Alien Embassy by Ian Watson

Author:Ian Watson [Watson, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

I wake up in my tiny cell bedroom in the back of the Palace (where slaves’ or servants’ quarters once were) hating my body for its perversities. My nails are turning brittle and cracking. I have to hold them away from the walls wherever I walk these days, in case they catch and splinter. My breasts plump fatter, turning themselves into chocolate hemispheres from which the nipples push like worms from wet soil. Nipples are exceptionally tender and damp to the touch, while breasts themselves grow coarse with all the moisture settling in them, becoming thick granulous membrane-bags full of lumpy sodden sponge. They tug down from my shoulder blades, pulling the skin so taut that my collar bones stand out from deep hollows, giving the upper quarter of my body a ridiculously gaunt appearance.

A hidden, ghost’s hand is rubbing me out and drawing me back in again in cruder, darker lines. A thick streak of pure charcoal plunges downward from my navel, a faint signpost.

Down in the Great Hall of the Sutras I polish whatever is smooth and round and golden.

Alone in my cell, I follow the tracks of the foetus within me, amazed. See, here they are upon my belly! Upon my breasts! It’s travelling somewhere, inside. Not walking; it hasn’t proper feet yet. Yet it leaves dark oozy trails on me, from inside. I’m always one step behind it in trying to anticipate its moves, because I can’t see it. Nor can it see me. Yet, still, there are these traces and tracks connecting us. I’m its horizon, its boundary. Nevertheless, it’s it that curves me round itself. Otherwise I wouldn’t be this shape. It curves me. It lays marks on my belly to measure me. But these marks broaden and coarsen as I curve, so that it can’t really take my measure. Thus, in a strange way, we enclose one another mutually. Each one of us is the boundary of the other’s boundary. Only the most indirect observations are possible.

If the nature of the space that we both occupy, and warp, is a well-nigh insoluble problem, the time scale we share is even more questionable. For my dreams carry me outside time, and there the foetus lies in wait for me. It is actually far older than me - as old as life itself, which it recapitulates. I have only lived eighteen years; whereas it has already straddled a billion years of evolution. So far as my sense of time goes, I feel myself balanced upon its vast (yet tiny!) base like another fotala impaled on the tip of a mountain hidden inside.

I discuss this with Feng, who comes to see me. He nods approvingly at my analysis.

‘You’ll be able to interrogate the Star Beast far more effectively after all this, you realize? You’ll understand the nature of the problems better - the boundary between us and the rest of the universe, between our kind of consciousness, and the Star Beast’s cosmic consciousness-‘

I wander down to

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