The icosahedron was all sleek and polished surfaces and sharp edges, smooth and shiny, not splintery and powdery, the light a strange and artificial glow, the music some sort of enigmatic hum. The first thing I noticed inside the icosahedron was that I didn’t feel damp anymore, and I didn’t feel slightly chill. I was dry, and the temperature was … comfortable. (“Comfortable” — now there was a concept I’d forgotten all about!) We were clean; my wretched Albanadíqué tuxedo was fresh and spotless, as was Althea’s wretched Albanadíqué gown; we were outside our dirty selves, we were new. Translucent travelers surrounded us on all sides, some clutching travel bags, some sporting backpacks. A young man and woman walked through me, laughing, not noticing me. It didn’t hurt; it didn’t bother me at all. Pale-skinned young men in spiffy dinner jackets and clean white shirts scurried about delivering drinks. Emelina ordered herself an extra-strong whiskey (which they had in stock), and I finally tasted a Monongahela again. The music soaked through my skin and into my soul. A breeze blew, ruffled my hair, a vanilla and peppermint-scented breeze.
From this vantage point, inside the icosahedron, each of the twenty windows looked out on a different landscape; one showed a red ocean, another showed a green ocean, one viewed a busy city street, traversed by horse-drawn carriages, dusty and dark; another showed an enclosed and artificially lit city, glossy and synthetic. One window showed our own landscape, our own barren Hell. Emelina’s crow was a shrinking dot on the cloudy horizon. A valley stretched off to the left; some sort of rocky, mountainous world rose up to my right, flecked with wildflower blooms.
I laughed. Emelina was a woman of great power; she could have summoned a horse, but she had summoned a great crow instead, perhaps to impress us.
She heard my thought.
“I just enjoy riding on that crow,” Emelina said, watching the bird vanish into the distance. “He lives in Hell, and I am not often here in Hell. And so when I visit, I summon him.” She took a gulp of her whiskey. “He is very loyal, that crow,” she added.
Through another window, I saw an icy landscape, dotted with squat brick buildings. I watched it for a while, the snow floating in the wind, the smoke pumping from the chimneys.
A man appeared, young and dapper, with crooked and incongruous features — a slanted nose, premature greyness at the temples, pupils of different sizes and colors — but he was crooked and incongruous in the charming way of a young and dapper man. He smiled.
“Kobrund,” he said, introducing himself.
He shook my hand.
“The entire structure has an uncountable number of icosahedrons within it, connected by tunnels,” he said. “Each icosahedron has twenty windows, and each window looks out at a different — parking spot? Does that make sense to you?”
I wondered why that was, and Kobrund explained the whole thing to me.
“Quantum mechanics,” he said. (I had never heard of quantum mechanics.) “The icosahedron has a rotating trajectory, and thus a weak coherence, which results in a superposition of states. It’s in an infinite number of places at once. The way you were once dead-and-alive simultaneously, for example.”
Kobrund was an exceptionally likable young man, even when he spouted scientific gobbledygook. He had a touch of an accent, something almost undetectable. I said that my being dead-and-alive simultaneously was a different thing; one of my essences had been killed (one out of twenty-one, and one I wasn’t using and didn’t need), and it only looked as though I had died. This really was nothing like “quantum mechanics,” as he had described it to me.
“Well, you see,” Kobrund began, and he launched into an explanation that made it entirely clear that I was exactly wrong, and that he was exactly right. Quantum mechanics explains a lot of things. I’ve used this many times over the years to explain the inexplicable. Quantum mechanics, I will say. (If I want to excuse the explicable but inexcusable, on the other hand, I will instead say, I’m sorry, I don’t recall. I’d had a lot to drink. There are some things that even quantum mechanics cannot explain.)
Kobrund took a breath and smiled.
“My friends, you need fresh air,” he said, “a light and warm breeze, a touch of shaded sunlight, sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit, crispy roast goose with apple stuffing, and a bit of Violin Sonata #21. Remember fresh air?”
I remembered fresh air, but only barely, as some kind of dream.
Emelina and I chased Kobrund through plunging tunnels, Master Yu, Althea and Elias close at my heels. Every time we turned, a new door opened, until at last we exited into the shade of a forest glade, scattered with purple and yellow wildflowers, surrounded by towering elms, blue sky above. A single table stood in the center of the meadow; white tablecloth, cloth napkins, a bottle of wine, five place settings. In the middle of the table, a crispy stuffed goose, steam rising into the perfect sixty-seven-degree-Fahrenheit air. To our left was a small mere, fed by a small stream. Red and gold flying fish arced over the surface. Doves perched in the trees. To our left, a beautiful woman in a white gown played violin, and a handsome man in a white tuxedo accompanied her on piano. (Kobrund had led me to believe that it was Violin Sonata #21, and, although I did not bother to confirm that, I believe it was almost certainly Violin Sonata #21. By Mozart, I guess, or one of that bunch.)
“Real music,” I mused. “Where does it come from?”
“From not-Hell,” Emelina replied.
We watched the river as it flowed from the lake to feed the jungle forest.
We were not on a different planet, or a different plane of existence — this was the Underworld, with another reality superimposed on it, like one of those children’s books with painted transparent pages, each with a new part of the picture on it, each merged on top of the last. (You know what I mean?; they were popular in the mid-1960s.) I could see the mountains to the northeast, and the jungle in the west, but the ruined castle outside Wemas City was no longer ruined — it stood now in all its expansive glory, solid as a mountain, knights in the turrets, maids in the windows, musicians in the courtyard, carriages rolling in and out, doing business — the camellia flower bushes blushed with double blooms, from pink to blazing red, a few white camellias shimmered against their shiny green leaves, and the castle was ringed by cherry trees with cherry blossoms in the sort of full bloom that lit up the land, and the landscape was no longer parched grasslands, but rather green and lush, dotted with stone cottages. Was this the future or the past, or some sort of present that we couldn’t ordinarily see with our own eyes?
I enjoyed the wine a lot. You know what it was? 1663 Haut Brion. (This is pronounced Oh Breeyaw!) I suppose your gold cuff-linked sommelier could find a lot of poetical notions to describe the experience of drinking this wine, but what I can tell you is that it seemed to go pretty nicely with the crispy stuffed goose, and, unlike pig piss, it gave me more than a middle-level singe. (A “sommelier” is a fancy word for a guy who drinks wine for a living; he needs to pretend to be “intellectual” about it, which is why I am not a sommelier.) Another thing about this wine, the bottle never ran out, no matter how much we drank, which I imagine had something to do with quantum mechanics. After a while, thanks to the bottomless wine bottle, I felt that I could speak my mind, and so I said to Elias, “We’re very grateful for everything you did back there, rescuing Althea, but you know, we’re aware you betrayed her in Malchut. This is why she’s here, after all. And so I have to wonder whether we can trust you now.”
Elias looked worried at this, because, after all, I’d made a good point, but Althea replied for him with more than certainty that her beloved had not betrayed her, that in fact this had all been a terrific misunderstanding, and that she had me to thank for clearing the whole thing up, that if I had not rescued her from the Wemas City mud, she would not have seen Elias again in glamorous Albanadíqué, and now she would yet be feeling the sting of lost love, when in fact their love was very thoroughly alive and as strong as ever.
“You see, Watt?” she said. “I
f Elias had betrayed me, he would still be alive. And even if he had died, why would he be here if someone hadn’t betrayed him also? He and I, we’re both ghosts looking for vengeance. I can’t let them win by turning on him, darling.”
I thought this sounded a little bit too logical. Life is rarely so logical. And the “darling” sounded rehearsed; she didn’t wear this kind of affectation well. I didn’t believe her.
Elias muttered, “Emm. You see — ”
“We were both betrayed and killed,” Althea interrupted. “Elias first, and then me, when I resisted. Hence, we are reunited in Hell. And the only thing that makes it Hell is the mistrust we both feel for humankind.”
“Otherwise,” Elias said now, “anyplace that two young lovers are reunited — such as me and Althea — would be Heaven.”
He looked eagerly to Althea for approval.
“Might Elias have betrayed you and then subsequently been betrayed by someone else?” I wondered. “He betrays you first, for the money, but then the guy who owes him the money doesn’t want to pay, and he kills Elias instead. And that subsequent betrayal gets Elias locked up down here?”
I looked at Elias.
Emelina smiled.
“The sixth level of Hell is for naught but the betrayed,” she said. “Betrayers unwelcome. They go elsewhere. Someplace worse. Seventh or eighth level, depending on the severity of the betrayal.”
Elias smiled and sat back, relaxed, and Althea nestled into his arms.
A blue and silver dove, perched in one of the lower branches of a rainbow eucalyptus tree, now sang along with the musicians, as though commenting on the perfect serenity and equilibrium we’d just achieved; the bird’s voice was clear and sweet, like a flute.
After a couple of hours of conversation that felt like real life, a chocolate mousse dessert and a bottle of port, the sun began to set, and a cheerful red shadow flowed out over the land.
We watched the sunset for a bit, all of us smiling and nodding and even oohing a bit, as though we’d never seen a sunset before — after a spell in Hell, we had all thought we’d never see a sunset again — but then something changed, the birds stopped singing, the fish stopped jumping, and a dark inky cloud covered the sunset, and then the sky. A musty chill filled the air, and the scent of wildflower blew away.
Nothing perfect lasts forever, and nothing nice lasts forever. Nothing just meh lasts forever, either. Misery always catches up eventually.
This was no longer the same pleasant glade.
Master Yu and Emelina stood up at once. The Chinaman’s eyes clouded over, for just a moment, then cleared; Emelina kneaded the warm air with both hands, and she hummed softly to herself, and then she looked up, her face unnaturally white; both of them, using their magic.
Master Yu pointed; the trees that surrounded us grew a bit translucent; yester-day’s Hell oozed through to-day’s beautiful Hell, in which we’d lived for the last hour, and on the very very far horizon, there was a rising circle of dust.
“A band of horsemen galloping towards us,” Master Yu said. “Still miles away, but coming closer. Three in the lead. A dusty crowd behind them.”
I could hear their furious hoof beats in my head, I could see the urgency in their steady gait.
“No longer the party of six that we saw from the Maldensses swamp,” he said. “Now a small battalion of fifteen, supplemented with new Skimmies.”
“They are after you, Watt,” Emelina said.
I didn’t ask how she knew. I believed her.
“Is there nothing we can do about this?” I asked.
Master Yu said, “It is not just the Fabricator himself to fear, but the Simulacrums.”
“Simulacrums?” I demanded angrily. “Why?”
“The Fabricator’s fabrications,” Master Yu explained.
I said that I knew that, but I thought the defining aspect of a Simulacrum’s character was that I didn’t need to fear him. Snap, crackle, pop! and he’s gone.
“They come to life in the Otherworld,” Master Yu said, “but they can visit the World Above, as well as the World Below. In the World Above, the Simulacrums are constrained by the various physical laws that have come to govern ‘reality.’ Down here they are subject to no such limits. In Malchut, they are distractions; in 枉死城 they are invincible monsters.”
The trees around us shook, began to melt into a windy and sandy fog.
Master Yu’s one good eye went blurry for a flash.
“They know you are here,” he said.
“Emelina?” I pleaded.
“I am immortal,” Emelina whispered. “I would like to keep it that way.”
“Is there nothing you can do? Nothing I can do?”
Steadily, she replied, “No, Watt. I am afraid not. The only thing to do is run away from this one.”
This was usually my favorite answer to almost anything, but — dammit — I’d gotten used to Emelina, and how she liked to rescue me from things like this. Well, I generally preferred not to be brave if it could be avoided, but I didn’t see how it could be avoided this time around, so I said I would lead them on a merry chase, let Emelina take wing and let the others escape to join Madame Tang. Kobrund handed me some dried meat, a flask of water, and a flask of grape wine (because why not? I might want some decent wine in the jungle), which I put into my saddle bag.
And with that, the great crow descended from the sky. Emelina blew me a kiss, mounted, and off they flew. I felt the pain of that parting years ago, in Wyoming, when Emelina rode northeast, and I fled southwest, in the snow.
I was grateful that we had finished the goose, and the wine, and that I had seen Emelina again.
“I will take the gemstone to Warlord Hua,” Master Yu said, “to secure the loyalty of his army in our war against the soldiers of Hell.” He nodded at me. “O’Hugh will journey to Sadlo’reen to retrieve the guns from our allies in North Sadlareeyah.” Then, to Elias: “Take Althea and meet us in Hsi-Wang. It is not far, and the trip will be safer. Give the sentries my name, tell them that you will wait for me in the outer circle. And then wait. You know the way?”
Elias nodded.
I didn’t have time to ask what was in Hsi-Wang, and why Elias and Althea should travel there. We were close enough to the jungle to hear the demons screaming, and we were close enough to the wall of the forest to see flickering shapes over the edge, invisible flickering shapes that flashed and sparkled, invisibly, when they screamed. I wasn’t sure if they were screaming in laughter or in agony, but I would soon enough find out.
“In the jungle, your compass will work,” Master Yu said. “In the jungle, magnetic north registers. March south. If you keep due south, you will eventually emerge from the jungle, although from time to time it might not seem that way. Do not give up hope, do not lose your resolve. You will be tempted to stray from my directions. Please do not.”
He thought for a moment, and he looked out at the horizon, gauging, perhaps, the distance between me and my pursuers, the Fabricator and his Skimmies.
“And here is one other thing you will be inclined to doubt,” he said, very quickly, “but about which you must trust me. This jungle is a portal of sorts. A tunnel that serves as the doorway to Sadlo’reen. You see? In such a portal, as the Yellow Emperor wrote in White Pond (his magnum opus) and as I have witnessed for myself, you will pass demons, a multitude of them. Look them in their eyes, and be unafraid. If you look them in their eyes without fear, they will be trapped in their frozen air. But you must be unafraid. You must not doubt. They will be trapped in their frozen air.
“If you get away,” Master Yu continued, and then he paused, and he changed his mind: “When you get away, O’Hugh, you will see a waterfall almost immediately, just to the immediate east of the forest, framed by two peaks. On the opposite peak, you will see a large boulder that looks almost exactly like a dragon head. You will recognize it immediately. A rainbow will connect the two peaks. The waterfall will smell terrible — like the worst shit yo
u’ve ever smelled. All of this will confirm for you that you have reached the correct waterfall, as indicated in Voltairine de Cleyre’s instructions, and you should then jump into the waterfall. You will plunge — oh, it will seem as though you are plunging forever — but you will emerge in Sadlo’reen intact, unhurt. Our allies will meet you on the other side of the portal. They will be waiting.”
“I have a bit of a….”
“Phobia of waterfalls?”
“I prefer to say a rational fear of waterfalls.”
“Nothing can be done about that.”
“Should I dive headfirst, or should I just jump?”
“Miss de Cleyre did not say, so I believe it does not matter. She is exceptionally thorough and careful in her thinking. So: do whatever you are most comfortable with, in the moment. Whatever strikes your fancy.”
I did not think that either diving or jumping would truly strike my fancy.
I asked him if he were absolutely sure about all of this, and he said that I should trust him, and so I did. I repeated his instructions, and he nodded.
Then he smiled, my friend Master Yu.
Master Yu shook my hand. Elias shook my hand, slapped my back. Althea kissed me on the cheek, sadly. Maybe she would never see me again. I had saved her life, after all. So she looked a little sad at the idea of my impending death.
Chapter 21
Remember Dawsey? A sleepy little town in North Dakota territory, Dawsey changed its name to Pearce, then to Freda, and then most of the town, of course, was entirely destroyed by a meteorite during the Great Sidonian Revolt of 1918. To-day, in 1936, it is a ghost town, a few half-abandoned buildings and a grassy road, hardly visible. The rotten shell of the bank still stands, and two half-walls of the church have resisted crumbling entirely. The ruins of Dawsey are surrounded by flat prairie to the east, and rolling treeless countryside, mostly abandoned farmland, and then by badlands, cut across by a small river. There is also a small pond in the ruins of Dawsey, in which the citizens of Dawsey used to fish, back in the day.
Watt O'Hugh and the Innocent Dead: Being the Third Part of the Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third (The Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third Book 3) Page 19