Memoranda (6 page)

The room was small and dimly lit by one candle. It took me a moment for my eyes to adjust, and in that time Misrix had entered and was standing beside me. The candle sat in a holder on a small table next to a large bed with an ornate headboard. Lying in the bed was Drachton Below, his eyes closed. His head was propped up on cream-colored pillows as though resting on a cloud bank, and he was dressed in blue silken pajamas. In the time since I had last seen him, he had grown a long mustache and beard, the same color as the pillows. His face was remarkably clear of wrinkles for one as old as he, but the thick hair that he had once worn in an impressive wave was now all but gone.

Misrix walked over to the side of the bed and reached out to pat him lightly on the head. I approached and asked if I could awaken him.

“I wish you could,” said the demon.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Before he could answer, though, I noticed the expression on Below's face. He wore a subtle grin, the same I had seen back in Wenau on Roan and Jensen and the others who had succumbed to the disease.

I turned to Misrix, and he simply nodded. “We were in the laboratory three days ago, and he was preparing one of his metal birds. He told me, ‘Another gift for my children at Wenau.' There was a small beaker of steaming yellow liquid in his hand that he was preparing to pour into the mouth of the bird. He began to tell me something, and when he did, the beaker slipped from his fingers and crashed against the floor. I was on the other side of the laboratory, and I began to rush to his aid. By then a thick yellow smoke was rising around him. He spoke excrementally, and motioned for me not to come near him. I stayed at a distance, because he kept his finger pointed at me to remain. Then his eyes rolled back in his head. He said, ‘Good night,' and fell onto the floor. I have not been able to wake him since.”

I felt a tightening in my stomach. “Is there an antidote? Do you remember him mentioning or working on a cure for the yellow smoke?” I asked.

The demon nodded his head sadly. “Yes. When he first created the smoke, he made an experiment using one of the werewolves. He put the creature to sleep and then after two days awakened it with a needle full of something.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“I never knew,” said Misrix, and I saw him begin to get upset.

“That's fine,” I told him. “It's not your fault.” I put my hand on his arm. “Do you know where he keeps it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Where is it?” I asked.

With the tip of a claw, he touched Below's temple. “In there,” he said.

6

I asked Misrix to take me to the laboratory, but he said it would be impossible until daybreak, when the werewolves would be sleeping. It was situated on the main floor of a partially intact building all the way on the opposite side of the ruins, and the path to it led through some treacherously narrow spots that were havens for ambush. The lab itself was unprotected, and the creatures knew how to get in.

“They could trap us there, and we'd never get out,” said the demon as he took one last look at Below before shutting the door.

“Why did your father keep a laboratory so far away from your living quarters?”

“Two reasons,” he said. “In case one of the experiments escaped while we were sleeping, and he used the daily journey to it as a way to get physical exercise.”

“Can you carry me through the air?” I asked as we walked the long hallway.

“During daylight, the metallic birds guard the sky. They will not strike us on the ground, but flying is too dangerous while the sun is up. They are set to intercept anything that crawls or walks outside the City walls and anything that flies over it. My father was particularly frightened of an attack by military balloons or rockets.

“This is my room,” he said, and opened it for me. He set about lighting the spire lamps as I looked around. The place was enormous, well lit, and spotlessly clean. It was divided into a small living area and the rest was more rows of library shelves. He beckoned me over toward the shelves, and I followed.

“I've gotten rid of the books in here and begun my Museum of the Ruins. These shelves are lined with the most interesting items I have salvaged from the Well-Built City.”

I looked to the shelves and saw row upon row of artifacts—bullets and skulls and huge shards of soap-bubble crystal, obviously scraps from the false paradise. As I moved along the aisles, staring at the remains and reading the hand-printed cards that went with each small display, the ghost of the City came over me, and I remembered so clearly. In my memory, I rode the crystal-enclosed elevator to the Top of the City, while in actuality I walked past squashed shudder cups, a demon horn, bracelets, dolls, teeth, mummified toes, and a severed head from one of Below's gladiators—gear-work showing through empty sockets.

“Remarkable,” I said to him, as he followed, hands clasped as if in prayer to his accumulations.

“What did your father think of this?” I asked.

“‘Abhorrent' was the term he used, but he never demanded that I dismantle it.”

“What made you start?” I asked, turning to watch him.

“I had the feeling that there was a story in all of this,” he said. “If I just put the right pieces together it should all become clear to me—the story of the Well-Built City.”

“You've done a fine job here,” I said. “But what do you make of this story?”

“A love story, I'm sure of that much, but after that I lose the thread in a small object I cannot make out the meaning of. It's down here,” he said, and walked past me, leading me deeper into the aisles of shelves.

He finally stopped in the last row, at the very corner of the far-flung room. “Here,” he said as I caught up to him. He pointed at the shelf and stared.

There, in a display between an empty Schrimley's bottle and the blue hand of a hardened hero, sat a white fruit at the moment of ripeness.

I reached toward it, but was quick to bring my arm up short, landing my index finger on the paper card that held the message:
UNKNOWN FRUIT—plucked from tree growing among the ruins.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is the fruit of the Earthly Paradise,” I said. “A kind of miracle engine. I've seen people poisoned by it, and I've seen it bring back the dead.”

“Interesting,” he said.

“What does this do to your story?” I asked.

“It's too early to tell. It's got to be important, though.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise, I wouldn't have found it,” he said.

He led me back to his living quarters, which included a writing desk, a lamp, a small shelf of books.

“Do you sleep?” I asked, not seeing a bed or couch.

“Sleep is my return to the Beyond, for I still dream like a demon. Occasionally I will dream human, and these are always nightmares. But here—” he said, and his wings swept out. He gave a slight jump and lifted into the air, the papers on the desk flying off in all directions. I followed his course upward to where there was a metal bar affixed to the ceiling. He wrapped his fingers around this and then brought his feet up beneath him, bending his knees and resting the soles against the bar between his hands. Crouched upside down like this, he folded his wings closed and hung, motionless, like some prodigious fruit of the Beyond.

“—is where I sleep,” he said, his voice muffled by the cocoon of his wings.

Without thought, I applauded.

“Rest now, Cley,” he said. “There is only an hour or so till dawn.”

A moment later he was snoring. After retrieving the green veil from my coat, I took it off, sat down against the wall by the door, and closed my eyes. I was exhausted, hungry, and completely confused. There was no sense in fighting the course of events. Like one of the artifacts in the Museum of the Ruins, I was a mere fragment of debris from a far-reaching story. I tried to think of what I should be looking for in the laboratory the next morning, but the words on the list in my mind began to drip off the page, and I nodded forward into a dream of Wenau. I found myself walking silently through my own darkened house. Outside, in the moonlit yard, a dog was barking.

I opened my eyes a few hours later and saw Misrix sitting at his writing desk, plunging, into the crook of his arm, a hypodermic of what I was sure was sheer beauty. When he finished, he grimaced and slid the needle out.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He turned quickly and stared into my eyes. At first his look conveyed guilt, but I could sense the beauty wrapping around his mind, and guilt soon became innocence.

“The beauty,” he said, smiling.

“Do you need to take it?” I asked.

“I need to take it when I am going out into the ruins without my father. It makes me lighter and gives me ideas where to hide if I have to.”

“Don't we need to concentrate on getting to the lab?”

“Certainly, certainly …” he said, and took to staring at the wall.

I got up from where I had slept and walked over to him. “Misrix,” I said.

He gave no reply.

“Misrix,” I said, and touched his wing. He turned his head slowly, and said, “Yes, Cley, I know, the lab.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “No resting,” he said. “When we get out into the ruins, we must move quickly.”

I nodded, letting him know I understood, but he had already brushed past me and was heading out the door. I followed him down the hallway almost to Below's room when he abruptly stopped and put his hand to his head.

“Wrong way,” he said, turned around, and went past me in the opposite direction. Imagine yellow eyes, bloodshot, and hands that were slightly trembling. Just the very mention of the beauty was bad business as far as I was concerned. This drug had been the leash that Below had used to restrain us all in the days when the city was still whole. Its powerful hallucinogenic effects left one in a rictus of paranoia, totally suggestible, the Master's favorite environment through which to govern. I had spent many years wrapped in its hellish nightmare and quite a few more trying to forget its insistent tug. Misrix was using it, much as I had in the old days, as an antidote for his fear of being human.

We went through another door which opened onto another long hallway. At the next door, Misrix let me catch up to him. “Cley,” he said, and smiled foolishly. “When we go out this door, I will lock it behind me. We will have entered the remains of the public baths. Through these we will get to the street.”

“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked him.

“About the white fruit.”

“Let's think about werewolves instead,” I said.

He laughed and put his arm on my shoulder. “You think about them,” he said, and pushed the door open.

I followed him out quickly. He turned around, and with a long key I had not noticed him holding before, locked the door. Then he straightened up, and we made our way amidst the still-bubbling cisterns. Great chunks of the roof had fallen into the pools, letting the daylight stream into the water that had remained crystal clear. When I looked down, I could see frogs and fish darting about, and down deeper yet, I could make out the remains of a human rib cage.

Although the baths had sustained less damage than many other sites in the city, broken tile lay everywhere, and there was one spot where we had to leap over a fissure in the floor through which a swift stream of purified water now ran. The real problem came when we reached the entrance. That once grand archway that had led to the street was choked almost to the top with an enormous hill of shattered coral masonry. Misrix began the climb toward the sliver of daylight that shone in at the very peak. I took to the hill and made my way up the uneven slope, twisting my ankle and cutting my forearm in the process. Misrix reached a hand down and dragged me up the last few feet. We had to lie on our stomachs in order to slip through the opening into daylight.

The sky was clear and the sun had already lifted away from the horizon. For the first time, I could see the extent to which the city had been decimated. Entire ministries that at one time had held hundreds of workers on any given day were completely leveled. The pink coral that Below had used for the structures lay in boulders, slabs, and jagged, toppled columns everywhere. Reaching from beneath these weighty fragments were the skeletal arms and hands of the citizens of the city. In the crevices, I could make out the glint of brass gears and the twisted belongings of Below's children. A fine pink powder swirled in the street when the breeze blew.

I followed Misrix down the gently sloping hill of debris, taking care as to where I placed my feet. As I leaped off the last boulder and onto the street next to the demon, I could tell there was something wrong. Misrix held his head back as if he were looking at the sun and sniffed the air.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I'm not sure. It might be the wolves, but it would be very unusual for them to be awake so early. It might just be the beauty, playing tricks on me.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

The demon looked nervously over each shoulder, but didn't move forward. I knew that he was panicking as I had out on the fields of Harakun.

“Come on,” I said. “Your father will die without the antidote. Everyone will die.”

“There's something out there,” he said.

“It's your fear,” I told him.

“This way,” he whispered. Then he pointed down the street to where the road was blocked by the fallen facade of the Ministry of Education. “Through there,” he said, and began to run, using his wings to propel him.

“Wait,” I yelled, and sprinted to catch up.

I followed the demon through a chaotic maze designed by explosion, leaping from rock to rock, squeezing through tunnels, sprinting down powdered streets. Misrix used his wings and legs together in a way that made his every move fluid and weightless. I was a crooked shadow, stumbling merely at the thought of his ease.