The Last Revelation Of Gla'aki (7 page)

"And what shall be said of the star-signs which some claim as protection against entities no less immemorial than creation? How blurred the ancient truths become in the minds of the uninitiated What are these signs but imperfect renderings of a stage in the formation of the universe? None but the ignorant seek to invest them with power, and only the most imbecilic of the old survivals may mistake them for a hostile charm, to be cowed by them for a short while. Let the star-signs never be confused with the secret gesture of the Children of the Moon, whose true nature is disguised in many a fairy-tale. Whereas to the rudimentary minds of lesser entities the star-sign may appear to threaten a return to primal chaos, and on occasion may temporarily interfere with the ethereal sendings of the dormant masters of our world, the gesture of the Children recalls that paradisiacal state of fluidity which the Bible bids to deny with its fabricated tales about the father of the Jew. Even these betray their imperfectly veiled secrets to the initiate, for the serpent in the garden is but a symbol of fluidity, an occult promise that the upstart race and its beliefs cannot wholly trammel the potential of the world..."

Was the image on the cover meant to illustrate the gesture? Fairman had the irrational thought that it was just a human approximation; perhaps that was the kind of thing the book was meant to put into your mind. He held up his left hand and could only laugh at his pathetic attempt to describe the sign. His reflection did no better, but at least its fingers didn't twinge. It watched him until they bowed their heads over the book.

The more he read, the less he seemed to grasp, and yet he felt close to understanding, as if the incantatory prose were leading him in that direction. Of course this wasn't the original text, it was whatever Percy Smallbeam had made of it. How much did that matter? Why should it matter to Fairman at all? He could almost have imagined that he was dreaming the material, letting it take shape in his head. He had no sense of how long it took him to read to the end, where he found he was eager to continue, in case the next volume helped him understand. He shut the book and saw that darkness had gathered behind him.

Night was at the window. It had fallen more than an hour ago, according to his watch. He couldn't recall switching on the standard lamp beside him, though why should a librarian feel troubled by having been engrossed in a book? He should at least eat, and he returned the books to the safe without boxing them up. Once he'd pressed his hands against the metal door to reassure himself that it was locked, he let himself out of the room.

Janine Berry was waiting at the counter by the time he came in sight. "Will you be having our dinner?" she said.

"Would you excuse me if I just nip out for something quick so I can get back to work?"

"The work you're doing here, you mean."

"Examining what I've acquired." In case this was unclear Fairman added "Yes."

"Then we've nothing to excuse." As she took hold of the bludgeon attached to his room key her fingernails glistened, and he thought the skin around them did; she must have been painting them again. "There won't be much difference," she said. "It's all our own produce."

The glare of the streetlamps blanched the promenade and blackened the cars parked outside the hotels but left the buildings as grey as the fog that had crept back across the sea. For the moment the seafront was deserted, though Fairman heard a metallic rattle that might have belonged to a restless car on the roller coaster or a shutter at a shop window, if it wasn't the sound of the bars of a cage. He made his way past Fishing For You to another such establishment among the noisily wakeful arcades. "Trying us tonight?" said the blubbery man at the counter of Fish It Up, dabbing the infirm pallid ridges of his brow with a paper napkin. "It's the only thing to have while you're here."

"Seaside food, you mean? I expect you're right. Fish and chips for me."

He was relieved not to see the man touch the food, instead using a spade like a child's seaside toy to scoop chips out of the fryer and employing tongs to crown them with a fish. At first he'd thought the man was wearing plastic gloves, since his rudimentary nails were virtually indistinguishable from the stubby fingers. He was careful not to touch the man's hand when he paid—he still remembered vividly how the coin with which he'd tipped the porter had seemed to sink into the moist palm—and took the package from the sweating metal counter.

When he crossed the promenade to a bench he was surprised to see how many people were still on the beach, but he supposed he wasn't behaving entirely unlike them. Most were seated, which made them look as if they were protruding from the pebbly sand, and a few were lying down. He saw none of them move even slightly while he ate his dinner; in the pasty light he could have taken them for dummies that had strayed out of a waxworks. The meal was very much like last night's, with the same odd texture to the fish, but he felt as if he wasn't quite able to grasp the familiar taste. Perhaps he was too anxious to be back at the books, though he was also distracted by the sight of a supine figure on the beach lurching upright at the waist as though roused from a dream. The man's face was covered by a floppy hat, which had slipped so far down the head that Fairman could easily have imagined it had taken the face with it; there certainly appeared to be an unreasonable amount of greyish brow beneath the glistening hairless cranium. He finished his dinner as quickly as digestion would allow, while the figure stayed half upright with the hat dangling from the unseen face, and then he made some haste to the hotel.

As he reached it a chorus bade him good evening from the shelter opposite. The voices were feeble enough to add up to a single one, and they belonged to several old folk— surely not the same ones he'd seen earlier—who sat facing the Wyleave. For an absurd moment he wondered if they were about to address him by name. "Good night," he called and felt as if the chilly fog had lurched across the seafront after him.

The thump of the metal club on the counter reminded him of a gavel. "Here for good now?" Mrs Berry said.

"In for the night, if that's what you mean."

"That's good." As Fairman took the key she said "You know who to ring if you need anything at all."

Perhaps he was making too much of this, but he blurted "Isn't Mr Berry with you?"

"We don't leave Gulshaw, Mr Fairman. I think you saw him at the zoo."

Fairman was so embarrassed by his own question that he could only protest "I didn't see very much."

"The season's over for this year." As if she were reassuring a disappointed child Mrs Berry said "We promise you won't miss them."

"I appreciated your husband's help," Fairman said to leave his peevishness behind. "Please do thank him for me."

He wasn't expecting this to be met with a stare so distant he couldn't identify an expression. "Dream well, then," she said as he moved away. "Try and lose yourself."

He wondered if the state of the man in the booth at the zoo was her excuse for seeking solace elsewhere. In any case she mustn't look to Fairman. Once he'd checked the safe he hurried to the bathroom. He couldn't hear a sound in the hotel, and the silence seemed so expectant that it made him even more conscious of the noise he tried to muffle by flushing the toilet. As soon as he was able he retreated like a culprit to his room.

He left the first book in the darkness of the safe and lined up the others in front of the mirror before opening the second volume,
On the Purposes of Night.
"What is daylight but the ally of brutish creation, the progenitor of mindless growth? Let the night be celebrated as friend to the true possessors of the world. Let its powers be roused that it may reveal the nocturnal truth which lies even within men."

Did this refer to dreams? It would take more than a book to rouse any within him, although while reading he did feel as if the night was growing not just darker but more substantial—the fog, of course. The book wasn't capable of persuading him that the night was pregnant with secrets, let alone teeming with creatures best left unseen, but he was quite glad to reach the final page. He'd finished the third volume last night—however little of it he recalled, he felt as though its burden had lodged somewhere in his head—and so he turned to
Of the Secrets of the Stars,
the fourth book. "Cry out the names of the ancient constellations ..."

The night was always beyond the sky, however bright the sun strove to appear. The infinite darkness was older than time, and the stars were simply playthings that its avatar had shaped and scattered in patterns to which the universe was in the process of reverting. Fairman understood this much; at least, he saw the meaning of the words, although the further he progressed the more he felt that the book was a kind of reverie, incomprehensible to a waking mind. By the time he reached the end he was little better than asleep, and the reflections of the trinity of volumes in the mirror made him feel as if the books were dreaming of companionship. He laid the books to rest in the safe and stumbled to the window.

The old folk in the shelter raised their heads as he dragged up the sash. The beach was still peopled as well. Most of the occupants were supine, but Fairman saw a woman stand up and waddle away from the edge of the sea, leaving a rubbery cushion on which she'd been seated. The roundish object glistened and stirred feebly, having been caught by a wave. As Fairman shut the window and turned away, unenlivened by the stagnant smell he'd let into the room, he saw a man carrying a large plastic bucket down a ramp to the beach.

Fairman went to bed expecting to be kept awake by thoughts of the books, but the vision that was waiting for him to lie down in the dark came from somewhere earlier. Once more he was beset by the image of the stone cocoon, but this time he imagined the end of its wanderings. He saw it blaze like an enormous coal as it plummeted into the depths of a forest, blasting a crater many times its size and setting fire to the surrounding trees. He had to watch as it cooled and split open, a spectacle too reminiscent of the hatching of an egg. Through the fissure he glimpsed a whitish spongy lump that must be some species of face, since eyes reared up from it to peer in all directions from the crack in the meteor—two eyes and then another. He managed to avoid imagining its size until the meteor tumbled apart in huge fragments to let its contents crawl forth. The ovoid body was as vast as a cathedral, a similarity that was brought to mind by the spines protruding all over the ponderous bulk. As it used the spines to scrabble deep into the earth Fairman could almost have been watching a cathedral bury itself, and he had an uneasy sense that the idea was how his mind coped with the vision, which surely derived from one of the books he'd read. He was relieved not to see more of the face as it sank into the earth; the other sight was bad enough—the eyes withdrawing like a snail's out of the glare of the forest fire. Then there was only the expanse of disturbed earth surrounded by great flames, but it was imbued with a dreadful sense of waiting. At last the notion of settling into the earth merged with the prospect of subsiding into sleep, and that was all he knew.

A thumping sound roused him. It seemed to gain definition, growing less large and loose, as he struggled awake. Somebody was at the door. "What is it?" Fairman demanded, trying to control his slack voice. "What's wrong?"

"It's only Janine, Mr Fairman. Just wondered if you wanted to miss breakfast."

Fairman fumbled at the bedside table for his watch. From the greyish light that seeped into the room he would have taken it to be not much later than dawn, and he had to blink his eyes clear before he could believe it was almost eleven o'clock. "Good God, I've slept in," he called. "I meant to be up hours ago."

"Don't you worry even the tiniest bit. It's ready when you are."

Did he have time for breakfast? As his panic faded he saw that he would almost certainly need to stay overnight to complete the set of books. It might very well have been necessary even if he'd wakened when he should have. The thought left him feeling almost lethargically calm, no doubt because he hadn't quite woken up.

Nobody was in the bathroom or the toilet, and the corridor was deserted, though he seemed to recall having heard quite a few people come upstairs last night while he was intent on the books. Of course they would have been up and about today long before him, unless he'd imagined hearing them, and could he really have seen anybody lying or otherwise occupied on the beach last night? The breakfast room was empty, and just one couple was checking out at the desk. "See you next year," the man told Fairman, and the equally rotund wife joined in.

Fairman mumbled ambiguously and made for his breakfast table by the window. A thick curtain of fog was trailing its hem in the sea about half a mile from the promenade, and he couldn't locate the sun. Just now the sea looked no wider than a lake. As he saw that the fog had sent the old folk away from the shelter, Mrs Berry arrived with a plateful very similar to yesterday's. "Here's your favourite," she said.

He thanked her before saying "I'm afraid I'll need the room tonight as well."

"No need at all to be afraid."

She closed her mouth and then rounded her lips, suggesting that she'd realised she had more to say. If she meant to bring up dreams again, Fairman wasn't anxious to discuss them. "Would you excuse me?" he said and took out his phone. "I should make some calls."

"You do what you have to, Leonard."

The bell shrilled in his ear and continued shrilling. At last a reluctant voice said "Yes, Mr Fairman."

"Good morning, Ms Bickerstaff. Have things improved for you today?"

"Some have and some haven't. It's always like that for us here."

"Well, I'm glad to hear some have. When should I pay you a visit?"

"I still can't say."

"I thought you said the situation—"

"Nothing's changed there."

"I'm sorry to hear it. I'm obviously sorry, but I really do need—"

"Don't attempt to bully me, Mr Fairman. Some of our residents have tried that on, but it doesn't work."