Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (20 page)

 
          
The next morning
dawned wet and gloomy;
which encouraged them. Land, lake and sky had all run together now into one
amorphous whole, as though the world was returning to some primitive state of
being.

 
          
Since
there was no more ready wood to scavenge, Jim opened a can of corned beef to eat
cold. When they had emptied it turn by turn, Weinberger set the empty can out
under the eaves to catch rainwater.

 
          
Using
the fishing line, Jim slung the pheromone drip flask from a nail in the roof
within easy reach of the two mattresses; then he checked the battery power of
the cassette player. He tapped out two of the orange hearts of
Neo-Harmaline-MDA from a twist of paper. By his watch it was seven-thirty.

 
          
Presently
Weinberger ducked out to fetch the can, which now held a finger of rain. Jim
would rather have swallowed his own pill dry, but there was something
ceremonial about the way in which Weinberger toasted him then shoved the can
his way; so he washed his pill down with the remaining ounce of meat-flavoured
gruel.

 
          
Fully
dressed on this occasion, they stretched themselves upon the musty mattresses.
Jim reached out; Mike Mullen’s voice began to drone.

 
          
Later — but how much later, he had no idea — his hand remembered
to touch the pheromone tap.

 
          
Later
— or was it earlier? —
as
the shack was revealed for
the ghost of a shack that it was, he floated up towards the rickety roof along
with Weinberger. The grey wet air outside, and inside too, was more cloud than
air: a luminous cloud contaminated with dirty shadows.
The
shadows of the trees backing away from the lake; the shadows of the ordinary
world.

 
          
Jim
gazed down upon the motionless bodies of two hobos, who might be dead of
exposure on their filthy mattresses. But he watched those makeshift corpses
with a sense of rapture. It was the old rapture of drowning into oceanic light
— a light which he now knew to be split by a billion crystal prisms, prisons
which reproduced themselves by fission to garner yet more souls.

 
          
And
because he was simply out of his body, and not actually dead, the ordinary
world still cast strong shadows to distract him from that contaminated light.
The shadows of the forest pulled at him, urging him to haunt the woodlands, and
even to skim back to Egremont. He bobbed like a balloon, caught between the
shadow wind and a different breeze that blew towards the white fog.

 
          
Death
appeared suddenly, a red fire upon those hobos’ chests. From waxwork Jim to
waxwork Weinberger it hopped back and forth.

 
          
This
time, they navigated the fog with its coloured crystals more speedily. From
side to side they arced, tight on Death’s tail.

 
          
Sometimes
quite wide straits opened out between the crystals, straits down which Death
flew. Sometimes there was far less room for manoeuvre. Yet still the crystals
stretched on and on in all directions, apparently forever: a great ocean in
which chunks of coloured ice of the same density as water floated at all
levels. It was a maze of many possible pathways and innumerable cul-de-sacs —
Death’s dead ends — which they could never have picked their way through on
their own. Surely a boundary must exist, a brighter or a clearer light beyond .
. . but where it might be it was impossible to tell, or set one’s course by, so
broken up and so refracted was that true light by the crystal fog.

 
          
Death
did not exactly ignore them on this occasion. The further into the fog that
they chased it, the more it seemed to react to their pursuit by sudden
hoverings and pivotings and by quick backward glances, its ruby eyes glittering
like crystals in miniature. Death did not seem angry that they were chasing it.
Or afraid.
Nor did it try to shake them off by
squeezing along narrow paths. Rather, it seemed to be luring them on now —
keeping ahead of them, but never too far ahead.

 
          
Jim
wondered how far their elastic life-lines could really stretch. Would the
silver threads reach snapping point? Then would Death sweep back to gather
them? For all he knew, Death was leading them cunningly in circles . . .

 
          
“Is
there no end to it?” called Weinberger.

 
          
But
then, quite suddenly, there was an end. They were through. Out they darted on
Death’s tail between the final crystals — into a lucid, shining emptiness which
was very like a negative of space: a white void. It was lit, yet from no
particular source other than itself. Now there was only the red creature ahead
of them, flying unimpeded.

 
          
Behind,
the crystal fog was a wall which divided this universe in half. Breaking out of
the fog, Jim had felt that he had been . . . ‘unconceived’. They were two
sperms leaving that enormous egg
of a myriad coloured cells
.
Or was it more like glassy cuckoo spit?

 
          
The
wall receded as they flew away from it into the white void. It hardly seemed to
grow much smaller to a backward glance, only smoother — smooth as a billiard
ball. But yes, there was a slight curvature to it now. It was an enormous
sphere.

 
          
And
it was the home of
a myriad mind-worlds
, and a billion
soul-imaginings — including many purgatories and hells. Whilst out here there
was simply a bright nothingness . . . Jim began to fear a greater peril, that
of being cast adrift by Death in limbo. Was this void the same as Ananda’s
‘pure Nothing’? No, since it contained light. He could see, though there was
nothing to be seen. He knew he was conscious, though there was very little to be
conscious of.

 
          
“Where
are we?” cried his companion.

 
          
“Watch Death, Nathan!
Don’t take your eyes off Death!”

 
          
Apart
from the tiny red speeding creature, there was only a blank visual Field. If
Death, indeed, was still speeding . . . Perhaps it was standing still, and so
were they.

 
          
Like
any single item concentrated on relentlessly for too long, the red creature was
becoming meaningless. Their eyes would soon blank it out, their brains would
not register it, and it would vanish too. They would lose it.

 
          
By
now Jim’s mind was willing the blank void
to
be something.
His eyes hunted for any marbling or mottling or grain in the
luminous space: for some sort of texture or irregularity. Soon, what had seemed
at first like indefinite extension ahead and above and beneath them seemed more
like . . . walls. Yes, there was a spherical wall behind them: that was the
crystal fog. Why should there not be walls ahead too? No space could be utterly
unbounded, extending forever. Even a universe must bend back upon itself, so
that it created out of itself its own walls: Moebius strip walls with no other
side but this one side. The void, too, must bend back upon itself . . .

 
          
Now
they were indeed flying through an enormous room, with the most peculiar walls:
they were at once everywhere, and nowhere. The enormous room was nothing less
than
an infinity
of ‘local’ rooms, coexisting within
one and the same space. Bring one room into focus out of this infinity — choose
it — and there you would be. No longer in infinity; and yet on the other side
of its walls, its one-sided walls, there would still be all the other possible
rooms and spaces. Here was a place that was infinite, yet bounded. No
‘elsewhere’ existed — only an eternal
here:
the quality of being here, yet with access to everywhere.

 
          
Within
the crystal fog that they had left behind, trapped souls also chose the shape
of their world-spaces — of their rooms — modelling them on their dreams and
fears. Yet those lost souls were all separated from each other forever.
Whereas this ‘room’ was the Many-in-One.
It allowed infinite
access.

 
          
As
Jim realized this, and chose
something
,
the room took on architecture, texture, furnishings . . .

 
          
It
became a long rococo hall. He and Weinberger were walking along it now,
together. Red Death flew on ahead of them down to the furthest end.

 
          
The
two men took stock of their surroundings.

 
          
The
floor was of polished parquet. A number of gilded chairs and brocaded sofas
stood about, and several round tables the tops of which were inlaid with strips
of contrasting marble. The roof was of many linked domes, painted to resemble
blue skies v/ith fleecy clouds. The richly papered, embossed walls were
subdivided into alcoves or little antechambers each of which housed a closed double
door with moulded covings above it and a carved headpiece: of cherubs,
tritons, centaurs, bunches of grapes in gilded wood. All along this hall,
reaching up to the false
sky,
was intricacy: carved
gilded wreaths, cartouches, friezes, architraves. Nowhere were there windows;
yet outside each alcove there hung a heavy ornamental picture frame, and though
no painting was inside a single one of these — only a blank space — somehow
these seemed to illuminate the hall. With a one-way light: one couldn’t see
where it came from, only what it fell upon within this place.

 
          
Death
had dipped into an alcove at the very end of the hall and settled there,
clinging
upside-down to the headpiece of the furthest door.

 
          
Keeping
an eye open for any flicker of movement on its part, just in case it darted
back towards them, Jim strode to the door closest by. He gripped the curled,
gold handles and pulled the twin doors open . . .

 
          
A
beechwood grew
outside, the trees
smooth and tapering with the only foliage up at the roof of the wood. The
ground was a lavender mist of bluebells. A path led through the wood,
disappearing from sight.

 
          
Erect
on its hind legs, a shaggy wolf with a long thin snout leaned idly against one
of the beeches. It panted, pink-tongued. And its teeth dripped saliva. Yet it
held a posy of bluebells in one of its forepaws. It looked as though it had
only stopped running and adopted this nonchalant pose a moment earlier.

 
          
Shrugging
itself off the tree, the wolf strolled towards them, holding out the bunch of
flowers, grinning wetly, invitingly. Hastily Jim slammed the doors.

 
          
“Open
up again,” said Weinberger.

 
          
“Huh?”

 
          
“Just an idea.
Go on.”

 
          
Cautiously
Jim opened the doors a crack, then pulled them wide. Now there was no bluebell
wood outside. In its place was a moated castle set in a clearing in an oak
wood. Steep, jagged mountains of ice or glass rose beyond the wood, flashing in
the sunshine. A dinosaur-like dragon capered out of the oak wood, breathing
fire. A knight rode out of the castle over the drawbridge, levelling his lance.
Up on the topmost tower stood a lady; wired veils of gauze wafted from her high
steeple hat.

 
          
“Fairyland!”
exclaimed Weinberger. “All the facets of fairyland . . .!”

 
          
He
thrust the doors shut before they could witness the outcome of the dragon-tilt,
and pulled them wide once more.

 
          
A
great cavern with an underground river rushing through it. . . Bones littered
the stone floor. A wicker cage penned a weeping, hand-wringing maiden. A giant,
with nail-studded club over one shoulder, grabbed for them. Its fist slammed
into the doors as both men threw their weight against them. They forced the
twin doors shut against increasing pressure, till they clicked home. Then there
was no more resistance from beyond.

 
          
Plucking
at Jim’s sleeve, Weinberger urged him along to the next alcove and the next set
of doors.

 
          
Weinberger
opened these more cautiously.

 
          
A
white rabbit wearing a frock coat ran past, feverishly consulting a pocket
watch . . .

 
          
Again:
a bilious, lime-green, goggle-eyed toad rowed lazily along a winding river
under the feathery drip of willow trees. The toad sported a straw boater with a
candy-striped hatband, a loud checkered jacket and a mustard-yellow waistcoat.
The toad was puffing on a fat cigar . . .

 
          
On
they went to the next alcove.

 
          
Here
the doors opened on to some future city, or some city on another world. The two
men stood high on a railed tower, looking down. Gossamer bridges spanned
rose-red canyons. Craft flew through the air, flapping metal wings like birds.
The sun in the sky was hugely swollen, a dying bonfire red. When they reopened
this same door a moment later, bloated glassy spiders the size of houses
floated through a violet sky above a tawny desert, their dangling webs snaring
angular white birds . . .

 
          
“
They’re
genre
doors,
that’s
what,” said Weinberger.
“Sets of fictions.
Imaginings.
Free creations.
Not hells or purgatories, but
inventions.
Folk invention, personal invention.”

 
          
But
beyond the next double doors lay a perfectly normal town suburb of white
clapboard houses with green-tiled pitched roofs, neat lawns and hedges. A
parade was in progress, with drum majorettes and a pipe band . . .

 
          
“Perhaps
this is a memory of the ordinary — the humdrum?”

 
          
“Yes.”
Jim smiled. “I can hear the humdrum playing.”

 
          
“It’s
somewhere to go back to at night, after fighting dragons and rescuing maidens?”

 
          
“They’re
probably all busy swopping wives and husbands there, and holding black masses.”

 
          
“You
just hold a black mass here, boy, and you’ll get what you summon!”

 
          
“So
maybe this is Horrorville, or Sexville?”

 
          
What
lay beyond the next doors was quite incomprehensible, unless it was an example
of abstract invention. Differently coloured lights hummed about a great
three-dimensional abacus. Musical tones sounded in a constantly varying warble
. . .

 
          
“If
we go through one of these doorways, can we get back again from the other
side?”

 
          
“No
idea, Nathan.
Maybe.
Probably.
But we aren’t here for the scenery!”

 
          
All
this while, they had been moving closer to the final doorway where Death hung.
Now they quickened their pace towards it. From the gilded carving above those
doors, Death squeaked at them plaintively.

 
          
“It
wants in,” said Weinberger. “Who usually opens the door for it?”

 
          
Wary
of the creature hanging above his head, Jim reached for the handles, which were
shaped like rams’ horns. Pulling both doors wide open, he stepped back.
Immediately Death flitted through the doorway, down the wide short corridor
beyond.

 
          
After
about thirty feet this corridor opened directly on to a pearly space. In the
midst of the space floated what looked like a child’s drawing of a treetop on
fire with little flames, or a burning bush uprooted. As they watched, some
‘leaves’ zipped away like red meteor streaks.
Others arrowed
in from outside the pearly space.
They were neither leaves nor flames.
They were the Death creatures, roosting in their aviary: hundreds, perhaps
thousands of them. Every moment a few left; every moment a few returned.

 
          
Half-way
down the corridor stood a gold-lacquered bamboo screen that reminded Jim of the
pipes of a choir organ. From behind this screen stepped a tall red angel.

 
          
This
was no human angel, though. It was no man or woman with white wings.

 
          
The
angel stood over six feet tall. Its body and limbs were thin and rigid, like a
stick insect’s. The wings sprouting from its back were those of a death’s-head
hawkmoth. Its head was disproportionately large, with big faceted eyes. It had
a prim little mouth, of cartilage. It was a thing of great strength — and
lightness. And it was as red as Death.

 
          
“Don’t
worry,” it said, watching them a thousand times over with its eyes. Its voice
was chirrupy.

 
          
“How
you see me is not
exactly
how we are.
I could have appeared to you as a copy of a man, but that would have been
misleading. Better by far that you meet me as an alien creature. This will
assist your understanding of the situation.”

 
          
“What
situation?” asked
Jim.
“What are you?” He knew, as he
spoke, that this was merely an automatic, parrot response. So long as the being
did not move towards them, they were safe.
Provisionally.

 
          
In
the pearly space outside, the red mites of Death roosted upon that
free-floating network of branching spars. Constantly, as if at a hidden signal,
one or two streaked away; others streaked back . . . So the angel, then, was
their Master: the true Master of the House of Death.
One of
their Masters, at any rate.

 
          
“Could
we possibly sit down?” asked Weinberger, in more practical vein. He gestured at
the Death-infested space. “Somewhere away from
thatV'

 
          
“Oh
yes. If you will return to the Long Hall which you have shaped, I will follow
you.
At a polite distance.”

 
          
“Are
you real?” demanded Jim, not wanting to turn his back on the being.

 
          
The
angel twitched its wings, perhaps impatiently, perhaps in amusement.

 
          
“That
is a large question to discuss in a corridor, when your friend is dying to sit
down.”

 
          
Was
‘dying to sit down’ a joke? If this angel could make jokes, perhaps it could be
trusted.
But if it was the Master of Death, which imprisoned
souls . . .?

 
          
“If
you want me to make any sense to you,” added the angel, “you must tell me your
story first. You must tell me exactly how you came here — why and wherefore.”

 
          
“Have
we got time for that?”

 
          
“Time?
He asks me if he has time! You don’t know what time
is, or untime either. Or space and unspace, for that matter. Did you come all
this way — I ask you seriously — just to return immediately, with your eyes
still seeing only what they expect to see?”

 
          
“Okay,
sorry
, we’ll go and sit down.”

 
          
Jim
followed Weinberger back into the long hall. The angel followed Jim.

 
          
While
the two men settled themselves into one of the brocaded sofas, the angel strode
over to the wall and began to tap here and there as though to test its solidity.
Finding one section which returned a hollow echo, it twisted a boss. A panel
fell open on hidden hinges. The compartment inside held a quart bottle of
whisky, three glasses and an ice bucket.

 
          
“Name
your poison,” said the angel.

 
          
“Neat,”
said Weinberger. The angel poured a couple of fingers of whisky. Reaching out
with exaggerated discretion till it almost overbalanced, it passed the glass to
Weinberger.

 
          
“That’s
the whisky you wanted back in the shack,” whispered Jim. Weinberger swallowed
half of the drink then nursed the rest.

 
          
“What
if it is?”

 
          
“Then
it isn’t
real
.”

 
          
“It
tastes real enough to me.”

 
          
“Neat,
or on the rocks?” the angel asked Jim. “It is curious how those who worry about
wasting time proceed to waste it.
Obviously
this is a place that
you
have
shaped.
Somewhere that
you
have defined.
However, I share it with you. That is its nature: it can
be shared.”

 
          
“Neat,”
said Jim. “Please.”

 
          
The
angel poured, and passed the glass, stretching out again in a parody of
delicacy.

 
          
“What
a waste of ice,” it remarked. “Someone must have wanted ice.
Me,
perhaps?
’ ’ The angel popped a cube into its mouth and crunched the ice
up. Then it poured itself some whisky.

 
          
So
angels drank whisky with the dead, did they?

 
          
Its
wings fluttered briefly.

 
          
“Interesting taste — like drinking brown electricity.”

 
          
“Is
that what you usually drink?
Electricity?”