Tyrannia (24 page)

In this monograph, though, James claimed that there was another Aeropagus, a secret society within the secret society. There was always a mystical bent to Sidney and the poets in his circle; after all, one of Sidney’s mentors was John Dee, the notorious English magus and favorite of Queen Elizabeth who regularly asserted that he could summon angels. But this inner circle of Aeropagus was a commission by Queen Elizabeth herself, to establish a beach-head of “scientifick philosophy” on the continent. In the guise of a diplomat and governor, Sidney could gather onto him all of the arcane learnings that were flourishing on the mainland of Europe, particularly in Holland, Italy, and the German principalities. In this way, Sidney could fine-tune the metaphysics of poetry, in the manner of incantations, in order to fully utilize knowledge of voice, rhetoric, and musical diction to (piously, of course) access the conduits of heavenly wisdom for magical aims.

This was the passage where James had mentioned the “devolutionaries”:

“Sir Philip Sidney had found no small measure of success in his experiments in vatic verse—that purely by metrical speech and on occasion musical accompaniment, a poet could not only speak to the future, but also enter a state of terrible apprehension and, through chant, ‘project’ oneself, theosophically, into past events, and even into the thoughts of others, with physical distance being no impediment whatsoever.”

I read that again, and once more, and tried to wrestle with what James was proposing, or whether he was even being serious. But I had to trust that he, at least, believed it—or if the connection was there, that whoever sent me the package believed it as well.

I kept reading:

“Sidney thought these experiments to be both divinely inspired and verifiable by careful observation and study.

“Truth be told, his coterie of German alchemists, disaffected Jesuits who had stolen away monastic tomes from the time of Charlemagne, and troubadours from Toulouse all looked to Sidney for moral guidance and an extended patronage from his Queen. There was a sense, for Sidney, that he could heal the divisions between Papists and Protestants that had ravaged Europe, finding a common religious experience based on celestial song.

“However, these experiments could not be kept from prying enemies forever. A rival secret society who called themselves Devolutionaries—mostly from those under the employ of Hapsburg Spain and Austria, but also the French, who were greatly angered by Sidney’s presence in Holland and were fearful that the English meddling could spread—began to plot a thwarting of Aeropagus. Their sigil was the bear, one of the few natural enemies of the porcupine, which happened to be prominent in the coat of arms of the Sidneys.

“The battle at Zutphen, which caused Sidney’s death, then, was orchestrated purely to slay Sidney and to crush English advancements in magical poetics. A murder by poison or knife would have been too conspicuous. Spanish armies, then, had to be set into motion. With bitter irony, the Devolutionaries knew full well that Sidney was gallant and also foolhardy, and would not hesitate to rush into battle to save a lost cause. His English forces vastly outnumbered, he charged forward. However, the Devolutionaries had paid a Dutch squire three Spanish florin to steal Philip’s armour. He was able to steal the leggings. Had it not been for this theft, Sir Philip Sidney might have survived. It was easy for the English to spread the rumour that Philip had spurned his leggings in order to rush into the battle in all haste. Thus after his long, agonising death, the Aeropagus society was doomed. He had written one final, secret poem on his deathbed, but it has been lost to time.”

I had no way to verify any of these claims, but it was the one true thread I could find, and I held onto it for dear life.

When I was finished with reading the monograph, and dawn was breaking, I decided to bite the bullet with the third file on the disk. I should have slept. Instead I read.

The third file didn’t begin with the passenger at all, but with me. This story began with me driving down a narrow state highway. I was squinting ahead. On the seat next to me was a manila envelope with a Minneapolis postmark and a return address that said “Aeropagus Storage” with an address. I noted to myself that I was desperate to try to finish the story about the passenger (which was only paraphrased in this version). I was in dire straits. It was becoming all too much for a story. I recalled the shock and thrill I had received when I had received the envelope, and I looked down at my seat at it. The envelope didn’t have my address, only my name.

I found myself going to one of the suburbs around the outskirts of the airport. It was noted in the story that it was late at night, an hour or two before midnight. I drove on winding roads, until I made a gentle turn down a hill. Warehouses were on either side of me. This was the place. As I was about to pull into the parking lot of the warehouse to my left, I saw a horse hobble across the road right in front of my car. I swerved. The horse disappeared into the scrawny woods on the other side of the warehouse.

There was a car coming toward me in the other lane, which I tried to avoid. In the story, I had a feeling of both emotional distance and stoic certainty regarding what was happening. I felt the shock of the vibration of steel, the desperate turning of the steering wheel. I stepped on the brakes. The instants were elongating but, in the end, they were just instants, and it was too late. I had no control. The car slid forward—I couldn’t tell if I clipped the other car, or the other way around. But I was the one who stopped the car, and the other kept moving, sidewinding down the road. My Corolla was only grazed, but I had a sharp stiffness in my neck. I opened the door and hobbled out to inspect the damage.

Then I saw the third car coming toward mine, fast.

This car did not slam the brakes as it hit my car. The Corolla was pushed over the side of the embankment. My trunk popped open, and hundreds of sheets of dot-matrix paper spilled out.

The other car put itself in reverse, and skidded backward from the berm.

When it stopped, I ran toward it, waving my hands, hysterical, cursing. The windows were tinted black. I moved to knock on the windows, but something stopped me. The car was silent except for its own engine.

I took a few steps back, and then the car revved and was soon out of sight.

I picked up a few of the stray pieces of paper that had scattered onto the road. They all had different versions of the same story. My story. I read patches:

“The passenger was looking for stories to resuscitate . . .”

“He drove away, not sure whether his family would be able to forgive him . . .”

“The passenger drove his car into the reinforced steel partition of the warehouse, desperate to get inside . . .”

“The Order of the Lamb assented . . .”

I had no doubt that it would keep going.

I looked up and saw the faint tail-lights of an airplane above me. The airplane was making its descent into the airport. It might have been the same plane as it always was, or a different one. Even if the same things were happening, they would mean something different every time.

My body was still aching from the slightest movement, but I scurried down the embankment, which wasn’t as steep as I thought it was. When I went into the driver’s side to turn off the ignition, I startled, because I realized with a rush that this Corolla was not mine.

There were lots of green Corollas on the road, and there were many times when I’d find myself trying to open someone else’s car door with my keys. This was similar, though on a far vaster scale. The car was indeed nearly identical to my own, but not completely so. There were little touches that kept rising to the surface of my perception—the “1” button on the stereo that was scuffed a little on my Corolla was not; the window sticker pass for Minnesota State Parks was for 1999 and not 2000; the stain on the upholstery of the passenger’s seat was a couple inches lower than it should have been.

I wondered, then, whose car this was—and moreover, why I was driving it.

I was about to call Kristin on my cell, but searched my pockets. No phone. I went back to the car and searched all the nooks of the car that wasn’t quite my own, but no phone. Then it dawned on me that it was, in fact, 1999 and I wasn’t supposed to have a cell phone.

Wandering up from the embankment in a crouch, worn to the bone, I made my way to the warehouses. This was the address that I had been sent, and the paranoia about the two cars that had collided with me was more of an afterthought. What was I supposed to be doing there? I tried the door of the first warehouse but it didn’t open. I then happened to look at my keyring, which I had been clutching since the collisions, before I was going to put it in my pocket. There was a key on there that I didn’t recognize. Just a normal key. I slid it into the lock and turned. The interior was vast and dark, except for blue circular lights that shone in a slow crawl throughout the space. Bright and revealing nothing. There were also red curtains, acting as capes on invisible bodies, flowing toward me. And I could hear a song, in the distant recesses of the warehouse.

What was the warehouse holding? The warehouse was holding the song, the song that I had always longed to hear, but never could, because I was always too busy and too distracted with my own pains and insecurities. Like verses encased in lines—the hard forms of meter and rhyme—the music and the words were kept from the world inside these walls. This was Philip Sidney’s poem of dying, his lost last poem.

This was the story—I was listening to this song, at last. And I was there, and I was never to leave.

  And yet, this is not the end . . .

In the second warehouse, it is completely dark. An antiphon of nothing-to-see. Then, a small square of orange light, flashing. The printer is out of ink. The paper, filled with The Words, has no light to reflect against it.

Footsteps. The opening of a machine. Ejection. Black fluid on unseen fingers. A shaking of a cylinder. Then a clicking shut. Everything in place. The whirring begins again, like a mechanical bird pecking at wood. The paper spools to the floor. Every twenty minutes or so, hands tear off a sheaf and place it into a manila envelope, sealing the envelope with a gummy tongue. Although it’s hard to discern the unilluminated dimensions of the warehouse, the envelope is walked to the other end and put into a slot, which leads to a disorganized back office, sealed off from the rest of the warehouse.

Here, in a room no bigger than a closet, there is a single overhead light in a socket. As soon as the envelope falls through the slot (with no light being emitted to the other side),

. . . I begin addressing it to you. I have been in here a long time. My need is great. I am going to die when you die. Who am I? I am part of you. The Words are Your Words, the totality of whatever you will say and think and write.

Alan, when you were a child, there was so much terror. So much. This was the reason you began to write, to make stories out of the things you could see. It was a way to make limitations out of the world. This was your Aeropagus, in the pencils clutched in your first-grade, sinister hand.

Things grew, you grew, and the terror became admixed with desire—and more than a desire not to be terrified. You wanted better things. You wanted people to admire you and your imagination. This was, this is, your Philip Sidney Game. Always thirsty. Always carted off from the battlefield but angling for water. So how do you signal? How do you let the knight-of-water inside of you know of your thirst?

Here in this story, Sir Philip Sidney is only a phantasm. The devolutionaries are an illusion as well—they are you, they are what you use to thwart your semblance of inner peace. They are in constant battle with what you want to create. It is a wide-ranging battle across many places of your life and over nearly all your years. You didn’t begin that story twelve years ago. You only began it this year, but its aims to show how you lived twelve years ago are true, and how much you are trying to be true is true. Though it’s nothing to be afraid of, one day

it will be finished. All the threads will weave

together and the warehouse doors thrown open,

and the office park of plasterboard and glass

will sink into the untouched wetlands, and

the passenger will board his plane for home.

Then it will be finished. God willing,

when you are at the end of your life, you

might come across this story in an old

ancient stick of memory, and with

your eyes creased with those necessary heart-

aches countless, you will read it and allow

the story enter into you once more,

and for a moment it will be your life

before you take your last breath, and you let

the horse lead you into the woods of May.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications and anthologies in which some of these stories first appeared:
Strange Horizons
(“Tyrannia”);
Spolia
(“A Rendition”);
Blue Penny Quarterly
(“Cudgel Springs”);
Interfictions 2,
ed. by Christopher Barzak and Delia Sherman (“The Warp and the Woof”);
Logorrhea
, ed. by John Klima (“Plight of the Sycophant”);
Caketrain
(“Dancing in a House”);
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
(“Walking Stick Fires,” “The Flowering Ape,” “The Wildfires of Antarctica”); and
Interfictions Online
(“The Philip Sidney Game”). “Moonlight Is Bulletproof” was published as a standalone ebook by Weightless Books.