by Jeffrey Ford
As cold as it is to say, I thought nothing of the predicament of my neighbors in Wenau, but only of Anotine. I could not lose her. The only prospect for her survival would be to find the antidote. It was this alone that convinced me to gamble.
“You’re not really going to drink that muck, are you?” asked Brisden.
I walked past the others and took a seat in the metallic chair, which now frightened me less than the thought of what I was about to do.
“I can’t allow this,” said the doctor. “Cley, this is senseless. There is no evidence that this will do any more than sicken you.”
“I’m with the doctor,” said Nunnly. “We are going to need you when the Delicate comes. You’re the only one who knows this foolish plan of yours.”
“I’m only going to take a little of it,” I said.
“Absurd,” said the doctor.
“We’ll have to prevent that,” said Brisden.
“Wait,” said Anotine. “He knows what he is doing. You said you would trust him. Now is the time for trust. Stand away from him.”
I watched as the gentlemen all bowed their heads and reluctantly moved a step back. It confirmed what I was beginning to suspect, that Anotine was really the leader of the group. Although Hellman had always spoken with the most conviction, it was evident that she had an unvoiced authority over the rest of them.
“I’m grateful to you all for your concern,” I told them. “If this wasn’t necessary, believe me, I’d rather a Rose Ear Sweet any time.”
“What if you perish?” asked Nunnly. “What are we to do with the Delicate?”
“Kill him,” I said, “and take his head to the gate. Align his eyes with the eye on the emblem. Hopefully it will open for you. The Panopticon might save you from the dissolution of the rest of the island.”
“And if it doesn’t?” asked the doctor.
I had no ready answer for him, for I had barely thought that far ahead myself. To my surprise, I found a lit Hundred-To-One in my right hand. When I looked up, Brisden, Nunnly, the doctor, and Anotine were all smoking. After a few puffs, I swirled the liquid one more time and put the flask to my lips.
“Cheers,” said Brisden.
The green fluid trickled across my tongue and then down my throat, leaving an almost unbearably bitter taste. I did not take all of it in case it proved useful and more would be needed later. Handing the flask to Anotine, I sat back and waited.
18
Twenty minutes passed and the only noticeable effect was that my stomach had begun to ache. The others pulled up chairs and sat quietly, watching my every breath.
Doctor Hellman had been right in that there was no scientific basis to my belief that to ingest the brain liquor of the Fetch might afford me its special power of vision. All I could have said in my defense was that in light of the Fetch’s remarkable abilities, the near emptiness of its skull was enough to prove that science had little to do with the natural laws that governed the island. To do so, though, would imply that all of the work the researchers had done in their long confinement had been nothing but an elaborate game of make-believe.
Every now and then, Anotine would ask me how I felt, and I would give her the same report as to my status. During her fourth inquiry, Nunnly interrupted and said, “I think it is fairly evident he has a stomachache. While we are waiting for Cley’s head to take flight, could we at least discuss what we are going to do with the Delicate when he comes in search of us.”
“Agreed,” I said, and they all seemed relieved that I felt well enough to carry on a conversation.
“One thing we must take into consideration,” said the doctor, crossing his legs and then uncrossing them, “is that we do not know what our menacing friend is capable of.”
“The signal gun seemed fairly effective against the Fetch,” said Brisden.
“There is only one remaining shell for it, though,” said the doctor.
“With anything else, we are going to have to get dangerously close to that mouth of his to kill him,” said Anotine.
“Could you create some weapons?” I asked Nunnly.
“It’s not my specialty,” he said, “but I guess I can put together just about anything in my workshop.”
I thought of the crossbow that the people of Wenau had supplied me with, but I had no idea as to how to describe the operation of the firing mechanism. “What about a couple of long poles with sharp blades attached to the ends?” I asked.
“What about a big rock I can hit him on the head with?” said Brisden.
“We could just have him spend some time with Brisden,” said Nunnly. “With that strategy, he might be persuaded to cut his own head off.”
“What about a trap?” said Anotine. “I think we should trap him first.”
“Do we have a net somewhere?” asked the doctor.
“Slingshots for everyone,” said Brisden.
I was about to suggest that we shock the Delicate into unconsciousness with the same technology utilized by the metallic chair in which I sat, when the whole room suddenly tilted to the left. Gripping the armrests, I tried to steady myself as everything tipped back in the opposite direction. This seesaw effect rapidly increased in speed, giving way to a brutal spinning that made me feel as if I were descending into the funnel of a whirlpool.
“Something is happening,” I yelled to my friends as they spun past. I was forced to close my eyes against the dizzying motion of the world around me, which elicited a sudden attack of intense nausea. The disorientation also disturbed my hearing, because though I knew the others were only a few feet from me, their voices seemed very distant. I could only catch snatches of what they were saying. Somewhere in my motion-addled mind, I began to believe that it was the chair I sat in that was rotating. The phenomenon soon reached an unbearable speed that took my breath away. With my last shred of consciousness, I flung myself out of the metal seat.
For quite some time it felt as if I were turning somersaults in midair. Although I kept anticipating a sudden crash, it didn’t happen. “Perhaps I have gained the power of flight,” I thought. I finally opened my eyes, expecting a view from somewhere near the ceiling only to find the floor in my face. A moment later, the impact of the fall registered, as if my entire body suddenly remembered the collision. I grunted with the delayed pain, but the spinning had stopped, and the nausea began to dissipate.
Hands grabbed at my arms just beneath the shoulders, and I was being hoisted to my feet. At the same time, the others’ voices became clear, and I heard Brisden behind me say, “Cley is quite a duffel bag full.”
“The weight is all in his head,” said Nunnly.
As soon as my field of view became more than the stone floor, I realized a change had occurred in my vision. The room appeared submerged in a clear, lime green light, and all of the objects that filled the tables gave off a mild incandescence that seemed associated with a vague jumble of whispering in my mind. The transformation was unsettling to say the least. I closed my eyes, and the indistinct voices fell silent.
“Are you all right?” asked the doctor.
I nodded to him. “I’ll be fine,” I said, and my speech sounded low and throaty, almost unrecognizable to me.
“Cley, it’s me, Anotine,” she said, and I felt her hand upon my face. “Wake up if you can.”
I wanted to tell her I was not asleep or faint, but I did not want to hear that foreign tone in my voice again. Nunnly and Brisden still held firmly to me, and I felt another hand reach down along my wrist—I assumed it was the doctor’s—in order to find my pulse.
“Come back to me, Cley,” I heard Anotine say. Then she lightly slapped me.
I smiled to let her know I was fine, and when I opened my eyes her face was before me, an absolutely radiant green. Her lips moved, and I knew she was speaking to me, but her words were blocked by the whispering inside my head, which had begun again the moment my eyes focused on her.
In addition to the alien voices, I also saw pictures that
did not obscure my view of her, but played over it in a strange palimpsest. Numbers and chemical formulae were scribbled across her forehead. They wavered and swam in circles along with a school of words that spoke the meaning of it all to me. When I saw an image of Drachton Below superimposed upon her right cheek, holding up a beaker of violet liquid that became the center of her iris, I turned away. Shrugging off the supporting hands, I ran out of the lab, down the hallway, and out into the village.
Frantically, I fled from this new attribute whose power seemed to increase with every second. The architecture, the dying flowers in their planters, the steps in the myriad stairways I climbed and descended, all revealed themselves to me in a dizzying barrage of information. I had found the key that unlocked the symbols of Below’s mnemonic design, and the secrets came at me from every direction, clamoring to have me know them, accosting me with their detail, leaping upon my back like so many malicious demons and riding me through the alleys.
I flew rapidly through states of knowing—the formulae for deadly explosives, equations that equaled fear, philosophies of chaos and order and the insubstantial border between them. I saw phantoms, some I recognized from the Well-Built City, step forth from sculptures to expound upon their lives, and cornices and arches oozed music and poetry. When I was finally exhausted, I fell to my knees in front of the fountain of the pelican whose breast spurted an arched stream of water. The stone bird told a tragic tale concerning the death of Below’s sister. There was no running away from the Master’s brilliance. All I could do to stop it was close my eyes.
The relief that darkness brought calmed me, and I was able to regain my rationale. I crawled forward and reached up over the edge of the fountain to cup some water in my palms. Splashing this over my face, I breathed deeply.
“They are only ideas,” I said aloud to myself. “They can’t hurt you. Only notions.” My eyes remained closed as I leaned back against the base of the fountain and began to cry. These tears had nothing to do with fear. The reason I had run, the reason I felt then an overwhelming sense of desolation, had to do with what I had seen in Anotine’s face. Like the purported power of the false science of Physiognomy, the Fetch’s borrowed vision had read the cues of her outer form and revealed to me her essence.
That flask of violet liquid that the image of Below had held up to her eye was nothing less than sheer beauty. In the Master’s memory palace, she was the symbolic manifestation of the formula for the vicious drug I had so long been a slave to. My desire for her was clear to me. It was the recultivation of an addiction that had at one time nearly cost me my soul.
“He’s over here, by the fountain of the pelican,” I heard Nunnly call.
His message was followed by the sound of footfalls on the pavement. I felt them all around me, and my recent revelation made them seem like ghosts who had materialized to torment me. Doctor Hellman could very well have contained at his core the process for turning men and women into werewolves. Brisden or Nunnly might have been the receptacle of Below’s recipe for the sleeping virus. In my mind, I cried out for Misrix to bring me back. I wanted nothing but to awaken from the nightmare. Again I felt Anotine’s hands on my face, and I flinched at her touch.
“Please, Cley, open your eyes,” she said, and with that, everything changed.
The pleading in her voice, the touch of her fingers on my forehead, an image of our making love, came suddenly together, like some magic spell, to completely obscure the horrible knowledge I had of her. I was like a traveler at a crossroad. One path would, if all went well, deliver me back to my placid existence at Wenau. The other most likely led toward death, but for the duration of the journey I would be with Anotine. My decision to embrace the illusion was almost instantaneous. Until then, I had been solely focused on the ramifications of memory. It was time to succumb to the mechanism of forgetting.
I opened my eyes to find that the green affliction had passed. The day was bright, and Anotine’s face was more beautiful than ever. She leaned forward and kissed me. “There’s an odd custom I don’t think I will adopt,” said Brisden as he helped me to my feet.
“Can you stand on your own, Cley?” asked the doctor.
“I’m quite all right,” I said.
“What did you see?” asked Nunnly. “What frightened you?”
“It was just the weirdness of it all,” I said. “A rush of information. The place is brimming with knowledge.”
“Will you be able to take the stuff again when we get inside the Panopticon?” he asked.
“I’ll be able to do it. I know what to expect,” I said.
“What did you learn about us?” asked the doctor.
“Nothing. I didn’t have a chance to really focus on any of you,” I said. When it was evident from the quizzical look he gave me that my answer was hardly sufficient, I spoke quickly before he could question me further. “The weapons,” I said. “We have to prepare for the Delicate. Nunnly, do you understand what I’m looking for?”
The engineer nodded. “I think so.”
“Brisden,” I said, “I want you to go to the edge of the island and check the rate of disintegration.”
He bowed as low as his stomach would allow and set off, surprisingly, without a word.
“I’ll get the remaining shell for the signal gun,” said the doctor.
“Meet at Anotine’s as soon as possible,” I called.
Brisden waved without looking back, and the other gentlemen turned away to their tasks. I was left alone then with Anotine.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” she said.
“Nonsense,” I told her. “I’m not leaving here without you. No matter what happens, I will find a way for us to be together.”
She smiled and put her arms around me. I pulled her close and could feel every inch of her body against mine. Putting my lips to her ear, I meant to whisper, “I love you,” but instead the words came as, “I believe in you.”
19
Back in Anotine’s bedroom, I had only to tell her my idea of using the technology of the metallic chair as some sort of weapon, and she immediately came up with a way it might be put to use.
“The seat and back are the only pieces that carry the charge,” she told me. “We remove the arms and legs, and then lay the effective parts in the entrance, so that when the Delicate tries to come in we can use the black box from a distance to disable him. Once he is weakened, we can finish the job with one of the cruder weapons that Nunnly comes up with.”
“Perhaps we should then fire the signal gun at him,” I said.
She shook her head. “From what you said before, the signal gun should be held for emergencies. If you destroy his face with it like you did the Fetch’s, we may not be able to use him to gain access to the Panopticon.”
“You’re right,” I said, impressed with the speed and clarity of her thought. I could see now that she had shrugged off her fear and was attacking the situation as if it were a research problem.
I followed her down the hall to the laboratory, and stood back as she moved quickly from table to table collecting an armful of implements. The way she launched into the project of cannibalizing the chair showed me why my conjecture as to her being the leader of the group was correct. Although Nunnly was the engineer, Anotine herself was a wizard with tools. She was altogether focused and graceful in her work, and when she needed my assistance, gave orders with an authoritative voice that told me I had better pay attention.
As we set the makeshift trap up in the entrance to her bedroom, I asked her how the black box was able to affect the chair parts from a distance.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said, kneeling to check our placement of the device. “The apparatus was here when I arrived long ago. I can tell you, my discovery of how it worked was rather interesting. I had always thought that the chair, being made of a metallic alloy, must have some importance beyond being another piece of furniture, but I just couldn’t find the key to its significance. One day
, after long hours of research on trying to study the instant between a candlewick’s being lit and my extinguishing of it, I sat down in the chair. Back in those days, I believed my stay on the island would have a limit, and I wanted to make the most of it. Instead of simply resting, I thought it would be a good time to take another look at a certain black box with buttons I had also found here in the lab.”
I laughed. “Happy accident,” I said.
“A shocking discovery,” she said. “I think it proves something that Brisden always says: with enough time and the right degree of curiosity, all secrets will be revealed.”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of my own problems in locating the antidote.
“The time has come for another discovery, Cley,” she said, standing up from where she had been adjusting the sections of the chair. From the manner in which she dipped her head and arched her eyebrows, I realized she wasn’t speaking hypothetically.
“What would that be?” I asked.
She paused for a moment before speaking. “It came to me before by the fountain of the pelican. You said you believed in me. Why would you have to say that? None of this is real, is it? Nunnly, Brisden, the doctor, myself, we’re all merely the afterthoughts of some other greater place, aren’t we?”
I walked over and took her hand. “Listen,” I said. “I’m from another place, and there is no one there who doesn’t wonder the same thing. We may have the curiosity, but there will never be enough time to answer that question. Live your life, Anotine. Be real for me, and I’ll be real for you.”
Her look softened, and then she smiled. “Agreed,” she said, and shook my hand.
I was going to put my arms around her, but Brisden came in then, overheated and babbling at an alarming rate. He walked directly between the two of us, pushing apart our hands, and took up a seat at the table near the back of the room. I had never witnessed the weighty philosopher practice his verbal profluence. The words came in torrents, strung together by a frayed ribbon of exotic grammar.