remind me of the sins of our past. So that I might not be tempted to err now that I have placed myself out of reach of the help of the Fathers of Men and in the near occasion of foulest sin and degradation. But another part of me knows well that this is not so. It is pure acquisitiveness. I want a keepsake. Just a small thing. I spot a bit of fabric, just a small loop of stretchy material that is a hot shade of pink. It is the colour that attracts me. We do not have pink to wear. Haraamasur, I know. Still, I slip it over my wrist and push it up under the sleeve of my dressless, then continue on into the glare of the low sun and into this, my third night alone in the wilderness. I walk all through the night, for what reason to stop? I find no place of shelter to protect me from the cold and rain.
Close to dawn the rain eases away almost entirely, and the grisly moonlight labours once more through her cowl of cloud. Now, clear of the bog at last, I note the land is again capable of supporting flora greater than rushes and swamp grass. Indeed, here are many greeny-grey bushes. It is clear that this was once a garden, though it is now overgrown. When I kneel to investigate I find a profusion of small beans, pale yellow in colour. Surely there can be no harm in eating from such shrubs, since they seem to have been cultivated by human hand. I collect several handfuls of the beans, which are bitter and very hard, but I force myself to chew as I walk on into the morning. And now, as the mists clear, I see what kind of a place I have stumbled into.
As far as I can see stretches a field whose monotony is broken at regular intervals by grave markers, each rough-cut from white granite in the shape of the holy phallus. Some are whole, many are damaged, intentionally split down the middle by some heretical hand. There are tens of thousands that I can see, though I cannot see the end of them. All of our fallen soldiers and Men, martyrs sacrificed in the holy wars fought so long ago. All the nameless dead.
Ah, horrible! I fall to my knees and hide my face in my cowl. I am exhausted beyond description. I sleep, I don’t know for how long, but after a time I hear a snuffling breath and feel the moisture of a rough tongue that dares to lick the salt from my face. A lili!
I open my eyes and find myself presented not with the lashless eyes of a malformed swamp-siren, but with the brindled face of some cat-like thing, only three times the size of any cat I have known, its muscular body longer than my own. Behind him are ranged three others, low rolling growls issuing from all throats. Then the one nearest me exposes his fangs, leaving no doubt as to his intent. Very carefully, stealthily, I feel for Pearl’s knife in the folds of my garment.
PEARL
10.
I did not ask for this.
‘Thank you, Mother Oblation,’ I say, oh so demure. Good on me. Oh, thank you. But I must turn away so she cannot see my rage, which I know is making my lips thin as wires fine enough to slice through the cheese of her heart and then feed it piece by piece to the rats.
She waits for me to swoon in an ecstasy for gratitude. Oh, take my arms …
So I face her. I have to. I rise, dusting the earth from my knees.
‘You may finish up your duties here, and go and bathe, dear. Then bed. In the morning you will present yourself at the Careforce office, where I will meet you.’ Those measured tones. The tea-coloured eyes, watery. Her eyeball skin looks oddly dimpled, as though the jelly-stuff they’re made of is moldering while she still lives. But can you call it living, really? ‘I will take you to your audience with the Ministers, then attend to your confinement preceding Perfection.’ She smiles again, gravely. A smile from the grave. ‘We are proud of you, Pearl. As we are proud of all our girlies. You are one of three Chosen from Oblation House this Attainment.’ Simpering idiot slave with a voice like a weevil in my brain. And she leans forward as if to embrace me, but before her clammy hand can touch me I take a step back. I thank her. All the while I am telling myself, Do not give away by word or gesture an iota of your feeling, of what you are thinking, Pearl.
I walk away from the garden.
Mica cannot conceive of why a girlie would not Beseech, even her weak wicked Pearl. And MaOblat, mere House Mother, could not know I did not Beseech. But the Properganders who scrutinise our secret slips from the Plea Box must have known. Secret? Filthy treachers. They have chosen me though I did not ask.
I walk faster now, wanting to run run run. I control this urge and I cross the corp-yard where the eyes wait and watch on their stalkers’ stalky stalks. But once clear of the gazers I do run, all fuelled by hate I run, silent as a sewer rat, down past the cunnydorms, Oblation, Sacricunt and Dutilove, all filled with girlies dreaming dreams of self-sacrifice and sacred mutilation, but I must have something vital missing in my being for I have never felt the impulse towards Perfection. So. Good riddance! Good riddance to whatever it is that impels those selfless girlies, and damn me to hell if that’s what it takes because there is no Plea from me slipped into the cock-eye in the Plea Box – and rot your Citadel, your Orchid Nursery and all the Orchids too! Yes, bring on the Agnostics – if they’re real, and if they are, may the Devil lead me to them!
I break into the Careforce office and steal a loaf, and from the fridge a big knob of hard cheese and a fistful of cold radishes. I steal a canteen for water and a flask of wine and a coil of fine wire for making a snare for my dinner. And I take this book and this pencil and six more and a blade to keep them sharp. And for cutting anyone who might try to stop me.
I take a big coat, the one belonging to that she-dog, the Martinette, with her voice like an air-raid siren, may she freeze her horrible pointy little doggie-dugs off, and stuff its outsized pockets with my gear. In the foyer I pass the glass Vitrine of Shame and the old-fashioned opaque porno-dress from the Museum of Iniquities in there. It takes my fancy so I slide the panel open and nick that too. I quickly slip out of my dressless and and pull my new frock over my head. Glancing at my reflection, I’m pretty chuffed at the coverall effect. See me, titless and cuntless porno queen! I’d like to steal a lot more, but there’s nothing more I need. I’d like to kick and punch and bash the glass in, but that would be very noisy and stupid.
Then I tear the first page from the notebook and scribble out a note to Asa. I tell him everything is changed and now we have no time to plan, for if I wait I will soon be on my way to Perfection tomorrow and a limbless vegetable by next week. I tell him where to meet me. By BigAmass. There is no other landmark as clear as that. And then I write: Only wait. Wait a day and a night and if I’ve not been caught and bundled back like a sack of dead hope, then perhaps I am safe. I underline this instruction to wait many times, for I do not want a dead man, but a living-breathing-loving one. I secrete the note in our hiding place, where we have always placed our messages, here under the sheeny moon with her luminous face all riddled with craters of some ancient pox that’s faded now to old scars … and still she shines! She shines. And I too will shine and I too will beam when Asa and I meet, oh yes, we will fall together down into the bracken and I will wrap myself around him and we will move together and there’ll be no need for quiet, no more hush-hush secret silence, no – never mind any more those other boys or Men or damned mothers listening and watching and sharpening their nasty little knives and baring their nasty little teeth …
I love him almost like I loved Mica, my Mica always, my stern and sweet love. I’m so sorry Mica, sister of my heart, but I’m twisted with a sickness that perverts all common sense, thank the long-dead gods! It’s my disease and it’s spread from my head and down down down, and it’s spread from that deep ache in my cockslot and up, up through my bowels and further, further up in a wave, in a phalanx of soldiers, and they beat with their hammers on my anvil of a heart,
