incubating her silly certainty and her careful plan, lay by the side of her lover. See her as she pushes back a damp lock from his eye with its pupil so large and black you can hardly see the blue. We’ve finished fucking and lie a muddled bundle of humanity corded together like mangrove roots under the thin skin of swampy water that is our sour-sweet sweat. I say, ‘Look at this map I found – no, never mind where just now, tell you later – we’ll follow the way that leads to the edge of the treeline, on the edge of the world, edge of Civilisation. A crossroad, a forest, all the way to Hagovel where Big River embraces the swamplands, rich in faeries, feys, and lil’im sprites. And from there I know it is not so far to the ocean, the clean, wide sea that goes on forever …’
A little stray slip of moon gets in to where we lie and I see his eyes are alive with the hope and the terror, as must mine be also. I say, ‘Anyone who is hated as much as the Hag has got to be our friend. Why else is everyone so frightened even by the thought of her? Got to be more to it. We’ll find out what it is.’
By the look on Asa’s face, which is now quite white, my audacity can blanch a Man’s soul. I wonder what it feels like to have one of those, a soul, blanchable or otherwise? Like this? Like I feel? Oh, haraamasur …
My infidelity has opened a chasm at my feet between what I always knew and what I have yet to discover. Between what was and what may be. I am terrified at my insolence and what it has done. Anything can happen now I have broken with the Lore, broken it in half and crushed it beneath my feet, and now I creep in my mind to the edge of the abyss and I peer over the lip at the end of the world, at the end of belief, and I see the bright and dark things within, flashes of possibility …
And then what happens?
On the night of the Day of Attainment – or not – MaOblat came to me. I was working alone in the garden where I’d been sent – a mild and pleasant punishment for some pettiness, my slapping of a dullard for some irritating inanity, as is usual – to work late under the arc of light from the watchtower. I was here a lot, I liked my ‘Solitary’. Alone amongst the rows of lettuce, turnip, silverbeet, their broad, dark leaves so thick and fleshy, lurid in the watch-light, I plucked the weeds that grew there, sly little stranglers. Then I saw her two feet in their brown felt slippers, all bulgy with aug-sockets for her useful appliances, her gizmos for dusting and brushing, for grabbing and grasping.
‘Pearl,’ she said in her crimple-crumpled little voice, her face bright and shiny as a septic carbuncle. At first I thought she’d reprimand me for having my dressless rucked up around my waist and my knees all muddy, but no … Instead, she smiled like one of those antediluvian fishes with bodies of leather and three rows of teeth. ‘Pearl,’ she said, her weak-tea eyes all wet in their dusty pouches, ‘You have been Chosen for Perfection. You have been graced.’
I did not ask for this!
MICA
7.
Amid the hissing cries I let myself sink to the floor, squeezing my eyes shut and clamping my hands over my ears against the obscene sounds. Yes, they are horrible to me, so easily unravelled are the weak fibres of my feeble-female moral being. Then, after a moment or an hour of silent prayer, I open my faithless eyes and look upon them again, the womanidol vessels. Perhaps I may receive the truth of what they are, perhaps I will be redeemed by Truth? But GodFather (BBHCM) does not speak. No revelation through dream or vision is afforded me for I am undeserving and must be tested further. I understand this.
With a dip of the scale, beauty made in equal parts of strangeness and formal utility shifts from mystery to monstrosity. Suffering flesh is all I can see, no more and no less. The vision of symmetrical order that can only be achieved in (wo)Man and nature herself when her untamed form is pruned back to reflect pure function, the ideal to which I always aspired, is ruined. And I feel that ruination in the deepest part of me. If (wo)Men had souls – see, even if it makes me tremble, I can utter even the worst blasphemies, thoughts I would never previously have considered giving form – then that is where I would be feeling it, in my soul. In that moment my world is thrown off kilter, as if the planet itself has fallen out of its orbit around the sun, is dislocated among the dead stars. My blood roils in my brain as I crouch amid the wreckage of a dream.
I am weak and impure and although I know that ultimate spiritual fulfilment is achieved only through sacrifice, in that moment I cannot feel the truth of it. I am a poor, shallow thing, fit only for the meanest and foulest duties in the Spare Parts Manufactory, a dudbub minder or shop-floor sluicer.
But is that her in the rose-coloured gown? I make myself look once more.
‘Pearl?’ I venture.
But the veiled face is still now, the swollen lips closed over the empty mouth. Silent.
I make my way back through the corridor to the meeting house and let myself out into the corp-yard, no plan formulated, no way yet even to think. Somehow day has become evening. The sky is the deepest indigo it can be before turning black. Lightning forks among the heavy clouds banked at the edges of Civilisation, at the end of the farthest plain. I smell metal, and blood sausage frying. The shaved grass of the corp-yard is deep green, highlighted in gold where the floodlights touch it. The foot-soldiers are at their evening Defence Drill. The Martinette yelps a command and the armoured troops stop in perfect unison, the folds of their brief military skirtles subsiding into disciplined folds at mid-thigh. Then, efficiently as clockwork mannequins, each (wo)Man clicks her left shoulder-aug into the right one of her neighbour. I see that this is a formal drill tonight. They have painted their faces in regulation bands of black and white from the forehead down to where the upper body armour meets the throat. Another yelp in a slightly lower key and they click the opposite shoulder-augs into position. Now they form a perfectly impregnable barrier of metal and bone and hard flesh. A beautiful thing.
What Pearl said is true. I do have a talent for this life. It suits me. All of it: the clarity of intent, the elegant precision, the focus and nobility of purpose. Yet it could be that I will never again participate in this humble but essential aspect of the art of war. I let myself linger just a little longer to watch the lines of armed Ecumen now form ranks behind those of the (wo)Men. A further command from the Martinette and the (wo)Men at each end of each line form a circle around the Ecumen, protectors of Perfect State. I watch as the Men now lay the muzzles of their guns upon the steel shoulder-bridge formed by the female foot-soldiers, their living palisade. I do not wait to watch the second round, do not wait to listen to the prayers that will follow.
I walk past the reading room where, years ago, inspired by the images printed on the covers of books, I had sought and eventually won the privilege of learning more of that arcane art. Naturally girlies don’t need very sophisticated reading skills, for we learn our lessons by rote as dictated. We accrue our vocabulary and grammar and all refinements of our spoken manners and conversation through repetitions of the elegant rhythms and poetic constructions in the Tenets of the Ways of (wo)Man and, of course, the Doppelbook. Our girlish mixture of modern post-Liberation phrasing and gracious archaisms tends to please Men – especially the Properganders and Scholars – when they desire to hear our voices. Nevertheless, I managed to get a special dispensation from Jimander, who was in charge of Instruction for Girlies. He granted it only when I had agreed to do an extra unit of Contemplation on the Responsibilities of the Vessel on Tuesday to Saturday evenings. Later, I would take my hard-earned learning and, in intimate collusion beneath the covers of my bed, would in turn impart to Pearl what I had learned … ah, how long ago that now seems!
I
