by Jeffrey Ford
“Understood,” I said. “I will proceed immediately.”
He was not ready to let me go just yet, though. He brought out two vials of the beauty. I wanted to decline, but I could see that it was a test of my loyalty. The Master went for the vein in his tongue.
“It’s my special mix,” he slurred as he pulled the needle out of his mouth.
We sat there for an hour in the throes of the beauty, and he did card tricks and sleights of hand with coins. Below’s special mix was certainly special. I couldn’t move. The graceful motion of his hands as he performed was hypnotic. Pigeons, fire, a tiny man fashioned from his earwax did somersaults across the table. Finally, it all came so fast and furiously, I thought I was going to pass out. Then he jumped out of his seat, came around the table, and ushered me toward the door.
“Tonight, Cley,” he said, “I have arranged for a dinner in your honor. I want them all to kiss your ass for a night. It was a shame that I allowed them to talk me into sending you away.”
“As you wish,” I said.
“You’ll need this to get in,” he said, and put one of the coins he had been performing with into my palm.
I said good-bye and walked down the hall of hardened heroes. Once outside, I stopped on a bench and tried to catch my breath. Not even on Doralice had I perspired so much. That batch of the beauty had given me the worst case of chills I had ever experienced. In addition to this, my nerves were frayed by the immensity of the future.
Eventually, I pulled myself together by walking around one of the outside malls. In a temporary ring, at the center of the walkway, there was a battle match taking place between two of the Master’s hardware-enhanced citizens. I tried not to pay any attention to the brutality, but at that time of day the mall was relatively empty. There was only a young mother and her two daughters present.
When my breathing had returned to normal, I turned my attention to the contest in the ring. One of the fighters had snapping metallic claws for hands and a set of steel corkscrews protruding from his head. The other fellow whirred and clanked with the noise of his defective inner workings, but he was very large. There were crude skin grafts across his neck and chest. He had no odd features save for life itself, but he carried in one hand a pickax and in the other a net.
The metal claws snipped through the net as if it were lace. When the big man swung the pick and missed, the other drove forward with his head and gored an arm. I saw no blood, but the skin tore fiercely. It ended with the pickax in the claw-man’s back. The sound of applause filled the mall from speakers mounted on the buildings. The big man bowed stiffly as the cleanup crew came to take away the vanquished. The mother and daughters lost interest and wandered off to something else. I walked quietly up to the side of the battle ring behind where the winner stood.
“Calloo,” I said.
He stood perfectly still, staring off into the distance.
“Calloo,” I called.
At the sound of his name, he turned and looked down at me. He stared for the longest time. I thought I was making some deep contact with him, but then I realized that he had broken down. When I looked up, I saw a large spring protruding through the skin at the back of his neck.
I ran through the mall and out into the park. I wandered through the city gardens for an hour or so before I finally made my way across town to my office. After having seen Calloo, I was more determined than ever to undermine the realm in any way I could. As soon as I got to my desk, I dashed off a letter on official stationery to the Minister of the Treasury, requesting a complete inventory of all the items the Master had brought back with him from the territory. If I was lucky, my message would never even get to the minister but would be handled by one of his underlings. I was afraid of being caught, but in this situation it was just as dangerous not to act at all. I thought I might find a clue in the official records that would show me the way to Arla.
After dispatching the note with a messenger, I stood by the window, staring down across the street in front of the Academy of Physiognomy. I wanted to yell out the window to the passing crowds, “There is madness here,” but I could tell they were too busy thinking of what official connections they could massage in order to procure a snort or two of demon horn.
22
My dinner was held at the Top of the City, beneath the crystal dome. When I tried to give the guard at the entrance the coin that Below had handed me, he refused it. He welcomed me back from Doralice as I stepped through the doorway. The sun was setting behind a mountain range off to the west, its red beams refracting through the translucent roof of the candlelit restaurant. I immediately went to the bar and ordered a drink.
The circular room was a hive of ministers and dignitaries from the realm’s matrix of bureaucracy. They moved around between the tables, methodically chasing one another and running away, talking from one side of the mouth, laughing from the other, all the while gritting their teeth. Big cigars were being smoked, and I caught snippets of conversation, all revolving around status and the acquisition of belows.
The moment it was known I had arrived, a long line formed before me. They came at me one at a time to shake my hand, welcome me back, perhaps ask some tidbit about the territory or the sulphur mine. I yessed them and thanked them and told them all how much I had suffered. The alcohol flowed freely, and many of my well-wishers were drunk. I, myself, had downed three Rose Ear Sweets before half the line had gotten to me. I remembered my days of Physiognomy and how many lines of faces I had been through. The same now as then; I did not expect to find anything remarkable.
That thought had just left my head, when a drunken young woman came staggering toward me. She was unescorted, probably one of the young women the Master hired at these events to “fill out the crowd.” Her eyes were half-closed, and she wore a smirk on her face. I could smell Three Fingers before she got within four feet of me. She threw her arms around my shoulders and kissed me full on the lips, pressing her tongue between my teeth. Those behind her in the line applauded.
I drew away, and she put her lips to my ear and said, “How’s that leather glove?”
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“No,” she said. Then she released me and stepped back to the person behind her in line, a tall fellow with a striped suit and a well-trimmed mustache. “He pinkied me one night wearing a leather glove over in Memorial Park,” she said.
The man laughed and nodded. As she moved off into the crowd, I saw him turn to the man behind him and tell him something. The second man looked up at me while he listened and then he too began to laugh. I watched with a sick feeling as the description of my dalliance made a visible wave through the crowd. Some of the inebriated put on their gloves to shake hands with me. I grinned and told them how much I had suffered.
After I had been accosted by everyone present, the Master made his appearance. He was dressed in a living suit made of some trailing plant that grew from pockets filled with soil. The thing covered him like a hedge and made a sort of hood above the back of his head. In a half dance, he moved to the center of the room and called for silence. Quiet descended like a rock, for everyone knew that even to sneeze during one of his orations could mean dire consequences.
“I have been to the territory,” he said, staring up through the dome at the gathering night as if looking for something.
Everyone looked up until they realized it was merely a dramatic effect.
“And,” he continued, “I have brought the territory back to you.” With this he clapped his hands and attendants began moving tables and chairs aside, creating a wide path that led from the double doors of the kitchen to a large, circular clearing. When their work was finished, the Master announced, “Behold the demon.”
They brought it through the doors of the kitchen with its hands chained behind its back and a rope around its chest, folding down and holding fast the wings. Two soldiers accompanied the creature—one leading it by a chain attached to a metal clasp around its neck and the
other following, a flamethrower trained on its back.
The demon hopped more than walked, all the time flashing its fangs and growling at the guests. They shrank back as it tried to lunge at them. The soldier pulled hard on the leash and brought his prisoner away from the crowd. It was led into the circular clearing, and its chain was shortened considerably and attached to a clamp in the floor.
The demon roared and fought against the restraints. Muscles across its back flexed, swelling the wings a pitiful half-inch beneath the rope. The Well-Built City’s elite stayed clear of it for five minutes, and then seeing that it could not escape, they inched closer and closer. Soon the taunts began. They threw crumpled cocktail napkins at it. They crept up until they were just out of its reach and yelled threats to it. The Master walked up to me where I still stood next to the bar.
“You’re a smart man, Cley,” he said to me, turning to keep an eye on the spectacle.
“How’s that, Master?” I asked.
“You are interested in investing in some of the relics of the territory, I believe?” he asked.
“Well, I’m not sure,” I said, taking a drink to disguise my confusion.
“The Minister of the Treasury has informed me that you requested an entire list of items brought back from the territory,” he said.
“Oh, that,” I said. I smiled, then laughed, then scratched my head. “I thought a demon horn might be a wise investment, seeing as how if it were ground up and sold by the snort, one could charge quite a bit, making fourteen hundred out of seven,” I said. “Of course, I got the idea from you this morning.”
“I knew that is what you had in mind,” he said. “I’ll send you one as a gift.”
I was going to thank him, but there was some commotion going on in the crowd. The guests suddenly fled backward, tripping over the legs of chairs and sprawling across tables. It seemed the demon had been able to catch one of its tormentors with a horn to the forehead. I looked up just in time to see the poor victim slide to the floor with a blood-drenched look of total surprise beneath a gaping wound. The demon immediately descended, snapping down with its powerful jaws on the now screaming face.
The Master stepped forward as the soldier with the flamethrower tightened his finger on the trigger. “Hold on a second,” he called as the man writhed beneath the fangs of the demon. “Who is that on the floor there?” he asked.
A few of the people turned and said, “It’s Burke from the Ministry of the Arts.”
The Master laughed. “Forget it,” he said to the soldier, and the man lowered his weapon. Then Below snapped his fingers and the music began to play. Waiters entered from the kitchen, carrying bottles of absence and trays of chived cremat. “Delicacies from the territory,” he called out over the rush to grab them.
Later, I had to sit on a dais at the north side of the dome while ponderous speeches were made about my brilliance, my dedication to the realm, the perplexing elegance of my physiognomy. I smiled and nodded inanely, and the crowd applauded, laughed, and cheered in all the right places. When I was asked to speak, I merely gave the standard salute to Below and said, “Long live the City, the realm, and the Master.” I looked down at the crowd, and after their response died away they looked at me, none of us knowing what should come next.
The Master was then beside me, shaking my hand for all the dignitaries to see. I was escorted back to my seat on the dais by one of the attendants as Below addressed the guests.
“Watch this,” he said, and grimaced. White flowers popped into existence at the ends of the tendrils that made up his hood. The guests were beside themselves. I preferred to watch the attendants drag the remains of Burke away from the demon with an eight-foot steel hook.
“Get your résumés in for the Minister of the Arts position,” said Below. A wave of laughter welled up from the crowd, but once things had quieted down, the Master struck a more sober pose. “It is only fitting that we honor Physiognomist Cley tonight,” he said, “for he embodies the ingenuity and insight of the territory. You all love the idea of those strange, wide-open places, and I have done my best to bring some of that to you tonight. But beyond this, I see the territory as a symbol of my new campaign to revitalize the City. In doing so, I propose two measures. First, I have ordered Cley here to round up physiognomical undesirables for execution. In ten days, in Memorial Park, you will witness the survival of the fittest, or should I say the perishing of the unfit, a phenomenon borrowed directly from the wilderness.”
The guests clapped madly for this announcement, as if in the energy of their applause, the Master might notice they were worthy of survival.
“As a result of this campaign, you may lose a relative, a spouse, a child, but never let it be said that Drachton Below takes without giving back. A new exhibit from the territory will open in ten days. The location of this spectacle will be kept a secret until it is announced after the executions in the park. This display will be called “Anomalies of the Territory,” and in it, you will see some of the strangest sights any city dweller has ever beheld. It will be fun for the whole family. The demon there is merely a pathetic creature. Wait till you see what I have brought back,” he said.
He moved the fingers of his left hand as he had that morning and produced a small coin out of thin air. “All of you were given one of these,” he said. “Save these special coins, for they will admit you and a loved one to the exhibition for free at the grand opening.”
I followed suit as the members of the audience began searching their pockets for the coins. When I pulled mine out and held it up in my palm, I saw that it had an image of a coiled snake on one side. I flipped it over and there was a flower.
The mess that was Burke had been whisked away by the time dinner was served. I sat at a table with the Master and the Minister of Security, Winsome Graves. The moment we were seated, Graves began toadying, blathering on about the grandeur of Below’s Territory Campaign.
“Shut up,” Below said to him.
“Yes, of course,” said the minister with a forced smile.
In keeping with the theme of the evening, roasted fire bat and old-fashioned cremat dumplings were the main course. I could barely keep from retching when my plate was set down before me. The Master looked over and saw that I wasn’t digging in like the other guests, some of whom were already inquiring about seconds.
“Cley, don’t you like the meal?” he asked.
Graves looked across at me and smiled, his mouth full of dumpling, waiting to see what would happen.
“It’s the excitement, sir. I am overwhelmed by this outpouring of acceptance,” I said.
“Well, I don’t blame you,” said the Master. “I don’t see how they can eat that shit.”
He, of course, did not have a serving of the foul repast set before him, but as he finished speaking, a silver tray with a domed top was brought. “Here is real sustenance,” he said as he lifted the top to reveal the white fruit of paradise.
“Begging your pardon,” said Graves, “but is it wise to eat that? Who knows what effects it might have.”
“I’ve had it tested over the past few months,” said the Master. “There is a laboratory rat, now in the Academy of Science, who was fed a morsel of it. The little beggar has been brought back from death’s door by it. Though he was dying of rat old age, he is now virile, resilient, and runs mazes, I dare say, with more intelligence than you would, Graves.”
“May you taste paradise,” I said to Below as he lifted the fruit to his mouth and began eating, its pale juices flowing down his chin. The aroma of it wafted around me, bringing me back to my visions and dreams and obliterating the stench of the cremat. The Master’s vegetal suit reminded me of Moissac, the foliate, and fragments of the Fragments of Beaton’s journey came back to me. When I looked up from my thoughts, I saw the core of the fruit, a gnawed hour glass, revealing black pits at its center.
“Quite edible,” he said as he wiped his hands on his leaves, “but I hardly feel immortal.” He s
napped his fingers and his private servant moved up next to him. “Take this away and plant the seeds as I have instructed,” he said.
The night wore on as I minced and bowed and nodded. I kept a close watch on the Master to see what kinds of changes the fruit might make in him, but nothing remarkable came to pass. When he got up to dance with the young lady who had revealed to the others my sexual techniques, I pumped Graves for any information he might have about the exhibit the Master had referred to. He told me some of his men had been pulled from their usual assignments in order to guard the thing, but not even he knew where it was being built.
“We can only know what the Master tells us,” he said, smiling.
I considered paying him a visit the next day in my new, official capacity and ordering him in for a reading. I wondered how many deaths he had been responsible for over the years. As I pictured his head being filled with inert gas before a crowd in Memorial Park, swelling to match his sense of self-importance, I caught myself. “You are hating again, Cley,” I told myself. I remembered the word carved into sulphur in Professor Flock’s tomb—“forgive.” It was a struggle, but before long, I could see that Graves was simply trying to survive. He had his own disguise, like me, like the rest of them. We were all trying to hide our true selves from Drachton Below, waiting for his “glorious dream” to finally come to a close.
The affair abruptly ended when the Master entangled two young ladies in rapidly growing vines, like spiderwebs, and left through the double doors of the kitchen. The minute he was gone, the music stopped, the lights came up, and the attendants began cleaning up. The demon was then led away. Guests were wrapping up the delicacies of the territory in napkins and pocketing them to take back to their families. I was quite drunk but relieved that I had made it through the evening.
The coach was waiting for me outside on the windy street, but I told the driver to go on without me. I walked the city for an hour or so, trying to sober up. It was down on the Boulevard of Montz along the man-made lake of floating lilies that I realized I was being followed. I first heard the footsteps in syncopation with my own. Finally, I spun around and saw a shadow clumsily dart into a doorway on the other side of the street.