Hugh Cook - The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘Saved,’ muttered Chegory, for he was sure he must be nearing an exit.

Fatigue fled in the face of excitement, as it had on his discovery of the ice which had so recently (this was how he thought of it, though he was doubtless overdramatising the situation somewhat) saved his life. His stride lengthened as he stepped out smartly, eager to see what was ahead.

The tunnel down which he strode was pierced to left and right by ovoid doorways opening on empty chambers. Chegory glanced in each as he passed it, and was rewarded when he spotted further signs of human life in the tenth to the right. Rubbish rubbish rubbish! Oh most welcome sight! Among the mingled triflings of garbage were a few pieces of broken coconut shell. The carapaces of a couple of land crabs. A small, discrete dumping of turds. A bit of dried-out banana leaf, perhaps used as the wrapping for a handful of rice or rations similar. A few lumps of charcoal remaining from a fire.

‘Someone camped here,’ said Chegory. ‘Or rested here, at least. Ice miners, maybe.’

The amount of rubbish suggested people had been here often, as did the state of the walls, which past visitors had liberally graffitographed with charcoal sketches of the postures of lust — the fluid strokes of the said sketches suggesting that easy artistry which comes from long and diligent practice. There too young Chegory saw, among an overlay of names and slogans, a few scribbled equations. Familiar were these indeed, for they were couched in the inscrutable elegance of Thaldonian Mathematics. Had Ivan Pokrov been this way? Quite possibly. But Chegory was unlikely to find him round the next corner, particularly since the charcoal marks could have been there for anything from a day to fifty thousand years or more.

Chegory picked up one of the pieces of coconut shell. A few tiny, dessicated fragments of dried coconut meat adhered yet to the brown-black rind. He scratched them off with a thumbnail still black from his rock gardening. Licked them up. Food food food! He drooled at memories of the last lunch he had eaten. Sea slugs and flying fish. Right now he would happily have killed for another such meal. Or any meal.

‘Soonest out, soonest fed,’ muttered Chegory.

He tossed the coconut shell over his shoulder. It clattered on the metal underfoot. Chegory scratched through the rest of the rubbish. Nothing there. Nothing to eat, anyway.

He picked up a piece of charcoal then began to write on the wall. He wrote in Ashmarlan for that was the sole language he could read and write, since nobody had thought to learn him his letters till he started to board with Jon Qasaba at the Dromdanjerie, and thereafter the language of his education had naturally been that of his Ashdan tutors.

[Here an anomaly. Ashmolea’s language of scholarship is not the demotic Ashmarlan but the elegant Slandolin, language of Formal Literature and High Art, hence surely Guy’s tutors would have educated him in Slandolin. Does the Originator of the Text err in ignorance? Or is this but an absent-minded slip of the pen? Or is one to presume that the Ebrell Islander Guy was found by his tutors to be incapable of attaining mastery of Slandolin? Quite possibly, since the Originator notes that Guy was, in technical terms, ignorant of any language whatsoever. Scholars should bear in mind ambiguities such as this whenever they encounter a passage in which the Originator is sufficiently hubristic as to lay claim to omniscience. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]

THALDONIAN MATHEMATICS SUCKS RED RULES, OK? AQUITAINE VARAZCHAVARDAN ZABAGRUBS PIGS OLIVIA OLIVIA OLIVIA URI THE VALOROUS WAS HERE JUSTINA LOVES VAZZY. THEODORA LOVES. AND LOVES. AND LOVES.

Here is, first, conclusive proof that Chegory Guy had at least some awareness of what went on in Justina’s pink palace. He knew of the albinotic ape Vazzy which the Empress held in such high regard and he had heard at least a rumour or two of the scandal surrounding the life of Justina’s twin sister, the famous Theodora. What is here secondly demonstrated is the essential bankruptcy of the notion of ‘educating’ an Ebrell Islander. Once Chegory Guy learnt to read and write did he act as an educated man? Did he enter upon politics or the law, or [Here a lengthy tirade against Ebrell Islanders and the stupidity of ‘educating’ them has been deleted on the grounds of redundancy. Conclusive proof of the moral degeneracy and intellectual insufficiency of this subhuman breed has appeared in this Text already. There is no need to reproduce further Comments by the Originator on this subject, particularly when one begins to suspect some of these Comments are Originated not for purposes of advancing scholarship and enhancing the world’s enlightenment but merely to allow the Originator an arena in which to display intellectual prowess, or a misguided ‘wit’ which the Originator equates with such prowess. Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

With his works of literary composition completed, Chegory Guy pocketed some spare charcoal in case he was once more beglamoured by inspiration, then onward he went, soon entering on a huge vaulted hall shod with tessellating tiles cast in three dozen different patterns. Blue and green were the tiles and metal was their substance. Their unity was pierced by half a thousand transparent tubes ascending from floor to ceiling. Fluids flowed within those tubes. Some were clear, doubtless bearing water to feed the fountains which watered Injiltaprajura so generously. Others were stained with colour. A couple did young Chegory recognise — the grey of shlug and the bile-green of dikle. But what was that thick fermented black? That blue made to rival the sky? That ominous red, darker yet than bloodstone? That yellow as bright as the lethal sun scorpion of Zolabrik?

‘Here mystery,’ said Chegory.

With all enquiry thus dismissed he onward went, caring not for the solution of the mystery. He was, remember, but an ignorant Ebrell Islander with a lust for raw survival, not a philosophic scholar with a taste for knowledge and enquiry. Surely any reputable encyclopaedist (yourself, for instance, dear reader) would under the circumstances have stayed to Examine the tubes, to Speculate on their Origins and their Outfalls, and to make notes in order to be able later to Account. But Chegory Guy did no such thing. Instead, he went hunting for a way of escape.

[While one does not wish to deprecate the scholarly impulse in any way, it must nevertheless be noted that the valuation of intellectual enquiry to which the Originator has made a commitment in terms of autogenerated commentary on the above geophysiopsychic scenario is excessive in objectified terms which take into account the presumed extrapolations in regard to survival expectations which the scenario subject would have been making with at least a partial appreciation of the normative consequences of psychobiological stress (such as a shortfall in terms of bio-environmental substance exchange in the input mode and, equally important, deprivation of required regenerative therapy in the form of subjective experience of nonconscious brain modes) and of the implications of such consequences with respect to global performance factors. While precise medicometrical quantification is impossible on the basis of Textual analysis alone, the Originator’s apparent valourisation of speculative enquiry and data acquisition as absolute goods always to be set above the pursuit of socioindividual integration and the preservation of biological integrity is indicative of a failure to rationalise the tension between purely subjective supra-mundane conceptual freedom and statistically probable biosociopolitical outcomes in favour of a normative accommodation with objectified reality. While neither genetic deficiency nor exobiopsychically sourced transmundane manipulation can be definitively discounted as elements causative of this syndrome, the weight of theory coupled with realtime experience gained from extensive praxis in the context of the client-therapist nexus supports the conclusion that inadequate parenting is the ultimative cause of the psychic disturbance which led to the display of the sociomedicolegalistically maladaptive behaviour which resulted in the Originator being subjected to non-voluntary therapy in an institution for non-normative individuals. To put all this in simple layman’s terms, my conclusions are that the psychosocial maladaptation which led to the Originator being incarcerated in a lunatic asylum is predicated upon a sociopathological lack of any sense of proportion, and I blame the parents. Eshambultung Tafun-groid, Phrenologist-in-Chief of the Board of Scrutiny, Psychometrician Extraordinary and Head of the Committee of Norms.]