by Felix Gilman
Slowly, Arjun approached one of the cases and leaned down close to it. A buzzing filled his head. He felt drunk, dizzy, glorious, young, surrounded by friends and lovers. He laughed and cried. He pulled back and his head emptied out and was cold again. Laughing, Shay said, “That’s the god in it. See?”
Arjun leaned in over another, touching the case with his palm. A shock ran up his arm and he felt his muscle tense. His head pulsed like a raw wound. His lips curled back and he bared his teeth. A thrill of violence went through him. A noise halfway between bark and howl tore out past his grinding jaw. He pulled away, shaking his head, and went down the line of cases, through clouds of love and lust, hatred and pity, and more complex sensations: a complacent certainty of justice done, a craving for glory. When he was close to them, the cases radiated wonder. When he stepped back—which was hard to do—the sensation faded and left him feeling empty and soiled. They were ugly things. The glow in each of them seemed to be pressing at the glass, trying to escape. Surging and breaking, weakly.
“Are they aware in there? Do they feel?”
“An interesting question. If they have minds, they are—this is my view, Arjun—they are nothing like ours. Despite the delusions of the idiots outside, they do not love you, Arjun, or this city. Not in any way you could understand.”
Nevertheless, Arjun thought the things wanted to be free. He could feel it. Was that what the Voice was? Was the Chamber a cage? Had they held it prisoner? Maybe it hadn’t abandoned them; maybe it had escaped them. He went round the cases again, listening for its song. It was not there.
“Are you disgusted, Arjun? Many people are. You must have passed by a number of them on the way in here.”
“I don’t know. I still don’t know.”
“They call it blasphemy. Sacrilege. Some other words they can’t really explain. They’ll try to run me off soon, I expect.”
“Yes. The Countess’s men are coming for you soon.”
“Someone always does. I’ll take myself elsewhere for a time, and come back, soon, soon enough. I always do.”
“I’m here to ask you some questions. About your work.”
“Oh dear. I suppose I won’t be making a sale tonight.”
“I have no money, Mr. Shay. And the prices of these must be…extraordinary. Besides, they are not real.”
“Didn’t you feel them, Arjun?”
“I felt something. But I once felt the touch of the real thing. These are…false. Shoddy goods. A cheat. They’re only shadows of gods. What are they really?”
Shay shook his dirty white mane. “Oh no. I’m not here to answer your questions.”
“I can pay for your answers. I have nothing, but Holbach can make it worth your while to answer me.”
“I doubt it. My methods are my living; why would I share my secrets? And who is this Holbach, anyway?”
“You haven’t heard of him? I gather he’s famous.”
“I spend my time elsewhere. Other parts of the city.”
“He’s the creator of the Thunderer.”
“Isn’t that some local newspaper?”
“What? No. The warship. The flying warship?”
Shay stared at Arjun. “That changes things. I’ve seen it; it’s a remarkable achievement. I don’t care about the money, boy. But tell me how the ship works, and I’ll give you answers.”
Arjun thought quickly. He knew nothing about the ship, nothing at all. He took a gamble, and said, “The charm isn’t permanent. Holbach has to renew it each morning. He makes sacrifices of birds, down by the Bay. He burns the feathers.”
“Aha! There’s always a trick to it. It’s always both a true miracle and a sham. Now, you were honest with me, so I’ll be honest with you. They’re not gods. They’re mere traces, sloughings-off; reflections, you might say. Good enough for most of my customers; perhaps they lack sensitivity. Now, how was the ship raised? He used the Bird, that I know. But how?”
“Ah. The ship itself is made from pine taken from trees swept by the wind on mountain peaks. That’s part of it. How do you capture these reflections?”
“Well, not so much reflections as afterimages. I catch ’em on glass. There’s a trick. That’s part of it. Tell me more.”
Arjun kept lying. Shay swallowed every wild lie he could conceive. Or it seemed he did. Perhaps Shay was lying, too. It was hard for Arjun to remember everything Shay said, while still keeping track of his own fabrications; many of the details of Shay’s science escaped him. But he remembered that Shay reached under the table and snapped open a big black briefcase, and pulled out an odd little box, a bit like an accordion with a glass eye. Shay called it a heliotype. They had them, and better, in other parts of the city, Shay said. “Or they will. Some streets’ll take you there, if you walk ’em right.”
They captured light on glass. And, if properly treated, the glass could capture these afterimages of the gods, these ghostly trails of glory. Did the heliotype make these spectral energies, or steal them? Shay didn’t know or care.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. And I’ve crossed this whole world. What do you mean when you say ‘other parts of the city’? When you go into hiding, where do you go, Mr. Shay?”
“How will you pay for that information?”
Arjun tried to think of something else to say about the ship. Where was there a gap in his web of fabrications, some space he could fill with more lies?
In the silence, he realized, he could hear noises below. A window breaking. The chants of the crowd echoed distantly up the spiral corridor. Hang ’im high! They had got their courage up. Arjun wondered whether they had noticed he was missing, and followed him over the railings. They were coming. Ride ’im out!
Grunting, Shay started packing the strange cages away in his briefcase. Arjun said, “Mr. Shay, you can’t leave yet. I don’t care how you capture the images. I need to know how you find the gods. Do you track them? Summon them? How is it done?”
“Oh? Used yer time poorly, didn’t you? Can’t you hear ’em?”
“Those questions were for Holbach. This is for me. I can’t let you leave.”
“Oh dear. We don’t have time for this, boy.” Shay abandoned his packing and put down the case he was holding.
“Take me with you, then.”
“You can’t follow. You don’t have the trick of it.”
The mob sounds were still some way below. Arjun drew his pistol and moved to stand between Shay and the door.
“It’s like that, is it, boy?” Shay put down the briefcase.
“You don’t have time to argue, Mr. Shay. You have to take me with you. We’ll go together.”
“Haven’t you been listening? There’s more to this city than you know. Than you or them below’ll ever see. Paths, places that open up only to the one who walks ’em right, and that’s me, and not you. You’re not even city-born. The city you see’s a curtain before your eyes. Where I go, you can’t come.”
“Show me how, then. Show me and I’ll follow. You won’t leave here without me. Please, Mr. Shay, be reasonable.”
“What’ll they do to you, do you think, if they find you doing business with me?”
“They may kill me. They will kill you. I can chance it.”
Shay’s sharp teeth smiled. “Very well, then. There’s a trick to it. Listen.” He started to whistle tunelessly.
The light in the case at his feet grew and pulsed and scratched at the glass. Arjun felt the throbbing at the back of his head. A great thrill rose in him. The walls stretched away. He could hear applause. All around him were people calling his name. He had never been prouder; there was nothing he couldn’t do with all this love, and he loved them back….
He stood there looking wide-eyed down the rows of empty chairs. He didn’t see Shay rushing him until the last second. The little man’s hair was wild and he was snarling. There was a knife in his hand, stabbing up. Arjun jumped back. Flailing his arm out in panic, he struck Shay’s knife with his pistol, knock
ing it aside. Shay staggered back, shocked. Arjun lost his own footing and fell back into a chair. Shay came at him again, the knife held high to stab down, and Arjun, his head clear, raised the pistol and fired. The bullet smashed Shay’s skull bloodily open. The flintlock’s dirty powder-flash lit his brittle white hair, and a wave of fire circled the orb of his head like dawn rising over the red planets above. Shay’s twitching leg gave way and his body fell back.
Arjun breathed out. The mob would be here soon. There was no time to think about what he had done. But he couldn’t leave the things in the cases. Gods or reflections, aware and suffering or not, they were grotesque, pathetic—lies, told without love. There were miracles in the city, that were perhaps no less sacred in their way than his own beloved Voice: they deserved better than to be reduced in this way. He supposed he did find Shay’s work blasphemous, after all.
With the butt of his gun, he broke open the cases. As he cracked each one, the lights took on a greasy liquidity, and flowed out and away. A few did not just dissipate, as one might expect; instead, the lights gathered across the floor, clutching in tight knots of radiance. Some took on tiny forms. Glowing homunculi drifted away into the room’s shadows. Something soft and blue and nearly-not-there, the height of a man’s knees, crept over the dusty floorboards; something the size of a man’s fist formed itself from throbbing red light and knuckled away into the dark. When Arjun blinked again, they were gone.
When he was sure he was alone, he knelt and looked at the device Shay had called a heliotype. The big black briefcase was full of plates, boxes, and chemical-jars that seemed to be integral parts of the device. There was no time to take it all with him; it was far too heavy to run with.
Taking the steps two at a time, he ran back out into the observatory dome. The chanting of the mob was very close now. He was very frightened. Who knew what they might do to him?
There were no other doors, but far over his head, the dome was split open to the sky, where the smashed and slumped telescope still protruded. Arjun put a foot on the telescope’s broad, gleaming back. It wobbled, but did not collapse; it was braced against the hole in the roof. On hands and knees, he shinned up the ruined column and out onto the dome’s curving roof, where he collapsed and let the cold night wind clear his mind.
The mob came into the room below. He listened to them smashing what was left of the machines, and thought about what he had done to Shay. His mind kept running again and again down two tracks. He was disgusted with himself: he had blundered, he had killed, he had broken open a remarkable mind and left a bloody ruin. He was excited, proud: he had survived Shay’s uncanny attack, emerged unscathed. It was pure luck, though, he told himself; nothing but a panicked instinct, and besides, he was half your size and twice your age, and you had a gun to his knife; and he fell again into self-disgust.
The mob went away after a while. He wondered if they felt satisfied or cheated. He stayed out on the roof, looking out over the dark Heath, until something below caught his eye.
A movement down in the Observatory’s grounds: a mote in the dark, glowing pale green. It was shaped like a dwarf or a child, tottering awkwardly on little legs. It leaned its wan body against the fence, and slowly oozed through, and staggered on down the hill. One of the afterimages, Arjun realized. The stolen shadow of a god. He had thought they had all vanished. This one was stronger than the others. Where was it going?
Arjun slid down the dome’s roof on his back, bracing himself with his hands on the cold metal, going as fast as he dared. He dropped the final distance, landing heavily but unharmed. Then he climbed over the fence again. On the other side, he could see the faint, flickering glow, drifting down the hill.
At first he tried to keep his distance, but when it entered the trees, he had to come closer to avoid losing it. It didn’t react. He got closer and closer, until he could see it clearly. It was no taller than his waist, and featureless, but its stumbling movement put him in mind of a crippled child. He kept a few arms’ lengths away, out of wariness. Which one was it?
They left the trees and the homunculus drifted and fell across the lawns. Arjun followed. The little circle of pale corpse-light moved across the dark grass.
The Heath was empty and silent, but it was said to be dangerous at night. Desperate vagrants camped out here. He stopped to reload his pistol, fumbling powder and shot out of his pouch, nearly spilling it in the dark.
The glow flickered; it ebbed, then seeped softly out again. The little thing inside it continued down along the path around the reservoir, its light reflecting out over the water, until it came to an ivied fence at the Heath’s edge. There the homunculus passed through, its pale form seeming to snag on the obstruction for a moment. Arjun followed over the fence.
They were in a narrow cobbled street adjoining the Heath. They turned left, then right, always going downhill. The thing slumped down the middle of the empty streets, its glow too weak to illuminate the buildings on either side, and Arjun could see nothing except the cold light ahead of him. Sometimes they passed a turn to some lit street, friendly windows and illuminations inviting into the night; but the thing would always lurch away down a dark alley instead. At other times, Arjun heard the sounds of crowds, drinking and shouting, buying and selling, away over the rooftops. It sounded like a theater crowd, once, though he thought they were going down to the warehouses of Barbary, far from any playhouse. The thing walked clumsily, but with a purpose, as if it was going home.
It pushed through a bowed and broken wire fence. Arjun stepped through a ragged hole a few feet away, and they crossed a vacant lot. Dogs or foxes lived here, leaving dry white spoor and gnawed bones among the weeds. Past a rotting boathouse, they came to the edge of a canal, where the water sat low and dark.
The canal split in two and they followed the smaller course. A sheer wall of slimy stone dropped down to the cold green surface. These were, Arjun thought, the grimy industrial canals that ran through Barbary and Shutlow, and out to the factories of Agdon Deep. He had seen a painting of the canals of Ebon Fields, in the north, with their elegant curves, pleasure boats, and delicate, arching bridges. This was very different.
Not far ahead, a great black warehouse sat squarely across the path and the canal. Its cracked windows reflected the pale glow. The canal ran into a tunnel under the building.
The thing stopped in a patch of weeds. It remained still for a long time, then began to stoop and pick around, reminding Arjun of the children who went down to the riverbanks to pick over the city’s refuse. He sat down on the damp stones to watch.
Another figure came out of a dark alley along by the warehouse. Arjun tensed and began to get to his feet; he felt a sudden urge to proclaim his innocence, to say I am not involved, I didn’t do this, I saw nothing. But the new figure ignored him, and Arjun bit the words back and sat in silence to watch.
The new thing looked like a man, but Arjun couldn’t see its features. A long coat? A hat? Its lines were unclear. It ebbed and seeped shadow and a soft stagnant light.
It came slowly toward the spectral thing in the weeds.
Neither figure made a sound.
As they came closer together the two figures resembled distorted reflections of each other, glimpsed through dark water. When they touched—when the larger figure, that was like a man, reached out a shadowy arm and seized the childlike homunculus by its shoulder, and leaned predatorily in—they were like two aspects of the same troubling thing. The two figures bathed together in the sad, ugly glow, until it seemed to flicker from them both, and from the whole unpleasant scene.
Whatever Arjun was seeing, he thought, was not in either figure, but in both, or in the space between them. Or in the repetition of the scene—something about the set of the larger figure’s shoulders suggested pointless, grinding repetition: as if this was a ritual, or a tiresome duty; as if this was something that happened here again and again, and would happen forever.
The thing in its tiny and vulnerable aspect st
ruggled like a child, and shook. In its murderous aspect it tightened its grip.
The thing—the god—was in the ritual. It was in the vision. It was in the bitter sense of futility that choked Arjun’s throat and weighed down his limbs so that he said nothing, did nothing, as the vision enacted itself.
This ugliness—it was what this god had in place of music.
The child-thing shuddered, then went still. The man took the child up in its arms and walked down the slimy stone steps to the narrow path by the water’s edge. It stopped in the mouth of the tunnel and stepped down into the dark water. There was a faint, hungry glow from the tunnel’s mouth. Then it went out.
Arjun was more frightened than he could say; he felt it as a physical cold.
But he couldn’t just run. He needed to know what was in the canal. He had come to the city to search among its divinities. This was surely one. It was frightening, but how could he have thought strange gods would be otherwise? And it was more than that: the tunnel mouth called to him. It was all he could do not to lower himself at once into the water. He knew he should turn back, but he couldn’t. He drew the gun for comfort and walked carefully down to the water’s edge, and into the tunnel.
T he tunnel was empty and silent. There was no light at its end. Mud and weeds sucked at his feet. Arjun’s steps echoed. Nothing came rushing out at him. He ran a hand along the slick, mossy wall.
“Is this your home?” His voice was weak and strained.
Finding a firmer voice, he said, “What are you?” And, “Are you here at all?” And, “Was that thing a part of you, or only an image, a shadow? I was the one who set it free.”
He said, “What was that I saw, outside? Was that something that happened here? Is that how you show yourself, in murder? Is it a part of you, too? Is it some ritual you demand?”
