by Tim Lebbon
“Homing light,” she said. “He welcomes us. I wonder how much he knows?”
“About what?”
“You, the book, your wife.”
“I thought you said he never went out?”
“Doesn’t mean he hasn’t got his ear to the ground. Come on.”
They headed through the park, following paths where they led in the right direction, then crossing tended lawns. When they reached the foot of the cliff Nina stood back for a while, staring at the light fifty feet up the sheer slope.
“Can’t walk up there,” Scott said.
“No, but we can climb.”
“What if we fall? It’s okay for you; you’re immortal.”
Nina offered her lopsided smile. “Then be careful.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll climb first. Watch my hands and feet. Try to follow.”
“My arm—”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll get you better; then we can head off to find Helen.”
Scott nodded, but he knew that he was being played. She said all the right things and made the right moves, but Nina wanted only one thing from him. She had no concerns for Helen or even for him. And though that frightened him in part, in another way he found it comforting. She was immortal—as inhuman as a human could be—and to believe that she was concerned with anything so grounded as love would feel so unnatural.
“You’re a monster,” he said, surprised that he had uttered instead of thought it.
Nina turned and started working her way up the slope. He had not seen her face. Maybe for just an instant, the monster would have shown through.
They climbed. The cliff was not as sheer as it appeared from the ground, and Scott found that he could crawl up on hands and feet. His right hand was almost useless, supported as it was by his dying arm, but he could still curl his fingers around grasses and the roots of small bushes. He followed Nina, trying to use the same handholds, but something seemed to be lifting him up that slope. When he looked behind and down it seemed a long way, but he knew he would not fall. He could not, so he would not. If he fell, Helen would be lost forever.
The higher they went, the more of Edinburgh was laid out behind them. Without moonlight the city was a darkness speckled with streetlights. Lines of them snaked around one another, and individual illuminations cast a thousand spots across the old town. A plane took off in the distance, too far away to hear but still visible. Life continuing.
I’ve just been to where it ends, Scott thought. I’ve just felt the start of the journey to eternity. I’ve seen more than anyone, and now I’m climbing a cliff to meet an immortal who may be able to keep me on this side of the Wide, at least for a while longer. I’m coming for you, Helen. Don’t worry. And Lewis . . .
A shape fell past him, blurring lights and wailing as it bounced from a rocky outcrop six feet below his left foot. It spun out into the darkness and disappeared. Scott did not hear the thump.
He pressed himself to the ground before him, breathing in the loamy reality. Then he looked up.
Nina stared down at him. “Lucky we’ve seen only one,” she said. “It’s such an old place.”
Scott closed his eyes and pressed his face farther into the moss. It smelled so good, so real, that he plucked a handful from between rocks and rolled it in his hand, getting the smell of it beneath his fingernails and into his lifeline.
It took only a minute for a shape to fall past him again, striking the rock and disappearing out into the night, trailing its haunted wail behind. He pressed his hand to his nose and inhaled the mossy tang.
When he was dead, he’d no longer be able to smell.
They climbed on. Nina moved faster, and it took her only a few minutes to reach the splash of weak gray light exuding from the cliff. She sat there on a small ledge and waited for him, waving impatiently when Scott leaned back to look up.
A shape fell past again, close by, the wail distant.
Are you new or old? he thought. Are you a tourist who fell from the walls, or someone who died building this place?
He reached Nina; she held his arm to keep him steady, and he saw where the light were coming from. A large rock formed an overhang, protruding from the cliff like the broken nose on an ancient face. Beneath the overhang, where the nostrils would be, light leaked from the cliff like pus oozing from an old sore. It was almost as if the light were heavier than air, struggling to keep itself airborne as it probed weakly into the Scottish night.
“What is that?” Scott asked.
“Like I said, homing light. Old Man must have lit it when he knew we were close.”
“Won’t anyone else see it?”
“I doubt it.” She smiled an enigmatic smile that meant there was more to this than Scott could know. He was already becoming sick of that expression.
She’s cold, he thought. A cold fish. However friendly she acts, however enthralling I find her presence, I must never forget that.
“I’ve lived too long to dillydally over what’s not important,” Nina said.
Scott looked away. Yet again, she seemed to know exactly the way he was thinking.
He lowered himself slightly and tried to see past the light. “So where do we go?”
“Patience.” Nina leaned against the rock and raised her face to the sky. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “Smells good,” she said.
“What does?”
“History.”
Scott put his hand to his nose again and breathed in the aroma of earth and moss. Smells good, he thought. Reality.
The light faded away to nothing.
“There we are,” Nina said. She lowered herself down so that she was level with Scott, leaned forward, and probed the sudden darkness beneath the overhang. “In here.”
“He’s in there?”
“Come on.” She crawled into the gap in the land.
Scott watched until her feet disappeared. He heard the sound of crawling, Nina dragging herself deeper into the hole beneath the castle, and for a moment he wondered what would happen if he fled. He could climb down the steep hill, run into Edinburgh, find a guesthouse at random, and spend what was left of the night thinking things through. Helen gone. Papa dead but affecting him more than ever before. His arm and chest . . . his flesh dying, and the death spreading through his blood, infecting him elsewhere, killing him.
He did not really want to kill himself for the sake of independence. Like it or not, one way or another, he was tied to Nina until this was over.
He heard a whisper from the hole in the cliff, and it sounded like Old Man.
There was no answering voice, and no other sounds. He was alone. And the choice really was not difficult to make.
The hole was wider than it looked, hidden in the shadows of the overhang. To begin with, Scott crawled over sharp shale and angled rocks, which dug into his palms and knees. But a few feet in, when any borrowed light from the city failed to penetrate, the ground changed to something smooth. He could not easily identify what it was; it felt like grass, but was warm and fine as felt.
He leaned down and took a sniff, and it smelled of nothing.
He lay still and breathed out slowly, listening for any sounds from deeper in the cave. There were none. He crawled on, enjoying the feel of the stuff beneath his hands, and within a few seconds he saw a light up ahead. It flickered and flowed, dancing in unseen currents, perhaps caused by his entry into the cave. And he could smell the smoky taint of burning oil.
“Hello!” His voice did not echo at all. “Nina?” he called. “Old Man?” The rock ate his words. Nothing came back.
Scott crawled on, aiming for the light. He hauled with his left hand, pushed with his feet, pulled his right hand along after him. It was getting worse. He caught a whiff of something wrong and smelled the mud on his hand. I’m dying.
He reached back and touched the papers folded in his pocket. They felt suddenly dangerous, evidence of some vast betrayal that he did not yet understand, and all he wanted to do was t
hrow them away. But what if he did? What if he crawled back to the cave entrance, curled the papers into balls, and threw them from the cliff? Perhaps they would blow away on a breeze and be lost forever. Or perhaps they would be found, an enigma, a puzzle, just as challenging to the discoverer as the original tablets had been to Papa and Lewis sixty years before.
He could not do that.
And much as they felt heavy as guilt, neither could he destroy them.
He crawled on, came to a bend, turned almost ninety degrees, and found Nina looking at him.
She was standing in a small, spherical cave. Several holes in the walls bore bluish flames, lighting the cave and giving the smell of burning oil to the air. The ceiling shone with crystal brilliance, and the floor was lined with dozens of overlapping rugs: reed, wool, and silk.
“Old Man not home?” Scott asked. He lowered himself from the crawl space and stretched straight.
“This is only his front door,” Nina said. “He asked me to wait here for you, guide you in.”
“Guide?” Scott looked around. Other than the way he had come, there was one exit from the cave, a round doorway behind Nina.
“There are lots of ways in, but only one way out,” she said. “I don’t want you to get lost down here.” She turned and entered the doorway, and Scott followed.
The corridor wound left and right, up and down, and the entire route was lit by burning oil reservoirs held in hollows in the wall. In places the smoke hazed the air slightly, but generally the cave was kept clear, though Scott could detect no real air movement. Other tunnels veered off from the main corridor, varying from the same size to too small for someone to pass through. They joined from above and below as well as from the sides, and Scott quickly formed the impression of a vast ants’ nest below Edinburgh Castle, inhabited by just one man.
“How far?” he asked.
“Almost there. How do you feel?”
“Tired.” His chest was starting to ache as the rot ate its way inside. His muscles were turning to jelly, and his joints were so stiff that he was amazed Nina could not hear them creaking. He was much, much more than tired.
“Almost there,” she said again, glancing back at him over her shoulder. Her beautiful dark eyes . . . sometimes so cold, now tinged with sympathy. Was she really just playing him?
A minute later Nina stopped, glanced around as if to orient herself, and then turned back to Scott. “He’ll see you,” she said, “but he’ll seem . . .”
“Strange. Yes. You told me.”
“Well . . .” She shrugged, turned, and headed through an arched doorway.
Scott followed. Strange. And when he entered the wildly illuminated chamber beyond, he thought that had to be one of the greatest understatements ever.
Papa sits in his comfortable fishing chair and stares out across the river. He has never seriously fished—not that Scott has observed, anyway—but he seems to enjoy the tranquillity of the river. It gives his mind free rein to wonder, so Papa says, though Scott thinks that maybe he means wander as well. Its soporific flow provides a certain hush and solitude. And to underscore it all, there are sounds and sights to the river that many people seem unable to appreciate. Water flows musically across rocks, reeds hush and sigh as currents pull them this way and that, ducks paddle, pond skaters float on the surface, dragonflies speckle the air, kingfishers make a blur of blue, a heron stands still as an ornament until it darts for the kill, fish leap and make rippled patterns, and insects and birds buzz and sing, adding their own concerto. Life follows the river, Papa says, and what better place to join in?
But today things are different. Today the far side of the river has been invaded by tourists.
“There was a time when they’d never have let that damn monster drive down this far,” Papa says. “Let alone disgorge all those sheep to scatter their picnic waste and crush the grass with their fat arses.”
“We can move if you like, Papa,” Scott says. He’s eleven years old, and he’ll do anything to help his grandfather.
Papa waves his hand, shakes his head. “Too relaxed to do that,” he says. “For now, anyway. Look at them! Damn them. A sample of all that’s annoying about humanity.”
Scott watches the tourists disembark from the coach and flow along the riverbank. They have no grace about them, and within minutes the riverbank has been polluted by their colorful clothes, picnic hampers, and the annoying chatter of conversation. He and Papa are too far away to hear what is being said, and he’s glad for that.
“People have a lot to answer for,” Papa says. And here the memory normally ends, with the old man staring across the river and Scott staring at him. It’s a saying that Papa used a lot in his final few years, and Scott often wondered why it sounded so weighted coming from Papa’s mouth, so judged. He would mumble it while reading of a new housing estate being built on the other side of their village, but his tone implied that the builders were using dead babies as foundations.
And now the memory continues, telling Scott more than he has ever remembered before.
“People are different,” Papa says.
“From who?” Scott asks.
“One another.” Papa waves his hand, as though shooing away objections that have not yet been spoken. “No, no, I don’t just mean the differences from country to country, color to color, creed to creed—though there are differences all across there, and don’t let any of these new politically correct cretins tell you otherwise. It’s what makes humanity great, all those differences. It’s what makes us so wonderful and diverse. Embrace the diversity, Scott, and you’ll be great as well. No, it’s not that.” He sits back in his chair, chewing a stem of grass and resting one finger on his fishing rod, testing for movement. Scott has never seen him catch anything.
“What is it, Papa?”
“It’s us and them, Scott.” Papa closes his eyes.
“Us and who?”
“Us—thinkers and seekers, and explorers of places and things. And them.” He opens his eyes again and nods slightly across the river. “Them. The flock. Ignorant of so much, and happy in their ignorance. All great people are sad people, Scotty.”
“What are you sad about, Papa?”
“They’re sad because they gain a glimpse at the truth. And I’m getting there. I’m getting there.”
The memory came and went in an instant, the phrase people are different sticking in Scott’s mind as he looked in upon Old Man. And in that same instant Scott wondered whether Papa had been referring to the people picnicking on the other side of the river, or the ghosts that dwelled among them.
The cavern was almost perfectly cuboid, and Old Man hung in one top corner. He was startlingly skinny, bald and naked, and his long limbs ended in hooked claws that found purchase in the rough walls and ceiling. He was staring directly at Scott, and for someone who appeared almost animalistic, the intelligence in his eyes was startling.
Scott glanced around the cavern. There were dozens of electric lights set in the walls and ceiling, some of them on, some off. They were a variety of colors. Two walls were taken up entirely by a range of shelves, all of them crammed with books and loose bundles of paper. Another wall was adorned with exotic-looking tapestries and weavings, all of them overlapping so that the wall behind was totally obscured. There was a cot in one corner piled with rumpled sheets and blankets, and in the center of the room stood a chair and large desk. The desk was almost bare except for one huge, thick book, open at its midpoint, and a vast selection of pens.
The remaining wall through which Scott had entered the room was pocked with dozens of holes, each the width of his clenched fist.
“You’ve changed,” Nina said. “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”
“Peace, Nina. Quiet, girl. Don’t taunt Old Man.”
“I was teasing, not taunting. Big difference.”
Something hissed somewhere in the room and Scott looked around, panicked. Snake? Insect?
“Another secret,” Old M
an said. “Still so many. No end to secrets, Nina. Lately, all bad.” He moved down the tapestry-covered wall like a spider, crossed the floor on all fours, and climbed onto the chair. His head tilted and his eyes almost closed.
The hissing grew louder. Scott glared at Nina, but she offered him nothing.
Something spit from one of the holes behind him. Old Man raised his hand faster than Scott would have believed possible and plucked a shape from the air. He held it up before his face, sniffing it, tilting his head to listen, and before Scott could even begin to make out what he held, Old Man had opened his mouth wide and thrust it inside.
For a moment his cheeks seemed to glow with some inner light.
“Ahh,” he said. He looked at Scott and nodded. “Secrets.”
“Old Man, I need your help.” Nina knelt beside the table, then sat cross-legged on the floor. She glanced at Scott and motioned him over, but he remained where he was.
Not just yet, he thought. Not until I know this is safe.
“He won’t hurt you,” Nina said.
“Won’t hurt human,” Old Man said, and when he smiled, the colored lights reflected from a mouthful of sharp, white teeth.
Scott walked across the soft carpet and sat beside Nina, sighing as the weight relaxed from his frame. He wanted to close his eyes and rest, but he dared not. He was afraid that he would never open them again.
Old Man picked up a pen and wrote a few words in his book. Scott and Nina watched silently, listening to the scratch of pen on paper and Old Man’s breath as he concentrated on every letter, every curl and spot of ink. He leaned back when he was finished, dropped the pen, and sighed. “Almost done, this one.”
“What are you working on right now?” Nina asked.
“Deciphering the root of Linear A,” Old Man said. “Oldest language, still unknown. Secrets? Yes, it holds many.”
“Such as?”
Old Man glared down at Nina, and for the first time Scott noticed that his eyes were a pale milky white. “I can’t say.”
“You can tell me,” Nina said. “You can tell me anything; you know that. Come on, old guy.”
“Talk strange,” Old Man said. He sat back in the chair and laced his hands behind his head. “Talk like people. You, always ready to blend in. Can’t live with humans. Stars don’t live with rats. Gods don’t eat with spiders. Order of things, Nina. Order.”