Thunderer (17 page)

Arjun breathed out. The mob would be here soon. There was no time to think about what he had done. But he couldn’t leave the things in the cases. Gods or reflections, aware and suffering or not, they were grotesque, pathetic—lies, told without love. There were miracles in the city, that were perhaps no less sacred in their way than his own beloved Voice: they deserved better than to be reduced in this way. He supposed he did find Shay’s work blasphemous, after all.

With the butt of his gun, he broke open the cases. As he cracked each one, the lights took on a greasy liquidity, and flowed out and away. A few did not just dissipate, as one might expect; instead, the lights gathered across the floor, clutching in tight knots of radiance. Some took on tiny forms. Glowing homunculi drifted away into the room’s shadows. Something soft and blue and nearly-not-there, the height of a man’s knees, crept over the dusty floorboards; something the size of a man’s fist formed itself from throbbing red light and knuckled away into the dark. When Arjun blinked again, they were gone.

When he was sure he was alone, he knelt and looked at the device Shay had called a heliotype. The big black briefcase was full of plates, boxes, and chemical-jars that seemed to be integral parts of the device. There was no time to take it all with him; it was far too heavy to run with.

Taking the steps two at a time, he ran back out into the observatory dome. The chanting of the mob was very close now. He was very frightened. Who knew what they might do to him?

There were no other doors, but far over his head, the dome was split open to the sky, where the smashed and slumped telescope still protruded. Arjun put a foot on the telescope’s broad, gleaming back. It wobbled, but did not collapse; it was braced against the hole in the roof. On hands and knees, he shinned up the ruined column and out onto the dome’s curving roof, where he collapsed and let the cold night wind clear his mind.

The mob came into the room below. He listened to them smashing what was left of the machines, and thought about what he had done to Shay. His mind kept running again and again down two tracks. He was disgusted with himself: he had blundered, he had killed, he had broken open a remarkable mind and left a bloody ruin. He was excited, proud: he had survived Shay’s uncanny attack, emerged unscathed. It was pure luck, though, he told himself;
nothing but a panicked instinct, and besides, he was half your size and twice your age, and you had a gun to his knife;
and he fell again into self-disgust.

The mob went away after a while. He wondered if they felt satisfied or cheated. He stayed out on the roof, looking out over the dark Heath, until something below caught his eye.

A movement down in the Observatory’s grounds: a mote in the dark, glowing pale green. It was shaped like a dwarf or a child, tottering awkwardly on little legs. It leaned its wan body against the fence, and slowly oozed through, and staggered on down the hill. One of the afterimages, Arjun realized. The stolen shadow of a god. He had thought they had all vanished. This one was stronger than the others. Where was it going?

Arjun slid down the dome’s roof on his back, bracing himself with his hands on the cold metal, going as fast as he dared. He dropped the final distance, landing heavily but unharmed. Then he climbed over the fence again. On the other side, he could see the faint, flickering glow, drifting down the hill.

At first he tried to keep his distance, but when it entered the trees, he had to come closer to avoid losing it. It didn’t react. He got closer and closer, until he could see it clearly. It was no taller than his waist, and featureless, but its stumbling movement put him in mind of a crippled child. He kept a few arms’ lengths away, out of wariness. Which one was it?

They left the trees and the homunculus drifted and fell across the lawns. Arjun followed. The little circle of pale corpse-light moved across the dark grass.

The Heath was empty and silent, but it was said to be dangerous at night. Desperate vagrants camped out here. He stopped to reload his pistol, fumbling powder and shot out of his pouch, nearly spilling it in the dark.

The glow flickered; it ebbed, then seeped softly out again. The little thing inside it continued down along the path around the reservoir, its light reflecting out over the water, until it came to an ivied fence at the Heath’s edge. There the homunculus passed through, its pale form seeming to snag on the obstruction for a moment. Arjun followed over the fence.

They were in a narrow cobbled street adjoining the Heath. They turned left, then right, always going downhill. The thing slumped down the middle of the empty streets, its glow too weak to illuminate the buildings on either side, and Arjun could see nothing except the cold light ahead of him. Sometimes they passed a turn to some lit street, friendly windows and illuminations inviting into the night; but the thing would always lurch away down a dark alley instead. At other times, Arjun heard the sounds of crowds, drinking and shouting, buying and selling, away over the rooftops. It sounded like a theater crowd, once, though he thought they were going down to the warehouses of Barbary, far from any playhouse. The thing walked clumsily, but with a purpose, as if it was going home.

It pushed through a bowed and broken wire fence. Arjun stepped through a ragged hole a few feet away, and they crossed a vacant lot. Dogs or foxes lived here, leaving dry white spoor and gnawed bones among the weeds. Past a rotting boathouse, they came to the edge of a canal, where the water sat low and dark.

The canal split in two and they followed the smaller course. A sheer wall of slimy stone dropped down to the cold green surface. These were, Arjun thought, the grimy industrial canals that ran through Barbary and Shutlow, and out to the factories of Agdon Deep. He had seen a painting of the canals of Ebon Fields, in the north, with their elegant curves, pleasure boats, and delicate, arching bridges. This was very different.

Not far ahead, a great black warehouse sat squarely across the path and the canal. Its cracked windows reflected the pale glow. The canal ran into a tunnel under the building.

The thing stopped in a patch of weeds. It remained still for a long time, then began to stoop and pick around, reminding Arjun of the children who went down to the riverbanks to pick over the city’s refuse. He sat down on the damp stones to watch.

Another figure came out of a dark alley along by the warehouse. Arjun tensed and began to get to his feet; he felt a sudden urge to proclaim his innocence, to say
I am not involved, I didn’t do this, I saw nothing.
But the new figure ignored him, and Arjun bit the words back and sat in silence to watch.

The new thing looked like a man, but Arjun couldn’t see its features. A long coat? A hat? Its lines were unclear. It ebbed and seeped shadow and a soft stagnant light.

It came slowly toward the spectral thing in the weeds.

Neither figure made a sound.

As they came closer together the two figures resembled distorted reflections of each other, glimpsed through dark water. When they touched—when the larger figure, that was like a man, reached out a shadowy arm and seized the childlike homunculus by its shoulder, and leaned predatorily in—they were like two aspects of the same troubling thing. The two figures bathed together in the sad, ugly glow, until it seemed to flicker from them both, and from the whole unpleasant scene.

Whatever Arjun was seeing, he thought, was not in either figure, but in both, or in the space between them. Or in the repetition of the scene—something about the set of the larger figure’s shoulders suggested pointless, grinding repetition: as if this was a ritual, or a tiresome duty; as if this was something that happened here again and again, and would happen forever.

The thing in its tiny and vulnerable aspect struggled like a child, and shook. In its murderous aspect it tightened its grip.

The thing—the
god
—was in the ritual. It was in the vision. It was in the bitter sense of futility that choked Arjun’s throat and weighed down his limbs so that he said nothing, did nothing, as the vision enacted itself.

This
ugliness
—it was what this god had in place of music.

The child-thing shuddered, then went still. The man took the child up in its arms and walked down the slimy stone steps to the narrow path by the water’s edge. It stopped in the mouth of the tunnel and stepped down into the dark water. There was a faint, hungry glow from the tunnel’s mouth. Then it went out.

Arjun was more frightened than he could say; he felt it as a physical cold.

But he couldn’t just run. He needed to know what was in the canal. He had come to the city to search among its divinities. This was surely one. It was frightening, but how could he have thought strange gods would be otherwise? And it was more than that: the tunnel mouth called to him. It was all he could do not to lower himself at once into the water. He knew he should turn back, but he couldn’t. He drew the gun for comfort and walked carefully down to the water’s edge, and into the tunnel.

T
he tunnel was empty and silent. There was no light at its end. Mud and weeds sucked at his feet. Arjun’s steps echoed. Nothing came rushing out at him. He ran a hand along the slick, mossy wall.

“Is this your home?” His voice was weak and strained.

Finding a firmer voice, he said, “What are you?” And, “Are you here at all?” And, “Was that thing a part of you, or only an image, a shadow? I was the one who set it free.”

He said, “What was that I saw, outside? Was that something that happened here? Is that how you show yourself, in murder? Is it a part of you, too? Is it some ritual you demand?”

There was no answer. Whatever presence there had been was gone. He was so relieved that he nearly laughed out loud. He had tried. He had done his best, he could go back. He turned around.

The tunnel stretched out behind him. The light at its end was tiny and distant—a grey scratch of moonlight. Impossible: he had taken no more than few steps inside. Hadn’t he?

Arjun set out walking toward the light, moving as quickly as he dared on the slimy stone, with his stiff, nerveless legs. He got no closer to the exit. As he walked, he bargained. “I am not one of your worshippers. That’s true. But I meant no disrespect. I have done you a service. I freed your image. I spared you that indignity. I can be of service to you.

“I have some training in music,” he said. “I can sing your praises.” But he knew that was pointless: the thing did not care for song.

He thought of Ama, from back in the hills so far to the south. When he spoke of the city’s gods and miracles, she corrected him, gravely:
hauntings,
she called them. Should he have kept her talisman?

The light dwindled, until he wasn’t sure whether it was still there, or was just an afterimage scratched on his straining eyes. Then it was gone. He ran. Underfoot was deep, clutching mud. He stumbled and fell. The weeds and mud took him.

A
rjun hung suspended in the dark and the cold. His head burned and throbbed, but that was all right. He could not move, but there was nowhere to go. So many people came here in the end. Why not him? It hurt very much, but the city had to be fed. He felt all the lives that had been broken along the rivers and canals of the city, by the weight of the city’s industry, by the black water, by cruelty and thoughtlessness. Children above all; the water demanded sacrifice. The malice of empty places. The city’s dark and primitive past, always sucking back down.

He felt all this, and it felt right and necessary. There was nothing to fight. This was the way it was. The presence was there with him, and there was nothing else. The magnificent and terrible hunger of the god filled the tunnel and the world. The burning in his head was a hymn. He hung there, in the void of that presence, accepting, worshipping.

He opened his throat and It rushed in.

He had no name for It. He needed no name for It. It occupied all his thoughts. It was the River; It was all the city’s waters and It touched everything, It seeped into everything. All weeds and rot in the city were nourished in it. In summer every black fly in the city’s skies would hatch there; Arjun
felt
them unfurling sticky wings. It fed all the city’s factories; Arjun’s body spasmed and shook and he
felt
the engines groan and roar.

And in the end everything in the city would rot and feed the River.

In the west he
felt
a bloated strangled body rise on the tide into suddenly foul night air by a café on the banks, and well-heeled patrons retched and dropped their drinks and saw, in that pale rotting face, the face of the god.

This was a hard and terrible fact about the world. It was something Arjun had always known but no one had ever dared to say. There was a deep bitter joy in facing It, in knowing It.

This is how everything ends.

He shook again, and he opened his throat to the blackness again, and It began to swallow him from the inside out, and he
felt,
in the north, a storm rising over the River where It coiled into the slopes of the Mountain. A black acrid rain drowned the night. He felt Its cruel will bearing down over the city. He felt the rain crash down the streets and shake the trees and drive the birds from the sky.

Abruptly the vision was snatched from him.

He fell back into the meaningless pain of his body, blind and helpless and insignificant in the dark.

The god was gone. He was alone.

For a moment he was able to wonder:
what happened?
In the last instants of the revelation there had been something he had hardly noticed, some wrongness, some
flaw;
an imperfection that echoed and grew so huge, so suddenly, that the whole vision shattered. Some
division
. If he could only remember…

First the loathing distracted him, then the pain. Now that he was alone he felt the purest, most sickening revulsion for that murderous god and its false revelation and everything about it and everything
touched
by it. He could not stand to be in its waters a moment longer. In the next moment a burning agony gripped his throat and he understood that he was drowning, and all he cared about was survival.