Beforelife

by Randal Graham

  Despite his notably ominous demeanour, this man was neither the city’s supremely powerful mayor nor a member of City Council. Nor did he aspire to such offices. He held a great deal of power, to be sure, but he wasn’t designed to rule. He was, instead, one of nature’s scheming advisers, the conniving sort of minion who whispers plots into the ears of kings and sultans. He was a creature of guile and cunning, a master of subtle manipulation. He didn’t simply make plans; he concocted machinations — diabolically clever plots that would give Machiavelli the willies. He was, by talent and temperament, a natural-born Grand Vizier.

  Unfortunately for the silk-suited man, Detroit had evolved beyond the era of Grand Viziers. And so he settled for the closest modern equivalent, the only position suitable for a person with his particular endowments.

  He was a lawyer. The City Solicitor, in fact. And tonight he was late for a meeting. He placed his hands on the doors to the Council chamber, gave a push, and strode in.

  The scene he entered was a ruckus verging on kerfuffle status, with a 30 per cent risk of hullaballoo.

  The Council chamber was alive with activity, its seven tiers of amphitheatre seating abuzz with the sounds of government-in-action. At least two-thirds of Detroit’s three hundred councillors were present and, in the City Solicitor’s view, making themselves a damned nuisance. Councillors stood throughout the chamber crossly shouting at one another, gesticulating wildly, throwing papers and pounding fists into their hands as though expecting impotent acts of trivial violence to make their arguments more compelling. The City Solicitor strode across the chamber and approached the central dais upon which, conspicuously empty, stood the seat of the most powerful man in the world. Abe the First. Founding Father. Mayor of Detroit.

  The City Solicitor had known Abe’s chair would be empty. He had known this for two reasons. The first was a note he had found affixed to his office door the previous morning. It read:

  Visiting Ham. Won’t be around for a while.

  Keep the place running.

  Abe

  P.S. — She’s here.

  “She’s here,” the City Solicitor had thought, smiling inwardly. Written in a postscript. Trust Abe to treat the greatest crisis Detroit had ever faced as a matter barely worthy of mention.

  The second reason the City Solicitor knew Abe’s seat would be empty was the unruly conduct of the councillors. Abe, while not a terribly solemn figure himself, instilled a sense of reverence in those around him. He had Presence, Charisma, and an almost tangible Air of Authority. He wasn’t the sort of man around whom people pounded fists, flapped arms, or otherwise misbehaved like children during a Ritalin drought.

  The City Solicitor climbed the stairs of the dais, turned to face the assembled councillors, and cleared his throat. The sound generated a wave of silence that spread across the chamber, starting among those city councillors who were closest to the dais and quickly reaching those who stood in the upper tiers. Councillors turned toward the Solicitor, stopping their arguments mid-shout and hastily bringing themselves to order.

  Every one of them was afraid of the City Solicitor. And he knew it.

  The moment of tense silence was broken by a hooded figure in long, purple robes, trundling up the central aisle toward the dais. All eyes turned to watch.

  The hooded figure reached the dais and drew back his hood with a dramatic, theatrical flourish. The man within the robe had a dainty air about him — the sort that puts you in mind of doilies, ribbon candy, and cucumber sandwiches. His long, draping, bell-sleeved robe was a marvel of sartorial excess, cut of rich purple velvet and highly adorned with gold frogging, polished medallions, a sequined sash, and other ornamentation attesting to the wearer’s weakness for gilty pleasures.

  The dainty fellow’s honorific was The Revered Dalton Hymar, Chief Officiant, Loresmith, Master of Ceremonies, Minister of Protocol, and Keeper of The Ritual. The councillors called him MC Hymar. He hated that.

  Hymar bowed his head and withdrew a silver sceptre from the depths of his Robe of Office, raising the sceptre spireward as he spoke. “I raise the Mace of Summoning,” he warbled in an attempt to sound eldritch; the effect was slightly beyond his reach, MC Hymar being a natural-born contralto. “Let all who petition Council step forth and be heard, let those who —”

  “Ahem,” someone interrupted from behind. “Sorry to cut you off, mate. Closed meeting. No petitions.”

  “Ah, right then,” said Hymar. “No petitions. Fine, fine.” He rearranged his expression and settled into the most occultish face he could muster. “Who, then, brings the Chalice of Governance?” he intoned.

  This was met with much clearing of throats and shuffling of papers.

  “What?” said the officiant, dropping the eldritch tone and switching to a garden-variety whine. “No Chalice? You expect me to proceed without the Chalice?”

  “It’s in the shop,” called a voice from an upper tier. “Expectin’ it back next week.”

  The officiant sighed heavily and shrank into his robes. “All right then. No petitions, no Chalice. Do we at least have the Oil of Service, with which to anoint the —”

  “Sorry,” called yet another voice from somewhere in the back. “Left it in my other pants. I mean, it’s wash day, right, and we didn’t have much warning of this meeting, after all, and — I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we just skip the Oil for now and use it twice next time?”

  MC Hymar cringed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No Chalice, no Oil, no bloody petitions. I don’t know why I bother. I try to conduct a nice ceremony, nothing too flashy, just a nice touch of pageantry, and not a bit of help from you lot. I mean, honestly. I do and do and do for you people and this is the —”

  The City Solicitor raised a placating hand. The officiant noticed.

  “Ahem, right,” said the officiant. “Get on with it, I suppose. Nothing wrong with efficiency, say I,” he added, casting a hurt look toward the Solicitor. “Who chairs the Council, this night?” he added, with as much pomp as he could muster.

  The assembled councillors rifled through papers, checked agendas, and consulted electronic organizers. A rumpled, unmade bed of a man seated near the chamber’s entrance rose from his seat and addressed the assembled councillors. “Um, yes,” he began, “it’s the fifteenth, so I have the chair.”

  “The sixteenth,” someone interjected greasily from a seat near the base of the dais. “It’s after midnight, now,” the voice added, “so it’s the sixteenth. That means I’m chair.”

  No one bothered looking around to see who had spoken. From the obvious conviction with which he had made his hair-splitting correction as well as the glutinous quality of his voice, everyone knew that the speaker was Councillor Loomis. The other councillors slumped in unison, like a classful of students who’ve learned that recess has been cancelled. Forever.

  Councillor Loomis had the distinction of being the least-loved member of City Council. It’s not that he was a bad person. He really wasn’t. But he was moist. Disturbingly moist. He had a freshly lacquered appearance that brought to mind a glazed ham in a three-piece suit. He looked as though his skin had been rubbed with suet. Worse than his damp complexion, though, was the legendary clamminess of his speech. Nature had been unkind to Loomis and cursed him with a moistness of speech that made his audience want to wipe his mouth with a hanky — or, more accurately, club him with a chair — whenever he spoke. He wetly smacked his way through every word, enunciating every syllable as though he had recently kissed a maraschino cherry. It was astounding. Even his k’s were viscous.

  He was the sort of man you’d want to describe with words like “unctuous” and “lugubrious” whether or not you knew what they meant.

  Councillor Loomis slid from his seat and seeped toward the dais. The other city councillors squirmed uncomfortably, many averting their eyes and staring toward the spire as though hoping something would drop
on Loomis from a height. Loomis took a position beside the officiant and addressed the City Solicitor.

  “Mr. Solicitor,” he dribbled. “I’m sure you know why you’ve been summoned. There is a woman we seek — a woman foretold by ancient prophecies too numerous to recount. Suffice it to say that she is a harbinger of ruin and desolation. And we are informed, by reliable investigative resources, that she may have been detected in the vicinity of the Styx within the last twenty-four hours, in the company of a person or persons unknown, most likely newly manifested. Can you confirm this?”

  “Council’s suspicions are correct,” said the City Solicitor. “She has come.”

  This response was met with generalized hubbub.

  The City Solicitor raised a hand. “Councillors, councillors, please. Your anxiety is misplaced. We have weathered countless crises since the founding of Detroit. We have repelled uprisings and insurrections. We have faced all manner of threats from within and beyond our city, and still Detroit endures. One young woman will not destroy what we have built. When His Worship has returned —”

  “This cannot wait!” Loomis shouted. His sudden outburst startled the officiant into dropping the Mace of Summoning. “We cannot sit idly by, waiting for the mayor’s return while this woman threatens to undermine everything we hold dear. Council insists that you act at once!”

  “Council insists?” hissed the City Solicitor, every syllable dripping venom. Another moment of silence followed, lasting the space of several heartbeats. The officiant scuttled crabwise away from Councillor Loomis as though retreating from Ground Zero.

  Had this particular moment taken place in the Old West, a tumbleweed might have considered rolling by, thought better of it, and fled in fear of the high drama.

  “Er . . . my apologies,” smacked Loomis, nervously. “My words were ill-chosen. I mean no disrespect. I spoke in haste, reacting only to the gravity of this crisis. What I mean to say, Mr. Solicitor, is that the City Council requests your assistance in this matter.”

  “Of course,” the City Solicitor replied. “I am your servant. There is, regrettably, little that I can do. My role, as you have frequently pointed out, is to advise and recommend. It would be improper for me to take directive action in response to the present crisis. Only the mayor, or Council itself, has such authority. Perhaps, if Council awaited the mayor’s return, or delegated authority to one of your number, then —”

  “Mr. Solicitor,” Councillor Loomis interrupted, sputtering nervously with the air of a man who has drawn the short straw and has to give bad news to an especially irritable crocodile, “the Council is aware that you have — shall we say — unique resources at your disposal; means of dealing with this crisis that are beyond our —”

  “Nevertheless,” said the City Solicitor. “Without proper authority —”

  “I am afraid,” said Loomis, somewhat more literally than he intended, “that you cannot plead lack of authority in this instance. You shall have all the jurisdiction you require. The matter was decided by resolution of City Council before this meeting was convened. A two-thirds majority, Mr. Solicitor. You are, by Special Order of Council,” Loomis continued, nervously brandishing a document that bore the requisite number of signatures, “hereby clothed with full authority to investigate this woman and take any action you see fit. The full power of governance rests with you until the mayor has returned.”

  There is a particular brand of silence that goes beyond the absence of sound. It is a tangible, weighty, resonant silence: a thought-muffling anti-sound that penetrates the body and reverberates in your bones. It is the silence you feel when the door of a soundproof crypt slams home and seals you in. That is the brand of silence that filled the Council chamber now. It lasted exactly nine seconds, until someone in the gallery blew his nose and ruined the mood.

  “Very well,” said the City Solicitor, his voice scarcely above a whisper. “I am the Council’s servant. I shall do as Council directs.”

  This response sent a wave of relief rippling throughout the chamber, the type of profound relief one ordinarily feels when, right at the critical moment, one realizes that there is an extra roll of bathroom tissue under the sink.

  “With your permission,” the City Solicitor continued, “I shall send Socrates to begin the investigation.”

  The Council erupted in a susurration of anxious whispers.

  “Ah. Ahem. Yes, S-Socrates,” stammered Loomis, lubricating several nearby councillors. “Very well. Yes. Socrates. That will do nicely. Very nicely indeed. Yes. We expect — er, that is to say — Council invites, ahem, your report within the week.”

  With a barely perceptible nod to Councillor Loomis, the City Solicitor stepped down from the dais and made his way across the chamber.

  Heads turned and necks craned as the City Solicitor swept along the central aisle toward the exit, a mobile singularity passing through the Council’s solar system, disrupting the fragile orbits of the resident planets, moons, and interplanetary debris. Most of the councillors lacked the background in astrophysics needed to think in those terms; they merely had a vague sense of gravity.

  With a backward glance and a curt “Good evening, councillors,” the City Solicitor left the chamber.

  Three hours, he thought, smiling inwardly as he closed the doors behind him and stepped into the shadowy corridor. Three hours to circulate the rumour, ensure the attendance of the appropriate Council members, and secure the power he needed to deal with the city’s latest crisis. Three hours. It had been decades since it had taken the City Solicitor more than an hour to win a game of Shahmet-jong (a lot like chess, but with differently named pieces — mayors and city halls replacing kings and castles, for example. Detroit had never experimented with monarchy). Of course, navigating City Council was more treacherous than a Shahmet board. Three hundred pieces, to begin with, each pursuing its own agenda and clinging to the belief that it moved of its own accord.

  The City Solicitor stopped briefly to examine one of the paintings hanging along the darkened hallway. It was one of his favourites, entitled “Emergence,” depicting a single, dark-skinned male stepping out of the River Styx and into a desolate, cratered plain. It was, the City Solicitor imagined, meant to depict Abe’s manifestation and the discovery of Detroit. He had always been slightly bothered by the anonymous artist’s rendering of Abe’s face. When viewed in a certain light from a certain perspective — specifically, when viewed from the City Solicitor’s current position in precisely the type of moonlight that currently bathed the corridor — Abe appeared to be winking.

  Artists, thought the City Solicitor. There ought to be a law.

  He gazed at the painting for several minutes. Then he withdrew a small device from his jacket pocket, touched two buttons on its face, and stepped silently into the darkness.

  * * *

  4The other three are Khuufru’s Pyramid, Khuufru’s Garden, and the Ancient Colossus of Khuufru. Khuufru himself, who’d been selected as the official judge of Ancient Wonders, sold the Pyramid, the Garden, and the Colossus for a profit after the selections had originally been made (as a result, the Wonders are now more accurately described as Emily’s Pyramid, Eugene’s Garden, and the Ancient Colossus of 84752 Detroit, Inc., although the original names remain more popular). Asked why he also selected the City Hall (in which he’d never had an ownership interest), Khuufru responded, “Well, it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

  5This gesture, now known as the Councillor’s Salute, has taken on special significance in Detroit, and is used throughout the city to indicate political disapproval. Bastardizations of the Councillor’s Salute have since appeared in other centres.

  Chapter 3

  Ian woke up face-to-face with a salmon.

  On further inspection it proved to be human, but a human with a distinctly salmony air about him, particularly when viewed from Ian’s muzzy-headed perspecti
ve. Ian blinked, shook his head, and revved his brain until it attained a useful speed.

  The improvement was marginal. Even viewed through rested eyes, Ian’s companion gave the impression that nature had started making a salmon and then changed its mind midstream. It was the face. The mouth and lips were conspicuously fishy and the eyes protruded more than strictly permitted by prevailing standards of beauty. The rest of him wasn’t especially salmonish, merely pasty, lanky, and slightly undernourished.

  He was standing over Ian, wearing polka-dot pyjamas and wielding a muffin.

  “Sorry to barge straight into breakfast bartering, old man, but were you planning to eat this?” he asked, jiggling the muffin.6 His accent hinted that he’d been hatched in a British fishery.

  Ian rubbed his eyes and tried to get his bearings. He was lying in a four-poster bed topped with a poofy yellow comforter, freshly ironed linen sheets, and a profusion of overstuffed feather pillows. A large bay window to his left afforded a view of a walled-in garden featuring manicured lawns, blossoming trees, and a meandering gravel pathway dotted with drinking fountains and benches.

  Turning his attention to local matters, Ian noted a second bed stationed a few feet from his own. This was covered by a well-worn patchwork quilt, embroidered with the motto “Every Day Is a Changing Day.” The theme of greeting-card philosophy was picked up by a series of decorative wall hangings and framed posters featuring sentiments ranging from the fairly innocuous “Hope for Tomorrow” to the downright cringe-worthy “Love Manages.” A tall, fussily carved wooden dresser beside the door was topped by a lace doily and a hamster cage, population: one. The resident hamster looked at Ian philosophically, said “Grnmph,” and turned his attention toward a wad of shredded paper.