The Knights of the Cornerstone

by James P. Blaylock

  He heard someone speak, and he peered into the recesses of the cavern, trying to orient himself before moving farther in. Illuminated like figures in a painting, the Lymons stood in the distance near a shoulder-high, rectangular white stone. Calvin was astonished to see that his uncle stood there unsupported, when only a couple of hours earlier he had been near death. Clearly Nettie had made use of the veil, as she had threatened—or promised. The white stone was the Cornerstone of the Temple of Solomon—the Fourth Secret. His aunt held the Veil of Veronica in her hands.

  Water leaking through fissures in the floor above fell like a brightly beaded curtain between the Lymons and the stone. Other cut stones rose beyond the Cornerstone in an immense pile, pyramiding up and filling the end of the cavern, supporting the floor of the Temple. The glowing light clearly emanated from above, as if from an interior sun—light that seemed to Calvin to be alive with flitting dark figures like giant birds in a painting of a prehistoric world, or like angels in an antique illustration of Heaven. The figures coalesced out of the mist, glowing briefly like burnished gold in the light, and then became shadow again and disappeared altogether, back into the misty ceiling of the cavern as if into the vast, open sky of another world.

  Calvin saw Postum now, standing some distance away near the far left wall of the cavern—the river wall. Water ran through the rock behind him, trickling down in little mineral-streaked rivulets. Postum’s arm hung at his side, his hand holding a pistol. He wasn’t moving, but was talking into a walkie-talkie, staring at the Lymons and at the falling curtain of water. Calvin edged toward him, keeping well out of sight, seeing Donna now, who sat on the floor of the cavern, apparently unhurt, her hands behind her, her ankles held together with a nylon zip-tie. A backpack lay on its side ten feet from her, spilling out hand tools, water bottles, assorted junk.

  The ground shook again, and Calvin staggered, but caught himself, listening to the creaking of the restless earth, the ground trembling, and he told himself that if he wanted to see the sunlit world again, he’d have to do something besides stand and wait—something that wouldn’t prompt Postum to start shooting up the place. His aunt and uncle stood stock-still, Nettie holding the veil up and out before her now as if it were an offering. The mist overhead dimmed and glowed, still alive with shadowy movement.

  “That’s right,” Postum said, talking loudly. “Are you hearing me clear now? Good, because I’m getting a little nervous about these quakes. Like I was saying, it’s old-school. Black powder, a piece of PVC pipe from down at the hardware store, and some cannon fuse I ordered out of the Estes Rockets catalogue. It’s a foolproof, thirty-dollar deal. All I want to do is breach that wall.” He gestured with his left hand, which held the pistol.

  Calvin spotted a heavy smear of black tar on the river wall, water trickling over and around it. Pressed into the middle of it was a foot-long piece of PVC pipe with the ends capped off. Several feet of fuse looped away from it. Calvin knew nothing about explosives, but he knew that Postum didn’t have to use theater props down here where there was no audience. The bomb wouldn’t be a fake.

  “The river’ll do the rest,” he was saying. “How high it’ll rise is a good question, but it’ll sure drown anyone down here, which amounts to three people, me being the fourth. What I want is twenty-four hours. Then we’ll be out of your hair for good and all, and no more collateral damage.

  “Wait … you hear me out. I’m looking at the veil as we speak. Right now it’s in the hands of an old woman who won’t give me more than a moment’s grief before she drowns. As for the silver, I’m banking on the water rising past the entrance to that passage that comes down out of the Temple there, which means that the only way into what you call the mint is down from the hills, and from your point of view that’s enemy territory now. Whether that mint’s underwater or bone-dry, we’re going to take that silver right out of there in a trolley car. You all can come on up the Khyber Pass and gamble with us if you want, but I don’t think you’ve got enough chips to see the bet. That’s the end of my pitch.”

  He listened again, and then said, “You sure can try a man’s patience, Miles. Give me just a second to up the ante here.”

  He walked across to the coil of fuse, took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, lit the flame, and touched it to the fuse, which immediately sparked and burned. Calvin stopped himself from lurching out of the darkness right then and there, which would only end in him being shot—no doubt about it this time. He wiped his face with his forearm, then yanked off the saturated piece of beach towel and tossed it aside. The misty light around him seemed to have intensified, and sounds were strangely clear—the undertone of music, the sound of the river.

  “It’s done,” Postum said. “Fuse is lit. Anybody shows his face at the mouth of the cavern is a dead man, according to my pistol. This cannon fuse burns at a steady rate, and you’d best believe I’ve timed it to the inch, so I know just how much time I’ve got to walk out of here, and it ain’t long. All my chips are on the table now. You want to call my bluff, Miles, you go right ahead. Meanwhile, I’m going to secure that veil before the river looks in on us.”

  Move, Calvin told himself, and this time he didn’t hesitate. He stepped out into the open and strode silently toward the burning fuse. Donna was looking straight at him, but her face didn’t change. The Lymons were facing away, paying no one any mind. Nettie was talking out loud, what sounded like prayer, still holding the veil out before her. Postum paced toward the Lymons, intent on the veil, his back to Calvin. Bomb first, Calvin thought.

  He stumbled, but caught himself, not knowing whether it was the knock on the head or the earth moving again, and not caring. Jerk the wire loose? He wondered whether it would explode like a holiday cracker. His ignorance of bomb making was profound. He sank his fingers into the roofing tar and clutched the piece of two-inch pipe, pulling it loose from the wall. Holding it out in front of him, he turned around and walked back toward the entrance to the cavern. The least he could do was carry it away, throw it to hell and gone up the passage. He ran his free hand up the long looping fuse until he found the end, feeling it burn his fingers. He pressed on it, trying to smother it, heading for the entrance to the cavern.

  Donna shouted, and he ducked sideways fast, hearing the gunshot and spinning around, making himself small as he lunged away. Postum was coming straight toward him now, walking hurriedly and shaking his head, half smiling, aiming the pistol. Calvin lurched away, seeing the fuse sparking again. He hadn’t put it out at all.

  “You’re going to blow yourself up, son,” Postum said to him, his voice loud and nervous now. “Give me the bomb and take a seat with your girlfriend. Miles is going to come through here and solve this problem. You see if he doesn’t. Do it right now, or I’m going to have to shoot you.”

  Calvin backed away, watching Postum’s face. He yanked hard on the fuse, which popped out of the pipe bomb through a plug of roofing tar. They were jolted by another earthquake, hard this time, as if defusing the bomb had silently exploded it. Calvin hunkered down, riding it out, the bomb stuck to his hand. Fragments of rock fell from the roof of the cavern in a shower of dust, the falling debris causing Postum to throw his arms over his head. The walkie-talkie flew out of one of his hands, landing somewhere out of sight and taking Miles Taber out of the equation.

  Calvin saw that Uncle Lymon had fallen, and that Nettie knelt next to him now, lifting the veil again with both hands, as if she had business to finish and no earthquake was going to stop her.

  Postum recovered, raising the pistol again, and Calvin threw the bomb hard, but it stuck to his hand like a tar baby, the piece of pipe merely falling loose and bouncing on the ground. Postum bent over as if to pick it up, his head cocked upward so that he could watch Calvin, the pistol ready but aimed slightly wide. Calvin rushed at him without thinking, gripping the long fuse, looking at Donna and senselessly yelling, “Now!”

  Postum spun sideways toward Donna, who still sat helplessly
on the ground, and Calvin threw a loop of still-burning cannon fuse around Postum’s head, thinking of Lamar Morris dead in the cardboard carton. Postum shoved his hand and arm into the loop before Calvin could yank it tight, and then turned to face him with no apparent effort, slugging him hard in the stomach. Grabbing both of Calvin’s shoulders, Postum cracked his head against Calvin’s forehead, and Calvin fell in a rush of darkness, holding on to the fuse, dragging Postum with him, gasping for wind, his eyes blurred with blood.

  Postum pushed himself free and stood up, a bloody mark on his forehead, the pistol in his hand. He picked the pipe bomb up off the floor and wiped a gob of tar off the top of it, then fumbled to push the fuse back in, packing the tar around it carefully, glancing at Calvin but not apparently concerned with him.

  There was a sound like ice breaking now, as if the floor of the cavern had split open like a frozen lake, and the undertone of music heightened, the sound of the river playing beneath it, the sighing of the water and the clacking of stones taking on a counterpoint melody. The cavern seemed to Calvin to be slowly spinning, and he braced himself, fighting vertigo, watching Postum shuffle sideways to stay on his feet, cramming his pistol through his belt and heading toward the river wall and the heavy smear of black tar, still working his plan.

  Then he stopped abruptly. His attention wasn’t on the bomb any longer. He was staring at the Lymons, who were on their feet again, standing before the Cornerstone.

  Postum raised the pistol, but his hand moved wildly from side to side as if drawn by an erratically shifting magnetic source. Calvin stood up dizzily, trying to balance himself. The music was abruptly deeper, a symphony of earthly noise rising out of the bedrock on a draft of cool air that washed past Calvin, raising dust from the floor, the updraft catching the veil and lifting it from Nettie’s hands. The veil fluttered upward, slowly ascending, casting golden rays where the light shone through it, until it was a small wafer of shadow against the misty aura of the ceiling. Calvin wiped blood from his eyes again, squinting upward, watching as the veil disappeared.

  Uncle Lymon sat down hard on the ground, which shook again as if he had become so heavy that the earth could barely support his weight. The floor tilted sharply, and Calvin lunged forward, feeling the solid stone moving beneath him. Postum waded toward the cavern wall again like a man fighting against a waist-deep, heavy tide. He bent over the backpack and picked up what must have been a pair of wire cutters, clipping off most of the remaining fuse before throwing the cutters aside and jamming the pipe bomb back into the tar. He fumbled the lighter out of his pants pocket, clicked open a flame, and waved it at the fuse, but then staggered backward, trying to stay on his feet, glancing back at Calvin. Postum looked smaller now, old, worn-out. Fear played in his eyes, as if he had finally figured out that the stakes were higher than he had thought.

  Calvin started toward the wire cutters, the cavern abruptly quiet. He snatched them up, moved to where Donna sat, and snipped through the nylon ties. He saw that his aunt and uncle were walking forward now, having passed through the veil of water, an aura of opalescent light around them that brightened and brightened until they simply disappeared altogether.

  There was a crack like a gunshot, and Calvin saw Postum pitch forward, a hail of stones clattering down around his shoulders, and in the next instant Postum looked upward into the downrushing shadow of an immense, conical stalactite that pulverized him beneath a cloud of dusty rubble.

  Calvin felt a hand on his arm, bringing him to his senses, yanking him backward, and a voice shouted “Run!”—a voice he obeyed without hesitation, the glittering dust whirling around him and the sound of avalanching rock filling the cavern. Donna’s hand clutched his wrist, drawing him upward. He looked back into a cloud of illuminated dust, but the cavern disappeared from view as they ascended, and Calvin found himself in the darkness of the passage again, Donna still holding on to his wrist.

  TOMORROW

  Calvin sat in a lawn chair drinking a grape soda. There were a dozen bottles left from the case—two of which were dug into the river sand at his feet, keeping cool—but that would be the last of it, given what had happened to the Gas’n’Go and Shirley Fowler’s moving out to New Cyprus from Essex. The thought made him consider the things that had come into his life and then had passed out of it again over the past few days, and, more happily, the other things that had come into his life and stayed.

  By the time he had gotten home last night from the hospital in Bullhead City, Doc Hoyle’s body was gone, and the bedroom and most of the house had been put right. This morning his forehead was tight with the stitches, and the aspirin hadn’t done much to dumb down the pain, but he had awakened with a feeling of peace that was still with him. Out on the Temple Bar they were taking the fortifications down, eradicating all evidence of yesterday’s invasion, the little Bobcats and Pullman carts running back and forth, the Knights putting things right. Calvin was reminded of holiday decorations coming down or of a theater set being struck after a show had closed.

  He thought again about the strange ascent of the veil, and about the rest of the Knights’ relics, or rather the relics that the Knights cared for. Taber apparently understood them to be symbols of Heaven on earth. His uncle had seen them as a way to change human pain into something bearable. To Bob Postum they had been objects that you bartered at the Coronet store with promises of a pillowcase full of paper money. But for Calvin the relics hadn’t been the issue. New Cyprus was the issue—the ever-moving panorama of the river, the mountains glowing gold with the dawn light, the fall of evening casting long shadows over the trailers in the park

  They had found Postum’s body beneath the rubble in the cavern. The Lymons had simply vanished along with the Veil of Veronica. “God took them home,” Taber had told him. “Now and then He does that.” Calvin had no reason to argue, and anyway, he wasn’t in an argumentative mood.

  The constant fisherman in the little aluminum outboard had a line out over on the Arizona side now, and beyond him a dust devil rose up from the field where Postum had been casting stones. It spun wildly for half a minute before abruptly falling still. Dust to dust, Calvin thought, tossing a stick out into the river and watching it bob away on the current. The water was emerald green even under the blue of the desert sky, and there were thunderheads over the mountains again. A breeze sprang up, carrying on it the promise of pending rain, of autumn and cooler days.

  “There’s your ghost,” he said to no one, “blowing in from Arizona.”

  He thought about his uncle and aunt and about his father and mother and the inevitable passing away of the things of man. And then, hearing Donna’s footsteps on the driveway, he said a few words on behalf of all of them to the close and holy silence of the desert morning, finished his grape soda, and headed around the side of the house to meet her.

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  Also by James P. Blaylock

  The Elfin Series

  The Elfin Ship

  The Disappearing Dwarf

  The Stone Giant

  Langdon St Ives

  Homunculus*

  Lord Kelvin’s Machine*

  Other Novels

  The Digging Leviathan

  Land Of Dreams

  The Last Coin

  The Paper Grail

  The Magic Spectacles

  Night Relics

  All The Bells On Earth

  Winter Tides

  The Rainy Season

  Knights Of The Cornerstone

  Collections

  Thirteen Phantasms

  In For A Penny

  Metamorphosis

  * not available as
SF Gateway eBooks

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank some people for the help they gave me with this book, starting with my family, all of whom made sensible and useful suggestions when I needed them, and particularly Danny, who gave me the idea of making my main character a hopeful cartoonist and lent me some of his own cartoons to get me going. I’d also like to thank Tim Powers, Lew Shiner, Chris Arena, Paul Buchanan, and Dixie and Bull Durham.

  Dedication

  For Viki, John, and Danny

  And this time for John Ciarcia and Karen King

  Cha Cha and Karen: Here’s a book dedicated to the two of you, for years of New York hospitality. The Blaylocks thank you for your love and support. See you soon.

  James P. Blaylock (1950 - )

  James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California, in 1950, and attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was befriended and mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with his contemporaries K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded – along with Powers and Jeter – as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © James P. Blaylock 2008

  All rights reserved.

  The right of James Blaylock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.