by Damien Love
Gradually, he assembled a plan to help himself: he would build a careful, detailed mental picture of each element in the process of contacting the power, a kind of map of the path his mind had to follow: first came the shell of the old tin toy; next, the ancient clay tablet inside, bearing its strange words written in illegible scratches; then, finally, the roaring white light tinged blue and gold.
He would line each image up, one after the other, like a series of doors. Then he would carefully attempt to approach, feel, and pass through each door in turn. Just a series of doors. He set his mind walking slowly toward them.
First the toy robot.
Then the tablet.
Then the light.
Nodding over the toy, trying to move his mind, he lost all track of time. Somewhere along the border of sleep, something flickered, a sudden sense of the tablet’s presence, a feeling that what he was looking for was glimmering ahead.
With the distant feeling of trying not to wake himself, he just let it be there for a while. Then, softly, he pushed after it, pushed deeper, slipping through one door, then the next, like a thief tiptoeing through a house.
As he approached the final door that would reveal the light, he saw a vague, unexpected figure, standing between him and the door, back to him. As the figure turned, he saw a face he recognized. The mouth was moving:
“Alex? Wake up, son.”
XI.
SPRING MORNING
Alex’s grandfather stood outside, leaning through the car’s open door. They were parked off the road on the edge of a thick forest. It was early morning, still dim. Spotty rain fell.
“Uh . . . where are we?” Alex blinked and stretched. Aside from fields and trees, the landscape was empty. He could feel a dream draining away and tried to remember what it had been. The sleep had been deep.
“We’ve crossed into Germany,” the old man said. “Close to where Harry is. There’s a hotel I know not far from here. But there’s something I need to do first, and it needs a little privacy. Come on.”
He led Alex into the woods. The first unseen birds were already chipping away at the big silence. Tall trees arched together to form a vaulted ceiling above, the light shaded gray green as it came filtering through.
“Any luck?” his grandfather asked as they walked. “With the tablet?”
“Not sure.” Alex frowned, beginning to remember. “I thought there was something. Maybe. I was getting closer. But I couldn’t get to it.”
“You’ll do it.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Alex said. As best he could, he shared his half-formed idea, about moments when he had accessed the power without being aware he was doing it. “Almost like a . . . an unconscious reflex,” he concluded. “Or subconscious. But it’s like, when I try to do it, I can’t.”
“Mmm. Might make sense,” his grandfather mused. “Deeper spots in the mind. You’re trying too hard but don’t really know what you’re trying, so you wind up getting in your own way. You have to relax, think less.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a . . . technique I’m trying to work out. To lead me through, and kind of tune out. I’m still trying to figure it out. I don’t know if it makes sense.”
“Can but try, Alex,” his grandfather said. “But, then, there have been times when you’ve used it consciously, no?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “In Prague, on the bridge.”
The old man chewed his lip, thinking. “There’s a chance Prague might have helped you there. There are places on Earth where, ah, things can get thin, Alex. Between the world we know and—you know. Whatever else. The unknown. Some maintain Prague is one. The bridge we were on, the Charles Bridge, there are strange stories about how it was built. Theories that the whole area was all designed as a kind of alchemical equation: that the very layout of the Old Town is a magical code. A powerful place. And the presence of the golem itself, of course, seeking a master . . . All that might have helped amplify things, helped you make the connection. The distance you had to travel wasn’t so far. It met you halfway.”
“Okay, I get it. Sort of.” Alex nodded. “But there were other times. Back home, when I could use the power when I wanted it, how I wanted it. I was conscious, awake, and there was nothing amplifying it there, was there? Like, there was a boy getting beat up, and I helped him. And then someone was going to beat me up, and I made him stop. Actually”—Alex frowned—“it was the same boy.”
“Go on,” his grandfather urged.
“But then, the other night, at David’s,” Alex continued, tripping up over a new thought. “The old woman was shouting at me, and, yeah, I wanted her to stop. But I didn’t, y’know—command it. It just came out of nowhere and kept getting stronger. I mean, I was wide-awake, and . . .”
“Yes?”
“I dunno.” Alex shrugged, bothered by a feeling of having mislaid something important. He nodded determinedly. “I’ll keep thinking. I’ll keep trying.”
They came to a bare place encircled by trees. His grandfather stopped by a large mossy rock and dropped his Gladstone. “This’ll do.”
He knelt to the bag and pulled out the sack he’d collected from Harry’s, upending its contents onto the ground. Two objects fell out: complex, heavy-looking mechanical assemblages of iron and brass, thick springs, cogs and coils held together by metal links and leather straps with buckles. Grunting, he began fixing one over his boot, covering the heel.
With a start, Alex realized where he had seen them before.
“Those are . . . Wait, are those his?”
“Hmmm?” His grandfather was working his other foot into the second device. “No. Well: yes. He built them—but I stole them, long time ago. Not used them in a while, though. Let’s see, good lord, must be sixty years. Last time was . . . down around Cannes. Ha.” He smiled distantly. “There was a masked ball, movie stars in town, a lot of jewelry, and . . . Well, it was a long time ago. Swore off them after that. But needs must when the devil drives.”
The old man stopped fussing with the apparatus and smiled up. “Thing is, Alex, I’ve been feeling a little . . . tired lately. Too much running around, I suppose. So I thought I might use these for a little help, if my energy gets low. Put a spring in my step, as it were. Ha. I had Albert tuning them up for me. Harry collected them while I was away.”
He stood, took a tentative step, frowned at the squeal it produced. He turned back to his Gladstone, found the oilcan Albert had given him, applied a few drops and pumped his foot until it was silent.
“Thought it best to get a little practice in. When I broke into the library back there, I overshot, wound up at a window a floor above. But I remember the real trick was walking in them. The jumping stuff’s quite easy, once you get the hang of it. The spring-heels multiply the force of your leap, basically. Although it gets a little exponential after a certain point.” He stood flexing his knees, looking upward and ahead. “Okay. Right.”
He crouched and swiveled his feet quickly toward each other, almost as if he were clicking his heels. Then he was gone.
Alex gawped at the spot where his grandfather had been. He spun, looked around, looked up, hunting the canopy overhead. He finally located him balanced on a branch about thirty-five feet up a tree around thirty feet away.
“That’s amazing,” Alex breathed. “That was amazing!” he shouted now, running to stand beneath the tree.
“I was actually aiming for the next one down,” his grandfather called, gesturing to a branch some ten feet below. “But, no, not bad after six decades. Getting down’s the real test. Stand back, please.”
Alex retreated, then caught his breath as the old man stepped casually from the branch. He fell tombstoning down, yet landed as though bouncing lightly on a mattress. The springs at his heels gave out a hissing sigh.
“Let’s see.” He crouched, creaked, and vanished once more in a gray upward
blur, to land on the lower branch he had previously indicated.
“Like riding a bike.” The old man beamed as he touched down following his fourth test leap. He nodded, satisfied, then knelt to unstrap the contraptions. As he bent to stow them back in his Gladstone, he hesitated, set them aside on the ground, and pulled out the painting Harry had salvaged. The old man unrolled it and moved into better light to stand scrutinizing it.
“Can you show me those pictures you took of the others, Alex?”
While Alex found the images on his phone, his grandfather spread the canvas on the grass. Alex showed him yet again how to flip from one picture to another. After some grumbling, the old man got it, then crouched over the painting, stabbing at the screen.
“What am I missing?”
“Well, we don’t know if it’s all of them, do we?” Alex asked. “Like you said: we don’t know if they need all the paintings or just one, or what. Maybe there’s a connection between just some of them. So, like, uh: some have got people, and some don’t. Some have got trees, and some don’t.” Alex looked at the trees around them, thinking hard. “Maybe it’s to do with the different types of trees? You can make a recipe using leaves or . . . bark or something. Like with that flower you mentioned. The potion.”
“Hmm.” His grandfather sounded unconvinced. He pushed back his hat as he swiped rapidly at the phone, muttering.
Alex stood looking on over the old man’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s not . . . the pictures,” he said.
“Eh? How do you mean.”
“I mean, not the . . . images. Like, if it was some coded message in the images—to do with the trees, or whatever—they wouldn’t need to physically take the paintings, would they? They could just, y’know”—he gestured at the phone’s display—“look at copies.”
“That’s a point,” the old man said. “But then, there are minute details in the originals that might not be apparent in reproductions. And also, unless you were very careful and did them yourself, copies wouldn’t all be at the right scale to each other. These pictures on your phone certainly aren’t. What I’m saying is, you might need to arrange the originals together in a certain way, so that things line up in a particular manner. But, yes, decent point: they seem to need the actual physical object. Let me keep thinking.”
While his grandfather was absorbed, Alex crouched to inspect the spring-heels. He picked one up. It was even heavier than it looked. After a moment, he sat and fastened the mechanisms around both feet, pulling buckles tight, then stood, testing the feel. His gaze fell on the moss-covered rock they had stopped beside. He tried a step, then hobbled heavily to stand before it. A broad boulder, about five feet high. Alex bobbed at the knees, trying to get a feel for the kind of force he might use to get up there.
He glanced at the old man’s back, took a breath, crouched, and jumped—then felt stupid when nothing happened. With the weighty apparatus around them, his feet barely left the ground. He frowned, then brightened, remembering the last little movement his grandfather had made, swiveling the heels toward each other.
“Must set the mechanism,” he muttered, licking his lips.
“Hmm?” his grandfather said over his shoulder.
At the same moment the old man turned and shouted—“Alex! No!”—Alex moved his feet quickly inward. Then something punched him so hard in the stomach that he couldn’t breathe.
XII.
OUT ON A LIMB
He still couldn’t breathe. He was beginning to panic about that. He couldn’t see, either. His eyes were streaming. The world was a gray-green smear, waving strangely up and down. Blood was rushing to his head. And possibly out his nose. He wheezed uselessly.
“Alex?” His grandfather sounded far away.
White spots sparked across his blurring vision. The weight pressing into his belly grew heavier. There was a jagged, tickling feeling there, too, as though something was struggling weakly, trapped against him.
“Alex?”
Trying to move away from it, he felt himself lurch forward and steadied himself by flinging out a hand, grabbing something rough. The agitation at his stomach was gone.
“Alex?”
Gulping fishlike, he finally found a shallow, shuddering breath. Then another, deeper. His vision cleared, but he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. To his right, an enormous gray pipe stretched off into a great greenish-brown wall, about sixty feet ahead. Something was waving oddly in the air nearby. Two things. Turning his head slightly downward, they seemed familiar. It took him a second to identify his own feet.
With sickening clarity, he realized. The gray pipe wasn’t stretching ahead into a wall. It was a tree trunk, and it was going straight down to the ground. The very hard ground. Sixty feet below. He was hanging bent double, flung over a high branch.
“Hang on, old chap, I see you now. I’ll get a rope from my bag.”
Alex opened his eyes and squeezed tighter to the branch as he felt himself slip. The weight of the machines around his ankles was dragging him back. His arms were beginning to ache. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep hold.
His mind was suddenly taken off that problem by a small scratching sound to his right. He stopped breathing again as he looked in that direction.
Just along the branch, a small gray robot was trying to stand, but every time it pulled itself to its feet, it went toppling woozily onto its back again. It was almost comical, but Alex didn’t feel like laughing. The scratching sound was the noise of its hook-hand, digging viciously into the bark to stop it falling.
Flier. The word buzzed into Alex’s mind with a sting. The robot was badly mangled. One of its razor-edged wings had been bent, almost torn off. On its head, a tiny propeller jerked uselessly, then died. Its lamp-eyes gave only the faintest amber glow. But the hook and scalpel blade that served as hands still seemed sharp enough.
The thing had given up trying to stand. It sat staring dully at him. Alex noticed a new detail: around its hook-arm hung a small patch of black cloth. Before he could think further about it, his attention was snagged by a more pressing point. The flier had started crawling toward him.
It clawed at the branch, sinking its hook into the wood with a hollow little thunk and pulled itself forward. Then repeated the maneuver, drawing closer in tiny increments.
Thunk.
Alex tried a kick at it, swinging one leg up. His foot hit the underside of the branch, and he swayed terribly backward as it dropped away again like an anchor. He held tighter. With the dead weight around his feet, it was all he could do to hang there and watch the robot closing in.
Thunk.
Thunk. Nearer.
Thunk. Seven inches away.
It raised its scalpel-arm as though testing it, making a slash at the air.
Thunk. Five inches.
Slash-slash.
THUNK.
This was a sound of a different, more violent order. With it came an explosion of splinters that Alex had to duck to avoid. When he turned back, the little machine was lifeless, lying impaled by one of the three sharp prongs of the grappling hook that had embedded itself into the branch about three inches from Alex’s face.
“Sorry, old chap,” his grandfather’s voice sailed up from below. “That was a little closer to you than intended.”
The rope tied to the hook tightened as Alex’s grandfather started hauling himself upward. The branch trembled and groaned.
“And that’s why,” the old man grunted as he swung himself over the limb, “it always pays to ask permission.” He sat straddling the branch with his back against the trunk, catching his breath. “If you had asked me, I could have told you that the spring-heels are rather carefully calibrated for a specific user’s weight and height. In this case: mine. Plus, I think Albert might have been a wee bit overenthusiastic about tightening them up.”
He rubbed di
stractedly at his left arm, stretching his bicep then flexing his hand. “Have to confess, that climb took it out of me. Feeling my years, ha. Hold up, what’s this?” Spotting the dead flier, Alex’s grandfather leaned forward, scrutinizing the thing. “Where did he come from?” He scanned the sky in alarm.
“Don’t know,” Alex said. He could barely feel his arms. “Uh. Could you help? I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Oh. Of course. Give me your hand, old bean.”
With help, Alex maneuvered until he was sitting facing his grandfather. The old man sat studying the robot pinned between them. Moving with great care, Alex bent to join him.
“I think I crashed into it, in the air, when the heel things threw me up,” Alex said. “Or maybe it was already on the branch and I landed on it.”
“In bad shape,” his grandfather mused. “What do you make of that?” As he flicked the scrap of black cloth, Alex suddenly remembered Carl, in his bedroom, holding up his hooded top, the rough little square hole cut out of the back. Gremlins come when they’re out on the clothesline.
“I think that’s . . . mine. Cut from my hoodie.” Moving with great care, Alex pulled at his hooded top to display the spot.
“Hmm. Wear it a lot?”
“All the time.”
His grandfather nodded. “Beginning to make sense. When I met you, you said you’d had a feeling you were being followed. You were. By this. How long did you say you’d felt it?”
“A week, maybe?”
“Uh-huh. They must have sent it to keep track of you. My father or Zia, but most likely him. He knows where your house is now. He knows you exist now, more to the point. He didn’t before the golem business; I’d always tried to keep you— Well, anyway, this explains how they knew we were going to Harry’s office. Why they were waiting.”
“They can see us through these things?” Alex asked, shifting on the branch. “I’ve never really understood it.”
“Well, depends on the type of device, and how close to us it got. And, most of all, who’s operating it,” his grandfather said, still distracted. “Ah, what kind of skill, what power they have. It’s a combination of natural talent, study, and practice, like most things. A low-level practitioner could just give the machine a basic instruction and would then have to watch and direct it: like operating a remote-control airplane, say. But, yes, at higher levels, when you learn to section off your mind, and have the strength, you can send out part of your awareness. A psychic extension—”