by Felix Gilman
She held the lamp up to them, absurdly, as if she could see their lips moving.
The words were distant, crackling, incomprehensible. A tidal whoosh swept back and forth, obliterating meaning.
It was cold in the cellar; her skin crawled and her hair bristled with static.
The cellar was huge, and deep, and its corners shadowed. The Dad had built the house over complex foundations, and sledge-hammered through into adjacent buried spaces. The darkness thronged with uncomfortable memories. The light of the lamp made the eyes of the Dad’s mangy stuffed birds and vermin glitter.
Ruth had never been down there much. Nor had Marta, for that matter. Only Ivy, who’d always been so clever with the machines, who’d shared their father’s fascinations, had really been welcome in the cellar when he was working.
The radios chattered and sighed.
What were the devices picking up? What barriers were falling?
She had no idea how the things operated. She turned the stiff dials and knobs, but it seemed to make no difference.
There was a tone of panic in the whispering that unnerved her and excited her at once.
Still, to be on the safe side, she lowered the machines to the floor, got a thick blanket from upstairs, and covered them up. Grunting and cursing, she dragged breeze blocks in place to hold the blanket down. It wouldn’t do to have the wrong person hear those strange voices.
She went walking past the Museum, glancing nervously at the guards, listening intently, opening her ears to any sound as if she were a radio herself.
Nothing. No sound of the creature’s voice, no whispering. She flushed with embarrassment. What had she been expecting?
The guards at the door were different. She didn’t recognize either of them. Siddon’s and Henry’s shifts had ended, of course; they’d gone home to bed, or off to other duties, or back to their regular jobs. Like most low-ranking Know-Nothings, Siddon and Henry still worked ordinary jobs at the factories, for the Combines. They spent their nights and their free days working for the Know-Nothings for a little extra cash or for the prospect of advancement; or because the Know-Nothings could get them free shifts away from the noise and dark of the factory floor, or because they just liked hurting people.
The two on the door today looked like real bastards.
She nearly stumbled right into a drift of grey young women on their way between factory shifts and home shifts. She stopped, collected herself, turned home, where she waited, and waited.
The doorbell rang and instantly Zeigler came running in, eyes gleaming, stage-whispering, “I’ve found him.”
“Arjun?”
“Who?”
“… never mind. Forget it. Who?” She put down her book.
“Our,” he glanced, with theatrical caution, at the slowly closing door. “Our soldier. Our ghost.”
“From last night? I thought he vanished.”
“So did I! Fair enough, fair enough, they do that, don’t they? But I happened to overhear Mrs. Salt talking to Mr. Thatch, she says there’s some beggar or paperless skulking around the back of the old barn, the Patagan one, you know, and I thought, hmm, sounds interesting …”
“And you went poking around? I know you.”
“It was him. Poor man. Huddled in a corner. Reduced to scrubbing up grass to eat. Quite lost, couldn’t give his own name, his rank, anything. I offered him something to eat. I asked him a few questions but …”
He took out his notebook, and held up the page—blank, save for the words interview 3 7 and War?
“I scared him,” Zeigler said. “Perhaps, if you’re not too busy, a woman’s touch … ?”
But Ruth was already getting her purse, and her coat, and getting ready to lock up the shop behind her.
The man hadn’t moved. He sat at the back of the barn, in the loft, up the iron ladder, and half hidden by shadows and a heap of old machinery. His back was against the rusting wall, his legs stretched out stiffly before him as if broken and stretchered. He stared blankly up into the shafts of dusty light that fell through the ceiling. He seemed to be counting under his breath. When he heard Ruth approach—as she stepped carefully up off the unsteady ladder—he scrabbled for his rifle. She held up her hands.
Zeigler, below, hissed, “Are you all right?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Wait a moment.”
The man lowered his weapon again.
Ruth came slowly closer. She sat down beside him with a sigh and a, “Cigarette?”
He took one, automatically held it in his lips for her match. That told her something; many of the ghosts from far off parts had no idea what to do with a cigarette. The pilot Altair had smoked ferociously, as if trying to burn himself up; but her astronomer had regarded the practice as charmingly quaint; and the strange intense red-haired, spike-haired sculptress—who’d come wandering down Ezra Street lost, frightened, touching the surfaces of buildings and trees and the cobbles with her strong hands as if everything in the world was fake and poorly made—had said, “Ruth, are you mad? Put that shit out!”
So he smoked; this man was from a part of the city not altogether unlike her own.
He was looking at her a little more calmly now.
His ragged uniform was familiar, in an odd way. It seemed like a translation, an intensification, of something with which she was intimately acquainted—and, she thought, unpleasantly acquainted. She disliked the uniform. The man himself, helpless, confused, she couldn’t help but pity.
She let him finish the cigarette.
He stubbed it out under the heel of his boot, smiling for the first time, and suddenly he reminded her of any of the Know-Nothings, and she was a little afraid of him.
“Are you all right?” Zeigler called. “Hang on. I’m coming up.”
“Stay,” she said.
She waited for the soldier to ask her something. He stayed silent. After a while he closed his eyes. He still had a faint smile on his lips.
He was enjoying the peace, she realized. Perhaps he thought she was a dream, the silence and shade of the barn were a dream of a wounded and dying man, and he was afraid that if he said anything the moment would be over, and he would wake on the battlefield, on the Mountain …
“My name’s Ruth,” she said. “If you can’t remember yours, don’t worry. That happens. You’re not the first. This close to the Mountain, we see a lot of ghosts, lost, we can help.”
He winced at the word Mountain.
“Were you a soldier?” She thought he might be able to answer that question.
“I didn’t bloody want to be.”
“You remember? Where are you from?”
He shook his head. He looked sad. “I don’t remember. I’ve been sitting here all day and I don’t remember. All of this,” he waved a hand, “it looks like I know it all, but I don’t remember, it doesn’t make sense.”
“The city you’re from, before you went on the … before, it was like this one?”
“I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. I look at it and I think: I know all this. Then I think: all this is gone.”
“You were in a war. Sometimes we see … people like you, who say they were in a war.”
“We went up … there. I remember we had a song, about how all the rich bastards on the Mountain had castles of gold and rivers of wine and all that, and we weren’t going to put up with them anymore, and we were going to sort a few things out. The things they’d done—wicked. Shay, that name comes back to me, I don’t know why. “
“Who’s Shay?”
The soldier shook his head, irritated, eyes still firmly shut—”I don’t remember, some man on the Mountain, they tell me to bloody hate and I do it. Rifle, pack, special issue, like in the old days. What old days? I don’t fucking know. I never signed on for this. Up the Mountain. And then all I remember is … shadows. Wire. A flash, like a flash of dark. Bumping lost in the dark into my men. Then I was running down that street, screaming.”
He opened his
eyes. “I knocked you down, didn’t I? That was you? Sorry, love. I thought it was all a big cruel joke. After the War this is all gone. Rubble. That’s all I remember. Now it’s all back again.” He smiled and closed his eyes again. “If I can remember my name I’ll go down the factory, get my old job back. Go down the nearest League Chapterhouse, say, reporting for duty, sir. Went on a bit of a bender. All all right again. “
A shiver ran down Ruth’s spine. “You were a Know-N …”
The rusty barn door screeched open, and there were boots on the concrete floor below. She heard Zeigler’s voice, full of false cheer, saying, “Good afternoon, officers, is this company property, sorry, sorry, just poking around a bit, bird-watching, yes, I’ll just be …”
A young man’s voice drawled, “Shut it, you old fool.”
She recognized the voice: it was Siddon, the young Know-Nothing who’d stood guard on the Museum the night before. He sounded tired, angry.
She put a hand over the soldier’s mouth. He opened his eyes in shock. “Stay quiet,” she hissed. “I don’t care if you were a Know-Nothing. These boys aren’t your friends anymore. Not after what you’ve seen. Right? Yes? Quiet.”
His eyes were full of hurt and confusion and fear.
The men below—it sounded like three, four of them—poked around the junked machinery, the rotting hay bales, the old dry oil drums, and the stagnant water barrels.
She looked all around for an escape from the loft, but there were no windows, no places to hide, and it was only a matter of time before one of the Know-Nothings below came clanging up the ladder—in the end it was Siddon.
He shook his head. He glanced at Ruth for a moment, then away. “I didn’t see you,” he said.
The soldier reached for his rifle and Siddon came quickly up over the edge of the ladder, lunged forward, and put his black boot firmly down on the weapon’s stock. The soldier snatched his bruised fingers back, and looked up with a stupid, trusting expression on his face. His bloodshot and tired eyes took in Siddon’s boots, his long black coat, his collars and cuffs, his black cap. “Hey—don’t I know you?”
“Leave him alone,” Ruth said. “He’s just not well, a bit mad, he’s no trouble, he’s been stealing chickens, that’s all, so we came to tell him to …”
Siddon ignored her. He looked at the man at his feet and horror and loathing crept palely over his face; he breathed deeply and swore under his breath and his eyes went blank, flat, distant.
Two more Know-Nothings rose up over the edge of the ladder, and—while the soldier tried to say, wait, I’m one of you, the League, I think I remember, what Chapterhouse are you from, the two of them lifted him up roughly by the shoulders, and Siddon stepped forward and, not looking at him, stiffly not looking, eyes trained up at the shafts of light that fell through the ceiling, slit his throat.
The other two Know-Nothings let the body go.
“Oh, fucking hell!”
“Covered m fucking blood.”
“What about her?”
Siddon shook his head. “She didn’t see anything, she didn’t hear anything, she’s not one of Them. Local girl. I know her. Nice girls, no harm in them, bit mad. Father was mad. Leave her, all right?”
He turned and smiled at her, wiping off his knife.
She slapped him as hard as she could in the face. He staggered, his lip bled; it wasn’t enough.
“You son of a bitch, Siddon. Why did you do that? Why did you do that? He wasn’t any harm.”
He still had a patronizing smile on his face, even as he dabbed at his bloody lip with his sleeve. “It’s not for you to decide, Ruth, you know that. This is the way things are. He was a ghost. A monster. He shouldn’t have been here. You want to live in his world, instead?”
“You bastard, Siddon, you hypocrite. Monster? He was only a man. He was lost. Monster? I know what you’re guarding in that Museum. I know what kind of monster you’ve got down there.” Siddon flinched. She realized it was stupid to go on, but she couldn’t stop herself: “I’ve seen it, you bastards, you’re not even honest, why are you keeping that thing, why … ?”
She trailed off. She was shaking. Siddon and his colleagues looked suddenly pale and nervous, as if they’d been caught stealing from petty cash.
“Fuck it then,” Siddon said. “Let’s take her in. The old man, too.”
Threats-Fire and Smoke-
An Awkward Dinner-Weapons-
Pursuit
Arjun
Sorry about last night,” Basso said. “How’s the bruise?” Basso was a tall man—taller than Arjun—and he stood too close, as they walked together across the lawns of Brace-Bel’s estate. He had the ropey build of a man who was made to be thin, but started every morning with chin-ups, and press-ups, and dumbbells. He was pale and hollow-cheeked, scarred and unshaven, and he smiled a lot. He wore a single golden earring. Sometimes he tugged self-consciously at it. Otherwise his manner of dress was entirely ordinary; unlike the others, he wore no costume.
“I’ve had worse,” Arjun said.
“All a bit of a misunderstanding.”
“In fairness, I did break in, Mr. Basso; I can’t complain.”
Basso seemed delighted by this. “No harm done, then!”
Basso leaned against things. Somehow even while walking he managed always to be leaning, smirking, glancing idly around in odd directions, as if making a note of vulnerabilities and valuables.
Basso asked, “How’s the old street?”
“Carnyx Street? I don’t really know. I was only there briefly. It was the only place in this city I have liked.”
“How’s Thayer and that lot?”
“I met only Thayer. He is a ruin of a man. But somehow you seem unscathed by Brace-Bel’s traps, Mr. Basso.”
“I’m a lucky lad. Shame about Thayer. A good man.”
“Is it true that only Ivy understands the devices?”
“I don’t know that that’s your business.”
“What did you do before coming into Brace-Bel’s service, Mr. Basso?”
“I know that’s not your business. No offense.”
“No offense taken.”
“You and me, we’re in the same boat,” Basso said. “Ruth and Marta asked you nicely, right? They went all misty-eyed? They told you how much Ivy meant to them, how wonderful she was, how wonderful the city used to be? How when Ivy was back they’d all go somewhere wonderful together and you could come, too? How they’d escape everything ugly, and you could come, too?”
“Not really,” Arjun said.
“What did they promise you, then?”
“They saved my life. I know no one else in the city. They only had to ask.”
Basso—who was leading Arjun across an unweeded and wild tennis lawn—shrugged. “You’re not a bad man, Arjun. The Low sisters are good women.”
“There was also the matter of a prophecy, in which Brace-Bel was mentioned. For personal reasons it is important for me to be here; I can’t explain why.”
“Huh.” Basso stooped and lifted an ancient mossy yellow tennis ball from the weeds and tossed it in his hand. “Is that so?”
“Why did you come to work for Brace-Bel, Mr. Basso?”
“Ivy had a word with me.”
“Ivy seems to be more the mistress here than a prisoner.”
“She’s a clever one, all right.”
“What did she promise you, Mr. Basso?”
“Maybe she only had to ask nicely.”
“Is that true?”
“Where are you from, Arjun? Brace-Bel thought you were from his time, his city. Is that true?”
“Yes. We met once or twice. We didn’t know each other well.”
“Small fucking city.”
“Few dare the Mountain. Fewer find the way. There is a certain … community. Among the obsessives one meets the same people again and again. It’s not so strange.”
“Do you know the way back?”
“No.”
Basso sig
hed. “That’s a shame.”
“I went up on the Mountain. They took my memory of the path back. It seems they have defenses.”
“What’s up there, then? What kind of forces? What’ve they got in the way of weapons? Everyone says there’s going to be a war one day. Our bosses want what they’ve got or their bosses are just sick of looking down on us. Are they getting ready for war?”
“I don’t know.”
They walked for a while longer.
Basso said, “If Ivy wants to help you, she’ll help you. If Brace-Bel wants to help you, he’ll help you. Do you understand? But if you’re here to steal from them, it’ll be my job to break your neck.”
“I understand.”
“Don’t be here to steal Ivy away, or I’ll kill you.”
“I understand.”
“Here she is, then.”
Basso pointed out across the lawn to a stone shrine, where Ivy sat, in a simple white dress, legs folded, apparently waiting impatiently. Her head was tilted up toward a little black device in the shrine’s low ceiling, from which a distant muttering voice could be heard.
Ivy Low, my name is …”
But she stood, without looking at Arjun, without listening to him, and strode over to Basso.
“Basso,” she said. “There are men at the gate.”
“Sorry, Ivy. I was looking for this bloke, like you asked me.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I heard them talking, over the listening-tubes. They’re scared to come in.”
“Who is it?”
“Know-Nothings. That pest Maury again. They’re here about last night’s explosions. They have questions.”
“I’ll go talk to them.”
“They want to know, did we see anything? Did we hear anything? Did we see anyone fleeing the scene?”
“Well, Miss Low, did we?”
“We did not, Mr. Basso. The whole household was fast asleep at an early hour. “
“Understood.”
