Imajica

  For the first time since she’d appeared she said his name, tentatively, as though in this darkness she’d suddenly doubted he was real.

  “I’m here,” he replied. “Always.”

  “This is what you want?” she said.

  “Of course it is. Of course,” he replied, and put his hand on her sex.

  This time the iridescence, when it came, was almost bright, and fixed in his head the image of her crotch, his fingers sliding over and between her labia. As the light went, leaving its afterglow on his blind eyes, he was vaguely distracted by a ringing sound, far off at first but closer with every repetition. The telephone, damn it! He did his best to ignore it, failed, and reached out to the bedside table where it sat, throwing the receiver off its cradle and returning to her in one graceless motion. The body beneath him was once again perfectly still. He climbed on top of her and slid inside. It was like being sheathed in silk. She put her hands up around his neck, her fingers strong, and raised her head a little way off the bed to meet his kisses. Though their mouths were clamped together he could hear her saying his name—”Gentle? Gentle?”—with that same questioning tone she’d had before. He didn’t let memory divert him from his present pleasure, but found his rhythm: long,slow strokes. He remembered her as a woman who liked him to take his time. At the height of their affair they’d made love from dusk to dawn on several occasions, toying and teasing, stopping to bathe so they’d have the bliss of working up a second sweat. But this was an encounter that had none of the froth of those liaisons. Her fingers were digging hard at his back, pulling him onto her with each thrust. And still he heard her voice, dimmed by the veils of his self-consumption: “Gentle? Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” he murmured.

  A fresh tide of light was rising through them both, the erotic becoming a visionary toil as he watched it sweep over their skin, its brightness intensifying with every thrust.

  Again she asked him, “Are you there?”

  How could she doubt it? He was never more present than in this act, never more comprehending of himself than when buried in the other sex.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  Yet she asked again, and this time, though his mind was stewed in bliss, the tiny voice of reason murmured that it wasn’t his lady who was asking the question at all, but the woman on the telephone. He’d thrown the receiver off the hook, but she was haranguing the empty line, demanding the reply. Now he listened. There was no mistaking the voice. It was Jude. And if Jude was on the line, who the fuck was he fucking?

  Whoever it was, she knew the deception was over. She dug deeper into the flesh of his lower back and buttocks, raising her hips to press him deeper into her still, her sex tightening around his cock as though to prevent him from leaving her unspent. But he was sufficiently master of himself to resist and pulled out of her, his heart thumping like some crazy locked up in the cell of his chest.

  “Who the hell are you?” he yelled.

  Her hands were still upon him. Their heat and their demand, which had so aroused him moments before, unnerved him now. He threw her off and started to reach towards the lamp on the bedside table. She took hold of his erection as he did so and slid her palm along the shaft. Her touch was so persuasive he almost succumbed to the idea of entering her again, taking her anonymity as carte blanche and indulging in the darkness every last desire he could dredge up. She was putting her mouth where her hand had been, sucking him into her. He regained in two heartbeats the hardness he’d lost.

  Then the whine of the empty line reached his ears. Jude had given up trying to make contact. Perhaps she’d heard his panting and the promises he’d been making in the dark. The thought brought new rage. He took hold of the woman’s head and pulled her from his lap. What could have possessed him to want somebody he couldn’t even see? And what kind of whore offered herself that way? Diseased? Deformed? Psychotic? He had to see. However repulsive, he had to see!

  He reached for the lamp a second time, feeling the bed shake as the harridan prepared to make her escape. Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch. It didn’t smash, but its beams were cast up at the ceiling, throwing a gauzy light down on the room below. Suddenly fearful she’d attack him, he turned without picking the lamp up, only to find that the woman had already claimed her clothes from the snarl of sheets and was retreating to the bedroom door. His eyes had been feeding on darkness and projections for too long, and now, presented with solid reality, they were befuddled. Half concealed by shadow the woman was a mire of shifting forms—face blurred, body smeared, pulses of iridescence, slow now, passing from toes to head. The only fixable element in this flux was her eyes, which stared back at him mercilessly. He wiped his hand from brow to chin in the hope of sloughing the illusion off, and in these seconds she opened the door to make her escape. He leapt from the bed, stilldetermined to get past his confusions to the grim truth he’d coupled with, but she was already halfway through the door, and the only way he could stop her was to seize hold of her arm.

  Whatever power had deranged his senses, its bluff was called when he made contact with her. The roiling forms of her face resolved themselves like pieces of a multifaceted jigsaw, turning and turning as they found their place, concealing countless other configurations—rare, wretched, bestial, dazzling—behind the shell of a congruous reality. He knew the features, now that they’d come to rest. Here were the ringlets, framing a face of exquisite symmetry. Here were the scars that healed with such unnatural speed. Here were the lips that hours before had described their owner as nothing and nobody. It was a lie! This nothing had two functions at least: assassin and whore. This nobody had a name.

  “Pie ‘oh’ pah!”

  Gentle let go of the man’s arm as though it were venomous. The form before him didn’t redissolve, however, for which fact Gentle was only half glad. That hallucinatory chaos had been distressing, but the solid thing it had concealed appalled him more. Whatever sexual imaginings he’d shaped in the darkness—Judith’s face, Judith’s breasts, belly, sex—all of them had been an illusion. The creature he’d coupled with, almost shot his load into, didn’t even share her sex.

  He was neither a hypocrite nor a puritan. He loved sex too much too condemn any expression of lust, and though he’d discouraged the homosexual courtships he’d attracted, it was out of indifference, not revulsion. So the shock he felt now was fueled more by the power of the deceit worked upon him than by the sex of the deceiver.

  “What have you done to me?” was all he could say. “What have you done?”

  Pie ‘oh’ pah stood his ground, knowing perhaps that his nakedness was his best defense.

  “I wanted to heal you,” he said. Though it trembled, there was music in his voice.

  “You put some drug in me.”

  “No!” Pie said.

  “Don’t give me no! I thought you were Judith! You let me think you were Judith!” He looked down at his hands, then up at the hard, lean body in front of him. “I felt her, not you.” Again, the same complaint. “What have you done to me?”

  “I gave you what you wanted,” Pie said.

  Gentle had no retort to this. In its way, it was the truth. Scowling, he sniffed his palms, thinking there might be traces of some drug in his sweat. But there was only the stench of sex on him, of the heat of the bed behind him.

  “You’ll sleep it off,” Pie said.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Gentle replied. “And if you go anywhere near Jude again, I swear . . . I swear . . . I’ll take you apart.”

  “You’re obsessed with her, aren’t you?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “It’ll do you harm.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It will, I’m telling you.”

  “I told you,” Gentle yelled, “shut the fuck up!”

  “She doesn’t belong to you,” came the reply.

  The words ignited new fury in Gentle. He reached for Pie and took him by the
throat. The bundle of clothes dropped from the assassin’s arm, leaving him naked. But he put up no defense; he simply raised his hands and laid them lightly on Gentle’s shoulders. The gesture only infuriated Gentle further. He let out a stream of invective, but the placid face before him took both spittle and spleen without flinching. Gentle shook him, digging his thumbs into the man’s throat to stop his windpipe. Still he neither resisted nor succumbed, but stood in front of his attacker like a saint awaiting martyrdom.

  Finally, breathless with rage and exertion, Gentle let go his hold and threw Pie back, stepping away from the creature with a glimmer of superstition in his eyes. Why hadn’t the fellow fought back or fallen? Anything but this sickening passivity.

  “Get out,” Gentle told him.

  Pie still stood his ground, watching him with forgiving eyes.

  “Will you get out?” Gentle said again, more softly, and this time the martyr replied.

  “If you wish.”

  “I wish.”

  He watched Pie ‘oh’ pah stoop to pick up the scattered clothes. Tomorrow, this would all come clear in his head, he thought. He’d have shat this delirium out of his system, and these events—Jude, the chase, his near rape at the hands of the assassin—would be a tale to tell Klein and Clem and Taylor when he got back to London. They’d be entertained. Aware now that he was more naked than the other man, he turned to the bed and dragged a sheet off it to cover himself with.

  There was a strange moment then, when he knew the bastard was still in the room, still watching him, and all he could do was wait for him to leave. Strange because it reminded him of other bedroom partings: sheets tangled, sweat cooling, confusion and self-reproach keeping glances at bay. He waited, and waited, and finally heard the door close. Even then he didn’t turn, but listened to the room to be certain there was only one breath in it: his own. When he finally looked back and saw that Pie ‘oh’ pah had gone, he pulled the sheet up around him like a toga, concealing himself from the absence in the room, which stared back at him too much like a reflection for his peace of mind. Then he locked the suite door and stumbled back to bed, listening to his drugged head whine like the empty telephone line.

  I

  OSCAR ESMOND GODOLPHIN ALWAYS recited a little prayer in praise of democracy when, after one of his trips to the Dominions, he stepped back onto English soil. Extraordinary as those visits were—and as warmly welcomed as he found himself in the diverse Kesparates of Yzordderrex—the city-state was an autocracy of the most extreme kind, its excesses dwarfing the repressions of the country he’d been born in. Especially of late. Even his great friend and business partner in the Second Dominion, Hebbert Nuits-St.-Georges, called Peccable by those who knew him well, a merchant who had made substantial profit from the superstitious and the woebegone in the Second Dominion, regularly remarked that the order of Yzordderrex was growing less stable by the day and he would soon take his family out of the city, indeed out of the Dominion entirely, and find a new home where he would not have to smell burning bodies when he opened his windows in the morning. So far, it was only talk. Godolphin knew Peccable wellenough to be certain that until he’d exhausted his supply of idols, relics, and jujus from the Fifth and could make no more profit, he’d stay put. And given that it was Godolphin himself who supplied these items—most were simply terrestrial trivia, revered in the Dominions because of their place of origin—and given that he would not cease to do so as long as the fever of collection was upon him and he could exchange such items for artifacts from the Imajica, Peccable’s business would flourish. It was a trade in talismans, and neither man was likely to tire of it soon.

  Nor did Godolphin tire of being an Englishman in that most un-English of cities. He was instantly recognizable in the small but influential circle he kept. A large man in every way, he was tall and big-bellied: bellicose when fondest, hearty when not. At fifty-two he had long ago found his style and was more than comfortable with it. True, he concealed his second and third chins beneath a gray-brown beard that only got an efficient trimming at the hands of Peccable’s eldest daughter, Hoi-Polloi. True, he attempted to look a little more learned by wearing silver-rimmed spectacles that were dwarfed by his large face but were, he thought, all the more pedagoguish because they didn’t flatter. But these were little deceits. They helped to make him unmistakable, which he liked. He wore his thinning hair short and his collars long, preferring for dress a clash of tweeds and a striped shirt; always a tie; invariably a waistcoat. All in all, a difficult sight to ignore, which suited him fine. Nothing was morelikely to bring a smile to his face than being told he was talked about. It was usually with affection.

  There was no smile on his face now, however, as he stepped out of the site of the Reconciliation—known euphemistically as the Retreat—to find Dowd sitting perched on a shooting stick a few yards from the door. It was early afternoon but the sun was already low in the sky, the air as chilly as Dowd’s welcome. It was almost enough to make him turn around and go back to Yzordderrex, revolution or no.

  “Why do I think you haven’t come here with sparkling news?” he said.

  Dowd rose with his usual theatricality. “I’m afraid you’re absolutely correct,” he said.

  “Let me guess: the government fell! The house burned down.” His face dropped. “Not my brother?” he said. “Not Charlie?” He tried to read Dowd’s face. “What: dead? A massive coronary. When was the funeral?”

  “No, he’s alive. But the problem lies with him.”

  “Always has. Always has. Will you fetch my goods and chattels out of the folly? We’ll talk as we walk. Go on in, will you? There’s nothing there that’s going to bite.”

  Dowd had stayed out of the Retreat all the time he’d waited for Godolphin (a wearisome three days), even though it would have given him some measure of protection against the bitter cold. Not that his system was susceptible to such discomforts, but he fancied himself an empathic soul, and his time on Earth had taught him to feel cold as an intellectual concept, if not a physical one, and he might have wished to take shelter. Anywhere other than the Retreat. Not only had many esoterics died there (and he didn’t enjoy the proximity of death unless he’d been its bringer), but the Retreat was a passing place between the Fifth Dominion and the other four, including, of course, the home from which he was in permanent exile. To be so close to the door through which his home lay, and be prevented by the conjurations of his first keeper, Joshua Godolphin, from opening that door, was painful. The cold was preferable.

  He stepped inside now, however, having no choice in the matter. The Retreat had been built in neoclassical style: twelve marble pillars rising to support a dome that called for decoration but had none. The plainness of the whole lent it gravity and a certain functionalism which was not inappropriate. It was, after all, no more than a station, built to serve countless passengers and now used by only one. On the floor, set in the middle of the elaborate mosaic that appeared to be the building’s sole concession to prettification but was in fact the evidence of its true purpose, were the bundles of artifacts Godolphin brought back from his travels, neatly tied up by Hoi-Polloi Nuits-St.-Georges, the knots encrusted with scarlet sealing wax. It was her present delight, this business with the wax, and Dowd cursed it, given that it fell to him to unpack these treasures. He crossed to the center of the mosaic, light on his heels. This was tremulous terrain, and he didn’t trust it. But moments later he emergedwith his freight, to find that Godolphin was already marching out of the copse that screened the Retreat from both the house (empty, of course; in ruins) and any casual spy who peered over the wall. He took a deep breath and went after his master, knowing the explanation ahead would not be easy.

  II

  “So they’ve summoned me, have they?” Oscar said, as they drove back into London, the traffic thickening with the dusk. “Well, let them wait.”

  “You’re not going to tell them you’re here?”

  “In my time, not in theirs. This is a mess
, Dowdy. A wretched mess.”

  “You told me to help Estabrook if he needed it.”

  “Helping him hire an assassin isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Chant was very discreet.”

  “Death makes you that way, I find. You really have made a pig’s ear of the whole thing.”

  “I protest,” said Dowd. “What else was I supposed to do? You knew he wanted the woman dead, and you washed your hands of it.”

  “All true,” said Godolphin. “She is dead, I assume?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve been scouring the papers, and there’s no mention.”

  “So why did you have Chant killed?”

  Here Dowd was more cautious in his account. If he said too little, Godolphin would suspect him of concealment. Too much, and the larger picture might become apparent. The longer his employer stayed in ignorance of the scale of the stakes, the better. He proffered two explanations, both ready and waiting.

  “For one thing, the man was more unreliable than I’d thought. Drunk and maudlin half the time. And I think he knew more than was good for either you or your brother. He might have ended up finding out about your travels.”

  “Instead it’s the Society that’s suspicious.”

  “It’s unfortunate the way these things turn out.”

  “Unfortunate, my arse. A total balls-up is what it is.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “I know you are, Dowdy,” Oscar said. “The point is, where do we find a scapegoat?”

  “Your brother?”

  “Perhaps,” Godolphin replied, cannily concealing the degree to which this suggestion found favor.

  “When should I tell them you’ve come back?” Dowd asked.

  “When I’ve made up a lie I can believe in,” came the reply.

  Back in the house in Regent’s Park Road, Oscar took some time to study the newspaper reports of Chant’s death before retiring to his treasure house on the third floor with both his new artifacts and a good deal to think about. A sizable part of him wanted to exit this Dominion once and for all. Take himself off to Yzordderrex and set up business with Peccable; marry Hoi-Polloi despite her crossed eyes; have a litter of kids and retire to the Hills of the Conscious Cloud, in the Third, and raise parrots. But he knew he’d yearn for England sooner or later, and a yearning man could be cruel. He’d end up beating his wife, bullying his kids, and eating the parrots. So, given that he’d always have to keep a foot in England, if only during the cricket season, and given that as long as he kept a presence here he would be answerable to the Society, he had to face them.