Alasdair Gray - A History Maker

Big Bang to The Battle of

The Ettrick Standard!

ORIGINAL TEXTS BY

Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Milton,

Goethe, Tolstoy, T. S. Eliot,

MacDiarmid, Hamish Henderson

et cetera;

ORIGINAL MUSIC BY

Carver, Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz,

Wagner, Verdi, Stravinsky,

Hamish Mac Cunn

et cetera;

ORIGINAL CLOUD EFFECTS BY

Rubens, Tiepolo, Delacroix, Turner,

Thanks …

Impatiently Wat scanned the print for the name of a living woman and saw Alauda Magna was Choral Synthesizer, Cathleen na Houlihaun was Cloud Choreographer and the mirages had been designed by Lulu Dancy. Under these was a guest list of over three hundred commanders and famous fighters from all round the globe. Lust for Delilah Puddock, the honour of his clan, personal vanity now pulled him so strongly toward the circus that he instinctively knew it would be wrong to go. Welcoming escorts, loud cheering, handshakes with other celebrities would inevitably turn him into a posturing, smirking ornament — into a something used for other people’s benefit. To find why he had been called Instigator of the New Era he switched his telecom to the public eye.

Several housewives, one weeping, said the mobilization epidemic infecting most of the world’s males was a crazy and dangerous fad. An equal number of young women were shown who expressed pride that their brothers or lovers would face death for the glory of their clan.

“Like the crowds of men swarming to their local Warrior houses, most people in the public eye are responding euphorically,” said a public eye announcer euphorically, “Commanders everywhere predict a new age of more challenging war games played on a scale of almost historical proportions. They also insist that this is no cause for alarm. The Geneva Conventions will not be contravened though war game rules may have to be redrawn.”

Wat was alarmed by how many people said there was no cause for alarm. He watched Wolfgang Hochgeist with a globe of the world showing the spread of the epidemic from its origin in Ettrick. The least infected areas were Tibet, Ireland, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Italy. Most of the worst infected had military histories. In Japanese, German and French speaking lands the armies trebled, in the British Isles and North America they more than quadrupled. The big surprise was Canada, where fighting men had multiplied by six. Hochgeist daringly suggested that the Japanese, German and French had been slightly inoculated against militarism by historical recollections of disaster; Britain and the former U.S.A. were more prone to it because of former victories; Canada was worst infected because as a historical nation it had a less secure identity for which it was now compensating.

“The persistence and evolution of national military attitudes through generations for whom nationality has not been operational is interesting but not alarming,” said Hochgeist,

“Since soldiers will not be fighting to enrich their homes future warfare will remain unpolitical.”

Wat switched to another channel and found an amicable discussion between Hinchinbrook, commander of the East Anglian Alliance, and Winesburg, North America’s most popular fighter since Stormin’ Norman. The alert and boyish Englishman was obviously talking hard to impress the famous veteran.

“The primitive armies of yesterday — and I mean precisely the yesterday of twenty-four hours ago — were single regiments. This wonderful new influx means every general must divide his force into three, four, five new regiments, so we will require a whole new hierarchy of command.”

“Or an old hierarchy of command?” said Winesburg, smiling.

“Of course! How clever of you to notice. Yes, we will have to bring back the highly unpopular sergeant major.”

“And commanding officers will lead less risky lives, if you don’t mind a battle-scarred old veteran saying so.”

“Quite right! More brain work, less cut and thrust.”

“What do you think now of the global and interplanetary referendum called by Geneva, General Hinchinbrook?”

“What do you think of it General Winesburg?”

“Out of date?”

“Utterly out of date. I don’t mind keeping the Boys’ Brigades in reserve because with these thousands of other lives to play with we don’t need them. But it’s absurd to confine battles of the scale we now anticipate to two days! Why not a fortnight? Plenty of room to manoeuvre in that. And this fuss about standards also seems outmoded. What the world’s armies now need — and what our families viewing us from home deserve — is a more inspiring object to struggle for. Last week a great Scottish soldier called his standard a pole with a tin chicken on top . I was shocked, I confess. I now see he had the right idea.”

“Have you another object to fight for in mind?”

“None. Not the faintest. But in six months — not more than six months — we’ll be commanding whole new companies of troops just raring to go. I dare say we’ll have thought of something better by then.”

“Would you mind saying a word about the manoeuvring of large new armies on common land for whole fortnights?” said a public eye chairman, “Won’t that play havoc with the migration of gangrels? Not with all of them everywhere, of course, but many of them sometimes?”

“Some havoc, no doubt,” said Hinchinbrook with a pleasant smile, “But we are many and they are few. I’m sure they’ll manage to adapt. Besides, they stink. There is nothing to be alarmed about as long as our houses are safe.”

Wat blanked the screen and gloomily pondered the fact that every general in the world would soon command a new army of beginners, most of them bigger than his because they lived in more peopled places. He had another fit of wanting Delilah Puddock. He wanted to tie her up and torture her until she told him exactly what she was trying to do; he was also disgusted with himself because he knew she must have foreseen that reaction. He kicked his shoes off, lay on the bed and tried not to want her by remembering other women he had passionately wanted. Their only similarity was that none had passionately wanted him.

He had staggered after the henwife as soon as he learned to walk because she was small, aloof, and unlike the comforting big-bosomed grannies and thin energetic ones. She only visited the house for the morning service, always ordering two sacks of grain and a book. She had a pocket for the book but he insisted on carrying it, trotting beside her when she crossed the garden to the poultry yard with a sack under each arm. After feeding the geese, hens and chickens she firmly took the book back, entered the ancient tower and shut him out. No other granny had a door which could be locked from inside. It was the only wooden door in Dryhope and he hated it, kicked and screamed at it, pounded it with his fists, threw stones at it and occasionally butted it with his head until the Dryhope mother came and carried him home. After what seemed years but was maybe less than a month the upper half of the door opened inward. Kittock leaned her folded arms on top of the lower half, looked down on him with interest and said, “Will you keep doing that till I let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“Even if I never let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“If you hold on to me you’ll have a lonely life, Wattie. I don’t like weans.”

“I don’t care.”

“O, if you understand that cheeriness is not man’s chief end, come in.”