Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

the Fomalhauti that had been peacefully upon Trivash, visiting, on business, married to Trivashti —

each one bisected so that half a trunk carried a leg, an arm and half

a head and the entrails hung to the ground and streaks of blood

blackened the shining marble pillars — oh, that is death, that is

death: blood-slimed festoons of guts hanging to the ground with

dogs ripping what they can reach and the pitiful little penis of an

axed-in-half m an and the tears you might shed over the curling

brown sex hair below the ripped belly of half a not-yet-married girl.

Sesemene, no fop, did not avoid the meaning of Take me Fomalhaut:

death, girl flesh slashed and blood released to blacken down pillars.

Arrogantly he rode between the halves of these innocents, rode to

Fomalhaut on winged elephant and starship, fought at Fomalhaut,

but did not stay all the years of the war. Returned there at last to

hear — ‘Lord, Fomalhaut.’

From me strange learned Fainey-Juveh would maintain a formal

distance: eagle-clawed entrail-ripping Sesemene he embraced. For

him the blue-faced emperor was alive, riding his eternal winged

elephant down that charnel-hung avenue to Fomalhaut for ever

and ever amen. Tiuark lived, all the five Tiuarks, all the forty-four

Tenikis, the six Selenippes, the twenty-one Ororons, the three

Pvattis, the seven Pvatchis, Chuchah the Devil, and Chuchah the

Builder, Henorahk the Priest, Fiodek the Three-eyed, Charmesh of

the Five Thousand Children (is it possible? Oh yes, oh yes). T hat is

Jagging

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the meaning of empire — a man, gorgeous and grandiose as all

men, free of all checks, possessor of all power, building into the

world all his dreams, those known and those secret even for himself,

the beautiful and the sickening, building in real stone, real iron,

real flesh. The myriad of his subject willingly subject themselves

because it is better to see their dreams made flesh by somebody else

than never.

Gentle intelligent Fainey-Juveh said ‘Autocracy is the only form

of Government worthy of man. W ith anything else one’s life drains

away in unrelieved mediocrity and no one sees a dream worth the

name made real.’

Still high on the splendid visions of empire this strange jack had

given me, I said, ‘Do you support Jahenry?’

He thought a moment with his bald dome shining, his long lips a

little thrust and his eyeglass windows aimed away to the stars. Then

said, 1 suppose I am inconsistent at times.’

Because now we knew each other so well that I understood he

didn’t like Jahenry, Berlit was much more his type. And also we

both understood, with nothing more being said, that inconsistency

is truly the salt of hum anity’s thoughts and deeds and dealings.

Inconsistency, being unpredictable: it is the source of all laughter

— take me, take Orry, take Fiormaria, Kolissa, G randm other

Tiuark, Sesemene, Fainey-Juveh . . ..

But now Trivash, the emperors’ garden, was an airless ball of

slag. Bubutap after whom the emperors took one of their titles

(What? This big big jack emperor comes in — Pvatti II like a fighting cock wearing foot platforms to make him taller than his gang of yesboys — comes in and they all suddenly stop their heads-together

eyeball-to-eyeball talking and smarten up and yell ‘Hail, Bubutap!’

Bubutap, they say, Hail Bubutap — ! O r — or — Sesemene the

Conqueror, eagle-faced, lean as a blade strides into the High

Audience Cham ber and the lords there in one voice — really, one

voice — shout ‘Hail Bubutap!’ and you think of those raging vortices and freezing methane belts out there on the giant that takes up half the sky and you know that some jack has entered that cham ber) — yes, Bubutap whose great name the emperors grabbed for their own, and Bubutap into whose storming gas seas they sank

vast power stations, and Bubutap who sat always like a swollen

apple in the Eden of the Trivashti mind — this Bubutap spins on at

some fantastic rate and its gas storms rage and rage now at this

moment and will rage until the end of time. But time has ended,