Thunderer

by Felix Gilman

  There was a child waiting for him outside the Cypress that afternoon, who jumped up to say, “Mr. Arjun, sir? Letter for you.” He pressed an envelope into Arjun’s hand, and left, looking sincerely aggrieved at Arjun’s meager tip.

  May I presume upon your time, Arjun of Gad? I believe we may be of assistance to each other. Please come promptly. I will be at home to guests this evening. 122 Fallon Circle, Foyle’s Ward. Our previous meeting was a pleasure and I look forward to renewing our acquaintance.

  Gracien Holbach.

  P.S.—If the boy is honest, you will find money for a carriage, with my compliments.

  Arjun shook four green notes out of the envelope. Rials, the Countess’s currency. How did Holbach know where to find him?

  Haycock, of course. Haycock knew Holbach, did business with him. Arjun knocked on the book-dealer’s door, but he wasn’t in.

  Back down at Gies Landing, he found a carriage rank. “I don’t take rials,” the coachman said. “See the crest on the side of the cab? Belongs to the Gerent. Dollars only.” Arjun shook his head in exasperation and looked around for another carriage.

  “Never mind,” the driver called. “I’ll stretch a point.”

  The driver flicked the horse into motion with his stick and they went forward under the arches and banners, up the hill toward the Tor. Arjun had walked this route many times, but it was very different from the inside of a carriage, lifted up out of the filth of the streets. No one shouldered into him cursing, or grabbed his sleeve to beg or preach at him. And it was so much faster than walking that it redrew his map of the city, changing his sense of scale and time: it was still quite early in the evening when they turned into Foyle’s Ward.

  Fallon Circle was quiet and elegant, its houses set back behind gardens. The round tower of 122 was visible from the end of the street. Evening lights in the windows, all the way up. The building beneath it was a huge and dusty sprawl, stately yet disheveled. A butler met Arjun at the door and led him through what seemed like a maze of libraries and cluttered reading-rooms and up into the tower, then gestured him through into an office.

  Holbach was leaning against the window. A woman lay on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Déjà vu seized Arjun for a moment, and he forgot what he was going to say. But the woman was not the Countess. She was much younger—the flesh of her face was still soft—and she wore her dark hair plain and short and scraped back. She was wearing a man’s suit of well-tailored silk. She looked intelligent; not beautiful, but compelling. She met Arjun’s eye and smiled, tapping out her ash into a copper bowl.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Holbach said.

  “I was curious, Professor. I expected nothing to come of our last meeting. I recall it less fondly than it seems you do.”

  “Few people would dare speak quite so dismissively of an opportunity to meet our glorious Countess.”

  “I intended no offense. It was simply…frustrating.”

  “I took no offense, Arjun. May I call you Arjun? No other title? Arjun, this is Olympia Autun. This is Dr. Joseph Liancourt.” Holbach gestured at a stocky man with unkempt black hair, who hunched over a table, scribbling. Liancourt grunted.

  “Miss Autun,” Arjun said, “are you also in the Countess’s service?” She laughed.

  “Olympia is a lawyer. She is in no one’s service. Liancourt you may know. The playwright? The Sign of Winter? The Fourth Temple? Hare and Isabel?”

  “Hare was a potboiler. Please, remember me for Sign, or not at all.”

  Arjun shrugged. Liancourt shook his head sadly.

  “Ah well,” Holbach said. “So, I was intrigued by your story, at our previous meeting. Have you had any success?”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t. I’m trying to be patient.”

  “Well, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Olympia stubbed out her cigarette. “This doesn’t concern me. Professor, we’ll talk later. Liancourt. Arjun, a pleasure.”

  She left. Holbach gestured for Arjun to take her place on the sofa. “Intrigued. Yes, very much so. We will talk at length, later. A lost god. Insubstantial. A Voice, as you put it. Where did it go? Perhaps you are wondering if it was ever really there. Intriguing questions.”

  “I rather suspect he’s just a lunatic,” Liancourt said. “Look at his eyes. An obsessive. One encounters them, in the theater. Best to humor them, yes, but not to employ them.”

  Arjun felt a sudden stab of panic. He stood up and moved to stand between Liancourt and Holbach. “Professor, I don’t want to repeat our previous conversation. I am tired of being turned away. Can you help me? Will you?”

  “All right. Shall we get to the point, then?” Holbach said. “Our mutual friend Mr. Haycock tells me you are looking for work. He says that you say you can read certain languages that are almost lost in this city. I can use that skill.”

  “Mr. Haycock would like to sell me certain books. I had to decline his business; I have little money left. I think he would like you to pay me, in hopes that the money will find its way through me to his pockets. But I’m not interested in money. I have enough for my food and shelter for the time being. You know what I am interested in. Can you help?”

  “Please, sit down, Arjun. Sit. We have time to talk. Perhaps things were simpler in your distant mountain hermitage; here in Ararat, we need to talk things through.” Arjun sat and held his tongue.

  They began with testing, Holbach opening books at random and asking him for the meaning of certain passages. Arjun tolerated it as patiently as he could. Some of them he could read fluently. Others he had never seen. When Arjun offered a halting translation of a yellowed Tuvar scroll, Holbach clapped his meaty hands and laughed. “Hear that, Liancourt? I’d despaired of finding anyone who could unscramble this text. The ancient languages must be remarkably well-preserved in Gad.”

  Arjun shook his head. “The language is forgotten, but we preserve many books. I found grammatologies and dictionaries that translated between Tuvar and Asi and Kael. I taught it to myself. I do not know how the words should sound.”

  “Remarkable. Now”—Holbach raised a finger—“I can see your questions working to the surface again. Why would you work for me? How can I help your purpose? Well, I expect you are aware of my reputation. I am the man who predicted the Bird’s return, and harnessed its power. Some of my, ah, projects, may be relevant to your search. In fact, I have an opportunity for you right now. Something I hope you will pursue this very evening.”

  Arjun remained silent. “It’s a small matter,” Holbach began, “but the Countess is displeased. There is a man whose activities displease her. His name is Shay. We know where he can be found. He has advertised his presence, through unsavory channels. No, no, that doesn’t concern you: she has brutes for that sort of work. You’re not the type. What should interest you is this: Shay claims to have certain, ah, powers, a certain unusual science. He’s probably a fraud or a maniac. But if he’s the real thing, you of all people will want to know what he knows. I think you should visit him, talk to him. And quickly. Before the Countess’s brutes kill him or drive him underground.”

  “You want to know what he says to me.”

  “Oh, certainly. I couldn’t claim to be disinterested. I would eagerly await your report. And, if you do this for me, I promise you I will help you find your Voice. I am, I think I can honestly say, the greatest theologian in this city. I will help you, if you come work for me. Now tell me: are you armed?”

  H olbach had a carriage waiting outside the tower. He was confident that I would take his offer, Arjun thought.

  The carriage took Arjun across the river and onto Laud Heath. Arjun had the coachman stop on the lawn at the base of Observatory Hill, and walked up the hill alone. Lanterns hung in the trees, marking out the path in the gathering dusk.

  After a few minutes, the path rose up out of the trees. Arjun stopped halfway up the hill and looked out across the dark city. The streets were traced out in fire. Arjun picked out the places he knew: a
tiny circle carved out of the city’s vast map. With his finger in front of his eye, he traced the circle’s circumference. Everything within a day’s walk of the Cypress, he thought. If I had money for carriages, or horses, or boats, I could expand that circle, bring more of the city within my map.

  Gad, and all the towns he had passed in his travels, would easily fit into the space marked out by his finger. Ararat extended seemingly infinitely beyond. The high, high walls in the north—that must be the Urbomachy. Was that the Iron Rose? Those must be the factories of Garhide. That scar of red light could only be the pillar of fire: Tiber. What would it be like to be near it? He knew that there were courthouses all around the fire’s plaza, tempering themselves in the light of its justice. It must drive their inhabitants quite mad.

  He could see no walls, no borders; the city’s lights were a haze on the horizon. How did this endless sprawl feed itself? It seemed impossible. No profusion of gods could take the place of honest farmland. Could it? He made a note to ask Holbach for books on the city’s economy, and moved on. No time to waste.

  There were fires on the hilltop, surrounded by clusters of dark man-shapes. There was a banner strung between the trees over their heads—TO THE FIRE WITH THE BLASFEEMER!—and the squat dome of the Observatory Orphée rose behind them. They were between Arjun and the gate in the derelict building’s fence.

  Holbach had warned him to expect something like this. Shay’s peculiar business infuriated the churches, the pious, the mob. The Sentinel and the Burgher-Gazette were competing with each other to see who could denounce Shay’s blasphemies more furiously. There were protests in the streets—Arjun thought he had passed one a few days earlier, but the protest songs were uninteresting and he had paid no attention. Hence the Countess’s concern: Shay was an irritant, a source of unrest in her territory.

  While Arjun stood there, one of the men left the fire and came toward him, calling out, “What’s your business here?”

  Arjun took a deep breath and stepped forward into the firelight, saying, “I heard about the scum in there,” jabbing his fist at the Observatory, feigning rage. “The blasphemer. What are we going to do about it, friend?”

  The figures around the fire turned to him, with the heads of black-eyed eagles and boars, lions and snakes. Then Eagle-head took his eagle-mask off to reveal the face of a bearded young man, and handed Arjun a jug. “Come sit with us, friend.”

  T here were about thirty of them. There were signs—rubbish strewn on the grass, dead fires—that there had been many more during the day. Only the diehards had stayed into the night.

  “It’s evil,” said a woman who had been wearing a spider mask, dozens of blank glass bead-eyes on a bristling black brow.

  “It’s against the order of things,” Eagle-head agreed. “The gods won’t allow it.”

  “We read about it in the Herald,” Spider-head said. “They said he’d been here for weeks, doing his filthy business. Our own neighbors could have been coming here.”

  What were they going to do about it? They showed him. They took their last swigs from the jug, and put their masks back on—not just animal heads, but clocks, locks, flames, horns, mirrors, a ring of blades, a scribbled page—transforming themselves into the avatars of their various gods. They picked up pots, pans, and sticks and proceeded around the fence, banging out a rough, mocking music. They kicked their legs out high in an ugly parody of dance. Huge paste-and-paper heads wobbled loosely. Eagle-head went at the front carrying a torch and chanting, Out, out, out, hang ’im high, cut ’im down, ride ’im out. They went off around the corner of the fence into the dark.

  Arjun waited, and they came back a few minutes later from the other side. Clearly, their anger was up; they went for another lap, disappearing again behind the trees.

  He had at least a few minutes before they came back round again. He ran up to the gate and tried it: locked, of course. He looked at the spiked fence. He passed his gun and his lantern through the fence, then his jacket, then grabbed the railings tightly in both hands and pulled himself up and over the spikes. He fell to the ground on the other side, with a long rip in his trouser leg but nothing worse. Better than I expected.

  The front door was boarded up. Arjun found a broken window and pulled himself through into darkness. He struck the lantern’s flame. A dusty corridor ran around the circumference of the abandoned building, curving away in either direction.

  Arjun checked his flintlock. It was loaded with a single shot. Shay might be dangerous, Holbach had said: either he was a fraud, in which case he might be a hardened criminal, or he could really do what he claimed, which might be worse.

  Arjun set out clockwise. The corridor rose and spiraled inward, the turns getting sharper, until he took one last turn and he was under the dome. A shaft of moonlight came in through the dome’s aperture. The huge telescope was fallen at an angle, the gears and struts on one side rusted and rotted through. It was like a great golden beetle, legs smashed, body bent.

  There was light coming from an open door. Arjun made his way around the wreckage and stepped through into the next room, which was dominated by a large brass orrery: an expensive arrangement the height of a man, of loops and whorls of burnished metal, describing complex and implicate arcs around a golden solar sphere.

  Across the room, through the long shadows of the brass loops, Arjun could see a man sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper by candlelight. The man wore round glasses and a neat black suit, well-tailored, though the shoulders were dusted with dandruff. He had long, dirty white hair. He rose, and folded the paper. He was very short and thin.

  “I am Mr. Shay.” He spoke with a cold dry rasp, with an unpleasant rise to his voice, as if daring Arjun to find him repellent. “Well. Are you here for business, or to vent your outrage?” He pointed to the paper. “The Era is terribly full of outrage. Apparently the soul-health of the city’s children requires that I be hanged forthwith. Or has some lord decided I am a nuisance, and sent you here to put a stop to me?”

  “I don’t entirely know yet.”

  “A good answer. An honest man.”

  Arjun put his lantern down and took a step closer. Shay moved around so that the orrery was still between them. Its outer loops had broken and fallen to the floor. There were worlds underfoot. Shay asked Arjun’s name, and Arjun gave it to him.

  Shay circled the orrery as Arjun stepped closer. “You have an unusual accent, Arjun. Where are you from?”

  “A place called Gad. Far to the south.”

  “There are still places outside Ararat, then. Sometimes I wonder. I am strangely relieved.”

  “You are from the city, then, Mr. Shay?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He stopped circling by an open door. “Let’s see what I can offer you, then.” He darted through.

  Arjun followed. At first, he couldn’t see where Shay had gone. The room was dark, and full of moldy chairs, arranged in circles around a circle of tables in the well of the room.

  The door shut behind Arjun and the roof opened and stars splashed overhead, more than he had ever seen, even on the clearest mountain nights. The wheel of the galaxy spun across the sky, rushing in. A single point of light gleamed brighter and sharper, came closer and larger. A second star overtook it, rushing down, growing red and angry, blotched with orange. It was whipped away and another point of light expanded to fill the sky with a huge purple sphere, belted by a vast plane of smashed dust. Arjun stumbled back and fell. The planets paraded before him. A peaceful blue orb expanded across the heavens, and was gone. Darkness for a moment, then stars again, turning.

  It was not really the sky, or the stars; the images were running across the ceiling somehow. He tried to reach up and touch them, but it was too far overhead. Pale white light ran over his reaching fingers, then red, then green. Shay came down the steps toward the center of the room. “My apologies, Arjun. I find it amusing, and it creates an appropriate atmosphere.”

  “How are you doing it?�
�

  “I’m not doing anything. What do you think I am? Don’t answer that. The machinery is in the ceiling. It was a mess. Hasn’t been maintained in gods only know how long. No one in this part of the city would know how. It’s most likely from elsewhere, like yours truly, fallen through, from some less fusty district. I know a few tricks, though. I found a way to get it working. Do you like it?”

  “Less so than the real sky. It casts a false light.”

  “Not such a good answer,” Shay sneered. He stood by a table, on which were arranged a number of small glass cases. There was a faint glow from within them. “Here they are, then,” Shay said. “Ararat’s divine presences. Caged and for sale. This is my business; this my merchandise. Interested, appalled, or both? What brings you here?”

  Arjun walked up and down, looking in the cases. Their dusty plates were seamed with black gum. The glass was thick and grimy, like the windows of old charity-shops on empty streets. Inside each one, phosphor ghost light sparked, in dragonfly green-gold, occluded jellyfish purple and blue. An uncanny plasm. A shimmering slick, which shifted and coiled and scratched the glass. A soft electric crepitation. The light made his eyes feel shadowed and grainy.

  He turned away from them, and said, “I’m not here on my own account, but as an agent for Professor Holbach.”

  “Is he a purchaser?”

  “I don’t know yet. He tells me you trap the faint and forgotten gods. Or you say you do. The presences the city has left behind. He says you catch them, cage them, and sell them, like animals, or slaves, or toys. Is that what these are?”

  “Faint? Lean in close. You’ll see just how faint they are.”

  “Who would buy these?”

  “Who wouldn’t? To hold the powers of the city in your hand. As you love them, to possess them. As you hate them, to revenge yourself upon them. I don’t give a shit what you do. Sit it on your lap, hold it, let it sing to you, tell yourself it loves you and it gives you meaning, to possess such a wonderful thing. Spit at it. As you please. You would be surprised how much business I do. Rich and powerful men come sneaking in at night. They all try to cover their faces, do you know that? As if I know or care who they are. You don’t seem ashamed, though. I like that, Arjun. Go on. Lean in closer; feel their presences.”