Abarat: Absolute Midnight

“What’s going on, Voorzangler?”

“I was just about to alert you, sir.”

“No need. You’re being watched too, remember?”

“I wasn’t aware—”

“That some of the screens you’re looking at are looking at you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they are.”

He closed the door to his suite behind him and then, moving very slowly, his limbs exhausted, he stepped up onto one of the discs and, taking up his familiar posture, hands cupped left in right behind his back, he allowed the disc to carry him the long way around the room, examining the screens as he went.

Such was the immensity of the chamber, and vastness of the numbers of screens, that it took him several minutes to come around again to the place where Voorzangler and Kattaz were standing. When he finally did so, and Voorzangler got an opportunity to look at his mentor very closely, he was troubled. Pixler appeared very much the worse for wear following his descent into the depths of the Izabella. His skin was white, and beaded with sweat. His hair was pasted to his scalp with the moisture.

“I wish you’d let me examine you, sir. Just a brief checkup?”

“I’ve told you, Voorzangler, I’m perfectly fine. Never better.”

“But weren’t you in the bathyscaphe when the Requiax took hold of it?”

“Oh yes. Oh, I’ve been closer to death than I ever care to be again. But the Requiax is an ancient entity, Voorzangler. It has no interest in whether a man lives or dies.”

“You’re not a man, sir. You’re Rojo Pixler. You’re the father of the Commexo Kid.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. And I am not going to die. Now, or ever.”

“Or ever, sir?”

“You heard me, Voorzangler. Or ever. The future is mine to own. It’s bright, Voorzangler, and full of possibilities. I can’t afford to die.”

“I want to believe you, sir—”

“But—?”

“But these sacbrood, sir . . .”

“Is that what they are?” Pixler said matter-of-factly. “Fascinating.”

“Our records report—”

“Forget the records. They’re not worth a damn.”

“But sir, you wrote them.”

“No, not me, Voorzangler. I was another man entirely when I wrote those. That man is gone.”

“Gone, sir?”

“Yes, Voorzangler, gone. As in departed. Exited the building. Dead.”

“You look a little sick, sir,” Voorzangler said, speaking slowly, as though to an idiot. “But . . . you’re not dead. Trust me.”

“Oh no. Thank you very much for the invitation. But I don’t think I will. Trust you, I mean. I have better advisors now.”

“Sir?”

“It’s their understanding that our neighbors on Gorgossium, specifically that she-cur, Motley—” As he spoke of her, his features were overtaken by a rising wave of infiltrations, his muscles twitching violently, plainly not under Pixler’s command. “She’s apparently intending to cut off all natural light to the islands.”

“How do you know this?” Voorzangler said.

“I’m looking at the screens, Doctor. This mass swarming of sacbrood is blotting out the skies. There will be a severe, even catastrophic, drop in temperature. Blizzard conditions on islands that have never seen a flake of snow. Crops will perish in the fields. Livestock will freeze to death. There will be massive loss of life in rural areas—”

“People can build fires,” Kattaz said.

Pixler looked at the woman with naked disdain. “Go away,” he said. “You offend me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t need reasons. Just go.”

“Mr. Pixler, please.”

“Oh don’t whine, Voorzangler. I know what goes on between you two. I’ve watched you fawn over her. Love makes you look ridiculous, don’t you see?” He glanced back at Kattaz. “Are you still here? I said go away.”

Kattaz looked to Voorzangler for help, but his face was utterly blank, all sign of real emotion concealed. She didn’t wait for him to come to her defense. Obviously he wasn’t going to do so.

“I’m sorry I offend you . . . sir,” she said in a monotone, and departed.

“So Mater Motley has herself an army,” Pixler went on, as though nothing had happened.

“She does?” Voorzangler said. His gaze was on the screens filled with sacbrood now.

“Stop looking at the damn insects. They’re just a part of what she’s up to. Look at this.”

He pointed to a cluster of screens showing both recorded footage of the stitchling legions, marching in shockingly precise lockstep as they assembled to board the warship, and live feeds showing those same warships carving their way through the dark waters of the Izabella; the only light supplied by the lamps, like blazing eyes, in the bows of the ships, and a host of smaller, airborne lights that cast a cold, blue-white luminesence as they flew around and above and behind the vessels.

“You mean the goons on the ships?” Voorzangler said. “They’re just stitchlings. Rags and mud! They have no brain-power. Yes, she can train them to march, but I doubt they’ll do much else!”

“I think perhaps she let you see the clowns so that you wouldn’t ever think of them as soldiers. The Old Mother’s quite brilliant in her way, you know,” Pixler said.

“The Old Mother? Is that what they call her? Huh. She’s a crazy hangover from the days of the Empire. I doubt she even knows what year this is.”

“She may indeed be touched by madness, Voorzangler. On the other hand, that may be simply a performance, to have you believing she is harmless in her lunatic condition.”

“Sane or insane,” the doctor said, “she is not the real power. That was Carrion right from the beginning.”

“Never underestimate a woman. After all, Old Mother has persuaded some very powerful allies to come over to her side. Powers I do not even care to name. They do not see the world as we do, in opposites. Night and Day. Black and White.”

“Good and Evil?”

“They would find that particular idea utterly absurd.”

“So these . . . beings . . . are her allies?”

“So she believes.”

“But you don’t.”

“I believe she is useful to them at present. So they indulge her dreams of founding an Imperial dynasty —”

“Isn’t she a little old to be having children?”

“You don’t have to give birth to children in the world of mysteries where that woman walks.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. Not remotely.”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Good!” Pixler said brightly, laying a clammy, cold hand—a dead man’s hand was all Voorzangler could think—on the doctor’s shoulder.

“You can still admit to ignorance. There’s hope for you yet, Voorzangler. Smile, Doctor!”

“I can’t. I mean I will if you want me to . . .”

He tried to fake a smile, but it was a wretched sight.

“Forget it,” Pixler said.

Voorzangler let the smile die a quick death, and went on talking: “Is the City in any danger?”

“Well, ask yourself: what do our sources tell us about her plans?”