The Road to Amber (16 page)

“When do you plan to embark for Ubar?” she asked him, after a long silent time.

“Soon,” he said, “if all goes well.”

“We will visit my vessel in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“It depends partly on how long the work there takes.”

“Partly?”

“I think that I will want to meditate some more afterwards. I do not know how long that will take.”

“Whenever…” she answered.

“I know that you are eager,” he said later. “But this part must not be rushed.”

“I understand.”

He walked with her then into the town, passing lighted residences, some shops, government buildings. Many of the sounds of the city had grown still with the darkness, but there was music from some establishments, shouts, laughter, the creaking of a few passing carts, the stamping of horses’ feet; they smelled spices in some neighborhoods, perfumes in others, incense from a church.

“What did you do,” he asked her, from across a table where they sat sipping a sharp yellow wine, “in the five years between your escape from Aidon and your coming to see me?”

“I traveled,” she replied, “seeking you—or someone like you—and trying to find the surface locus of that string. It had seemed bound to this world, as if it were somehow being employed. I supposed that one who had mastered it could be the one I needed to help me in this. I traveled with many servants—with some large male always in charge—as if I were part of a great man’s retinue rather than owner of the lot. It is difficult being a woman on this world. I visited Egypt, Athens, Rome, many places. Finally, I heard stories of a man called Kalifriki, who had been employed by Popes, Emperors, Sultans. I traced the stories down. It took a long time, but I could afford to pay for every scrap of information. They led me here.”

“Who told you the stories?”

“A poet. He called himself Omar, tentmaker.”

“Ali, yes. A good man. Drank too much, though,” said Kalifriki, sipping his wine. “And locally?”

“A priest named Basileos.”

“Yes. One of my agents. I am surprised he did not warn me.”

“I came immediately. I hurried. There was no opportunity for him to beat my arrival with a message. He told me to make further inquiry of Stassinopoulos, but I decided to ask for you here by name instead. I suspected by then that you had a second identity, and I was certain that a man such as yourself would be too curious not to give me audience under the circumstances. I was in a hurry. Five years of hearing their cries has been too long.”

“You still hear them, right now?”

“No. Tonight they are silent,” she said.

The moon fell down the sky, was caught in the Golden Horn.

N
ow, Nelsor, they have reached the Shoot, a Mountain hurtling by them, but feet above the ground. They must crawl upon their bellies here, and even then, if one of my small satellites whose long ellipse brings it by here has so rotated that some downward projection rakes the land—
quish!
A pair of stepped-on cockroaches. Too fast? True. But this is but the foreplay, dear companion, my mentor. She calls to you again. Do you hear her? Do you wish to answer her? Can you? Ah! another rock and a jagged beauty it is!—races its purple shadow above the blood-red way. By them. And still they crawl. No matter. There will be more.

T
hey completed the transfer on the Sea of Marmara that morning and afternoon. Then Kalifriki, clad in brown kimono and sandals, meditated for a brief time. At some point his hand went forward to take hold of the bow. Bearing it with him, he walked away from his villa down toward the sea. Alice, glimpsing his passage from her window, followed him at a distance. She saw him walk upon the shore, then halt, take forth a cloth and bind his eyes with it. He braced the bow, removed an arrow from its case, set it against the string. Then he stood holding them, unmoving.

Minures passed on toward the end of day and he did not stir. A gull flew near, screaming. The better part of an hour went by. Then another gull passed. Kalifriki raised the bow almost casually, drew it, released the arrow into the air. It passed beside the bird and a single feather came loose, drifted downward.

He removed the cloth from his eyes and watched the feather rock its way to the water. She wanted to sing, but she only smiled.

Kalifriki turned then and waved to her.

“We leave for Ubar in the morning,” he called out.

“Did you want the bird or the feather?” she asked, as they walked toward each other.

“To eat the bird is not to digest its flight,” he replied.

T
hey have passed Endways Shoot, where my moons flow like a string of bright beads. Leaving the passage like a trail of blood behind them, they rise, turning sharply to the left, climbing to the yellow ridge that will take them down into the valley where they must pass through my Garden of Frozen Beings, the place where I collected my third Alice…What is that? A question? A chuckle?

Nelsor? Do you stir? Would you enjoy a ticket to this final festival? Why, then you shall have one, if you be able to use it. I have not felt such enthusiasm from you in ages. Come then to me if you can. I touch the bone, your skull. I summon you, lord, my mentor, to this place and time, Nelsor, for you were always my master in the matter of killing Alices. It is fitting that you be present when the collection is made complete. Come to me now, Nelsor, out of darkness. This spectacle is yours. By bone, siphon, and dot, I summon you! Come!

T
hey came to Ubar, city of Shaddad ibn Ad, to be called Iram in the Koran, oasis town of lofty pillars, “the like of which were not produced in the land.” Alice’s hair was red now, and she wore a white garment and a light veil upon her face; Kalifriki had on his kimono and sandals, a cloth about his eyes, his bow upon his back, lacquered case beside it containing a single arrow.

Passing amid a sea of tents, they made their way down avenues lined with merchants, traders, beggars, to the sound of camel bells, gusts of wind, and the rattle of palm fronds. Conversation, song, and invective sounded about them in a double-dozen tongues. They came at last to the great gated pillars through which they passed, entering into the town proper, where the splashing sounds of fountains came to them from within adobe walled gardens; and white-stuccoed buildings gleamed in the morning sun, bands of blue, green, red, and yellow tiles adorning their palace-high walls.

“I seem to recall the dining area of the inn as being located in a kind of grotto,” Kalifriki said, “within a rocky hillside, with the rest of the establishment constructed right, left, and forward of it, using the face of the hillside as a rear wall.”

“That is correct,” she said. “The cavern keeps the place cool by day. The cooking fires are well vented to the rear. You descend four or five stone steps on entering, bearing to the right—”

“Where is the mirror located?”

“On the wall to the left as you go in, below the steps.”

“Metal, isn’t it?”

“Brass or bronze—I forget.”

“Then let us go in, be seated, have a cooling drink, and make certain that everything is still this way. On the way out, pause and investigate the mirror as you pretend to study your appearance. Lower the veil as you do so. If it attempts to draw you through, I will be near enough for you to take my hand. If it does not, turn away as if you are about to depart. Then return, as in afterthought, and employ that transport sequence you learned from your predecessors.”

“Yes. There is the place up ahead now,” she said.

He followed, and she took him in.

S
ee, Nelsor? They are at the Garden of Frozen Beings now, place of your own design, if you recall—though in your original plan it was only for display. I came across it in an odd memory cache. See how cunningly it is wrought? It holds your studies of living things from a dozen worlds, in all sizes and colors, set upon many levels, in many interesting poses. Impossible not to pass among several at any given time. I added the Series Perilous.

I took an Alice here, crushed by the blue spiral, eighth from the left where she lay long in two pieces, gasping—for not calculating the death sequence correctly; and one back at Endway’s Shoot, smeared to a long streak, though barely noticeable upon the red-stone, and another well flayed and diced in the crystal forest, by my
arbor decapitant
.

The first three, which you managed yourself—before your second disorientation—were so much more elegantly done…

F
inishing their drinks, Kalifriki and Alice rose and crossed the refreshment area. They passed the metal mirror and mounted the steps. At the threshold, she paused.

“A moment,” she said. “I want to check my hair in that mirror we passed.”

Returning down the stair, she produced a comb. At the mirror, she made a quick adjustment of several stray tresses, letting her veil fall as she did so.

Kalifriki stood behind her. “We must be at least partway entered before I shift,” he whispered, “if I am to lay the Thread in that universe so as to benefit our course through it. Remember what I said of the phenomenon. Whenever you are ready…”

“Good,” she said, putting away her comb, turning toward the door.

Three beats later she turned back, lips set in a tight line, raising her hand, touching upon the reflecting surface. After a moment she located the pulses, passed her hand through the activation sequence.

As her fingers penetrated the interface, Kalifriki, behind her, placed his hand upon her shoulder, following a small squeeze from her free hand.

Her entire arm passed through the interface, and Kalifriki took them to the Valley of Frozen Time, where he removed his blindfold. He regarded the Thread’s passage through the placeless time into the timeless place, its twistings were complicated, the nexuses of menace manifold. Alice tried to speak to him, not knowing that words, like wind or music, could not manifest in this place of sculpture, painting, map. Twisting the Thread, he flicked it three times, to see it settle at last into the most appropriate bessel functions he could manage under the circumstances, racing ahead to meet himself down thoroughfares of worlds-yet-to-be, and even as it plied its bright way he felt the tug of Time Thawing, replaced his blindfold, and set his hand again upon Alice’s shoulder, to feel them drawn back to the waters of a small lake in the toy universe of the collector of Alices, piecemeal, who must even now be wondering at their interrupted passage.

G
ood of you to have summoned me back to my world, Aidon. What have you done to it? What are these silly games you have been about? Aidon, Aidon…Is this how you read my intention? Did you really think the bitches worth the concerted efforts of an entire universe, to crush them in manners you found esthetically gratifying? Did you think I wanted to construct a theme amusement park? You profane the memory of the woman I love. You should have taken instruction from my disposition of the first three. There was a point to those—a very important point. One which you have been neglecting.

Lord, Nelsor, master, my mentor. I am sorry if the program is faulty. I had it that the killing of Alices was the highest value in the universe, as taken from your own example. See! See how this one must scramble, to avoid the hanging
twar?
She has generalized the experience of two of her sisters, to learn it is not the
twar
nor the
twar
‘s physical position that matters, but rather that position in the sequence of encounters. She had to abstract the series from the previous deaths. See how she must scramble-and her companion after her-to dodge the falling
frogbart,
leap high above the lower limb of the
gride?
When the
bropples
rolled around them she knew just how to dive—and to stand perfectly still till the
wonjit
exhausted its energies. See where the
jankel
has cut her arm? And even now she must pass the way of the
vum.
There is fine sport in her gasping, her bleeding, the tearing ofher garments, in seeing the sweat pour from her. And the
slyth
yet remains, and the
fangrace-pair.
Tell me how this differs from the doomed races where you ran the earlier Alices. How have I mistaken your intent? When you ceased being able to function, I was proud to take on your role. I am sorry if—

Aidon, it broke me to do as I did with the first three. I retreated into my second madness over my actions, still unsatisfied, worse than unsatisfied, actually. I hated them, true, and it made it easier to do what I had to, to learn certain things. Still, it hurt me, also, especially in that I did not learn what I wished, though it narrowed the field. You should have summoned me for the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. There was data that I required there—lost to me now!

Not so, lord! For I recorded them! You can summon them! Have them back! Deal with them further! I have done it many times—for practice. I even bring in outsiders for fresh rites. I have performed the ritual of the dying Alices over and over in your name—hoping to effect your repair in the reenactment. I have been faithful to your procedure—What? You have not employed that command mode since ship-time… You would retire me? Do not! There is an important thing I have yet to tell you! I—

Go away, Aidon. Go away. I would rid myself of your bumbling presence, for you have offended me. Let us say that it was an honest mistake. Still, I no longer wish to have you about, chortling over my undertakings, misreading all my actions, distracting me with your apologies. Before you fade entirely, see how I dismantle your remaining stations of blood. It is not games that I desire of the scarred lady I hate. But you are right in one thing. I will have the others back, as you recorded them, messy though the prospect be. She will follow the Thread of a new course to the Place of Facing Skulls. By dot, bone, and siphon, this one will give me what I want. Go away, Aidon. Go away.

Come back to the Killing Ground, Alice, my last. The rules you’ve learned no longer apply. Keep calling to me. You shall have my answer, a piece at a time.