Imajica

"Don"t come near me!" he said. "I don"t want you touching me!"

He turned his back on the vomit and its cause and retired to the shade of the waiting room, sitting down on the hard wood bench, putting his head against the wall, and closing his eyes. As the pain eased and finally disappeared, his thoughts turned to the purpose behind Pie"s a.s.sault. He"d quizzed the mystif several times over the past four and a half months about the problem of power: how it was come by and-more particularly-how he, Gentle, had come to possess it. Pie"s replies had been oblique in the extreme, but Gentle hadn"t felt any great urge to get to the bottom of the question. Perhaps subconsciously he hadn"t really wanted to know. Cla.s.sically, such gifts had consequences, and he was enjoying his role as getter and wielder of power too much to want it spoiled with talk of hubris. He"d been content to be fobbed off with hints and equivocation, and he might have continued to be content, if he hadn"t been irritated by the zarzi and the lateness of the L"Himby train, bored and ready for an argument. But that was only half the issue. He"d pressed the mystif, certainly, but he"d scarcely goaded it. The attack seemed out of all proportion to the offense. He"d asked an innocent question and been turned inside out for doing so. So much for all that loving talk in the mountains.

"Gentle..."

"f.u.c.k you."

"The train, Gentle..."

"What about it?"

"It"s coming." He opened his eyes. The mystif was standing in the doorway, looking forlorn.

"I"m sorry that had to happen," it said.

"It didn"t have to," Gentle said. "You made it happen."

"Truly I didn"t."

"What was it then? Something I ate?"

"No. But there are some questions-"

"That make me sick."

"-that have answers you don"t want to hear."

"What do you take me for?" Gentle said, his tone all quiet contempt. "I ask a question, you fill my head with so much s.h.i.t for an answer that I throw up, and then it"s my fault for asking in the first place? What kind of f.u.c.ked-up logic is that?"

The mystif raised its hands in mock surrender. "I"m not going to argue," it said.

"d.a.m.n right," Gentle replied.

Any further exchange would have been impractical anyway, with the sound of the train"s approach steadily getting louder, and its arrival being greeted by cheers and clapping from an audience that had gathered on the platform. Still feeling delicate when he stood, Gentle followed Pie out into the crowd.

It seemed half the inhabitants of Mai-Ke had come down to the station. Most, he a.s.sumed, were sightseers rather than potential travelers; the train a distraction from hunger and unanswered prayers. There were some families here who planned to board, however, pressing through the crowd with their luggage. What privations they"d endured to purchase their escape from Mai-Ke could only be imagined. There was much sobbing as they embraced those they were leaving behind, most of whom were old folk, who to judge by their grief did not expect to see their children and grandchildren again. The journey to L"Himby, which for Gentle and Pie was little more than a jaunt, was for them a departure into memory.

That said, there could be few more spectacular means of departure in the Imajica than the ma.s.sive locomotive which was only now emerging from a cloud of evaporating steam. Whoever had made blueprints for this roaring, glistening machine knew its earth counterpart-the kind of locomotives outdated in the West but still serving in China and India-very well. Their imitation was not so slavish as to suppress a certain decorative joie de vivre joie de vivre-it had been painted so gaudily it looked like the male of the species in search of a mate-but beneath the daubings was a machine that might have steamed into King"s Cross or Marylebone in the years following the Great War. It drew six carriages and as many freight vehicles again, two of the latter being loaded with the flock of sheep.

Pie had already been down the line of carriages and was now coming back towards Gentle.

"The second. It"s fuller down the other end."

They got in. The interiors had once been lush, but usage had taken its toll. Most of the seats had been stripped of both padding and headrests, and some were missing backs entirely. The floor was dusty, and the walls-which had once been decorated in the same riot as the engine-were in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. There were only two other occupants, both male, both grotesquely fat, and both wearing frock coats from which elaborately bound limbs emerged, lending them the look of clerics who"d escaped from an accident ward. Their features were minuscule, crowded in the center of each face as if clinging together for fear of drowning in fat. Both were eating nuts, cracking them in their pudgy fists and dropping little rains of pulverized sh.e.l.l on the floor between them.

"Brothers of the Boulevard," Pie remarked as Gentle took a seat, as far from the nut-crackers as possible.

Pie sat across the aisle from him, the bag containing what few belongings they"d accrued to date alongside. There was then a long delay, while recalcitrant animals were beaten and cajoled into boarding for what they perhaps knew was a ride to the slaughterhouse and those on the platform made their final farewells. It wasn"t just the vows and tears that came in through the windows. So did the stench of the animals, and the inevitable zarzi, though with the Brothers and their meal to attract them the insects were uninterested in Gentle"s flesh.

Wearied by the hours of waiting and wrung out by his nausea, Gentle dozed and finally fell into so deep a sleep that the train"s long-delayed departure didn"t stir him, and when he woke two hours of their journey had already pa.s.sed. Very little had changed outside the window. Here were the same expanses of gray-brown earth that had stretched around Mai-Ke, cl.u.s.ters of dwellings, built from mud in times of water and barely distinguishable from the ground they stood upon, dotted here and there. Occasionally they would pa.s.s a plot of land-either blessed with a spring or better irrigated than the ground around it-from which life was rising; even more occasionally saw workers bending to reap a healthy crop. But generally the scene was just as Hairstone Banty had predicted. There would be many hours of dead land, she"d said; then they would travel through the Steppes, and over the Three Rivers, to the province of Bern, of which L"Himby was the capital city. Gentle had doubted her competence at the time (she"d been smoking a weed too pungent to be simply pleasurable, and wearing something unseen elsewhere in the town: a smile) but dope fiend or no, she knew her geography.

As they traveled, Gentle"s thoughts turned once again to the origins of the power Pie had somehow awakened in him. If, as he suspected, the mystif had touched a hitherto pa.s.sive portion of his mind and given him access to capabilities dormant in all human beings, why was it so d.a.m.ned reluctant to admit the fact? Hadn"t Gentle proved in the mountains that he was more than willing to accept the notion of mind embracing mind? Or was that co-mingling now an embarra.s.sment to the mystif, and its a.s.sault on the platform a way to reestablish a distance between them? If so, it had succeeded. They traveled half a day without exchanging a single word.

In the heat of the afternoon, the train stopped at a small town and lingered there while the flock from Mai-Ke disembarked. No less than four suppliers of refreshments came through the train while it waited, one exclusively carrying pastries and candies, among which Gentle found a variation on the honey and seed cake that had almost kept him in Attaboy. He bought three slices, and then two cups of well-sweetened coffee from another merchant, the combination of which soon enlivened his torpid system. For its part, the mystif bought and ate dried fish, the smell of which drove Gentle even farther from its side.

As the shout came announcing their imminent departure, Pie suddenly sprang up and darted to the door. The thought went through Gentle"s head that the mystif intended to desert him, but it had spotted newspapers for sale on the platform and, having made a hurried purchase, clambered aboard again as the train began to move off. Then it sat down beside the remains of its fish dinner and had no sooner unfolded the paper than it let out a low whistle.

"Gentle. You"d better look at this."

It pa.s.sed the newspaper across the aisle. The banner headline was in a language Gentle neither understood nor even recognized, but that scarcely mattered. The photographs below were plain enough. Here was a gallows, with six bodies hanging from it, and, inset, the death portraits of the executed individuals: among them, Hammeryock and Pontiff Farrow, the lawgivers of Vanaeph. Below this rogues" gallery a finely rendered etching of Tick Raw, the crazy evocator.

"So," Gentle said, "they got their comeuppance. It"s the best news I"ve had in days."

"No, it"s not," Pie replied.

"They tried to kill us, remember?" Gentle said reasonably, determined not to be infuriated by Pie"s contentiousness. "If they got hanged I"m not going to mourn "em! What did they do, try and steal the Merrow Ti" Ti"?"

"The Merrow Ti" Ti" doesn"t exist."

"That was a joke, Pie," Gentle said, dead pan.

"I missed the humor of it, I"m sorry," the mystif said, unsmiling. "Their crime-" It stopped and crossed the aisle to sit opposite Gentle, claiming the paper from his hands before continuing. "Their crime is far more significant," it went on, its voice lowered. It began to read in the same whisper, precising the text of the paper. "They were executed a week ago for making an attempt on the Autarch"s life while he and his entourage were on their peace mission in Vanaeph-"

"Are you kidding?"

"No joke. That"s what it says."

"Did they succeed?"

"Of course not." The mystif fell silent while it scanned the columns. "It says they killed three of his advisers with a bomb and injured eleven soldiers. The device was... wait, my Omootajivac is rusty... the device was smuggled into his presence by Pontiff Farrow. They were all caught alive, it says, but hanged dead, which means they died under torture but the Autarch made a show of the execution anyway."

"That"s f.u.c.king barbaric."

"It"s very common, particularly in political trials."

"What about Tick Raw? Why"s his picture in there?"

"He was named as a co-conspirator, but apparently he escaped. The d.a.m.n fool..."

"Why"d you call him that?"

"Getting involved in politics when there"s so much more at stake. It"s not the first time, of course, and won"t be the last-"

"I"m not following."

"People get frustrated with waiting and they end up stooping to politics. But it"s so shortsighted. Stupid sod."

"How well do you know him?"

"Who? Tick Raw?" The placid features were momentarily confounded. Then Pie said, "He has... a certain reputation, shall we say? They"ll find him for certain. There isn"t a sewer in the Dominions he"ll be able to hide his head in."

"Why should you care?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Answer the question," Gentle replied, dropping his volume as he spoke.

"He was a Maestro, Gentle. He called himself an evocator, but it amounts to the same thing: he had power."

"Then why was he living in the middle of a s.h.i.t-hole like Vanaeph?"

"Not everybody cares about wealth and women, Gentle. Some souls have higher ambition."

"Such as?"

"Wisdom. Remember why we came on this journey? To understand. That"s a fine ambition." Pie looked at Gentle, making eye-to-eye contact for the first time since the episode on the platform. "Your ambition, my friend. You and Tick Raw had a lot in common." ambition, my friend. You and Tick Raw had a lot in common."

"And he knew it?"

"Oh, yes..."

"Is that why he was so riled when I wouldn"t sit down and talk with him?"

"I"d say so."

"s.h.i.t!"

"Hammeryock and Farrow must have taken us for spies, come to wheedle out plots laid against the Autarch."

"But Tick Raw saw the truth."

"He did. He was once a great man, Gentle. At least... that was the rumor. Now I suppose he"s dead or being tortured. Which is grim news for us."

"You think he"ll name us?"

"Who knows? Maestros have ways of protecting themselves from torture, but even the strongest man can break under the right kind of pressure."

"Are you saying we"ve got the Autarch on our tails?"

"I think we"d know it if we had. We"ve come a long way from Vanaeph. The trail"s probably cold by now."

"And maybe they didn"t arrest Tick, eh? Maybe he escaped."

"They still caught Hammeryock and the Pontiff. I think we can a.s.sume they"ve got a hair-by-hair description of us."

Gentle laid his head back against the seat. "s.h.i.t," he said. "We"re not making many friends, are we?"

"All the more reason that we don"t lose each other," the mystif replied. The shadows of pa.s.sing bamboo flickered on its face, but it looked at him unblinking. "Whatever harm you believe I may have done you, now or in the past, I apologize for it. I"d never wish you any hurt, Gentle. Please believe that. Not the slightest."

"I know," Gentle murmured, "and I"m sorry too, truly."

"Shall we agree to postpone our argument until the only opponents we"ve got left in the Imajica are each other?"

"That may be a very long time."

"All the better."

Gentle laughed. "Agreed," he said, leaning forward and taking the mystif s hand. "We"ve seen some amazing sights together, haven"t we?"

"Indeed we have."

"Back there in Mai-Ke I was losing my sense of how marvelous all this is."

"We"ve got a lot more wonders to see."

"Just promise me one thing?"

"Ask it."

"Don"t eat raw fish in eyeshot of me again. It"s more than a man can take."

From the yearning way that Hairstone Banty had described L"Himby, Gentle had been expecting some kind of Katmandu-a city of temples, pilgrims, and free dope. Perhaps it had been that way once, in Banty"s long-lost youth. But when, a few minutes after night had fallen, Gentle and Pie stepped off the train, it was not into an atmosphere of spiritual calm. There were soldiers at the station gates, most of them standing idle, smoking and talking, but a few casting their eyes over the disembarking pa.s.sengers. As luck had it, however, another train had arrived at an adjacent platform minutes before, and the gateway was choked with pa.s.sengers, many hugging their life"s belongings. It wasn"t difficult for Pie and Gentle to dig their way through to the densest part of the crowd and pa.s.s unnoticed through the turnstiles and out of the station.

There were many more troops in the wide lamplit streets, their presence no less disturbing for the air of la.s.situde that hung about them. The uncommissioned ranks wore a drab gray, but the officers wore white, which suited the subtropical night. All were conspicuously armed. Gentle made certain not to study either men or weaponry too closely for fear of attracting unwelcome attention, but it was clear from even a furtive glance that both the armaments and the vehicles parked in every other alleyway were of the same elaborately intimidating design as he"d seen in Beatrix. The warlords of Yzordderrex were clearly past masters in the crafts of death, their technology several generations beyond that of the locomotive that had brought the travelers here.

To Gentle"s eye the most fascinating sight was not the tanks or the machine guns, however, it was the presence among these troops of a subspecies he"d not encountered hitherto. Oethacs, Pie called them. They stood no taller than their fellows, but their heads made up a third or more of that height, their squat bodies grotesquely broad to bear the weight of such a ma.s.sive load of bone. Easy targets, Gentle remarked, but Pie whispered that their brains were small, their skulls thick, and their tolerance for pain heroic, the latter evidenced by the extraordinary array of livid scars and disfigurements they all bore on skin that was as white as the bone it concealed.

It seemed this substantial military presence had been in place for some time, because the populace went about their evening business as if these men and their killing machines were completely commonplace. There was little sign of fraternization, but there was no hara.s.sment either.

"Where do we go from here?" Gentle asked Pie once they were clear of the crowds around the station.

"Scopique lives in the northeast part of the city, close to the temples. He"s a doctor. Very well respected."

"You think he may be still practicing?"

"He doesn"t mend bones, Gentle. He"s a doctor of theology. He used to like the city because it was so sleepy."

"It"s changed, then."

"It certainly has. It looks as though it"s got rich."

There was evidence of L"Himby"s new-found wealth everywhere: in the gleaming buildings, many of them looking as though the paint on their doors was barely dry; in the proliferation of styles among the pedestrians and in the number of elegant automobiles on the street. There were a few signs still remaining of the culture that had existed here before the city"s fortunes had boomed: beasts of burden still wove among the traffic, honked at and cursed; a smattering of facades had been preserved from older buildings and incorporated-usually crudely-into the designs of the newer. And then there were the living facades, the faces of the people Gentle and Pie were mingling with. The natives had a physical peculiarity unique to the region: cl.u.s.ters of small crystalline growths, yellow and purple, on their heads, sometimes arranged like crowns or c.o.xcombs but just as often erupting from the middle of the forehead or irregularly placed around the mouth. To Pie"s knowledge, they had no particular function, but they were clearly viewed as a disfigurement by the sophisticates, many of whom went to extraordinary lengths to disguise their commonality of stock with the undecorated peasants. Some of these stylists wore hats, veils, and makeup to conceal the evidence; others had tried surgery to remove the growths and went proudly about unhatted, wearing their scars as proof of their wealth.

"It"s grotesque," Pie said when Gentle remarked upon this. "But that"s the pernicious influence of fashion for you. These people want to look like the models they see in the magazines from Patashoqua, and the stylists in Patashoqua have always looked to the Fifth for their inspiration. d.a.m.n fools! Look at them! I swear if we were to spread the rumor that everyone in Paris is cutting off their right arms these days, we"d be tripping over hacked-off limbs all the way to Scopique"s house."

"It wasn"t like this when you were here?"

"Not in L"Himby. As I said, it was a place of meditation. But in Patashoqua, yes, always, because it"s so close to the Fifth, so the influence is very strong. And there"s always been a few minor Maestros, you know, travelling back and forth, bringing styles, bringing ideas. A few of them made a kind of business of it, crossing the In Ovo every few months to get news of the Fifth and selling it to the fashion houses, the architects, and so on. So d.a.m.n decadent. It revolts me."