by Jeffrey Ford
"Pass me the nasal gauge," I said to Aria, who stood close by me, rapt with interest. Now I could see that to have invited her along on this venture might have been a mistake. I did not want her to sense my uncertainty in the face of the Traveler. What could be worse than a pupil discovering a lack of confidence in her mentor?
"He is most peculiar looking up close," she said. "Nothing physically would suggest anything but the weakest link to humanity, yet there is something more there."
"Please," I said, "we must let the numbers do the thinking." I fear she took this as a reprimand and was from then on completely silent.
The bridge of the nose began almost at the hairline, and instead of flanging at the nostrils tapered to a sharp point with two small slits, like the puncture wounds of a penknife on either side. "Madness," I muttered, but, again, I put down precisely what I found. Instead of the math solidly confirming my suspicions that he represented a species of prehistoric protohuman, the measurement was in direct ratio to that of a Star Five, my own and Aria's illustrious physiognomical evaluation.
The hair itself was long, black, and braided, and appeared as healthy as Aria's beautiful tresses. There was a point where the braiding ended, but the hair had continued to grow a full six inches. From the look of it, I was forced to wonder if it was still not growing beyond death, slowly reaching outward through the centuries. I removed my glove and tentatively ran my fingers through it. Soft as silk, and I could almost feel life in it. I wiped my hand on my trousers and quickly put the glove back on.
I continued, calling for Aria to pass the various instruments— the Hadris lip vise, the ocular standard, the earlobe cartilage meter, etc. I took my time, working slowly and carefully, recording, as always, precisely what I found, yet all the time a feeling of frustration was mounting in my intestines. The representative mathematics of this strange head was acting more like magic, conjuring something utterly superior to even my own features. When all I had left to apply was the calipers, my specialty, I stepped back from the altar and motioned to Aria that we would take a break.
I turned away from the Traveler and lit a cigarette in order to calm my nerves. Sweat trickled down from my brow, and my shirt was damp. Aria said not a word but gave me an inquiring look, as if I should relate to her my findings so far.
"It is too early to make any determination," I said.
She nodded and glanced past me at that long face. From the cast of her gaze, I knew what it was she was looking at—the same eye-crease-to-jawline measurement we had earlier discussed about her grandfather. I didn't need the calipers to know that I would find a measurement there well within the bounds of the Grandeur Quotient.
"Your honor," she said, "I think he is moving."
I spun around, and she brushed past me. She put her hand out and laid it on his chest. "I feel it," she said, "the slightest movement."
I reached over and withdrew her hand with my own. "Now, now," I said, "at times we can doubt what we see, but I'm afraid there is no doubting Death, especially since it has had residence in this fellow for a thousand years or more."
"But I felt it move," she said. There was a look of fear in her eyes, and I could not let go of her.
"Garland probably upset the internal structure of the thing when he moved it. You must feel the breaking of brittle bones turned to salt or the rearrangement of petrified organs. That is all."
"Yes, your honor," she said, but still stepped back with a look of horror on her face.
How could I have told her that all of my calculations to this juncture pointed to an individual of great awareness and subtle nuance? How could I admit that this freak of nature, with his insect skin and webbed fingers, was, as far as I could tell, the very pinnacle of human evolution? "Where does this put me?" I wondered. I wanted desperately to change my findings. It would have been easy, and I knew, for all involved, it would have been better, but the magic that had infected my computations had put a hex on me that tied me to the bitter truth.
I spread the calipers wide and once again approached the subject. For the first time since beginning, I saw the face devoid of geometric and numeralogical inference. Instead of angles and radii, I saw that he wore a sly, close-lipped smile, and that from the shape and position of his lidded eyes, he had been a man of great wisdom and humor. Then I looked up to see the candles flickering all around the dim cavern that was the church. The Master's voice ran through my head. "Cley," he said, "you are buried alive." I began to feel trapped and claustrophobic. I forced myself to hide my fear and placed one tip of the instrument at the direct center of his forehead and the other at the end of his long chin where grew a small pointed beard. I tried to take the reading, and then instantly realized I had no idea what I was doing. The Physiognomy, with its granite foundation in the history of culture, suddenly dissolved like a sugar cube in water. I stood between my love and that slab of living Death and felt Garland's blizzard of sin sweeping over me.
"Aha," I said, a bit too theatrically, "here is what I was looking for."
"What is it?" Aria asked.
'Well, if you take into consideration the meager nostril slits and divide them into the center forehead to center chin measurement, as I have just done, this activates the Flock vector, which in turn conclusively proves our subject is little more than an animal with an upright stance."
'The Flock vector?" said Aria. "I'm unaware of it."
As was I, but I created a history for it and talked at great length about the brilliance of my professor.
A look of disappointment crept across her face, and I was unsure if it was for me or for her own desire to be witness to a grand discovery. At that point, though, all I wanted was the beauty and to sleep for a very long time.
As I put away my instruments, Aria asked if I would like her to get Garland. I brought my finger to my lips and waved for her to follow me. She looked surprised, but she helped me on with my topcoat and then put on her own. I took one more glance at the Traveler before fleeing. His expression seemed somewhat different now. The mouth was slightly open, as if satiated after having devoured the Physiognomy right out of me.
I couldn't, for the life of me, recall the most basic theories, and the geometery of things had all become circles. The sudden nature of the loss made me dizzy, leaving me sick to my stomach. I no longer had an angle on the world, an anchor in myself. Aria helped me across the swaying bridge, through the doors, and down the steps. When she did not let go of me out amid the swirling snow, I knew she knew there was something wrong.
After a few deep breaths I insisted she unhand me and then, by force of will, trod along in my normal, determined gait. My eyes, devoid of the ability to measure, saw no meaning. Everything was just inexplicably there and brimming with uncertainty. "Structure determines existence in the physical world," I said to myself. At least I had remembered this much, but the meaning of it melted down to the base of my spine and froze.
I left her in the street outside the Hotel de Skree. "Tomorrow, ten sharp," I said. "Don't be late."
Up in my room, I pushed a vial and a half of the beauty into my favorite vein. I was perilously skimming the edge of overdose, but I needed strong medicine to tolerate my fear. I could feel the violet liquid almost immediately begin to perk in my head and chest, but before she had me fully in her grasp, I went over to my valise and took out the derringer I carried as insurance against hostile subjects. Placing a chair, back to the wall, I sat with my feet pulled up and listened hard for a lurking danger I could not put my finger on.
Cursed Anamasobia had become the hell of physiognomists, and I prayed to everything— Gronus, Aria, the Weil-Built City—that my amnesia was not permanent. If it were, my life would be lost, and I knew I would eventually have to turn the derringer on myself.
"The Flock vector, I like it," said the professor who now stood before me, laughing. He was dressed all in white and as young as on the first day of class I had had with him.
"That damn Traveler has erase
d everything," I said, unable to see the humor.
"Perhaps you'll be joining me soon," he said.
"Be gone!" I yelled. He evaporated instantly, but the sound of his mirth lingered like the smoke of an extinguished cigarette.
In the wind outside, I heard low voices, passing on gossip. The lights flickered. The Mantakises were either groaning or singing, and the floor began to move like water. I bobbed in the tide, trying to think of numbers and rules, but all I was capable of seeing in my eye's mind was a parade of meaningless faces. The harder I thought, the faster they sped by, disappearing into the wall above the bed. During my career, I had read each of them, each revealing to my instruments and well-trained eye a certain measure of guilt, but now they might as well have been lumps of cremat for all the meaning they bestowed. I couldn't find the sum, and, when I tried to divide, my brain went haywire, emitting showers of green sparks. If I even attempted to think of the mathematical formula for figuring surface-to-depth ratios, I would immediately picture Mayor Ba-taldo, leaning on his balcony, saying, "A first-rate beating," and smiling like a classic moron.
I was, though, able to read a message of doom written on my own countenance as it peered back at me from Arden's mirror across the room. My hands shook from the beauty chills, those tremors of the nervous system that occasionally rack the long-time user, and the paranoia was exquisite. For a moment, I thought I saw the face of a demon at the window, staring in through the falling snow. To calm myself, I got up, grabbed my instrument bag off the dresser, and brought it to the bed. Still holding the derringer in my left hand, I opened the bag with my right and took the chrome instruments out one by one. I laid them on the bed in a straight line and then stood and stared. The sight of each of them brought back to me the damnable face of the Traveler. I was reaching for the calipers when I heard someone begin climbing the stairs to my room, one heavy step at a time.
Even as I spun to face the door, bringing the derringer up for better aim, the question struck me, Why do they call this man-thing the Traveler? It seemed to me he hadn't gone anywhere for centuries. But like an enormous dry cornstalk rattling in the autumn wind, I saw him in my eye's-mind now coming to me, wearily mounting the stairs, his very skin creaking, his exhalations, heaves of dust. I wondered if he was using the banister. "Mantakis," I yelled at the top of my voice, yet only the slightest murmur escaped me.
The sound of steps ceased at the landing and I cocked the trigger. I had never fired the gun before, and I wondered if it was, in fact, loaded. Three methodical raps sounded upon my door and in the silence that followed I detected the faint wheeze of labored breathing. "Come in," I said.
The door opened, and it was a good thing I did not give in to the urge to pull the trigger, because standing before me was the pig-faced driver of the coach and four. The miserable wretch stared, glassy-eyed, as if he were walking in his sleep.
'The Master requested that I fetch you," he said without the slightest trace of his misbegotten humor.
"Drachton Below is here?" I asked, unable to hide my astonishment.
'You must accompany me," he said.
"Very well," I mumbled. I put on my overcoat and gathered up my instruments. Hastily I put them in the bag and snapped it shut. When the driver turned to begin his descent, I slipped the derringer into the pocket of my coat. Shaking like a leaf, my mind swimming through rough seas of beauty, I staggered toward the door. I knew that whatever came of this, it would be no good.
The driver took each step at the same dense pace with which he had ascended. When I reached the landing outside the Mantakis's bedroom door, I heard Mrs. Mantakis gibbering on and on about something, and the very sound of her voice drained the energy out of me. I leaned, exhausted, against the wall for a moment and closed my eyes.
"Your honor," said the driver.
I instantly awoke and somehow we had gotten outside the hotel. The moon was bright, and I was startled that the weather had turned warm and the snow seemed to have all melted.
"But how could this be?" I asked.
"The Master is waiting," he said, holding open the door of the coach.
I nodded once and got in.
As we drove down the main street of town, I wondered where he could be taking me. I had a million questions, but soon I realized that the whole episode must be the result of the beauty, working its magic on me. "It's not real," I said to myself. When we passed the church and headed across the field to the boundary of the wilderness, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I hoped that if I could fall asleep and wake up, I would be back in my room at the Hotel de Skree, or better yet, back in the Well-Built City.
I must have fallen asleep, because I was awakened by the jolt of the carriage coming to an abrupt stop. "Persistent hallucination," I whispered. Looking out the window was like looking into a pool of ink. I could not make out the merest glimmer of light. Suddenly, the door of the coach swung open and there was the driver, holding a lit torch in his hand. The flame from it blew and sputtered in the warm wind, and the way it lit his inadequate face made him appear now more sinister than stupid.
"Where in Harrow's hindquarters are we, my good man?" I asked, stepping out into the night. I slid my left hand into the pocket of my overcoat and put my fingers around the derringer. My right hand followed suit with the opposite pocket and found the handle of my scalpel.
"The entrance to the mines of Mount Gronus," he responded. "Follow me, your honor."
We walked a few paces up a dirt path to the timber-lined opening of the main shaft. "Are you quite certain the Master is here?" I asked.
He said nothing but plunged into the deeper darkness and forged unhurriedly ahead. I scrabbled to keep up with him, the whole time my mind turning over the possible questions the Master would ask me. "No matter how bad it gets," I told myself, "if you know what is good for you, you won't mention Aria."
We walked for a long time through pitch black. It is true, he had the torch, but what could it light? For every few yards of night it burned away, there were oceans more that would flood in. This darkness everywhere had me constantly on the verge of screaming. I have no idea how I was able to continue, but continue I did. We seemed to be traveling down to the heart of nothing when all of a sudden, we turned to the right and stepped into a small cavern that was lit as brightly as day by some luminescent source I could not detect. Sitting in a high-backed chair situated in front of a garden of waist-high stalagmites, legs demurely crossed, smoking a long thin cigarette, was Drachton Below. Curled up at his feet with its back to me was a very large doglike creature covered with long silver hair.
"Cley, good to see you," he said and blew a stem-thin trail of smoke from his lips. He wore burgundy silk pants and a lime green jacket. The pale skin of his hairless chest almost reflected the brilliant light that was everywhere.
"Master," I said, bowing slightly.
"And how is the investigation going?" he asked, inspecting the back of his right hand.
"Splendidly," I said.
"Really ..." he replied.
"But are you real?" I asked. "I recently took the beauty, and I am in a jillywix as to the corporeality of this meeting."
"What do you mean by real?" he said and laughed.
"Are you here?"
"Not only am I here, but, look, I've brought along an old friend of yours." With this, he nudged the creature lying at his feet with the sole of his sandal. "Up," he commanded. It growled slightly, kicked its back legs spasmodically once, and then began to rise. I was astonished when it did not come to rest on four legs, but continued till it was standing on two like a dog convinced it is human.
"Wait . . ." I said, because something about it began to appear familiar to me. Then it turned and I saw the lupine face of Greta Sykes, the Latrobian werewolf. "Not this," I said, taking in her form. She was larger than when I had first tracked her down, and there were two rows of metal bolts that pierced both scalp and skull at the crown of her head. Her incisors and claws still
appeared as sharp, but now beneath the thick coat I could detect the human breasts of a young woman. Trapped in her eyes was a look of great suffering and sorrow.
"Your little werewolf. I've done some work on her, messed around with the brain and added some new pain centers. She doesn't change into a little girl anymore; now she is an effective agent."
"Your genius astounds me," I stammered.
"Down," he told her, and she lowered herself to the floor, curling up at his feet once again. "Cley, your genius had better astound me at the completion of this case. I want that white fruit."
"I am about to enact the Twelfth Maneuver," I said.
He laughed at me. "Whatever," he said, waving his hand. "If you fail, I will have Miss Sykes here perform the Last Maneuver on you and the rest of that tedious town."
"As you wish, Master," I said.
"And what is this I hear about a certain young lady who is serving as your assistant?"
"Just a secretary, sir. There are a lot of bodies to read down there. I need someone to help me keep track."
"You're a sly one, Cley," he said. "I don't care what you do with her. I want the fruit. The Weil-Built City needs me to live forever."
"But of course," I said.
"Now," he said, turning his profile to me and placing the much-diminished cigarette in his mouth, "take that surrogate penis out of your coat pocket and let's see some of the old scientific exactitude."
"Am I to shoot?" I asked.
"No, you are to stand there till the end of time. I'm not giving medals for stupid questions this week. You'd better get to it," he said speaking out of the smiling side of his mouth.