Abaddon - Chapter 16

Day Four

"It was only after I began experimenting with your own people as well as your enemy prisoner that I realized", said Percival. "Observe."

The open area at the end of the square that approached the Bathopolis had been cleared. In place of the usual press of people - Percival determined to call them 'people' - were the following experimental materials: three jagged-brimmed stoneware pots (made, he suspected, out of the remains of shattered classical amphorae); a creaking, swaying cage containing a wary red-eyed experimental subject making brooding crawling circuits of his cell; a control troglodyte; a large, recently opened bag of bonbons from Percival's pack; and Percival himself.

"This is a repetition of an experiment we have already successfully executed several times. The prisoner and Loquax here” - he indicated the control troglodyte, the Queen's English-speaking translator - "have both been introduced to the delights of Cadbury's Chocolate Eclairs, and are aware of their advantages over bat sourprise. They are both eager to locate and ingest as many Chocolate Eclairs as possible." Loquax grinned widely and nodded his head vigorously. His teeth, Percival noted, had been filed into points.

"The two test subjects", said Percival, "will now be blindfolded." He issued a set of commands in pseudo-Latin, and well-drilled laboratory assistants scurried forth with strips of ragged cloth, which were tied around the temples of Loquax and - as it became suddenly, amazingly docile in its cell - the prisoner.

And I know why you're docile, you poor bastard, thought Percival. You know you're about to be sent out to hunt for chocolate eclairs again. For one peculiar instant, although he knew the prisoner had been deprived of freedom, food, safety, and almost certainly any prospect of future survival, it was the fact that this might be the last time it ever tasted Chocolate Eclairs that seemed most tragic to Percival. Every creature, he thought to himself, deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of Chocolate Eclairs.

"We now take flagstone A", said Percival, "which has, as have flagstones B and C, been painted black. It should be very easy, one would think, to locate a bright object of any colour seen against such a background. Firstly", he continued, "we will take an ordinary Chocolate Eclair - wrapped, of course, to preserve the flavour - and dip it in a pot of bright blue dye prepared by your majesty's simple-makers. It becomes blue; I place it somewhere on the flagstone. We release Citizen Loquax, and remove his blindfold -"

The Queen clapped her hands in glee at the conceit. Loquax grinned like an alligator, rushed forward to the flagstone, scooped up the sweet immediately, unwrapped it with a practised flick of his fingers, and devoured it.

"Bravo, Loquax!" The Queen squealed like a little girl. "More, your reverence! More!"

"Now we prepare another sweet, place it on the same stone, and release our prisoner." The prisoner, pathetically cooperative, loped out of its opened cage, making no attempt to attack or escape, scooped up the sweet, and ate it.

"So what have we established?" recouped Percival. "Only that both species - and I do consider the prisoner to represent an entirely separate species of homo sapiens - can easily distinguish blue objects against a black background.

"Now, however, we will change the experiment. On flagstone B, we place another sweet, this time coloured a bright yellow by Her Majesty's inestimable simple-makers, who I believe made highly imaginative use of human bile to do so. We blindfold Mr. Loquax as we place the sweet - we spin him around, thus - we release him." Loquax wandered forward, paused at the edge of the flagstone, stared down at it like a surface person staring at a Magic Eye picture. Eventually, he squatted down, squinted across the flagstone with only one eye open, located the sweet, scooped it up greedily and chugged it.

"Mr. Loquax, as we can see, had more difficulty this time. Let us see how our prisoner fares."

The prisoner, his leash released, scampered up to the flagstone, his eyes flickering like flames. He squatted in front of the stone, examining it from edge to edge. He bobbed his head up and down, and weaved his body from side to side. Eventually, he fell onto all fours and began to actually sniff the air, before finally appearing to locate the sweet purely by accident and greedily snuffling it down, not even attempting to remove the wrapper.

Percival cleared his throat.

“Both subjects exhibit a marked lack of ability to identify a yellow-dyed object against a black background. This is interesting enough in itself; but let’s see what happens when we move to flagstone C.”

Both test subjects were re-blindfolded and spun round, Loquax with ease, the prisoner with some difficulty.

“Now we will put down an Eclair”, said Percival, “which has been dyed bright red.”

Loquax was released, and loped up to the flagstone. Despite the fact that the sweet was clearly visible, he stared at the stone in great perplexity. Eventually, completely stumped, he fanned his hand across the surface of the stone until he found the sweet purely by touch and gobbled it.

“That was cheating, Loquax”, reproved the Queen. “Was that cheating, Reverend Percival?”

“I suspect so, Your Majesty”, said Percival. “But it matters little. Now let us see how our prisoner deals with the same situation.” He clicked his fingers.

The prisoner, with a contemptuous glance at Loquax, swaggered forward arrogantly, scooped up his own sweet instantly, and ate it.

“The prisoner”, said Percival, “appears to have no difficulty whatsoever seeing light from the red end of the spectrum.”

The Queen was unamused. “We have already established, Mr. Percival, that these creatures do not see light in the infra-red.”

“Quite so, Majesty. All I am suggesting is that they see light in the red.”

“What is so fantastic about that?”

“To us, as normal homo sapiens sapiens, nothing, Your Majesty. But to your subjects, who clearly are incapable of distinguishing the colour red, it means a great deal.”

The Queen kept her counsel, absorbing this information. Percival continued. “The Abyss at this depth, like seawater below a depth of only a few metres, like the Earth’s atmosphere after sunset, seems to filter out all colours but blue. The rocks, to us, if we snuff out all man-made fires, torches and candles, seem blue. Blue is the last colour lost before total blackness. Your subjects, Majesty, have accordingly developed, it would seem, an extraordinary acuity for sight in the blue end of the spectrum. On my first day down here, I passed a plastered wall which, it seemed to me, somebody had simply painted a flat uninteresting blue. It was only later, when I saw one of your citizens painting something on that wall very carefully in blue, that I realized that their eyesight differed from my own not just in that they were capable of seeing in dimmer light - they were also capable of seeing two colours where I can only distinguish one. To them, there is no one colour ‘blue’ - light of this wavelength, to them, represents the whole of their visual spectrum, and is split into ‘colours’ of its own. Their eyes have evolved to deal to maximum efficiency with light of the only colour that can naturally penetrate down here.

“But what happens even further down? How does a human being adapt when there is no light at all?

“The citizens of your state, Majesty, have evolved methods of seeing in a dark environment which I believe to be analagous to those exhibited by fish in the twilight layers of the deep oceans. Fish living at these depths are adapted to see multiple shades of blue in much the same manner, and have large eyes in the same manner as your own people. Further down in the ocean, however, certain fish have developed other ways of seeing in darkness.

“The game of prey against predator is like a battle between soldiers, and the classic soldier’s goal, as far as reconnaissance is concerned, is the ability to ‘see without being seen’. Many fish in the deep oceans can produce bioluminescent light, but this is a light anyone can see. It advertises the fish that produces it as a potential meal just as much as it allows that fish to see where it is going. But what if the fish were able to produce a kind of light no other fish could see? The light would project out into the dark ahead like a radar beam, invisible to those not equipped to see it, but highly useful to the fish that made it. And for this reason, some fish of the deep seas have redeveloped the ability to see red light. The reason why they’ve done this is that the light-producing organs on their bodies only produce light of that colour.”

Percival gestured to the prisoner as it crouched on the flagstones, head bowed low in case it received a smack on it with the lead weight of a spear. Its eyes were still burning like Mars and Antares in the gloom. “What you see here as just ‘eyes’ are in fact organs of far greater sophistication. I imagine that, if a skilled anatomist were to dissect this fellow’s eyes, he’d find a massive number of photophores, light-producing organs, mixed in among the rods and cones in the retinas. His eyes, you’ll notice, don’t burn with a steady red light; instead, they seem to flicker, much like the picture on an old TV set. This, I believe, is because photophores at the back of his eyes are strobing many hundreds of times a second, switching on and off extremely rapidly. Why do they do this? For the simple reason that, if the photophores were switched on at the same moment the rods and cones were absorbing light, they’d burn out his retinas as surely as if someone had shone a laser beam into his eye. Bats switch their hearing off for just the same reason while they’re issuing their outgoing sonar shriek; if they didn’t, they’d deafen themselves. The pupil of the eye can pass light out just as easily as it can let it in; hence the eye of this man is both a light-producing and a light-receiving organ.”

The Queen was confused. "And does this mean we now have a military advantage, Mr. Percival?"

"I'm afraid it does, ma'am."

"You're afraid?"

"I am a soldier of the British Army, ma'am. I'm allowed to bless the bullets for a just war. Is this a just war?"

"My people have been attacked, Mr. Percival. Attacked and eaten. I am almost certain that eating enemy prisoners is against the Geneva Convention."

"And what will your people now do in retaliation? And would they not have done it already, if the enemy had not had the advantage?"

"Mr. Percival, you are considering these creatures to be human. Do you have proof they are of the same species as humanity? What is the definition of a species? A group of creatures that can interbreed with each other? There has never been an instance of an Enemy creature interbreeding with a person of the City. However, I am living proof that the people of the City can still, by the skins of their teeth, interbreed with humans. This is, therefore, not warfare - it is pest control. Humans versus animals. In your Big Book Of God, was dominion over all the animal kingdom not given to Adam?"

"I think you'll find that Adam was only given the opportunity to name the animal kingdom", said Percival. "Must have been a big job, I imagine. All the way down to the protozoa."

"Will you help us develop ways of combatting these creatures?"

"I will help you develop ways of protecting yourselves."

"The best means of defence is attack, Mr. Percival."

Stephanie, what do I say?

"I will help you to see your enemies", said Percival stuffily. "As far as attack is concerned, I must refer you to my military superiors."

What the hell. Of course, What The Hell, down here, might not just be idiomatic. My hand is in Satan's fiery arse up to the elbow, and it hurts.