Mark Taylor

There is a small, unimportant detail in Use of Weapons that caught me more than perhaps it ought to have. In hope of extracting a favour from a university, the Culture tracks down a set of wax tablets on which the legendary lost works of a great poet are inscribed. They are held in the wall cavity of a monastery, and are almost completely intact, except for three or four that have been damaged by a fire lit by a passing shepherd.

I tried on a few new pairs of legs. I’ve had these so long, they must need replacing. Some were stronger. Some were longer. All were more shapely. But none of them had that little tingle, the damaged nerve to remind me that they carried me everywhere I have been.

You know how it goes with immortality. First you think it’s the best thing that could ever happen to you, then you wise up and realise it’s a curse. The thing is that, so far, everyone has died in the end. They never got the chance to wise further up. You can’t just think your way into wisdom. The wise among us know that.

So if you wise up first and then become immortal second, you have a bit of a panic. You think: I’m going to watch everyone I love age and die. (It’s only our own mortality we’re supposed to be sanguine about, normally.) You think: what if I just get tired of it all? You think: what if someone sets my feet in concrete and throws me into the river?

You spend a long time thinking about the first two, and dismiss the third as a bit silly and outlandish. Of course, thinking about the first two is pointless, because you just have to live through them, the same way the mortals do. And thinking about the third is wise, because if you stick around forever, all sorts of things are going to happen to you. And when people learn you are immortal, this is the kind of idea they come up with to deal with you.

But what makes being thrown into the river with concrete shoes so horrifying is the part where you drown. The desparate struggle, when you have minutes left. I don’t have minutes. I have forever. I watch fish. I watch what floats past. I see the riverbed shift and flow. You know when you get sick, and it’s the only time that feels like a proper holiday, because on an actual holiday you can’t stop thinking about your responsibilities? It’s like that, at the bottom of the river. I’ll come out of it a better man. And I will come out of it. That’s what “immortal” means.

She had never been able to hula hoop. Never ever. She just wasn’t a person who could move that way. But she watched her kids say the same thing, “I can’t do it”, over and over. About riding their bikes, about tying their laces, about hula-hooping. They said it after a minute of trying, and whatever it was, before long they had done it. How long had she spent trying to hula-hoop over her lifetime, she wondered? How often had she tried more than once in a row?

So she took the day off work, and bought a hula hoop, and practiced. Because we are not fixed. We are capable of so much more than what we are now. That was the lesson the kids had taught her. That alone was worth all the late nights and heartache.

It was 4pm. The hula hoop clattered to the floor again.

What an unbelievable waste of effort it had been. Opening the wrappers with a razor blade. Syringing just the right poison in just the right dose, enough to do the job and well-distributed so the taste would be right. Smoothing the chocolate over the puncture marks with a hot knife. Resealing the wrappers. Subtly marking the one left safe for herself. She had thought of everything, except the dog. And now the bloody dog had eaten the lot. Not that she didn’t want to kill the dog too. But the chocolate would have done that on its own.

Pilot always knew first. She didn’t whimper or drop her ears: that came earlier, when she lost the scent but still had hope. Those things meant, “I’m a bad dog”, and all she needed was a reassuring touch and a few words from Pat to be off and running again. But sometimes, just as Pat thought they were getting close, Pilot would start playing. She would play brashly, irrepressibly, like a child who doesn’t want to be told off. She fetched sticks and nosed at pockets and ran around in tight little circles, like she was doing now. Those things meant: “It’s a bad world”. Those things meant that they would not find the boy alive.