He was so breathless the words were barely audible, and the light from the earth made him look sick.
‘I don’t want to shed blood,’ he told Cal. ‘Not here. There arc forces around us that wouldn’t take kindly to that.’
Cal had slopped running. Now, as he listened to Shadwell’s speech, he felt a twitching beneath the soles of his feet. and looked down to see shoots springing up between his toes.
‘Go back. Mooney,’ said Shadwell. ‘My destiny isn’t with you.’
Cal was only half-listening to the Salesman. The sudden growth beneath his feet intrigued him, and he saw now that it spread across the ground, following Shadwell’s footsteps to where he stood. The barren soil had suddenly produced all manner of plant life, which was growing at a phenomenal rate. Shadwell had seen it too, and his voice was hushed as he said:
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ said Cal.
Shadwell’s face carried a lunatic grin.
‘You have no place here,’ he said. ‘I grant you that. But I’ve waited all my life for this.’
An ambitious plant burst the earth beneath Cal’s foot, and he stepped aside to let it grow. Shadwell read the movement as an attack. He opened his jacket. For an instant Cal thought he was going to try the old trick, but his solution was far simpler. He pulled a gun from his inside pocket, and pointed it at Cal.
‘Like I said, I don’t want to spill blood. So go back, Mooney. Go on.
He meant it; of that Cal had not the least doubt. Raising his hands to chest height, he said:
‘I hear you. I’m going.’
Before he could move however, three things happened in quick succession. First, something flew overhead, its passage almost hidden by the clouds that pressed upon the roof of the Temple. Shadwell looked up, and Cal, taking the chance, ran at the man, reaching to knock the gun from his grip.
The third event was the shot.
It seemed to Cal he saw the bullet break from the barrel on a plume of smoke; saw it cleave the space between the gun and his body. It was slow, as in a nightmare of execution. But he was slower still.
The bullet hit his shoulder, and he was thrown backwards, landing amongst flowers that had not existed thirty seconds before. He saw droplets of his blood rise over his head, as if claimed for the sky. He let the puzzle go. There was only energy enough to hold onto one problem at a time, and he had to make life his priority.
His hand went to the wound, which had shattered his clavicle. He put his palm against the hole to stop the blood coming, as the pain spread down across his body.
Above him, the clouds roiled on, thundering; or was the clamour he heard only in his head? Groaning, he rolled onto his side, to see if he could get a glimpse of what Shadwell was up to. The pain almost blinded him, but he fought to focus on the building up ahead.
Shadwell was entering the Temple. There was no guard at the threshold; just an archway in the brick, through which he was disappearing. Cal inched himself up onto two knees and a hand – the other still clamped to his shoulder – and from there got to his feet, and began to stagger towards the Temple door to claim the Salesman from his victory.
2
What Shadwell had told Mooney was true: he had no wish to shed blood in the Gyre. The secrets of Creation and Destruction dwelled here. If he’d needed confirmation of that fact he’d seen it spring up beneath their feet: a fabulous fecundity which brought with it the promise of heroic decay. That was the nature of any exchange – a thing gained, a thing lost. He, a salesman, had learned that lesson as a stripling. What he sought now was to stand beyond such commerce, inviolate. That was the condition of Gods. They had permanence, and purpose everlasting; they could not be spoiled in their prime, nor shown wonders only to have them snatched away. They were eternal, unchanging, and here inside this bald citadel he would join that pantheon.
It was dark over the threshold. No sign here of the shining earth outside; just a shadowy passageway, its floor, walls and ceiling built of the same bare brick, without mortar between. He advanced a few yards, his fingertips running over the wall. It was an illusion, no doubt, but he had a curious sensation walking here: that the bricks were grinding upon each other, as his first mistress had ground her teeth in her sleep. He withdrew his fingers from the walls, advancing to the first turn in the passage.
At the corner, a welcome discovery. There was a light source somewhere up ahead; he would not have to stumble in darkness any further. The passage ran for forty-five yards or so, before making another ninety-degree turn.
Again, it was the same featureless brick; but half way down it he was presented with a second archway, and stepping through found himself in an identical corridor, but that it was shorter by twice the breadth of the first. He followed it, the light brightening, around one corner and along another bare passage, then around a second corridor which again had a door in it. Now he grasped the architect’s design. The Temple was not one building but several, set within each other; a box containing a slightly smaller box which then contained a third.
The realization unnerved him. The place was like a maze. A simple one, perhaps, but nevertheless designed to confound or delay. Once again he heard the walls grinding, and pictured the whole construction closing in on him, and he suddenly unable to find his way out before the walls pressed him to bloody dust.
But he couldn’t turn back now; not with the luminescence tempting him to turn one more corner. Besides, there were noises reaching him from the world outside: strange, disfigured voices, as if the inhabitants of some forgotten bestiary were prowling around the Temple, scraping at the brick, padding across the roof.
He had no choice but to press on. He’d sold his life away for a glimpse of Godhood; he had nothing to return to now but the bitterest defeat.
Forward then, and to Hell with the consequences.
3
As Cal came within a yard of the Temple door his strength gave out.
He could no longer command his legs to bear him up. He stumbled, throwing out his right arm to prevent his falling too heavily, and hit the ground.
Unconsciousness claimed him, and he was grateful for it. Escape lasted seconds only however, before the blackness lifted, and he was delivered back into nausea and agony. But now – and not for the first time in the Fugue – his blood-starved brain had lost its grasp on whether he was dreaming, or being dreamt.
That ambiguity had first visited him in Lemuel Lo’s orchard, he remembered: waking from a dream of the life he’d lived to find himself in a paradise he’d only ever expected to encounter in sleep. And then later, on Venus Mountain, or beneath it, living the life of planets – and passing a millennium in that revolving state – only to wake a mere six hours older.
Now here was the paradox again, at death’s door. Had he awoken to die?; or was dying true wakefulness? Round and round the thoughts went, in a spiral with darkness at its centre, and he fleeing into that darkness, wearier by the moment.
His head on the earth, which was trembling beneath him, he opened his eyes and looked back towards the Temple. He saw it upside down, the roof sitting in a foundation of clouds, while the bright ground shone around it.
Paradox upon paradox, he thought, as his eyes drifted closed again.
‘Cal.’
Somebody called him.
‘Cal.’
Irritated to be summoned this way, he opened his eyes only reluctantly.
It was Suzanna who was bending over him, saying his name. She had questions too, but his lazy mind couldn’t grasp them. Instead he said:
‘Inside. Shadwell …’
