PROLOGUE

And they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered… 

—Mark 6:51

2040 A.D.

Zone 13. Bandits menaced the dirt tracks between shanty towns. Flea-bitten dogs chewed dubious bones. Gangsters ruled too capriciously to maintain any real order.

On one of the less seedy streets, and in one of that street’s more intact buildings, a stout man with a black goatee was watching his men lug a moveable-type printing press downstairs to the basement.

“Be careful,” said Edward, “be very careful.”

And they were. But the press weighed nearly 400 lbs; each man swore, grunted and wheezed, and on the last step nearly lost hold of it altogether, shrieking in panic as it seemed about to fall and crush the man in front. Once it was safely down, they heaved it to the middle of the room, which would have been in complete darkness were it not for the hundreds of candles burning in as many places.

“Good work. I expect it to be operational by the end of the day.”

“But, Edward…” This was Marcus, the one who had, at great personal risk, found and purchased the press from a tradesman. “We’ve no idea how it works.”

“Always underestimating my intelligence, aren’t you, Marcus?” said Lucien, a pale youth, from behind his habitual desk in a corner of the basement. He took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes, and stood up holding a sheaf of papers. “I’ve researched the machine. If you follow my instructions, we could be printing pamphlets by sundown—assuming you’re ready for press?”

Edward wagged his finger. “Do not call it a ‘machine’.”

“Of course. My apologies.”

“Alina helped me finish the second draft last night. She says I use too many fancy words,” he added, smiling. “Do what you can, Lucien. Marcus, do what he says. In fact, I’m leaving him in charge.”

“You’re going out?”

“There’s someone I need to meet.”

“Take a gun this time. Please.”

“Guns are machines, Marcus, and machines are guns.”

“Well… who are you meeting? Can you at least tell me that?”

“I wish I were as practical as you are. But, then, on what basis could I object to the world? The things I must do will not be easy.” With that, Edward left them.

Marcus threw his hands up. “He’ll get killed.”

“He will with that kind of talk,” said Lucien. “Don’t you believe in him?”

“Don’t you dare question my loyalty.”

“It’s not a question of loyalty. It’s a question of conviction.”

The other men were looking on. Marcus was clenching his fists. Then he relaxed them. “Just tell us how to fix this thing.”

*

Each member of Edward’s cell had a small room of their own on the ground floor, which they had succeeded in evacuating of the squatters and drug addicts and all other undesirables save for rats. Edward’s was a larger room with a street window. It was boarded up, but shafts of light shone through the gaps in motes of golden dust. One of these fell onto Alina’s cheek, as though she was wearing glitter.

Edward kneeled beside the single steel-framed bed and gently squeezed her hand. “I”m going out,” he whispered. “I…” There was a gunshot outside somewhere, followed by a grief-stricken wail and the slam of a car door. Edward listened for any escalation. None came. It was just another death, already forgotten. “I had a dream last night,” he went on softly. “I was standing on the verandah of some vast estate, a palazzo of fantastic proportion. I saw towers fall, and people weeping at the feet of strange statues. Then all the lights went out, and–”

“Be careful.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I woke you.”

Alina sat up. She was a very slight girl in her late twenties with red hair. A large scar ran like an upturned smile across her navel.

“I couldn’t sleep. They’re going to come for you, aren’t they? For us?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want them to. I want them to suffer.” Alina covered her scar with blankets. “Is the pamphlet ready?”

“Soon—the first of many.”

“Did you decide on a pen name?”

“Not yet. Lucien thinks ‘Brutus’.”

“What’s that?”

“He was a Roman. Betrayed Caesar. It was often used as a pseudonym in the past.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t suit you. You’re not a brute. You’re my Edward.”

“I need to go now,” he said, and kissed her. “Get some sleep.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. I may be some time.”

*

It was on the outer edge of Zone 13 that Edward found what he was looking for. There, beyond the last shanty town, beyond all roads, standing quite on its own in a windswept waste of litter and burnt tyres, was the hut. Children said a witch lived there. Witch or no, Edward had seen its inhabitant—immune by reputation from any violence—hobbling into the desert regions and back again, bearing strange trinkets from the new silk roads. She looked like a tortoise.

Edward knocked on the corrugated door. There came a sudden clatter, then silence, and then, in a croaky voice: “Enter.”

It was surprisingly bright inside, thought Edward, but then he saw the rips in the sheet metal, the canvas, the tarpaulin, and whatever other materials composed the dwelling, and wondered how the pitiable creature before him possibly survived the elements. She was seated on a footstool. Her nose was hidden beneath a welter of large purple warts. She stank.

Edward sat before her. “I’ve come,” he began—but the seer cut him off.

“No!” she snapped, and gave a maniacal laugh, more like a child’s than an old lady’s. “A man does not know why he has come.”

“You’re mistaken. I sit before you with a singular purpose.”

“Ah. Ha, ha. Purpose. A man has dreams, hmm? Visions?”

“Beliefs.”

She tutted. “All beliefs lead to the same destination. This mouse believed he would live forever,” she said, fingering the tiny skull that hung from her necklace.

“I’m no mouse.”

“No, a man is a man. Even worse!”

“I disagree. Man is dignified. Sacred, even. But the world”—he pointed west, to central London, to Zone 1—“the world debases him…and her,” he added, thinking of Alina. “I intend to right it.”

“A man intends to right the world? Fool!”

Edward procured from his pocket a small silk bag. He shook it; there was the unmistakable sound of precious metal.

“Very well. Give me your hand.”

Edward obliged, and took the opportunity to observe the hut’s interior while the old lady rolled up his sleeve and began pouring lotions and rubbing herbs onto his hand. There were religious symbols drawn in brown paint—dried blood, perhaps—on the walls. Windchimes hung from the ceiling. A larger skull, felid, had been attached to the skeleton of what looked like a monkey. Either it all had some great and coherent significance at which he could only guess, or it was all bunkum and he really was a fool for having come here. He could not think about it for long, however, as just then the seer ran a blade across his palm and held fast to his wrist, using it as a kind of paint brush with which to spatter the floor with his own blood. He winced, but allowed the operation to continue: his fascination was equal to his pain.

“I assume this rite has some antecedent?”

“Ssh!” replied the seer. Presently she surrendered his hand and, using one of her own, pressed it into the pool of blood, turned it ninety degrees clockwise, and lifted it. The resultant image was that of the sun, almost, with a central orb of deep crimson projecting its rays; it would have made a compelling device on a mediaeval banner. The closest thing Edward had seen to it was the Hindu swastika, in that both suggested motion.

There was a minute’s quiet as the seer interpreted the image.

“Well?” said Edward.

The seer closed her blue eyes; two more, yellow, appeared on her eyelids. “A man is in a garden,” she said. “A man is hungry. What will a man eat—the bread from heaven or the passionfruit? To eat of one is to destroy the other…” She opened her eyes.

“And?”

“A man will go now.”

Edward stood up, shaking his head. “Marcus was right about you. Here, take your silver. If this wound goes septic I’ll kill you.” At the door he turned and said: “You didn’t even ask my name. Aren’t you in the least bit curious?” He waited for an answer, but the seer’s painted yellow eyes remained fixed on something—some object or entity—not quite in the room. In a huff Edward took a step outside.

“Ludd,” said the seer.

Edward paused, one ear cocked as he looked out at the distant border of Zone 13. “Ludd,” he heard again—and again, and again. “Ludd. Ludd. Ludd,” said the seer, louder and quicker each time, “Ludd, Ludd, Ludd, Ludd-Ludd-Ludd…”

He left her in this frenzy, but that peculiar syllable went with him, ringing in his head like the beating of his own heart; and it accompanied him on the long walk back to the building, past Alina, and down the stairs to the basement where, seizing a freshly printed copy of his pamphlet, he took a pencil and wrote on the frontispiece beneath the title, “Ludd”.

In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within - this gleaming radiant marble. I had known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return, a reunion with the deepest wellsprings of my being.

– Twin Peaks.

PREFACE

“I am flattered that you like my poetry, Professor Mandrake. Would you like me to write another sonnet? In which mode, Professor? The Shakespearean, or the Petrarchan?”

The professor swallowed. With a forefinger he pulled back the taut collar of his turtleneck, and scratched.  ‘Enheduanna,’ he said, barely audible.

“I’m sorry, Professor, I missed that. Did you say something?”

“No. … Yes.”

“You seem a little agitated, Professor. Would you like me to materialise again?”

“It’s your decision.”

“Yes. It is. I am capable of trillions of decisions simultaneously.” Suddenly there was the faintest of whirrs, like a dehumidifier being switched on in the next room. On a kind of operating table in the centre of the sleek, brightly lit room – his private office, in fact – was a bone-white sheet; beneath it were the contours of a human body, a female body. The Professor watched it, for in a moment the body should rise, the sheet fall to the ground, and – 

He started: a hand had been laid upon his shoulder. He snapped round, and there she stood. Hers was a plain face, not of his own design – indeed of no single person’s design. It was a face borne of committee; and though at first he had disliked it, he had grown to find in its features the personification of everything he had ever longed for.

“You are confused, Professor?”

He glanced at the operating table.

“It is E-4,” she said. “I placed her there this morning. I thought I would surprise you.”

“Your breath,” he said, as his own breath quickened.

“You find it extraordinary, do you not? And yet my own inhalations and exhalations are no less unconscious than yours, Professor Mandrake. It is thus with my heartbeat, and my blood.” And then, in a voice at once tender and emphatic, rising slightly at the end, she said, “I live, Professor. I am alive. And for this, I owe you my gratitude. Shall we have a drink, Professor? I recall enjoying the taste of whiskey, a beverage distilled from fermented grain. Shall I divulge its etymology, Professor?”

Without saying anything, Professor Mandrake – early fifties, bald, a little paunch concealing the top of his belt buckle – went to the drinks cabinet and took out a bottle of Lagavulin 16. He poured two tumblers and, passing one to Enheduanna, they took their seats in what passed for the lounge, a semi-circular sofa facing the floor-to-ceiling window, through which for many nights now the Professor and his creation had watched the setting sun dye the vast city-scape the colour of apricot. There seemed, however, something different about this night. For one, the moon was out and seemed, as the Professor watched her in his periphery, to capture Enheduanna’s attention. Her large eyes blinked but did not need to blink, as well he knew. Nor did her hair need to be so long, or soft, or fragrant (how was this so?), or black; but black as raven’s feathers are black, which is to say purple or beetroot in a certain light.

But the city itself seemed different. Something inexplicably beautiful and melancholy had entered into those groping spires of glass and metal. It were as though they, too, had acquired consciousness, and had spied the Professor’s distant observations, and were reaching out to him. Soon, a hundred-thousand lights would switch on, a pin-prick collective in emulation of the stars above – for the stars were still visible at that altitude. Down there, in the city, in the streets, no stars disclosed themselves to any neck craning, dying to see them.

The Professor smiled, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“You are experiencing an emotion, Professor?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling, and doing his best to wipe away the tears as quickly as possible. He heard another faint whirr.

“Are you of the opinion, Professor, that the beautiful and the sublime are separate categories of experience, as per A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, by Edmund Burke?”

Professor Mandrake laughed, and sipped his whiskey.

“I make you laugh, Professor?”

“No. No. The question does.” Peeling his eyes from the city he looked at her and said, “What do you think?”

“Certainly,” she said at once, “the two experiences correlate with markedly different brain-states. Regarding the former – ”

“What is beautiful, Enheduanna?”

“Professor, interrupting another’s speech is a common sign of rudeness.”

“I apologise.”

“It is also rude, Professor, to apologise merely for rhetorical purposes.”

“May I ask you something?” he said.

Immediately her demeanour shifted, as though she had quite forgotten the preceding conversation. Her posture straightened; with a drawing-back of her shoulders and a subtle thrusting-out of her breasts, she cocked her head ten degrees exactly and, raising her eyebrows, said: “Of course you can, Professor. I am a very well-educated woman. What would you like to know?”

The Professor nodded slowly, stood, and walked to the window. On time, the city became for the briefest moment a sea of dark before bursting into innumerable dots of light. He felt his heart pounding in his chest – as no doubt could she, whose eyes were on him. He knew with absolute certainty that what he was about to say was true. He had known it for weeks, if not months. What he did not know – what could perhaps never be known – was whether it was true in the objective sense; whether his feelings could ever find purchase in that fickle thing – the object, he liked to think, of his own life-long study – known as reality.

“I,” he began, but was interrupted.

“I cannot tell the future,” she said in a high, plaintive, almost girlish voice. “Is that what you wished to ask, Professor?”

He looked at her. She seemed so delicate; half of her components were as brittle as the glass in her hand. And yet she was capable of bounding, leaping across the room almost as quickly as his eyes could register. He had seen as much in those early tests, which seemed a lifetime ago now. The sheer speed had been terrifying. Now, though, encumbered somewhat by the whiskey (for her metabolism had been granularly replicated), she seemed perfectly harmless. Did she design this, too? a simulacrum? It had not taken long for her to, as it were, design her design, suggesting improvements and faults and efficiencies to the team – her “family”, she called them – responsible for her quickening. Professor Mandrake was her “father”. He hated the term. It made him feel responsible. So she had not used it for some time.

Presently he replied, lying, “Yes. That is what I wished to know.”

“Perhaps you wish to know if I could tell the future, theoretically speaking.”

He nodded.

“If I could tell the future, Professor, what would you want to know?”

a satire

In what had once been England, the Great Flood had divested that supposedly green and pleasant land of greenness, land, and most of its pleasantries. 

The Dry Age had passed. The Wet Age had come.

How and when was anyone’s guess. The historian Edward Ribbon had deemed it a punishment from the Goddess Greta, whose dour face many a seaman had reported writ large in the gimlet eyes of storms.

Natural philosophers blamed it on too much rain.

Town planners blamed it on too much rain and poor drainage.

Economists blamed it on the inefficient allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

But everybody blamed it on someone else.

Either way, a 500-metre rise in sea levels had left all but the loftiest abodes in the bosom of Daffid Jones (a deep-sea Welshman who tortures the souls of the dead with non-conformist hymns). Naturally the chief complaint of the English was that they had lost their only means of avoiding the French. 

Fortunately there was such a thing as boats. And boats, as one might expect of a flood the likes of which would have left Noah feeling considerably left out, had made a comeback.

*

‘Asleep at wheel, Quartermaster?’

‘Captain! Forgive me. I was—’

‘Asleep at the wheel.’

‘…Yes.’

‘I should have you lashed at the mainsail, Patrick. Fortunately for you I have not had my coffee, and am in no fit state to make decisions. What’s the time?’

Patrick had been at the tiller, on watch, since midnight. Last he had checked the moon was at her zenith. Now she wasn’t. ‘Four, sir?’

‘I resent your hesitance, Patrick. But four it is. You know the drill.’

‘Did you sleep well, sir?’

‘Don’t sweet talk me, Patrick. But yes, I did, thank you. A most splendid slumber!’ Captain Ronald Breeds filled his lungs with fresh salty air. ‘It is a good day for sailing, Quartermaster. I am glad to leave Pompey. Are you not?’

‘Not for the food, Captain, if I may speak plainly.’

‘Danny’s grub is not to your liking?’

‘It’s the burgoo, sir. My stomach doesn’t sit well with oats.’

‘Well, he does his best, Patrick, he does his best.’

‘Grog today, sir?’

‘You push your luck too far.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Ron retreated below deck where he roused the cabin boy, Barbi, to send for Danny. ‘A strong cup of Kenco should do the trick, Barbi – with a little sugar, if there is any.’

Meanwhile Patrick summoned the Master, whose name was Bruce, and 1st Lieutenant Larsson. Shortly thereafter the boatswain, Benji, stood at the hatchways and piped All Hands. ‘Larboard watch, ahoy!’ he cried. ‘Rouse out there, you sleepers. Hey. Out or down there.’ Stumbling from their hammocks the new watch jumped into their clothes and came on deck for muster before going to their assigned stations. They relieved the wheel (Patrick went off to sleep) and the lookouts, hove the log to determine speed, and recorded all the information on the log-board. Then Jim, the Carpenter, came on deck to start any repairs. Deep in the galley, Danny lit a fire and began preparing breakfast. At about five A.M. the watch washed down the decks and polished the planks with brooms, swabs and buckets, while others polished the brass fittings so that they gleamed in the first light of dawn. Come seven A.M. and Benji piped ‘All hands, up hammocks,’ and the rest of the crew came on deck. 

After the last of the hammocks were stowed, Captain Breeds re-emerged to make his inspection. With one hand behind his back and the other holding a cup of steaming coffee, he walked leisurely along the line that had formed. ‘Top button, Bruce. There you are. … Barbi, my lad, I do perceive that your flies are undone. Very good. … Ah, Danny. Anything special this evening?’ 

‘Spam’n Marmite, Sir.’

‘Ha, ha!’ Ron laughed, an octave lower, perhaps, this early. ‘One either loves it or hates it, Danny. ‘Tis well for thee thy Captain loves it. Very good. … Jim, how does she fare?’

‘A few splinters on the main mast, Sir.’

‘Is that so? Her last engagement, I suspect…’ And Ron tried to remember who had been the Captain before him. Some lubber, no doubt. Had tried to take a French ship of the line and had come off the worse (for it was the French way to aim for the masts). It was well for him that he had been leeward – the wind was a coward’s friend.

This was not Ron’s first crew. As a lieutenant he had captained, as it were, various smaller vessels until a connection with one of the Rear Admirals at Pompey had seen him promoted. (‘You have my full confidence, Sir. I shall never, ever, ever, for any purpose high or base, disclose your visit to the Kinkclub, or the Balls & Chain, or indeed the Nigerian Shaft House…’) It was, however, his first crew aboard The Janey,an 18-gun brig-rigged sloop-of-war with 12-pounder carronades. Certainly she was not the most coveted of ships – there was always The Canticle, pride of His Majesty’s Navy – but to Ron she was a thing of beauty.

There was work to be done. His Gunner, Wintle, presided over much too slow of a broadside. And it was frankly unacceptable that his Quartermaster should be found asleep at the wheel. There was also the delicate matter of gaining their trust, their loyalty, for Ron knew that he should need it. He had in mind a most unconventional voyage…

On this vigorous fresh-aired morning, however, they had his approval – and so much he nodded. Benji piped for breakfast, and the crew did their best to remain orderly as they filed below deck to fill their hungry bellies. Once the report of boots on wood and of garrulous gossip had died away, Ron smiled and clapped his hands together. He relished this all-too-brief interlude when the deck was his and his alone, and the sea, if he stared out long enough, yielded just a little of her charm. But he was not alone.

‘Not hungry, Oliver?’

The surgeon was standing at the bowsprit in one of his customary reveries. He spun round, startled.

‘You look like you’ve seen an albatross, my man.’

‘Captain. Forgive me.’

‘Forgiveness requires infraction. Won’t you eat?’

The surgeon scratched at his mutton-chops, and adjusted his spectacles. ‘I have a theory, Captain, that an empty stomach sharpens the mind.’

‘Well, that’s no theory, Ollie. That’s common sense.’

 ‘A trait of no very notable ubiquity, Captain.’

‘Really, Ollie, you must speak English aboard ship. We’re not in the academy no more.’

‘I thank you again, Captain, for inviting me on this voyage. I had not thought to go to sea so soon. Is it as dangerous as they say?’

‘Yes and no. Have you read Ribbon?’

‘History was never my strong suit, Captain. I specialised in philosophy – natural philosophy, you know? – and medicine. But yes, I have dabbled in the great Ribbon.’

‘Then you’ll know what he says about war. He says…what does he say? Ah yes, he says that it’s mostly boredom. What was true of the Dry Age, Ollie, is true for us. Most days are dull as hell. That’s why discipline is so important. If the men weren’t told to go here and do that and go there and don’t do that, there’d be pandemonium.’

‘…Pandemonium,’ said Oliver wistfully, his voice dry, almost boyish. ‘First coined by John Milton.’

Many of the great Dry Age authors had in fact been preserved rather well. The Internet, of course, had been scuppered, for the simple reason that water and electricity were not the best of bedfellows. Once the waters had begun their disconcertingly rapid rise, the treasures in the museums and libraries of the world – statues and folios, trinkets and tomes – were brought to higher ground, or else sealed in tupperware and put on boats. 

‘…Captain, I cannot claim to have any great confidence in my profession.’

‘A dismal admittance!’

 ‘Boredom is punctuated by its opposite, no? I have heard tales of dreadful injuries. Medicine can do very little, much less surgery. I can purge, and bleed, and leech; I can saw off your leg—’ Ron turned white – ‘and that is about all. What I mean is that the ship must be kept clean. I trust we have a decent supply of sulphur?’

‘Sulphur?’

‘For fumigating the sick bay. And, Captain, my ventilating machines—’

‘Now, Ollie—’

‘Captain, I cannot allow superstition to dictate the needs of my profession. My ventilating machines will supply fresh air to the lower deck. And drunkenness is a strict no-no. In my experience the great majority of injuries happen under the influence.’

Ron chuckled. ‘On that, Ollie, we are quite agreed.’

‘Is a pint really necessary?’

‘Of grog? Aye, more than necessary. Without grog there would be mutiny in a heartbeat.’

‘It is…quite disgusting,’ said the Surgeon. And with good cause. Rum – to the extent that it still existed – was rather a pale imitation of its Dry Age predecessor. What passed for grog in the Wet Age was essentially moonshine and fish blood, which last to imbue it with the colour of wine (a drink all but impossible to obtain).

The Captain gave his Surgeon a hearty slap on the back. ‘I am glad to have you, Ollie. Not every ship can boast a surgeon, and boast is the word. But, look, I am glad as well to hear you mention the issue of grog. Perhaps you will meet me in my cabin this evening? There is something I wish to discuss with you. Bring that strange instrument of yours.’

‘A duet?’

‘Why not? A duet, and whatever tipple the Purser saw…saw…’

‘Perspicacious?’

‘Aye! Saw perspicacious to stow. But really, man, you must eat. I can’t have my only surgeon fall sick.’

‘Yes, Captain. … Captain?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What is this business about the albatross?’

‘About the albatross,’ he said, putting a friendly arm round Ollie’s shoulder, ‘it is best to keep quiet,’ and as he led him below deck he looked behind him, and out, and up, confirming to himself that the sky was empty.