Doyle After Death (11 page)

“He couldn't have ‘formulated' that thing,” I said. “It looks nailed together.”

“He didn't formulate it,” Doyle said. “I've never seen him formulate much. He constructed it out of scrounged—­I will not say stolen—­scraps of wood from old, disused cottages. We
do
have tools here, and even nails. Metal is hard to formulate, it requires great concentration because of its denseness. Some, not so good at formulating, have chosen to create it from ore deposits. And this world has all that's found in the periodic table. There is more to that than you might suppose . . . but for now I'll just say that he nicked wood, a hammer, and nails, and put it up by hand.”

Beards of moss obscured the details, but I could see Bull Moore's silhouette, just his head and upper body framed in a glassless window, as he peered down at us from the second story.

“Keep back!” Moore shouted.

“Just passing by, Mr. Moore!” Doyle called, hands cupping his mouth. “Trail's out, the other way!”

A compacted clod of soil struck the ground in front of us, bursting apart.

“Come on, Fogg!” Doyle said, running along the trail that skirted the tree. “We shall brave the barrage!” He ran lightly for a man of his bulkiness, but he'd always been athletic. He had played rugby, soccer, cricket, and he'd introduced recreational skiing to the world.

“Bull!” I shouted, as I followed Doyle. “You're an idiot!”

Doyle seemed to relish rushing past Moore's tree, as more clods of dirt and several small stones struck the trail behind us. “Ha, Moore! You'll never make a cricketer!” Doyle cried, as we ran past the tree house.

A clod of dirt struck me sharply in the middle of the back, then. “Ow! He just might be good at pitching beanballs though . . .”

About thirty yards onward we came to a stop on the trail, mouths open but scarcely breathing hard. “What a buffoon the fellow is,” Doyle said.

“Doesn't seem like a good time to interview him about Morgan Harris,” I said, as I looked around.

We were in a clearing, here, a meadow in spongy ground. Beyond it was another series of pools, a line of trees—­and between them I could just make out what looked like the rooftops of a Bavarian village. “That a small town, over there?” I was curious about other settlements in the afterworld. There must be millions of them, out there . . .

“That is certainly not a town.” Doyle chuckled. “But it looks like one from here. That is our first sight of Merchant's mansion.”

We continued on the trail, and I had an odd feeling . . . and it was really about what I
wasn't
feeling. It was something I'd noticed trekking up the hill to look at Morgan Harris's remains. I should be feeling hunger, thirst, fatigue, after all this exertion through a muggy swamp. There was a little heaviness of the body—­fatigue of the kind they have here. I could have enjoyed a drink of water. But I didn't feel a
need
for it. That bothered me, somehow, as it had bothered me when I'd climbed the hill to look at Harris's remains, probably just because I was used to feeling it after exertion. And not feeling real physical fatigue interfered with my sense of the realness of it all. But at the same time, I didn't feel ghostly. That dirt missile that Bull Moore had hit me with felt real, all right. It had
stung.
I looked up at the sun, and felt an urge to thank it for sustaining me. But the urge made me feel foolish.

The trail was winding circuitously through the trees, now. Twenty minutes more and we came to the edge of another clearing—­a grand expanse of lawn edged with topiary in the shape, oddly enough, of airplanes, aircraft of all kinds. Beyond the lawn the mansion rose up, immaculately constructed but wildly out of control at the same time. Minarets crowded towers, gargoyles squatted beneath finial-­topped cupolas; art nouveau fanlights topped every door, and there were many doors on many balconies; jutting dormers seemed to scowl atop leaded windows. Stained glass pulsed red and blue and yellow; grand hallways bulked up, to the right and left, striated by colonnades of columns in dissonant styles, Ioni standing beside Corinthian beside Doric beside Persian.

We took four more strides toward it—­and then waist-­high spikes rose up from the ground, like a fence, black and sharp, and nearly impaled us.

 

SIXTH

“W
hat the fuck!” I burst out, as we scrambled backward.

“
Do
have the consideration to refrain from that manner of language,” Doyle said coolly, frowning at the chest-­high spikes. “But I can appreciate the sentiment. What the devil
are
they up to here?”

“If we'd stumbled into that, what then?” I asked. “It would've ripped into us . . .”

“Yes. We could have deformulated it, in time, after . . . exquisite suffering. This will not do at all . . .”

“Fellas, sorry about this!” said someone, chuckling apologetically as he strolled up from the brush to my left. The man's voice was light, almost lilting. His accent seemed Southern California to me. He was a smiling, genial-­looking man with quizzical brown eyes, a stub of a nose, swept-­back blond hair that looked dyed but probably was just imagined that way. He wore a khaki jacket, like something from a safari movie, khaki shorts, hiking boots. He had skinny legs, knobby knees. I'd wondered why ­people didn't change their appearance more, here, since they seemed to have some psychic influence over their physicality. Some did, but I later learned that there was a tendency for the shape of the body to return to default—­which was the way it was in that person's prime on Earth. Disfigured and severely handicapped ­people are repaired in the afterworld. It's not heaven—­but in some ways it comes close.

“Charlie Long,” Doyle said, his tone clipped with reproach, “how is it you imagine anything like this”—­he pointed at the spikes—­“could ever be permissible here?”

“Wasn't
my
idea, Arthur,” Long said cheerfully.

Doyle winced. He didn't like being called by his first name except by his wife. “And whose idea was it, then? Merchant's?”

“More likely it's the work of good old,” Long said, pursing his thin lips with comical disapproval. “The man's got hostility issues. He overreacts to things!” He shrugged. “ takes the term ‘caretaker' too seriously.” Long stuck his hand out to me. “Charles Long. Head carpenter around here.”

“Nick Fogg,” I said, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip.

“New here?”

“I guess I am. Starting to feel normal though.”

Doyle grunted. “I felt ‘new' to this world for decades, in some ways. Long—­you might have put up a warning sign about this fence or whatever it is.”

“It's more like a death trap than a fence,” I said.

Long shook his head dubiously. “
Death
trap? In the afterworld?”

­“People do die here,” I said. “Or close enough.” I watched his face. “Man named Morgan Harris, for example.”

There was no special reaction from Long when I mentioned Harris. He simply nodded. “We have had Morgan around here. Last I knew he went off on one of those walkabouts that ­people go on . . .” His voice trailed off and his brow knit. “Are you saying he's
dead?
You
are
new! There isn't any death here, just transformation.”

Doyle cleared his throat. “Ah. Back in the Before that we called Earth, ­people were murdered from time to time. What became of the victims there, Long? What became of their souls? Some have more of that essence that survives the transformation we call death, and some have less, in consequence of the lives they've lived. Still,
something
essential survives. It comes here, Charlie, to this world . . . somewhere.” He gestured grandly, to include the all the vast unknown topography of the afterworld. “Death on Earth is transformation, too. Why shouldn't there be the possibility of another kind of death here? And we are convinced that's what happened to Morgan Harris. Another kind of death—­and quite possibly murder. First, he vanished . . .”

­“People wander off all the time. They leave the village and never come back.”

“Yes, however—­Morgan Harris's remains turned up.”

Long looked back and forth between us. “Remains!”

I nodded, and kicked the spikes still fencing us off. “I might have mine stuck on this. Getting stabbed through the middle by this contraption wouldn't hurt us for long, I guess. But it'd be bad enough.”

Long shook his head in wonder at the spikes. “Really is an ugly thing. Glad you didn't step into it. You can talk to Higgs about his toy here.” He turned, cupped his mouth, and shouted, “Roscoe! Hey, get your feuding ass over here!”

“Yes, coming, dammit!” came a faint voice from around the side of the mansion.

I noticed Doyle staring at Long's fingers, and his sleeves. I could almost see the wheels of ratiocination turning in Conan Doyle's head.

I looked up at the mansion. It seemed to cry out for ogling. It was twice the size of the queen's palace in Britain. Every individual section of it was symmetrical, well built and some connected with other sections rationally. But a great many more seem to have grown out from the building with the randomness of toadstools.

“You
design that building, Long?” I asked, nodding toward the mansion.

“Me?” His mouth twisted with a private amusement. “No! But I
built
it, you might say—­I formulated it, with a little help from Higgs. But it was designed by Garrett. By Mr. Merchant. If you can call impulse a design. Garrett Merchant's feeling is, if we can formulate whatever we want, why not just build whatever you want wherever you feel it? So he points and says, ‘I want this here' and we add it. And he comes up with something all the time. There's very little central design. We've learned not to argue, long as any addition is not likely to fall over. It's not like the afterworld doesn't have gravity, but sometimes he tries to get me to ignore that particular force of nature.” He shrugged. “Of course, I don't
have
to do it. I don't have to have a job here. But . . . it's fascinating, to me, to see how far we can carry it. And he's given me a great many Fionas—­and my own wing of the house.”

“How does he earn his Fionas?”

Doyle answered that. “He figured out how to treat frip, to make it more concentrated, easy to chew or smoke. He did the work himself, at first. Then Higgs turned up—­Higgs worked for Merchant in the Before—­and he's taken over all the grounds work, maintenance, all that.”

I hooked a thumb toward the sculptured shrubbery. “What's up with the aviation topiary?”

“Merchant asked Higgs to do it. Merchant made his money, on Earth, in aviation. Guy was a big competitor to Boeing. Planes, missiles, the occasional orbiter. I guess the shrubbery there is homage to all that stuff.”

“Aviation! That's right, I remember. Big spender, party guy, yacht race enthusiast.”

So Merchant was the type of guy who doesn't give up running his own corporate fiefdom just because a little thing like death comes along . . .

“Sure,” Long said. “Famous guy in his time. Oh, here's Higgs.”

Roscoe Higgs was a hulking, bald, round-­faced man with an etched frown and long simian arms. He wore boots and a blue work shirt and coveralls. “Who's that one?” he asked, nodding toward me, his eyes narrowed.

“And good afternoon to you too, Higgs,” Doyle said sarcastically. “My associate here is Mr. Fogg. He is a consultant in this investigation. Which has now taken on a dual character. Let us take the second tine of the fork, as it were, first. Did you set up this vicious trap here?” He pointed at the sharp spikes sticking up from the ground.

Higgs flapped a big hand dismissively. “And so what? I warned Moore, he wouldn't listen, so I figure that'd discourage him. If he got stuck on it, I'd have got him loose if he couldn't do it himself. But he'd have learned a lesson.”

“So you've been feuding with Moore? I appreciate your feelings toward him but we cannot have it taken this far. I'll have to talk to the village council about this,” Doyle said.

“We're not in the village here!”

“But you come into the village,” Doyle said. “You use it. If you wish to continue to do that, this must end. How many other traps are there?”

“A few,” Higgs admitted sulkily.

“And you yourself formulated them?”

“Yes.” Higgs shrugged. “And the springs that pop the spikes up,” he added with a touch of pride. “They're underneath. Pressure plate there. I was an engineer for Garrett, back on Earth.”

Doyle was looking closely at Higgs—­especially at the man's hands and feet—­just as he had with Long.

“So the trap was all about scaring Moore off?” I asked.

“He's just the latest one, spooking around, upsetting things,” Higgs said, his gaze sliding out toward the woods.

“And would Mr. Morgan Harris be another such person?” Doyle asked, mildly.

“Sure, Harris tramped his dirty shoes through the house,” Higgs said indignantly. “Left his plant samples around. Always distracting Mr. Merchant.”

“Ah, there it is,” Long put in. “The jealousy.”

Higgs deepened his perpetual scowl, and glowered at Long. “Don't start that crap again.”

“Do
start it again, Charlie,” Doyle said impishly. “What jealousy is this?”

“Oh, he's like a jealous pet around Merchant,” Long said. “Merchant's like his own private billionaire.”

“Merchant has a billion Fionas?” I asked.

“No one has that,” Higgs said, huffily.

“Since everyone has all they materially need here,” Doyle said, “there is no true wealth in the afterworld. Just the appearance of it. Which perhaps frustrates Garrett Merchant.”

“Mr. Merchant is a person of high style,” Higgs said. “Says a man without style is a cipher. Just a blank.”

“I always reckoned,” said Doyle, looking up at the mansion, “that a man who's a blank makes a great deal of
show
to conceal his blankness. Real style comes from something essential.”

“Well, Mr. Garrett has got that.”

“Higgs,” I said, watching his face, “was Moore trying to get between you and Merchant?”

“What? Mr. Merchant's not my boyfriend, you know. Moore was just intruding. Coming around here and raving. And I think he stole some things for that elevated junk yard of his.”

“Would you kill Moore to protect Garrett Merchant?” I asked.

I thought I was being subtle by making it about Moore instead of Harris for now, but Doyle gave me a quick, hooded glance of irritation. I could tell he thought I was scaring the suspect. And if you scare the suspect, the suspect will clam up. I've never been known for real subtlety.

I gave Doyle a look of apology.

“You can't
kill
anyone here,” Higgs said.

Doyle tapped the spikes of the trap. “But you're willing to do something quite
radical
to ­people here, with this cruel device of yours.” The cat of unsubtlety being out of the bag already. “Do you know how to deformulate a human body, Higgs?”

“What?” Higgs seemed confused. “Deformulate a body? No.”

“I see. Is Mr. Merchant about? Can we talk to him without being impaled first?”

“Yeah, he's here,” Higgs said reluctantly.

“Point us to him. Long can take us there,” Doyle said. “You sir, will be occupied. You will be deactivating all such traps around your house, or I'll see to it that Merchant sends you away. And you will certainly not visit the village again.”

Higgs looked at Long, maybe hoping for support.

Long nodded. “He's right. You didn't tell
me
about these things . . .”

“Was going to.” Higgs seemed suddenly eleven years old.

“I'm not so sure. Take them down, Higgs.”

Doyle looked at the spikes. “Take this one down last. I shall want to have a look at it again, a little later.”

L
ong went into another room to call up to Merchant, somehow, as Doyle and I looked around the entry hall.

The great, high ceilinged entry hall of the mansion was like something from M. C. Escher. A staircase rose sweepingly to the right, while on the left another staircase was running upside down from the ceiling to the floor. You'd have to walk upside down, defying gravity, to use it.

The sound of our footsteps echoed from the high, ornate ceiling as if in a cathedral. The hexagonal stone tiles were alternately jet and ivory. A sweeping staircase of broad black and white steps rose to an intricately carved balustrade along a balcony, its balusters shaped in angels and imps topped by optical-­illusory spirals that seemed to spin when you looked at them indirectly; a chaotically figured chandelier made of innately glowing crystals hung overhead. Iridescent colors traded place in its crystals.

I gaped around in awe. “Holy . . .” I remembered Doyle was sensitive about profanity. “ . . . crap.”

Doyle nodded. “Yes indeed. It is indecorous decoration.”

“Almost awe inspiring. But more like ‘
shock
and awe.' Does someone . . . or something . . . actually walk on that upside-­down M. C. Escher stairway?”

“I think not. We have most of the same physical laws here. Of course, there may be spirits about we can't see . . . and who knows what they might be capable of?”

I looked at him. “Wait . . . are there? Spirits here we can't see, in the afterworld? I mean, I thought we were spirits here?”

“We are embodied spirits. But . . . Diogenes has alluded to our rate of vibration. Some spirits having a higher one may not be visible to us. Ah, Merchant, there you are!”

A man in a black velvet robe was looking down from the second-­floor balustrade now. Garrett Merchant had a scrupulously shaped jet-­black goatee, long black hair swept back from a high, pale forehead and sharp features. He waved—­it wasn't a friendly wave, just a
yes I see you
wave—­and made his way along to the stairs and down, holding on to the banister. His small dark eyes fixed on us; his already narrow face was pinched further with irritation. “What's going on, here?” Merchant demanded, his voice squeaky but somehow resonant with authority. “What's this about a demand for my appearance?” He pointed a partly chewed stick of frip at us. “Are we in a police state now, Doyle?”