by Lavie Tidhar
“More popcorn?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
Florence hefted a heaped spoon from the bowl and ladled the popcorn onto his plate. The Stranger chewed without enthusiasm. The Kid laughed childishly as Constance fed him a gummy worm.
The Stranger could smell nothing but substance. It was everywhere, in the air, in the clothes, in the furniture. Outside, the din of the mine never ceased, the machines humming and burping and digging, always digging, and the sounds of distant, underground explosions at regular intervals, and the rustling of the chains.
“Bring me a damn steak,” the General said. The Stranger sighed with relief when a servant materialised (though it was just another carnie, in an ill-fitting suit), pushing a service cart. He plonked down several steaming plates on the table and decamped. The General helped himself (with a long three-tined fork), and the Stranger, too, took a steak and began to eat.
“Do you like it?” Florence said, eagerly. “It’s rump.”
“It’s tasty but . . . I’ve seen no cows?”
The girls giggled. There was something very old and very false about the sound, at odds with their youthful looks. Their dresses, too, were very old, like brides’ gowns that had gone mouldy in an attic.
“Did I say something funny?”
The General put down his knife and fork and glared at the girls, and they subsided into a frightened silence.
“Not cows,” he said. “Zebras.”
“Zebras?”
“And sometimes bear. This is clown country, kid. If you can ride it or you can make it dance or you can stick your head in its mouth, then you can eat it.”
“Clown country,” the Stranger said.
“Was,” the General said. A cat came and sat under the Stranger’s chair and rubbed its head against the Stranger’s leg, then padded softly away and vanished through the wall. “Mine, now.”
“The Hole,” the Stranger said. “It’s very large.”
“Biggest substance mine ever discovered,” the General said. “A star that fell down from the sky. Made this hole. This Hole. Sacred to the clowns.” He snorted. “Clowns,” he said. “Makes you laugh, doesn’t it.”
But no one laughed around the table. The Stranger had lost his appetite. There was punch, served in giant jugs, and he drank from it though it never sated his thirst. It was red and smelled of mouthwash and gin and shatkora. It had large crystal chunks of substance floating in it but that seemed to make no difference. Everything in that place was covered in substance. The Stranger drank. A band, still made of carnies, struck up a dance. They played fiddle and harmonica and the washtub bass, stovepipe and kazoo. First Boo drew the Conjurer to his feet, and then the Kid was doing a wild ragtime with Constance, and then the Stranger too was on his feet, dancing with Florence, and the beat grew faster and their steps more frenzied, and the chandeliers twinkled in the candlelight and the punch flew freely and the ghosts, too, were dancing now, in that other place, like mimes in a mirror. The Stranger had a vague sense of unease, but there was nothing to pin it down to, there was nothing but the music and the candlelight and the girls in white moving like cloth in the wind, like white dresses on a clothesline, like scraps, faster and faster and fa—
The flash of a nervous grin as the last of the carnies scuttled out warned him. The Stranger sidestepped the dance and for just a moment he looked upon the scene not as he thought it was but as it was. He saw the Kid and the Stranger shambling, and the three creatures—things—these women in white, how crude their features were. Crystal substance grew upon their skin and colonised their eyes. They were like pillars of salt, like rotted driftwood crusted with sodium chloride. And yet, in a fashion, they lived. And yet, in a fashion—they hungered.
He shrank back from Florence with a muted cry of horror—of revulsion!—but she laughed, and drew him to her, and he was powerless to resist. Her lips touched his. He tasted emptiness—an awful coldness—a bright explosion—
Then nothing. The Stranger was falling, in a black emptiness where giant forms of light glared. Space, he thought. Perhaps it was outer space. The Escapement was a fleck of dust in the distance, yet so lovely: he could see all its features so clearly, the flowing Nikulin and the wide Chagrin and the Désert de Soleil and the Great Salt Lakes and beyond them the Pillars of Nisir.
Beyond the Pillars there was no light, and he knew then that he was staring at the Mountains of Darkness. He focused, and the Ur-shanabi came into view, the Plant of Heartbeat, growing all on its own at the highest peak. How lovely it was! he marvelled. He could see each of its petals, its quivering leaves. The Stranger had travelled the Escapement for a long time, and he was destined now, he saw, to travel just a little bit farther. With a sign he returned to his body, held still in the dance by lovely Constance, and he smiled at her, tenderly. How happy they could all have been, in Hole!
“No,” the Kid said, “no, no, Boo, I don’t want to, I don’t wanna—”
The Conjurer was making those strange little noises small boys make when in the grip of a bad dream.
“Wake up, you fools,” he said. “Wake up!”
The Conjurer stumbled. The Kid, with a frightened cry, said, “Daddy!”
It gnawed at the Stranger’s soul, that cry. The man left his bedside vigil by the boy and went into the bathroom and he stared at himself in the mirror and his vision blurred. In the reflection he could see a grand ballroom, a table strewn with dirty plates and gnawed-at gummy worms, the stained tablecloth splotched with red ichor. In the reflection three men shied away from three deathly white creatures dressed in ruined wedding gowns. The man reached and rubbed the mirror but the image didn’t grow any clearer and it was only when he wiped his eyes that the image sharpened. He stepped back across the divide. The Stranger drew his gun. Florence and Constance and Boo advanced on the men. The Stranger shoved the Kid in the back and yelled, “Run!”
They ran. They were good at running, these men. There are men who stand their ground and fight to the last, and there are those who run and live to tell the tale.
The three girls followed. They moved fast, jerkily, with a certain joie de vivre, hopping after the men, hopping onto the walls, and Boo hung from the ceiling, and stuck out her tongue after the running men, like a frog catching flies. Her tongue was very long and very pink. The Stranger and the Conjurer and the Kid ran down the corridor and turned and ran and turned and ran. But the girls cheated and passed through the walls and appeared ahead of them, laughing and calling out, “Alakazam!” and “Aunt Sally!” and “Ballyhoo!”
The Kid took potshots. They missed, or if they hit they made no damage. The Stranger and the Conjurer saved their ammo. They ran with frenzied determination, not speaking, breathing heavily. But the maze of corridors seemed endless, and they could find no way out.
All mazes, it has been pointed out previously, are ultimately solvable. There is the random mouse approach, and there is wall following, there are the Pledge and the Trémaux. But mazes on the Escapement were not always static, and the unwary traveller using one such method might find that the maze could shift unexpectedly around them. The three men kept trying doors on their way, and on one such corridor the third door on the left opened and they disappeared briefly into a large wardrobe filled with heavy fur coats, much eaten by moths. The Stranger felt a cold draught, and made his way deeper into the wardrobe, to seek an exit, and for a moment he smelled fresh pines, and distant snow; but he found nothing but the back of the wardrobe and he retreated back with a vague sense of loss.
“We need to find a way out of here,” he said.
“What are those things?” the Kid said. “My head hurts.”
“You hit the punch?”
“Well, it was free.”
“Only yourself to blame, then.”
“When are we going to rob the mine and get the
treasure?” the Kid said.
The Conjurer and the Stranger exchanged amused glances.
“How do you propose carrying it all away, kid?” the Conjurer said.
“I don’t know, Dad. In a cart or something.”
“I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the scale of the problem, kid,” the Conjurer said. “What happens when a place is too big to be robbed?”
“I don’t know, what?”
“If you can’t rob it, you have to own it,” the Conjurer said.
“Own it? What are you going to do with a mine?”
They pondered the question. Beyond the door, they could hear the three girls call out, sometimes distant, sometimes near. Their voices echoed down the corridors, multiplying and trailing off on their own.
“There’s a way out,” the Conjurer said. “Come on.”
They listened at the door until the girls’ voices, more frustrated now, faded into the distance. The Conjurer opened the door cautiously. “Clear.”
They stepped out into the corridor.
“Look for chalk marks,” the Conjurer said.
“You marked the way?”
“This ain’t my first time at the rodeo.”
No maze is unsolvable. But it is a forward-thinking person who makes sure to mark their passage as they go into one. And a conjurer is never short of chalk.
They ran. But this time, they ran with purpose along the endless corridors, searching for a mark. Soon they found one, and then all that remained was to follow the trail. On and on they went, while the wails and cries and laughter of the General’s three daughters gradually receded behind. Until at last they burst out of the front doors of Hole Manor, and into silver moonlight.
They stopped, and stared. For this was Hole, but this was not the place that they had left when they first entered the mansion. This was not . . . Hole.
The Stranger looked down at his arms and they were transparent, but when he looked at the other two men they were solid, and he realised that they had no parallels.
They stood on the side of the road of a busy intersection. The moon hung in the sky, but it was the only thing visible above, and unlike on the Escapement it was not broken. There were no stars, and the streetlights shone in a soft eternal yellow. Cars and trucks crawled along the four-lane roads, their lamps shining. A cat emerged beside the three men, purred, rubbed itself against the Stranger’s leg and wandered away along a pavement strewn with cigarette butts and broken bottles. The traffic lights flashed red and green and yellow. The cars crawled and crawled and music blared out of the speakers of a white Buick. The Kid looked at the scene with awe on his face and said, “What is this place?” and then he looked at the Stranger and said, “Hey, you’re a ghost!”
“I am not a ghost,” the Stranger said, but the Kid wasn’t paying attention. “This must be what the circus is like,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to visit the circus.”
“The circus isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” the Conjurer said. He looked very out of place in his black suit and top hat and his very white gloves, and his silver-handled pistols. The Stranger worried a police car would go past and see them with their weapons. But there was no one around, they were on some no-man’s-land, a traffic island, and an overhang for foot traffic made of rusted steel was the only way out. He began for the stairs.
“When did he turn into a ghost, Dad?”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Where are we?”
The Conjurer sighed. “We’re at that other place, Kid,” he said.
“I never thought it was real,” the Kid said.
“No,” the Conjurer said. “It does seem far-fetched.”
They followed the Stranger up the stairs and along the bridge. Overhead on a low hill there stood a grand old bank building with stone columns, and on the other side, one block away, the Stranger could see—
The hospital, he thought, with a sudden chill. This had never happened before. Should not have happened. It was Hole, it had drilled a hole so far down the substrata of the Escapement that it came clean through the other side, into that other place. He could go there right now. He could see the boy, he could tell him everything, about the Titanomachy, and las máquinas de sueños, and what happened in Jericho, and, and . . .
But he saw that his form was fading even further as he walked. He was becoming translucent, and when his hand accidentally brushed the railings it passed clean through them. He was not meant to be there, he was a reflection of the man in the hospital or the man in the hospital was a reflection of him. He did not know if he dreamed that man or if that man dreamed him. He hastened his steps and almost tripped coming down the stairs on the other side of the footbridge. The other two chased after him but he paid them no mind. He reached a road lined with shops. All the buildings were very tall and rose overhead, blocking the sky. A newspaper blew past in the wind and a homeless man went clear through him and grinned with a toothless mouth. He could hear the Kid’s delighted sounds behind him and the Conjurer saying, “Leave him, we’ll have to make our own way back—”
He paid them no attention. I’m not even really here, he realised in horror. A couple walked towards him, the man pulling up an umbrella and the woman laughing at something he must have said, and they too walked through him as though he was not really there. His feet sank into the ground. He had to get out of that place. He saw a plain wood door leading to one of the above-shop apartments and tried it, but his hand kept slipping through the handle. When he at last gained purchase it was locked. He ran with increased desperation, tried door after door. But the buildings themselves began to lose definition and he could see the naked skeleton of pylons and beams, wires running everywhere. Why were there so many wires?
He reached the front of a convenience store. He could see the counter inside, a turbaned man behind it, a row of cigarette packets, gum, condoms. The shop was awash in light. He stepped in through the open door. The door pinged, once. The Stranger stepped into the light.
He emerged into a long dark tunnel. He could not see the other two. The tunnel was hewn deep into the rock. The walls shone with wet substance. He could see the crystals embedded in the rock. He ran his finger over a seam, lightly, and tasted it. Hole. He was back in the mine. Lights were erected along the tunnel and he made for the nearest one, not knowing whether he was going deeper into the mine. He heard a deep humming sound. At first it meant nothing to him. He reached the light and plunged back into the darkness. On his way he saw the first clown.
The clown was a Hobo and he was alone. His feet were chained and he dug into the rockface with a pickaxe. And as he dug, he hummed.
The Stranger passed the clown and as he reached the next light fixture he saw a group of shackled clowns digging into a rich seam of crystal, and they all hummed in unison, a deep and thrumming sound that ran through the rock and was magnified in the crystal substance until it seemed it could alter the very shape of the world. And he realised then that, in their own, curious fashion, the clowns were singing.
It was this eldritch subterranean song that carried him, deeper and deeper into the mine, along that dark tunnel, traversing the twilit world from one lamp post to another. Into the song he went, into a sort of wakeful dreaming, and his shadow travelled by his side. He began to see the crystals blossom along the walls as new seams were found and not yet exploited. He saw there traces of the ancient Escapement, its hidden layers. The silver fin of a struck ship, the earlobe of a Colossus, a broken wind chime still making eerie noise and shifting the air and light around it in disturbing ways, the skeleton of a giant, ossified boss clown with seven elongated toe bones. The darkness sang to him ahead. He walked between the lights along the darkness, until there were no more lights, and no more relics, and the clowns’ song vanished behind him, and he was all alone in the total, all-consuming dark.
There was no
more ground, there was no more floor. The Stranger fell, into Hole.
What he saw there, in that null-space, he couldn’t, later, recall. Only vague and fleeting sensations, somewhere far older than humanity’s newborn existence, out there between the stars, where huge, black machines floated, dead and unresponsive, in the vastness of space. The Stranger floated there, in that ancient graveyard. He could make no coherent shape out of the vast objects he passed. They were larger than worlds, and dormant, all—all but one. For one of these ancients opened an eye as large as a moon, and saw—saw him! And it spoke to him, in some alien fashion, and whispered tales of a younger age, and of machine minds which fell from the sky one day onto the Escapement, through some hole torn out of space and time and dream, and for an era made it in their shape. They had wakened the Colossi and the pupae umbrarum, who took on their shapes as they took the shapes of whichever generation of species came upon the Escapement, as all living, dreaming beings do.
But nothing lives forever . . . , the ancient thing whispered, there in the null-space. What is it you seek, stranger?
The Ur-shanabi, the Stranger said, The Plant of Heartbeat, which can cure even time.
The healing plant, yes, yes, the ancient machine said. We had a different name for it, and in our minds it took a different shape. I had smelled of the flower, stranger. In my youth I had undertaken the long and perilous journey to the Mountains of Darkness, to seek that rarest of blooms. And I alone remain, here, in this desolation, with my people all about me as still and cold and lifeless as the ice-moon of Amarok. Is this what you wish for?
Tears strangled the Stranger’s throat. No, he whispered, in that place of null-sound. Only a moment, a single breath, for the boy, for the boy to live.
The old machine was silent then, for a long while. Then it sighed, a single, drawn-out exhalation, of cosmic ice, and dust, and X-rays. Then it closed its eyes, and it was still. The current caught the Stranger and lifted him up and tossed him away. He fled towards a small red sun. It opened and he plunged towards it, and once again he fell into the hole.