Tidelands: I-Four (9)
Argus. The King’s Foreskin.
Where are they?
They should have made contact by now.
But they have been late before, Caulden reminds himself. He tries to relax, distracting himself with the spectacle of the peacock strutting to and fro across the upper lawns, stopping here and there to peck or preen, to unfurl that ridiculous tail as he calls out to his dowdy mate, wherever she may be.
How has evolution preserved such a thing? Something so fragile and ungainly, so unnecessary. Like natural selection has given it a free pass, a seat on the sidelines in the war of all against all, exempting it from the sort of tediously utilitarian qualities that aid its fellow creatures in their fraught battle for survival. The very fact of its existence is unsettling. But most of all it’s the “eyes”, like it’s watching you – or rather, the suggestion that what made it is, through this feathery proxy: hundred-eyed Argus, the watchman of the gods. In this specific instance, however, what made it is actually stamped proprietarily on its tail, in place of a few of those very same “eyes”, which have been swapped out, here and there, with the Company logo. Tacky, really. It’s a poor craftsman that leaves so ostentatious a signature.
Argus. What he could have called Azimuth, perhaps, his own many-eyed watchman – watch-thing. But this would have been to invite back in that which had been banished, a name to resurrect all that Caulden despised – the supernatural, the superstitious, myths and monsters, gods and spirits, and all such idols of the mind.
The shadows of dotted clouds inch across the morning, dappling the lawns in a pleasing pattern – albeit one not dictated by meteorological forces. It is a projection, one better for the morale of the residents, the Arc’s outer windows doubling as screens, and therefore a view that can be called up on command, a snapshot of eternal summer sequestered from the world outside, regardless of what the actual weather is doing – where gentle cloud-dappled afternoons have long been growing fewer and farther between. The thought pushes him on.
He finds his thumb and fingers tapping out the familiar soothing pattern, and attempts to centre himself.
Have they ever been this late?
But what is time to them? In a situation such as this?
The gardens were originally designed to provide a sort of mental respite, a haven of mindful calm for the Arc’s inhabitants, a slice of tame nature to stave off stir-craziness. At this hour, he has the space mostly to himself, and to be fair to its other regulars, even when it is more populated than it is now, most respect the intended purpose of the place, conversing in subdued tones or not at all. But he finds even this minimal presence a distraction, an invasion of alien minds into his, almost as if he can hear the ticking of their thoughts. And later, of course, as it gets dark, there will be even more minds, as the gardens provide a backdrop for those in search of gentle recreation, for meetups or dates, for parents seeking family-friendly edutainment to drag the kids off the Feeds. And all of whom will come flocking to the light show as the gardens’ various flora and fauna irradiate the evening with the otherworldly glow of phosphorescence and luminescence, the naturally occurring and the lab-tweaked. From the fireflies and glow-worms that will speckle the trees; the patterned koi and the tiny jellyfish, flashing and shivering through the pools; to the creatures that are strange and distant cousins to anything that evolution, untinkered with, might itself have intended. But, main attraction and advert for all the eugenic skills on show, it is the peacock that most will come to see, which as the evening draws in will light up like a pre-programmed firework, flashing and glowing in an orchestrated array of intricately shifting patterns. Look, it will say, how even Nature’s greatest achievements may be upgraded, may be outdone. It is – logos notwithstanding – quite the sight.
A gentle ping sounds, which only Caulden can hear. He brings up his interface with a fingertap to his right temple, and blinks through his messages. It’s them.
He makes his way toward his favoured bench, half-hidden in a little shallow grotto shaded by drooping spears of bougainvillaea, and which Azimuth will flag on the interface of any resident who approaches, “Closed for Maintenance”. He sits and opens the message, and double-blinks on the attachment, which is simply labelled “Invoice”. Cute.
[Are you sure you trust this sender?] asks Azimuth – a perfunctory response, or a little tongue-in-cheek remark? How much does it actually know? Hard to tell with Azimuth.
And to be completely honest, Caulden is still not absolutely sure that he does – trust them; but he confirms anyway.
And all at once the gardens disappear, and he is somewhere else; somewhere that not even many-eyed Azimuth can follow him.
The King’s foreskin!
What a dope she’s been.
Eva’s strategy has been all wrong. She’s been focusing on peripherals, symptoms, and not the causes themselves! No point in curing the gout – for what good will that do? Buy some temporary royal favour, possibly, but beyond that, not a lot. How will that stop the Revolution! But what if she could prevent it entirely! (The gout, that is.) And thereby fix what it represents!
She’s so excited by her realisation that her thoughts are stumbling over themselves.
OK, rewind. Set it all out in logical steps.
Louis XVI’s marriage to Marie Antoinette remained unconsummated for its first seven years – years! – and was childless for the first eight. During that time, the couple became increasingly unpopular with their public, who saw in them only a cold, superior and distant epitome of all that was wrong with the French aristocracy. Balladeers and pamphleteers even made free with mocking their childlessness (and specifically, the King’s alleged conjugal incompetence) in bawdy lyric and song. The Queen was also hated for her Austrian heritage, the alliance with her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, having doomed France to its losing part in the Seven Years’ War. It was these sentiments that would ultimately feed into the animus that culminated in Louis’ head (and later, M.A.’s too) kissing the wicker. So by the time the first royal bundle of joy happened along, it was too little too late, in terms at least of regaining all the public affection that had been lost.
But what if they’d had children earlier? What if the newly-wed couple (one of whom was a despised foreigner) were not seen as cold, distant, superior and childless, vain, shallow and pleasure loving, but an emblem of family harmony and love, with direct experience of the joys and sorrows of that most fundamental of human experiences? He, the epitome of French masculine virility? She, of maternal and feminine warmth? Wouldn’t that have diverted the course of public opinion, creating a sympathy where none before existed? And on their side, the royal couple’s marital problems resolved, a mutual fire kindled in their hearts (and groins!), how much more sympathy might they have felt for their fellow human beings? Might it not, even, have ultimately helped avert the Revolution?
And what had delayed that early consummation and procreation?
The King’s foreskin!
Much debate still surrounds this sorry fold of flesh. Which interpretation is embedded into the game itself? What is the state of the King’s digital foreskin? Not sure. But the general consensus is that Louis’s lack of interest in sex originally sprang from the fact that he suffered from phimosis, “a condition in which sufferers possess an over-tight prepuce, thus making intercourse painful and unpleasant, or even in some cases virtually impossible”! It was this that had actually been responsible for his gout (indirectly), as he had rechannelled his libido into the acts of hunting, feasting, reading, and – bizarrely – an obsession with locksmithing (while showing no inclination to pick the conjugal lock…). All of which had turned his wife into the detested Madame Déficit, as she sought out in recompense the eighteenth-century equivalent of retail therapy! (Eva had in fact great sympathy for the much maligned Queen – a part, ironically, she has never yet chosen to play – for was she not a fellow princess in the tower? Like herself, another unworldly little girl caged away from the beastly world behind golden bars of wealth and privilege?) But just think what a virile, fit, fully functioning Louis might have accomplished! How much more decisive, engaged and politically savvy all that redirected libido might have made him!
Pure conjecture, of course, Eva has to admit, but worth a shot at least.
Now all she has to do is find a way to persuade his erotically crippled majesty to undergo circumcision.
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