Foul Ball



  FOUL BALL

  HARRY CAVENDISH

  Copyright 2011 Harry Cavendish

  To

  Charlotte and Alex

  ***

  Chapter One

  ‘Yes, pleased with this one,’ He said slowly, looking about the room. ‘Carbon life forms have rather proliferated.’

  He reached down to a tile and plucked at it. Cormack could see he had found an ant there.

  He held it carefully between His thumb and forefinger, examining it closely.

  ‘Isn’t always the case, you know. Some of them take on a life of their own and some of them don’t.’

  He twirled the ant a little, being careful not to crush it, and then let it run up His arm, caught it again, and set it down.

  Then He turned to Cormack, and looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Look here, young fellow,’ He said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’

  ‘Please go ahead,’ said Cormack. He was in his pyjamas, ready for bed.

  ‘Didn’t actually get much chance to look around. Materialized fairly close by and just popped in. But, I’m wondering - is this all a joke?’

  ‘A joke? How do you mean?’

  ‘That thing on the floor over there, for example.’

  ‘You mean the television?’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s a television.’

  ‘You use it for what?’

  ‘Entertainment.’

  ‘The technology - laughable. I suppose it’s an antique? I suppose you’re a collector?’

  ‘My dad brought it last year. It’s top of the line.’

  ‘I suppose you’re a primitivist and like to paint? Commendable in a savage but really rather reprehensible when you consider how much the whole damn show has cost.’

  He started pacing, hands in the pockets of His Oxford bags, the white beard barbaric and out of conformity with the neatness of His clothes - a maths don searching for the blackboard.

  ‘Thing is, I usually intervene when a civilization is roughly three millennia beyond the Singularity. People get this dreadful temptation to start investigating FTL transportation and look for wormholes. They think they can manipulate the phase space. Can’t be done of course. I don’t allow it. Would have untold consequences and my insurance just won’t cover the cost. So I intervene. Before the universe starts folding in on itself. Damned difficult to clean up when that happens.’

  ‘I suppose it would be.’

  ‘See,’ said the Creator, staring at Cormack rather hard. ‘I don’t think that television, as you call it, really represents technology from beyond the Singularity.’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Cormack. ‘My dad got it from Rumbelows.’

  ‘So it has me a bit concerned. And there’s another thing that’s bothering me. I don’t wish to appear vain or conceited or anything like that, but most people, most civilizations even, are usually very pleased to see me. I am often welcomed with intergalactic parades, vast crowds of humanity or their equivalent, in mass formation, fireworks, and such like. Stars have been deliberately supernova-ed at my appearance. Perhaps these things are appropriate for the arrival of the Creator, perhaps they are not, but they are, in my experience at least, tried. Did you even get the message?’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘I sent an intervention imminent radio-form in electromagnetic loops on seventeen different frequencies. Perhaps you didn’t bother to read it?’

  ‘I don’t recall anything,’ said Cormack, looking puzzled.

  ‘You know, I’m struggling not to become too dramatic, but the arrival of the Creator of the Universe is usually quite a big thing. And here I am! The Creator of the Universe! This Universe! Right here! That’s right, little man! Stand up straight!’

  Cormack did as he was told and the Creator continued.

  ‘My main mission is a small intervention re your wormhole experiments. Just to set you on the right track. Stop you imploding the Universe causing all that mess as explained previously. Maybe feed you a little more physics if you ask nicely. Don’t expect any moral guidance though. Not that kind of a Creator. Fairly unremitting…’

  Cormack was rubbing the floor with his foot in his discomfort. The Creator misinterpreted the shuffling.

  ‘Now look here!’ He thundered, really angry now. ‘This is all very casual and I imagine you feel very clever treating me in this offhand way, but there is a reason for all the parades and supernovae and the general obsequiousness that other worlds and civilizations have seen fit to afford me….’

  He puffed His chest out and opened His eyes wide so that the whites were shining. Then He screamed, ‘They were bloody terrified of what I might do to them!’

  ‘Well, you don’t look too frightening,’ said Cormack, finding his voice now, enraged by His insolence and anxious to assert McFadden householder rights. ‘You know, it’s somewhat hard to take all this in. I was just getting my cocoa and then you arrived. And at first I thought you were wearing some kind of fancy dress, but then you started talking in this rather lurid manner and I’m not really sure any more. Is this some kind of a joke?’

  ‘Damned impertinence! Do you have any bloody idea? Look, I’ve had enough!’ He said and lunged at Cormack, knocking his cocoa and spilling it onto him.

  ‘You’re obviously a blasted primitive so bring out the sacrificial virgins!’ He cried and then, perhaps fortunately for Cormack, His mobile, or what Cormack thought looked like a mobile, began to vibrate.

  The Creator looked at the device and then looked back at Cormack. There was an expression of shock and surprise on His face.

  ‘Well, whip me with a ferret…’ He groaned throatily and whistled a long slow whistle. ‘Damn, damn and triple damn… I’ve only got the wrong bloody Universe, haven’t I? This is trey, trey, beta, trey, seven, alpha, zip. Why didn’t you tell me? I was supposed to intervene in trey, trey, beta, trey, seven, alpha, one. This one’s no bloody good at all.’

  He moved towards Cormack, resting a hand on his arm, and made to wipe the cocoa from him.

  ‘You won’t mention that I was here, will you? There’s a good fellow. See, my research grant is dependant on getting these Universes to a certain stage of development before intervention. Can’t really start all over again now, can I? Not after thirteen billion years. I’ll just bugger off out of here and we won’t talk about this again. Otherwise, I’ll have to close it down, I’m afraid. The Universe. And you wouldn’t want that, would you? You wouldn’t want that at all…’

  And He was gone, with a crash of pots and pans and knives and spoons, backwards through the kitchen door.

  Cormack got his toast, went back to bed, and fell asleep.

  ***

  Chapter Two

  He awoke, not in his bedroom, but in a cell, twelve feet by twelve feet by twelve feet.

  He spent a long while examining it.

  The walls were of patterned bricks, the same tiling on each face, and there was no door, no windows, and precious little light. His nostrils were filled with a stench, foul and vaguely urinary, but with a putrid über-scent of rotting flesh.

  He wondered where he was.

  Then a voice began to speak, sombrous and stentorian.

  ‘Awake now, are we?’ it said. ‘What are you in for, then?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Cormack, looking about him.

  ‘What are you in for, then?’ said the voice again, booming through the cell. ‘We could be together quite a while. Like to know what I’m dealing with.’

  ‘Who are you?’ said Cormack. ‘Who’s talking to me?’

  ‘I am the Prison Whale,’ said the voice slowly and carefully, the words spaced out as though the Prison were talking to someone particularly stupid.

  ‘The
Prison Whale?’ said Cormack.

  ‘Indeed. I am the Prison Whale, and you are contained within my belly. I ask again, as is my right, what are you in for?’

  Cormack didn’t know exactly what he was in for so he stayed silent.

  ‘So be it,’ said the Prison, and the walls began to shake, and instead of their former perpendicular rigidity, assumed a convexity, as though the cube that made up the cell was being blown under pressure to form a sphere, and then a strange liquid started to ooze from between the cracks of what Cormack had, now he realized, rather naively assumed were bricks. On the closer examination he was now urgently making, they looked more fibrous, and the spaces in between like vents or channels, and, come to think of it, thought Cormack, the bricks were not as hard and unyielding as he had first thought. He would have hesitated to have described them as fleshy, but perhaps they were.

  The pus dribbled into the centre of the floor and formed in pools around Cormack’s feet.

  ‘The consumption has begun,’ announced the Prison Whale. ‘I shall be ingesting you over four hundred Zargonic days. I believe you are from a planet called Earth in the Solar System, so that will be two hundred of your Earth days, and I shall try to keep you alive for the majority of that time. Consequently, I shall be digesting your appendages first. I believe your brain is in your head stalk. I will leave that for last.

  ‘I’ll be using a digestion fluid that has some very satisfactory suturing powers, so have no doubt that, although your flesh degrades at an alarmingly fast rate, you will be alive for a very long time indeed. I prefer to digest you alive because although it has been fifty years since I’ve eaten one of your kind, I do remember it well – mouth-watering when it was pumping juice, but it died rather quickly and then became disgustingly desiccated…

  ‘I thank the Emperor of the Zargons for his marvellous gift of an Earthling, and I shall milk you more judiciously. You will oxidize quite nicely in my belly acid and leave a pleasantly tangy sensation that I think I will find most delectable. I will consume you with a small forest of Zargonic snuffle-leaves that I will digest in my third belly, and will presently allow a medium-sized Zargonic cow to enter my first belly, where you are situated, so please don’t mind the cramped conditions and the rather overpowering stench. The cow will provide a pleasant counterpoint to some of your more revolting effusions, and I believe that eventually your suppurations, cow and human together, will complement each other scrumptiously. Now, again… I ask you, very politely - what are you in for?’

  ‘Well, I…’ said Cormack in some distress. ‘I really don’t…’

  ‘Had it away with a young Zargonic female, did we? You dirty little man! Sorry about it now, are we? Consequences, my dear boy! We will learn about them together!’

  Cormack could feel the heat on the soles of his feet.

  ‘Or did you steal a Zargonic space-cruiser? One of those intergalactic pilots? Joy rider, eh? Bet you’re sorry now. Not so joyful riding in my big, fat, acidic belly is it, joy rider? Wait until the Zargonic cow gets here!’

  Then the Prison stopped talking and the cell went completely black. Cormack could see nothing, but felt himself squeezed as the slimy, fleshy walls contracted around him, and squashed against him, and rubbed him up and down.

  He passed out briefly.

  ‘Just wanted to show you that,’ said the Prison when he came round. ‘You’ll be getting a lot of that in the coming months. I call it a “flatulation” – just my word for it – so you know what’s coming. I’ll be telling you, “Flatulation!” and then you’ll know that’s it, what’s coming. Now get up!’

  Cormack stood up.

  ‘Right! Some more ground rules,’ continued the Prison. ‘Your evacuations of a solid or liquid nature - I am looking forward to ‘em. Feel free! Bring ‘em on! You think I won’t like ‘em? You’re wrong! I welcome your excretions! Don’t think that I don’t!

  ‘And sleeping… With the Zargonic cow in here, there won’t be much of that, but I understand that you’ll need some every now and then, so you’ll do it upright in a corner, because the cow takes priority and she’ll want to lie down. That’s all for now. I’ll check back with you later.’

  The prison walls were restored to their former rigidity and the cell was silent again.

  Cormack resumed his position, head in hands, on the floor and cried little salty tears that smoked as they fell.

  Eventually he rose to his feet.

  ‘There must be a way out of here,’ he said to himself, staring at the walls, wondering at the dim light that penetrated from above.

  ‘No there isn’t,’ said the Prison by way of reply. ‘Only way out is when you’re fully digested and then you’ll leech into my intestines and I’ll defecate what’s left of you and the cow. Four hundred days from now. Looking forward to a good shit…’

  Up above, Cormack saw a first deformation, a foot-shaped protrusion against the cell ceiling, and then another.

  He sat watching for a few minutes more and could count five small bumps.

  Soon one began to get bigger than the others and became pointed and less shallow. Then a great circle started to form in the ceiling above, and there was an almighty tearing sound, and the walls and floor rocked and bounced as if a great pressure had been released, and from the ceiling, through the hole that had now formed, rained gobbets of rank, red, half-digested meat and lumps of what must be faecal material, and then a huge, unnatural motion that forced its way through the hole and down and onto Cormack, flattening him.

  The cow had arrived.

  ***

  Chapter Three

  ‘Hi!’ said the cow, picking herself up from the floor.

  ‘Hi!’ said Cormack.

  She looked slimy and red, as though she were wearing an afterbirth, and immediately began to lick herself all over to make herself more presentable.

  When she was clean, she was mostly black with some white spots, and exactly the same as an Earth cow, resembling most closely a Fresian.

  ‘So what are you in for?’ said the cow eventually.

  ‘Why is everybody asking me that?’ said Cormack.

  ‘Something to hide? Anyway,’ said the cow, adjusting herself on the cell floor and finding her bearings well enough to stand up. ‘Pleased to be meeting you.’

  ‘I’m Cormack,’ said Cormack.

  ‘And I’m a Zargonic cow,’ said the cow. ‘I’m one of the Pantheistic Syllogists. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Pantheistic Syllogists?’ said Cormack.

  ‘Yes. Pantheistic Syllogists,’ said the cow. ‘Have you heard of us? In your little backwoods corner of the Universe? The Pantheistic Syllogists?’

  She was fully recovered from her fall from the ceiling, and was strutting about now, cockily thought Cormack, making a small circle of the cell.

  ‘Can’t say that I have…’

  ‘Only the most desperate and committed band of desperados and freethinkers in the entire known Universe. That’s why they’re trying to stamp us out, innit?’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yeah – me and my friends - the other cows.’

  ‘You’re all cows?’

  ‘Not all cows. But my chapter is cows.’

  ‘And they’re coming to get you?’

  ‘The Zargons. Yeah. They’re coming for us. One by one. They come to our pasture, where we has our meetings… meetings is mostly Tuesdays. That’s when we discusses stuff the most. Pantheistic syllogisms mostly. But could be most anything. We free-for-all after five o’clock. Anyway, theys come for us. “Here pretty, pretty cow,” they says. “Here pretty, pretty cow and come with us.” Some of them does have straw in their hands. Big, bunches of freshly mown straw. “Here pretty, pretty cow,” them does say. “Take the straw. Take the lovely straw.” And, you know, that straw does be so tempting that we does go with them. And we does forget our pantheistic syllogisms, and our discussions, and they does carry us all the way to the slaughterhouse to slit our throats and
make steaks from our buttocks.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here. Having a dangerous discussion, I was. I was affirming a disjunct in the style of modus tollendo ponens. Was affirming it to Desmond, I was - Desmond’s another cow. And that’s when they came: “Here pretty, pretty cow. Here pretty, pretty cow.” Freshly mown straw, it was. Smelt like heaven.

  ‘Now, I says to Desmond. The first premise is pantheistic in that it asserts God moves through nature, and is one with nature, and nature and God are the same thing, and the second premise must be opposed to that one, and the two must form the only possible alternatives, so that we can affirm the disjunct classically. Hence, I need a second premise along the lines of, ooh… I says, now here’s where it gets tricky – maybe God being a Zargon… Now, Desmond wasn’t happy with that premise at all, quite rightly, because the two premises together don’t represent the only possible alternatives… And that’s when they started: “Here pretty, pretty cow. Here pretty, pretty cow”…with the rustling of the straw. To stop the dangerous conversation. The syllogisms, you understand. And they led me far, far I tell you, Cormack. It is Cormack, isn’t it? With their wicked straw and vigorous rustling. Right into the mouth of a Zargonic Prison Whale. And here I is. With you. That last part - coming through the stomach lining up there. That was not pleasant I can tell you.’

  Cormack listened to more in the same vein for a while, and went back to sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.

  ***

  Chapter Four

  The Emperor of the Zargons was now at his bath, lying in the topmost tub of a cascade of tubs in the vast Imperial Bathroom that stretched a full five hundred yards along a flank of the Imperial Palace. The water was very hot, steaming like a bouillabaisse, and filled with unguents and crystals and perfumes and salts. He was enjoying himself hugely, scouring his back with a loafer and singing folk songs to the silent hive-mind.

  It was one of his great pleasures to come here and bathe. His office was burdensome, the people that surrounded him tiresome, the great duties and responsibilities of State hung on him heavily, but in the Imperial Tub he could relax and be at one with nature, nude and utterly alone, excepting his throat cable and his hive-mind.