Everville (69 page)

It was almost welcome, that witlessness, given the alternative: the shrieks and screams coming from those trapped in the besieged building. He was puzzled as to why the victims didn't escape out the back until he saw Gamali6l running down the side of the building with something that looked like a human head in his hand. If Gamaliel was here, so were his brothers, and probably the surviving members of Zury's clan too: all here to enjoy the spectacle.

So where was Kissoon? He'd masterminded this night of retribution; he was surely here to witness it.

Shouting for Kissoon as he went, Harry broke into a run. It sounded strange to be calling a man's name in the midst of such utter bedlam, but hadn't it been Kissoon himself who'd said that whatever the lad looked like they'd have a human heart? Men were not nameless. Every one of them had a past; even Kissoon, who had spoken so fondly of being nobody: just eyes on a mountain, looking down on a world of fishes...

The walls of the Town Hall were cracking, as the great wheel of the lad pressed against it. The closer Harry came to the place, the more the lad's name made sense. Uroboros, the self-devouring serpent, encircling the earth while it ate its own tail. An image of power as a self-sufficient engine: implacable, incomprehensible, inviolate.

This time there were no hallucinations in its proximity-no Father Hess accusing from a makeshift grave, no demon spouting enigmas-just this ring of malice, cracking the shell that kept it from its victims. He saw it more clearly all the time. It seemed to him it was displaying itself, tormenting him with the fact that despite the clarity there was no comprehension to he had; no place where its intricacies resolved themselves into something recognizable: a head, a claw, an eye. Just shapes in nauseating abundance, flukes and scraps and scabs; hard forms of indeterminate color (bluish here, reddish there, or neither, or nothing); all soul less, all passionless.

There was, of course, no human face here either. Only repetition, like a scrawl caught between mirrors, its echoes looking like order, like meaning, but being neither.

He had to find the heart. That was his only hope: Find the heart.

The noise in his head had grown so loud now he was sure it would burst his skull, but he kept walking towards its source, and the closer he came-sixty yards, fifty, forty@e more clearly he heard a whisper beneath the din, It was calm, this whisper.

It's nothing to be afraid of... he was telling himself.

He was surprised at his own courage.

Nothing you haven't seen before... Surprised and reassured.

Just let it embrace you... Wait, he thought; where did that idea come from?

There'll only be the two of us, very soon...

That isn't me. It's the lad.

Oh, but there's no way to divide us... the whisper replied, receding now that it had been identified, you know that, in your heart... it said, in your human heart...

Then it was gone, and he was ten yards from the vast, slow wheel, the screams from the building drowned out by the mindless noise in his head. Off to his right he saw Gamaliel striding in his direction. It would slaughter him on the instant, he knew. No prayer, no hesitation. Just the killing stroke.

He had seconds to live. Seconds to bring Kissoon to him.

He drew a deep breath, and though he could no longer hear his own voice, yelled into the bedlam. "I'm looking for Clayton O'Connell!"

There was no response at first. The wheel kept moving, senseless form upon senseless form passing in front of his exhausted eyes. And then, with Gamaliel a yard from him, its hands stretched to fip out his throat, the lad's motion began to slow. Some unheard order must have gone out, because Gamaliel stopped in mid-stride, and then retreated a little way.

The din in Harry's head retreated t@though it didn't disappear-and he stood before the lad gasping like a prisoner whose restraints had been loosened enough to let him breathe. There was some movement amid the lad's anatomy. It unknotted itself, parted. And there, enthroned in its entrailswhich were the same incomprehensible stuff of its outward appearance-was Kissoon.

He looked much as he had on the mountain: simple and serene.

"How did you work out who I was?" he said. Though there was a considerable distance between them, his voice sounded as intii-nate as the lad's whispers.

"I didn't," Harry said. "I was told."

"By whom?" Kissoon wanted to know, rising and steppino out of the living sanctum down onto the street. "Who C, told you'?"

"Your mother."

The face before him remained impassive. Not a twitch.

Not a flicker.

"Her name's Maeve O'Connell, in case you've forgotten," Harry said, "and she was hanged on a tree, alongside your father and you."

,,You talk to the dead?" Kissoon said. "Since when)'

"She's not dead. She's very much alive."

"What kind of trick is this?" Kissoon said. "You think it's going to save anybody?"

"She escaped, Clayton. The bough broke, and she found a way through to Quiddity."

"Impossible."

"The door was always up there, open just a crack."

"How could she have got through it?"

"She had suits of her own, didn't she? And the will to make them work. You should see what she's done at the crossroads." Harry glanced back over his shoulder. "That light. - - " he said. There was a noticeable glow in the sky around the region of the whorehouse. "That's her handiwork."

Kissoon gazed at it a moment, and Harry had the satisfaction of seeing a flicker of doubt upon his face. A tiny flicker, to be sure, but it was enough.

"I... don't know... about you, D'Amour. You keep surprising me.

"You and me both."

"If you're lying about this@'

"What would he the point?"

"to delay me."

"Why would I bother?" Harry replied. "You're going to do what you're going to do sooner or later." "And I still will," Kissoon said. "Mother or no mother." He stared on at the glow in the sky. "What's she doing?" he said.

"She reconstructed the whorehouse," Harry said. "For old times' sake." Kissoon mused on this for a few moments. Then he said, "Old times? Fuck old times," and without further word he strode off down the street towards the crossroads, leaving Harry to follow after him.

Harry didn't need to look back to know that the lad had left off its assault on the Town Hall, and was also trailing after Kissoon, as though for all its legendary malevolence it didn't have the will-or perhaps the desire-to act without instruction. The noise in Harry's head had dwindled to a murmur, and he took a moment to turn over the options that lay ahead, assuming that the lad was by now indifferent to his thought processes.

Plainly, the possibility of his mother's survival had done nothing to mellow Kissoon. He was going to meet her, it seemed, more out of curiosity than sentiment. He had his agenda; he'd had it since childhood. The fact that the woman who'd brought him into the world had survived her lynching would not dissuade him from wanting that world filled with fishes. Harry entertained a remote hope that in the midst of the reunion Kissoon might lay himself open to attack, but even if he did, what weapon would touch him? And while an attempt upon his life was being made, would the lad simply stand by and let it happen? Unlikely, to say the least.

"It's not what you expected, is it?" Kissoon said as they turned the corner. "The lad, I mean."

Harry watched the great wheel appear behind them, its forms spilling and curling as it came, like a wave perpetually threatening to break. it seemed almost to usurp and transfigure the air on its way, turning the very darkness to its own purpose.

"I don't know what I expected," Harry replied.

"You had any number of Devils to choose from," Kissoon pointed out. "But I don't think this was one of them." He didn't wait for confirmation or denial. "It will change, of course. And change. And change. The one thing it will never be is dead."

Harry remembered Nonna's wisdom about the world. was that true of the lad too? Changing, but inextinguishable?

"And of course it's just a tiny part of what's waiting on the other side." ive ar er

"I'm glad I won't be here to see it," Harry said.

"Are you giving up then? That's wise. You don't know up from down any longer, do you, and that fills you with terror. Better to surrender. Go watch TV until the 'end of the world."

"You hate the world that much?"

"I was taken from a tree by wolves, D'Amour. I woke up in the dark with a rope around my neck being fought over. And when I'd gutted them-when I was standing among the bodies, drenched in their blood-I thought: These were not my enemies. These were not the creatures that took me naked from my bed, and hanged me. It's their blood I have to bathe in.

It's their throats I have to take out. The question was: How? How was a half-crazy nobody, with a brothel-keeper for a mother and a drunken freak for a father to find a way to take out the throat of Sapas Humana?" He stopped. Turned. Smiled. "Now you know."

"Now I know."

"One question for you, D'Amour, before we get there." "Yes?"

"Tesla Bombeck."

"What about her?"

"Where is she?"

"Dead."

Kissoon studied Harry for a little time, as if looking for some sign of deception. Finding none, he said, "She was quite remarkable, you know. I look back on our time together in the Loop almost fondly." He made a tiny smile at the foolishness of this. "Of course finally she was a featherweight. But disarming, in her way." He paused, staring past Harry at the lad. "Do you know why it eats its own tail?" he said.

"No." "to prove its perfection," Kissoon replied, and turning his back on Harry strode on to the next intersection. Turning it, they finally came in sight of the crossroads, and of the house that Maeve had built there. It looked almost solid; like a drawing made of light, worked over and over and over again, obsessively. A figure added here, a window there; some steps, some guttering; memory upon memory. Kissoon made no audible response to the spectacle, but proceeded towards it, his stride somewhat slower than it had been.

"Where's my mother?" he wanted to know.

"Somewhere inside, I suppose," Harry replied.

"Go fetch her for me. I don't want to go in."

"It, s just an illusion," Harry said.

"I know that," Kissoon replied. was there a subtle tremor in his voice? Again he said, "I want you to go fetch her for me."

"Okay," Harry replied, and walked on past Kissoon to the front steps.

The door before him seemed to stand open, and he slipped through it into a kind of erotic wonderland. The walls were covered with brocade now, and hung with paintings., most of them titillative works passing themselves off as classical subjects: The Judgement of Paris, Leda and the Swan, The Rape of the Sabine Women. And all around him, the feminine flesh so lovingly daubed on these canvases rendered in light, seemingly more real than when he'd left. Women in their camisoles and knickers, chattering in the parlot. Women with their hair unbraided, bathing their breasts. Women lying in bed, their hands between their legs, toying and smiling for their phantom clients.

Moving down the thronged passageway in search of Maeve, Harry's spirits rose, despite all that reason dictated. Doubtless life had been hard here. There had been disease and brutality and bastard children. Doubtless these women had endured the contempt of the very men who'd paid for their services, and longed, while they plied their trade, to escape. But that was not recorded here. It was the joy of this house Maeve had chosen to remember, and though Harry knew none of this was permanent it didn't matter. He accepted the pleasure this illusion offered him with gratitude.

"Harry?"

There, in the kitchen, idling in the midst of a group of chattering women, was Raul. "Where did you get to?" "I went to find Maeve's offspring. Where is she?"

"She's out back," Raul said. "Did you say offspring?"

"Kissoon, Raul," Harry said, heading on towards the back of the house.

"He's Clayton O'Connell." Raul came after him, forsaking the company of the women.

"Does he know?" he said.

"Of course he knows! Why wouldn't he?"

"I don't know, it's just... it's difficult imagining Maeve's kid being the one who murdered the Shoal, or created the Loo@,

"Everyone begins somewhere," Harry said to him. "And everyone has their reasons."

"Where is he now?"

"At the front of the house," Harry replied, "with the lad." He was out the back door now, into the garden. Maeve had remembered it the way it must have looked some distant spring, the cherry trees heavy with blossom, the air as heady as liquor. She wasn't alone out here. One of the women was sitting on the grass, star-watching.

"Her name's Christina," Maeve said. "She knows all the constellations."

"I've found Clayton," Harry told Maeve.

"You've what?"

"He's here."

"Impossible," she said. "Impossible. My son's dead." 11 "It might be better for us all if he was," Harry replied. "He's the one who brought the lad through, Maeve. It's his revenge for what happened to you all."

"And... are you expecting me to teach him some compassion?"

"If you can."

She looked away. First to the star-watcher, then up to the stars. "I was having such a time out here. It was almost as though I'd never left-"

"He wants me to bring you to him."

She looked towards Raul, who was standing on the back doorstep. "is my Coker here?" Raul nodded. "So he knows?" Again, Raul nodded. "And what does he think?"

Raul listened for the dead man to speak. "He says be careful; the boy was always wicked." "Not always," Maeve said quickly, moving back towards the house. "He wasn't wicked in my belly. We taught him, Coker. Lord knows how, but we taught him."

She stepped inside, her face stony, and refusing Harry's aid made her way back through the kitchen and the parlor towards the front door.

It was still open. Mssoon was at the threshold, and by the stare on his face it was clear he'd been watching his mother for some time, through the veils of the whorehouse. The monkish face he'd worn was tainted now. He looked pinched and bitter.