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We shall always have lived in the castle
May. 4th, 2014 12:44 pmApparently I never will finish Kipling-on-Mars; all I can do is reread and endlessly revise the first half. It's like a river that loses itself in a desert, winding away into dry sand, nowhere to go.
I do still like what I've done, though. The most of what I've done, even if I have marched it up a blind alley.
Here, have a chunk:
"If I can’t trust a brother of the Craft, I’ve lived too long. Now,” briskly, “how soon can you bring me into the company of a Martian?”
I may have gaped at him; I’m sure I stuttered. “A, a Martian, sir? Do you mean a merlin? That is, an aboriginal, a native, an alien Martian? You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Of course not; I know only what I’ve read, what I’ve heard from others, what we’re told. That’s not good enough. Come, lad, why do you imagine I travelled all this way? To spend my time with hoary colonels and remittance men? I’ve seen them all already, from Bournemouth to Lucknow to Canton; they’re all the same. And the red dust of the Deccan is not so different from the red dust of Ares.” He kicked up a cloud of it, to underscore his point. “What do you have for me that’s new, that I haven’t seen a thousand times before? Heh?”
“Olympus Mons,” I said immediately. “You’ve seen nothing like it, sir. And the canals, some of them are broader than the Mississippi and razor-straight for a thousand miles or more; and the crater-lakes, and Cassini-city on the wall, and—”
“Geography and architecture, yes. Engineering, too. The works of God, the works of man - and works by other hands. This, man, this!” His hand stabbed up and back towards the ship, the edifice, the great bulbous steel cliff-face he’d descended from. “This is why I came. Not to give a lecture-tour, and not to stand - well, not merely to stand on another ground and breathe another air. I have travelled, far and far, in all the conveyances there are. Sailships and steamships, bicycles and rickshaws, howdahs and bullock-carts and palanquins, steamcars and airships too: I have ridden in them all, and I have never, never had an experience such as this. All my life I have been a man of words, and that was ... indescribable. I had no notion of time, during our passage. I cannot even name it a journey: say transit, rather. No notion, none. Time was my friend before, reliable and certain; now I feel it again, a hesitant presence at my shoulder, wishful of resuming our former acquaintance; but in that vessel? Not at all, it could not cross the threshold.
“I need,” he said, “I have a need in me to meet the authors of this wonder. No one aboard, not even our courtesy-captain, could bring me to the pilot of the craft. I sent a note, a halting and inadequate note, which I was assured would not be read on the other side of the door that divided us from the native crew, even if it did not miscarry in the space between. Nevertheless. I am here, now; and we the British are here, and the Martian race is here among us, and that is why I have come. Now, sir: you have that look about you that tells me you are Anglo-Martian, born and bred. You must have been an adventurous youth; no stay-at-home has ever made a good reporter. Do not tell me that the spirit of bravado never brought you face to face with one of their kind, for I’ll not believe you.”
He was right, of course. More than one, and more than once. I’d been a bolder child than I should have been, perhaps; and a more desperate, that too, on occasion. I had the finger-talk down pat, and some of the bubble-talk - and even so. Something in me quailed, something more rebelled. What, should I introduce this venerable literary lion to a nymph, in all its vicious unpredictability? Or to a naiad, deep down, where they could indulge in a slow and mutual incomprehension? Or to an imago that nobody could talk to, that might not even be sentient any more...?
I do still like what I've done, though. The most of what I've done, even if I have marched it up a blind alley.
Here, have a chunk:
"If I can’t trust a brother of the Craft, I’ve lived too long. Now,” briskly, “how soon can you bring me into the company of a Martian?”
I may have gaped at him; I’m sure I stuttered. “A, a Martian, sir? Do you mean a merlin? That is, an aboriginal, a native, an alien Martian? You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Of course not; I know only what I’ve read, what I’ve heard from others, what we’re told. That’s not good enough. Come, lad, why do you imagine I travelled all this way? To spend my time with hoary colonels and remittance men? I’ve seen them all already, from Bournemouth to Lucknow to Canton; they’re all the same. And the red dust of the Deccan is not so different from the red dust of Ares.” He kicked up a cloud of it, to underscore his point. “What do you have for me that’s new, that I haven’t seen a thousand times before? Heh?”
“Olympus Mons,” I said immediately. “You’ve seen nothing like it, sir. And the canals, some of them are broader than the Mississippi and razor-straight for a thousand miles or more; and the crater-lakes, and Cassini-city on the wall, and—”
“Geography and architecture, yes. Engineering, too. The works of God, the works of man - and works by other hands. This, man, this!” His hand stabbed up and back towards the ship, the edifice, the great bulbous steel cliff-face he’d descended from. “This is why I came. Not to give a lecture-tour, and not to stand - well, not merely to stand on another ground and breathe another air. I have travelled, far and far, in all the conveyances there are. Sailships and steamships, bicycles and rickshaws, howdahs and bullock-carts and palanquins, steamcars and airships too: I have ridden in them all, and I have never, never had an experience such as this. All my life I have been a man of words, and that was ... indescribable. I had no notion of time, during our passage. I cannot even name it a journey: say transit, rather. No notion, none. Time was my friend before, reliable and certain; now I feel it again, a hesitant presence at my shoulder, wishful of resuming our former acquaintance; but in that vessel? Not at all, it could not cross the threshold.
“I need,” he said, “I have a need in me to meet the authors of this wonder. No one aboard, not even our courtesy-captain, could bring me to the pilot of the craft. I sent a note, a halting and inadequate note, which I was assured would not be read on the other side of the door that divided us from the native crew, even if it did not miscarry in the space between. Nevertheless. I am here, now; and we the British are here, and the Martian race is here among us, and that is why I have come. Now, sir: you have that look about you that tells me you are Anglo-Martian, born and bred. You must have been an adventurous youth; no stay-at-home has ever made a good reporter. Do not tell me that the spirit of bravado never brought you face to face with one of their kind, for I’ll not believe you.”
He was right, of course. More than one, and more than once. I’d been a bolder child than I should have been, perhaps; and a more desperate, that too, on occasion. I had the finger-talk down pat, and some of the bubble-talk - and even so. Something in me quailed, something more rebelled. What, should I introduce this venerable literary lion to a nymph, in all its vicious unpredictability? Or to a naiad, deep down, where they could indulge in a slow and mutual incomprehension? Or to an imago that nobody could talk to, that might not even be sentient any more...?