13. THE WISE COUNCIL'S LESSON

A look at the authority on Terraful

The streets of Terraful were unusually empty as Zoz drove along in his magnetic car. He had a feeling that he might be summoned to the Wise Council to answer questions about two of his students who had, apparently, deviated from the norm. Instead of playing endless erotic games with each other they had, it appeared, started thinking.

So he was going to the Wise Council to see what was what, and if it was possible for him to feel nerves, then he was nervous.

And the Wise Council was equally nervous. There was something unusual afoot in the depths of the sentience that was the essence of the greatest wisdom ever foisted on the Universe by any force. At least, that’s what it thought as it ruminated on recent developments.

The problem was with the essence of something that considered itself the greatest wisdom ever foisted on the Universe, for that consideration itself reflected a severe lack of that same wisdom. But that didn’t stop there being something unusual afoot.

Like all good parents the Wise Council kept its eyes, all of them, all thousands or even millions of them, on its children, and if any being had a blood supply and a beating heart it was one of its children.

Everything was organised for the greatest of harmonies and the most beautiful of joys. Education was lengthy but the teachers were instructed to omit trivial things like human nature and social interaction from the syllabus, steer clear of actual history but concentrate on old myths and older lies, and actually refrain from teaching anything actually useful. Geography was allowed, but what could really be usefully said about a world that was all blue savannah and millions of little streams? And whereas what past generations might have looked on as an indecent concentration on physical lust was at the top of the curriculum, students were students almost until their middle years before it crossed their minds that somewhere there should be more to life that the weary routines of carnal ventures.

The Wise Council was no sadist, though. It knew one troublesome thing and that was if the human animal had nothing to do it would find something with which to fill its empty hours. It would then possibly trespass into forbidden realms, and before you could say what the ancients said and utter Jack Robinson there would be wars and pestilence and disease. The solution, it had long decided, was lust. Lots of it, all safely shielded by waters that were natural contraceptives until the annual celebration that was Michaelmas when anti-contraceptive pills were issued to the chosen few.

That dangers lurked whenever humans were free to think was gleaned from the archives.

So let the people enjoy their games. Let them bide their time in play while an answer was found and whilst he (whenever the Wise Council thought of itself it was as a masculine rather than feminine entity) ran things.

The trouble was, things had started to go wrong. There was the young prostitute fulfilling a renowned role, and her first task, of being a comfort-wench to the old Priest, had gone awry. The old fool had died mid-thrust!! Yes, died! He had enjoyed the most monumental surge of passion, and at its height he had gasped his last breath. And rather than understand death as being a part of life the silly young woman had screamed and wailed and sounded exactly like a b***h of old, exactly like a recording, weathered in his archives now but still just about audible, of a fish wife.

That in itself would have tested the Wise Council, but more had happened. That infantile creation, that Zoz, the android thing who was already waiting in his vestibule (if a cupboard could be called a vestibule) had prematurely instructed his students about the circle of life and even gone so far as to introduce the notion of cannibalism to them. And now there was another silly young student already condemned to life in the Asylum, being force fed on nutrients the planet could ill afford.

He didn’t know much about the Asylum, just that it was a place, not a pleasant place, the insane would never recover if they enjoyed being insane, and it was subterranean because non-essential building above ground required too much growing space, and that growing space was where the savannah replaced vital gases in the atmosphere. That was one lesson from the dim past: consume too many natural resources at your peril, and it was his one and only task to keep the human population on Terraful alive and well until they were called back home, and that could be any day now. That’s how he had thought for, well, centuries. They could be called back home any day now. It was recorded.

The only trouble was any day now never came, there were fewer births every year (maybe his cunning use of Michaelmas as a time for breeding was to blame, who could tell, but there were never enough births to replace the deaths), and it troubled him.

In fact, just about everything troubled him and now he had Fil and Cun to worry about. Two fems unlikely to seek their own Michaelmas at a time when breeding was looking pretty essential.

There was only one thing to do about the wretched subversives. Only one order he could make.

DESTROY THEM echoed round his silicon brain, and the message rang forth. Down empty corridors (all buried beneath the blue-green soils, all safe from polluting their new planet) it echoed until it reached Zoz in the vestibule.

And he heard it, and shuddered.

© Peter Rogerson 23.04.19