Everville

  “Anywhere in particular?” Harry said.

  “Yes, as you’re asking,” Maeve replied. “There’s a crossroads—”

  “What is it about those damn crossroads?” Harry said.

  “It’s where I lived. Where we built our house, my husband and me. And let me tell you, that house was a glory. A glory. Until the sons of bitches burned it down.”

  “Why did they do that?”

  “Oh, the usual. Too much righteousness and too little passion. What I would give for a taste, just a taste, of the way it was at the beginning, when we still had hope . . . ”

  She fell into silence for a few moments. Then she erupted afresh: “Take me there!” she hollered. “Take me there! Let me see the ground where it all began!”

  TWELVE

  I

  Tesla found Buddenbaum sitting in the Nook, as Seth had told her she would. The little coffee shop was deserted, and dark but for the fire Buddenbaum had started on a plate in front of him, feeding it with scraps of menu.

  “I was about to give up on you,” he said, with a smile that was very nearly sincere.

  “I got waylaid.”

  “By some of the locals?”

  “Yes.” She came to his table, and sat down opposite him, plucking a napkin from the dispenser to mop the sweat from her face. Then she plucked another and blew her nose.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Buddenbaum said.

  “Oh, do you?”

  “You’re thinking: Why should I give a shit about these fucking people? They’re cruel and they’re stupid, and when they’re afraid they just become more cruel and more stupid.”

  “You’re exempting us from this, of course.”

  “Of course. You’re a Nunciate. And I’m—”

  “The Jai-Wai’s man.”

  Buddenbaum grimaced. “Do they know you’ve come here?”

  “I told them I was going walkabout, to think things through.” She dug in her pocket, and pulled out the cards. “Ever seen these before, by the way?” She laid them on the table. Buddenbaum regarded them almost superstitiously, his mouth tight.

  “Whose are they?” he said, his fingers hovering over them but not making contact.

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’ve been in powerful hands,” he said appreciatively.

  Tesla went back into her pocket in pursuit of a stray card, and brought out the remains of the reefer she’d confiscated from the crucifixion singer. She sniffed it. Whatever it contained, it smelled appealingly pungent. She plucked a spill of burning cardboard off the plate, and putting the reefer to her lips, lit it.

  “Will you work for them?” Buddenbaum said.

  “The Jai-Wai?” she said. He nodded. “I doubt it.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re psychotic, Buddenbaum. They get a buzz out of seeing people suffer.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “No.” She inhaled, just half a lungful. Held the smoke.

  “Oh, come on Bombeck,” Buddenbaum replied. “You wrote for the movies. You know what gives people a thrill.”

  She exhaled a breath of lilac smoke. “The difference is: This is real.”

  Buddenbaum leaned forward. “Are you going to share that?” he said. She passed the joint over the fire. It had induced some subtle visual hallucinations. The flames had slowed their licking, and the beads of sweat on Buddenbaum had become crystalline. He drew on the joint, and spoke as he held his breath. “What’s real to us isn’t what’s real to the rest of the world. You know that.” He turned his gaze towards the dark street. A family of five was hurrying along the sidewalk, the children sobbing. “Whatever they’re suffering,” he said, exhaling now, “and I don’t mean to diminish them in saying this—it’s an animal response. That’s not real in any absolute sense. It will pass. All things pass, sooner or later.”

  She remembered Kissoon, in Toothaker’s house. This had been his wisdom too.

  “The life of the flesh, the animal life, is transient. It melts, it fades away. But what’s hidden in the flesh—the enduring spirit—that has permanence, or at least the hope of permanence. It’s up to us to make that hope a reality.”

  “Is that why you want the Art?”

  Buddenbaum drew on the joint again, passed it back to Tesla, and leaned back in his chair. “Ah . . . the Art,” he said.

  “I was there when the Jaff got it. You know that?”

  “Of course.”

  “He didn’t exactly flourish.”

  “I know that too,” Buddenbaum said. “But then he was weak. And crazy. I’m neither. I’ve lived two and a half lifetimes, preparing for what’s about to happen here. I’m ready to handle power.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  Buddenbaum rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “This ganga’s good,” he said. “The truth is, it’s not you I need, Tesla.”

  “It’s the Jai-Wai.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Do you want to tell me why?”

  Buddenbaum considered this for a moment.

  “If you want my help,” Tesla said, “you’re going to have to trust me.”

  “That’s difficult,” Buddenbaum said. “I’ve had so many solitary years, keeping my secrets.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you,” Tesla said. “I’ll tell you what I know. Or what I’ve guessed.” She picked up the cards, and shuffled them in the firelight, her eyes on Buddenbaum as she spoke. “You buried one of the Shoal’s medallions at the crossroads, and over the years it’s been gathering power somehow. And now you’re ready to use it, to get you the Art.”

  “Good . . . ” said Buddenbaum, “go on . . . ”

  She pushed the fire-plate aside, and started to lay the cards out on the table, one by one. “The Jaff taught me something,” she said, “when we were together under the Grove. I was looking at the cross he had, trying to work out what the symbols meant—these symbols”—she waved the cards. “And he told me: To understand something is to have it. When you know what a symbol means, it’s no longer a symbol. You have the thing itself in your head, and that’s the only place anything needs to be.” She looked down at the cards for a moment. When she glanced back up at Buddenbaum his gaze was icy. “Everything dissolves at the crossroads, doesn’t it? Flesh and spirit, past and future, it all turns into mind.” She had found all the cards picturing the body spreadeagled at the center of the cross, and now proceeded to assemble them. “But for you to access the Art, you need to have all the possibilities there in the stew. There at the crossroads. The human pieces. The animal pieces. The dreaming pieces—” She stopped. Stared at him. “How am I doing?” she said.

  “I think you know,” said Buddenbaum.

  “So—where was I?”

  “Dreaming pieces.”

  “Oh yes. And the last pieces, of course. The pieces that complete the pattern.” She had the very card in her hand: the symbol at the top of the vertical arm. She turned it to him. “The pieces of divinity.”

  Buddenbaum sighed.

  “The Jai-Wai,” she said, and tossed the card down onto the table.

  There was twenty, maybe thirty seconds of silence. Finally Buddenbaum said, “Can you imagine how difficult it’s been to arrange this? To find a place where I had a hope of all these forces coming at some point or other? This wasn’t the only spot I buried a cross, of course. I put them all over. But there was something about this place—”

  “And what was that?”

  He considered a moment. “A little girl called Maeve O’Connell,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “She’s the one who buried the cross for me, back before this little burg existed. I remember hearing her father call her name—Maeve, Maeve—and I thought, this is a sign. The name’s Irish. It’s a spirit who comes to men in their dreams. And then when I met the father, I realized how easy it would be to inspire him. Make him build me a honeypot of a city, where every manner of creature came, and there in the middle of i
t, my little cross could be gathering power.”

  “Everville’s your creation?”

  “No, I can’t make that claim. The inspiration was mine, but that’s all. The rest was made by ordinary men and women going about their lives.”

  “So did you keep an eye on it?”

  “For the first three or four years I came looking, but the seed had failed to take. The father had died on the mountain, and the daughter had married a damn strange fellow from the other side, so people kept their distance.”

  “But the city got built anyway?”

  “Eventually, though I’m damned if I know how. I didn’t come back here for a long time, and when I did, what do you know? There was Everville. Not quite the Byzantium I’d envisaged but it had its possibilities. I knew that wanderers from the Metacosm came here now and again, for sentimental reasons. And they crossed paths with Sapas Humana, and they went their way, and all the while the medallion gathered its powers underground.”

  “You waited a long time.”

  “I had to be ready, in myself. Randolph Jaffe isn’t the only one who lost his wits thinking he could handle the Art. As I said before, I’ve lived several lifetimes, thanks to Rare Utu and her buddies. I’ve used the years to rarefy myself.”

  “And now you’re ready?”

  “Now I’m ready. Except that one piece of the puzzle I need has deserted me.”

  “So—you want me to bring them to you.”

  “If you’d be so kind,” Buddenbaum said, with a little inclination of his head.

  “If I succeed you’ll help me keep the Iad from destroying the city?”

  “That’s my promise.”

  “How do I know you won’t just piss off into your higher state of being and let the rest of us go down in flames?”

  “You have to believe I won’t break the last promise I made as a mortal man,” Buddenbaum replied.

  It wasn’t an airtight offer, Tesla thought, but it was probably the best she was going to get. While she was turning it over, Buddenbaum said, “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Once you’ve brought the Jai-Wai to the crossroads, I want you to get out of the city.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this afternoon, when I had everything in place, the working failed because of you.”

  “How’d you work that out?”

  “There was no other reason,” Buddenbaum replied. “You’re a Nunciate. The power couldn’t choose which of us to flow to, so it stayed where it was.”

  “All right. So I’ll get out.”

  “Now I’m the one who needs the promise.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Good enough,” Buddenbaum said. “Now—why don’t you burn the cards?”

  “Why?”

  “As a . . . gesture of good will.”

  Tesla shrugged. “Whatever,” she said, and gathering them up she tossed them into the slow flames. They caught quickly, flaming up.

  “Pretty,” said Buddenbaum, rising from his chair. “I’ll see you at the crossroads then.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  II

  She felt the presence of the enemy the moment she stepped out into the street. Memories of Point Zero came flickering back into her head—the desolation, the dust, and the Iad, rising like a seething tide. They would be here soon, bringing their madness and their appetite for madness, turning over this city, whose only crime was to have been founded in the name of transcendence.

  And once it was trampled, what then? Out into the Americas, to find new victims, new adherents? She knew from her years of wandering that it would not go unwelcomed. There were people across this divided nation hungry for catastrophe, plotting to welcome the millennium in with bloodshed and destruction. She’d heard them at diner counters, muttering into their coffee; seen them at the side of highways, raging and raging; brushed by them in busy streets (passing for sane, most of them; dressed and polished and civil): people who wanted to murder the world for disappointing them.

  Once the Iad arrived they wouldn’t need to talk to themselves any longer. They wouldn’t need to berate heaven, or put on smiles when all they wanted to do was scream. They would have their day of wrath, and the power she’d seen unleashed at Point Zero would be suddenly inconsequential.

  God help her, in her time, she might have numbered herself among them.

  She didn’t have to go far to find the Jai-Wai. A hundred yards from the Nook she heard a great commotion, and seeking out its source found the chief of police, along with two of his officers, attempting to calm a mob of perhaps fifty Evervillians, all of whom were demanding he do something to protect their city. Many of them had flashlights and had them trained on the target of their ire. Ashen and sweaty, Gilholly did his best to calm them, but circumstances were against him. The Iad’s influence was getting stronger as they descended from the Heights, and the already demented crowd was steadily losing its grip of reality. People started to sob uncontrollably or shriek at the limit of their lungs. Somebody in the throng began speaking in tongues.

  Realizing he was losing what little grip he had, Gilholly pulled out his gun and fired it into the air. The crowd simmered down a little.

  “Now listen up!” Gilholly yelled above the murmurs and sobs. “If we just stay calm we can ride this out. I want everybody to go to the Town Hall, and we’ll wait there until help arrives.”

  “Help from where?” somebody asked.

  “I got calls out all over, don’t you worry,” Gilholly replied. “We’ll have support from Molina and Silverton in the next half hour. We’re going to get the lights back on and—”

  “What about what’s going on on the mountain?”

  “It’s all going to get taken care of,” Gilholly said. “Now will you please clear the streets so when help gets here nobody’s hurt?” He pushed through the crowd, beckoning for folks to follow. “Come on, now! Let’s get going.”

  As the mob began to move off Tesla glimpsed a white dress and, making her way towards it, found Rare Utu, her girlish guise as flawless as ever, watching the scene with a smile on her face. It broadened into a grin at the sight of Tesla.

  “They’re all going to die,” she beamed.

  “Won’t that be fun,” Tesla dead-panned.

  “Have you made up your mind?”

  “Yes,” said Tesla. “I accept the offer. With one proviso.”

  “And what’s that?” said Yie, stepping out of the retreating crowd wearing his human face.

  “I don’t want to be the one to tell Buddenbaum. You have to do it.”

  “Why do we even need to bother?” Haheh said, emerging at Yie’s side.

  “Because he served you all those years,” Tesla said. “And he deserves to be treated with some dignity.”

  “He’s not going to perish the moment we leave,” Haheh pointed out. “He’ll have a quick decline as the years catch up with him, but it won’t be so terrible.”

  “Then tell him that,” Tesla said. She looked back at Rare Utu. “I don’t want him coming after me with a machete, because I took his job.”

  “I understand,” the girl said.

  Yie scowled. “This is the first and last time we accede to your desires,” he said. “You should be grateful to be serving us.”

  “I am,” Tesla said. “I want to tell you wonderful stories and show you wonderful sights. But first—”

  “Where is he?” said Haheh.

  “At the crossroads.”

  * * *

  III

  Thank God for the darkness,” Maeve said as they made their way through the murky streets. “I swear if I saw this ugliness in the plain light of day I’d weep.” She demanded to be set down in front of the Hamburger Hangout, so that she could be appalled. “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” she said. “It looks like something made for children.”

  “Don’t break your heart over it,” Raul said. “It won’t be standing much longer.”

/>   “We were going to build a city that could stand forever,” Maeve said.

  “Nothing lasts that long,” said Harry.

  “Not true,” said Maeve. “Great cities become legends. And legends don’t die.” She scowled at the Hamburger Hangout. “Anything would be better than this,” she said. “A pile of rubble! A hole in the ground!”

  “Can we get a move on?” Harry said, glancing back towards the mountain. They’d been meandering through the streets for maybe twenty minutes now, with the O’Connell woman confidently giving directions back to the place where she’d lived, though it was increasingly plain that she was lost. Meanwhile Kissoon and his Iadic legion had been descending from the Heights. Their tangled mass was now no longer visible, which surely meant they’d reached the bottom of the slope. Perhaps they were already in the city, and the demolition Maeve so relished underway.

  “It’s not far now,” the old woman said, making her way unaided to the nearest intersection and looking in all directions. “That way!” she said, pointing.

  “Are you sure?” said Harry.

  “I’m sure,” she said. “It was at the very center of the city, my whorehouse. The first house that was ever raised, in fact.”

  “Did you say whorehouse?”

  “Of course they burned it down. Did I tell you that? Burned down half the neighborhood at the same time, when the fire spread.” She turned back to Harry. “Yes, I said whorehouse. How do you think I built my city? I didn’t have a river. I didn’t have gold. So we built a whorehouse, Coker and me, and I filled it with the most beautiful women I could find. And that brought the men. And some of them stayed. And married. And built houses of their own. And”—she opened her arms, laughing out loud—“lo and behold! There was Everville!”

  * * *

  IV

  Laughter? Bosley thought, hearing Maeve’s amusement echo through the streets. How pitiful. Somebody had lost their mind in all this chaos.

  He was sheltering in the doorway of the Masonic Hall at present, to keep himself (and the baby he was still carrying) out of the way of people and vehicles. Ten yards down the block, Larry had the Lundy kid up against the wall and was interrogating him. He wanted to know where the sodomite Buddenbaum was hiding out, but Seth wasn’t letting on. Every time Seth shook his head Larry traded him a blow: a tap sometimes; sometimes not. Waits and Alstead hung around at a distance. Waits had broken into Dan’s Liquor Store on Coleman Street, and got himself a couple of bottles of bourbon, so he was quite happy watching the interrogation over Larry’s shoulder. Alstead was sitting on the sidewalk, with his shirt hiked up, examining the abrasions he’d suffered during the earlier skirmish with Lundy. He had already told Larry that when the questioning was finished he would be taking over. Bosley didn’t give much for Lundy’s chances.