Hugh Cook: The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

Why did the young man take this business of rape so seriously? He was not one of those earnest young philosophers who pass through a phase of diligent asceticism at the age of eighteen. No: it was a survivor’s caution which governed his flesh.

Chegory Guy was, as we have said already, an Ebrell Islander. By breeding at least, though not by birth. Yes, though Chegory Guy had been born on Untunchilamon, his parents had both been of Ebrell Island stock. Now the Ebrell Islanders are a race of drunkards, knifefighters and fornicators cursed by a genetic tendency to wanton dissipation. You doubt this? Are you then one of these Ashdan liberals who hold that hereditary traits are but illusory, and who believe (or at least claim to believe) that all things are possible for all people? Read on! And you will be enlightened.

The Ebrell Islanders had long been a troublesome minority on Untunchilamon. They had always been for the most part unemployed. Gambling, drug abuse, violence and venereal disease were rife amongst them. They were customarily involved in smuggling, theft, prostitution, extortion and organised crime. They were a cancerous blotch upon civilisation.

Therefore, when Chegory Guy was but nine years of age, the wise and magnanimous Wazir Sin had organised a pogrom against the Ebbies. The slaughter had been efficient in the extreme, and only a few of the underpeople had escaped into the wilderness. Among those few were the nine-year-old Chegory Guy, his father, his uncle Dunash Labrat and his cousin Ham.

Strangely, the slaughter of the Ebrell Islanders failed to end unemployment, crime and prostitution in Injiltaprajura. Wazir Sin was vexed. He decided he had not gone far enough. So he drew up a Program of Purification. First he would hunt down any and all Ebbies who had fled into the Wastelands. Then he would slaughter the few survivors of the Dagrin — the aboriginal race of Untunchilamon. Then he would kill the crippled, the insane, the mutant, and anyone over the age of seventy. Then he would But it is pointless to detail further this Noble Experiment, for it was not to be. Before the saintly Wazir Sin could enact his visionary program, the horrors of Talonsklavara threw the Izdimir Empire into disarray. The Yudonic Knight Lonstantine Thrug took advantage of the confusion, overthrew the innocent Sin, then murdered that upright imperial servant. Two years later, Thrug was imprisoned in the Dromdanjerie when his mounting insanity had reached the point where it had become undeniable. His daughter Justina installed herself in the belfried palace at the top of Lak Street and proclaimed an amnesty so general that its provisions extended even to the few remaining Ebrell Islanders.

Some of the Ebrell Islanders who still survived in the wilderness returned to Injiltaprajura. Dunash Labrat came home to reclaim his properties, which had been managed in his absence by his wife. Though Chegory Guy’s father stayed in the heartland of the Scorpion Desert, Chegory himself came back to Injiltaprajura with his uncle (the aforesaid Dunash Labrat), and began an apprenticeship as an apiarist. This was aborted when young Chegory proved to be allergic to bee stings. Thereafter he took various forms of irregular employment until at last he landed himself a steady job on the island of Jod.

On Jod, Chegory came into contact with Ivan Pokrov, and thus met Pokrov’s friend Jon Qasaba. An Ashdan. An Ashdan liberal, in fact. Jon Qasaba and his sister-in-law Artemis Ingalawa found the civilisation of Chegory Guy to be a project which appealed to their hopelessly optimistic liberal tastes. They collaborated with Ivan Pokrov on this civilisation experiment, arranging for Chegory’s working day to end at midday so he could study throughout the afternoon while still drawing his pay from Jod’s Analytical Institute. Soon enough, Chegory was boarding with Jon Qasaba in the Dromdanjerie’s staff quarters, and was thus thrown into daily contact with the nubile Olivia.

Is there any need to further elaborate the reasons for Chegory’s caution? He was a member of a despised minority which had recently been almost hunted to extinction on Untunchilamon. By reason of his race, people would expect him to rape, kill, cheat, steal and lie, and also to indulge in the worst forms of drug abuse. Therefore he acted always with the greatest of caution, avoided compromising situations, and showed his thorns to Olivia.

This delicious young damsel, seeking friendship at least (and sometimes thinking she might be seeking more), found his remoteness hard to endure.

By now you may be asking: how are such things known? How have the dynamics of Chegory’s relationship with Olivia been discovered? How can we be sure that this is how it was?

Why, because there is such a thing as gossip, of course. You must realise that institutions (prisons, armies and asylums) are great places for gossip, because there is intimacy, the cheek by the jowl, the free speaking of the loquacious in front of those so familiar they have become invisible, and because there is time. Time to study hints, to theorise on fragments.

And if most of the witnesses to these events were mad, what of it? The intellectual powers of the insane are no weaker than those of people fool enough to accept the status quo. You may doubt this. But reflect! Suppose one has done something heinous. Suppose one has raped one’s brother, burnt down a temple, embezzled half a million dragons or finally settled accounts with one’s mother-in-law. What is smarter? To throw oneself on the mercy of the court, and get oneself executed? Or to discover that one is in truth insane and really indulged in delinquency because one was, for example, frightened by a goldfish in early youth.

Believe me, unless one is truly demented it takes a lot of calculated intellectual discipline to maintain one’s madness in the face of the implacable investigations of that most scholarly of all therapists, Jon Qasaba.

Suppose one has yet again been hailed to the Drom-. danjerie’s interview room, there to face the tenth interview in as many days with the formidable Qasaba. The ever-resourceful Ashdan thinks he has at last found a clue which will explicate one’s behaviour. He enters. He seats himself. He shuffles through a great heap of notes, observations and laborious speculations. Then he looks one in the eyes (he is still ignorant of the fact that my people consider such eye-to-eye contact extremely rude) and he says:

‘Why did you use an axe to kill your mother-in-law?’ ‘Because I wanted her dead.’

‘Yes, yes, I know that. But why an axe? Why that particular implement and not another?’

In the teeth of such a question, what is one to do? One’s natural reaction will be to laugh. Or voice one of the quips which come so easily to the tongue:

‘What was I supposed to use? A toothpick?’

But one cannot safely do either of these things. The mad are supposed to be serious and devoid of wit. So: will the truth serve? No. For the truth is too simple. It was pleasure, pure pleasure, to see the bitch smashed apart, to see her skull burst like a rotten cantaloup, to see great globs of blood [Here a lengthy descriptive passage has been excised. By Order, Drax Lira, Redactor Major.]

Anyone can understand this. Or should be able to. However, Jon Qasaba is so obsessed by his pursuit of arcane knowledge that he has lost touch entirely with the blatantly obvious. So one thinks long and carefully, then answers: ‘Weight.’

‘Weight?’

‘Yes, it… the axe, it… I mean, it was heavy. Oppressive. It was… there was a memory. I mean, what I’m trying to say is that there’s all these… these…’

‘Go on.’

‘It goes back to… to when I was little, that’s when the weight, the weight, the pressure, it first… or maybe it was before then.’