Weaveworld (72 page)

The bullet hit his shoulder, and he was thrown backwards, landing amongst flowers that had not existed thirty seconds before. He saw droplets of his blood rise over his head, as if claimed for the sky. He let the puzzle go. There was only energy enough to hold onto one problem at a time, and he had to make life his priority.

His hand went to the wound, which had shattered his clavicle. He put his palm against the hole to stop the blood coming, as the pain spread down across his body.

Above him, the clouds roiled on, thundering; or was the clamour he heard only in his head? Groaning, he rolled onto his side, to see if he could get a glimpse of what Shadwell was up to. The pain almost blinded him, but he fought to focus on the building up ahead.

Shadwell was entering the Temple. There was no guard at the threshold; just an archway in the brick, through which he was disappearing. Cal inched himself up onto two knees and a hand – the other still clamped to his shoulder – and from there got to his feet, and began to stagger towards the Temple door to claim the Salesman from his victory.

2

What Shadwell had told Mooney was true: he had no wish to shed blood in the Gyre. The secrets of Creation and Destruction dwelled here. If he’d needed confirmation of that fact he’d seen it spring up beneath their feet: a fabulous fecundity which brought with it the promise of heroic decay. That was the nature of any exchange – a thing gained, a thing lost. He, a salesman, had learned that lesson as a stripling. What he sought now was to stand beyond such commerce, inviolate. That was the condition of Gods. They had permanence, and purpose everlasting; they could not be spoiled in their prime, nor shown wonders only to have them snatched away. They were eternal, unchanging, and here inside this bald citadel he would join that pantheon.

It was dark over the threshold. No sign here of the shining
earth outside; just a shadowy passageway, its floor, walls and ceiling built of the same bare brick, without mortar between. He advanced a few yards, his fingertips running over the wall. It was an illusion, no doubt, but he had a curious sensation walking here: that the bricks were grinding upon each other, as his first mistress had ground her teeth in her sleep. He withdrew his fingers from the walls, advancing to the first turn in the passage.

At the corner, a welcome discovery. There was a light source somewhere up ahead; he would not have to stumble in darkness any further. The passage ran for forty-five yards or so, before making another ninety-degree turn.

Again, it was the same featureless brick; but half way down it he was presented with a second archway, and stepping through found himself in an identical corridor, but that it was shorter by twice the breadth of the first. He followed it, the light brightening, around one corner and along another bare passage, then around a second corridor which again had a door in it. Now he grasped the architect’s design. The Temple was not one building but several, set within each other; a box containing a slightly smaller box which then contained a third.

The realization unnerved him. The place was like a maze. A simple one, perhaps, but nevertheless designed to confound or delay. Once again he heard the walls grinding, and pictured the whole construction closing in on him, and he suddenly unable to find his way out before the walls pressed him to bloody dust.

But he couldn’t turn back now; not with the luminescence tempting him to turn one more corner. Besides, there were noises reaching him from the world outside: strange, disfigured voices, as if the inhabitants of some forgotten bestiary were prowling around the Temple, scraping at the brick, padding across the roof.

He had no choice but to press on. He’d sold his life away for a glimpse of Godhood; he had nothing to return to now but the bitterest defeat.

Forward then, and to Hell with the consequences.

3

As Cal came within a yard of the Temple door his strength gave out.

He could no longer command his legs to bear him up. He stumbled, throwing out his right arm to prevent his falling too heavily, and hit the ground.

Unconsciousness claimed him, and he was grateful for it. Escape lasted seconds only however, before the blackness lifted, and he was delivered back into nausea and agony. But now – and not for the first time in the Fugue – his blood-starved brain had lost its grasp on whether he was dreaming, or being dreamt.

That ambiguity had first visited him in Lemuel Lo’s orchard, he remembered: waking from a dream of the life he’d lived to find himself in a paradise he’d only ever expected to encounter in sleep. And then later, on Venus Mountain, or beneath it, living the life of planets – and passing a millennium in that revolving state – only to wake a mere six hours older.

Now here was the paradox again, at death’s door. Had he awoken to die?; or was dying true wakefulness? Round and round the thoughts went, in a spiral with darkness at its centre, and he fleeing into that darkness, wearier by the moment.

His head on the earth, which was trembling beneath him, he opened his eyes and looked back towards the Temple. He saw it upside down, the roof sitting in a foundation of clouds, while the bright ground shone around it.

Paradox upon paradox, he thought, as his eyes drifted closed again.

‘Cal.’

Somebody called him.

‘Cal.’

Irritated to be summoned this way, he opened his eyes only reluctantly.

It was Suzanna who was bending over him, saying his name. She had questions too, but his lazy mind couldn’t grasp them.
Instead he said:

‘Inside. Shadwell …’

‘Hold on,’
she told him. ‘You understand me?’

She put his hand on her face. It was cool. Then she bent down and kissed him, and somewhere at the back of his skull he remembered this happening before; his lying on the ground, and her giving him love.

‘I’ll be here,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘You’d better be,’ she replied, and crossed to the door of the Temple.

This time, he did not let his eyes close. Whatever dream waited beyond life, he would postpone its pleasure ‘til he saw her face again.

III

THE MIRACLE OF THE LOOM

utside the Temple, the quake tremors were worsening. Inside, however, an uneasy peace reigned. Suzanna started to advance down the darkened corridors, the itching in her body subdued now that she was out of the turbulence, in this, the eye of the hurricane. There was light ahead. She turned a corner, and another, and finding a door in the wall, slipped through into a second passageway, as spartan as the one she’d left. The light was still tantalizingly out of reach. Around the next comer, it promised; just a little further, a little further.

The menstruum was quiet inside her, as though it feared to show itself. Was that the natural respect one miracle paid to a greater? If so, the raptures here were hiding their faces with no little skill; there was nothing about these corridors suggestive of revelation or power: just bare brick. Except for the light. That coaxed her still, through another door and along further passageways. The building, she now realized, was built on the principle of a Russian doll, one within another.
Worlds within worlds.
They couldn’t diminish infinitely, she told herself. Or could they?

Around the very next corner she had her answer, or at least part of it, as a shadow was thrown up against the wall and she heard somebody shouting:

‘What in God’s name?’

For the first time since setting foot here, she felt the ground vibrate. There was a fall of brick dust from the ceiling.

‘Shadwell,’ she said.

As she spoke it seemed she could see the two syllables –
ShadWell
– carried along the corridor towards the next door. A fleeting memory came too: of Jerichau speaking his love to her; word as reality.

The shadow on the wall shifted, and suddenly the Salesman was standing in front of her. All trace of the Prophet had gone. The face revealed beneath was bloated and pale; the face of a beached fish.

‘Gone,’ he said.

He was shaking from head to foot. Sweat droplets decorated his face like pearls.

‘It’s all gone.’

Any fear she might once have had of this man had disappeared. He was here unmasked as ludicrous. But his words made her wonder.
What
had gone? She began to walk towards the door he’d stepped through.

‘It was
you –’
he said, his shakes worsening.
‘You
did this.’

‘I did nothing.’

‘Oh yes –’

As she came within a yard of him he reached for her, his clammy hands suddenly about her neck.

‘There’s nothing there!’
he shrieked, pulling her close.

His grip intended harm, but the menstruum didn’t rise to her aid. She was left with only muscle power to disengage him, and it was not enough.

‘You want to see?’ he screamed into her face. ‘You want to see how I’ve been cheated?
I’ll show you!’

He dragged her towards the door, and pitched her through into the room at the heart of the Temple: the inner sanctum in which the miracles of the Gyre had been generated; the powerhouse which had held the many worlds of the Fugue together for so long.

It was a room some fifteen feet square, built of the same naked brick as the rest of the Temple, and high. She looked up to see that the roof had a skylight of sorts, open to the heavens. The clouds that swirled around the Temple roof shed a milky brightness down, as if the lightning from the Gyre was
being kindled in the womb of troubled air above. The clouds were not the only movement overhead, however. As she gazed up she caught sight of a form in the corner of the roof. Before her gaze could focus on it. Shadwell was approaching her.

‘Where is it?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the Loom?’

She looked around the sanctum, and discovered now that it was not entirely bare. In each of the four corners a figure was sitting, gazing towards the centre of the room. Her spine twitched. Though they sat bolt upright on their high-backed chairs, the quartet were long dead, their flesh like stained paper on their bones, their clothes hanging in rotted rags.

Had these guardians been murdered where they sat, so that thieves could remove the Loom unchallenged? So it seemed. Yet there was nothing in their posture that suggested a violent death; nor could she believe that this charmed place would have sanctioned bloodshed. No; something else had happened here –
was happening still, perhaps
– some essential point both she and Shadwell could not yet grasp.

He was still muttering to himself, his voice a decaying spiral of complaint. She was only half-listening; she was far more interested in the object she now saw lying in the middle of the floor. There it lay, the kitchen knife Cal had brought into the Auction Room all those months ago; the commonplace domestic tool which the look between them had somehow drawn into the Weave, to this very spot, the absolute centre of the Fugue.

Seeing it, pieces of the riddle began to slot together in her head. Here, where the glances of the sentinels intersected, lay the knife that
another
glance – between herself and Cal – had empowered. It had entered this chamber and somehow cut the last knot the Loom had created; and the Weave had released its secrets. All of which was well and good, except that the sentinels were dead, and the Loom, as Shadwell kept repeating, was gone.

‘You were the one,’ he growled. ‘You knew all along.’

She ignored his accusations, a new thought forming. If the
magic
had
gone, she reasoned, why did the menstruum hide itself?

As she shaped the question Shadwell’s fury drove him to attack.

‘I’ll kill you!’
he yelled.

His assault caught her unawares, and she was flung back against the wall. The breath went out of her in a rush, and before she could defend herself his thumbs were at her throat, his bulk trapping her.

‘Thieving bitch,’ he said. ‘You cheated me!’

She raised her hands to beat him off, but she was already growing weak. She struggled to draw breath, desperate for a mouthful of air even if it was the flatulent breath he was expelling, but his grip on her throat prevented so much as a mouthful reaching her. I’m going to die, she thought; I’m going to die looking into this curdled face.