by Clive Barker
"It's over, Mama...."
"I know, child," Celestine said. There was conciliation in her tone, not rebuke.
"He's going to kill everything...."
"Yes. I know that too."
"I had to hold the circle for Him... it's what He wanted."
"And you had to do what He wanted. I understand that, child. Believe me, I do. 1 served Him too, remember? It's no great crime."
At these words of forgiveness, the door of the Meditation Room clicked open and slowly swung wide. Jude was too far down the staircase to see more than the rafters, lit either by a candle or the halo of Oviate tissue that had attended on Sartori when he was out in the street. With the door open, his voice was much clearer.
"Will you come in?" he asked Celestine.
"Do you want me to?"
"Yes, Mama. Please. I'd like us to be together when the end conies."
A familiar sentiment, Jude thought. Apparently he didn't much care what breast he laid his sobbing head on, as long as he wasn't left to die alone. Celestine put up no further show of ambivalence but accepted her child's invitation and stepped inside. The door didn't close, nor did the gek-a-gek creep back into place to block it. Celestine was quickly gone from sight, however. Jude was sorely tempted to continue her ascent and watch what unfolded inside, but she was afraid that any further advance would be sensed by the Oviates, so she gingerly sat down on the stairs, halfway between the Maestro at the top and the body at the bottom. There she waited, listening to the silence of the house; of the street; of the world.
In her mind, she shaped a prayer.
Goddess, she thought, this is Your sister, Judith. There's a fire coming, Goddess. It's almost upon me, and I'm afraid.
From above, she heard Sartori speak, his voice now so low she could catch none of his words even with the door open. But she heard the tears that they became, and the sound broke her concentration. The thread of her prayer was lost. No matter. She'd said enough to summarize her feelings.
The fire's almost upon me, Goddess. lam afraid.
What was there left to say?
The speed at which Gentle and the Nullianac traveled didn't diminish the scale of the city they were passing through: quite the opposite. As the minutes passed, and the streets continued to flicker by, thousand upon thousand, their buildings all raised from the same ripely colored stone, all built to obscure the sky, all laid to the horizon, the magnitude of this labor began to seem not epic but insane. However alluring its colors were, however satisfying its geometries and exquisite its details, the city was the work of a collective madness: a compulsive vision that had refused to be placated until it had covered every inch of the Dominion with monuments to its own relentlessness. Nor was there any sign of any life on any street, leading Gentle to a suspicion that he finally voiced, not as a statement but as a question.
"Who lives here?" he said.
"Hapexamendios."
"And who else?"
"It's His city," the Nullianac said,
"Are there no citizens?"
"It's His city."
The answer was plain enough: the place was deserted. The shaking of vines and drapes he'd seen when he'd first arrived had either been caused by his approach or, more likely, been a game of illusion the empty buildings had devised to while away the centuries.
But at last, after traveling through innumerable streets that were indistinguishable from each other, there were finally subtle signs of change in the structures ahead. Their luscious colors were steadily deepening, the stone so drenched it must soon surely ooze and run. And there was a new elaboration in the fagades, and a perfection in their proportions, that made Gentle think that he and the Nullianac were approaching the First Cause, the district of which the streets they'd passed through had been imitations, diluted by repetition.
Confirming his suspicion that the journey was nearing its end, Gentle's guide spoke.
"He knew you'd come," it said. "He sent some of my brothers to the perimeter to look for you."
"Are there many of you?"
"Many," the Nulh'anac said. "Minus one." It looked in Gentle's direction, "But you know this, of course. You killed him."
"He would have killed me if I hadn't."
"And wouldn't that have been a proud boast for our, tribe," it said, "to have killed the Son of God?"
It made a laugh from its lightning, though there was more humor in a death rattle.
"Aren't you afraid?" Gentle asked it,
"Why should I be afraid?"
"Talking this way when my Father may hear you?"
"He needs my service," came the reply. "And I do not need to live." It paused, then said, "Though I would miss burning the Dominions."
Now it was Gentle's turn to ask why.
"Because it's what I was born to do. I've lived too long, waiting for this."
"How long?"
"Many thousands of years, Maestro. Many, many thousands.":
It silenced Gentle, to think that he was traveling beside an entity whose span was so much vaster than his own, and anticipated this imminent destruction as its life's reward. How far off was that prize? he wondered. His sense of time was impoverished without the tick of breath and heartbeat . to aid it, and he had no clue as to whether he'd vacated his body in Gamut Street two minutes before, or five, or ten. It was in truth academic. With the Dominions reconciled, Hapexamendios could choose His moment, and Gentle's only comfort was the continued presence of his guide, who would be, he suspected, gone from his side at the first call to arms.
As the street ahead grew denser, the Nullianac's speed and height dropped, until they were hovering inches above the ground, the buildings around them grotesquely elaborate now, every fraction of their brick and stonework etched and carved and filigreed. There was no beauty in these intricacies, only obsession. Their surfeit was more morbid than lively, like the ceaseless, witless motion of maggots. And the same decadence had overcome the colors, the delicacy and profusion of which he'd so admired in the suburbs. Their nuances were gone. Every color now competed with scarlet, the mingled show not brightening the air but bruising it. Nor was there light here in the same abundance as there'd been at the outskirts of the city. Though seams of brightness still flickered in the stone, the elaboration that surrounded them devoured their glow and left these depths dismal.
"I can go no farther than this, Reconciler," the Nullianac said. "From here, you go alone."
"Shall I tell my Father who found me?" Gentle said, hoping that the offer might coax a few more tidbits from the creature before he came into Hapexamendios' presence.
"I have no name," the Nullianac replied. "I am my brother and my brother is me."
"I see. That's a pity."
"But you offered me a kindness, Reconciler. Let me offer you one."
"Yes?"
"Name me a place to destroy in your name, and I'll make it my business to do so: a city, a country, whatever."
"Why would I want that?" Gentle said.
"Because you're your Father's son," came the reply. "And what your Father wants, so will you."
Despite all his caution, Gentle couldn't help but give the destroyer a sour look.
"No?" it said.
"No."
"Then we're both without gifts to give," it said and, turning its back, rose and went from Gentle without another word.
He didn't call after it for directions. There was only one way to go now, and that was on, into the heart of the me tropolis, choked though it was by gaud and elaboration. He had the power to go at the speed of thought, of course, but he wished to do nothing that might alarm the Unbeheld, so took his spirit into the garish gloom like a pedestrian, wan dering between edifices so fraught with ornament they could not be far from collapse.
As the splendors of the suburbs had given way to deca dence, so decadence had, in its turn, given way to pathology, a state that drove his sensibilities beyond distaste or antipathy to the borders of panic. That mere excess might sq
ueeze such anguish out of him was revelation in itself. When had he become so rarefied? He, the crass copyist. He, the syba rite who'd never said enough, much less too much. What had he become? A phantom aesthete driven to terror by the sight of his Father's city.
Of the Architect Himself, there was no sign, and rather than advance into complete darkness Gentle stopped and simply said, "Father?"
Though his voice had very little authority here, it was loud in such utter silence, and must surely have gone to every threshold within the radius of a dozen streets. But if Hapexamendios was in residence behind any of these doors, He made no reply.
Gentle tried again. "Father. I want to see you."
As he spoke he peered down the shadowy street ahead, looking for some sign, however vestigial, of the Unbeheld's whereabouts. There was no murmur, no motion. But his study was rewarded by the slow comprehension that his Father, for all His apparent absence, was in fact here in front of him and to his left, and to his right, and above his head, and beneath his feet. What were those gleaming folds at the windows, if they weren't skin? What were those arches, if they weren't bone? What was this scarlet pavement, and this light-shot stone, if it wasn't flesh? There was pith and marrow here. There was tooth and lash and nail. The Nullianac hadn't been speaking of spirit when it had said that
Hapexamendios was everywhere in this metropolis. This was the City of God; and God was the city.
Twice in his life he'd had presentiments of this revelation. The first time when he'd entered Yzordderrex, which had been commonly called a city—god itself and had been, he now understood, his brother's unwitting attempt to recreate his Father's masterwork. The second when he'd undertaken the business of similitudes and had realized, as the net of his ambition encompassed London, that there was no part of it, from sewer to dome, that was not somehow analogous to his anatomy.
Here was that theory proved. The knowledge didn't strengthen him but, instead, fueled the dread he felt, thinking of his Father's immensity. He'd crossed a continent and more to get here, and there'd been no part of it that was not made as these streets were made, his Father's substance replicated in unimaginable quantities to become the raw materials for the masons and carpenters and hod carriers of His will. And yet, for all its magnitude, what was His city? A trap of corporeality, and its architect its prisoner.
"Oh, Father," he said, and perhaps because the formality had gone from his voice, and there was sorrow in it, he was finally granted a reply.
"You've done well for me," the voice said.
Gentle remembered its monotony well. Here was the same barely discernible modulation he'd first heard as he'd stood in the shadow of the Pivot.
"You 've succeeded where all the others failed," Hapexa- mendios said. "They went astray or let themselves be crucified. But you, Reconciler, you held to your course. "
"For your sake, Father."
"And that service has earned you a place here," the God said. "In my city. In my heart."
"Thank you," Gentle replied, fearful that this gift was going to mark the end of the exchange.
If so, he'd have failed as his mother's agent. Tell Him you want to see His face, she'd said. Distract Him. Flatter Him. Ah, yes, flattery!
"I want to learn from You now, Father," he said. "I want to be able to carry Your wisdom back into the Fifth with me."
"You've done all you need to do, Reconciler," Hapexamendios said. "You won't need to go back into the Fifth, for your sake or mine. You 'II stay with me and watch my work."
"What work is that?"
"You know what work," came the God's reply. "I heard you speak with the Nullianac, Why are you pretending ignorance?"
The inflexions in His voice were too subtle to be interpreted. Was there genuine inquiry in the question, or a fury at His son's deceit?
"I didn't wish to presume, Father," Gentle said, cursing himself for this gaffe. "I thought You'd want to tell me
Yourself."
''Why would I tell you what you already know?" the God said, unwilling to be persuaded from this argument until He had a convincing answer. "You already have every knowledge you need—"
"Not every one," Gentle said, seeing now how he might . divert the flow.
"What do you lack? " Hapexamendios said. "I'll tell you everything."
"Your face, Father."
"My face? What about my face?"
"That's what I lack. The sight of Your face."
"You've seen my city," the Unbeheld replied. "That's my face."—"There's no other? Really, Father? None?"
"Aren't you content with that?" Hapexamendios said. "Isn't it perfect enough? Doesn't it shine?"
"Too much, Father. It's too glorious."
"How can a thing be too glorious?"
"Part of me's human, Father, and that part's weak. I look at this city, and I'm agog. It's a masterwork—"
"Yes, it is."
"Genius."
"Yes, it is.";
"But Father, grant me a simpler sight. Show a glimpse of the face that made my face, so that I can know the part of me that's You."
He heard something very like a sigh in the air around him.
"It may seem ridiculous to you," Gentle said, "but I've followed this course because I wanted to see one face. One loving face." There was enough truth in this to lend his words real passion. There was indeed a face he'd hoped to find at the end of his journey. "Is it too much to ask?" he said.
There was a flutter of movement in the dingy arena ahead, and Gentle stared into the murk, in the expectation of some colossal door opening. But instead Hapexamendios said, "Turn your back, Reconciler."
"You want me to leave?"
"No. Only avert your eyes."
Here was a paradox: to be told to look away when sight was requested. But there was something other than an unveiling afoot. For the first time since entering the Dominion, he heard sounds other than a voice: a delicate rustling, a muted patter, creaks and whirrings stealing on his ear. And all around him, tiny motions in the solid street, as the monoliths softened and inclined towards the mystery he'd turned his back upon. A step gaped and oozed marrow. A wall opened where stone met stone, and a scarlet deeper than any he'd seen, a scarlet turned almost black, ran in rills as the slabs yielded up their geometry, lending themselves to the Unbeheld's purpose. Teeth came down from an unknitted balcony above, and loops of gut unraveled from the sills, dragging down curtains of tissue as they came.
As the deconstruction escalated, he dared the look he'd been forbidden, glancing back to see the entire street in ross or petty motion: forms fracturing, forms congealing, forms drooping and rising. There was nothing recognizable in the turmoil, and Gentle was about to turn away when one of the pliant walls tumbled in the flux and for a heartbeat, no more, he glimpsed a figure behind it. The moment was long enough to know the face he saw and have it in his mind's eye when he looked away. There was no face its equal in the Imajica. For all the sorrow on it, for all its wounds, it was exquisite.
Pie was alive and waiting there, in his Father's midst, a prisoner of the prisoner. It was all Gentle could do not to turn there and then and pitch his spirit into the tumult, demanding that his Father give the mystif up. This was his teacher, he'd say, his renewer, his perfect friend. But he fought the desire, knowing such an attempt would end in calamity, and instead turned away again, doting on the glimpse he'd had while the street behind him continued to convulse. Though the mystif s body had been marked by the hurts it had suffered, it was more whole than Gentle had dared hope. Perhaps it had drawn strength from the land on which Hapexamendios' city was built, the Dominion its people had worked their feits upon, before God had come to raise this metropolis.
But how should he persuade his Father to give the mystif up? With pleas? With further flattery? As he chewed on the problem, the ructions around him began to subside, and he heard Hapexamendios speak behind him.
"Reconciler? "
"Yes, Father?"
"You wanted to see
my face."
"Yes, Father?"
"Turn and look."
He did so. The street in front of him had not lost all semblance of a thoroughfare. The buildings still stood, their doors and windows visible. But their architect had claimed from their substance sufficient pieces of the body he'd once owned to recreate it for Gentle's edification. The Father was human, of course, and had perhaps been no larger than His son in His first incarnation. But He'd remade Himself three times Gentle's height and more, a teetering giant that was as much borne up by the street He'd racked for matter as of it.
For all His scale, however, His form was ineptly made, as if He'd forgotten what it was like to be whole. His head was enormous, the shards of a thousand skulls claimed from the buildings to construct it, but so mismatched that the mindit was meant to shield was visible between the pieces, pulsing and flickering. One of His arms was vast, yet ended in a hand scarcely larger than Gentle's, while the other was wizened, but finished with fingers that had three dozen joints. His torso was another mass of misalliances, His innards cavorting in a cage of half a thousand ribs, His huge heart beating against a breastbone too weak, to contain it and already fractured. And below, at His groin, the strangest deformation: a sex He'd failed to conjure into a single organ, but which hung in rags, raw and useless. "Now," the God said. "Do you see?" The impassivity had gone from His voice, its monotony replaced by an assembly of voices, as many larynxes, none of them whole, labored to produce each word.
"Do you see," He said again, "the resemblance?"
Gentle stared at the abomination before him and, for all its patchworks and disunions, knew that he did. It wasn't in the limbs, this likeness, or in the torso, or in the sex. But it was there. When the vast head was raised, he saw his face in the ruin that clung to his Father's skull. A reflection of a reflection of a reflection, perhaps, and all in cracked mirrors. But oh! it was there. The sight distressed him beyond measure, not because he saw the kinship but because their roles seemed suddenly reversed. Despite its size, it was a child he saw, its head fetal, its limbs untutored. It was eons old, but unable to slough off the fact of flesh, while he, for all his naivetes, had made his peace with that disposal.