[ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:12 AM 5/28/2007 -0700, Spike wrote:

>I wonder what the muggers thought they would get from
>the Mormons.

The satisfaction of the deed? (Not that I approve, mark you.)

>  I have heard that it is a sport among lonely housewives to try to seduce the
>Mormon boys

In GODPLAYERS, one of my rather more ferocious characters has sport 
of a somewhat different kind:

==============

           The doorbell rang again, more insistently.
           `Oh, for crying out loud,' the Reverend Jules roared in 
vexation. He flung himself out of his chair, went swiftly down the 
corridor. I heard the front door open, his irritated, `Yes? How can I 
help you?' A soft, indistinct male voice spoke, then another in a 
nasal American accent, perhaps a mid-Westerner. `Why, I'm glad you 
asked me that question,' Jules said in a voice like golden syrup 
laced with rat poison. `Please do come in, these are matters which 
have troubled me for many years. I shall be very glad of your 
counsel.' The door clicked shut with a jail cell certainty that made 
me shiver, and three sets of feet trod towards us. Two young men in 
bad haircuts, dark suits, white shirts and drab ties followed Jules 
into the living room.
           `August, Coop, I'd like you to meet Elder Bob and Elder 
Billy, who have traveled all the way across the Pacific ocean to help 
us find peace of soul. Here, gentlemen, sit, sit.' He gestured them 
to the couch, where each missionary placed himself uncertainly to 
left and right of the robot, who tipped his cap and then sat in 
unearthly relaxation. `These men come bearing witness to a miracle of 
faith, August, and I would recommend that you study their testimony, 
for it will stand you in good stead in the hard times that are at hand.'
           Elder Bob, or perhaps Billy, hardly older than me, was 
craning his neck to look at the open Schwelle; its cold wind played 
with his cowlick, and his eyes swiveled.
           `Yes, these young worthies asked me if I were Saved, if I 
had accepted the Savior, and I found that downright neighborly of 
them, don't you agree, August? That they should come out here to 
Westgarth on such a hot summer's day in their heavy dark suits just 
to pass on to us this timeless message? Apparently it escaped their 
notice,' he said, tone silky, `that this household is immediately 
adjacent to a place of worship not of their denomination, and that 
its occupant might well be, and indeed is, a minister, a pastor, an 
ordained clergyman of that very faith--no, no, boys,' he insisted, as 
they struggled blushing to their feet, clutching their holy book to 
their sweating chests, `no need to feel embarrassment, because I feel 
that the Lord has directed your feet or perhaps your bicycle tires 
here today, for where else would you be vouchsafed so intimate a 
vision of the truth of that doctrine which I sometimes suspect many 
of the today's youth affirm only in word and not in heart. Here, 
since you're up, allow me. Give me Dis. Coop, if you please.'
           A threshold tore open in the middle of the room. The hairs 
went up all over my body, and I felt my gorge rise. It was the stench 
of the holocaust world of Septimus but doubled, trebled. Things with 
no skin over their raw muscle writhed in agony, screaming from torn, 
bloody throats. They rushed toward the opening. Coop had the two 
young men by the upper arms, drew them effortlessly across the 
threshold, and their own screams joined the rest. I lurched toward 
them. I had to do something, this was literally inhuman. Jules spoke 
a word; the Schwelle shut with its tearing sound. We were alone, the 
two of us, and I tottered on my toes, scared witless, beside myself 
with disgust and anger.
           `You prick. Do you think you're God Almighty?'
           He shook his head, amused, eyes bright. `Ah, that was a 
tonic. I hate those little shits. Here, do sit down.' He let himself 
back into his ratty old chair, eased the creases of his jodhpurs. `No 
harm will come to them, silly meaningless toys that they are. Really, 
sit down, you'll do yourself a damage if you don't calm down. Oh, for 
heaven's sake, very well.' He rose again. `Give me Dis.'
           The shriek of torn reality. Shrieks, plural. `Bring them 
back, Coop.' Through the window and its atrocious landscape of 
suffering, the machine half-carried its victims. Bob and Billy 
sagged, eyes white, pupils pin-pointed, breathing in horrendous 
stertorous gasps. Their clothing was in tatters; slime spattered 
their legs and shoes. Were those toothmarks?
           `You're Satan,' whimpered Billy, cowering away. The 
Schwelle zipped shut behind him. Coop released them; they fell to the 
carpet, began crawling away toward the hall, their scriptures 
abandoned. `You foul wicked thing.'
           `Oh, get over it. I thought you'd be grateful. The green, 
I think, Mr. Fenimore, and then a touch of the blue.'
           `Certainly, sar.' Coop had his amnesing tube out of his 
pocket with blinding speed, bathed them in emerald radiance. They lay 
like children, curled up, happy smiles on their faces. Blue light 
danced, stranger yet, something I had seen once and in effect deleted 
from my own memory without need of the green ray. Slime melted away, 
like ice slurry under a blow torch. The ripped garments healed 
themselves, as the evaporated window had renewed itself in Great-aunt 
Tansy's bathroom, like a video tape run backward, like a broken 
yellow and viscous mess amid cracked white shell fragments sucked 
back together and knitted into a gleaming ovoid, the unbroken egg 
flying back upward against gravity into the waiting hand, deposited 
swiftly inside the refrigerator door. But this was reality being 
edited on the run, not backward but forward, smoothed out, spliced 
and repaired.
           I was right, I told myself. I'm in a simulation.
           `Tut tut, you're having a banal thought, August.' Jules 
was watching me keenly. `You're assuring yourself that this is some 
kind of virtual reality program running on your petaflop home 
computer in the year 2051 and you're really some old retired fart 
with electrodes jammed into his head, jacked into fantasies and 
remembrance of things past.' Close enough, actually; I felt chilled, 
and it wasn't just the wind from the open Schwelle. `Ah, ye of little 
faith. Nothing so simple, lad, nothing so neat, nothing so... old 
hat. Thank you, Coop, I wonder if you'd be so kind as to see our 
young friends to the door?'
           `Sar.'
           Dazed, peering about in a sort of pleased confusion, Billy 
and Bob took a hand apiece and trailed into the hallway. The door 
open, shut quietly. I suppose they pedaled away into the hot north 
wind. I never saw them again, and can't imagine what their dreams 
told them. If they retained any partial memories of the hell world, 
did their epiphany serve to confirm their faith or refute it? I don't 
know and, frankly, I don't care. I'm a Player now, a Player of the 
Contest of Worlds, and I have bigger fish to fry.

================

Damien Broderick