by Jeffrey Ford
I reviewed my findings on her breasts. “And what do you see when you look in the mirror?” I asked.
“A species striving for perfection,” she said.
“I love an optimist,” I told her. She smiled at me, and I was forced to turn away. To my surprise, facing me was her grandfather, newly nestled in the corner of the room. The sight of him nearly made me jump, but I controlled the impulse. “What do you think of your grandfather, that ill-figured boulder there?”
“Nothing,” she said.
I turned to look at her, and she was staring peacefully at the old blue man. “I may have to do some chiseling during my analysis,” I told her.
“I’d be honored to help in excavating that head,” she said.
“What might we find?” I asked.
“The journey to Paradise,” she said. “It’s there. He told it to me when I was a young child. Sometimes a moment of the story will come back to me all in a flash and then, a minute later, I will have forgotten it. It’s there, encased in spire rock.”
“I suppose we will find a white fruit at the center of his brain,” I said.
“Or a cavern,” she said.
I acquiesced with a smile and quickly asked, “Who is the thief?”
She uncrossed her legs, and I pulled up a chair. Leaning forward, as if in the strictest confidence, she whispered, “Everyone thinks Morgan took it and fed it to his daughter, Alice.”
“Why?” I asked, leaning close enough to smell her perfume.
“The child is different now,” she said, pursing her lips, her eyelids descending.
“Does she fly?” I asked.
“People say she now has all the right answers.”
I took out a cigarette and lit it as a means of changing the subject. “Have you recently been in contact with any members of the opposite sex?” I asked, staring directly into her eyes.
“Never, your honor,” she said.
“Do you have any aversion to the naked human form?” I asked.
“None at all,” she said, and for a moment I thought she smiled.
“Does the sight of blood or suffering bother you?”
She shook her head.
“Are either of your parents dimwitted?”
“To some extent, but they are simple, kind people.”
“You must do whatever I say,” I told her.
“I fully understand,” she said, moving her head suddenly so that her hair flipped back over her shoulder.
I couldn’t help myself and leaned over to measure the distance from her top lip to the center of her forehead with my thumb and forefinger. Even without the chrome exactitude of my instruments, I knew she was a Star Five—an appellation reserved for those whose features reside at the pinnacle of the physiognomical hierarchy. It sickened and excited me to know that if not for the fact that she was female, she would have been my equal.
When I pulled my hand away, she said, “Star Five.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“I will,” she said.
We left the hotel, and as we proceeded up the street toward the church, I asked her to recall for me the essence of the renowned Barlow case. She hurried along beside me, her hair twisting in the wind, as she recited from memory exact facial measurements I had made myself ten years earlier on an obscure doctor who had flatly denied having written subversive poetry.
To be candid, Arla Beaton reminded me of my first love, and I knew she would mean nothing but trouble for me. Involving a woman in the official business of the realm was strictly forbidden, but how could I ignore her? In the work I had done all my life, she was for me, in the concise elegance of her features, my earthly paradise. As she driveled on about the case in question, quoting me, quoting Barlow’s rotten poetry, I temporarily lost my head and allowed myself to remember.
When I was a young man studying at the academy, we had a series of classes in the human form. These were early classes in “the Process” (a term used to describe the eight-year curriculum of the physiognomist), and they were extremely difficult so as to weed out those who were not worthy.
I had an advantage over many of my classmates, because I refused friendships and eschewed social life. In the evenings, when the others were out visiting the cafés of the city, I took my notebooks and returned to the academy. Every night I descended to the bowels of the enormous old building to the Physiognomy labs. The human form lab was a small room with just enough space inside for a table and chair. When you sat down, you faced a window with a curtain drawn across it. Simply by speaking, you could command the curtain to open. As it did, a stark white, well-lit room behind it appeared. The academy saw to it that a subject for study was in that room twenty-four hours a day. These were naked forms, and by speaking you could order them to bend and pose for you. I often wondered how much these human puppets were paid or if they were paid at all. They were usually of inferior physiognomical design—who else would do such work?—yet this made them all the more interesting as subjects.
I saw my first Zero there—a person devoid of any craniometric, facial, or bodily merit. This fellow was a real favorite with the students. He was often there late at night, I supposed, because he was so dim there was nothing else he could have been doing. Reading him, though, was like staring into infinity, seeing nature with her pants down, so to speak—both unsettling and sublime. I went one night expecting to find old Dickson there, as blank and crooked as a half-melted snowman, but when the curtain drew back at my command, I found something completely different.
She had the most exquisite body I had ever seen. All perfection and her nipples were like the points of straight pins. I had her twist and turn and jump, get down on all fours, and lie on her back. Still, I could not find the slightest blemish. Her face was smooth and radiant, her eyes the deepest green, her lips full, and her hair a cascade of auburn that moved like a divine sea creature swirling in a tidal pool. That first night I stayed with her till dawn, and my commands for crude motor movement slowly gave way to whispered pleas for the wink of an eye or the flexing of a pinkie.
I should have been dead tired that next day, but instead I was filled with a strange excitement, a smoldering in my solar plexus. I could not concentrate on my studies, all the time wondering how I might meet her and have a chance to converse instead of merely command. I returned the next two nights, and to my delight she was there behind the window. On the third night, I told the curtain to open, and the sight of Dickson, drooling, brought an audible groan from me that in turn made that idiot simulate silent laughter. Right there, I devised a plan to discover who she was.
The following morning, I bribed the old fellow who oversaw the operation of the labs. “Just a name,” I said to him, and slipped fifty belows into his jacket pocket. He said nothing but kept the money and walked away. What I had requested was clearly against the law, and I waited for two days, wondering if I would be turned in. On the night of the second day, the authorities showed up at my apartment. Four men in long black coats, one holding back a huge mastiff with a chain thick enough to haul an anchor. “Come with us,” the leader demanded, and they hustled me outside and into a carriage that swept me across town to the academy. During the ride I had given myself up to being sent to the sulphur mines or, at best, executed on the spot.
I was shaking and my mouth was incredibly dry as the four silent agents and the dog ushered me down into the basement where the labs were located. We entered a hallway I had never seen before and from that hallway entered a large stone chamber with metal doors fitted into the walls.
The agent who had spoken to me at my apartment said, “The Master, Drachton Below, has taken a special interest in your progress and has decided to grant your request.” He then walked over to one of the doors, pulled on its metal latch, and slid out a table holding the body of my love. “You requested her name?” said the agent. “She is number two forty-three.”
“But she’s dead,” I said, tears coming to my eyes.
“Of
course she’s dead,” he said. “They are all dead. This one was a suicide, distraught over the indictment of her parents in court by Physiognomist Reiling. Her body has been hollowed out and preserved and then fitted with special gear-work and the grafted neurons of dogs—all of the Master’s invention.”
He leaned over and touched her behind the head, turning her on. She opened her eyes and sat up. “Sing,” he said to her, and she began to grunt pitifully. The other agents laughed. “Now go home and don’t speak a word of this to anyone,” he said. As I hurried toward the door of the chamber, I looked back and saw the men gathered round her, removing their black coats. The dog, free of its leash, was madly running in circles.
5
The architecture of the church at Anamasobia elicited two initial reactions in me, neither of which I allowed myself to act on. The first was to laugh uproariously at the absurdity of its conception; the second, to light a match and burn it to the ground. Composed of that horrid gray wood, the structure had been built to resemble the outline of Mount Gronus. Had Arla not been with me to explain, I would have thought it just an enormous pile of splintered lumber that came, somehow, to a point. As on the summit of the true mountain, there were representative crevices, cliffs, and sheer drops. None of the steps that led to its crooked doors was the same width or height; there was no symmetry to the placement of the windows, which were paper-thin slices of spire rock engraved with holy scenes. Set atop its highest peak was what appeared to be a miner’s axe forged from gold.
“Who is responsible for this mess?” I inquired.
“It was entirely conceived of by Father Garland the first year he appeared in Anamasobia. He swore God had controlled the hand that drew the plans for it,” Arla said.
I took her slender hand, pretending to help her up the steps, but before we reached the door, it was I who stumbled and momentarily leaned against her. She surprised me with her strength, and the smile she gave in helping me drained all of mine.
“You must be more careful,” I told her before pulling back the taller of the two doors.
“Thank you,” she said, and we entered into the darkness.
The bad joke that was the exterior of the building was drawn out to nauseating proportions within, for to enter the church was to enter an underground cavern. There were splintered wooden stalactites and stalagmites affixed to the ceiling and floor. Shadowy constricting pathways led off from the entrance to the right and left of us into utter blackness, while directly in front was a rope bridge that traversed a miniature ravine. Across the bridge and through the sharp outcroppings, like the partially open mouth of a giant, I could make out a large cavern lit only by candlelight.
“Isn’t it incredible?” asked Arla as she led the way across the bridge.
“Incredibly insipid,” I said, feeling the surrounding darkness like a weight against my eyes. “Church as high adventure.”
“The workers and their families feel at home here,” she told me.
“Undoubtedly,” I answered, and nervously began inching my way out above the abyss.
In the altar chamber the pews were hewn from spire rock, and lining the walls were occasional statues that I slowly realized were more of the blue, hardened heroes. Large, white candles flickered here and there, dripping wax and infusing the scene with a dim shifting light that was like the last few moments before nightfall. The altar itself was also a large flat boulder, and behind it hung an immense portrait of God as a miner.
“When Father Garland gives his sermons do they represent the release of methane gas?” I asked.
She did not seem to understand that I was joking and answered in earnest, “Well, he does refer to sin as a cave-in of the soul.”
As she went off down a dark corridor to search for Garland, I stood alone, staring at God. According to the portrait, the Almighty’s physiognomy suggested he might be well-suited for digging holes and little else. To start with, his face was dotted with all manner of fleshy wens. There were hairs protruding from the ears, and the eyes looked in two directions. I could not see his general physiognomy as being influenced by the animal kingdom, but there were certain breeds of dogs and an entire line of simians he might have influenced. He held an axe in one hand and a shovel in the other, and he flew upright, long, blue hair streaming behind, through a narrow underground tunnel. He came at the viewer out of the dark with an expression that suggested there had been a recent cave-in in his overalls. Obviously, this was a scene from the Creation.
This was not my introduction to the odd religious practices of the territories. I had read of the existence of a church, out in the western reaches of the realm, built of corn husks. Their deity, Belius, takes the form of a man with a bull’s head. These strange Gods scrupulously watch the miserable lives of the outlanders and sit in judgment over them. The illusory guiding the ignorant to some appointed Heaven beyond life where their clothes fit and their spouses don’t drool. On the other hand, in the city, there was Below, a man, and the Physiognomy, an exacting science, a combination of reality and objectivity capable of rendering a perfect justice.
I heard Arla and Garland approaching down the corridor behind the altar and was about to look away from the portrait when it struck me I had seen that face somewhere before. My mind raced to think, but already Arla was introducing me to the Father. Making sure the thought was filed away for later, I turned and found before me an exceedingly small man with white hair. He held out a doll-sized hand with tiny fingernails sharpened to points.
He showed us to his study, a small cave at the back of the church, and offered us a liquid derivation of cremat. We kindly settled for a glass of something he said he had brewed himself—an amber-colored liquid that smelled like lilac and tasted like dirt. I couldn’t stop drinking it.
Garland’s voice had a strange whistling sound behind it that was most irritating. Combining this with his freakish little face and his aphorisms—“When two become one, then three becomes none and zero is the beginning”—he was hopelessly less than adequate. Arla, on the other hand, stared at him with a certain reverence that bordered on the unseemly. I could see I would be forced to shatter her perception of this pretentious runt.
“Tell me, Father,” I said, after we were settled in and he had said a short prayer, “why you should not be my primary suspect.”
He nodded as though it were a fair question. “I already know the way to Paradise,” he said.
“What about the fruit?” I asked.
“Plump and sweating sugar every minute. I touched it, and it felt like flesh. Did I ever think of biting it? Even having only heard of it, did you not already think of biting it? Everyone here wanted it. But as long as we left it alone, the power of that combined desire kept us on the path of righteousness. Now we are heading for a blizzard of sin.”
“Did anyone show a particular interest in it?”
“One or two,” he said.
“Who took it?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head. “For all I know demons swept down one night from out of the wilderness and crept into the altar chamber while I was sleeping.”
“I’ve heard a lot of talk recently about an Earthly Paradise. Can you tell me exactly what that is?”
Garland pinched his nose with the fingers of his left hand and then sank into a pose of deep thought. Arla leaned forward in her seat, waiting for him to speak.
“The Earthly Paradise, your honor, is the one small spot in this enormous world where nature has made no mistakes. It is God’s last best work before he was buried alive. It is a place that accommodates all sin and all glory and turns them drop by drop into eternity.”
“God was buried alive?” I asked.
“Every day we dig closer to him,” he said.
“What will happen when we get there?”
“We will have reached the beginning.”
“Of what?” I asked.
“The beginning of the end.” He sighed when he was through and looked over to smile
at Arla. She smiled back and he said, “Tell your mother thank you for that whipped tadberry pie.”
“Yes, Father,” she said.
“I hear from the mayor that your dog was recently taken by a demon,” I said.
He nodded sadly. “Poor Gustavus, probably rent to pieces by a pack of the filthy creatures.”
“Can you describe it?” I asked.
“It was as Arla’s grandfather said, like the way you always supposed a demon would look. It left a strange smell behind as I saw it flapping away.”
“Did it have sharp nails?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
“I think you are equating me with the demon in some way because of my nails,” he said, never losing his composure. “I keep them sharpened in order to pull out splinters like the one now lodged in my heart.”
“I’ve got a pair of chrome tweezers you can use,” I said. Then I turned to Arla and asked her to leave the room. “The Father and I have personal business we must discuss.”
When she was gone, I told Garland I would need his church in which to perform my investigations of the townspeople.
“You mean they will disrobe in my church?” he said, standing.
“That is the procedure,” I said. “You will be on hand to keep the crowd orderly and silent.”
“Impossible,” he said, and took a step toward me, thrusting out those two little hands as if he intended to use them.
“Easy, Father,” I said. “I’d hate to have to enlighten you.”
Then he grimaced, and I noticed his front teeth had also been sharpened. He was turning red in the face and shaking slightly. I put my hand in my coat pocket and around the handle of my scalpel.