The Revolutions

by Gilman, Felix

  He opened his mouth. For a moment she thought he might be about to offer an apology, or an explanation. Instead, he lifted the papers in his hand, waved them, and shouted something that she couldn’t hear over the wind. She lunged and struck the papers. The wind whirled them away, scattering some over the rooftops, swallowing others up into the shadows. Atwood looked around wildly. When he turned back to her, there was nothing in his expression but a cold inhuman hatred.

  He raised his unbruised hand in a peculiarly unpleasant devil’s-horn gesture—what was peculiar about it was that it seemed to involve too many fingers, or shadows of fingers. As she leapt towards him again, the wind picked up, seizing her with cold hands and sending her helplessly tumbling through the air, so that one moment she was staring up into the sky, the mountain above her like a whirlwind, and the next she was looking down at the castle, its mad turrets and arches and windows all askew. Somewhere off in the sky she saw Orpheus struggling in the same wind. Beneath her, Arthur and a ragged stranger approached Atwood across a chessboard of dense shadows.

  * * *

  Vaz, seeing the Martian strike the pistol from Lord Atwood’s hand, shouted with hoarse joy, jumped out from the stone he’d been sheltering behind, and ran, boot flapping, his head down and a hand up against the wind. Mr Shaw, he observed, was half a ship’s length away and had fallen on all fours in a drift of dust—and no wonder, because it did seem that the whole castle had started to sway in the wind. If this was a dream, then this frantic chase was as good a way to end it as any. If he could just get his hands around Lord Atwood’s throat, then perhaps he might wake with a jerk in London … Or he might not. One way or another it would be over.

  He looked up at the Martians, thinking he might wave to them, to acknowledge comradeship—they were beautiful creatures, who belonged in a bluer sky! He could hardly make them out. A whirlwind overhead flung them to and fro among clouds of dust; as he watched one of them seemed to plummet, wings broken by the wind, to slam into a sharp-cornered obelisk. That was an outrage. Distracted, he nearly stepped out into a hole in the rooftop. He teetered on the edge.

  A long stone beam led across the chasm. At the other end of it he saw Atwood standing on the roof’s edge, arms raised; it was hard to say whether he was conducting the winds, or whether the winds were jerking him about like a puppet. Vaz inched out across the beam, tightrope-walking. “Your Lordship,” he called. “Your Lordship—one moment, if you please.”

  The wind had picked up, and he felt unsteady on his feet. When he was three-quarters of the way along the beam Atwood turned to him and gestured with one hand. Vaz took another step forward and the sole of his boot finally tore off, as if it had caught on a nail (there were no nails—as if some invisible hand had snatched at it).

  He threw himself forwards, in one of those great leaps that were possible only on Mars, and seized Atwood by his wrist. Atwood stumbled. It seemed to Vaz that the winds went still for a moment. Then Atwood pushed him backwards and his bare foot slid in the dust and he fell back through the hole in the roof.

  He fell fifteen feet down into a drift of dust.

  After catching his breath for a moment he stood, patted himself down, and looked around for a way back up. He was in a large, dark, dust-choked pentagonal room. When he lit one of his last remaining matches, he saw no obvious exits other than the hole far overhead. The far corners of the room were cloaked in shadow. There might be a door there; it was too early to panic.

  Something moved in the darkness ahead and for an instant he saw them as they were now—the makers of this ruin. He saw them the way that sometimes one could quite clearly see a storm approaching on the horizon without quite knowing exactly what it was one had seen; perhaps nothing but a distant flickering, a certain bruised quality of the light. First they weren’t there; then they were, whether one liked it or not, in their dozens, their hundreds, pressing together, their overlapping wings darker patches within the shadows of the room. They filled the whole castle, perhaps.

  He closed his eyes and prayed and pushed through them. Cold; dry; fluttering; electrical. His prayer became a wordless moan. Slipping and sliding through the dust toward the wall he tried to recall the symbols of the Engine, Atwood’s tricks of magical defense. He couldn’t remember a bloody thing. Perhaps it was better that way. “Not a bloody thing! Ha! Not a thing.”

  * * *

  As Arthur struggled to stand, he saw Vaz fall from fifty feet away. The wind seemed for a moment to have died down; Atwood was fleeing along the edge of the rooftop, holding his right arm as if Vaz had wrenched it. With a bull’s roar Arthur ran at him, head down. Atwood turned and raised his hand again. Arthur stumbled, moaned. A hand of ice clutched his heart; fingers of ice reached into his skull. A hundred voices screamed and buzzed nonsense-words at him. He pressed forward.

  He almost came close enough to grab Atwood’s collar; he reached out a hand, but Atwood dodged, turning and leaping from the rooftop’s edge across the narrow chasm and onto the dome.

  Arthur jumped after him. He had a revolting sensation of pushing through thick shadows, like cobwebs.

  Atwood was already on all fours, inching his way up the dome, calling out names and incantations and God knows what. Arthur reached for Atwood’s ankle, and he kicked back and caught Arthur’s chin with a glancing blow. Arthur grunted and started crawling up the dome. He had the advantage over Atwood, for once: he was taller and stronger and a faster climber, and besides, Atwood seemed distracted by whatever he was muttering. The vital thing—apart from not looking down—was not to relent, not to let up, not to let Atwood out of his sight for one moment, even though the dust and the shadows swirled so thickly around the top of the dome that he was almost blind. If the bastard got away into the castle’s corridors, they’d never flush him out again. If there was a they. It seemed quite likely that Vaz might be dead. He saw no sign of Josephine. Perhaps she had vanished again, having given her message. Well, that was more than he had a right to expect. More than most people got, and worth the trip.

  He reached out again, and this time he caught Atwood’s ankle and dragged him back down. Atwood shrieked in outrage. For a moment, both men slid down side by side. Then Atwood scrabbled to his feet and Arthur stood too, both of them teetering at what would on Earth have been a quite impossible angle. Atwood’s eyes were blank. With one hand Atwood gouged at Arthur’s face, while he made that dreadful devil’s–horn gesture again with the other. Arthur’s lungs constricted, his heart skipped, his legs buckled. He lunged, wrapped his arms around Atwood’s neck, and, with the last strength in his legs, threw himself backwards.

  They rolled together down the dome. Atwood screamed and struggled and bit at Arthur’s ear, but Arthur refused to let go. Faster and faster, over and over they bounced. Bones broke. Arthur hardly noticed the pain. He couldn’t breathe. He thought he might be about to fall asleep. They rolled out over the edge of the dome and into empty air. There were glimpses, through dust and shadow, of the courtyard rushing upwards. At last Arthur let go, and closed his eyes.

  He heard a whir of wings and felt himself lurching upwards. Beneath him he heard Atwood shouting gibberish, as if commending his soul to things best not named; then silence.

  * * *

  Vaz reached the wall unharmed, rather to his surprise; he bumped into it with an outstretched hand. Cold and hard and painful. He walked along the wall in the dark, feeling for a door. He didn’t really expect to find one, but it seemed that he walked for a very long time without encountering any corners, which was odd.

  The dust drifts mounted and became finer and finer, until with every step he was sinking up to his knees, then up to his waist.

  He was thinking of striking his last match when he saw a faint light ahead of him in the darkness, as if from a distant lamp. “Mr Shaw?” he said; but then he saw that there were a dozen other lights, or perhaps a hundred. He took one more step forward and sank into the dust over his head. He kept sinking, as if the dust were
black water through which he could see the glimmer of stars above, or the lights of a distant shore.

  * * *

  Josephine held Arthur’s hand in both of hers and strained upwards. He was a tremendous, impossible weight. Winds buffeted her; she felt she might tear in two. She struggled for purchase on the harsh and gloomy air. She looked down for a place to land, but saw none. She was already high over the castle—higher than she’d realised—and its rooftops were wreathed in shadow. Atwood’s body was lost to sight. Orpheus and the others were faint blue lights that guttered like candle-flames and went out. A moment later, nothing was visible of the castle but a few claw-like spires that narrowed to mere lines and then were gone, as if the whole structure had dissolved into dust and shadow and been swept away on the wind. She struggled up through the dark, not with her body but with her will. The black mountain above her spun like a whirlwind, swelled, and became the whole sky. Then, after what seemed like an aeon of struggle, it whipped away like a black veil, revealing the stars. She was so amazed that she hardly noticed that Arthur’s weight was gone, and that she was alone.

  Chapter Forty-three

  It was the smell that first woke her, after God only knows how long a sleep. The smell of the river, and then the sound of traffic. She opened her eyes.

  Oak rafters. A cobweb.

  Sunlight. Blinding and golden. High summer warmth.

  She tried to speak. Her fingers were stiff. Her arms were wrapped in something heavy, some kind of smothering restraint. She panicked, struggled, finally forced her hands free of it.

  It was a blanket. An itchy woollen blanket.

  She held up a hand. Pink. Stubby fingers. Long, unkempt nails.

  A croak emerged from her throat.

  She tried to sit up. Her body failed her; she could no more sit up than flap her arms and fly. The exertion made her heart pound.

  She croaked again, then worked her stiff dry tongue and her cracked lips until she was able to form an obscenity. It was tremendously satisfying.

  Already the memory of her long waking was starting to fade. Her flight through the dark, up through the unfolding geometries of the spheres. And before that, the castle, the lunar city—had that been real, or a dream?

  She stared at the spider’s web. Its solid and sane geometry comforted her.

  She bent her will to the task of sitting up.

  Pain shot through her. Everything ached. A man’s hoarse voice called out in surprise.

  * * *

  She began to panic. Her hands shook. She fought for control.

  They were in a long narrow room, under a slanting attic roof. There were two beds in the room: hers, and the man’s. He sat upright in bed, beneath the window, staring madly about, as if her voice had suddenly woken him. He was jabbering something, not in English. Not Arthur. The sunlight from the window was almost blinding. He wore an unkempt beard, a white nightgown, and a long white hat, which he tore off to reveal a shaved head. He appeared to be Indian. She patted her head and found that she, too, had had her hair cut short. In the corner was a wardrobe and a closed door.

  She croaked, “Arthur.”

  The stranger pulled himself to his feet. A little man; skin and bones. He opened the window—not without difficulty—and let in the smells of the river, of sizzling food-carts, of flowers and perfume and horse-sweat, of coal and asphalt and bonfires; and the noise of traffic and pigeons and a hundred beautiful human voices. Mid-day bells were ringing.

  “London,” he croaked. “We have gone and come back.”

  “Who?”

  He turned as if surprised to find that she was real. He hobbled over to her and leaned on the edge of her bed for support.

  “Miss—Bradley? Bradford? Bradman? Bradman. Josephine? By God. By God! It is you. He said—Mr Shaw said—my name is Vaz. Mr Shaw and I—by God! We went to Mars together!”

  “Vaz? Mars?”

  “Yes! Yes! He said that you were there; he said that he spoke to you. By God. Is it true?”

  She clutched his stick-thin arm. “He fell, Mr Vaz; I saw him fall from the rooftop. He fell, and I caught him. And then I was carrying him, and then I wasn’t, not any more … Where did he go?”

  His bloodshot eyes widened. “I don’t know, Miss Bradman.”

  “How long have we been asleep, Mr Vaz?”

  He looked out the window and shrugged.

  * * *

  Vaz flung open the wardrobe and found ointments, medicines, bandages, and eventually, folded in the dust at the bottom of a drawer, a moth-eaten suit of clothes that he recognised as his. Just as he’d left them the night of the departure, back in Deptford, he said. That had been winter. It felt like high summer now, he suggested. The clothes hung from his bony frame. He found a mirror and some scissors and attacked his beard and hair and fingernails until he thought perhaps he was presentable, though he confessed he no longer recalled what a presentable human being looked like.

  Josephine sat on the edge of the bed. She couldn’t move any further. Her legs were feeble and her will appeared to have deserted her. She recalled, over and over, the fall from the dome—catching Arthur—Atwood falling silent—the castle’s dissolution into shadow, and an eternity of struggle upwards through the dark. Had she lost Arthur? Had she let go? Had he really been there at all, or had she dreamed it? This stranger—Vaz—seemed to suggest that she had not.

  He came limping over to her bed. He carried a long robe, scarcely more presentable than the nightgown she was wearing.

  “Quick,” he said. “We must go.”

  “Where are we, Mr Vaz? How did we get here?”

  “To London? I don’t know. I remember—I fell from the roof. And then there were shadows; and then it seemed that everything was shadows; and then it seemed that I was drowning; and I fought for the light. I fought with all my strength and all my cunning, and I did not think I would win … and then after a long time I heard voices, and bells … How did we come to be in this room? I don’t know that either. I went to sleep in a warehouse by the river and now we are—I don’t know. But listen: Mr Shaw had come to believe that our employers were very wicked people. I believe it too. We should flee, before they know we are awake.”

  “I cannot leave Mr Shaw.”

  “He is not here, Miss Bradman.”

  He hurried over to the door, and found it was locked.

  She forced herself to stand, and then to walk. She joined him by the door.

  “Perhaps the window,” he said.

  Exhausted, trembling from the exertion of walking, she leaned against the door. The smell of oak and varnish was so delightful it almost made her cry.

  Mr Vaz limped over to the window and reported that it was hopeless. They were three stories up and the climb would have been impossible even for a strong man in good health.

  She pressed her head against the door. Through the wood she felt the heavy iron of the key, sitting in the lock on the other side of the door. She felt a tingling in the air; the memory of her wings. She reached out with her will, took hold of the key, and turned it. The lock clicked.

  “By God,” said Mr Vaz.

  When she opened the door it caused a bell to ring: twice, loudly. Then it was silent.

  They stepped out arm in arm onto a landing at the top of a staircase that led down into what was plainly someone’s house. It was somewhat sparsely furnished by London standards, but after Mars, the mere presence of an old rug on the floor and a lamp on the wall seemed quite dizzyingly luxurious.

  A woman’s voice called out, “Come down, please, Miss Bradman.”

  Mr Vaz shook his head. “No, Miss Bradman. We must go.”

  “I have to, Mr Vaz. I have to know what happened.”

  “Come down, please, Miss Bradman! Mr Vaz. I want to talk to you.”

  * * *

  The woman who’d sometimes gone by Jupiter, and sometimes by Moina, sat in a chair in the corner of a small and spare office on the second floor of the house. A window overlooke
d the river. Tower Bridge, still half-finished, loomed in the middle distance. Though to someone accustomed to the cold of Mars it felt like high summer, crowds on the riverbank were dressed for winter. Someone had painted a variety of occult-looking sigils on the window-sill and on the floor.

  Jupiter wore a heavy black dress, and she appeared to have quite a lot more grey hair than when Josephine had last seen her. Her eyes were red and sleepless, her face was pale. On her lap was a Bible, and she was making annotations in it.

  She put down her pen and stared. “It’s true, then. I had almost ceased to hope.”

  She stood, and put the Bible down on the window-sill. “Sit,” she said, “sit.” She took Josephine by her arm and steered her into the empty chair.

  Mr Vaz waited anxiously in the doorway.

  “I mean you no harm, Miss Bradman, Mr Vaz—no further harm. Please. Please sit, before you hurt yourselves. Perhaps you mistrust me—and why shouldn’t you?—but you are safe here. God knows you will have enemies enough, but I am not one of them.”

  “Moina—please—where is Mr Shaw?”

  “Please—please.” Jupiter paced. She appeared quite distracted. “We may not have long. If you’ve awoken at last … It’s been such a long time since you left, Mr Vaz, and it’s been such hell since then. The rules of conduct have not lately been observed, Miss Bradman. They have not been observed! I could tell you news that would turn your hair white! But I knew that I had to keep you safe—I had to have answers, I had to know. Even after Atwood—even after that, I had to know if we had succeeded; and what it meant.”

  Josephine felt a rush of panic. She struggled to rise from the chair, but her legs betrayed her.

  “If you’ve awoken, others may know soon.”

  Mr Vaz spoke softly. “When did Lord Atwood die, madam?”

  “Oh—some months ago. It was still summer. In his sleep. It was terrible—terrible. I’ve had such nightmares ever since. You’ve done nothing but sleep, but I’ve hardly slept a wink. They sent these nightmares, you know; Podmore, or Archer. Or worse. Or worse! Tell me, please—what did you see?”