by Jeffrey Ford
“The Flock vector?” said Arla. “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, Arla 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 geometry 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. Arla 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.”
7
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, Arla, the Well-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 erased 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 Bataldo, 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 Mantakises’ 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 Arla.”
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 Well-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.
I pulled out the gun and raised my arm to aim. The derringer swerved and dipped at the behest of the beauty, my fear, and the increasingly pungent odor of Greta Sykes. “What if I were to miss,” I thought as I closed one eye for clearer vision. That thought exploded in my mind a moment before the gun went off, its report ricocheting off the blue walls of the cavern.
I came awake suddenly, sitting straight up. Across the room from me there was a neat hole in the center of Arden’s mirror and a sleet storm of shattered glass on the floor in front of it. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. The bright day outside my window revealed an end to the snowstorm. I threw the derringer on the floor and took out a cigarette. There was the sound of rustling a floor below, and then I heard Mantakis hurrying up the stairs. His pounding at the door thickened my headache and spiked my eyes.
“Your honor,” he called, “did I hear a gun go off?”
“A little experiment, Mantakis,” I said.
“An experiment?” he asked.
“To see if you were awake,” I said.
“I am,” he said.
“What is the time?”
“Your honor, it is nine-fifty.”
“Draw me a bath and bring me a steaming bowl of that excrement that passes for sustenance here.”
“The wife has made a cremat goulash that is a testament to her abilities,” he said.
“My very fear, Mantakis.”
I almost lost consciousness while adrift in the acrimonious waters of my bath. With the freezing temperature, the blowing snow, and the fact that I felt as if I really had traveled to Mount Gronus through the night, my mind reeled and my consciousness began to constrict in the manner of my other apertures. Just as I was going under, Mantakis appeared and swept a steeping bowl of goulash under my nose, which had the miraculous effect of smelling salts. I actually thanked him for that whiff of death and then ordered him to take it, and himself, away.
I sat, frozen, and searched every inch of my mind for the lost Physiognomy. I couldn’t turn up a single digit, not even a fraction of a chin. “What do you do when the surface gives way and you fall in?” I said to the snowdrifts beyond the screen. Then the Master came to my thoughts, carried by a chilly gust of wind, and for a moment I wondered if perhaps he had not truly contacted me by somehow swimming through the beauty and into last night’s hallucination. The memory of Greta Sykes standing before me led me to believe the entire incident was nothing more than a nightmare concocted from my own worst fears, but the Master was rich in magic, a primitive phenomenon I had no knowledge of. For all their grotesque weirdness, these thoughts did not concern me as much as the prospect of facing the faces of Anamasobia empty-headed.
8
Mayor Bataldo was standing in a small snowdrift waiting for me outside the hotel. He was dressed in a long black coat, and atop his bulbous head was a ridiculous black hat with a broad brim. Seeing me, he flashed a grin so full of whimsy that I wanted, right then, to give him another beating.
“Beautiful day, your honor,” he said.
“Contain yourself, Mayor, my patience is a brittle thing today,” I told him.
“The people of Anamasobia await you at the church,” he said, his smile fading but never quite completely gone.
We started down the street, snow crunching beneath our boots, the town as still and silent as a graveyard. As we walked, the mayor reeled off the details of his preparations.
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br /> “I have assigned you a bodyguard, the most vicious of the miners, a fellow named Calloo. He will protect you in the event one of the citizens protests the protocol. Father Garland has set a screen up on the altar so that those who must disrobe will have some privacy. By the way, the Father is beside himself with the idea of both nudity and science infiltrating his church on the same day.”
“Keep him away from me,” I said. “Whatever status he has in this town due to his religious station means nothing to me. I’ll have him whipped like a mongrel if he interferes.”
“Arla has suggested that you would like to see Morgan and his daughter, Alice, first, since they have generated some suspicion in the town.”
“Very well,” I said.
“Look, there are your specimens,” said Bataldo, pointing ahead of us.
We were close enough to the church for me to appraise the haphazard line of oafish reprobates. When they noticed us approaching, they grew silent, and it did me some good to see a suggestion of nervousness and perhaps a tinge of fear come into nearly all the faces. Some of the bigger and more brutal looking of the miners showed no emotion at all. How could I really frighten them after their having spent such a large portion of their lives in darkness with the possibility of a cave-in or the invisible danger of poison gas always lurking? At least they did not openly show their contempt.
I was about to head for the door of the church when the mayor took my arm and stopped me. “A moment, your honor,” he said. Then he turned to the crowd and, waving his arms in the air, called out down the line, “All right, as we practiced. Ready, one, two, three …”
The townspeople broke into a raggedly coordinated chorus of “Good morning, your honor,” yelling like a pack of schoolchildren greeting their teacher.
It took me by surprise, and all I could think to do was give a half bow in acknowledgment. This brought peals of laughter from them. Bataldo was beside himself with glee. My anger surged in me, and for a moment I almost lost sight of the situation. Had I actually taken out the loaded derringer and shot the mayor as I so wanted to at that moment, it might have jeopardized the entire case. Instead, I took a breath, turned away, and made for the entrance to the church. It did not help that I tripped on the first of those crooked steps, for that brought forth another torrent of hilarity at my expense.