Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  Perhaps the same military men, now retired to the Official Residences where I have my room, were at one time quartered in these buildings. I am in a quandary as to the circumstances that warranted their transfer to the Western Hill, thus leaving the barracks to ruin.

  Toward the east, the rolling fields come to an end and the Woods begin. They begin gradually, bushes rising in patches amongst intertwining tree trunks, the branches reaching to a height between my shoulders and head. Beneath, the undergrowth is dotted with tiny grassflowers. As the ground slopes, the trees increase in number, variety, and scale. If not for the random twittering of birds, all would be quiet.

  As I head up a narrow brush path, the trees grow thick, the high branches coming together to form a forest roof, obscuring my view of the Wall. I take a southbound trail back into Town, cross the Old Bridge, and go home.

  So it is that even with the advent of autumn, I can trace only the vaguest outline of the Town.

  In the most general terms, the land is laid out east to west, abutted by the North Wood and Southern Hill. The eastern slope of the Southern Hill breaks into crags that extend along the base of the Wall. To the east of the Town spreads a forest, more dark and dense than the North Wood. Few roads penetrate this wilderness, except for a footpath along the riverbank that leads to the East Gate and adjoins sections of the Wall. The East Gate, as the Gatekeeper had said, is cemented in solidly, and none may pass through.

  The River rushes down in a torrent from the Eastern Ridge, passes under the Wall, suddenly appears next to the East Gate, and flows due west through the middle of the Town under three bridges: the East Bridge, the Old Bridge, and the West Bridge. The Old Bridge is not only the most ancient but also the largest and most handsome. The West Bridge marks a turning point in the River. It shifts dramatically to the south, flowing back first slightly eastward. At the Southern Hill, the River cuts a deep Gorge.

  The River does not exit under the Wall to the south. Rather it forms a Pool at the Wall and is swallowed into some vast cavity beneath the surface. According to the Colonel, beyond the Wall lies a plain of limestone boulders, which stand vigil over countless veins of underground water.

  Of course, I continue my dreamreading in the evenings. At six o’clock, I push open the door, have supper with the Librarian, then read old dreams.

  In the course of an evening, I read four, perhaps five dreams. My fingers nimbly trace out the labyrinthine seams of light as I grow able to invoke the images and echoes with increasing clarity. I do not understand what dreamreading means, nor by what principle it works, but from the reactions of the Librarian I know that that my efforts are succeeding. My eyes no longer hurt from the glow of the skulls, and I do not tire so readily.

  After I am through reading a skull, the Librarian places it on the counter in line with the skulls previously read that night. The next evening, the counter is empty.

  “You are making progress,” she says. “The work goes much faster than I expected.”

  “How many skulls are there?”

  “A thousand, perhaps two thousand. Do you wish to see them?”

  She leads me into the stacks. It is a huge schoolroom with rows of shelves, each shelf stacked with white beast skulls. It is a graveyard. A chill air of the dead hovers silently.

  “How many years will it take me to read all these skulls?”

  “You need not read them all,” she says. “You need read only as many as you can read. Those that you do not read, the next Dreamreader will read. The old dreams will sleep.”

  “And you will assist the next Dreamreader?”

  “No, I am here to help you. That is the rule. One assistant for one Dreamreader. When you no longer read, I too must leave the Library.”

  I do not fully comprehend, but this makes sense. We lean against the wall and gaze at the shelves of white skulls.

  “Have you ever been to the Pool in the south?” I ask her.

  “Yes, I have. A long time ago. When I was a child, my mother walked with me there. Most people would not go there, but Mother was different. Why do you ask about the Pool?”

  “It intrigues me.”

  She shakes her head. “It is dangerous. You should stay away. Why would you want to go there?”

  “I want to learn everything about this place. If you choose not to guide me, I will go alone.”

  She stares at me, then exhales deeply.

  “Very well. If you will not listen, I must go with you. Please remember, though, I am so afraid of the Pool. There is something malign about it.”

  “It will be fine,” I assure her, “if we are together, and if we are careful.”

  She shakes her head again. “You have never seen the Pool. You cannot know how frightening it is. The water is cursed. It calls out to people.”

  “We will not go too close,” I promise, holding her hand. “We will look at it from a distance.”

  On a dark November afternoon, we set out for the Pool. Dense undergrowth closes in on the road where the River has carved the Gorge in the west slope of the Western Hill. We must change our course to approach from the east, via the far side of the Southern Hill. The morning rain has left the ground covered with leaves, which dampen our every step. We pass two beasts, their golden heads swaying as they stride past us, expressionless.

  “Winter is near,” she explains. “Food is short, and the animals are searching for nuts and berries. Otherwise, they do not go very far from the Town.”

  We clear the Southern Hill, and there are no more beasts to be seen, nor any road. As we continue west through deserted fields and an abandoned settlement, the sound of the Pool reaches our ears.

  It is unearthly, resembling nothing that I know. Different from the thundering of a waterfall, different from the howl of the wind, different from the rumble of a tremor. It may be described as the gasping of a gigantic throat. At times it groans, at times it whines. It breaks off, choking.

  “The Pool seems to be snarling,” I remark.

  She turns to me, disturbed, but says nothing. She parts the overhanging branches with her gloved hands and forges on ahead.

  “The path is much worse,” she says. “It was not like this. Perhaps we should turn back.”

  “We have come this far. Let us go as far as we can.”

  We continue for several minutes over the thicketed moor, guided only by the eerie call of the Pool, when suddenly a vista opens up before us. The wilderness stops and a meadow spreads flat out. The River emerges from the Gorge to the right, then widens as it flows toward where we stand. From the final bend at the edge of the meadow, the water appears to slow and back up, turning a deep sapphire blue, swelling like a snake digesting a small animal. This is the Pool.

  We proceed along the River toward the Pool.

  “Do not go close,” she warns, tugging at my arm. “The surface may seem calm, but below is a whirlpool. The Pool never gives back what it takes.”

  “How deep is it?”

  “I do not know. I have been told the Pool only grows deeper and deeper. The whirlpool is a drill, boring away at the bottom. There was a time when they threw heretics and criminals into it.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They never came back. Did you hear about the caverns? Beneath the Pool, there are great halls where the lost wander forever in darkness.”

  The gasps of the Pool resound everywhere, rising like huge clouds of steam. They echo with anguish from the depths.

  She finds a piece of wood the size of her palm and throws it into the middle of the Pool. It floats for a few seconds, then begins to tremble and is pulled below. It does not resurface.

  “Do you see?”

  We sit in the meadow ten yards from the Pool and eat the bread we have carried in our pockets. The scene is a picture of deceptive repose. The meadow is embroidered in autumn flowers, the trees brilliant with crimson leaves, the Pool a mirror. On its far side are white limestone cliffs, capped by the dark brick heights of the Wall.
All is quiet, save for the gasping of the Pool.

  “Why must you have this map?” she asks. “Even with a map, you will never leave this Town.”

  She brushes away the bread crumbs that have fallen on her lap and looks toward the Pool.

  “Do you want to leave here?” she asks again.

  I shake my head. Do I mean this as a “no,” or is it only that I do not know?

  “I just want to find out about the Town,” I say. “The lay of the land, the history, the people,… I want to know who made the rules, what has sway over us. I want even to know what lies beyond.”

  She slowly rolls her head, then fixes upon my eyes.

  “There is no beyond,” she says. “Did you not know? We are at the End of the World. We are here forever.”

  I lie back and gaze up at the sky. Dark and overcast, the only sky I am allowed to see. The ground beneath me is cold and damp after the morning rain, but the smell of the earth is fresh.

  Winter birds take wing from the brambles and fly over the Wall to the south. The clouds sweep in low. Winter readies to lay siege.

  13

  Frankfurt, Door, Independent Operants

  AS always, consciousness returned to me progressively from the edges of my field of vision. The first things to claim recognition were the bathroom door emerging from the far right and a lamp from the far left, from which my awareness gradually drifted inward like ice flowing together toward the middle of a lake. In the exact center of my visual field was the alarm clock, hands pointing to ten-twenty-six. An alarm clock I received as a memento of somebody’s wedding. One of those clever designs. You had to press the red button on the left side of the clock and the black button on the right side simultaneously to stop it from ringing, which was said to preempt the reflex of killing the alarm and falling back to sleep. True, in order to press both left and right buttons simultaneously, I did have to sit upright in bed with the thing in my lap, and by then I had made a step into the waking world.

  I repeat myself, I know, but the clock was a thanks-for-coming gift from a wedding. Whose, I can’t remember. But back in my late twenties, there’d been a time when I had a fair number of friends. One year I attended wedding after wedding, whence came this clock. I would never buy a dumb clock like this of my own free will. I happen to be very good at waking up.

  As my field of vision came together at the alarm clock, I reflexively picked it up, set it on my lap, and pushed the red and black buttons with my right and left hands. Only then did I realize that it hadn’t been ringing to begin with. I hadn’t been sleeping, so I hadn’t set the alarm.

  I put the alarm clock back down and looked around. No noticeable changes in the apartment. Red security-device light still on, empty coffee cup by the edge of the table, the librarian’s cigarette lying in a saucer. Marlboro Light, no trace of lipstick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t worn any makeup at all.

  I ran down my checklist. Of the five pencils in front of me, two were broken, two were worn all the way down, and one was untouched. The notepad was filled with sixteen pages of tiny digits. The middle finger of my right hand tingled, slightly, as it does after a long stint of writing.

  Finally, I compared the shuffled data with the laundered data to see that the number of entries under each heading matched, just like the manual recommends, after which I burned the original list in the sink. I put the notepad in a strongbox and transferred it and the tape recorder to the safe. Shuffling accomplished. Then I sat down on the couch, exhausted.

  I poured myself two fingers of whiskey, closed my eyes, and drank it in two gulps. The warm feel of alcohol traveled down my throat and spread to every part of my body. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, drank some water, and used the toilet. I returned to the kitchen, resharpened the pencils, and arranged them neatly in a tray. Then I placed the alarm clock by my bed and switched the telephone back to normal. The clock read eleven-fifty-seven. I had a whole day tomorrow ahead of me. I scrambled out of my clothes, dove into bed, and turned off the bedside light. Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn’t stop it. I was going to sleep.

  I replayed my usual fantasy of the joys of retirement from Calcutecdom. I’d have plenty of savings, more than enough for an easy life of cello and Greek. Stow the cello in the back of the car and head up to the mountains to practice. Maybe I’d have a mountain retreat, a pretty little cabin where I could read my books, listen to music, watch old movies on video, do some cooking,… And it wouldn’t be half bad if my long-haired librarian were there with me. I’d cook and she’d eat.

  As the menus were unfolding, sleep descended. All at once, as if the sky had fallen. Cello and cabin and cooking now dust to the wind, abandoning me, alone again, asleep like a tuna.

  Somebody had drilled a hole in my head and was stuffing it full of something like string. An awfully long string apparently, because the reel kept unwinding into my head. I was flailing my arms, yanking at it, but try as I might the string kept coming in.

  I sat up and ran my hands over my head. But there was no string. No holes either. A bell was ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I grabbed the alarm clock, threw it on my lap, and slapped the red and black buttons with both hands. The ringing didn’t stop. The telephone! The clock read four-eighteen. It was dark outside. Four-eighteen A.M.

  I got out of bed and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” I said.

  No sound came from the other end of the line.

  “Hello!” I growled.

  Still no answer. No disembodied breathing, no muffled clicks. I fumed and hung up. I grabbed a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and drank whole white gulps before going back to bed.

  The phone rang again at four-forty-six.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello,” came a woman’s voice. “Sorry about the time before. There’s a disturbance in the sound field. Sometimes the sound goes away.”

  “The sound goes away?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The sound field’s slipping. Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” I said. It was the granddaughter of that kooky old scientist who’d given me the unicorn skull. The girl in the pink suit.

  “Grandfather hasn’t come back up. And now, the sound field’s starting to break up. Something’s gone wrong. No one answers when I call the laboratory. Those INKlings have gotten Grandfather, I just know it.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe he’s gotten all wrapped up in one of his experiments and forgotten to come home. He let you go a whole week sound-removed without noticing, didn’t he?”

  “It’s not like that. Not this time. I can tell. Something’s happened to Grandfather. Something is wrong. Anyway, the sound barrier’s broken, and the underground sound field’s erratic.”

  “The what’s what?”

  “The sound barrier, the special audio-signal equipment to keep the INKlings away. They’ve forced their way through, and we’re losing sound. They’ve got Grandfather for sure!”

  “How do you know?”

  “They’ve had their beady little eyes on Grandfather’s studies. INKlings. Semiotecs. Them. They’ve been dying to get their hands on his research. They even offered him a deal, but that just made him mad. Please, come quick. You’ve got to help, please.”

  I imagined what it would be like coming face to face with an INKling down there. Those creepy subterranean passageways were enough to make my hair stand on end.

  “I know you’re going to think I’m terrible, but tabulations are my job. Nothing else is in my contract. I’ve got plenty to worry about as it is. I’d like to help, honest, but fighting INKlings and rescuing your grandfather is a little out of my line. Why don’t you call the police or the authorities at the System? They’ve been trained for this sort of thing.”

  “I can’t call the police. I’d have to tell them everyth
ing. If Grandfather’s research got out now, it’d be the end of the world.”

  “The end of the world?”

  “Please,” she begged. “I need your help. I’m afraid that we’ll never get him back. And next they’re going to go after you.”

  “Me? You maybe, but me? I don’t know the first thing about your grandfather’s research.”

  “You’re the key. Without you the door won’t open.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “I can’t explain over the phone. Just believe me. This is important. More than anything you’ve ever done. Really! For your own sake, act while you still can. Before it’s too late.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. “Okay,” I gave in, “but while you’re at it, you’d better get out of there. It could be dangerous.”

  “Where should I go?”

  I gave her directions to an all-night supermarket in Aoyama. “Wait for me at the snack bar. I’ll be there by five-thirty.”

  “I’m scared. Somehow it—”

  The sound just died. I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun. Was the rupture in the sound field spreading? I hung up, stepped into my trousers, threw on a sweatshirt. I did a quick once-over with the shaver, splashed water on my face, combed my hair. My puss was puffy like cheap cheesecake. I wanted sleep. Was that too much to ask? First unicorns, now INKlings—why me?

  I threw on a windbreaker, and pocketed my wallet, knife, and loose change. Then, after a moment’s thought, I wrapped the unicorn skull in two bath towels, gathered up the fire tongs and the strongbox with the shuffled data, and tossed everything into a Nike sports bag. The apartment was definitely not secure. A pro could break into the place and crack the safe in less time than it takes to wash a sock.

  I slipped into my tennis shoes, one of them still dirty, then headed out the door with the bag. There wasn’t a soul in the hallway. I decided against the elevator and sidestepped down the stairs. There wasn’t a soul in the parking garage either.