by Clive Barker
"I remember this house," Jude said as she emerged from the car.
"We should both be careful," Gentle warned, as he climbed the steps. "Sartori left one of his Oviates inside, and it nearly drove me crazy. I want to get rid of it before we all go in."
"I'm coming with you," Jude said, following him to the door.
"I don't think that's wise," he said. "Let me deal with Little Ease first."
"That's Sartori's beast?"
"Yes."
"Then I'd like to see it. Don't worry, it's not going to hurt me. I've got a little of its Maestro right here, remember?" She laid her hand upon her belly. "I'm safe."
Gentle made no objection but stood aside to let Monday force the door, which he did with the efficiency of a practiced thief. Before the boy had even retreated down the steps again, Jude was over the threshold, braving the stale, cold air.
"Wait up," Gentle said, following her into the hallway,
"What does this creature look like?" she wanted to know.
"Like an ape. Or a baby. I don't know. It talks a lot, I'm certain of that much."
"Little Ease .. — ."
"That's right."
"Perfect name for a place like this."
She'd reached the bottom of the stairs and was staring up towards the Meditation Room.
"Be careful," Gentle said.
"I heard you the first time."
"I don't think you quite understand how powerful—"
"I was born up there, wasn't I?" she said, her tone as chilly as the air. He didn't reply; not until she swung around and asked him again. "Wasn't I?"
"Yes."
Nodding, she returned to her study of the stairs. "You said the past was waiting here," she said.
"Yes."
"My past too?"
"I don't know. Probably."
"I don't feel anything. It's like a bloody graveyard. A few vague recollections, that's all."
"They'll come."
"You're very certain."
"We have to be whole, Jude."
"What do you mean by that?"
"We have to be ... reconciled... with everything we ever were before we can go on."
"Suppose I don't want to be reconciled? Suppose I want to invent myself all over again, starting now?"
"You can't do it," he said simply. "We have to be whole before we can get home."
"If that's home," she said, nodding in the direction of the Meditation Room, "you can keep it."
"I don't mean the cradle."
"What then?"
"The place before the cradle. Heaven."
"Fuck Heaven. I haven't got Earth sorted out yet."
"You don't need to."
"Let me be the judge of that. I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design."
"You can be. As part of—"
"Part of nothing. I want to be me. A law unto myself."
"That isn't you talking. It's Sartori."
"What if it is?"
"You know what he's done," Gentle replied. "The atrocities. What are you doing taking lessons from him?"
"When I should be taking them from you, you mean? Since when were you so damn perfect?" He made no reply, and she took his silence as further sign of his new high-mindedness. "Oh, so you're not going to stoop to mudslinging, is that it?"
"We'll debate it later," he said.
"Debate it?" she mocked. "What are you going to give us, Maestro, an ethics lesson? I want to know what makes you so damn rare."
"I'm Celestine's son," he said quietly.
She stared at him, agog. "You're what?"
"Celestine's son. She was taken from the Fifth—"
"I know where she was taken. Dowd did it. I thought he'd told me the whole story."
"Not this part?"
"Not this part."
"There were kinder ways to tell you. I'm sorry I didn't find one."
"No," she said. "Where better?"
Her gaze went back up the stairs. When she spoke again, which was not for a little time, it was in a whisper.
"You're lucky," she said. "Home and Heaven are the same place."
"Maybe that's true for us all," he murmured.
"I doubt it."
A long silence followed, punctuated only by Monday's forlorn attempts to whistle on the step outside.
At last, Jude said, "I can see now why you're so desperate to get all this right. You're... how does it go? ... you're about your Father's business."
"I hadn't thought of it quite like that...."
"But you are."
"I suppose I am. I just hope I'm equal to it, that's all. One minute I feel it's all possible. The next..."
He studied her, while outside Monday attempted the tune afresh.
"Tell me what you're thinking," he said.
"I'm thinking I wish I'd kept your love letters," she replied.
There was another aching pause; then she turned from him and wandered off towards the back of the house. He lingered at the bottom of the stairs, thinking he should probably go with her, in case Sartori's agent was hiding there, but he was afraid to bruise her further with his scrutiny. He glanced back towards the open door and the sun— " light on the step. Safety wasn't far from her, if she needed it.
"How's it going?" he called to Monday.
"Hot," came the reply. "Clem's gone to fetch some food and beer. Lots of beer. We should have a party, boss. We fuckin' deserve it, don't we?"
"We do. How's Celestine?"
"She's asleep. Is it okay to come in yet?"
"Just a little while longer," Gentle replied. "But keep up the whistling, will you? There's a tune in there somewhere."
Monday laughed, and the sound, which was utterly commonplace of course, yet as unlikely as whale song, pleased him. If Little Ease was still in the house, Gentle thought, his malice could do no great harm on a day as miraculous as this. Comforted, he set off up the stairs, wondering as he went if perhaps the daylight had shooed all the memories into hiding. But before he was halfway up the flight, he had proof that they hadn't. The phantom form of Lucius Cobbitt, conjured in his mind's eye, appeared beside him, snotty, tearful, and desperate for wisdom. Moments later, the sound of his own voice, offering the advice he'd given the boy that last, terrible night.
"Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing..."
But before he'd completed the second dictum, the phrase was taken up by a mellifluous voice from above.
"... except in adoration of your true self. And fear noth—. ing..."
The figment of Lucius Cobbitt faded as Gentle continued to climb, but the voice became louder.
"... except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing."
And with the voice came the realization that the wisdom he'd bestowed on Lucius had not been his at all. It had originated with the mystif. The door to the Meditation Room was open, and Pie was perched on the sill, smiling out of the past.
"When did you invent that?" the Maestro asked.
"I didn't invent it, I learned it," the mystif replied. "From my mother. And she learned it from her mother, or t her father, who knows? Now you can pass it on."
"And what am I?" he asked the mystif. "Your son or ; your daughter?"
— Pie looked almost abashed. "You're my Maestro."
"Is that all? We're still masters and servants here? Don't
— say that."
: "What should I say?" "What you feel."
"Oh." The mystif smiled. "If I told you what I feel we'd be here all day."
The gleam of mischief in its eye was so endearing, and the memory so real, it was all Gentle could do to prevent himself crossing the room and embracing the space where his friend had sat. But there was work to be done—his Father's business, as Jude had called it—and it was more pressing than indulging his memories. When Little Ease ha
d been ousted from the house, then he'd return here and search for a profounder lesson: that of the workings of the Reconciliation. He needed that education quickly, and the echoes here were surely rife with exchanges on the subject.
"I'll be back," he said to the creature on the sill.
"I'll be waiting," it replied.
He glanced back towards it, and the sun, catching the window behind, momentarily ate into its silhouette, showing him not a whole figure but a fragment. His gut turned, as the image called another back to mind, with appalling force: the Erasure, in roiling chaos, and in the air above his head, the howling rags of his beloved, returned into the Second with some words of warning.
"Undone," it had said, as it fought the claim of the Erasure. "We are... undone."
Had he made some placating reply, snatched from his lips by the storm? He didn't remember. But he heard again the mystif telling him to find Sartori, instructing him that his other knew something that he, Gentle, didn't. And then it had gone, been snatched away into the First Dominion and silenced there.
His heart racing, Gentle shook this horror from his head and looked back towards the sill. It was empty now. But — Pie's exhortation to find Sartori was still in his head. Why had that been so important? he wondered. Even if the mystif had somehow discovered the truth of Gentle's origins in the First Dominion and had failed to communicate the fact, it must have known that Sartori was as much in ignorance of the secret as his brother. So what was the knowledge the mystif had believed Sartori possessed, that it had defied the limits of God's Kingdom to spur him into pursuit?
A shout from below had him give up the enigma. Jude was calling out to him. He headed down the stairs at speed, following her voice through the house and into the kitchen, which was targe and chilly. Jude was standing close to the window, which had gone to ruin many years ago, giving access to the convolvulus from the garden behind, which having entered had rotted in a darkness its own abundance had thickened. The sun could only get pencil beams through this snare of foliage and wood, but they were sufficient to illuminate both the woman and the captive whose head she had pinned beneath her foot. It was Little Ease, his oversized mouth drawn down like a tragic mask, his eyes turned up towards Jude.
"Is this it?" she said.
"This is it."
Little Ease set up a round of thin mewling as Gentle approached, which it turned into words. "I didn't do a thing! You ask her, ask her please, ask her did I do a thing? No, I didn't. Just keeping out of harm's way, I was."
"Sartori's not very happy with you," Gentle said.
"Well, I didn't have a hope," it protested. "Not against the likes of you. Not against a Reconciler."
"So you know that much."
"I do now. 'We have to be whole,' " it quoted, catching Gentle's tone perfectly. " 'We have to be reconciled with everything we ever were—' "
"You were listening."
"I can't help it," the creature said. "I was born inquisitive. I didn't understand it, though," it hastened to add. "I'm not spying, I swear."
"Liar," Jude said. Then to Gentle, "How do we kill it?"
"We don't have to," he said. "Are you afraid, Little Ease?"
"What do you think?"
"Would you swear allegiance to me if you were allowed to live?"
"Where do I sign? Show me the place!"
"You'd let this live?" Jude said.
"Yes."
"What for?" she demanded, grinding her heel upon it. "Look at it."
"Don't," Little Ease begged.
"Swear," said Gentle, going down on his haunches beside it.
"I swear! I swear!"
Gentle looked up at Jude. "Lift your foot," he said.
"You trust it?"
"I don't want death here," he said. ''Even this. Let it go, Jude." She didn't move. "I said, let it go."
Reluctance in every sinew, she raised her foot half an inch and Little Ease scrabbled free, instantly taking hold of Gentle's hand.
"I'm yours, Liberatore," it said, touching its clammy brow to Gentle's palm, "My head's in your hands. By Hyo, by Heretea, by Hapexamendios, I commit my heart to you."
"Accepted," Gentle said, and stood up.
"What should I do now, Liberatore?"
"There's a room at the top of the stairs. Wait for me there"
"For ever and ever."
"A few minutes will do."
It backed off to the door, bowing woozily, then took to its heels.
"How can you trust a thing like that?" Jude said.
"I don't. Not yet."
"But you're willing to try."
"You're damned if you can't forgive, Jude."
"Youcould forgive Sartori, could you?" she said.
"He's me, he's my brother, and he's my child," Gentle replied. "How could I not?"
With the house made safe, the rest of the company moved in. Monday, ever the scavenger, went off to scour the neighboring houses and streets in search of whatever he could find to offer some modicum of comfort. He returned three times with bounty, the third time taking Clem off with him. They returned half an hour later with two mattresses and armfuls of bed linen, all too clean to have been found abandoned,
"I missed my vocation," Clem said, with Tay's mischief in his features. "Burglary's much more fun than banking."
At this juncture Monday requested permission to borrow Jude's car and drive back to the South Bank, there to collect the belongings he'd left behind in his haste to follow Gentle. She told him yes, but urged him to return as fast as possible. Though it was still bright on the street outside, they would need as many strong artns and wills as they could muster to defend the house when night fell. Clem had settled Celestine in what had been the dining room, laying the larger of the two mattresses on the floor and sitting with her until she slept. When he emerged Tay's feisty presence was mellowed, and the man who came to join Jude on the step was serene.
"Is she asleep?" Jude asked him.
"I don't know if it's sleep or a coma. Where's Gentle?"
"Upstairs, plotting,"
"You've argued."
"That's nothing new. Everything else changes, but that remains the same."
He opened one of the bottles of beer sitting on the step and drank with gusto.
"You know, I catch myself every now and then wondering if this is all some hallucination. You've probably got a better grasp of it than I have—you've seen the Dominions; you know it's all real—but when I went off with Monday to get the mattresses, there were people just a few streets away, walking around in the sun as though it was just another day, and I thought, There's a woman back there who's been buried alive for two hundred years, and her son whose Father's a God I never heard of—"
"So he told you that."
"Oh, yes. And thinking about it, I wanted to just go home, lock the door, and pretend it wasn't happening."
"What stopped you?"
"Monday, mostly. He just takes everything in stride. And knowing Tay's inside me. Though that feels so natural it's like he was always there."
"Maybe he was," she said. "Is there any more beer?"
"Yep."
He handed over a bottle, and she struck it on the step the way he had. The top flew; the beer foamed.
"So what made you want to run?" she said, when she'd slaked her thirst.
"I don't know," Clem replied. "Fear of what's coming, I suppose. But that's stupid, isn't it? We're here at the beginning of something sublime, just the way Tay promised. Light coming into the world, from a place we never even dreamed existed. It's the Birth of the Unconquered Son, isn't it?"
"Oh, the sons are going to be fine," Jude said. "They usually are."
"But you're not so sure about the daughters?"
"No, I'm not," she said. "Hapexamendios killed the Goddesses throughout the Imajica, Clem, or at least tried to. Now I find He's Gentle's Father. That doesn't make me feel too comfortable about doing His work."
"I can understand that."
&
nbsp; "Part of me thinks..." She let her voice trail into the silence, the thought unfinished.
"What?" he asked. "Tell me."
"Part of me thinks we're fools to trust either of them, Hapexamendios or His Reconciler. If He was such a loving L God, why did He do so much harm? And don't tell me He moves in mysterious ways, because that's so much horse shit and we both know it."
"Have you talked to Gentle about this?"
"I've tried, but he's got one thing on his mind—"
"Two," Clem said. "The Reconciliation's one. Pie 'oh' pah's the other."
"Oh, yes, the glorious Pie 'oh' pah."
"Did you know he married it?"
"Yes, he told me."
"It must have been quite a creature."
"I'm a little biased, I'm afraid," she said dryly. "It tried to kill me."
"Gentle said that wasn't Pie's nature."
"No?"
"He told me he ordered it to live its life as an assassin or a whore. It's all his fault, he said. He blames himself for everything."
"Does he blame himself or does he.just take responsibility?" she said. "There's a difference."
"I don't know," Clem said, unwilling to be drawn on such niceties. "He's certainly lost without Pie."
She kept her counsel here, wanting to say that she too : was lost, that she too pined, but not trusting even Clem with this admission.
"He told me Pie's spirit is still alive, like Tay's," Clem was saying. "And when this is all over—"
"He says a lot of things," Jude cut in, weary of hearing Gentle's wisdoms repeated. ; "And you don't believe him?"
"What do I know?" she said, flinty now. "I don't belong • in this Gospel. I'm not his lover, and I won't be his disciple."
A sound behind them, and they turned to find Gentle standing in the hallway, the brightness bouncing up from the step like footlights. There was sweat on his face, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. Clem rose with guilty speed, his heel catching his bottle. It rolled down two steps, spilling frothy beer as it went, before Jude caught it.
"It's hot up there," Gentle said.
"And it's not getting any cooler," Clem observed.
"Can I have a word?"
Jude knew he wanted to speak out of her earshot, but Clem was either too guileless to realize this, which she doubted, or unwilling to play his game. He stayed on the step, obliging Gentle to come to the door.