The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers Read Online Free Page B

collaborated with Ivan Pokrov on this civilisation experiment, arranging for Chegory’s working day to end at midday so he could study throughout the afternoon while still drawing his pay from Jod’s Analytical Institute. Soon enough, Chegory was boarding with Jon Qasaba in the Dromdanjerie’s staff quarters, and was thus thrown into daily contact with the nubile Olivia.
    Is there any need to further elaborate the reasons for Chegory’s caution? He was a member of a despised minority which had recently been almost hunted to extinction on Untunchilamon. By reason of his race, people would expect him to rape, kill, cheat, steal and lie, and also to indulge in the worst forms of drug abuse. Therefore he acted always with the greatest of caution, avoided compromising situations, and showed his thorns to Olivia.
    This delicious young damsel, seeking friendship at least (and sometimes thinking she might be seeking more), found his remoteness hard to endure.
    By now you may be asking: how are such things known? How have the dynamics of Chegory’s relationship with Olivia been discovered? How can we be sure that this is how it was?
    Why, because there is such a thing as gossip, of course. You must realise that institutions (prisons, armies and asylums) are great places for gossip, because there is intimacy, the cheek by the jowl, the free speaking of the loquacious in front of those so familiar they have become invisible, and because there is time. Time to study hints, to theorise on fragments.
    And if most of the witnesses to these events were mad, what of it? The intellectual powers of the insane are no weaker than those of people fool enough to accept the status quo. You may doubt this. But reflect! Suppose one has done something heinous. Suppose one has raped one’s brother, burnt down a temple, embezzled half a million dragons or finally settled accounts with one’s mother-in-law. What is smarter? To throw oneself on the mercy of the court, and get oneself executed? Or to discover that one is in truth insane and really indulged in delinquency because one was, for example, frightened by a goldfish in early youth.
    Believe me, unless one is truly demented it takes a lot of calculated intellectual discipline to maintain one’s madness in the face of the implacable investigations of that most scholarly of all therapists, Jon Qasaba.
    Suppose one has yet again been hailed to the Drom- . danjerie’s interview room, there to face the tenth interview in as many days with the formidable Qasaba. The ever-resourceful Ashdan thinks he has at last found a clue which will explicate one’s behaviour. He enters. He seats himself. He shuffles through a great heap of notes, observations and laborious speculations. Then he looks one in the eyes (he is still ignorant of the fact that my people consider such eye-to-eye contact extremely rude) and he says:
    ‘Why did you use an axe to kill your mother-in-law?’ ‘Because I wanted her dead.’
    ‘Yes, yes, I know that. But why an axe? Why that particular implement and not another?’
    In the teeth of such a question, what is one to do? One’s natural reaction will be to laugh. Or voice one of the quips which come so easily to the tongue:
    ‘What was I supposed to use? A toothpick?’
    But one cannot safely do either of these things. The mad are supposed to be serious and devoid of wit. So: will the truth serve? No. For the truth is too simple. It was pleasure, pure pleasure, to see the bitch smashed apart, to see her skull burst like a rotten cantaloup, to see great globs of blood—
    [Here a lengthy descriptive passage has been excised. By Order, Drax Lira, Redactor Major .]
    Anyone can understand this. Or should be able to. However, Jon Qasaba is so obsessed by his pursuit of arcane knowledge that he has lost touch entirely with the blatantly obvious. So one thinks long and carefully, then answers: ‘Weight.’
    ‘Weight?’
    ‘Yes, it... the axe, it ... I mean, it was heavy.