Imajica - The Reconciliator Part 24

"In the late twenties."

"So a hundred and fifty years of G.o.dolphin b.u.ms sat on one of those seats?"

"That's right."

"Including Joshua."

"Presumably."

"I wonder how many of them I knew?"

"Don't you remember?"

"I wish I did. I'm still waiting for the memories to come back. In fact, I'm begining to wonder if they ever will."

"Maybe you're repressing them for a reason?"

"Why? Because they're so appalling I can't face them? Because I acted like a wh.o.r.e; let myself be pa.s.sed around the table with the port, left to right? No, I don't think that's it at all. I can't remember because I wasn't really living. I was sleepwalking, and n.o.body wanted to wake me."

She looked up at him, almost defying him to defend his family's owners.h.i.+p of her. He said nothing, of course. Instead, he moved to the vast grate, ducking beneath the mantelpiece, selecting a third key as he went. She heard him slot it in the lock and turn it, heard the motion of cogs and counterweights its turning initiated, and, finally, heard the groan of the concealed door as it opened. He glanced back at her.

"Are you coming?" he said. "Be careful. The steps are steep."

The flight was not only steep but long. What little light spilled from the room above dwindled after hahf a dozen steps, and she descended twice that number in darkness before Oscar found a switch below, and lights ran off along the labyrinth. A sense of triumph ran through her. She'd put her desire to find a way into this underworld aside many times since the dream of the blue eye had brought her to Celestine's cell, but it had never died. Now, finally, she was going to walk where her dream sight h'ad gone, through this mine of books with its seams to the ceiling, to the place where the G.o.ddess lay.

"This is the single largest collection of sacred texts since the library at Alexandria," Oscar said, his museum-guide tone a defense, she suspected, against the sense of moment he shared with her. "There are books here even the Vatican doesn't know exist." He lowered his voice, as though there might be other browsers here that he'd disturb if he spoke too loudly. "The night he died, Papa told me he found a book here written by the Fourth King."

"The what?"

"There were three kings at Bethlehem, remember? According to the Gospels. But the Gospels lied. There were four. They were looking for the Reconciler."

"Christ was a Reconciler?"

"So Papa said."

"And you believe that?"

"Papa had no reason to lie."

"But the book, Oscar; the book could have lied."

"So could the Bible. Papa said this Magi wrote his story because he knew he'd been cut out of the Gospels. It was this fellow named the Imajica. Wrote the word down in this book. There it was on the page for the first time in history. Papa said he wept."

Jude surveyed the labyrinth that spread from the foot of the stairs with fresh respect. "Have you tried to find the book since?"

"I didn't need to. When Papa died I went in search of the real thing. I traveled back and forth as though Christos had succeeded and the Fifth was reconciled. And there they were, the Unbeheld's many mansions."

And there, too, the most enigmatic player in this interDominional drama: Hapexamendios. If Christos was a Reconciler, did that make the Unbeheld Christos' Father? Was the force in hiding behind the fogs of the First Dominion the Lord of Lords, and, if so, why had He crushed every G.o.ddess across the Imajica, as legend said He had? One question begged another, all from a few claims made by a man who'd knelt at the Nativity. No wonder Roxborough had buried these books alive.

"Do you know where your mystery woman's lurking?" Oscar said.

"Not really."

"Then we've got a h.e.l.l of a search on our hands,"

"I remember there was a couple making love down here, near her cell. One of them was Bloxham."

"Dirty little b.u.g.g.e.r. So we should be looking for some stains on the floor, is that it? I suggest we split up, or we'll be here all summer."

They parted at the stairs and made their separate ways. Jude soon discovered how strangely sound carried in the tunnels. Sometimes she could hear G.o.dolphin's footsteps so clearly she thought he must be following her. Then she'd turn a corner (or else he would) and the noise would not simply fade but vanish altogether, leaving only the pad of her own soles on the cold stone to keep her company. They were buried too deeply for even the remotest murmur from the street above to penetrate, nor was there any suspicion of sound from the earth around them: no hum of cables; no sluicing of drains.

She was several times tempted to pluck one of the tomes from its shelf, thinking perhaps serendipity would put her in reach of the diary of the Fourth King. But she resisted, knowing that even if she had time to browse here, which she didn't, the volumes were written in the great languages of theology and philosophy: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit, all incomprehensible to her. As ever on this journey, she'd have to beat a track to the truth by instinct and wit alone. Nothing had been given to her to illuminate the way except the blue eye, and that was in Gentle's possession now. She'd reclaim it as soon as she saw him again, give him something else as a talisman: the hair of her s.e.x, if that's what he wanted. But not her egg; not her cool blue egg.

Maybe it was these thoughts that ushered her to the place where the lovers had stood; maybe it was that same serendipity she'd hoped might lead her hand to the King's book. If so, this was a finer leading. Here was the wall where Bloxham and his mistress had coupled; she knew it without a trace of doubt. Here were the shelves the woman had clung to while her ridiculous beau had labored to fulfill her. Between the books they bore, the mortar was tinged with the faintest trace of blue. She didn't call Oscar but went to the shelves and took down several armfuls of books, then put her fingers to the stains. The wall was bitterly cold, but the mortar crumbled beneath her touch, as though her sweat was sufficient agent to unbind its elements. She was shocked at what she'd caused, and gratified, retreating from the wall as the message of dissolution spread with extraordinary rapidity. The mortar began to run from between the bricks like the finest of sand, its trickle becoming a torrent in seconds.

"I'm here," she told the prisoner behind the wall. "G.o.d knows, I've taken my time. But I'm here."

Oscar didn't catch Jude's words, not even the remotest echo. His attention had been claimed two or three minutes before by a sound from overhead, and he'd climbed the stairs in pursuit of its source. He'd disgraced his manhood enough in the last few days, hiding himself away like a frightened widow, and the thought that he might reclaim some of the respect he'd lost in Jude's eyes by confronting the trespa.s.ser above gave purpose to the chase. He'd armed himself with a piece of timber he'd found at the bottom of the stairs and was almost hoping as he went that his ears weren't playing tricks on him, and that there was indeed something tangible up above. He was sick of being in fear of rumors, and of pictures half glimpsed in flying stones. If there was something to see, he wanted to see it and either be d.a.m.ned in the seeing or cured of fear.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. The light spilling through the door from Roxborough's room was moving, very slightly. He took his bludgeon in both hands and stepped through the door. The room swung with the lights, the solid table and its solid chairs giddied by the motion. He surveyed the room from corner to corner. Finding every shadow empty, he moved towards the door that led out into the foyer, as delicately as his bulk allowed. The rocking of the lights settled as he went, and they were still by the time he reached the door. As he stepped outside a perfume caught his nostrils, as sweet as the sudden, sharp pain in his side was sour. He tried to turn but his attacker dug a second time. The timber went from his hand, and a shout came from his lips....

"Oscar?"

She didn't want to leave the wall of Celestine's cell when it was undoing itself with such gusto-the bricks were dropping onto each other as the mortar between them decayed, and the shelves were creaking, ready to fall-but Oscar's shout demanded her attention. She headed back through the maze, the sound of the wall's capitulation echoing through the pa.s.sageways, confounding her. But she found her way back to the stairs after a time, yelling for Oscar as she went. There was no reply from the library itself, so she decided to climb back up into the meeting room. That too was silent and empty, as was the foyer when she got to it, the only sign that Oscar had pa.s.sed through a block of wood lying close to the door. What the h.e.l.l was he up to? She went out to see if he'd returned to the car for some reason, but there was no sign of him in the sun, which narrowed the options to one: the tower above.

Irritated, but a little anxious now, she looked towards the open door that led back into the cellar, torn between returning to welcome Celestine and following Oscar up the tower. A man of his bulk was perfectly capable of defending himself, she reasoned, but she couldn't help but feel some residue of responsibility, given that she'd cajoled him into coming here in the first place.

One of the doors looked to be a lift, but when she appreached she heard the hum of its motor in action, so rather than wait she went to the stairs and began to climb. Though the flight was in darkness, she didn't let that slow her but mounted the stairs three and four at a time until she reached the door that led out onto the top floor. As she groped for the handle she heard a voice from the suite beyond. The words were indecipherable, but the voice sounded cultivated, almost clipped. Had one of the Tabula Rasa survived after all? Bloxham, perhaps, the Casanova of the cellar?

She pushed the door open. It was brighter on the other side, though not by that much. All the rooms along the corridor were murky pits, their drapes drawn. But the voice led her on through the gloom towards a pair of doors, one of which was ajar. A light was burning on the other side. She approached with caution, the carpet underfoot lush enough to silence her tread. Even when the speaker broke off from his monologue for a few moments she continued to advance, reaching the suite without a sound. There was little purpose in delay, she thought, once she was at the threshold. Without a word, she pushed open the door.

There was a table in the room, and on it lay Oscar, in a double pool: one of light, the other of blood. She didn't scream, or even sicken, even though he was laid open like a patient in mid-surgery. Her thoughts flew past the horror to the man and his agonies. He was alive. She could see his heart beating like a fish in a red pool, gasping its last.

The surgeon's knife had been cast onto the table beside him, and its owner, who was presently concealed by shadow, said, "There you are. Come in, why don't you? Come in." He put his hands, which were clean, on the table. "It's only me, lovey."

"Dowd...."

"Ah! To be remembered. It seems such a little thing, doesn't it? But it's not. Really, it's not."

The old theatricality was still in his manner, but the mellifluous quality had gone from his voice. He sounded, and indeed looked, like a parody of himself, his face a mask carved by a hack.

"Do join us, lovey," he said. "We're in this together, after all."

Startled as she was to see him (though hadn't Oscar warned her that his type was difficult to kill?) she didn't feel intimidated by him. She'd seen his tricks and deceits and performances; she'd seen him hanging over an abyss, begging for life. He was ridiculous.

"I wouldn't touch G.o.dolphin, by the way," he said.

She ignored the advice and went to the table.

"His life's hanging by a thread," Dowd went on. "If he's moved, I swear his innards will just drop out. My advice is let him lie. Enjoy the moment."

"Enjoy?" she said, the revulsion she felt surfacing, though she knew it was exactly what the b.a.s.t.a.r.d wanted to hear.

"Not so loud, sweetie," Dowd said, as if pained by her volume. "You'll wake the baby." He chuckled. "He is a baby, really, compared to us. Such a little life...."

"Why did you do this?"

"Where do I begin? With the petty reasons? No. With the big one. I did it to be free." He leaned in towards her, his face a chiaroscuro jigsaw beneath the lamp. "When he breathes his last, lovey-which'H be very soon now-that's the end of the G.o.dolphins. When he's gone, we're in thrall to n.o.body."

"You were free in Yzordderrex."

"No. On a long leash, maybe, but never free. I felt his desires, I felt his discomforts. A little part of me knew I should be at home with him, making his tea and drying between his toes. In my heart, I was still his slave." He looked at the body again. "It seems almost miraculous, how he manages to linger."

He reached for the knife.

"Leave him!" she snapped, and he retreated with surprising alacrity.

She leaned towards Oscar, afraid to touch him for fear of shocking his traumatized system further and stopping it. There were tics in his face, and his white lips were full of tiny tremors.

"Oscar?" she murmured. "Can you hear me?"

"Oh, look at you, lovey," Dowd cooed. "Getting all doe-eyed over him. Remember how he used you. How he oppressed you."

She leaned closer to Oscar and said his name again.

"He never loved either of us," Dowd went on. "We were his goods and chattels. Part of his..."

Oscar's eyes flickered open.

". . . inheritance," Dowd said, but the word was barely audible. As the eyes opened, Dowd retreated a second step, covering himself in shadow.

Oscar's white lips shaped the syllables of Judith's name, but there was no sound to accompany the motion.

"Oh, G.o.d," she murmured, "can you hear me? I want you to know this wasn't all for nothing. I found her. Do you understand? I found her."

Oscar made a tiny nod, then, with agonizing delicacy, ran his tongue over his lips and drew enough breath to say, "It wasn't true...."

She caught the words, but not their sense. "What wasn't true?" she said.

He licked again, his face knotting up with the effort of speech. This time there was only one word: "Inheritance. ..."

"Not an inheritance?" she said. "I know that."

He made the very tiniest smile, his gaze going over her face from brow to cheek, from cheek to lips, then back to her eyes, meeting them unabashed.

"I... loved ... you," he said.

"I know that too," she whispered.

Then his gaze lost its clarity. His heart stopped beating in its b.l.o.o.d.y pool; the knots on his face slipped with its cessation. He was gone. The last of the G.o.dolphins, dead on the Tabula Rasa's table.

She stood upright, staring at the cadaver, though it distressed her to do so. If she was ever tempted to toy with darkness, let this sight be a scourge to that temptation. There was nothing poetic or n.o.ble in this scene, only waste.

"So there it is," Dowd said. "Funny. I don't feel any different. It may take time, of course. I suppose freedom has to be learned, like anything else." She could hear desperation beneath this babble, barely concealed. He was in pain. "You should know something," he said."I don't want to hear."

"No, listen, lovey, I want you to know.... He did exactly this to me, on this very table. He gutted me in front of the Society. Maybe it's a petty thing, wanting revenge, but then I'm just an actor chappie. What do I know?"

"You killed them all for that?"

"Who?"

"The Society."

"No, not yet. But I'll get to them. For us both."

"You're too late. They're already dead."

This hushed him for fully fifteen seconds. When he began again, it was more chatter, as empty as the silence he wanted to fill.

"It was that d.a.m.n purge, you know; they made themselves too many enemies. There's going to be a lot of minor Maestros crawling out of the woodwork in the next few days. It's quite an anniversary, isn't it? I'm going to get stinking drunk. What about you? How will you celebrate, alone or with friends? This woman you found, for instance. Is she the partying type?"

Jude silently cursed her indiscretion.

"Who is she?" Dowd went on. "Don't tell me Clara had a sister." He laughed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but she was crazy as a coot; you must see that now. She didn't understand you. n.o.body understands you but me, lovey, and I understand you-" '

"-because we're the same."

"Exactly. We don't belong to anybody any more. We're our own inventions. We'll do what we want, when we want, and we won't give a f.u.c.k for the consequences."

"Is that freedom?" she said flatly, finally taking her eyes off Oscar and looking up at Dowd's misshapen form.

"Don't try and tell me you don't want it," Dowd said. "I'm not asking you to love me for this, I'm not that stupid, but at least admit it was just."

"Why didn't you murder him in his bed years ago?"

"I wasn't strong enough. Oh, I realize I may not radiate health and efficiency just at the moment, but I've changed a lot since we last met. I've been down among the dead. It was very ... educational. And while I was down there, it began to rain. Such a hard rain, lovey, let me tell you. I never saw its like before. You want to see what fell on me?"

He pulled up his sleeve and put his arm into the pool of light. Here was the reason for his lumpen appearance. His arm, and presumably his entire body, was a patchwork, with the flesh half sealed over fragments of stone which he'd slid into his wounds. She instantly recognized the iridescence that ran in the fragments, lending their glamour to his wretched meat. The rain that had fallen on his head was the sloughings of the Pivot.

"You know what it is, don't you?"

She hated the ease with which he read her face, but there was no use denying what she knew.

"Yes, I do," she said. "I was in the tower when it started to collapse."

"What a G.o.dsend, eh? It makes me slow, of course, carrying this kind of weight, but after today I won't be fetching and carrying, so what do I care if it takes me half an hour to cross the room? I've got power in me, lovey, and I don't mind sharing-"

He stopped and withdrew his arm from the light.