Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley

by John Crowley

  She had never hated him. Whatever in her could have hated him had been rubbed off, far away, on the cliffs of the Edge maybe. Now he was the only other in the world, and she found that the needle of being left her by solitude needed him utterly, beyond speaking, for they had spoken little lately; only there had come a day she could not go on unless he held her hand, and a night when she would not stop weeping unless he held her, held her tight.

  So they had gone on, hand in hand.

  They raised the shelter, there where he had seen the sign, though it was neither hot nor cold there. Partly they sought protection from the wind, which was not strong, only insistent and unceasing, like hopelessness; mostly, though, when it was pitched, they had a place amid place-lessness.

  They had not imagined, on the soundless lake, to what an unbearable pitch soundlessness could be tuned.

  “What do you love?” she sobbed, muffled in his red robe late at night, curled within his arms. “What do you love? Tell me. What means more than love to you? What makes you laugh? What would you die for?” Her tears wet his chest, tears warmer than his flesh. He couldn’t answer; he only rocked her in rhythm with her fast-beating heart, till she was quieter.

  “What will you do,” she asked then, “when you find him?”

  “Ask him why he has summoned me.”

  “And what will he answer?”

  Silence.

  When the sun next day was overhead and they had no shadow, they came on the first step.

  The step was low, cut sharp as though with tools, and it was wide, seemed to go on around the world, and it was so deep they could not see if it led to another. They stopped a moment, because it was a marker, and there had been no other all day. She tightened her grip on his hand and they stepped upward. Far, far behind a bird screamed, so startling they both jumped as though their stepping up had caused it; they looked back but could see no bird.

  The next step when they came to it was perceptibly higher; beyond, closer, they could see the next, higher still.

  Through the afternoon they climbed toward the top of the edge of the world, which lay above and ahead seeming sharp and flat as a blade. The steps grew shallower and higher in a geometric progression, each seeming to double the last, until toward sunset the steps they climbed were higher than they were deep, and the edge of the world was perpendicular above them. They were in its shadow.

  Along the stair that circled the world there were huge flaws in its perfection: it seemed to slow the heart to imagine the shudderings of earth needed to crack and split that geometry, reduce its plated, flawless surface to glittering rubble. At an ungraspable distance away a pitted stone, a moon perhaps, something vast, had imbedded itself in the stair, blasting its levels for great distances. It was terrifying in its congruity, the unfathomable stair, the unfathomable stone.

  It was they who were incongruous.

  He was above her on the climb; sat on the stair holding his hand down to her to pull her up with him. Both wore the rags of the clothes they had left Forgetful in, his red domino, her hooded cloak, climbing steps never meant for anything like them; flesh in that desert.

  The last step was a ledge barely wide enough to stand on and a sheer wall taller by far than he. He inched along it sidewise, she below him on the next stair, until they were nearer the catastrophic damage. There they struggled up through a broken place, their hands and knees bleeding from the malevolent surfaces, until he dragged himself groaning over the last ledge and came out onto the last place in the world. He turned, trembling, and drew her up with him.

  It was nothing but the top of the last step. It was wide, but they could see the edge of it, jagged, more broken than the stair. And beyond that nothing, nothing, nothing at all. A veil of cloud extended Outward from the edge like a ledge of false earth, and the sun stained it brown and orange; but through the veil they could see that the Nothing went down, down, thickening into darkness.

  There were two things there with them at the edge. There was the wind, stronger, filled with a presence they could not face into, though they had sought it so long. And there was, not far from where they came up, an egg of some soft silver, as high as a man, seamless, fired with sunset light.

  He had never been sure, not for a moment, that he had been right, that he had saved from his damaged knowledge the right clues, the right voice. Not till now.

  He went to it, touched the hand that was a reflection of his own hand in the glassy surface. Turned to look back to Nod: she crouched on the shelf of the world, touching its surface with her hands, as though afraid she might fall off.

  “That,” she said, and another would not have heard her tiny voice.

  “A… Vehicle.” He went to sit with her.

  They watched the sunset fire fade from it in silence.

  “What will you do?” she said at last. - “Eat,” he said, and took from his pack a little of the food that the Last Man had given them, broke it and gave her some.

  The egg turned ghostly blue in the evening, then dark, seemed to disappear. She threaded her thin arm in his which was cold as steel, colder than ever.

  “If you must return alone,” he said.

  “No.”

  “If you must…”

  “No.”

  He said nothing further. It grew cold and she began to shiver, but stopped then as through an effort of will.

  In the night, it was almost possible to believe they were not where they were. The stars, cold, distant, seemed familiar and near.

  She felt him suddenly tense beside her, could almost feel the workings of his senses.

  “Yes,” he said, and the wind snatched away his word.

  The wind rose.

  He went to the egg, touched the stars that seemed to cover its surface. The wind rose.

  The wind rose, invaded him, filled him as though he were hollow, made him deaf then blind, then utterly insensate: calm in silence. The Blindness compressed itself into a voice, or the metaphor of a voice, speaking to senses he had not known he had; lovely, wise, murmurous with sleep.

  You have come late, Recorder.

  His being strove to speak, but he could find no voice.

  Go, then, said his Blindness. Go to him, he awaits you.

  Leviathan, he tried to say, Leviathan.

  Blindness trembled, as though unsure, and withdrew in a roar of silence. The last place in the world congealed before the Recorder’s eyes, like the false place of a dream though he had never dreamt, and he saw Nod on her knees, mouth open, an idiot’s face.

  He cried out, not knowing what he said, desperate that Blindness might not return. He pressed his naked cheek against the cold egg and waited. Waited…

  Blindness, angry, inchoate, whipped through him.

  Why are you not gone?

  Now he found the voice to speak to that Voice: I know no way to go, he said. Do trouble you?

  Yes.

  Only tell me then what I must do.

  How am I to know if you do not? it asked.

  You don’t know?

  Not what task he might have set you other than to Record, for which you were made, and could not but do.

  It wasn’t you….?

  I?

  You who made me, you who summoned me.

  Summoned, perhaps. Guided, as a beacon. But not made. No. What would I want with your Recording? I have forgotten more than he has ever created. It is my skill.

  Who is he, then? Is he Leviathan?

  I am Leviathan; so men call me. He is… other than me. A brother.

  Where is he? How am I to come to him?

  Where now? I cannot tell. Your Vehicle will find him. A journey of a thousand years. More. Less… Only go. Open that Vehicle. You have the hey, not I.

  I have no key, said the Recorder to his Blindness, feeling withered by an awful impatience pressing him to go: I have no key. Leviathan, I am damaged, I have forgotten everything; help me. Help me.

  Help. I cannot…

  Begin at the be
ginning, the Recorder said; and, as he had to the two Endwives on the Drum: perhaps something will return to me, some part of the way I am made, that will tell me what to do.

  Beginnings, said Blindness. You don’t know what you ask. I have forgotten beginnings of worlds that were dead before this one was born.

  The Recorder heard no more then; but he waited, for he seemed to feel deep stirrings, a Thought drawn up painfully from some ancient gulf. I have forgotten, Blindness began again at last, forgotten how it was I came here… But it was I who dropped the pillar into the placeless deeps… I who set this roof, to protect me from the heaven stones.

  You made the world.

  My house this world; my roof, holding place, shelter. Beneath it I lived, down deep where it is hot and dense and changeless. I was alone. Then he brought them.

  Men.

  It was mine before they came. It will be mine when they are gone.

  How did he bring them?

  Sailed.

  How, sailed…

  He has sails, and I do not. We are not alike. He is busy and wide-ranging; I am sleepy and stationary. He has sails; sails like woven air, that fine; large as the world Many of them. They are his speed.

  Spread sails to catch the Light of Suns…

  Yes, he did so. Bringing them.

  From where?

  Elsewhere. What could it matter? A journey of a thousand years. Less. More.

  How did they survive?

  He did not bring living men; no, they are too fragile for that; he brought instead a sliver of each, a grain, a seed, from which he could grow a whole man when he chose. These seeds or what you will could make the journey, though the men could not…

  There were fifty-two.

  Perhaps. And all their grasses, the green things proper to them, and their beasts too, one of each—no, two, one of each sex. And he set out each in turn to grow on my naked roof: increase and multiply. And set out the men last, new-grown.

  And then.

  And looked on it all, and saw that it was good.

  The Recorder was desperate to pause, to assemble all this, to let it combine within him and form some answer; but Leviathan trembled at his hesitation. Wait, he said then; I have understood nothing; tell me who I am, what is to become of me; why he made me.

  He does not trust me.

  Not trust you…

  I owed him a service, from another time. He put them in my charge. I have watched as well as I could, between sleepings. When he has not trusted me, he has had you.

  Me?

  You and others like you; recorders, adjusters. He has not forgotten. It is his chiefest toy, this world; no, not chiefest, not any longer. But he has not forgotten. And when he wishes to have senses here, he casts a recorder among men. A thing, his invention, his finger.

  Why?

  It must be kept in balance. That is the play, the whole jest. It is a small world, Recorder; my back only; it must be pruned, regulated. So there have been adjusters: warmakers, peacemakers, idiots, cardplayers. His invention is endless.

  The Just.

  The Just. A fine adjustment. The smaller wheel that justifies the large. He fashioned a Notion for them, you see; and when they gathered round it, he put the pruning knife into their hands. The Gun I mean. And so the thing is kept in balance…

  The Recorder’s utter attention had shifted, minutely: Nod…

  Who is there with you?

  She brought me.

  Brought you?

  I didn’t know the Task, or how to come to you to ask what it was. She led me.

  It doesn’t matter. She cannot hear. Deaf. Deaf, blind, dumb; as they all are.

  As I am.

  Well. You are a thing of his. He will know if there is any use left in you.

  I think… I will not go to him.

  Recorder.

  Why? Why did men agree to such a thing?

  They asked it.

  They could not have.

  That is the tale, Recorder. He came to them on his endless, busy way; he found them on the last undesolated shelf of some wretched ruined stone. They worshiped him; that has always been his pleasure. He granted their desire.

  What was their desire?

  An end to Change. What other desire is there? “Take us away,” they prayed, “to a new world, like the one our ancientest ancestors lived in, a small world where the sun rises and hastens to the place where he arose, where we can live forever and where nothing runs away.” So I remember him telling it…

  And he brought them here. Here.

  They didn’t know themselves. They made a bad bargain. We kept our part.

  Did you?

  They wanted eternal life; he gave them perpetual motion. It comes to the same thing, for such a race.

  Why? What did he gain?

  I don’t remember. Some satisfaction. It had nothing to do with me. For the amusement of it only, perhaps, probably…

  Does he know how men suffer?

  Do they suffer?

  I think, the Recorder said, I think I do not choose to return to him.

  You think. You do not choose. Recorder! He has expended energy on your creation. He will not see it wasted. He wastes nothing. Every part of you is minutely inscribed; he will disentangle you utterly, leach from your every thread what it is dyed with. He looks forward to it

  I think I…

  Recorder! I awoke from sleep to welcome you, awoke from depths and lengths of sleep you cannot imagine. Speaking to your ignorance is anguish. Go to him. If you can speak, then, ask him to illuminate you; if you can speak, perhaps he will answer you…

  Unable to bear more, the Recorder sought within him for some barrier to hide from that lovely Voice behind, some refusal, some power… He found it. It would rise within him if he could find the strength to summon it: he found strength: it rose, blocking the blind madness.

  As though far off, but coming closer, the last place in the world began to appear to him. And the nature of the wall he had found became clear:

  He was screaming.

  All his multiple strengths drew to his throat, drew in to be pressed into sound, a long, breathless, continual sound that grew louder as it rose higher until it ceased to be sound. The sound searched him, cleansed him, healed him, broke into places within him sealed since the Gun, and let out all his wounded knowledge.

  With horror he remembered all. Who he was. What had made him. And why: he knew the whole Plot he had been made for, the reason for his hideous strength, the blood-hero he was to have been, the long war that would never happen now…

  And with the great knowledges came a small one: he knew why it was he screamed, for at a certain pitch and loudness the egg before him opened soundlessly.

  His scream had opened his Vehicle. It was the key.

  He ceased; the sound lingered, ran away, died; he stood with his wide chest throbbing, done.

  It was near dawn. Inward the stars faded in an empurpled sky. Nod lay before him, prostrate, hands against her ears, her face pressed against the ground. When the sound was gone she lifted her head, her tear-streaked face, looked at him, couldn’t look away.

  The wind had risen, pitiless, like no wind of the world. It tore at his ragged robe, urging him to discard it. He kicked off his cracked boots. He drew out the Gun, dropped it; undid his belt and let the garment go. It stepped away on the wind for a moment as though possessed, and then collapsed.

  The wind could not touch him then. His skin shone, impervious, seamed with bright silver threads, knotted with weird muscle. Hairless, sexless, birthless, deathless.

  “Neither-nor,” Nod breathed, seeing him thus. “Neither-nor.”

  There was a part of himself, he knew now, that he had invented; had had to invent because of the damage done him. There was a Truth that his invention had allowed him to discover, that he was not meant or made to discover. That invented part wanted him to take up the girl, hold her as he seemed to remember he once had, speak comfort to her. That invented part,
which his Maker could not have foreseen, wanted… it wanted.

  He lifted Nod to her knees.

  “Well, I will speak to him,” he said, his hoarse voice nearly wind-lost. “I promise. Speak to him, ask him…”

  “No!” she said. “Stay!”

  He turned from her; that invented part was fading, disengaging; it was unnecessary now that he was whole again. Yet he would save one question. One question, over the whole length of his huge journey. He went to the open Vehicle, found a way to fit himself within it.

  “No! you said no…”

  The wind turned around, sucked suddenly into the Deep. It screamed as it ran down, bellowed, sobbed, shrieked. The ledge of earth trembled. As silently as it had opened, the Vehicle closed, closing the Recorder within it.

  Nod, sobbing, unable to stand, searched for Suddenly on hands and knees; the wind, tortured, turned again and fled upward. The Vehicle began slowly to spin on its axis.

  The Vehicle rose into the air, spinning faster.

  And Leviathan arose from the Deep to bid his brother’s thing farewell.

  Mad, Nod ran toward the edge, toward the hugeness that rose from the Deep, screaming, screaming obscenities, pleading, reviling. As it rose it eclipsed each wavering star beyond; when it was so high it blotted out all the sky above her and looked, she thought, down toward her with an eye larger than night, she fired Suddenly toward the eye, trying to fling all of herself along the barrel with the little ball against that hatefulness.

  For she had heard. Heard it all, all. She fell with the shock of the explosion; fell where his garment had come to rest on the ledge of earth; she clutched its worn stuff and knew nothing for a time.

  But she had heard, and had recorded.

  4

  They would say of the King Red Senlin’s Son in later times that he was the tallest, the handsomest man of his age; that anyone who ever saw him in armor never forgot the splendor.

  They would date an age’s beginning from his reign, and cherish the glories of his new City, the wit of his poets, the loveliness of his artisans’ work. They would forget his arrogance, his indulgence, his spendthrift luxury, and why should they not? They would remember only that he was handsome, and that his love was great, and that his reign was brief.