Gears of the City (12 page)

“Smith, and Miller, and Sol, Basso, Thayer. Ah, most of those men are gone now,” Ruth said. “Moved away.”

“Sol died in the fire at the Fielding Foundry,” Marta said. “Miller got murdered by the Know-Nothings for talking out of turn.”

“I
do
know Brace-Bel’s name,” Arjun said. “The Beast in the Museum named him. In return for my blood the Beast spoke prophecy:
Brace-Bel, and his beautiful blasphemies. “

There was a confused pause in the conversation.

“What happened?” he asked. “At the estate, I mean.”

“Brace-Bel had prepared his defenses,” Marta said. “His devices.”

“His magic,” Ruth said.

“If you like,” Marta said. “Brace-Bel’s a ghost and he knew ghost tricks. Things he’d brought from his city,
or your
city, or the Mountain. Sol and Smith came back and they wouldn’t talk about it. Miller came back and he said he didn’t remember anything. Thayer babbled about lights and voices, and kept crying, and he’s never been right in the head since. Basso never came back at all.”

“Brace-Bel’s a
monster,”
Ruth said. “How could we have known? Poor Thayer.”

“We
should have
known,” Marta said.

“Every month I write to her,” Ruth said. “I tell her how the Street is.”

“You know he doesn’t let her read those letters,” Marta said. “It’s a waste of ink.”

“I like it. It matters to me.”

“How can I pass his defenses?” Arjun asked. “What if I end up like Thayer, or Basso?”

“You won’t,” said Ruth. “I believe in you. You’re a ghost, same as him. You can match his magic.”

“I have magic of my own? I don’t remember any.”

“You
will,”
Ruth said. “You’re electric with it.”

“Are you afraid?” Marta asked.

He looked from face to face—Marta scrutinizing him carefully, practically, calculating his weight and worth; Ruth’s face nervous, half elated. He lied,
no.

… Brace-Bel.
Arjun lay awake that night. The Beast had said that name; surely that was confirmation of the Beast’s prophetic powers. By chasing down Brace-Bel he could set himself back on his proper path … to whatever the
absence
in him was, whatever he’d gone seeking in the first place.

There was an obsession in him, confused and unfocused. The grinning and menacing faces of the madmen at the mysterious Hotel; the darkness of the Mountain. What had he been looking for there?

“You’re different,” Ruth had said. “You remembered something.”

He’d shaken his head. “Nothing important.”

Ruth was half awake, dreaming or thinking about something. He didn’t know what. He stroked her dark hair as she lay there, and wondered if Ivy still lived, and how Ruth would take it if she were dead; how best to break the news, if it came to it …

T
he next day it rained, a yellow and acrid downpour that rattled off the roofs and made the streets hazy and dark.

“One more day won’t make any difference,” Marta said. “Gather your strength. No sense catching a fever.”

She busied herself preparing food for him to carry. She avoided looking him in the eye.

She asked, “Do you want a weapon?”

“Would it help, do you think?”

“It might.”

“I feel I have never been lucky with weapons.”

“Well, you can’t just
talk
to him.”

“Perhaps I can! I’ll appeal to his fellow-feeling. It’s hard to be a man out of his time.”

“It’s not funny,” she said. “Now let me take a look at your hand.”

W
hen you’ve found Ivy, come back to us,” Ruth said. “Come back one more time, before you disappear.”

“Ruth …”

“No. Not now. When you bring Ivy back things will be better. Then we’ll talk. When you come back. If you come back.”

“I …”

“Good. Go on, then. Please. It’s stopped raining.”

A
rjun set out east along Carnyx Street in the afternoon. The paving-stones were wet and the sky full of black clouds through which a straw-yellow sun cast a cold clean light.

Brace-Bel’s mansion was more than a day’s travel south and east. Arjun carried a bag slung over his shoulder, containing food and a blanket.

Ruth had cut his hair short, and he’d shaved with the Dad’s old straight razor. He wore a suit borrowed from the Dad’s old wardrobe. It was pinstriped and it fit badly. The Dad had been short and fat. It smelled of mothballs and there were ancient scribbled notes-to-self in the pockets:
buy eggs
and
rent due on No. 43
and
Ask Stevens about the money
and
Poss. 7-minute anomaly b/w Ezra Street fountain & Capra Street Theater?
and
See Smith about the key; see Kaplan about Smith
and
Thunders roost blw Odradek & 121 A; nets? Poison?
and
remember Ivy’s Birthday(?).

Also in the pockets: a wallet thinly lined with what money the Low sisters had been able to spare, and a folded map on which Ruth had sketched the omnibus routes for at least the first third of the journey, after which Arjun would have to improvise, or walk. And also everything he’d had in his pockets when he’d first come tumbling through Ruth’s door, a sad little pile of miscellany that she’d kept safe for his return while he went wandering: the red matchbook from the WaneLight Hotel, a worn and crumpled theater ticket for something called
The Marriage Blessing
, a citation to appear in Lord Chymerstry’s Court for false preaching, on the back of which someone—Arjun himself?—had scribbled a
ten-digit number. Some lengths of wire, a pencil stub, some coins.

He had no work papers, no residency papers; according to Marta, there used to be a forger on Carnyx Street, but the Know-Nothings had beaten him and hauled him off one night last year. Arjun would have to get by paperless.

Arjun stopped, on a whim, at the end of the street, outside a public house that called itself the White Horse.

He made his way down damp stone steps into the bar. It was half subterranean, sawdust-floored and filled with rough wooden benches. Someone had painted the walls with horses in primitive style, vast and powerful and surging; others had defaced them with curses and obscenities.

Two men played chess in the corner. A third slumped drunk-enly under the dartboard. The landlord sat smoking at the bar. He did not respond to Arjun’s greeting, and appeared not to listen to Arjun’s question; but he answered, “Mr. Brace-Bel? Yeah, I remember him.” He spat.

The landlord squinted suspiciously. “Not a friend,” Arjun assured him. “He owes me money,” he improvised.

“Big fucking surprise.”

“May I ask you another question?”

“I won’t bite.”

“Do you know where I can find a Mr. Thayer?”

T
hayer still lived on Carnyx Street, back west, in a flat over the tobacco shop, in the care of his elderly mother. Old Mother Thayer, half blind, half deaf, not quite right in the head herself, seemed to take Arjun for a doctor of some sort; he did not disabuse her.

Thayer slumped in an armchair in the half-dark and silence. He was a large man, with a boxer’s hands folded in his lap, but gone soft and fat and pale. He looked Arjun up and down without getting up; only his head moved. He was blind in one eye. He asked, “Where are you from?”

“I don’t know,” Arjun said.

“Not from around here. I can smell it on you.”

“I think that’s right. You seem quite astute, Mr. Thayer. I was told you were sick.”

Thayer’s mother, hovering in the doorway, said, “He can’t go outside, sir.”

Without moving from his chair Thayer craned his neck around and screamed at her with sudden unhinged rage to
fuck off.
She started to sob; Arjun led her gently from the room, sat her on her bed, and returned.

“I don’t
want
to go outside,” Thayer said. “Nor would you, friend, if you saw what I saw.”

“At Brace-Bel’s mansion? What are his defenses?”

Thayer snapped, “Who
are
you?”

“I’m a friend of the Low sisters, same as you.”

“Good luck to you, then, friend.”

“What are his defenses?”

Thayer closed his eyes and breathed deeply for nearly a minute. He appeared to reach a decision; he opened his eyes suddenly and said, “He’s got man-traps in the grass. Fuck that, though, Basso used to do a lot of second-story work, you know? He knew his way round a man-trap. But there were trip wires and alarms that Basso didn’t understand.”

“What else?”

“There were … things in the trees. Like shadows. They touched you and you froze. There were lights that made you go blind.” Thayer raised a fat finger to his dead white eye. “If you were lucky. Sol and Miller never made it to the mansion. We left Sol crying by the fishpond; he said it was a fucking
mirror.
I don’t know what he saw in it. I was
shitting
myself, you know, and I didn’t want to listen. We left Miller laughing and wanking himself in the rose garden. Who fucking knows, right?”

Arjun said, “Did you make it to the house?”

“It was night. We broke open a window. It took fucking ages. I don’t think we were right in the head by then, it was like we were drunk. I mean we’d had a few before we went, loosen the nerves, that’s good business, but it was like we were … The house was all dark on the ground floor, and all lights upstairs. There was music.”

“Is Ivy alive?”

“There were girls, friend. Lots of ‘em. Dancing. They wore masks. Maybe one of ‘em was Ivy. What’s Ivy to you?”

“Her sisters saved my life, Mr. Thayer. They have shown me great kindness.”

“They’re kind with the rent, I’ll tell you that; not like their Dad. So what have you got that’s going to beat Brace-Bel, friend?”

Arjun shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“All that dancing and masks … not
just
dancing, know what I mean? Dirty stuff—he made us watch. He made us join in. He’s a fucking monster. He’s in touch with …
things.
The old Gods. What have you got, ghost?”

“I don’t know. Someone or something has tampered with my memory, Mr. Thayer. Like you I have been wounded in my mind. In my self. I remember things bit by bit but …”

“You mean you won’t tell me.”

“I mean I don’t know. What was he in touch with?”

Thayer moved. One of his thick pale arms lurched into sideways grasping motion; clammy fingers hard as roots closed round Arjun’s wrist. Thayer growled, “Tell me, ghost. What
have you
got? What’s backing
you?”

“Nothing, Mr. Thayer.” Arjun tried to pull away—his hand flaring with pain—and Thayer’s grip tightened.

“What’s backing you? What’s your plan?” Thayer’s whole massive body surged up from the chair and drove Arjun back against the wall. “Why are you here?” Thayer’s broad pale face forced itself so close that his spittle sprayed Arjun with every word: “Fucking
ghosts.”
Thayer’s hand closed around Arjun’s throat. “What are you and him planning?”

Instinct took over Arjun’s limbs—some rapid twisting motion of shoulders and elbows. A hold-breaking move; a wrestler’s trick. Where had he learned it? When? He hardly knew what he’d done. Unfortunately Thayer, too, knew how to grapple. He had a bouncer’s confident grip, and was twice Arjun’s size; the effect of Arjun’s resistance was to topple them both to the floor, Thayer’s heavy body on top, pinning and crushing and snorting stale breath … They struggled. Thayer regained his grip on Arjun’s throat and lost it again. Arjun drove a knee into Thayer’s flab but the angle was bad and there was no force to it. Thayer regained his grip again. Thayer’s cheeks quivered and flushed red. There was a murderous light in his eye.

“Who’ll …” Arjun forced out a painful breath past Thayer’s squeezing fists. “Who’ll tell Ruth I failed?”

Thayer relaxed his grip but did not let go.

“Can you tell the Low sisters I failed, Mr. Thayer? Can you face them? Will you send a letter?”

Thayer did not get up. He seemed to be confused. Arjun scrutinized his heavy body for vulnerabilities. He had just decided that gouging Thayer’s one good eye was a suitable opening gambit when Thayer’s mother appeared overhead, ineffectually flogging Thayer’s back with a mildewed dish towel, shrieking, “Stop that stop that
stop that.”

Thayer recoiled, rolled over.

Arjun scrambled to his feet. Thayer remained sprawled. Thayer’s mother dropped the towel and started to sob.

“I’m sorry, madam.” Arjun held both of her thin hands in his. “I’m so very sorry.”

Thayer started to get up again, so Arjun picked up his bag and ran downstairs and outside.

W
ith the rains over it turned into a warm and sunny afternoon. The Mountain was at Arjun’s back as he walked and he did not have to look it at. His brush with death put him in high spirits. He felt invulnerable; better, he felt
fortunate.
He let the omnibus go by and decided to walk. The factory towers, their complex rigging of scaffold and strut and girder and pipe, glittered in the light.

Since Arjun was walking down empty streets, between wire fences and vast bare lots, he felt safe talking to himself to test his bruised voice. It croaked. As he passed a Patagan Waste Mgmt. scrap yard Arjun decided to hum, and then to sing. His voice, he discovered, was quite good; limited in range and power, but still acceptable. And he knew so many songs! The words were lost; he had only a few tantalizing scraps of lyric and he filled in the melody with
la-la-la.
But the music alone was a remarkable recovery! Hymnal and protest song, drinking song and chant, playground song, wedding song, mourning song … He walked steadily west and south. With every street he recovered another fragment of self; he polished and set them.

… what was Ruth doing? How was she waiting for him? Was she alone or with her sister? Eager to share those precious fragments with her, he picked up his pace.

He caught the omnibus when it started to get dark, when the streets began to feel unsafe. He squeezed onto a crowded bench and rode in silence through the evening.