Gears of the City

by Felix Gilman

  That was far from the worst of it.

  I questioned further. In those days in the city there were subtle webs of confidence and trust between the highest and the lowest people. Holbach prostituted his science to the Countess, and was— before she turned on him, that dangerous woman—in her highest councils. I corresponded with Holbach on matters theological. My investigations and my pleasures required the services of panders and whores, and I was often seen in vile places. In the company of whores there were men and women who served the Countess as spies and agents—the wheel spun, the heart pumped, and the blood circulated. Now the city is like a dead thing, stiff and silent and cold.

  I questioned further, in vile places. It seemed my own escape from the Rose had not been noticed, for there had been a general riot at the Rose and indeed over all of the Countess’s districts, and elsewhere. But my association with the Atlas was well known, and I feared the Countess’s men might be looking for me. I adopted an assumed name, like a spy in my own city. And I skulked, and I listened.

  Rumors swirled around the Atlas like carrion-crows. Those men and women of the Atlas who’d not been beheaded, it seemed, were all dead. Maine first, then others. In the city in those weeks there was a plague, plague wrestled with riot to see who should prey on the city’s poor flesh. A choking foul blackness of the lungs. It rose from the rivers and from dark places. Rumor had it that the plague had begun with Maine’s death, and that it pursued all those who’d had dealings with him, or the Atlas. I snorted. I was skeptical. I will not pay for these fancies, I said, and sometimes there was an altercation, and then there was one more drinking-establishment in the city where Brace-Bel was not welcome! Fancies—for it was always the case, when there was sickness, that some preacher or other would blame the makers of plays or the writers of forbidden books, and the mob was always eager to believe them.

  Yet on further investigation it appeared that the mob was quite correct.

  I counted the dead. Lauterbach, dry dull economist; Vannon, the etymologist; Marlowe, one of our pet radicals, theorist of revolution; Aumont, the architect; Helvensi, armchair general, who wrote on horsemanship and siege-engines and the sniper-rifle; credulous Bayley, who offered us his theories on the werewolf; Lycian, Dumont, Gilfoyle, hardened explorers, carriers of theodolites, astrolabe, and pistol; too many, too many others, all dead of the plague. It was a bad plague but it did not strike the common folk near so bad as it struck those of us of wit and learning.

  There was something haunting the streets in those days. A blackness in the fog. A stink in the gutters. Rumor had it that some God had gone mad. Beware the water, people said. Do not go out of doors. The River-God is hungry.

  In my house, now, the River-God is played by a young man named Marley. It frightens me terribly to touch him, but I steel myself to it. The drugs help.

  I felt it. I felt it pursuing me.

  A shiver passes across your face, Arjun. I wonder if you are aware how eloquently your face speaks. Your voice is silent, but your body remembers, and shudders.

  You remember this.

  Once, as I left a whorehouse on Baruch Street, I felt something brush against my face. The next morning I had to ply rotten teeth from that side of my jaw.

  When I returned to Baruch Street, the whorehouse had been torched. The plague, they said, had come in the night.

  I did not dare attempt to charter passage from Ararat by boat; the docks were always watched by spies, and besides the plague was worst by the water. Instead I fled west. The shadow followed at my heels. I felt it in my dreams. When I woke my sweat stank. Why did it want me? I do not know. Perhaps my daring explorations in blasphemy and perversity had finally angered something more … ultimate than the censors and priests who had formerly been my tormentors. Terror mingled sweatily with pride. I had been marked for persecution by the Gods themselves!

  For a while I hid in the highest bolt-hole I could find—on the roof of a condemned hotel, among pigeon-roosts. One day I returned from scavenging for scraps to find all the pigeons dead.

  No place in the city was safe.

  What, then, if I went beyond the city?

  If you change your mind, Shay had said, you know my name.

  I called out to him—feeling foolish—as if he were a pantomime devil. He did not appear.

  I paid for an advertisement to be placed in the paper. I checked the post-office box but he never responded.

  I painted his name on the wall of my hiding place. I spelled it out in candles on my roof. Nothing.

  I went into the alley with hammer and chisel and carved it on the wall. S—H—A—Y. Acting on some unclear instinct I appended my name, and the date.

  That night Shay came to me.

  He wore a grey coat. His head was shaved, a knob of ash-white stubble. Was he older, or younger? He was thinner. I could hardly doubt that he was the same man—not with those cold eyes.

  “I was out for a walk,” he said. “A hundred years tomorrow, when what did I see? Under all that ivy. All that graffiti. My own name, and yours. I keep a close eye on my name. Changed your mind, eh?”

  He saw my desperation; my terror amused him.

  I remember this because it was strange. “The old fool’s gone and let one of his creatures loose,” he said. “This part of the city’s done for. They should put yellow tape round it and call it condemned.”

  “So come with me,” he said. “But I would have given you cushy duty last time. Now you won’t get off that easy. I want you with me when I go for the Mountain. You can carry my bags.”

  I threw myself on the floor. I kissed his feet. I did not balk when he blindfolded me.

  Have you noticed how beautiful my house is at night? How lovely my garden?

  Shay did not give me those. I earned them with my own wits and charm, and with the devices Shay left behind. I have for instance a die that comes up one, or six, or what-have-you, just as I will it; hold the dots in your mind’s eye and the little thing eagerly jumps to your bidding. A profitable trick. There are others greater than that.

  I will always be rich. If I were poor I would kill myself. The city’s mirrors are clouded; its scribes are drunk; in our various translations across time and place the fine details of our selves may undergo change and transformation. Nevertheless our essence persists. It is of Brace-Bel’s essence that he be a rich man. Just as it is apparently of your essence that you be poor, and lost, and confused. My condolences. But we all have something for which to reproach our creators. I for instance have gout. Moreover I have spent seven of every ten years of my manhood in chains.

  Shay brought me here. I mean to this time, this place, not to this house. Shay made his home in this Age some way to the north. In an empty warehouse. Do not go looking for it. I stripped it bare of wonders when I quit his service.

  I do not recall the route between our Age and this. I was blindfolded. He led me through alleys, up and down stairs. I heard doors unlock. For a time I thought we were pursued, but he only laughed, and the footsteps receded. If I knew the way I would have followed it back long ago.

  We lived in the warehouse. Shay taught me the use of his devices. Amulets. Keys to surprising locks. Cloaks. Charms of concealment and devices of augury. Ah, what didn’t he have? What hadn’t he collected on his travels? He made machines to suit his whims out of the birds of the air and the rats and lizards of the sewers. Twisted and unhappy things that had been burdened by surgery with something very much like the power of speech. I am a cruel man and a perverse man, but those poor creatures filled me with pity and loathing. I have laboratories, Shay said, as if that explained everything. He laughed and called me a very provincial coward and hypocrite. That clawed monkey which he claimed to have purchased in a market in the Under-City of a far-off time guarded our door and was unable to close its poor red eyes. It was scaled in places, part lizard.

  I inspected him closely, as servants do their masters. He was not so young as I had first thought—a man in early mid
dle age, a little tired sometimes when he thought my eyes were not on him—when he forgot that I was a man, not a possession. I had mistaken energy and pride for youth.

  Many of his devices were terrible weapons. Those Shay took with him when he went. I let his creatures go when he left and I imagine they starved in the concrete hideousness of this city. I am left with the dregs of his collection.

  We did not often go outside. Why would we? I looked out from the high windows over the rooftops and it made me shudder. This is an ugly time.

  I asked him what was on the Mountain, of course, why he meant to assault it. And how. In the old days of the Atlas, sometimes our explorers went north to the Mountain. Always it ended in madness—if they came back at all. The Mountain has always been an evil thing. Shay would not answer me. He told me it was not my place to ask.

  I cooked for him, and cleaned. The monkey and I developed a jealous mutual dislike, one servant to another.

  One day Shay went away and did not come back. That is to say, one morning I woke, and he was not there; and by nightfall he was still not there.

  I reasoned carefully.

  Suppose that those who inhabit the Mountain had spied out Shay’s intentions—which is hardly improbable, for any denizen of this dejected and fearful Age will tell you that the Mountain spies on them constantly, and they surely must be at least half right. Suppose that the Mountain’s servants had stolen Shay away, or killed him. Yet they had left me unharmed, as if I were beneath their notice. Were that the case then I was free, though I was lost in a strange and hideous time. I certainly had no intention of revenging my erstwhile master; let the Mountain have him!

  Or suppose that Shay had gone up the Mountain without me; then it would be wise to flee before he returned.

  Suppose that Shay never intended to go up the Mountain. He was a brilliant man, the most brilliant I have ever met, and the most remarkably well traveled. He had a number of striking scars. He was a man who’d survived much. Perhaps, rather than face the terrors of the Mountain himself, he brought travelers, adventurers, madmen, obsessives, daring and dangerous men, all would-be visionaries, into his orbit, and into some small part of his confidence; and he hinted to them of the Mountain, and the wonders hidden there—let them go! Let them face it first! Well, I said, if that’s the case, you may fuck yourself, Mr. Shay; I am no one’s pawn, no one’s monkey. I have seen what the Mountain does to people.

  For instance look at you, poor ghost.

  I considered other possibilities; I have never learned the truth. Nor do I care to. Is Shay dead? Well, that’s a nice question, isn’t it. Even if he’s dead here there are times in the city when he may be alive, and what’s time to Mr. Shay but a flimsy veil? One day he may come for me. Or he may not. I intend to enjoy what time I have, regardless.

  I do not like the dawn. Ha! In the play of Mr. Liancourt that brought down the wrath of the Countess and doomed the Atlas there was a very silly hymn to the dawn. A pretty tune but idiotic words. What a thing to die for!

  Dawn is so ugly here. Look how the factories poison it. Those rosy fingers are nicotine-stained and filthy They paw the horizon like they’re picking its pocket.

  An ugly time. They talk daily here about war; ever since I arrived there have been rumors of war, from some quarter or other; from the Mountain if no mundane enemy is available. I think they cannot bear to live in this time. They long for the end. They know these are the last days.

  Dawn brings sobriety. I do not like to be sober.

  We have talked all night. My servants will be waking now, and doing the housework.

  Once I thought, by my rituals, to pierce the veil of reality; to see the city as the Gods see it, mutable, infinite, miraculous; to break the walls of the city down and force my way into …

  Never mind. Do you know why I keep up my rituals? This tired charade? Because I cannot bear the thought that I might die in this time. I cannot bear to be stranded here.

  Sometimes when I performed my rituals I felt that I was close, so very close …

  I hope to bring the Gods back. To call them back into being ! To open the way. To follow them home. If I provoke them, if my little performances outrage them, if they come in anger, so be it. I will still have opened the way home.

  I long for the comforts of home. The city I grew up in seems unbearably beautiful to me now. Even its priests, even its judges, even its cruel princes. Their robes and finery and arrogant display had a certain … richness. Life in the last days is thin and grey. I would happily go back into my little cell, if I could look out of the window over the towers of old Ararat.

  I, Brace-Bel, the great libertine, the great debaucher, the great hater and despoiler of the good and the pure! Like a toothless old woman mooning after the days of her childhood. Sentimental in my old age, and I am not yet an old man. Shameful. And yet there it is.

  When I first recognized you, I thought: at last my rituals have succeeded. I have called up a phantom from the old days. I have opened the door. I have fucked into being a miracle. I have scribed the spell with my whip! Oh, how wonderful! No wonder I could not sleep. Ah, but you recall nothing, do you? I have watched your face closely for hours and you recall nothing.

  It is pure accident that brings you here. You came for Ivy, and not for me. You told me that but I did not believe you at first.

  Leave me alone, will you? Let me watch the dawn. Go to bed, go to bed.

  Liancourt’s little song about the dawn. I was never musical, but sometimes music awakens the memory, it transports us home. How did it go?

  Now I remember you, Arjun. You worked with Liancourt on that silly play He did the words and you did the music. I remember you beavering away in the conservatory. Stay a moment. How did it go? Tumpty-tumpty-tum-tum-tum-tum. No, not quite. La-la-la-la-la …

  What? You look quite stricken! Your eyes … Steady, steady; what’s come over you?

  Music and Memory-Housework-

  “Ivy’s Clever”-The WaneLight

  Hotel-Doors

  Arjun

  Brace-Bel Slept late. Even in sleep the words kept pouring out of him. He muttered; sometimes he shrieked. It echoed down the stairs. The household was apparently used to it.

  Arjun didn’t sleep at all. The “bed” Brace-Bel’s servants had made for him was a velvet-covered loveseat. To sleep on it one had to curl like a bent note. Arjun ached where Brace-Bel had struck him, and his wounded hand throbbed again, and his head thronged with memories. Memories returned one by one like birds coming to roost.

  That song—the few notes Brace-Bel had sung in his tuneless grating voice. That was the heart of it; the heart of him. Everything else wove in and around the bright thread of that song. Gad, his home in the far southern mountains, the Choristers, his God, and the absence of his God, which struck him all over again now as a fresh wound, a loss that left him gasping; the long trek north, by horse, by cart, on foot, by train, by slow barge, across deserts, plains, hills, the sea, into the city, Ararat, the impossible, legendary, infinite city, in search of his absconded God; the day—the music, his memories, looped back again, he snatched a moment of his childhood from the stream—when he first sang in the Choir, the gypsy girl, a faded scent-memory of his mother, before the Choristry took him from his first home; then an accelerando of violent and terrifying and wonderful city-memories, assaultive, confusing, like the first moment he stepped off the boat and into the surging crowds of the docks. The Atlas; Olympia; the boy Silk; the monster of the canals; Shay …

  The song was the key to himself. It was unfortunate, then, that Arjun knew it only from Brace-Bel’s half-hearted and unmusical rendition. As he lay awake struggling to order his memories, part of his mind was trying to weave the music back together—to remember the next notes. There were laws and principles of composition floating in his head according to which it should have been possible to reconstruct, to develop, to reanimate the scrap of music Brace-Bel had half remembered; he couldn’t do it. It far surpasse
d his talents. It hovered on the edge of awareness like an angel. It was not merely music; it was Music. But naming it brought it no closer, in fact perhaps only drove it away. He twisted and turned on his side; the arm of the loveseat poked his spine.

  … and after Shay, how he’d traveled beyond the city, and into its hidden places, and past and future times, and seen things he could hardly, now, make sense of. He remembered how Shay had taught him to open the city’s secret doors, and then … Memories flickered across Arjun’s mind like unspooling film. The moving pictures, the cinema; that was something he suddenly remembered. Gods, how long had he wandered? There had been traces of his God everywhere, like a trail marked for him through the city, but he’d never found it. The Martyrs of the Bloody Scalp. Gradek’s Academy. The slave market on Caspar Street. The river-pirates of the Flood Years. (The faded lash-scars on Arjun’s back began to itch like a bulb’s filament burning at the flick of a switch.) The Unlicensed Operators who gave up their bodies to inhabit the city’s wires and mathematics and flickering screens, and guided him on through a dark time. (He wanted to share the news with the Low sisters. This is a bad time but there have been worse; this is not the end of things. Was it good or bad news?) The incident of the duel on Hawker’s Common. (He remembered learning to fence, and a number of occasions on which that skill had saved his life; he suddenly, childishly, itched for a rematch with Brace-Bel.) The monomaniacal Replacement Men of Ako, who took the place of their sleeping masters, and lived un-comprehendingly half-existences. The Glorious Revolution—one of many. The Bank Theater and the spies among Lord Wolfe’s Players. The WaneLight Hotel! He searched in his pockets and drew out the matchbook and turned it over and over in his hands. He remembered his years at the Hotel, digging into its secrets, hunting for clues, bartering for rumors …