The Brothel Creeper: Stories of Sexual and Spiritual Tension (4 page)

“I don’t recall reading any of that.”

Herod yawned. “1 John 3:2.”

Tennyson let his doubts recede. “Setting the same age for everyone sounds reasonable, but what about those people who die on Earth
before
reaching the age of thirty-three? What about them?”

Herod was genuinely impressed. “You’ve stated our big problem on your own! I knew you were the right man for the job!”

“So what’s the answer?”

“See for yourself. Look straight ahead!”

Tennyson blinked. “What?”

It was a huge capstan rising directly out of the white ground. The figures that worked it were bedraggled angels. Their feathers trailed in the dust. There was no need for overseer or whip for they were driven by blind obedience and extreme dedication. As they pushed the spokes of the massive machine, they wound a thick cable around a spool. This cable was connected to the horizon and vibrated with a menacing note. Pausing for a minute, Herod observed the toil with a slight grin. He was trying not to enjoy the suffering. He jabbed his heels into the donkey again and they cantered away, following the line of the cable, reaching out occasionally to touch it and absorb the low note, the music racing up their arms and into their hearts. Now there were other sounds. A vile scraping from ahead and above this a pulsing giggle that was monumental and completely mindless.

Something emerged over the horizon and approached them more slowly than they moved toward it, but their combined velocities meant it was soon recognisable. A baby. Forty feet high at least. And as ugly as any infant viewed objectively. It was sitting but its feet had been bound together. This is what the angels were dragging across Heaven. It stopped giggling and began bawling instead. Huge globules of acidic spittle, many containing curls of warm milk like tortured flatworms, flew out and hit them or passed through the frame of the donkey, breaking apart on the edges of its bones, causing it to slip and kick and foam at the fleshless mouth by default, for some of this saliva was driven into its chattering jaw. Herod steered the beast away; and the magnified infant and its pointless tantrum slid past harmlessly.

Tennyson asked simply, “Why?”

Herod replied, “There’s a good reason for this operation. There are too many babies in the nurseries. They need to be segregated, dispersed around the celestial territories. Too much mass has been gathered in too small an area. It creates surplus gravitational fields. Angels in flight have reported difficulties in maintaining altitude. The babies are behind it and they may even destroy everything.”

“And this is now my responsibility?”

“Don’t panic. You’re not expected to settle in fast. You’re the first Heavenly Safety Officer we’ve ever had. There are no precedents for your behaviour. We have to make it up as you go along.”

“How can I possibly deal with giant immortal babies?”

“Wait until you see one of the nurseries.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Yes. And at this rate, we’ll be there for feeding time. That’s a sight, sure enough. Gross!”

“What will those angels do with that particular child?”

“When they have finished reeling it in, they will cut open the top layer of the surface of Heaven and push it under the fabric of spiritual spacetime. Then they will sew it up again.”

“Is that what all those irregular bumps are? Massive babies trapped inside the floor of Heaven?”

“Yes, between the dimensions. In Limbo!”

Tennyson thought he felt sick, but it was just a trapped laugh, an immense, bitter laugh, a laugh bigger than his utter mouth.

It appeared that Heaven was creating itself around them, but they were simply moving closer into the finished regions. There were more towers and towns, roads and a few trees. The capital city was still a long way off, but a green glow on the horizon betrayed its existence, somewhere close to infinity. Healthy angels soared overhead. There were many other capstans, some in motion, a few abandoned. The moving hills also became more frequent; one knocked down a town as they passed. There were people too, all thirty-three years old. But there were a few figures that seemed wrong. They were both younger and bigger than the majority. There was a direct relation between youth and size. Tennyson decided to question his guide on this point.

Herod was obliging. He replied:

“If you had read the Bible, you would appreciate that at the end of time there will be a new Heaven to replace the old. This suggests the old one isn’t quite good enough. And in fact it isn’t. God didn’t really know what he was doing when he designed it. There was no model. He made mistakes. He has learned from his errors. One of these errors is a flaw in the process of extrapolation of outer identity for souls which expire before their thirty-third birthday.”

“What is the nature of this error?”

“Instead of accelerating age, the process magnifies form. It is automatic and can’t be reversed. It switched itself on when everyone was still flushed after the successful crucifixion of Jesus. It had been set to activate itself then, and it did. Everybody who died after that time but who was younger than this minimum threshold age was physically blown out of all proportion.”

“Is that really so bad?”

“Consider this. If a man is 22 when he dies, then he is two-thirds of the way to being 33. So his age needs to be increased by another half of what it already is. Eleven years. But the automatic system doesn’t do that. It doesn’t extrapolate his outer identity into what for him is the future. Instead, because of a technical hitch, it adds half his
size
to his frame. If he is six feet tall, his soul is stretched another three feet. He remains only 22 years old in Heaven, but must pass the rest of eternity nine feet high!”

Tennyson gulped. “And if he is only eleven when he dies? His age needs to be tripled? But instead his size is tripled? So if he is five feet high, he will be fifteen feet here?”

“Yes, and wider in proportion too.”

“What if he is only one year old when he dies?”

“Thirty-three times bigger in Heaven, of course. But it gets worse. There are twelve months in a year. A baby who dies when it is only one month old must be expanded 396 times. That’s 33 multiplied by 12. There are 52 weeks in a year. A baby who dies when it is one week old must be magnified 1716 times.”

“A baby that dies on the day of its birth?”

“That baby must be magnified 12,045 times. But still it gets worse. There are 24 hours in a day. A baby that dies in its first hour must be expanded 289,080 times. And there are 60 minutes in an hour. A baby that dies in its first minute must therefore be expanded 17,344,800 times.”

“And a baby that dies in its first second?”

“That one must be expanded 1,040,688,000 times. That’s more than a factor of one billion. If such a baby is a typical weight of 8 pounds at birth then its gross weight here in Heaven must be 8.3 billion pounds, which is equivalent to approximately 3,716,742 tons! The largest animal that has ever existed on Earth is the blue whale. Its typical weight is about 150 tons. The babies in question are each equivalent to 25,000 blue whales! That’s a lot of baby.”

“A veritable mountain of slobbering infant!”

“There are entire ranges here made out entirely of babies. And the gravitational effects, as I’ve already mentioned, are starting to become unfortunate. We’re in big trouble!”

“And this is my job? To sort it out?”

“Yes. I’m afraid so.”

Tennyson fell into a depression which was unrelieved by thoughts of his sensational elevation in status. He remained quiet, musing darkly on the challenges ahead, until Herod announced they were approaching the first nursery. They had been ascending an incline for a long time, but the donkey hadn’t slowed its pace. It had no muscles to grow tired, no heart to wear out. The relentless whiteness of the ground and matching pallor of the sky had given Tennyson a condition similar to snowblindness. He couldn’t focus.

They crested the rise. Now his eyes slowly adjusted. He was looking out across a vast plateau.

A plateau of very big children.

Herod said, “They can’t all be sewn into Limbo. The fabric wouldn’t take it. There would be a tearing of the barrier that separates mortal and divine realms. Sacrilege!”

Tennyson croaked: “Babies.”

“Yes. Aren’t they hideous?”

A boardwalk had been erected on stilts. Women with swollen breasts were tramping along it, offering their nipples to attendants who milked them by hand and filled bottles with the warm liquid. These bottles were emptied into funnels connected to rubber tubes that snaked and curved into the gaping maws of the infants. There were hundreds of babies. Some were only as large as aeroplanes or castles. Milked dry, the women filed onward, mouths hard and twisted.

Some of the attendants were puffing on cigarettes. Tennyson cleared his throat. “Isn’t that unhygienic?”

“Not in Heaven,” answered Herod. “Only people who smoked on Earth are allowed to smoke up here. Each of these cigarettes undoes the damage of one cigarette down below. A man who smoked ten a day for thirty years must smoke nearly 110,000 up here to regain his health. Then the craving returns to zero. It’s a good system.”

“So many numbers! So much baby!”

“We’re standing on a drugged one now,” calmly declared Herod. “It’s the only way we can stabilise the mountains. It forms the incline we’ve been riding up. Heaven is perfectly flat. Every hill and valley is just a by-product of a prodigious child.”

“Can’t they be slaughtered?”

“This is Heaven. All life is immortal.”

“Then they must be expelled!”

Herod raised an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting proposition. Where would you have us exile them to?”

“How about Earth?”

“But surely the governments of your planet would object to hosting millions upon millions of titanic, indestructible and ravenous infants?”

Tennyson licked his unloved lips.

“Perhaps not. Listen, there is an acute shortage of work back on Earth. Looking after so many demanding infants would provide labour for every unemployed person for the rest of their lives! The economy of the planet could be saved! These babies would need nannies and nurses to feed, clothe and wash them.”

“Dear old Earth as a cosmic orphanage?”

“Why not? It has been many other things in its time. A sphere of molten fire, a platform for dinosaurs.”

“But we would need you to sign an official document declaring that this was your idea and that you accept full responsibility for it. Just a formality, you understand.”

“No problem. I’m the Heavenly Safety Officer.”

“I have the paper here. And a pen.”

Herod delved into his robes again and emerged with the items. With an impulsive laugh, Tennyson signed his name with a flourish and grinned. “This is quite an easy job really.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“How many other people applied for it?”

“Only you. We advertised it just once. In your city. Because of the perennial clouds there, we were able to draw you up on the rope ladder without running the risk of many people seeing you. The clouds parted especially for you, forming a narrow shaft to Heaven. They would have remained impenetrable to any observers out on the streets. But when we lower the babies down on strengthened hawsers, such considerations will be irrelevant. We have your signature.”

“Strengthened hawsers? You have already planned for this?”

“We have experience in importing and exporting objects of various sizes and weights through the portal.”

“What sort of experience?”

Herod smiled. “You are free to rest now.”

“Suddenly I don’t feel too good about anything. Maybe I’ll change my mind about this particular strategy.”

“Don’t be silly! What a great idea! Relocating the giant babies to Earth! How come nobody else up here ever thought of that?”

The attendants within hearing range smirked and the wet nurses with their sore nipples chuckled.

Herod gestured at the babies. “They will be like cuckoos down there on Earth! Won’t they? Cuckoos!”

Tennyson said, “I’m leaving.”