LIV

IT WAS DARK inside the small blackwashed house, a dark chill quiet. Shadows stood everywhere, insubstantial guards over the unseen ugliness. Outside, the shrouds of Calf Mountain’s summit hung over the house like a second, thundery ceiling, shielding it from the pale, mist-weak sunlight lying over the plains beneath. Liv’s home, blind and without foundation, stood blankly on the cheerless outcrop, its door firmly shut, the only sign of life a single donkey, tethered to the last tree of the climbing forest, munching at the forest’s long grass. A bird shrieked.

The unseen ugliness. Behind the shuttered windows lay a scene of cosmic chaos, the debris of a life wrestling and vying for floor-space. Dust lay thickly over the scattered books and plates. A piece of bread, invisible behind its crust of mould, lay on a broken hand-mirror and a spider etched its web between the two. Cloth, paper and crumb alike succumbed to the encasing envelope of dirt. And above the strewn floor, the carvings glared. Carvings which made their ancestors at the Rising Son seem, by comparison, effusions of beauty and joy. The vile, twisted shapes, faces, bodies, truncated limbs, nightmare landscapes, spoke of a deepening passion in their maker, a deepening slough of loathing. If the carver merely extracts from his raw materials the shapes that already lie within it, then the wood must have been made by demons, to contain such hideous forms.

The interior of the small black house was a single room. Hens sat miserably in cages on a shelf. There was a chair, and a bed. And here was a surprise: for these two pieces were as perfectly clean as the rest of the house was filthy. They were dusted and cared for and the bedclothes were washed. They were pieces from another world.

A shadow sat unmoving in the chair.

To re-enter the forested slopes was to relinquish all illusions of normality, to shake off the air of the town, insanely mundane, mundanely insane. The green light of the trees was a kind of purifier for them both. Here Flapping Eagle felt once more the tangible mystery of the mountain and was cleansed of the webs of his own self-deceit. The mountain would not be ignored. Virgil, too, was in good heart, dragging corpulence and corns uncomplainingly up the steep incline, grasping hummocks of earth and tufts of grass to ease his ascent. The air was alive with the hum of insects and the esoteric messages of birds in flight.

—Magister pene monstrat, Virgil Jones quoted, out of nowhere.

They were resting for a moment. Flapping Eagle was obliged to ask for clarification.

—At school, said Virgil Jones in half-embarrassed recollection. An irritating young twerp chalked that up on the blackboard before the lesson. As a joke. The magister in question took it very well. Simply asked why the word penis was in the Ablative rather than the Accusative. Whereupon the young twerp, showing a degree of nerve, stood up and said: —Please sir, it’s the Ablative of the End in View.

They resumed their climb. The excitement of the end in view, whatever it might prove to be, had invaded and conquered them both. If the Mountain was to win, Flapping Eagle told himself, at least it would have to fight for its victory. In the excitement of anticipation, he didn’t pause to reflect that he knew few of the rules of the battle or of the purposes of his adversary. He was in it now: that was all that mattered.

The scar on his chest itched.

He noticed that Virgil Jones’ fingers, when they were not holding on to clumps of grass, were tightly crossed.

A little way behind them, the secret figure of Media followed, keeping her distance, keeping in touch. They didn’t hear her, because they didn’t expect to be followed. The mind-whine of the Effect, not so much a sound as a feeling, was stronger now, but in their separate ways they were all defended against it: Media by her new obsession, Virgil by his old paralysis, Flapping Eagle by his recent conquest of the fever.

The shadow sat unmoving in the chair and heard the movements outside. Eventually, it would move. Eventually, it would be time to look at the book under the pillow. Eventually, it would be time to wring a pullet’s neck, and eat. Eventually, the movements would have to be investigated. But not for the moment. For the moment, sitting here in the dark was enough.

Liv sat like this a great deal, still, stone, statue.

It was cold on the outcrop, cold and damp. The day had moved into late afternoon. Flapping Eagle stood by Liv’s donkey, patting it idly, watching Virgil Jones behaving like a schoolboy on a treasure hunt.

(—No, he had said, let’s not bother to see her. Let’s get it done.)

Sixteen paces forward from the edge of the clearing. He turned right. Sixteen paces right. He stopped. The black house was behind him, impassive. —Here, said Virgil Jones. It should be here.

Flapping Eagle closed his eyes and controlled the wild rushing inside him. It was time. He walked across to Virgil, whose tongue flickered in an agony of tension, the blind guide. Being paralysed by the Rose, he could not himself know if it was the right spot. Flapping Eagle had to be the guinea-pig.

—If you stand where I am standing, said Virgil, and concentrate upon the Gate, you should find it. He moved three paces to his left and crossed his fingers anxiously.

Flapping Eagle lunged forwards suddenly and stood upon the spot.

Again, he closed his eyes.

The Gate, he thought fiercely. This is the Gate. I am passing through the Gate. This is the Gate. I am passing through. This is the Gate…

Over and over, building power in himself as Virgil had instructed, waiting for the Outer Dimensions to claim him and carry him to Grimus.

Was that a change in climate? Was there a breeze where there had been none before? Did the ground feel strange beneath his feet? Cast out those thoughts, they are a distraction. Concentrate, concentrate. The Gate and I am passing through.

Nothing happened.

Virgil’s voice, calling: —Think on the Rose. You’re going to the Rose.

A rose made out of stone. It is coming to me, I can hold it in my hand. I am going to hold the rose, hold the rose, hold the rose…

Nothing.

He opened his eyes. Virgil was staring at him in anguish.

—What is it? he cried. Is it Grimus? Is he fighting you? Can’t you get through? Will, will. That’s the thing. Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

—Virgil, said Flapping Eagle quietly. This isn’t the Gate.

—Of course it is, said Virgil. Of course. It always was. I wouldn’t forget.

—There was nothing here, said Flapping Eagle in an empty voice.

—You didn’t feel the, the power? asked Virgil. Flapping Eagle shook his head. —didn’t you have a sense of being about to be … transported? asked Virgil. Again, Flapping Eagle shook his head. He felt drained, voided by the anticlimax.

Virgil Jones subsided to the hard ground and buried his head in his hands.

—He’s moved it,

The words came from him like an echo from a hollow cave. Flapping Eagle knew it was the end. They had failed before they had even begun. Bitterness flooded over him.

—didn’t you know? he asked. didn’t you know he could move the Gate?

Virgil looked up, hearing the tinge of frustrated scorn.

—In theory, he said. Yes, in theory. But in practice … He must have become infinitely more expert. It took so much hardship to build. So much pain. It isn’t an easy thing, you know. Wasn’t. I didn’t think he would have.

—You didn’t think, said Flapping Eagle, adrenalin forcing the insult to his lips. Virgil looked at him, and his eyes were the eyes of a beaten man.

—We’ll find it, he said blankly. Can’t have gone far. Don’t believe he’s that expert. Just have to nose around a bit. It’s here all right. We’ll find it.

—Yes, said Flapping Eagle, turning away, to face the black house.

A figure stood in the doorway, covered from head to foot in a black veil with a window at eye-level.

—I thought you’d come, said Liv in a flat voice.

Virgil Jones was lurching across the small plateau and muttering to himself. Every so often he would stop, squeeze his eyes shut until moisture ran from the corners and stand in a paralysis of thought. Then he would open his eyes, shake his head, and continue on his lurching way. The Gate continued to elude him.

Liv said:

—Does he imagine I have never searched for the Gate? Does he imagine I have lived here for nothing? I have as much reason to hate Grimus as he has. Does he imagine Grimus to be as great a fool as Virgil Jones?

The flat tones were gone now, replaced by a frightening intensity of passion. The venom in her voice would have alarmed a snake.

—Look, Flapping Eagle, she said. Look at Virgil Jones, your guide and my husband, and equally incompetent at both functions. I look at him and see a man as blindly possessed as any man in K. What do you see? I see a man chasing shadows. What do you see? Come inside, Virgil, she called. Perhaps I’ve hidden your Gate inside. Come and look for it inside.

Virgil Jones continued to squeeze his eyes and lurch from empty ground to empty ground. He might not even have heard her.

—It is time, she said, turning to Flapping Eagle. It is time you knew all about Virgil Jones. High time you knew how great a fool you are to believe in him.

They stood there for a moment, ingrowing, hate-filled Liv and scarred, colourless Eagle, as Virgil muttered and stumbled his shambling way around them, racked by the gulf between attempt and achievement. There were vast spaces between their lives: Flapping Eagle could almost see the holes. And yet, it was those spaces which bound them irrevocably together, weakness, ignorance and hate, united against their will.

Liv wheeled and went indoors. After a moment’s hesitation, Flapping Eagle followed her, leaving the shambling Virgil Jones, vulnerable and wounded, to go his muttering way. It was getting darker.

Media, hiding at the end of the wooded slopes, cried tears of sympathy for their failure.

—Did he tell you about Dimension-fever? said Liv. No. I suspect he wanted you to suffer that, because only by conquering it could you become the man he wanted. Did he tell you the danger you would be in, with your face, in K?

—What about my face? asked Flapping Eagle, perplexed.

—He didn’t even tell you that, said Liv. The hooded head shook; the voice was disgusted. Twice already he has risked your life. He was ready to do so again. And he didn’t even tell you that.

—He saved my life twice, said Flapping Eagle. And he had my agreement for this attempt. But what about my face?

—Poor idiot boy, said Liv, lying back on her bed. Flapping Eagle sat stiffly on the chair amid the accumulated filth.

—Poor idiot boy, she repeated. Your face is as like the face of Grimus as his own reflection. Younger-looking, paler, but so, so similar. Did you not know that was what attracted him to you in the first place? It was not Bird-Dog he was interested in. It was you. Born-From-Dead.

She knew a lot about him…

—Sispy, he said. Sispy and Grimus are one and the same?

The reclining, hidden figure nodded.

—Then if my face is so like his, said Flapping Eagle, why did Bird-Dog not tell me so? She would have mentioned it… we were close then.

—Grimus, said Liv, is a master of disguise. Don’t doubt it, poor stupid double. It was your face that fascinated him. But it was Bird-Dog he got.

A cruel laugh. As his thoughts whirled, Flapping Eagle wished he could see the face behind the hood.

—One other thing, said Liv. Grimus is a very attractive man. Does that perhaps explain some things?

Deggle used to call him pretty-face.

Irina saying: —You are not the man you look…

Gribb at the foot of the bed, muttering: —Remarkable, remarkable.

The looks of recognition he had received in the Elba-room, and Peckenpaw saying: —Jones and a stranger, in that loaded voice.

The Spectre of the Stone Rose.

The Spectre of Grimus…

That was why Irina Cherkassova had been drawn to him so instantly. That was why Elfrida Gribb had been attracted, too. That was why the girl Media had stared at him so compulsively. That was why Jocasta had disliked him instinctively. He was living behind another man’s features, reaping both the rewards and the whirlwind of his personality. That was why.

—I see that it does, said Liv dryly. She stretched lazily on the bed. How fascinating it is to watch the truth at work on people.

—The truth, mumbled Flapping Eagle.

—And now, she said, I shall tell you the truth about me. I shall tell you because you’ve been starved of truth. This is the truth about Liv: she hates Grimus. She hates Virgil. She hates this infernal mountain.

—But she lives, said Flapping Eagle.

—Hate, said Liv, is the nearest thing on earth to power. One does not give up power easily.

Flapping Eagle was about to speak, but she silenced him.

—It’s time to look at the book, she said, and reached under her pillow.

Sitting in this slum of a room, his hopes of redemption shattered by the mumbling failure outside, reduced to the status of a pawn in someone else’s game by the truth from this hooded oracle, Flapping Eagle learnt the story of Calf Mountain; learnt it when he believed there was no longer anything he could do about it. As usual, he was wrong about that.

The carvings stared down from the wall as Liv brought the old, old notebook out from under the pillow, wrapped in rough black cloth.

—In those days, she said, Virgil kept a diary. It makes interesting reading.

A hen squawked irrelevantly from the shelf.

—I shall now read from it, she said, and began to recite. Recite, because the room was dark, and getting darker by the second as evening drew on and even the faintest light withdrew. She knew the book by heart.

Wodensday 19th June.

My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings. Honest, too. Holding up a constant mirror to one’s own inadequacies, but without malice. There’s friendship if you like.

The fact is, my friend, you are going to have to be more understanding today than ever you were. The things I am about to tell you are true, but you could easily be forgiven for disbelieving them. You must not disbelieve.

A tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Dear Brutus. I wonder if he was right. Certainly it is high tide in my affairs. The link between floods and fortune is somewhat tenuous, however. But I am circling round my subject. Perhaps I am reluctant to begin. I shall begin.

My old failures you know: it was sheer laziness, a butterfly quality of the mind, that thwarted my archaeological aspirations. Ironic that idleness should have led so directly to manual labour. But debts must be paid and I do know how to dig. Even if I now inter where once I exhumed. I think of myself as a layer of evidence for future archaeologists. I must; I can see no other dignity in my present labour.

As you further know, Nicholas Deggle arranged for my present employment. He came to see me yesterday. (My apologies for not writing then. Events had me by the scruff of the neck.) I think he came to ridicule. It is his most unfortunate trait. Forgivable perhaps from a creditor. Understandable perhaps when considering my employment.

Not only am I a gravedigger, my friend, but a digger of pets’ graves! I have been burying beloved spaniels and lamented moggies by the score. Everyone has to start somewhere, they say. There could scarcely be a more humble beginning.

The pets’ section of the cemetery is at its very edge, next to a piece of overgrown woodland. Having consigned my third lap-dog to the soil, I went here to eat my small lunch: two biscuits and a piece of cheese. It was here that I found the Thing.

At first I thought it was a mislaid tombstone. On closer inspection I realized it was not so easily explicable. It is about the height of a man and perfectly carved in stone. It looks like a highly geometric rose, and that is what we now call it: the Stone Rose.

It stood in the middle of a bush. I don’t think it was deliberately concealed there. It just was there. I cleared a way to it, scratching my hands and tearing my coat-sleeve a fraction.

This is where you must begin to suspend your disbelief, my friend. I touched it and an entirely terrifying thing happened. My head swirled, strange pictures formed before my eyes. I must have fainted. I awoke on the ground by the Rose, dusty and with a couple more scratches. I’m ashamed to say my first instinct was flight. I returned to my duties and buried a few more animals. Then Deggle arrived. It was his condescension that led me back to the Rose. I wanted to see if it had the same effect on him. If it did, he would soon stop sneering.

It did. I was forced to resuscitate him by splashing water over him. I say forced: I must confess I used more than was necessary.

We emerged from the wood, shaken and greatly frightened, to find ourselves being scrutinized by a tallish, fairish man, who somehow gave the appearance of being a good deal older than he was. I suppose he is in his middle fifties and is actually very well-preserved, but he seems older. If that is not too oxymoronic a statement. He had brought us a bird to bury, a highly coloured bird of paradise. He said his name was Grimus; by his accents he is evidently Middle-European, a refugee no doubt.

We must have looked a fright, for he asked us instantly what the matter was. After a brief discussion, during which he looked increasingly interested, we led him into the wood and he tried his hand at the Rose. He staggered away from it, clasping his head; but he did not faint. Which instantly gave him a kind of seniority over us. Perhaps that is why we agreed to keep the Rose a secret for a while, until we understood it better.

He invited us to his home that evening to talk further. Already we seemed to have entered a conspiracy with this man. He returned to the cemetery as I was completing my duties with an empty coffin. Using ropes and sticks, we unearthed the rose and placed it in the coffin without touching it. He had brought his large estate car to the wood and we smuggled our treasure out like three grave-robbers, feeling criminal though we had committed no crime.

Grimus’ house is in a dingy suburban terrace in the south-west extreme of the city. It is as dingy inside as out, and cluttered with a quite amazing variegation of objects and books. There are a number of stuffed birds and evidence of wide travel. There are pictures, Oriental I think, everywhere, and again the theme is preponderantly ornithological. Grimus is interested in mythical birds and as he talked he seemed curiously bird-like himself, his hands fluttering and his voice a rushing twitter. In my amateur way, I share his interests; moreover he has the quality of interesting others in his own preoccupations, so we were not bored.

It is not his real name, Grimus. He told us so freely. He changed it from something unpronounceable when he arrived in this country some thirty years ago. True to himself, his adopted name is derived anagrammatically from a mythical bird: the Simurg.

—The Simurg, he told us eagerly, is the Great Bird. It is vast, all-powerful and singular. It is the sum of all other birds. There is a Sufi poem in which thirty birds set out to find the Simurg on the mountain where he lives. When they reach the peak, they find that they themselves are, or rather have become, the Simurg. The name, you see, means Thirty Birds. Si, thirty. Murg, birds. Fascinating. Fascinating. The myth of the Mountain of Kâf.

—Calf? asked Nicholas Deggle.

—Kâf, Grimus enunciated. The Arabic letter K.^*

He would have rambled on thus for ages, but Deggle cut him short, reminding him about the Rose.

—Ah yes, he said. The rose. The rose has Power.

—You are an occultist? I asked, depressed. I am always depressed by the occult. It is so cheerless.

—Not exactly, he twittered. Broad-minded. That is what. If the rose has Power, we must learn of what kind.

—Open the coffin, he said to me. I resented the order, but found myself obeying. Grimus moved swiftly to the rose and before we knew what he was doing, grasped it. He cried aloud in pain, but did not release his hold. I saw his eyes dilate and widen.

Then he disappeared. The Rose stayed where it was, but I swear he did not. He softly and silently vanished away.

A few minutes later, he reappeared, beaming and shaking his head.

—Wonderful, he said. Truly wonderful.

I looked at Nicholas Deggle and he at me. —You must both try it, said Grimus. You must.

We both did in the end, after a large measure of Grimus’ excellent brandy. We were both scared but I am sure Deggle was the more so. He had an entire posture of superiority to lose, after all. Deggle is not an humble man.

I cannot describe the planet Thera to you as yet. I must form my opinions of it more completely first. Suffice to say that we have travelled through … what? I do not know, and met a life-form vastly superior to our own. The world is suddenly filled with marvellous possibilities.

And it was I who found it!

—I will leave out the next part, said Liv formally. It is an account of other journeys they made.

The room was black now. Eagle listened riveted to the flat recitative.

Moonday 1st July.

Today Grimus made his greatest discovery and propounded his grand design. I must say it enthralls me. Deggle is surly and withdrawn and, I think, disapproves; but the Rose has him gripped as tightly as any of us. Even though he has continued to refuse to use it after that first visit to Thera.

—One has enough problems, he said today, without any of this trickery. He still comes though: comes every evening when we gather around the coffin in Grimus’ living-room to go on the Conceptual Travels which Dota explained to us. He comes to sit and glower as Grimus and I take turns to visit our worlds.

How rapidly I have come to accept a new universe, to sit in an exotic suburban living-room watching a man disappear and reappear and doing so myself! Evidently, like Grimus, I too am (his word) broad-minded. Fortunate. But today the broadmindedness received a nasty test. Grimus brought something back from his Travel. It is the first time those other universes have entered ours. He brought back two bottles. One filled with yellow liquid. One filled with blue.

—Yellow for eternal life. Blue for eternal death, he says.

This is his grand design. In his own words. Or as nearly as I can remember.

—We have now the situation of being able to dispense the gift of life, he said in his feathery Slavonic voice. I propose we accept the responsibility. The necessary first step is that we grant it to ourselves. The necessary second step is the choosing of recipients. I offer some criteria for the choice: those with a pleasure in life. Those with a work to do which eternity would benefit. Those in short who would both benefit from, and seek, a longer span of life. The necessary third step is to provide a place of refuge. A place where those who tire of the world but not of life may come.

—Just a moment, said Nicholas Deggle. How on earth are we to choose these people?

It was at this point that Grimus reached into a pocket of the greatcoat he always wore on his Travels and produced the Watercrystal.

—With this, he said, and with the Rose correctly adjusted, we can see the lives of those we Conceptualize, according to the techniques of Dota. Simply we fix our thoughts upon the selected type of recipient and they appear here like a TV picture. Then with a further adjustment of the Rose we go to them.

—Playing God, said Deggle. Dangerous, don’t you think?

—Would you rather we handed our knowledge to the authorities? snapped Grimus. His voice was filled with a bitterness and hatred for authority that must spring from some awful experience in his past, before he became Grimus the birdman. (We never knew his true name.) —Would you rather be locked up in an insane asylum? Or watch as Governments used our gift to make weapons and war? We do it ourselves or not at all. I say only this: to allow knowledge of this magnitude to go unused is more than a crime. It is a sin.

Liv skipped several pages. She made great show of turning to the correct place, though she never glanced at the book in her hand as she spoke.

We have been building a world. Impossible to say whether we found the island or made it. I incline to the latter, Grimus to the former. He holds that Conceptual Technology merely reveals existences which mirror your concepts. I am not so sure. However, we have made the island and it is a paradise, fertile, lush and green. Grimus has named it. Kâf Island. The mountain is Kâf Mountain. But since neither Deggle nor I are masters either of the glottal-stop or of the flat Arabic vowel, I’m afraid we bastardize the name to Calf. Fatted? Golden? Time will tell.

As for its population: Grimus now spends his entire time at the Watercrystal. He has made a discovery: each life he sees there comes from a fractionally different dimension, exists in a slightly different potential present … his phrase. Will there be a problem in assimilating immigrants from these different planets in the one society? Grimus is cheerfully optimistic. The differences are too minute to matter, he says. I trust he is right.

Liv moved on once more.

Calf Island, Day One.
Moonday January 1.

The date is arbitrary. One may as well begin at a beginning. We are all on Calf Island now, at the town called simply K. Grimus has been clever in arranging this beginning: by astute use of the Rose he has engineered that whoever wishes to come to Calf Island, (he has kept a careful check on all the Recipients) whenever they do so in their own lives and dimensions, they are brought to K on the same day. —It is a time-equation process, says Grimus, and I believe him. He says there has been only one misjudgement.

The philosopher Ignatius Gribb and his wife Elfrida’s journey has been mistimed; they will not be here for some time yet.

There is an air of joy in K today, as the community meets itself, a sense of paradise. We are the immortals and this is our Olympus. It was a lucky day when I took the job in the pets’ graveyard.

Another jump. This time there was a tension in Liv’s voice that had not been there before.

Freyday January 26th.

Today’s is a tale of two women. For my part, it is a happy tale.

Liv Sylwan is a whore. A very exceptional whore. (Curious, by the way, how many whores chose Calf Island. It must be a very fulfilling job.) Liv rejoices in being beautiful and enjoys working with her body. She is without shame. She is also gifted with command. The brothel became hers instantly. Jocasta, who lies second to her, so to speak, was the only real opposition. I like Jocasta. But Liv is … well, Liv is.

I must confess that until the Rose I had never been what you might term a sexual giant. A pigmy would be more accurate for all my bulk. I didn’t blame the ladies, dear sweet bebummed betitted things. Who would want to be squashed under me? The Rose gave me confidence. I journeyed to new worlds where fat men were as much in demand as Rubens ladies. The terror of the titties, I. Virgil Jones, a sex-symbol! Remarkable.

I cannot quite believe that Liv Sylwan wants me. She said she did, though, and I must not call her a liar. So she does. But why? In heaven’s name, why? She says she will give up her work to keep house for Deggle and Grimus and myself—I cannot understand it. But I will not look the gift horse in the mouth. It is a happy day, when beautiful women want ugly men simply because they like them.

We are going to be married. Grimus was apparently a monk once, in his old days, and he will marry us according to the rites of our church, though I am not terribly godly. Ceremonies are fun.

As for Grimus … he’s an odd bird, to coin a phrase. I’ve never been one for judging the attractiveness of men, so I’d have said Nicholas Deggle was the best-looking of the three of us. Apparently not. Grimus is the one they all covet, the favourite of the whores (except, of course, my own Liv), the darling of farmer’s wife and Russian countess alike. The trouble is he shows no interest in them. It’s that monkish background. Trained to celibacy. Perhaps that’s the attraction. He’s hard to get.

The Axona Indian woman called Bird-Dog is the most persistent. As plain a girl as You’ll see, she dogs his footsteps as her name suggests she would. He has no time for her, though she fawns on him. She probably sees him as some kind of shaman, and worships him, poor simple child. She’ll tire of it.

Interesting fact arising from Bird-Dog’s presence here. Grimus became much taken once with the notion of finding his own double. —Logically, he said, in an infinite universe, there must be a precise duplicate of myself. That doesn’t interest me. What I’m after is a certain similarity. A likeness to me which is also entirely alien.

He was very pleased when the Axona Plateau loomed up in the Watercrystal. It hasn’t worked out as he hoped, though. Bird-Dog’s brother hasn’t chosen Calf Island yet. Perhaps he will, perhaps he won’t.

Perhaps it wasn’t really Grimus’ hope that he would. One can never be entirely sure with him.

Liv turned several pages, jerkily.

Thorsday April 5th

It’s all going wrong. I can feel it. The atmosphere of joy has gone. If that goes then it is no longer worth while. Though Grimus disagrees. —It is a Great Experiment, he says. It cannot fail. I am not sure that the force of his will can hold us together. Forever is such a long time.

Besides: the three of us never ran any suitability tests on ourselves. We took it for granted we deserved immortality, and then took it for granted that Calf Island was the place for us. We may have been entirely wrong.

The suicides are doing it. That’s what it is. Grimus is furious about them. They should never have come, he says. They should have drunk their blue bottles in peace, somewhere else. Not killed themselves here. Deggle says it’s like marriage, agreeing to come to Calf Island. A lot of people will inevitably want a divorce no matter how much in love they were at the time.

The suicides are turning people against us and Deggle is on their side. Is he right? No, he must be wrong. Everyone made a free choice. It’s not our fault.

Like a marriage … I was blind, of course. Liv doesn’t love me. I know that. I knew it then. I thought she liked me, though.

Liv loves power. She loves to be near the centre of power. She loves to be near Grimus. Through me, she is. There’s an end to it. An end to paradise. We do not make love. She talks to Grimus incessantly.

I overheard this:

—Your name, said Grimus. LIV. In the Roman numerology that is fifty-four. I was fifty-four when I drank the elixir. The numbers bind us.

I knew Grimus was interested in numerology. But is this simply a monkish, mystic bond? I am becoming a jealous man. Liv says I have nothing to be jealous of. She is right. There is nothing between us.

It’s all going wrong.

Tiusday May 1st.

Mayday, m’aidez. The grand design is broken and so are we. I will try, my friend, to recount events dispassionately, but I may not succeed.

Deggle started it. The violence.

Liv finished it.

But the beginning. Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, then stop. Sound instructions. The beginning, then. Two nights ago. I was awakened by a terrible crash in the Rose Room. I rushed, as rapidly as my bulk permits, to the scene. Grimus was already there, in his ridiculous nightshirt and noddycap, a large, enraged goblin, staring at the disaster.

The Rose lay on the floor, its stem protruding from the coffin, which was overturned on top of the precious thing! And stooping over it, scowling, was Deggle.

I have felt for some time now that all was not well with Deggle, and wondered how much the growing dislike of Grimus and myself in the town was a result of his machinations. We have been passing through disenchanted times in K. Suicides apart (and thank the lord, that phase seems to be over) there have been a number of defections from K. People who have chosen to live elsewhere, in the wooded lower slopes, away from the town. K itself, stultified, discontented. Natural, I suppose, god help us, that they should vent their spleen upon the people responsible for Calf Island. But the violence … the whispers about destroying Grimus’ infernal machine … I had thought we had left violence behind. And the Rose itself … I do not even know about that anymore.

Control. Control.

Deggle has been spending much of his time in the Elba-room. Perhaps he saw himself as a kind of saviour. A popular messiah. A liberator. There has never been much love lost between us. Perhaps the enmity ran deeper than we believed.

At any rate. We found him trying to shatter the Rose! Grimus recovered quickly from the shock and, displaying astonishing strength, hurled him from the room. —It must be tested, he said, and for the rest of the night he was closeted with the Rose, adjusting, permuting, testing. It was dawn before he declared himself satisfied that no damage had been done.

No damage!

—We must not allow this to happen again, he said, with a fierceness in his voice I had heard only once before, in his short diatribe against authority. —The Rose is the most valuable thing on the island, he said. I cannot permit it to be jeopardized. Will you help me?

I was caught up in the fervour of those bright, hooded eyes. —How? I asked.

—By myself I am not sure I can do it, he said. It will take our combined wills. We must expel the vandal from the island. I visited Dota in the night: he has taught me a method. But it is difficult.

I won’t bother with the ensuing argument. Suffice to say that we went into the Rose Room, agreed. At once I felt uneasy.

How can I explain it? There was a sensation in the room, like a soft inaudible whine. No, not in the room. Inside my head. And it was strongest near the Rose. I asked Grimus what it was, in some anxiety. He dismissed it: it had not affected the Rose’s functions in any way. —It was only a whine, he said. Dota the Gorf had not been worried about it.

He set the Rose and we fixed our thoughts upon our intentions, repeating this form of words: IXSE SIXTTES SIXE IXSETES EXIS EXISTIS. A variant, I supposed, to the SISPI formula for Travel between potential presents.

Deggle has not been seen on Calf Island since. I must presume the expulsion worked. I do not know where we have sent him, but he has gone. No doubt the Water-crystal will spot him should we desire it. I do not desire it. Not now.

I have always thought of uses of the Rose as rites. They are so very unmechanical. So. When the rite was over, it happened. I felt dizzy. I was unwell, I was sure. Grimus was saying: —It is not enough to expel Deggle. We must remove the Rose to a safer place. I have a plan.

I could hardly hear his voice … it came and went, and went.

(Now, Virgil, dispassion, tell it calmly.)

The whine. It was the whine, somehow, it must have been. Holding the Rose all that time, so close. I wonder why Grimus was not affected…

The whine filled my head with shapes and pictures and beasts and terrors. Horrors. Horrors. I tried to escape and there was no escape. They were inside.

Hallucinations? No, they were too real, they could cause pain. No, I will not describe them, the infernal scenes I saw and felt, the depths I plumbed. It was as though an army of terrors from the recesses of my own imagination had been released, my inmost fears made flesh. Horrible, most horrible. No, I will say no more about it … the Dimension-fever. So Grimus called it.

When I came to my senses, Grimus sat by me solicitously, on the Rose Room floor. He had rescued me, tuning the Rose to my co-ordinates and willing me back from my inner depths. So the Rose can heal as well as hurt. I am more scared of it than I ever was.

Most of all I am scared because I can no longer use it.

Grimus wanted me to master it again, like a fallen mountaineer. He set the Rose for Thera and we grasped it.

I did not Travel I Try as I might, I could not use the Rose.

It is like a paralysis of the mind. It shuts me out from that insidious whine—but it shuts me out, too, from all the countless universes I have not yet seen. Calf Island is all I have now. And a bleak inheritance it is.

I shall be brief now, or else I shall become maudlin.

Grimus, using the Rose for intradimensional Travel for the first time, has removed himself—and it—to the mountain peak. With a great deal of effort, he has succeeded in building a double barrier against the island: a visual barrier of clouds which obscures him perennially from our sight, and a kind of forcefield which we cannot pass. There is one Gate. He showed it me in case things improved. They will not improve.

His departure has brought about the end of my—not marriage—cohabitation with Liv. I was obliged to watch the degrading spectacle of my wife pleading, begging Grimus to take her with him. Misogynist that he is, he refused. I found myself feeling angry with him for this, this, insult to my wife! Imagine that, my friend. So greatly am I reduced.

Picture Liv’s fury, then, when he took the woman Bird-Dog instead of her. An explicable choice. He wants a servant, not a mistress. The doting Axona will be a good servant, I expect. She thinks of him as a demi-god.

Liv’s fury, in the absence of Grimus, vented itself on me. She has said a number of cruel things I will not commit to this page. She despises me for not being his equal, though I never claimed I was. And for my paralysis, thanks to which she is barred from his company. She wants nothing to do with me. In her eyes, I am just a fat, weak man. Probably she is right. Yes. Probably she is.

The house where we lived is empty now. Liv has gone up the mountain, to be as near Grimus as possible, no doubt. She does not know the location of the Gate, nor how close she is. And even if she knew, Grimus would not let her pass. He will watch the island with his Watercrystal and defend the Rose, and his privacy. The Rose is all he cares for now.

I am being looked after by Jocasta. She has always been a friend to me. I suspect a rift between her and Liv. Because Liv scorns me, Jocasta adopts me. But I am past questioning motives; I accept companionship where it is offered.

Mayday, indeed.

Saturnday September 29th.

I am leaving K. It is a town made mad by a machine. Soldiers, policemen, actors, hunters, whores, drunks, wasters, philosophers, menials, morons, artisans, farmers, shoe-salesmen, artists, united by their common inability to cope with the world they have had imposed upon them, Especially as the whine grows worse, they say. I cannot hear it. It has driven some to distraction. It has led to what they now call the Way of K. Gribb’s way. Gribb and Mrs Gribb, who arrived recently. No doubt Grimus had a hand in their arrival, but now they deny him and his Effect. Obsessionalism is their defence. I cannot bear what is happening to K, place of erstwhile joy. If my mind is paralysed, at least my life is not.

Guilt. It must be someone’s fault. It is ours. It was our experiment. But the Rose … the Rose is a wonderful thing. How has it brought so much grief? It is a terrible thing, so much distortion caused by such a wonder. I must leave. I do not want to watch. The woman Dolores O’Toole is going down the mountain. I shall go with her.

As for you, my friend, I shall take my leave of you as well. I want no friends now. I shall sacrifice you to Liv in propitiation of the gods. I shall take you to her. She will probably rend you limb from limb or toss you casually aside, as she did me. That is your future. It may help me forget my past. It may help me forget K and the horrors that burnt my mind. You will be my means of self-immolation. Greater love hath no friend.

To your destroyer, I will say one last word. There was a moment, back in that fit-to-be-expunged past, when I thought she wanted me. The excellence of that moment is not dimmed by the discovery of my mistake. I thank her for it. Beginnings are always better than endings. Then, everything was possible. Now, nothing is.

Dark. The book shut, wrapped, replaced. The silent blackveiled woman rising to her feet, standing stiffly before him. A hen clucking, once. Outside, the frenzied padding of the diary’s author, searching for a door he knew he could not find or pass. And the hiding whore, crouching by the donkey, behind a tree, watching.

But she did not rend it limb from limb, thought Flapping Eagle.

—Fifty-four, said Liv in a flat, regular voice. He said it was a bond between us. His always-age, my name. He is a man who breaks his bond. I knew how he thought, knew how he felt, knew him. It was a bond beyond breaking and it was broken.

As she spoke she stooped over a group of candles on the floor and lit them with flints. Then she stood erect once more, the light yellowing upwards at her from the floor, casting great shadows on the wall. Flapping Eagle remembered: the goddess Axona had looked like this. Then. Ago. Before. And the recollection mingled with the revealed history of the island, losing itself in that gloom.

She had not been speaking to him. Again, the sense of ritual: the book recited, the candles lit, the litany spoken. This was how she lived her life, embalmed in the bitter formaldehyde of old hatreds and betrayals. Flapping Eagle felt sorry for her for an instant; then her eyes focused on him through the grill of her hood.

—Aaaaaah. It was a huge exhalation of air, sobbing out from her lungs.

—Of course, she said. Of course. You have returned. The Spectre of Grimus is here to make good the bond of Grimus. Of course. So it is.

She was different, Flapping Eagle realized. The recitation, the entire rite, had altered her. She spoke slowly now, distantly, as though in some kind of trance. The past had possessed her. And he, Flapping Eagle, had become a part of that past.

—Come, she said, backing towards the bed, beckoning. Come and consecrate your bond.

Flapping Eagle sat immobile in the chair, not knowing how to react.

—Look at my body, Spectre, said Liv. Is it not a suitable altar?

Her hands moved suddenly to the back of her neck, where they undid a fastening. The black robe fell to the floor. She stood unclothed before him, her face still hidden by the black veil, the eyes looking out at him, piercing, perhaps even mocking, the candles casting their upwards yellow glow.

—Look at my body, Spectre, repeated Liv. Flapping Eagle looked.

Liv, ice-peak of perfection. Virgil had overstated nothing.

His eyes described her to his unbelieving mind. The feet, a little too large, stained with intricate henna tracery like an Indian bride; the long, tapered legs, the right bearing her weight and the left relaxed, so that the swayed curve of her hips was accented, sinuously, consciously; the tight curls of hair beneath her navel, unshaven, untrained, pale, nestling curls; the deep, deep navel, a dark pool in the whiteness of her skin; the breasts, small, the right slightly larger than the left, the left nipple tilted a fraction higher than its partner, but both still child-rosy, soft; the narrow, straight shoulders pushed back a fraction to an almost military angle, challenging, confident; the arms hanging straight and loose, palms of the hands facing forwards, third fingers curled beneath the thumbs, a generous hint of hair shadowing the pits of the arms. The rest, the neck and face and head, unseen beneath their hood, only hinted at by those sharply quizzical eyes. He looked at her now in the whole, the black garment lying at her feet, a forgotten shroud, the dancing candles on the floor sending rich shadows to flirt with the naked body, the chaos and filth of the room forgotten in the perfection of this vision. She knew how to display her body, just enough emphasis to heighten its beauty without obtrusion. A headless venus in a slum museum.

—Is it not a suitable altar? she said.

He nodded, wordlessly, and with a sudden movement of the right arm she removed the windowed hood. It fluttered to the floor to join its companion-robe.

He had known she would be beautiful; but he had failed to anticipate how subjugating that beauty would be. Flapping Eagle had to wrestle with himself to look into that face without instantly lowering his eyes. It was the loveliness of sun on ice, too brilliant to watch. Blinding, imperious perfection. The firm, long, narrow jaw, set and tilted upwards, and the wide, wide mouth without the vestige of a smile; the nose, short and straight, flanked by cheekbones like blades or sharp white cliffs. A long face, the bones perfectly balanced by those vast lucent pools of eyes, deepest aquamarine, eyes you could almost see through, eyes that saw, effortlessly, through you. And framing the head of the ice-queen, an abundance of waving gold, rising a few inches from a central division and crashing effusively around the glitter-hard face with the sea-soft eyes, a niagara of falling hair. It was the face that did it.

Liv lying down on the bed.

—Come, she said. Come and consecrate your bond.

As Virgil Jones stumbled around in the night, Flapping Eagle moved towards the body of his wife, towards the clean bed, past the glowing candles and the spiders and the mould.

She could arouse him as Irina never had. Then, he had been in control, a part of him always detached, choosing his next course of action, watching her come to her peak, deriving most of his satisfaction from the giving of pleasure; now it was he who was driven, uncontrollably, by the touches and movements of her body. She spent a long, slow while discovering his preferences and taboos, whispering all the time: —Do you like that? Is that nice? Shall I do that harder or softer? Shall I lick or nibble or tickle or scratch? Is my hand good there? Shall I be like this, or this, or this? The new, quiet gentleness in her voice softened interrogation into intimacy, and it was only later that he realized he had never asked if she, too, liked what he chose.

So that, when she did what she had always intended, it caught him with every defence down, open, helpless.

He lay on his back on the bed. The candles flickered closer to guttering out. The time of exploration was over, and the kissing and stroking and squeezing and she knelt over him, the golden cornucopia covering her face like a lavish thatch, the aquamarine eyes hidden, the long hands kneading and working at the small tilted breasts, the thighs quivering gently as she descended, and then he was in her. Slowly still, making it last, the living strike of flesh in flesh, slowly, slowly gathering force, building, slowly gathering.

She was groaning now (— groan, she had said) and they were striking hard at each other, near, so near, the shudder growing within him, and the moment had…

She wrenched herself off him then, hard and without warning, and stood on the bed looking down at him, composed, unruffled, and the aquamarines were filled with triumph.

—It is Liv who breaks the bond, she said.

Liv’s revenge on Grimus, plotted in centuries of darkened, still-seated brooding. Now, possessed, entranced, she had wrought it on his Spectre. It was a very final humiliation, hitting him in the core of his carnal pride, the only pride he had left. He looked up at the towering Valkyrie, staring at him with the full force of her century-festered hate, and helplessly, miserably, his body roused beyond his control, spilt his sterile seed upon the sheets.

Virgil Jones had slept squatting on the outcrop. Flapping Eagle was curled into a foetal ball against the wall of the black house. When they awoke, the damp had seeped into their bones. They shivered.

It was the cry that woke them, a half-frightened, half-elated yell from the wood. Flapping Eagle was awake at once and running in the direction of the voice. Virgil, slower, bulkier, followed him, blinking rapidly.

Media stood at the edge of the wood, her arms trembling but her hands clasped rigidly together.

Trapped between her arms was the surly, draggled figure of Bird-Dog.

Brother and sister stood still a moment, taking stock.

—Tell this stupid woman to let me go, little brother.

Her voice was unfriendly.

—I saw her appear, Flapping Eagle, said Media tremulously. Like a spectre. I saw her appear so I caught her. I thought you’d, you’d want to see her.

It had been a brave thing to do.

Bird-Dog said: —If you saw me appear, don’t you think I could just as easily disappear? You’d be left clutching thin air.

Media looked doubtful, but didn’t release her hold.

—She’s right, Media, said Flapping Eagle. If she’s here, it’s because she wants to be. Let her go and perhaps we’ll find out why.

—I don’t want to be here, said Bird-Dog roughly. If he hadn’t sent me I would never have come.

—Grimus sent you? It was Virgil’s voice, blank, disbelieving.

—Not for you, she said. For him. Little Joe-Sue. It’s none of my doing, little brother. Remember that.

Grimus actually wants to see me, thought Flapping Eagle. There will be no battle of wills.

—Why? Again, it was Virgil Jones who spoke Flapping Eagle’s thoughts.

—Don’t ask me why, said Bird-Dog, shaking herself free of Media’s constricting embrace. I have a message to deliver, and then I am to take him back with me.

Media was about to speak, but remained silent, She looked worried.

—Well, then, said Flapping Eagle. Deliver your message.

As Bird-Dog began to speak in a memorized, sing-song voice, a figure in a black robe and hood came out of the black house to listen.

Grimus says: —Thank you all for your efforts. I have derived a great deal of pleasure from watching you. To Virgil, I owe my apologies. I have been playing a game of hide and seek with him. Slightly cruel, possibly, but necessary.

It is to Liv Sylwan Jones that I owe my greatest thanks. She has set the seal on Mr Eagle, who is therefore prepared at last to meet me. He knows about me now, intimately, I think. And more important, he has moved from a state of what I should call self-consciousness to a state of what I would humbly term Grimus-consciousness. That is a good state in which to meet me, and I must once again thank you all: the absent Nicholas Deggle for making the meeting possible, you, Virgil, for leading him so astutely towards a confrontation with me, and you, Liv, for breaking down the last barrier to that meeting: his masculinity. In a sense, Liv, you were the Gate, as far as he is concerned. Now that he has passed you, he may come to me. I am very thrilled: perhaps this is my Perfect Dimension, after all.

Bird-Dog stopped and lowered her head. —Shall we go now? she said. To Flapping Eagle, the sight of this servile Bird-Dog, a grumbling, malcontented but totally subservient menial, was a shock and an upset. This was not the sister who had foraged for his food, who had raised and protected him. This was a shadow of the Bird-Dog he had known. What had Grimus done to her?

Liv raised her hood a small way and spat viciously on the ground before her.

Virgil Jones fussed at Flapping Eagle: —Don’t forget. Wait your moment.

But life no longer seemed entirely clear-cut to Flapping Eagle. Curiosity and last night’s humiliation were creeping over his resolve.

Media came up to Flapping Eagle and said quietly: —Take me, too.

Flapping Eagle was no longer surprised by anything. —Why, Media? he asked.

She shrugged.

Flapping Eagle found himself saying: —Yes. All right. Come with me. Perhaps it was because he felt the need of a friendly face on the journey into the unknown. Perhaps it was a reaction to the night with Liv, a need to reassure himself. He didn’t bother to examine his motives, but he realized he was glad she was coming. As for Media, her face had suddenly broken into sunlight.

Bird-Dog said: —Not her. Just you.

Flapping Eagle found a drop of strength.

—Big sister, he said. You’re supposed to lead me to Grimus. Now I’m not coming unless she does. So You’ll just have to take us both.

With bad grace, Bird-Dog gave in.

—Follow me, she said.

Flapping Eagle clasped Media’s hand, tightly. The returned pressure was even more fierce. —I will think about you, she said, and only you. While I do that, nothing can harm me.

He realized that she was exactly, precisely right.

Bird-Dog walked ahead of them to a spot just behind the first trees. She closed her eyes and muttered: —Sispi, Sispi. She became transparent. She nearly disappeared, but the faintest outline of her moved a step to the right and waited. Media’s eyes widened; then she closed them and tightened her lips.

Flapping Eagle led her to the Gate.

Virgil Jones and Liv watched the three faint outlines walk away up the rising slope of the mountain, walking miraculously where there was no path to walk on, until they were lost to sight. They were so slight that it did not take long for this to happen.

Liv turned and went back into the black house, slamming the door.

And Virgil? Virgil knew that there was no longer anything he could do, that after all the Gorfs prophecy had come true. Flapping Eagle had reached Grimus without his help, and who knew what the result would be? There was nothing to be done now.

He started down the mountain, back to the beach, back to Dolores O’Toole and the jigsaws, the rocking-chair and the shreds of his helpless dignity.