by Jeffrey Ford
I opened my eyes a few hours later and saw Misrix sitting at his writing desk, plunging, into the crook of his arm, a hypodermic of what I was sure was sheer beauty. When he finished, he grimaced and slid the needle out.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He turned quickly and stared into my eyes. At first his look conveyed guilt, but I could sense the beauty wrapping around his mind, and guilt soon became innocence.
"The beauty," he said, smiling.
"Do you need to take it?" I asked.
"I need to take it when I am going out into the ruins without my father. It makes me lighter and gives me ideas where to hide if I have to."
"Don't we need to concentrate on getting to the lab?"
"Certainly, certainly …"he said and took to staring at the wall.
I got up from where I had slept and walked over to him. "Misrix," I said.
He gave no reply.
"Misrix," I said, and touched his wing. He turned his head slowly, and said, "Yes, Cley, I know, the lab." He pushed back his chair and stood. "No resting," he said. "When we get out into the ruins, we must move quickly."
I nodded, letting him know I understood, but he had already brushed past me and was heading out the door. I followed him down the hallway almost to Below's room when he abruptly stopped and put his hand to his head.
"Wrong way," he said, turned around, and went past me in the opposite direction. Imagine yellow eyes, bloodshot, and hands that were slightly trembling. Just the very mention of the beauty was bad business as far as I was concerned. This drug had been the leash that Below had used to restrain us all in the days when the City was still whole. Its powerful hallucinogenic effects left one in a rictus of paranoia, totally suggestable, the Master's favorite environment through which to govern. I had spent many years wrapped in its hellish nightmare and quite a few more trying to forget its insistent tug. Misrix was using it, much as I had in the old days, as an antidote for his fear of being human.
We went through another door which opened onto another long hallway. At the next door, Misrix let me catch up to him. "Cley," he said, and smiled foolishly. "When we go out this door, I will lock it behind me. We will have entered the remains of the public baths. Through these we will get to the street."
"What are you thinking about right now?" I asked him.
"About the white fruit."
"Let's think about werewolves instead," I said.
He laughed and put his arm on my shoulder. "You think about them," he said, and pushed the door open.
I followed him out quickly. He turned around, and with a long key I had not noticed him holding before, locked the door. Then he straightened up, and we made our way amidst the still-bubbling cisterns. Great chunks of the roof had fallen into the pools, letting the daylight stream into the water that had remained crystal clear. When I looked down, I could see frogs and fish darting about, and down deeper yet, I could make out the remains of a human rib cage.
Although the baths had sustained less damage than many other sites in the City, broken tile lay everywhere, and there was one spot where we had to leap over a fissure in the floor through which a swift stream of purified water now ran. The real problem came when we reached the entrance. That once grand archway that had led to the street was choked almost to the top with an enormous hill of shattered coral masonry. Misrix began the climb toward the sliver of daylight that shone in at the very peak. I took to the hill and made my way up the uneven slope, twisting my ankle and cutting my forearm in the process. Misrix reached a hand down and dragged me up the last few feet. We had to lie on our stomachs in order to slip through the opening into daylight.
The sky was clear and the sun had already lifted away from the horizon. For the first time, I could see the extent to which the City had been decimated. Entire ministries that at one time had held hundreds of workers on any given day were completely leveled. The pink coral that Below had used for the structures lay in boulders, slabs, and jagged toppled columns everywhere. Reaching from beneath these weighty fragments were the skeletal arms and hands of the citizens of the City. In the crevices, I could make out the glint of brass gears and the twisted belongings of Below's children. A fine pink powder swirled in the street when the breeze blew.
I followed Misrix down the gently sloping hill of debris, taking care as to where I placed my feet. As I leaped off the last boulder and onto the street next to the demon, I could tell there was something wrong. Misrix held his head back as if he were looking at the sun and sniffed the air.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'm not sure. It might be the wolves, but it would be very unusual for them to be awake so early. It might just be the beauty, playing tricks on me."
"Wonderful," I said.
The demon looked nervously over each shoulder, but didn't move forward. I knew that he was panicking as I had out on the fields of Harakun.
"Come on," I said. "Your father will die without the antidote. Everyone will die."
"There's something out there," he said.
"It's your fear," I told him.
"This way," he whispered. Then he pointed down the street to where the road was blocked by the fallen facade of the Ministry of Education. "Through there," he said, and began to run, using his wings to propel him.
"Wait," I yelled, and sprinted to catch up.
I followed the demon through a chaotic maze designed by explosion, leaping from rock to rock, squeezing through tunnels, sprinting down powdered streets. Misrix used his wings and legs together in a way that made his every move fluid and weightless. I was a crooked shadow, stumbling merely at the thought of his ease.
When we finally came to a long stretch of clear street,
Misrix slowed down and waited for me. I caught up to him and stopped to get my breath.
"It looks like we will make it there, Cley," he said.
"I'm glad you think so," I said, still heaving.
"A quarter of a mile up this street," he said.
"One of the old munitions factories?" I asked.
"Where they used to make the shells?"
I nodded.
"Very good, Cley," he said, and the tip of his barbed tail came up and tapped me on the shoulder.
He started walking more slowly then, and I easily moved along at his side. From his dazed expression, I could tell he was lost in a daydream of the beauty.
"Stay with me," I said to him.
"I was thinking," he said.
"I know."
"I was thinking about my father telling me that you were a great Physiognomist. No, not great …the best, he said. He told me that no one read a face like you did. It makes sense to me, the Physiognomy, as he described it."
"It's one of those things that sounds like it's got to make sense, but it never does," I told him.
"Read me," he said, and stopped walking.
"Here?" I asked.
"I know you have no instruments, but give me an estimated reading," he said putting his enormous horned head down in front of me. "What do you see?"
Behind Misrix on the side of the street was a grim tableau—a mother, cradling an infant's skull in a splayed web of finger bone. I preferred to stare at that than to stare into his face and apply the bogus science that had in the past made both a fool and a butcher of me.
"I see, 'intelligent,' " I said, and quickly began walking.
"Intelligent," the demon said. He followed behind me.
"Perhaps it is merely the spectacles," he said.
"It's the wings," I told him.
"What about the horns?"
"A nice touch," I said.
"What do you say to the way my forehead bulges and to the prominence of my cheekbones. They must say something to you."
He continued to beg for my approval the rest of the way to the laboratory. It became difficult thinking up accolades that would be subtle enough to make them convincing. I won't describe to you what the Physiognomy really told me about him. If I'd belie
ved it, I would have fled.
7
"They know he is sleeping" said Misrix as we sur-veyed the damage to the lab. Not one beaker or test tube was left unbroken. Brightly colored liquids had spilled out, painting the floor like a dream. There was a horrific stench of chemicals and werewolf excrement.
"How do they know?"
"You don't understand; the wolves know things that we can't know. They have been waiting for this for a long time. Once, when I hid above them in a dark nave of rubble among the ruins, I heard them whispering of revolt. I told my father about it. He called them to him from the plain and the ruins the next evening and served them large platters of a green, raw meat. They ate ravenously and when they were satiated and lying on the ground in a daze, he put a pistol to the heads of two of them and blew out their brains. The others cowered. He kicked one in the side and put a few bullets into the ground near Greta. Later that night, I was awakened by them howling out on the fields of Harakun."
"They've done a thorough job, here," I said, stepping over a pile of shit. "Still, we might find something."
"They've marked this place as their territory," he said. "I think they knew we would come here."
"Take anything that appears remotely interesting," I told him. "See if there are any vials of the antidote, any written notes." I moved farther into the lab, pushing aside nets of wire, glass shards grinding beneath my boots. The stench was blinding.
I followed a row of wooden tables along the back wall. Gingerly picking through the remains of beakers, I searched for a shred of Below's thoughts. Instead, I uncovered a dozen palm-sized creatures that mixed the attributes of man and fish. The heads were bulbous and gilled. Although there were legs with feet, there were also tails. I stared far longer than I should have.
It was slow going, and the discoveries were all wondrous but unsettling. I found gears made of bone, and bones grafted from metal. These lay in a patch of grass that grew out of the top of a table as if it were dirt instead of wood. Next to this was a collection of female heads of a lime complexion. They lay drenched in a clear viscous solution beneath the shattered remains of the huge jars in which they had once floated. There were racks of instruments, none which I could identify, and springs and gears scattered amidst the glass.
Every few minutes a machine in the shape of a diminutive lighthouse at the center of the lab would begin to glow and project three-dimensional images of colorful, long-tailed birds flying through the air. Their different songs filled the lab. As abruptly as the device turned on it would suddenly go dark, and the sounds and images would fade. It was during one of the flights of the birds that I found a scrap of paper on the floor. On the shred of rumpled parchment, rendered in ink were two objects, an hourglass and an eye, with an equal sign between them.
"Come here, Gey," Misrix called. I put the paper into my pocket and carefully made my way past an operating table rigged with wires and tubes and around a chair made of metal. When I reached him, he was pulling a case out from beneath a worktable.
"What do an hourglass and an eye have in common?" I asked him as he hefted the object up onto the table.
"The past has run through both of them?" said the demon, then flipped the latches on the sides of the case and opened it to reveal a blue-velvet lining and five vials of some liquid arranged in a star-shaped pattern, their corked tops almost touching at the center.
"What is it?" I asked.
"This isn't it," he said, and shook his head. "I remember Father telling me that he called this mixture Holy Venom. What it does, I can only remember is not good."
"Have you seen any other cases like this one?" I asked.
"None that haven't been broken into and the vials shattered."
"Let's keep looking," I said, but just then Misrix held his hand up, motioning for me to stay quiet. He leaned his head back as he had done earlier and sniffed at the air. I could see his ears actually twitch slightly as if tracking some vague sound.
"They are coming, Cley."
"We haven't had a chance to find anything."
"There's nothing to find. Everything is destroyed, and Father never committed his ideas to paper. We've got to leave now."
I looked around one more time to see if there was anything promising I had missed. The sight of the place in ruins saddened me, for I would have liked to have seen all of the products of the Master's obtuse mind. It was the thought of the werewolves approaching that brought me to my senses. "It's better off that all of this is destroyed," I said.
We made quietly and cautiously for the door. Misrix leaned over my shoulder, and whispered to me, "When we leave the building, don't stop running." He had us wait what seemed an incredibly long time before he broke into the daylight and took off down the street. I followed close behind, running away from the stench of the lab as fast as I could. I knew there was nothing more I could do to save my neighbors.
If the werewolves were there, I didn't see any and began to get suspicious as to whether Misrix had merely panicked again. I slowed down to a walk when we reached the boundary where the rubble began, mounds of treacherous wreckage sloping toward a distant ridge formed by the southern wall of the Ministry of the Territory.
"Hurry, Cley," the demon called back. "They're coming."
"I don't see them," I said, climbing onto the first boulder.
"You won't see them until it is too late."
"Where are they?" I asked. Just as I said this, I looked over my shoulder and saw ten sleek forms charge out of the laboratory door and head up the street in our direction. I scrabbled to the next rock and from there kept climbing, leaping with a precision that seemed unnatural. I could see Misrix ahead of me, spinning and tumbling in his leaps from spot to spot while behind me the baying grew louder.
When I saw the demon scrabble down into the rubble, I went to my stomach and followed him through a tight passage which led to a fall through darkness and an abrupt landing in the underground network. As I fell I heard the wolves pass overhead like a distant wave, their claws tapping on the coral.
Misrix helped me to my feet. "The beauty showed me this escape a long time ago," he said.
He motioned for me to follow him, and we began walking down the winding tunnel. "I want to show you a secret," he said, and put his tail around my shoulders.
The instant we left the tunnel, I knew where we were. In the center of the huge underground expanse sat the shattered crystal egg that had at one time been the false paradise.
"This is part of the story," he said.
I nodded.
"I named this place Paradise," he said.
I looked through the jagged remains of the crystal shell and saw beneath barren trees the skeletons of exotic beasts scattered in the dirt. The fresh water that had at one time run through the center of the transplanted territory had dried up.
"Why that?" I asked.
"A strange thing," he said. "The first time I discovered this place, I found, lying on the ground out there, the head to one of my father's gladiators. I'd seen them before among the ruins, but this one caught my interest because it had belonged to the man that I, myself, had fought here in the underground. It was the man who had snapped off my horn.
"I picked up the head and considered taking it home for my collection. The moment I lifted it, I could feel a light vibration coming from inside. I looked down to where I had it cradled in my arm, and I saw the lips move. The gear work inside the head began to whine as the eye lids fluttered open. The mouth moved, and it whispered the word Paradise. I dropped the head and kicked it away from me. But ever since then, I call this Paradise," he said, pointing to where a cold, floating ash had replaced the once brilliant sun.
I said nothing.
We continued on through another tunnel that finally opened onto the street across from the entrance to the public baths. I looked toward the dark opening we would have to enter, but halfway up the mound I saw six of our pursuers sitting on the rocks, staring down.
"Not
good" said Misrix, and I saw the werewolves turn in our direction. They began to growl and slowly descend.
"Back underground," I said.
"No," said the demon. "Run for the hill and climb as fast as you can, straight at them."
"What should this accomplish?" I asked.
"I can't explain; go," he said and pushed me with all his might.
I ran forward and began climbing. The werewolves snarled, and I snarled back at them as we drew closer. Misrix climbed behind me, yelling for me to keep going. When they were within ten yards of me, I felt a breeze begin to blow at my back. I heard the wing thrusts just as I felt Misrix's hands grabbing me beneath the arms. He lifted us up, away from the gathering danger, straight into the sky. We remained there for a moment, treading air, and Misrix said, "Where are the birds?"
"There," I said, pointing off to the east.
"That's them," he said, and stopped beating his wings. We dived headfirst, then glided along an arc that swept us down over the leaping beasts and suddenly up toward the top of the hill. Misrix put me down beside the opening into the baths. The werewolves had reversed direction and were now climbing toward us.
"Let's go," I said, but the demon waited until he made certain that the metallic birds had fixed on our position. When they dropped in altitude to exactly the height at which we were standing, he called over his shoulder, "Now."
I slid through the hole and Misrix followed close behind, his wings snagging for a moment on the top of the entrance. Carefully pushing down on the dark flaps, I was able to free him. As he got to his feet, I crouched down and looked back through the opening. The birds were less than fifty yards away, and I could hear the growling of the werewolves directly below us. Again, he lifted me beneath the arms and leaped off the top of the inside mound. We flew low over the debris and dived into one of the cisterns. The water was freezing, and I had only had a second to hold my breath. I tried to struggle free of the demon's grasp, but he would not let me go.
He placed his hand atop my head, and I instantly felt my thoughts swirling through a storm that spun my consciousness into a globe. I became like a tornado in a paperweight and flew upward through a tunnel whose walls rippled with orange energy. The demon flapped his wings behind my eyes, and suddenly I found myself deep in the Beyond, staring down from a tree branch. I flew off the tree, now a demon myself, out across the inland ocean. When I wheeled around and headed back toward the shore, I saw the outline of a fantastic walled city, the buildings, huge dripping mounds riddled with holes. I knew it was the Palishize, that deserted city that had been described in Aria's recollections of her grandfather's journey through the territory.