How the Stars did Fall (5 page)

“And if I do not comply?”

“I’ll shoot you dead.”

“I see. Perhaps there is another way. You see, it is true what you said. The machine is not real. I use that diving suit and place the gold flakes inside. However, I believe the solution to this quandary, yours and mine, is not for you to shoot me.

“Go on.”

“This very situation could have been avoided if I’d had a partner looking out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you need gold. I have a way of attaining it easily and without violence. If we worked together, then you would have no interest in killing me or robbing me or telling anyone the truth of my operation. We both win.”

Faraday thought on it for a moment. Then he holstered his revolver.

“How would you propose we split the profit?” he said.

“One half to each man I believe is fair.”

“And how much you reckon we can earn in, say, a month?”

“I gather together we could earn at least four or five thousand dollars in a month.”

“Alright. That’ll suit me.”

Chapter Five

It took Daniel only a few days riding to reach San Francisco from the Tuttle estate. On the way, he avoided any place where humans congregated, guiding the two horses carrying the heavily laden carts on the road by holding on to their reins, one in each hand. Once he came within sight of the city, he stopped and waited for night to come to cover his entry. Even late in the day, the streets bustled with people. They huddled around the markets and the cafes and the brothels. The city truly barely slept. And if one were inclined, one could purchase goods at any hour. Grain and fresh vegetables and fish just caught and live goats and sheep and pigs ready for slaughter and bottles of milk and churned cream. No one took much notice of the muscled man riding one horse and pulling another. From the outside, it looked like Daniel was there to replenish some storehouse or other with fresh goods. If only they knew what treasure lay hidden beneath those cowhides.

Even if they did, it was unlikely anyone would dare try to rob him. That had been the Good Man’s first gift to the city. Security. Just then, Daniel spotted a guardsman from the militia dressed all in black patrolling the street. The guardsman tipped his hat to Daniel in deference. He did not salute even though technically Daniel was his superior within the militia’s chain of command. That had been another of the Good Man’s innovations. In this new San Francisco, there were no superiors. Only equals before a single universal lawgiver. Most of the citizens equated this lawgiver with the Christian God but the Good Man himself never gave it a name or any other appellation, neither confirming nor denying the general assumption. “Only men need names,” the Good Man often said. “The Lawgiver is defined by his creation; he writes upon the universe the contents of his heart.”

It helped that the Good Man had not outlawed Christianity or any other religion. He allowed all men and women to continue worshipping as they wished as long as they also kept to his precepts and attended, at least once a month, one of his revelatory sermons in Union Square. That requirement was difficult to enforce but it afforded the Good Man a unique opportunity to persecute his enemies. Daniel himself had more than once arrested some man or other on the sole charge that he had faltered in his obligation to The Way.

Now Daniel rode into Union Square, right to its center, where a white chapel, still only half-built, served as headquarters of The Way and as the Good Man’s residence. He rode around to the back. By then one guard had already recognized Daniel and, summoning others to help him, the men unfurled the tarp and carried the gold bars one by one into the chapel. They went down a stairway to where a vast catacomb-like basement had been constructed. And in the basement they came to a spot where the Good Man had transferred the city’s bullion, locking it all inside the vaults. When first constructed, these vaults had been mostly full, the gold bars stacked up to the ceiling. Now only one vault actually held any bullion and the amount there could barely account for a year of city expenses. A portion of the gold had been sold for paper money, the notes deposited in a bank. But much of it had already been spent. On what, Daniel did not precisely know. That was not his area of responsibility.

After they finished storing all the gold, Daniel told the men to do away with the two horses and the carts and then go back to their posts. Daniel waited for them to leave before turning and heading further into the basement. As he walked, he began to hear the sound of people chanting coming from deep inside. The further he went, the less man-made the structure looked until the walls and the floor were no longer man-made at all, but made of rock and sediment. And the rock walls were slick with humidity, the basement becoming a damp grotto. The path led Daniel to the source of the chanting, a natural underground chamber connected to the chapel above by way of a ladder. In that chamber, a sarcophagus made of pure granite had been left in the center and it was inside it that the Good Man rested. He was surrounded by a number of men in white robes chanting the vowels in succession like Egyptian priests. The chanting resonated in that tight enclosure, producing extraordinary vibrations which Daniel felt in his bones and ligaments.

Eventually the chanting stopped and the Good Man lifted himself up from the sarcophagus, dismissing his acolytes with a movement of his wrist. The leader of The Way was an old, emaciated man with spectacles and tonsured hair. And when he stepped out of the sarcophagus he was naked, the skin on his back lightly bruised by the rugged granite on which he had lain for hours like some diseased prelate.

“Did you get it? Is it safe?” the Good Man asked Daniel while putting on his own white robe.

Daniel nodded. “Stowed and locked away.”

“All of it?”

“Every ounce accounted for.”

“You’ve done well. We could not afford any more delays.”

“Any news out of Fort Tancredo?”

“The scouts have reported no movement. I believe they will not attempt any retaliation until they have the full support of the navy. And that will take many weeks yet.”

“Enough time for us to prepare our defenses.”

“Indeed. Have you eaten yet? Come up with me. Drink some wine.”

Truth was, Daniel wanted nothing more than to go to his bed and sleep. But he could not refuse the Good Man. The ladder took them up to the library. They ate cheese and bread and sipped at their wineglasses while surrounded by two-story-high bookshelves carved out of solid oak that were still empty save for a stone bust of some luminary here and there, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton among them, left on the shelves as bookends. And when Daniel and the Good Man were done with their victuals, they took a seat in front of a great fireplace, already lit, the wooden paneling inlaid with toothlike ivory, the fire like the flickering tongue of some hellish beast, its mouth agape and hungry.

“Do you need me to set up the meeting with the Mexicans?” Daniel asked.

“No, everything’s been arranged. You will go with me to Sonoma to bring them the gold. There are men of influence there that will mediate our exchange.”

Now the Good Man got up from his seat and, stoking the fire, he turned and touched Daniel on the shoulder and looked into his eyes.

“How long have you known me?” he asked.

“Since I was a boy—so twenty-five or so years.”

“And during that time have I tried to treat you as a father treats a son?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Have I succeeded?”

“You know you have, master.”

“And my work. Do you believe in it?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe in it more than you believe in those flames?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe in it more than you believe in that gun on your belt?”

“I do.”

“I hope you do. Because a man will come and test you and if you fail you will surely die.”

“I am prepared to die.”

“Do not take these to be idle words. I remember when I was tested. Doesn’t matter how many times you try to convince yourself of your own aptitude. Only in the direst moment will you discover what is truly inside yourself. But enough of that. Are you too tired? There is something I intend to show you.”

“I am ready for whatever is asked of me, Master.”

“You are a good soldier, Daniel.”

Together they went back down the ladder and returned to the basement, but this time they took a different path, one shrouded in darkness and narrow such that the men had to crawl on all fours through a part of it. Throughout this walk, Daniel could think of nothing else but the exchange in front of the fireplace. Why had the Good Man questioned him? Could he be in some way cognizant of Daniel’s doubts? Did he have such power to know that Daniel had almost failed at procuring the gold? That choosing between Faraday and The Way had been much more difficult than Daniel had anticipated? Daniel was nervous now, and his heart beat faster and his breathing became shallow, so that even the Good Man noticed something amiss.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Fine. It’s the heat in here.”

“Few men have seen these tunnels. Because they were made only recently but also because they are for the use of only the most senior members of The Way.”

“It’s a good idea.”

“It is certainly convenient and necessary. One of them leads straight to the northernmost tip of the city, right to the harbor.”

“To flee if necessary?”

“Indeed. A precaution in case the city is overrun. Ah, we are almost to the end of our path.”

Where the tunnel ended, another ladder hung. The Good Man dropped his torch and began to climb, Daniel behind him. Halfway up, the Good Man’s hand slipped as he tried to grasp the next rung in the ladder. Daniel’s strength was enough to hold the Good Man in place. They hung on and continued inside that cylinder of blackness, a dim light below them and another above.

Coming out on the other side, Daniel recognized the place. It was the city jail. One of them, anyway. In the main ward, only two of the cells were occupied. It was towards those cells that the Good Man went, and when he stood right in the middle of them, on the threshold, he spoke to Daniel.

“Father and daughter—so close, yet so far. Isn’t that right, Mr. mayor? You have not thanked me yet for sparing your life and that of your daughter. This displeases me.”

The Good Man had taken a candle lamp and now he held it against the bars of the cell that held the former mayor of San Francisco. The mayor was the only official from the old regime that had been kept alive. And Daniel knew it was not for long. Now the Good Man tossed Daniel a set of keys.

“Open it.”

Daniel did. The mayor himself was barely visible in the depth of the cell.

“Grab him and bring him to me.”

Daniel did that, too, taking hold of the mayor’s body. After weeks wasting in that cell, the man weighed no more than a woman of comparable height and did not resist.

“Let me have a look at your face,” the Good Man said. “You look haggard. Like death. Well, tomorrow is the big day. Daniel, shave his face and his head, and once you’re done kill the daughter. I’ve no use for her any longer.”

Hearing that last part brought an impish whimper from the mayor. He closed his eyes and the most awful look of anguish Daniel had ever seen contorted his features.

The Good Man left after giving the orders and Daniel went to the front of the jail and procured a bucket of lather and a razor and, returning to the mayor’s cell, shaved the old man’s beard and head, exposing his tough, wrinkly skin.

“Do what you want with me,” the mayor said, “but don’t kill my daughter. Spare her, I beg you. Spare her.”

“If I do as you say, then I would forfeit my own life.”

The mayor did not respond. It had taken him every ounce of his energy to speak those words and now he had fallen silent and sullen, and when Daniel finished shaving, the mayor returned to a corner of the cell like some putrid growth infesting the crevices of the wall. Daniel dumped the lather, leaving the bucket empty, and wiped the razor on his trousers. He would have to use it to kill the girl, because he did not want to fire his revolver in such tight quarters.

Daniel opened the other cell and found inside it a young girl, no more than fourteen, dressed in filthy rags, her hair matted and clumped together and her skin bearing the marks of many lashes. And when the girl came forward, the candlelight revealed her cut and swollen lips and the purple bruises on her arms and legs.

“I want you to kill me,” she said, her voice desperate and hoarse. “Please kill me. Please. Please. Please.”

Seeing the razor, she got on her knees and lifted her chin, exposing her neck. And Daniel did bring the razor to her skin, but he did not cut her. The girl, about to be orphaned, awakened something in him. An old memory. Nostalgia tinged with regret. It had been a feeling he had often entertained as a boy. A feeling of inadequacy and helplessness at not being able to save his mother from the man that had killed her. Of not being able to provide for her and stop her from whoring her body out. A silly feeling, for he had been no more than a babe when she died. Daniel put away the razor.

He believed in the Good Man. Believed in The Way. But he could not kill the girl.

“Please, please,” she said. Her eyes were closed. Then she opened them.

“Get up,” Daniel said. She didn’t, so he reached out and touched her on the arm and tried to help her up, but she recoiled at the touch.

“Get away from me.”

“I can help you.”

“Help me? You’re the same as them. The same as him.”

“Likely I am. But I’m not going to hurt you like them. Get up. I can help you live. But we must go. We cannot linger.”

The girl took a few moments to consider these words. Eventually, she got up of her own accord and left the cell. But before leaving with Daniel, she stopped in front of her father’s cell.

“Father? Are you there?”

“Your father has accepted his fate. There is nothing anyone can do for him.”

“Can’t you help him, too? Let me leave with him.”

“I can hide you away and my master will think you dead, but I cannot hide him. His death tomorrow is more than an execution. There are powers at play which I do not fully understand.”