Ink (60 page)

Your God, you say, is a God of wisdom, justice and mercy. Perhaps this is why, when Lot had offered up his daughters and the crowd rejected them, then the angels went out and destroyed all who were gathered there with the swords of fire that came from their mouths. It is wise to offer what you know will not be accepted. It is just to punish the offense of those refusing such gifts. It is merciful to give the peace of death to one's enemies.

But your Torah does not tell of the reward the angels asked for in exchange, I think. It does not tell of how the wife of Lot poured wine for them, and took their robes from them, to wash away the ashes of humanity, how she washed the angels’ feet and anointed their hair. It does not tell of what the wife of Lot learned from the mouths of angels, and how she knew then that her husband would die, and there would be no good men in the city, and the city would be destroyed.
This, we are told, is why Lot gathered together all his household, his wife, his daughters and his servants, and escaped into the hills.

In your story, my friend, the wife of Lot is a foolish woman turned to salt for looking back upon the destruction of Sodom. In our tale, my friend, she looked back in defiance. If she was foolish it was with bravery. If she was turned to salt it was because she stood against the angels with her tears, her tears for the city that she loved and all who died in it, defying God's angels to pass the pillar of her sorrow.

But this is only our tale, and how can we say that ours is true while yours is not, we who write nothing down but let our words drift away with the winds as dust, as ashes, as salt? I will ask you this, my friend: In your tale what is the name of Lot's wife? I do not think she has a name in your Torah.

But we remember her, my friend. We know her name.

It's the sound of hooves on cobbled stone that wakes him, then a cry in Arabic and the neighing of a horse that brings Carter upright in the bed, the sound of the gate to the courtyard clanging open that has him rolling out onto the floor and reaching for his holster. Danger has its own sound, the sound of anxiety in a voice, of sudden violence in a mundane act. Or hurried footsteps clattering up a stairwell. Carter unclips the holster, draws the Webley out and places a hand over Tamuz's mouth, hisses a warning at him. The boy stirs, moans at the touch of cold steel, the handgrip of the gun prodding his shoulder; he rouses, tries to sit up and speak, only for Carter's hand to clamp tight, muffle his mumble of confusion. Carter puts the gun barrel to his lips in want of a finger.
Hush.
He drops his hand at Tamuz's nod, motions the boy onto the floor behind him, clicks the safety off, cocks the trigger, and aims the pistol at a door handle now rattling.

The door opens and Carter has a challenge on his lips but Tamuz beats him to it, hand on his arm, pulling his aim to the side.

“No. Is OK.”

A figure in flowing desert robes, an apparition in the night, Carter only catches a glimpse before the man is inside and closing the door behind him, slender features of a face half shadowed, half revealed by the gaslights of the stairwell; a few details—an Arab headdress, a pencil mustache, is that a saddlebag over his shoulder?

“Eyn Reinhardt,” says Tamuz.

“Tamuz, some light, eh, for the love of God? And you might lower the gun, Captain Carter, please. It would be much appreciated.” “Von Strann?” “Yes. If you would point the gun elsewhere, at least…”

Carter drops his aim and uncocks the trigger, clicks the safety back on… and pulls the linen sheet off the bed to flip over his shoulder. As he slides the gun back into its holster, there's a flicker of matchlight, muted and then replaced with the rising glow from one of the small gas lamps built into the wall; the Baron is already laying the saddlebags and his headdress down on the table. He leans on the back of one of the chairs, glances between Carter and Tamuz. With the deep tan of his skin and the dark hair, it's only the piercing gray of the man's eyes that ruins the Arabian Prince illusion—or delusion, thinks Carter. It's a ridiculous costume.

“Reinhardt von Strann,” says the man. “You are Captain Carter, yes?”

“Captain Jack Carter.”

Von Strann offers a hand and they shake—quick, no nonsense.

“If you would like to get dressed, please do,” says von Strann. “There is not much time for chitchat and I'm sure you have many questions. This might make some of them easier to formulate.”

He pulls a sheaf of papers out of the saddlebags—the leather of them is heavily stained with blood and scorched by fire, Carter notices—flicks through them and hands one page to Carter.

It's Hobbsbaum's scrawling longhand.

On the 19th of March 1929, the Treaty of Istanbul was signed between the Futurist Reich and the New Ottoman Empire, and a vanguard of Turkish troops landed in Syria to begin their move south. The news spread like wildfire through the cities of Palestine. In Tell el-Kharnain, though, the battle was lost before it was even begun, the city in the control of the Turkish police even before the seizure of government buildings and official premises that night. While Jerusalem was to become, over the next few days, a bloody battleground for the British and Turkish forces, in Tell el-Kharnain the unopposed Turks simply began rounding up dissidents and undesirables. Scattered fighting did break out in the Lebanese and Jewish quarters, where opposition was strong, but the people of this city of hedonist refugees were quick to realize that the war they'd sought to escape had followed them right into the heart of their haven and made it abase of operations.

Whether it is coincidence that von Strann arrived in the city on that night or whether his Enakite contacts had some intelligence on the movement of
Turkish forces, whether von Strann returned to warn Carter or to enlist his aid, the two were thrown together in the holocaust that was to engulf the city. It is still unclear how it started but—

“What in God's name is this?”

“It's the truth,” says von Strann.
“A
truth, at least. This city will burn, and every man in it will die.”

“You and me,
mon ami,”
I say.

The creature from the id and the slinky, silky, sylvan self, we sit across from each other on the elaborate Persian rug, me and Fast Puck, legs crossed in lotus pose, a look of horny bliss upon his face. His skatepunk T-shirt shucked, his torso glistens with traceries of visual trickery, quick colors trickling across him, gleaming with the glamour of the acid that we dropped two hours ago. Nice. On the stereo, the outlawed Lennon/Morrison collaboration starts to smooth its way in slowly, higher, higher. It's twenty years old, pre-punk experimental; it's sheer indulgence (worst excesses of them both—think
Revolution 9
meets
Soft Parade)
, but I have a mission to go on, and I need to cleanse my chakras, charge my kun-dalini, focus my chi. That mosaic of music, all the sex and death of it—the tan trie mantras—it might well be bollocks, but it's loaded bollocks. I can feel the orgone power flowing into me.

“Shit, this is good,” says Puck.

His aura's so blue he's a comic-book Krishna in combat pants hung low to show the waistband of his Calvins. Me, I'm feeling like the jewel on the lotus. Out of the corners of my eyes, the shimmering golden light surrounding me seems like a myriad of waving arms; Shiva on one side, Shakti on the other, I'm the Buddha with a hard-on. I'm a bodhisattva baby floating in a sea of bliss, an angel assassin getting charged up for the kill.

A maze of mad Mayan hieroglyphs and Hindu carvings swirl in fractal man-dalas over the four walls of the Fox's den, illusions of gravings on reality itself, mirroring the myriad me of the Vellum. Under, over and around the sound that's coming from the stereo, noises inside my head are twisting, bells and klaxons, whirrings, chirpings, gongs, all rhythmic, syncopated. This is what I call trance music.

“Shit, but this is good,” says Puck.

——

“It does feel positively oriental,” says Guy Fox.

He stands at the bay window, casual, cool, and sipping at his gin and tonic, strokes his pencil mustache, rakes his fingers through his crow-black flop of hair—the king of thieves, the prince of charmers, and the leader of our revolutionary cell. He's taken less than half the dose that Puck and I have … but then he has to stay on guard. This is a dangerous game we're playing and the enemy, the Empire, plays for keeps.

I rise from my cross-legged pose to pull on a velvet robe, feel it furling round me soft and smooth. Tickling shivers surge down my serpent spine as I stretch. When I pick up the Curzon-Youngblood Mark I chi-gun that sits on the top of the dresser, it buzzes with the orgone energy pulsing into it. Ah, yes. Happiness is a warm gun.

“Shit, this is
fucking
good,” says Puck.

Guy Fox looks out the window over the Rookery, arches an eyebrow.

“Gentlemen, I hope you're ready,” he says. “We're about to have some visitors.”

Outside, the ornithopters of the Royal Albion Militia are approaching low over the rooftops, beams of their searchlights scything across the ramshackle tenements and ghetto squats of the Rookery. Looks like a swarm of locusts flying over Hell's shantytown.

Fast Puck stands limberly and stretches out one hand into the air in front of him. The aura crackles round him as he slides his fingers down the shaft of his six-foot chi-lance and it buzzes into life, powered up by that mystic force, the kundalini orgone energy that flows through every deadly sexy thing.

“Well then,” says Puck. “Looks like it's time to cure some karma.”

Fox looks at me and raises his glass—
chin-chin, old chap
,

“Operation Orpheus is go,” he says.

Tamuz rushes to and fro, gathering supplies, filling water bottles. He pulls a trunk out from under the bed, opens it up. Von Strann paces the room.

“Where is Samuel?” asks Carter. “That's the only thing I want to know.”
“When is Samuel?”
says von Strann. “Believe me, Captain Carter, my people know many things. We know that the Turks are gathering a fleet of Prussian airships in Syria, ready to strike British Palestine. We know that your Russian friend, Major Pechorin, is also in this city, liaising with the head of the Turkish garrison.

We know that the Turks and the Futurists are the least of your worries, Captain Carter, believe me. That we do not know where Samuel is concerns us more deeply than you can imagine.”

“You must put this on,” says Tamuz, handing Carter a long white robe identical to the Baron's. “They will notknowyou.”

Carter throws it onto the bed disdainfully, buckles his belt and picks his shirt up. He ignores the boy, focused entirely on von Strann.

“Talk sense, man. Give me answers.”

“Did Tamuz tell you of the Book? Or did Samuel, in his letter?”

“What book?”

“The Book of All Hours.”

Tamuz snorts with derision.

“A story of a story. A story for children, like your Santa Claus.” “As Ab Irim said to Eliezer,” says von Strann, “the angel Enoch had a book. Inside that book is every story possible, the story of every angel, every human being, every demon. Inside that book is every story true or false, even those about the book itself, how it was written, lost, stolen, destroyed. The most important story, though, is how it will be found again one day, and the seal of it broken open, and the name of God Himself read aloud to bring Him back into the world, out of the ink with which he's bound into the vellum, bound into the book.”

“A story,” says Tamuz. “A story for children. My mother used to tell us this each new year, at the dawn.”

“Your mother was trying to prepare you for the truth,” says von Strann. “Your people have had the book for generations, keeping it hidden. That's why they have no books of legends, histories, why they write nothing down; they have it all written in the book already.”

“We have no secrets,” says Tamuz. “My people have no secrets.” “When you have the book,” says von Strann, “no one has any secrets.”

Carter shakes his head.

“I think I'm with Tamuz on this one: a story for children.”

“Do you have a cigarette?” says von Strann.

Carter offers his case and the Prussian clicks it open, takes out a cigarette and snaps it shut again. He taps the cigarette on the case and looks at it for a second before putting it in his mouth.

“These things are bad for you, you know, Captain Carter? They clog your
lungs, poison the cells. Leave that, Tamuz; it's not important. Just food and water. We know many things, my people, but if the Futurists are the ones who have our friend—and believe me, whatever Samuel has done, he remains my friend—but if the Futurists have him… we thought perhaps he was going to the Turks, taking what he had learned…”

He trails off, takes a drag. It's as if he's stalling some decision, Carter thinks, putting off the inevitable moment.

“As Ab Irim said to his servant Eliezer,” says von Strann, “it was not God who gave Adam and Eve their suits of skin. You know the Bible story, yes, Captain Carter, how they were ashamed of their nakedness and so God gave them the suits of skin? Maybe this is so. Maybe this is one truth. Here is another. In the beginning Adam and Eve gave God the suit of skin. In the beginning, God was only an idea until we sought to bind the wild world with our words. Male and female we created our gods, in the image of humanity.”

“Once upon a time,” says Carter. “Look, I'm not interested in your Enakite heresies. I'm sure they're very—”

“Let me show you the Cant, Captain Carter,” says von Strann. “Let me show you just a little of the language that the book is written in, what it can do. How man might make God in his image.”

[… Von] Strann left with his boy [… and?] the headman, as […] thought at the time, rode out of the arid sands of the western desert upon [his steed?] thundering […] The horse reared and his […?] billowed in the air. His face masked by the black linen djellaba that left only his eyes visible, narrowed against the cruel early-afternoon sun […] glinting in the light, the emerald or jade of […] green eyes […] not a Semitic people? Yet the coppery coloring of their [skin?…] and had little time to think of such things really, for […] Enakite headman [… moved?] his djellaba from his face and […] saw it was, in fact [a woman? …] her long red braided [hair? …] a scar running from her eye to her jaw. […] was astonished, […] should say, von Strann never having made even the slightest allusion to this circumstance, the rogue; trust him to insure […] first meeting with the Enakites should have adequate drama. And even in [… she?] spoke with a voice like […] a great many rivers rushing, a roaring torrent […] into my very soul […] herself: