“I don’t understand.”
“I won’t get in your way. My ambitions, at least, are few now. And don’t confuse the other with me, though we are both failures. The other brought your woman here. You’ll contend with him, not me. I regret many things, not least of all...him. You can go now.”
“Who are you?” Michael asked, confused.
“To tell all would be most painful. Find out for yourself. Earn the facts.”
Michael thought of the rocking chair. “You were in the house next door to Clarkham’s.”
“Yes.”
“Who were you waiting for?”
“Arno. To apologize. I told him I’d be waiting when I left him the key.”
“Did you expect me?”
The sniff was less delicate this time, and much less pleasant. “You can go.”
The elevator door opened with a chime. Michael hesitated, then entered. The simulacrum operator smiled toothily at him. “Lobby?” he asked.
Michael nodded.
“Nothing on the fourth floor,” the operator said, smirking.
The door closed with a squeak, but behind that squeak, Michael heard a distant wail of anguish. Even through his controlling discipline, his neck and scalp prickled.
The daylight brightness had diminished slightly. He passed the shoeshine stand and turned left down the street in Kristine’s direction. When he had first located Kristine, he had seen a distinctively narrow three-story white wood-frame building wedged between two other brick and stone structures. Considering the limited size of Clarkham’s creation, Michael didn’t think it would take him long to find the site.
The street changed character within a few hundred yards. The buildings aged and darkened; brick and stone replaced stucco, styles reverted to those of the teens and twenties. The air cooled and tasted gritty.
The people changed, too. Less care was spent on their details. Their faces became blander, more standardized; the worst of them were mere blank-eyed mannequins.
Michael became aware, after walking a mile and a half, that he was much closer to the edge of corruption. He took care to limit the extent of his probe in that direction.
Despite his discipline, he couldn’t help becoming more excited—and anxious—the closer he came to Kristine. The undercurrent of his anxiety was excruciating. So much had happened since they last met; even if he could bring her out of this creation and back to Earth—even if Earth was recovering through the influence of his overlay—would they still feel for each other with as much intensity and depth?
So little time together, and the time so strange...
Memories of Manus’s ancient loves came to Michael unbidden, colored by rich emotions and contexts he couldn’t begin to interpret. There were hardly words in English to describe what the memories conveyed.
Now the figures around him were little more than place markers in barely-sketched clothes. Michael could see and feel the shifting qualities of their presence, holding them together only marginally here on the edge of a corruption that burned.
He saw the narrow white building, sandwiched between two five-story brick apartment complexes. A fire escape crisscrossed its front and ended a few feet above arm’s reach over the sidewalk. Beneath the folded ladder, a simple square cloth awning shadowed the building’s double glass and wood doors.
Michael felt for Clarkham’s presence, gingerly skirting the painful borders of the creation. There was nothing definite; his probe kept being drawn back to the office building where the unseen figure had addressed him, and Michael kept pulling away from that sensation of lostness and resignation.
He pressed the latch on the brass handle of the right-hand door and opened it slowly, stepping inside. A wall of tarnished mailboxes waited with timeless patience on the left, beside a janitorial door shut and padlocked. To his right, an ancient map of Los Angeles hung behind dusty and cracked glass.
So much detail...
Stairs covered with frayed oriental-style carpet rose beyond the wall of mailboxes. He began climbing, not needing to refer to the building’s directory, knowing which floor. She is here.
Kristine, Michael knew, at this moment sat in a worn leather armchair behind a beat-up wooden desk in a small office on the top floor, the third.
He climbed the next flight of stairs, past the second floor landing and doorway, the door hand-lettered in black: “Pascal Novelties amd Party Supplies.” Not and—amd. The detail was repeating, and inaccurately. Clarkham had made much of his creation out of rubber-stamped combinations, prefab units, as it were. Michael thought of the large teeth on both the salesman and the elevator operator: identical.
On the third floor doorway, in gold letters on the clear glass, he read:
TOPFLIGHT DETECTIVES
Ernest Brawley Rachel Taylor
Divorces Investigations Confidential
Behind the door, at the end of the very narrow hallway that ran the length of the building against the right-hand wall, Michael heard Kristine speaking to someone in an undertone.
He walked at a measured pace down the hall, restraining an urge to run and find her immediately, simply to see her and know by the evidence of his eyes that she was alive and well.
The corruption was so close, barely a few hundred yards away, practically singing against the fabric of the streets and buildings, vibrating in the wood like a threatened quake or tremor. How had she withstood it for so long?
The door to the last office was cracked open. Michael pushed it all the way. Kristine sat facing the door, black Bakelite desk phone sitting on the desk in front of her. She held the receiver pressed against her ear and slightly lowered from her heavily lipsticked mouth.
Kristine’s hair been arranged in an upswept, split bun above her forehead and pulled tightly back behind into a more full bun. The style was not particularly attractive. She looked hard, weary. Her eyes barely reacted when she saw him.
“Yeah,” she said into the phone. “Bring me the timecards, and I’ll believe Jimmy was there, like you say. Look, I’ve got company. I gotta go.” She dropped the receiver with a clatter into its cradle. “There’s a buzzer downstairs. We come down to meet you. We like it that way.” She appraised him coldly. “What can I do for you?”
He smiled. “It’s time to leave,” he said.
She stiffened and dropped one hand below desk level. “Yeah? Where are you going?”
What came next was pure inspiration. He remembered Bogart and Stanwyck playing through their timeless roles on the television screen the night his father had first introduced him to Waltiri.
“You mean, where are we going,” Michael said casually.
“The persuasive type, huh?” Kristine asked, eyes sweeping him again with faint amusement. She popped a stick of gum into her mouth and sized him up again, eyes languid. “You aren’t dressed for the part. Ernie has a good tailor—”
“It’s not what I’m wearing that counts,” Michael said. “It’s what I’m thinking.”
“Is a penny payment enough?” She kept her hand below desk level. Michael sensed that it was just an inch or two away from a gun. She knew how to use it, too.
“More than enough. For you, it’s free.” He began to feel gloriously giddy. “You look and act tough, but I know better. I’m thinking you don’t belong here.”
“We never met before, Mister.”
“Think back to before you came here. Remember a kiss?”
She smiled wryly. “Sing me the tune on the radio. Maybe that’ll refresh my memory.”
Just the words Stanwyck had used.
Michael wet his lips and sat on the corner of her desk, watching her hidden arm closely. He began to whistle, hoping he could reproduce at least the basics.
She stopped appraising. Her large green eyes opened wide. The face behind the thick makeup softened.
“I know that...” she said.
“You should. It’s our song.”
“What’s it called?” she asked. She placed both
hands on the desk, empty. She seemed ready to stand, perhaps run.
“Opus 45,” Michael said. “Concerto for piano and orchestra, Infinity.”
Kristine pushed the chair back. “There’s no music like that here,” she said.
“It’s a case of kidnapping. Simple.”
“Who’s simple, and who’s been kidnapped?”
“You,” Michael said, pointing. “Now you know. We have to get out of here.”
Her confusion put an end to the enjoyment. Michael held out his hand. Kristine reached for it, hesitated, then grasped it firmly. The warm touch of her skin was ecstasy.
“Your name is Kristine,” he said.
“I’m not that simple. Kristine Taylor. I mean... Kristine Pendeers.”
“Who am I?”
She smiled. A tear traveled down one cheek, dragging a streak of mascara after it. “You’re Michael,” she said, taking a deep, tremulous breath. “Oh, God. Michael! Where in hell are we?”
“Not far from hell at all,” he said. “Come with me.”
But first, she ran from behind the desk and wrapped her arms around him. Not so much had happened after all, he decided—not enough to matter. He cried, too.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The difficult part now began: getting home. Michael led Kristine through the double doors onto the street. “Something hurts my head,” she said. “I haven’t really been able to think about it until now, but it’s hurt for a long time.”
“This whole place is rotting away,” Michael said.
Kristine made a face. “That’s what it feels like. Can we leave?”
“I’m trying.”
“What happened to you? How long has it been?”
Michael shook his head and held his finger to his lips. “I have to think.” He pulled her close and nuzzled her cheek, then let her go and drew his palms together to feel for a way out.
“God, all this gunk,” she said, touching the caked makeup on her lips and cheeks. “What ever made me do it?”
Michael tried again to locate a seam in the apparently seamless matrix of Clarkham’s world. The substratum beneath the detail and solidity was masterfully smooth, smoother than it needed to be—as if Michael’s father were to spend weeks polishing the underside of a table. Again, there was more craftsmanship than practicality or actual achievement in this world.
“It’s going to be hard,” Michael admitted, letting his hands drop.
“We can’t leave?”
“There has to be a way.” He was calling up facts from the Serpent Mage’s memories, but in all that Manus knew about makers and creating worlds, there was little about one-way entries. Detail, he thought. How do I use Clarkham’s craftsmanship to get out?
“We’re going to walk toward the center. That’s where the reality is most complete,” he said.
“I’m ready. I have some questions. I think I have, anyway. How long have I been here—months, years?”
“Months, maybe.”
“Am I older? I feel older.”
“You don’t look any older.” In truth she looked like a little girl hiding behind the mask of a stage hooker, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
“Is this place like the Realm?”
“In a way,” Michael said. “It’s much smaller, and it’s not made the same.” They looked at each other intently. “I love you,” Michael said. “It was awful, losing you.”
Kristine’s face became comically serious. She stared at him so intently her eyes seemed to cross. “I haven’t felt the time, however long it’s been. He made me into somebody else. And the funny part is—nothing happened, and I didn’t really notice. I wasn’t bored, but most of the time I just sat behind that desk or walked around the city, thinking I was on a case... Taking phone calls. God, I don’t remember what people said. It’s all jumbled now, like a bad dream. Not a nightmare, I mean, but badly thought out, artistically bad.”
They brushed past figures that became more and more convincing and detailed as they approached the center of Clarkham’s creation. “I have a thought,” Michael said. “It’s crazy, but no crazier than anything else... Do you know a liquor store or a good restaurant around here?”
“There’s a fancy French place called La Bretonne. Lots of mobsters go there.”
“Take me there,” Michael said.
“Why?”
“We need to order a good bottle of wine.”
La Bretonne was on the ground floor of a stately stone building at the very heart of Clarkham’s creation. At four or five in the afternoon—the apparent time of day—it was just beginning to open for its supper “crowd.” Neither Michael nor Kristine was dressed for the occasion, and a haughty maitre d’ with slicked-down black hair and prominent teeth adamantly refused them service.
This did not stop Michael. Leaving Kristine at the front, he walked to the prominent oak rack of wine bottles set into one wall and paced before it, finger to his lips. The maitre d’ followed and berated him for his crudeness and bad manners.
“I will call the police, monsieur,” he threatened with a terrible French accent.
Michael chose a sauterne—Chateau d’Yquem 1929—and skirted around the man, uncorking the bottle as he rejoined Kristine.
The maitre d’, red-faced and huffing like a pigeon in heat, stalked off with loud threats to call the police. Other employees—penguin-like waiters and busboys—stood well clear of the scene, watching with mixed empty amusement and empty irritation.
Michael offered the bottle to Kristine, more out of politeness than any expectation she would be able to use the taste as he intended to. She took a swallow and nodded. “Good wine,” she said, returning the bottle.
“Clarkham’s a connoisseur of wine. I’d expect him to stock his world with a good cellar.” He brought the bottle to his own lips and took a hearty swig. It was indeed a good sauterne, bloody gold in color, and it carried a distinct sweet message of warm sunny fields and evening mists, of a definite place on Earth. Michael gripped Kristine’s hand as the maitre d’ returned, still livid and voluble.
A shadow fell over the restaurant’s interior. Kristine paled and held Michael’s hand with painful pressure. “I know who that...” she began, not needing to finish. Michael recognized it, also.
In front of La Bretonne, hidden behind a stone pillar, was the presence he had met on the fourth floor. The simulacra in the restaurant froze and lost definition.
Michael tried to place himself in the middle of the wine’s flavors and to take Kristine with him, but the wine soured on his tongue. The livid gold liquid in the bottle foamed black, and he hastily set it on a table top.
“It came around the agency sometimes,” Kristine said quietly, her face drawn with fascination and fear. “I didn’t know what it was—it didn’t fit in. I never saw it, but I always knew when it was there.”
“Mr. Perrin,” a voice called behind them. They turned. Between the dark, gritty black outlines of the maitre d’ and a waiter stood David Clarkham. He appeared much older than when Michael had last seen him, pallid of face and long of arm, gaunt as a scarecrow. “You’re disrupting everything. That’s not unusual for you, is it?”
Michael smiled confidently, though he did not feel confident. He had once thought himself a match for Clarkham... Had once believed that the Isomage did not present much of a danger.
Now, he was not so sure. The presence outside the restaurant was stranger and more frightening than Tristesse or Lamia.
“How clever that you head for my wine collection. I never would have thought of that. It’s brilliant, but it won’t work. You think the battle—the competition—is over, don’t you? I trust you believe you’ve won, too.”
“I don’t know that,” Michael said. Kristine stared at Clarkham with rising color, her face grim.
“I know you, too,” she said. “You’re the one who threatened me on the phone and brought me to this foul place.”
Clarkham sighed deeply. “I would be quite
proud of this world, but for some major difficulties, not entirely my fault,” he said. “One of the difficulties is that creatures of genuine, original flesh and blood cannot escape. As you’ve no doubt discovered, this world has a smooth and flawless foundation. For any would-be mage, it’s the equivalent of a pit with sheer ice walls. That was not my original intention, believe me. You cannot leave.”
“And you?” Michael asked.
“Whatever advantage it is, I can come and go as I please. How did your entry in the competition fare?”
Michael shook his head. “I haven’t been back yet to see.”
“Eager to rescue your woman. Laudable—if your ambitions are purely human. A mage has to be more deliberate and disciplined. What will you do if things go wrong on Earth? You’re not there to protect your people.”
That was true enough. Michael felt a surge of guilt—and anger that Clarkham, of all people, could chide him. He probed Clarkham quickly, shielding his reactions against the expected suffusion of evil. But the Isomage seemed almost—not quite—free of corruption.
“I’ve shed my latest accumulation of dross,” Clarkham said. Outside, the unseen presence made a deep, unpleasant noise like coughing. Clarkham appeared momentarily irritated. “This world accepts my difficulties...sanitation facilities are abundant, you might say.” He put his arm around one of the low-resolution simulacra. “Better than using humans, no?”
Kristine looked as if she might be sick. Her hand tightened on Michael’s, and his anger compounded. He brought it under control immediately. Null, Manus’s memories recommended. A world ill-conceived can be aborted...in Null.
And if the world envelops the maker?
No creation is completely seamless. That came to Michael almost as a truism, compounded of Manus’s knowledge and his own experiences in Null.
The presence approached the door of the restaurant slowly. Michael caught a glimpse of it through the front window before it passed behind a wall again: large, dark and of no definite color.
“If you can leave,” Michael said, drawing conclusions rapidly, “then you must not be flesh and blood.”