Beyond the Farthest Suns (12 page)

“Once upon a time,” I said, focusing ahead of me at no space in particular, and smiling confidently, “a young man on a luxury cruise was caught in a horrible shipwreck, stranded on a desert island with nobody and nothing but a crate of food and water, and a crate of unopened packs of playing cards.”

I brought out a deck of cards and peeled away the plastic. “I was that young man. I knew nothing of the magical arts, but in three solitary years I taught myself thousands of manipulations and passes and motions, until I felt I could fool even myself at times. And how was this done? How does a magician, knowing all the methods behind his effects, come to believe in magic?”

I swallowed a lump in my throat and leaped into the abyss.

“In those three years, I learned to make cards
confess
.” I riffled the deck of cards and formed a rippling mouth, and with one finger strummed the edges.

“We spoke to each other,” the cards said in a breathless stringy voice. “And Cardino taught us all we know.”

I produced another deck, opened it with one hand, removed the cards and arranged them on my palm, and made them speak as well, in a
female
voice: “And we taught him all that we know.”

I squeezed both decks up in a double arc and caught them in opposite hands. From the top of each deck I produced a Queen of Hearts, and clamped the two cards together in my teeth. “I learned the secrets of royalty,” I said through clenched jaws. Holding the decks in one hand, separated by my pointing finger, I plucked the cards from between my teeth and revealed them as two jacks. “The knaves whispered to me of court intrigues, and the kings and queens taught me the secrets of their royal numbers.”

In my hands, the two cards quickly became a pair of threes, then fives, then sevens, then nines, and then queens again. “Finally, I was rescued.” I riffled the decks together, blowing through them to make the sound of a ship's horn. “And returned to civilization. And there, I practiced my new art, my new life. And now, having returned from that island called
death
, where all magic must begin—”

I looked around me, unsure what effect my next request would have. “I call for volunteers, who wish to learn what I have learned.”

The overgrown chamber whispered and lights passed among the fibrous growths like lanterns on far shores. Five figures appeared in the chambers then: Wont, Cant, Shant, Mustnt, and Dont. Cant approached first, smiling her most wistful and attractive smile. “I volunteer,” she said.

Roderick, standing in the background, his feet almost rooted to the floor by thick cables of fiber, lifted his hands in overt approval. Why encourage those he loathed—those who shackled him with so many strictures?

Was he flaunting the strength of his chains, like Houdini?

“Am I a physical person?” I asked Cant, dismissing all questions from my thoughts.

“Yes,” she said. “Very.”

“Am I the last untouched human on this world?”

“In this house, to be sure.”

“Do I have a connection with any of the external powers that can make things appear and disappear, make illusions by wish alone?”

“You do not subscribe to any services,” Cant said. “This we guarantee, as antitheticals.”

I hesitated just a moment, and then took her hand. She felt solid enough—like real flesh. “Are
you
real?” I asked.

“Who can say?” she replied.

“Is your form solid enough to forego false illusions, illusions of will isolated from body?”

“I can do that, and guarantee it,” Cant said. Her companions took attitudes of rapt attention.

“It is guaranteed,” they said as one.

I began to get some sense of what their function was then, and how they constrained Roderick. What would they do to constrain me?

“If I told you there were cards rolled up in your ears, what would you say?”

“All things are possible,” Cant said musically, “but for you, that is not possible.”

I held my hand up to her ear and drew out a rolled-up card, making sure to tap the auricle and the opening to the canal. She reacted with some puzzlement, then delight.

“You have doubtless been told that in the past, illusion was possible only through tricks. Tell me, then—how do I perform such tricks?”

“Concealment,” Cant said, prettily nonplused.

I showed her my hands, which were empty, then removed my coat, dropping it to the floor, and rolled up my sleeves. I pulled another card from her other ear, unrolled it, showing it to be ruined as a playing card, then converted it to a cigarette by pushing it through my fist.

“Everyone can do that,” Cant said, her smile fading. “But you—”

“I can't do such things,”
I said with a note of triumph. “I am an atavism, an innocent, an anachronic … A
lich
.” I held out the cigarette. “Does anybody smoke anymore?” I asked. The five did not speak. Roderick shook his head in the shadows. “I didn't think so. King Nerve needs no chemical stimulants. All drugs are electronic. There is no one else on this planet—or in this house, at least—who can make the world dance, the
real
world. Except me—and I was taught by the cards.”

The remaining antitheticals came forward. Musnt, as it happened, unknowingly carried a deck of cards in the pockets of his solid but unreal dinner jacket. Producing a fountain pen, I had him mark his name on the edge of the deck, grateful that these phantoms could still write, and blew upon the ink to help it dry. “These cards have friends all over the world, and they tell tales. Have you ever heard cards whisper?” I patted the deck firmly into his hands. “Hold these. Don't let them go anywhere.” I borrowed his jacket and put it on Dont, helping her into the sleeves with courtesy centuries out of date. The cuffs hung over her hands.

“Hold up your deck of cards, please,” I said to Musnt. He lifted the cards, his face betraying anticipation. I was grateful for small favors.

“I believe you have a set of pockets on the outside of your jacket,” I told Dont. “Investigate them, please.”

She reached into the pockets and removed two cellophane-wrapped decks of cards.

“Sneaky devils, these cards. They go anywhere and everywhere, and listen to our most intimate words. You have to be discreet around playing cards. Open the decks, please.”

She pulled the cellophane from one deck. On the edge of the deck was the awkward scrawl of Musnt, written in fountain pen. Musnt immediately looked at his deck. The edges were blank.

Fibers formed curious worms and squirmed closer, lights pulsing.

“The other deck, now,” I told Dont. She unwrapped the second deck, and there, in fountain pen, was written,
Wont.

“Hand the deck to the person whose name is written on the side,” I said. She passed the deck to Wont.

“Write on the other side your name and any number,” I told Wont, giving him the pen. “And then, on a card within the deck, write the name of anybody in this room—in big, sloppy, wet letters. Show the card to everybody
except
me, and put it within the deck and press the deck together firmly.”

He did this.

“Now give the deck to Cant.”

He passed the deck to her. “How many decks do you carry now?” I asked. She reached into her pockets and found two more decks, which she handed to me, keeping Wont's deck with his name written on it.

“Now find the card on which Wont has written, and the card immediately next to it, smeared with the wet ink from that card. Write your name on the face of that card, and another number. Show them to everybody but me.”

She did so.

“How many decks do we all have now?” I asked.

I went among them, counting the decks presently in circulation—five. I redistributed the decks one to each of the five Negatives.

“The cards have told each other all about you, and you have no secrets. But I am the master of the cards—and from
me
not even the cards have secrets!”

I reached behind their ears, one by one, and pulled the cards that had been written on, with the names Cant, Musnt, Dont, and Wont. “The gossip of the cards goes full circle,” I said. “Show us your decks!”

On the top of each deck, the cards bearing the suit and number of the written-on cards—for all had been number cards—appeared, bearing a newly written number, and a new name—
Cardino.

The Negatives seemed befuddled. They showed the cards to each other and to the questing fibers.

They had forgotten the art of applause, and the fibers were silent, but no applause was necessary.

“How is this done?” Musnt asked. “You must tell …”

I pitied them, just as a caveman might pity a city slicker who has lost the art of flint knapping. From the beginning of their lives to the present moment, they had truly fooled nobody. They had lived lives of illusion without wonder, for always they could explain how things were done.

All their magic was performed by silent, subservient, electronic demiurges.

“Turn to the last card in your decks,” I said. “Show me who is King.”

On every one of their decks, the King of Hearts was inscribed with two names. They held the cards out simultaneously. Each Negative carried a card bearing his or her name, and in larger letters, RODERICK ESCHER.

The fibers seemed to give a mighty heave. Roderick came forward, and I saw the fibers fleeing from his legs, his suit, his face and skin.

The Negatives turned to each other in confusion. Cant giggled. They compared their decks, searched them. “They're made of matter,” Wont said. “They aren't false—”

“Tricks,” Shant said.

“Can
you
do them?” Wont asked.

“In an instant,” Shant said. Cards fluttered down around him, twisted, formed a tall mannequin and danced around us all. The fibers withdrew from around him as if singed by flames.

“Not the point,” Roderick said, free of fibers now. “You can do anything you want, but you
subscribe
. Cardino does these things by himself, alone.”

The fibers bunched around my feet. Shant made his cards and the mannequin vanish. “How?” he asked, shrugging.

“Skill,” Roderick said.

“Skill of the body,” Shant said haughtily. “Who needs that?”

“Self-discipline, training, years of concentrated effort,” Roderick said. “Isn't that right, Cardino?”

“Yes,” I said, the confidence of my performance fading. I was caught in a game whose rules I could not understand. Roderick was using me, and I did not know why.

“Nothing any of us can experience compares to what this man does all by himself,” Roderick continued.

The five froze in place for a moment. I could see some change in their structure, a momentary fluctuation in their illusory shapes.

Roderick lifted his arms and stared at his body. “I'm free!” he said to me in an undertone, as if confiding to a priest.

“What's all this about?” I asked.

“It's about skill and friendship and death,” Roderick said.

The five began to move again. The fibers touched my shoes, the hem of my pants. Instinctively, I kicked at them, sending glowing bits scattering like sparks. They recoiled, toughened, pushed in more insistently.

“My time is ending,” Roderick said. “I've done all I can, experienced all I can.”

The five smiled and circled around me. “
They
favor you,” Cant said, and she bent to push a wave of growing fibers toward my legs. I backed off, kicked again without effect, shouted to Roderick,

“What do they want?”

“You,” Roderick said. “My time is done. Maja is dead; I go to follow her.”

I turned and ran from the room, sliding on the clumps of fibers, falling. The fibers lightly touched my face, felt at my cheeks, prodded my lips as if to push into my mouth, but I jumped to my feet and ran through the door. Roderick followed, and behind him a surge of fibers clogged the door.

Wherever I ran in the house, eager fibers grew from the walls, the floor, fell from the ceiling, like webs trying to ensnare me. Cant appeared in a twisted hallway ahead. I fell to my hands and knees, staring as the floor twisted into a corkscrew, afraid I would pitch forward into the architectural madness.

Dr. Ont appeared, shoulders dipped in failure, hands beseeching to explain. “Roderick, do not—”

“It is done!” Roderick cried.

A cold wind flowed down the hall, conveying a low moan of endless agony. Roderick helped me to my feet, his thin fingers cold even through the fabric of my suit.

“Can you feel it?” he whispered to me. “King Nerve has released me. I'm dying, Robert!” He turned to Dr. Ont. “I'm dying, and there's nothing you can do! I know all the permutations! I've experienced it all, and
I am bored
.
Let me die!”

Dr. Ont stared at Roderick with an expression of infinite pity. “Your sister—”

Roderick gripped my shoulders. “We are walled in like prisoners by the laziness of gods, all desires sated, all refinements exhausted. Let them crown the new master!”

The moaning grew louder. Behind Dr. Ont, Roderick's sister appeared, even more haggard and pale, the feeblest energy of purpose animating a husk, her dry and shrunken mouth trying to speak.

Dr. Ont stood aside as Roderick saw her. “Maja!” Roderick cried, holding up his hands to block out sight of her.

“Still alive,” Dr. Ont said. “I was wrong. She cannot die. We have all forgotten how.”

The five brushed past Roderick, smiling only at me.

“The House of Escher loses all support,” Cant said, lightly brushing my arm. “The flow is with you. The world wants you. You will teach them your experience. You will show them what it feels to be
skilled
and to have fleshly talents, to
work
and
touch
in a primal way. Roderick was absolutely correct—you are a marvel!”