Chapter 9 #2
She rolled her eyes. “This is hopeless,” she said.
“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?
This is something that’s got to be done.
You’re the only one who can do it. Any normal person – yes, it’d give them the horrors and people would have to be very kind and understanding for a while and not make any sudden movements, but they wouldn’t go to pieces like this, they’d have a shred of—”
“Moral fibre?”
“Yes, as it happens. Gumption. Balls. Talking of which, I’m not surprised you’ve been mooning round that miserable cow all this time and never done a thing about it.
Yes, I know you had an unhappy childhood, blahdy-blahdy, but other people have a shitty time growing up and it doesn’t turn them into emotional and spiritual eunuchs.
Your trouble is, every single thing you do you expect your big brother to smash your face in because of it. That’s no way to live, now is it?”
“You’re not coming back inside my head, and that’s final.”
“Fortunately, it’s not up to you.” She took a step back and considered me, as if she was buying me at market.
“The question is, what can we do to shore you up and make you fit for purpose? And I keep coming back to this atheism nonsense. If only you believed, you’d be able to put up some kind of resistance, and that would keep you going.
I know, it sounds a bit screwy, but I’m sure that’s what’s at the bottom of it.
So, what we’ve got to figure out is, how can we make you believe? ”
“You can’t,” I said.
“No such word as can’t. He can do everything, that’s the whole fucking point. It’s just that there are certain things He chooses not to do, and forced conversion happens to be one of them. Under,” she added thoughtfully, “normal circumstances.”
I shook my head. “If God exists,” I said, “which He doesn’t, you’re His enemy. Therefore—”
“You’re so naive,” she snapped. “Now be quiet and let me think.”
“No,” I said. “Svangerd’s safe now, you told me so yourself.” I stood up. My legs were wobbly as hell, but never mind. “I’m leaving.”
She hit me. Not a bad punch for a short, middle-aged woman.
She caught me right in the solar plexus, and for several seconds I couldn’t breathe.
She guided me back into the chair and pushed me down.
“Like hell you are,” she said. “And please don’t do anything else stupid, because you’ll only get hurt, and this is hard enough as it is without a broken jaw as well.
It was bad enough when I sprained your finger, when I realised it was your right hand, but luckily it’s not one of the fingers you write with.
Now then, I wonder if we could do something with a small, controlled stroke?
Just enough to shut down the bits of your brain that deal with fear and suffering. ”
I made an effort and dragged breath into my lungs.
“No,” she said, “that won’t wash, I’ve checked and it’s far too technical.
Also wiping selected parts of your memory, your childhood traumas and all that garbage.
And I put in an application for you to stand in the presence of the living God, but it’d have to go through channels, and we haven’t got time.
” She frowned and bit her lip. “Maybe,” she said, “we’re looking at this the wrong way.
Let’s ask ourselves, why does being an atheist make you so hopelessly feeble? ”
I tried to think of something pleasant and cheerful, to give myself hope. But I realised that there wasn’t anything like that, so it didn’t help.
“And,” she continued, “I keep coming back to hatred. Normal people can bear to carry me because they hate me. They try to fight, and that keeps them warm, so they don’t just die.
It’s that old ethical immune system thing again.
The trouble with you is, you’re not a hater.
You don’t hate, you just despair. Comes of being a moral vacuum.
No sense of right and wrong, so nothing to trigger your indignation.
Now if I could get you to hate me, really deeply and fundamentally loathe and execrate the mere fact that I exist—”
I looked at her. She grinned. “That’s it,” she said, “Now we’re making sausages.”
True enough. The Loyal Opposition bugs the hell out of me, which is why I swear at them though I don’t usually use profane language, and from time to time I thump them; but hate them?
Not really. You can’t hate someone for being delusional, which is what they are.
Aside from them – I grew up hating my brothers, but I loved them, too.
No. I think hate doesn’t live in my mind, the same way crocodiles don’t live in Permia.
The crocodile, by the way, is a huge Blemmyan water lizard, like a sort of small wingless dragon.
Bremaro devoted a whole chapter of the Histories to them, so we know they used to exist, and presumably they still do.
They only live in hot places. I guess my mind’s too cold for hate.
Also, different creatures have different diets.
The crocodile lives on monkeys and small gazelles, neither of which do you get in Permia.
Hate feeds on a diet of faith, belief in Right and Wrong, Good and Evil.
You hate slavery because you think it’s unethical.
You hate the Darians, because they come over here, scrounging off your taxes and taking all the jobs, which isn’t right.
You hate so-and-so in the chief clerk’s office because he got the deputy secretaryship instead of you, but you deserved it more, so that was unjust. You hate your wife’s cousin because he always makes nasty remarks about you, which is so unfair.
But Right and Wrong, Good and Evil are just chequered squares on the board on which the long game is played out – black squares and white squares, and the pieces move effortlessly from one to another, otherwise they could never get anywhere.
I don’t believe in Good and Evil; therefore I am incapable of true hatred.
But I can dislike someone a whole lot, particularly if they shove me around and cram themselves inside my body and freeze me into an idiot. Not because it’s unfair and unjust and unethical, but because it hurts and I don’t like it. “Absolutely not,” I said. “You are not coming inside my—”
Sorry, she said.
I pushed back. I had next to nothing to push with, just a ribbon of myself between my skin and the ice; like the little wafer of steel forge-welded up the middle of two slabs of iron to make a cutting edge.
It was like pushing against a wall. I pushed so hard against the ice, I could feel myself being crushed against my skin.
I didn’t hate spiders when I was a kid, but they paralysed me with horror, and then I squashed them.
Get out, I screamed. Get out of me, you filthy, disgusting –
That’s the ticket. Keep it up and everything will be jake.
Cold as stone. Cold as midwinter. Cold as home.
Don’t go outside when it’s snowing, my mother used to yell, reinforcing her message with the back of her hand.
I remember one time when there was no wood in the house, and I was freezing.
But it was snowing and we had to stay inside, and we sat round the last pale glow in the hearth.
My mother and father were scared to death, and my brothers were fighting over the blankets.
The hell with this, I thought, so I slipped out without being noticed, out through the back door and across the yard to the woodshed.
I got about halfway before I lost the use of my legs.
I collapsed into the snow, which engulfed my face and hands, sucking the warmth out of me.
It hurt a lot, I couldn’t move, I just wanted it to be over.
Then Kotkel and my dad came and got me, and afterwards my dad hit me so hard he cracked my cheekbone.
He did it for love, which at that moment transitioned from a white square to a black one.
It hurt, but I didn’t hate him because of it.
Anger, which I define as the friction caused by movement between squares, keeps you warm. I carried on pushing. Anger, revulsion and disgust; there abide these three, but the greatest of all is anger.
It’s different in the south, of course, she was saying. Blemmya, Antecyrene, places like that, where it’s always hot. If you were an Antecyrenaean, I’d be a huge blob of volcanic lava. Weird, isn’t it, how cultural programming and environmental conditioning can alter your most basic perceptions.
Fuck you, I thought. Get out.
There’s a book about it, or there was, I think the last copy was lost in the great flood that destroyed the library at Moy Ennep.
Carrhasius of Maba’s Metaphysics. Carrhasius reckoned that you lot weren’t created all on one day by the Invincible Sun moulding you out of river mud.
He took the view that originally you were all monkeys, who somehow managed to get smart and start using sticks and bits of sharp flint.
He also theorised that the soul evolved – that’s the word he coined, evolution – like the body did, to meet the demands of environment, which is why Permian souls are different from Blemmyan or Echmen ones, which is why the Echmen worship the Eternal Flame rather than the Invincible Sun.
Of course, half of what he wrote is complete bullshit, though the other half is true.
You lose track of time, and everything else except the need to push.
It hurt, and it kept on hurting. I pushed, and kept on pushing.
In classical Mezentine they have a different tense for continuous past action, which grammarians call the imperfect.
I hurt, present tense; also, I hurt in the past, perfect tense, I hurt for a long time, continuously and without interruption, imperfect tense.
I push, I pushed, I carried on pushing. And a fat lot of good it did me.