Imajica

‘You should just leave,’ Gentle said. ‘Go and live in Patashoqua.’

‘Please,’ Tick Raw said, his tone vaguely pained. ‘Must we play games? Haven’t I proved my integrity? I saved your lives.’

‘And we’re grateful,’ Gentle said.

‘I don’t want gratitude,’ Tick Raw said.

‘What do you want then? Money?’

At this, Tick Raw rose from his cushion, his face reddening, not with blushes but with rage.

‘I don’t deserve this,’ he said.

‘Deserve what?’ said Gentle.

‘I’ve lived in shite,’ Tick Raw said, ‘but I’m damned if I’m going to eat it! All right, so I’m not a great Maestro. I wish I were! I wish Uter Musky was still alive, and he could have waited here all these years instead of me. But he’s gone, and I’m all that’s left! Take me or leave me!’

The outburst completely befuddled Gentle. He glanced across at Pie, looking for some guidance, but the mystif had hung its head.

‘Maybe we’d better leave,’ Gentle said.

‘Yes! Why don’t you do that?’ Tick Raw yelled. Get the fuck out of here. Maybe you can find Musky’s grave, and resurrect him. He’s out there on the Mount. I buried him with these two hands!’ His voice was close to cracking now. There was grief in it as well as rage. ‘You can dig him up the same way!’

Gentle started to get to his feet, sensing that any further words from him would only push Tick Raw closer to an eruption or a breakdown, neither of which he wanted to witness. But the mystif reached up and took hold of Gentle’s arm.

‘Wait,’ Pie said.

‘The man wants us out,’ Gentle replied.

‘Let me talk to Tick for a few moments.’

The evocator glared fiercely at the mystif.

‘I’m in no mood for seductions,’ he warned.

Pie shook his head. ‘Neither am I,’ it said, glancing at Gentle.

‘You want me out of here?’ he said.

‘Not for long.’

Gentle shrugged, though he felt rather less easy with the idea of leaving Pie in Tick Raw’s company than his manner suggested. There was something about the way the two of them stared and studied each other that made him think there was some hidden agenda here. If so, it was surely sexual, despite their denials.

‘I’ll be outside,’ Gentle said, and left them to their debate.

He’d no sooner closed the door than he heard the two begin to talk inside. There was a good deal of din from the shack opposite - a baby bawling, a mother attempting to hush it with an off-key lullaby - but he caught fragments of the exchange. Tick Raw was still in a fury:

‘Is this some kind of punishment?’ he demanded at one point; then, a few moments later: ‘Patient? How much more frigging patient do I have to be?’

The lullaby blotted out much of what followed, and when it quietened again, the conversation inside Tick Raw’s shack had taken another turn entirely.

‘We’ve got a long way to go …’ Gentle heard Pie saying, ‘…and a lot to learn …’

Tick Raw made some inaudible reply, to which Pie said: ‘He’s a stranger here.’

Again Tick Raw murmured something.

‘I can’t do that,’ Pie replied. ‘He’s my responsibility.’

Now Tick Raw’s persuasions grew loud enough for Gentle to hear.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ the evocator said. ‘Stay here with me. I miss a warm body at night.’

At this Pie’s voice dropped to a whisper. Gentle took a half-step back towards the door, and managed to catch a few of the mystif’s words. It said heart-broken, he was sure; then something about faith. But the rest was a murmur too soft to be interpreted. Deciding he’d given the two of them long enough alone, he announced that he was coming back in, and entered. Both looked up at him; somewhat guiltily, he thought.

‘I want to get out of here,’ he announced.

Tick Raw’s hand was at Pie’s neck, and remained there, like a staked claim.

‘If you go,’ Tick Raw told the mystif, ‘I can’t guarantee your safety. Hammeryock will be wanting your blood.’

‘We can defend ourselves,’ Gentle said, somewhat surprised by his own certainty.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so hasty,’ Pie put in.

‘We’ve got a journey to make,’ Gentle replied.

‘Let her make up her own mind,’ Tick Raw suggested. ‘She’s not your property.’

At this remark, a curious look crossed Pie’oh’pah’s face. Not guilt now, but a troubled expression, softening into resignation. The mystif’s hand went up to its neck, and brushed off Tick Raw’s hold.

‘He’s right,’ it said to Tick. ‘We do have a journey ahead of us.’

The evocator pursed his lips, as if making up his mind whether to pursue this business any further or not. Then he said: ‘Well then. You’d better go.’

He turned a sour eye on Gentle.

‘May everything be as it seems, stranger.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gentle, and escorted Pie out of the hut into the mud and flurry of Vanaeph.

‘Strange thing to say,’ Gentle observed as they trudged away from Tick Raw’s hut. ‘May everything be as it seems.’

‘It’s the profoundest curse a sway-worker knows,’ Pie replied.

‘I see.’

‘On the contrary,’ Pie said, ‘I don’t think you see very much.’

There was a note of accusation in Pie’s words which Gentle rose to.

‘I certainly saw what you were up to,’ he said. ‘You had half a mind to stay with him. Batting your eyes like a—’ He stopped himself.

‘Go on,’ Pie replied. ‘Say it. Like a whore.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

‘No, please,’ Pie went on, bitterly. ‘You can lay on the insults. Why not? It can be very arousing.’

Gentle shot Pie a look of disgust.

‘You said you wanted education, Gentle. Well let’s start with may everything be as it seems. It’s a curse, because if that were the case we’d all be living just to die, and mud would be King of the Dominions.’

‘I get it,’ Gentle said. ‘And you’d be just a whore.’

‘And you’d be a just a faker, working for-’

Before the rest of the sentence was out of his mouth a pack of animals ran out between two of the dwellings, squealing like pigs, though they looked more like tiny llamas. Gentle looked in the direction from which they’d come, and saw, advancing between the shanties, a sight to bring shudders.

‘The Nullianac!’

‘I see it!’ Pie said.

As the executioner approached, the praying hands of its head opened and closed, as though kindling the energies between the palms to a lethal heat. There were cries of alarm from the houses around. Doors slammed. Shutters closed. A child was snatched from a step, bawling as it went. Gentle had time to see the executioner draw two weapons, with blades that caught the livid light of the arcs, then he was obeying Pie’s instruction to run, the mystif leading the way.

The street they’d been on was no more than a narrow gutter, but it was a well-lit highway by comparison with the narrow alley they ducked into. Pie was light-footed; Gentle was not. Twice the mystif made a turn and Gentle overshot it. The second time he lost Pie entirely in the murk and dirt, and was about to retrace his steps when he heard the executioner’s blade slice through something behind him and glanced back to see one of the frailer houses folding up in a cloud of dust and screams, its demolisher’s shape, lightning-headed, appearing from the chaos and fixing its gaze upon him. Its target sighted, it advanced with a sudden speed, and Gentle darted for cover at the first turn, a route that took him into a swamp of sewage which he barely crossed without falling, and thence into even narrower passages.

It would only be a matter of time before he chanced upon a cul-de-sac, he knew. When he did the game would be up. He felt an itch at the nape of his neck, as though the blades were already there. This wasn’t right! He’d barely been out of the Fifth an hour and he was seconds from death. He glanced back. The Nullianac had closed the distance between them. He picked up his pace, pitching himself around a corner, and into a tunnel of corrugated iron, with no way out at the other end.

‘Shite!’ he said, taking Tick Raw’s favourite word for his complaint. ‘Furie, you’ve killed yourself!’

The walls of the cul-de-sac were slick with filth, and high. Knowing he’d never scale them, he ran to the far end and threw himself against the wall there, hoping it might crack. But its builders (damn them!) had been better craftsmen than most in the vicinity. The wall rocked, and pieces of its foetid mortar fell about him, but all his efforts did was bring the Nullianac straight to him, drawn by the sound of his effort.

Seeing his executioner approaching, Gentle pitched his body against the wall afresh, hoping for some last-minute reprieve. But all he got was bruises. The itch at his nape was an ache now, but through its pain he formed the despairing thought that this was surely the most ignominious of deaths, to be sliced up amongst sewage. What had he done to deserve it, he asked aloud.

‘What have I done? What the fuck have I done?’

The question went unanswered; or did it? As his yells ceased he found himself raising his hand to his face, not knowing - even as he did so - why. There was simply an inner compulsion to open his palm and spit upon it. The spittle felt cold, or else his palm was hot. Now a yard away, the Nullianac raised its twin blades above its head. Gentle made a fist, lightly, and put it to his mouth. As the blades reached the top of their arc, he exhaled.

He felt his breath blaze against his palm, and in the instant before the blades reached his head the pneuma went from his fist like a bullet. It struck the Nullianac in the neck with such force it was thrown backwards, a livid spurt of energy breaking from the gap in its head, and rising like Earth-born lightning into the sky. The creature fell in the filth, its hands dropping the blades to reach for the wound. They never touched the place. Its life went out of it in a spasm, and its prayerful head was permanently silenced.

At least as shaken by the other’s death as the proximity of his own, Gentle got to his feet, his gaze going from the body in the dirt to his fist. He opened it. The spittle had gone; transformed into some lethal dart. There was a seam of discolouration that ran from the ball of his thumb to the other side of his hand. That was the only sign of the pneuma’s passing.

‘Holy shite,’ he said.

A small crowd had already gathered at the end of the cul-de-sac, and heads appeared over the wall behind him. From every side came an agitated buzz that wouldn’t, he guessed, take long to reach Hammeryock and Pontiff Farrow. It would be naïve to suppose they ruled Vanaeph with only one executioner in their squad. There’d be others; and here, soon. He stepped over the body, not caring to look too closely at the damage he’d done, but aware with only a passing glance that it was substantial.

The crowd, seeing the conquerer approach, parted. Some bowed, others fled. One said, bravo!, and tried to kiss his hand. He pressed his admirer away, and scanned the alleys in every direction, hoping for some sign of Pie’oh’pah. Finding none, he debated his options. Where would Pie go? Not to the top of the Mount. Though that was a visible rendezvous, their enemies would spot them there. Where else? The gates of Patashoqua, perhaps, that the mystif had pointed out when they’d first arrived? It was as good a place as any, he thought, and started off, down through teeming Vanaeph towards the glorious city.

His worst expectations - that news of his crime had reached the Pontiff and her league - were soon confirmed. He was almost at the edge of the township, and within sight of the open ground that lay between its borders and the walls of Patashoqua, when a hue and cry from the streets behind announced a pursuing party. In his Fifth Dominion garb, jeans and shirt, he would be easily recognized if he started towards the gates, but if he attempted to stay within the confines of Vanaeph it would be only a matter of time before he was hunted down. Better to take the chance of running now, he decided, while he still had a lead. Even if he didn’t make it to the gates before they came after him, they surely wouldn’t dispatch him within sight of Patashoqua’s gleaming walls.

He put on a fair turn of speed, and was out of the township in less than a minute, the commotion behind him gathering volume. Though it was difficult to judge the distance to the gates in a light that lent such iridescence to the ground between, it was certainly no less than a mile; perhaps twice that. He’d not got far when the first of his pursuers appeared from the outskirts of Vanaeph, runners fresher and lither than he, who rapidly closed the distance between them. There were plenty of travellers coming and going along the straight road to the gates. Some pedestrians, most in groups, and dressed like pilgrims; other, finer figures, mounted on horses whose flanks and heads were painted with gaudy designs; still others riding on shaggy derivatives of the mule. Most envied, however, and most rare, were those in motor vehicles, which, though they basically resembled their equivalents in the Fifth - a chassis riding on wheels -were in every other regard fresh inventions. Some were as elaborate as baroque altarpieces, every inch of their bodywork chased and filigreed. Others, with spindly wheels twice the height of their roofs, had the preposterous delicacy of tropical insects. Still others, mounted on a dozen or more tiny wheels, their exhausts giving off a dense, bitter fume, looked like speeding wreckage, asymmetrical and inelegant farragoes of glass and metalwork. Risking death by hoof and wheel Gentle joined the traffic, and put on a new spurt as he dodged between the vehicles. The leaders of the pack behind him had also reached the road. They were armed, he saw, and had no compunction about displaying their weapons. His belief that they wouldn’t attempt to kill him amongst witnesses suddenly seemed frail. Perhaps the law of Vanaeph was good to the very gates of Patashoqua. If so, he was dead. They would overtake him long before he reached sanctuary.

But now, above the din of the highway, another sound reached him, and he dared a glance off to his left, to see a small, plain vehicle, its engine badly tuned, careering in his direction. It was open topped, its driver visible. Pie’oh’pah, God love him, driving like a man - or mystif - possessed. Gentle changed direction instantly, veering off the road, dividing a herd of pilgrims as he did so, and raced towards Pie’s noisy chariot.

A chorus of whoops at his back told him the pursuers had also changed direction, but the sight of Pie had given heat to Gentle’s heels. His turn of speed was wasted, however. Rather than slowing to let Gentle aboard Pie drove on past him, heading towards the hunters. The leaders scattered as the vehicle bore down upon them, but it was a figure Gentle had missed, being carried in a sedan chair, who was Pie’s true target. Hammeryock, sitting on high, ready to watch the execution, was suddenly a target in his turn. He yelled to his bearers to retreat, but in their panic they failed to agree on a direction. Two pulled left, two right. One of the chair’s arms splintered, and Hammeryock was pitched out, hitting the ground hard. He didn’t get up. The sedan-chair was discarded, and its bearers fled, leaving Pie to veer round and head back towards Gentle. With their leader felled, the scattered pursuers, most likely coerced into serving the Pontiff in the first place, had lost heart. They were not sufficiently inspired to risk Hammeryock’s fate, and so kept their distance, while Pie drove back and picked up his gasping passenger.

‘I thought maybe you’d gone back to Tick Raw,’ Gentle said once he was aboard.

‘He wouldn’t have wanted me,’ Pie said. ‘I’ve had congress with a murderer.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘You, my friend, you\We’re both assassins now.’ ‘I suppose we are.’

‘And not much welcome in this region, I think.’

‘Where did you find the vehicle?’

There’s a few of them parked on the outskirts. They’ll be in them soon enough, and after us.’

The sooner we’re in the city the better then.’

‘I don’t think we’d be safe there for long,’ the mystif replied.

It had manoeuvred the vehicle so that its snub nose faced the highway. The choice lay before them. Left, to the gates of Patashoqua. Right, off down a highway which ran on past the Mount of Lipper Bayak, to a horizon that rose, at the furthest limit of the eye, to a mountain range.

‘It’s your choice,’ Pie said.

Gentle looked longingly towards the city, tempted by its spires. But he knew there was wisdom in Pie’s advice.

‘We’ll come back some day, won’t we?’ he said.

‘Certainly, if that’s what you want.’

Then let’s head the other way.’

The mystif turned the vehicle on to the highway, against the predominant flow of traffic, and with the city behind them they soon picked up speed.

‘So much for Patashoqua,’ Gentle said as the walls became a mirage.

‘No great loss,’ Pie remarked.

‘But I wanted to see the Merrow Ti’ Ti’,’ Gentle said.

‘No chance,’ Pie returned.

‘Why?’

‘It was pure invention,’ Pie said. ‘Like all my favourite things, including myself! Pure invention!’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

1

Though Jude had made an oath, in all sobriety, to follow Gentle wherever she’d seen him go, her plans for pursuit were stymied by a number of claims upon her energies, the most pressing of which was Clem’s. He needed her advice, comfort and organizational skills in the dreary, rainy days that followed New Year, and despite the urgency of her agenda she could scarcely turn her back on him. Taylor’s funeral took place on the ninth of January, with a Memorial Service which Clem took great pains to perfect. It was a melancholy triumph: a time for Taylor’s friends and relations to mingle and express their affections for the departed man. Jude met people she’d not seen in many years, and few, if any, failed to comment on the one conspicuous absentee: Gentle. She told everybody what she’d told Clem. That Gentle had been going through a bad time, and the last she’d heard he was planning to leave on holiday. Clem, of course, would not be fobbed off with such vague excuses. Gentle had left knowing that Taylor was dead, and Clem viewed his departure as a kind of cowardice. Jude didn’t attempt to defend the wanderer. She simply tried to make as little mention of Gentle in Clem’s presence as she could.

But the subject would keep coming up, one way or another. Sorting through Taylor’s belongings after the funeral, Clem came upon three watercolours, painted by Gentle in the style of Samuel Palmer, but signed with his own name, and dedicated to Taylor. Pictures of idealized landscapes, they couldn’t help but turn Clem’s thoughts back to Taylor’s unrequited love for the vanished man, and Jude’s to the place he had vanished for. They were among the few items that Clem, perhaps vengefully, wanted to destroy, but Jude persuaded him otherwise. He kept one in memory of Taylor, gave one to Klein, and the third to Jude.

Her duty to Clem took its toll not only upon her time but upon her focus. When, in the middle of the month, he suddenly announced that he was going to leave the next day for Tenerife, there to tan his troubles away for a fortnight, she was glad to be released from the daily duties of friend and comforter, but found herself unable to rekindle the heat of ambition that had flared in her at the month’s first hour. She had one unlikely touchstone, however: the dog. She only had to look at the mutt and she remembered - as though it were an hour ago - standing at the door of Gentle’s flat, and seeing the pair dissolving in front of her astonished eyes. And on the heels of that memory came thoughts of the news she had been carrying to Gentle that night: the dream-journey induced by the stone that was now wrapped up and hidden from sight and seeing in her wardrobe. She was not a great lover of dogs, but she’d taken the mongrel home that night, knowing it would perish if she didn’t. It quickly ingratiated itself, wagging a furious welcome when she returned home each night after being with Clem; sneaking into her bedroom in the early hours and making a nest for itself in her soiled clothes. She called it Skin, because it had so little fur, and while she didn’t dote on it the way it doted upon her she was still glad of its company. More than once she found herself talking to it at great length, while it licked its paws or its balls, these monologues a means to refocus her thoughts without worrying that she was losing her mind. Three days after Clem’s departure for sunnier climes, discussing with Skin how she should best proceed, Estabrook’s name came up.

‘You haven’t met Estabrook,’ she told Skin. ‘But I’ll guarantee you won’t like him. He tried to have me killed, you know?’

The dog looked up from its toilet.

‘Yeah, I was amazed, too,’ she said. ‘I mean, that’s worse than an animal, right? No disrespect, but it is. I was his wife. I am his wife. And he tried to have me killed. What would you do, if you were me? Yeah, I know, I should see him. He had the blue eye in his safe. And that book! Remind me to tell you about the book some time. No, maybe I shouldn’t. It’ll give you ideas.’

Skin settled his head on his crossed paws, gave a small sigh of contentment, and started to doze.

‘You’re a big help,’ she said, I need some advice here. What do you say to a man who tried to have you murdered?’

Skin’s eyes were closed, so she was obliged to furnish her own reply.

‘I say: Hello, Charlie, why don’t you tell me the story of your life?’

2

She called Lewis Leader the next day to find out whether Estabrook was still hospitalized. She was told he was, but that he’d been moved to a private clinic in Hampstead. Leader supplied details of his whereabouts, and Jude called to enquire both about Estabrook’s condition and visiting hours. She was told he was still under close scrutiny, but seemed to be in better spirits than he’d been, and she was welcome to come and see him at any time. There seemed little purpose in delaying the meeting. She drove up to Hampstead that very evening, through another tumultuous rainstorm, arriving to a welcome from the psychiatric nurse in charge of Estabrook’s case, a chatty young man called Maurice who lost his top lip when he smiled, which was often, and talked with an almost indiscreet enthusiasm about the state of his patient’s mind.

‘He has good days,’ Maurice said brightly. Then, just as brightly: ‘But not many. He’s severely depressed. He made one attempt to kill himself before he came to us, but he’s settled down a lot.’

‘Is he sedated?’

‘We help keep the anxiety controllable, but he’s not drugged senseless. We can’t help him get to the root of the problem if he is.’

‘Has he told you what that is?’ she said, expecting accusations to be tossed in her direction.

‘It’s pretty obscure,’ Maurice said. ‘He talks about you very fondly, and I’m sure your coming will do him a great deal of good. But the problem’s obviously with his blood relatives. I’ve got him to talk a little about his father and his brother but he’s very cagey. The father’s dead of course, but maybe you can shed some light on the brother.’

‘I never met him.’

‘That’s a pity. Charles clearly feels a great deal of anger towards his brother, but I haven’t got to the root of why. I will. It’ll just take time. He’s very good at keeping his secrets to himself, isn’t he? But then you probably know that. Shall I take you along to see him? I did tell him you’d telephoned, so I think he’s expecting you.’

Jude was irritated that the element of surprise had been removed; that Estabrook would have had time to prepare his feints and fabrications. But what was done was done, and rather than snap at the gleeful Maurice for his indiscretion she kept her displeasure to herself. She might need the man’s smiling assistance in the fullness of time.