Crystal Express

by Bruce Sterling

  The Dark Girl’s curving lips opened slightly. “Greetings, philosopher.”

  Hearing that she knew of him, de Maillet’s amazement was quelled, and his old stubborn courage at once filled his ancient heart. He heaved himself to his feet with the help of his cane and bent forward in a stiff and courtly bow. “A very good day to Your Ladyship,” he said.

  The Dark Girl smiled the strange hieratic smile seen on the oldest statues of Greece and Egypt. “You know my name?”

  “I know that you are the Dark Girl from the Sea; surely that should be title enough, since there could never be two such entities.”

  “Ah,” she said, “old philosopher, you have lost none of your cleverness. It is well that you flatter me now, after having done me so many grievous injuries during your long career. We are old enemies, you and I. You have faced me many times, and stolen your knowledge from my dark realm. You built your System to do me hurt. But now you face me incarnate.” The Dark Girl’s great eyelids closed and opened, and she fixed him with her gaze of serpent green.

  “Listen, philosopher!” she cried. “This is a Day of days, when a Great Tide of Change sweeps across the World, and the Spirit of the Age—which is to say, the minds of men—is transformed forever. During this awe-filled Moment, the iron laws of necessity and fate that govern this world are held in abeyance, and the dark essences and spirits that ruled this plane of being may walk abroad for the last time.”

  De Maillet said, “I have read that in a man’s last days he may glimpse hidden truths and have prophetic visions. Am I dying, then?”

  “O mortal, the whole world is dying, and a new world is being born: a world that you yourself, and the others of your kind, have brought into being. It will be a barer, sharper world, where a harsh and pitiless Enlightenment burns from men’s minds the old, warm clutter of legends and dogmas and romances.”

  “But my System,” de Maillet cried. “In this new world of clarity and light, will my System be triumphant? Will my name live on? Will the evidence support me?”

  The Dark Girl laughed aloud, revealing a gray mouthful of sharp, serrated teeth. “You ask me to prophesy? I am the Mother of Fantasies, the Mother of Faith, Hope, and the Church.”

  De Maillet stared, clutching his ebony cane to his chest. “You are Ignorance.”

  “I am,” the Dark Girl said. “So ask of me no favors, you who have pursued and harried me throughout this world; you, who through your learned books and the example of your life, shall harry me still, even after your death. Ask questions of my daughters, if ask you must.”

  The Dark Girl gestured with her slate-gray hand, and three weird Sisters sprang up from the sand at de Maillet’s feet.

  “I am Faith,” said the first of the Sisters. “I am she who enters the mind of man when his power to reason is exhausted, and he clings stubbornly to his own wishes and ambitions, and believes in them, for fear of madness otherwise. You have chased me from your own mind and, with your books, sometimes from the minds of others; but I will persist as long as there is ignorance and fear.”

  “Why do you cringe, then?” said de Maillet. “And why is your face so pale?”

  “O savant, you have wounded me. In the new age that dawns, it will be possible to live without me, as you have lived. You and your brethren, with eyes that see everything and fear nothing, will make me a thing of catalogs and dissertations and claw me with harsh arguments and skeptical logics. That is why I tremble and cannot meet your eyes.”

  “What of my System, then, Spirit? Will it be revealed as truth?”

  “You must believe that it will,” said Faith, and seeped away into the sand.

  The second Sister stepped before him. “I am Hope,” she said accusingly, “and I, too, shall be wounded grievously. I shall no longer be the great, blind Hope of Salvation, but only trivial fragments of hope: for power, or riches, or earthly glory, or simply for an end to pain. This era to come will not be a time of great hopes, but of plans, predictions, theories, and hypotheses, when man will seize the reins of fate in his own hands, and have only himself to blame or credit. I shall not be totally destroyed; but you shall rob me of my glory.”

  “What of my System, then, Spirit? You whose eyes are fixed always on the future? Will my work persist?”

  “You must hope that it will,” she said, and vanished into the sand.

  De Maillet faced the specter of the Church. “You should have been mine!” said the last of the Sisters, pointing at him with a bony arm lopped off clean at the wrist. Within her hooded veil, the crone’s eyes were tightly shut. “If not one of my theologians, then mine to burn!”

  “I never opposed you,” said de Maillet. “Not openly.”

  “But your logics have chopped off my hands!” the Spirit wailed. “In the days to come, your successors will cry, ‘Crush the infamous thing!’ and make of me a mockery, a thing to be shunned by free-thinking men.

  “Your heart was not mine, philosopher. It belonged to science and to worldly fame. Each time you despised and doubted the flames of hell, those flames guttered a little lower. As you have discovered His worldly machineries, you have withered the God of the Prophets to a watchmaker’s God, a phantom mechanic. The demons that lurked in the wastes; the spirits of woods and dells; the legions of ghosts and angels, all, all will shrivel in the pitiless light!

  “No more will I gather the souls of believers for rapture and punishment. When the great Change is through, there will be no souls. Men will stand revealed as cunning animals, born from the loins of apes. Their sharpened minds will cut all my fine fictions into pieces.” Weeping, the Church turned her back on the philosopher.

  De Maillet leaned on his cane. “You should not have concealed the truth,” he said.

  “The Truth!” cried Ignorance. “O mortal, the truth exists in the minds of men. It is you who have brought this great Change upon the world. The round and cozy firmament was too small for your ambitions. No, you would have stars in Newton’s orbits, and whole universes reeling to your laws! Every law and datum wrenched from the great Mystery enfeebles God, to put man in His place! I see my fate is written on your brow. The day will come, in stark futurity, when the mind of man will encompass all, and his omniscience will utterly destroy me. So know my hatred!”

  From the depths of the sea, a wall of turgid water roared upon the land and struck de Maillet down. His stick was knocked from his grasp and his nostrils were filled with the smell of muck. As he floundered in the dark water, blinded, he seized a smooth and rounded pebble from the beach. He lurched splashing to his feet.

  His spectacles were gone. He looked around wildly for the apparition of the Dark Girl. “This!” he shouted, shaking the pebble in his clenched fist. “This will defeat you, Dark Spirit! This is the evidence; I put my Faith and Hope in that, and in myself…”

  A dull roaring came from out to sea. Dimly, de Maillet saw the waves receding, and a vast wall surging toward the land, bright with lightnings. The storm burst upon him with appalling speed, crackling, rumbling, and roaring, with a sound like the walls of Heaven itself, crumbling under siege.

  Gasping, stumbling, clutching his pebble to his pounding heart, Benoît de Maillet fled into the ultimate darkness.

  A pure and searing light beat down on the old man’s eyelids. Groaning, de Maillet opened his eyes upon a brilliant summer dawn.

  Suddenly the face of his servant Torquetil was thrust before his own. De Maillet seized the shoulder of the young man’s livery coat. “Torquetil!”

  “Huzza!” cried Torquetil, pulling loose and leaping into the air in joy. “He stirs, he lives! My master speaks to me!”

  A hoarse, ragged cheer broke out. De Maillet, dizzily, sat up. A motley collection of house servants, fisherfolk, and townsmen had gathered around him, some of them clutching burned-out torches. “We have searched for you all night,” said Torquetil. “I brought the carriage as soon as the weather turned bad, but you had gone!”

  “Help me up,” de Maillet
said. The young Breton put his shoulder under de Maillet’s arm and hoisted him to his feet. “Monsieur’s clothes are drenched,” Torquetil said.

  Blinking myopically, de Maillet stared at the pebble he held in his hand.

  “It was the young gentleman here who first thought of looking among the Lovers’ Rocks,” said Torquetil, gesturing politely at the confident well-dressed figure of Jean Martine the Younger.

  “It was nothing,” the young merchant said, stepping closer. “After we, ah, parted, I felt some concern for Your Excellency. The weather turned foul quite suddenly, and I thought Your Excellency might have sought shelter here.” He smiled patronizingly at de Maillet, obviously pleased at his own ingenuity in tracking down an eccentric dotard. “The rocks were very high; in the wind and darkness my servants lost their way. I do hope Your Excellency is not injured.”

  “I’ve lost my spectacles,” de Maillet said. “Torquetil, do you have my spare ones?”

  “Of course, monsieur.” He produced them. De Maillet hurriedly pinched them on and studied the wave-smoothed pebble. “Remarkable,” he said. “Remarkable! Have I played by the shore of this great ocean so long, to have no more than this? Still, I have this. I do. This, at least, is mine.”

  Torquetil glanced pleadingly at Jean Martine; the merchant stifled a smile. “We must get Your Excellency into some dry clothes,” he said. “My carriage is on the road, not far from here. It is at your service.”

  “Come along, monsieur,” said Torquetil with exaggerated gentleness. He lowered his voice. “It is not well that the common folk should see you like this.”

  There was a sudden bustle at the back of the small crowd, and three ragged children burst forth. “We found it, we found it!” they cried. One of them carried de Maillet’s ebony cane.

  “Splendid!” de Maillet said. “Give them a little something, Torquetil.” The servant tossed them a few coppers; they scrambled for them wildly. “And what about my parasol?” de Maillet said.

  Torquetil looked sad. “Alas, monsieur, your wonderful parasol, so strange and colorful! The winds, the terrible winds, have blown it all to pieces; it is all cast down and wrecked.”

  “I see,” de Maillet said. He was silent for a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh.

  Martine cleared his throat. “If Your Excellency should care to visit my father’s warehouse in town, perhaps we could find you another.”

  “Never mind,” de Maillet said stoically. He polished the pebble across the front of his soggy waistcoat and dropped it into his pocket. Seeing him do this, the children pointed at him and giggled behind their hands.

  “They laugh,” de Maillet observed. “Posterity will laugh. Thus am I answered.” He leaned heavily on his cane, then turned to go. Torquetil helped him up the slope.

  Suddenly de Maillet stopped and squared his shoulders. “And what if they do?” he demanded. “At least, if they laugh at you, then you know you are still alive! Eh, Torquetil?”

  Torquetil smiled. “Just as you say, monsieur.” He brushed sand from his master’s shoulders. “Let us go home. The cook has promised: no more curries.”

  THE LITTLE

  MAGIC SHOP

  THE EARLY LIFE of James Abernathy was rife with ominous portent.

  His father, a New England customs inspector, had artistic ambitions; he filled his sketchbooks with mossy old Puritan tombstones and spanking new Nantucket whaling ships. By day, he graded bales of imported tea and calico; during evenings he took James to meetings of his intellectual friends, who would drink port, curse their wives and editors, and give James treacle candy.

  James’s father vanished while on a sketching expedition to the Great Stone Face of Vermont; nothing was ever found of him but his shoes.

  James’s mother, widowed with her young son, eventually married a large and hairy man who lived in a crumbling mansion in upstate New York.

  At night the family often socialized in the nearby town of Albany. There, James’s stepfather would talk politics with his friends in the National Anti-Masonic Party; upstairs, his mother and the other women chatted with prominent dead personalities through spiritualist table rapping.

  Eventually, James’s stepfather grew more and more anxious over the plotting of the Masons. The family ceased to circulate in society. The curtains were drawn and the family ordered to maintain a close watch for strangers dressed in black. James’s mother grew thin and pale, and often wore nothing but her houserobe for days on end.

  One day, James’s stepfather read them newspaper accounts of the angel Moroni, who had revealed locally buried tablets of gold that detailed the Biblical history of the Mound Builder Indians. By the time he reached the end of the article, the stepfather’s voice shook and his eyes had grown quite wild. That night, muffled shrieks and frenzied hammerings were heard.

  In the morning, young James found his stepfather downstairs by the hearth, still in his dressing gown, sipping teacup after teacup full of brandy and absently bending and straightening the fireside poker.

  James offered morning greetings with his usual cordiality. The stepfather’s eyes darted frantically under matted brows. James was informed that his mother was on a mission of mercy to a distant family stricken by scarlet fever. The conversation soon passed to a certain upstairs storeroom whose door was now nailed shut. James’s stepfather strictly commanded him to avoid this forbidden portal.

  Days passed. His mother’s absence stretched to weeks. Despite repeated and increasingly strident warnings from his stepfather, James showed no interest whatsoever in the upstairs room. Eventually, deep within the older man’s brain, a ticking artery burst from sheer frustration.

  During his stepfather’s funeral, the family home was struck by ball lightning and burned to the ground. The insurance money, and James’s fate, passed into the hands of a distant relative, a muttering, trembling man who campaigned against liquor and drank several bottles of Dr. Rifkin’s Laudanum Elixir each week.

  James was sent to a boarding school run by a fanatical Calvinist deacon. James prospered there, thanks to close study of the scriptures and his equable, reasonable temperament. He grew to adulthood, becoming a tall, studious young man with a calm disposition and a solemn face utterly unmarked by doom.

  Two days after his graduation, the deacon and his wife were both found hacked to bits, their half-naked bodies crammed into their one-horse shay. James stayed long enough to console the couple’s spinster daughter, who sat dry-eyed in her rocking chair, methodically ripping a handkerchief to shreds.

  James then took himself to New York City for higher education.

  It was there that James Abernathy found the little shop that sold magic.

  James stepped into this unmarked shop on impulse, driven inside by muffled screams of agony from the dentist’s across the street.

  The shop’s dim interior smelled of burning whale-oil and hot lantern-brass. Deep wooden shelves, shrouded in cobwebs, lined the walls. Here and there, yellowing political broadsides requested military help for the rebel Texans. James set his divinity texts on an apothecary cabinet, where a band of stuffed, lacquered frogs brandished tiny trumpets and guitars. The proprietor appeared from behind a red curtain. “May I help the young master?” he said, rubbing his hands. He was a small, spry Irishman. His ears rose to points lightly shrouded in hair; he wore bifocal spectacles and brass-buckled shoes.

  “I rather fancy that fantod under the bell jar,” said James, pointing.

  “I’ll wager we can do much better for a young man like yourself,” said the proprietor with a leer. “So fresh, so full of life.”

  James puffed the thick dust of long neglect from the fantod jar. “Is business all it might be, these days?”

  “We have a rather specialized clientele,” said the other, and he introduced himself. His name was Mr. O’Beronne, and he had recently fled his country’s devastating potato famine. James shook Mr. O’Beronne’s small papery hand.

  “You’ll be wanting a love-potion,”
said Mr. O’Beronne with a shrewd look. “Fellows of your age generally do.”

  James shrugged. “Not really, no.”

  “Is it budget troubles, then? I might interest you in an ever-filled purse.” The old man skipped from behind the counter and hefted a large bearskin cape.

  “Money?” said James with only distant interest.

  “Fame then. We have magic brushes—or if you prefer newfangled scientific arts, we have a camera that once belonged to Montavarde himself.”

  “No, no,” said James, looking restless. “Can you quote me a price on this fantod?” He studied the fantod critically. It was not in very good condition.

  “We can restore youth,” said Mr. O’Beronne in sudden desperation.

  “Do tell,” said James, straightening.

  “We have a shipment of Dr. Heidegger’s Patent Youthing Waters,” said Mr. O’Beronne. He tugged a quagga hide from a nearby brassbound chest and dug out a square glass bottle. He uncorked it. The waters fizzed lightly, and the smell of May filled the room. “One bottle imbibed,” said Mr. O’Beronne, “restores a condition of blushing youth to man or beast.”

  “Is that a fact,” said James, his brows knitting in thought. “How many teaspoons per bottle?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Mr. O’Beronne admitted. “Never measured it by the spoon. Mind you, this is an old folks’ item. Fellows of your age usually go for the love-potions.”

  “How much for a bottle?” said James.

  “It is a bit steep,” said Mr. O’Beronne grudgingly. “The price is everything you possess.”

  “Seems reasonable,” said James. “How much for two bottles?”

  Mr. O’Beronne stared. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, young man.” He recorked the bottle carefully. “You’ve yet to give me all you possess, mind.”

  “How do I know you’ll still have the waters, when I need more?” James said.