‘Maybe we could get him out,’ I protested. ‘That’s what you yourself had in mind until he started this insidious love-me, kill-me business.’
‘Just how are we going to get him out? I wasn’t considering how, or what for, and neither are you. Look back that way, Ben.’ Elegy pointed over the forward wall of the compound into the eerie gloom of the catacombs, at the immense central column by which we had descended from the pagoda. ‘Do you really think we can carry my father back up that thing, Ben? Just the two of us?’
That central column-cum-stairway was a landmark of towering prominence, visible despite the gloom shrouding its highest reaches. It climbed upward better than half a kilometer through the dark. We would never get Chaney up its switchbacking scaffolds and into the light of the day. If we did get him up, and if the Komm-galens in Frasierville somehow managed to prolong his life, he would be something less than either a human being or an Asadi.
Still, with help, Elegy and I might be able to manage that otherwise unlikely mission.
And the white-blue beam of an emergency torch, probing the catacombs from a set of scaffolds halfway up the column, suggested that help was reasonably close to hand. Jaafar had entered the pagoda and descended into the pit comprising the huri sanctuary.
‘Jaafar’s coming,’ I said, ‘and that gives us a chance.’
Elegy shook her head. ‘That isn’t the point, Ben. Maybe the three of us could lick the how of getting my father out, but the what for – Ben, you haven’t even addressed that!’ She struck me in the chest hard enough to make my breastbone sting. ‘It’s my grant, Ben. It’s my father. And it’s my decision. Leave me alone with him for five minutes. Go. Right now. Or don’t ever expect to own a jot of my regard again.’
‘That’s blackmail, too, Elegy – virtually the same kind your daddy’s working on you.’
‘Interpret it however you like. If you really think you’re right, you’ll be able to live with my contempt. But if you’re interfering with me now to establish a sense of your own authority, or to worry aloud some abstract notion of higher morality, well, you’ll deserve what you get. Worse yet, Ben, you’ll know it.’
I swore at her. ‘Get out of here,’ Elegy said evenly. ‘Wait for Jaafar at the base of the column. I’ll join you there as soon as I’m finished.’
I swore again, ritually. Then, obeying her, I duckwalked beneath the chrysalis’s support lines and headed for the opening at the front of the compound. When I glanced back, Elegy was crouched beside her father’s head like a worshiper in the tomb of some Egyptian or Mesoamerican god-king, her deity’s face masked in tarnished bronze and lapis lazuli, the mummy itself winged in silk like an angel.
Curiously vivid and affecting, the scene stayed in my vision even as I negotiated my way past the subterranean lagoon, the huri dovecotes, the walls festooned with molds, the guano compounds, and all the oozing amethyst dividers of the labyrinth. The memory clung like a burr. I couldn’t shake it. By the time I reached the base of the column I was trembling uncontrollably. Half in awe of the tears streaming down my face and beading in my eyelashes, I eased myself cross-legged to the floor and waited.
It felt astonishingly good to cry – even if, astonishingly, it hurt like nothing else I had ever known.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Transfigured Lives
‘Dr Benedict,’ droned a voice in my ear, ‘Dr Benedict, sir.’
It was Jaafar, on his throat radio, perched on a platform high above me, for our connection was reestablished now that we inhabited the same volume of space. I hadn’t thought to call him before, nor, apparently, had he remembered the radio until better than halfway down the chamber’s central tower. Elegy, I assumed, was too busy, too preoccupied, to respond, and I knew that the only decent thing to do was to tell Jaafar to stay put until she and I could join him aloft. Otherwise, he would make the trip down for nothing. It took me a few moments to compose myself, but I finally activated my radio and did the decent thing.
‘Please, Dr Benedict, what business is Civ Cather about?’
‘I’m not sure, Jaafar. We’ll have to wait until she gets ready to come back and tell us. Just sit tight for a while.’
‘There’s an Asadi ahead of me, sir. It led me down here.’
‘You mean Kretzoi, don’t you? Surely you’re able to tell the difference between Kretzoi and a real Asadi by now.’
Jaafar waited three or four beats before responding. ‘Yes, sir. By now I’m capable in that way. This is not Kretzoi who leads me. It’s an Asadi, with empty eyes and a – how do you call it? – a ratty mane.’
‘The Bachelor!’ I radioed in surprise. ‘Where’s Kretzoi, then? You saw him, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. He’s with the helicraft. I used him to point me to my landing in front of the pagoda.’
‘You were able to see it then? The pagoda, I mean?’
‘As large as a hammered thumb it showed from the air, sir. Larger, I guess one should acknowledge. It’s very large indeed.’
‘What’s the Bachelor doing now, Jaafar?’
‘Who?’
‘The Asadi. What’s he doing? How did you happen to pick him up as a guide? And what in Allah’s name made you want to follow him?’
‘He wanted me to come. He emerged from the pagoda only a short time ago, indicating by movements that I should follow. Kretzoi told me – with his hands, you know – that Elegy and you had gone down beneath the floor. Civ Cather, I mean.’
‘Go ahead and
