellyfish in a bowl of water, and this interrupted the heroic monumentalism I was going for. By the time most of the water had been absorbed or generally splashed around, a baffled crowd had gathered and were arguing about what I meant. Finally I turned and hurled the thing into the sea, but people paid more attention to my savage yell than the goodness of the act.
I spent days trying to prove that the creature had survived and was thriving in the surf, but all I found were thousands of eels. The eels were made of soft glass and were almost impossible to see in flowing water. Only their eyes gave them away, and those rare occasions they started singing. And when they sang, they would close their eyes. I told the local authorities about it and they just looked at me like I was mad. I even showed them photographs, which I stuck on the police station wall and pointed to with a stick, but the Chief of Police instantly shouted: ‘Get those things off the wall!’ And I had expected to be treated like a saviour.
I didn’t leave, but got bored sitting there so I started making a thin wet sound like a burning banana skin. This kept me amused for eleven minutes and then I shouted something in impatience. I think it was ‘Oh, god, let it end!’ or that kind of thing. Maybe ‘God I want to kill everyone!’ or like that. Several people looked aside at me like a wall of turbots.
During this whole time with the jellyfish, eels and police, I was supposed to be writing the opening chapter of LINT. Remembering this, I left the station and immediately saw a happy dog. From the flapping of its ears I thought the dog was running toward me but I realised it was just tossing its head up and down to send its ears flapping – it was looking eager and aglee having just discovered this crazy trick. It stopped as I approached, and I knelt down, putting my right eye directly against the dog’s. That’ll let him know, I thought – then became aware that the hound was sniggering to itself. ‘Ah you’re not worth it,’ I said aloud, straightening up.
‘I am,’ the dog whispered, looking up at me. ‘And you know it.’
And I thought, The abyss conceals.
At home, I looked at the screen. A mistake requires a minimum of two moving parts. A bug like a fingernail tremble-walked along the sill.
Three weeks later I was stumbling through smoke and the flopped bodies of three hundred swans, the sky filling with rejuvenated pteranodons bent on revenge. You take your life in your hands when you write one of mine. Should you look down at your own boots kicking through black coins, or up at the horizon patrolled by lies with bright yellow fins? Watched always by a red frog like a beating heart?
