Gravity Box and Other Spaces (9 page)

The flap went back and Jude ducked inside with the can refilled. Steam wafted from the liquid. “Here you are.”

Devon accepted the cup.

“Where are you heading, Devon?” Jude asked.

“I was going into Cheyenne County, but we got rousted off the K.T. & S.F.”

“You have people there?”

“Not specifically.”

“Specifically.” Jude whistled with mock awe. “I love a man who's good with words, knows just the right ones to use at the right time.” He shook his head. “Harder times get, railroad bulls get less and less understanding. They don't care who you are or where you're going; they toss you off like a sack of spoiled meal.” He grinned. “Speaking of which, Devon, there's some food you're welcome to out by the fire.”

Devon locked eyes with Jude in the dim light. Suddenly Jude was a blank wall, no more than he appeared to be, a tolerant 'bo willing to share resources with another, no less suspicious, but no more willing to act on unsubstantiated fears than Devon himself.

Devon glanced at Elle but found no solution there. He nodded and crawled out of the hovel.

The moment he straightened, hands closed on his arms and shoulders. He lurched briefly, but at least four men held him. When he stopped struggling, they carried him away from the fire, into the darkness beyond the pitiful camp.

“Hey—” he grunted.

He smelled their sour breath, sweat and fear and the innumerable odors of smoke and sage—

“—wait—”

—bad food and oil and dry hay—

“—damn it—”

—blood and bile and broth—

“—let go!”

—unwashed cotton and hot rubber and old cracked leather.

They made small grumbles and exhalations as they carried him along, as though working hard at a simple, necessary task like chopping wood or scrubbing floors, long hours of which would earn them a meal and a blanket. But their grips were painful and their movements quick, one step ahead of conscience.

They stopped without warning and kicked his feet from under him. Devon knelt on hard earth while they tied his hands with a thin cord of old, frayed rope that burned and cut. Then they pulled him back to sit and gathered around him in the darkness to wait.

A short time later a light approached. Jude stepped into the circle carrying the lantern from the hovel. He looked around at the men, who, in the uncertain yellow light, all looked mildly embarrassed. One of them was Jeffin, Devon saw.

Jude placed the lantern just beyond the reach of Devon's feet and crouched down before him.

“I need a name,” he said.

“You're Jude,” Devon replied.

Jude shook his head. “No. Not quite. It doesn't work. Almost, but—I need a true name!” He scowled. “How hard can it be? You gave Lucy hers. You know the baby's, why not mine?”

Devon did not look away. In the shifting light, Jude's face seemed to waver and melt, change age, settle for a moment and then, fluidly, become another.

“I guess you've been looking for a long time,” Devon stated. “Asked a lot of people?”

“Smarter men than you, 'bo.”

“Then—”

“And every one of them more obsessed with his own intelligence than aware of his talent!”

“Who was the first?”

Jude's eyes narrowed.

“Let me guess,” Devon said. “Kircher?”

Jude snorted.

“Horapollus, then.”

“That's a good a place to start as any,” Jude allowed. “He's way too early though. I don't remember much from back then.”

“Tell me about it. Maybe I can help.”

Jude glanced around at the other hobos, who all seemed to be pointedly ignoring the conversation. He glared at Devon.

“How do you do it? Tell me.”

Devon felt himself shrug. “I look. It's clear. It just—comes.”

“That's what Francis said—” Jude stood. “I came out of the Levant, starving and faceless. I didn't have any idea what year it was, what day. I couldn't tell noon from midnight. I just walked from place to place. People ignored me for the most part, but some tried to kill me, run me off at least. I felt like I had this smell or something that they just knew, and they couldn't help it. They reacted. ‘Not their fault,' I said, ‘they don't know any better.' Times came, I went weeks without food, but I never died.”

He sat down, clasping his hands around his knees. “In Florence I found a woman who had a gift for healing. She'd look at someone and talk to them, people who suffered fits and rages, the possessed. I remembered times when those kind of people were killed, run off. Then they just got locked away. But she just talked to them, softly, no one
else could hear what she said, and they'd quiet down, and after a time they'd start leading worthwhile lives.

“I asked her how she did it, and she told me she just showed them who they really were. I asked, ‘You mean, you tell them their names?' and she said ‘yes, something like that.' ‘What's my name?' I asked. She told me I wasn't sick, that I didn't need healing. Didn't matter, I needed a name, but she never got to give me one. They came and arrested her one day. I never saw her again. I ran before they arrested me. I'd been seen in her company and people pointed at me.

“I always thought about that, though, that she said I wasn't sick, and I wondered what that had to do with it. I had need. That can make you sick, having need, never finding what you must have, never knowing what it is. I must've become sick. I wandered all over, not remembering one place from another, but I had an idea, then.

“I didn't have a name, so I took one. I was in a graveyard once, somewhere—big stones, beautiful, deeply carved, and I took a name. Don't know how I got there. The first time I ever remembered stealing. I took a name from a tomb and claimed it for my own. It wasn't mine, though, and it got me into trouble more often than not, but a little bit at a time I started changing it on my own, until I found a sound and a shape that got me into towns and let me live. I chipped at that name over the years, worked it like stone, and remade it until it felt more like my own. At least it was my creation, something I had made.”

“What was it? Jude?”

“You know better. I won't tell you. I gave it away eventually, gave to someone else, because I started finding people who could help me find my real name. Horapollus—I never knew him, only his book, but that
was the start. I found it first in the possession of Alciati. He was working on his own book then, and everyone was fascinated with ancient knowledge and wisdom and finding the true language, the original tongue, the way we spoke before Babel, and Alciati had a gift for decipherment.

“It was from him that I learned about the ones who might have helped—Horapollus, sure, but Isidore of Seville and Origen and Ambrose. But Alciati wasn't interested in naming anything or helping me. He was in love with his own thoughts, his own ideas, his own interpretations. He feared me finally and ran me off, but not before I found the trait, the telltale.

“I followed them, then, the namers, the illuminators, the lexicographers, the iconographers, the ones who see past the surfaces of things into what is. I followed them one after another, from Valariono to Ficino to Mirandola, to Bruno and Webb and Leibniz, Campanella and, yes, Athanasius Kircher, and on through Bacon and Delgarno, Lodwick, and Wilkins, Foigny and Vairasse, up through Rousseau and Diderot and Champollion.

“All of them possessed the trait, the talent, the gift, whatever you want to call it, but every damn one of them was more concerned with some lost forgotten primal tongue than with finding a truth right in front of them—or it was politics or it was religion or it was money or it was fame. None of them could tell me what I needed to know. A simple question—what is my name? I could do something if I only had myself. I could act. I could become what I needed to become, but I had to know what that was and for that I needed to know who I am called.

“I borrowed names, concocted bits, used the scraps from the workbenches of these geniuses to try to cobble one together, and now and then I'd get close. I get so close and for a short while I could do something. People would
know who I was. I could change things. I could act. But they were always temporary, names that worked for a year or a decade, and then the power would fade, and I'd realize that I still didn't have it right, and I'd try again.”

“Did you ever figure out where you came from?”

“Somewhere near the heart of the world. I told you I came out of the Levant, the Holy Land. I was beaten and burned and scarred and my mind was numb. I'd been hanged once, I think. Something had happened—for a while I thought maybe I was Icarus. I couldn't even speak then, as if I had been dropped whole into a storm that had ripped all memory from me and tore me into a thousand pieces and scattered me. I was left, not dead, somewhere—and I started wandering. I needed. That's all I knew, and it took me time to learn what I needed and sort through some of what I might have known.” He stared at Devon. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“You've been the same places I've been, haven't you?”

“Every one of them. Been to some of them first.”

Jude leaned close to Devon. “People follow me. Look at this bunch here. They've been with me now for weeks, and they'll come with me when I move and I can get more. Look at Lucy. She gives me whatever I want just for the asking, and I never had to ask more than once. Here I'm Jude, and they'll follow and others will follow. I could gather an army up this way. I could change things, make the world into something new. I can do that. But it's only for now, only for a short while, because I still don't have the right name, I still don't know what I am. Once I have my name, they'll know it too, and they'll follow forever.”

“And what would you change? What would you do?”

Jude laughed. “Just look around! Look at what the world does! You can walk into town right here, Achilles, Kansas, and see all the things that could be different!”

“You don't think you'd make things worse?”

“How could anything get worse?”

Devon smiled at him. “Oh, it can always get worse.”

“Maybe. Yes, I can see that. But it can get worse without any help, too, in fact worse because there's no help.”

Devon looked at the four hobos nearby, each one studying the dirt at his feet, and wondered what they made of the rant Jude had just delivered. Maybe they would follow him just because of his vision.

“Jeffin,” Devon said. The man looked up. “Jeffin. That's not quite right, is it? Almost. Jeff—Jeff—Jeffrin? Jeffrid. That's your name. Jeffrid.”

Jeffin-now-Jeffrid stared at Devon, eyes large and seized and suddenly alive and frightened and grateful all at once. Devon looked at the man beside him.

“You. I know you, too. Corum. And you, you're Perrinok. Right?”

Jude frowned. “What are you doing?”

Devon addressed the last hobo. “And you.” The man stood abruptly as if about to run. “Linfor.” The hobo stopped, stared at Devon. “Am I right? Linfor sounds right.”

The four hobos stood as one, then, waiting, watching Devon.

“Untie me,” Devon said. “Jeffrid?”

Jeffrid opened a penknife and cut the cord. Devon rubbed his wrists where the rope had left a deep indentation that looked black in the lantern glow.

“What about me?” Jude asked.

“Jude should be good enough,” Devon said. He stood. “I think you shouldn't tolerate this man in your company.” He pointed at Jude. “He'll bring you nothing but pain.”

“That's not true!”

“How do you know? You don't even know your own name. You don't know what you might be, but I do.” He glanced around at the hobos. “He should be cast out.”

“Wait—!”

The four men fell on Jude, who fought more than Devon. His face, already fluid, writhed in the flickering light. Spittle blew from his lips and a stream of incoherent, guttural clicks and growls emerged. Scales seemed to appear and vanish over his face and hands, down his neck.

“See?” Devon said reasonably. “He's already showing his real nature.”

“Should we kill him?” one of the hobos—Linfor—asked.

“No. I'm not sure you could. But strip him and beat him and leave him far from here.”

Spitting and screaming, Jude was dragged away from the light. Devon stood quietly, listening until he could no longer hear Jude's rage, and after a time the crickets started singing again.

There's always a reason to go somewhere, he thought.

He lifted the lantern and returned to the hovel.

Elle looked up, frightened, when Devon entered. She hugged her baby more closely, then relaxed when she saw who it was.

“Where's Jude?”

“Gone. He won't be back.”

She frowned and for a moment Devon thought she might argue. “He wasn't a bad sort. He just—assumed a lot, I guess. Took care of us, but I always knew he'd leave
someday, that he had somethin' else to do.” She watched Devon shrug out of his coat. “Did you tell him his name?”

“No. We're all better off if he doesn't know it.”

“But I thought—”

Devon lifted the can of coffee. It had cooled now, though it tasted worse.

“What did you think? That I give everyone their proper name? Now what kind of a world would it be if everyone knew who and what they were?” He smiled at her. “I only give names to people who make no difference, who are harmless. People who will never change anything, never matter, never have a say in how the world works. Once they know their names, they stop complaining so much and accept their lot in life. And they're grateful. Someday I'll have made enough of them grateful—”

Elle stared at him now and he could see the open fear. “For what?” she asked in a near whisper. “Grateful enough for what?”