“One who conjures,” Noah said. “Perhaps the one who opened this door.”
“Don’t you want to wait and thank him?” Joe said, still studying the procession. There were perhaps thirty in the line, some of them on horseback; one, it seemed, on a camel.
“The door wasn’t opened for me,” Noah replied.
“Who was it opened for?” There was no answer. Joe looked round to see that Noah was once again staring out towards the apocalyptic storm that blocked the horizon. “Something out there?” he said.
“Maybe,” Noah replied.
Half a dozen questions appeared in Joe’s head at the same time. If what was out there was coming here, what would happen to the shore? And to the city? And if it passed over the threshold, would the storm it brought go with it? Down the mountain, to Everville? To Phoebe?
Oh my God, to Phoebe?
“I have to go back,” he said.
“You can’t.”
“I can and I will,” Joe said, turning and starting back towards the crack. It was not hidden here, as it was on the mountain. It crackled like a rod of black lightning against the shifting sky. Was it his imagination, or was it wider and taller than it had been?
“I promised you power, Joe,” Noah called after him. “And I still have it to give.”
Joe turned on his heel. “So give it to me and let me go,” he said.
Noah stared at the ground. “It’s not as easy as that, my friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t grant you power here.”
“On the other side, you said.”
“Yes, I did. I know I did. But that wasn’t quite the truth.” He looked up at Joe now, his oversized head seeming to teeter on his frail neck. “I’d hoped that once you got here and saw the glories of the dream-sea, you’d want to travel with me a little way. I can give you power. Truly I can. But only in my own country.”
“How far?” Joe said.
There was no answer forthcoming. Infuriated, Joe went back to Noah, moving at such speed the creature raised its arms to ward off a blow. “I’m not going to hit you,” Joe said. Noah lowered his guard six inches. “I just want an honest answer.”
Noah sighed. “My country is the Ephemeris,” he said.
“And where’s the Ephemeris?” Joe wanted to know.
Noah looked at him for perhaps ten seconds, and then pointed out to sea.
“No shit,” Joe said, deadpan. “You really put one over on me.”
“Put one over?” Noah said.
“Tricked me, asshole.” He pushed his face at Noah, until they were almost nose to nose. “You tricked me.”
“I believed you’d been sent to take me home,” Noah said.
“Don’t be pathetic.”
“It’s true, I did. I still do.” He looked up at Joe. “You think that’s ridiculous, that our lives could be intertwined that way?”
“Yes,” said Joe.
Noah nodded. “So you must go back,” he said. “And I’ll stay. I feel stronger here, under my own sky. No doubt you’ll feel stronger under yours.”
Joe didn’t miss the irony. “You know damn well what I’ll be when I get back there.”
“Yes,” said Noah, getting to his feet. “Powerless.” With that he started to hobble away down the beach. “Goodbye, Joe,” he called after him.
“Asshole,” Joe said, staring back up the shore at the sliver of night sky visible in the crack. What use would he be to himself or to Phoebe if he returned home now? He was a wounded fugitive. And just as Noah had pointed out, he was utterly powerless.
He turned again to scan the strange world into which he’d stepped. The distant city, the approaching procession, the storm raging over Quiddity’s tumultuous waters: none of it looked particularly promising. But perhaps—just perhaps—there was hope for him here. A means to get power of some kind, any kind, that would make him a man to be reckoned with when he got back to his own world. Perhaps he’d have to sweat for it, but he’d sweated in the Cosm, hadn’t he, and what had he got for his efforts? Broken balls.
“All right,” he said, going down the shore after Noah. “I’ll stay. But I’m not carrying you, understand?”
Noah smiled back at him. “May I . . . put my arm around your shoulder, until I get some nourishment in me, and my legs are stronger?”
“I guess,” said Joe.
Noah hooked his arm around Joe’s neck. “There’s a beached boat down there,” he said, “we’ll take refuge until the procession’s gone.”
“What’s so bad about these Blessedm’n?” Joe asked him as they made their hobbling way down to the vessel.
“No one ever knows what’s in a Blessedm’n’s heart. They have secret reasons and purposes for everything. Perhaps this one is benign, but we’ve no way of knowing.”
They walked on in silence, until they reached the vessel. It was two-masted, perhaps twenty-five feet long, its boards and wheelhouse painted scarlet and blue, though its voyages had taken their toll on both paintwork and boards. Its name, The Fanacapan, had been neatly lettered on its bow.
Hunger was beginning to gnaw at Joe, so he left Noah squatting in the lee of the vessel, and clambered on board to look for some sustenance. The narcotic effect of the painkillers was finally wearing off, and as he went about the boat, looking above and below for a loaf of bread or a bottle of beer, he felt a mingling of negative feelings creep upon him. One of them was unease, another trepidation, a third, disappointment. He had found his way into another world, only to discover that things here weren’t so very different. Perhaps Quiddity was indeed a dream-sea as Noah had claimed, but this boat, that had apparently crossed it, showed no sign of having been built or occupied by creatures of vision. Its two cabins were squalid, its galley unspeakable, the woodwork of its wheelhouse crudely etched with drawings of the obscenest kind.
As for nourishment, there was none to be found. There were a few scraps of food left in the galley, but nothing remotely edible, and though Joe searched through the strewn clothes and filthy blankets in the cabins in the hope of finding a bar of chocolate or a piece of fruit, he came up empty-handed. Frustrated, and hungrier than ever after his exertions, he clambered back down onto the shore to find that Noah was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring up the shore with tears on his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“It just reminds me . . . ” Noah said, nodding towards the procession. Its destination was the crack, no doubt of that. Five or six celebrants, who looked to be children, and nearly naked, had broken from the front of the procession and were strewing a path of leaves or petals between their lord and the threshold.
“Reminds you of what?”
“Of my wedding day,” Noah said. “And of my beloved. We had a procession three, four times that one. You never saw such finery. You never heard such music. It was to be the end of an age of war, and the beginning . . . ” He faltered, shuddering. “I want to see my country again, Joe,” he said after a time. “If it’s only to be buried there.”
“You haven’t waited all this time just to die.”
“It won’t be so bad,” Noah murmured. “I’ve had the love of my life. There could never be another like her, nor do I want there to be. I couldn’t bear to even think such a thought until now, but it’s the truth, Joe. So it won’t be so bad, if I die in my own country, and I’m laid in the dirt from which I came. You understand that, don’t you?” Joe didn’t reply. Noah looked round at him. “No?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t have a country, Noah. I hate America.”
“Africa then.”
“I was never there. I don’t think I’d much like that either.” He drew a long, slow breath. “So I don’t give a fuck where I’m buried.” There was another long silence. Then he said: “I’m hungry. There’s nothing on the boat. I’m going to have to eat soon or I’m going to start falling down.”
“Then you must catch yourself something,” Noah said, and getting to his fe
et, led Joe down to the water’s edge. The waves were not breaking as violently as they had been, Joe thought. “See the fish?” Noah said, pointing into curling waves.
The streaks of iridescence Joe had seen from the threshold were in fact living things: fishes and eels, bright as lightning, leaping in the water in their thousands.
“I see them.”
“Take your fill.”
“You mean, just catch them in my hands?”
“And swallow them down,” Noah said. He smiled, seeing the disgusted look on Joe’s face. “They’re best alive,” he said. “Trust me.”
The ache in Joe’s stomach was now competing with that in his balls. This was, he knew, no time to be persnickety about his options. He shrugged and strode out into the water. It was balmy warm, which came as a pleasant surprise, and if he hadn’t known better he’d have said it was eager to have him in its midst, the way it curled around his shins, and leapt up towards his groin. The fish were everywhere, he saw; and they came in a number of shapes and sizes, some as large as salmon, which surprised him given the shallowness of the waters, others tiny as hummingbirds and almost as defiant of gravity, leaping around him in their glittering thousands. He had to exert almost no effort at all to catch hold of one. He simply closed his hand in their midst, and opening it again found he’d caught not one but three—two a reddish silver, the third blue—all flapping wildly in his palm. They didn’t look remotely appetizing, with their black, black eyes and their gasping flanks. But as long as he and Noah were trapped here he had little choice. He either ate the fish, or went hungry.
He plucked one of the reddish variety off the plate of his palm, and without giving himself time to regret what he was doing, threw back his head and dropped it into his mouth. There was a moment of disgust when he thought he’d vomit, then the fish was gone down his gullet. He’d tasted nothing, but what the hell. This wasn’t a gourmet meal; it was eating at its most primal. He took one more look at his palm, then he popped both the remaining fish into his mouth at the same time, throwing back his head so as to knock them back. One slipped down his throat as efficiently as the first, but the other flapped against his tonsils, and found its way back onto his tongue. He spat it out.
“Bad taste?” Noah said, wading into the surf beside Joe.
“It just didn’t want to get eaten,” Joe replied.
“You can’t blame it,” Noah replied, and strode on until he was hip deep in the waters.
“You’re feeling stronger,” Joe yelled to him over the crash of surf.
“All the time,” Noah replied. “The air nourishes me.” He plunged his hands into the water and came up not with a fish, but something that resembled a squid, its huge eyes a vivid gold.
“Don’t tell me to eat that,” Joe said.
“No. No, never,” Noah replied. “This is a Zehrapushu; a spirit-pilot. See how it looks at you?”
Joe saw. There was an eerie curiosity in the creature’s unblinking gaze, as though it were studying him.
“It’s not used to seeing your species in flesh and blood,” Noah said. “If you could speak its language it would surely tell you to go home. Perhaps you want to touch it?”
“Not much.”
“It would please the Zehrapushu,” Noah said, proffering the creature. “And if you please one you please many.”
Joe waded out towards Noah, watching the animal watch him.
“You mean this thing’s connected to other . . . what’d you call them . . . Zehra-what?”
“People call them ’shu, it’s easier.” He pressed the creature into Joe’s arms. “It’s not going to bite,” he said.
Joe took hold of it, gingerly. It lay quite passively in his hands, its gaze turned up towards Joe’s face.
“The oldest temples on the twelve continents were raised to the ’shu,” Noah went on, “and it’s still worshipped in some places.”
“But not by your people?”
Noah shook his head. “My wife was a Catholic,” he said. “And I’m . . . I’m a nonbeliever. You’d better put it back before it perishes. I think it’d happily die just watching you.”
Joe stooped and set the ’shu back in the water. It lingered between his palms several seconds, the gleam of its eye still bright, then with one twitch of its boneless body it was away, out into deeper waters. Watching it go, Joe could not help but wonder if even now it was telling tales of the black man to its fellows.
“There are some people,” Noah said, “who believe that the ’shu are all parts of the Creator, who split into a billion pieces so as to pilot human souls in Quiddity, and has forgotten how to put the pieces back together again.”
“So I just had a piece of God in my hands?”
“Yes.” Noah reached down into the water again, and this time brought up a foot-long fish. “Too big?” he said.
“Too big!”
“The little ones slip down more easily, is that it?”
“Much easier,” Joe said, and reaching into the waters plucked out two handfuls of the tiny fish. His encounter with the ’shu had taken the edge off his pickiness. Plainly these blank-eyed minnows were of a much lower order of being than the creature that had studied him so carefully. He could swallow them without concerning himself about the niceties of it. He downed two handfuls in as many seconds and then found himself something a little larger, which he bit into as though it were a sandwich. The meat of it was bright orange, and sweetly tender, and he chewed on it careless of how the thing thrashed in his grip, tossing it back only when one of its bones caught between his teeth.
“I’m done for now,” he announced to Noah, working to ease the bone out.
“You won’t drink?” Noah said.
“It’s salty,” Joe said, “isn’t it?”
“Not to my palate,” Noah said, lifting a cupped handful of Quiddity’s waters to his lips and sucking it up noisily. “I think it’s good.”
Joe did the same and was not disappointed. The water had a pleasant pungency about it. He swallowed several mouthfuls and then waded back to the shore, feeling more replete than he’d imagined possible given the fare.
In the time he and Noah had been discussing fish and God, the entire procession had arrived at the crack—which was indeed growing larger: It was half as tall again as it had been when he’d stepped through it—the members of the procession now gathered at the threshold.
“Are they going through?” he said.
“It looks that way,” Noah replied. He glanced up at the sky, which though it had no sun in it was darker than it had been. “If some of them remain,” he said, “we may find our crew among them.”
“For what ship?”
“What other ship do we have but this?” Noah said, slamming his palm against The Fanacapan.
“There are others in the harbor,” Joe said, pointing along the shore towards the city. “Big ships. This thing doesn’t even look seaworthy. And even if it is, how the hell are we going to persuade anyone to come with us?”
“That’s my problem,” Noah said. “Why don’t you rest a while? Sleep if you can. We’ve a busy night ahead of us.”
“Sleep?” Joe said. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
He thought about getting a blanket and a pillow out of one of the cabins, but decided it wasn’t worth being lice-ridden for the little snugness they’d afford, and instead made himself as comfortable as he could on the bare stones. It was undoubtedly the most uncomfortable bed he’d ever attempted to lie upon, but the serenity of the sky made a powerful soporific, and though he never fell into a deep enough sleep to dream, he drifted for a while.
SEVEN
I
Around four on Friday afternoon, while Tesla and Phoebe were getting to know each other in Everville, and Joe was lying under a darkening sky on Quiddity’s shores, Howie Katz was sitting on the doorstep with Amy in his arms, watching a storm coming in from the northeast. A good rainstorm, he thought, maybe some thunder, and the heat would break.
r /> The baby had not slept well the night before and had been fractious for most of the day, but now she lay contentedly in his arms, more asleep than awake. Jo-Beth had gone up to bed half an hour before, complaining of an upset stomach. The house was completely quiet. So was the street, except for the neighborhood dogs, who were busier than ever right now, racing around with their noses high and their ears pricked, all anticipation. When he’d found a better place for them all to live, they’d get a mutt, he decided. It would be good for Amy to have an animal around as she grew up, as a protector and a playmate.
“And he’ll love you,” Howie whispered to her. “Because everybody loves you.” She grew a little restless in his arms. “Want to go lie down, honey?” he said, lifting her up and kissing her face. “Let’s take you upstairs.”
He tiptoed up, and laid Amy down in the spare room, so as not to disturb Jo-Beth. Then he went to take a quick shower.
It felt good to put his head under the cool water and soap off the sweat and grime of the day; so good that he sprung a hard-on without touching himself. He ignored it as best he could—shampooed his hair, scrubbed his back—but the water kept beating on it, and eventually he took himself in hand. The last time he’d made love to Jo-Beth she’d been four months pregnant, and the attempt had ended with her crying and saying she didn’t want him touching her. It was the first indication of how problematic the pregnancy was to prove. During the next few months it sometimes seemed to him he was living with two women, a loving twin and her bitch-sister. The loving Jo-Beth didn’t want sex but she wanted his arms around her, and his comfort when she wept. The bitch-sister wanted nothing from him: not kisses, not company, nothing. The bitch-sister would say: I wish I’d never met you, and say it with such conviction he was certain she meant it. Then the old Jo-Beth would surface again—usually through tears—and tell him she was sorry, so sorry, and she didn’t know what she’d do without him.
He’d learned to curb and conceal his libido pretty well during this time. Kept a stash of skin magazines in the garage; found a soft-core channel to watch late at night; even had a couple of wet dreams. But Jo-Beth was never far from his imagination. Even in the last two weeks of her term, when she was enormous, the sight of her remained intensely arousing. She’d known it too, and seemed to resent his interest in her: locked the bathroom door when she was washing or showering, turned her back on him when she prepared for bed. She’d reduced him to a state of trembling adolescence, watching her from the corner of his eye in the hope of glimpsing the forbidden anatomy; picturing it later when he was jerking off.