Alecto (3) Important note for travellers: most cheese connoisseurs in the Torcularis Septentrionalis star system insist on referring to Stilton as Melting Mowberry, a name they find far more poetic. And they go on to point out that as Stilton doesn’t come from Stilton anyway, they can really call it whatever they like. Unfortunately the Torcularians love English cheese and apply the same sloppy terminology to other cheeses from that country. (This is known as “shooting the Brie” in the local argot, a turn of phrase that the neighbouring warlike Gurnarghians took rather too literally to heart. They developed their own equivalent of Swiss cheese by using Gruyere for firing practice. More about the Gurnarghians to follow later.) If you order Wensleydale in a Torcularis hostelry, it is just as likely you will be served Lancashire, which can revive age-old rivalries; a request for a slice of double Gloucester can lead to the arrival of two chunks of Cheddar instead; and anyone asking for Sage Derby is at risk of getting nothing more than a wedge of smelly Basildoncaster, (named after a new town planning disaster on Torcularis which sought to combine the easy shopping facilities of a dormitory suburb with the dour sense of identity of a mining community). Planners throughout the galaxy are unanimous in considering Basildoncaster and its cheese, the worst of both worlds. 21. Reblochon - was the first cheese of the Savoie region of the French Alps to be granted European certification, in 1958. The cheese is made by mixing the milks of three different breeds of cow : abondance, tarine, and montbéliarde. The birth of this fascinating cheese is due to the ingenuity of the Savoie herdsmen. In the 13th century, the farmers were completely dependent on landowners who insisted that all the herd's milk was their property. At milking time, the herdsmen did not quite complete the milking. After the controllers had left, the herdsmen finished the milking. They "re-blochaient". From this the cheese was named Reblochon, made with the creamy milk of a second milking. The cheeses are put into a cellar to dry, and are turned every 2 days and washed with whey. From this process, the rind turns an orange-yellow with a velvety texture. Reblochon is a well-proportioned cheese with a nutty after-taste that contrasts with a strong odour of the cellar. The creamy cheese often has a herbal aroma. Historical note: this shining example of rural revolutionary action offered by the Savoyard peasantry became the guiding light for downtrodden masses under the rule of Gurnarghian feudal lords on the planet of Demesne. Groups of rebellious serfs would break out of bondage (those left behind were described as “vassalating”) and form guerrilla units, rampaging around the countryside to extract their pound of flesh from wealthy landlords, normally from just below the knee. (This retribution was known colloquially as tugging the shylock). Their slogans were various; Milk the Rich, The Whey is the Path, Stop Treating Us Like Chattel or Free the Curds. Members of the underground movement were known as Rebolsheviks and their leader was said to be named Rennin, (apparently he came from the east and milk would curdle during his longest speeches). A minority faction of radical pig farmers, inspired by the Rebolshevik lead, tried to apply the same techniques to their swine. They would cut the feet off their pigs at night and equip them with short painted stilts in the hope that their lords and masters would not notice the difference in the daylight. Their slogans were more urbane; Save Our Bacon, Stop Hamming It Up or Buddy Can You Spare A Rib and inevitably, they were termed Trotterskyists. 22. Roquefort - the Earth's greatest blue cheese, produced entirely from ewes that feed on the uplands of Causses, a limestone plateau ringed by cliffs found in the Aveyron region of France. It is the quality of the milk, the processing of the curd, the adding of “penicillium roqueforti” and finally the ripening in naturally damp and airy caves under the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon that give us this unique and remarkable cheese. The exterior aspect of a Roquefort should be white and faintly shiny. The “pâte” should be cohesive and at the same time slightly crumbly. The texture is buttery with blue veins of mould extending to the edges. The smell has a subtle register of sheep’s milk. The taste is complex, but quite outstanding….. soft, creamy, slightly salty, with an after-taste that leaves the palate craving for more. A good Roquefort should never be aggressive. Roquefort marries extremely well with nuts and figs. Technical note: the often accidental introduction of mould spores during the production of cheese has given rise to a whole genera of cheese families grouped under the name of "Blue," not to be confused with the Marecillian Toad cheese of the Elnath system, which due to the presence of strands of algae running through it, has been classified as a "Blue-Green." The sub-type of prophylactic blue cheese merits a mention in this context too, along with the discoverer of its antibiotic qualities, Madame Gasm. She was the founder and moving force of a renowned brothel on the outskirts of Sin City, nerve centre of Hedon, the pleasure planet of the Yed Posterior binary star system. When asking for directions, visitors should be aware that locals refer to the city’s outlying erogenous zones as “the underskirts” or the “Yed Light District.” Madame Gasm noticed after long experience that if she served appetisers of local blue cheese in her vestibule, then none of her customers were subsequently infected by syphilis. A director of one of the major transgalactic pharmaceutical companies, who was a frequent visitor to Hedon, though he denied ever actually visiting Madame Gasm's establishment, heard of this breakthrough and had the idea of developing a range of anti-bacterial cheeses for all kinds of common diseases. The company's marketing department came up with what proved to be a catastrophic delivery channel. The company set up a chain of fast-food burger restaurants where all the sandwiches came heavy on the cheese. The venture went down like an over-capitalised start-up, the culinary delights were snubbed by the target customers who said that the cure tasted worse than the disease and the experiment is now featured on the syllabi of a number of business schools as a "hownoto" case study. Madame Gasm commented after the debacle that she had never said anything about the cheese being eaten and was quoted in the local tabloid press urging that "businessmen need to be hard-sighted but with a bit more foreskin." She has since denied this, adding that it was “a bangled mastardisation.” 23. The pleasure planet of Hedon proved to be fertile ground for many commercial ventures however. Take for example, the little-known Intergalactic Association for the Creation of a Universal Language (IACUL), which happens to mean "there's a bottom" in French, (it would, wouldn’t it?). The Association found, after extensive research, that there were only seven words that were common to all languages throughout the Universe. And that five of these words were concerned with sex. Only one commercial establishment fully supported the IACUL initiative, but what a success story was spawned as a result. This was the universally famous Trappingville Discotheque and Sex Change Clinic, the pulsating heart of Sin City and the only venue on Hedon to proudly proclaim in all its advertising, "Where there’s IACUL, there’s a way." The basic premise of the Disco was that sex was, in fact, already a universal language, (it was to be found in every nook and cranny of every galaxy), and that biology should not be allowed to spoil a good night out. Couples, or indeed any other combination of individual organisms, who had spent the evening drinking a wide range of alien cocktails, dancing and chatting using the seven words of IACUL, on leaving to go back to one of the many surrounding seedy hotels, could have an express sex change operation to equip them with whatever appendage(s) were required to fully consummate a night of lust with the partner(s) of their choice. The clinic, despite its somewhat doubtful ethical underpinnings, succeeded in attracting some of the most talented surgeons from far-flung star systems. Nowhere else in the Universe were so many ambitious and exotic surgical interventions carried out on such a routine basis. Young surgeons would queue up to obtain a post at the clinic, in order to cut their operating theatre teeth in challenging circumstances. One notorious surgeon, who was renowned for his scalpel-sharp dentition and bucal operating technique, literally cut his teeth whilst trying to equip an Arcturian armadillo with the spring-loaded phallus appropriate only for coital consummation with a female Canopian coelacanth. While the young hopefuls were queuing up, inevitably some of the most promising were tempted into the Disco and were lost forever to the medical profession. 24. While we are on the subject of queuing, sociologists from a number of galaxies have produced conflicting theories that seek to explain why queues are so prevalent in Post Offices throughout the Universe. One school of thought has suggested that there may be a secret society of dim philatelists which is trying to corner the market in common stamps. Inevitably, a rival school of thought, backed by almost no survey data, it has to be said, has protested that this sort of conspiracy theory should not be taken seriously by professional sociologists. Their more liberal ideology has encouraged them to look in detail at the strategic locations of Post Offices on high street intersections, a research programme they have dubbed "The Market for Corners." Yet another school of thought has proposed that there may exist a form of time-travelling chameleon-sheep that is congenitally unable to make up its mind. By constantly flitting back and forth between Post Office queues at different epochs, the species has found that it is possible to avoid reaching the post office counter at all and therefore no decision ever has to be made. According to the theory, the almost perfect chameleon-like qualities of this organism makes it virtually impossible to distinguish it from the native population, conveniently making the theory almost impossible to disprove. This did not stop one researcher from suggesting that the chameleon-sheep might be shocked out of its camouflage if an air-filled paper bag was burst just behind its left ear. Field trials of this theory had to be curtailed after several elderly women suffered heart attacks while queuing at the Post Office. Another influential member of the same faculty countered that chameleon-sheep could be forced into the open if somehow all the indigenous members of a Post Office queue could be persuaded to simultaneously leave, thus obliging the chameleon-sheep to confront its genetic indecisiveness at the Post Office counter. This approach has foundered however on the stubbornness of genuine Post Office queue members, who refuse to leave the queue, especially when near the front. As a further footnote, it is worth mentioning here that a group of meta-sociologists (sociologists who study the social behaviour of sociologists) has been formed to study the herd-like qualities of the various schools of thought that have sprung up around the fertile issue of Post Office queues. One group has put forward the thesis that the various schools of thought may be likened to schools of fish swimming through some kind of higher-dimensional ocean of concepts. Another rival group has countered that, in fact, the different schools of thought may be situated vis-à-vis educational establishments relative to high streets and Post Offices. Finally there is a minority anarchist tendency arguing that the seemingly fertile ground of schools of thought for studies in sociology is only fertile because of the large quantities of manure that are spread about, metaphorically-speaking, by sociologists. There are now rumours circulating that an academic from Betelgeuse may be seeking research funding for a project to investigate the relationship between sociological fashions, the growth of plant-like schools of thought and the fertility of the societal terrain that underpins all social discourse. Etc, etc. 25. The Universe paused in the middle of her train of thought. So all this was the fruit of hazard? The creation of blind chance? Sex? Sociology? Cheese? She knew this was nonsense. Chance was not blind! Never could the brute forces of nature produce such complexity on their own. The chances, for example, of gravity unaided, coming up with Roquefort was about as likely as the moon being made of blue cheese. She remembered something Luigi would say to her with reference to his staff. “If you leave enough monkeys banging away on enough typewriters for long enough, you will eventually get Hamlet.” Brilliant chef, but Luigi was a few inches short of a yard when it came to probability theory. The Universe did a quick calculation. Thirty-two thousand four hundred and fifty-six words in the play, or 145,026 characters, 180,303 including the spaces. Twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. Lets throw in four more for basic punctuation, but we’ll be generous and not make any distinction between upper and lower case (we are waiting for the text to be written by a monkey, after all). If Hamlet consisted of just one letter, there would be a one in thirty chance of one monkey hitting the jackpot first time. At two letters, the chances would be 30 times 30 or 302. That’s a chance of one in 900. So for the whole of Hamlet, the chances were one in 30180303 or a number so vast that it could account for every particle in the Universe multiplied by every instant since the beginning of time. Even if the Universe was inhabited solely by monkeys with typewriters, all the stars in the Universe would have exhausted their fuel and stopped shining before any of the monkeys had an evens chance of coming up with Hamlet. Those who are sticklers for precision, like Luigi, would suggest here that starlight may not be strictly necessary if the monkeys are hitting the keys of their typewriters at random, so they could continue typing on in the dark after the last star went out. In response the Universe would point out the logistical difficulties Luigi would face in feeding all those monkeys, even for someone in the catering trade. There were bound to be shortages of bananas across such a cosmic ecosystem. And typewriter mechanics. Or paper for that matter. All of which would be impossible to organise in the dark. Then Luigi would hit back with a crushing retort. The Universe had not specified in which language she wanted to have the monkeys write Hamlet! Given all of the possible languages that could exist in theory, this vastly increased the chances that a monkey somewhere would type Hamlet in Gurnarghian or some other little-spoken tongue. (Of course, Gurnarghian does not have the richness of vocabulary for Hamlet – To be or not to aaargh). Luigi, confident that he had boxed the Universe into a corner, if such a concept is not a contradiction in terms for an entity that is finite but unbounded, would dash off a few dozen Marfik locust vol-au-vents while waiting eagerly for the admission from the Universe that he was indeed right. Unfortunately, Luigi would have overlooked the fact that it is virtually impossible to win an argument with the Universe. She would say to him kindly but firmly, ”Luigi, you are forgetting that the very purpose of using monkeys in the first place is that they can’t speak. If we have a Universe full of monkeys, there would be no languages at all and therefore the only language that could be considered would be the original 17th century Elizabethan English vernacular used by Shakespeare himself in writing Hamlet.” QED. The Universe was happy with her reasoning. The only way of getting Hamlet, never mind the complete works of Shakespeare, was via the evolution of a Shakespeare, something that was more than likely if you leave enough monkeys banging away on enough typewriters for long enough. Though the Universe was right, she had to accept there was something wrong too. Once you accept the evolution of a Shakespeare you have to accept the evolution of a Himmler. It was Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy at a higher level. Something could be created from nothing, so long as it was created in equal and opposite pairs. 26. The iron laws of probability have not, however, stopped the “Randomists” from being a very influential group within the avant-garde art movement. The Cro-mignon random sculptors of Algieba 3 were a notable example. Their credo was to throw rocks at large boulders until they came up with statues that more often than not, had all the aesthetic appeal of a demolition site. All this was slow work. Some sculptures-in-progress had been in the family for generations and were still not finished. Others, like the well-known Minus de Vilo, were almost complete and were just receiving the final finishing touches from the impact of small pebbles when both arms fell off after a tragic ricochet. Hillbilly cousins of the Cro-mignons, who evolved on Algieba 4, had a tendency to drink too much moonshine when they were working and found that progress was increasingly difficult using the manual techniques of rock throwing. It was then that one of their brighter brethren came up with the idea of using high explosives, dropped from low-flying light aircraft. The Random Quarry Movement came to the attention of a broader audience when one noted artist managed to get a passing resemblance of the faces of four former presidents after throwing dynamite at a cliff face. One of these presidential profiles was subsequently vandalised by someone wielding a hammer and chisel who carved a nose into a couple embraced in a kiss. Fortunately, the level of technology remained mediocre on Algieba 4, otherwise who knows what would have been the results of delirious, drunken artists equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. The Randomists, like so many other avant-gardist tendencies, were notorious for their internecine disputes. On one occasion, Martin Bigtoilet, a member of the poetry fraternity of the Randomist movement, was excommunicated when it was revealed that his work was fraudulent. He had claimed that his pet cat was writing poetry via an ingenious system of words stuck to magnetic labels on the door of his fridge. Whenever he went to open the fridge door, the cat would come running thinking it was going to be fed and would stretch up with its front paws, thus rearranging the magnetic labels and the words. The false poet’s early works were believable enough: cricket act devotes noses mercifully, toast meek dame connote unassisted pickles, wasting ventilated bifocals His downfall came when he published “I wander'd lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” After a clinical autopsy was carried out on his cat, it was found to be a breed of highly intelligent Zuben Elakrab feline philosopher and subsequent cross-checking of educational records confirmed that the cat had a PhD in English Literature. 27. A final observation is worth making before we close this brief review of Randomist art. Though not considered a strand of Randomism, the bat musicians of the Altair system display some similar traits. No one denies that the bats are gifted musicians. It is no mean feat to play a musical instrument while hanging upside down from the roof of a cave, especially the difficult French horn, where the saliva has an unpleasant tendency to run back into the mouth under the force of gravity. The problems stemmed primarily not from the orchestra however, but from the audience. Particularly animated pieces by Beethoven or Mahler would cause the bats in the audience to leave their seats in excitement. Once a significant number were flying around the auditorium, it was impossible for those who remained seated to separate the music from all the high-pitched squeaking. Worst of all, some members of the orchestra would lose their way in the score and could even be persuaded to go off the wall carrying an oboe or flute by the cacophony coming from the audience. One music critic attempted to sum up the scene for those who do not have sophisticated systems of echo-location. “You have to understand that for us bats, music is a visual experience. Going to a concert of music by Bach is like watching a Gothic cathedral appear out of the ground before your very eyes, in all its dour splendour. A concerto by Mozart is a Baroque chapel full of gilded flourishes and playful touches. Needless to say, a solo piano piece by Liszt can only be compared to the leaning tower of Pisa. But when the audience gets over-excited, you have the impression that St Peters has been reworked in the BauHaus style and the Sistine Chapel has been touched up by Andy Warhol. It’s an awful experience. No one should have to submit to being touched up by Andy Warhol!” The only concert not to suffer from such disruption was a modern atonal piece by Schoenberg where live turkeys were required to be let out of a coffin on stage. On this occasion the audience stayed riveted to their seats. The orchestra didn’t move an inch either. It was simply the music that went gobbling off around the auditorium. One observer said it looked like Santa Sophia had been designed by Antonio Gaudi in withdrawal. 28. So this was the price of mystery and freedom? If she wanted to experience the delectable delights of cheese, sex and sociology, peripheral as these aspects of reality might be to the narrative in question, then she had to accept Dr Mengele, the Spanish Inquisition, Attila the Hun and all the other bad guys, including the vicious blood-drinking warlords of Gurnargh. There could be no good without evil, no life without death, no love without fear. Hazard, it was clear now, was necessary but it was also a two-edged sword, a sword that could keep you perched on the edge of your seat, hiding the twists and turns of the plot behind a veil woven from the warp of the possible and weft of the improbable. But it could also lead to the slicing in half of babies. Incidentally, virtually all swords throughout the history of the Universe have had two edges. The exception that proves the rule is provided by the warrior blacksmiths of Gurnargh who spent several hundred years in research and development, trying to perfect a four-edged sword. The weapon would have been unique in the history of armoury, in that two of the edges were situated a split second in front of the other two edges. In this way, foes would be taken aback to receive a blow slightly before the one they were preparing to parry. Unfortunately, though the prototype seemed to perform well enough in trials, too many testers were killed in mysterious circumstances for the weapon to be fully accepted by the Gurnarghian troops. The Universe made a mental note. When the appropriate time came, she would need some system of physical quarantine so that when the ultimate evil did eventually get out of the box, as it inevitably would, there was no way it could take over the whole of reality. 29. Meanwhile, down at The Enmari, things were quiet. Ron, as usual, was reading his newspaper. Though he could not be classed as a Guardian-reader, he read the Guardian, nevertheless. Dave could not be classed as a reader at all. Sometimes he would look at the first couple of pages before turning to the sports section at the back of one of the more ribald toilet papers. But most of the time he was a keen observer of form rather than a reader and collector of facts, like Ron. At that moment, the unmistakable form of Spencer the Marxist burst through the front doors of the pub like they were the swing doors of a dusty western saloon. He looked around the half-filled room, his hands twitching over the Smith and Wesson revolvers that were not dangling languidly from each of his hips. He pulled the large, beige Stetson that he was not wearing, a little lower over his eyes. He glanced towards Ron, who was sat on his usual stool at the bar. Ron scowled back as Spencer marched up to the bar. ”Gimme a double bourbon on the rocks, Sylvie,” growled Spencer, “and make it snappy.” Then he hawked from the back of his throat and launched an imaginary gob of phlegm into the silver spittoon behind the bar. With perfect timing, Dave flicked a peanut so that it landed in the spittoon at exactly the same moment as the imaginary phlegm, making a ringing, poing sound. Dave had never missed the spittoon in the five years since this urban tradition had sprung into life. Everyone smiled broadly, except Spencer, who was busy lighting an imaginary cheroot. This ritual was played out in exactly the same way whenever Spencer could drag himself away from his computer to come out for a drink. Spencer, who was not really called Spencer, but Dick, was passionate about four things in life. Hacking computer code, rock music, Marxism and of course, Westerns. Sylvie had by this time poured Spencer’s pint of draught Bass bitter. One day, Spencer had promised all of his mates down the pub, he would really drink a bourbon. He wanted Sylvie to slide the glass down the bar to him but she was too scared it would fall on the floor and that Derek, the publican would dock the cost from her wages. Dave had offered to give Sylvie sliding lessons, arguing that it was not so different in technique from the wrist action of a indecent left-arm spin bowler, which Dave indeed was. Sylvie, however, was not convinced. 30. “How’s life?” said Dave to Spencer. ”Like kicking dead whales down the beach,” he replied.
Copyright © 2002 Nick Beck |