by Martin Dukes
“I guess…” conceded Alex. “But what’s this got to do with me?”
“It has a great deal to do with you–and with your skull in particular. Your skull, you see, is merely a three-dimensional projection of a six-dimensional object; one of the greatest significance. You may think of it as the tiny three-dimensional tip of a six-dimensional iceberg, if that helps you. Your skull is particularly exquisite. It has a powerful resonance across those shadow dimensions. We can perceive that.”
“Aren’t I a lucky boy?” said Alex glumly. “Who’s we, anyway? If you’re not like me, what exactly are you?”
“To understand that, you need to understand a little about Elysium. That’s where we are, Alex, Elysium.”
“Yeah, I know that. I was here before, once.”
“We know.” Ezekiel took a cake and regarded it thoughtfully, before taking the tiniest bite from it and setting it down on his plate. He averted his head slightly and held his other hand vaguely in the region of his mouth as though to shield Alex from the visual unpleasantness of seeing him chew. He leant forward, touching Alex lightly on the knee for emphasis.
“We know a great deal about you, Alex. You have been an object of study ever since the moment you first came to our attention. There are essentially two types of angels, you see: the elect and the immortal. The vast majority of angels were once mortals like you, but they have become elect. They have been translated to Elysium and their normal physical processes have been adjusted to equip them for their new life in this place. They do not die, in the manner that you would understand it, but neither do they reproduce. Do you see? Elysium is a place that exists in parallel with the physical universe you inhabit.”
“Right,” said Alex looking thoughtful. “You still haven’t answered my question. I’m guessing you’re not one of the elect sort.”
“Indeed. I am an immortal. My existence is infinite. I have been here since the beginning of the Universe, and I will never cease to exist, never die, as you would understand.”
“You don’t look that old,” said Alex. “I’d have thought you’d be wrinklier.”
Ezekiel leant back in his chair and a flicker of amusement momentarily animated his stony features. Alex guessed this was as close as he got to a belly laugh.
“What you see is a combination of what I choose to project in the first three dimensions and what your senses choose to interpret. Would you prefer this?”
Instantaneously, the elderly Ezekiel was replaced by a beautiful blond-haired child, with piercing blue eyes and a seraphic smile.
“Do you care for this projection of me?” asked the child. “I can be whatever you want me to be with virtually no additional effort.”
Alex, aware that he was gaping, closed his mouth.
“No. As you were was fine,” he heard his voice say somewhat distantly as his mind continued to reel.
“Very well,” said Ezekiel, an elderly man once more. “This is what you might think of as my default projection to your senses. We call it an avatar. We shall stay with it. I am an archangel, Alex, an archangel, and I have powers, knowledge and experience far greater than you are equipped to understand. You, on the other hand, are a mortal, but a mortal in possession of a very particular gift.”
“So I gather,” said Alex. “Not that it’s doing me any favours. So what happens next? I guess you need to have a good look at my skull then. I hope you can do that without, er…” He found that he suddenly wanted to cry, unable to complete the sentence.
“Without having to kill you,” supplied Ezekiel evenly. “Of course. You may not be aware of it but the vessel in question is already being investigated as we speak. It can be done in situ. It is better done in situ because your spirit continues to animate its inner reaches.”
“Oh, good,” said Alex feeling suddenly terribly weary. “That’s a comfort.”
“I think we have talked enough for now,” said Ezekiel. “Although we shall certainly meet again. I can see that you are fatigued. I shall leave you with Garek. He will see to your entertainment and accommodation.”
There might have been more of this but Alex was already asleep, consciousness drifting away into oblivion.
Chapter Seventeen
Alex awoke in a soft white bed, with clean white sheets, and with the fresh scent of flowers in his nostrils. He was in a plainly furnished room, lit by a tall, full-length window with double doors that opened onto a balcony. Net curtains stirred in a faint breeze. Birds sang distantly and there was the sound of bees at work in the window boxes fixed to the front of the balcony. Fluffy white clouds in a blue sky drifted in front of high mountain peaks. It felt like morning. The fatigue, the nagging pain from the various minor wounds he had picked up during his escape from the Sultan’s prison, all these had gone. He felt relaxed, refreshed, his mind at rest. This phenomenon lasted only a moment, vanishing like a puff of smoke as the dreadful reality of his situation crowded in on him once more. He sat up, pulling the sheets aside and glancing around him.
“Do you like this? I thought you would like this,” said Garek, walking in from the balcony and gesturing around him at the room. “I have been asked to make you comfortable.”
“Oh, great. You!” said Alex rubbing his eyes. “Just what I need.”
“A sensitive person might resent your tone,” said Garek a little peevishly.
“Yeah? Then get lost,” said Alex brusquely. “How’s that for a tone?”
“Hmmm,” said Garek rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I detect hostility.”
“Damn right you do,” snarled Alex. “What d’you expect? You’ve kidnapped me; you’re holding my friends hostage. I don’t think we’re ever going to be best buds.”
“What I did, I did because I had to,” said Garek, coming over to Alex’s bed. “Not because I’ve got anything against you personally. You must understand this.”
“Ha!” scoffed Alex, looking down at himself for the first time and finding that he was wearing striped pyjamas. “I know exactly what you guys are up to. It’s that Dodeka…”
“Dodekakephalon,” supplied Garek. “You’re right, of course. If your skull proves to be the one it’s obviously of the first importance.”
“Why?” demanded Alex peevishly. “Why’s it so important. What’s this stupid skull thing supposed to do, anyway?”
“That hurts me, you know, saying that kind of thing,” said Garek sadly. “Come on, are you going to join me for breakfast?”
Alex found that he was hungry. He followed Garek through to an adjoining room, where there was a table and chairs. The table was laid with a magnificent spread of cereals, fruit, juices, cold meats and various sorts of bread and pastries. A number of covered silver dishes proved to contain sausages, bacon, eggs, mushrooms and fried tomatoes. Alex piled his plate and sat down to eat. Garek poured himself a black coffee and sat opposite.
“Malcolm says you guys think this skull thing is going to regenerate the Universe or something,” said Alex around a mouthful of toast. “Once you’ve got the last skull in place, anyway.”
He marvelled that he was able to discuss it this calmly, that he was able to eat at all, given the circumstances in which he found himself. In truth, his feeling that there was something different in his mind made it hard for him to react to events with any kind of logic or consistency. In addition, there was something so fantastic about his surroundings, so bizarre in the nature of his recent experiences, that he couldn’t fully accept the reality of them, although from time to time he was overtaken by sharp pangs of panic or despair.
“Your friend is all wrong about that part,” said Garek, looking over the top of his cup. “The purpose of the Dodekakephalon is not to regenerate the Universe but to end it.”
“Why would anyone want to end the Universe?” asked Alex, helping himself to more bacon. “Sounds a bit mad to me.”
“I can see that it might,” conceded Garek, “to a mortal. But look at it from our point of view. You think immortality
is a blessing?” He shook his head. “It’s not, it’s a curse. Alright, to begin with it’s fantastic, all that time ahead of you, without limit, that dark shadow cast by death forever lifted. But it palls, it wears you down, it really does, over the course of a few thousand years.”
“Wow! You’re thousands of years old?” said Alex, impressed despite himself.
“I was amongst the first of the elect,” said Garek with a wry smile. “Twelve thousand eight hundred and forty-three years ago. Believe me, after that long, life gets to be a drag.”
“Why don’t you, you know…” Alex gestured vaguely with his fork. “Take up a hobby, collect stamps, make your own greetings cards, that kind of thing?”
“And Ezekiel thinks me flippant,” observed Garek, eyebrows raised. “Don’t set out to annoy me, Alex. It won’t do you any good.”
“Why? What are you going to do, chop my head off?” asked Alex bluntly, considering his next course. “Anyway, Ezekiel said you’ve got to be nice to me.”
Garek seemed to consider this, an expression of annoyance settling briefly in his face just for a moment, but long enough for Alex to mentally lick a finger and mark up a minor victory.
“So, you were saying,” continued Alex, thinking about what Henry would say in the circumstances. “This immortality lark, not what it’s cracked up to be, is it?”
“No, Alex,” said Garek with a small and transparently false smile. “It’s not ‘what it’s cracked up to be’, as you so eloquently put it.”
“It’s a gift,” said Alex, feeling a weird sense of elation. “So why don’t you just, you know, top yourself?”
“Some of us do– the elect, that is,” said Garek, swishing his coffee around in his cup pensively. “When you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough. You can just turn in your halo any time you fancy. Plenty do. But that’s not an option open to the archangels, see? Archangels are in it for the long haul. They’ve been around since day one. And by day one I mean the day one. The beginning of the Universe, something like fourteen billion years ago. They cannot die, even if they want to.”
“Tough break,” said Alex unsympathetically. “What do you mean by the beginning of the Universe? D’you mean, like, the Big Bang?”
“I wouldn’t try dipping your toe in the murky waters of cosmology if I were you,” advised Garek dryly. “What do mortals know, anyway?”
“Okay, so what’s in it for Ezekiel and his crew then?” asked Alex. “I’m guessing he’s ploughing a lonely furrow on this. Not all the archangels are out to call time on the Universe, are they?”
“No, they’re not,” agreed Garek. “There’s just Ezekiel and eleven others. I’m one of a few of the elect who are in on the deal too.”
“These archangels, they’re the Brethren of Twelve, am I right?” asked Alex, pouring himself a glass of orange juice.
“Yes,” said Garek cautiously, his expression registering momentary surprise before being swiftly concealed. “You are well informed.”
“And you guys are some kind of religion, yeah?” suggested Alex, setting down the jug. “I bet you’ve got a special book and stuff; robes, ceremonies, the whole shebang.”
“We are guided by the words of our Maker, yes,” said Garek suddenly solemn. “The being who made everything at the beginning of time. But not words as you would understand them. Not words on a page. You would perhaps think of them as a pattern of hints and clues, hidden within the fabric of the cosmos and interpreted by the Brothers over a period of time your feeble brain has absolutely no chance of understanding. And that’s the big problem with mortal brains; they’re just not mentally set up to get it. The Brothers are working over seven dimensions, if you include time, so you and I aren’t ever going to get a handle on it. We don’t have the sensory organs or the brain power. You just have to accept what the archangels tell us. We believe the Maker left us clues to tell us how to return to him, how to complete his work. The Dodekakephalon is what you might think of as the ‘off’ switch. It’s what we believe, Alex,” he added earnestly, his eyes gleaming with sincerity.
“Yeah, well it sounds stupid to me,” said Alex with a shrug. “Why would this Maker guy want his handiwork winding up anyway?”
“Logic has no place in it,” said Garek shaking his head. “It’s faith. It is not accessible to reason.”
Later, Garek left Alex alone to explore his apartment, which contained, in addition to a bedroom and a dining room, an impressively luxurious bathroom in which Alex took the most satisfying hot shower of his life, after weeks of deprivation. After this and his enormous breakfast, he felt much recovered. The inconvenient fact that he was being held prisoner by a bunch of angelic lunatics was the only fly in his ointment. Unfortunately, the fly was a rather large one.
Apart from his pyjamas there were no other garments available to him, so he was obliged to put these back on after his shower. He stood for some time looking at his reflection in the mirror, pushing his hair right back from his forehead so that he could better scrutinise the shape of his head. It seemed to him that it contained a perfectly ordinary skull, although his hair and his rather prominent ears made it hard to be sure. At length, he plastered his damp hair back down and pressed his ears back flat against his head, as he always did after a wash or shower, as though he might eventually train them to remain there. As ever, they sprang back into place, glowing a healthy red with the light from the bedroom window streaming in from behind.
Alex crossed to the balcony and looked out glumly over the beautiful garden to alpine meadows and mountains beyond – jagged saw-toothed peaks flecked with pockets of snow in the highest reaches. Butterflies in various colours fluttered industriously amongst the shrubs below. Alex stretched his arms wide and yawned, thinking for the first time in hours of his friends. What were they doing now? Was Shirman treating them well? Would they manage to contrive to escape from their captivity? Would he ever see any of them again? Kelly’s pale, anxious face in the gap of the closing door came back into his mind and he tightened his grip on the wrought iron balustrade, holding it tighter and tighter until his knuckles showed white through his skin.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he told himself grimly. “At least I’ve got to try.”
It was highly likely that he was being watched, of course. The angels undoubtedly had some kind of angelic equivalent of video monitoring. Nevertheless, Alex felt he owed it to them and to himself to make things as awkward as he could. His apartment proved to have no door, although Garek had seemed to experience no difficulty in coming and going. The same was true of his breakfast things, all gone now and replaced on the table by a bowl of fruit. This left the balcony as the only possible point of exit. Conveniently, a large and sturdy creeper was growing up the side of the building on either side. Having bare feet was less than ideal in the circumstances, but Alex made his way down to the ground with no particular difficulty and stood on the gravel path that surrounded his place of confinement, rubbing his hands together. There was no one around, the only sounds those of the bees in the flowering borders and the faint creak of a weathervane on top of an outbuilding. The garden was surrounded by an ancient high brick wall, clad over much of its surface with clematis, vines and honeysuckle. There was a door, which proved to be unlocked. Alex went through and found himself in a lane, along which various pedestrians and cyclists were passing. It had to be presumed that these were angels, although there were a fair number of children of various ages, a category Alex had yet to see represented in Elysium, unless you counted Ezekiel’s momentary apparition. They were all moving purposefully along the lane towards the brow of a hill where it disappeared from sight amidst a stand of trees. The manner of their dress suggested that they were in 1950s Britain. Nobody seemed particularly to remark upon the fact that Alex was standing at the roadside in his pyjamas. A plump, ruddy-faced police sergeant came cycling past.
“Excuse me,” called Alex, stepping out into the road, arm raised.
“Yes, sonny?�
� said the sergeant, pulling up and setting down one foot to balance himself. He had a splendid white handlebar moustache and was perspiring freely.
“I was wondering where everyone was going,” he said.
“We’re going to the fair, of course,” said the sergeant, taking off his helmet to wipe his brow with a big white handkerchief. “Are you coming?”
Alex frowned. He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering whether there was anything else he should be asking the officer of the law. The notion of drawing his captivity and maltreatment to the attention of the local constabulary came briefly to mind and was as quickly dismissed. He needed to get to Malcolm.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Do you know Malcolm?”
“Malcolm? Malcolm who?” asked the sergeant, settling his helmet back on his head. “Can’t say I do. Afternoon to you.”
So saying, the sergeant remounted and wobbled off along the lane, gathering stability with speed. Alex regarded this thoughtfully and, after a moment, set out after him, falling in alongside a young mother pushing a pram.
“Do you know Malcolm?” he asked.
It seemed that no one on the way to the fair knew Malcolm. The fair could be heard long before it could be seen, the strains of music, the whine and clatter of rides carrying on the wind as Alex approached the crest of the hill. It proved to be a large one, sited in a field to the side of the lane, where throngs of merrymakers wandered amongst the helter-skelters, big wheels, dodgems and waltzers. The light was beginning to fade and the flickering coloured lights were bright as Alex wandered contentedly amongst rides and stalls, the faint electric smell of rides mingling with the heady scent of candy floss and popcorn. He had no money, of course, and so was denied the opportunity to go on any of the rides. Nor could he throw hoops to win a goldfish in a plastic bag as invited by a snaggle-toothed and elderly angel of disreputable appearance. Were these even angels at all, Alex wondered, as he stood to admire a magnificent fairground organ. On the front of it were little animated marionettes that danced and clashed miniature cymbals in time with the music. His musings were abruptly interrupted as a black-clad man pushed through the crowd, the sinister silver emblem of the skull embroidered on his sleeve. There was a moment of mutual recognition, in which time seemed to stand still and the world to draw breath.
