Gears of the City (36 page)

So Brace-Bel wandered the dusty halls of the Museum. His feet scuffed the dust, which reassured him that he truly existed, notwithstanding the fact that he could not see his own feet. Whenever he looked down he felt as though he should fall. He touched his own face compulsively. He could not see his fingers. In fact he could not see any part of himself, nor could he (so far, touch wood) be seen by others.

He’d inherited no fewer than
three
invisibility devices from Shay. He’d kept them on his person and they’d survived the destruction of his household. One, which hung from a chain around his neck, was a grey pigeon’s feather, which smelled of dry blood and smoke, and was distressingly cold to the touch. Shay had said that it held the power of a God of the city’s unwanted and friendless and elderly, and imparted that God’s gift of being forgotten. A second, clipped to Brace-Bel’s belt and humming softly, was a little box of circuits and diodes that might one day be invented somewhere, but never here. Shay had explained—as if it “explained” anything!—that the box created a field that bent and scattered light. And last there was an inky black stone, shiny but unreflective, massy and somehow ancient-feeling, that Shay had refused under any circumstances to discuss. Brace-Bel kept it in his pocket and tried not to touch it.

He had no idea which of the three devices did the work of hiding him. Perhaps all of them did! He felt terribly uneasy. He felt remarkably brave and pleased with his own bravery and ashamed that in these last days, this alien city, he had been reduced to being proud of such nonsense. He wiped his brow and felt sweat that he could not see.

Because he was a scholar, and had had conversations with the leading students of optics of his day, he wondered how he was not
blind.
If he could not be seen it seemed to him that he should not be able to see. A puzzle. It was sad to think that he knew no one with whom he could share it.

Over the sound of the thrashing of wings he could hear men outside in the Square screaming. A little shiver of delight ran down his spine.

He had a device like a tin whistle that could throw, like a ventriloquist, various noises, and he used it to distract the Know-Nothings when he needed to pass. He had a device like a monocle
that did
something
to people that left them sitting on the floor staring vacantly through their own pouring tears.

He found Ivy on the second floor, the only object in an emptied room, standing still at the window, watching the birds circle. She stared with a fierce curiosity as if trying to calculate their chaotic interweaving trajectories. She did not seem to be anyone’s prisoner.

“If every beautiful thing in this Museum were destroyed,” he said, “and you alone remained, this would be no less a storehouse of wonders.” He was at least half sincere, which delighted and confused and appalled him.

She turned from the window. “Brace-Bel,” she said. She did not seem surprised at his presence, or his invisibility. She sighed and said, “I might have known you’d interfere.” Unable to think of anything intelligent to say, instead he went down on one knee, where he wobbled slightly, then cursed as he realized that she could not see him, and fumbled in his pockets for the relevant devices, which he was not sure now how to deactivate, and his hands were soaked with sweat.

She helped him stand, saying, “Never mind, never mind. Too late now. Let’s go talk to the Beast.” She gave him her arm and permitted him to lead her to safety.

Arjun

Outside in the Square the Know-Nothings got to their feet. Some of them were still in agony or in tears; two ran away into the alleys behind the Museum. The rest drew their weapons. They were scattered and panicked and confused; their clothes were torn and they looked like bloody scarecrows. Maury moved among them calling for order and it seemed to Arjun that he was telling them to stay calm and in control and knocking their guns from their hands. But in fact there was no one obvious to shoot anyway. The protesters had fled.

Where was Ruth? Was she safe?

Arjun peered from around a corner and as far as he could see the Know-Nothings hadn’t yet noticed him.

There were only half a dozen of the Know-Nothings standing. It seemed like more, but he counted carefully.

One of the Know-Nothings aimed his gun at the Beast, still struggling out of its cage and into the city.

It was a violent birth; the broken bars gouged into its scaly hide. Blood oozed from the wounds in its throat.

Maury wrestled the gun from the man’s hand, as if he’d decided now to save the Beast.
(Was
it Maury? Whoever it was still wore his torn and filthy black coat over his head as a shield against the birds.) The Beast’s would-be executioner decided to run for it, slipping and sliding on bloody feathers. Maury—if it was Maury—sat on the steps, wrapped in torn black, and watched the Beast emerge.

There was a terrible explosion of noise in Arjun’s ear, and he stumbled. His face was warm; he put a hand to it and felt blood, dust.

A bullet had hit the wall next to his head, sprayed him with fragments of brick. His ears rang with noise and shock. Who’d fired? He couldn’t tell. He stumbled back into the alley, hunching for cover.

Ruth

As the storm of birds descended Ruth sheltered in an alley just off the Square. Marta was there, clutching Mrs. Anchor’s frightened snotty children by their collars—where was Mrs. Anchor? Zeigler was there, an expression of utter rapture on his face. The alley was heaped with stinking refuse, broken crates. Mrs. Rawley was there, sitting on a crate, swigging from her whiskey-bottle, cackling. Schiller the dogcatcher peered from the shadows, baring his broken teeth into a snarl of joy. “Take that! Fucking Know-Nothings!” Shriveled old Mrs. Thayer leaned on her huge pale damaged son, who’d left his bedroom for the first time in years to see the miracle for himself, and was maybe bellowing, maybe laughing, and either way his round face was bright with tears.

At the back of the alley was a wire-link fence, at the foot of which were heaps of garbage, rank stands of weeds; over the top of which hung half a dozen children, fingers knotted in the wires, watching the miracle.

At the mouth of the alley the Square, the city, the sky were all utterly transformed. The beating of wings was loud as a train. Nothing was visible but bright feathers, flashes of color and light—and sometimes the chaotic thrashing
stilled
, and for a moment it seemed every bird swooped together, like a single white
wing beating slowly. It was impossible to imagine that the world would ever return to normal.

Ruth stepped out into it with her eyes wide open. She heard Marta’s voice calling
stop …
and then she could hear nothing but the thrashing of wings, the cries and song of the birds. They left her unharmed. They resembled illustrations of angels torn from an old book, set loose on the breeze. She couldn’t stop laughing …

… until suddenly they rose, all at once, their song tapering off into cries of dismay and confusion, their flight becoming unsteady and uncertain. She reached after them; they were gone.

The Square was a bloody, filthy mess. A Know-Nothing with his eyes torn from his face staggered past her, fell at her feet. At the far end of the Square the surviving Know-Nothings were regrouping.

After the miracle was over the world was unchanged.

Now the Black Masks came into the Square, from the east and west sides, as arranged, guns at the ready, to demand the Know-Nothings’ surrender.

Ruth wasn’t sure who started the shooting.

She walked forward across the Square. Marta was calling,
get back here, Ruth, come back.

On the steps of the Museum the Beast was forcing its way out of its cage.

It was so much larger than she remembered, so much uglier and wilder. Its savage jerking motions as it thrashed at the bars were nothing like the gentle creature of her memories. Only its huge yellow eyes were the same.

Its neck seemed to stretch, snakelike, as it squeezed out into the world.

It terrified her. What would it do when it escaped into the city?
What have we done?

Then she saw the scars and stitches that covered every inch of its hide. She saw how badly put-together it was, and she was full of pity for it.

A shapeless black figure approached the monster, stumbling, half on its knees, half upright—Inspector Maury, who it seemed had sheltered from the birds with his long black coat over his head. He knocked aside another Know-Nothing and kept stumbling forward. When he reached the cage he threw the torn and filthy
coat aside, and stood up. He barely came up to the Beast’s long scarred throat. He lifted up his hands as if seeking the Beast’s blessing, and its head, madly thrashing, swooped and snapped shut over his left arm—and tore, and twisted, so that Maury jerked like a puppet—and it swung its head and threw him aside, bleeding, broken, to roll down the Museum’s steps.

Ruth stepped over him. She was running, now …

Mr. Wantyard had staggered to his feet. His waistcoat was torn and his belly protruded; he looked like an unraveling scarecrow. He snatched a long rifle from the limp frightened grip of his bodyguard. He sighted and fired into the Beast’s open and slavering jaws. Blood sprayed. He fired again. Before she knew she meant to do it, Ruth found that she’d lifted a truncheon from the belt of the unconscious Know-Nothing at her feet, and run up the slick and feathered steps, and struck Wantyard with all her strength on the back of his bald head.

Wantyard stumbled, cursed, dropped the rifle, and put a hand to his head. He rounded on her, snarling.

Arjun

Arjun’s head rang; he could hear nothing in his left ear but the droning echoes ofthat shot, like an airplane circling in his skull. In his right ear he could hear dim and muted sounds of gunfire, screaming. He felt sick.

He staggered back out of the safety of the alley and into the chaos of the Square. One of the Black Masks had been shot and lay writhing. Arjun couldn’t hear—was he groaning or screaming? At the south end of the Square a group of Masks was accepting the surrender of the last of the Know-Nothings, or perhaps it was the other way around.

Soundless, the scene was unreal, dreamlike, meaningless. The Beast opened its bloody jaws in a silent roar. Feathers still drifted in the air.

Up on the steps a fat man in a torn green waistcoat was wrestling with—Ruth?

Arjun ran up the steps. He slipped on something and fell, bruising his shins. When he got up again, he saw that Ruth and the
fat man—Wantyard?—both stood still, watching the door to the Museum, from which Ivy was now emerging.

Behind Ivy there was a faint shimmer in the air—Brace-Bel.

Ivy wore a simple black dress. She appeared quite calm— almost amused at the strange scene before her.

The Beast stilled its thrashing and watched her.

Ivy reached out and took a drifting feather from the air. She examined it, and smiled.

Wantyard let go of Ruth.

Wantyard said something; Ruth said something; Ivy said something. Drone and buzz; silence.

Ivy walked straight past Ruth. She took Wantyard’s hands in hers and whispered something in his ear.

Did they know each other? Apparently they did—because Wantyard attempted to kiss her, and when she stepped deftly aside, he followed her eagerly over to the cage, where the Beast waited.

The expression on Ruth’s face—confused, upset, angry? Arjun moved next to her and held her hand. He pointed at his ears and mouthed,
can’t hear.
Her eyes were wide.

Ivy and Wantyard stood together before the Beast’s cage. Ivy turned and smiled at Wantyard, whispered in his ear, and he swallowed, leaned forward, and reached into the bars of the cage.

Instantly the Beast lunged and clamped its jaw around Wantyard’s arm. Wantyard reared back—and then Ivy was standing behind him, holding his shoulders, and she was shouting something at him, or at the Beast—which bit again, and then again, in Wantyard’s shoulder, in his belly, in his leg, opening shallow precise wounds…

The Beast worked on Wantyard with the delicacy of a surgeon. With a swift slice of its claws it removed the man’s genitals; raking deftly back and forth it opened the man’s throat like an accordion. It was a complicated operation. It seemed to go on for some time.

Ivy stood beside Wantyard, talking, gesturing—as if she was giving the Beast instructions.

Ruth buried her head in Arjun’s shoulder and sobbed. Brace-Bel, visible now, blanched and looked away.

As the Beast worked on Wantyard its own stitches began to open—the scars of the surgery that had made it. At first they bled,
a thick black ooze. Then they began to leak dust. They snapped open and dry sheets of hide and scale fell away, exposing wet muscle and bone. The creature’s movements became slow and painful. The light in its yellow eyes faded. Its haunches sagged. At last it slumped to the floor and lay still.

After a long moment Wantyard got to his feet.

He was bleeding from a hundred wounds, small and large. His clothes were torn and he was nearly naked.

He smiled, and his smile was too wide. His eyes had an ugly yellow shine to them. His tongue flickered.

Ivy wrapped Maury’s discarded black coat around Wantyard’s shoulders. Wantyard struggled to get into it, jerking and twisting, as if unfamiliar with clothing. When he was done he smiled again, and began to stroke the coat’s leather, preening himself.

Arjun realized that the hearing in his right ear was returning— his left ear still buzzed and roared. He could hear Ruth crying. He could hear distant alarms.

The creature wearing Wantyard’s flesh stopped its preening, and came toward Arjun. He stood his ground. He was very frightened; but all it did was stand in front of him and look him curiously up and down, and smile, and sniff, repeatedly, obsessively, as if puzzled by the sensory deficiencies of its new body.

It grinned again, and spoke, and Arjun strained to hear the distant buzzing words: “He has laboratories. He made me. I made myself anew. He no longer owns me.”