by Colin Meloy
“It’s best not to get so upset,” said Desdemona.
Unthank lifted his finger. “That’s it. This is all an elaborate joke. All those men in those dive bars that I visited; the ones in mental institutions, the ones raving about bands of coyotes dressed in nineteenth-century military uniform. They were just having me on. And guess what? I fell for it. I flipping fell for it, didn’t I?” He stalked over to the desk and began rudely tousling the sheaves of paper on its surface. “Ha-ha. Joke’s on Unthank. The kid who everyone said wouldn’t amount to anything. And guess what? I did. I became a Titan. Machine parts. Showed them, didn’t I? But the other guys always get the last laugh, huh? Like the guy who made this.” Here, he began searching through the paper stack for something in particular, and, not finding it, he stopped in his ramblings and thrust his hands into his pockets. His eyes scanned the room. “Where is it?”
“What, dear?”
“The map. The flipping map, Desdemona. The one that the old man gave me.”
Desdemona, sensing Joffrey’s rising anger, began stepping toward the door. “I am not knowing what you talk about, map.”
Unthank, rifling back through the papers, was shouting now: “The map! The map! The one with the … the things on it. The one that was given to the old man, who gave it me. With the big tree and the mansion!”
“Is not there?”
“No, it’s not there.” Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. “Those kids. The ones who took the transponder unit. One of them must’ve …” His voice trailed off.
“Must’ve …?” prompted Desdemona.
Unthank thrust a finger at Miss Mudrak. “Go search through those girls’ footlockers. They’ve got to have it. They must’ve stolen it.”
“Okay, darling. I will do this. But you must be calmed. You are much too божевіл’ний.” She huffed loudly and turned to go. But before she did so, she exclaimed, “And do not yell. It is ungentleman.” And with that, Joffrey Unthank found that he was once more alone in the office.
He collapsed his weight into the chair and placed his head on the cool of the desk’s surface. His remaining hair, in the tirade, had been upset and now jutted from his pate like the feathers of a peacock. A bit of snot dripped to the tip of his nose, and he wiped it away on the hem of his sleeve. He sat this way for a considerable time, torturing himself with the memories of his many years of experimentation. He was so tortured by these specters, in fact, that he briefly considered standing up, rushing to the bookshelf, and destroying every glass vial and philter and bringing a crashing end to his life’s endeavor of finding a way into the Impassable Wilderness in a single, ear-shattering moment.
That is to say: He would’ve done this if a knock, at that moment, hadn’t sounded at the door.
“What?” asked Unthank, exasperated.
“Sir,” came a voice. It was Miss Talbot. “Someone to see you, sir.”
He wiped his nose again and flattened the rumpled front of his sweater. “I’m not taking visitors right now, thanks very much, Miss Talbot.”
“It’s a man. He says it’s very important.”
Unthank glared at the door. “I said, Miss Talbot, that I am not receiving visitors.”
There was a long pause, after which Miss Talbot’s voice sounded again through the wood of the door. “The gentleman really won’t take no for an answer, sir.”
“Is he an attorney?” asked Unthank, groaning. He’d had his share of ambulance-chasing lawyers attempting legal sieges on his unscrupulous and somewhat negligent business practices before, though it was never anything a written check and a call to a state senator couldn’t fix.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Miss Talbot.
“You don’t know?”
Another pause. “He’s … well, there’s something fairly strange about him, sir. Something I can’t rightly put my finger on.”
Unthank stared at his hands as he tented them on his desk surface. What was it those Mehlberg girls had said? That their parents were returning shortly? There had been, on rare occasions, parents returning for their children, and it was often a fairly sticky wicket to navigate. He’d found, though, that with the correct tone, even a guilt-ridden parent coming back for a child they’d knowingly orphaned could be easy to placate. He sat back in his chair and tried to assume a calm demeanor. “Very well,” he said. “Show him in.”
A few minutes passed. Then the door creaked open and Miss Talbot shuffled into the room. Behind her walked a tall, thin man in an elegant suit, which struck Joffrey as being out of style by an easy century. His hair was neatly pomaded back from his forehead, and he wore a close-shorn beard. Perched on his nose was something resembling glasses.
“Is that …,” started Joffrey, searching for the word, “a pince-nez?”
The man ignored him as he strode confidently into the room. He carried a worn leather briefcase under his arm, and he seemed to be surrounded by an aura that Joffrey could only later describe as being somewhat otherworldly, as if every time you glanced in his direction it was like you’d just woken from a very strange and wonderful dream. Joffrey remained frozen for a time, marveling at the man, before he remembered his objective.
“Dear sir,” said Unthank, before the thin man had an opportunity to speak, “I realize that you might be unhappy with your decision to—how should I put this?—part ways with your child or children, but I can assure you that—”
The thin man interrupted him. “Are you Joffrey Unthank, machine parts manufacturer?”
“I am,” said Joffrey, after first sharing a questioning look with Miss Talbot. She’d evidently decided her job was done, as she promptly turned about and left the room, closing the door behind her. The thin man waited until she’d gone before he continued.
“I’d like to commission an object,” said the man.
“A … what?” asked Unthank, confused.
“An object. A machine part. I’m given to understand that is your specialty?”
“Well, yes. But wait a second. Who are you? What’s your name?”
“My name is incidental,” said the thin man.
Unthank cracked a wry smile. “It might be to you, but I like to know with whom I’m doing business.” He leaned back in his chair, waiting for the man to respond.
“Very well,” said the thin man after a moment of hesitation. “If you insist. My name is Roger. Roger Swindon. And I wish to have a machine part made.”
“Nice to meet you, Roger,” said Unthank.
“May I sit?” asked Roger.
“Sure, Mr. Swindon. Have a seat.” Joffrey waved at one of the leather chairs in front of the desk.
Setting the briefcase down at his feet, Roger first fanned out the twin tails of his black suit jacket before setting himself on the edge of the leather chair. He then picked up the briefcase and set it on his lap. Unthank was still staring at his suit.
“That’s a fancy getup you’ve got there,” Joffrey said. “You going to a costume party?”
This comment was ignored. “A very great deal depends on the manufacture of this object, and I would prefer if it could be done with the speediest diligence.” He began unfastening the buckles on the leather briefcase as he spoke. “I have procured the design, no small feat, which should make the entire process fairly simple. I am told, by trustworthy sources, that you are the best.” He paused and peered up at Unthank over his pince-nez.
Unthank smiled warily. “I like your sources,” he said. “Can I ask who they are?”
“That is of scant importance.” The man continued opening the briefcase. There seemed to be an inordinate number of buckles on the thing. “It would behoove me to point out at this juncture, though, that I expect you to work in absolute secrecy. No one must know that you are crafting this object. You are to speak only to me.”
“Listen, buddy,” said Unthank, growing weary of the man’s attitude. “You come in here, insisting on seeing me. You interrupt me from my work. You won’t tell me who referre
d you. And then you just assume that I’m going to bend over backward to—what—make some kind of object for you? It doesn’t work that way. I have contracts with major appliance manufacturers, relationships I’ve fostered over years and years of hard work. I’ve got my hands full as it is. I can’t rightly drop everything I’m doing in order to make this object for you—I owe it to my clients to make sure their work comes first. And also: I don’t like secrets. I don’t like working in secret. Secrecy means illegality, and that’s the last thing I need right now.” Unthank pulled open the center drawer of the desk and began rummaging through its contents. “I can give you the names and numbers of a few smaller-quantity manufacturers; they don’t quite get the quality I do, but they’ll suffice for whatever dryer manifold or replacement blender blade you’re looking for.”
The man listened to Unthank’s monologue quietly. When Joffrey had finished and was offering Swindon a small, gold-foil business card, the man spoke again. “You’ll be rewarded for your services, Mr. Unthank. I think it is in your interest to take this commission.”
Unthank waved the business card impatiently. “I’m doing just fine, thanks very much. Here, take this card. This guy’s pretty good.”
“I can offer a very, very appealing exchange, Mr. Unthank.”
“I don’t work in exchanges. Maybe this guy will.” He was still wagging the business card when the thin man said something that made him stop.
“Access, Mr. Unthank. I can offer access.”
Joffrey raised his right eyebrow. “What kind of access?” he asked.
“The kind of access you’ve been looking for, Mr. Unthank.”
The way the man kept saying his name was unnerving. “What are you talking about?”
“We’ve been watching you. We’ve been witness to your work. We can help you, Mr. Unthank. We can get you into the Impassable Wilderness.”
Joffrey let the business card fall to the desk. He suddenly felt unable to move, as if his muscles had simply ceased functioning. He stared intently at the man, at the little black hairs of his beard, at the gold of his pince-nez. Finally, he found his voice. “You can?” he croaked.
Roger nodded. “Now, can we continue?”
“Wait a second,” said Joffrey. “How?”
“That, too, is unimportant right now.”
“I think it’s pretty important, actually. How do you get in? How will you get me in? I need to have some sort of assurance before I agree to anything.”
The thin man sighed resignedly. “Suffice it to say that I, and anyone who travels with me, am unaffected by the Periphery Bind. I am of Woods Magic.”
“You’re what?”
“Really, Mr. Unthank, I don’t think nattering over trivial details is the best use of our time.”
“The Periphery Bind—is that the boundary?”
The man nodded.
Joffrey fell back in his chair, his eyes wide. He thrust his hands into his hair and pushed it back compulsively, flattening the greasy strands against his scalp. “Oh man,” he said. Then he said it again: “Oh man.”
Roger, having finally managed to undo all the clasps of the briefcase, produced a yellowing piece of paper, folded into quadrants, and began to flatten it out on his lap. When it had been unfolded, he set it gently on Joffrey’s desk. “Take a look at the schematic,” he said. “Tell me how soon you can produce it.”
Shaking himself from his shocked delirium, Joffrey blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and squinted at the piece of paper. The shape of something came into view, and he knitted his brow to try to make sense of it. When he did, finally, his mouth nearly fell open in shock.
You see, Joffrey Unthank knew machine-part schematics. It was in his blood. His great-grandfather, Linus Mortimer Unthank, had started Unthank Machine Parts in 1914, right at the start of the Great War. The old man’s portrait hung in the main hall of the building. Joffrey had met him only once, though it could be said that he’d only had half a meeting with the man. It had been at his great-grandfather’s deathbed, and Unthank, all of five years old, had been shepherded to the bedside of the dying patriarch to say hello and good-bye. Joffrey remembered the exchange vividly. The smell of the room was close and stifling; the ashy, pale skin of his great-grandfather was almost indistinguishable from the starched white sheets. “Mr. Unthank?” said his father, who’d always referred to his grandfather that way, “I’d like you to meet your great-grandson, Joffrey.” The old man had twisted his head slightly, with apparent difficulty, and spied him out of the corner of his eye. His mouth contorted to speak. “Don’t,” he began. “Don’t. Don’t let it die.” And then, quite coincidentally, he died. No one was ever entirely sure what he meant by it (his prided pot of gardenias was in desperate need of watering just then), but Joffrey always felt, in his heart of hearts, that he meant the shop. Don’t let the machine shop, Unthank Machine Parts, die. And so, as soon as he was able, Unthank threw himself into the business with the enthusiasm of a true entrepreneur. He slashed budgets, he discarded languishing accounts, he fired inefficient employees and hired efficient ones. And to top it all off, he incorporated the nearby orphanage into his business and began using the children for cheap (read: free) labor. He spent every leisure hour studying the history of the trade like an archaeologist, poring over detailed part schematics until his eyes went blurry from the strain. He learned every new machine that came into the shop and studied its inner workings meticulously. His entire life revolved around the shop; even when he was elected to the Quintet, the hierarchy of Industrial Titans, he skipped out on his award ceremony early because he’d only recently bought a collection of early-twentieth-century manifold schematics and was eager to get back to his office and study them. There was not a single blueprint, spec sheet, or circuit diagram with which he was not intimately acquainted.
Until now.
“What is this?” Unthank asked breathlessly.
“A Möbius Cog. Have you never seen one?”
Unthank, despite himself, said, “No.”
Roger frowned.
“What does it—?” Unthank stuttered, his attention thoroughly captured by what he saw. “How does it—?” His fingers drifted over the page, feeling the smoothness of the paper. Drawn there in blue-gray ink was the most precise and careful rendering of a machine part that Unthank had ever seen. Every single curve had been painstakingly measured and labeled; every angle drafted with footnoted graphs. As a man who’d studied nearly every schematic to leave a draftsman’s pen, one would assume that Unthank would be able to easily make sense of the cog’s design; but no: It was baffling to him.
Consisting of three toothed rings, the cog was more like a series of gears, revolving around an orblike core. The three rings themselves were toothed like spur gears, but they were each twisted in a way that defied logic, as if each outside surface was also the gear’s inside surface. Somehow, in all their twisting, the teeth of the three gears made contact with one another at just the right spots to create, the schematic presumed, a smooth motion between the separate pieces. Unthank traced the circumference of the entwined cogs and mumbled to himself. Finally, he looked at his visitor with a look of abject surrender.
“It’s not possible,” he said.
The thin man would not be denied. “Surely, that is not so.”
“I mean, it just defies logic. I can’t even imagine the amount of work that was involved in drawing up this blueprint; to actually build it? Impossible. This design, pretty though it is, is pure conjecture! A thing of beauty, no doubt, but so are unicorns, my friend.”
“It is not conjecture.”
Unthank seemed to not hear him. He was back admiring the schematic. “I have to admit, it’s awfully impressive. I’d even go so far as to say genius. Gotta hand it to a guy to have such a fertile imagination to make up something like this.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head.
“Mr. Unthank, I assure you it is not imaginary. It has been made before.”
“By whom?�
��
“Two very gifted machinists. It is presumed that they worked together in solitude in a rudimentary workshop, with nothing more than a few hammers and chisels at their disposal. I would assume, since you are in control of an entire machine shop, the creation of the cog should come easily to you.”
Unthank laughed, once, very loudly. He set down the schematic and looked Roger squarely in the eye. “This … thing is one of the most incredibly designed machine parts I’ve ever seen. Even with my entire shop devoted to the creation of this thing …” His eyes traveled over the words on the schematic, carefully unpacking their meaning. He murmured to himself as he read. After a moment, he looked back up at Roger. “These machinists—they did this with hammer and chisel? I’ve got to think that your Woodsy Magic had something to do with it.”
“Woods Magic,” the thin man corrected.
“Right.” Unthank paused. “What is that, exactly?”
“It’s the essence of the Wood, and it flows in the blood of anyone born to it. It is believed we are descended of the trees themselves. You Outsiders are shamefully ignorant of what happens beyond the Periphery, in these woods you so colloquially call the Impassable Wilderness. It is a vibrant and vital place. And I am offering you exclusive access, something that, to my knowledge, no Woodian has offered an Outsider in the history of our parallel existences.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” said Unthank. “What exactly does that entail, this access?”
“Absolute, unfettered access. A chaperone at your disposal to walk you in and out of the Periphery until such time that the Bind can be dismantled. The opportunity to market your wares to an entirely new world of buyers. Complete control over the resources of a country teeming with ancient forests. Trees, thousands of years old. Perhaps, once our dominion is cemented, you will be included in the administration. Machine Part Manufacturer to the Dauphin. How does that sound?”
“Intriguing,” said Unthank. He looked back at the schematic. “I mean, I suppose it could be … well, I don’t want to speak too hastily, but I’ve attempted these kinds of experimental projects in the past. Lord knows I have the shop for it. If this has been built before—if it has existed in the world—I’ve got to assume that if anyone’s got the stuff to make it again, it’s me. But it’s no small feat, I tell you.” He paused for a moment. “Did you say something about a dolphin?”
