Henning Koch - The Maggot People

“You know, if we really want to leave this place we can’t head down , can we?” she said. “Are you sure you’re trying to escape, Michael? Are you sure you’re not just playing games with your friends, the graybeards?”

Michael trudged on, considering her question, and then answered: “I’m running because they’re puffed-up frauds; I’m sick of their pomposity. They mystify the maggot and keep it secret; they use its power to make themselves stronger. They tell themselves they’re the custodians of our future, Ariel, but they’re only saving their own skins.”

“You sound a bit like them. Maybe you should also grow a beard? I’m sure it’ll turn gray if you wait long enough.”

“I might have to. I don’t have a razor.”

Their conversation drifted like this, sometimes argumentative, often consoling, but always aimless. They kept moving for the sake of moving, never knowing where they were heading.

On the third day the passages broadened and they reached an ultramodern silo where the Sacred Tomb of Jesus was housed in a lead-lined cavern beyond yet another pair of blastproof steel doors.

The place was absolutely deserted.

They stood, a little awed, looking up at the doors, which were as tall as a three-story building.

“I’ve got news for you,” said Ariel. “Hanging round caves for no particular reason… isn’t my thing.”

“We should go inside at least and have a look.”

Ariel stared dubiously at the steel doors. “I’m not sure I want to. Something tells me once you go in there you’re there for keeps.” Despising herself even as she spoke, she went on: “I’m lost. I don’t know what I want anymore. I don’t even know if I should stand or sit. I miss fruit and sunlight and water.”

Michael nodded at a familiar contraption fixed into the wall, an adjustable double-prong at the top and a retractable hose below. “At least we can top ourselves up when we need to.” He wandered over to the machine, and stood there fingering the controls, while he thought back on the bullshit Mama Maggot had fed him when she emptied him in Sardinia. All that stuff about… what was it she’d called it? — the passpartout —and then the oath of loyalty she had made him swear.

Why did people with power always have to abuse it?

He tested the hose by touching the trigger. A high-pressure burst of wriggling maggots sprayed across the floor.

“Michael, leave that thing and come here.”

She put her arms round him, kissed him and said, “When I am close to you I almost feel human. At least that’s something I can be happy about.”

“I’d say everything is going a bit too well,” said Michael. “Maybe they actually emptied us and we’re hanging up to dry and this is all a coffin dream? If it is, then I’m quite happy being dead.”

Giacomo woke up at six-thirty and made sure he was well tanked up on coffee, raisin rolls, Manchego cheese, and a half-bottle of Armagnac by the time his team of advisers turned up, showered and rosy-cheeked in their pressed suits.

One of the first things Giacomo did when he assumed his position as Grand Master of the Maggot Church was to have a group of top bankers and scientists maggotized and co-opted. He never bothered to learn their names; he didn’t want excessive contact with seculars. They bored him, for one thing, and then of course they didn’t qualify for storage and eternal life — which inevitably meant any friendship would have limited duration.

His chief statistician was a ferocious creature; he knew her simply as Chase, because that was the institution for which she had once worked. His financial analyst, a bit of a pompous dullard from South Kensington, went by the name of Barings. Then there was a smiling, voluptuous biologist, Smithsonian, who in another life would probably have had many happy children. Lastly, an acne-scarred information technology expert from New York — Warburg.

Giacomo watched them settling into their chairs, and as usual he marveled at their apparent ability to find pleasure in this whole ethos of Don’t fuck with us; we’re here to do business and we know what we’re talking about: their salmon-striped cashmere suits, thousand-dollar handbags, polka-dot silk ties, expensive splashes of aftershave or perfume, the hiss of tights as legs were crossed, then those shoes, polished and sharp-heeled, lurking under the table like malevolent insects. Warburg, on the other hand, affected a sort of disheveled slacker appearance, always glum, always arrayed in a baggy tracksuit, long hair shedding a light rain of dandruff, a diamond stud in his left earlobe.

Giacomo frowned: Oh, blast it, it was just a lot of ego-posturing, the whole thing. The trouble was he needed them.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve called you in this morning because we must analyze the state of play. As you know we’re having a problem with mortality; we’re talking here about significant people — bishops, cardinals, proper religious people — dying without any prospect of ever coming back. It’s never happened before.”

“Could I ask…ah…you, whoever you are,” he said awkwardly, glancing at Chase, “to give us a rundown of the situation.”

“Certainly,” said Chase with a repressed frown: “Guys, can I have the projector?” She stood up and walked up to the screen, showing a world map with all the countries color-coded according to their “maggot saturation.”

Using her electronic pointer she clicked first on Beijing. “What we have is a statistical problem that’s pretty damn complex, kind of interesting too…”

“Really?” scowled Giacomo. “What’s so interesting about it?”

“Well, let’s take an example. At current maggot levels available to the Beijing market it’s going to take like two hundred and sixty-three years to neutralize the population.”

“That’s absurd,” said Giacomo. “I’ve got ten or twenty years at most.”

“Right,” said Chase. “The problem we have, sir, is if we move more maggot product into the region we’re looking at significantly higher maggot die-off levels. Even if we ram Beijing with five times more maggot, the projected timeframe only improves by…” Her face froze as her brain crunched into the equation: “…just short of a century.”

“That’s absurd!” roared Giacomo.

“Anyway, we can’t move that much maggot into China, sir. There’s a political issue. The Chinese secret service is onto us, and according to our information, they’re starting up a maggot program of their own.”

“The Americans are doing the same, and the European Union, too. The technology is very easy,” Smithsonian cut in, with a lovely grin. “Any imbecile can breed them. All they need is oxygen and sugar. Let’s just hope North Korea doesn’t get hold of them.”

There was a thunderous silence.

Chase continued. “The problem is the die-off factor. If we tried to blitz Beijing with a really massive program, say a tenfold increase, the maggots would actually die off before we got them there.”

“What we’ve got here is a sort of entropy,” Warburg whined. “If we could figure out the problem, we might be able to recalibrate the program and stabilize our targets. Or even modify the maggots… change their hard-wiring.”

“But then we’d have to get into genetic engineering,” Smithsonian sighed, with a look at Giacomo. “What does the Church feel about that?”

“I really couldn’t give a fuck,” said Giacomo irascibly. “I’m faced with a classic Patton-Montgomery conflict of interest.” He stood up, grasping his cigar and bottle of Armagnac. “At the end of the Second World War, Churchill wanted to use Montgomery’s armored brigades to punch aggressively through the lines of German resistance and race for Berlin. But the Americans insisted on Patton’s lines advancing very slowly, taking out all the resistance as they went. And this is why we lost Eastern Europe to the Russians.” He stopped, and swigged his Armagnac. “Just in case any of you have any doubts about where I stand, I want you to know I’m more of a Montgomery man, myself. That means I want the populations of Beijing, Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Los Angeles, Moscow, and New Delhi punched out within ten years… or I’ll decommission you all… and I won’t put you in coffins. I’ll throw you in the fire.”