Mainspring (37 page)
Authors: Jay Lake
There was music beneath Creation. It was the clangor of brass and springs and pawls and stops and jacksâthe greatest clock ever built. Every man and woman of any race was just a movement in the music, a tiny assembly within that vast train of clockwork.
Hethor let the clicking build within his ears, drawing from both the great unwinding of the world and the feverish little rattle that was Arellya, filling in all the things in between.
The stars had their own brittle, brilliant music. The moon hummed on her track, a silvery rattle much lighter than the roaring of the Earth's passage. Night's air was soft and vast. Snow scattered pin-bright upon the ground, a carpet of bright pain upon the slower-moving Earth. Each of the correct people surrounding him was their own song. All of them were in tune to one another, all their gear patterns closely allied.
His ears lost the sound of breathing, lost the worrying whistle of the wind, heard only the gearing of the world.
Everything was clockwork now, a vast sea of gears and springs and arbors and escapements and detents and shafts and wheels. Even his memories were of such things.
Hethor had good memories.
So he reached out to touch the world before him. The South Pole was a looming presence in the distance. Hethor faced that, made to part the way. A road was what he neededâa road of memory.
He stopped some wheels spinning, reset some gears, bent some escapements back, changed the length and period of certain pendulums. He made a smooth, shining road of his memory that cut through the brass jungle of cold death.
He closed his eyes, thanked God, and thought of Arellya.
HETHOR STOOD
in a field of brilliant flowers, poppies and marigolds and all the things that bloomed in a New England spring. Though there was no sun in the sky, the field was bright, and warm. Snow swirled in a deadly darkness a hundred yards to each side.
in a field of brilliant flowers, poppies and marigolds and all the things that bloomed in a New England spring. Though there was no sun in the sky, the field was bright, and warm. Snow swirled in a deadly darkness a hundred yards to each side.
Arellya limped from the still-huddled circle to hug him. “Messenger, you have done this thing.”
“I ⦔ Hethor didn't know what he could or should say. “God did it.”
“
You
did it.”
You
did it.”
Though he was in a field, the grassy marge stretched away south, topping the ridgelines and plowing through the snow in a bright band of warmth and color. A spring glistened nearby. Conies leapt and played.
“We shall drink, and eat,” he said. Or was this his dying delirium?
“To the hunt!” Arellya cried.
Though they groaned out their pain, the eight surviving young males were happy for the warmth, and desperate for the food. They ran the rabbits down.
“
I WONDER
how long it will last,” Hethor said, wiping blood from his lips. They had not been able to make a fire to cook the conies.
I WONDER
how long it will last,” Hethor said, wiping blood from his lips. They had not been able to make a fire to cook the conies.
“Do not think of that,” Arellya said. She glanced at the nearby wall of swirling snow. “Each breath here is a gift to our souls. A scrap which you were able to beg for us from God's campfire. I will live with it as long as I can.”
“Am I a sorcerer, or is God?”
“Are you concerned with the evil of other men? Do not be. Messenger, you are who you are.”
She took him by the hand, and the two of them found a gentle slope a small distance from the young males.
There they lay among the poppies and had the joy of each other's bodies one last, unexpected time.
There they lay among the poppies and had the joy of each other's bodies one last, unexpected time.
HETHOR AND
the correct people walked for days, eating flowers, hunting small animals, and drinking from springs. Where the meadow-road met an escarpment, it snaked around, up hidden ravines and sly valleys, but otherwise their progress was steadily to the south. The polar winter was always just a few hundred yards behind them, the road vanishing as they progressed along it.
the correct people walked for days, eating flowers, hunting small animals, and drinking from springs. Where the meadow-road met an escarpment, it snaked around, up hidden ravines and sly valleys, but otherwise their progress was steadily to the south. The polar winter was always just a few hundred yards behind them, the road vanishing as they progressed along it.
Each step was a cheat of death. Each breath was borrowed life. The smell of the flowers crushed beneath Hethor's feet was like stars burning in his head, each tingle a bright light. The gears were never far away either, echoing in the buzzing wings of the bees that tended the flowers, gleaming in the strange light that lit their path though all around them was howling polar darkness.
Two weeks after they had set out walking, Hethor began to hear a deep rumble underneath the whisper of the storms and the endless chatter of gears that had captured his hearing. This new noise was more measured, slower, and somehow bigger than any sound he'd heard since the great gear atop the Equatorial Wall had stolen his hearing. And perhaps his mind, Hethor had to admit.
“Do you hear it?” he asked Tiktiktee.
The correct person shook his head, a gesture copied from Hethor. “No. You have the hearing of the world, Messenger.”
“I think it is the South Pole. We approach the axle of the world.”
“Your journey is almost over.”
“Or just begun.”
THREE DAYS
later, cresting a rise, Hethor and the correct people saw the South Pole.
later, cresting a rise, Hethor and the correct people saw the South Pole.
Perhaps two more miles of the flowered highway
stretched ahead. It was lit as always by some milky version of Heaven's light though the storms and darkness swirled around them. The highway ended in a great circular meadow. In the center of the meadow a brass shaft erupted like a javelin stuck into the unyielding earth. It was about a quarter mile in diameter, and rose to vanish frost-rimed into the dark sky above.
stretched ahead. It was lit as always by some milky version of Heaven's light though the storms and darkness swirled around them. The highway ended in a great circular meadow. In the center of the meadow a brass shaft erupted like a javelin stuck into the unyielding earth. It was about a quarter mile in diameter, and rose to vanish frost-rimed into the dark sky above.
Perhaps a hundred yards up a collar was set that extended to a four-footed frame grounded at the edges of the meadow. Another hundred yards above the collar, just below the frost line where the air changed, whirled a set of weights. These were four brass balls, each larger than Master Bodean's shop building back in New Haven, which must serve to balance the shaft.
Hethor could not see upward past the weather, but he could easily imagine the shaft towering as high as the Equatorial Wall. In the endlessly bright polar summer it must be a brilliant reminder of the last withdrawal of God's finger from His Creation.
“We are here,” Hethor whispered.
“This is the end of the world?” asked Arellya as the few surviving correct people crowded around them.
“The end, the beginning.” Hethor shrugged, feeling the weight of his borrowed days of life as though they were years. “God has spared me to come to this place that I might descend beneath the Earth and pursue my errand.” The thought filled him with dread. “I ⦔
“No one ever wants to walk into the fire,” Arellya said softly, her fingers entwined with his. “But someone must, if only to save the ashes.”
Hethor had to laugh. “What does
that
mean?”
that
mean?”
Arellya laughed as well, the correct people joining in. “It is something mothers tell their children to quiet them.”
“Mothers are fools, too,” said Hethor, but his fey mood had broken.
Then the correct people began to run, eight young males who had voyaged to the bottom of the world for
him, a stranger, capering and shouting as if they had come home. They raced for the shaft. They bounded through the flowers. They stumbled together to wrestle and push in the manner of young men of every race and species.
him, a stranger, capering and shouting as if they had come home. They raced for the shaft. They bounded through the flowers. They stumbled together to wrestle and push in the manner of young men of every race and species.
Hethor stood with Arellya and smiled. He might in that moment have been a little specimen of God, and these his little men.
“We are old,” she said.
Had she read his mind?
“Your stories of the garden and the snake, these are the history of our people.”
“God created you first,” Hethor said.
“Perhaps. We do not tell it that way. You might, were you to write our words in your tongue.”
“What of the giants in the earth that the Bible speaks of?”
“The other hairy men. The ones who live upon the cliffs of the Wall. Brothers to you, almost, save that they think with their noses and eat like antelope.”
“We of the Northern Earth think with our manhood and eat like wildfires,” said Hethor.
She poked him in the hip. “That is not all a bad thing.”
Hand in hand, they ran after their little army of boys, Cains and Abels dancing in a flowered Eden in the dark heart of winter.
THEY CAMPED
near the shaft. This was the end, in more ways than one.
near the shaft. This was the end, in more ways than one.
“I fear we shall not return from here,” said Hethor.
“Surely you are not surprised in thinking that, Messenger,” replied Tiktiktee.
“Do you want your soul to linger at this pole, once the snow closes in again?”
Tiktiktee ate a mouse, thinking over the question. As he swallowed, he smiled. “If your stories are true, there is a paradise of sunlight and beauty here half the year. What
is this but the long night that comes before the bright day? My soul would rejoice for the change.”
is this but the long night that comes before the bright day? My soul would rejoice for the change.”
“Every season a day,” said Hethor, “and every day a season.” Not that it was that simple, but Tiktiktee was not far wrong, either. Hethor went on. “I must carefully examine the shaft, and possibly the legs of the collar. Somewhere here there will be a route downward into the heart of the world. This is where my journey takes me.” He looked significantly around the circle of correct people, finally resting his gaze on Arellya. “I will go alone.”
She simply smiled at him. The other correct people nodded or grunted.
“I cannot counsel you further,” Hethor went on. “There is no return from here.” The last of the flowered road had closed behind them when they entered the meadow around the shaft. “When I descend, the snows may come immediately. Or if I am killed. Even if I survive and make my return to the surface, I do not know how to leave this place.”
Tiktiktee touched Hethor's arm. “Enough, Messenger. We know these things. You owe us no apologies.”
Hethor glanced down. “It is the custom among my people to make a speaking when we set out for great danger or certain death.”
“Then speak all you want,” said Tiktiktee. “We will listen. But it is for you, not for us.”
“And I am going,” said Arellya, “though the others will stay here and watch for us until the snow takes them.”
“No!” Hethor jumped up. “It is too dangerous!”
Arellya looked around at the wall of dark and freezing night bordering the meadow. “More so than here? Our place is with each other, Hethor.”
“I won't have it.” He began to pace. “The Key Perilous is my business, the Mainspring a job given me by Gabriel. I know it will end badly. I can't be responsible for what will happen to you.”
“The time for avoiding responsibility passed many days and miles ago,” said Arellya.
“There may be fires, devils, or demons. Winged savages.” Hethor could feel his voice rising, pitching toward stinging frustration and the tears that had brought him only ridicule at New Haven Latin.
“I have faced all those things with you already on this journey.”
Arellya's calm reminded Hethor of Librarian Childress. The old woman had been unyielding in a strange way, something that still bothered him. She had upset his sense of the female kind for good, it seemed. Here Arellya was bent on shattering what remained of that upset sense.
“No,” he said. “There is no more arguing.”
She just smiled.
He lay back in the poppies and stared up at the sky. What was left to argue?
“I rest now,” he announced, meeting no one's eye. “To be ready for my journey below.” He lay for hours, flowers tickling his face, as the correct people moved around him, murmuring among themselves.
“
THE YOUNG
males have found your entrance.” Arellya lay in the poppies next to Hethor, tickling his face with her hairy fingers.
THE YOUNG
males have found your entrance.” Arellya lay in the poppies next to Hethor, tickling his face with her hairy fingers.
“I told them ⦠,” he began, then stopped.
Had he slept?
He must have.
“You told them not to come below with you. Not a one of them has set a foot upon the stairs that lead beneath the world. They merely found it for you. Are you rested, Messenger?”
“Yes,” he said, surprised to find that it was true.
She handed him the bulb from some unlucky flower. “This will help hunger. I have meat for later.”
Meat meant mice, and an occasional rabbit, but Hethor had long since lost any pretense of being fussy about his food. “Thank you,” he said. Sitting up, he split the bulb. It
tasted like a mild cousin of garlic or onion, with little strips of fiber that caught between his teeth. The food made his lips and tongue tingle as well. He paid that no mind.
tasted like a mild cousin of garlic or onion, with little strips of fiber that caught between his teeth. The food made his lips and tongue tingle as well. He paid that no mind.
It was a short walk across the poppy meadow to the shaft. Up close, the brass was like a wall. The curve was so large that it was shallow almost to the point of flatness. The shaft spun with a whirring noise that was much quieter than he had expected from the rumble he'd heard several days distant. Rotating rapidly, it stirred the air like a spring breeze. There must be a massive reduction gearing deep within the world, he realized, to translate that speed to the stately revolutions of the Earth in its orbit around the sun. Cold radiated off the surface before him, doubtless conducted downward from the immense length of the metal that protruded into the long polar night not far above his head.
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