Salvage Rites: And Other Stories Page 3

  Yet Mary’s hair was very long, a flood of generous fire… Did Mary realize that this might subtly irritate Ash, and merit an impatient hearing?

  ‘Change to double-day cycle?’ the geologist (and temporary Rockologist) Stevens requested. ‘Field-work one day plus whole night’s data analysis; sleep through whole next day and night?’

  ‘Waste too much time sleeping then,’ judged Ash. ‘Be soldiers of science; learn to cat-nap. Next?’

  It wasn’t long before Fremantle rose, darting a look of amused triumph towards Mary.

  ‘Reporting trip into forest. Bottle-trees come in dozen main shapes; all are hollow shells supporting fronds.’

  ‘Known,’ said Ash.

  ‘Shells show fracture lines, large-piece jigsaw patterns. Stone smashes shells into constituent fragments.’ Reaching into his bag, he exhibited one of the native wooden spades with short curved handle, the specimen wrapped in film. ‘This.’ Now he placed a native work on the table. ‘Or this.’ He flourished a film-clad wooden knife. ‘Plus sharp shards. All known native artifacts readily available from nature.’

  Mary sat wounded, momentarily confused. All data would be put on the infonet for access and review by anyone else. Meanwhile, Fremantle seemed to have scored a coup.

  ‘Biotechnology?’ asked Peter helpfully. He knew the concept. ‘Trees bred for tools?’

  Fremantle laughed brusquely but it was agronomist Vasilki Patel who supplied the answer.

  ‘Biotech requires microscopes, laser scalpels. Farm crops indicate only simple improvement over wild strains.’

  ‘Amazing,’ said Stevens, with a note of sarcasm, ‘those trees falling apart so conveniently into identifiable tools; quite naturally too.’ He also was trying to be helpful: Rockologist in league with stonemason.

  Sandra Ramirez spoke up from beside Fremantle. ‘Hypothesis: wrecking a tree has connection with reproductive cycle. Lemurs wreck trees which produce useful shapes. Thus evolutionary selection favours trees which split up usefully; against those which didn’t.’

  Stevens looked towards Peter. ‘Bottle-wood tools sufficient for sculpture? If tempered by fire?’

  Peter thought of his own power-tools and chisels back home. Power-tools to rough out a block of stone – in the old days apprentices would rough out a block more laboriously by hand – and chisels, strong sharp chisels. Their abrasive action, the sparks that flew, produced a protective surface on a stone which would let it weather out its first few years until the regular hardening could set in. How could the natives produce such strong, such detailed surfaces by banging away with wood, however hard?

  No one had seen a single identifiable mason at work. One item Peter had to correct his colleagues about on arrival was the notion that masons carved anything in position by preference. Stone was unpredictable; even the best master mason could spoil a piece through no fault of his own. The sensible way to work was down on the ground. Each figure should jut from a supporting block which was subsequently winched into position in a preplanned gap. So you wouldn’t expect to see lemur masons clinging to walls and chipping away. But even so.

  Nor had anyone seen evidence of loose, unused blocks of stone lying around or in transit.

  Maybe they simply hadn’t yet stumbled upon a masons’ yard in the maze of the city. Maybe secret ritual surrounded the art of masonry? Maybe the lemur masons had hidden their metal tools away when the expedition arrived, just as a sensible tribe might hide its treasures from potential conquerors?

  Maybe the work had all been completed ages ago? But surely it hadn’t been. And surely there should be some evidence of ongoing building work?

  ‘Comment,’ said Ash sharply.

  Peter shook his head.

  ‘Maybe you should try,’ suggested the Ismaili agronomist. ‘Carve blank jut of wall using bottle-wood?’

  ‘Carve Michelangelo was here,’ said Fremantle. ‘Might activate natives. Provide cultural insights for Everdon. Valiant effort at artistic communication using native mode, eh? If no response, native behaviour is hardwired.’

  ‘How would you like it,’ asked Peter, ‘if aliens landed in Paris and started carving graffiti over the front of Notre Dame?’

  ‘Improve it, probably.’

  In fact Peter had once carved a graffito of a kind upon an Oxford college: a playful caricature of his own head gazing out from the top of a tower. Wearing a veritable dunce’s or wizard’s hat parodying the mason’s neatly folded daily paper hat which kept the dust from one’s curls. His large ears exaggerated into jug-ears, his prominent nose sticking out like Pinocchio’s, jaw dimpled as if by a pickaxe, eyes wrinkled up to a vanishing point (to avoid splinters).

  The nose had been a mistake. Back then, Fuller domes were new and exhibited quirks of micro-climate. Little clouds could form. Condensation drops gathered on the end of such a nose and dripped as if he had a runny cold. Maybe that feature was considered a witticism by subsequent generations of students: the wizard with the drippy nose. Since no real rain fell inside Fuller domes and genuine gargoyles were forever dry, perhaps his nose was in a very minor sense the only working gargoyle left.

  ‘You haven’t proved they use wood tools!’ blustered Peter.

  Take metal chisel, hammer, demonstrate human mason’s art,’ suggested Vasilki Patel.

  ‘Cultural interference,’ objected Mary. ‘Analysing categories of carvings more important, this stage. Catlow’s viewpoint more valuable here. Establish lexicon of stone images.’

  ‘Report when complete,’ said Ash. ‘Enough on topic. Base security?’

  ‘Sweet and simple,’ reported Leo Allen. The black man coordinated all outside surveillance and image-gathering as well as supervising the infonet.

  ‘Medical?’

  Doctor Chang said, ‘Clean slate. Still no interaction our micro-orgs, Rock’s micro-orgs. Probably unnecessary even wear masks. Recommend continue, though, be double safe. Besides, the odours –’

  The atmosphere of Rock was an acceptable oxy-nitrogen mix. Native proteins were based on D-amino acids that were right-handed, as were the sugars in the local nucleic acids – unlike the left-handed counterparts on Earth. Chang had declared that humans could eat the local veg and fish without any effect whatever; they would excrete everything unused. Nothing gut-wrenching, nothing nutritious. Protein incompatibility. So you had to bring a packed lunch to Rock, unless, as Vasilki said, you intended to set up in competition with the local veg by planting Earth seeds and letting the rivals crowd the native veg for available minerals. Charmed against any local bugs or viruses by their left-handedness, Earth crops ought to win hands down.

  Ash said, ‘Am authorizing Michelangelo depart on grand tour two nights hence, sixteenth hour local. Returning after forty days, local, for flight Solward. Hope for full local info by then.’

  ‘We see M go?’ asked a woman chemist, Liz Martel.

  ‘Yes. Fusion fireworks overhead, fine show.’

  ‘Observe effect on natives?’ asked Lipmann. ‘Night duty?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ash. ‘That night.’

  Mary stood up, red hair swinging. ‘Depart farside world instead? Avoid cultural impact?’

  Ash shook her head. ‘Best orbital departure.’

  ‘But M orbits whole world constantly! Well, depart daytime instead? Minimize shock from sudden light in sky?’

  ‘Spoilsport!’ burst from Liz Martel.

  ‘Timing already computed.’

  ‘Change it! Cultural impact.’

  ‘May be fruitful.’ Ash smiled slightly towards Fremantle. ‘If true culture exists.’

  It was obvious to Peter that the matter was already fixed, in Mary’s disfavour.

  To protest further, or shut up? Possible black mark on bio. Insubordinate. Mary nodded and sat down.

  ‘End of info-swap,’ said Ash.

  Since you couldn’t take your filter-mask off outside to feed, breakfast the next morning was a hefty, though hurried, affair of pawpaw, reconstituted om
elette over huge slices of ham, waffles, and syrup, muffins and honey, pints of coffee. Afterwards Peter set out with Mary and Carl Lipmann for the city. Already lemur farmers were out in their veg fields, hoeing or harvesting. Fisherfolk were heading for the river. The humans joined one of the sledge paths.

  ‘Bit swinish, that bottle-wood business,’ remarked Carl. Of course, reflected Peter, Fremantle’s discovery was a slap in the face to the linguist too. If the natives were only highly programmed animals using tools that nature provided, their ‘language’ might be an illusion too. A parrot could mimic speech with every appearance of beady-eyed intelligence, as well as screeching its own fixed repertoire. A chimp could chatter a sort of limited conversation, a dolphin could click and whistle. You’d still be barking up a gum tree if you hoped for full flexible communication.

  ‘It would be enormously useful,’ said Mary, ‘to find some metal tools which had demonstrably been made -for sculpting, eh Peter?’

  ‘You know how carefully I’ve examined their work,’ he said, ‘and I still can’t swear to what tools were used. A fine bit of work isn’t covered in chisel chips. Art lies in the concealment of art. Maybe… maybe they just rubbed away at the rock for years on end till they wore out the figures they wanted.’

  ‘Like the Skull of Doom?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A perfect human skull in rock crystal. It’s in a Mexican museum. The Mayans made it by rubbing away at a solid block of rock crystal. Must have taken years. I can’t imagine the decoration of entire cities being rubbed into shape the same way!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Carl, ‘each figure occupies the whole of one lemur’s lifetime, off and on. Maybe it’s his or her ritual life-image.’

  ‘In that case you’d find half-finished work,’ Mary pointed out.

  ‘Maybe they stopped making images fifty years ago, five hundred years ago? Funny self-image they must have of themselves, though!’ For now they were nearing the south-east entry gate guarded by its grotesque Herms or termains, whichever term one preferred to name boundary or entrance markers. Peter had supplied both names. Herms, from the Greek god of doorways, Hermes. Termains, from the Latin word terminus. On either side of the Herms stretched the frozenly writhing, leering wall, massed gargoyles jutting as if vomiting.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mary. ‘These are the keys to their psyche.’

  And by now half a dozen lemurs were tagging alongside, twittering interestedly. None of the adults stood more than four feet high. The swirls and hues of their tight, close fur varied endlessly from individual to individual, fingerprinting each in auburn, russet, orange, brown which might be solid-hued or dappled or with hints of stripes. Lemurs wore no clothes or ornaments of any sort. Indeed, to hide the body might be to hide the self since their faces were all much the same: dun coloured, with the same large black melancholy eyes, pert twitchy noses, erect rounded ears, lugubrious mouths. The slight breasts and genital slits of the females and the retracted penises of the males were veiled by fur. Lemur arms were long and dangly; the hands had three thin fingers and a thumb.

  A female plucked at Carl’s tunic and warbled. Twitching his own nose behind the transparent mask with friendly humour, he adjusted the sound-bud in his left ear, fiddled with the minicomp and corder clipped to his belt, and twittered in response. Perhaps in response.

  He explained: ‘I’m trying to say: want/see/tools/cut/rock. But maybe I just said, “I want you to watch me dig the world”! Peter, would you please mime the mason’s art? Oh yes, and rubbing too?’

  Nowhere had they found any simple carved representations of lemurs. The Herms were soaring, elongated heads with eyes the size of dinner plates above gaping, sharp-toothed mouths. Stone beards burst from the sucked-in cheeks, straggling down like horsehair eviscerated from an old upholstered chair, knotting and massing to almost hide a stubby, squat, dwarf body. All in perfect stone, except that these Herms looked newly sloshed with night-soil liquefied in urine.

  The arch of the gate curving between the two Herms was a quartet of capering, interlacing babewyns, a popular motif. These were baboon-like beings, stretched out as though their bones had melted. Again, Peter had supplied the appropriate medieval name for such carved lusty baboon-buffoons.

  While Carl twittered again, Peter stepped over to the nearest Herm, grateful for his mask. The lemurs collected their own night-soil assiduously, brown soup of excrement and pee. Instead of carting this out to fertilize the fields they hurled the contents of the bottle-wood buckets at their sculpted walls or poured the mixture with gay abandon over monstrosities and gargoyles.

  (At an earlier info-swap: ‘Ritual insult,’ Mary had theorized. ‘Thus to domesticate the fearful images.’

  Fremantle had retorted, ‘Maybe lemurs inherited cities from genuine intelligences that died out?’

  Mary had returned to the fray: ‘Perhaps act of respect, reverence. Excrement not taboo – but gift of self. Stuff of one’s own creation.’

  While Peter had said, ‘Maybe do that to protect, strengthen surfaces?’

  That chemist woman, Martel, had hooted.

  Since then, he’d also seen lemur cooks chucking over the stone art the water in which they’d boiled veg or fish.)

  The lemur female watched with curiosity while Peter went through the motions of tapping away with a mallet and chisel, and then – though he had to guess what these other motions might be – of patiently rubbing at stone.

  True curiosity? Big glossy lemur eyes wore a perpetual expression of surprise and fascination, of alert astonishment.

  However, this lemur then beckoned – surely she beckoned – and darted inside the gateway, to wait and beckon again.

  I do believe we’re getting somewhere,’ Carl said in pleased surprise. ‘Well done.’

  As soon as they passed beneath the arching babewyns, their lemur set off along the northerly of three possible lanes; they followed.

  Periodically Mary blazoned that day’s personal code in invisible ultraviolet on protruding stonework. On the way out her bleeper would respond to those UV marks, and no others. Despite an annotated aerial survey map composited by computer from Michelangelo’s high-resolution photos and their own overflight before landing, it was no easy matter, otherwise, to trace one’s progress with any confidence through the labyrinth of walls, pillars, lanes, yards, archways, doorways, almost all of which were dense with statuary. Pathways branched frequently, almost arbitrarily, sometimes leading to dead ends. Lapids might block the way – figures emerging from or stepping into solid walls like spirits who could walk through stone. Gargoyles might sprout out overhead to join into ribbed vaulting so that what had been a lane became a hallway. A lane could enter a room through a narrow door, to resume as a broad lane beyond the far wall. Grotesques formed steps leading to tangled gargoyle bridges. Gaping stone mouths were entrances to what seemed to be cellars but which might open into airy corridors.

  Their guide trotted ahead, warbling, glancing back, occasionally flapping an arm, though she may only have been slapping at the equivalent of a flea in her fur.

  Peter noted a huge scaly devil-creature with ribbed, bar-like wings. This jutted from the top of a short freestanding wall which seemed to have no other rationale than to support that devil. The blocks of the walls, perhaps forty in number, were condensed, squashed stone bodies as though creatures had been crushed inside suit-case-sized moulds, there to harden.

  ‘That chap’s definitely new,’ said Peter, and took a holo.

  ‘New?’ queried Carl.

  ‘New to me. I’ve never seen the like before.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve never been in this part of town.’

  Still wondering at the devil, Peter fell back a few paces so that now he brought up the rear. From that vantage point he could admire Mary’s hips and the hang of her red hair as she bustled onward. No denying it, she did remind him of a certain buxom rural barmaid he’d known once. However, that bouncy barmaid
had been keener on a recently widowed farmer who turned to her for sympathy, and more.

  Peter had always been a bachelor, more by accident than design. Wedded to stone, he was. Somehow his work with stone had seemed to express – yet also to limit – the sensuality which he felt was part of him, deep down. Had he been a sculptor of marble, of smooth sensual flanks, he might have been able to express desire better in person. The rough hardness of the images he worked on, their often grim satiric comedy, and not least their moral sententiousness seemed to distance him from expressing in actual life the lusts and greeds and devilries which those carvings parodied. If he committed a… fault (even though the world might regard it as no fault at all, and indeed life was a jumble of desires, envy, pride, resentment, and such) then this fault might somehow solidify and be him for dusty ages. On the other hand, those virtues which he also carved and lived by – the patience, loving kindness, charity, forbearance – somehow locked up his heart… from which, otherwise, a grinning demon might spring forth?

  He sighed, and wished that Carl wasn’t with him and Mary, although he liked the man and in this case three was company. No doubt he exaggerated the importance of lust, anger, envy, lust. Yet one did so when one perpetuated, by renovation and restoration, the medieval tradition of incarnating in stone – of lapidifying – gross emblems of vice and virtue. Thus displaying in caricature monsters of the heart, by way of mockery and warning, by way of immunization against those selfsame monsters which represented human frustrations and fears.

  He caught up with Mary. ‘I wonder,’ he asked, ‘what fears or frustrations might have caused the lemurs to sculpt such monstrosities – not as a frieze to their city but as its central substance? They themselves seem gentle, innocent, happy, don’t they?’

  In the city no ‘houses’ as such existed. Yet where bridges arched over yards or where gargoyles roofed corridors or where walls came together, definite living zones occurred. There, a twittering mass of lemur children would play, the babies scampering on all fours swifter than any human child. There, cooking would be in progress tended by grizzled oldsters. One jumble of blackened pots brewing herbs and berries, connected by dripping wooden tubes, suggested a liquor still.