Free The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson Page A

who had understood the essential nature of action, its drabness, the perfunctoriness of muscle-movements compared with the salivating torments of anticipation and the long, rich pastures of regret.
    The expressionless clay mask chanted on. The voice of the main singer was expressionless too, telling, as if in a stone frieze, the precise cruelties that the two heroes dealt each other until both were dying.

    Na!ar dragged himself through the reed-bed
    Using only his arms.
    The barbs of his own spear held fast in his liver.
    The spear-shaft caught and dragged among the reed-roots.
    Where clear water gleamed he lay still.
    He saw the piebald horse wallow away, saddle empty.
    He saw Nillum kneeling in the water.
    He felt the poison-creatures beginning to suck up his soul.
    Words then Na!ar, shield of the people, spoke.

    Morris thrilled to the grammatical surprise, though he was ready for it, the sudden, rare null-root, the expression of general and involuntary action, contorted almost to the end of the longest word-group for many minutes. He was quite sure that the effect was intentional: the fight itself had been a personal matter between two men, moving their own limbs at their own will; but now a different power stirred in Na!ar’s dying mouth, as large and impersonal as the movement of the floodwaters or the return of day, for which the null-transitive root was invariably used. A series of heavy strokes on the slack-stringed harps seemed to underline the effect and at the same time to usher in another procession of dishes to fill the interval before the cryptic exchange of oaths and absolutions that actually embodied the ancient treaty.
    Shivery and sighing Morris switched his tape-recorder off. In an attempt to protect his inner silence from any idiot who might want to break in with gossip or comment he pretended to be absorbed in the ridiculous architecture of the Council Chamber.
    Even the Sultan was a bit ashamed of the Council Chamber; he would never explain quite how it had been designed, but Morris’s own theory was that the architects had been told to go to Oxford and Cambridge and produce a large room that combined all the most striking features of various college dining halls—though it looked as though they might have strayed into a few chapels as well. In some ways they had been ingenious, adapting the idea of a music gallery to make the place whence the women could watch from behind a screen (carved into a uniquely eclectic Gothic-Arabic design) their lord gobbling. No use had been found for the pendulous great nodules of plaster that hung from the fan vaulting—unless there were secret switches that enabled the Sultan to release them like bombs on to the unwelcome guest. The stained-glass windows had to be lit by an electric sun, because the chamber had no outside walls. The chandeliers were certainly very fine. But everything had somehow been thrown out of proportion partly (Morris suspected) because the Sultan had at a late moment decided to add a few feet to the dimensions here and there, and partly because of the tables. Perhaps it is impossible to design a room which will look right when all the furniture consists of one low throne, a lot of cushions, and five enormous black oak tables only eighteen inches high; Morris was actually beginning to wonder about this as he came out of his trance when the persistent litigant on the far side of bin Zair belched so loudly that he woke himself up. Bin Zair turned pointedly away from him, so could hardly avoid addressing Morris.
    “I will come and see the animals to-morrow morning,” he said. “Thus we will settle this matter.”
    “I am your debtor already,” said Morris.
    “It is convenient,” explained bin Zair. “These Yemenis are slave-merchants; thus I can buy what you need, or order it if they do not have the stock in hand.”
    He was turning away but the litigant, quite unrebuffed, was still there waiting his chance. Bin Zair half rose from his