by Jeffrey Ford
Off in the left corner was a drawing table, its surface tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. Next to it on one side sat a stand, holding jars and cans full of brushes, quills, knives, half-melted candles, and bottles of ink. On the other side was a mattress that lay directly on the floor with no box spring or headboard. I pictured Nunnly late at night, overcome by exhaustion from working away at the depiction of one of his mechanical masterpieces: the brush drops from his hand as he falls from his chair onto the waiting mattress.
From under a stack of used paper, Nunnly retrieved a wooden box with a crank handle on the side and carried it to the table at which we were sitting. He placed it down carefully, and then, with his right hand, turned the squealing crank in a counterclockwise direction no less than fifty times. When he finally let go, the box began, very gently, to hum. He walked over and took his seat.
Anotine turned to me, her eyes closed, and said, “Shhh, just listen.”
A faint noise of very fine glass slowly fracturing issued from the mechanism. Before long, though, it increased slightly in volume and arranged itself into a tinkling music that sounded like icicles being struck by minute tin hammers. The song was slow and sweet, eliciting a sense of nostalgia. I looked around at the company and saw that they all had their eyes closed and were following every note with emotional intensity.
I thought of them for the first time as a group, their different personalities and the focus of their individual studies, mixing together in a cocktail of inspiration. They were not merely symbolic objects containing secrets waiting to be remembered. If that were the case, there would have been no need for them to carry on lives and interact. I realized that Below was, through them, using the mnemonic system as a type of laboratory for creativity. Not only was he storing ideas here on the floating island, he was blending them to create new hybrids of thought. The researchers and their interactions, their conversations, constituted an imagination engine whose output was gathered and brought to consciousness by the Fetch. In short, Below was thinking without having to think about it.
When the box ran down and the last plinking note had sounded, Doctor Hellman turned to me, and said, “When I hear that, I can’t help but believe that things are going to work out for the best.”
“Very pretty,” I said, and they all smiled at my approval.
“Let’s have another drink,” said Nunnly, “and then the doctor can explain what happened to Claudio.”
We each assiduously worked at our poison until our glasses were emptied and then refilled. Brisden polished off the bottle before him and reached down next to his chair to lift another pint he had at the ready. As he twisted off the top, he said, “I can hardly remember what Claudio looked like.”
“I remember his thin black mustache,” said Anotine.
“Hair that curled upon his head in a rather remarkable wave,” said Nunnly.
“An altogether serious-minded fellow,” added Doctor Hellman. “Claudio was a numbers man. He worked mathematics like an artist. The tune you just heard was composed by him. It is a theorem of his transposed into notes. For him, numbers had personalities, equations were like plays or stories, great comedies and tragedies that could make him laugh or cry. An interesting fellow, but ill-suited for life on the island as it is prescribed by our absent employer.
“His vanity got the better of him, and he eventually came to the decision that he would no longer share his discoveries with the Fetch. We all cautioned him that to meddle with its work might be a tragic mistake. We did not know the extent to which we would be proven correct. One day when the head swooped down to extract his recent findings, he managed to duck beneath it, come up from behind and grab its long locks with both hands. It attempted to free itself, and the wailing it sent up brought us all scurrying to see what the commotion was. When we arrived he was swinging it by the hair, slamming the head into one of the walls in the courtyard outside his rooms. He gave it four or five bone-crunching whacks before it turned on him and bit his hands, finally liberating itself. It sped back to the tower emitting the sounds of a child weeping.”
“He was very proud of what he had done,” said Brisden.
“To say the least,” continued the doctor. “The next day, we were all sitting at the club, that room where you, Cley, initially materialized. We were drinking and playing cards, when suddenly there appeared a figure in the doorway. He was a tall, exceedingly thin man with a bulbous forehead and a chin that came nearly to a point. I remember his plain brown suit and how snugly it fit his emaciated body. His fingers were long and graceful, and they wriggled like unjointed worms when he spoke. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said.”
“Wait,” said Anotine. “Do you remember his head was shorn but for two long braids in the back?”
The others nodded.
“The look he wore on his face was what I imagine my expression will be when I go to the closet and find there is no more Tears in the River,” said Brisden.
“Or mine, when you next open your mouth to speak,” said Nunnly.
Brisden grinned around his cigarette.
“A nightmare,” said Doctor Hellman. “Then he said, ‘I am looking for Professor Claudio,’ in a high, whistling voice. We were all too amazed at the sight of another person on the island to respond. Claudio finally came to his senses, and said, ‘I am Claudio.’ The stranger excused himself to the rest of us and walked over to the mathematician. In an awkward manner, he leaned down. I thought he was going to whisper something to the professor, but at the last second, he put his lips over Claudio’s ear, covering the entire thing. Then began the most horrifying process I have ever witnessed. I don’t know how else to say it, but that he sucked the life right out of him.”
“More than the life,” said Nunnly. “Claudio’s eyes imploded, his chest caved in, bones popped and broke, and his skull deflated like an overripe melon. The entire procedure took three agonizing minutes. The professor’s screams exceeded any relationship to pain. I’ll never forget it.”
“Claudio was nothing but a limp husk when the stranger released him,” said Anotine.
“A flesh puddle,” said Brisden.
“The rest of you may not recall this,” said the doctor, “but when the thing, for I knew then it wasn’t human, was finished, it belched, and through its open mouth, I could hear Claudio, as if at a great distance, crying unmercifully for help.”
“I wish you hadn’t mentioned that part,” said Anotine, bringing her hand up to cover her eyes.
“Then, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his brown suit, turned to us, and said, ‘Please excuse the interruption.’ With that, he walked out of the room,” said the doctor.
“We did nothing to help,” said Brisden, staring at the tabletop. “We sat by, paralyzed with fear, and watched our colleague get devoured. Since then, I often think of things I might have done.”
There was a thick silence for some time before the doctor went on. “Nunnly and I followed a short distance behind the creature to see where he went. He walked swiftly, taking the most direct route to the doors at the base of the Panopticon. As far as we knew that entrance had never opened in all the time we had been here. But he presented himself to the eye that is carved into the center of the emblem that adorns it. A green light shot out, much like the light that issues from the Fetch, engaging his eyes, and the doors slid open to allow his entrance. He stepped through, and they slammed shut behind him. And that,” said the doctor, “is what you can expect from interfering with the protocol of the island.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“We call him the Delicate,” said Anotine. “It was Brisden’s name for him.”
“I thought it captured the irony between his demeanor and his table manners,” said Brisden.
“I hope you’ll forgive us for not having mentioned it sooner,” said Nunnly, “but we can barely stand the thought of it.”
There was nothing I could say. Either we would perish by way of the disinteg
ration of the island or at the gaping mouth of the Delicate, who I surmised was some kind of agent for the eradication of errant or dangerous thoughts from the mnemonic system. I merely shook my head. The glasses were filled again, cigarettes were lit, and Nunnly went over and wound the box up. This time the same tune seemed more lurid than nostalgic. While we listened, the Fetch flew by the window outside, then returned to stare in. The doctor silently motioned for us all to laugh. We did, a false chorus of merriment that iced the eerie moment and convinced Below’s spy to move on.
While I waited for the box to wind down, I weighed the words I would use in order to bring the others into my plan. I knew that without them, it would be impossible to circumvent what the doctor called the protocol of the island and get inside the Panopticon. Even with them, it was going to be difficult. When the last notes of the music had disintegrated and a contemplative silence still held sway, I lit a Hundred-To-One for courage and spoke.
“I have a confession to make,” I said. The others looked up from their thoughts and focused on me. “I am not here to fulfill the position of specimen, but instead I am on a mission to save both yourselves and your employer, Drachton Below.”
“Fancy that,” said Brisden with a laugh. “Perhaps you should switch over to ice water now, Cley.”
“No, hear him out,” said Anotine. “I feel he is telling the truth.”
“Go on, Cley,” said the doctor.
Nunnly leaned back in his chair and smiled in amusement.
“The island is disintegrating because there is something wrong with the health of Below. There is a direct connection between them. He created this place and is linked to it by means I can’t fully explain.”
“Try,” said Nunnly, blowing a smoke ring.
“We don’t have time for explanations,” I said. “Below is infected by a sleeping disease that has put him in a coma, and his body is wasting. As he debilitates so does the island. There is an antidote to this disease and it is here on this very island. The only problem is that it is hidden in an object which I believe is in the Panopticon. If I don’t find it, Below is going to expire, and if he does, so are we all.”
Brisden started to laugh. “Cley, I appreciate your humor.”
“You’re starting to sound like Brisden,” said Nunnly, poking a smoke ring.
“Anotine,” I said, looking to her for help.
“I do believe you, Cley, but I can’t say why or how.”
“We haven’t got time,” I yelled. “Look, you know something has to be done, yourselves. That is why we are here. I think you are all just afraid to act.”
The doctor sat forward and placed his drink on the table. “I believe you, Cley.” Then, turning to the others, he said, “I’ve got something in the way of proof that might convince you to follow him.”
“Please let it be more than one of your rambling dream interpretations,” said Nunnly.
“Have you got a mirror back in your workshop?” asked the doctor.
Nunnly nodded.
“If you don’t mind,” said Hellman, and the engineer got up and walked down the hallway.
“Now, now,” said Brisden, “doubling your image won’t make you twice as believable.”
Anotine seemed more certain after the doctor had spoken. She smiled and put her hand on my back. I was as puzzled as the others as to the evidence he might have, but I stayed silent and hoped for the best.
Nunnly returned with a square mirror that was two feet by two feet. He laid it on the table in front of the doctor, and said, “The last one in is a Fetch’s leg.”
The doctor reached inside his coat and brought forth a small vial. He held it out in front of him so that we could all see. It glowed there in the dimness of the room like a silver flame, its reflection bouncing off the mirror and throwing bright dancing patterns onto the walls. I knew instantly it was a part of the sample we had taken from the ocean, and when I looked more closely, I saw miniature images swirling and twisting through the thick liquid.
16
“Stand and observe,” said the doctor. He unscrewed the small glass stopper from the top of the vial and very carefully poured the shimmering liquid onto the surface of the mirror. It flowed out with a lazy thickness and puddled in a mound before spreading flat to cover a good portion of the glass.
“What is that?” asked Brisden, standing now and leaning forward to get a better look. He weaved slightly from the drink and blinked his eyes twice in order to clear them.
Nunnly also began to show an interest when the shallow pond of silver started to swirl within its boundaries. “A dream?” he asked.
Doctor Hellman shrugged. “A piece of the ocean,” he whispered, as if speaking too loud might cancel the effect he was looking for.
“It’s beautiful,” said Anotine.
“Watch now,” said the doctor, “and you will see what I am talking about.”
Images began to form in the liquid mercury. First there came the vague outline of a person. Then it was clear that the figure was holding something round up to his eyes. As the details slithered into place like crease-snakes in the silver, I thought for a moment that it was going to be me on the floor of Anotine’s bedroom, inspecting the steel ball. Instead the detail coalesced and began to move, revealing Below, biting into the fruit of paradise.
“I see a man,” said Nunnly. “He’s eating something.”
“Quite right,” said the doctor.
“Now it is changing into the same man, holding a kind of dog creature on a leash,” said Anotine.
“Look carefully at the next scene,” said Hellman.
Then I was there, sitting across from Below in his office at the Ministry of Benevolent Power back in the old days of the Well-Built City.
“Why, that’s Cley,” said Brisden.
“I see him,” said Nunnly.
My head slowly spun into the fruit of paradise from the first scene. Below lifted me and took a bite, and the series of tableaux began to play from the beginning again with perfect accuracy at the speed of dripping honey.
“The man you see in all of these scenes … Well, the ocean beneath us contains the entirety of this man’s life, every movement from every instant of his existence. He is ever-present on the surface of the silver waves. This is the merest portion of that sea, and it happens to hold three distinct incidents. I believe the man whose life is being detailed is Drachton Below, our employer. Cley, as you saw, shares one scene with him, but it is proof that he must know him.”
“Couldn’t it all be a dream?” asked Nunnly.
“I used to think they were dreams,” said the doctor, “but now I think they might be memories. If this is so, then we have been trapped all of this time in a world that has as its essence the soul of Below. If you want to survive, I suggest we follow Cley’s advice.”
“I don’t want just to survive,” said Anotine. “I want to escape.”
“If I can save him, I think I can convince him to return you all to the lives you left when coming to the island,” I said, unable to look into Anotine’s eyes as I made the false promise. I prayed that the doctor would not have been self-effacing enough to realize that he and the rest of them were no more than the insubstantial stuff of thoughts. I let my proposition sink in for a moment before lifting my head and asking, “Who is with me?”
Nunnly nodded in silence.
Brisden gave a grunt that was obviously meant as an affirmation.
Anotine said, “I’ll do anything to leave here.”
When I looked at the doctor, he smiled and nodded, but in his expression I saw a hint of sadness. “There’s no choice but to follow you,” he said.
I was a little taken aback by his gaze, but I could not stop. I had them where I needed them. As long as I could attain the antidote without ever having to tell Anotine the entire truth, I would be able to continue.
“Very well,” I said. “Tomorrow, when the sun is directly overhead at noon, I want you all to meet me at Anotine’s.
From that moment on, you will have to do whatever I ask of you, no matter how strange or dangerous it might seem. I will explain as much as I can as we proceed. But if I were to tell you the plan now, the Fetch would surely be upon one of us as soon as the alcohol wore off. You’ve got to trust me that your safety is my greatest concern, although there will be moments of doubt. From now until tomorrow, return to your work and work diligently. When you cannot work, sleep. Try not to consider, even for a moment, the possibility of what might happen.”
When I finished speaking the others looked at me strangely for they had never heard me address them with so much self-confidence. For a moment I had fallen back into the autocratic speech patterns of a Physiognomist, First Class. I was somewhat startled myself, but managed to counter its effect with a smile.
By the time we left Nunnly’s, it had stopped raining, and the sun shone in its final hours. The temperature had also nearly returned to its usual warmth. Anotine and I, ignoring my advice to the others of work and sleep, shuffled through the wet green leaves that littered the wood and marveled at the starkness of the naked branches silhouetted against a pink twilight. We said nothing but held tightly to each other. I wondered what she was thinking, but did not ask for fear that she would ask the same of me.
When we reached the edge of the island, it became obvious that the disintegration process had accelerated past the rate it had been earlier that afternoon. The clearing where we had all met and watched Brisden push the winch over the rim was now, itself, gone. Trees fell before us to the growing nothing, and the crackling sound of their disappearance, which at one point had been so faint, was now readily audible, like the feasting of an invisible swarm of insects.
On the way back to Anotine’s rooms, we discovered that most of the blossoms that had filled the planters of the terraced village had shriveled and turned brown. She stopped to pluck one of the dead vines and crumble it between her fingers. At first, her look was that of the researcher, studying how the crumbs of stem came apart and floated away toward the stone of the terrace floor. Then her lips curled back and her eyes winced in a show of disgust. For the remainder of our walk back to her rooms, she kept wiping her hands together even after all trace of the dead plant was gone.