Immortal From Hell

by Gene Doucette

  By way of answer, I sat at the table.

  “Do you have something to write on?” I asked.

  “Yes, under the ledger.”

  The ledger book was heavy, more from the binding and the thick paper than because it was particularly voluminous. It was intended as a record of transactions that passed through this station, and by what Oscar was saying, there hadn’t been a transaction in something like sixty years. I resisted the urge to open it and see what was on record there. Instead, I pulled out the pad of paper. Next to it was a thoroughly useless fountain pen.

  I waved it around.

  “Don’t suppose you have a ballpoint pen on you? I never much cared for these.”

  I write with both hands, but that’s largely because when I first learned to write, it was with ink that didn’t dry immediately. That wasn’t a big deal for languages that were read vertically, and it didn’t much matter when recording numbers, or using a chisel in stone. I also distinctly recalled a type of ink that dried and/or was absorbed refreshingly quickly when used on certain types of papyrus. But for a decent portion of the time, writing was done left-to-right, with ink that needed time to dry, using a quill or a fountain pen. Doing this with the left hand—which felt more natural to me—meant smearing every word immediately.

  Anyway, I prefer ballpoint pens almost without exception. (An exception: if I need to use the pen to defend myself, fountain pens are better.)

  Oscar had one, and handed it over. I spent a few minutes writing down the key, which was a series of characters in three different alphabets, a couple of random symbols—a triskelion was in there—and a hieroglyph belonging to the god Anubis. It looked like what happens when a bored archeologist doodles while on the phone.

  “Here you go,” I said, handing the pad and pen to Oscar.

  “Which box?” he asked.

  “You’re going to need a ladder.”

  His eyes drifted upward.

  “Oh. How far?”

  “Top center. I wrote it for you.”

  The symbol on the top center square matched the first one I’d written down. It was a character in a language that didn’t exist any longer, and the symbol corresponded to my name in that language. For good measure, the three-hares symbol was above it.

  Oscar laughed.

  “But that’s the founder stone,” he said. “That isn’t…it doesn’t open, it’s just there for…you’re serious.”

  “That’s me: the keeper of the Path. Nice to meet you. And it better open. I put entirely too much time and effort into this for it not to.”

  The three-hares motif was already around for a while when I decided to make some good use of it, primarily because I thought it was neat. The first time I saw it was at the China end of the Silk Road, so I’m pretty sure it came out of China from somewhere, as much as something this widely-used can be held to a single origin story.

  I moved merchandise along the Silk Road for a good long while, and became enamored of the way the Buddhist monks set up shop at certain way-stations along the route. These were safe spaces for travelers to bed down for the evening, where they could expect to wake up alive the following morning, which was something considerably less guaranteed on most other parts of the road.

  One time, for reasons I can no longer recall, I was at one of the monasteries with a supply of heavy goods—bulk spices—when I had reason to very quickly travel in an unanticipated direction. The ideal way to do this was to finds someone to guard my expensive and heavy spice jars while I went on this errand, until I came back. The short version of the story is that I asked the monks to hang onto the spices in exchange for a portion. They agreed, I took off and did the thing, got back and retrieved my spice, paid them for their service, and everybody was happy.

  I should mention one other thing about this time-period, because it’s slightly relevant. We didn’t have banks. What we had to do, if we wanted to move money—gold, typically—from one region of the world to another was use a Hawala. I’d pay money to one guy in one part of the world, and tell him it’s for my account in another part of the world. He’d keep the money I gave him, and send a letter to his partner in the other part of the world telling the partner to credit my account the same sum I gave to him, minus the fees for the handling of this transaction. Really simple, and not all that different from how electronic funds are moved now, I’m told.

  So here was my big idea: a private society made up of fellow travelers who were looking for additional security for their liquid funds. Originally, this was just for the folks like myself, who traveled the Silk Road, but the network grew to cover most of Europe, got as far as Britain, and eventually set up in the US in at least two cities I’m aware of.

  At first, that was the extent of it: a sort-of Hawala for a select group, with a location—you can think of it as a bank with branches if that helps—every hundred miles or so. The bonus feature was that each location also had a vault (safe deposit boxes, if you will) where things could be stored.

  It was the second part that was an evolution into something slightly more useful to a general traveler—merchant or no—and especially to someone who happens to be immortal. It basically solved a large number of problems I was having with my stuff.

  I’ve owned a lot of stuff. I’ve lost most of it, sold some of it, and broken some of it, but I’ve managed to keep a select few things I like and consider important. This has been incredibly difficult, because private ownership of things is not something that mixes well with immortality.

  What I needed was a few places to store a private cache of things, with a caretaker to keep them from falling into a volcano or whatever, and with enough secrecy around it so that it wouldn’t get discovered by someone operating under the assumption that the owner was long dead.

  So that was the first function of the secret society I invented. The second was what gave it the name, the Path. (Technically, it never had a real name. I would have probably called it something cooler, if anyone asked.) If you’ve done any traveling, you’ve probably figured out that it’s a lot easier getting around someplace new if you’re being helped by a local. Take that sentiment, and factor in that being a stranger in a land with unusual customs could well get you killed, and you can see how I developed this idea.

  Once it was up and running—it took a while—I had a network I could rely upon to help keep me alive during a particularly tumultuous part of history. If I traveled to a new city, and needed immediate assistance, the Path would provide a place to stay and, if I needed it, funds from my account, whose balance was kept in a shared ledger across the network. If I knew where I was traveling next, and that I would need help, word could be sent down the path, ahead of time.

  It worked really well, in part because we all kept it a secret, and in part because we kept it very exclusive. My initial investors—and it was an investment, as this kind of thing isn’t cheap—were all hand-picked. Almost all of the users of the Path after that were legacies. That was what all the squares in the wall represented: legates.

  The other users of the Path were people who had been given the means to use it by a legate. We called them delegates, or wanderers. The delegate’s use of the path was meant to be only a one-time thing, although it occasionally became a means of recruitment and fund-raising. Help out a well-to-do delegate, offer them a proper membership, refresh the society’s coffers a little. Kind of like how professional sports leagues expand, only less expensive and a lot more private.

  Another reason it worked really well is that none of us used the Path all that often. For a fair number of legacies, they may not even be fully aware what the dues they’re expected to pay are for.

  Given my arrival was the first time Oscar had even had to open up this room, it sounded like for this part of Europe, the Path was effectively no longer in use. This wasn’t a huge surprise; Devon wasn’t precisely a large travel destination. If I could be certain a way-station still existed in London itself, I would have gone there instead.
But one of the things the churches in Devonshire were known for was the peculiar three-hare decoration that seemed to be everywhere. I don’t know why this is—I think it’s possible the decoration was borrowed by another tradition for a different reason. Your guess is as good as mine on that. But I figured if I wandered around long enough I’d find one that was dedicated to the Path.

  “That’s quite a story!” Thelonius said.

  I’d given him and Mirella the basics while waiting for a deeply shaken Oscar to find a ladder that could reach the top shelf.

  “You have to keep it to yourself,” I said. “Can I trust you to do that?”

  “I will find a way to recount it by couching the details in such invention that none could find the true Path, I swear to you,”

  “Well, that’s almost a yes.”

  “I find this difficult to fathom,” Mirella said. “A thousand-year old travel agency?”

  “Kind of.”

  “It’s difficult to believe something like this could remain a secret.”

  “None of us tried to profit off of it, by design. I think that helped. It’s strictly a co-op. Or, it used to be. Like I said, I haven’t had to rely on it for a really long time.”

  I wanted to add, but didn’t, that Mirella was probably underestimating the number of secret societies currently in existence, about which the general public is largely unaware. It sounds sinister when I put it like that, but the reason they continue to exist without being detected is the same as the reason I gave for the Path remaining secret: nobody tried to profit. More exactly, these clubs aren’t seeking any kind of world domination or whatever. More than half of them are trade organizations, which means they are just incredibly boring unless you happen to be highly enthusiastic about that particular craft.

  Anyway, it’s not a big deal. It’s what happens when communities grow to a certain size: people try and organize small tribal groups of like-minded people. As long as they aren’t lynching anyone, they’re mostly harmless.

  Oscar returned, shoving one end of a ladder through the hole. Thelonius helped get it in the rest of the way, and then the frail old man was climbing to the one box nobody expected to access.

  The decoration on the front of the box hid indents that were meant to be used as a drawer handle, which was how he managed to get the front opened. The stone face flipped downward on a rusty hinge. Behind it was a metal box, and a second handle.

  Oscar pulled that handle, and got the box out. All three of us made some effort to help him with the box at that point, because it really looked like we were going to be dealing with a broken bone and a ton of questions from whatever paramedic arrived to deal with that bone, but he made it down okay.

  “It’s the rules,” he said, panting from the exertion. “I have to do it myself.”

  I cleared off space on the table for the box. He put it down, opened the top, and extracted a rolled-up bit of leather from inside. Then he re-closed the box.

  He untied the strap around the leather parchment and rolled it open, then spent several seconds comparing what I’d written on the paper to what was burned into the leather.

  “Well, sir,” he said. “It’s impossible, but you appear to be who you claim. You are a legacy, I gather. I was told the founder had no offspring, but clearly we were misled.”

  “No, that’s right. I’m him.”

  He laughed.

  “But this is…hundreds of years of tradition, my prior told me. Hundreds, and you’re just a lad.”

  “Well thanks, I’m older than I look.”

  He shook his head, and stepped back so that I could examine the contents of the box.

  Inside, there was a pouch containing gold coins. It wasn’t a fortune in gold, and it was frankly a lot more trouble than it was worth to even try and turn it into traveling money. This was the downside of relying upon a system this old. True that gold retained value even after all these years, but I couldn’t pay for a room with it, or book passage on a boat or an airplane.

  This was just the seed money from the foundation of this way-station. If it was heavily trafficked, I might have expected to find regular donations to the box as well, in more fungible currency.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else in the box. That wasn’t necessarily a shock since, again, I’d never been to this location, so I never stored any personal items here.

  I sort of regretted not having thought of this a little sooner. It would have taken up a lot more time than we had, but I’d left an incredibly rare sword of Damascus steel in a way-station somewhere in Austria. It would have been just as unhelpful for the present situation as the gold coins, but I sure did miss that sword.

  But, the main reason for opening up the box was to establish my identity, not to fund our quest. That said, if we needed more usable currency, a portion of the ledger should have been dedicated to the Hawala aspect of the Path—it would have had a record of my account. There was really no telling how that balance converted to modern money (unlike banks, Hawalas don’t compound interest) but it was bound to be worth more than the coins.

  I put the sack of gold back into the box, put the leather scroll in on top of it, and closed the lid.

  “We’re going to need travel assistance,” I said. “I assume that process has become much easier in the telephonic age?”

  “I imagine it’s… why, I don’t even know how it could’ve been managed otherwise,” Oscar said. “But yeah, of course. I’ll make the call. No trouble, it’s all coming back to me now.”

  The difference between now and back before there were telephones (and cars, and airplanes) was that none of us were in as much of a hurry to get someplace. If I turned up at a way-station needing full travel arrangements, it could be taken care of, but it would require a month or two of planning before I went anywhere. Most times I just stopped in long enough to ask the location of the next way-station and maybe drop off a few things, and then made my way to the next city, but I wasn’t nearly as allergic to foreign cultures as some of the other legates.

  Oscar sat at the table and opened the ledger. After a few minutes or poring over different pages of numbers and letters, he found the phone number he was looking for, and dialed it.

  “Hello, luv, my first time on this line,” he said. “I have a traveler…right…Yes, I’m excited too.”

  He put his hand on the receiver.

  “She’s excited,” he said. “Her first time.”

  He got back on the call.

  “Yes. Yes, dear, I can’t do long distance from…oh, right the number. Hang on.”

  He flipped through the ledger again. What he was looking for now was the code corresponding to my account, which should provide them with an idea of precisely how much service they would be offering. A delegate off the street would probably only be smuggled over the nearest border. This was sometimes incredibly dangerous, so it was still a decent service. My rank, I suspected, could get me anywhere in the world, provided the people I was dealing with still had the infrastructure to handle that kind of request.

  He found the code and read it off. There was a long pause as he waited for the woman on the other end to find a match.

  “Yes,” Oscar said. “Yes, no I’m not joking, he…he passed the test, luv…well yes, I agree, and it’s a good thing we’re already in a church, ennit?...well I can’t ask him that.”

  “Ask him what?” Mirella asked.

  “All right, hang on.”

  He put his hand on the receiver again.

  “She wants to know if you’re Satan,” he said. “You’re not Satan, right?”

  “I’m probably not,” I said.

  “He says he’s probably not,” Oscar said on the phone. “No, I think he’s having us on…no, not about that, about being…right. Look, dear, can we get this rolling, I don’t want to keep them all day….yes. Yes, call it in.”

  Oscar turned to us.

  “Sorry, I should have asked,” he said. “Where are you going?”
/>   “Chicago,” I said.

  “Oh, all right. Dunno if we have one of our…one of these little ports in the States or not. Guess it don’t matter, we can get you there either way, I guess. You know, you can fetch tickets online these days, it’s really very easy.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that,” I said. “And there are a couple of stations in the U.S. that I know of.”

  “Oh. Very good.”

  Whoever he was talking to came back on the line. He spent a few minutes muttering and taking notes, relaying that we needed to go to Chicago, and that we appeared to be unwilling to buy airline tickets online, and that I continue to probably not be Satan. Then he hung up.

  “All right. What I understand, she made a call to another one of our people, and they’re making some more calls, and eventually we’ll be reaching up high enough to get this sorted. If I’m guessing, you won’t be headed to Heathrow tonight. There’s a lovely little inn up the road, if you’re looking.”

  After helping Oscar hide the hole in the wall behind a rack of priest robes and an old confessional, we headed down the street, to an inn that was indeed lovely and little, and whose sole apparent employee, Bridget, was happy to have us.

  “Is this the most expedient way to do this?” Mirella asked, once we’d gotten to our room. We could afford two rooms, so Thelonius was down the hall.

  “Do what? Get to America?”

  “Yes. I know your concern is valid, but relying on a technology that last made sense for an overland merchant route? Perhaps we can use one of our aliases now and just book our own flight. They’re likely still looking for us on the continent.”

  “I think this will happen faster than you realize.”

  “And then, we don’t even know what we’re going to find once we get there. This is a small needle, and America is a very large haystack.”

  I stopped to look closely at her. She was sitting on the bed, and displaying an emotion was frankly not familiar with in her.