“I’m not so sure,” said Abe, who wasn’t. But he was sure that several of Ham’s acolytes were unshakeably fervent in their belief that the book was — well, Holy. The Missive was held in such reverence that every single extant copy was a perfectly flawless replica of the original.
That was a highly specialized use of the term “flawless.” The original OM — still safely in the City Solicitor’s clutches — was a grungy, tattered, barely readable mess that looked to have been dragged through the mud, harried by an unusually sadistic badger, and quite possibly blown through a turbine. And at the risk of being a shade too graphic, some of the more organic stains gave the impression that the badger and turbine incidents had taken place at the same time. But whatever had really caused the damage, whoever had produced the copies had gone to the trouble of replicating every stain, every smudge, and every tear.
That was another thing. Copies. Copies implied dissemination. Someone had made those copies for a reason — presumably with a view to spreading the Word. And Abe was sure that the Word had spread. Ham’s acolytes were, by their own accounts, only a tiny cell of a growing movement. Reggie claimed that the Church of Ω, as the acolytes were calling it, had been gathering new adherents for upwards of twenty years. They had hundreds of members now.
And Abe was sure of something else. Something disturbing. Something that kept him up at nights and gave him migraines.
Abe was sure that much of what the book said — much of its text about “manifesting your wishes” and “achieving your desires,” about re-weaving the fabric of reality and bending it to your will — was 100 per cent true.
Had Abe been wearing knickers, this would have put them in a twist.
Who could have written it? Who else, other than Abe and those few who’d been here when he’d tamed the wild — those who’d be present when he’d made The Rules and manifested the neural flows — understood the bending of the city through a focused act of will?
A mighty squeaking of timbers grabbed Abe’s attention, and heralded Ham’s return to his seat. The deck chair strained under the sort of pressures that sometimes transform deep-sea divers into bouillon. Ham’s fleshier bits settled into a cozy equilibrium. Ham fixed a slightly wobbly, one-eyed gaze directly at Abe.
“There is one thing that puzzles me, O Gaseous Eructation,” he said, genially.
“Just one thing?” said Abe.
“Indeed,” said Ham. “Tell me, Old Friend, have you looked at page forty-two? And if you have, tell me this: why do you think the Missive has an article called ‘Living to 100,’ hmm?”
Oh. That.
Abe was fairly certain that he’d solved that mystery straight away. He wasn’t about to explain it to Ham. Not yet, anyway. But he was saved the trouble of dodging Ham’s question when the universe suddenly jumped about three inches to the left.
Reality surged.
“Whoa,” said Abe, jumping to his feet. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what, O Skittish Leaper?”
“Something shifted.”
“You ate a very big lunch,” said Ham, accusingly.
“No,” said Abe, “something . . . else.” And he was about to say, “It felt as if thousands of voices suddenly cried out, and then were silenced,” when he chose instead to focus on specifics, and said, “I think that something has happened to Socrates.”
“Another encounter with the girl?” said Ham, his interest piqued.
“No — something different. It’s almost as though — as though he came within a hair’s breadth of . . . of ceasing.”
“Serves him right,” said Ham. “You should never have allowed him in the first place. A nasty piece of work, that one.” He spat on the beach.
“This is bad,” said Abe. “If I could feel the shift, then . . .” He trailed off, and stared out toward the horizon. “This is bad,” he repeated.
“What’ll you do, O Great One?” asked Ham.
“I think it’s time that I got involved,” said Abe.
“Now you are talking, O Reluctant Intervener!” said Ham, who leaned forward to start the long, tectonic process of levering his way back out of the chair.
The air rippled. The beach, the sea, the gulls, the trees, and the empty beer cans faded out of focus, blurring at the edges and then disappearing entirely.
Reality reasserted itself.
Abe and Ham were seated on an upper balcony of the Spiral Minaret.
Abe still had the cooler.
Ham surveyed the changed scenery, and harrumphed. He’d known Abe for thousands of years, but couldn’t get used to this sort of thing. Ham heaved against the chair and rose to his feet.
“Before you leave us, O Shifter of Scenery,” he said, plucking splinters out of his robe, “I must ask you: was any of that real?”
“Real?” said Abe.
“Where we were. The beach. The sea. Was it real? Were we genuinely there — did you transport us to and from some distant beach, or was it . . . I don’t know . . . some sort of projection? Something conjured in your mind?”
Abe regarded his old friend thoughtfully. “Would it help if I said it was both?” he asked.
“Not especially,” said Ham.
“Let’s just say it was real, then. Now lend me one of your robes.”
* * *
53A short while later, in response to an untapped market for lower-calorie beer, Abe said, “Let there be light.”
Chapter 33
Socrates stood on a raised, marble dais in the centre of the City Council chamber.
No. This isn’t the Council chamber. It’s a court.
Why is Socrates in court?
Socrates stood on a raised, marble dais in the centre of the court. He was surrounded by a sea of swarthy faces looking down at him from sturdy wooden bleachers.
They were strange faces. Oddly uniform faces. All male, all dusky bronze, all beaded with sweat. Quite a number of them were faces that had never discovered the wonders of dental hygiene. The crowd was currently producing several Town Halls’ worth of murmured, grumbly hubbub.
Not a crowd. A jury. A jury of five hundred, here to judge him.
How do I know that?
Socrates paced the dais in silence.
The dais was flanked by fluted marble pillars draped in tapestries and banners. A pair of sentries stood at the base of each column. They were clad in heavy bronze helmets, knee-length skirts, purple capes, and shiny breastplates. In accordance with long-standing laws of military machismo, the breastplates featured their very own sets of overdeveloped pectoral muscles. Why the breastplates also needed realistic nipples was a secret known only to the armourer.
Each sentry carried a brightly polished short sword and a halberd.
Antiquated weapons. What use could they possibly be against Socrates?
The sentries surveyed the assembled jurors with the blank, unfocused, eye contact–avoiding gaze common to bouncers, bus passengers, people who face the wrong way in elevators, and anyone in the path of a religious pamphleteer.
A large, glassless window revealed a cloudless, azure sky.
The breeze wafting through the window was heavy with the mingled scents of olives, feta cheese, and roasted goat. The atmosphere was pregnant with the overpowering smell of Ancient Grease.
Or something like that.
Socrates doesn’t look himself.
It was definitely him. He was still roughly as handsome as a poorly carved pumpkin, but almost everything about the assassin’s appearance had been . . . well . . . downgraded, it seemed. He was inexplicably frail, for one thing, his well-muscled frame replaced by a crooked, knobbly version made of elbows, skin, and gristle. His closely cropped beard had been swapped for a shaggy, mangy affair that could have camouflaged a goat. His customarily shaven head now featured a crop of unwashed tangle
s.
He looked like a street prophet — a street prophet who believed that, what with the End being Nigh, it was safe to take a pass on personal hygiene.
And he appeared to be wearing a curtain. It wasn’t even a nice curtain. You’d find it right down at the bottom of any scale that featured things like the Bayeux Tapestry and the Shroud of Charlemagne at the other end. This was a manky, dingy, tattered, threadbare sheet. Some singularly talented toga maker had managed to capture, in textile form, all of the charm and effervescence of hot dog water.
Was this a disguise? When did Socrates wear a disguise?
Socrates paced around the dais and gesticulated broadly, raising and lowering his hands in the universally recognized signal to hush up.
The jury hushed up. Every ear strained to hear him.
Socrates spoke.
“O, Athenians!” he cried.
What in Abe’s name is an Athenian?
“O, Athenians!” he cried, “Of the many accusations my opponents have brought against me, I marvel especially at this one: they urge you to be on guard lest I deceive you with my eloquence. Surely, this is trickery. One cannot call Socrates eloquent, unless he would call eloquent any man who speaks the truth.
“From me, you shall hear the truth. Not arguments highly wrought, not elegant phrases and highly adorned expressions, but speech uttered without pretense, words without premeditation. I shall speak plainly, without fabrication. Let no one expect otherwise.”
It takes an especially keen mind to realize that it is dreaming. The City Solicitor, as has been noted numerous times, had a famously keen mind. A mind obsessed with stripping away the thin veil of “unreality” separating the world of mere perception from The Truth; a mind that searched for the hidden Forms that existed outside the grasp of human understanding. And so it was that, at this point in the unfolding narrative, the City Solicitor decided that what he was seeing was a dream.
The tutu-wearing bear in the front-row seat had been a clue, but even without that hint the City Solicitor would have realized that he was dreaming.
“Ah,” said the City Solicitor, in the privacy of his mind, “A dream, then. Not a memory. Obviously. I am working out issues in my subconscious. Right. Perhaps, upon reflection, I would have been wiser to decline the second helping of escargot. One lives and learns. But in any case, this is a dream. That is not the real Socrates, and this explains why the guards and jurors remain entirely not sliced-to-ribbons. Very well then. On with the dream.”
And because the City Solicitor had an especially powerful mind, he was able — even in an unconscious state — to assert control.
The courtroom flickered and was replaced by the Council chamber. The jury disappeared. In its place, the three hundred members of Detroit’s City Council. The feeble, decrepit Socrates — the Socrates who had been standing at the centre of the scene, was replaced by . . .
Hmm. How odd.
Socrates didn’t change.
The City Solicitor had intended to restore the real Socrates. Yet his dream stubbornly carried on with this gnarled, gristly hermit wrapped in a larger-than-average bathmat.
The courtroom reasserted itself. The Council chamber dissolved.
Socrates — the weak, decrepit version of Socrates — carried on with his address. He droned on for ages, blathering on about such nonsense as “impiety” and the corruption of the young.
The corruption of the young. This tugged at a strand of memory — a shrouded, unreal echo of a memory of Socrates in this very venue, pointing at the City Solicitor and calling him something strange. Not “my liege.” Not “my lord.” Not even “the City Solicitor.” For some unimaginable reason he’d pointed at the City Solicitor and referred to him as “my student.” And then he’d uttered a word that sounded like “plateau.”
“O, Athenians!” Socrates cried, approaching the climax of his address. “O, Athenians! I beg you — have mercy upon me. Think of my children. Show your compassion, your generous nature. Spare me, and I promise that I shall —”
That isn’t right. It can’t be right. He wouldn’t beg.
A Socrates who’d lower himself and beg for mercy would be useless. How could you reshape a city with a frail, decrepit, street hustler, who smells of old toga and begs for mercy? You couldn’t. Why would anyone pay the slightest bit of attention to a Socrates who had begged?
It is decided. He wouldn’t beg. Not even a dream Socrates would lower himself to beg for mercy. The man is proud to the point of arrogance. A potent symbol of my power. My unstoppable right hand. The monster under the bed. He is my unseen Minister of Justice — given a highly specialized definition of justice, I’ll admit, but it’s my justice, and it needs meting out. And Socrates — my Socrates — is tailor-made to to do the meting, so to speak. The perfect guardian. A protector of the City. A shadowy agent of the republic. Not some feeble, tea towel–wearing, plucked chicken.
This pathetic, begging Socrates was beneath contempt. As formidable as a breath mint. As useful as an umbrella in an avalanche. He was a hollow, pale reflection of the philosopher’s ideal form.
Assassin, I mean. A pale reflection of the assassin’s ideal form.
This isn’t how Socrates should be remembered.
He’ll have to be reforged. Reinvented to suit my purposes. Transformed into what I need.
And then, the essential lawyer at the City Solicitor’s heart had this to say: There is precedent for this. I’ve done it before.
Somewhere far, far away an obsequious throat was cleared.
“Ahem. My lord?” said the throat.
Was that part of the dream?
“Ahem. Your Eminence? Are you quite all right, sir?”
It was a familiar voice. A deferential voice. A voice pregnant with a level of subservience achievable only by a supremely gifted genius who fully appreciated the value of aspiring to servility in the appropriate situation.
“Sir?” said the voice. “Are you all right, sir?”
Isaac.
The City Solicitor opened a heavily crusted eye. Sight happened. His head thrummed in protest.
He was seated at his desk. The right side of his face was planted firmly on his desktop. His cheek appeared to be glued to the inside cover of a book.
The Omega Missive.
He’d fallen asleep while reading.
That wasn’t entirely accurate, and the City Solicitor knew it. He hadn’t technically fallen asleep, at least not in the usual sheep-counting, “sweet dreams” sort of way. He had fainted — something he’d never done in a life that spanned millennia. But because the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are important, the subtle alchemy of the City Solicitor’s mind quietly transformed the word “fainted” into the phrase “fallen asleep.”
Still . . . why had he, ahem ahem, fallen asleep so suddenly? He’d been reading the Omega Missive, pouring over a troubling little passage on taking mindful action, and then poof. Oblivion happened.
“Sir?” said Isaac, who was hovering at the City Solicitor’s rear.54 His hands were poised inches away from the City Solicitor’s shoulders, as though Isaac had set out to shake them but was stopped by some kind of impenetrable force field.
There wasn’t a force field, of course. But touching the City Solicitor was one of those things that isn’t done. And so it was that he appeared to be warming his hands over the City Solicitor’s back. He was still mother-henning over his master in this fashion when the City Solicitor finally gave his first indication of being awake.
It was a sound. It sounded like this: “UUUuuuurrrrnghk.”
The City Solicitor stirred — slightly at first, and then progressing to more advanced movements, such as placing his hands on the edge of his desk and prising his face from the distressingly drooled-on pages of the Missive.
He managed to open both eyes, alternately squin
ting and goggling several times to work the kinks out of the system. He felt depleted. He had that drained, empty, off-kilter feeling you get after spending several hours in a hot tub, or right after you stick your finger into a light socket. Whatever had caused him to, ahem, fall asleep, had taken something out of him. As for what had caused it — who could say? But the City Solicitor had a growing, highly irrational, and inexplicable feeling that this was somehow linked to something that had happened to the assassin.
The City Solicitor shook his head, levered himself into something approaching a conventional sitting position, and aimed a bleary, watery gaze in Isaac’s direction.
“What has happened?” said the City Solicitor, more muzzily than he’d hoped.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Isaac, radiating relief. “But I only just discovered you in your present, ah, state. I came to tell you about Socrates and found that you were . . . slightly more recumbent than I’d expected, sir.”
“What about Socrates?” the City Solicitor demanded.
“I lost contact with him, my lord,” said Isaac, backing up a few respectful paces and slipping into the barely readable, slightly wooden expression he generally wore when making reports to the Solicitor.
He’d been using that particular expression a good deal lately, and the City Solicitor knew why. He knew that Isaac had ample reasons to wear a poker face these days, what with his “secret” boycott of his little blue pills, and his clandestine research into whatever secrets the OM held about the nature of the city.
“Go on,” said the City Solicitor, drumming his fingers on the OM.
“Awk! Go on!” squawked Cyril, reminding readers that he was there.
“It happened roughly ten minutes ago, my lord,” said Isaac, ignoring the bird. “Socrates accessed the Daimon Array to upload the schematics of an explosive device located in Lantz’s shop. Soon thereafter his uplink terminated, Your Eminence. I lost Socrates’ signal.”
Beforelife Page 35