by Paul Meloy
Doctor Mocking and Bismuth trod slowly across the grass. Bismuth blinked and wiped his eyes, looked around at both the beauty and ruin of this part of the Quay. There were bombsites, and the blackened, collapsed shells of buildings all around, and decay evident, but there was also this place, and across a canal beyond the balloon, a sunken row of tenements leading down to a dark and churning sea.
They approached the basket, and Doctor Mocking held his breath, and looked over the side. The bottom of the basket was covered in pieces of torn cloth and small, sharp-looking wires were jammed and pinned between the weave. Otherwise it was empty.
Doctor Mocking looked up, scanned the far bank of the canal, feeling panic rise.
Then he turned, as Bismuth touched his shoulder.
A man was walking towards them through the trees. He was tall, and broad, and fair-haired, perhaps even bigger than Bismuth, scale giving the impression by way of comparison with the girl that walked beside him and held his hand.
Doctor Mocking gasped, felt his heart clench with sudden relief.
The girl let go of the man’s hand and started to run. She carried something, a round silver object bigger than Bismuth’s Compass, but too similar not to be of the same mould.
Doctor Mocking fell to his knees and let Lesley race into his arms.
“It worked,” she said, out of breath and elated, “It worked, dad!”
She pulled out of his grasp and held the Compass so that he could see. Its needle trembled, tipping towards the two men.
Doctor Mocking looked up at Bismuth, who was smiling. It was a small smile, and enigmatic, but it was there on his face, concealed beneath his beard, and reached his eyes nonetheless.
The fair-haired man had approached but stood at a courteous distance. He leaned against the trunk of a tree, reached up into the branches and picked an apple. As he bit into it, watching the others gathered near the collapsed balloon, something small and silver glittered on his tongue.
Doctor Mocking took the Compass from his daughter’s hands. It was the same one Bismuth had given her on the day of her birth, the twin of the one he carried. He was her Godfather, and had loved Lesley from the moment he had first held her, gentle and fiercely protective.
“Bismuth,” Lesley said. “It worked!”
She hugged him, too, and Bismuth bore it with the same tenderness he always summoned for the girl. He huffed, and patted her back.
Lesley laughed. She turned and pointed to the man she had been walking with.
The man saluted, tipping the hand holding the apple towards the three. He pushed off from the tree trunk and sauntered over.
“He had it!” Lesley said. “He found me asleep in the basket and gave it to me. He said I would be able to bring you back if I trusted it.”
“And she did!” said Jon Index, with a good, deep laugh, and someplace dark —some flux above the linear—the Night Clock began to tick again.
WHITE-FACED, COLIN CLIMBED down from Railgrinder’s cab. Bismuth helped him up onto the platform.
“Thanks, big lad,” Colin said. He walked over to a cast iron bench and sat down. John Stainwright came and sat next to him.
“You okay, mate?”
Colin shrugged. “That was grim,” he said. “I reversed a caravan over a pheasant once. Burst like a football. That was bad enough.”
John smiled and patted him on the shoulder. Colin looked up and scanned the group standing on the platform.
“Where’s Bix?”
John told him, and Colin said, “Oh shit,” and stood up. The café was still there, its door shut, but the sound of voices could be heard coming from within. “Can I see him?”
“Don’t see why not,” John said. “He’s asleep, though.”
Colin went to the door of the café and went inside. John settled back against the bench but a moment later Colin came charging out from the café and grabbed his arm.
“John, you need to see him!”
John felt the ferric sensation of fear in his mouth but Colin said, “Don’t worry, he’s fine.”
“What is it?”
“He’s dreaming,” Colin said. “Come see.”
BIX STOOD AT the corner of the street. The road wound up through the village. He could hear the silvery rush of a stream through a culvert that ran alongside the road. He poked his head around the side of the building against which he stood, a bookshop, small, timbered, leaning against its neighbour, one of many that lined the sides of the road. There was a meadow to his left, high grass tipped with soft fronds, ripe and ready to gust away on the breeze. Beyond the meadow was a forest, deep and cool, and the low mountains, red as dried blood, rising in a perimeter above the trees. Bix lowered his head and sniffed. There was something in the road up ahead. It had called him from the cave in the red rock side of the mountain. He hadn’t wanted to come, but the call was insistent, and he had left the sleeping child on its pile of rugs at the back of the cave and trod slowly down the ladder to investigate. The woods were dark but familiar and he emerged at the edge of the meadow with his paws stained brown, and leafy from the soft, fragrant loam.
And now he stood there, a worm of anxiety twisting in his belly, and watched as the man stumbled down the road towards him.
Bix waited until the man stopped in the middle of the street. The man appeared distressed and disoriented, his eyes wild. Bix could smell his sweat, sharp and redolent of panic.
But the smell and appearance of the man did not concern Bix as much as the thing he carried, the thing from which the call issued in a constant, imprecating whine.
The man started walking again, hesitant steps, his head switching about as though trying to find something familiar on which to focus. Bix shuffled backwards, hiding himself against the side of the bookshop. There was nothing to be gained from confrontation, not at this moment, not unless it became necessary. Bix turned and slipped away into the high meadow grass and ran back towards the forest leaving the man who carried the jar full of darkness and eyes to continue his aimless, faltering journey through the town.
"YOU HAVE TO connect, John,” Colin said. He stood with his hands clasped beneath his chin as though begging John to act. “Bix needs you.”
John squatted next to the sleeping dog and put his hands flat on Bix’s flank. The dog’s breathing was rapid, and his lips curled and his muzzle twitched. Occasionally his paws made a frantic paddling motion.
“He told me to stay here,” John said.
“You can’t leave him, he’s been through enough.” Colin’s voice had an edge now, and John looked up at the old man. Colin was staring at him and there were tears in his eyes. “I’d go, if you’d let me,” he said.
John shifted his weight and sat next to Bix. He put his face close to Bix’s ear and whispered something to him, soothing and full of love. He closed his eyes.
Colin stepped backwards, his hands still clasped at his throat. The café was quiet again, the people hushed and expectant. Johnny had switched off the radio.
And then all was commotion again as newspapers were opened and coffee cups and cutlery resumed their clatter, conversations started up and Johnny flicked the radio back on.
Bix’s agitation subsided. Colin thought he looked peaceful, now John had gone to find him.
JOHN STAINWRIGHT OPENED his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a cobbled street that ran through a small town. He stood and looked about. Small shops lined both sides of the road. They all seemed to be bookshops. Above the sky was a clear blue. He felt a chill, and turned. A wind was rising and it moved through his hair, lifting it from his brow as he squinted back along the road. He felt gooseflesh crackle like static up his arms and across his belly.
Something was coming, and it brought dread to John’s heart even before he saw it, slouching and crashing up the road.
John heard something else: a bark, sharp and adamant, and he turned on the sight of the Autoscope army, coming in their black machines, and ran, headlong, towards
the meadow and the forest, and the low iron mountains beyond.
DOCTOR MOCKING PAUSED and glanced towards the cavernous opening to the Loom. Robin followed his gaze. Chloe was standing beneath a viaduct arch of broken metal looking out onto the Compartment. Her head was tilted slightly, as though she were listening to something above the endless hum and song of the Looms.
The two men approached Chloe and stood, one either side of her, and waited.
After a moment, Chloe frowned and said, “We have to go now.”
“What is it?” Doctor Mocking asked.
“It’s the devil-in-dreams,” she said. “It’s trying to kill my brother.”
"HE’S ONLY THIS big,” Chloe said, smiling. She held her hands an inch apart. “But as soon as I knew mummy was pregnant I put him in my Quay, to keep him safe like I’d been.”
“You knew Claire was pregnant?” Doctor Mocking said.
“Straight away,” Chloe said. “Mummy and Daddy don’t know yet. Or maybe they do now, but they didn’t. It wasn’t for me to tell them.”
“Very wise,” said Robin.
Chloe’s expression darkened. “But now that man is there and the devil-in-dreams wants to kill my brother.”
Doctor Mocking put a hand on his forehead and looked over Chloe’s head at Robin. “Can you get us out of here,” Doctor Mocking said.
Robin shook his head. “I don’t see how, not without an activated Loom.”
Chloe reached out and took Doctor Mocking’s hand in hers. “I can do it,” she said. “With my brother’s help. The same way Lesley helped you last time.”
Doctor Mocking held his hands apart an inch, said, “But he’s only…”
Chloe said, “Not here he isn’t.”
Robin was staring at Doctor Mocking.
“Robin knows,” Chloe said, and squeezed Doctor Mocking’s hand.
“He’s you,” Robin said.
Doctor Mocking felt himself go pale. He was suddenly, and not inexplicably, afraid.
“Yes,” Chloe said. “He’s you. Waiting to be reborn.”
"PHIL?”
Trevena was still looking down at the tracks. He had watched it all and was wishing now that he hadn’t. His stomach grumbled and his mouth was suddenly secreting saliva with too much generosity.
“Phil?”
Trevena turned and saw young Andy Chapel standing at his side. The boy’s face was serious.
“Yes, son?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” Trevena was glad of the distraction. Since Colin had driven Railgrinder over the Despatrix everyone had seemed to retreat into themselves, as if wondering what to do next. Trevena certainly didn’t have a clue.
He followed Andy away from the others until they stood a few feet away from the opening to the train shed.
“What do you know about him,” Andy asked. “The other Andrew Chapel. The man.”
Trevena thought for a moment and said, “He’s empty. I couldn’t get anything from him except his script. It was way beyond a personality disorder. He didn’t have a personality to get disordered. That’s what I think, now you ask.”
“Is that unusual?”
“It’s not unusual, it’s impossible. He described a temperament but without any of the unique effects his perceived upbringing would have had on shaping a personality. Even his sculptures are a constant repetition of the same theme, dull and unimaginative. Shows how easy it is to pull one over on the intelligentsia. But I suppose he wasn’t even an artist, really. You were using him to project yourself into the world through him.” When Andy nodded, Trevena went on, “He was one of the most unengaging men I’ve ever assessed, if I can put it like that. Characterless. I’m sorry.”
Andy laughed. “Don’t be sorry. You’re not insulting me!”
Trevena liked this lad already. He was bright and easy-going and had a good heart. Trevena resisted the urge to pat him on the head. There was something familiar about him, though. He felt like he’d known him all his life. Companionable, that was it. The lad was companionable. Like the son he wished he’d had.
“Phil?”
“Huh?” Trevena came back to the boy, from his strange but pleasant ruminations. He didn’t feel nauseous any more, either.
“We both can’t exist now,” Andy said. “You know one of us has to die.”
Trevena pointed towards Bismuth, who was standing talking to Colin in the doorway of the café.
“He’s spent the last seven years looking for you,” Trevena said. “I don’t think he’s going to let anything happen to you now.”
“No, but what if he was only meant to free me? Just so I could be at peace?”
Trevena shook his head. “I don’t believe that for a minute. And leave that soulless adult version wandering around until he’s completely corrupted? He hasn’t stopped causing problems since he pitched up for that assessment. It’s you that’s one of this lot, not him. I’m sure of it. I think you’ve been his conscience all this time. Now you’re free and integrated, he’s spiralling. There’s nothing left in him to resist the darkness.”
Andy was biting his lip. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Because there’s something else I need to tell you.”
"WE HAVE TO go to my Quay,” Chloe said. Doctor Mocking was holding very tightly to her hands. “Me and Robin. You have to go back home.”
“To die.” Doctor Mocking uttered this as a statement and not a question. He stood up straight and brushed dust from the lapels of his coat.
“Yes. So you can be reborn. And so my brother can help us defeat the devil-in-dreams.”
“Do you know what to do?”
Chloe walked out from beneath the crags of the Loom and crossed the golden boulevard. She stood facing an unfired Loom, its gigantic bulk soaring above her in gleaming tiers and slabs. She approached its flank and put a hand against it, a pink orchid lying against all the gold ever mined from earth, and turned, and called across to the two men:
“This one,” she said.
“You can tell?”
“No. I can fire it.”
“You know how to do that?”
“Yes. It’s easy.”
Doctor Mocking laughed. “Easy! Chloe, you’re incredible.”
Robin was lingering in the shadows beneath the blackened Loom. He was digging about in a pile of machine parts and a snake’s nest of wires.
“It’s intuitive for her,” he said. “There’s no way to get inside these Looms and fire them. They have to be fired from outside, in the Quays or the Waking World. She’s linking up with her brother. They’ll do it together. Hang on, Chloe, I just need… this!”
Robin yanked a device from the midst of the pile of junk and carried it with him across the boulevard. He stood next to Doctor Mocking and Chloe.
“Ready,” Chloe said.
“Yes,” said the two men.
Chloe put both palms against the Loom and closed her eyes.
BIX FRETTED. THE child was restless.
The dog sniffed the air at the entrance to the cave. He could smell the man. He was close now, stumbling through the forest. He had crossed the meadow, the wind behind him, on a wavering course. Now he was amongst the trees and he was coming, coming carrying death.
Bix left the opening and went to the back of the cave where the child lay curled up on a pile of furs. Bix thought back to when he had first been here, seven years ago, protecting Chloe. Dangers then had been real, but located elsewhere. Now the danger was present, and closing. Bix whined, low in his throat.
The boy on the bed of furs flinched and cried out. Bix nuzzled the child’s hand as it lay, fingers uncurled, against his flushed cheek.
What’s your name? Bix wondered. Do you know?
When he had first met Chloe, here in her Quay, unborn but full of power, she had been a young adult, bursting with words and forming thoughts, but this child was young, no more than a toddler. Bix began to despair. What could he teach this boy? How could he protect him?
He began to pant, tail pressed between his legs. He turned to go back to the entrance to the cave. There was a ladder there, and no one to pull it up. They were so vulnerable.
And then the boy spoke.
“Adam,” he said.
Bix lowered his head. “Bix,” he said. “Dog.”
The boy was awake. He smiled, and his eyes were an incredible shade of slate gray. Tiny rainstorms circling his dilated pupils.
“Bixdog,” he said. He reached out an arm and touched Bix’s muzzle with a tiny, soft hand.
“You’re safe,” Bix said. “Safe, Adam.” But he glanced away as he said it, looking towards the opening to the cave.
The boy sat up. He was looking in the direction of the opening. There was a look of great interest on his face,
He turned to look at Bix, and said, “Chloe.”
Bix was so surprised, he barked. Adam toppled backwards onto the pile of furs. He lay on his back and grinned. Then he chuckled, a rich, sweet sound of delight.
“Sorry,” said Bix. “Sorry, Adam.” He put his nose against the child’s neck and licked him. Adam squealed and sat up, still laughing. He pointed towards the cave’s entrance.
“Chloe,” he said, again.
“Yes,” said Bix. “Yes. Chloe.”
THE GROUND TREMBLED. No; it buckled.
Doctor Mocking staggered backwards, and Robin caught him before he fell. Chloe was still there, pressed against the Loom with her eyes closed. She appeared unyielding, almost an extrusion of the great sheet of gold against which she stood. Her arms glowed, brazen, as the light poured through her.
“Chloe,” Doctor Mocking cried, but Robin was dragging him away, back across the rippling surface of the boulevard.
The Loom shuddered, and a line of light, brighter than anything shining within the Compartment, appeared around its base. It was neon, radiant, fearsome.
Doctor Mocking and Robin stood with shadows long and brilliant black behind them, withdrawn to the opening of the blasted Loom again. It shook around them, and great stanchions of clotted metal broke away and thundered to the ground somewhere deep within it. Robin stood with the mechanism he had salvaged between his feet, its wires and circuits glittering in the sudden and enraged light. Doctor Mocking closed his eyes and clenched his fists, conscious of the intolerable clockwork spirals of untold galaxies pressing with every micron against his presence there in the Compartment.