by Hal Duncan
“Don't know what I'm looking for myself,” says Finnan. “But I'd say you've given me a few ideas.”
As the mescaline lights up the world behind his eyes, he stands up from the table, pushes his chair back, picks up the cards, his cigarettes, his lighter, and stretches, yawns. It's time to go behind the scenes.
four
THE CHAMBERS OF HIS HEART
THE SILVER SCREEN
The tower and the roofs of the Rookery seen from a barred window—a re-.X flection into a room filled with books on Futurism—the corridor outside the cell—spiral staircase down to Sublevel Thirteen—Joey prying a grille off the wall, looking into a ventilation duct—crawling through the flow of dreams pumped up from below to sustain the psychic sleep of the Circus—steel thrum of fan blades turning slow before us at a T junction, blowing hokey smoke into the mirrorspace, dry ice of Joey's dreams—a left turn and a sharp drop down into darkness and—
I'm looking through a silvery screen into a shabby movie hall, all worn red velvet seats and curtains, peeling paint on plaster. Couples kiss and grope each other in the darkness; in the seedy squalor of the seventies, I reckon, from the lapels wide enough to hang-glide with. Somewhere in the audience, potential parents make their futures: she stops him; a smooth-tongued devil, he persuades her; she consents; a ritual play that's been the same since the chromascope was invented. Fuck, they probably played the same game back in Shakespeare's day.
The frame flicks to the edge of my vision and I snap my head round, following it. It floats at the foot of a bed on which—
“What the fuck?” I say.
“Polanski. Son of Satan,” says Joey, shimmering into solid shape beside me. We're extras in a Sabbat scene, standing among masked revelers as, on the bed, Satan humps his poor, doped victim. The revelers start as Joey unsheathes his vorpal blade in a sleek singular move, and the horned and horny-red archfiend looks up to see these unexpected walk-ons in his little Catholic drama of doom. Joey Narcosis, dream killer, and yours truly, Jack Flash, hotter than Hell if I do say so myself. I'm about to introduce us when Joey steps forward, scythes his sword through, flicks it back into an arc and down to his side. There's a look of shock on Satan's face as his head rolls off its shoulders and black blood sprays the ceiling of the bedroom.
And … cut, I think.
Satan's minions back into the corners, his body trembling on top of the girl until I roll it off with a foot, slipping the jackknife from my boot while I'm at it. Through the magic mirror that flicks here and there with cuts to close-up and wide shot, different angles, I can see the audience sitting up at this strange turn of events. Even Polanski isn't usually this weird, I guess. I flick the knife through the air and spear the screen while it's on wide-angle, bounce over the bed and grab the handle, slide a slice down it like a pirate down a sail. Beyond the flaps peeling open in front of me, the audience starts to scream, all rising from their seats.
I unhook an orgone grenade from my bandolier, pull the ring out with my teeth and lob it into reality.
I sniff the air as I step out into the cinema; there's the slightest scent of phero-mones on the ether too, the same psychic aroma as on my passport, but it's almost lost in the musty smells of popcorn sweat and hotdog fear, and the stench of sexy sin getting stronger by the second. They're shagging in the stalls already. I drop down onto the carpet at the front of the stalls, where an usherette has crumpled to the floor, pink uniform skirt hiked up to do … unmentionable things with an ice cream cone.
Two weeks of tantra and she's giving me ideas.
I reach down to pluck a Cornetto from Sexy Sadie's abandoned tray, as Joey lands beside me. Up there on the ripped screen, Sharon Tate is shrieking for an oblivious audience, subliminal newsflashes flickering through the film. Massacres of movie stars and Indochinese villagers. Internment and states of emergency. It's not real news, only newsreels, all the little lies they bury in the backbrains of the mindfucked masses to sustain the circularity. Keep them thinking it's the same year, you know, and the bitmites make it so, like the same movie being played over and over, midnight or matinee. There's a reason they call this place the Circus.
I flip a gray trench coat from the back of a seat and pull it on over my leathers as Joey and I head for the green glow of an EXIT sign, stride down a dim hallway, sticky carpet underfoot, low lighting on dark red and gold patterned wallpaper. A framed poster of Lord Jagger in Performance,
I peel the cardboard top off the Cornetto, strip the paper down to expose the mint choc chip.
“Cool and creamy,” I say.
Joey slams the handle of the fire exit and we step out into the evening air.
The greeny-gold streetlamps give the city a gaudy glow, lighting bright the busy road at the end of the alley… and the roads overhead and to the side, and every which fucking way but loose; a jumble of buildings upside down and on their sides, man, this place looks like someone let a psycho architect loose in zero-g. An airtram crawls past, old and slow as a dinosaur, windows rattling, engine thundering, a couple of inches off the ground at most. Cars float by, scooters buzzing round them. Sign on the wall across from me says Northbridge Road, so we're in the vicinity, from what I know of Dunedin. Down at the next corner, blackshirt militiamen are stopping traffic at the red-and-white candy-striped barrier of a checkpoint which just has be the entry to Imperial Way. I duck back into the alleyway; the passport will work as a postcurfew permit on a one-to-one basis, but it would never get me past that level of security.
That's where Joey comes in.
He leans out in front of me, scoping the militiamen that we're allowed to kill. That he's allowed to kill, that is. I'm a little envious, I have to say.
“Don't fuck this up,” says Joey. “They still have public hanging here.”
The plan is simple: All I need to do is find my cover id, download myself into his deep and dirty, deep enough and long enough for me to sneak inside the castle while Joey, reeking of my blood pumping in his veins right now, has them looking the other way. Then I shuck off the soulskin, sneak into the secret depths without raising any alarms, rescue Joey from the dungeon he should be safely tucked away in by then, and we carnage our way to the chi-mine. Nice and easy, lemon squeezy
“What could possibly go wrong?” I say.
“Not a sausage,” says Joey, skeptical as fuck.
He nods his head—on ye go—and I nod back, saunter casually out of the alley and turn right, north up the road, away from the checkpoint. I glance back just the once to see Joey heading toward the guards, sliding sword out of scabbard with a shickl
Head down, I walk away.
“Yo, motherfuckers!” Joey calls behind me. “Come and slurp my saucy spunk!” Yeah, right. Like I would say that.
THE BALANCE OF THE WORLD
20th March. A day of fighting draws to its close and we are lucky to be alive. I hardly know what to think, now that I have fought side by side with the Baron against the Turkish forces. I have seen his true mettle, Anna. I can hardly deny that he's a man of honor now. Yet only twenty-four hours ago I was cursing the man to his face, calling him a liar and a murderer. But I suppose I knew even then that he and his Enakite leader were not behind Samuel's disappearance. Even before he told me of the book, I knew. I knew the moment he uttered that bloody word. A book of prophecy, he said. A book of names.
The Book of All Hours—the language it is written in is … compressed. You could not write down every life that ever was or will be, not in a million pages, otherwise. You must understand, to read one page … It is like reading a thousand pages in each word. How could any man ever learn such a language?
“We do not learn it,” he said. “We remember it.”
He told me that Samuel had argued with the Enakite leader about a page of the book; something on that page, some prophecy or invocation, something that was too terrible to accept. That Samuel wanted to alter it, believed that by doing so they could change the future itself. I knew just from h
earing that word that one word can change everything.
“In the language of the Enakites”—he shrugged—”a thousand words in one sign, a thousand pages in one word, a thousand books in one page. It could be a million lives at stake or more.”
I refused to believe him, Anna. Bloody-minded and pig-headed, I refused to believe his “absurd claims.” Prophecies and words of power. I cursed. I swore. Eventually we just stood there, eyes locked, our faces inches apart, like two bareknuckle fighters in the moment before the bell begins the fight. Sometimes it is when the invective has given way to silence that men are at their most dangerous, Anna, and I believe I might well have taken a swing at the fellow then had Tamuz not pushed himself between us.
“Eyn, no! Carter Bey! Please, Jack. Eyn Reinhardt.”
Von Strann stalks away, seems to grasp control of himself, to swallow whatever rage is driving him, before he turns back to Jack.
“Captain Carter,” he says in a voice measured in syllables.
And Jack's anger drains away at the strain in that voice and the look of… anguish in his eyes; it's as if the man is carrying the weight of a million souls, and Carter is looking into that mass, hearing a resonance under the simple sound of his own name. He's not sure if it's the look or the voice or Tamuz's hand on his chest that makes him take a step back. Or if it's … a horrible recognition that whatever that weight is, it's not just in von Strann. He can still feel an echo of something strange about the room, about the air, and about himself, the clenching of his fist, his heartbeat in his scarred chest, something clamped around his heart.
“Jack,” says Tamuz.
He's still wound up. That's all it is. He tries to tell himself that but it's like he's trying to keep his footing on the deck of a ship listing ever further to one side, like trying to aim while charging along a steep slope covered with scree. As if one support of the world around him has been blasted away, the broken floor angled down so sharp he has to fight to stay upright. He looks from Tamuz to von Strann and back again, and has this sense, this strange sense like a sort of deja vu, the recognition when you realize some stranger looks so like an actor or an old acquaintance but you can't quite place them.
But most of all he sees this … honest sadness in von Strann's face, and his own instability in the fear on Tamuz's. He was about to lose control, he knows. That's what this feeling in his chest is, he knows.
The desire to lose control.
CREATURES WITH CLAY FOR FLESH
As Ab Irim said to his servant Eliezer, I have told you of the suits of skin they say God gave to Adam and Eve to cover up their nakedness. I will tell you more, yes? You will know this tale, I think, my friend, of how the Lord created a garden, a paradise, how he built a wall around his land, as you today build walls around your cities; how he made the waters rise to water it, as you today dig wells and irrigation channels to water those cities; how he shaped a man from the raw clay, and a woman from the man's bone, to be his wife, as you today shape your sons in your own image. And as your daughters today are only their wives, a … piece of them, yes? If women were made from a man's rib, surely a woman's place is at a man's side, is it not? This is your tale, I think. It is not ours.
Our tale, my friend, is not so different. We also say that these eümmu—this is our word, my friend—these creatures with clay for flesh, filled with a little of his breath and blood, were shaped to work his garden and take care of it, to toil for the Lord in his fields. We also say that the Lord gave his servants one rule to obey that he told them they were free to eat from every tree in the garden but the tree which grew at the heart of it. We also say that he threatened them with death if they ever ate the fruit of this tree. And, my friend, we also say, that of all the creatures in the garden, the serpent was the wisest of them all, and he came to the woman, saying:
Take the fruit.
If I eat the fruit then I surely will die, said the woman.
You will die one day, said the serpent, but not today. And would you not rather die with your eyes open like a god's?
And so the woman tasted the fruit and, since it tasted good, she ate it.
But, in our tale, my friend, we do not call this act a sin, for how can a creature of clay with only a little blood and breath to make it walk and talk, just enough life for it to toil as a slave, how can we curse such a creature for a little taste of this forbidden fruit? To taste the knowledge of good and evil, to taste the fruit of the tree of life, my friend, is this a crime to your people? No, my friend, this woman who left her man's side is the mother of all living because she did this. And of all the creatures in the garden, now this woman was the wisest of them all, and she came to her husband, saying:
Take the fruit.
If I eat the fruit then I surely will die, said the man.
You will die one day, said the woman, but not today. And would you not rather die with your eyes open like a god's?
And so the man tasted the fruit and, since it tasted good, he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they saw each other in their nakedness, and hid among the bushes of the garden, hiding their shame among the branches and the leaves. This is the tale as you tell it in your Torah, a tale of sin and shame. But if they knew shame, my friend, then they knew pride as well; and they knew hate, my friend, and love, and sorrow and joy, and all the good and evil that we know in our hearts. For they had eaten of the tree at the center of the garden, and to taste that fruit, my friend, to taste its juices, sweet and bitter, on your tongue and running down your throat to fill your belly—my friend, wisdom is like no other fruit, for once you have tasted it you know a hunger that can never be satisfied.
But our tale ends just as yours, my friend. For it is said that when the Lord found his slaves hiding from him, when he knew that they now had wisdom, he was afraid of them, that they might become as powerful as him, and so he sent them out, and set an angel with a sword of fire to guard the gates of his paradise. What master does not fear slaves who have tasted wisdom? What master does not fear slaves who would disobey his rules? What master does not fear slaves who know what is good and what is evil?
Those are the sort of slaves who make trouble.
And Words as Weapons
Jack puts his hand on Tamuz's shoulder—it's OK—and the boy relaxes, steps out of the way. Von Strann tips him a nod and Tamuz returns to his work, to preparing for their departure.
Outside, far off, dogs are barking.
“You have to understand the peril we're in,” says von Strann. “These are treacherous times, and our enemies, they are… what makes them dangerous is as much what we have in our hearts as what they have in their hands.”
He hefts Carter's holster with its Webley, hands it to him.
“A gun in the hand is of less import to them than the fear and hatred in a man's heart.”
“Who are these enemies?” says Jack. “The Futurists?”
“Worse,” says von Strann.
“That word,” he says, “that word I… used on you, you understand, there are those who speak this language more fluently and to more effect than you or I can even imagine. I think… Samuel thought… that the Book was created to keep them in check, to bind them into a world where this is right and this is wrong, this is true and this is false. If they have control of the book, then they could… change it, shift the balance in their favor.”
A scream in the distance. Breaking glass.
“Balance,” says Jack.
Ten years since the Great War ended, years of madness, anarchy, bloody holocaust. The war to end all wars, he'd thought, when he signed up to fight the Kaiser, to save Belgium, to stop Prussian militarism in its tracks. Ten years fighting genocide in Kurdistan.
“What balance?” he says.
“Captain Carter, I beg you,” says von Strann. “I am not your enemy. And my people, Tamuz's people, we want to find Samuel every bit as much as you. So he stole from us? We do not believe in revenge. Believe me. We ar
e not barbarians. We do not lie. And we do not murder in the name of justice. Not for any book. We—Anat and I—we only rode out after him to… we were trying to save his life. To save all our lives. We have been searching for him since he left. We found…”
“What did you find?”
Von Strann swallows. He opens one of the flaps of the saddlebag.
“We found the carcass of his horse, a scorched and charred piece of carrion, torn apart by vultures; we knew it only by the metal on its halter. And we found this, buried inside the horse's bowels. Someone had cut the creature open… had hidden it among the poor brute's entrails.”
Von Strann scatters loose papers from the saddlebags across the table.
“If you will not trust me,” he says, “trust Samuel's words. But stop delaying us with your obstinacyp/eese: if we are not out of this city within the hour, I doubt we will get out alive.”
Jack picks up one of the pages:
…know now how to translate the language fully, unlike […] and false are signaled, […] think, in the[…]so that the Cant, as […] have come […] and words as weapons, tools, […]« sword of fire…
“And I suppose this enemy will be using their swords of fire against us,” says Carter. “Words as weapons, eh? I doubt words would be much use against a Lee-Enfield.”
“No?” says von Strann.
THE TIME BOMB IN YOUR HEART
The blackshirts are arriving as I kick the last Mod in his parka through the pastry cabinet of this little Italian joint, all Formica tables and espressos, that I've tracked my horsey to. I slug a shot of Java back with one hand, with the other flick my jackknife through the air and into a plain clothes SS man's cold heart. He drops, and a chi-gun skitters from his hand across the lino floor toward me. I dive for it, and roll, and come up blasting.
Fuck the Fox's plan, I think. You wanna party, come ahead.
As my cover runs for cover, I take down the blackshirt who's about to shoot him in the back—bad form, old chap, as Fox would say. With his black Ray-Bans and polo-neck, our guy looks more groovy cat than cunning fox, but it's him all right; there's no mistaking that little goatee and mustache. Two newcomers shoot out the windows and come diving through, their chi-blasts shattering tabletops and sending splintered wood and splatterings of ketchup, mustard, clouds of sugar, salt and pepper up into the air around me. I sneeze and shoot the ceiling down on top of them, a lucky fluke. Fuck, I think. All hell is breaking loose. The mission's not just in jeopardy, it's full-scale fucking abort, baby. The enemy were waiting for me. Some bastard's sold us out and, when I find out who, they're going to pay the piper at the gates of hell.
