The Road to Amber (15 page)

“That will be a long journey.”

“Not really. Not as I shall conduct it.”

“By some employment of the string? You can do that?” He nodded. “How did you gain such control over a thing like that?”

“As you said, Alice, I know too much.”

…B
ut wait. Now they are back. Her arm still extends above the waters of my lake. Likely but some trick of the interface, some roving particle’s hit within the microcircuitry, that fogged the transfer. They come now into my world, wet white garment clinging to the well-remembered contours of her form—nipples above their orbs, curves of hip and back and buttocks, shoulders, thighs—ripe for the delicate raking of claws. And the man, he is more muscular than first I thought. A lover, then, perhaps. Then to see those muscles flex when the skin has been removed to the waist…there is that to fill the air with the music of outcry and weeping. Dead Alices, give them a song as they come ashore, of welcome to their new home, through crystal forest beneath a sky of perfect blue. How long from that then to this now? Centuries. As entropy here rockets to the sharp curves of my architecture, the contours of its form rake of my desire. The arrow of time passes and returns down sharp geodesics, pierces memory to the rage, impales rage that the love may flow. Why did you come back, form of hatred and its opposite? You will tell me, upon the ground I have prepared for you, tell, to the chorus of your sisters beneath a bleeding sky. But we must not rush these things, Alice, my last. For when you are done the ages will be long, the glory of your exposed architecture a piece of frozen time, distributed in monument about the crying landscape. Come back to the Killing Ground, Alice, my love. I’ve many a present to gift you there, the entire universe our angel of record against the long dark time. Set foot upon the shore and find your way. The ladies sing your nuptials in the Place of Facing Skulls.

K
alifriki dropped the anchor and struck the sails of their boat, as Alice moved to the bow and begin singing in a lilting language he did not understand. The beginning morning’s light touched the waves with flecks of gold and a cool breeze stirred her zebra hair upon her shoulder. He leaned against the gunwale and watched her as he listened. After a time the boat rose with a long, slow swell, subsiding only gradually. Her voice went out across the water, vibrated within it, and suddenly her eyes widened, reminding him of one of the Acropolis Maidens, as the water roiled to starboard and a curving, burnished form surfaced there like the back of some great, mysterious sea creature rising to meet the day.

He stirred himself, fetching a pole with a hook affixed to its end to grapple them closer to the bronzed surfaces. He glanced back at her before he used it, and she nodded. Reaching then, he caught it within one of the stair-like projections which had rippled into being upon its side, leading up to a hatch. He drew them nearer until he felt the scraping of their hull upon metal.

“Grown, not fabricated,” he remarked.

“Yes,” she replied, moving forward.

He held the grapple until she had crossed over to the alien vessel’s companionway. Then he set it aside and followed.

By the time he came up behind her she had the hatch open. She entered and he looked down in to a lighted interior, down to a soft green deck which might be covered with tailored grasses, furniture built into niches in contoured walls without corners.

Entering, he descended. Barely visible scenes flashed across surfaces he passed. A small vibration communicated itself to him, through the floor, through the air. They passed rooms both bright and muted, traversing corridors with windows that seemed to open upon alien landscapes—one, where red, treelike forms scrambled across an ebony landscape beneath a double sun causing him to pause and stare, as if remembering.

At length, she halted before a tan bulkhead, manipulated a hatch set within it, flung it open. Stack upon stack of small golden bars lay within the revealed compartment, gleaming as through a hint of green haze.

“Take all you want,” she said.

“I want another bag such as the first, for the transaction of which I spoke,” he told her, “and another after that for the first half of my fee. I will claim the final payment when the job is done. But we can collect these on the way out. I wish to view the source of the ship’s power now.”

“Come this way.”

He followed her farther into the vessel’s interior, coming at last to a circular chamber where watery visions appeared around the walls, including one of the underside of his boat, off to his right.

“This is the place,” Alice said.

Kalifriki did not see what she did, but suddenly the floor became transparent and far beneath his feet it seemed that something pulsed darkly. There came a dizziness and he felt drawn toward the center of the room.

“Open it,” he said.

“Move back two paces, first.”

He obeyed. Then the floor opened before him, the section where he had been standing dropping to become three steps leading down to a narrow well. Its forward wall housed a clear compartment within which he seemed to feel the presence of something drawing him. He descended the steps.

“What are the dangers? What are the safeguards?” he asked.

“You are safe where you are,” she answered. “I can open the panel and give you a closer look.”

“Go ahead.”

It slid back and he stared for a moment.

“How would you manipulate it?” he asked.

“Forcefield pressures against its container,” she replied.

He shook out a strand of the Thread from his wrist, snaked it about the opening several times, withdrawing it slowly on each occasion.

“All right, I can work with this,” he said a little later.

“Seal it in again.”

The compartment closed before him.

“…Pure carbon crystal lattice, antigrav field webbed throughout,” he said as to himself “Yes. I saw something like this managed once, a long time ago.” He turned and mounted the stair. “Let’s go in and get the gold. Then we can head back.”

They withdrew the way they had come in, returning to the boat with two heavy sacks. The vessel’s hatch secured, she sang it back beneath the waves. The sun stood now fully risen, and birds dipped toward the waters about them as he weighed the anchor and set the sails.

“Now?” she said.

“Breakfast,” he replied.

“Then?” she asked.

“India,” he said.

N
ow the monk has fully entered my world, following her. Suddenly, things are no longer as they have been. Things are no longer right. Things seem to collapse like strange wave functions about him as he passes. Yet nothing seems really changed. What has he brought with him into my world, that I feet uneasy at his presence here? Is it a kind of turbulence? Is it that I am spinning faster? It would be hard to tell if my spin state were affected. Where did she find him? Why did she bring him? An aged tree reaches the end of its growth and shatters as he goes by it. I do not believe I like this man, shuffling unseeing through my gardens of crystal and stone. Yet perhaps I shall like him a great deal when the time comes. Such feelings are often close akin. In the meantime, it is always amusing to observe when a new thing comes to this place. My
arbor decapitant
awaits, but fifty paces ahead. She knows of it, of course. All of the Alices learned of it, the first the hard way. Yet it is good sport to see such things do their business. Yes, he will be all right. New blood must be brought to the game from time to time, else there is no bite to it. I will let them play through, to the end of her knowledge…

I
n Maharajah Alamkara’s palace ofwhite marble they were feasted and entertained with music and dance, for Kalifriki had once done some work for that ruler involving a phantom tiger and some missing members of the royal family. Late into the evening a storyteller regaled them with an almost unrecognizable version of the event.

The following day, as Kalifriki and Alice walked amid walls of roses in the royal gardens, the chamberlain, Rasa, sent for them to discuss the business to which Kalifriki had alluded the previous evening.

Seated across the counting table from the heavy dark man of the curled and shiny mustaches, they beheld the stone known as the Dagger of Rama, displayed on a folded black cloth before them. Almost four inches in length, it was broad at the base, tapering upward to a sharp apex; its outline would be that of a somewhat elongated isosceles triangle, save that the lower corners were missing. It was perfectly clear, without a hint of color to it. Kalifriki raised it, breathed upon it. The condensation of his breath vanished immediately. He scrutinized it then through a glass.

”A perfect stone,” Rasa said. “You will find no flaws.”

Kalifriki continued his examination. “It may hold up long enough,” he said to Alice in Greek, “if I frame it appropriately, using certain properties of the Thread to control external considerations.”

“A most lovely stone for your lady to wear between her breasts,” Rasa continued. “it is sure to influence the
chakra
of the heart.” He smiled then.

Kalifriki placed a bag of gold upon the table, opened it, poured forth its contents.

Rasa picked up one of the small bars and studied it. He scratched it with his dagger’s point and measured it, turban bobbing above the gauge. Then he placed it upon a scale he had set up to his left and took its weight.

“Of great purity,” he remarked, tossing it back upon the table. Then he raised several of the bars from the pile and let them fall from his hand. “Still, it is not enough for so remarkable a stone. It may well have accompanied Rama on his journey to confront Ravan in the matter of Sita’s abduction.”

“I am not interested in its history,” Kalifriki replied, and he brought up the second bag of gold and added its bars to the heap. “I’ve heard reports that the tax collectors have had a lean time these past several years.”

“Lies!” Rasa stated, opening a nearby chest and dipping his hand into it. He withdrew and cast forth a fistful of semiprecious stones upon the tabletop. Among them lay a small carved mountain of pale green jade, a pathway winding about it in a clockwise direction from base summit. His gaze falling upon this piece, he reached out and tapped it with a thick forefinger. “Sooner would this spiral change direction,” he said, “than would I undersell a treasure simply to raise funds.”

Kalifriki raised his wrist. The Thread touched upon the piece of jade, seemed to pass within it. The stone moved slightly. The spiral now wound in the opposite direction.

Rasa’s eyes widened. “I had forgotten,” he said softly, “that you are the magician who slew the phantom tiger.”

“I didn’t really kill him,” Kalifriki said. “He’s still out there somewhere. I just came to terms with him. Storytellers don’t know everything.”

The man sighed and touched his middle. “This job is sometimes very trying,” he said, “and sometimes seems to give me pains in my stomach. Excuse me.”

He removed a small vial from a pouch at his sash, as Kalifriki moved his wrist again. As he unstoppered the container and raised it to his lips, Kalifriki said, “Wait.”

Rasa lowered the vial.

“Yes?” he asked.

“If I heal your ulcer,” Kalifriki said, “you may well bring it back with too much worry and aggravate it with too many spices. Do you understand?”

“Heal it,” he said. “It is hard to cultivate philosophy in the face of necessity, and I do like my foods well seasoned. But I will try.”

Kalifriki moved his wrist again and Rasa smiled. He stoppered the vial and replaced it in the pouch.

”All right, magician,” he said. “Leave the gold. Take the stone. And if you see the white tiger again, let it know that you pass this way occasionally and that bargains are to be kept.”

Later, in the garden at twilight, Alice asked him, “How did you do that reversal on the stone?”

“The full circumference of the Thread is less than 360 degrees,” Kalifriki replied. “The negative pressure of antigravity affects the geometry of space about it. Its missing angle is my key to other spaces. I simply rotated the stone through a higher space.”

She nodded.

“I seem to recall something of this property from my training,” she said. “But how did you heal the ulcer?”

“I speeded up time in its vicinity, letting the natural processes of his body heal it. I hope that he takes my advice and learns some detachment, from his work and his food.”

They took a further turn, into an area of the garden they had not yet explored. The bowers seemed to grow flat upon a flattening prospect along the twisting trail they followed. Then they were gone and it was the dead of night with great winnowings of stars blazing above them as they entered the lesser courtyard of Kalifriki’s villa at Constantinople.

“You still smell of roses,” she said.

“So do you,” he replied, “and good night.”

…W
alking through my forest, ridiculous archaic weapon upon his back, his hand upon her shoulder, the monk follows the Alice. This one, I note, is scarred. My last Alice, then. She did escape, of course. And gone all this time. Planning, surely. What might she have in mind for the final foray, the last gasp of the octad? Its aim, certainly, is to free Nelsor. Nelsor…Even now, I feel her reaching out toward him. Disturbing. She is the strongest in this regard. Yet soon she will be distracted. They approach my favorite tree. Soon now…It spins in its socket, each limb a saber of glass. But she drops to the ground at precisely the right moment, and her monk moves with her in instant response. They inch their way forward now, the limbs flashing harmlessly, cold fire above them. Yet Endways Shoot is next, where I took my second Alice, and the Passage of Moons may take them yet, even aware of the peril. And already she calls again. Nelsor…?

K
alifriki sat all the next day in meditation, his bow before him upon the ground. When he had finished he walked on the shore for a long while, watching the waves come in.

Alice met him on his return and they took a late supper together.