Arm of the Sphinx (Books of Babel Book 2)

by Josiah Bancroft

  What did the Sphinx say? ‘Books are traps.’ But how are they so, and whom do they trap: the author or the reader? Perhaps they are just the boasts of vainglorious minds, and what we hold up as literature is in fact a cult of unlikable characters. I hate to think they are like a fishing weir to the swimming mind, a trap easily swum into but rarely escaped: a neurosis, a dogma, a dream.

  No, no, I must not be so cynical! If books are traps, then let them be like terrariums: sealed up and still living miniatures of the world.

  Light bulbs run upon an electric vine. I have to take care not to crush them as I writhe along. The bulbs cast such a feeble light I can hardly see these letters as I write them.

  I have tried to recollect everything I know about zoetropes, since that is the subject of my errand. As I recall, a zoetrope is a cylindrical device that contains a series of subtly different images, which, when spun before a candle and observed from the right angle, give the impression of movement. A zoetrope is the sort of trifle that adults show off at parties.

  I don’t believe the Sphinx honestly needs the book. This has all been an outing to clear my head. I won’t pretend it was unwarranted or ill conceived. But now that my head is clear, I am left to wonder when does the exercise end? When will we turn around?

  Day 9 (Or thereabouts)

  I think it’s the ninth day. It may still be the eighth, or perhaps it’s the tenth, or eleventh. I let Byron’s pocket watch run down. What a silly thing. The librarian can’t be relied upon to tell me when it’s dinnertime. He would eat at any hour, even beyond appetite and good health, and I do not wish to be stuck in a tunnel with a sick cat.

  My knees are ready to come off; my trousers are frayed half to rags. I can hardly force myself to crawl anymore. The librarian could have the decency to look concerned, but he seems not at all worried. I wonder if he knows how much food he has. Perhaps he would be willing to share. Surely his tinned fish can’t be so different from pickled herring, which I have often enjoyed. Come to think of it, the two aromas are not so different. Perhaps spread upon a cracker…

  Byron was right. I want to eat the cat’s food. I must think of something else.

  It’s awfully uncomfortable to write while lying on one’s stomach. So, I will get to the point of my present thoughts: I know I do not deserve it, but I would greatly appreciate a rescue. If Edith were to come crawling the other way just now, a fate I would not wish on her of course, I would weep with joy.

  I have encountered a cave in. The way is blocked by a great jumble of books.

  I spent the past half hour trying to convince the librarian to turn around. Either we are lost, or we have been thwarted by a structural failure, and regardless of which it is, pawing and scratching at the pile won’t change the fact that we cannot go on.

  I’m not sure whether there is enough room to turn around, or if I will have to undertake a backward crawl for some distance. If I try to turn about and get stuck, I will die here. I am going to die here. I don’t want to write anymore. What is this for? Who is this for?

  The cat has just batted me twice on the nose. It was necessary, if not humiliating. At least I feel more composed.

  The librarian is convinced we must go forward, so I will undertake an excavation. The odds seem fair enough that I will only weaken the structure further, and bring the library down on my head. I can only hope the Sphinx’s book on zoetropes is near the front of this cave in.

  And since this may very well be my final word, I would just like to say, I have no regrets about coming down here. I feel much better, actually. I loved my wife. I loved my friends. Goodbye.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “The essential lesson of the zoetrope is this: movement, indeed all progress, even the passage of time, is an illusion. Life is the repetition of stillness.”

  - Zoetropes and Magic Lanterns: An Introduction to Moving Stills

  Senlin’s excavation became a worming, and the worming became a burial as the tunnel buckled and collapsed.

  It had never occurred to him how unforgiving books were until he lay at the bottom of a great pile of them. They were all hard corners and rough cloth. The saw teeth of fore edges slit his hands as he searched for air amid the folios, finding none. Every breath he surrendered returned shorter and tighter. Yet incredibly, he suffered no panic within the crushing dark, just a broad regret that he would die so far from his friends, so far from anyone in fact that he might never be found and so be forced to share an eternity with the unremarkable and the unread.

  The pressure abated all at once, and he found himself sledding down a metal chute. He tumbled amid a shower of books, and landed with a bump upon a plain, plank floor.

  Volumes continued to dribble out, pelting him upon the back and shoulders, until at last the librarian leapt down from the open vent and concluded the little avalanche. The cat looked perfectly composed. Senlin imagined he’d had the good sense to stand well clear of the collapse.

  “Perhaps I should hire you on as a chimneysweep,” The Sphinx said, looming over him, his mask a shadowy cavity. Senlin gave a startled yelp. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” the Sphinx said, leaning away. “Stand up, stand up.”

  Senlin attempted to compose himself, but the hours he’d spent on first his knees and then his stomach had rubberized his legs. With some effort, he got his feet under him and straightened his back. A bolt of pleasurable lightning ran up his spine. It was only then that his environment came into relief. He had fallen out the bottom of the Bottomless Library into someone’s private quarters.

  A pair of leather boots, bent at the ankle and ashen with age, lay at the foot of a rotting field cot. A dented canteen on a strap hung on the back of the only door. Six or seven small volumes, insufficient to justify a shelf, lay upon a petite writing desk, which was attended by a spindly stool. Other than an oil portrait upon the wall, the room was quite austere. It reminded him of a neglected wing in a museum, and he would not have been surprised to see labels pinned beneath the humble relics.

  “Is this your room?” he asked.

  “Don’t be absurd. You will never see my room. Do you have my book?”

  Senlin voiced an “ah” that stretched into a musical phrase. He looked about for the librarian, not to blame him, but in the scant hope that the cat would come to his defense.

  He found the big tabby sitting with its white paws perched upon one of the volumes that had followed them down. Senlin retrieved it and read the title. “Zoetropes and Magic Lanterns: An Introduction to Moving Stills. My word. You found it,” Senlin said with unvarnished awe. The tabby blinked at him affectionately.

  “He really is a wonderful librarian,” the Sphinx said, taking the volume from Senlin’s suspended hand.

  His amazement shifted from the cat to this unlikely reunion. “How did you get here?”

  “By elevator, of course,” the Sphinx said, stowing the book inside his cloak. “I’m not the one who needed a walk, Tom. I’m not the one who needed to clear his head. But don’t let your thoughts run back to your friends just yet. You’ll see them soon enough. There are one or two things we must discuss first.”

  It felt unfair to have someone so enigmatic call him by his first name, though Senlin could hardly protest. “If it’s about the crumb, I am cured of it. The visions have stopped.”

  “Bravo. But, no, that’s not what I’ve come to talk to you about. I want to—” The Sphinx saw Senlin’s gaze flit to the portrait behind him. “Do you like it?”

  “Yes, I think so. There’s something unusual about it.”

  “What I wouldn’t give to see it for the first time. Familiarity is such a cataract. I can’t see past my stale impression of it anymore.” The Sphinx moved to stand at Senlin’s elbow so they could regard the painting together. “Please, tell me what you see.”

  The portrait was formal in style, but rustic in subject: a plainly dressed man sat upon a stool before a great, golden haystack, framed narrowly by an untroubled sky. At first glanc
e, it was a common pastoral scene: the country laborer romanticized for the urban landlord. But the more Senlin looked at it, the more complex the humble character became.

  “He has one of the strongest brows I’ve ever seen. It’s incredible, almost a turtle shell.” Senlin cupped his mouth and drew his hand down to his chin. It all felt a little surreal. A moment before he had been grappling with his mortality; now he was playing the art critic. Somehow it was easier to feign composure than to express his lingering distress. “I suppose he’s about sixty years old, though it’s difficult to tell. There’s nothing ostentatious about him: his collar, shirt, and boots are all quite practical. He looks the sort of fellow who would trim his own hair.” Senlin leaned nearer, studying the undertones of the skin. “I recognize the style. Is it an Ogier?”

  “It is.” Senlin could feel the Sphinx watching him closely.

  “The moustache is a departure. It’s so thin and dapper,” Senlin said, absently scratching the whiskers on his cheek. “It seems like a vestige of a former life, like the aging madam who still paints on a beauty mark every morning.” The Sphinx sniffed at this, and Senlin could not tell if it was in stifled amusement or irritation. “His complexion is a little inscrutable. I would hazard to guess he’s either a native of the South, or he’s from the pale East and spent his days outdoors under the sun.”

  “Very good,” the Sphinx said, and Senlin clearly heard pleasure in his tone.

  “A laborer, I should think, or a craftsman. Look how knotty his hands are,” Senlin sketched the air over the painting with a finger. “Look how he displays them on his knees. He’s proud of his hands.”

  “That is one of the most accurate descriptions of the Bricklayer I have ever heard.”

  “That’s the Bricklayer?” Senlin looked again and tried to reconcile this relatively unassuming man with the grandeur of the Tower. It was impossible.

  “Don’t you recognize the stool?” the Sphinx said, touching the modest seat that stood by the desk. Senlin saw veneration in the act. This was not a museum after all; it was a shrine. “He was always moving. That’s why he had so few things. Everything he owned, everything you see here could be packed on a mule at a moment’s notice. He slept where the hods slept, and since their beds rose with the work, his did as well.”

  “He toted around a portrait of himself?” Senlin said with a touch of levity, though he saw at once it was not appreciated.

  “Don’t be crass. I hung it there. He was not at all a vain man, though he had every reason to be. You said he looked sixty. When he sat for this, he was one hundred and nine years old.”

  “That’s incredible,” Senlin said as charitably as he could.

  The Sphinx was not fooled. “You don’t think it’s possible? Believe me, it is.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?”

  “Well, aren’t you fearless.”

  “Sir, I have spent the past ten days being terrorized by hallucinations, fever, and lethal traps. A few minutes ago, I penned my goodbyes because I thought I was going to die. Anything you do to me will seem a reprieve.”

  “Wonderful!” The Sphinx laughed. “Now I see what Marya saw in you.”

  Despite his profession of invulnerability, Senlin could not help but be upset. “Surely I have proven my character by now. I have signed your contract; I have delivered your book. Would you please tell me what you know about my wife?”

  The Sphinx emitted a sigh that pitched and scraped like a braking train. “Not everything. I know she resides in Pelphia. I know she has some connection to Wilhelm Horace Pell, who is a powerful duke, though I’m not sure about the nature of her association with him. She may be on his staff; she may be his guest. It has been several months since I last had my eyes on her, but I have seen no evidence that her situation has changed.”

  “How many months?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten months!” Senlin tried to voice a scoff, but it stuck in his throat and came out as a strangled groan. Ten months ago he had been lounging in the Baths. A lifetime had passed since then. He felt horribly cheated. “You don’t know anything!”

  “I beg your pardon. I know a great deal,” the Sphinx said with sharper inflection. “My eyes inside Pelphia haven’t been very reliable of late, but nothing passes into or out of the port without my knowledge. I would know if she had left.”

  Senlin couldn’t stop shaking his head. “Even if it were by the black trail? Even if it were by funeral pyre?”

  “Perhaps not. But I presume she is generally well and looked after.”

  “Why would you assume such a thing? Everyone I have met here has either become a hod, an outcast, or a corpse. Assuming anyone is well and looked after is just delusional!”

  The Sphinx rose up until he seemed to stand en pointe. The silver tuning fork he’d once used to smite a swarm of butterflies appeared in his hand. “Do not bark at me, Thomas Senlin. I will stop your heart.”

  Senlin raised his hands at once and retreated a step. “I’m sorry. I meant no offense. I was only a little surprised.”

  The sparking wand vanished again into his sleeve. “I assume she is safe because the alternative would discourage you, and we both know that you must see this through. You’re life will remain a quagmire till you do. I need your eyes in Pelphia; you need my assistance to get there. That is why you will assume Marya is healthy and whole and waiting to be found.”

  Senlin absorbed the Sphinx’s words with a dry, difficult swallow. The Sphinx was right in one respect at least: he had to see this through. “Thank you for telling me,” he said hoarsely.

  “You’re welcome.” The Sphinx turned to the room’s only exit. “Now, there’s something I would like you to see. I think it might cheer you up.”

  The adjoining room seemed the very antithesis of cheerful. Dimly lit, low of ceiling, and stale of air, the room was dominated by a structure that resembled a boarded up gazebo.

  “What is it?” Senlin said, peering through one of the slits between staves. He saw nothing in the dark recesses of the installation.

  “It is a device for animating still images.”

  “A zoetrope? It’s enormous. I thought they were toys.”

  “As far as you’re concerned, they probably are. Technology tends to degenerate the further it flows from its source. That’s no conspiracy. It’s just the natural process of users modifying a machine to their level of understanding. The wise man’s tool becomes the simpleton’s toy.”

  “Simpleton!” Senlin said with a crow of offense.

  “Don’t be so sensitive, Tom. Enjoy the moment. Before you stands a wonder of the world: Ogier’s Zoetrope. You cannot fathom the kind of genius required to create such a thing. Sixty-four painted panels on which every touch of the brush, every tint of paint is exactly tuned to the next image in the sequence.”

  Senlin’s face tightened as he tried to imagine such a thing. “May I see it spin?”

  “First, we must install your panel. May I have your Ogier?”

  Senlin produced the rolled up canvas. It had bent inside his breast pocket and was beginning to fray at the edges. He felt a little ashamed to have handled such a valuable artifact so roughly.

  An iron band divided the zoetrope into two hemispheres: the top half was slatted like a fence; the bottom contained a succession of cabinet doors, each emblazoned with a number plate, one to sixty-four. The Sphinx turned the wheel by hand until the number three stood before him. He opened the cabinet, extracted an empty wooden frame, and began the delicate work of mounting the masterpiece.

  “If there’s even a single crease, it will spoil the effect,” the Sphinx said as he tightened the stretcher.

  “How many paintings do you have?”

  “Patience, Tom.” The Sphinx reseated the now filled frame inside the cabinet. “We must take our seats. This is only the projection room. You didn’t honestly think the Bricklayer meant to squeeze sixty-four dignitaries, plus their husbands, wives, and retinues, insi
de this closet, did you? That’s no way to premier a miracle. Come on.”

  The Sphinx skirted the zoetrope, opening a door secluded in the shadows. Senlin followed him into a swinging forest of black curtains.

  The Sphinx seemed to vanish, and for a disturbing moment Senlin thought he had somehow wandered under the Sphinx’s robes. He cast about while the heavy drapes caressed him with unwanted familiarity.

  Shuddering with revulsion, he broke upon a well-lit and echoing stage.

  The bright auditorium before him rose so steeply it seemed a sheer bluff. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of white, velvet seats packed the slope and the balcony above. The plaster ceiling resembled a vast nautilus shell, split in half, its chambers spiraling toward a colossal chandelier, the likes of which he had never seen before. It resembled a great branching frond of transparent seaweed. The flat leaves mingled with milky globes of electric light. It was breathtaking.

  Not waiting for Senlin to take it all in, the Sphinx descended from the shallow stage and began to mount the steep flights between rows. Closing his mouth, Senlin hurried after the black gash of a figure, taking the stairs two at a time and never gaining any ground on the tireless Sphinx. Breathing heavily, Senlin sidled out to where the Sphinx sat, centered upon the snowy bank, his stark robes piled about him like the melted skirt of a candle.

  Before them, squared under the black proscenium, was a perfectly white backdrop.

  The Sphinx said, “I’m going to turn the lights down. Don’t be afraid.” The shining orbs above them dimmed until they were no brighter than twilight stars.

  “I’m not scared of the dark,” Senlin said, sinking into the plush seatback.

  The Sphinx leaned over their shared armrest and said in a chorusing whisper. “Not the dark, you silly man. The light.”