String City

by Graham Edwards

  “It won’t work,” I said. “All you’ve done is turn this projector into a new Still Point. With the Glory inside it, the workings won’t work.”

  “The glass may be silent,” the Pennyman replied, “but the lighthouse shall speak.”

  He pulled the lever. The projector’s motor, unaffected by the Glory’s stasis field, whirred into life while the Glory itself remained frozen in its new home. The film reels turned, sending celluloid chattering through the sprockets. Light flickered from the lens and as it did so the Pennyman stepped in front of it. The light hit his spinning head and his face flashed, his expression all streamers of mirth and madness. On the distant silver screen, a kaleidoscope of color swam slowly into focus. It looked like a picture. A big one.

  “This is all just a trick!” The Scrutator was stuck out on the stairs, its voice muffled by the reinforced glass of the locked door’s vision panel. Behind it, I could just make out a line of robots straggling down into the gloom.

  “TRICK!” they all roared as one.

  “The Pennyman has opened the way to the Big Picture but still he cannot choose to leave!” the Scrutator shouted.

  “LEAVE!”

  “He needs another to make the choice for him!” said the Scrutator.

  “CHOICE!”

  The Pennyman’s arms closed around Zephyr’s waist. Quick as a rattlesnake, he pulled her into the light. Their shadows filled the screen: a couple dancing.

  “Regard,” the Pennyman hissed in Zephyr’s ear. “Regard the truth of the two, of you and of him, and of the chance to be paired once more. Make the total, and carry the sum.” He bent close, his leering face bright in the spinning coin of his head. “Carry me!”

  “Don’t do it, Zephyr!” I cried. “He’s powerless here, remember? He can’t make the choice to leave himself. As long as we don’t help him, he’ll stay trapped.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Zephyr’s eyes were fixed on the dazzling vista that was opening up on the screen. I could feel its pull, and knew she could too. “You think I don’t know the power is mine?”

  “If you lead him out into the Big Picture, there’s no telling what damage he’ll do there!”

  Tearing her eyes away from the Big Picture’s promise of eternity, she pinned her gaze on me. “Why do you care what I do? And why should I care what he does? Why should I care about anything?” Her eyes strayed back to the screen. “Why shouldn’t I just go there, and leave all this behind?”

  “But it was the Pennyman who messed with your life. With so many lives. It’s what he does. Think of the chaos he’ll cause if you give him a canvas as big as this. He’ll bring down the worlds! All of them!”

  She shook her head and I felt a crush of despair.

  “I can’t make a choice for any world,” she said sadly, “and if you think I can then you’re a fool. I can only choose for me.”

  I blinked, suddenly confused by what appeared to be a gleam in her eye. “What? Choose what?”

  With a sharp, sudden flick of her wrists, Zephyr yanked the Pennyman’s hands free from where they were gripping her midriff. A snarl shuddered across his speeding face.

  “I picked up your penny,” she said to her captor, “and it made me kill the man I loved. Some would say my man was a monster, but he didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of it.”

  She smiled at the Pennyman, and in the light of the Glory, she was beautiful.

  “But you deserve this!”

  Her hand stabbed out. In it she held a curved shard of glass—a single slice of the broken zoetrope. The sharp point sliced into the lapel of the Pennyman’s crisp white suit, just above his heart.

  And went no deeper.

  The Pennyman grinned. With one hand he slapped Zephyr’s cheek. With the other he wrenched the sliver of glass from her fingers. Blood flew—I couldn’t tell whose it was. He slapped her again, continuing to smile as he plucked a dented silver dollar from the breast pocket of his black dress shirt, the lucky coin that just had saved his life.

  “Chance is but a wager,” the Pennyman crooned, “and here come my winnings.”

  He shoved Zephyr against the projection booth window. The glass shattered. Screaming, eyes bulging, she clutched at the frame but it was too late. She tumbled out through the window and fell from sight into the auditorium below.

  “Zephyr!” I lunged at the Pennyman, but he stepped nimbly aside. I slammed into the window frame, now studded with sharp glass teeth, and nearly followed Zephyr over the edge. Regaining my balance, I rocked back and was about to grapple with the Pennyman when I saw something that made me stop.

  Laura’s face on the screen. Laura in the Big Picture. She was smiling, radiant. Beckoning.

  “Do not look at it!” called the Scrutator, thumping its fist against the locked door. “Brothers, help me!” More thumps followed as the other robots joined in. The door shuddered, but held.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off my lost wife, and the paradise that was slowly forming around her.

  “She is there,” said the Pennyman in my ear. “She saw it and she is there. The story was always hers, and she was always destined to be the story. Restring the violin, gumshoe, and play again the music you once were so happy to hear.”

  “You’re lying,” I growled. “Laura died.”

  “To swim in the Lethe is never to die, only to forget, and to forget is to change, and to journey, to become elsewhere and elsewhen and elsewhy. She is there, and so shall you be too.”

  “It’s not true!”

  The light of the Glory was lifting me up. The Pennyman’s arms snaked around my neck and his legs clamped around my waist. Now I was carrying him, though he weighed nothing. I weighed nothing. I was a feather afloat, no longer really here, aware only of there. Of where I wanted to choose to be. With her. Glory light wafted me through the broken window and out over the auditorium seats. On the screen, in the screen, behind the screen, the Big Picture was gradually coming into focus.

  A voice called to me from the projection booth. It said, “Give me your coat!”

  “But it’s my coat,” I mumbled back. The words sounded thin and meaningless.

  “Exactly! Throw it here!”

  I didn’t recognise the voice, but it was loud and authoritative, so I obeyed. What did it matter? It was only a coat. I wriggled out of it, sliding it past the Pennyman’s clutching limbs and tossing it through the window and into the booth. Why not? Where I was going, I wouldn’t need it.

  On the screen, Laura beckoned to me. I let the light of the Glory carry me toward the Big Picture, toward the place beyond Beyond, toward the place where I would be with my dead wife again.

  “Where did you put the damn stuff?” said the voice. “This pocket? Maybe it’s... aw geez, what is this? Wait, maybe this pocket... ah, here we are...”

  I realised the other voice was my voice. How could that be? My thoughts slopped like bad broth as I tried in vain to work it out. The ineffable mosaic of the Big Picture filled my vision, my head, my heart. Cabochon light dazzled my soul.

  “See what lies ahead,” the Pennyman whispered. I could feel the rush of air as his coin-head spun close to my ear. “See all that there is, and all that there may be, and all the choices that may be made by one bold enough to take the chance. See what lies over and under, and what mysteries course through all. This is the truth of it, gumshoe, unfurled for you now and forever.”

  Back in the booth the projector continued to throw out the Glory light. The light pushed me on toward the waiting screen while the Pennyman clung to me, a passenger relieved of the need to make a decision. Laura’s face broke into a rainbow. Shadows fell like rain, color like snow. Something swelled, a flower poised to open, a bubble about to burst. My heart held itself trembling, on the verge of revelation.

  “So, buddy,” said the voice, “you care to take a wager?”

  Muscles twitched in the Pennyman’s arms. “I will not be distracted by what comes and what goes.”


  “Comes and goes?” Understanding finally pierced the single-minded mud of my thoughts. It was the doppelganger—that was who the voice belonged to! “Shouldn’t that be comes or goes? Isn’t that your thing, pal? Making choices? Either, or? This, that?”

  “There is no chance in Beyond,” snarled the Pennyman, “as I believe I have already explained.”

  “Hmm, well, maybe not. But there is this.”

  Another rustle. Something partially blocked the light spilling from the projector. A little of my weight returned and some hidden force began tugging me and the Pennyman back toward the booth.

  “What do you have there?” The Pennyman sounded curious, or cautious, or both.

  We floated back into the booth through the broken window. The doppelganger was just a silhouette against the Glory’s glare, but I could tell by the shape of him that he was wearing my coat. He was also holding up something he’d found inside one of the pockets. The thing I’d pulled from the safe just before leaving my cellar to come here.

  The pouch of Schrödinger’s Gold.

  “Here’s the thing,” said the doppelganger. “The way I understand it, this pouch is either full of gold, or it isn’t. At the same time, it’s also both. It’s only when you open it that fate decides what’s really inside. Don’t ask me how that works. I failed quantum philosophy.”

  “It is chance,” growled the Pennyman. “It is all of it chance, as you must surely comprehend.”

  In his other hand, the doppelganger was holding the compact. I could just make out the numbers glowing on the dial—the timer was down to six minutes and twelve seconds.

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t comprehend it as well as you claim to, buddy. But when you’ve tangled with Titans, you get to learn a lot about gambling. And gambling’s what you do, isn’t it? It’s what you are. That or this. This or that. It’s all just one big wager for you, right?”

  “Wager?”

  “That’s what I said. And that’s exactly what I’ve got for you—a wager.”

  “Don’t do this,” the Pennyman quavered. “Please.”

  “I’ll bet you my partner’s life that I can predict what’s inside this pouch.” My doppelganger grinned like a devil in heat. “You want to take that bet?”

  119

  THE PENNYMAN’S HEAD thrummed. His face was one big blurred grimace. I thought I heard him sob. Meanwhile, the light of the Glory was trying to push me back toward the screen. Back toward Laura. With all my strength, and what little was left of my heart, I fought against it.

  “I accept!” he blurted at last. “You know I must! You know it!”

  “There speaks a true addict.” The doppelganger stepped a little more into the light. His grin had transformed into something that wouldn’t have disgraced a shark.

  A shudder ran through the Pennyman’s body. “I must take your wager,” he said. “I must take the chance. I must take the choice.” Four minutes and thirty-one seconds left on the compact. “Make your play, gumshoe!”

  “Oh, my partner here is the gumshoe. Me, I’m just a shadow. You want to know what I bet?”

  “Tell me!”

  “I bet this pouch is empty.”

  “Then prove it!” The Pennyman drew in his breath with a hiss and held it. I felt myself do the same.

  The doppelganger hefted the pouch from one hand to the other. Doubt clouded his face. For an instant, some kind of syrupy liquid seemed to slop inside it. The next moment, it sagged like a spent balloon.

  “Open the pouch,” growled the Pennyman. “Be done with this!”

  The doppelganger shrugged and unlaced the cords. He peered inside, frowned, then tilted the pouch forward to reveal the shimmering pool of liquid gold inside.

  The Pennyman’s head whirred round faster than ever.

  “Not empty!” he screamed, letting go of my neck and clapping his hands together. “I win! I win! Oh, I will paint such pictures as you have never before seen!”

  The doppelganger looked straight at me. “Partner, are you any good at tossing coins?”

  As he said it, he flung the contents of the pouch against the projector’s lamp housing. The liquid gold splattered over the hot glass, which shattered instantly. Raw volts shot from the suddenly exposed electrical contacts. Sparks zapped the projector sprockets, fusing the film, and the entire machine juddered to a halt.

  At once all the colors vanished from the screen. Laura’s face lingered like a phantom for a single, breathless second, then she was gone.

  The Big Picture—whatever it was or might have been—was gone.

  Naked in the broken lamp socket, the Glory screamed.

  Tossing coins?

  I grabbed the Pennyman’s head with both hands. Hot metal dug into the flesh of my fingers and for an instant I thought that the giant coin wouldn’t stop turning, that I’d be spun and thrown like a child from a carousel. Then my shoulders jolted and locked and there was the Pennyman’s face, stationary at last, staring at me with eyes like round silver dollars. Robbed of motion he looked old but not wise, and filled to the brim with a measureless rage.

  I stared back for a moment, then turned the Pennyman’s head slowly round, a half turn. Don’t ask me why. I just did it.

  On the other side, the same furious face stared back at me.

  “Double-headed coin,” I said. “Pal, you’re just a big fat cheat.”

  Bunching my muscles, I tossed the Pennyman toward the projector. He flipped all the way over, once, twice. The cabochons drew a thousand angry glints across the screeching silver of his face.

  He came down hard, right on top of the Glory. The light of the cosmos enveloped him, sank into him, sucked in all the caustic reflections of all the cabochons out in the auditorium, redoubled them, compressed them into a single blazing highlight that circumnavigated the silver coin of the Pennyman’s head before finally lancing into its center. There the light of the Glory settled and subsided, and there it remained, peaceful and grounded once more, frozen in space and time at the new heart of the changing cosmos, which was also the collapsed choice of the Aerlyft’s greatest gambler: the Pennyman, who was now and would forever be the Still Point of the Turning World.

  120

  "ZEPHYR!” I EXCLAIMED.

  I got to the door at the exact same time as the doppelganger. He snicked the lock and I turned the handle. The Scrutator spilled into the projection booth, mechanical arms flailing. Behind it, a tide of robots fought for balance. I pushed past them, raced down the stairs and back into the auditorium.

  “Zephyr!” I shouted. “Zephyr!”

  I found her lying between the seats of the back row in a heap of old popcorn cartons. Blood oozed from a laceration on her scalp. Her eyelids trembled. Her lips fluttered out words that I couldn’t make out.

  “What?” I said. “What did you say?”

  “... believe,” she croaked. “That’s what he said... all I had to do...”

  “Believe what?”

  “In the dance.”

  She coughed. Blood sprayed down her chin. Her eyes flickered open. The left one was shot through red.

  “The dance stopped for Raymond,” I said. “But not for the rest of the world. Not for you.”

  “Why do I feel dizzy?”

  I held her. “Because you’re dancing. We’re dancing. It’s a waltz and a whirlwind. All of it. A cyclone.”

  “... not making any sense...”

  “None of it makes sense. But somehow it all hangs together.”

  “... take your... word for it...”

  Her eyes flickered shut.

  “No!” I shook her. No response. “Don’t take my word! Take my hand!”

  I seized her. Her fingers were cold. I pulled her to me, stood her up. She hung limp in my arms, heavy as a doll. I moved my feet.

  “Dance, damn you!”

  I turned her. Her short hair was silky with cabochon light. Her feet dragged. I spun her round, once, twice. Her head lolled.

  Then he
r free hand twitched. Slowly it came up. Rested on my shoulder.

  “... don’t know... the steps...”

  “There are no steps. There’s just the dance.”

  We turned together.

  “Is this all we do?” Her eyelids lifted jerkily.

  “It’s all there is,” I replied. “We turn. Everything turns. That’s all you need to know.”

  Her head nestled into my shoulder.

  “Like a merry-go-round? Like a hurricane?”

  “Just like that.”

  She looked around.

  “Is this the eye of the storm?”

  “Something like that, honey. Something like that.”

  121

  I STOOD FOR a while staring at the projection booth window. The light of the Glory pulsed gently inside the motionless coin of the Pennyman’s head, a slumbering candle. Meanwhile, the robots broke the organ apart, then ripped out the hydraulic mechanism that elevated it out of the cellar. The Scrutator supervised the proceedings.

  “They obey you,” I observed.

  “They are my brothers,” the Scrutator replied. “But they are also earlier models. Where I am woven of cosmic string, they are merely metal. I suppose you might say I am the latest thing.”

  “Did you know they were going to be here?”

  “I confess I had allowed myself to hope. As you know, knowledge of the coming apocalypse prompted our makers, the Thanes, to send their sons to a safe place. But nobody knew where that safe place was.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yes, until now.”

  Something occurred to me. “You told me that, after your brothers left, you had to stay in the city because you couldn’t leave the cosmos by conventional means. So how come I was able to bring you here?”

  The Scrutator’s mechanical face folded into something that was unmistakeably a smile.

  “You are many things,” it said. “But you are certainly not conventional.”