Chapter 9
Wake up. Wake up, for crying out loud, you’re scaring me.
I was lying on a bed of ice, with a ton of ice on top of me. My head was pressed down hard on the ice by the weight of the ice above me, and my brain was frozen stiff. Piss off, I thought, but I couldn’t remember why.
Don’t be like that. We need each other. I need you.
I vaguely remembered something about that.
I was needed, for some future ramification of the grand design, but it was classified and need-to-know, and that information was not available.
You can’t help speculating, though, and it made me wonder; what kind of really bizarre and unnatural set of circumstances would make me necessary or even useful, let alone essential – me, of all people, a cowardly peasant whose only skill is writing out words and drawing little pictures?
I don’t even make the words up, I just copy them. Crazy.
Sorry, I thought, because it takes loads more muscles and muscular effort to frown than to smile, according to some old writer whose name I couldn’t remember, writing a million years ago, when they knew about stuff like that.
Anyway; do what’s easiest and takes the least effort.
Sorry, I thought. I didn’t mean to be nasty.
I know this is probably quite uncomfortable for you, and a bit disturbing. Quite likely more for you than most people, because you’re smarter than most people. The smarter you are, the worse it is, apparently. Sort of a left-handed compliment, in a way.
I had no idea what she was talking about. She? I remembered knowing the reason why I thought she was a she, but not the reason itself. A quotation from a lost book, copied out into another book by someone who knew absolutely nothing about anything.
Oh Lord, you are in a state, aren’t you?
Yes, I thought; then, What’s a state?
Nuts. My fault. Of course, it’s easier for normal people because they believe, so they hate me, because I’m the spawn of the Evil One, and hate helps you keep warm. You couldn’t believe just a tiny bit, could you? For your own good.
I tried believing. Sorry, believe in what?
The Invincible Sun, she said patiently, who created heaven and earth, and His son the Redeemer, who sits on the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the quick and the dead. Ring any bells? Hello?
Is he real? I asked.
Yes. Real as anything. And He loves you and will not suffer your foot to be moved. Just hold on to that thought, and everything will be peachy.
I tried to imagine Him, but all I could think about was a round yellow blob. Hard to imagine a yellow blob creating heaven and earth, whatever they were when they were at home. Still, weirder things have happened, as my mother used to say. Excuse me, I thought.
Yes?
Why does the son sit on the father’s hand? That doesn’t sound very comfortable.
It’s figurative language. Or a mistranslation. Because.
Are we nearly there yet?
Soon, said her voice, and then it was too cold to think.
Wake up, said the voice. Wake up, for crying out loud.
I remembered that I was alive. Not a happy thought. Are we nearly—?
We’re fine. Not far now. We’ll be there soon.
Is it soon yet? I asked.
It’ll be soon very soon. This isn’t normal, you know. Clearly you’re much more vulnerable than most people.
I had no idea what vulnerable meant. It hurts, I whined; and that was odd, because I wasn’t sure what I was hurting with. I had no arms or legs, head, body, I couldn’t see or hear. But it hurt.
There’s my brave little soldier. Buck up, for God’s sake. If you die on me, I’m going to be in so much trouble.
Sorry, I thought.
I’m pretty sure it’s something to do with you being an atheist. It screws up your moral immune system.
Just so you know, I’m on a horse, riding north on the Southern Express road, about six south of Hellenreif.
It’s a clear day, sunny but a bit of a nip in the air, and I’ve got plenty of food, because I stocked up before I left Kouden.
Your body’s absolutely fine, except I sprained one of your fingers tightening a girth, sorry about that, but it’ll be fine in a day or two.
It’s a nice body and it’s good that you’ve taken care of it over the years.
Very good teeth. Svangerd has a recurring abscess under one of her back molars, which gives her hell sometimes but she’s far too scared to have it out.
Probably I should’ve had it seen to while I was in her, I’d have done her a favour.
Betterment, I think they call it. Always try and leave a place neater and tidier than when you moved in. Hello? Can you hear me?
I think so.
God, you’re a mess. Trouble is, I’m going as fast as I can. The only way to shave a bit off the journey time would be to hitch a lift on the mailcoach at Hellenreif, but I’d need a pass for that. Feel up to faking one for me?
I don’t know. What’s a pass?
Shit. I can operate your hand, of course, and the correct form of words is right here in your memory, but I still need you to do the actual faking.
If I try and do it, it won’t come out right.
There’s technical reasons why it works like that, a load of stuff to do with the soul and the transcendent nature of genius, it’s why I could possess the body of Saloninus but I couldn’t make it write Creatures of Impulse.
Go on, be a sport. It’s for your benefit as much as mine. At the very least, you could try.
Sorry, I thought. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Fuck, piss and shit. This really isn’t good. You do realise, if you drop dead on me, I’ll be completely screwed.
I’d already apologised, and I wasn’t entirely sure I still knew what sorry meant.
It was something you said, but beyond that – all this thinking was making me feel very tired, and the more tired I was the more it hurt.
Surely, I reasoned, it must be possible just to slip away, let go, allow myself to drift off somewhere where it didn’t hurt any more and there wasn’t that horrible cold voice trying to make me do things.
That kind of slipping away was definitely a thing and there was a word for it, but I couldn’t remember it offhand.
Don’t you fucking dare. They’d have my scalp.
Sorry.
I can’t believe you could be so thoughtless.
Don’t you get it? Everything depends on you.
Millions and millions of people who haven’t even been born yet.
A grand design that’s been five thousand years in the making.
People have died to get you to where you are now.
My job is on the line. We need you. God needs you.
Who?
I woke up. I was sitting in a chair, beside a fire, in a room. The fire was warm, though not nearly warm enough. There was a woman standing over me. I’d never seen her before.
“This is a total balls-up,” she said. “They’re going to flay me alive.”
I flexed my fingers. They all worked apart from one, which felt like it had been sprained. Then I wiggled my toes.
“Obviously,” the woman said, “I can’t just steal this body. I’d need half a dozen clearances from area command, and there simply isn’t time. How are you feeling?”
“Cold,” I said.
The woman sighed. She was short, stocky, pepper-and-salt hair drawn back into a bun.
“If only they’d told me you’re a total big girl’s blouse I could’ve anticipated, sorted something out.
Never in all my years in the business have I come across anybody so utterly feeble.
It’s a joke. Six foot three of lean muscle and you’ve got all the resilience of an egg yolk. Try standing up.”
I tried and failed. “Where is this?” I asked.
“The Hope Vindicated at Hellenreif,” the woman said. “I think when we got here you were actually clinically dead. Which meant I collapsed in the stable yard and had to be carried up the stairs. Took three grooms and the ostler. Then the landlady came up to see if I was all right, so I nabbed her.”
I had pins and needles in my memory, which meant I was getting the feeling back. “Svangerd,” I said.
“Oh, she’s fine. Soon as Grimhild realised I’d done a flit, she let her go. She’s hopping mad, goes without saying. Grimhild and Svangerd, both of them. I really wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when they catch up with you.”
Svangerd, with that thing inside her. She’s one of those women who can’t abide the cold. Any temperate lower than the melting point of copper and she’s utterly wretched. “I nearly died,” I said.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you, you halfwit.
Do you have the faintest idea how awkward it is for me if one of my hosts dies on me?
I have to hang around, like a basinful of porridge without the basin, until area command can send someone to scoop me up, and just in case I neglected to mention it earlier, we’re on a fucking schedule.
” She sighed and crossed her arms. “No use beating you up about it, I guess, you can’t help being completely pathetic.
Only, you should’ve thought about that before you told me to get into your head. Really, you should.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. “Now what?”
She gave me a long, soulful look that would’ve been devastating if she’d still been inside Svangerd.
“I’m going to have to come back inside you,” she said.
“Sorry, but there’s no alternative. So what we’ve got to do is somehow induce you to grow at least the vestige of a backbone, so we don’t have to go through all that palaver again.
I’m not quite sure how we’re going to do that, but we’ve got to. ”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”