The New Weird (42 page)

"Oh," said Whorefrost, "I think that me and my cock'll be doing the ramming." His huge mouth formed a broad, lascivious sneer. He raised the baton, rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb, and took a step forward.

Little Sister spat an unintelligible curse. Big Sister slapped the flat of her blade against her palm and positioned herself in a crouch.

No wonder Whorefrost was aroused. The Sisters of No Mercy were an impressive pair who did little, clothes-wise, to conceal the fact. Little Sister was short and extremely curvaceous, her thick arms and solid thighs betraying an immensely powerful strength in one so small. Big Sister was sinuous and agile, her flat breasts taut and masculine alongside Little Sister's sumptuous orbs. But anyone with any pretensions of fucking them was asking for trouble. The only people the Sisters had sex with was each other, and anyone who tried to prove otherwise would pay a very heavy and painful price.

Except for Whorefrost.

As far as he was concerned, their cunts were his.

Once, they had been three, clutching each other as they slept. In the recollections of their dreams, they would walk again in the Forest of Sores, hand in hand through trees as thick and closely knit as they were.

But these trees were of no ordinary caste; nor were they the product of the functions of Nature as they are normally perceived through linear means of scientific enquiry.

The trees of the Forest of Sores were a corruption of the basic elements of form ― with whips and flails instead of branches, razor-wire instead of leaves, and shards of glass instead of blossoms.

Corruption, however, is of itself a consequence of Nature.

And so it was with the Sisters. With every step they took, their naked bodies were shorn of skin or cut to the bone or flayed of flesh; and their blood would turn to puss instead of scabs because of the constant rawness of their wounds.

At night, they wept together in the darkness, shivering on beds ofwet moss, soothing each other's wounds with tears. In the morning, when they woke, they would begin again their aimless migration through the abysmal vastness.

There was no sense of the world's passing in the Forest of Sores, no fleeting indication of the motions of time. The momentary provocations of agony were equal to a prolonged suffering that defined them forever.

Random violations of innocence are liable to induce a reaction of ferocity. The wild beast that suffers the taunts of the baiter responds with a superior malice in its defence. There is an abiding equality between chasteness and cruelty ― just as a diamond is an intensification of the mineral implications of coal.

The Sisters of No Mercy were in a very bad way when the Mother of Sores called them to her roost. But the Mother soothed them with her balms and tended them with a loving hand they had known only for each other. Then the Mother told them of what they must do to purge themselves of their eternal suffering in the Forest of Sores.

And then the Mother gave them Weapons.

Once, they had been three, searching together for enemies in the world of linear men.

But not anymore.

Middle Sister was dead.

And the Sisters of No Mercy would honour her memory with a measure of cruelty that was equal to her prodigious chasteness.

The Light That Never Shines was accustomed to shadows. Or maybe the shadows were accustomed to her.

Either way, she slipped from the gloom like she was casting a cloak off her back, and blended in with a shaft of light that filled the street like liquid metal fills a mould.

The Light That Never Shines was hungry for a skin to wear. She dressed herself in skins and could reproduce one for every occasion. That was the secret of blending in. Her body had absorbed them and she could muster them at will ― a skin for all seasons ― and right now was the season was for harvesting.

She smiled, but it was nothing to do with feeling happy. She smiled because it was always the season for harvesting.

And tonight she was planning a good yield.

The Salon of Catastrophists lay on the border between the Cerebral and Cymbeline districts. It was a guild frequented by an exclusive coterie of artists, poets and theoreticians renowned for their speculations on the various ways in which Life as they knew it would come to an end.

The Salon of Catastrophists was a square-shaped, spacious auditorium with a high ceiling and no upper floors but, it was said, plenty of lower ones. On the whole, it was grim. It was also one of the few buildings in the city whose walls were divested of the pictorial extravagance that was common to others. This was in keeping, however, with the principle that buildings should be decorated according to what they were used for; and, given that the Salon of Catastrophists was used for discussions about catastrophe, it is only right that its walls remained bare.

Members of the guild generally assembled to practice rituals of attainment and loss, consisting of recitals, readings, performances and exhibitions, followed by uproarious drinking sessions (lasting for days) that were intended to convey the passage of Life through various stages of degeneration. Yet, in spite of the seeming absence of formality, the Salon of Catastrophists was organised into two distinct intellectual groups.

Overall, it is agreed by the Catastrophists that the Universe is encoded with contradictory conditions of order and chaos which necessitate its failure as a sustainable entity. To this extent, all things are destined to perish: but the question remains as to the nature of
how?

In their attempts to resolve this issue, the Salon of Catastrophists has become divided into the Continuity and Discontinuity Schisms.

The Discontinuity Schism believe that the destruction of the Universe will come as a result of a catastrophic deterioration or collapse -a Cataclysm ― while the Continuity Schism is firmly opposed to a climactic destruction, and prefers to concern itself with theories such as the "Permanence of Disorientation." The Permanence of Disorientation states that the Universe consists of a continual extinction of its contingent parts, which are simultaneously replenished by their re-emergence as universal forces (life, light, precipitation, and so on) which, in turn, begin to decay at the very moment of their re-emergence as existing phenomena.

There are, of course, various interpretations that apply to Continuity Theory, but the Continuity Schism can be roughly summarised as a belief that the world exists in a state of perpetual calamity, which also implies that Existence and Time are essentially meaningless.

As such, the Continuity Schism tended to appeal to thinkers who were not inclined towards divine interpretations of catastrophe, while the opposite was true of the Discontinuity Schism. But the Continuity Schism did have its share of fanatics.

The Psychomatics, for example, were prepared to take extreme measures in order to emphasise the legitimacy of their position. They were the militant wing of the Continuity Schism who sought an active involvement in the way of the world as they defined it. In other words, they liked destroying things ― or, more to the point, they liked destroying people. Which is why they had developed a formidable range of expertise in various means of sabotage and assassination.

It had taken the Gutter a lot of effort to find this out ― and a lot of gutting. He had first been alerted to the Psychomatics when he was doing some reconnaissance work on a Meta-Warrior called Hecticon who was posing as a linear usurper in the disputed northern province of Uin. As luck would
not
have it, the Psychomatics had tried to assassinate Hecticon while the Gutter was trying to figure out a way to do the same. When their attempt had failed, Hecticon stepped up his security measures which made him temporarily unavailable for an appointment with the Gutting Knife. So the Gutter decided to do some reconnaissance work on the Psychomatics instead. The fact that they'd targeted a Meta-Warrior like Hecticon had led him to suspect that they might have been acting under the influence of a non-linear element.

Which, as it happens, is perfectly true.

There was a bee wrestling with a bud on the ground that had fallen off the broken stalk of a wilting flower that was growing from a crack in the ruptured brickwork.

The Light That Never Shines reflected on the fact that she had seen linear men and women work with the same mindless vigour, and with the same failure to comprehend the underlying motivations of their most rudimentary tasks.

"
Are you any different?

"Of course," she replied. "My automatic functions are distinguishable for their emphasis on the wilful elimination, rather than preservation, of my species. To this extent, it is not a question of performing rudimentary tasks in order to survive, but a question of killing or being killed."

"Is there a difference?

"Yes, there is. It depends on the amount of risk you are exposed to. I am exposed to an extreme measure of danger in performing my routine tasks; a common bee is exposed to much less; while a linear human (except in cases of disease, famine or war) is exposed to almost none at all."

At the same time, the Light That Never Shines had been careful to take advantage of occasional individuals who surfaced from the linear tide with an almost Meta-Warrioristic compulsion to commit themselves to
a cause.

"But who's to say they're right to do so?'

That's obvious, thought The Light That Never Shines.

She was.

The Light That Never Shines arose from her basic element wearing a singularity of dark matter that had no basis in ― was a precursor of ― the totality of form.

Emerging from her non-awareness, and having only been able to register her existence through emotions, she was formulaically integrated into a linear means of physicality.

The Light That Never Shines had known the primordial absence of herself without ever knowing that she had existed.

Until that time.

"Existence can only be measured by the fact that it must come to an end," she told herself. "Is this what it means to say,
I live?
Which is only another way of saying that
I must die?"

The Light That Never Shines had harvested a multitude of skins in order to saturate herself in the depths of personality that she was lacking until, finally, she consisted of more expressions of herself than she could account for. The intellectual capacities of her various aspects are boundless to the point that, mathematically, she is devastating and, poetically, she is the purveyor of many fine examples of genius.

"But are you afraid
?" she asked an emerging version of herself.

"No," she replied ― but, in actual fact, she was.

There was a bad rain blowing in the faces of the Sisters of No Mercy. Their vision was blurred. Their long hair swept dark and lank across their faces. The Wilden Howe was a dismal place. But the Sisters didn't mind. It was an ideal place for killing an enemy, which is why they were there.

The Wilden Howe was a small peninsula that jutted into the Sea of Absences off the headland of Noth. It was a barren shaft of land that degenerated into cliffs along its coasts, with occasional lagoons and shingle beaches offering treacherous points of access from the broiling sea.

The currents around the Wilden Howe were a distortion of the Laws of Nature. On the northeast side, a gigantic maelstrom presented a terrifying hazard to ships and skiffs, many of which had been swallowed up in its liquid maw.

The Howe itself was a harsh domain of haggard grasses and windswept moss, with stagnant pools and peat-bogs in the lower reaches, and broad summits of granite that rose like warped skulls through skins of vegetation.

It was a perfect place for smuggling cartels to ply their trade, which is why Whorefrost was there. Whorefrost was posing as a Harbour Lord from the Isle of Balloch who specialised in trafficking sex slaves from the mainland to a wide variety of island groups. It was a position that afforded him a reasonable degree of power and influence, which he was able to use for the more pressing business of destroying his foes.

"Not a bad racket," admitted Little Sister, as if being forced to swallow a live insect.

"No," said Big Sister, "not bad at all."

"But not," said Little Sister, watching the lone figure of Whorefrost approaching through the mist,
"that
good."

"No," agreed Big Sister, "not fucking good at all."

Whorefrost was up against a dangerous adversary. Perhaps it was the extent of their erotic appeal that was making him lose his concentration. But Whorefrost knew that he didn't require any concentration when it came to a fight.

The smooth strokes of his baton were deftly applied but, oddly enough for a weapon forged in the shape of a penis, lacking penetration. His every move was blocked, his every subtlety anticipated.

The Sisters were good ―
too fucking good.

As his frustration increased, he began to lose his balance; and, finally, he overreached with a blow that was aimed at the little one's head. She whirled her body out of his range while the other, the big one, swung her sword upwards in a gentle arc.

In a sense, he was lucky that it struck him directly on the point of his elbow, or else it might have lopped off his lower arm. The pain, however, was outrageous. But what alarmed him most was the sight of his baton flying out of his hand and landing well beyond his immediate reach.

In the meantime, the little one had recovered her poise. She smacked him across the back of his head with the flat of her blade and sent him sprawling forward onto the wet grass, face-first.

And vulnerable.

"Well, fuck me," said the little one behind him. "I bet you were thinking you were lucky you didn't lose your lower arm."

Fuck her, she was right.

The next thing he knew there was a muffled thud that sounded like a spade being driven into wet soil. It wasn't. It was Little Sister's long sword hacking into his lower arm which, this time, was removed within two or three fleeting strokes.