“Shit.”
“We’ll swim,” said Shrike. “We just have to get inside the city walls. There are walkways along all the canals.”
“You cool with swimming, Lulu?” Spyder asked.
“Excuse me, son. You were the civilian. I was a lifeguard at YMCA camp, remember?”
“Yeah, but that was a while back. Before you had your troubles.”
“You think my empty little eye holes and gut holes are going to fill up with water and drown me? That ain’t going to happen. But thanks a shitload for making a thing of it.”
“I’m just concerned is all.”
“I’m fine,” Lulu said and waded into the river. When she was knee deep, she turned back. “There aren’t any sharks or things with stingers out here, are there?”
“Nothing that can hurt you,” said Shrike.
“Countdown, you get one side and I’ll get on the other. We’ll put Shrike and Primo between us. Make sure no one wanders off course or sinks,” said Spyder.
The Count smiled. “A good idea, little brother.”
“Primo, are you all right swimming with one arm?” asked Shrike.
“I’ll be a little slow, I think,” he said.
“Slow’s fine. No one’s in a rush to find their lost retainer,” said Spyder.
Shrike took Spyder’s arm as they waded into the river. When she swam, she did so with ease and confidence. Spyder realized quickly that she didn’t need much looking after. He kept an eye on Primo, who was doing a kind of modified dog paddle with his one good arm. The swimmer Spyder kept wondering about was the Count. How he managed to stay afloat while still wearing his chainmail amazed Spyder. Lulu was ahead of them, a strong, steady swimmer. She’d tied her jacket around her waist and on certain strokes, her Hello Kitty shirt slid up her body, letting the morning sun glint off the glass and metal she’d inserted into her wounded flesh.
Something brushed along Spyder’s legs. Fingers touched his chest, tugged at his arms as they entered the water on each stroke. “What the fuck is happening?”
“They can’t hurt you,” Shrike said. “They’re just memories. Drowned sailors, soldiers, anyone who died in water.”
Suddenly, Spyder wanted very much to be out of the river and out of Berenice. The towering city walls, through which they soon passed, also seemed to be made of water. Not ice, but liquid water, pulled upward and carved into imposing barriers. If all that water ever came down, Spyder thought, it would wash the city away.
Lulu was already out of the river when the rest made it to the walkway. She helped Spyder out and he grabbed Shrike. The Count leaned down and practically lifted Primo from the water. The little man bowed in thanks.
“Where to?” Spyder asked.
“Uptown Saturday Night,” said Shrike.
“You know some weird shit, girl.”
“I just remembered the name. That happens here.”
As they walked along the masonry concourse beside the canal, Spyder asked, “Earlier, why did you say that we’re lucky we followed the river?”
“There are four entrances to Berenice. Water, air, fire and earth. Fire is the memory of violence and war. Air is the perpetual hurricane of anger and lost souls. Earth is a freezing mountain of despair and fear.”
“The memories of the drowned are like the welcoming arms of your family compared to what lives in those other places,” said Count Non.
“Wonder what would happen if I dropped a bunch of Alka Seltzer in back there?” asked Lulu. “Would it piss those drowned guys off or make ’em feel better?”
THIRTY
A Universal Joke
Their clothes dried quickly in the bright sun, and by the time they reached one of the great boulevards that divided Berenice into its local parishes, no one would have guessed that they’d had to swim into the city.
From the interior, Berenice was much more impressive than it had seemed on the approach. At each corner of the boulevard was a whitewashed ziggurat topped with a gilt sun, angled to catch the light at different time of the day. Crystal globes hung from polished street lamps. Spyder counted a dozen large bronze statues to different gods on the one street. Who knew how many there were on the others? Handsome residents came and went from temples and tailor shops, butchers and herbalists, paying no attention to the travelers. The street on which they stood was paved with pale pink flagstones, but green, yellow and sky blue streets intersected it.
“Okay, we’re here, somewhere. What do we do now?” asked Lulu.
“Let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation,” Count Non said.
Spyder looked hard at the Count.
“St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Thessalonians,” he said.
“Yeah, I was just about to say that.”
“We need to find stables or a market,” said Shrike. “Some place big, with professional traders. And remember that you can’t tell the wandering memories of people from real humans simply by looking at them.”
“Then how do we know who we’re talking to?” asked Spyder. “How do we trade for anything?”
“It’s a question of attitude,” Shrike said. “If you’re talking to the memory of a trader, his responses will be mechanical and rote. A memory isn’t active. It can’t really do or say anything new or original. A human trader will be more eager and unpredictable.”
“Makes sense.”
“I’m going to go alone,” said Shrike. “A poor, lost blind girl can usually count on a pity discount.”
“You’ll be able to find your way back here?” asked Spyder. “Maybe you should take Primo as backup.”
“I’ll be happy to accompany you, Butcher Bird. And a one-armed man with a blind woman might evoke even more pity from an anxious trader.”
“All right,” said Shrike. “We’ll rendezvous here in two hours. Can I trust you three to find your way back?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll look after Lulu and the little brother,” said the Count.
Spyder felt a pang of awkwardness as he and Shrike went off in different directions. He felt, somehow, that he should give her a goodbye kiss or something, but simultaneously wondered if he was supposed to acknowledge anything between them at all. In the end, they both went their own way.
They walked three abreast through the strange town, Spyder near the street and Lulu near the buildings. Count Non walked between them. “The first time I ever went to Tijuana on my own, I got lost,” said Spyder. “Ended up in this shantytown somewhere up in the hills. This place went on and on. Plus, it was one of those days where you don’t wake up hungover, you wake up still drunk. So, I’m wandering around, trying to figure out a way back to town, and this kid, a student, starts chatting me up. He wants to practice his English. Only whenever I ask him how to get back downtown, he suddenly can’t understand me. I tell him to fuck off and keep walking. But these Tijuana shantytowns are like a goddam anthill. Houses made of broken cinder blocks, cardboard and big cans of vegetable oil pounded flat.
“Fast forward a few hours and I’m somewhere, but nowhere I’ve ever seen before. And now the sun is going down. Out of nowhere comes the kid who wanted English lessons. At first I think that I’ve just walked in a big circle. Then, I realize that the little fucker’s probably been shadowing me all day. My eyes are red and my head’s full of broken glass and dust bunnies. I was wearing a brand new shiny pair of two hundred dollar New Rock boots. I had to trade ’em to the kid to get out of there, and walked back to my hotel barefoot.”
Spyder couldn’t quite figure out a pattern to the city. A street would be laid out like an ordinary one in any town, but then a building would be gone and in its place would be a pile of junk. Lost things, Spyder guessed. Not objects, but the memory of them. There were mounds of keys, piles of every kind of money, great meals laid out on endless banquet tables, the wan clowns and listless trapeze acts from forgotten circuses, lost limbs (fingers
still trying to grasp some long lost something, feet flexing with somewhere to go). There were packs of dogs, flock of birds, colonies of house cats and stacks of dirty aquariums holding every kind of fish imaginable, lost pets all.
They stopped to look at the trinkets laid out on tables in a small street market on a yellow boulevard that intersected theirs. A trader with leathery skin and blue, chapped lips clasped his hands and greeted them eagerly. He stared at Lulu. “I see you’ve been doing some renovations, my dear.” He took a bite of a juicy, green-skinned fruit. “What will you take for her?”
Spyder didn’t bother looking up at the man, but kept studying the charms on the table. “She’s not for sale.”
The merchant leaned in close and spoke in intimate tones. “You think I won’t keep her well because she lacks eyes and perhaps a liver. But don’t worry. Those are not the organs that concern me.”
Spyder tucked his hands in the waist of his jeans, pushing back his jacket to make sure the man saw Apollyon’s knife. “I missed that. Say it again,” Spyder told the man.
The merchant’s gazes flickered from the knife to Spyder’s shoulder. “You misunderstood me, friend. There is no business here,” said the merchant, licking his thin lips. “Thank you. Have a good day.” He walked quickly away.
Spyder turned to Count Non, who loomed close behind him. “I was doing all right, you know. I don’t need you doing Hulk Hogan over my shoulder.”
“Perhaps neither of us frightened him,” said the Count. “Perhaps for once he heard his own words and thoughts and appalled himself.”
Lulu said nothing, but pushed the merchant’s wares off his table and onto the pavement.
“He seemed like the real reflective type,” said Spyder.
“‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.’” The Count laughed, “I like you, little brother. You disguise your nobler qualities to play the fool well.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Would you take some advice from someone with more experience of the world?”
“You don’t look that much older than me.”
“Trust me. I am.”
“Are we talking Michael Douglas old or Bob Hope old?”
“More like those mountains we’re heading to.”
“You must get great senior discounts on the bus.”
“Be quiet, little brother.”
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Be quiet,” repeated Count Non. “It’s not necessary to fill every moment with your own voice. Silence terrifies you. Your see your own existence as so tenuous that you’re afraid you’ll pop like a soap bubble if, at every opportunity, you don’t make a noise to remind the world that you’re alive. But wisdom begins in silence. In learning to listen. To words and to the world. Trust me. You won’t disappear. And, in time, you might find that you’ve grown into something unexpected.”
“What?”
“A man,” said the Count. He started out of the market and back to the main boulevard. Spyder and Lulu followed.
“Don’t feel badly. This is just a chat between friends, not a reprimand. If you feel lost and foolish sometimes, don’t worry about that, either. All great men begin as fools. It’s one of life’s little jokes.”
“Spyder, he just called you a joke of the universe. Kick his ass,” said Lulu. She put an arm around Spyder’s shoulders. Count Non smiled at her.
“Food for thought,” said Spyder. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up for a while. I’ll meet you back at the corner where we started.”
“I was just fucking with you, man,” said Lulu, but Spyder was already rounding the corner in the other direction.
THIRTY ONE
The Future
In a street of nightmares, Spyder saw the Black Clerks.
The street had been roofed over, like the souks of Morocco. The sound attracted Spyder to the spot, a strange and deliberate animal wail—screams extracted with mechanical precision.
Inside the dark, cramped street was a gallery of horrors. Men turned over bonfires on huge metal spits. Women were crushed under rolling boulders studded with surgical blades. Children screamed as spiders and over-sized ants tore at their young flesh. Terrified people were tormented up and down the length of the street, shrieking and tearing at the arms of passersby as they were chased by snarling animals or angry mobs. Spyder took a breath and reminded himself that none of this was real. It was just the collective memories of bad dreams, the night terrors these poor saps could never forget. It reminded him of paintings by Bruegel and Goya, and, while he tried to work his way around the thought and not let it invade his consciousness, the memories of the paintings made him think of the underworld. If this is what Hell was going to be like, Spyder wasn’t sure he could take it. Of course, he was going to be blindfolded so, unlike here, he wouldn’t have to actually look at Hell. It was a small comfort, but Spyder was ready for any comfort he could get.
At the far end of the street, Spyder spotted the Black Clerks. At first, he took them to be part of another nightmare and stopped to watch them pulling the guts out of a cop who had been crucified across a writhing pile of drug-starved junkies, their withered limbs (oozing pus and blood from running sores) strained against the barbed wire that held them together. The head Clerk, the one who always held the reptile-skin ledger, looked at Spyder and beckoned him over.
“You are quite a long way from home?” said the Clerk, in his peculiar singsong cadence.
“You see me. I thought you were someone’s bad dream.”
“We’re as real as you?”
“How about him? Is he real, too?” asked Spyder, inclining his head toward the tormented cop.
“He thought he could escape us,” said the Clerk. “Sometimes it is not enough to take what is ours from the body, but to insinuate ourselves in the mind and memory. A warning and object lesson for others? This is our burden.”
Spyder started to walk away.
“I hope you aren’t running away, trying to cheat providence?”
“No way, José. I’m true blue,” said Spyder.
“You don’t wish to stay and watch us work?”
One of the Clerks had placed an elaborate metal brace into the policeman’s open mouth and was studiously sawing off his lower jaw.
“Why would I want to see that?”
“Because you’re lying. And most people want to know their future.”
Spyder backed away and quickly left the street of nightmares.
THIRTY TWO
Dominions
Before this world, there were other worlds. Before this universe, there were other universes. Before the gods you know now, there were plenty of other gods.
Gods like to think of themselves as eternal. It’s what gets them through the eons, but there are only two true eternals: birth and death. Everything else is junk washed up on the beach. The tide goes out and the pretty pink shells, the gum wrappers and the dead jellyfish are all washed away. Gods and universes come and go this way, too, but a living god knows some tricks. A god can mold energy and matter into anything it wants, or nothing at all. Gods can appear in an instant. Gods can disappear faster than the half-life of Thulium-145.
To save themselves, Gods can scheme and they can hide. Some Gods learned to hold their breath and float like kelp in the elemental chaos that rules the roost when one universe ends and the next hasn’t quite kicked in.
Each of these trickster gods thought she or he alone had outwitted Creation by crouching in shadows of the universal attic. Then a young God called Jehovah took a band of rebel angels and tossed them, like week old fish, from his kingdom into the dark between the worlds. As the burning angels fell, the old gods laughed and heard each other. For the first in a long time, knew they weren’t alone.
Worlds collapsed as the old gods, called the Dominions, got to know each other and learn one another’s favor
ite games. Galaxies flickered and went out like cheap motel light bulbs. Whole Spheres of existence burned like phosphorous. Though this took a few million years in human terms, it was just something to do over lunch for the Dominions.
But the universe had its own agenda. When the Dominions tried to slip back into our universe from their refuge in chaos, they took a header out of the starry firmament, every bit as violent and humiliating as Lucifer’s fall from Heaven. Not coincidentally, the Dominions fell along the same path as the exiled angels, straight into Hell. But unlike the Lucifer’s hordes, they didn’t stop there. The mass of these beings was so great, that they fell through Hell out the other side, into a dead universe, one whose last echo hadn’t yet faded away.
There was no life in this other universe except the Dominions themselves. Nothing to destroy but empty worlds. No one to torment, but each other. And no new games to play. The Dominions loved games. That’s why they devoured stars. The best games, to them, were the ones played in the dark where only the sounds of screams and the taste and smell of evanescing lives let you know when you were winning. Their plan was to go from world to world, playing different games until there was no one left to play with. Then, they’d hide in the dark between universes until a new universe came into being, and they’d start all over again. Now, however, there was no one to play with and no way out. They’d fallen out of the living universe and didn’t know the way back in.
In some stories, the Dominions have grown even madder in their isolation. They slash their empty worlds. They burn each other. But nothing makes them happy. When the Dominions sleep, they dream about us and how sad they are that we’re so far away and not able to play. Sometimes they gnash their planet-size teeth in the dark. They’re always looking, scratching at the edges of time and space for a way back into our universe. Sometimes they find a crack and peek through at us. When your skin goes cold and you feel like you’re being watched, but no one is there, it’s them. We’re their drive-in double feature, with a Cherry Coke and free refills on popcorn.
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