Part 13 (1/2)

Greg: Windows of the soul.

Greg-in-the-mirror: That's a bit trite! More a two-way filter than a window, I'd say.

Greg: What next?

Greg-in-the-mirror: The whole body needs to be done eventually. A nip and tuck to bring back the sleek English lorry-driver that you truly were. Get rid of all the irrelevancies of flesh and ident.i.ty. Bring in the was.h.i.+ng to untense the was.h.i.+ng-line of your true being.

Greg: As each minute pa.s.ses, I feel the real Greg is becoming me again.

Greg-in-the-mirror: Or vice versa.

Greg: But who are you?

Greg-in-the-mirror: Just a reflective sounding-board. Don't worry about me. I have no axe to grind.

Greg: (Turning away from the mirror) I hope so. I really hope so. I'm no longer Mike. No longer the false I that I never wanted to be in the first place, despite the sense of security being an I made me feel.

Greg-in-the-mirror: (From behind Greg) A false sense of security. But, thinking about it, you are still not talking like a lorry-driver, are you. Argghh! (Gla.s.s crazes over as if in a psychological road crash.) When Greg had finished the sound-shaving process, he relaxed back into the newly undisguised welters of Chamber Music, waiting for the doctor to return following a set period of mind-confinement... to test whether any of the process had actually 'taken' and Greg was satisfied with the plug of his own recovered Gregness.

Shattered mirror: Do you know what the first sign of madness is? Being told you have hairs growing in the palm of your hand... and then looking for them!

Greg stared at his smooth inner-hand and saw a tiny hard knot in one pore which he feared might pre-figure the future tenacity of a feather.

Beth had been going through a feminine version of this process in a neighbouring Chamber but the facts are far more inaccessible since the various methods were privy only to the women themselves and to their beauty-sleep mentors. It is to be hoped, however, that she had removed any restricting characteristics concerned with any mutual ident.i.ty-envy between her and her sister Susan.

A low-key end to what was a crucial soundfest.

When Greg and Beth emerged from their respective chambers of re-a.s.serted ident.i.ty, they immediately fell into each other's arms, with a renewed love surging through their veins-not so much reminding them of their old love as it once was but showing them the potential of their new love as a cathartic transformation of their old love... as a crystallised plug of wisdom to replace the angst that used to fill the growing hole of disappointment gradually and ineluctably encroaching upon them in recent years, to blot out what was once possible between them by revealing what was now possible again in the enhanced wonders of sheer togetherness and love for each other as well as for life itself.

The sirens had momentarily ceased their wailing, whilst the citizens were singing a Bach Cantata. Not stage-managed so much as the natural spontaneity of a flashmob.

Many gazed up into Klaxon's undersky, shading their eyes from a newly radiant Sunnemo, in fact two Sunnemos as one had emerged from a blindspot to become each other's ghost and symbolic of the love between Greg and Beth. Within the glowing skin of the master Sunnemo could be glimpsed the silhouette of the Angel Megazanthus itself slowly and repeatedly folding and unfolding its wraparound wings, a vast king in yellow, or a nesting mother-bird, or a token of a horror vision now made divine.

A scattering of hot-powdered Angevin fell from the two cores like Christmas snow.

Bach's Cantata draws to an end and the sirens resume, as Greg and Beth, hand in hand, continue their adventures of self-discovery within Inner Earth. He would need to visit Klaxon's cleansing chambers regularly for the Gregness of Greg to prevail. And to tussle with the Tenacity of Feathers.

Beth stared up at Sunnemo-and she wondered whether the Angel Megazanthus within its eggskin owned a sensory capacity equivalent to her own selfhood. Beth was the salt of the earth, full of natural Ess.e.x feistiness. She was so deeply in tune with things that she didn't understand she was in tune with, even her wondering about this fact took place without it touching the sides of her own selfhood's intellect (or lack of). A process that could only be addressed by the arts of fiction or fantasising. Imagining imagination that could not exist without multiple imaginations plugging in socket to socket. A power of imagination (a strength to dream) that could only be possible following contact with the Flew. Flown the next nest. Brain with new wings. Mind with old ones. Beth Flew. Greg Flew. All flocking together towards or from the Klaxon chambers as a positive migratory force of flight.

So, in short, did the Angel Megazanthus have its own 'consciousness'? Or did it manoeuvre its wings as part of some parthenogenetic spontaneity... or of a mysteriously insidious instinct of twitching or tweaking parts of itself to prove to any observers (such as Beth and Greg) that there was indeed a real creature lurking within its shape: pulling its own strings from within itself. Beth thought about one of her friends from school. Rachel Mildeyes (as she was known to peers and teachers alike). Everyone loved Rachel. She had a self-creative gloss that girls like Beth could never aspire to. Nevertheless, Beth was one of Rachel's best friends... sharing those secret feminine moments that remain an enigma to most men.

Beth wondered if everyone's special friend-someone they recall with deep affection (remarkably without appreciating quite how deep)-populated the shape that was Angel Megazanthus. She imagined Rachel looking down upon her now-in Klaxon-as she and Greg wandered aimlessly from chamber to chamber, yet learning c.u.mulatively the lessons of imagination whilst living within imagination's creation (fiction, fantasy or dream) as real people. Most fictions contained fictional characters... or once real people-now ceased to be real people (if retaining their real names)-fictionalised as fiction characters. Yet, strangely, Beth and Greg retained their hard-won, hard-worn ident.i.ties as real minds and bodies while living and dreaming-unfictionalised-within a full-blooded fiction. A fiction shot through with reminders of itself via fluctuating volumes (from silent to strident) of Klaxon's noise.

Stub of Pencil: Rachel Mildeyes peered through a slit in Sunneskin, feeling her huge wrinkled, webby wings on the outside of her body (joined to her but not strictly hers to use) lift slowly like imperfect flaps of her own skin merging (like shuffling cards with cards) into the sinewy membranes (half-cooked, but de-blooded, meat and/or poultry) of Sunne's last underlayer of surface skin. She felt herself to be a core but also a core's innards-but could a core have anything within it without the innards becoming a new core?

Beth laughed at the whimsy of such imaginings in the air about Rachel spotting her from aloft. It was bad enough living within imaginings without adding to them with one's own imaginings!

Greg asked why Beth was laughing-giving her a peck on the cheek in honour of their lately rediscovered love of and for each other-and as he did so, they happened to pa.s.s a lobe or dune near to new chambers about to be on their list of visits whilst here in Klaxon-to learn about preparations for war and other hand-to-hand conspiracies.

”Nothing really. Just an old schoolfriend. She was funny and I just remembered an old joke we had together.”

”Rachel, you mean? You've even forgotten to send her Christmas cards in recent years. Life by-pa.s.ses friends.h.i.+ps sometimes.”

Rachel shrugged, reading 'time' for 'life' in what he had just said. Greg smiled. Indeed, meanwhile, Klaxon was soon to be at war with itself-a fact that had been lost sight of, one that needed addressing because, as visitors, they owed it to themselves to get their loyalties sorted out like coloured threads in the eventual textured pattern of carpet pre-destined for their feet to walk. Captain Nemo had not briefed them about these dangerous inter-tribal machinations before leaving the now pyloned earthcraft. And here was Beth talking about an old schoolfriend! ”Women!” he thought-and laughed at and against his own instincts.

Beth: Now we've rediscovered our love for each other, I get the feeling that they're splitting us up again by forcing us to be on different sides in a war.

Greg: I didn't understand all this about a war, until someone mentioned it in a cave the other day... off the cuff almost. Klaxon seemed so peaceful when we first arrived.

Beth: (Laughs) Peaceful!

Greg: Well, you know what I mean. Citizens at peace with each other, at least, if not with this flipping racket of air signals! (Laughs, too.) Edith: The war was second thoughts, I gather. Things were getting too boring... and tension is required for anything creative to work properly. Even Proust realised that as he created friction as well as fiction between levels of time.

Clare: And of s.e.xual acceptability. Between levels of it, that is. Grinding levels sparking off further frictions... and spinning.

Greg: How do you ladies cope with seeing everything as if it's in a book? It's enough for me to get my head round reality! Isn't this place bizarre enough already without fictionalising it? This war, for example. I hear it's where a person becomes a Flew person and those who are not Flew are still themselves-and they open veins in their bodies to see if they can merge the meats between them-coming together in hugs that blend as genuinely as hugs of love always tried to be.

Beth: Or s.e.x. Not love. Yet, it's a war. That's what I don't understand. It's not a love-in.

Edith: A love-between?

Clare: That's a better expression-a love-between, but the meats weren't meant to merge, because some people have become poultry-some even giant insects-leaving some other people as genuine human meat. And when they try this love-blending business, the meats reject each other. Like transplants in the old days.

Beth: Captain Nemo always spoke about something called Human Coning when we were all getting here on the earthcraft. Perhaps that was a misprint-I mean a misp.r.o.nouncement for what you're talking about. War because the cones or clones don't 'take'. I'm talking beyond myself, now. But do you know what I mean?

Clare: I think so. It is only possible to understand rarefications like that if you fictionalise them-which brings us back to where we started.

Edith: So, what are we saying? As in Proust we need really long sentences to manage the concepts properly-whilst conversation is inevitably staccato. Like this.

Greg: All I know-is that the citizens are in two warring groups-yet simultaneously paired off as love-partners between each group. And they want us to nail our colours to one mast or the other. In fact, Crazy Lope and Go'spank are already involved. Up to their necks.

Beth: Not only warring, Greg, but viciously warring. The combatants are tooth and nail. Almost tearing each other apart-sinew by sinew. Both s.e.xes, each s.e.x with a different s.e.x, or both the same s.e.x together. It does not seem to matter to birds or insects. I could never tell their genders, in any event.

Edith: Proust hinted at all this in Swann's Way.

Clare: Needs careful exegesis, though, Edith.

Beth: Do they have any weapons-others than their bodies, I mean?