‘Steve Aylett is without doubt one of the most ambitious and talented writers to emerge in England in recent years. While his work echoes the best of William Burroughs, it has the mark of real originality. It’s hip, cool and eloquent.’
Michael Moorcock
‘Aylett is one of the great eccentrics of British genre fiction.’
The Guardian
‘Aylett’s prose is like poetry.’
The Independent
‘Utterly original’
SFX
‘The most original and most consciousness-altering living writer in the English language, not to mention one of the funniest.’
Alan Moore
Steve Aylett was born in London in 1967. He is the author of The Crime Studio, Bigot Hall, Slaughtermatic, LINT, The Complete Accomplice, Rebel at the End of Time, Toxicology, The Inflatable Volunteer, Atom, the Tao Te Jinx, Shamanspace, And Your Point Is?, Smithereens, Novahead and Heart of the Original. His work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Greek, Finnish, Czech, Russian and Japanese. He is a bitter man.
REBEL AT THE END OF TIME
Steve Aylett
Serif
London
This e-book first published 2015 by
Serif
47 Strahan Road
London E3 5DA
Completed 2007, first published 2011 by PS Publishing
Copyright © Steve Aylett 2011, 2015
e-book edition copyright © Serif 2015
Steve Aylett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover artwork by Mo Ali
ISBN: 978 1 909150 44 7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publishers
e-book produced by Will Dady
Thanks to Mike Moorcock
‘Power keeps hacking away at the weeds, but it can’t pull out the roots without threatening itself’ – Eduardo Galeano
1 In the Golden Age
In Which the Duke of Queens Creates a Scene
Regina Sparks flew over a lion-coloured desert in a monoplane of clear glass. Birthing from the horizon was a pyramid of fitted gold, confetti crowds already gathering about it. She viewed the landscape through large jet eyes without whites. Her friends looked like a scattering of paste jewels.
The glass cross drifted to hover over the crowd, turning slowly. Regina’s large black mouth curved into a smile as faces turned up to her. She flipped the plane sideways, settling it softly on the rise of a dune. Remembering to cease the engine sound and the spinning of the ‘propeller’, as she had learned to call it, she stepped down from the replica craft. She was an elfin negative of snow-white skin patterned with black tattoos of twisted vines. Her bare feet padded through roasted sand.
As she looked for the Duke of Queens, the guardian to whom she was so devoted, Regina spotted Bishop Castle’s huge headdress swaying above the crowd. He was soon lost amid posturing gallants and beaked babies. The party was a throng of snouts, wings and tails. Here was a living totem pole of sullen expressions, there a large fleshy dice with a smile on each side. Though free to choose their form by whim, caprice or professed philosophy, the oldest among Regina’s neighbours chose to be human, with only minor variations. Some still trailed fashions which were almost spent: coloured shadows, bone companions, magnified heads and the ‘hell’ word used without context. What would replace these was yet to be seen – perhaps today a new notion would strike them all as fresh, or at least as something they hadn’t tried for the last thousand years. It was often necessary, at the End of Time, to have a short memory.
The Iron Orchid emerged from the crowd like a ship’s figurehead from a mist, resplendent in a dress of bacon, marmalade and black satin. ‘Lady Miss Zebra,’ she said, ‘no party of the Duke’s is complete without your two-tone presence.’
Regina smiled. ‘As you can see, sweet Orchid, I’ve changed my patterning – stripes are tired, I now favour these lively vines, you see?’ She turned once around, twisting her head to admire her own inked nakedness.
‘So you do, Regina. Does it taste the same?’
‘I don’t know.’
The Iron Orchid bent to lick at Regina’s breast. ‘Cinnamon, ashes and human flesh.’
‘Good?’
‘Exquisite, my heart.’
‘Is that your Napoleon?’ Regina asked the Orchid, gesturing to a short fellow in a crimson uniform. The man took one bite from a cupcake and then hurled it to the floor, shouting at the sky with declamatory gestures.
‘Yes,’ said the Orchid. ‘The most voluble of the three in my collection, I think. He weeps sometimes, for his lost empire.’
‘He is possibly the real one?’
‘Perhaps. He believes so, of course. I keep them in separate sections of my menagerie.’
Whisper Terrible floated down on a chicken-shaped weathervane which he straddled like a fairground horse. Landing, he dismounted the metal silhouette. Before they could go to greet him, Doctor Volospion strode over to them followed by a bone companion. The saturnine Doctor had conceded nothing to the theme and posed in his customary blue and purple brocade gown. ‘Welcome, permanent bloom, and most white shade of pale. I look forward to the Duke’s new extravaganza. What will he dream up next, I wonder?’
Though the Duke of Queens was universally admired for the scope and originality of his invention, it was generally acknowledged that he overdid things in terms of monumentalism. His scenes were also regarded as being somewhat impersonal and static: mere spectacle. Regina felt obliged to go to her guardian’s defense. ‘Uncle is throwing himself heart and body into this spectacle, Doctor Volospion. He has been about it several weeks in historical research.’
‘I have seen pyramids before, somewhere.’
‘Do you know what they are for?’
‘Being tall,’ he said vaguely, turning to gesture at the monolith, ‘like that. And pointed. Perhaps pointing up at something in the sky.’
‘It was more in the manner of a machine,' Regina told him. 'For processing the death of kings.’
‘Kings?’ Volospion’s sharp features became sardonic. ‘A try at immortality, then, through a grand building project. Their methods clearly didn’t work. I can’t remember the name of a single king.’
Volospion’s bone companion leant in at his shoulder and whispered, ‘This too shall pass. And remember you are butter, man.’
‘I’m getting a bit sick of these,’ Volospion muttered, and touched a purple power ring on his left hand. The skeleton evaporated.
‘Let us wait to see what the Duke has created for us,’ said the Iron Orchid. She was being kind to Regina. ‘The pyramid is impressive. And precise.’
‘You are right, Madame Orchid,’ Volospion conceded.