The Travails of Jane Saint

by Josephine Saxton

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Time Travel

Synopsis

A short story collection from one of SF's greatest authors, featuring her most successful character in the title piece. The other stories include 'Woe, Blight and, in Heaven, Laughs', 'Gordon's Women', 'The Message', 'Heads Africa, Tails America' and 'The Pollyanna Enzyme'.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

Jane Saint held out her arm for the tranquilliser. She did not want it but many things were now beyond her control. She hoped that she still had one chance left, and that her punishment here would enable her to make the most of it. She had been sentenced to total reprogramming, for the crime of being a revolutionary leader. The brainwashing would take place after several days in a sensory deprivation tank, designed to loosen all her normal associations. The input of approved ideas would easily take on a malleable self. The police doctors were chatting amiably one to another, the Spring sunshine illuminated them. An orderly spoke to Jane.

‘I must say you are calm, usually they kick up a fuss, especially you female liberation types …’ She put him to silence with her grey-eyed contempt, shrivelling him with silent disgust at his glib labelling. She did not want to waste energy screaming at these pigs, she had work to do. This treatment they were giving her could be ideal for her purpose, She intended to use it to obtain maximum concentration on her techniques for leaving her body behind. She planned to travel to the other world (if such there really was) and continue her work for the cause. Perhaps she could get other powers to intercede. She would need as much of herself and her memory as possible to go through with her, she did not want to trip off into some useless dreamland. There was no way of knowing whether her trial experiments had been delusion or not, but she had to try, and seriously. A true believer never gives up, and what else could she do in this situation?

She composed herself once more, trying to ignore the effect of the tranquilliser. Now the breathing, the counting, the mental picturing, everything she had been able to find out about this procedure she now tried, suppressing her own scepticism. She was determined they would not destroy her and her work, her hopes, her efforts to make a better world.

Her three children, her Melanie, Dolores and Sybil, they, too were somewhere in this place they called a hospital. They also were preparing like their mother, they too were trying to survive in a killing world. They had been judged contaminated by their mother’s ideas and therefore in need of care and protection. She sent them a mental message: ‘Mother’s coming soon’ and that was all she had time for before they manacled her to the bottom of the tank so beautifully fashioned in solid glass. She felt the water seeping, at blood heat, creeping, up to her ears, lapping her lifted chin. Things could not be better, for she would be in a womb, an amniotic space-ship. They drew the blinds close, they left a little light while they put the lid over the vision of her red hair streaming like blood, needing flowers to be Ophelia. Then darkness, utter silence.

‘This is it, Jane,’ she told herself. ‘Now, you will either get “through” and accomplish something important, or you will lose everything and never be yourself again.’

Down she went into the heights.

Jane Saint had everything she knew of to ensure a memory, but she had no notion of where and why she was. A telephone box ahead on the lonely moor. She decided to use it to ascertain her whereabouts, thinking that she must have had an accident, become dazed. There was no habitation in this windswept world of peatbogs, the only relief was an upheaving of rock, a sky on the move, racked yet determined not to reveal any secret; a Brontë land smeared with puce spewings of Erica, torsioned bonsai.

On the floor of the telephone box was a small blue nylon rucksack. Better not touch it, might contain a bomb.

Eventually the operator answered, and after much argument, stating that it was against the rules, told Jane that further up the path there was shelter. She was in Glun Cloud, which was not famous. Well then, sincere thanks.

The rucksack was a temptation. Not all abandoned packages contain bombs, some contain useful objects and food. Jane had nothing with her at all except the inexplicably wet nightshirt she wore, and this made her feel lost. It is said that a woman loves a handbag. She went outside to look at the object from the other side, and was glad she had, for there was a tag upon which was written: Jane Saint c/o reprogramming. It is at such moments that all memory comes rushing back, but this did not happen to Jane. She now felt confident in opening the rucksack, and found inside a few personal objects. A comb and mirror, a nail-file, a scent-spray, a safety pin, a flashlight, some tissues, a packet of Gitanes Mais Filtre and a disposable lighter, a small book titled: Further Astral Projections and a bottle of Guinness but no opener. She put the cigarettes by the phone because she had given up smoking, and then, in case the finder did not have a light, the lighter. There were no maps and no clothes or food. She wished she could recall where she had owned it, and what a ‘reprogramming’ was. She needed clues. Never mind, this was a start. With the rucksack on her back she felt more confident and strode up the path briskly to get warm, for it was too breezy to be wearing only a wet shirt.

And then she saw the tower against a Sublime sky. She wrestled with an inner turmoil which she knew to be despair. The sight of the tower did not fill her with joy, it looked hostile. It stood on raised ground like a Folly, with steps cut into the rock spiralling around, and the whole resembled an immense phallus, although she knew that there were days when everything looked like that.

Jane Saint mounted the steps and banged on the great door which opened immediately, knocking her over as it swung outwards. Swearing and cursing about design she arose to face a peasant. It was a female peasant dressed in sacking, with greasy hair and warts, obviously mediaeval Germanic.

‘What do you want?’ demanded the peasant in a strong Yorkshire accent, thus dealing with the obvious.

‘Sanctuary, sanctuary,’ said Jane, gloriously beautiful as Notre Dame, somehow feeling herself as hunched and gnarled.

‘Come on in then, and warm yourself’ She actually said ‘wahm thissen’ but Jane somehow understood.

There was a great brick oven in the corner with wonderful fires raging beneath and a glow from an ashtrap.

‘Take off your things and dry them.’ She declined. The shirt was already steaming, clinging to her body like stone drapery.

‘It’s very kind of you to have me in, I was told that I might stay over and that you could help me on my way.’ Jane was not certain about that, she only thought that the telephone operator had told her that. It seemed to be the right thing to say.

‘I’m looking for my children, and for a kodebook.’ Some memory had returned but not much reason.

‘A kodebook? You must be from the other place.’

‘I suppose so. I’m on a mission, I think.’ How stupid she must seem.

‘Your children will probably be in the Valley of Lost Children. We might be able to help, but first you must help us. We are making an Anthroparion, and we need a few drops of the blood of a good woman.’

Jane laughed.

‘But I am not that woman. Your recipe will curdle if you use my blood.’

‘Well let’s try anyway. There’s nobody else. The vampires won’t give us any and mine won’t do for certain. When Anthroparion is made he will be able to help you on your way, they can answer all questions.’ Very useful! Jane tried to be patient and wait. After all, it was more than possible that this place was Timeless.

From the opposite corner of the room the other half of ‘we’ shambled out from a narrow closet, dusty and unattractive; an old, selfish man. There were ingrained foodstains on him and his teeth were terrible.

‘Are you the new apprentice?’ he asked Jane, goggling at her beauty. Before she could reply ‘no’ the old woman had answered ‘yes’.

‘Well come here then, I’ve a few things to show you.’ He had all the air of a flasher in a mac, he was fatherly and furtive and much too pale. As she watched, he mixed salt and soot and sulphur, boiled them up and produced gold.

‘Crikey!’ said Jane Saint, understandably. He took it over to the closet, and flushed it down the oubliette.

‘We don’t make it for it’s own sake you know, just for practice.’ He grabbed her hand and while she was worrying about what he was going to do with it, he pricked her finger and squeezed out some drops of blood onto a filter paper. He threw that into a glowing crucible and then added some unholy mix and put the lot into a bottle which he sealed.

‘Now we cook him.’ And into the great oven went the bottle and then the old woman came near and began to undress herself.

‘Time for bed,’ said the old man, also undressing. Jane was embarrassed.

‘You can sleep over there, under the bench while we make this baby. Don’t mind us.’ Jane went and crept under the bench with her back to the couple and her ears stopped against the lengthy sound of copulation. She realised as she fell asleep that there was much else she ought to know, or should remember.

Melanie, Dolores and Sybil clung to one another in the Valley of Lost Children, chilled by the wails of others, by the grey mists and by the hard white rocks.

‘I think I hear Mother saying she will come to us soon,’ said Sybil, only half convinced. The others did not reply. They might be merely lost, or lost forever. There were girls who had been waiting for a million years, waiting for Mother, or for Life to Begin. They needed a clue as to how to escape, so they used the only power left to them, which was wishing. They wished very hard and nothing happened. Then they tried hoping, for Melanie thought of that distinction and it seemed important. As they hoped, they had the idea of digging down into the pebbles, which they did, finding a ring which they pulled, which opened a door into the rock revealing a cave. They entered the cave and the door banged shut behind them. Inside, it was as bright as day and delightfully warm. The results of hope sometimes look very much like astonishing good luck, thought Sybil with incipient irony.

They were afraid, but determined. They walked on around a corner and came into a chamber containing the most enormous woman they had ever seen, reclining like a stranded whale. She was so comfortable and smiling they felt all their problems and miseries fade away. The woman’s hands were held in a caressing pose, and they were large enough for a baby to sit in the palm of each. Her limbs were immersed in rolls of solid flesh, her skin taut over nourished fat. Her eyes were hypnotically kind.

‘Come to Mother,’ she said softly, and they went forward. Her hair was like fibrous rootlets of trees toppled after a gale, earth clinging to it with a fresh smell. There was a creaking noise of something expanding.

The huge finger beckoned. Dolores began to cry, incoherently certain that they must not proceed. She tugged her sisters hard, trying to turn away.

‘We want our Mother,’ she managed at last, and the other two suddenly seemed as if they had woken up. They had a sense of terror, and without thinking they fled away down the tunnel.

‘Keep on hoping, don’t forget,’ said Sybil.

‘Nil desperandum’, said Melanie.

‘Excelsior’, said Dolores. And indeed, the tunnel was leading upwards.

Jane Saint was watching the presumably alchemical process, seated by the great fired oven. She was remembering her other life in swatches like fabric samples, coloured and indecisive. Why was she searching for her three lost children – she could not recall losing them, she could not recall having them. It was something ingrained, like instinct, perhaps it was instinct. She wondered how old she was, felt certain that it was not less than fifty. Therefore the children were surely not so very little? A late motherhood? Illegal. She got up and went to look at herself in the window against the evening, and knew that she looked young and beautiful by any standards. Had she ever had a husband? Why had they tried to drown her? She must be a criminal. What was the Kodebook?

‘Look, something is manifesting!’ screeched the old woman. She had flung back the oven doors, and inside, the retort glowed. Jane surmised that it should have melted, so hot was the fire. They carefully pulled out the tripod holding the retort, manoeuvring with iron rakes until the thing stood on the hearth. Inside, there was a slow cloud of bloody smoke, and claws and scales appeared in it, denoting something not human. As Jane watched, she recalled a dream in which much of this had occurred. Was the other life a dream or was this? It seemed for a moment or so that she was falling between two stools.

This thing in the retort was complete, and the old man came over from his bookshelves to look. He was skinny and bent with an eye that rolled upwards from time to time when he scowled, and stringy hair that he never cut or brushed. Jane loathed him.

‘Ask it the passwords!’ he roared. He always either roared or mumbled, a sign of a deceitful nature, Jane believed.

‘Kodebook Seven,’ said the old woman, and the hairs on Jane’s arms stood up with interest.

‘There’s no such thing,’ spoke a little voice in the retort. ‘Kodebooks belong to people without hearts and brains. The Koran, the Bible for example out of many, tomes by Marx, Confucius and such are all without value in that they only seem to offer the key to a good way of life. There shall be no more Kodes.’

‘Sounds like Blasphemy,’ said the old man, grinning.

‘Sounds like good sense to me,’ said the old woman, thinking of how there had been no Good Books which took account of women as other than secondary and of how all Christian females had been judged evil Eve and sinful Salome. A book biased to half the world must be about half rubbish – or rather more. But she did not speak, and neither did Jane, for both knew that it is better to keep the trap shut in certain circumstances.

The old man took the stopper out of the retort and bid Anthroparion come out. He took no notice when the old woman pointed out that this was not Anthroparion, but a demonic presence. It didn’t seem to matter. Jane realised with a strange pleasure that this creature was a blood relative of hers, in a way. It had leathery wings, a scaly tail with a horny point, little sharp teeth in a monkeyish head, and gilded feathers or scales which shone in the firelight. It appeared to be wearing pink nail varnish. It spoke to Jane.

‘I have seen your daughters. They have been tested and found strong enough to be women. They are looking for you.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about,’ said Jane, shivering.

‘It doesn’t matter, I was just trying to calm your fears. I had the feeling that you were on an important quest, but perhaps you aren’t. Important missions are out of style anyway.’ Jane realised that she had been expecting miracles. Now, she could not even recall the political problem she had been dedicated to – if it was political. This was like being sent back to square one, she would have to relearn everything to win.

‘I’m hungry,’ announced the thing. ‘My name is Zilp, it’s meaningless. Once, I had an exotic Hebrew name but they’ve given all that up as racialist.’ Nobody got that. The old woman went to drag out a sack of flour to prepare some scones. She beckoned to Jane to get on with it but Jane declined, saying that she needed some fresh air. Something was changing. At one time she would have made not only scones but cakes and a batch of bread and currant biscuits and scotch pancakes. Now they would damn well make themselves.

Going down the steps of the tower, she wrestled with Guilt. After all, a woman’s place is in the Tower.

At the bottom of the steps was a desert – no wonder so many turned back. It was a temptation. But, ahead also were temptations, coming towards her now in the form of a man. Zilp was watching from the window.

The male figure approached and Jane saw that it wore a doublet and hose in dark velvet with sleeves slashed over gold. It had long fair hair and regarded itself inwardly, which was to be seen from the noble and absent-minded expression on its face. She felt that she could throw herself into the river for the love of such a one. Thank heavens this was a desert!

It seemed for a moment that the figure led a white horse, but she was fascinated to observe that the whole scene changed. The man was in fact wearing farm-labourer’s jeans, was naked to the waist, barefoot, his chest covered in a baroque pattern of dark hair, his features clear as if cut from Siena marble. He was hardworking, proud of it. She could bear him ten children as well as keep the house perfect and sit up all night with ailing calves, breaking off to take him ale in the field and to cook huge repasts. But before she could offer her services he changed again.

Zilp came out of the tower and hopped over to Jane who ignored him. He pulled at her shirt, whining not to take notice of them for they were merely the work of a sorcerer, only shifted shapes.

The man now had on a hairy tweed suit and wore a thin pale beard, smoked a knobbly pipe and had untidy hair, leather patches on his elbows and stout stitched shoes on his feet. His eyes were distant with academic problems and male thoughts, kind and strong and yet vulnerable, absent-minded and clever and remote, yet like an uncle, all at once. He smelled of nicotine, which made Jane recall her discarded Gitanes, and of peat and book-bindings. Her heart beat faster and she shut her eyes in bliss. When she opened them again there was a very young man in tight jeans and tee-shirt, lean and innocent, with a little bit of acne marring his immature visage. She glanced at Zilp who clutched his head in despair. Why would he mind her giving herself to one of these? She could not see any harm.

‘Test them out by shifting shape yourself,’ advised Zilp. ‘I can help you to change your shape to some other kind of woman, and you will then see in reality.’ Jane shrugged and said why not, for she did not believe him. Jane Saint knew love at first sight when she saw it, and she c. . .