Are you kidding? I’d love it
. “No, Gerald,” he said obediently. “I wouldn’t at all.”
Far too soon they reached the next opaque dome.
“Now,” said the other Gerald, “here’s another really useful object lesson.” He snapped his fingers, and the obscuring mist before them began to dissolve. “I like to call this one
You Do Have A Choice
. Because he did. He really did. Didn’t he, Bibbie?”
Bibbie smoothed down her short, sleek hair. “Yes, he did, Gerald. And he made the wrong one.”
“And d’you know, I was pretty bloody reasonable,” said the other Gerald, sounding aggrieved. “I gave him three chances to join me. It was a damned nuisance he’d been shadbolt-proofed, I can tell you.”
With an effort he kept his face blank.
A nuisance. Yes. I mean, Saint Snodgrass forbid you should ever be inconvenienced.
Then, as he opened his mouth to say something that could be interpreted as supportive, the last of the obscuring mist melted… and he saw who the other Gerald was whining about. He saw, he heard, he smelled… and his mind and body rebelled, recoiling in horror.
Oh. Oh—good lord. No. No—no—no—
He heaved up his half-digested fried eggs and bacon in a³ anrd. splattering mess, all over the parade ground’s pristine flagstones.
“What?” said the other Gerald, surprised, his voice raised above the steady crackling and the terrible screams. “Do you know him? Really? That’s… unexpected.”
Gerald dragged his sleeve across his foul-tasting mouth.
Don’t look again. Don’t look. Turn away.
But he couldn’t. He owed it to Sir Alec—even a Sir Alec who’d never met him, or fought for him—to bear witness to this most despicable act.
The other Gerald muted the awful sounds. “It’s a pretty ingenious incant, even if I do say so myself,” he said. “I wish I could take full credit for it, but I can’t. It’s what you might call a joint effort. I dreamed it up, but Monk’s the one who made it work. Y’know, I might be the world’s most powerful wizard but Saint Snodgrass’s
bunions
—he’s its greatest inventor and thaumaturgical technician. What I wouldn’t give to have his kink in the brain.”
He could taste blood in his mouth, he was biting his lip so hard.
And what I wouldn’t give to be completely blind and deaf and senseless right now.
For a
moment he thought he’d be sick again, but somehow he managed to keep his stomach where it belonged.
“It is a bit gruesome, though,” said Bibbie, sounding petulant. “I do wish you wouldn’t keep making me come back to see it.”
“Well, of course it’s
gruesome
, Bibbie,” said the other Gerald. He sounded miffed. “It’s
supposed
to be gruesome. What kind of an object lesson would it be if it didn’t make you want to claw out your eyes, stuff corks in your ears and shove cotton plugs up your nose?”
“Well… yes,” said Bibbie, unconvinced. “I know. You’re right. I suppose.”
“And I thought you were proud of me for thinking this one up,” the other Gerald added. “You
said
you were proud. You
said
you thought it was fantastic.”
“I do, I do think it’s fantastic,” Bibbie protested. “Only a genius could’ve dreamed this up. But I’m sensitive, Gerald, and this must be the fiftieth time I’ve seen it.
Fifty times.
Isn’t that enough?”
As his counterpart and Bibbie launched into a bitter bickering match, he made himself face what they’d done to Sir Alec. Looking at him not only with his one good eye, but with his sharply honed thaumaturgic senses, too.
If I can see how the incant’s put together maybe I can break it. Maybe I can set the poor bastard free.
Because what this world’s Gerald and Monk had done, between them, was imprison their Sir Alec within an infinite temporal loop. Chained to a stake, surrounded by ignited oil-soaked wood, enigmatic, mysterious and oddly compassionate Sir Alec was burning alive. Worse, he was trapped in the last hideous
heartbeats before death that now, thanks to Monk’s genius, stretched on and on to infinity. A death without end. A death lasting forever.
They show this to children. They make children see this. How can I help him? I can’t help him. I don’t want to. I want him to die.
Through blinding te³ugh I ars he battled to understand the construction of the incant. He’d never encountered anything like it, a combination of the darkest magic he’d ever tasted and his own
potentia
warped almost beyond recognition, shot through with Monk’s inimitable, irrepressible thaumic signature.
How could you, Monk? How could you do this?
And then he felt a rough hand on his shoulder, shaking him. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Professor! Now you’re
crying
? What are you, a girl? Even Bibbie’s not boo-hooing. Who is this Sir Alec to you, that you’d give a toss that he’s dead?”
It was no good. He couldn’t begin to break this incant. Not here and now, anyway. Probably not ever. Pulling away from the other Gerald, he dried his face on his sleeve.
“But he’s not dead, is he? Gerald—”
“He tried to kill me!” the other Gerald shouted. “All right? This isn’t murder. It’s self-defense. It’s
justice
. When someone tries to kill you—”
“You have them arrested!” he cried. “You don’t—you don’t—”
“What, like you had Lional arrested?” retorted his counterpart. “Really? You’re going to stand there on your high horse and lecture me with your Lional’s blood all over your hands?”
He shook his head. “That was—”
“If you say
different
, sunshine, I’ll bloody knock you on your ass!” said the other Gerald. “Besides, I told you, I gave Sir Alec three chances. I was prepared to forgive him for trying to kill me—if he’d join me. But he wouldn’t. And like I said, I couldn’t shadbolt him. So Gerald, I’m telling you, he brought this on himself. And now I’m tired of discussing it.” A savage fingersnap, and the dreadful sight of endlessly dying Sir Alec disappeared inside a smoky dome. “Now if you don’t mind we’ve a few more exhibits to look at, and then we’ve somewhere else to be. So do yourself a favor and just look where I point and no more wringing your lily-white hands. Or I’ll bloody forget how much I need you and I
will
do you a mischief. Understood?”
Numbly, he nodded. “Yes, Gerald. Understood.”
“Fine,” snapped his counterpart. “Then come on. We’re running late.”
Their nightmare visit to the parade ground took nearly three excruciating hours. By the time it was over, every single monstrous exhibit examined, its history lovingly detailed, Gerald wanted to crawl into a hole and never crawl back out again.
Depravity
would no longer be an abstract word.
“Do cheer up, Professor,” said the other Gerald briskly, as they made their way back to the car. “Nothing you’ve seen here will happen to you. Well. You know. Probably.”
They piled into the glamorous Kingsmark and drove next to Government House. And if the rest of the exhibits on the parade ground had been appalling,
what had been done to Lord Attaby—no, make that Prime Minister, he was wearing the official chain of office—and his colleagues was unspeakable.
Standing in the lavish blue and gilt Cabinet room, with Bibbie’s ³ wi unarm once more threaded possessively—controllingly—through his and the other Gerald standing to one side, gloating, Gerald looked at Ottosland’s vanquished leadership and its senior civil servants, shadbolted to a man—and felt the enormity of the situation threaten to crush him like an avalanche.
I can’t fix this. How am I supposed to fix this? If I had an army of janitors behind me I don’t think I could fix this.
One of the shadbolted officials was Monk’s Uncle Ralph. The change in him was dreadful. The Sir Ralph Markham of his world was a wily and powerful First Grade wizard. Forthright, no nonsense—but a man with hidden depths and inconspicuous influence. Fierce in his defense of both family and country.
This
Sir Ralph was a defeated man, with fearful, haunted eyes and a tic in his cheek that leaped and leaped without ceasing.
Sir Alec was his friend. Was he made to watch what was done to him? Does he spend every waking minute wondering if he’ll be next?
Knowing the answer, sickened, he looked at the rest of the Cabinet and its servants. All in all some thirty men, crowded into the Cabinet room like bullocks in a butcher’s yard. As a janitor he was vigorously encouraged to stay well out of politics, a stricture which didn’t bother him in the least. But
even so, some three-quarters of the group before him looked familiar, echoes of portfolio and junior ministers back home. Thanks to his short-lived career as a probationary Department of Thaumaturgy compliance officer he even recognized some of the permanent Secretaries and Under-Secretaries—the men whose busy paddling kept their nation afloat.
But look at them now. They’re as paralyzed by fear as they are by those shadbolts. Even if I could reach them, I doubt they’d be any help. They’re too far gone. I think their minds are close to breaking.
And of course he could never blame them for that. Not when he still visited his own breaking in bad dreams.
Who knows about this? Have the ordinary, everyday people noticed there’s something terribly wrong with their government? What about the
Times
? Its journalists always sticking their noses into things. I can’t believe they’ve not sniffed this out. I can’t believe they aren’t shouting protests from the rooftops.
A flicker of shadow. A vibration of glass. A deep, almost subliminal thrumming in his bones. Through the vast, uncurtained Cabinet room window he watched an airship sail majestically past the building. Up this close its guns looked particularly lethal.
Yes. Right. Next stupid question, Dunnywood?
As Bibbie continued to cling like a barnacle, the other Gerald regarded the assembled Cabinet as though they were exotic exhibits in a zoo. “Politicians, Professor, should be seen and not heard. Father used to say that all the time. D’you remember? I did this for him, you know. Well. Mainly for me,
but it’s a hat tip to him too. I like to think that wherever he is, he knows I still think of him.”
From what he could tell without getting any closer, these particular shadbolts turned people into compliant puppets. The convoluted incants woven into them were composed of various compulsion and direction hexes. Not a single, si³ot bolmple hex to prevent the answering of inconvenient questions, or a choke-chain kind of shadbolt, like the one inflicted on Melissande, but a cobwebbery of thaumaturgics designed to control what its victim said and did. Brilliant… and diabolical.
Prime Minister Attaby, his Cabinet and his civil servants were staring at him in shocked silence. Not only because they were shadbolted, but because the sight of him was surely unexpected and probably terrifying. Look, gentlemen! It’s your lucky day. Two torturers for the price of one! He wanted to reassure them, to tell them,
No, no, don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you.
But the other Gerald wouldn’t take kindly to that, so he had to content himself with throwing the occasional loathing glance at their tormentor when their tormentor wasn’t looking.
“It turns out they’re proving wonderfully useful,” the other Gerald added. “Which is hard to believe, I know, seeing as how they’re politicians and pencil-pushers. But it’s true. They’re making sure Ottosland creaks along until everything else is in place. Ensuring the general populace isn’t too alarmed by the changes. And of course keeping up appearances in front of various international heads of state. Because
that’s
a situation still in flux,
Professor. Which of course is why I brought you here. To help me de-flux things, as it were.”
Bloody hell, he really has fallen in love with the sound of his own voice, hasn’t he? When I get home I’m going to give Reg strict instructions to poke me in the unmentionables if I ever turn into a tosser like him.
Oh, lord. Reg. Traipsing around that appalling parade ground, being confronted by atrocity after atrocity, he’d been convinced that at any moment he’d be brought face to face with Reg. Dead or worse than dead, like poor Sir Alec. But she wasn’t there. It was the only good thing that had happened since he’d opened his eyes at the house.
“Professor, are you listening?” said the other Gerald, sharply. “Because you’ve got that look on your face again. The one that says your mind’s wandered off. Don’t do that. It’s rude.”
Ignoring Bibbie’s scolding little shake of his arm, he swallowed. “Sorry. I was only wondering when I’d get to see—”
“I
told
you.
Later
,” said his counterpart. “But if you don’t shut up about it you won’t see her at all.”
Before he could think up a suitably groveling answer the large crystal ball at the center of the Cabinet room’s conference table hummed, then started flashing bright green.
“Hmm,” said the other Gerald, his frown deepening. “Y’know, if that’s not President Damooj calling to accept my terms I’m going to be bloody pissy. Attaby! Answer it! You know what to say.”
Moving jerkily, like an animated marionette, shadbolted Prime Minister Attaby stepped forward to the conference table and accepted the incoming
communication. The green light stopped flashing, the crystal turned cloudy, then cleared a moment later to reveal a man with robust silver muttonchop whiskers and a thin face, dark as ebony and set into an expression of grim intractability.