Salman Rushdie - Luka and the Fire of Life

‘,’ said Ra, ‘.’

‘What on earth was that ?’ asked Bear the dog.

‘He’s speaking Hieroglyph,’ said Nuthog, ‘and what he says is, “Okay, this had better be good.”’

‘Start dancing,’ murmured Bear the dog to Dog the bear. ‘And dance as you’ve never danced before.’

‘And you start singing,’ growled Dog the bear to Bear the dog. ‘Sing as if your life depended upon it.’

‘Which, in point of fact, it does,’ chorused Nuthog, Sara, Badlo and Jinn. ‘And ours too, by the way,’ Nuthog added. ‘No pressure, though. Break a leg.’

So Dog the bear began to dance, first a soft-shoe shuffle, then a rhythm tap, and then the African Gumboot Dance. Once he had warmed up, he went into the Broadway Style and at last his show-stopping speciality, the Caribbean Juba, the most energetic tap dance of them all. The audience went crazy. He had them right where he wanted them; as his feet tapped, so did the feet of the ex-gods; as his hands clapped, so the junked deities clapped along; and when he twirled the Juba Twirl, well, those ancient relics discovered they could still get down and boogie! Ra the Supreme clapped right along with everyone else. ‘,’ he roared, and Gyara-Jinn translated, ‘He says, “You make my pants want to get up and dance.”’ Dog the bear shook his head in wonder. ‘But he isn’t wearing any pants,’ he pointed out. ‘Just that little loincloth sort of thing which doesn’t exactly hide very much,’ agreed Bear the dog, ‘but let’s not argue.’

‘Your turn now,’ said Dog the bear to Bear the dog, and the dog murmured back, ‘Let’s try a little flat-out flattery. After all, it’s been a while since anyone worshipped these folks properly.’ Then he cleared his throat and burst into howlful melody, singing a series of honeyed odes to the gods of Babylon, Egypt, Asgard, Greece and Rome, improvised from less specifically reverential tunes: ‘When I Wish upon Ishtar’, ‘It’s a Beautiful Frey’, ‘Long-winded Adulation Goes to Memphis on the Nile’, and so on. The show seemed to go well, and as he launched into his big finish, the metal sows oohed and clanged behind him.

‘ You’re dee-vine ,’ sang Bear the dog, and the Clangers chorused, ‘ Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang). ’

‘ You’re Level Nine ,’ sang Bear the dog. ‘ Ooh (clang), ooh (clang). ’

‘You gorgeous gods of mine,

I really wanna praise you!

Really am amazed by you!

Really wanna praise you now

Cause you look so fine, my gods…’

‘Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang),’

‘My sweet gods…’

‘Ooh (clang), ooh (clang), ooh (clang).’

‘O, my gods -’

Bear was interrupted by an angry roar and a golden blaze of light. Ra the Supreme broke the spell of the music, rose into the sky, glowing furiously, and shot like a bullet towards the summit of Mount Knowledge. All the other ex-gods soared after him, looking like the grandest fireworks display in world history. Bear the dog looked disconsolate. ‘I lost my audience,’ he said sadly. Dog the bear comforted him. ‘It wasn’t you. Something just happened up there,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was something good. Let’s hope we bought young Luka enough time.’

An enormous white horse with eight legs galloped towards them, snorting angrily. ‘Let’s go and see if you did, shall we?’ he said. ‘By which I mean, you’re both under arrest.’ This was the real Slippy, King of the Horses, and he didn’t look at all pleased to see them. ‘As for you and your sisters,’ he said to Gyara-Jinn and the other Changers, ‘you should consider yourselves seized as well. We’ll decide what to do about you later, but treason, may I remind you, is not a minor offence.’

When Luka saw the rhyming Abysm of Time ahead of him he didn’t slow down, because now, at last, he could feel the ghostly pressure on his left shoulder that told him the Left- Hand Dimension was right there, right beside him , so he ran even faster, and then, at the very edge of the Abysm, he hurled himself to the left…

… and fell into the Bottomless Pit, and, as he plummeted through the blackness, flew apart into a million shiny fragments. When he came to his senses, his life-counter had subtracted one hundred lives, and he was running at the Abysm again; and again throwing himself left at that area of soft pressure; and again toppling into blackness and disintegrating.

And the third time, the same thing happened again . This time, when the shiny fragments of himself re-formed, and he saw that a total of three hundred lives had evaporated in just these few instants, leaving him with only 165, he lost his temper. ‘That’s pathetic, Luka Khalifa, to be honest with you,’ he scolded himself. ‘If you can’t be serious now, after coming so far, then you deserve the Final Permination you are about to receive.’

Just then a red squirrel ran across his path from right to left, at the very edge of the Abysm, and simply disappeared into thin air. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Luka thought, ‘I don’t even know if there are such things as left-handed – left-footed? – squirrels, – but if there are, then this was surely one of them, and it’s amazing how easily it hopped across onto the Left-Hand path, without even trying. Obviously when you really and truly believe it’s there you can scurry across onto it without the slightest difficulty, whenever you feel the urge.’ Whereupon, following the squirrel’s example, Luka Khalifa simply turned to the left and took a step, and, without even needing to stumble, stepped into the left-handed version of the Magic World…

… in which the Mountain was completely different! As a matter of fact, it was no longer a Mountain at all, but a low green hill dotted with oaks and elms and chinar trees and stands of poplars, and flower bushes around which honeybees buzzed, hummingbirds hummed and larks warbled melodiously, while crested orange hoopoes strutted like princes on the grass; and there was a pretty path curling around it to the left, a path which looked like it might take Luka all the way to the top.

‘I always knew the Left-Hand World would be much easier for me to handle than the Right-Hand one, if I could just find my way there,’ Luka thought happily. ‘I bet you that if there was a doorknob anywhere around here, it would turn to the left. It seems that even Knowledge itself is not such a huge, frightening Mountain when the world is arranged to suit us lefties for a change.’

The red squirrel was waiting for him on a low tree stump, nibbling at an acorn. ‘Greetings from Queen Soraya,’ she said, bowing formally. ‘Ratatat’s the name. Oh yes. Her Majesty the Insultana thought you might appreciate a little guidance.’

‘She certainly has friends everywhere,’ Luka marvelled.

‘We redheads like to stick together,’ said Ratatat, bristling with pleasure. ‘And some of us (I don’t want to boast, but there it is) are Honorary Otters of long standing – oh yes! – members of the highly confidential Ott List, the Insultana’s emergency undercover squadron – sleeper agents, if you will, lurking in our secret Ott Beds and available to the lady twenty-four/seven on her personal Ott Line, just in case she needs to activate us. But, much as I’d like to stop and chat about these Ott Topics, I do believe you might be in something of a hurry. So,’ she went on quickly, noticing that Luka had opened his mouth to reply, and obliging him to shut it again, ‘let’s Ott-foot it up this so-called Mountain while we can.’