Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

Marya Quinsana rapidly grasped the situation.

“Morton, I’m taking on Mikal as an extra hand in the surgery. Right?”

Morton Quinsana said nothing but stormed out in a petulance of slamming doors.

“What was that all about?” asked Mikal Margolis.

“Morton’s very attached to me,” said Marya Quinsana. “Well, he’ll just have to get used to the fact that things have changed a bit now that you’re here.”

A week later Persis Tatterdemalion returned to Desolation Road with her old, proud name, her three husbands and a full-size professional-quality snooker table made by MacMurdo and Chung of Landhries Road. All hands were set to hauling it from the station to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel. Complimentary refreshments were promised and the children, who had danced around pulling ropes and carrying cues, gave a hooray in anticipation of bottomless jugs of clear lemonade. When Persis Tatterdemalion/Gallacelli saw the locks and the sign, she went straight to find Mikal Margolis.

“You don’t have to go.”

Mikal Margolis was sterilizing a pair of pig castrators. He found it impossible to hold any anger against her, though rationality demanded that he should. It was fate, and being angry at fate was as futile as being angry at the weather.

“I thought it was best that I leave.” Mikal Margolis’s voice was heavy with congested love. “It wouldn’t have worked, we couldn’t have gone back to the old days, not knowing that you belonged to someone else, were bearing someone else’s child. It won’t work again. Take my share of the hotel as a wedding present and I hope it brings you joy. Honestly. One thing though… tell me, why did you have to do it?”

“What?”

“Get pregnant by… by the Gallacelli brothers, of all people! What were you doing that day the rains came? That’s what I can’t understand, why them, have you seen the place they live in? It’s like a pigsty… I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Look, I was crazy then, we were all crazy then…”

She remembered lying flat on her back in a bed of red poppies the day the rains came, staring at the sky, twirling a little red poppy in her fingers, humming a silly little tune while a million million light years away something went ump-wump, ump-wump, ump-wump inside her. She had gladly ripped off her clothes when the rains fell and rubbed the beautiful red mud into her hair; it had felt good, it had felt free like flying, it had felt like she could fall forever like a fat, pregnant raindrop and burst her womanly fluids over the dry land. She had put her arms out like wings weeeeee round and round and round, down into the fields of flowers, her propellors sending daisies marigolds poppies flying in twin arcs from her round nippled engines. Child of grace, she had been crazy then, but hadn’t everyone, and if this crazy town with all its same same faces wasn’t an excuse to go crazy time and again, what was? Maybe she had gone a little too far: the Gallacelli brothers had never needed much encouragement, but when EdUmbertoLouie had got on top of her, she’d flown!

“I didn’t know what I was doing; hell, I thought I was flying.” The excuse did not even convince her. After they parted, Mikal Margolis felt the guilt rise like fog. He must walk away, and walk away soon, from these women who were drawing him close to the Roche limit of the heart.

In the new snooker annex of the B.A.R./Hotel Mr. Jericho was potting balls with the consummate ease of a man who had his Exalted Ancestors calculating the angles for him. Limaal Mandella, aged seven and three-quarters watched him. When the. table was free, he picked up a cue and while attention was focused on beer and bean stew, made a break of one hundred and seven. From behind the bar Ed Gallacelli heard the sound of balls falling into pockets and took interest. He watched Limaal Mandella complete his hundred and seven, then go on to make one hundred and fifteen.

“Child of grace!” he exclaimed quietly. He went over to the boy, busy setting up the triangle of reds for another practice. “How do you do that?”

Limaal Mandella shrugged.

“Well, I just hit them where it seems right.”

“You mean you’ve never touched a cue before now?”

“How could I?”

“Child of grace!”

“Well, I watched Mr. Jericho and did what he did. It’s a very good game, you’re totally in control of what’s happening. It’s all angles and speed. I think I might go for the big break this frame.”

“How big?”

“Well, I think I’ve got the hang of it. The maximum.”

“Child of grace!”

And Limaal Mandella made a maximum break of one hundred and forty seven and Ed Gallacelli was utterly amazed. Ideas of bets, challenges and purses began to trickle through his mind.

The months of Persis Tatterdemalion’s pregnancy passed. She grew great and bulbous and unaerodynamic, which depressed her more than anyone suspected. So great and bulbous grew she that her husbands took her to Marya Quinsana’s veterinary surgery for a second opinion. Marya Quinsana listened for almost an hour through a device used for monitoring llama pregnancies and at the end of that time diagnosed a case of twins. The town cheered, Persis Tatterdemalion waddled ponderously around the B.A.R./Hotel in gravid misery, the rains rained, and the crops grew. Under Ed Gallacelli’s management Limaal Mandella turned teen-shark, fleecing gullible visiting soil-scientists, geophysicists and plant pathologists out of their beer dollars. And Mikal Margolis drew foolishly close to Marya Quinsana’s mother-mass and by the laws of emotional dynamics cast Morton Quinsana into the dark.

On a sharp and freezing autumn night, Rajandra Das went around knocking on every front door in Desolation Road.

“They’re coming, it’s time!” he said, and dashed away to spread his warning to the other households. “They’re coming, it’s time!”

“Who’s coming?” asked Mr. Jericho, slyly arresting the fleetfooted Mercury with a cunning arm lock.

“The twins! Persis Tatterdemalion’s twins!”

Within five minutes the whole town, with the exception of the Babooshka and Grandfather Haran, were being served complimentary drinks in the B.A.R./Hotel, while in the master bedroom Marya Quinsana and Eva Mandella got in each other’s way as Persis Tatterdemalion squeezed and huffed and huffed and squeezed and huffed a pair of fine sons into the world. As might have been expected, they were as alike in every detail as their fathers.

“Sevriano and Batisto!” declared the Gallacelli brothers (senior). The two celebrated and while the Gallacelli brothers (senior) were in with the mother and the Gallacelli brothers (junior), Rajandra Das posed the question everyone wanted to ask but had lacked the courage to voice.

“All right then, which one of them is the father?”

The Great Question buzzed around Desolation Road like a swarm of annoying insects. Ed, Umberto or Louie? Persis Tatterdemalion did not know. The Gallacelli brothers (senior) would not say. The Gallacelli brothers (junior) could not say. Rajandra Das’s question reigned absolute for twentyfour hours, then a better question replaced it. That question was: Who killed Gaston Tenebrae and left him by the side of the railroad line with his head smashed like a breakfast egg?

There was to be a trial. It was eagerly anticipated by all. It would be the event of the year. Possibly the event of all time. It would mark Desolation Road as a real place, for no place was real until someone had died there and put a big black pin on the monochrome maps of the dead. It was of such importance that Dominic Frontera spoke with his superiors on his microwave relay and hired the services of the Court of Piepowder.