Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (30 page)

"But he said you exercise every day."

"Exercise?" says my shadow. "Every day the Gatekeeper drags me out and makes me burn dead beasts with him. Some exercise."

"Is that so bad?"

"It's not fun and games. We load up the cart with carcasses, haul them out to the Apple Grove, douse them with oil, and torch them. But before that, the Gatekeeper lops off the heads with a hackblade. You've seen his magnificent tool collection, haven't you? The guy's not right in his head. He'd hack the whole world to bits if he had his way."

"Is the Gatekeeper what they call Townfolk?"

"No, I don't think he's from here. The guy takes pleasure in dead things. The Townpeople don't pay him any mind. As if they could. We've already gotten rid of loads of beasts. This morning there were thirteen dead, which we have to burn after this."

The shadow digs his heels into the frozen ground.

"I found the map," says my shadow. "Drawn much better than I expected. Thoughtful notes, too. But it was just a little late."

"I got sick," I say.

"So I heard. Still, winter was too late. I needed it earlier. I could have formulated a plan with time to spare."

"Apian?"

"A plan of escape. What else? You didn't think I wanted a map for my amusement, did you?"

I shake my head. "I thought you would explain to me what's what in this Town. After all, you ended up with almost all our memories."

"Big deal," says my shadow. "I got most of our memories, but what am I supposed to do with them? In order to make sense, we'd have to be put back together, which is not going to happen. If we try anything, they'd keep us apart forever. We'd never pull it off. That's why I thought things out for myself. About the way things work in this Town."

"And did you figure anything out?"

"Some things I did. But nothing I can tell you yet. Without more details to back it all up, it would hardly be convincing. Give me more time, I think I'll have it. But by then it might already be too late. Since winter came on, I am definitely getting weaker. I might draw up an escape plan, but would I even have the strength to carry it out? That's why I needed the map sooner."

I look up at the elm tree overhead. A mosaic of winter sky shows between the branches.

"But there is no escape from here," I say. "You looked over the map, didn't you? There is no exit. This is the End of the World."

"It may be the End of the World, but it has to have a way out. I know that for certain. Look at the sky. Where do those birds go when they fly over the Wall? To another world. If there was nothing out there, why surround the place with a Wall? It has to let out somewhere."

"Or maybe—"

"Leave it to me, I'll find it," he cuts me short. "We'll get out of here. I don't want to die in this miserable hole."

He digs his heel into the ground again. "I repeat what I said at the very beginning: this place is wrong. I know it. More than ever. The problem is, the Town is
perfectly
wrong. Every last thing is skewed, so that the total distortion is seamless. It's a whole. Like this—"

My shadow draws a circle on the ground with his boot.

"The Town is sealed," he states, "like this. That's why the longer you stay in here, the more you get to thinking that things are normal. You begin to doubt your judgment. You get what I'm saying?"

"Yes, I've felt that myself. I get so confused. Sometimes it seems I'm the cause of a lot of trouble."

"It's not that way at all," says my shadow, scratching a meandering pattern next to the circle. "We're the ones who are right. They're the ones who are wrong, absolutely. You have to believe that, while you still have the strength to believe. Or else the Town will swallow you, mind and all."

"But how can we be absolutely right? What could their being absolutely wrong mean? And without memory to measure things against, how could I ever know?"

My shadow shakes his head. "Look at it this way. The Town seems to contain everything it needs to sustain itself in perpetual peace and security. The order of things remains perfectly constant, no matter what happens. But a world of perpetual motion is theoretically impossible. There has to be a trick. The system must take in and let out somewhere."

"And have you discovered where that is?"

"No, not yet. As I said, I'm still working on it. I need more details."

"Can you tell me anything? Perhaps I can help."

My shadow takes his hands out of his pockets, warms them in his breath, then rubs them on his lap.

"No, it's too much to expect of you. Physically I'm a mess, but your mind is in no shape either. The first thing you have to do is recover. Otherwise, we're both stuck. I'll think these things out by myself, and you do what you need to do to save yourself."

"My confidence is going, it's true," I say, dropping my eyes to the circle on the ground.

"How can I be strong when I do not know my own mind? I am lost."

"That's not true," corrects my shadow. "You are not lost. It's just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self. You must believe in your own powers."

"I will try," I say.

My shadow gazes up at the sky and closes his eyes.

"Look at the birds," he says. "Nothing can hold them. Not the Wall, nor the Gate, nor the sounding of the horn. It does good to watch the birds."

I hear the Gatekeeper calling. I am to curtail my visit.

"Don't come see me for a while," my shadow whispers as I turn to go. "When it comes time, I'll arrange to see you. The Gatekeeper will get suspicious if we meet, which will only make my work harder. Pretend we didn't get along"

"All right," I say.

"How did it go?" asks the Gatekeeper, upon my return to the Gatehouse. "Good to visit after all this time, eh?"

"I don't really know," I say, with a shake of the head.

"That's how it is," says the Gatekeeper, satisfied.

Meal, Elephant Factory, Trap

Climbing the rope was easier than climbing the steps. There was a strong knot every thirty centimeters. Rope in both hands, I swung suspended, bounding off the tower. A regular scene from
The Big Top
. Although, of course, in the film the rope wouldn't be knotted; the audience wouldn't go for that.

I looked up from time to time. She was shining her light down at me, but I could get no clear sense of distance. I just kept climbing, and my gut wound kept throbbing. The bump on my head wasn't doing bad either.

As I neared the top, the light she held became bright enough for me to see my whole body and surroundings. But by then I'd gotten so used to climbing in the dark that actually seeing what I was doing slowed me down and I nearly slipped a couple of times.

I couldn't gauge distance. Lighted surfaces jumped out at me and shadowed parts inverted into negative.

Sixty or seventy knots up, I reached the summit. I grabbed the rock overhang with both hands and pushed up like a competition swimmer at poolside. My arms ached from the long climb, so it was a struggle. She grabbed my belt and helped pull me up.

"That was close," she said. "A few more minutes and we'd have been goners."

"Great," I said, stretching out on the level and taking a few deep breaths, "just great. How far up did the water come?"

She set her light down and pulled up the rope, hand over hand. At the thirtieth knot she stopped and passed the rope over to me. It was dripping wet.

"Did you find your grandfather?"

"Why of course," she beamed. "He's back there at the altar. But he's sprained his foot. He got it caught in a hole."

"And he made it all the way here with a sprained foot?"

"Yes, sure. Grandfather's in very good shape."

"I'd imagine so," I said.

"Let's go. Grandfather's waiting inside. There's lots he wants to talk to you about."

"Likewise here," I said.

I picked up the knapsack and followed her toward the altar. This turned out to be nothing more than a round opening cut into a rock face. It led into a large room illuminated by the dim amber glow of a propane lamp set in a niche, the walls textured with myriad shadows from the grain of the rock. The Professor sat next to the lamp, wrapped in a blanket. His face was half in shadow. His eyes looked sunken in the half-light, but in fact he was chipper as could be.

"Seems we almost lost you," the Professor greeted me ever so gladly. "I knew the water was goint'rise, but I thought you'd get here a bit sooner."

"I got lost in the city, Grandfather," said his chubby granddaughter. "It was almost a whole day before I finally met up with him."

"
Tosh
," said the Professor. "But we're here now and 'sail the same."

"Excuse me, but what exactly is 'sail the same?" I asked.

"Now, now, hold your horses. I'll get't'all that. Just take yourself a seat. First thing, let's just remove that leech from your neck."

I sat down near the Professor. His granddaughter sat beside me. She lit a match and held it to the giant sucker feasting on my neck. It was big as a wine cork. The flame hissed as it touched the engorged parasite. The leech fell to the ground, wriggling in spasms, until she put it out of its misery.

My neck felt seared. If I turned my head too far, I thought the skin would slip off like the peel of a rotten tomato. A week of this life-style and I'd be a regular scar tissue showcase, like one of those full-color photos of athlete's foot posted in the windows of pharmacies.

Gut wound, lump on the head, leech welt—throw in penile dysfunction for comic relief.

"You wouldn't by any chance have brought along anything to eat, would you?" the Professor asked me. "Left in such a hurry, I didn't pack."

I opened the knapsack and removed several cans, squashed bread, and the canteen, which I handed to him. The Professor took a long drink of water, then examined each can as if inspecting vintage wines. He decided on corned beef and peaches.

"Care't'join me?" offered the Professor.

I declined. We watched the Professor tear off some bread and top it with a chunk of corned beef, then dig into it with real zest. Next he had at the peaches and even brought the can up to his lips to drink the syrup. I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.

"Yessir, that hit the spot," the Professor thanked me. "I usually keep two or three days' emergency rations here, but this time it so happened I hadn't replenished supplies. Unforgivable. Get accustomed to carefree days and you drop your guard. You know the old saying:
When the sun leaks through again, patch the roof for rain
. Ho-ho-ho."

"Now that you've finished your meal," I began, "there's a few things we need to talk about. Let's take things in order, starting from the top. Like, what is it you were trying to do? What did you do? What was the result? And where does that leave me ?"

"I believe you'll find it all rather technical," the Professor said evasively.

"Okay, then break it down. Make it less technical." "That may take some time."

"Fine. You know exactly how much time I've got." "Well, uh, 't'begin with," the Professor owned up, "I must apologize. Research is research, but I tricked you and used you and I put your life in danger. Set a scientist down in front of a vein of knowledge and he's goint'dig. It's this pure focus, exclusive of all view to loss or gain, that's seen science achieve such uninterrupted advances
i
. . You've read your Aristotle."

"Almost not at all," I said. "I grant you your pure scientific motives. Please get to the point."

"Forgive me, I only wanted't'say that the purity of science often hurts many people, just like pure natural phenomena do. Volcanic eruptions bury whole towns, floods wash bridges away, earthquakes knock buildings flat—"

"Grandfather!" interrupted his chubby granddaughter. "Do we really have the time for that? Won't you hurry up a bit with what you have to say?"

"Right you are, child, right you are," said the Professor, taking up his granddaughter's hand and patting it. "Well, then, uh, what is it y' want't'know? I'm terrible at explanations. Where should I begin?"

"You gave me some numbers to shuffle. What were they all about?"

"T'explain that, we have't'go back three years. I was working at System Central Research. Not as a formal employee researcher, but as a special outside expert. I had four or five staffers under me and the benefit of magnificent facilities. I had all the money I could use. I don't put much by money, mind you, and I do have something of an allergy't'servin' under others. But even so, the resources the System put at my disposal and the prospect of puttin' my research findings into practice was certainly attractive."

"The System was at a critical point just then. That's't'say, virtually every method of data-scramblin' they devised't' protect information had been found out by the Semiotecs. That's when I was invited't'head up their R&D."

"I was then—and still am, of course—the most able and the most ambitious scientist in the field of neurophysiology. This the System knew and they sought me out. What they were after wasn't further complexification or sophistication of existing methods, but unprecedented technology. Wasn't the kind of thinkin' you get from workaday university lab scholars, publish-or-perishin' and countin' their pay. The truly original scientist is a free individual."

"But on entering the System, you surrendered that freedom," I countered.

"Exactly right," said the Professor. "I did my share of soul-searchin' on that one. Don't mean't'excuse myself, but I was eagerer than anythint'put my theories into practice. Back then, I already had a fully developed theory, but no way't'verify it. That's one of the drawbacks of neurophysiology; you can't experiment on animals like you can in other branches of physiology. No monkey's got functions complex enough't'stand in for human subconscious psychology and memory."