The Physiognomy (14 page)

Hearing this, Calloo walked up behind the mayor and kicked him hard in the rear end. Bataldo jumped and then the two of them broke out laughing. I had no idea what I was laughing at, but I joined them.

“All right,” said the mayor, and we crested the hill and started down the other side. We no longer ran, for fear that Bataldo would give up, but we walked quickly, heading due north, pushing ever deeper into the Beyond. Each mile of forest we traversed held natural wonders never before seen by civilized man, but we could not slow to inspect any of them.

There were certain trees whose barren branches moved like arms, swiping at the birds that flew just out of their grasp. A species of diminutive deer, the very color of grass, moved in small herds off in the distance. We saw them through the trees, and when they saw us they ran away, emitting the cries of a woman with her hair on fire. Small red lizards with wings flitted from tree to tree like dragon-flies, and the songs of birds we could not see, for they flew too high, were hauntingly human. We witnessed all this in utter silence until we came to a brook where Calloo said we could rest for a minute. Then the mayor wondered aloud if we might not really have died back in Anamasobia and were wandering in the next world.

I was leaning over, taking a drink of water to ease my burning throat, when the demons came swooping down from the trees and burst out of snowbanks we had never suspected. The mayor was the first to draw his gun and shoot. He hit nothing, but the explosion frightened our attackers, and both the ones on the ground and the ones circling above flew up to the highest of the tall trees. They peered down at us, hissing and dropping branches they had torn from their perches.

Calloo lifted the rifle he was carrying, took aim, and shot one of them. Its scream was like nothing I had ever heard. The piercing nature of it tore a hole in reality as the creature plummeted to the ground. There it writhed, its barbed tail slapping the snow. We did not wait to see more but started running as fast as we could. I bounded over the brook with an agility I did not know I possessed. Calloo made it over easily, but the mayor fell into the water, having twisted his ankle when leaping from the bank. By the time we could turn back to help him, two of the creatures had him by the arms and were lifting him toward the treetops. Even as they flew, one of them had sunk its fangs in Bataldo's cheek.

Calloo reloaded in seconds, put the gun to his shoulder, and fired. He hit one of the demons in the back. The shot wasn't good enough to kill it, but it arched its spine as it screamed, releasing Bataldo's face from its jaws and letting go of him. The other demon could not support the mayor's great weight by itself and dropped him. He fell kicking and screaming from a height of twenty yards, hitting the ground stomach first. I heaved a sigh of relief when he got immediately to his feet and began hobbling toward us. He wore an expression of complete terror and his right hand was thrust forward as if leading him. No less than a dozen of the creatures left their perches.

“Run,” Calloo said to me, but I didn't. I watched as he feverishly loaded the gun. He took careful aim, but not at the descending monsters. The shot hit the mayor in the forehead and blood blossomed from the dark hole just as the first set of claws grasped at his collar.

We were off through the woods like a pair of creatures ourselves. For the longest time, I swore I heard demon wings beating above me. At any second I expected to feel a claw as hard as stone crack my head like an egg. Finally Calloo called to me that we had lost them, and I was able to stop and see there hadn't been anything at all behind me. We slowed our pace to a walk and went on till nightfall like that, never speaking.

Although Calloo knew how it was done, we did not dare to light a fire to warm ourselves. We found a spot in a thicket of trees that had grown above into an odd tangle that offered some insurance against attacks from the air. Calloo told me I should sleep first and that he would stand guard. As I lay down on the cold snow, wrapping one of the blankets we had carried around me, he began cleaning the rifle that had saved our lives. The noises of the wilderness, the weird mating calls and death screams, frightened me—but not enough to keep me awake. I fell instantly into a hard sleep.

Of course, I dreamt of Arla. Her face was clear of the ravages of my physiognomical quackery. We were in the wilderness, standing on a mountainside, gazing across a gorge at a tall craggy peak, at the top of which was a plateau where grew a resplendent garden that glowed brightly with golden light.

“Look,” she said, pointing, “we are almost there.”

“Let's hurry,” I said.

“Once we arrive, I will be able to forgive you,” she said.

Then we ran hand in hand down the mountain toward the mile-long rope bridge that reached across to paradise.

I woke suddenly to what I thought was the brightness of early morning but soon learned, after rubbing my eyes, that our thicket was ablaze with torchlight. I heard whispered voices and sat up slowly to see where they were coming from. As I moved, I felt the barrel of a gun press into my back. Across the clearing at the center of the thicket I saw Calloo, gagged, with his hands bound behind him and a rope tightened around his neck. Two of the Master's uniformed soldiers were leading him away.

“Get up,” said a voice behind me. Once standing, I was made to put my hands behind my head. The soldier kept the gun pressed into my back as we followed the torchlight of those surrounding Calloo.

We stumbled through the night for a half-hour before coming upon their camp. It was well lit by torches everywhere fixed to the trees. The Master stood before a large fire heaped high with kindling, warming his hands. Off to his left there was a metal cage containing a live demon. The thing hissed and barked and rammed its horns against the bars. The gear-work cart stood off to the right of a large tent. There must have been a hundred soldiers milling about and another fifty on the perimeter, standing guard with flamethrowers.

I was led to the Master, who sighed and said, “Cley, you are the embodiment of disappointment. It nearly breaks my heart to think of it. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Kill me,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, wrapping the cape he wore around him and shivering. “This territory is as bleak as your future, Physiognomist, First Class. You are going back to the city to face trial. Try to remember the frozen air here; it will be a pleasant respite from the heat of the sulphur mines.”

Later, I was forced to watch as he turned Greta Sykes loose on the bound and gagged Calloo. The troops stood around them in a circle, cheering and laughing as the big man kicked at the nimble wolf-girl. She took chunks of flesh out of both his legs before he toppled and she pounced on his chest. The metal bolts sparked as her snout burrowed down, shredding skin and cracking bone, to get to his heart. Every time I tried to close my eyes the Master would slap my face and make me watch. The gag prevented Calloo from screaming, so I screamed for him. Each time I bellowed, the Master would join me.

He had me ride along with him in the gear-work cart. We made our way out of the woods and were passing the charred remains of Anamasobia as the sun began to rise in the east. Our vehicle was surrounded on all sides by uniformed soldiers who marched in double time to keep up with its mechanical pace. Behind us rolled a wagon with at least three cages on it.

“Too bad you failed, Cley. It was a shame to have had to wipe out that town. Now I'm going to have to recruit new miners to work Gronus. I will mention at your trial that the increased heating costs this winter can be directly attributed to you.”

I said nothing.

“Look here,” he said, steering the cart with one hand. With the other he reached inside his cape and brought forth the white fruit. There were two distinct bite marks in it, but the rest of it was completely intact. The instant he brought it out, I could smell its sweet perfume.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, fearing what his answer might be.

“We had them before they even left the town,” he said. “The girl and her baby and that big brown fellow.”

“Are they alive?” I asked.

“Oh, I'm keeping all of them,” he said. “The girl is worth her weight in gold with that face you gave her. Simply by staring at them, she took down ten of my best men before reinforcements could get a bag over her head. The Traveler, as I believe he is called, came peacefully when he saw that we had the girl. Him, I think I will put on display in one of the malls and charge two belows apiece for anyone who wants a look.”

“What do you intend to do with the fruit?” I asked.

“First, I'm going to have it studied, and if it's free of poison and exhibits some proof for the outlandish claims made for it, I'm going to eat it to the core and plant the seeds.” He put it away inside his cape and then took out his cigarette case. “Have one,” he said, and I did.

Pressing a button on the console, the glass canopy opened back and we rode along, smoking, in the fresh cold air of the territory. We continued on without conversation for a while, the Master whistling and I contemplating my fate in the sulphur mines. Then he suddenly reached back into his cape and brought forth a portfolio stuffed with papers.

“A little something for you, Cley,” he said. “Let's say, a going-away present.” He handed it over to me.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It was meant for you, but I hope you don't mind that I took a few minutes to peruse it. I nearly split a gut reading that thing,” he said, smiling.

I took out the first page and saw that it was written in Arla's beautiful, rapid style. Dear Physiognomist Cley, it began. I soon realized that it was the notes she had assiduously been keeping on what she could remember having been told by her grandfather about the expedition. She had titled it Fragments from the Impossible Journey to the Earthly Paradise.

My trial took a week, there being fourteen physiognomists assigned to the case. Some of them had been my students and some my colleagues, but they all came forth to convince the public that I had somehow been marred by my experience in the territory. They all attested to the fact that my physiognomy had mutated into a symbolic representation of evil, which, of course, indicated that my personality was now irreparably ruined. The crowds in the Well-Built City called for my blood. I was to be executed by having my head inflated with an inert gas of the Master's discovery, resulting in its bursting like a grape.

At the scene of my execution, Drachton Below stepped in and commuted my sentence. Instead of being executed, I was to be sent to the sulphur mines on the island of Doralice in the southern latitudes of the realm.

14

I arrived at Doralice in the middle of the night, empty in both heart and head. As far as the official business of the realm was concerned, I was already deceased. My suffering in the sulphur mines was merely a formality that must run its course through the lethargic bureaucracy of torture. There was no moon, no starlight that night, so I couldn't make out any of the features of the island as we approached. I could tell from the pitching of the small ferry carrying myself and four guards that the seas surrounding my new home were angry. My keepers joked about how I would slowly, over a period of months, bake to a fine crisp and then suddenly begin to smolder, my body parts turning to salt and blowing away on the island winds.

We entered a small stone harbor that dimly glowed with torchlight. There was no welcoming committee, no soldiers to receive me. The guards helped me up onto the wharf and threw my meager bag of belongings up next to me. I was left standing there handcuffed.

“There will be someone along to get you shortly,” said one of the men as the boat pulled out into the channel. “I hope you have a fondness for the smell of shit.”

“He looks the type,” said another as they drifted slowly away from me, waving and laughing.

I stood there on the dock that had been cut from limestone. A wind blew off the ocean and I breathed deeply to see if I could detect even the slightest molecule of the fruit of paradise. As I suspected, the place was devoid of hope.

Back in the Well-Built City, while I awaited trial in my jail cell, I had used up my prodigious reserves of self-pity, crying and discussing aloud with myself how I had been wronged and how it had led me to a state of ignorance in which I had wronged others. Now I was washed up on the shores of Hell with no will left—“a blob of flesh,” as I would so aptly have put it in my previous life.

I waited for ten minutes and still no one came to take me to my cell. For a moment, I entertained the idea of trying to escape but then realized that there was nowhere to go. The waters surrounding the island—I had been told by one of the guards who had brought me—were teeming with shark and kraken, and the uninhabited parts of Doralice were home to a ravenous breed of wild dog. Both possible fates seemed more appealing than the mines, but along with my loss of self had come a sense of fatalism that eschewed action.

At that moment, I heard footsteps approaching along the dock. I looked up and saw a man with shoulder-length white hair, wearing an old military coat, the left breast covered with medals and pins. He drew closer and my first inclination was to apply the Physiognomy to him. I fought that urge and simply saw a face of folds and pouches, the eyes sunken, the nose a testament to voluminous drinking. Although he carried a drawn saber in his left hand, he did not seem at all threatening. Instead, there was a certain weariness about him.

He smiled as he approached and offered his hand to shake, but then realized I was handcuffed and said, “Good thinking.” He sheathed his sword and told me to turn around. I did as he said. Then he approached behind me, and I could feel that he was releasing my wrists.

“Good enough,” he said as he pocketed the key and cuffs. By the way he spoke, I did not think he would mind my turning back around. When I stood looking at him, he put his hand up and we shook.