Weaveworld (71 page)

It was a plant, the first living thing she’d seen here beyond the limits of the trail, with which it shared the same multiplicity of forms and brilliance of colour. It was the size of a small tree, its heart a knot of boughs so complex she suspected it must be several plants growing together in one spot. She heard rustling in the blossom-laden thicket, and amongst the serpentine roots, but she couldn’t see the creature whose call had brought her here.

Something did become apparent, however: that the knot at the centre of the tree, all but lost amongst the foliage, was a human corpse. If she needed further confirmation it was in
plain sight. Fragments of a fine suit, hanging from the boughs like the sloughed skins of executive snakes; a shoe, parcelled up in tendrils. The clothes had been shredded so that the dead flesh could be claimed by flora; green life springing up where red had failed. The corpse’s legs had grown woody, and sprouted knotted roots; shoots were exploding from its innards.

There was no time to linger and look; she had work to do. She made one circuit of the tree, and was about to return to the path when she saw a pair of living eyes staring out at her from the leaves. She yelped. They blinked. Tentatively, she reached forward, and parted the twigs.

The head of the man she’d taken for dead was on almost back to front, and his skull had been cracked wide open. But everywhere the wounds had bred sumptuous life. A beard, lush as new grass, grew around a mossy mouth which ran with sap; floret-laden twigs broke from the cheeks.

The eyes watched her intently, and she felt moist tendrils reaching up to investigate her face and hair.

Then, its blossoms shaking as it drew breath, the hybrid spoke. One long, soft word.

‘Amialive.’

Was it naming itself? When she’d overcome her surprise, she told it she didn’t understand.

It seemed to frown. There was a fall of petals from its crown of flowers. The throat pulsed, and then regurgitated the syllables, this time better punctuated.

‘Am ia live?’

‘Are you alive?’ she said, comprehending now. ‘Of course. Of course you’re alive.’

‘I thought I was dreaming,’ it said, its eyes wandering from its perusal of her a while, then returning. ‘Dead, or dreaming. Or both. One moment … bricks in the air, breaking my head …’

‘Shearman’s house?’ she said.

‘Ah. You were there?’

‘The Auction. You were at the Auction.’

It laughed to itself, and its humour tingled against her cheek.

‘I always wanted … to be inside …’ he said, … inside …’

And now she understood the how and why of this. Though it was odd to think – odd? it was
incredible
– that this creature had been one of Shadwell’s party, that was what she construed. Injured, or perhaps killed in the destruction of the house, he’d somehow been caught up in the Gyre, which had turned his broken body to this flowering purpose.

Her face must have registered her distress at his state, for the tendrils empathized, and grew jittery.

‘So I’m not dreaming then,’ the hybrid said.

‘No.’

‘Strange,’ came the reply. ‘I thought I was. It’s so like paradise.’

She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

‘Paradise?’ she said.

‘I never dared hope … life would be such pleasure.’

She smiled. The tendrils were soothed.

‘This is Wonderland,’ the hybrid said.

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes. We’re near to where the Weave began; near to the Temple of the Loom. Here everything transforms, everything
becomes.
Me? I was lost. Look at me now. How I am!’

Hearing his boast her mind went back to the adventures she’d had in the book; how, in that no-man’s-land between words and the world, everything had been transforming and becoming, and her mind, married in hatred with Hobart’s, had been the energy of that condition. She the warp to his weft. Thoughts from different skulls, crossing, and making a material place from their conflict.

It was all part of the same procedure.

The knowledge was slippery; she wanted an equation in which she could fix the lesson, in case she could put it to use. But there were more pressing issues now than the higher mathematics of the imagination.

‘I must go,’ she said.

‘Of course you must.’

‘There are others here.’

‘I saw,’ said the hybrid. ‘Passing overhead.’

‘Overhead?’

‘Towards the Loom.’

3

Towards the Loom.

She retraced her steps to the trail with fresh enthusiasm. The fact of the buyer’s existence in the Gyre, apparently accepted by the forces here – even welcomed – gave her some hope that the mere presence of a trespasser was not sufficient to make the Gyre turn itself inside out. Its sensitivity had apparently been overestimated. It was strong enough to deal with an invading force in its own inimitable fashion.

Her skin had begun to itch, and there was a restlessness in her gut. She tried not to think too hard of what this signified, but the irritation increased as she again followed the trail. The atmosphere was thickening now; the world around her darkening. It wasn’t night’s darkness, coaxing sleep. The murk buzzed with life. She could taste it, sweet and sour. She could see it, busy behind her eyes.

She’d gone only a little way when something ran across her feet. She looked down to see an animal – an unlikely cross between squirrel and centipede, eyes bright, legs innumerable, cavorting between the roots. Nor, she now realized, was the creature alone. The forest was inhabited. Animals, as numerous and as remarkable as the plant-life, were spilling out from the undergrowth, changing even as they hopped and squirmed, more ambitious by the breath.

Their origins?: the plants. The flora had parented its own fauna; its buds flowering into insects, its fruits growing fur and scales. A plant opened, and butterflies rose in a flickering cloud; in a thorn thicket birds were fluttering into life; from a tree trunk, white snakes poured like sentient sap.

The air was so thick now she could have sliced it, new creatures crossing her path with every yard she advanced,
only to be eclipsed by the murk. Something that was a distant relation of the armadillo waddled in front of her; three variations on the theme of ape came and went; a golden dog cavorted amongst the flowers. And so on. And so forth.

She had no doubt now why her skin itched. It longed to join this game of changes, to throw itself back into the melting pot and find a new design. Her mind, too, was half seduced by the notion. Amongst such joyous invention it seemed churlish to cleave to a single anatomy.

Indeed she might have succumbed in time to these temptations of the flesh, but that ahead of her a building now emerged from the fog: a plain brick building which she caught sight of for an instant before the air enclosed it again. Plain as it was, this could only be the Temple of the Loom.

A huge parrot swooped in front of her, speaking in tongues, then flitted away. She began to run. The golden dog had elected to keep pace with her; it panted at her heels.

Then, the shock wave. It came from the direction of the building, a force that convulsed the living membrane of the air, and rocked the earth. She was thrown off her feet amid sprawling roots, which instantly attempted to incorporate her into their design. She disengaged them from around about her, and pulled herself to her feet. Either the contact with the earth, or the wave of energy from the Temple, had sent her into paroxysms. Though she was standing quite still her whole body seemed to be
dancing.
There was no other word for it. Every part of her, from eye-lash to marrow, had caught the rhythm of power here; its percussion ordered her heart to a different beat; her blood sped then slowed; her mind soared and plummeted by turns.

But that was only flesh. Her other anatomy – the subtle body which the menstruum had quickened – was beyond the control of the forces here; or else was already in such accord with them it was left to its own work.

She occupied it now – telling it to keep her feet from rooting, and her head from sprouting wings and flying off. It soothed her. She’d been a dragon, and emerged again, hadn’t she? This was no different.

Yes it is, said her fears. This is flesh and bone business; the dragon was all in my mind.

Haven’t you learned yet? came the reply, there
is
no difference.

As the answer rang in her head, the second shock wave struck; and this time it was no
petit mal
, but the full fit. The ground beneath her began to roar. She started to run towards the Temple once more, as the noise mounted, but she’d got five yards at best when the roar became the hard din of breaking stone, and a zig-zag crack appeared to the right of her; and to the left another; and another.

The Gyre was tearing itself apart.

II

THE TEMPLE

1

hough Shadwell had a good lead on Cal, the thick air of the Gyre did not conceal him. The Salesman’s jacket stood out like a beacon, and Cal followed it as fast as his jittery limbs would carry him. Though his struggle with the by-blow had left him weak, he was still much the fitter man, and steadily closed the gap between them. More than once he caught Shadwell glancing behind him, his face a smear of anxiety.

After all the chases and crusades, the beasts and the armies, it had come down to the two of them, racing towards a goal beyond the articulation of either. They were equals at last.

Or at least so Cal had thought. It was only when they came in sight of the Temple that the Salesman turned, and stood his ground. Either his fingers, or the air, had clawed his disguise from his face. He was the Prophet no longer. Fragments of the illusion clung to his chin, and around his hair line, but this was recognizably the man Cal had first confronted in that haunted room in Rue Street.

‘Come no further, Mooney,’ he instructed.

He was so breathless the words were barely audible, and the light from the earth made him look sick.

‘I don’t want to shed blood,’ he told Cal. ‘Not here. There arc forces around us that wouldn’t take kindly to that.’

Cal had slopped running. Now, as he listened to Shadwell’s speech, he felt a twitching beneath the soles of his feet.
and looked down to see shoots springing up between his toes.

‘Go back. Mooney,’ said Shadwell. ‘My destiny isn’t with you.’

Cal was only half-listening to the Salesman. The sudden growth beneath his feet intrigued him, and he saw now that it spread across the ground, following Shadwell’s footsteps to where he stood. The barren soil had suddenly produced all manner of plant life, which was growing at a phenomenal rate. Shadwell had seen it too, and his voice was hushed as he said:

‘Creation.
See that, Mooney? Pure Creation.’

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ said Cal.

Shadwell’s face carried a lunatic grin.

‘You have no place here,’ he said. ‘I grant you that. But I’ve waited all my life for this.’

An ambitious plant burst the earth beneath Cal’s foot, and he stepped aside to let it grow. Shadwell read the movement as an attack. He opened his jacket. For an instant Cal thought he was going to try the old trick, but his solution was far simpler. He pulled a gun from his inside pocket, and pointed it at Cal.

‘Like I said, I don’t want to spill blood. So go back, Mooney. Go on.
Go on!
Back the way you came or so help me I’ll blow your brains out.’

He meant it; of that Cal had not the least doubt. Raising his hands to chest height, he said:

‘I hear you. I’m going.’

Before he could move however, three things happened in quick succession. First, something flew overhead, its passage almost hidden by the clouds that pressed upon the roof of the Temple. Shadwell looked up, and Cal, taking the chance, ran at the man, reaching to knock the gun from his grip.

The third event was the shot.

It seemed to Cal he saw the bullet break from the barrel on a plume of smoke; saw it cleave the space between the gun and his body. It was slow, as in a nightmare of execution. But he was slower still.