The Physiognomy (24 page)

“Package for Physiognomist Cley,” a voice said.

My head spun as I got up and walked shakily to the door. I opened it just enough to let the package in and then closed it. “Thank you,” I called, but there was no response. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. There was no name on it, no return address. I laid it on my desk and then just sat staring at it for some time. Finally, when the effects of the beauty had nearly worn off, I opened it. The first thing I pulled out was a note written in the Master's hand.

Cley,

Here is the demon horn I promised you last night. Try to stay away from the ones that are attached to a head. If you can't, I have enclosed something to help you protect yourself. Do not go out at night until the crisis has been abated.

Drachton Below,

Master of the Realm

Inside the package I found the hard black horn of a demon. Holding it in my hand, I realized that with its weight and sharp tip, it would make an adequate weapon. Beneath it, though, wrapped in tissue paper, I discovered something far more effective—my old derringer, fully loaded, along with a box of bullets. When I put on my topcoat that evening to leave the office, I had the gun, the horn, and a scalpel, each in a different pocket. None of them was a flamethrower, but I did feel a little safer as I stepped onto the street beneath the starlit sky.

I moved with some confidence amid the sea of homebound workers. When they recognized me, they gave me that curious one-fingered salute. Upon seeing it, I smiled and lifted my middle finger to them as a show of solidarity. To my annoyance, they did not smile back, but dropped their gaze and moved off, looking disgusted. It was then that I wished I was one of them, a nobody in the crowd, living a simple life like the gardener and his fiancée.

24

The streets had emptied completely by the time I got to the munitions factory. This was one of the older parts of town that did not have gaslamps on every corner. There were no stores there to light the way with glowing signs. It was a district of manufacturing, where the Master's ideas were transformed into brass and zinc. There hadn't been a war in over thirty-five years, yet the munitions factory had triple shifts. One of the Master's greatest feats of sleight of hand was how he stored all of the rockets and bullets that were made there. As I passed by, I could hear the machines banging out shells, and the glow from the windows was as vague as twilight.

Two blocks behind the factory, I found the warehouse I thought the soldier in the mall had been talking about. It ran, windowless, nearly the length of a full block and was deep to the point where I could not see beyond it. The entrance to the place was two huge wooden doors with a loose chain attaching them. I could easily slip through the opening between them. I took out my lighter and my derringer and went into the dark crevice.

I could barely make out the rows and rows of large cribs that lined the aisle I suddenly found myself in. Next to the cribs were rolling trays of tools, gears, and wires. My lighter went out for a moment, and it took me too long to get it going again. When I held it lit over one of the cribs, I saw a near-human Below creation of metal and flesh, half-open and completely asleep.

It took me over an hour to check all of the faces for Calloo's, but I found him. He seemed to have been patched since his contest in the mall. In fact, he looked much better. The scar tissue I had noticed on his neck and chest was greatly diminished, and his arms looked as powerful as they had in the territory. I put the lighter down near his open eyes to see if there was any movement. At first I noticed nothing, but then—and I nearly burned his lashes to see it—his pupils began to contract. Then his eyes began to rapidly jiggle ever so slightly from side to side.

Five minutes later, muscles all over his body began twitching, and then the lighter went out for good. Through the darkness I heard a great commotion of rolling and quaking from the crib. I almost ran, afraid someone might hear. Suddenly it stopped and there was quiet.

“Calloo,” I whispered.

There was no answer. I tried the lighter, but it was spent. I whispered his name again and again. “It's me, Cley,” I said. But the longer I stood in the dark, the more frightened I became. I was ready to bolt in an instant when I heard his voice. The horrible sound of it set me off, and I was stumbling back down the pitch-black aisle of cribs, ramming into their corners and slamming against trays of tools. I groped along in desperation as I heard him behind me now, yelling the word he had whispered. “Paradise,” echoed through the warehouse, and I heard some of the Master's other inventions begin to stir.

Eventually I found my way back to the crevice between the doors and slipped out. The first thing I did upon gaining my freedom was throw that damnable lighter across the street. I began walking very quickly, and my breathing rushed to catch up with me. In my confusion, I took the wrong street and walked for two blocks before I realized I had not passed the munitions factory.

I tried to turn back but I was totally lost by then. Though I had changed direction and decided to push on, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that it was one of those situations where I was heading in the exact opposite direction. I thought I saw the lights of the center of the city ahead of me, but I couldn't be sure.

It seemed as if I had walked all night when I came upon a bar with a glowing sign in the window on the corner of an otherwise unlit street. The sounds of voices and music drifted out through an open window. The sight of it so relieved me, I didn't care if I was spotted after hours in a less than reputable place. I went through the door, went up to the bar, and ordered a Rose Ear Sweet with which to erase the memory of those mockeries of life, squirming and squealing with a rudimentary electromechanical awareness.

Some of the people at the bar waved to me and I waved back. I sipped my drink and tried to relax. The bartender asked if I was from the manufacturing district. I told him that I was from the center of the city.

“I thought so,” he said. “You're Cley, aren't you?”

“Physiognomist, First Class,” I said, and took a gulp of my drink.

“I read about you,” he said. “You were in the territory.”

I nodded.

“I heard paradise was out that way,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I also heard that the women in the woods outside of Latrobia have three tits,” he said, and laughed.

“I've been there too,” I said. “But I couldn't tell you one way or the other.”

The bartender liked my answer and bought me another drink on the house. He had to go and serve the other customers then, so I took to staring into the mirror behind the bar.

My nerves needed considerable calming. I was on my third drink when a woman came running into the bar, screaming, “The demon, the demon!”

The bartender rushed around to her and tried to calm her. “The demon is coming up the street,” she said.

To my surprise, most of these citizens were armed. Ownership of a gun by workers was strictly prohibited by the realm. When I saw them brandish those weapons, though, I drew my derringer and followed the crowd into the street. We instinctively formed two rows, one kneeling, one standing. I had a position in the middle of the front row. Ahead of us we could see the thing's shadow approaching.

“Hold fire,” said the bartender, who stood to the left of us, sipping from a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Schrimley's. “Wait up until we can all hit him,” he said.

The creature methodically advanced as if it had no idea we were there. I heard the sound of his hidden machinery before I saw his face. Calloo had followed me. With a sick recollection of the favor he had once done Bataldo, I aimed for his forehead. The bartender raised his arm in the air and yelled, “Ready.”

He was no more than ten yards from us when we fired. The volley hit him straight on and forced him backward three steps, but he did not fall. We heard him grunt, as if the volley had merely awakened him suddenly from a nap, and then he began advancing again. The bartender yelled, “Reload,” and that is when I stood and told everyone to hold their fire.

“This is not the demon,” I told them.

“What is it?” one of them yelled.

“Just another man in search of paradise,” I said. At that, they put down their weapons and Calloo came to stand next to me. He had about twenty holes in his city-issue overalls, and there were definite wounds, though bloodless, in his chest and arms. His face was untouched.

The patrons of the bar came over and shook his limp hand. “We're sorry,” they said, and Calloo stumbled in place and grunted. Before we headed back toward the center of the city, I gave the bartender the demon horn that Below had given me.

“Powder it and give each person here tonight a snort,” I said.

He passed me his bottle as I handed him the horn. I took a drink and passed it to Calloo. The bartender said, “You don't snort this shit, you shoot it.” I wasn't sure if he was speaking literally or figuratively, but we had no time to ponder it. Calloo moved slowly, and it was a race against the sun to get him back to my apartment before the streets filled with workers.

It was entirely bizarre, but the only person we passed on the way happened to be the cleaning woman from the Top of the City. She smiled and waved, and I waved back. “Up early, your honor,” she said, and then gave me a sign with her left hand, an O formed by the thumb and middle finger. I returned the sign and Calloo tried.

After that encounter, I prodded him to move a little faster. We made it to my apartment just before the streets filled with workers. I led him to my bedroom and had him lie on the bed.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

He said nothing but blinked his eyes.

“I have to go out to work,” I said. “Do you understand?”

He blinked again.

“If anyone comes to the door, hide in the closet. If they discover you, kill them. Do you understand?” I asked.

He blinked.

As I made out the new day's appointment cards, I noticed that he was blinking quite a lot and began to question whether he had actually understood my instructions. I got dressed and armed myself with the derringer. I was just putting on my topcoat when someone knocked at my door.

“Who is it?” I called.

“The Master requests your presence,” said a voice. “There is a coach waiting.”

I looked into the bedroom and saw that Calloo had not moved off the bed. “Get in the closet,” I said.

“Paradise,” he mumbled but remained still.

I left with the coachman, and it seemed only minutes before I was across town in an elevator on the way up to the Master's offices. As I walked down the hall of hardened heroes, my mind was ablaze with fabulations and excuses for Below, but when I pushed through the door of his office, they twisted together and strangled each other. I stood, empty-headed before him. He sat with his elbow resting on the desk and a hand clutching his forehead. The expression he wore was grimmer than Calloo's.

“Sit down, Cley,” he said, waving me into the chair.

There was a long pause, in which he closed his eyes.

“Did you hear about the demon?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He started to laugh. “That's right,” he said. “I sent that note to you.”

“Have you captured it?” I asked.

“Captured it,” he said, “I was the one who let it go. I realized that change requires access to random possibility, so I released the demon into the city. He is your competition. As you methodically gather the unworthy for expungement, he kills them as he sees them. I'm thinking big, Cley, very big.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “By the way, I much appreciated your gifts.”

He waved his hand at me and shook his head. “What I've called you here for is to discuss these headaches I've been getting ever since I ate that white shit of the wilderness. My, was that a mistake. Stomach pains and these blasted headaches.”

“I have some familiarity with chemistry,” I said. “What were the ingredients your researchers found in it?”

“Who knows,” he said.

“Can you describe the pains?” I asked.

“Like a fist squeezing my brain,” he said. “I can feel that it is projecting energy from my head. Never before has the Well-Built City of my imagination seemed so inextricably tied to the physical City we now inhabit. These attacks make it hard to distinguish between the two.”

“I can't think of what that might be,” I told him.

“How is your special assignment coming?” he asked.

“I read a group yesterday afternoon and already have some participants for the Memorial Park affair,” I said.

“Excellent work,” he said, clutching at his head again. When he didn't speak for quite some time, I started to get up to leave. As I made for the door, he stopped me.

“Cley,” he said, not looking up, “keep that leather glove of yours clean.” He began to laugh, but soon it quieted into a wince.

By the time I got to the office, the morning was gone. I had just enough time to send out some appointment cards by messenger. I gave instructions that they should be distributed to the Minister of the Treasury and all the members of his family.

I longed for the beauty, but I did not take it. Instead, I smoked and stared out the window, trying to wrap my mind around the Master's gibberish about random possibility and the demon being my competition. He did not appear well at all, which was a blessing for me. I knew I would have to take bolder and bolder steps to get where I wanted to be, and to have Below distracted could only be beneficial. Then the Minister of the Treasury and his family arrived.

The minister was heavy and sweating profusely as I put him through his paces. Calipers, cranial radius—every tool I had in my bag. As I worked away, I praised his features and told him he was remarkable. He spoke of his accomplishments and his importance to the realm. I duly noted in my book the elegance of his third chin. I offhandedly questioned him about the treasures brought back from the territory.