The Sex Life of Worms (Episode One: Translator’s Introduction(continued(continued)))

(cont…)

I tentatively announced my presence and, after an interval of silence as gaunt and chill as the draught-swept rock floor, was answered by an incoherent whiffling from somewhere within. This was soon followed by a sort of greasy dragging sound portending Qsshflrrch’s appearance in what it transpired was some kind of antechamber. I was mesmerised from the moment I heard that dragging, and when Qsshflrrch sh-himself emerged from the doorway of the inner chamber I was struck dumb by an astonishment for which I cannot properly account. Sh-his pigmentation at that moment was a stunning pattern of white and pink striations that I could not recall ever having seen before. When shi-he apprehended me, shi-he stopped in sh-his tracks, gills bristling like the hood of a startled cobra, and the pink and white striations fluctuating suddenly in rapid waves about the anterior region. For the briefest of moments I forgot both my own identity and that of the creature before me. I seemed suddenly connected with emotions so ancient they transcended atavism, belonging to a time before life forms were identified with the isolated histories of their own planets, to a time that was awesomely intergalactic. My very instincts, human as they were, were confounded.

I do not know what those flashing pigments signified. This is one area of worm communication that is still closed to me, and so still a source of wordless unease. I imagine, though, that just as unnameable feelings had been stirred up in me, so, despite sh-his foreknowledge, Qsshflrrch had, after all, been unprepared for sh-his first encounter with a human being.

After a moment, however, sh-his gills drooped again and the pigments settled into a calmer pattern. Was there embarrassment or some analogous emotion now visible in Qsshflrrch’s demeanor? I could not tell. There followed another pause and then, in slow, squelching syllables, came the following words:

“You are a long way from home, human.”

Qsshflrrch turned away in a slouching manner, almost dejected, and slithered back towards the inner chamber, stopped briefly and added, as if as an afterthought, “You would do well to follow me.”

We passed together through the antechamber, actually a series of connected caves encircling the inner apartments, containing some sparse personal effects, but, without the divisions of doors, seeming little more than an extension of the tunnels through which I had come. The inner chambers were very different. Although they were largely left open, there were actually doors here, of some semi-opaque resinous substance, capable of sliding back into the walls or out again at the press of a touchplate. The room into which Qsshflrrch led me was a cornerless lozenge coated with some kind of metal. Bubbles containing fungi for consumption and other purposes protruded from the walls. Walls, floor and ceiling were decorated with nodular sculptures that reminded me somewhat of patches of brightly coloured vomit, or possibly the innards of some pulverised invertebrate. Perhaps this last association was prompted by the fact that about the room were dotted vessels containing preserved specimens of worm young, dissected or intact. There was the usual worm furniture, which I shall not take the time to explain now – imagine something in the nature, again, of abstract sculptures. I did notice something unusual about this furniture, however. Like the vomit-like objets d’art previously mentioned, this furniture was not only sat upon the floor, but also protruded from the walls and hung from the ceiling. Qsshflrrch was later to explain and even to demonstrate, that this was the result of sh-his own ideas on design, culminating in sh-his collaboration with those bodies in charge of worm gravity technology. This design for a room which was, thanks to the manipulation of gravity, effectively all floor, had won sh-him much acclaim and helped boost sh-his position in society a little. The design was now, apparently, catching on in the city.

Qsshflrrch ensconced sh-himself in the item of furniture I have come to call the toad-stool, because of its resemblance to that fungus. There was another toad-stool opposite shi-him, but since the inverted hoods of these articles are very uncomfortable to me, and generally contain a pool of analeptic – to worms, at least – slime, I declined to seat myself therein. Instead I unfolded the cane-seat which I carried and have found useful when visiting in worm society, and perched myself on top of that.

“Why are you here?”

This slurping whisper opened our conversation. I was perplexed by the question, which seemed to have sneaked up on me from behind.

“I mean that as a question you should ask yourself,” shi-he continued, “Why are you here? Where can you go from here? Do you intend to traverse infinity? We are both here now. It is the meeting of a new angle. I wish to trace the lines of this angle outwards. I am concerned with your consciousness and mine. I have become a passive existence in your first person. Yet I remain my own first person. I am a reflex angle that is its own universe of awareness. There is always a physical line of why to these meetings.”

Recording these words I am reminded again of the frustrations of rendering Worm into English. How elegantly Qsshflrrch had accomplished sh-his metaphorical conjuring trick in sh-his own tongue, yes, as if it were all done with mirrors, and how poor are my own attempts to convey this. But it is bad from for a writer to make excuses in this way. I must simply do my best.

“I suppose I’m here because, well, quite simply, I felt drawn to worm literature.”

“And to my work in particular?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of seed do you find in my work?”

“I think yours is one of the few genuinely dissenting voices in the field of modern worm letters.”

“Ah, deftly nuzzled! I think you understand one half of my work. That is good. You stand amongst worms in a place where they are blind. I feel a touch of anti-gravity in this. But there is something you do not see. Look around you. The shadows curve away in their dark serpentines. You may be in trouble here. Once you step into the serpentines of worm philosophy they start to move and coil and take you with them. I must ask you now, have you ever experienced ‘purple’?”

“Perhaps you don’t know what it’s like to live alone on an alien planet. I believe I have experienced something of comparable depth to ‘purple’. I think I can translate your work.”

“I wonder. It is not just ability. It is readiness to move with the new twists that will come. It is readiness to let go of the positive and float in the incest of shadows.”

We both fell into a chill silence here. Having read much of Qsshflrrch’s work, I was afraid I knew what shi-he was hinting. I was overcome by the lonely feeling that I was being tempted by a devil in a world where no authority exists to say the devil’s words are anything other than reasonable – a dull feeling of being utterly lost. It was at that moment that something happened which was to change the direction of our talk somewhat. As I gazed at the floor, something entered my field of vision, swiftly and noiselessly, that made me shrink back in fear, almost falling off my seat. It had jittered into the apartments like one of the ghastly breaths of air from the uninhabited caves beyond. It was a sickly white myriapod, long-legged, perhaps a foot in diameter and possessing the disconcerting ability to change directions without turning, as if it had no front or back. Such things, I suppose, have withdrawn from the densely populated city centre. It disappeared again soon enough, but left me with an unshakable creeping feeling that travelled from one part of my body to another in horrible shivers.

Qsshflrrch must have noticed my reaction.

“It’s probably harmless. These things pass through. Worms have forgotten the darkness of the wild inner earth. I have always wanted to be at the edge where things become ragged and structures dissolve. Strange that to be on the edge is to return to the most ancient. It is not impossible that I will be eaten here. I need to feel all that emptiness and darkness out there. Since they have been monitoring my behaviour, it is the only way I can find substitutes for ‘purple’ and inspiration for my art. Between wormkind and death there stands detachment. Death is non-existence, therefore it does not exist. It is the interstices of our thoughts, a stranger that makes us strangers to ourselves. If we are to identify with ourselves with sharper focus, first we must make death a presence.”

It was at this point that Qsshflrrch chose to divulge that shi-he had actually perused a certain amount of human literature. Of the works shi-he had read, shi-he had appreciated parts here and there, mostly for their impenetrable strangeness. Shi-he felt that shi-he could not properly understand them, however, perhaps, shi-he added pointedly, because of poor translation. It seems human literature had only ever been translated into worm via some other, non-human language. But there was one quote that shi-he had latched onto. If I was surprised at this quote it was because it was so obvious: To be or not to be, that is the question. Qsshflrrch found this to the most admirable, multi-faceted and resonant phrase in all that shi-he had read. So taken was shi-he with it, that shi-he intended to make it the title of sh-his next work, on a theme largely undealt with in worm literature, to wit, the late topic of sh-his conversation, death.

For a while shi-he grew animated as shi-he spoke, but then, as if sobering from the influence of sh-his own words in disgust, shi-he trailed off in mid-discourse. We entered upon another silence, which I can only describe as mucoid, a silence in which I became intolerably aware of the sour stink of worm, which I should have been used to. Qsshflrrch’s complexion underwent a change. Beneath a sickly white, a dark, sluggish blue deepened. Shi-he swayed almost imperceptibly. This silence was a pit, a membranous ravine of profound and stagnant revulsion. The sides of the ravine were a rubbery jelly that breathed a mucilaginous mist. In ancient times on Earth, four bodily fluids – blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy – were thought to determine one’s health and moods. Now I felt myself sinking slowly and soundlessly in some non-human liquid fouler, darker and more miry still than melancholy’s black bile. I could not break the silence myself, but only wonder when it would end. At last words emerged from the silence like bubbles of gas rising to the surface of a marsh.

“I wonder, is my work of any use to human beings?”

The words seemed infinitely weary.

I sensed that Qsshflrrch was assuming a role that shi-he felt was unnatural.

I frowned, troubled for an answer. The words which finally fell from my mouth seemed to do so almost by default, and I attached little meaning to them, regretted them even before they were spoken.

“Is it of any use to worms?”

At this, the feathery, moth-like antennae on Qsshflrrch’s head, which I had seen alternately as eyes and, rather incongruously, a wispy, Confucian moustache, began to quiver silently, furling and unfurling. I recognised this eerie display as the worm equivalent of laughter.

“Once again we float in space,” shi-he susurrated at length, “This is unwholesomely auspicious. Now I have had a chance to grope your contours I am satisfied. I support your studies and your translation. You may find my protection a besmearing curse, but if you have need of seals mine are at your disposal. In fact, I may draw the greater nourishment from our association. A translation will be neither worm nor human. No doubt from this fusion shall breed confusion. But I find such confusion more admirable than the dull fixations of both our species. I want to witness their heads turn in bewilderment as they wonder what has passed them by.”

We had arrived at this conclusion by a logic – if logic it was – both circuitous and elliptical, and for the moment it was I who was bewildered. Our conversation did not stop there, however, and slowly I came to feel that I too had understood something about our meeting that could not be expressed by any direct means. I determined to employ this understanding in my translation. In fact, it was mainly the translation that we now discussed. Despite sh-his delight at the idea of confusion, Qsshflrrch was strangely solicitous about the accuracy of the translation and suggested I consult sh-him on any doubts and send sh-him annotated drafts which shi-he would endeavour to read. Seeming to consider it of great relevance, Qsshflrrch also spoke of the trial and ostracism shi-he had undergone subsequent to the publication of Falling Into The Crevices, a work mentioned in the text of this story, and of sh-his vindication at that trial and the uneasy re-instatement into society that followed. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Overall, it was a fascinating encounter. Qsshflrrch managed to communicate a quiet and somewhat reflective sense of humour, verging on the dry, that I had not experienced elsewhere in worm company. On the other hand, I was also left with a rather disagreeable aftertaste, like a stink that had got under my skin. I could not say exactly why, but I had the distinct impression that here was a creature capable of any deed. I could understand why other worms were suspicious of sh-him, and why sh-his defence at trial had had to emphasise the separation between life and art whilst also stressing that for the art we also needed the life.

However, I remained impressed, despite myself. This was a remarkable worm who had gone far beyond sh-his fellows in the contemplation of the meaning of individuality and identity, to the extent that sh-his thinking in some ways resembles that of humans. Perhaps that is why I found sh-his work accessible, after all. In any case, I believe that Qsshflrrch’s influence is yet to be calculated. Shi-he may well end up affecting fundamental changes in worm philosophy. It is too soon to tell.

I have said that Qsshflrrch’s work is not necessarily representative of worm culture, but because of its relative accessibility and because it provides a counterpoint to worm orthodoxy, it may actually present the human reader with a clearer view of that orthodoxy and provide a more appropriate introduction to worm literature for humans than the orthodox works themselves.

Of course, it may do more than that. It may draw general worm attention to a previously neutral ambassadorial human presence. Where two cultures with entirely different rules meet, it is hard to know what the outcome will be. But I have been drawn on despite myself. Especially after my meeting with Qsshflrrch, there seemed to be no way forward but to lose myself in ‘purple’. I await the confusion that is Qsshflrrch’s delight and whose agent, or pawn, I am.

Jeremy H. Lofty, Frfrspfshuul, Five hundred and twenty eighth year of Yqstlss