by Hal Duncan
“And all of this,” the Duke Irae says, “for one little god.”
“The chaosphere is rather … complex, m'sire,” Arturo offers. “Just maintaining integrity alone—”
The Duke waves a hand.
“I'll take your word that we need it. Project Moonchild has my full support.”
Behind Perspex walls, ranks of babbling bonobo chimps sit strapped to padded school chairs, typewriters built into their wooden desks; they clatter at them like some monstrous secretarial pool, churning out screeds of paper to be grabbed and scanned by an army of technicians as they spew from the machines. In the shaved scalps, in the trepanned skulls of the apes, brain plugs spark and hiss, with blue-green luminous tubes like intravenous drips pulsing into and out of them, all linked back to a glass vat full of churning orgone vapor. A single hose spills from the vat, drops down into the abyss below, disappearing into the distance. Energy pulses up it.
“How goes this little side experiment?” the Duke asks over the cacophony.
Arturo snaps his fingers, a technician at his side in an instant.
“Results, man. What have we got?”
“Subject Twenty-three seems to be channeling Shakespeare, sir.”
The technician holds a folded train of perforated paper out for inspection, and Arturo flick-flick-flicks it over his shoulder like ticker tape, one foot, two foot, four, six, letting it fall in folds at his feet.
“ ‘This thing of darkness,’ “Arturo reads. “‘ These cloud-capped towers’… You call these results?”
The technician starts on an excuse, but Arturo cuts him off.
“Discontinue Alpha Phase and send subjects to Metaphysics Department for dissection. Move to Beta Phase.”
“The new subjects, sir? Where should—?”
“Contact Human Resources, man. Admin staff are ten a penny. Use a little initiative.”
“I'm not authorized to use initiative, sir …”
But the Duke and the Doctor are already striding on, leaving the flunky to realize he's dismissed … with an implicit authorization that amounts to a promotion. He snaps his fingers. In an instant, a technician's at his side.
“Yes, Doctor?”
The bioform archivist hurries on through the swing doors after its master, to find Arturo saying:
“There it is…”
A ball of obsidian darkness, a bubble of pure chaos, at least seven or eight feet in diameter, hangs in midair before them. Nothing touches it but the reflections of the world around. Alone of all the wild contraptions in Dr. Arturo's vast laboratory, it remains unintegrated, singular. The Echo Chamber, Arturo calls it.
This thing of darkness, thinks Dr. Arturo. An unborn God.
Of Siddim‘s Glist'rous Ink
“God knows,” says MacChuill, “Ah've never been able tae figure the man out, but. Keeps himsel’ tae himsel’, ye ken? Hauf the time, he's out in the bloody desert wi’ the goatfuckers—pardon ma French. That's how yer professor wanted tae get pally wi’ him, like.”
The car crunches gear and takes a corner, Carter wishing the mad Jock would keep his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, amazed at the way he treats the brake, clutch and accelerator as if he's doing the bloody Charleston— and by God, that's a gearstick not a joystick, man. They swerve left past a cart, right past a dolma stall, onto the Avenue of Palms, churning up a wake of curses behind them. MacChuill drowns out the noise with his own imprecations and a blaring horn, and Carter despairs of getting any sense out of him. He gazes hopelessly out at a silk stall; a couple of old men sit to one side of it, leaning forward on their metal-frame chairs over the backgammon board on the fold-down table between them.
“Aye, he—-fuck you, tool—wanted tae—an yer maw! Get off the fuckin road, ya numpty!—he wanted tae get in wi’ them, like. Tamuz's folk. Haud on a minute.”
The car grinds to a halt, bogged down in the throng of customers at the stalls lining the road. The Avenue of Palms runs north along the east bank of the Jordan, a straight-line shelter of dark fronds fed by irrigation acting as a natural canopy for the traders. The heat is still ferocious, though; the air itself feels heavy, languid.
“Tamuz's people?” says Carter. “Von Strann gave him his intro—”
“Ah, fer fuck's sake!”
MacChuill revs the car and presses on the horn, keeping his hand down so the ugly, insistent bray goes on and on, a nerve-jangling drone that surely, Carter thinks, only a Scotsman used to bagpipes as a weapon of war could suffer. MacChuill stands up, his head above the windshield. Whatever he shouts, it's impossible to hear, but it opens up enough of a crack in the crowd for him to sit down, slam the car into gear again and shudder it slowly forward.
“Sorry ‘bout that, sir. Bloody murder, this road, but it's the only way out tae the InkWells.”
Carter lets the heavy curtain fall back into place and takes a few steps away from the makeshift darkroom, lays his hand on top of the camera.
“The InkWells?” he says.
MacChuill nods. Tobacco tin on the table, he's busy rolling up a cigarette. He's not been much more use than Tamuz in terms of information, but even the smallest clue would help, something a little more than blank stares and appeals in broken English to just wait for the Baron, wait for von Strann. Not bloody likely. One day lost is one day too many. And Carter got nowhere with the dealers in the antiquities shops he trawled round yesterday. At the moment, the Scotsman seems his best bet.
“Aye,” says MacChuill, “that's the only time Ah really met him, apart fae in passing… yer man Hobbsbaum, like. Baron had us take the two of them up there. But it's no as if there's anything tae see apart fae some bloody big bits of fuckin ugly machinery. It's the Ink Wells, sir. Ah mean…”
MacChuill puts the cigarette in his mouth.
“Ye huvnae got a light, huv ye?”
“I think so. Just a second.”
Carter taps his pockets, finds what he's looking for and digs the silver lighter out, flicks the lid open, sparks the thing with his thumb.
“Cheers,” says MacChuill.
“What was Ah sayin?”
He shakes his head, shrugs.
“Aye… but they spent bloody hours up there, talkin tae this worker an that. Ye'd think they had shares in the bloody place. Christ, it's no even much of a business these days. Too flarnin expensive tae dig it out the earth when there's a hun-ner other ways tae make, well, stuff that does the job, ye know.”
Carter nods. You don't make sacks from silk, after all, and in this day and age Indian ink is good enough for any bureaucrat or banker's book of accounts. Th'un-fading gleam of Siddim's glist'rous ink, Shone on the calfskin page of Prospers books, And in Tres Riches Heures ofhist'ry's Dukes.
Yes, thinks Carter, but even the poetry waxing lyrical over its virtues was penned and printed in more mundane ink that dried dull black. The Ink Wells to the north of the city still produce small quantities for specialist markets, but it's a trade on its last legs, by all accounts. And Carter has no idea what interest it could possibly hold for Samuel other than the passing curiosity of someone steeped in ancient manuscripts. Has to be worth a try though.
“If you could take me up there,” he says, “it would be much appreciated.”
“Nae bother at a’.”
MacChuill nods at the lighter still in Carter's hand, his thumb idly clicking the lid of it open and closed.
“Nice piece of kit that.”
“Had it for years, old chap.”
Carter clicks the lid shut, tosses it in the air and catches it, slips it back into his pocket.
“Let's roll, then,” he says.
FOR THE SAKE OF ONE GOOD MAN
You must know your Torah. You must know the story as the Torah tells it, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But there are many stories, and only one truth. How is it in your book? What is that they say? That the Lord appeared to Ab Irim at sunset and spoke to him. At sunrise I shall destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he said, for their sins a
re smoke that fill my eyes with tears, and for this they shall be written out of the Book of Life.
They say Ab Irim was afraid for his nephew Lot—yes?—who lived within the city of Sodom, and he pleaded with the Lord: Will you destroy the whole of Sodom, he said, the good with the wicked; is this the action of a God of wisdom, justice and mercy?
The Lord was angry but He bowed to the appeal: Very well, Ab Irim, He said. I will spare the city if fifty good men are found within its walls. Yes? But Ab Irim still feared for his nephew Lot, so he pleaded further with the Lord: If there are only forty good men within the city, he said, then, for the sake of ten, will you destroy the whole of Sodom, the righteous with the wicked; is this the action of a God of wisdom, justice and mercy? And again, the Lord was angry but He bowed to the appeal: Very well, He said. I will spare the city if forty good men are found within its walls.
You must know the story as it goes, how Ab Irim bargained with the Lord until the sun had set and it was night, how he continued pleading until the Lord bowed to his pleas, agreed to spare the city if only ten good men were found within its walls. And the angels went down into the city to search, but there was only Lot, and so the cities were destroyed and Lot alone saved. This is the story told in your Torah, yes? But this is not the only story.
For so it was told by Ab Irim to his servant Eliezer, and so his servant's children still tell the tale. When Ab Irim stood with the Lord that night, so it is said, he asked again. He pleaded with the Lord again, and the Lord agreed to spare the city if only «/«e good men were found within its walls, and again, if only eight good men were found within its walls. But still Ab Irim haggled with the Lord. What if only seven were found, or only six? What if only five good men were found?
It is said that Ab Irim pleaded with the Lord all through the night until, in the final moment before sunrise, the Lord bowed to his last appeal: Very well, Ab Irim, He said. I will spare the city if only one good man is found within its walls. And Ab Irim was relieved. He knew that Lot was a good man and the Lord would not destroy the city of Sodom for his sake.
But as he said those words, Ab Irim looked out over the valley where the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah lay and, as the first light of the sunrise broke, Ab Irim saw Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed before his very eyes. There were no good men within the city walls, the Lord explained to him, for as Ab Irim had bargained through the night, the angels of the Lord had gone down into the city and taken Lot away, so that every man within its walls deserved to die in flames, in burning sulfur. So the angels of the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, for their sins were smoke that filled God's eyes with tears. For this they were written out of the Book of Life, and only the infamy of the cities is left. So it was told by Ab Irim to his servant Eliezer.
The Ink Wells
Dark twins of the mooring towers of the Ben-Abba Airfields, the black iron drill rigs of the Ink Wells rise in ranks across the white flats of the valley floor, in ranks and columns almost but not quite regular, like the pieces in a giant chess game near its end, inelegant Eiffel Towers all of them, knights with swinging hammers like horse heads lowering to snort, bishops with great pistons for miters, turning cogs and chains lowering damned workers down the shafts to Hell. The factory complex in the distance behind them seems like some God player slouched in his defeat, a refinery for a head lain on the table, warehouses as arms, one running this way and another that. Pipelines stretch out to this rig or that like distended fingers. The smell of sulfur is overwhelming.
The road runs up into the ink fields past a ruin so eroded you might mistake it for an outcrop of the rock but for the odd square angle of a doorway or a window—an old Templar fortress, MacChuill tells him, for guarding the profane pilgrims and profiteers on their way to unholy Hephaistonopolis.
“Hardly part of the charter for a brotherhood of Christian warriors,” says Carter.
“Aye, well, Ah guess that's what the Inquisition thought as well, eh?”
——
Heresy, blasphemy and sodomy—these are the charges raised against and confessed to by Templars, Cathars and Albigensians alike, and while the mundane political and economic rationale that was the primary basis for the persecution of these three most favored subjects of the pseudo-historian is, of course, of far more pertinence to a serious scholar than the fanciful content of confessions extracted by torture, it is nevertheless a question that should be asked: Just why do these three allegations go hand in hand? Rather than speculate on the dubious veracity of the charges that sent these “buggers” to the stake and their lands and money into the hands of good Catholics, rather than fabricating a web of occult mysteries from tenuous links (Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, 1982), tracing “secret traditions” back to obscene Essene baptisms of jism (Allegro, 1979) or homosexual Hashishim (Burroughs, 1959), let us turn our focus on the meaning of the myth. Let us drill down through the sediments of speculation that have built up in histories written by the victors and in tall tales told as true by latter-day artificers of arcana, and let us try to reach the core of the matter, to investigate the real substance of these accusations, the subtext, the semiotics of these sins.
To curse God as an evil demiurge, to urinate on a crucifix, to worship the severed head of Baphomet—these crimes against orthodoxy are consistent, coherent felonies which construct in their symmetry with monotheist belief structures a systematic opposition, a reflection, an extension almost, wherein the anthropomorphism of a Heavenly Father is in itself blasphemous, where the crucifix itself is an idol to be smashed, where the true salvation is not in an essentially pagan blood sacrifice but in the rebellious, ascetic Neoplatonism of baptist John, that latter-day Orpheus whose sundering of spirit from the flesh, of the soul from the body, reaches its symbolic apotheosis in the sundering of head from body. At the heart of these accusations is, perhaps, a fear that this is a purer form of monotheism, one which rejects God the Father and God the Son as graven images, one which venerates the Word over the Flesh with a dedication the more orthodox fall short of. In a way, these heresies can be seen as the logical end point of monotheism's abhorrence of pagan sensuality, and it is little wonder that iconoclasm should emerge entirely independently at various points across the history and geography of Christendom, whether as actualities, or as projections of subconscious paranoia, or as cynical justifications for the pillage of property and privilege. These are only surfacings in unadulterated absolutes of the very stuff of which Christianity is made, the dark vein it mines of hatred for the corruptions of the world and the flesh, of hatred which sees the world, the flesh itself as hell, a black iron prison for souls stained in sin.
Why though, we must ask, is the charge of homosexuality invariably added at the end of charge sheets which read like Manichaean manifestos? What does sodomy have to do with this transcendent devotion to the divine?
Nothing, thinks Carter. There's nothing here of any use. Two hours of questioning and none of the workers even remember either Samuel or von Strann; and one would have thought two crazy Europeans coming out to this parched hellhole in the midday sun, to ask God alone knows what, would stick in one's mind. Carter studies MacChuill sitting casually on the running board of the car, smoking his cigarette and watching the clamor and crunch of heavy industry in motion, conveyors carrying lumps of black crystal already melting in the sun. If the Scotsman's a liar he's a bloody good one, the sort that should be on the stage or silver screen rather than squandering his talent as chauffeur for a Prussian pornogra-pher with an eye for pretty, copper-skinned boys.
“Workers change a lot here, ye ken,” he'd mused. “There's guid money in it, but it's a filthy job, like. Ah mean, ye can smell it, can ye no?”
It's brimstone and burning rubber, oilsmoke and rotten eggs.
“No tae mention the danger; ye hit a liquid seam when yer diggin fer ore and… well, Ah worked there for masel a bit, but after a while ye realize the money jist isnae worth dying for. Drowning in ink… Christ…”
Car
ter sits now on the low rubble of a wall built by Templars, watching black vapors drift up from the ink crystals on the conveyors, curling in ornate arabesques not unlike the writing the ink might well become once it's been purified, packaged and exported to some distant corner of the world. The wells have been here for over two thousand years, but any remnants of past cultures that might interest Samuel have long since been cleared to make way for this modern, mechanized industry. So why would he come here?
“And the ink, ye know,” MacChuill had blathered on, “it disnae jist wash aff like coal dust. It stains ye, like, gets right under yer skin. Christ, ye can still see it on ma haun in the right light.”
MacChuill had held his hand up for Carter to see, turned it this way and that until he got just a glimpse of a mark, faint from one angle, like a tattoo blurred and faded by time, but flashing clear and crisp and black for an instant, impossibly clear and crisp and black. A trick of the light and—
“I think I need to sit down for a second. Feel quite giddy all of a sudden. Bloody heat.”
So MacChuill sits casually on the running board of the car and Carter sits in the shadow of a Templar ruin, trying to work out what on earth would have brought Samuel here and, indeed, if he really came here at all.
And we watch him as we drift in tendrils through the air, dreaming of the words we will become.
PERIMETER ALERT
“Death itself,” says the Duke Irae, “is less magnificent.”
He circles the Echo Chamber like an art critic appreciating an installation of the most unique originality. It should be more magnificent than death, after all, this egg from which the One True God will hatch. In death, the seven souls of a being are torn apart, dissolve away, one by one, but this … this will be the reunion of them all. Sekhu, the mortal remains. The dust of the angel Raphael gathered in a radioactive ruin that was once Damascus. Ka, the double. The empty armor of Gabriel taken from a desolate Haven out in the Hinter, the sculpted faceplate of his helmet a perfect mirror of his countenance. The Khu, the guardian angel. Uriel himself—the Duke Irae, as he's known in this piddling little fabrication of a fold—he's given his eye to the project, to watch over it from within. Just as Michael and Azazel gave of themselves. The Ba, the prince's heart. And the Khaibit, the shadow of the angel of death. And the sixth soul, second-highest of them all, the life, the energy, that burning song of spirit, the Sekem? The scream of Sandalphon as Uriel graved these other souls into him still echoes within that bubble of chaos, falling down forever toward that singularity of infinite energy, zero size, pure possibility, a void, a deep, waiting for a whispered word. For the secret name, the Ren, of God.
