—Naturally, said Grimus. For one thing, it had nothing to do with their reasons for being here. Immortality was their choice, not exploration. The Rose was mine.
—And Virgil’s, said Flapping Eagle. Grimus ignored him.
—This is the Perfect Dimension, he said. In another potential Dimension, you never came to Calf Island. In another, I never found the Stone Rose. In yet another, I continue to live, for ever, prisoner to my own ideas. But here, it must all be as I intended it.
His hands were working feverishly now, his voice was piercingly shrill.
—Supposing I had succumbed to Dimension-fever? asked Flapping Eagle.
—You couldn’t possibly, said Grimus. Your Ions were too strong. Notice the means you used to vanquish your monster: Chaos. The true weapon of the destroyer. Your unconscious mind knew exactly what it was doing.
—There was a risk, said Flapping Eagle.
—Nonsense, said Grimus. With Virgil Jones, the Gorf Koax as well as myself looking over your shoulder? Nonsense. You played your hand well, though, I don’t deny you that.
Something snapped inside Flapping Eagle at the sight of that face, so much his own and yet so little his own, smiling at him benignly. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say that a number of things fell into place. An old, old memory stirred: the memory of a man searching for a voice in which to speak. Flapping Eagle, in the company of the orchestrator of his life, had finally found such a voice for himself.
—Played my hand well, he repeated with quiet fury. A revealing metaphor, don’t you think? The Stone Rose has warped you, Grimus; its knowledge has made you as twisted, as eaten away by power-lust, as its effect has stunted and deformed the lives of the people you brought here. This is a game, isn’t it, a game you’re enjoying? An infinity of continua, of possibilities both present and future, the free-play of time itself, bent and shaped into a zoo for your personal enjoyment. Yes, you have made me, I grant it. Yes, you have brought me here in the condition you wanted for the lunatic purpose you envisaged. You are so far removed from the pains and tormented of the world you left and the world you made that you can even see death as an academic exercise. You can plan your own death as a kind of perfect game of chess. But in the end it all depends on me, Grimus, in some way which you haven’t yet explained. It all hangs on my choice and I tell you now I am not going to play. Virgil asked me to destroy the Stone Rose. I am now convinced he was right. It has already shattered too many lives. Too many possibilities of happiness. I said it to the goddess Axona in my fever and I say it to you: Grimus, I shall destroy you if I can.
Grimus applauded gravely.
—Ah, a spirited death, he said. Good. Good.
Flapping Eagle gathered his strength to do—what?— he could not form any plan. He stood helplessly, clutching his ju-ju stick, as Grimus laughed.
—I shall destroy you, repeated Flapping Eagle, but not in the way you want. I will not assume your mantle.
Grimus said: —I think it’s almost time to tell you my plan for my death, which is, of course, my plan for you. But before I do, I should like to set at rest certain misapprehensions you appear to be fostering. Please follow me.
He went through the door into the Kâf-room, the empty area with the letter Kâf on a wall. Flapping Eagle followed, seeing no reason not to. He still needed Grimus, needed him to find the Stone Rose.
—You say I am detached from my creation, said Grimus. This room will bear witness I am not. And who do you think it is that watches over K? Do you not think those aged houses would have fallen down by now? Do you not think that much-tilled soil would be exhausted by now? Did you ever wonder why Mr Gribb never ran out of paper or where the metal hinges which held the doors on were made? The truth is, Flapping Eagle, a Conceptual Dimension like Calf Island needs constant fostering and Re-Conceptualizing at regular intervals, in order to preserve its existence. If I am to die without a successor the island will crumble. You have to take my place.
—You said this room was to bear witness, said Flapping Eagle.
—Yes, yes, said Grimus, showing a trace of irritation. Very well. Think of anywhere on the island. Anywhere at all.
—Just think about it? asked Flapping Eagle, wondering what was coming.
—Yes. Think hard.
Flapping Eagle found the picture of Dolores’ house forming in his mind. It would be interesting to see what had become of her…
And suddenly they were there. In the cottage. The cottage was here, in the room, in Grimushome. The jigsaw, there. The pot of root-tea, there. The rocking-chair, there…
In the rocking-chair, Nicholas Deggle.
—He can’t see us, said Grimus.
—How are you doing this? Flapping Eagle’s voice was unsteady again.
—An adjustment of the Rose. I use it to keep watch on the island when I’m tired of using the Watercrystal. So much more detail here. By the way, Dolores O’Toole is dead.
The scene faded. Once more, an empty room.
—You see, said Grimus. I’m not really out of touch.
No, thought Flapping Eagle. You have reduced all other lives to the same level of unreality as your own. They are fictions now, illusions called up by Conceptualizing and the Rose… they cannot move you in this form. They don’t affect you. Aloud he said: —I disagree.
Grimus turned and walked from the room in that stylized bird-gait of his.
—The third part of the Dance will now begin, he said. I shall explain the manner of my death.
Flapping Eagle, seated once more in the rocking-chair. Grimus, circling around him once more.
—Grimus, said Flapping Eagle. Some questions.
—Questions? Good. Good.
—Why does the Effect leave you unscathed?
—Good question, said Grimus, and fell silent. It was as though he was thinking of the answer.
Eventually he said: —I was once a prisoner of war. Every day I feared I would be killed. It was that kind of war. I sat in trucks with dozens of others and they drove us to the execution-ground and blindfolded us. We heard soldiers coming, orders to aim … the bullets did not come. It was an expert torture. And sometimes, just to keep us believing, they really did shoot people. But it was the torture they liked. Some people died of heart attacks. Not me. I learnt two things about myself: first, that it was a matter of the utmost aportance to me whether my body lived or died. Second, that at some future time, I wanted to be the one to organize my life. Exactly as I wished it.
And so you built your own prison, thought Flapping Eagle.
—Aportance? he said.
—When a thing is neither important nor unimportant, said Grimus, when, in fact the concept of importance ceases to have meaning, you have understood aportance. This is why the Inner Dimensions could not hurt me: I am pliable, willing to believe anything, willing to accept any new horror, any vile truth about myself. I have no secrets from myself. So I can live with the Inner Dimensions. They coexist with my conscious self, continually. Do you see?
—Yes, said Flapping Eagle. I see.
—Another question, said Grimus. One tells one’s Death everything.
—Yes. Just one more. (I’ll reserve the blinks for a better moment. There will be a better moment, he told himself.)
—All the people on the island, he said, seem to come from a time roughly contemporaneous with the time I took the Elixir. So do you, in fact.
—Observant of you, said Grimus. Several reasons, really. One, I didn’t want to cause vast social problems by combining cavemen and astronauts. Two, I find my own time a great deal more interesting than either the past or the future. And three, it proved easiest to transport people from parallel dimensions if one fixed upon a constant time. Made the settings easier and so forth. No more questions?
—Yes, said Flapping Eagle, remembering.
Grimus clucked his tongue in admonition. —Such mental imprecision, he said.
—Don’t you consider your Experiment to have been a failure since the Effec
t has changed its course so completely?
He kept his voice deliberately level, abstract.
—Not at all, said Grimus. Good question. Not at all. My, you ask good questions. (Again, a slight feeling that something had got under his skin.) It merely changed the nature of the experiment. And helped with the necessary alienation. It is important that K should dislike me. For my Death, you know. For my Death.
—All right, said Flapping Eagle, seeing no alternative.
Tell me about it.
—Simple, said Grimus. I have put Bird-Dog through a course of deep hypnosis. At a given command she will Travel to Liv’s house. I shall of course open the Gate. She is instructed to tell Liv she hates me—and for the sake of verisimilitude I have abused her for centuries, so she shouldn’t find it too difficult to obey the post-hypnotic suggestion. She hates me and wants me killed. Liv, of course, has had her hate of me (carefully-nurtured by me, might I add) revived recently by her adventure with you. Obviously she knows, now that she is no longer in her trance, that her plan misfired somewhat, her sexual revenge I mean. So she will be very bitter, and will agree. The flux-lines say she will. I have examined them. Free will really is an illusion, you know. People behave according to the flux-lines of their potential futures.
Anyhow. They will attempt to drum up support, being sufficiently in awe of me not to attempt my murder on their own. Here again your mishaps in K were exactly correct. K is now more antagonistic to me than ever. And so we come to my murderers. A fascinating trio. Flann O’Toole is one. The thought of playing Napoleon, of leading an invading army, will be irresistible to him. The second is Peckenpaw. For him it will be a revenge for the death of his friend and a chance to return to the chase, the thrill of the chase. The third is more unlikely, perhaps. Mr Moonshy will join the merry band. He will tell himself it is to free the island from tyranny. Perhaps it will be. Perhaps he is really more interested in Trina Cherkassova than he allows. Those are the three who will come through the Gate, which I shall leave open. Flann O’Toole, as no doubt you noticed, has very powerful hands.
Strangled’s hands, remembered Flapping Eagle.
—The key figure in all this, said Grimus equably, is Liv. It is her passion which will drive them. Not Bird-Dog’s: she is a Spectre of Grimus. Not their own, for it is tempered with fear. It is Liv who will push them. Thanks to you. Angel of Death. You have prepared the Mountain of Kâf to turn upon the Simurg. And you will be the new master, because I shall have taught you how.
—You really wish to die like that, at the hands of a mob? asked Flapping Eagle.
—Of course, said Grimus with simple insanity. I have planned it for years. It is both psychologically and symbolically satisfying. The period of stability containing the seeds of its own downfall. The cataclysm being followed by a new and very similar order. It is aesthetic. It is right,
Grimus hopped across the room and pulled on a bell-cord. Though it was late at night, Bird-Dog was with them within a minute, panting and out of breath. Again Flapping Eagle felt a helpless rage at seeing his flesh and blood so humbled. Perhaps he, too, was as trapped as Bird-Dog, he thought, and then attempted without success to expunge the thought from his mind.
—Bird-Dog, said Grimus.
—Yes.
—This is my final order to you, said Grimus.
—Yes, said Bird-Dog, starting.
—The Order is Final, said Grimus.
Bird-Dog turned and walked towards the door. Flapping Eagle rushed to her and grasped her by the shoulders. —Don’t go, he said. Fight your conditioning. Say no.
—I want to go, said Bird-Dog quietly. I want him killed.
Grimus laughed happily in the background as Flapping Eagle released his sister. Who walked out of the room and shut the concealed door behind her.
Violence was all Flapping Eagle had left.
—Grimus, he said. If you don’t show me the Stone Rose now I shall happily strangle you myself for what you have done to my sister. Now, before your well-planned death can occur, as you say it will. It will be a miserable, meaningless death, Grimus.
—My, said Grimus. How cross you do get. I was just going to the Rose anyway. I have to set it in order to open the Gate.
He moved to the corner of the room nearest the centre of the house.
And pushed open a second secret door. Inside, at the heart of the house, was the Rose Room.
So that was why the house was such a crazy shape. Its labyrinthine excesses fogged the brain to such an extent that the presence of this small room went completely unnoticed. Flapping Eagle, who had been concentrating on the shape of the house when he arrived, had not even begun to guess at the room’s existence.
—Come, said Grimus. This is the last part of the Dance of Wisdom and Death.
The Stone Rose was actually not a rose at all. Flapping Eagle watched as Grimus set it, as it lay in its coffin in the small secret room, and began to understand.
Around the top of a central shaft, or stem, were a series of thin, star-shaped slabs of stone. Flapping Eagle counted seven such slabs. The top two had four points each, the next eight, the next sixteen, and so forth. Each slab rotated independently around the central stem. Setting the Rose appeared to consist of aligning the slabs in different relationships to each other. This is what Grimus was doing now. About halfway down the Stem, at convenient holding-height, was a sort of bulge.
—In some Dimensions, said Grimus, the Object is different. It varies according to the capabilities of the ruling species, you see. There are settings for space-warp, Travel to parallel dimensions, and so forth.
Flapping Eagle spoke.
—I haven’t changed my mind, Grimus, he said. I am going to break that thing. You can’t control it. It controls you. And then there are the blinks. The Rose is damaged, Grimus. It is dangerous. It has made you dangerous.
Grimus’ eyes gleamed for a moment, then went dull.
—Please, he said, and there was a new pleading tone in his voice. I would like to show you just one more discovery of mine. If it does not persuade you of the enormous value of the Rose, of the importance of preserving it and maintaining it when I am dead, then I will allow you to do whatever you wish. Just one discovery.
Flapping Eagle could not deny him. It was a small thing to concede. Now that he had the Rose in his reach, Grimus could not hold him back. After all, Flapping Eagle told himself, he was armed. Not just with bow and arrow, but with a powerful obligation. To Virgil. To his own, destructive past. This time his Ions could be put to good use: if he was a destroyer, let him at least destroy dangerous things.
Grimus had moved to a darkened corner of the small room. He took a cloth off a small object lying there. It was a transparent, spherical shape with a hançlle on each side. As Grimus picked it up by one of its handles, it began to glow.
—I foresaw I would have great difficulty in getting you to see my point of view, he said. It was for this reason that I conceptualized the Subsumer. If you take the other handle, we can communicate telepathically. Through the medium of this sphere. Are you willing?
Flapping Eagle hesitated for a moment.
—Are you afraid? asked Grimus in a child’s sing-song voice.
Flapping Eagle said: —No. He could take anything which Grimus, the ancient infant, could take. He had already proved the strength of his will, after all.
He put down his ju-ju stick on the edge of the Rose’s coffin and came up to Grimus. Then, taking a deep breath, he grasped the proferred handle of the—what was it?— the Subsumer.
The last thing he remembered as Flapping Eagle was Grimus’ high, shrill voice saying delightedly: —My old mother always told me, you’ve got to trick people into accepting new ideas.
(I was Flapping Eagle.)
(I was Grimus.)
Self. My self. Myself and he alone. Myself and his self in the glowing bowl. Yes, it was like that. Myself and himself pouring out of ourselves into the glowing bowl.
Easy does it
. You swallow me, I swallow you. Mingle, commingle. Come mingle. Grow together, come. You into me into you. His thoughts.
Yes, it was like that, Printing. Like printing. Press, his thoughts pressed over mine, under mine, through and into mine, his thoughts mine. Mine his. The swallow is a graceful bird. Two swallows, and then one half-eagle-half-him and the other half-him-half-eagle. Yes, it was like that. We were one there in the glowing bowl, two here in the flesh. Yes.
My son. The mind of Grimus rushing to me. You are my son, I give you my life. I have become you, I have become you are me. The mind of Grimus, rushing through. The mandarin monk released into me in an orgasm of thinking. The halfbreed, semisemitic prisoner of war and his contradictions, the aportance of self coexisting with the utter necessity of imparting that self, cruel necessity, ineluctable, the mind of Grimus rushing through. Like a beating of wings his self flying in. My son, my son, what father fathered a son like this, as I do in my sterility.
The light faded in the glowing sphere; the transfer was complete. I let go of my handle—my body was mine to command once more. He released his grip as well. The sphere fell.
And shattered on the stone floor.
—Now, he said. Now we are the same. Now you understand.
Mad? What is mad? It would be easy to call him mad, but he is in my head now and I can see his whys. They are not whys which go well into words. The undermining horror of prison camp, the destruction of his human dignity, of his belief in the whole human race; the subsequent burrowing away, away from the world, into books and philosophies and mythologies, until these became his realities, these his friends and companions, and the world was just an awful nightmare; the monkish man finding beauty in birds and stories. And then the Rose and a chance to shape a world and a life and a death exactly as he wanted, and naturally since he had no regard for his species he did not care what he did to them. They had done enough to him. To his birds, he was kind. He gathered them around him and lived out his favourite story, his ornithological myth. Mad? What is mad? To him, ideas were the sole justification for existence; and when he found the knowledge and power to play with his ideas, he could not be stopped. Knowledge corrupts; absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Yes, he was mad. But he is in me, and I know him.