Authors: Felix Gilman
“The silence is oppressive. A record player might be nice.”
“Ha. Perhaps not. Speaking of music, I visited the opera in Maliverne last night. Some thousand years forward and leagues clockwise of this place. Do you know it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“They engineer their sopranos from birth for fat. They make their fat ladies almost literally spherical. They think it’s important. One of those misunderstandings that gets passed down that buzzing telephone-line of the city’s history. It looks rather remarkable. Shining in stagelight, a chorus of perfect spheres, like people sometimes imagine angels. Except sweating copiously into velvet dresses. And the noise is very loud but not very good. My date was unhappy, I had to leave early. But this reminds me: how was the
Beast
engineered? Describe its scars. Describe its
shape.”
“It was a very big lizard.”
“Oh, don’t be tiresome. What was it took your fingers off, by the way? Does the thing bite?”
“A machine. I got caught in its gears.”
“Did it have
very
sharp teeth?”
St. Loup wanted to know everything about the Beast. Again and again he questioned Arjun—what had it said? How was it made? Bird, reptile, mammal, or indeterminate? What had it said about the Mountain? What had it said about Shay?
Because Shay’s Beasts were rare, and precious. They were the most extraordinary game in the city. Shay made them and used them and discarded them, scattered across the city in freak shows and sewers and temples and ruins—whispering Shay’s secrets, babbling prophecy. Rumor had it that they knew what Shay knew of the Mountain, which was likely considerable. Most of them didn’t last long. Hunters caught and beheaded them. Churches burned them, mistaking them, not unreasonably, for demons or lycan-thropes. Sometimes they died of their own surgical wounds, or simply relaxed into nonexistence. Sometimes one or other of St. Loup and Arjun’s fellow-travelers caught one, squeezed its secrets out of it, and killed it quickly so it could speak to no one else. The magus Abra-Melin had a glass jar containing a dead cat that had borne the marks of Shay’s manipulations, but didn’t dare open it for fear the little thing would turn to dust. Once St. Loup had fought a duel with Lord Losond, up on the roof of the Hotel, in the glass and sunlight and murmuring bloodthirsty antennae, over the ownership of a recently discovered Sphinx; and both of them had cheated, but Losond cheated better, and St. Loup ended up in the hospital, and Losond listened to what the Sphinx had to say, and vanished soon after and was never seen again.
“Where did it go? After the Museum, where did it go?”
“It took on the form of a prosperous local businessman and I believe it went to start a new life for itself.”
“Oh, Arjun, haven’t we been through too much together for you to tell me such ridiculous lies?”
T
urnbull pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him, folding his hands neatly in his lap, leaning forward as if slightly concerned.
“Has St. Loup been mistreating you?”
“I think you were the one who drugged me.”
“You were talking to him for a long time yesterday.”
“I told him nothing I won’t tell you: that I don’t know anything useful.”
“Well, now, don’t sell yourself short. You found one of Shay’s Beasts. That’s not bad work, even if you did manage to lose it again.”
There were two thugs at Turnbull’s back—a big low-browed man in a cheap suit, and an even bigger man in janitor’s overalls. They glared at Arjun, they glared at Turnbull’s back, they kept glancing warily at each other, braced for action. Arjun guessed that one was Turnbull’s man and the other St. Loup’s. When would they betray each other?
“But frankly the Beast interests me less than the place where you found it. Shay’s Beasts lie. There is no such thing as prophecy. But the Age it was hiding in … For such a drab little backwater, it has some remarkably unusual properties. ‘Ghosts.’ The proximity of the Mountain. Very unusual. Very unusual place. So tell me more about the Combines. Who owns Holcroft? Who owns Patagan?”
“I have no idea. “
“You must. You were there for weeks.”
“I ended up there by mistake. I know almost nothing about the place. It wasn’t very nice.”
“What are the Hollows?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you know about their war?”
“What war?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know about their war.”
“They weren’t at war.”
“But they will be. You must know that. I refuse to believe you went there without doing any research. Stop lying to me.”
“What war? Turnbull, what happens to them?”
“Why don’t
you
tell
me?”
A
t night Arjun dismantled the typewriter and the furniture to make approximations of crowbars and chisels, and worked on the window-bars. The moon was full and the sky was full of stars, and there were people working late in offices across the street, but they didn’t see him waving, or if they did they didn’t care. The pigeons
on the windowsill resented him. The Mountain was distant, here— just a thin starless spike on the horizon. The bars didn’t give.
S
t. Loup paced.
“What
were
you doing there? Why there, of all places? It’s a backwater. We all overlooked it. What
drew you
there?”
“I was lost.”
“Hmm. You know, we all noticed your absence at the Hotel. You left without so much as a note, which I consider bad manners, especially since you and I had been such close allies once. People asked questions. A lot of people assumed you were dead. Some accused me of foul play I said you’d simply wandered off somewhere, the way you always used to, you’d heard of a new choir or orchestra or a new bird with a particularly pretty song or something and gone chasing music. God. Whatever. Is that what happened?”
“More or less.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you learned something that actually matters. You always were a secretive type. You always did have more courage than sense. Did you try for the Mountain?”
“Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”
“Because you see, Arjun, we questioned some of your associates. We tracked you down to that Fosdyke place because of a newspaper story about the incident at the Fosdyke Museum, and we tracked you to your bolt-hole the old-fashioned way: bribery, threats. It wasn’t all that hard. The locals seemed to be under the impression that you had come down to them from the Mountain.”
“They’re superstitious. They blame everything on the Mountain. They’re almost as bad as us.”
“Hmm.”
St. Loup paced. One of the thugs—the one dressed as a janitor—watched him intently. The other stared blankly out of the window.
“Turnbull was asking me about the war. “
“Yes. The war. One of a number of oddities about that place, that time. What about it?”
“Some of the people there were kind to me. I want to know what happens.”
“Bad news for them, I’m afraid. Shortly after we picked you up
and we pulled you out, there’s what appears to be the most appalling war. Bombs. Ruins. Starvation. Collapse of whatever passes for government there. The whole horrible show.”
“Why? How?”
“No idea. We searched in all the usual libraries. You know the places. The ones that cater to our peculiar demands. The
best
libraries, the deepest networks. But we could find no news of that district past the first few days of the bombing. Airships. An unknown enemy. Why? Who knows? History does not record. A cul-de-sac in Time, an appendix. That part of the city ends there. The city continues elsewhere. Who cares? It’s just statistics; everything is always ending somewhere. It never would have occurred to us to explore in that direction had you not tipped me off. Had we not chanced to meet. But here’s the remarkable thing. As you get closer and closer to that moment, that fracture, that particular end of the city, it becomes harder and harder to travel. Maybe you noticed. For me the key was always lights, beauty; for you it was music. Both are in short supply at the end. The doors are locked, one by one, as the hours go by. Which is why we came late, unfortunately; we would rather have joined you at the Museum.”
“What happens to them, St. Loup?”
“I don’t know. That part of the city seems to separate itself from the Metacontext. As if the war cuts it free. It’s very odd. After those first few days no news escapes, and no traveler who has visited has returned. How is this possible? Well, I was hoping you could tell
me.”
“Turnbull seemed to have a theory …”
“He did?”
“I don’t know. He seemed to have a theory about it, something to do with the Mountain.” Arjun improvised: “He was asking a lot of questions about the weather.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, St. Loup. You’ll have to ask him.”
T
urnbull stood with his hands folded behind his back. There was just one thug in the room, the janitor. Turnbull himself appeared to be fidgeting behind his back with a weapon.
“What’s on the Mountain, Arjun?”
“I don’t know any more than you, Turnbull.”
“It’s so
close
, there, in that place where we found you. You were there for ages. You must have seen something.”
“Go yourself. “
“I’m not ready. Not ready yet. Why do you want to go to the Mountain, if you don’t know what’s there?”
“I’ve told you this before, Turnbull. My God is there.”
“How do you know, if you don’t know what the Mountain is?”
“I don’t know. I believe. I don’t have any other choice.”
“I
know what the Mountain is, Arjun.”
“No one knows.”
“It’s nothing. Just rock. Just black rock. It isn’t the seat of the Gods, it isn’t paradise. God isn’t there, whatever silly little thing
you
call God isn’t there either. St. Loup’s palace of beautiful women, Potocki’s perfect machine, none of it. It’s just rock. A million tons of nothing of significance. It isn’t the heart of the city in any sense except that that’s where it happens to sit. We’ve woven the most ridiculous delusions around it.”
“Maybe that’s true. I don’t know.”
“You know, for years I was like you, Arjun. I didn’t earn my title dishonestly. I was a very devout and humble reverend. It only slowly became apparent to me that there was no God, and the Mountain, which the nuns at school had always assured me was His Holy Seat, was empty. It was a painful realization. In fact I was in the process of committing suicide when Shay first found me and retained my services. He pulled me from the gas-filled car. He never tired of reminding me that I owed him my life. But we all must face the truth sooner or later. There is nothing there. I must find the way to the Mountain so that I can show the city: there is nothing there. Nothing. You can be liberated from that obsession of yours. You can give up. You can be free. Wouldn’t that be a relief?”
“It might. It certainly might.”
“Give me some straight answers, then. Help me. Better me than St. Loup, wouldn’t you agree? In our different ways we are both men of religion. St. Loup is a sensualist, he’d turn the Mountain into a brothel. Let’s begin again: who owns the Combines?”
“I already told St. Loup …”
“What? What did you tell him?”
“… Nothing. I told him I don’t know anything.”
“No. You were about to say something else.
What
did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I’m sick of both of you. Ask him.”
S
t. Loup was drunk. His sunglasses were pushed back on his head. He staggered and fell into a chair. He held out a bottle of something yellow that smelled like whiskey. It had what appeared to be an extraordinarily tiny human fetus floating in it. “Drink?”
“No thank you. “
“Hotel’s rarest stock. Thousand-year-old vintage. Only a hundred bottles made before the mob hanged the brewer. Hung? Hanged.”
“No thank you, St. Loup.”
“I was just back at the Hotel. Have to keep up appearances. Have to be seen being seen. You know how it is. Li-Paz was flirtatious—she must suspect something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up, St. Loup. It’s just the same old game. I don’t know anything and nor do you.”
“It always feels like the walls are watching you. Someone always
is
watching you. Microphones in the plants. Cameras in the mirrors. You had the right idea, your little holidays, your music, your what-do-you-call-’em, pilgrimages. Get away from it all. Not my idea of a good time. I’d rather be on a beach with a beautiful woman, but to each his own.”
“Do you want my advice on your life, St. Loup?”
“In real life I was something special, Arjun, you should have known me then. Before Shay found me. I won’t say I was always happy but I was, I was the other thing. Rich. Important. Young. Master of the universe.”
“And the universe turned out to be bigger than you knew.”
“Yes. Yes. And all this beauty in it; this extraordinary gift we’ve lucked into; and
this
is how we spend our days. Spying and scheming. Torture and murder. Doesn’t it make you sad sometimes?”
“Constantly.”
“Me too. Me too! I’m not a monster. You’re not the only one with feelings. It’s not our fault. It’s the situation we’re in. Sometimes I blame Shay. He should have chosen someone else. We’re the wrong sort of people for this.”
“So let me go, St. Loup.”
“Sometimes I blame the Mountain. All this time, living in its shadow. Always knowing that whatever we do doesn’t mean anything, because the real action’s somewhere else. Up there. It’s cruel, it’s not fair. It, it makes us
smaller.
We can’t grow up. I don’t
care
what’s up there, I really don’t, I just don’t want to be out here anymore, with the nobodies and the second-raters. Aren’t you sick of it, too? So help me. Let’s put an end to it all. You and me together, on the inside at last. Tell me what you know.”
“I’ve heard this speech before, St. Loup.”
“Yeah, so? How many times have I had to listen to your speeches about your bloody God?”
“I wouldn’t help
you
anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”