Rebel at the End of Time. Steve Aylett
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a shape – a shape which can tell us a great deal about what should dwell there. Fetch me down that blue-gold triangular book, Volospion. The Grimoire Yetneyet. Rayskin binding, spine like an eel.’
Volospion wondered why Krill didn’t reach for it himself with one of his arms – he had never previously missed an opportunity to be creepy and undulant – but obliged. He shook the book, and opened it. ‘These pages won’t mix.’ He handed it to Krill.
‘You consider this fact exceptional? It is not. If history teaches us nothing else it’s that matters were fixed, for months or years at a time. Thank you. Now, observe – this page, and this. The information is packed in by a process of endlessly proliferating inverse contradictions. Unfortunately this means that there must be an equal number of false statements in it as there are true facts.’
‘How do you tell the difference?’ asked the Orchid.
‘By trial and error. You may even contrast a couple of truths to reach a third. For instance: “Synergy – the behaviours of whole systems not predictable from the behaviours of the individual elements”, and “Obviouswhynergy – the behaviours of individual elements not predictable from the behaviour of whole systems”. Now, in reference to our party-crasher. Revolutionaries feel a need to explain their acts – dictators do not. You can even track the transition from one to the other in this need to be understood. It might be thought that you could measure the age of an institution by the number of times it has become its opposite while retaining its original name. But in practice, once an institution becomes its opposite, it remains so as long as profitable power can be wielded for it in that permutation. This may be one of the key themes of the Duke’s drama, in fact.’
Lord Jagged of Canaria interjected with effortless precision: ‘You believe, then, that the revolutionary is one of the Duke’s cast of actors?’
‘You know very well, Jagged,’ Krill returned. ‘Ahem ... that I cannot yet say.’
‘How did an empire respond to such revolutionaries?’ the Orchid enquired. ‘Could it cope?’
‘Empire collapse can occur without revolution, according to history – being a matter of empire physics, troy equations and such. It’s all based on energy expenditure, resource extension and principle drift, you see? Over-extension on top and loss of principle at the foundation. Revolution, depending on its effectiveness and honesty, can retard or hasten this collapse. As you can tell, I am equipped only to describe generalities.’
‘Which are getting us nowhere!’ cried Volospion. ‘How to proceed?’
‘If the young man is an alien, our dear Regina may be in actual danger!’ the Iron Orchid marveled. ‘Imagine it!’
‘I doubt any such anomaly will occur,’ mused Lord Jagged. ‘She has her power rings – I suspect she will enjoy the experience, whatever it is. But a course of action occurs to me. What if we spin up an “empire” for this fellow?’
‘What do you mean?’ Volospion asked.
‘It is not a statement open to wide interpretation. I mean …’
‘He means for us to whip up an oppressive regime for a day or two!’ the Iron Orchid exclaimed, seeing the idea.
Jagged’s smile was strange. ‘I believe this is what the Duke intends. To continue the drama he so carefully appointed. And in the process of interaction we may let our interloper prove himself as one thing or another.’
‘I’ll confess it has texture, Jagged,’ Volospion admitted, surprised again at Jagged’s angularity of thought. From where did he retrieve such notions? ‘I have an ancient recording which could help with that. It tells of a real jewel-box of an empire. With a big smoky head.’
‘We could put the courtiers in a deep pit,’ the Orchid suggested.
‘Set up tollgates,’ added Jagged. ‘And charge money.’
‘Money?’ asked Volospion, fluttering his hands as if to conjure the enigmatic concept.
Krill explained.
‘I see – it immediately provides a means of issuing unthinkable orders to good men! I agree that we should play along, for the purpose of our wager. We will discover if the crazed youth’s attack was choreographed or if there was anything accidental or authentic there atall.’
‘Authentic?’ said Lord Jagged, absently examining a fossilized phone. ‘Kudos to the Duke if there were.’
Volospion ignored him. And reaching for their power rings they set about recreating, as far as their knowledge allowed, the structures of a past age. In this they were veterans since a time their own memories could not recall.
5 A Girl From a Different World
Wherein the Stranger Begins to Sense His Mistake
They stopped in the Hapexian Wasteland. She walked a way from the vehicle and looked at the components at her feet. Here was strange debris, not one article of it alike to another. A million scenes had been made and demolished here, leaving these traces. The stranger followed her, taking off his jacket which was spiky like a fruit. He draped it over her shoulders, she didn’t know why. She crouched down and tilled through some bits. A glass padlock containing a preserved scorpion, a lump of shocking pink coal, a feathered medal, a semi-transparent amber screw, a domino of green wood, a playing card which was perpetually burning. She showed him this last. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
He seemed baffled, groggy. He knelt next to her, picking things up. A cross-sectioned ammonite containing blue oil, a piece of ice in a green rubber cage, a black root studded with tiny white screaming faces, a small disk of olvis timber. Principal Krill had invented four new colours – olvis, cry, zild and severin – and was happy for anyone to use them.
The stranger stood with a sudden inbreath, looking to the sky. ‘I don’t know where I am. This place … maybe this is what happens.’
‘Happens? When?’
‘When you win. Maybe you get kicked up to another level like a videogame. It would explain a few things.’ He glanced back at his vehicle. ‘Motor’s not even ticking down. So hot out here.’
She turned a silver power ring for a cool breeze, which he seemed to appreciate, closing his eyes.
‘Is this all part of the plan?’ she asked. ‘You taking me?’
‘I didn’t rescue you by accident, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I thought for a moment the Duke would be upset.’
‘He’s quite incapable of being upset about anything, I assure you.’
‘Ofcourse you’re right – the dear. And it was a wonderful “rescue”.’
‘If only it would rain.’
Regina touched the blue power ring on her left hand and rain began falling. A black umbrella pumped open from her hand.
‘How can you walk around like that – naked except for those tattoos?’
‘It’s easy.’
‘It’s shameless.’
He seemed galvanic with refusal. A multidirectional refusal, of everything perhaps. His beauty was like a bull eating a rose.
‘I don’t know what you mean. It’s very authentic. Principal Krill says the earliest age of man was without colour, the black and white age. The technical term was mono erectus. Some theorize that that age was also entirely silent, and only later was there full colour and sound. Principal Krill has visual records of prehistory and it’s quite true.’
‘Your Principal Krill has a lot to answer for, it seems.’
‘Oh, yes. He’s given everyone so many ideas about the past. The visual records I mentioned also show that people moved very quickly then, with an almost jerky