by Jeffrey Ford
"Have you ever administered it?" she asked.
"Once, to a young fellow who had lost his entire family in a fire. He was so grief-stricken, he could not continue with his life, and thoughts of suicide were always upon him," I said.
"Did it work?" she asked.
"I was loath to give it to him, but he pleaded so pitifully that I finally prepared him a tea from it."
"And did he find happiness?"
"He spent the next three years trying to find out who he had been and what had become of him. He discovered the names of his wife and children, but he could never acquire what they had looked like or any of the moments he had spent with them."
Anotine asked no more questions after that, and realizing my mistake, I relented on my pharmacopic lecture. As we walked along, I saw her very subtly lift her hands, as if she were merely adjusting her hair behind her ears. When she did not think I was looking, I saw her wipe tears from her eyes.
We came across the path that Scarfinati had described to me. It wound through the forest with unnecessary turns and loops as if it had been forged by a drunkard. Nevertheless, I made a point of sticking to it. Anotine hummed the tune from Nunnly's music box as we walked, and I lost myself for some time in the beauty of her voice and the haunting nature of that melody.
Sometime after midday, we came upon a small lake that the path cut across the middle of in a narrow land bridge. Being hot and tired, I suggested that we take a swim. Anotine said she had been feeling somewhat faint and agreed that it was a good idea. Leaving our clothes on the bank, we eased into the cool water.
I let myself slip down beneath the surface and slackened my muscles so that I sank slowly like a dead man. In that dark and quiet place, I remembered sinking in a similar fashion toward the bottom of the river at Wenau on the day that Below's metal bird had exploded. This brought to my mind images of the settlement and my own humble home off in the woods. I saw behind my eyes all of my neighbors, and for the first time in what seemed years I thought about the situation I had left them in. Jensen and Roan, the women I had assisted in childbirth, all of the children I had always thought of in some part as my own, beckoned to me for help.
I carried these troubling images with me to the surface, but the minute I burst through into the atmosphere of Below's memory and took a deep breath, I wanted only to find Anotine. Turning to look for her, I was startled when she appeared from under the water right behind me. She neither smiled nor spoke, but swam to me and put her arms around my neck. Her breasts gently pushed into my chest and her legs came up around my waist. The ends of her hair swirled on the surface of the water in spiral patterns as I joined with her and moved toward the moment. Wavelets began to break against the bank, and in the midst of our passion, she told me one of her dreams.
"I was paralyzed in the present, trapped in a block of unmelting ice in the hold of a ship bound for nowhere. I could not breathe. I had no pulse or heartbeat, yet I could see through the clear substance that was my tomb. Time had no hold on me, and all that passed before me, I saw only in the present, so that I saw it all at once. The faces of the crew when they would come down into the hold to stare at me, Below when he would make his yearly visits, the monkey that was bought by the captain during one of the voyages, the destruction of the ship in a typhoon, volcanoes and krakens at the bottom of the sea, my rescue by a strange race of amphibious people, a great city of dripping mounds where my frozen image was worshiped, and you, Cley. You were there somewhere," she said, climaxing with a sigh that sounded like dying.
When we finished, she swam backwards away from me. "It was a love story bound within an instant," she said, and then dived underwater.
The beauty had me in its clutches before I even climbed out of the lake. We dressed without drying off so that we would stay cool well into the afternoon. I felt refreshed and calm as we again began our journey along the twisting path. The effects of the drug helped me to remember the loss of my neighbors I had felt while floating beneath the surface of the lake. It all came back to me with the same vitality that my visions of Wood and the Fetch and the scenes from the hourglass had when wrapped in the afterglow of Anotine's love. What I experienced this time was a single thought, but one so powerful that it caused me to stop in my tracks. What, I wondered, was to be our future? Were we destined to wander aimlessly through Below's memory until it dissolved?
I turned to look at Anotine and in that very second, she put her hand to her forehead and fell into me with a great sigh.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I feel weak, Cley," she said.
"Are you simply tired or are you ill?"
"I'm dizzy and I cannot feel my hands or feet." Her eyelids were half-open and fluttering madly.
I quickly moved my hands beneath her arms and carried her off the path. Finding a moss-covered spot that looked soft, I laid her on the ground and knelt at her side.
"Just give me a moment," she said. "I need to rest." With this, her eyes closed and she either fell asleep or passed out.
I didn't know whether to wake her or to let her sleep. "Anotine," I called to her, brushing the hair away from her face. I was relieved somewhat to see that she was breathing steadily. Leaping to my feet, I began pacing around her. My instinct told me that there was something truly wrong. Although I kept telling myself that she was merely resting, I knew that what had happened carried deeper implications.
The beauty heightened my paranoia of being left alone, and I began to circle frantically. "Just sleeping, just sleeping," I repeated aloud to myself. I changed directions and walked across to the other side of the path. While I still had my back to her, I heard a voice, not hers, say, "She's not sleeping, Cley."
I spun around and saw a misty figure sitting on the ground next to her. It was a man, someone familiar to me. I squinted, and this brought, what appeared to be, the ghost of Doctor Hellman into focus.
"Doctor," I said, the hair on the back of my neck rising, my pulse quickening, "how are you here?"
"Nothing in the memory is ever really destroyed unless the mind that contains it is destroyed. I have suffered a mild erasure through a willful act of forgetting, but Below can't eradicate me completely. Traces of me will exist as long as he does."
The sight of him back from the dead brought tears to my eyes. I could barely continue in the face of this new assault on my reason. "I have been through too much," I said to him.
"Listen, Cley. She is losing energy now that she is away from the island. We were designed as complex memory markers. You will lose her unless you do something."
"What? I'll do anything," I said.
"Go to the ruins of the city and find the book," he said. "Destroy the page as Scarfinati instructed."
"How do you know about Scarfinati?" I asked.
"I now have all the knowledge of one who has died," he said.
"But where do I go?" I asked.
"You must hurry," he said. "I will wait with her, but I can't remain for too long. My being here requires great effort. You must go, now."
Anotine then opened her eyes. "Doctor," she said weakly.
He smiled at her.
I walked over and knelt down. "I am going to leave you for a short time," I said. "Do you understand?"
"Don't go, Cley. Stay with me," she said, a look of panic in her eyes.
"I'll only be gone for a very brief time. I have to do something that will make you feel better."
"Promise you will come back," she said.
"I promise," I told her. I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the balled-up green veil. Reaching down, I put it into her hand. "Keep this for me until I return. This is my promise to you."
Her hand weakly grasped the veil, as I leaned over and kissed her. Before I could pull my head up, she put her arms around my neck and pulled me gently down again. I could feel her breath on my ear. "I believe in you," she whispered.
"You must leave," said the Doctor. "Hurry."
I stood and be
gan running along the path. When I reached the first turn, I looked back at the scene of Anotine lying there with the shimmering form beside her. She seemed to once again be asleep and, just as he had appeared in the silver ocean's tableau, keeping vigil next to Below's failing sister, the Doctor's hand rested upon his beard.
The journey along the convoluted path to where the fields of Harakun came into view could have lasted minutes or hours. My panicked concern for Anotine, my astonishment at the sudden appearance of the Doctor, the overwhelming uncertainty and weirdness of everything, boiled madly in a stew liberally seasoned with sheer beauty. I couldn't think clearly as to what my purpose was. All I could remember is that I had to get to the ruins.
I left the path, passing over a fallen tree and through some underbrush which eventually gave way to the barren plain. My very first thought upon setting foot amidst the dry dirt and saw grass was, "What about the werewolves?" I had traveled an enormous circle only to return to where I had begun.
The whole exercise seemed futile at that point, but if I didn't continue, what else was I to do? "Damn the werewolves," I thought, and took off toward the ruins in the distance at a pace that was more a stumble than a run.
The sun was still high and the heat was intense out in the open. I perspired past the point of sweating and felt myself beginning to parch. The soles of my feet burned in my boots, and my tongue had turned to cotton. The breezes were both a blessing and a curse, for although they were my only respite from the heat, they also made the saw grass shift, and then I thought werewolves were on the move.
Needless to say, the running did not last long, having early on given way to simple stumbling. I kept my sight fixed on the shattered column that was the Top of the City and advanced as best I could. The whole city wavered in a liquid mirage, making it appear a lost kingdom sunk into the sea. I swam through the heat with the determination of a salmon moving upstream, and finally, after hours, I walked headlong into a portion of the fractured circular wall and bounced back onto my rear end.
Following the wall around, I found a place where there was a gaping hole and entered the ruins. I laughed out loud at my success as I moved into the shadows of the rubble to rest and cool off. The beauty had long been sweated out of me, as had all my fear and confusion. I knew now I had to find the book and find it quickly. There was no time to delay, since the afternoon would soon begin to turn to night. I had promised Anotine I would return, and that is what I intended to do.
When I felt that some of my strength had returned, I left my hiding place and started up a street that I knew would lead me to that part of the city where Below's lab had been located in the ruins of my reality. I hadn't even taken twenty steps before I heard behind me an odd sound, something lightly tapping on the coral pavement. Before I turned, the smell had already permeated the air. There was the sound of growling. Greta Sykes, I thought, and saw in my mind's eye the lean, savage figure of the wolf girl, silver fur, head studded with metal bolts and, burning in her eyes, the desire to tear my heart out.
28
Greta rose up on her back legs in order to lead me through the remains of the city as her prisoner. She walked behind me and a step to the left, slightly hunched, the tips of her long claws resting on the back of my neck. I could tell from the sounds she was making, beastly guttural rumblings, that it was a great effort for her not to kill me. I remained silent and followed the direction her claws dictated. At any other time I might have been unable to walk from fear, but in this instance there was something I feared far more than death. I had to get the memory book, and I knew she was leading me directly to it.
When we arrived at the laboratory, she shoved me through the entrance, and I tripped and fell to my knees. Looking up, I saw that the place was almost exactly as it had been when I visited it with Misrix to search for the antidote. The only difference now was that everything was intact, the glassware was unbroken, holding the various colored powders and liquids that, upon my previous visit in the other world, had been strewn across the floor and walls. The lighthouse contraption that projected intermittently the images of birds was there as was the operating table and metallic chair. Nests of wiring lined the ceiling, and, over the edge of one of the tables, I could see a stern female face framed by wild hair, staring down at me from where it floated within a huge glass jar.
Then a hand came into view, and I heard Below laughing. He helped me to my feet. "Wonder of wonders," he said. "If it isn't the Physiognomist."
"Master," I said out of habit, and nodded. Although he had lost much of his hair on top and had shrunk in stature somewhat from the days when the city was in one piece, he appeared quite vital, and his face, I dare say, might have looked younger than mine at the moment.
"I knew you would come back someday, Cley. I imagine life out there in shantytown must be a little tedious."
"Not at all," I said.
"As you can see," he said, "I've been keeping myself busy." He turned and swept his arm in a gesture that directed my attention around the lab.
"You always were a busy fellow," I said.
He looked sternly at me for a moment, then broke into laughter. "I'm a family man now, Cley," he said.
"You don't say."
"I thought you would be more surprised," he said, looking somewhat disappointed.
"I'm here for a reason," I said.
"Well, it's good to see you," he said. "I'm glad you came. Come, we'll go to my quarters, where we can talk."
I followed him out of the lab and around the corner of the building. Behind the structure, in a lot cleared of the ubiquitous rubble of the city, we passed a row of ten large cages, each containing a man. Upon seeing us, the occupants cried out to be released in the most pathetic voices. I noticed that the two at the end of the row were not men at all but had begun some process that was transforming them into werewolves.
"Silence, gentlemen," said Below to his prisoners. "Who needs a visit to the metal chair?"
His words made them cease their groaning as they cowered away from the doors of their cages.
"What is this atrocity?" I asked.
"Now, now, Cley," he said. "These men came to my city with the express purpose of robbing me. They are criminals. I'm helping them to become useful."
"What have you done to those two on the end?" I asked.
"Well, that's the way they are all headed. Greta needs some playmates. What better way to protect my city than a pack of werewolves? Consider the lesson they are all learning. They are being transformed from thieves into guardians."
"That's horrible," I said.
"Let's try not to judge each other while you are here, Cley. Ideological differences shouldn't come between old friends. I hope that we can agree to disagree."
It was hard for me to ignore the suffering I witnessed, but I told myself that there was nothing I could do about it. These men would become werewolves, and I, myself, would kill quite a few of them. I had to concentrate on getting the book. "Very well," I said.
"Very well, indeed," said Below, and patted me on the back.
We walked through the rubble, heading, for the Ministry of Information.
"I understand you have become a vegetable salesman," he said, smiling.
"I gather and trade herbs and other medicines of the forest."
"Primitive," he said. "But, you also deliver children. Now, being a father, I can appreciate this."
"Do you have a son or daughter?" I asked.
"A son," said Below, actually beaming with pride. "You might say he is much like me in many ways."
"I look forward to meeting him," I said. "And who is the mother?"
"She is wild and untamed …deep and mysterious, but paradise is in her heart."
"Who is she?" I asked.
"The Beyond," he said. "My son is the demon I brought back with me from the territory. I tell you, Cley, I am not lying to you in any way when I say that I truly love him."
"I beg your pardon, Master, but this cre
ature …"
"I know what you are thinking. It is hard for you to imagine how I have helped him. He speaks human language. He no longer eats meat. He reads. He thinks. He is good, Cley.
You will approve of him, I'm telling you. Perhaps it was the last result of the white fruit. After it completely destroyed all of my possessions, it left me one gift. The ability to love. I would do anything for him."
"I am amazed," I said, and even though I knew the tale, to hear Below speak these words was a miracle I never thought I would witness. "What is his name?"
"Misrix. I named him after a certain adept who lived three centuries ago. A great man as I expect my boy to be someday." He stopped walking and put his hand on my arm. "You must try very hard not to react to his demon appearance. Please, treat him as if he were …"
"Normal?" I said.
The Master quietly nodded, and we continued. For the remainder of our journey, he questioned me quite specifically about the daily life at Wenau. He inquired about certain people he had known who might still be alive and also as to the whereabouts of Aria and Ea. When we reached the Ministry of Information, we did not enter through the remains of the public baths, but Below produced a key, and we went through a side door in a part of the massive structure that was still completely intact.
He led me down into the basement and to one of the rooms in the long hallway lined with doors, at the end of f which was the very place that in my true reality of the future, he lay wasting away with the sleeping disease. It twisted my thinking for a moment when I considered that if I went down the hallway to that room and waited long enough, I would meet myself.
The room, with the exception of the fact that there were no windows, was an exact duplicate of the parlor in which I first met Anotine back on the floating island. I took a seat at the table. He very cordially served me a glass of Rose Ear Sweet and pushed a pack of Hundred-To-One's, a box of matches, and an ashtray toward me.
"Relax for a moment, Cley. I'll be right back," he said, leaving me alone in the room.