by Clive Barker
Her face must have registered her distress at his state, for the tendrils empathized, and grew jittery.
‘So I’m not dreaming then,’ the hybrid said.
‘No.’
‘Strange,’ came the reply. ‘I thought I was. It’s so like paradise.’
She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
‘Paradise?’ she said.
‘I never dared hope … life would be such pleasure.’
She smiled. The tendrils were soothed.
‘This is Wonderland,’ the hybrid said.
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. We’re near to where the Weave began; near to the Temple of the Loom. Here everything transforms, everything becomes. Me? I was lost. Look at me now. How I am!’
Hearing his boast her mind went back to the adventures she’d had in the book; how, in that no-man’s-land between words and the world, everything had been transforming and becoming, and her mind, married in hatred with Hobart’s, had been the energy of that condition. She the warp to his weft. Thoughts from different skulls, crossing, and making a material place from their conflict.
It was all part of the same procedure.
The knowledge was slippery; she wanted an equation in which she could fix the lesson, in case she could put it to use. But there were more pressing issues now than the higher mathematics of the imagination.
‘I must go,’ she said.
‘Of course you must.’
‘There are others here.’
‘I saw,’ said the hybrid. ‘Passing overhead.’
‘Overhead?’
‘Towards the Loom.’
3
Towards the Loom.
She retraced her steps to the trail with fresh enthusiasm. The fact of the buyer’s existence in the Gyre, apparently accepted by the forces here – even welcomed – gave her some hope that the mere presence of a trespasser was not sufficient to make the Gyre turn itself inside out. Its sensitivity had apparently been overestimated. It was strong enough to deal with an invading force in its own inimitable fashion.
Her skin had begun to itch, and there was a restlessness in her gut. She tried not to think too hard of what this signified, but the irritation increased as she again followed the trail. The atmosphere was thickening now; the world around her darkening. It wasn’t night’s darkness, coaxing sleep. The murk buzzed with life. She could taste it, sweet and sour. She could see it, busy behind her eyes.
She’d gone only a little way when something ran across her feet. She looked down to see an animal – an unlikely cross between squirrel and centipede, eyes bright, legs innumerable, cavorting between the roots. Nor, she now realized, was the creature alone. The forest was inhabited. Animals, as numerous and as remarkable as the plant-life, were spilling out from the undergrowth, changing even as they hopped and squirmed, more ambitious by the breath.
Their origins?: the plants. The flora had parented its own fauna; its buds flowering into insects, its fruits growing fur and scales. A plant opened, and butterflies rose in a flickering cloud; in a thorn thicket birds were fluttering into life; from a tree trunk, white snakes poured like sentient sap.
The air was so thick now she could have sliced it, new creatures crossing her path with every yard she advanced, only to be eclipsed by the murk. Something that was a distant relation of the armadillo waddled in front of her; three variations on the theme of ape came and went; a golden dog cavorted amongst the flowers. And so on. And so forth.
She had no doubt now why her skin itched. It longed to join this game of changes, to throw itself back into the melting pot and find a new design. Her mind, too, was half seduced by the notion. Amongst such joyous invention it seemed churlish to cleave to a single anatomy.
Indeed she might have succumbed in time to these temptations of the flesh, but that ahead of her a building now emerged from the fog: a plain brick building which she caught sight of for an instant before the air enclosed it again. Plain as it was, this could only be the Temple of the Loom.
A huge parrot swooped in front of her, speaking in tongues, then flitted away. She began to run. The golden dog had elected to keep pace with her; it panted at her heels.
Then, the shock wave. It came from the direction of the building, a force that convulsed the living membrane of the air, and rocked the earth. She was thrown off her feet amid sprawling roots, which instantly attempted to incorporate her into their design. She disengaged them from around about her, and pulled herself to her feet. Either the contact with the earth, or the wave of energy from the Temple, had sent her into paroxysms. Though she was standing quite still her whole body seemed to be dancing. There was no other word for it. Every part of her, from eye-lash to marrow, had caught the rhythm of power here; its percussion ordered her heart to a different beat; her blood sped then slowed; her mind soared and plummeted by turns.
But that was only flesh. Her other anatomy – the subtle body which the menstruum had quickened – was beyond the control of the forces here; or else was already in such accord with them it was left to its own work.
She occupied it now – telling it to keep her feet from rooting, and her head from sprouting wings and flying off. It soothed her. She’d been a dragon, and emerged again, hadn’t she? This was no different.
Yes it is, said her fears. This is flesh and bone business; the dragon was all in my mind.
Haven’t you learned yet? came the reply, there is no difference.
As the answer rang in her head, the second shock wave struck; and this time it was no petit mal, but the full fit. The ground beneath her began to roar. She started to run towards the Temple once more, as the noise mounted, but she’d got five yards at best when the roar became the hard din of breaking stone, and a zig-zag crack appeared to the right of her; and to the left another; and another.
The Gyre was tearing itself apart.
II
THE TEMPLE
1
hough Shadwell had a good lead on Cal, the thick air of the Gyre did not conceal him. The Salesman’s jacket stood out like a beacon, and Cal followed it as fast as his jittery limbs would carry him. Though his struggle with the by-blow had left him weak, he was still much the fitter man, and steadily closed the gap between them. More than once he caught Shadwell glancing behind him, his face a smear of anxiety.
After all the chases and crusades, the beasts and the armies, it had come down to the two of them, racing towards a goal beyond the articulation of either. They were equals at last.
Or at least so Cal had thought. It was only when they came in sight of the Temple that the Salesman turned, and stood his ground. Either his fingers, or the air, had clawed his disguise from his face. He was the Prophet no longer. Fragments of the illusion clung to his chin, and around his hair line, but this was recognizably the man Cal had first confronted in that haunted room in Rue Street.
‘Come no further, Mooney,’ he instructed.
He was so breathless the words were barely audible, and the light from the earth made him look sick.
‘I don’t want to shed blood,’ he told Cal. ‘Not here. There arc forces around us that wouldn’t take kindly to that.’
Cal had slopped running. Now, as he listened to Shadwell’s speech, he felt a twitching beneath the soles of his feet. and looked down to see shoots springing up between his toes.
‘Go back. Mooney,’ said Shadwell. ‘My destiny isn’t with you.’
Cal was only half-listening to the Salesman. The sudden growth beneath his feet intrigued him, and he saw now that it spread across the ground, following Shadwell’s footsteps to where he stood. The barren soil had suddenly produced all manner of plant life, which was growing at a phenomenal rate. Shadwell had seen it too, and his voice was hushed as he said:
‘Creation. See that, Mooney? Pure Creation.’
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ said Cal.
Shadwell’s face carried a lunatic grin.
‘You have no place here,’ he said. ‘I gra
nt you that. But I’ve waited all my life for this.’
An ambitious plant burst the earth beneath Cal’s foot, and he stepped aside to let it grow. Shadwell read the movement as an attack. He opened his jacket. For an instant Cal thought he was going to try the old trick, but his solution was far simpler. He pulled a gun from his inside pocket, and pointed it at Cal.
‘Like I said, I don’t want to spill blood. So go back, Mooney. Go on. Go on! Back the way you came or so help me I’ll blow your brains out.’
He meant it; of that Cal had not the least doubt. Raising his hands to chest height, he said:
‘I hear you. I’m going.’
Before he could move however, three things happened in quick succession. First, something flew overhead, its passage almost hidden by the clouds that pressed upon the roof of the Temple. Shadwell looked up, and Cal, taking the chance, ran at the man, reaching to knock the gun from his grip.
The third event was the shot.
It seemed to Cal he saw the bullet break from the barrel on a plume of smoke; saw it cleave the space between the gun and his body. It was slow, as in a nightmare of execution. But he was slower still.
The bullet hit his shoulder, and he was thrown backwards, landing amongst flowers that had not existed thirty seconds before. He saw droplets of his blood rise over his head, as if claimed for the sky. He let the puzzle go. There was only energy enough to hold onto one problem at a time, and he had to make life his priority.
His hand went to the wound, which had shattered his clavicle. He put his palm against the hole to stop the blood coming, as the pain spread down across his body.
Above him, the clouds roiled on, thundering; or was the clamour he heard only in his head? Groaning, he rolled onto his side, to see if he could get a glimpse of what Shadwell was up to. The pain almost blinded him, but he fought to focus on the building up ahead.
Shadwell was entering the Temple. There was no guard at the threshold; just an archway in the brick, through which he was disappearing. Cal inched himself up onto two knees and a hand – the other still clamped to his shoulder – and from there got to his feet, and began to stagger towards the Temple door to claim the Salesman from his victory.
2
What Shadwell had told Mooney was true: he had no wish to shed blood in the Gyre. The secrets of Creation and Destruction dwelled here. If he’d needed confirmation of that fact he’d seen it spring up beneath their feet: a fabulous fecundity which brought with it the promise of heroic decay. That was the nature of any exchange – a thing gained, a thing lost. He, a salesman, had learned that lesson as a stripling. What he sought now was to stand beyond such commerce, inviolate. That was the condition of Gods. They had permanence, and purpose everlasting; they could not be spoiled in their prime, nor shown wonders only to have them snatched away. They were eternal, unchanging, and here inside this bald citadel he would join that pantheon.
It was dark over the threshold. No sign here of the shining earth outside; just a shadowy passageway, its floor, walls and ceiling built of the same bare brick, without mortar between. He advanced a few yards, his fingertips running over the wall. It was an illusion, no doubt, but he had a curious sensation walking here: that the bricks were grinding upon each other, as his first mistress had ground her teeth in her sleep. He withdrew his fingers from the walls, advancing to the first turn in the passage.
At the corner, a welcome discovery. There was a light source somewhere up ahead; he would not have to stumble in darkness any further. The passage ran for forty-five yards or so, before making another ninety-degree turn.
Again, it was the same featureless brick; but half way down it he was presented with a second archway, and stepping through found himself in an identical corridor, but that it was shorter by twice the breadth of the first. He followed it, the light brightening, around one corner and along another bare passage, then around a second corridor which again had a door in it. Now he grasped the architect’s design. The Temple was not one building but several, set within each other; a box containing a slightly smaller box which then contained a third.
The realization unnerved him. The place was like a maze. A simple one, perhaps, but nevertheless designed to confound or delay. Once again he heard the walls grinding, and pictured the whole construction closing in on him, and he suddenly unable to find his way out before the walls pressed him to bloody dust.
But he couldn’t turn back now; not with the luminescence tempting him to turn one more corner. Besides, there were noises reaching him from the world outside: strange, disfigured voices, as if the inhabitants of some forgotten bestiary were prowling around the Temple, scraping at the brick, padding across the roof.
He had no choice but to press on. He’d sold his life away for a glimpse of Godhood; he had nothing to return to now but the bitterest defeat.
Forward then, and to Hell with the consequences.
3
As Cal came within a yard of the Temple door his strength gave out.
He could no longer command his legs to bear him up. He stumbled, throwing out his right arm to prevent his falling too heavily, and hit the ground.
Unconsciousness claimed him, and he was grateful for it. Escape lasted seconds only however, before the blackness lifted, and he was delivered back into nausea and agony. But now – and not for the first time in the Fugue – his blood-starved brain had lost its grasp on whether he was dreaming, or being dreamt.
That ambiguity had first visited him in Lemuel Lo’s orchard, he remembered: waking from a dream of the life he’d lived to find himself in a paradise he’d only ever expected to encounter in sleep. And then later, on Venus Mountain, or beneath it, living the life of planets – and passing a millennium in that revolving state – only to wake a mere six hours older.
Now here was the paradox again, at death’s door. Had he awoken to die?; or was dying true wakefulness? Round and round the thoughts went, in a spiral with darkness at its centre, and he fleeing into that darkness, wearier by the moment.
His head on the earth, which was trembling beneath him, he opened his eyes and looked back towards the Temple. He saw it upside down, the roof sitting in a foundation of clouds, while the bright ground shone around it.
Paradox upon paradox, he thought, as his eyes drifted closed again.
‘Cal.’
Somebody called him.
‘Cal.’
Irritated to be summoned this way, he opened his eyes only reluctantly.
It was Suzanna who was bending over him, saying his name. She had questions too, but his lazy mind couldn’t grasp them. Instead he said:
‘Inside. Shadwell …’
‘Hold on,’ she told him. ‘You understand me?’
She put his hand on her face. It was cool. Then she bent down and kissed him, and somewhere at the back of his skull he remembered this happening before; his lying on the ground, and her giving him love.
‘I’ll be here,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘You’d better be,’ she replied, and crossed to the door of the Temple.
This time, he did not let his eyes close. Whatever dream waited beyond life, he would postpone its pleasure ‘til he saw her face again.
III
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOOM
utside the Temple, the quake tremors were worsening. Inside, however, an uneasy peace reigned. Suzanna started to advance down the darkened corridors, the itching in her body subdued now that she was out of the turbulence, in this, the eye of the hurricane. There was light ahead. She turned a corner, and another, and finding a door in the wall, slipped through into a second passageway, as spartan as the one she’d left. The light was still tantalizingly out of reach. Around the next comer, it promised; just a little further, a little further.
The menstruum was quiet inside her, as though it feared to show itself. Was that the natural respect one miracle paid to a greater? If so, the raptures here were hiding their faces with no little skill; there was nothing about these corridors
suggestive of revelation or power: just bare brick. Except for the light. That coaxed her still, through another door and along further passageways. The building, she now realized, was built on the principle of a Russian doll, one within another. Worlds within worlds. They couldn’t diminish infinitely, she told herself. Or could they?
Around the very next corner she had her answer, or at least part of it, as a shadow was thrown up against the wall and she heard somebody shouting:
‘What in God’s name?’
For the first time since setting foot here, she felt the ground vibrate. There was a fall of brick dust from the ceiling.
‘Shadwell,’ she said.
As she spoke it seemed she could see the two syllables – ShadWell – carried along the corridor towards the next door. A fleeting memory came too: of Jerichau speaking his love to her; word as reality.
The shadow on the wall shifted, and suddenly the Salesman was standing in front of her. All trace of the Prophet had gone. The face revealed beneath was bloated and pale; the face of a beached fish.
‘Gone,’ he said.
He was shaking from head to foot. Sweat droplets decorated his face like pearls.
‘It’s all gone.’
Any fear she might once have had of this man had disappeared. He was here unmasked as ludicrous. But his words made her wonder. What had gone? She began to walk towards the door he’d stepped through.
‘It was you –’ he said, his shakes worsening. ‘You did this.’
‘I did nothing.’
‘Oh yes –’
As she came within a yard of him he reached for her, his clammy hands suddenly about her neck.
‘There’s nothing there!’ he shrieked, pulling her close.
His grip intended harm, but the menstruum didn’t rise to her aid. She was left with only muscle power to disengage him, and it was not enough.
‘You want to see?’ he screamed into her face. ‘You want to see how I’ve been cheated? I’ll show you!’