Enigmatic Pilot

CHAPTER 1. Strange Languages

HEPHAESTUS AND RAPTURE PROPOSED A PAYMENT TO THE CLUTTERS that they felt they could afford for the time period they thought they would require (which the reformed inventor and drunkard optimistically estimated as a week). Once the older couple had nailed, sanded, and knocked these negotiations into an agreement that they could echo and be sure of, they took a handful of the green coffee Egalantine had browned in their oven in the back room, ground it in a mill, and boiled it up with some tin-tasting water and they all shared a bitter but celebratory cup.

Without children and but the coffinmaking and undertaking trappings and each other to keep them company, the Clutters seemed somewhat deprived of stimulus, and so quite delighted (in their own tapping, echoing, uncertain way) to have some live bodies under the same roof. How else would they have learned, for instance, that it was at all noteworthy that the two rooms that passed for their living quarters behind the shop were as crowded with music boxes as their official business space was with coffins?

The boxes were in themselves quite beautiful to look at, the size of snuffboxes and made of a variety of woods: burl walnut and elm, rosewood and bird’s-eye maple, while others had lids inlaid with tortoiseshell. Fascinated by anything mechanical, Lloyd asked if he could inspect them and found them to be disappointingly simple devices comprising a metal barrel of about three inches with a shiny-toothed steel comb inside. He understood the mechanics and the musical principles at a glance.

All the music boxes played the same tune for a little less than a minute, a rather pedestrian arrangement of the French children’s song “Au Clair de la Lune,” which was nonetheless quite engaging and ended with a gentle, invigorating flourish. Rapture, in particular, was taken with the contraptions, and after some sanding and tapping the Clutters were able to present her with one as a gift. But this just raised another question in the Zanesvilleans’ minds.

Given that small lovely boxes that could make music were ever so much more interesting than plain pine boxes big enough to house the dead, and given that the Clutters had so many of them, why did they not contemplate another kind of business, or at least a separate enterprise? It was clear from their humble standard of living that some extra money would come in handy. Surely, even out here on the frontier of Missouri, there would have been at least some demand for items that were so visually appealing, so charming to listen to, and so portable. Rapture put the question directly, as she always did.

“Dissuh hice de chune. Hoa comen ees doan graff de good-fashin? Fsuttin exwantidge!”

The result was such a commotion of gapping, filling, sanding, and knocking, it became uncomfortably apparent that a nerve had been touched. Finally, after another round of coffee and more half-finished sentences than the Sitturds had ever not heard, the truth at last came out.

Outside, the brick-kiln sun had set and pale watery stars had appeared, glinting down in rutted puddles of rain in the street before the whole of the story was thoroughly sanded, tapped, and echoed-but the gist was that a settler from the East had left the boxes with them a year before. He said he had found them in a crate floating in the river, stuck up under some tree roots five miles below. He had the idea of selling them himself, he said, but had left them with the Clutters for the time being in payment for their assistance regarding his dead little boy. He had never returned.

“So you made his child a coffin and he left you with all these?” Hephaestus queried.

After still more sanding and tapping, Mr. Clutter and Mrs. Clutter managed to convey that it was not a coffin that had been required. The man, whose name they had never learned, had asked for his child to be embalmed and he had taken the body with him. This admission led to yet another digression, this time regarding the broader spectrum of funereal services the Clutters felt it necessary to provide, and concluded with Othimiel Clutter producing a brace of jars that contained the embalmed cats he had practiced on (and, ostensibly, succeeded with).

Lloyd was excited by the embalmed cats and, coming so soon after the investigation of the innards of the music boxes, they threw him into a fit of inquiry that removed him for the moment from all other thoughts and doubts, except, of course, Hattie.

He rose from the slat floor where he had been sitting and began examining the room. That was when he found a music box that was different from all the others. Mr. and Mrs. Clutter were still gapping and filling about the cats they had come by-or, rather, how innocently they had come by them-when the boy’s attention fixated upon one of the music boxes, which was not housed in a wooden box but made of a sleek, almost wet-looking metal. It was a margin larger than the rest, but what caught his eye was the design on the lid. Neither inlaid nor etched, there was nonetheless the image of a candle-with the suggestion of a flame rising above it. A pair of crab claws extended from the candle. Lloyd felt the breath sucked out of him.

He had never seen such an emblem before, but he recognized it instantly as the mark of the Vardogers-and quite intriguing it was to look at, too. Whoever had designed it had suppressed any presence of the crab’s body, choosing instead to arm the candle with crustacean claws, a bold and striking abstraction.

While all the other boxes opened with a quiet but definite click that would set the music playing, the box with the Vardogers’ emblem remained steadfastly shut, no matter how much pressure Lloyd applied.

“Don’t fuss yourself, son,” Mr. Clutter said, shaking his head. “It twon’t ever open. We’ve tried.”

Lloyd turned the box over to examine its underside and discovered a row of precisely etched letters that were so small even he had to ask for a magnifying lens, to read the words YOU MUST SAY SOMETHING THE BOX UNDERSTANDS.

“It is curious,” Hephaestus agreed, noticing the intensity of Lloyd’s consideration.

“Witched!” Rapture decreed.

Lloyd, on the other hand, held the box up close to his mouth and said as clearly as he could the word “Something.” To the sheer dumbfoundment of the adults in the room, the smooth metal lid clicked open to reveal not a bright barrel cylinder and sharp-toothed comb, or even the more intricate componentry of a musical clock. Instead, what met their eyes was a detailed, miniaturized orchestra. It was impossible to tell what the figures were made of because they were so small, but a heartbeat after the lid had opened by whatever unseen mechanism, the exquisitely tiny artificial musicians began to play-and the music rose to fill the room with a volume and a depth of presence that exceeded all the other music boxes put together. It began like the fugue from Mozart’s Magic Flute overture, but then evolved into a kind of marching rhythm, and then gradually shifted once more into a bell-like tune or a blend of tunes like nothing the Zanesvilleans had ever heard before. The effect was hypnotic. Transporting. And also disturbing.

Lloyd noticed that he was no longer marveling at the exactitude of the mechanical innovation inside the box but drifting in his mind. Fabulous, half-formed scenes and visions came into his head, like his dreams of old. He could not say what he was seeing, but it made him feel woozy. With an exertion of will, he slapped down the lid and the music died. The expressions on the other faces worried him. They were each dazed in their own way and somewhat hostile, as if he had cut short their fun. There was an oppressive closeness to the atmosphere in the room, which was so pronounced that Egalantine Clutter went so far as to open a window all on her own initiative to dispel it. Hephaestus seemed to have slowed and turned a bit surly, as if someone had waved a draft of pungent-smelling rum under his nose and then pulled it away. But Lloyd could see that his mother had regained her alertness, and was agitated, as if the coffee was just kicking in. He felt convinced that they had experienced something unwholesome.

As pleasing as the box was to look at, as satisfying as it was to fondle, and as badly as he wanted to speak to it and have the lid open, to have the microscopic orchestra perform again, he sensed a presence that was not benign. Beguiling, perhaps, but not benign. His own curiosity and need were so great, it turned around on itself and stared back at him.

Then he noticed the clock on the Clutters’ crowded mantelpiece and the breakout of sweat on his hands made him drop the box. Unless by some infernal magic the music had tampered with the operation of the clock, more than half an hour had passed since he had spoken the password and opened the lid. The other music boxes with straightforward mechanical means had played for forty-five seconds or less. No one had noticed the time that had passed.

“How did you know how to do that?” Othimiel Clutter demanded, when at last the spell had lifted.

“It was easy,” Lloyd answered. “What you were reading as one sentence is really two, so the direction could not have been clearer. Those are often the most difficult riddles to solve-the ones you mistakenly make for yourself.”

This observation, coming from one so young, provoked much discussion among the childless Clutters and the other two adults, although, of course, Rapture and Hephaestus were long inured to Lloyd’s perspicacity. While the older folk nattered on about what seemed transparent to him, Lloyd was more interested in the fact that, despite the amazing mechanico-musical phenomenon they had witnessed, no one now seemed at all eager for him to open the box again, not even himself anymore, Lloyd realized, which he could not account for logically but only in terms of the disquieting intuition he had had before. It seemed like such an elaborate folly to be listened to but once. Already the sense of the music was slipping away. Only a faint memory remained, like a dream.

The prolonged distraction had upset the Clutters’ normal dining schedule. On this evening, with “guests” in attendance, Egalantine insisted on laying out “a spread.” Said spread consisted of a large plate of cold small meats (which, of course, was a rather sensitive choice, given the surrounding jars of embalmed cats and the coffins), an exceedingly odd-textured goat cheese, hunks of shack-smoked bullhead, and a mound of jellied offal, which bore an unappealing resemblance to trifle. Unexpectedly, all the food on the platter soon disappeared, and Lloyd remarked on how hungry everyone seemed, eating with an almost mechanical urgency, verging on trance. He missed his mother’s fresh corn bread, but he, too, hoed in.

Seeing that the spread had been enjoyed (engulfed was more like it), Egalantine set about reheating a cast-iron pot of mutton-and-vegetable stew. This was how the dish was described at any rate, but the aroma that rose from the coals of the hearth, where the pot sat farting like a petulant mud pool, strongly suggested something else (for instance, the renderer back in St. Louis). Indeed, the atmosphere that filled the room was such that Rapture even wondered if the Clutters might not be inclined to create their own customers. Amid chunks of parsnips and what looked to be some highly suspect carrots were bits of bonelike knuckles and a film of what might have been a long-soaked doily but which Mrs. Clutter insisted had recently been red cabbage. A bowl of wax beans with a fine fungal fuzz brushed off at the last minute rounded off the repast. This, too, was consumed. We must be very hungry, Hephaestus told himself. We must be foolish proud, thought Rapture, hoping they would not become ill. What if this all has something to do with that music box, Lloyd puzzled?

Normality of interaction returned come cleanup time and the Clutters resumed their eccentric stop-start mode of conversation. Once some order had been restored to the kitchen area and the cooking fire damped down to embers, the Sitturds were shown to their grim beds in the main shop (with visions of the embalmed cats curled in their jars and the music boxes lined on shelves in the other room). General comments were made regarding plans for provisioning the next day and reassurances given that their stay would not be long, and that they would do all in their power not to disrupt the Clutters’ day-to-day lives and business. Then the candles were extinguished and the Zanesville refugees were left to themselves, each in a coffin packed with old mothball-smelling bedding.

Lloyd found it hard to sleep. Thoughts of Hattie filled his mind, and even without a lid on it was impossible to forget where he was lying. His restlessness set him floating back down a dark river of memories… to the trunk in Miss Viola’s cabin… to the trapdoor graveyard that Schelling had led him to the night that he met Mother Tongue… to the box of the Martian Ambassadors… and the secret hold where he had hidden in Hattie’s arms, making the love a child his age should not have understood. Then there were thoughts of the man who had brought the music boxes-his embalmed child-and the box with the Vardogers’ symbol, which seemed to contain an unnaturally suggestive music embedded in the workings of the miniature metal orchestra. It was a lot for him to think about. Just missing Hattie was enough.

Rapture had similar problems getting adjusted, but after a couple of dozy nightmares that startled her sheer exhaustion took hold and she collapsed into a deep slumber, grateful not to have been seized by stomach cramps. Hephaestus, who in his time on the bottle had grown accustomed to blacking out and waking up in unusual places, gave himself over to sleep with the peace of a baby after the satisfaction of the nipple-every so often releasing a pop of flatulence.

Lloyd listened for a while to his father’s regular snoring and fluffing, his mother’s shallower but soothing respiration, and he began to be aware of faint strains of music. The sadness he felt at losing Hattie-the need to know where she was and if she was all right-would not let him alone. And then, the very moment he experienced any reprieve from his pain, some wriggling other anxiety sneaked in-like music he did not want to hear.

At first he had a bizarre fear that the music boxes in the next room had opened of their own accord, but then he realized that the melody he was hearing came from outside, somewhere down the mud-and-plank streets, and was familiar to him. He picked out a banjo, a fiddle… and a squeezebox… folks singing. He recognized the song “The Pesky Sarpent” and then “Rosin, the Beau.” He crept out of the coffin and tiptoed to the window to listen.

A tall hatted figure passed outside, then a thin white cat. In the starlit space between two buildings across the street, he glimpsed the reflected shadows made by a small fire. He was seized with curiosity to explore the night town-as much to escape the stultifying atmosphere of the coffin room and the lingering smell of supper as anything-but he had trepidations about the safety of venturing out alone in the dark without a lantern or any definite idea of who might be abroad. He would have resigned himself back to a stiff attempt at sleep in the wooden box, when he heard a song that made his hair needle up on his neck.

There’s a place I know

Where I always go

There to dream of you

And hope that you’ll be true

And someday I pray

That you’ll find your way

Back to the secret place

Within my heart.

It was a female voice coming in on a cooling night breeze, which even through the plate glass carried with it the odors of charred wood and burned beans-but it was not, his keen ears told him, the voice of Viola Mercy. The poignancy of the melody made his head swim, though, wondering where the chanteuse might be. Louisville? Memphis? New Orleans? And what of St. Ives, his first business partner? Or the professor, the partner he had lied to and cheated? Or proud, scarred Hattie, his partner in a deeper way. His mind and soul reached out to them all, and through them to the phantom at the far edge of his field of inner vision: His sister, Lodema. Stillborn in Ohio and still being born inside himself.

No, it was not the steamboat entertainer he heard singing in the storm-rinsed, clearing Missouri night. Still, it seemed an omen that he could not ignore, and so he unlatched and unbolted the shop front door, unsure why anyone would break into an undertaker and coffinmaker’s place of business, anyway (unless, of course, it had something to do with the music boxes). He stepped lightly out into the gloom, leaving his parents breathing in their open coffins.

He glanced up and down the hog trough of the dark street. The moon was almost full and cast a spectral glaze over the town and the skeletons of buildings in the works. Most of the folk sheltered within the limits of Independence were either already abed or struggling by lantern and hearth light to repair ruptures, rips, and leaks, pluck weevils from biscuit flour, air out sodden fabric, comfort squalling infants, pack tobacco in a pipe, or take another slug from a fired earth jug. The church believers, the diligent, the indigent, the exhausted, and anyone whose guts were clogged with beans and salt pork had called it a night. But others, and there are always those, had different ideas. It was to these sounds and shadows that Lloyd was drawn.

Silhouettes fluttered over plank walls, and in the distance a hound howled, which made Lloyd think again of poor Tip, buried back in Zanesville along with their old life. Lodema.

He stepped between the ruts and puddles, moving in the direction of the music, remembering the evil that had befallen him in that laneway in St. Louis at the hands of the man with the harelip. Hattie had cured him of the shame, but the anger remained. And the wariness.

Squishing through the mud, which his mother would no doubt be angry about, he reached the shelter of a buckboard leaning down on its hitch across the street. Then in between the buildings. Somewhere he could hear horses jostling and whinnying in a stable.

The music, however, proved to be elusive. Where he had thought to find people gathered around a fire with their instruments, a couple of wagons and oil lanterns propped on casks, there was but an empty lot and the skeletal frame of a building going up. The camp where the music was coming from, and now beginning to die out, lay farther on, behind a row of makeshift sheds and a cluster of willow trees. The shadows he had seen earlier must have been made by other people and had melted away. Yet there were still some lights. The nearest and brightest came from a crude brick storehouse on the other side of a drenched pea patch. Someone had taken a spade and dug several runoff trenches to direct the water into the lumpy garden, and he had to mind his step. The light in the storehouse grew dimmer as he approached, as if the building were beginning to doze.

Now that the notion of investigating the source of the music had passed from his mind, Lloyd was without a plan of action and had half a mind to return to the Clutters’ and try to go to sleep, but there did not seem any harm in at least having a peek in the storehouse to see what was going on. Picking his way through the pea patch he became more intrigued, as from its exterior the storehouse appeared to be abandoned, and he had not seen buildings that were not being used in the town. Something was going on inside, though.

He crept up close to the yawning, empty window frame, which, with the softness of the mud underfoot, was infuriatingly just a little too high for him to see into. There was no choice but to stand on tiptoe and hold on to the ledge. By hoisting himself up just a few inches, he would be able to peer inside. Of course, his fingers might be visible from within, but there was no other way, short of trying to sneak in the heavy barn-width door, which might well have been barred anyway.

As quietly as he could, he reached up and grabbed hold of the rough-troweled masonry and dragged himself into the square of light cast from inside the storehouse. In the blend of moonlight and diffused gleam from within, he could see that the chinks in the slapdash brickwork had been patched with mortar and mud, and were flecked with old desiccated wasp nests and cobwebs. He tried to brace his boots against the chinks without making a scraping sound. What he saw at first surprised him as much as the sight that had greeted his eyes when the Vardogers’ music box had opened.

It was the Quists, all gathered together in a circle around a group of tallow candles arranged in a Star of David pattern atop a cross, which from his point of view was upside down. There were perhaps twenty or thirty adults, with a couple of older kids and a few mother-cradled infants. Everyone, even the babes in their mothers’ arms, were swathed in red turbans and staring with rapt attention as a man straddling the candle flames rising from the sod floor passed around what looked to Lloyd like pieces of sun-dried tree bark with funny markings etched into them. He struggled to maintain his hold on the ledge and to strain up a bit higher to get a better look.

The man who held sway in the center of the group was none other than Increase McGitney, lately arrived in Independence under cover of darkness with an armed escort, to lead his people west and south to a promised land they knew they would recognize when they came to it. The surviving Quists had congregated in this unusually derelict building at a late hour in a ritual of renewal, hoping to find the strength and focus to lead them forward, beyond the reach of their persecutors, to some green valley that lay on the other side of the wolf-roaming plains and scorching deserts. They had turned back to the sacred scriptures upon which their beliefs were founded, not the Book of Buford but the very Headstones that Kendrick Quist himself had uncovered on his way home from the fateful horse gelding in Indiana.

The sections of petrified wood were produced from a strongbox that McGitney’s guards carried, but, unlike the relics and holy texts of other less democratically minded faiths, they were not hoarded away as they had been back in the days of Buford’s prophetic leadership. Truth be known, McGitney had many personal reservations about the Book of Buford, and was privately of (the arguably heretical) opinion that the Headstones held a deeper mystery than either the great Kendrick or his relative had fathomed. In any case, ever since his inadvertent moment of courageous abandon, McGitney had grasped an often overlooked element of effective leadership: the sharing of authority whilst never shirking from responsibility. And so, at this crucial juncture in his people’s journey, he had deemed it appropriate to renew their collective sense of awe and devotion.

It was a risky move, for at first nothing could have seemed plainer or humbler than the old bits of engraved bark that came out of the box. Lloyd gripped like a cat to the ledge, eyes probing through the glassless space-not, of course, knowing what it was he was witnessing but perceiving, in the quality of attention in the shining eyes of the turbaned group, that it was something important.

Then, very gradually, the effect McGitney had counted on began to manifest itself. What before-at least, at the distance from which Lloyd was viewing them-had looked like the vehement gnawings of insects or the scratchings of some demented child in the ancient bark now began to glow. Over the course of a minute, the glow deepened and brightened as if magnetizing the moonlight. The unexplained phenomenon caused the desired stir around the circle of the Quists and set Lloyd wriggling to gain a clearer view. There was an inexplicable aura of bioluminescence about the markings now, as if they had come to life in the candlelight and indeed outshone the tapers with a weird green phosphorescence that revealed a new level of detail in the figures. To Lloyd’s amazement, he found that he recognized the radiant markings as the unmistakable likenesses of the hierograms of the Martian Ambassadors! The shock sent him tumbling to earth outside the window.

“Wait!” called Increase McGitney, becoming hypertense. “Go see what that was!” he instructed the guards, who bolted out between the candles. Trouble had followed the Quists wherever they had gone and they were prepared for more before they made their departure across the prairie. Three burly men in red turbans stormed out of the storehouse, one carrying a torch, the other two cudgels. Before Lloyd could scramble to his feet, they were upon him.

CHAPTER 2. The Blinking of an Eye

MCGITNEY’S GUARDS PLUCKED LLOYD FROM THE MOON-SOAKED mud and hauled him inside the storehouse like a sack of spuds. For all his fearsome intellect, the boy was powerless in their hands. When he recovered from his shock, he was standing, forcibly propped between two turbaned men on the perimeter of the candles that he had been observing moments earlier, with the face, or rather the dense red beard and glittering eyes, of Increase McGitney poking down at him.

“Who are ya, boy?” the Quist headman demanded.

“He’s a spy!” a woman cried out.

“I’m Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd,” the boy answered, and shook the big hands off his shoulders with an authority or an arrogance that made McGitney pause.

“Am I to know that name?” McGitney asked, hoping to raise a chuckle among his agitated congregation.

Lloyd instantly regretted proffering his name, but as he could not retract it he let the statement stand and sent his eyes out around the group.

“What brings a lad like you out so late, then?” the Quist leader tried, concerned about this disruption in their ceremony but not afraid. He doubted that any terror gang would send so young a child to scout them.

Lloyd ignored the question, in part because he did not want to have to explain about trying to sleep in a coffin. Instead, he reached out with his hand for the nearest of the thin wooden tablets.

The gray-bearded man who held it pulled back in alarm, but not quite fast enough. As the boy’s hand brushed the bark, the luminous glyphs pulsed with brightness.

“I know those markings,” Lloyd announced. “I’ve seen the likes of them before.”

“Are you… a Quist, then?” McGitney sputtered. “Because naught but the Quists has ever laid eyes on the sacred Headstones.”

Lloyd again refused to answer-he was too enthralled by the shimmering writings. He reached out his hand again toward the bark section the bearded man held close to his chest, and this time the fluorescence illuminated the whole of the man’s face, as if he were clasping a lidded lantern from which the light wanted to escape.

“My Lord!” a woman on the other side of the storehouse cried. “Look!”

One of the other tablets started pulsing more intently, too. Then another. Murmurs and moans spread throughout the storehouse. McGitney sensed some impending crisis of authority in the presence of this boy and the uncanny effect he seemed to have on the Headstones. But he was curious, too.

“Take out the others,” he directed his assistants.

The remaining Headstones were produced from the strongbox and all were now beaming brilliantly, casting their runic mysteries upon the faces and the walls like magic-lantern pictures. The Quists let out a collective gasp and then turned their frightened, composite scrutiny on the boy.

The Book of Buford had promised that there would be another prophet-a true messianic figure to lead the tribe forward into the light of the future and their destiny as spiritual pilgrims and prosperous citizens in the new America that was to come. It was one of the crucial points of the revealed doctrine that McGitney had unquestioning belief in. He knew in his heart that he was but a chieftain of the moment-a trailblazer to spur them westward. He had no private delusions (or “affinity with divinity,” as he called it), however shrewdly he played upon his role to achieve the ends he deemed best for his flock. Now here was an undeniable call from beyond, in the sect’s own terms. It could not be brushed aside.

“How are you doing this, lad?” he asked, in as calm a voice as he could muster. He was relieved at Lloyd’s reply.

“I don’t know that I am doing it-or doing anything. I just know I’ve seen these kinds of markings before.”

The Headstones sparkled in response, as if emphatically agreeing, triggering more exclamations and whispers.

“Where?” McGitney demanded. The Quists’ claim to be a chosen people hinged on the uniqueness of the Headstones. And yet, had not he, their own leader, always harbored the belief that there was more to the glyphic codes than the Book of Buford had disclosed? Was not the very hope upon which the Quist religion was founded-their fundamental tenet of faith-that revelation was not just real but continuing? The ancient wisdom embodied in the Headstones was alive. That was what the Book of Buford and all the Quists believed. The illumination of the tablets was proof of this.

“Are you some kind of proph-et?” one of the black men on the other side of the circle asked with a tremor in his voice.

Lloyd was not sure how to answer this question, and so repeated what he had said before. “I am Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. I have seen these markings before. These things you have are not the only examples.”

“Order!” McGitney called, as the commotion this assertion caused threatened to upset the entire proceeding, not to mention draw unwelcome attention.

“Well, young Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. My name is Increase McGitney, and the people you see gathered around you are my devoted compatriots in a holy mission of discovery and fulfillment. We call ourselves Quists. You may have heard of our trials-or have even been warned away from us. That is, provided you are not a spy. Are you a spy, young Lloyd?”

Lloyd shook his head violently. It occurred to him that if he were a spy he was not a very adept one. Hattie would have been dark with him.

“And where have you seen these writings, Lloyd? In a dream?”

“No,” the boy answered.

“Then where? Where are you from?”

“Zanesville, Ohio.”

“And is that where you saw them?” McGitney pestered. Even if by some fluke the boy was speaking the truth, if another example of the Headstones lay at a distance, perhaps lost, his claim could not be proved. Perhaps the effect the boy seemed to have on the tablets could be explained away and they could return to their ceremony.

Still, he could not get around his own intuition that the boy’s appearance was somehow fated. A defining moment in Quistory.

Lloyd hesitated. He had become so intrigued by the sight of markings like the Ambassadors’-and by their unexplained luminescence-that he had forgotten for a moment about his precarious situation. Surrounded by strangers with strange beliefs, late at night in a foreign frontier town-his parents not knowing where he was-he knew that his goal should have been to get back to the Clutters’ in one piece and get to bed without his parents knowing that he had been gone. He realized that he was always endangering their safety, and reproached himself for it. But he could not curb his curiosity-or his need to show these head-wrapped wayfarers the error of their ways.

“I have it with me,” he replied at last, which set the Quists chattering and speculating, while the light from the Headstones held in various hands around the circle bloomed brighter. “A short distance from here,” he added, as McGitney held up his hands for quiet.

“Then you must fetch it,” the Quist patriarch commanded. “Drucker and Soames, go with him. We must prove the truth of this claim here and now.”

“No,” Lloyd insisted. “I will not let you take it from me. It was given to me.”

“Who by, lad?”

“That is not for me to say to you,” Lloyd fired back. “But I will not fetch it for you to steal.”

The circle of faces erupted in discord.

“Hush!” McGitney demanded. “Lad, whoever you are, and wherever you are from, know this: the Quists are not thieves. More honest, law-abiding folk you would be hard pressed to find, wherever laws are fair and allow for freedom of faith. We are merely humble believers in the revealed truth the great Saint Kendrick bestowed upon us. We mean you no harm, as we hope to have none done to us. But see here. You have made a bald, bold claim that strikes at the heart of what we have risked and lost good lives to defend and protect. If what you speak is the truth, then something of your destiny is entwined with ours-whether the genuine nature of this can be fathomed by any of us gathered at this crossroads or not. I say to you-I give our word-you will not be harmed. Your property will not be appropriated. And if you are in the shadow of any danger, as we are, perhaps we may even be of help to you. And yours. You have family, I take it? Unless you just rose out of the ground to haunt us. Or did you fall from the sky?”

This last query had a noticeable effect on Lloyd, for he could not help seeing and hearing the pitiful Ambassadors as they were swept away into the cruel blue above the Mississippi. He had repaid their hermetic trust with betrayal, abandonment, and almost certain execution, unless Hattie’s theory held some hope. In any case, all that remained of them now seemed to be the box he had been given with their cryptic language engraved on it. His head churned with questions and doubts-yet he could not shake free his desire to know if the markings on the box he carried were also capable of coming to phosphorescent life like the Headstones, and he recalled the singular line of speculation that had been triggered by Hattie. He had to know more.

He felt that the Quist leader had spoken correctly when he suggested that his fate was somehow linked to theirs. He did not know how that particular machine worked, but the coincidence could not be ignored. That was what had drawn him to the storehouse. He could not turn his back on the mystery now. He owed it to the monstrous twins. He owed it to the Quists-and to himself. While there was fear and skepticism in their faces, he sensed no ill will toward him. These people were not Spirosians or Vardogers, of that he was sure, and both St. Ives and Hattie had advised him to rely on his instincts in a pinch.

“All right,” he agreed. “But a curse on you all if you do not keep your word and try to abscond with what is not your own!”

He threw in this last pronouncement for theatrical flourish, remembering the professor-reasoning that such a ritually inclined people, so fervent in their devotion to things they obviously did not comprehend, might in the absence of any physical force he could offer be checked by superstition. His threat had the desired result. He could see it in the eyes around the circle, a response enhanced by a chance gust of wind that unnerved the candles and yet left the sheen of the Headstones unchanged.

“Go with haste and with care,” McGitney said, pointing to the heavy door. “We will keep our word, while you put your truth to the test. A boy your age alone at night in a place like this-you took risks of your own accord far greater than you face at our hands. But hurry now. For we know we are at risk. There are folk about right now who want us gone-and others that would like to see us dead. It is not my intention to draw you into our tribulations. Go forth and return with speed.”

The two men McGitney had singled out to take charge of Lloyd donned trail-weary dust coats and escorted him outside with the aid of a small lantern. The night was mad with starlight, a buckshot blast of crystal, like some celestial analog of all the scattered souls and dreams below, the moon a distant glass globe full of cold white flame. Lloyd directed them back the way he had come. The going was easier this time, with the extra light and the knowledge of where he was going, but his heart beat faster, flanked as he was by two large unknown men (who had removed their turbans once outside). He wished Hattie were there to give him courage, but that would just have put her more in harm’s way.

There were low hints of mouth-organ music in the distance, and every so often the growling of dogs or the whine of tomcats, but other than that the town appeared to have folded in on itself at last. Lloyd led the men to the Clutters’ darkened place of dark business and whispered to them to wait while he went inside. The two Quists remained silent, and whether they trusted him or not they did not prevent him from entering the building on his own.

Everything was as he had left it. His parents were both sound asleep in their open coffins-his mother breathing deeply, his father snoring and farting, keeping alive the memory of their supper. It was hard to see, and with so many boxes and stuff to run into, it was a miracle he did not create a crashing confusion to wake the whole establishment. But he knew what he was looking for-his bag burrowed down on the other side of the container he had been assigned. By feel alone he probably would have been able to find it, but he was assisted by a telltale glow from within the bag. The sight drew his breath short. The Ambassadors’ box was indeed aglimmer just like the Headstones! He removed it from the bag and held it aloft, marveling at how it seemed to project its carved message into the room. The aura it cast reminded him of countless visions he had had just upon falling asleep. The sight surprised him, for he had begun to form the view that the Headstones’ illumination may have been some kind of trick that McGitney had devised to wow his followers-although he could not account for it, or explain the surges in brightness that he seemed to stimulate.

Nevertheless, without having been able to examine the tablets himself, Lloyd had remained skeptical of any magical power. Now, with his own familiar box in hand and the same phenomenon manifest, he had to concede that there was indeed some force at work, a kind of energy he had never encountered before-save perhaps that night when he met Mother Tongue. It was the one thing he could liken this demonstration to-and it turned his mind back to his bag, where the other eye, the mate of the gift he had given Hattie, nestled in its protective rags. To his even greater astonishment, he now found that the eye had changed, too. Where before it had always felt cool if not cold to the touch, and was always dark unless he held it up to the light (which he had stopped doing because of the unsettling memories it provoked), it was this time quite definitely warm to the touch and lit from within, as if answering some call from the markings on the box.

Lloyd felt a deep, inner need to take the eye in hand. To fondle it. When he did, he found that it had gained in weight and was growing warmer. He wondered how it would react in the immediate presence of the Headstones. For the first time since he had given the other one to Hattie, he stared at it, as if he had never seen it before. Embedded deep inside the iris now, there appeared to be depth upon depth of shimmering layers, like a small golden-green tornado or some almost living mechanism-a minuscule self-illuminating creature, or a captured strand of lightning. Lloyd could not be sure what it looked like, only that it seemed to look back at him, filling his head with a sublime radiance. He was suddenly intensely glad that he had given the mate to Hattie. His mate.

He might have stood there staring at the eye for quite a while longer, but Hephaestus gave out a grunt in his sleep and then there came a furtive tap on the glass of the window. The Quists were summoning him.

He slipped the eye into his pocket, feeling its cold-hot heat against his leg. For some reason, he felt he must keep it with him-that he needed it. Hattie’s skull fetish he tucked back into its protective rags with the precious communication from his uncle, which had set them out on their perilous flight in the first place. The box he wrapped in a piece of cloth from his bag and then he slipped out the door, restoring the darkness to his sleeping parents in their coffins.

He found that the men called Drucker and Soames were both wound very tight. They interrogated him by gesture when he emerged, and when he assented that he had what he had gone to get they set out again at a nervous pace. As silent as the two had been before, they were even more so now, listening with their whole bodies, as if something sinister had transpired while he was inside. He would have asked them what had happened to put them so on edge, but he felt certain they would just shush him up and hurry him along. Maybe there really were people out to get them, he thought, as they pigeon-stepped through the mud past the wagon lying on its hitch. It reminded him again that there may have been people out to get him, too. He did not know what to believe on that score, but the possibility niggled at him. The one called Soames appeared to flinch. Then Lloyd felt it, too. A sudden twinge of emergency. Footsteps-and some other sound. Then, from behind one of the buildings they had to walk between, a sharp bolt of lantern light stabbed out at them, creating a sudden infestation of shadows.

“Allo there, fine citizens!” a muffled man’s voice accosted them, and before they knew it as many as eight other men had stepped out from behind the other building. Some of them wore gunnysacks with eye slits cut into them pulled over their heads, which made them look particularly menacing in the moonfall. Others had dirty hats tugged down low with bandannas to hide their faces.

The man with the lantern, who sported two large dueling pistols in his belt, had on the kind of netted hat Lloyd had seen on beekeepers, which seemed especially malignant. He was tall, and his clothes were cleaner and more expensive than the others’. All the other ruffians were armed in some way: hickory ax handles, fence pickets, crowbars. One very large man in the back stood poised with a hay tine. A short, stinking torch was lit from the lantern, the spookish light wavering over the timbers of the wall.

Drucker and Soames stepped forward, putting themselves between Lloyd and the men, but the tall one in the beekeeper’s hat just laughed. What would Hattie have said? What would she do now? Captain of dark crossroads. She might have fled-but, like St. Ives, she was a game one with a bluff, too. Despite the acid burning in his stomach and his heart thumping against his rib cage, he could feel Mother Tongue’s eye in his pocket becoming both hotter and colder all at once. He sneaked his hand into his britches, gripping the orb for comfort.

“Stand aside,” Soames instructed the assembled host.

“Peace, citizens!” the netted hat replied, in a voice that reminded Lloyd of a rat in a gutter full of leaves. “We mean no harm. I swear it! Unless, of course, by some chance you happen to be religious fanatics bent on preaching your degenerate ways… fouling the waters of our fair community and taking liberties with our laws that the one true God will not tolerate. You wouldn’t be such vermin as that, would you?”

“Let us pass,” Drucker demanded, balling up a butcher-size fist in spite of his common sense and the hopeless mismatch.

“Oh, yes, boys!” joked the man in the netted hat to his brethren. “We’ll let them pass, all right! Won’t we?”

Despicable hoots of amusement rose from the shadowed figures beside him. The torch swooshed in the air, leaving an angry tattoo in the dark for a second.

“We’ll let you pass from this point right here into the pit of hell, you swine. We know who you are. Meddling in matters that don’t concern you, infecting communities wherever you go!”

Drucker and Soames now both pulled cudgels from beneath their dust coats. Lloyd grew truly frightened. It made no difference that he was not a Quist-he was in their company, this was his fight, too. And they were faced with overwhelming odds, from the lanky sneering coward in the beekeeper’s hat to the giant in the rear with the long hayfork. For a moment, Lloyd considered making a run for it. Just leave the Quist men to their fate and flee back to the Clutters’. With any luck, he would not be pursued. Hopefully, no one would see through which door he vanished. He would make it hard for any of these villains to recognize him again. By morning the horror would be over-one way or another. But his blood boiled at the thought of what that might mean. Somehow they had to get word to the others. They had to warn the Quists of the impending assault. He could not be party to any more loss of life if he could help it.

“I’ll tell you what,” the beekeeper mused. “I see you have a boy with you. No doubt you don’t want him hurt. What say you give us McGitney-take us to the others and we’ll let you go. I swear on the real Bible. You will go free.”

Drucker spat in the mud. “You’ll need a lot more than this ragtag posse a yourn.”

“Oh, we have more coming,” the vigilante leader replied. “Rest assured. Give up the others and you can save yourselves-and the boy.”

“No!” Lloyd cried, and pushed forward holding the Ambassadors’ box before him like a charm, his other hand still plunged inside his pocket, grasping the artificial eye. These men confronting them now were not Vardogers or Spirosians. They were just brutal, and perhaps as stupid as they looked.

The sight of the box with the luminous engravings startled them, but not as much as Lloyd had hoped, even when the etched symbols seemed to project out across their bodies and covered faces. Deftly, he spun the box around, making the figures whirl about like subtle, intelligent fire. The torch that one of the hooded men held seemed so primitive and clumsy by comparison.

“Eh, what’s this now? Some trick?” one of the sack-hooded men growled.

“Keep back!” Drucker yelled, hoisting his cudgel.

“We’ll take that bauble,” the beekeeper drawled. “Then you’ll take us to the others. They’re not far from here, we know. You can’t save them, but you can save yourselves. There’s tar and feathers and a nice oak tree on the edge of town otherwise. Or maybe we’ll burn ’em out!”

The gang cheered at this, and Lloyd thought the noise might draw some assistance. Then he realized that it was quite possible that these men were not mere outlaws and oafs but prominent local residents, ashamed or afraid in some way, yes, otherwise they would not be hiding their faces, but nevertheless doing the dirty work of the community by some after-midnight agreement.

Shades of Zanesville. Mob scenes from across America. The stories St. Ives and Hattie had told him of lynchings and castrations. The oppression he himself had felt too many times before. Scenes of every intimidation and assault he had ever endured flashed through his mind, swelling the impotent rage within him as he gripped the false eye of Mother Tongue ever tighter. He felt it burning now, so hot had his hand become-surely that was it. But why did it seem to throb, pulsing in time with the juice that slopped in the pit of his stomach and the white-hot hatred that scorched his forehead? He glanced down at his pocket and saw to his disbelief that the eye was shining through his hand, through the cloth, radiating up his arm as if the light and heat could not be contained.

“You’ll get naught out of us, you cur!” Soames snarled, plunging forward to strike the first blow.

The diabolical beekeeper drew one of his pistols and pointed it at Soames’s chest.

“Stop!” Lloyd shouted, and held above his head what was no longer an eye but the Eye. The Eye of his Storm.

The vigilantes gasped, for the brightness was so intense. Hotter and harsher than Greek fire or the silver rush of Chinese rockets. The Ambassadors’ box burned with a pale-green surrounding haze-but Mother Tongue’s Eye could not be looked at, it was so fiercely alight. Some of the men in the gang tried to cover their faces, as the baffled beekeeper man cocked and fired his pistol at Soames, but wide. Drucker ducked, shielding himself from the light the boy had produced from his pocket and trying to skirt the shot from the gun barrel. Soames dived forward, seeking to cudgel the hand that held the firearm, and lost his footing in the mud. Lloyd stood firm, one hand clutching the Ambassadors’ box, the other the Eye, whose rippling green electric flame he could feel racing through his nerves and then out into the dark like a jetted breath of deadly starlight.

The pistol exploded in the gang leader’s grip. The men beside him dropped their weapons and slapped their hands to their heads-their eyes. As one single cornered animal, they clamored in horrible unison and then collapsed, wriggling in the sloshy ground like worms. Only their leader did not fall to the ground. He was too busy dancing. A dreadful dance of unbearable pain that sent a wave of sickening fulfillment through Lloyd as he lowered the Eye and closed his fist around it, finding it cool once more.

The netted hat of the vigilante captain had ignited like a tumbleweed, encasing his face in a blue-green cage of flames, so that not even the stench of burning beard and skin escaped. He darted and weaved for a moment like some crazed new kind of pyrotechnic toy-the image of which might have made children laugh and clap, had the body below been some clever machine, and not a flesh-and-blood man, that could not be rebuilt in time for the next performance. Then he crashed into a wheel-rut puddle. The bloody shattered bone of his pistol hand lay outstretched, the fried black mass of what had been his head half submerged in the narrow ditch of rain, all skull and cobweb now, too hideous to look at.

Which his compatriots would never have to do. To a man, their sight had been seared shut like slits of blank slate-except for the colossus with the pitchfork, whose eyeballs had turned to scalding jelly and had leaked out of their sockets, staining his face and coat like offal flicked with a slotted spoon.

CHAPTER 3. The Quest and Questions of the Quists

WHETHER THE INHABITANTS OF INDEPENDENCE WERE SLEEPING very soundly that night, or whether such trouble had been anticipated in official quarters, after the blinding firestorm that had been released from the Eye, the dark of stars and the dim reflections of the moon in pools and rivulets returned, afterimages dwindling away like fiery leaves turned to ash. A lone stable dog howled at the other end of town, answered by the cry of coyotes or a wild pack in the distance. Soon the morning light would come creeping across the sky, the aroma of breakfasts would begin to rise-steel-cut oats bubbling and freshly laid eggs cracked and popping on buttered grills. Another steamboat would bring wagons and carriageloads of newcomers-barrels and crates of goods, workhorses dragging fresh timber, the smell of smoke, sweat, and the river clinging to their thickening coats. But all was still now, except for the mess of depraved and wounded humanity before them.

“Come quick,” urged Lloyd, pocketing his treasures and trying to raise Soames back up. Drucker kept blinking and batting the air, but it was clear that he had not been permanently debilitated. Both men could see all right again after a few moments, but neither could believe what he had seen. With the exception of the charred leader, the vigilantes lay sprawled on the mushy ground groaning, limbs tangled, fumbling for one another-for help, for answers to what had happened to them. Lloyd took charge and led the two Quist guards between the bodies and back toward the storehouse as fast as they could move, given their stunned, disoriented condition. After his miraculous performance, Soames and Drucker seemed more than willing to be led, boy though he was.

That Lloyd had no idea what sort of power had been unleashed or how he had unleashed it, he vowed he would not reveal. His one objective now was to return his bewildered new comrades to their families and fellows and deliver the warning about reprisals or further action against them.

Once back at the storehouse, Soames and Drucker poured forth a tale that made the Quists tremble and ululate. Even McGitney, practical man of decision that he had become, was distraught-flapping his arms for order and calling for more details all at once. Lloyd let the hoo-ha run its course and then reemphasized the admonition he had offered the moment they returned through the heavy door.

“You must leave town,” he told them. “By the fastest, straightest way you can. Those that waylaid us will not harm anyone again, but they have friends and other fools ready to do the same that they tried. Every moment you stay in this town you run the risk of being hunted down and-”

“We know, lad.” McGitney nodded. “We know too well the trials and risks we face. We have faced and suffered them before. That’s what brings us here and on the path before us. Our plan was always to leave this burg at first light. It was, in fact, your unexpected arrival that has delayed us. And, as fate or divine will would have it, has saved us, too. This is a night we will muddle over in times to come. But what of you and your family? Are you not at risk from these same marauders, too, now?”

“I don’t reckon this boy is at risk from anyone,” Drucker pronounced. “He is the next prophet-the one that Saint Kendrick foresaw. The box he carries is a match to the Headstones, and he can draw lightning down from a clear sky and make it do his bidding.”

This statement, presented so forcibly, offered a concise and unavoidable distillation of his and Soames’s initial attempt at a report. Lloyd dutifully presented Urim and Thummin’s box for inspection by McGitney and the others, and squawks of recognition and befuddlement filled the storehouse. The Eye he would not present, and as neither Drucker nor Soames had seen it clearly or grasped what role it had played in their deliverance, he was not about to stir up more chaos and inquiry now. What was more, of course, he had no idea what made the Eye work. It had been but an interesting if grotesque piece of jewelry minutes before-a souvenir of a lost part of his life that he was both afraid and hopeful of finding again. The real value he had placed on it had to do with Hattie LaCroix. The Eyes were a pair that might one day be reunited. That was his dream. That was why he had given her the other one.

McGitney tried with great patience to maintain order and take in the facts presented to him. It would not be long before the blinded vigilantes were found by their co-conspirators and, come the dawn, the tribe of Quists needed to be on the move. But they could not leave without knowing what their night visitor-savior had to tell them.

“Lloyd, are you who we think you are?”

The boy shook his head. “I’m not a prophet or your holy one. But you should listen to me just the same.”

“Because of your power?”

Lloyd dodged this. “Because I speak the truth.”

McGitney opened his arms to the group, as if calling for their opinion.

“You spoke the truth about the sacred markings. You helped save two of our own. I think you are the one Saint Kendrick foresaw. I know I speak for all the Quists when I say we want you to join us, to lead us to the promised land we know awaits us beyond the wilderness.”

Lloyd thought of his parents asleep in their coffins and shook his head. If he could not join the ranks of the Spirosians or the Vardogers, he certainly could not take up with the Quists-and he felt a great weight upon his shoulders when he thought of what he had to tell them, before any more of them were hurt or killed at the hands of night riders.

“I am not your messiah,” he said again. “And your faith… your theology-”

He was trying to think if that was the right word. To him, religion was what people who lacked magic and science had to fall back on.

“Go on,” McGitney encouraged. “We trust you, Lloyd. We would follow you if you would lead us.”

“Well, first I think you should stop this following business,” Lloyd began (which perhaps showed that, in spite of his prodigious mental faculties, his grasp of human nature was still weak or at least self-deceiving, for he himself was an avid follower-the only problem was that he was devoted to a phantom). “Not all can lead, but no one necessarily must follow.”

“What would you have us do?” a pretty young woman, who nestled a sleeping baby to her breast, implored. “Flounder blind like those men Brother Drucker says you left yonder?”

“Those men accosted us-and their blindness is a punishment,” Lloyd replied, not mentioning that he had no idea how that particular form of punishment had been inflicted. “The kind of blindness you mean is just not knowing. Uncertainty. Doubt. If you are not able to face that and keep on seeking, you will never find anything worth trusting.”

He thought of the Clutters, seeing a riddle in the simple, albeit esoteric instruction on the bottom of the Vardogers’ music box.

“You will build a church of meaning and procedure upon a mystery you have mistaken. Your church, even if it is a cathedral, will be a house of cards, and the genuine mystery will be missed.”

McGitney scratched his red beard. If this boy was not the Enlightened One that had been promised, he sure sounded like him.

“All right,” he said. “Supposing you are not he whom we have been expecting. Nevertheless you say you have a truth to tell us about the sacred markings and what we believe. Tell us your truth.”

“I’m afraid you won’t like it,” Lloyd answered, shuffling his feet on the sod floor to wipe off the mud he had accumulated.

“It is written that the truth will set you free. This must be why you have found us tonight. There can be no other explanation. And if, as you say, there are things about the Headstones that exceed your understanding, too, then perhaps there is a larger truth at work than any of us knows-or can ever know. But tell us the truth you came to tell, whoever you really are, wherever you really come from. It must be important. After all that has happened tonight, that much is clear.”

Lloyd looked McGitney in the eye, then scanned the faces around the room. Then he held up the box the professor had given him, in what seemed another life.

“The markings on this box, which you can all see are exactly like the markings on the strips of wood you carry, were not made thousands or even a hundred years ago. They were made in recent times by twin brothers. Wild, sad creatures. Freaks of nature, you would call them. From Indiana.”

A great choral sigh was released around the storehouse.

“The twins were deformed and disabled. A man who ran a medicine show had found them and taken them in, intending to exhibit them for profit, although I think he had too much heart to exploit them. Maybe because of their monstrous appearance they seemed to have grown up in their own world, never a part of the life that we know-though alert enough and smart in their own way. At least they were not imbeciles. But they could not speak English. Instead, they spoke a language all their own, which was every bit as odd to hear as these markings are to look at. The pitchman thought their speech was just animal chatter, but I know that it had a pattern and a depth-and a variety at least as great as English, perhaps much greater. I was given this box with their written language carved into it, because I hoped to study it and understand its meaning. I first believed it was something they invented, although both the writing and their speech had a-I’m not sure of the right word-an authority that some made-up code is not likely to have. But if they were specimens or representatives of some bigger group or a people whose language this is, I don’t know where to look for them.”

Lloyd paused, and McGitney tugged at his beard.

“You’re saying these writings are the creation of idiots from Indiana, and only a few years old?”

“I did not say they were idiots,” Lloyd answered. “It appears they were from Indiana, but there is no actual proof of that.”

“But why do the characters and symbols spring to life? Why do they glow?”

“That I do not know-yet,” Lloyd responded. “I agree with you that it’s wondrous strange, but you have assumed that the illumination is somehow inherent in the symbols-that they have a life of their own. Maybe the cause lies rather in how the symbols have been made. I have seen luminous fungi in caves. There are water creatures with strange properties, and any number of minerals with unusual characteristics. I cannot account for the capacity just now, but I propose to you that the mystery of the gleaming could be reconciled and the secret of the symbols still remain unsolved.”

“But your contention is that the sacred markings are not old and do not tell of the grand historic legacy that we, the Quists, have come to know and worship through the Book of Buford?”

“The sheets of bark are old,” Lloyd replied. “Clearly. The markings on them may or may not be. But I saw the wild twins making such symbols and figures with my own eyes not long ago. They would use any surface that was made available to them, and a range of implements from charcoal stick and quill to awl or sharpened bone. You will note that all the illuminated examples we have here are carved, which allows for the indentations to have been treated with some unknown material or by some undetermined process after creation. Sadly, we lack any examples of their writing system produced by pen or chalk on paper or parchment. It would be very interesting to see if such specimens would also demonstrate the same luminosity now. If they did, that would suggest that there is something, however difficult to understand, about the symbols themselves. If not, it would support the theory that the figures have somehow been treated. I myself have never observed the glowing of the writing on my box. In any case, I can see that all this is hard for you to follow, because you did not know other examples of the writing existed. Believing these bark fragments to be unique, you have therefore attributed special significance to them, which by definition they do not have-although they may very well have other kinds.”

“But you say this is not a message to us? That these are not a whole that tell a story. A lost book of revelation and prophecy?” asked a man with a large wart on his forehead that his turban was trying to hide.

Lloyd pursed his lips and then replied, “It seems the one thing that is certain in this matter is that none of us know for certain what these markings mean. The showman who was looking after the brothers thought it was just scribbling. We here all agree that there is a beauty and an order to the markings that lie far beyond any aimless scrawling. Far! This is a language-a true, full, rich language, however indecipherable it may seem. It may even be that it opens an unknown door on the nature of all languages. The characters, their shapes and repetitions, are the most intriguing and hypnotic things to look upon I have ever seen. But why the brothers would need to communicate to each other in writing is unclear. And if they were writing for someone else to read, who did they have in mind?”

“So, you maintain,” Soames piped up (his eyes still smarting), “that the Book of Buford is not based on an interpretation of these symbols?”

“I know nothing of your Buford,” Lloyd said, shrugging. “I gather from what you have said that you think these writings make up some lost book of the Bible, and that you trace some connection with the people you think it describes. I say again, I do not know what this secret writing means, but I doubt very much that it has anything to do with the Bible-unless it is some interpretation made by the twin brothers, which from what I know of them seems unlikely.”

“What about the woodpecker?” a sleepy knock-kneed lad called out.

“What woodpecker?” Lloyd puzzled. As distinctive as the story behind the Ambassadors’ language was, these people had even more peculiar ideas of their own.

“All right, then,” McGitney said in his summing-up voice. “The truth you have to tell us is that our theology is based upon a lie.”

“A misunderstanding,” Lloyd interjected.

“Kendrick Quist and his relative Buford were frauds.”

“They may honestly have believed what they said and taught.”

“In that case, dupes. They may have duped themselves, but they certainly have duped us-and we have endured persecution and exile because of it!”

“So it would seem,” Lloyd was forced to agree.

“The real source of the sacred writings is a couple of mooncalves from Indiana, where Quist was from. He may even have known them. Do you know anything more about them?” McGitney asked, as members of the group frowned and whispered.

Lloyd considered recounting the brothers’ experience with the tornado, but decided against it. The Quists had had enough miracles and unexplained phenomena. He shook his head.

“And what became of these weird brothers?” McGitney queried. “Where are they now?”

“They disappeared,” Lloyd answered. “I believe they are dead now. A tragic accident.”

“Hmm,” McGitney said, pondering. “If we are to believe you, then the true authors of our sacred texts are gone from this earth-and, with them, any hope of penetrating what it seems that you would call the real mystery.”

“I would not say any hope,” Lloyd replied. “The problem is having enough of their writing to examine. I have had but the symbols on this box and little time or privacy for study. Your so-called Headstones are much more extensive samples. There is also the vital matter of the glowing. If my box has never done this before but does so now, it suggests some association or intercourse between the pieces.”

“The markings change!” a young horse-faced girl sang out.

Lloyd took this comment as a reiteration of his point and continued. “Proximity may influence the luminosity. Cause unknown.”

“What about you-when you touch them?” asked a man with a mustache that curled in a way that reminded Lloyd of the “f” hole in a violin.

“There may be several other factors at work, which we do not comprehend as yet,” he answered.

“Fools, fools, fools we are!” an old dark woman gibbered.

“I would not say that,” Lloyd barked (somewhat surprised at himself). “The Headstones are not what you thought them to be. But while they may not be sacred in the way that you have believed, they are worthy of great interest and perhaps much more than that, if their secret were fully understood.”

Lloyd had intended his comments to be consoling, but, coming after all that had transpired, they were more than the Quists could bear. A woman in a sunflower calico dress and a knitted shawl thrust her googling baby into her husband’s arms and began unwinding her turban. Several others started to do the same.

“Ah,” McGitney lamented, remembering his moment of cowardice in the barn back in Illinois and his mad dash through the laundry line. He felt once again on the run, his vision clouded. Could he emerge to advantage once again?

“Dark night of the soul!” he mourned. “A messiah comes to us at last, who says he is not our messiah and yet calls the lightning down to aid our members. Then he tells us that our faith is based on false teachings-that our prophetic forebearers are in fact lunatics or lusus naturae suitable for naught but display alongside the sawdust and hogskin mermaid, and the two-headed calf at a village fair!”

There followed much grumbling and argument and more than a little weeping and wailing. Lloyd could find nothing to say that he had not already said and, in being there to witness the unraveling of the Quist theology, regretted the effect his knowledge had imposed, although he was canny enough to realize that without his performance with the Eye they might well have talked their way around his words. Truly, faith is a kind of blindness, he told himself. But, then again, so is being too sure of what you see. The first pale light of dawn began seeping into the storehouse. It was time for him to get back to his coffin, and for the Quists to mobilize.

“I must go,” he told them. “And so must you. Whether you take off your head wraps or not, you will not so easily lose your reputation.”

McGitney, who had been comforting one of his wives, turned to Lloyd.

“You are right again, young warrior. We must carry on and come to terms with this new revelation at a safe distance.”

“Why? What’s the point?” one of the young people hollered.

“I’m a-goin’ back to Indy-anna!” an old codger croaked.

“What say you, Brother McGitney? What in God’s name do we do now?”

“Who said he’s leader now?” A scraggly man choked and started snuffing the candles with a square-toed boot.

“Silence!” McGitney bellowed, recalling that moment of exhilarated surprise when the contents of the clothesline were removed from his head and he had found himself a hero. “Here is what I say. We must try to see the blessing in what has happened here. We are all still alive and unhurt, and if our pride and our faith have been challenged, perhaps in another way it has been renewed. If we are to put stock in what this boy has said-and it seems that we do-then we must remember that we have in our possession these things that have no less meaning than we supposed, just different. Perhaps we are more pioneers and pilgrims than we supposed. I say that we forge on as a family, as a clan and as a community, committed to freedom, industry, and the search for the significance of these tablets-an endeavor we can all participate in without the need for prophets or messiahs. It strikes me that I myself have never looked more closely at the symbols than tonight because I had some inkling, I believe, of what they represented. The Book of Buford was a kind of curtain, not an exegesis. I say that what we leave behind in this meeting place is our arrogance of special providence, not our loyalty to each other or our fascination and reverence for these enchanted characters. It was them that brought us all together-that made us risk life, limb, and old ties. That is powerful significance indeed, worthy of many lifetimes of devotion and study. Other beliefs and sects have but copies or imagined texts, relics and articles of faith. We at least have originals, whose meaning is as undiscovered and untapped as the wilderness waiting for us outside that door. I say we should wipe our eyes and gird up our loins and be grateful. For tonight we have been saved. We have been released and we have been refreshed. From the dark night of despair, we have been given a new dawn!”

Lloyd considered McGitney’s speech an example of both sod-level wisdom and true poise under pressure, worthy of both Hattie and St. Ives. If nothing else, the Quists had chosen the right leader, he was sure-a fact that contrasted sharply with the mesh-hatted bigot who had been incinerated. Perhaps an even brighter future lay ahead for the Quists than the one they had envisioned. He hoped so, for all their sakes.

McGitney had much to do now, holding the flock together, repairing breaches in trust and confidence, and trying to organize the group off to their hidden horses and wagons-to reassemble and disperse, or to bid farewell to those insistent members who had lost faith forever and were now determined to return East to their old lives or to team up with other settlers headed West. But still, he made sure that Lloyd was sent off with, if not consensual thanks, then at least an acknowledgment of respect.

“Young Lloyd,” McGitney said. “I know you would seek to have these tablets to assist your own inquiry. But these we must keep, because for better or worse they have been entrusted to us. You have your box, and in some way that we may yet decipher, our fates have been connected and may remain so. Go forth with what new blessings we have to give. You will not be soon forgotten.”

Soames and Drucker together gave Lloyd a deep bow, which he returned. Then he stowed the box under his garments and stepped out through the door into the ghostly morning, taking a longer, more circumspect route back to the Clutters’. After his earlier performance with the vigilantes, it was deemed that he needed no escort. He thought Hattie would have been proud of the Li’l Skunk.

He glimpsed many shapes and shadows along the way, and smelled the smoke of early cooking fires, the salivatory tang of bacon, and the glug of grits but garnered not a hint of any particular malice or intent toward himself or anything relating to either the vigilantes or the Quists. By the time he reached the undertaker and coffinmaker’s establishment and had scraped the mud from his boots, the sky was streaked with bloody color. Softly, he cracked the door, relatched, and bolted it-and had just snuggled back down into his coffin to think of Hattie when his father rose, stretched and farted simultaneously, which almost set him giggling. Hattie could change pitch! Moments later, Rapture squirmed awake.

“Yeh all fine?” she cooed to her husband.

“Lord, I feel like the risen dead!” Hephaestus exclaimed. “I have a crook in my back that will need a poultice. Or, better still, a knee and a yank. But we need to be shoving on. I’m hankering to be gone now. On our way.”

“I be there,” his wife promised, swallowing a yawn. “How’s Lloyd?”

“Ah, just look!” Hephaestus gestured. “A-peace like a suckling. You’d think there were no troubles a’tall in the world. He probably hasn’t changed position the whole night. Leave the rousting to me. We have tracks to make.”

CHAPTER 4. I Show You Plenty Ghosts

WE HAVE ALL HAD THE EXPERIENCE OF FALLING ASLEEP FOR A minute and then having what seems like an entire night of dreams. Often, these dreams act as a solvent to our day-to-day consciousness-a disbursing, confronting carnival of images and incidents that take us out of our familiar being and into fantastic new (or suddenly remembered) realms. Other times, we find ourselves not swept away from what we had been focused on before falling asleep but drawn closer, so that we seem to pass straight through the matter that was on our mind, merging with it. Such was the experience Lloyd had in the few short minutes of refuge and release that overcame him when he slipped back into his coffin as his parents were rising.

His mind was so aroused by what had transpired with the Quists and the vigilantes, the secret writing of the Ambassadors, and the lethal force of the Spirosian Eye (all of which, of course, had come close on the heels of the time-distorting effect of the Vardogers’ music box and the questions raised by the accelerated decomposition of the cannibal dog), that even though he was drained of physical energy, his thoughts ran back over his night episode. The conundrum of the Eye seemed momentarily impenetrable, so he ended up sifting through the things he had said to the Quists-the idea that the twins’ symbol system may have been treated by some process to create the illuminated effect. This, at first, had seemed to be the most logical explanation. He had even offered suppositions about what type of materials might be involved. Then he heard again in his sleep the remark made by the equine-countenanced girl: “The markings change!”

At the time, he had been aware of some taut string of conjecture her words had stroked in him, but there had been too much happening to address it. Now, in the serial stream of hypnologic clarity, this assertion began to resonate more explicitly. He realized that her remark was like the instruction on the Vardogers’ music box. Initially, he had thought it said one obvious thing-referring to the glowing effect of the writings. But it may have meant something both more literal and miraculous. Since he had first come into possession of the box, a vague thought had passed back and forth in his mind-that the symbols and characters seemed to move or shift with different examinations. Without the technology to duplicate the markings, it was impossible to decide the matter objectively. All he had was a foggy but needling impression that he had so far not had the energy, leisure, or privacy to explore.

The Quist girl had called his attention to it again, and now, in the twilight morning of half-sleep, he was able to at least contemplate the notion without prejudice. The idea of markings carved on a box, which were able to be altered-or to somehow alter themselves-was on the surface absurd. But suppose one had the suspicion that they did. What if this idea lingered and no matter how many times the writing was consulted one could not with absolute certainty feel as if the suspicion had been dispelled? This alone said something important about the symbol system, Lloyd felt. This was, in fact, a fundamental part of its uniqueness-that every time you confronted it, it seemed new and all the more indecipherable.

Yet if it were just a matter of impressions one could argue that the sense of change and movement was due to the foreignness of the markings. The whole world was like this. Birds arrange themselves like musical notes on the rope between trees where you hang washing. Are they the same birds you saw yesterday? Are they all the same? Do all humans appear as un-differentiated and interchangeable to other undomesticated species? This question sent him down a long corridor of speculation, and at the end of the corridor was a painting.

The impression one had that the Ambassadors’ writing underwent some kind of alteration (perhaps continuously, perhaps not) struck him as no more extraordinary than a painting that seems to change color and mood depending on the light, which brought to mind again the story that St. Ives had told about the paintings in Junius Rutherford’s possession. These apparently innocuous works of art, when observed over time, possessed very odd properties. It was not the effects their surface created that changed but the deeper structure, the very subject matter-or so his friend with the mechanical prosthesis had insisted.

As outrageous as the things the gambler had told him were, Lloyd acknowledged that there was a kind of consistency to them-and consistency, whatever form it takes, is always the hallmark of something one should pay attention to.

To Lloyd, the “painting phenomenon” was a transformation analogous to what he imagined occurring with the twins’ secret writing-and what the horse-faced girl may have been alluding to. The amount of space, the frame for each, did not change, but what happened within the frame did, over time. Time was the crucial element. Time and the observer, of course. Without someone to observe the changes, would they occur?

His mind had often spun around this perennial question of philosophy and perception. But now he saw that there was another aspect. There was the much more subtle yet still intensely practical issue of how the presence of a perceiver changed the event or object viewed. If, for instance, one was willing to grant some occult instability to the twins’ writing, what was it that triggered the changing? People, when they know they are being watched, behave differently from when they think they are alone and unseen. They perform. Could it be that in some way the markings were performing, and that the increase in their luminosity was influenced by the number of people and the intensity of attention paid? This would suggest that there was something important about his own particular participation, for the markings had shone brighter when he made physical contact.

This chain of thought brought to mind a comment his mother had made years before, when the husband of one of her herbal-remedy patients had asked with mock seriousness if she honestly believed ghosts were “truly real” or if she was just being colorful and folksy and thought that they were “creatures in the mind.” To Lloyd’s surprise, Rapture dropped the usual white accent she used in public and replied, “Show me now where yer mine true ends and de worl’ begins, I show you plenny ghosts.”

Something about ghosts. And time.

Ghosts and time were intimately related, and yet profoundly disconnected. For what were ghosts but people who had stepped out of time-who were now immune to time-watching from outside, interacting with the world but no longer of it?

What would the world look like outside time? Lloyd wondered in his sleep. What would human culture look like-or sound like-outside language?

Time was change. The glyphs of the Ambassadors seemed to be constantly changing, except for the spiral symbol that looked like a tornado. So their language had something to do with time.

But was not a written language always about time? A fixing and freezing of a spoken language? In his dream state it occurred to him that he had assumed that the markings and carvings were transcriptions of the alien tongue the twins seemed to share. Their behavior had suggested that they understood each other’s sounds. Because the one was so bizarre, he had made the link to their markings; it was not surprising that a method of transcription would appear alien, too. What had puzzled him was why they needed to write. If no one else could understand their language, what was the point of writing? They could speak to each other.

Looking at these assumptions now, he saw that people often write things down for their private benefit. (He did.) To make things clearer for themselves. To prioritize. To remember. Or for other as yet unknown people to find and read. To teach. What were most books? Messages written in the hope of being found and decoded. Perhaps the brothers were trying to teach people their language, only it was hard to find a suitable student.

Something about ghosts. And time.

In his trance state, Lloyd slipped through the hierograms and the phenomenon of their luminosity for a moment, back to the Martian Ambassadors’ speech and the question of what things would not just look like but sound like outside or in some new relation to time. Yes, there was something about ghosts and time when it came to the twins. And tornadoes-or at least the tornado that they had dropped out of.

He spiraled around and around, trying to cut through the shame and guilt he felt about his actions toward them, to hear their voices again, to visualize the changes he had imagined in their hierograms. Why was it that the one symbol that seemed the most representative of dynamism-the spiral icon-was the one element that he was certain remained constant?

It was not a letter like A or Z. It was not even a unit of meaning, he thought. It was…

It was a kind of system unto itself. A value system for interpreting all the other symbols and their relationship to each other. Was that it?

He could not grasp onto the mechanism. All his young life he had sought out with instinctive acuity the essential elements of machine operations and physical processes. He was a born engineer, with a pathological curiosity. Now he was seeing a whole new world open before his dreaming eyes-the possibility that behind and inherent in language were mechanisms equally as real as the physics of a slingshot or the chemistry of a beer vat, but far more mysterious and perhaps much more powerful.

If one could connect the mechanisms of language with ballistics and pharmacology, optics, harmonics, hydraulics and medicine, mathematics and music. If one could master the secrets of symbols and syphons, surgeries and solar energy. If one knew the exact point where the mind ended and the world began, and could render it…

Who would need projectiles if they had mastered that enigmatic science?

He glimpsed then, for just a flutter, a symbol so potent that it was beyond all representation of other things and ideas, but alive unto itself. Inclusive and yet apart. Because it was the Whole-simultaneously inside and outside itself. Not the word made flesh but the word made time-and the ghosts made flesh.

That was what the spiral of the twins was, perhaps. That was what he had caught a flicker of that night with his beloved Hattie.

A key and a keyhole, too. And if one could pass through the spiral one could look back and see and hear the secret language unified and clear. He fixed his mind on this and sent himself outward, imaginatively trying to enter the spiral, to gain the other side. And then…

Swirling strings and flowering fractals of ideograms and morphemes exploded before his eyes, as if the dusty leather-bound tomes he had pored over in Schelling’s bookshop had opened all at once inside his head. He saw Egyptian hieroglyphs, lush brush-stroked Chinese characters on long, unwinding scrolls. Arabic poems tiled into mosaics. Greek and Hebrew letters hammered in stone. Alchemical and astrological symbols. The tracks of animals in tar pits-the silhouettes of bison and ibex on cave walls-musical notes, tattoos, hand signals, constellations. Complicated chains of numbers twined into lattices that in turn formed the skeletons of fabulous beasts like gryphons and unicorns, whose emerging flesh and scales then took on the mesmerizing puzzle patterns of still more figures-radiant angels and ghastly demons, horned-bone shaman masks and polished metal armor made of tinier masks made of geometric shapes that were the visual representation of still other numbers, coalescing to build vast temples and coliseums of notation that grew and glistened like sentient crystal systems. On and on the symbols rained at him, blossoming into jungles of unknown significance-metamorphosing into monsters and monoliths, titans, totems, face cards, and pieces in forgotten games.

But through all the pictograms and treble clefs repeatedly appearing amid the empires of equations and alphabets was the insignia of the Vardogers’ clawed candle, and the tornado emblem of the teratoid twins-a spiral choreography suggestive of conceptual aggregates and psychological associations-which was something entirely different. As different as the momentary flare of a firefly in a bean row from the electric haunted hieroglyph you would see if you could follow its whole life-every single pulse and drift of wing-and hold it in your mind as easily as that one blink. It was as different as the bending of the youngest blade of grass in a fifty-acre field from… the wind.

The wind made him think of his ghost sister, Lodema, and he recalled where he had got the notion of building shrines to her that summoned and revealed the subtlety and power of the unseen breeze. It was because of the old Wyandot man back in Zanesville, King Billy.

King Billy made moonshine and talked to himself, but he knew the tracks of every animal, from a field mouse to a fox. He knew when to fish with hellgrammites and when to use night crawlers. He could tell you the time of night by smell. He read the world with his whole body, his being so embedded within it that he was always on the page that was being written. All around his shack he had rigged up nets of tinkling beads and spoons. King Billy called them “ghost traps.”

Lloyd saw them again in his dream, feathered, jagged-warning, intriguing-sometimes invisible, depending on the light. They kept away bad spirits and busybodies. They defined Billy’s property, reflected his view of the world, and provided decoration. Insects and animals interacted with them, like the shadows and the seasons. Lloyd saw them again now as like the symbols of the Ambassadors. A living web of meanings that marked where the World becomes Mind. Where the Word becomes Time. Where the Ghosts become Flesh.

CHAPTER 5. Looking Alive

LLOYD WAS PRODDED AWAKE BY HIS FATHER, HIS HEAD FILLED TO bursting with ideas and afterimages from his dreams. The awkwardness of extricating themselves from the coffins, the dreary atmosphere of the Clutters’ business, and the necessity of packing away what belongings they still retained in a safe place so as not to disrupt the activities of the older couple made all three of the Zanesvilleans concur that they would be wise to get organized and on their way to Texas as fast as possible. For Lloyd, of course, the incentive was all the sharper, given that there could be some backlash from the friends and families of the vigilantes.

There were also the claws of the Vardogers to consider. The presence of the insidious music box under the very same roof was a potent reminder of their ingenuity and long reach. It was hard to believe that it was just chance. Not knowing only increased the threat. He thought it essential to keep his prized possessions with him at all times until they found some reliable haven, and so, with great care, he nestled Hattie’s skull and the fearsome Eye into the box of the Martian Ambassadors and tucked it inside his coat, along with the mystery letter from Micah.

As much as the fugitives from Ohio craved company, normalcy, and being settled, it was obvious that they were not going to find such things in Independence. Their hosts provided still greater, albeit inadvertent, encouragement to get on the trail, as both seemed even more dithery than they had been the day before, to the point where boiling a kettle for coffee was quite beyond Egalantine and the completion of a sentence even with the other’s assistance was out of the question for them both. Rapture took over in what passed for the Clutters’ kitchen, which was still a tad too redolent of the previous night’s supper to promote much of an appetite in anyone but Hephaestus (who had started to regain some healthy color and to put a bit of meat back on his pickled bones). After several false starts, she managed to make them all flapjacks and strong black coffee, as Hephaestus commenced working out a list of the supplies they would need, and Lloyd kept a surreptitious eye on the undertaker-coffinmaker and his wife.

He had a suspicion that there was some dispute that the couple was trying to stifle. Then he noticed Othimiel return one of the music boxes to its place on one of the shelves. It was the Vardogers’ box. Perhaps the Clutters had had another listen unbeknownst to his parents. It occurred to Lloyd that their disorientation and woolgathering might have something to do with further exposure to the beguiling music, and he recalled a remark from the night before that had struck him as queer at the time but which he had dismissed as just another example of their eccentricity. Egalantine had commented on the “choir” she had heard in the music. Lloyd was certain he had heard no voices, and at this point unclear how the impression of human voices could be mechanically achieved (at least with requisite precision).

Everyone had been so taken and distracted by the music, there had been no actual discussion of what they had heard-and the assumption had been that they had all heard the same piece. Now, in his sleepy, wondering post-Quist way, Lloyd asked himself the question What if they had each heard different music? How would that be possible, and what would it mean?

It was too big a puzzle to resolve without further study (and, ostensibly, more risky investigation of the music box, which he was reluctant to do), but in any case one would have thought that both of the Clutters were suffering the aftereffects of a laudanum binge or some kind of neurological trauma. And the matter worsened over breakfast, with Egalantine dribbling from her chin and making what passed for lewd gestures at her husband, while Othimiel rose from the table and returned a moment later wearing what was, fortunately, an empty chamber pot on his head.

Hephaestus, having done plenty of questionable things himself when soused, tried to be as tolerant and respectful as possible. (His hope was that the Clutters were showing themselves to be habitual tipplers and had been hitting the jug hard and early.) It helped explain their disjointed way of communicating, and the sorry, haphazard state of their business. However, he was stumped as to why they did not smell of alcohol.

Rapture, once she had convinced herself that they were not playing a perverse joke, became concerned for them, and earnestly wished that, whatever the affliction, it was not contagious. “Like the rapid onset of senility,” Lloyd remarked to himself, as his mother helped put the couple back to bed after cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Maybe a bit more rest would bring them back to themselves, as fuzzy and intermittent as that had been.

“I think we need to look alive this morning,” Hephaestus proclaimed as the Sitturds made their way past the coffins and out into the street. “Another couple of nights with those folks-and in this place-I may not get out of the box!”

“Time egen ta tek ’e foot een ’e han,” Rapture agreed. “Firss, we grub nuts an’ prospah liken a squirrel.”

“I think we need to look alive this morning,” Hephaestus repeated, and began whistling.

Lloyd did not like that his mother had dropped her plain white diction and was intermixing more Gullah phrases than he thought prudent, even with the Clutters. What was worse, his father seemed befuddled, and the discordant tune he began to whistle got on the boy’s nerves. Lloyd now had no doubt that the Vardogers were real-and therefore the Spirosians, too. Even though the Sitturds had escaped from St. Louis, he could see that they were in the midst of a broader, deeper, and darker mystery than even the one Mother Tongue had intimated back in the grotto. The Martian Ambassadors, whoever they were, were somehow involved. Amazing technologies. Deviant desires. He longed to rise above the details even for just a moment-to get some coherent view-but the thought of ascending, even metaphorically, brought back memories of the courthouse, the black man crying for the Angel of the Lord… and the lost brothers blown over the water and into the wall of Illinois timber.

“I think we need to look alive this morning!” Hephaestus announced.

“Farruh, stop saying that,” Lloyd pleaded. “You sound like the Clutters. Where’s our list?”

Hephaestus froze in his tracks and slapped his forehead. “Jimminy!” he barked. “I left it back at the bone tailor’s. After all that!”

“Well, we’re not going back,” Lloyd insisted. “C’mon. We’ll all try to think of things as we go. It’ll clear our-your heads.”

The last remark conjured a new specter of doubt in his mind. What if he had also been affected by the music box? And why would he not have been? The reasoning was inescapable, which raised the issue of how much of what had happened the night before had been influenced by whatever it was he had heard. His thoughts seemed sharp and clear to him, but perhaps the Clutters’ did to them, too. He had had nightmares in the past, but they had always had the aura of an external experience enveloping him for a time and then disintegrating when he awoke. This new unease was more intimate and, if less fanciful in its effects, far more disquieting. “I am going to have to keep my eyes wide, wide open,” Lloyd told himself. “For anything-anything that might suggest that what I am perceiving is not right, not real.”

He half wished they would run into some of the Quists. Then he could confirm, at least intuitively, the events of last night. But this, of course, was folly. He would give himself away in front of his parents and perhaps to others who might be watching. And the Quists would just put themselves more in danger’s path. If his memory was at all correct, he could only wonder at the impact of the night crisis on their future plans. And he would have to stay wondering-and watching.

The stark open sky of sunup had begun to show signs of clouding over, and the hint of more rain later in the day invigorated the flow of traffic along the streets and boardwalks. Even the stragglers appeared to be loafing and straggling with vehemence. Horses and carts clattered and squished through the mud, saws ripped and shimmied, hammers pounded nails and clanging horseshoes, stick fires brought cauldrons of laundry to a dirty boil. But in between the heat of cooking and cleaning, and the clash of metal and wood, there was a noticeable edge to the air, as if the softness of the Indian summer had turned overnight, reminding the Sitturds of perhaps the biggest and most pressing problem they faced: the lateness of the season.

All of the westbound settlers who had any chance of surviving and reaching their intended destination had long since headed out-most at the first signs of spring growth on the prairie, the vital food source for their oxen and horses. As the Sitturds plunked across the planks or dodged the mud puddles, hundreds of other families who had arrived out West marveled at the Columbia River, the austere forests, or the clashing of the waves of the Pacific. Some people had died along the way, and many had left precious belongings behind when the going got tough. Many other groups had paused out in the desert or on semi-fertile mesas and made provisional camps, with the goal of hunting and foraging, and making it through the winter, to assault the fortress of giant mountains come the next spring. Some had run afoul of bandits or Indian war parties, or drowned in streams. Others had buried children and grandparents owing to influenza or grievous injury. The Sitturds were out of step with all of them, running late and not headed west at all but south, into the brewing turmoil of the conflict with Mexico over the fate of Texas, the forced migration of angry displaced Indian tribes, and the persistent rumors of unheard-of diseases and rum occurrences. Spirits. Unknown beasts. No wonder we feel unsettled, Lloyd thought. We are.

“I think we better look-why do I keep saying that?” Hephaestus groused.

His son’s face brightened somewhat at this. Whatever it was that had fogged his father’s mind, it appeared to be lifting. It either had a trigger release or a set duration of influence. His mother, too, seemed to be recovering her wits and usual good sense, which was a profound relief to him, given all the wagging tongues and peering faces.

All the local news seemed to be ominous. A farming family outside town had been found dead of unknown causes (a poisoned well, the word went). Another cholera scare had been reported, and the “moaning frenzy” somewhere upriver. But as the Sitturds puttered about the town the hottest gossip concerned the divine retribution meted out to Deacon Bushrod and the loose confederacy of standover men and bedroom raiders that had become known as Bushrod’s Rangers. Naturally, Lloyd’s mind lit up at the first hint of this intelligence, but it took several stops and inquiries before the matter could be laid out sufficiently to fully comprehend.

The men in question were without doubt his assailants from the night before, and the boy had been correct in identifying the rogue in the beekeeper’s hat as a man of some substance and education. Called the Deacon, the fiend had had some affiliation of his own creation with the local religious communities and had at one time been what passed for a circuit judge. His true orientation, however, was as a rabid anti-Mason and Mormon hater. (Lloyd supposed it was only a logical extension for such a figure to despise a group such as the Quists.) The word on the streets of Independence was that Bushrod and his gang had either crossed paths and swords with one of the powerful Masonic militias who operated in semi-secret across America or with a Mormon guard. Alternatively, God Almighty himself had struck them down because of their wickedness. Most of the understandable information on the subject came from a porcine butcher with fingers like his own sausages, and a drab pinch-faced woman in the dry-goods “emporium,” who referred to herself in the third person, as in “Well, what Dot Cribbage thinks…”

Hephaestus and Rapture, with their now clearing heads, thought Lloyd’s fascination with the incident was unhealthy if not scandalous, but the boy was intent on ferreting out whatever facts or received fictions he could. Those “in the know,” as Dot Cribbage put it, seemed to be divided on the possible parties responsible: independent Masonic reprisal, some dirty deed done by them on behalf of the Quists (recall the curious hermetic connection between the Masons and the Mormons), a Quist or Mormon strong-arm brigade acting in self-defense… or an “answer by fire” from on high.

What was not in dispute was that eight men had lost their sight, as if hot pokers had been thrust into their eyeballs, and Deacon Bushrod’s body had turned to dust and ashes, as if cursed. Those leaning toward a Masonic, Mormon, or Quist death squad as the culprit posited the application of acid or lye to the corpse, which explained its quick deterioration. (It looked as though Othimiel’s handiwork would once again not be required.)

The theistically inclined felt their explanation was even stronger because of the accelerated decomposition, and were busy hoisting Bibles and even bottles, early in the day though it was. The upshot was that eight local men had suddenly and simultaneously lost their sight and were not talking, and a civic leader of dubious reputation had inexplicably disintegrated. Lloyd, of course, thought of the ravenous little black dog of the day before.

The awful miracle set the town alight with accusations, speculations, prayer-saying, and rosary-clutching. To Lloyd, it seemed he could hear all the private fears that underlay the public mood more truly than the banging of tools or the snorting of the horseflesh. Then out of the ruckus there rose another sound, cool and pure and out of place, a new church bell giving forth its first trial toll-not in honor of the dead and blinded, it was true, but perhaps as some kind of fumbling community lament for all the terrors and wonders growing wild on people’s doorsteps.

Not knowing anything about his nocturnal exploits, Lloyd’s parents tried to dismiss the gossip and tall tales as just another symptom of life in this crossroads town. They had a wagon and oxen to locate, food to buy, little money to bargain with relative to their needs, and any number of miscellaneous supplies to source. So it was not surprising that they took little notice of the man with the wooden leg hobbling down the plankings tacking up posters. But Lloyd did.

He had a bad feeling about the posters even at a distance, and when they passed one up close his heart leaped into his throat. In big, brash letters were the words:

RUNAWAY NEGRO GIRL-$500 REWARD

Beneath the lettering was a hand drawn picture that captured the unmistakable likeness of Hattie in a rebellious mood. There were more details in finer print underneath, but he did not need to read these, although he caught a glimpse of the phrase “Answers to the names of…,” as if she were a dog missing from a farm.

It sickened and infuriated him, and he recalled the numinous fever that had overcome him during the Bushrod ambush. This place was even worse than Zanesville. Even with all the people about, he was sorely tempted to reach for the Eye and set the crippled money-grubber alight-to see if he could again strike his enemy down. That he would offer money, or be the means of that offer, to hunt Hattie down! Captain of dark loving. The memory of the blistering current of power rushed through Lloyd’s veins and nerves, so that he thought that he could smell his own hair singeing, but no one else seemed to take any notice. Had he wielded the Eye, or had it acted on its own authority and impulses?

He wondered if Hattie’s orb had the same power, and wished for her sake that it did and that he could tell her about it-that he could hold her, help her-glad though he was that she was away. Hopefully, far enough now so that no bounty hunter would pursue her.

If only the Eye were like an eye that he could see her through. But then he would convulse to see her in danger-to witness her sufferings at a distance and not be able to come to her aid. Or for her to observe his predicaments when she had so many more crises of her own. It was a silly notion, he thought. And yet he recalled that moment in the dark, with Soames and Drucker waiting for him outside-the trance he had fallen into briefly, staring into the sphere. There was no denying that he had felt watched then-seen by something or someone-but by what or by whom he could not say. Mother Tongue, that refined hag hiding from the world on her moss-festooned steamboat? Perhaps. Maybe that was her reason for giving him the Eyes-to keep a watch on him, by whatever witch-crazed science she had at her disposal. Then again, there was always the possibility that the Eyes held powers that were beyond her knowledge and understanding, too-like the spook lights in the cavern, a lost technology or magic for which she was seeking the key, or an engineer of subtlety to master its secrets.

Lloyd made a note of where the wooden-legged goblin put up the posters, vowing that he would sneak out that night, follow the route, and take them down. Every last one. He would scour the stinking village if he had to. If only Hattie were safe…

His thoughts were interrupted by a cry of chagrin from his father.

“By God!” Hephaestus shouted. “I’m supposed to be at work at the smithy’s!”

Rapture’s face sank at this recollection, as did Lloyd’s. With all that had been going on, the matter of casual employment for Hephaestus and some much needed extra money for their provisioning had completely slipped their minds. His parents were quick to explain the oversight in terms of the incredible news and the distress that permeated the town. Lloyd could not accept this. This disruption of their memories and concentration had a dark association with the Vardogers’ music box. He had no doubt that it had done something unwholesome to the Clutters.

Hephaestus limped off to Petrie’s blacksmith shed at the other end of town, leaving Rapture and Lloyd to try to make what arrangements they could. He honestly believed Lloyd might be more capable than himself when it came to locating, selecting, and negotiating for the proper equipment, plus there was always a chance that Petrie might know where to find what they needed-that is, if he was not too angry to speak.

Although Rapture had got used to doing many things for herself and her son since the breakdown in St. Louis, she did not feel the slightest bit comfortable scrounging around Independence without her husband. She did not like the looks they received, and Lloyd’s cocky, protective attitude, instead of cheering her up, upset her further, for it brought back memories of what was to her the still obscure disaster that had forced their hasty and, to her, frightening departure from the river city.

As it turned out, the crisis had been a good thing in certain ways, getting them back on their way to Micah’s property and back together again as a family. They had ended up with means they had not had before, and a new focus on their goal, just when everything was coming apart at the seams. Yet the thought of the man with the humped back and his associates spooked her. She wanted to believe that any threat they posed, or the veiled threats they had referred to, had been left behind down the Missouri River, but she could not bring herself to query her son any more than she had in those first few desperate hours when Hephaestus slept like the dead from the drug the humped dandy had administered, and then thrashed in delirium when he came to. Lloyd had slipped off into a cloud of blank indifference and denial at the first hint of her interrogation then, and she did not want to risk another psychic retreat now. If she had known that the boy carried with him the device that had laid the Bushrod Rangers down, she would have been horrified. And if she suspected, as he did, that they had all been exposed to an equally potent and puzzling kind of weapon in the mechanical music, she might well have lost her bearings entirely. But she did not have this information or trepidation to hand and so turned her attention to the task that she and Lloyd had been assigned.

CHAPTER 6. Justice Street

HEPHAESTUS LOCATED PETRIE’S BLACKSMITH SHED AGAIN WITHOUT much difficulty, and found to his relief that Petrie was too busy to be mad at his late arrival-and too perplexed. As it turned out, his chief hand, Rawknor, had been one of the Bushrod Rangers who was struck blind. Petrie had no truck whatsoever with vigilantes, but he had benefited from Rawknor’s skill and was now ashamed of himself for not speaking out about his suspicions regarding his employee’s private activities. A bit of counsel at the right moment might have been all it took to turn the fellow back to the path of honesty and tolerance. Now it might well be too late. News, or rather rumors, about the incident had swept through the town, and, being more centrally located than the Clutters, Petrie had learned about the unheard-of occurrence just after breakfast. In fact, he had heard about it while astride the privy, his bowels greased with grits, and in his consternation had almost forgotten to hitch up his pants. Now blackened and sweating in his heavy apron, all he wanted was to put the matter out of mind in a banging frenzy of work, and he was just happy to have another set of hands to help him. Unlike the Clutters, Petrie ran a thriving enterprise.

Out of practice with his old trade, the lame Ohioan was hard-pressed to keep pace with his Missouri benefactor and to shake himself from the happenings, not to mention the difficult circumstances the family was continually having to adjust to, and the hopes and expectations regarding his brother’s legacy, which were beginning to reemerge with intensifying urgency as a consequence of his sobriety. But he and Petrie’s apprentice, a beefy, silent lad named Badger, set to with bellows, tongs, and hammers, and soon the familiar smells and sounds swept Hephaestus away from his and the family’s troubles. The best tonic for psychological tension is exacting physical work, and the clubfooted former inventor and drunkard found his body, if not his whole being, remembering the tasks, the touch, and the satisfaction in the exertion, as if he had stepped back into his old life again, like a worn, comfortable set of clothes. He figured if anyone knew the best way to locate a wagon and animals in Independence it would be Petrie, and so he set out to impress his employer with gusto for the job.

Meanwhile, Rapture and Lloyd, who had been entrusted with the family funds, turned their attention to the kinds of nonperishable foodstuffs and basic utensils they would need. Not surprisingly, everything seemed overpriced or of suspect quality. But they had been through so much already that this did not deter them. For mother and son, what had started off as an intimidating and alienating exercise turned into a bonding excursion. The economy of the town ran on a haggling/bartering basis, which worked to the Zanesvilleans’ advantage, for with her wits now cleared, Rapture had an arsenal of negotiating resources to draw upon, and with Lloyd’s shrewd eyes and his unexpected acuity, the two of them worked well as a team, managing to at least identify and reconnoiter the price of the bulk of what they would require. Shifting into her whitest diction and demeanor, Rapture confused many of the merchants and shopkeepers, as well as the wily street traders. Others, like the Indians and the Spaniards, cared nothing about her ancestry or her plans-they had seen all sorts of people pass through and were concerned only for their own advantage.

Most of their purchases the Sitturds set aside to pick up later and some they arranged to have delivered to the Clutters’ doorstep, hoping to time their arrival back at the undertaker’s accordingly. Others they garnered some advance intelligence about, with the intention of returning to bargain more forcefully once they had a wagon and were ready to depart. The recognition that they had made it this far bolstered them both in their own ways, and the thrill and doubts about what lay ahead for them on the trail to Texas, and the possibilities of Micah’s property and a new life, filled both their heads with a new immediacy-a condition that was reflected in the weather, for the air was rich with the scent of rain.

Their conspiratorial sense of achievement was interrupted (at about the same time that Petrie was offering Hephaestus a cold-meat snack and proposing a price for a wagon and two draft horses that he himself owned) by an altercation in the main street. Mother and son had just dined on a pig-knuckle-and-collards revitalization purchased from an old cook wagon, when their attention was drawn to a row brewing between what looked like a heavyset young miscreant and a hardscrabble muleteer of indeterminate age.

On closer inspection, the muleteer proved to be female, but she had the posture and bearing of a man, and she appeared to have been interrupted in the midst of the same sort of supply-gathering errand they were on. Her hair was cut short under a flat storm-worn felt hat the color of dried blood. She wore the same kind of coat Lloyd had seen on the mail rider who passed through town earlier that morning, but with a store-bought shirt and pipe-leg trousers that contrasted sharply with her mud-flecked boots. There was a perceptible bulge under her coat, and, notwithstanding the straightness of her back, her hips seemed to lean as when a door needs a hinge tightened, so that even just standing she gave the impression of a swagger. Lloyd had never seen a woman with such a masculine aura. Rapture, sensing trouble they did not want to be a part of, pulled her son aside. But she, too, was curious, for the frontierish-garbed woman seemed to show no signs of concern, even as the young ruffian was joined by a foursome of shady comrades, one of whom cradled a bullwhip with a menacing gentleness.

“Hey there, sugar gal,” the meaty yokel gibed. “You want some help drinkin’ that?” He gave a phlegmy spit in the mud and laughed.

The woman dressed in man’s clothing had just added a small crate of what looked like whiskey bottles onto a horse-drawn cart loaded with sacks of rice, flour, and beans. She seemed to be ticking off items against a list in her head, not paying the question any mind. Her face was lined but expressionless, her thin, pointed jaw set, mouth tight-lipped, with a long sprig of chin hair brazenly jutting out. Both the Sitturds gathered that the hulking pupstart had been following her for a while, making increasingly unwanted overtures. There was a feeling of slow-burning animosity to the scene, and the other folk nearby either stopped to gawk or shuffled on faster, heads cast down.

“I need no help, sonny boy, as I’ve told you. Now get along and go do a man’s work.”

“Bet you know ’bout that,” the boor bellowed. “Look like you piss standin’ up!”

His fellows joined in his unsavory mirth. Rapture cringed, feeling a sympathetic twinge of female loyalty and fear. Lloyd wondered where the woman’s menfolk were, and why none of the other people around showed any signs of standing up for her. The woman herself showed no sign of alarm-just like Hattie. Only growing annoyance.

“At least I don’t need help when I do,” the woman replied, and finished stowing and securing the cart without so much as a glance at her provoker.

The Sitturds’ stomachs turned at this, for they saw that the men all stepped closer as a ripple of jeers spread around the ring they formed.

“Hey, Josh. I think this bearded lady is sassin’ you!” the one with the bullwhip said, chuckling.

“Lady? Shit. Gimme that,” the big one called Josh murmured, hawking up another glob of spit, and reaching out for the bullwhip. “I’m Joshua Breed, you trouser-wearer. Do you know who ma pappy is?”

“No,” the woman said without a change of expression. “And I’m not surprised that you don’t. Your mama probably doesn’t, either.”

Hoots of malicious cackles and curses stirred around the circle as the onlookers cleared off, and the galumph who had identified himself as Joshua Breed stood fuming-a thick vein in his forehead beginning to throb, as he clutched the whip handle and smoothed out the length in his other hand.

The others were all ribbing him now and egging him on. The Sitturds flinched back against a plank wall. Rapture, who was by nature a feisty woman herself, dared not take a stand without Hephaestus against a group of men such as these. She would just put herself at risk and endanger Lloyd by doing so-but she could not bring herself to turn away, for Lloyd’s feet were rooted in place, his young green eyes wide open. Inside his coat, he reached for the Ambassadors’ box. A fury was building up inside him-at the cowardice of the other townsfolk, the stupid lugs before him. Why would no one step up to help? From the corner of his eye, he saw that the Ambassadors’ carved box was beginning to glimmer.

He could see that there was something about this woman that angered and scared not just the bruisers but the so-called respectable people, too. It was like the resentment and loathing the Quists aroused. He did not understand it, but having been a victim of prejudice and violence himself, he identified with it, and with her.

Against his better judgment about calling attention to himself and his mother, he would step forward to stick up for her. Somehow, he felt as if he were defending his ghost sister-and his beloved Hattie. And Miss Viola. He felt the Eye reaching out to him just as he was reaching for it. Would it work again?

What would happen if he torched the stooges in their tracks right there in the main street? He was torn between putting himself and his mother at risk and doing-at least trying to do-right by this stranger. His joints seemed to lock, and yet he felt his hand open the box, seeking the summoning heat of the cool green sphere-like a crystal of electric judgment. He felt a need to demonstrate the power. A glorious, gluttonous need. It was only this that made him hesitate, a fear of the Eye-a fear that the weapon wanted to use him, or that he wanted to use it for the wrong reason. The terror of all that energy surging through him. What if he ignited himself? How could he summon forth what he did not understand? Perhaps the Eye had rules, secrets. He stifled his grasp, his little boots scuffing at the dried mud where they stood. The box shimmered softly beneath his coat, as if speaking to him in a language he did not comprehend yet which reflected his inner thoughts.

“I saw you ooglin’ the dance girl at the Two Dollar the other night,” Joshua Breed growled. “We know what kind you are. An’ we don’t like it.”

He raised the whip over his head and then levered down his arm with a jerk, so that the tongue of leather thong lashed out and cracked at the caked mud of a wagon rut beside the hair-chinned woman’s feet.

“Stop it!” Lloyd cried, bursting out of his mother’s grasp. “Leave her be!”

Rapture was both horrified and proud of her son’s boldness, but these emotions gave way to sheer fright. As smart as her son was, he was still an impetuous boy-all too capable of thrusting them into hot water on a sudden impulse. She braced herself for a collision with ugliness.

Lloyd, meanwhile, had secured the box inside his coat, opting not to bring forth the Eye unless forced to. The life experience he had gained away from his parents’ attention stood him in better stead than his mother knew. The sight of a small boy, unarmed, standing up to a bunch of grown men, who were well known for such shenanigans, had a galvanizing effect on the other bystanders. Another man, in suspenders and a heavy woolen shirt, picked up a small spade that had been leaning against a keg. He said nothing, but his intention was suggestive. Of course, if anyone had known the power that Lloyd had at his disposal, if he was again able to channel it, there would not have been a person left in the street. But no one knew that and so assumed that the boy was acting out of raw courage.

The surprise at this eruption from a mere child stalled the gang and might have bluffed the others, but for the one called Josh the matter had already gone too far. He gave the impression of every movement being a complicated negotiation between his limbs and his brain, and looked to be the kind of saloon brawler who throws huge haymakers that land only if an opponent happens to be drunker than he is. His face had all the telltale nicks and scars of a lifetime of petty combat, and, like a dog too stupid to stop chasing wagons, he wasn’t going to stop now.

He did, however, know how to handle the bullwhip, and he let it fly and smack at Lloyd’s feet. The boy saw it coming, as if in a dream, and reached for the box. The death rage was upon him now, a hot green madness, as if the threat of the violence had shut down his reason. The barking snake of leather retreated and the oaf’s frame swiveled, whether to strike again in his direction or to attack the woman it was impossible just then to say. It did not matter, for faster than anyone could see, the woman flipped back her coat and whipped from a holster around her waist a Colt revolver. A shot blasted from the long barrel and took the whip clean out of Breed’s grasp. He yelped and grabbed his bloodied hand with his other, sagging to his knees. Everyone else stood startled by the weapon. Colt revolvers had been heard about by many but were still rare in those days, and although this had the same lines as the ones that some of the rubberneckers, including Breed and his gang, had seen before, it was also different-some advanced new model. It looked heavy, scientific, and deadly-and the ease with which the rail-post woman wielded it caused a communal stir in the street.

Breed tried to yank something from his own pocket, but the woman nailed him cleanly in the other hand, so that he screamed and pressed the wounded paw between his arm and his ribs in agony and astonishment. Horses bucked and stray dogs ducked under the boardwalk.

“Now, that’s just a shame,” the woman said without any intonation. “With both hands hurt, you’re going to have to get one of your friends to wipe your ass.”

One of the men picked up a piece of timber. She shot it in half, one section whacking the man in the temple and knocking him cold. One of the others bolted like a jackrabbit. Another stepped back toward where a group of horses were tethered. He pulled a rifle from a saddle scabbard. As he stood in profile, a shot whizzed past and plucked his belt buckle clean off, dropping his pants to his ankles.

“Know what I’m going to shoot off next?” the woman asked. She pulled a well-chewed cheroot from a breast pocket and popped it in her mouth, savoring it like a fresh stem of grass. Shit-scared, the man dropped his gun and dragged up his pants.

Some people in the street were laughing now, many chuckling and whispering. What was happening to Breed and his boys was something a lot of folks had longed to see. Others had run for cover or were bustling away to either call for help or seek refuge in one of the stores. Lloyd stood still in the same spot where the whip had struck, with his hand on the box under his arm, Rapture frozen in place a few feet away against the wall. Joshua Breed wheezed with hurt and humiliation and regained his feet, his eyes a mix of terror and hatred. He turned, and the Colt cracked again. Now it was his pants that fell, and a round of applause went up from those still in position. Then, flustered and off balance, he tumbled down into the rutted mud, clutching at his guts to make sure they were still in place. The fourth gang member made a move as if to charge, but the woman stood her ground and produced another revolver from beneath her coat, and leveled it at the man’s chest, all the time sucking on the old cheroot.

“All right, boys. Who’s going to wipe your friend’s ass? His hands will be a while healing. I reckon he’ll need to have many a squat before then. Or would you like another question? Like who wants to die first?”

This inquiry took everyone off guard. Whether it was the woman’s unruffled demeanor or the comical effects she had achieved, up to that moment the thought of a homicidal act had seemed unlikely, despite the lethal force at hand. Of course, there was the potential for something nasty to happen, but she seemed too in control for such a thing. Now her dispassionate mastery sent out a chill in the crowd. Only Lloyd was immune. He in fact felt an obscure kinship with it. Hattie was like that, in her own way.

Breed wriggled on his knees, trying to stand up, his tattered dirty long johns showing, flesh wounds and broken fingers in both hands. There was a rascally, doomed look in his face. All his bluster had been cowed. He more than half believed the woman would shoot him. And a part of him wanted it. To see the glee in some of the surrounding eyes was a fate more horrible than he could have imagined. To have to live with the memory and the constant reminders was more than he thought he could endure. And what would his father say? Portion Breed, reclusive leader of the local renegades-extortionist, horse thief, and reputed murderer, who holed up somewhere along the river and sent his riders venturing out (the old villain himself had not been seen in years) to pilfer the town when need be, plague the settlers, cheat the Indians and Spaniards, and bleed the neighboring country for whatever they could get, appearing in town only in groups of four or more to get drunk, molest the dance girls, and then scoot back to their hiding places until the next foray-oh, to think what his father would say if he saw him now. Josh Breed would have preferred a headshot. But something worse was in store.

“Lad,” the woman called, turning her head just enough to address Lloyd. “You’re more of a man and a gentleman than anyone else I can see here. And I reckon you’ve got a score to settle with this dolly dumpling yourself for trying to horsewhip you. Go over to my cart. Down between the groceries you’ll find my trusty old cane.”

Lloyd darted a glance at his mother, but turned when Rapture hissed at him. He did not think it wise to ignore the woman with the revolvers, and he was curious about the request. He went to her pony cart and rummaged about until he did indeed find a cane, of a kind that reminded him of the insufferable schoolhouse back in Zanesville.

Breed’s remaining mates held their ground, one still stretched out in a stupor, the other two trembling in their boots, too afraid to run because the woman was such an accurate shot. No one else had the nerve to say a thing, and the crowd that had re-formed was too amorphous a creature to have any spine, and so gave in to prurience. Just what did this unnatural woman have in mind?

“Is this what you mean?” Lloyd asked, and to everyone watching he seemed much smaller and younger than he really was, sidling between the horse cart and the rough-hewn figure holding the fancy guns without a single quaver in her arms. Where had she come by such novel weapons, and how in blazes had she learned to use them so well? That was the question on everyone’s lips. (It would have been phrased rather more caustically by Josh Breed, but the essence was the same.) The poor fool struggled to his feet at last, straining to raise his britches,when the woman squeezed one of the triggers again and clipped a clod in front of him, which sprayed muck on him and sent him sprawling down in a collapse of cursing.

“That’s just right.” She nodded to Lloyd. “Now, none of you boys have had the stones to answer my question, which surprises me not one bit. You there, Joshua you called yourself? As if I should know or care. Well, my name is Fanny Ockleman-Fast Fanny to you. But once upon a time I used to be a schoolteacher. A terror, they called me when it came to discipline. Do you know what I did with unruly boys? Boys who showed no respect and thought they could bullyrag others?”

The whole street was silent. Even the animals seemed to be listening.

“I caned them, Joshua. I caned their hides for all to see.”

Hoots and catcalls went up around the gathering, and various children and stragglers dashed down the planks to spread the word. Joshua Breed had lost his pants and his wits and was going to get a whuppin’ by a gun-totin’ woman with a good start on a beard. Oh, this was too sweet to miss!

But the woman who called herself Fanny Ockleman did not take the cane switch from Lloyd, but instead directed him over toward the hapless Breed, who groveled in the mud. The trail buddy farthest away hightailed it off like a bleating goat. The other one, who had dropped the rifle, made a lunge for it, and had it shot from his grasp, so that the butt splintered and cut his face. He groped for his trousers and pivoted to flee in one motion-but the next shot forced him to dive for a horse trough, which he splashed into like a sack of corn heaved from a wagon, producing a roar of laughter from the spectators.

The news had reached the attention of what passed for the law in town, but, still reeling from the events of the previous night, with one of his deputies having been among the blinded vigilantes, and no love for the Breeds, who more or less ruled the vicinity, the so-called sheriff was not quick to try to assert authority now. Josh Breed knew that, with his friends on the run or incapacitated, he could not count on any help that would come in time. He peered up through bloodshot eyes and saw the little boy he had threatened with the whip striding toward him with the cane.

“Son,” Fanny intoned, lowering her guns. “I want you to give that blowhard a good licking. Five of the finest you can deliver. And one more for good measure.”

“You bitch!” Breed screamed, clawing at the mud with bullet-grazed mitts-desperate to scramble upright and grab for Lloyd all at once. He wanted to bite that blasted woman’s throat out. But he did not even manage to make it up to his haunches before Fanny had grazed his shin with another bullet, just as she had meant to do. Breed plopped forward, facedown in the street, his long-johnned rear end exposed now to Lloyd and the upraised cane.

“You know what to do,” Fanny called to Lloyd across the street, and expertly spat a full three feet without losing her cheroot. “Five of the best you can give, and one more to make the memory sore.”

While all this had been happening, Rapture had been beside herself with worry for Lloyd, and now to see him actively engaged gave her a rushing sense of disorientation, not unlike what she had experienced when the odd music box was opened back at the Clutters’. She saw him once again as utterly remote from her. He seemed to fit into the scene before her like a piece of puzzle slotted into position, and the thought filled her heart with dread. There was something monstrous in him that she could not accept as having come from inside herself. Truly, he seemed more the child of this man-witch, who had brought the beasts of the frontier village under her spell with an eerily composed violence of the kind that is not learned easily and was somehow invested with an authority far beyond the ken of the shopkeepers and malingerers there to witness it. The sky had gone jet-black over half the town, a harsh religious flare of sun striking a gunmetal edge along the running sheet of storm cloud. Rapture prayed that the lightning would come and disperse the gathering. But it did not come quite in time.

Lloyd stood above the prostrate figure of Joshua Breed, wounded, humbled, defenseless now. The boy saw in his mind the way the tough had directed the whip at him. One pass to scare, the next to smart. Every taunt and insult he had ever been subject to came back to him. The harassers of Zanesville. The robbers along the road. The devil in the lane in St. Louis.

He felt again those meat-slab hands on his slender hips. The excruciating agony of the penetration… the reaming… like an auger in a summer melon. The boar-heavy grunting… and the high-pitched laughter. The stench of the dung cart. And the smack of the spittle the beast let loose on the granite cobblestone when he was done with his desecration. It all came back. Everyone who had ever angered or abused him. The brats who had sabotaged his shrine to his sister, the pig who had tortured his beloved Hattie. He would repay all the evil debts, and he slashed down through the air with the cane, slicing across the filthy long johns with a fiendish sense of release and power. Again and again he struck, as the creature before him howled and squirmed. The force he felt in his little arm was like unto the wave of energy that had radiated through him from the Eye. His sense of time and the street scene around him blurred. There was just the thrashing joy of his vengeance, intoxicating him like a drug. Where before he had always had to outsmart his enemies-or use the Eye-to unleash some demonic force that had amazed him as much as his victims, here he was enjoying the animal truth of physical aggression and he gorged on it, whaling on the vulnerable idiot without mercy. He did not hear the call of Fanny Ockleman or his mother. He did not hear the thunder rumbling like a hundred laden wagons. He did not hear the cries of Joshua Breed, who had soiled his underwear at the second shot and was now bleeding across his exposed buttocks.

It was not the rain that came in bullet-size drops which finally awakened him again to himself and his actions. Nor was it that he had felt himself becoming erect upon raising the cane the second time-the blood-hot thrill of revenge firing through his whole body, seeking outlet in his loins, while the whine of the sturdy strand and the sharp bite on the exposed ass was the ultimate sign of surrender and an invitation to torture. No.

It was something else. Something other.

They appeared on the periphery of his vision, standing in a line in the street, which no one else seemed to take any notice of. He in fact did not notice them visually at first at all. He was animally aware of them before sighting them. Even then, he did not feel that he saw them, but more that they allowed him to become aware of them where others were not.

There were six women-or so he thought-all dressed in pristine white ruffled dresses. They were as clear as anything could be, and yet somehow seemed veiled, remote. At first, he would have said they reminded him of Mother Tongue. But their dresses were stark and formal, and seemed not to be worn by them, exactly, but more by parts of them-as if they were inside some sort of armor, wedded to it the way St. Ives was joined with his hand.

Beyond the inexplicable cleanliness of their attire, given the environment, there was about them a summoning grimness that called to mind the gossiping biddies who had so plagued his and the family’s life back in Zanesville-the sharp-tongued shrews who hid behind hoopskirts, complaining shawls, and what passed for women’s stovepipe hats in those days, matronly old skullcaps tied with ribbons under the chin, only frilly and without color. The instant he was conscious of them, they filled him with a new kind of malice and unease. Abhorrence. Aversion.

No ensemble could have been less intimidating at a glance, not relative to the night thugs he had faced off against with the Eye. But that was not what his instinct told him. It screamed out to him a very contrary message.

These were ones who did not fear the Eye. These were one.

They stood not just in a line but in a plane of vision, or at least perception. There was a dimensionality to them that both seeped forward toward him and receded backward, making it seem that the very depth of field of reality-the essential fabric and framework of the street-had been fundamentally altered.

The second he thought that-as he looked closer-he saw to his unspeakable and unreasonable, shrinking apprehension that they all had the exact same face. It was not a mask, in any sense of abstraction or caricature, but it was not eccentric, individual, and animate, either. It was a face like none he had seen before, even on the nags of Zanesville-repeated, separate yet combined. Blurred. Merged.

Yes, that was what the impression was like. Six figures sharing a single face, so that it was impossible to determine if there were six figures or one.

But he heard a multiplicity of voices. Not, just six-oh, no.

They did not move-they did not have to. He heard them calling to him inside his own head. Beat him, they called. Beat him! Release your hatred…

“That’s enough!” Fanny cried, and fired one of the revolvers into the air, as the storm broke and people scattered.

Lloyd dropped the cane, leaving Joshua Breed groveling in the mud, bleeding and soiled, whimpering like the dog the day before.

The six white women with the single face were gone, dissolved in the downpour as if they had never been.

CHAPTER 7. Something in Between

THE SIGHT OF LLOYD MERCILESSLY WHIPPING THE WOUNDED rouster at last spurred Rapture to action. She raised her skirt hem and dashed through the deluge to wrench her son out of his trance. The few items they had purchased she left behind in the streaming rain, dragging the boy along the mud-strewn boardwalk in a huffing flurry of anger and alarm until they reached the relative safety of the Clutters’ once more.

She did not look behind her to see the gun-toting Fanny Ockleman shaking her head at the boy’s performance. She did not see the sharpshooter stow her revolvers, adjust her hat, and stride over to retrieve the cane as if the sun were shining brightly and the most extraordinary event that had transpired had been the boy’s vented fury. Rapture was too busy trying to master the shame and chagrin that had replaced her pride and concern when her son stepped forward.

Lloyd, meanwhile, was beside himself with fascination and embarrassment. The excitation that had arisen inside him was like no other he had ever experienced-a sickening, insatiable lust and release beyond any he had known before. The entire world had been eclipsed in the heat of it. There was only his hunger, his will being fulfilled to the grotesque exclusion of all other senses. And the disquietude of the six watchers.

Were these what the Vardogers looked like? Or had it been a projection of their insidious science?

I wonder if I saw what I did because they wanted me to see it or because of how I felt? he thought.

Strangely enough, the very brutality of his performance drew a very different response from what his mother had anticipated. Racing back to the Clutters’ soaking wet, struggling with what she could carry and still mind Lloyd, Rapture assumed that all the items they had abandoned would either be stolen or spoiled by the rain. Not so. What she had not counted on was that the Breed gang, and slobbish Josh in particular, had long been a source of fear and local hatred. While the Bushrod Rangers comprised members who were respected at least in quarters of the community, no one would have spoken in favor of Portion Breed and his son’s confederates if they could avoid it, and for once it seemed they could. Perhaps things were going to change for the better around Independence.

So what if little Lloyd had whacked the tar out of Josh? The younger Breed had had it coming since he was that size and then some. The target that had apparently been chosen by chance gave the Sitturd whelp a line of credit to draw upon, and, ironically, the same child and his family who had been hounded out of Zanesville for using the native powers of his brain was now applauded and even lionized by the townsfolk of this Missouri outpost for unleashing some inner force of almost meditative violence. Rapture could only shake her head in wonder as, one by one, the items she had cast behind them returned, supplemented with more store-bought things, handmade items, food stocks, and provisions of all kinds. No one asked any questions about where the family was headed; it was just assumed somewhere west. People gave in the way that no tithing box had ever known, and when Hephaestus hobbled home after his first partial but still honest day’s work in as long as he could remember, he was startled to find his young son a hero again, his wife speechless, and the coffin-crowded shop front of the lackluster carpenter and rather keen embalmer Othimiel Clutter and his wife overflowing with things that the Sitturds would desperately need to reach their destination.

It was several minutes before Rapture could find the words to suggest more than explain what had transpired, and even then her limping husband limped far behind in his comprehension. The rain had cleared off again, the sun was near set, and the hint of a slow damp that would later rise from the ground could be smelled like distant cookstoves and the still prevalent atmosphere of the previous night’s questionable repast. With all the purchased and donated booty, they went inside the residential part of the shop front to reunite with their idiosyncratic and previously debilitated hosts-and then had an even greater shock.

Rapture, when she had been able to get past the family’s trials of the day, had thought it not out of the question that the older couple might remain in bed all day, and that perhaps their behavior of the morning had its explanation not in inebriation but in some illness, perhaps even some emerging disease of the mind-a mutual senility, for that was what it had so resembled.

When she courteously knocked on the humble door that separated the shop front and business premises from the living area in the rear of the building, it gave her a queasy reminder of Mr. Clutter manically tapping on his coffin lids. There was still the strong presence of last night’s dinner oozing under the door, but there was something else, too. A scent of premonition. When she got no response, she eventually opened the door-and then the horror was there for all the family to see.

The kitchen, which Rapture had left so neat and tidy, was a shambles of destruction, as if raccoons had broken in and torn the place apart. Pots and pans had been flung everywhere, the hearth piled with smashed crockery. What was more, every single music box had not just been swept from its resting place on the shelves but slammed to the floor and cracked open, their inner workings gouged out. The Sitturds croaked as one-and then discovered the couple.

“Dear God!” Hephaestus cried.

Mr. and Mrs. Clutter had indeed managed to rise from bed, and apparently had done much more. Inside what passed for their little bedroom, the bed had been demolished, their simple nightstands collapsed, candles snapped, pillows ripped to shreds. The devastation could not have been more complete, except for one old stick-back chair, which the couple still occupied. Both bodies were naked and entwined together in an obscene contortion. Any fear the Sitturds had that the couple had been the victims of some intruder’s violence was incontrovertibly dispelled by the fact that the Clutters-still sexually connected, or so it seemed-both had their teeth and jaws locked deep in the blood-soaked throat of the other. The frozen expression on their dead, stained faces was beyond all words.

The Sitturd adults were so stricken with sickness and terror that they forgot to try to cover Lloyd’s eyes. It was just as well, for Lloyd alone remained cool enough to examine the scene. That was what Hattie would have done.

Hephaestus, as hardened as he was to normal farm life and the facts of death that presented themselves in slaughtering and butchering, felt the food that Petrie had offered him earlier in the day roar up his pipes and onto the floor. Rapture, meanwhile, was certain the room was rife with evil “sperits” and flittered about like a wounded animal.

Lloyd, on the other hand, as revolted as he was, and as agitated as he was, was also enlivened, his senses brought to full attention. Beat him, beat him. Release your hatred.

There was something very important about this scene, he knew. Although the natural first thought was to shudder and look if not run away, his instincts told him to look more deeply, to savor and consider every detail that presented itself. There was a meaning to all this, and perhaps he was the only one to discover it.

The obvious fact that the Clutters had been the cause of each other’s death suggested that there had not been any dread invasion. There were no signs of forced entry. The back door remained secure. The front shop was undisturbed and all the Sitturds’ possessions were unmolested. Whatever had happened, it seemed, had been confined to the back area of the premises and had, at least to the eye, involved the old people alone. Who else had been present, if no one else had arrived?

While his parents comforted each other and tried to regain control of themselves, and rein in their mixed distaste and grief for their hosts and their now runaway panic about what this catastrophe might mean for them, Lloyd circulated through the establishment searching for clues. There was no mud at the entry to the shop, and the place looked as if it had not been open for business all day, which was probably not an unusual occurrence. If the back door was still bolted and all the windows were unopened, he thought it likely that no one else had intervened. And why would someone come to call with such intentions, and arrive in either calm or stealth and then wreak such destruction? Given the dismantled state of the rear interior, it seemed a telling point that the opportunities of exit and entry were still intact.

Then there was the inescapable matter of the two old folk having bitten each other’s throat out! Even the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of invaders would not have been able to force the couple into the position in which they were found. What threat could have been used that would have been worse than the result? It was not as if the Clutters had been bludgeoned or even tortured in some conventionally murderous way. On every level, this seemed to him an intimate matter and, however demented and bestial, there was some dark, inner logic at work.

The more he looked around, the more immune to the horror Lloyd became. Patterns began to form. He saw that the crockery and the kitchenware had not been piled or pounded apart for their own sake. It looked…

“It looks like the plates and pots were used… as weapons,” he said to himself.

That suggested that the Clutters had been attacked-whether from without, in some as yet unknown way, or in the form of some delusion that had taken hold of them.

An intruder of the mind had been floating in his thoughts ever since the family returned. After all, the couple had been strongly affected by their exposure to the music box. And the white-dressed women in the street…

Lloyd started pawing through the wreckage, searching for the Vardogers’ box. It was altogether possible, he granted, that some malevolent presence had chosen this particular moment to return and retrieve this strange treasure. But no, it, too, was on the floor. Alone of all the music boxes, it was unopened and on the surface unharmed. He knew what he had to do.

Very quietly, so that his parents could not hear, he spoke the password and waited, steeled to snap the lid shut before the sinister, enchanting music could start. To his amazement, when the lid opened no music began and he saw that the tiny artificial musicians were all gone. The box was as bare as one of the Clutters’ overturned kitchen drawers. He ran his right index finger along the edges and across the floor of it just to make sure there were no tricks-but the box was empty.

It was possible, he reasoned, that some external agent had come in and absconded with the miniature mechanical orchestra, but he felt that anyone who would have known about the contents of the box would not have needed or bothered to violate all the others. And why would they leave the box? Still more curiously, such a robbery-if that was how it could be described-did not explain the barbaric fate the old people had endured. Nothing he could think of did. He had half-formed theories and intuitions, but nothing that would stay fixed.

“We must separate and examine the bodies,” he said, more to himself than to his parents.

Hephaestus felt his partially digested food rise into his throat again. It was discomfiting enough to have their young son witness such depravity-there was, of course, no way to keep it from him now-but to have him so rationally investigating the matter was almost more than he could take. Then something in the wayward blacksmith’s mind clicked over. It was in the boy’s tone of native authority, but it was also an internal conviction of his own. His son knew and understood things he did not. There could be no pretending anymore. All his life since the boy’s birth had been in some way spent denying his offspring’s special intelligence, fearing it, resenting it, feeling proud about it-or worrying where it would lead. Hephaestus saw that, if nothing else, it had led to this. This was where they all were, still together as a family, still alive-and, with any luck, able to extricate themselves from this gruesome predicament and get back on their way. If Lloyd’s intellect was a means to that end, then so be it. As peculiar as he was, he was flesh and blood.

The lame blacksmith found a new personal strength with this recognition and, without any sense of humbling himself or taking an order from his own son, he did just as the boy instructed. He rose and respectfully but firmly wrenched the two rigor forms apart, laying them down on the floor beside the chair for further investigation. That pieces of the bodies burst apart at this maneuver was not pleasant to observe, but still he kept his tongue, even as the Clutters lost theirs.

Then something happened that even Lloyd was not prepared for. Portions of flesh peeled away to reveal not only organ and bone-not even organ and bone-but something truly unexpected. The inner anatomy the separation of the corpses revealed was not human. It was not animal. It was not organic. Nor was it mechanical-or like any machine he had ever seen.

If the Sitturds had gasped before, they swooned together now, for what they beheld was absolutely alien to everything they knew and counted on. The dithery older couple they had met the previous night, who seemed incapable of normal conversation and had such unusual notions about food-who had, in the time the family was gone, undergone such a dramatic transformation, becoming both mindlessly violent and lustful-were not people at all.

Rapture cawed. Hephaestus reached up to seize locks of hair on his head that were fifteen years gone. Even Lloyd’s mouth dropped.

“They’re… some kind of…” his father tried.

“They’re music boxes,” Lloyd replied, after a moment’s aching silence. “They looked like people. They acted like people-to a point. But they were really music boxes in disguise.”

“Music boxes!” his mother moaned. “How ya bee speaken that?”

“I don’t mean like the others.” Lloyd waved, indicating the mess of combs and needles pouring forth from the ruptured boxes on the floor. “I mean more like the one that so confused us last night.”

“Which one was that?” his father huffed.

Lloyd’s right eyebrow rose at this.

“The one it may be fortunate that you don’t remember. What I mean is that they were-or are-machines. Not like machines we have ever seen. But not human. See those fibers there? What are they? Glass, spun very fine? And what of that there? That’s no organ that we know. It’s not quite meat and it’s not quite metal. It’s something in between. And that’s what they were. Something in between.”

“But how can it be?” Hephaestus gurgled, clasping his head in his hands for comfort.

“I don’t know,” Lloyd conceded. “But I am certain these… folk… were not born. They were made. Made to look like people and pass for people.”

“B-but Petrie!” Hephaestus stammered. “They’re his kin!”

“He may have had kin. He may think these are still his kin. But they aren’t,” Lloyd answered. “Unless he’s like this, too.”

“No!” his father insisted. “I worked with the man all day. He was straight, he was quick. He was-”

“Normal?”

“Y-yes.” Hephaestus nodded, working through in his own mind a host of associations and perceptions. “N-normal.”

“Then that raises the proposition that he doesn’t know about this,” Lloyd reasoned. “Which is supported by the fact that he recommended we try to stay here. Did he say anything about them? Anything that might hint at a change in them and their lives?”

Hephaestus had to turn and stroke his chin at this.

“Well, now that you mention it… he did let on something. Once he saw I could do a good day’s work for him, honest and expert-like, he did say something at the end. What was it? Ah… he said he was glad that we were about to keep a fresh eye on them. That’s what he said-a fresh eye.”

“What did you take that to mean?” Lloyd asked.

“I’m not sure,” his father mused. “He’d said earlier that there’d been a change in them-the both of them. But he didn’t say how or what.”

“Did he say when?”

“Hmm. Not directly. At least I don’t think. I was busy working then. I got the impression it was about a year or so ago. I don’t know why.”

“That would put it sometime around when the man with the music boxes and the child he wanted embalmed came past,” Lloyd put forth.

“What that mean ya be speaken now?” his mother demanded.

“I don’t know,” Lloyd admitted, shaking his young head. “But I know we must leave here as soon as we can. Within the hour. Whatever the Clutters were, they weren’t done in by men with masks and cudgels. But they were attacked, whether from without or within.” He deeply regretted that there would not be time to circulate through town and remove the reward posters for Hattie.

“But if they were just machines-” His father sighed.

“I don’t think we should ever use the word ‘just’ about machines anymore,” Lloyd replied. “They are-or were-not machines we understand, and there were other machines here that are not here now. The two issues must be connected.”

“What othern maysheens?” his mother asked, sobbing now.

“Don’t trouble about them now,” Lloyd consoled her. “We need to be on the move. As you said, Farruh, we need to look alive-to stay alive.”

“Is they after you-dem folks from St. Louis?”

This was the first time any such thing had been mentioned in Hephaestus’s sober presence, and his faced showed it. Lloyd spoke his mind.

“It may be, and it may not. I think not. If they were to come, whoever they are, I believe there would be no mistaking it-and they would come for me. This is something else. It may be connected by chance, if there is such a thing. But…” and then he could not think.

“What yer sperit voice say?” his mother asked at last, putting into her old and often suppressed family speech the same suddenly accepted confidence that Hephaestus had arrived at in his own way.

Lloyd felt the momentousness of the change in the family dynamic and paused to weigh his words in respect for the new weight that had been openly placed upon his young shoulders. His rarefied mind rummaged through the shattered dishware and gaping flesh for some answer that would satisfy his own flesh and blood enough to get them all out of there. Fast.

“We were not the intended victims of this-if it be a crime,” he said. “But there is something about our presence here, and our (and he really meant his own) ability to see this as something outside experience, that must be heeded. How, I’m not yet sure. There is something larger happening in this country than we ever imagined back in Zanesville. Whether we can run from it, and truly get away, or come to understand it remains to be seen. But we can’t ignore it, and more than ever I feel we must get to our destination in Texas as quickly as we can. Uncle Micah has already warned and inspired us that something out of the ordinary awaits us there. It was our leaving Zanesville and our old lives that set in motion the wheels that have brought us here-to both this place and this new, unlikely world. We can but go forward, and now we have to do so with the greatest haste.”

“So you think we are in danger, real danger?” Hephaestus queried.

“I think,” Lloyd said, with a face on him that was far too old for his years, “that just as we must put behind us old ideas about machines-even my ideas about machines (and this remark completed the familial acknowledgment of the change that had occurred)-we need to be prepared for danger wherever we look. From now on, danger is always real. Even unreal danger. Especially the unreal.”

CHAPTER 8. Dead of Night

HEPHAESTUS HAD NO IDEA WHAT LLOYD WAS SAYING, AND YET HE understood that what was called for now was belief in his son. The failed inventor had sobered up inside himself at the deepest level.

“The Clutters have two horses and a wagon they used as a hearse,” he announced. “Petrie told me. I think I heard them out back. They may not get us all the way to Texas, but they’ll get us out of here. When any kind of word gets out about this, we’ll be in strife. People will think somehow we done this. Whether these be the real Clutters or no, locals will need to make sense of things.”

Lloyd nodded.

“These are the Clutters that Petrie knew. And what happened to them may have something to do with our arrival. But we aren’t to blame and we won’t be burned for it if we keep our heads.”

“We takem wib us and give ’em proper beerial,” Rapture said.

“That’s right,” Lloyd agreed. “We take everything with us, we get a head start. Then anyone who wants to know more has got to find us, and they have no proof of anything being wrong.”

“Let’s load up the coffin first,” Hephaestus suggested. “The way these folk lived, we might get a couple of days or even more before they’re missed. Even Petrie said he hadn’t had a meal or a jaw with them in weeks.”

Over the course of the next hour the Sitturd family worked in a frenzy of divided labor. Once Lloyd had indicated that he was finished examining the wreckage in the back area, Rapture set about gathering up all the broken, scattered bits into a neat pile. Hephaestus went out to inspect the wagon and the horses. “These animals have got to be real,” he said to himself when he found them and had lit a lantern. “If they were machines, they’d look better.” Both animals were desperately skinny, which seemed to fit in with everything the family had learned about the couple. “Perhaps they didn’t know any better,” Hephaestus reasoned.

While his mother was cleaning up and his father was giving the horses a feed and preparing the hearse, Lloyd completed his analysis of the bodies. In addition to the obvious mortal indignity they appeared to have inflicted on each other, he noted odd puncture wounds and gouges in their feet and legs, as well as on their hands. A couple of samples of their innards, some of which seemed organic and were already decomposing as the black dog in the street had, as well as some pieces of what were clearly manufactured workings of an intricate, complex nature, he placed in a bag that he found in the kitchen. Along with the now empty Vardogers’ music box, he tucked all his findings away with the Eye, the Ambassadors’ box, Hattie’s fetish, and his uncle’s map and letter.

Beyond the fatal wounds, the aspect of the corpses that he found most puzzling was discovered only when he pried open their mouths to find shards of comb and bent metal, as if in their delusional fever the couple had taken to eating the contents of the music boxes they snapped open. How very curious, Lloyd thought, remembering the ravenous hunger that had overtaken them all before.

When he combined this phenomenon with the ravaged interior of the living quarters and the position and unmistakable nature of the activity the bodies had been engaged in, he was forced to conclude that the Clutters had undergone some rabid confluence of animal cravings and instinctive behavior. Gluttony, fear, violence, lust, bloodlust. That machines of any kind could experience these states and needs was startling. But all at once? “Perhaps that’s just the way it would be,” Lloyd mused, not at all sure he knew what he was thinking.

Once Hephaestus had the horses hitched and the wagon ready, he returned to help Rapture and Lloyd load the two bodies and the miscellany of demolished kitchenware, music boxes, and household items into one of the larger coffins. It was only because the bodies were beginning to soften and break apart that they were able to stuff everything that needed to be disposed of in the one box. All three Sitturds helped lug the coffin out back and onto the hearse.

They fed themselves with what decent food they could find and then began hauling the goods they hoped to take with them. It was frustrating that many things would not fit with the coffin in position on the wagon, which, of course, needed to remain easy to unload. They could have managed everything if they had chosen to take the coffin and bury it first and then return to load their things, but no one in the family thought this was a good idea. Better to be seen by as few people as possible. Two trips would increase their vulnerability.

By the time they were ready to depart, it was close to midnight. In one sense this was good, because it meant fewer people would be abroad. However, it would also make their errand more suspicious if they encountered anyone-and, as Lloyd had learned the other night, anyone who was out at that time was far more likely to be a threat. But there was nothing to be done about that now.

Once more the Sitturds found themselves stealing away, hoping to avoid the detection of prying eyes. The difference this time was that all three were united in alertness, the bond of family stronger for the trials they had survived.

They were on the southwestern side of the town, so extricating themselves from the community was somewhat easier, given that this was the direction they were heading in. Nevertheless, they had intended to leave at first light, with full supplies and the best maps they could acquire. As it was, they had a compass, one of the large-scale maps used by the mail riders, a small duck gun, and a waxing moon swathed in clouds. With any luck, thought Hephaestus, the clouds will hold until we clear town and then break and give us some help.

The road was still muddy, but the Clutters’ emaciated horses seemed relieved to have made their escape from the funeral parlor and found an effort their sorry frames would not have indicated they could deliver. Their pace was slow, because the Sitturds wanted to make as little noise as possible without at the same time appearing to be sneaking. Their senses were sharp and their breathing was shallow. They saw a man snoring drunk beside a hogshead, which gave Hephaestus a prick of conscience, because he realized that this was what he must have looked like often in the past.

The dwindling aroma of a savory stew drifted out of a makeshift boardinghouse, so unlike the fare they had been inflicted with at the Clutters’. The whole sordid scene passed through their minds again, but passed through Lloyd’s the fastest. He was ruminating on the music box he had plundered. He could not imagine not having taken it-it was too tempting a prize not to want to examine further, even though it was empty. And that was the thing that troubled him, although he could not say why. Did having something of the enemy’s-if that was indeed what the Vardogers were-strengthen their position or weaken it? He did not like to think he carried with him something that might endanger his family further.

The frail horses hauling the overloaded wagon squished along in the hardening mud as the clouds thinned and the moon broke through. By the time they were past the edge of the town proper, they had counted just two figures they knew had seen them. One was an Indian smoking a long store-bought pipe, leaning up against his dozing horse as if there were nothing more natural than using your horse as a pillow-as at home as he would have been a hundred miles away in prairie grass.

Lloyd wished that he understood more about the Indians and their ways. He had known things about those closer to home in Zanesville, like King Billy, but in the family’s travels since, he seemed to have been cut off from any close contact. He had seen many, but they were more like parts of the landscape. Even by moonlight, it frustrated him not to be able to intuit more about the man. How far away did he live? What was his tribe, his language, the magic he believed in? Lloyd had already come to understand something that eludes or deceives many: everyone believes in a kind of magic, though it may go by other names. “I hope my life has more to do with Indians,” he told himself as they creaked past.

The other denizen of Independence to confront them was a dog, which at first made them all wary, because they were afraid it would bark and call notice to them. There was also not far in the back of all their minds the image of the black savage that had shredded the Spaniard’s dog in the street. But this dog seemed to be normal. Curious but not vicious. Scruffy, of no particular breed, it began to tag along behind them, tempting Hephaestus to load the duck gun.

Lloyd observed his father’s annoyance and said, “It’s all right, Farruh. Maybe he needs to leave town, too.”

The lame man sent out more energy through his arms into the reins. His son was right again. They had much more to worry about than stray dogs. And what were they if not stray dogs themselves? “You can’t blame a critter for wanting company,” Hephaestus told himself, his eyes ferreting through the moon shadows, hoping for some sign of the mail track on the outskirts.

They were a long time finding it, and then getting far enough down it to think of veering off-someplace they could get the wagon to so as to bury the remains of the Clutters in as much privacy as they could manage. Along the way they passed a couple of buckboards and simple farm wagons with canvas shells trying to be houses large enough to contain a ragtag of families and animals. It gave them all a little hope that their designs were no more foolish than many folk’s, torn between old lives and new. They also passed a large Spanish camp under some chestnuts. Here the fires were still burning-the scent of food and scheming. “Spaniards never seem to sleep,” Lloyd said to himself. “Perhaps I should become a Spaniard.”

Finally, they found themselves far enough away from Independence to consign the remains of the Clutters to earth and to heaven-if such in-between beings were allowed into heaven. There was a grove of trees off the track, which was becoming less a road and more tall grass with a seam running through. As far into the grove as they dared to venture, and as close in as they could get with the wagon and the now exhausted horses, they set about the strenuous task of digging a grave deep enough to hide the coffin.

All three Sitturds pitched in. The heavy rain that had softened the earth made the back-aching work somewhat easier, but not much. It was a good hour of team excavation before an acceptable depth was achieved. At some point, they each recalled poor old Tip back in Ohio-and the Time Ark. Rapture’s heart wandered further back in time to the stillborn body of Lodema, while Lloyd thought of his cove of wind charms and the slave cemetery across the river from St. Louis, where Schelling had taken him to meet Mother Tongue. Hephaestus remembered vague flashes of his drunken sprees in the shantylands, and how he had once passed out in a graveyard, and very well might have remained if not for the grace of chance and the love of his family. It struck them all that every camp is made amid graves. It is just unknown who lies buried.

It was with this welter of woe and anxiety that they at last completed their morbid mission. The horses were refreshed from the respite-slightly. To be able to push on past sunrise seemed hard. That would leave them still too close to Independence for comfort. Not being able to talk above a whisper and share concerns made the anxiety grow. A damp mist was beginning to rise, which was unsettling to see and unpleasant to feel, and the shambling gait of the horses seemed to herald some imminent breakdown, when around a stand of broken trees and heavy bracken they heard a sound that brought their hearts up into their mouths. It was not an animal sound, like a wild pig or a coyote. It was not a human sound, but it made the duck gun they were carrying seem as useful as a feather duster.

“E’ Gawd love!” Rapture exclaimed, too loud for the male Sitturds’ liking, for out of the patchy mist the beast noise rose as if in response. It was followed by the yelp of a dog-the mutt that had tagged along with them must have slunk out ahead of them, as dogs liked to do, Lloyd reasoned. Now the poor wayfarer had flushed some savage creature out of the underbrush and was about to become a meal. Or was something lying in wait for them?

All their mutual fears forced them to freeze. The moon swam out from behind what was left of the clouds, and the sky above the low road fog sharpened into cold clarity-the intensification of the light revealing the silhouette of something like a man, and something a little too much like a bear for their liking. The thing seemed to recognize its greater visibility and made a gesture that demonstrated a fierce desire both for confrontation and for greater camouflage.

Both inclinations were thwarted in a strangely comic fashion when the creature rushed forward, to be dragged back and to fall with a thump, as if it had run to the end of a length of chain. The next thing, which to Lloyd’s and Rapture’s minds at least, was the most unexpected of all was that a familiar voice rose out of the darkness. “Hey there, Senator,” it said. “Don’t fret now. I knew they were comin’ for the last half hour.”

It was Fast Fanny Ockleman, the gunwoman they had met on the main street earlier in town. The unmistakable ramrod shadow strode up out of the gloom about ten paces away from where the creature had appeared, and which now had returned to an upright but crouched position, making a low, threatening sound that was somewhere between an ursine growl and some kind of protective chant.

In the moonlight, Lloyd could see that she had one of her newfangled guns drawn, but she approached with no hint of alarm and seemed to step through the thigh-high mist to meet them with the grace of an Indian, just as casually as she had greeted the outnumbered situation with Joshua Breed and his hooligans. I wonder if anything scares her, Lloyd thought, before turning his mind to what she was doing out in the wild, awake and alert, at such a time of night.

“You folks’ll have to be right quieter if you expect to get where you’re goin’, and travelin’ at this hour is for those who have to or know how. I take it you have to.”

“Who… is that?” Hephaestus gasped, almost dropping the reins.

The weary horses had snapped awake at the first hint of the creature’s presence. Perhaps if there had been a breeze they would have known about the brute long before. In any case, they were nervous and distraught now.

“Tid be now a long tale tru,” Rapture muttered, not wanting even to think about the incident back in town.

“I am the best shadow you’ll meet in these parts tonight,” Fast Fanny replied. Nearby, Lloyd thought that he could make out a group of shelters tucked away, hidden by both branch and mist.

“We weren’t wanting to meet any shadows a’tall,” the elder Sitturd replied.

“Best not to venture by moonshine then,” the woman answered.

“What’s that… animal?” Lloyd called, unable to help himself.

“Hush there, boy,” Fanny returned. “Other folks are trying to sleep, and you don’t want to be stirring up Senator again. I’ll be to sunup getting him peaceful and he’ll be a sack of possums all day on the trail. Now follow me, with a lid on your questions. I can give you a place to bunk for a bit, and come a brighter hour you can make a better plan than the one you got.”

“You know this woman?” Hephaestus demanded.

“Aye that,” Rapture assented, not wanting to say more.

“And you trust… her?”

“Yes,” Lloyd answered decisively, still curious about the tethered creature, which was quite obviously of the same mind regarding them.

Hephaestus took stock. They had just fled civilization, well before their preparations were complete, to embark on the most difficult leg of their entire journey, having witnessed some kind of nightmare magic that had beset their hosts, then buried the evidence of the atrocity in an unmarked grave on the edge of what was to them real wilderness, with the possible charge of murder hanging over their heads, and maybe even more serious trouble awaiting them if anything like what his son had hinted about was true. In this mix of moonlight and mist, the idea of following a total stranger-a woman who looked like a man and who wielded a kind of gun that he had never seen before, and had some kind of monster animal, no less-seemed if not reasonable to him, then at least possible and maybe even advisable.

Fanny led them around the stand of trees to two wagons, one of them large and of odd design, and several improvised structures, which Lloyd recognized as Indian-style tepees made of animal hides supported by wooden frames. The rest of the camp, whoever they were, seemed to be asleep, except for a short, stocky man who had been leaning against a wagon wheel with a large cudgel on his knees. He got to his feet when Fanny gave a tight whistle.

“Who’s this now?” he whispered.

“At first light,” Fanny replied, as if to say no more would be said until then.

She ushered the Ohioans into a squat tepee pitched in the lee of the larger wagon and ducked her head in when the family had straggled through the slit.

“I’ll unhitch your horses and give them some feed. We don’t have much for our own, let alone yourn. But they’ll get some rest. We rise early and we’ll be on the trudge earlier than usual. I reckon you should do the same. But take a load off now. Whatever called you out on the move at such an hour won’t have an easy time making worry for you for a few hours at least. Now, no questions till birdsong. Get as much shut-eye as you can.”

Suddenly, the hardened woman was gone, and the Sitturds were left in deeper bewonderment than ever, but more than a little grateful not to have been attacked by the beast or waylaid by dark men with even darker designs. All three were bone-fagged and brain-sore, and still coming to terms with the crazed events of the day. Lloyd felt particularly bleary, since he had not slept more than an hour the previous night owing to his encounter with the Quists and the Bushrod Rangers.

Something in the performance with the Eye had drained him, he felt, and perhaps had also energized him in some new way, which he considered might account for the spell that had overcome him when caning Josh Breed. He had no explanation for the women in white. Then the shock of finding the Clutters, and all the questions their grisly situation called forth! It was all such a jumble, and yet he sensed that just to the edge of his mind’s sight was an explanation that brought it all together. The hint of it toyed with him for a while, as he lay clutching his bag of precious items on the hard bedroll in the skin-smelling tepee that kept the night damp at bay.

For a few moments he listened to his parents’ emphatic whispering, trying to clear his head-trying to feel the protective presence of Lodema and to imagine where his beloved Hattie was, hoping she was out of danger and knowing that almost certainly she was not. It was in this anxious, exhausted, wondering state that a dream began to enfold him.

He had the idea that he was hunting for Hattie, trapped inside a giant music box. The inside of the box was like an empty theater he had peered into in St. Louis. Hattie was hidden somewhere within, but he could not find her; she was being held prisoner by a man like Junius Rutherford with mechanical crab-claw hands. Then into the darkness of the empty seats there came a weird wind that brought with it a cloud of what looked like fireflies, luminous tiny insects that were so beautiful to behold that he wanted to reach out and touch them. But when he did they burned his hand like cinders. He swatted at them, trying to escape, and when he readjusted his eyes he saw that on every empty chair there now burned a sleek candle with even flames rising from them like the voting hands of some dire and unanimous congress. A door opened, and he saw a figure he took to be Hattie dragged from the theater and out into the light. He raced after them, feeling the scorching flecks of the insects against his face, hearing the hissing of the candles, like a religious chant.

He knew that he was still inside the music box, but it was much larger than he had first thought. The door of the theater opened into the street of a town, a ghost town lit by unknown means, like the lights he had seen in Mother Tongue’s grotto. Dead people were walking about as if in a trance. Skeletons and mechanical men and women, like a vast fair of haunted machines. There were folk dressed in historic costumes and all manner of fantastic creatures from out of fairy tales, while women in hoopskirts with the same porcelain mask for faces paraded past in silence.

In the dark of the windows he ran by, he glimpsed things like torture chambers-people getting their limbs removed, human bodies with the heads of other animals, pits full of reptiles with the faces of children. On and on he ran, trying to catch the man who had Hattie-or was it his sister?

Gradually, the light began to change, and he saw that the music box that he thought was a theater and then a town was like another kind of theater yet again. There were living people watching, pointing, ogling the sights-as if the entire maze he was lost in was but one huge medicine show. The people were in costumes of a type he had never seen before. Bright artificial colors, ridiculous shoes. Many of the women were baring obscene amounts of flesh, and everyone seemed obese. The more frantically he explored, the more disgusted he became, for he came to see and smell the overpowering aromas and quantities of the nauseous, tempting food they were devouring. Gorging like maniacs.

In the labyrinth of the automata ghost town, there were islands and lagoons where machine men dressed as pirates fought with swords and fired cannons. Somnolent blank princesses sang to birds and squirrels, whose mouths opened on hinges in perfect time. He saw riverboats like the kind he had ridden on, filled with talking dolls. All the living people were laughing at these distractions, stuffing food into their mouths as if they had never eaten before. The horror of it almost made him forget why he was there, what he was chasing-for in some unspoken way he understood that it was the mechanical creatures and the fantasies unfolding all around that were driving the living people mad with gluttony. Everywhere he turned, there were more frightening visions.

The giant music-box theater, which had turned out to be inside a town, which was really a bigger theater, revealed itself to be a city, swirling and swarming with bloated people in insane colors with masks like clock faces. Hunkered in doorways, like beggars, were rodent forms and filthy derelicts with the tails of lizards. There were trains that whisked by as if they ran on light, and carriages without horses or oxen that looked like eggs or beetles. In the sky overhead were flying machines like those he had envisaged, but inside them were just more people eating and drinking. The women wore next to nothing, and yet street-corner preachers set fire to random passersby. Bodies and baubles hung from the street lanterns-a murder and a sale of some kind were transacted on every corner. And, all the time, Lloyd told himself, “The oddest thing of all is that I know I am still inside the music box.”

Still, knowing this did not help him find Hattie. Then he peered out beyond the festering false-face emporia and saw something that held his eye. It was, in fact, something like the Eye. Only in the shape of an enormous building, like a cathedral. Limestone and metallic green, it towered in the distance. Until he saw that it was not a citadel of some kind, nor was it human-made. It trembled rhythmically, like some deep music. It was laced with lightning and rainbows as dark as the skin of the fish he remembered catching in the Licking River back in his other life. Hovering on the horizon like an omen and a promise, he saw in its inverted pyramid shape the complexity of the Ambassadors’ master symbol. It was a tornado-heaped and spiraling chaos that somehow retained its form. And at the base, in the gorgeous crisis that anchored it to the earth, was a door-and in the doorway was a girl. Then the shadow of a jeweled claw reached out to him. He turned to run and headed for one of the riverboats, for they were most familiar to him. He chose the one that seemed most authentic-and to his astonishment he found himself confronted by his old comrade, St. Ives. The gambler appeared lost in reverie, smoking a cigar and staring down at the water.

CHAPTER 9. A Bend in Another River

EVERYTHING WAS JUST AS BEFORE-THE NIGHT ST. IVES TOLD HIM the story about the hand. “You wonder about it, don’t you, boy?” St. Ives asked, and tapped an ash. “How I came by the hand-and how I came to lose my own.”

“Y-yes,” Lloyd found himself saying. “There’s no hiding there’s a story behind it.” Yet there was something different about this scene. Indefinably different. Was the boat moving?

“Well put, lad.” The gambler nodded. “And well spoken. Like a gentleman. But I fear if I tell you the truth you will think me mad. Still, you have been an excellent partner. I believe you deserve my trust and may reward me with your discretion.” St. Ives lowered his voice and glanced around to see if any other passengers or crew were within earshot. He had not been wearing a hat the night before, but now he was-and a very stylish hat, too.

“A little over ten years ago I used to be the secretary to a very rich man in the East. He valued my memory and my head for calculations. That may be hard for you to imagine, given your skills, but I took the bait. Phronesis Larkshead, or so he called himself then. But that was not his real name, I am sure. Owner of the Enigma Formulary and Gun Works in Delaware. An inventor, a wire-puller. A formidable figure.

“He had the tinge of some sort of acid burn on his face and wore a flat-brimmed hat pulled down low, with a veil, which he claimed offered protection from all his ‘substances.’ He always kept his skin covered as much as possible in a dark suit without buttons. I used to fancy that his body was riddled with unnatural signs and scars. My initial belief was that one of his experiments had backfired on him. He was forever fiddling with new combinations of chemicals-schemes for weaponry. And other things. Weirder things. He was far, far ahead of his time, was Mr. Larkshead. He had designed and built a mechanical manservant. A sort of butler named Zadoc. What it was powered by I do not know, he would not reveal it-but it was not steam. The device had an almost blank, bland face, but I suspected he had other faces baking. How the thing could see or navigate I have no idea. This was the first of many things I wish I had not discovered, but my fascination got the better of me. His estate was like nothing you can imagine. He called it the Villa of the Enigmas.”

“Go on…” Lloyd said, feeling the hairs on his neck rise. This was like what had happened before-but not the same. Not the same.

“Well… I know this will sound like utter flapdoodle, but he had a colony of live ants from the jungles of South America in a great glass nest. I could not guess why or how he came by them, but I know that he spent a good deal of money keeping them alive in the northern climate… and that, as outrageous as it sounds, he had some notion of communicating with them. I could see that he was at work on a grand scheme. There was a whole wing of the estate I was never allowed to enter-and, frankly, I had no wish to, given what was in evidence around me.”

“How did you really come to work for someone such as that?” Lloyd asked. “Such a person would need no hired head for figures.” He had not thought to say that before. But it struck him now. “Indeed,” the gambler smirked. “I wanted to think then that it was because of my abilities. Now I know I was a fool. I believe I was one of his test subjects, without knowing it.”

“Test subjects?” the boy queried.

“Aye. I believe I was lured to the estate with the offer of employment, but I think I was given drugs-some kind of powerful narcotic that did not disrupt all perception but yet was responsible for visions. I cannot explain the things I saw elsewise. I witnessed a meeting. Whatever they were, or are, I suspect it is the real force behind his company and his wealth-behind a great deal of other things, too. Things we would do well not to know about.”

“That sounds like something far better to know about than not,” Lloyd replied.

“Just the kind of young-headed notion that got me into the mess,” St. Ives lamented. “What I saw was a group… of people, if you like. Who all looked like him. I can’t explain it. There were twelve of them in total! Yet they did not seem like individuals. They seemed as one. They had a kind of diagram they conjured out of the air-a mosaic-like puzzle-and they were engaged in some type of ceremony or strategy-planning session. I swear I have never told anyone else this!”

“Where were you hiding while you were watching?” Lloyd wanted to know.

“Well, this may be the most miraculous part!” the gambler whispered. “I saw the whole thing through a bewitched glass cube I found in the library. I had seen the cube before, but it had always been clear and empty. I had assumed it was just some type of mirror made into an art object. There were so many peculiar artifacts about the place, I gave it no special thought, until that day when it came alive. As the scene unfolded, I could not but conclude that Larkshead and the others were assembled in the forbidden wing of the mansion and that I was somehow eavesdropping on them. The images could not have been inside the cube. It was some kind of window.”

“An interesting deduction,” Lloyd said, his mind churning like the river, which was flowing now. “What did you witness?”

“Oh, my young friend… I hesitate to tell you. They took off their hats and veils. They were not men-or women, either. They were… I know not what. Creatures. Ghosts. Their apparent bodies were but masks, camouflage. Their true forms were hideous and impalpable. As absurd as they appeared, there was a malevolence about them… as if their forms were punishment. I felt that malignance radiated through the cube. Their resentment, their envy. Their relentless hunger for other shapes. But I felt that they were still somehow human. Not demons, not inhabitants from some distant star. They were-”

“Shadows of the mind… from out of time,” Lloyd said, as a nightjar sounded in the distance. “Please tell me all that happened next-and I must know everything that happened.”

The gambler dropped his smoldering cigar into the river but had regained his composure when he stared at the boy again in the pale light.

“I grew… so hypnotized by what I was observing… I did not hear that repugnant Zadoc sneak up behind me. The machine subdued me with some kind of sedative delivered by a needle… and I was brought before that unholy tribunal… awake but unable to resist or escape. Oh, Lord…”

“As painful as it is to recall,” Lloyd said, squeezing the mechanical hand, “you must tell me everything that transpired. Please.”

“They reinstated their body cloaking,” the gambler answered, staring down at his boots. “I could not stand to look at them without it, and they seemed to understand this. I could not understand their words, but I gathered that my witnessing their congregation had not been intended. It was some mistake. The cube was fetched. Zadoc was disabled. Things beyond my reckoning were transpiring in that secluded wing of the mansion.”

“Be as precise as you can,” the boy pleaded.

“I could not look upon their mosaic puzzle and see it clear and whole, but it was certain they could. It wavered and vibrated like something that was alive. It was like a cyclone… a labyrinth.”

“What happened then? What were you allowed to see-and why?” Lloyd asked with growing impatience.

“What I saw was like some jumble of alchemist’s dens, a brewery and an insane asylum. I do not know how to put the rest… machines I have never known. I have the frightening idea-”

“You think they were making people-or what resembled people,” the boy filled in. “You believe you saw a man, with multiples of himself, who was not a man but not female, either, for those gathered were revolting jelly-like forms that you nonetheless regard as human, who were nurturing the growth of some kind of tissue as both a means of concealing themselves to normal eyes and cultivating others-beings who would be taken for people if you passed them in the street but that were not people the way we like to think of them.”

“Exactly!” St. Ives exclaimed, catching himself. “This is the strangest thing of all! That you should know! How is it possible? Have you-”

“No,” Lloyd answered. “We have seen some of the same magic-lantern pictures. But it was no magic-lantern image that took your hand.”

At this the gambler broke down weeping, although he made an effort to stifle himself. “Too right, my young friend! I was experimented on like a dumb animal! I was made to… to… oh!”

“Tell me,” Lloyd commanded.

“I… was introduced to a… woman… an auburn-haired beauty with eyes like sapphires. She was lovely. They wanted me to… to mate with her. They wanted to watch. It was so unthinkable! Because I knew-that they had made her. Why I was chosen I have no idea.”

“That may be the most hopeful thing so far,” Lloyd remarked.

“Hopeful! Of what?” the gambler moaned.

“Their technology of survival lags behind their technology of manipulation,” the boy replied, gazing out over the flattening water. “If they have to employ animal methods of reproduction, and yet can project images by stealth over distances, that shows they have vulnerabilities. Somehow they need to maintain form, human flesh. It’s not sufficient to their purposes to influence and direct-they need to manufacture new vehicles, and any manufacturing process is a continual one. They have not perfected theirs. As monstrous as they may seem to you, they are engineers-and that is something I understand. They still have problems to solve, whatever their religion. That is the hope.”

“You scare me, Lloyd. Not like they do-but still… the student has become the teacher,” the gambler gasped.

“We teach each other,” the boy responded. “And some fears are good if they lead to the truth. Now finish your story.”

“I was allowed to enjoy the beauty… and then… they seized me,” the gambler said, wincing. “Their forms were flesh and blood enough for that. I felt them searching my mind. They wanted to know what they looked like to me in their other guise. Then they performed surgeries, Lloyd… they took my hand… and gave me this artificial claw.”

“How did you escape?” the boy asked.

“The most unthinkable part of the whole story!” St. Ives coughed. “Zadoc, the mechanical thing, reactivated. He-it-released me while they were in another chamber one afternoon… perhaps vivisecting some other poor victim, like a rabbit. I was torn. I was bandaged. But I fled, as fast and as far as I could in that state. I owe my life to the mercy of a machine!”

“Machines that have mercy are hard to think of as machines,” Lloyd replied. “The question is, did you escape or were you allowed to escape?”

“I have wondered that myself ever since,” St. Ives rasped, still blinking. “But… are you not horrified by all that I have told you?”

“I see hope in what you have said-as well as horror,” Lloyd replied. “It may be that what happened to you had been planned. Still, it somehow sounds that it did not go quite according to their plan. If things can go against their desires in the heart of their control, that reassures me. And I think it a very encouraging sign that they are worried about physical survival.”

“You, young sir”-the gambler shrugged, and then could not control a crest of emotion-“are the son I’ve never had. Always raising the ante. And then some.”

“You taught me what an ante was,” Lloyd replied.

“Friends always?” St. Ives said, offering up his mechanical hand once more.

“Partners,” Lloyd answered, squeezing down on the metal digits. “This is the biggest mystery of all. Why do you think they gave it to you?”

“Who can say?” the gambler grumbled, a storm of anger and grief filling his eyes. “I would not rule out pure cruelty as their motive. I sensed it in them. Some conspiracy of hatred. A mania. What does your intuition say?”

Lloyd frowned and then stared out across the river to a stand of cottonwoods. “I feel that they are one… a different kind of creature than we are familiar with. Of one mind. I sense this being or beast is some holdover from long ago… and I feel some shadowy sympathy with all that you have related, which raises the question whether I am in fact who I believe myself to be-or as young as I appear.”

“But you are just a child! A boy!”

“Am I? I know how many syllables you have spoken in the last minute. Give me the materials and a bit of time, and I could make this hand. But that is not all. Do you see the dog I am thinking of? Boomer. That was my old dog, buried back in Zanesville. Smell his ragged blanket.”

“Oh…” The gambler shivered, seeing in his mind… smelling… “How did you do that?”

“I cannot say,” Lloyd answered. “It has something to do with the rapport we have. This is one of the reasons we have done so well at the tables. Seeing the others’ cards through my eyes. It is a species of communication like unto the cube you discovered, but the mechanisms that underlie it are obscure to me. I’m now thinking of a number between one and one thousand. What is it?”

“What?” the gambler squawked caught off guard. “Uh, seventy-three.”

“Correct,” Lloyd replied. “The odds are very long against you getting that right. I suspect you may have hidden talents, Mr. St. Ives, which is why we work so well. That may have something to do with why you were chosen. And it may provide some hint as to their larger purpose. You said you could not see the gathering’s mosaic diagram whole and clear, yet they or it can. Perhaps the adversary is working to a plan we cannot perceive… and we are a part of that plan. The hunger for human form may be part of the struggle to endure so as to fulfill that plan. What I find puzzling is that your hand is a baser technology than what you described in the female you were offered. If they can cultivate a fully fleshed human, real enough for you to find attractive, why bother with these metal joints and hinges?”

“Well, the hand is useful.” The gambler shrugged. “For years I hid it in a glove and loathed it. Resented the sensation of being able to direct it. I have no idea how I am able to make it work. It is a part of me, though.”

“To graft nerves onto raw metal is no small feat,” the boy agreed. “But this may be another hopeful sign-that they have had to become more mechanically ingenious because of some other lack. In any case, you have not finished your story. I can see that the oppression did not leave you when you fled.”

Rage gripped the gambler’s face. “Too true,” he said, sighing. “I went to Boston and into hiding. Two weeks later, I read that an enormous conflagration had swept through the estate. Whether it was an accident or a strategic retreat I cannot say. And what would provoke the need for retreat? It seems like an extravagant price to pay to withdraw, but who knows what resources such an organization or entity has at its disposal?

“Not long after, I learned that the Enigma Formulary and Gun Works had been acquired by a European consortium based in London calling itself the Behemoth Innovation Company. They have empty offices in several American cities, but there is no information about any of their directors. I poked and sniffed around a bit-made inquiries and checked records-but there were so many bank ledgers and writs and decrees, deeds and lawyer’s gobbledygook, there was no way to find the end of the knot. I withdrew and took up banal bookkeeping for the most colorless mercantiler I could find in Boston, where no one knew me, and I kept the hand concealed as much as I could. In time I came out of hiding enough to migrate West, using what wits I still had left to pursue the trade you found me in. I came to make peace with the hand, though it is an abomination and a constant reminder of the brutality. But it has often saved me from harm, as you have seen, and so it may be an unexpected and unintentional gift.”

“Up to now,” Lloyd answered. “Get as far away as fast as you can. Somehow I sense I am a lightning rod for these people, this other creature-whatever.”

“Say it is not so, Lloyd, please!”

“You may have gotten lucky before, although I understand you may not think so. But your luck may run out at the next encounter. Go far.”

“What about you?” the gambler garbled, the hand opening and retracting.

“I am destined for some confrontation of my own. Sooner rather than later, I believe. If you are my friend, you will take my advice and keep the hand hidden.”

“I know not what to say,” the gambler replied after a moment’s pause. “You have shed light brighter than any moon or candle. And you have cast shadows darker and more supple than I have imagined. What should we do if this… thing… is among us?”

“There is no ‘if,’ ” Lloyd answered. “You told me at the start there was a time to cut and run. That time has found you. It’s possible that there are many people throughout the world who have stories similar to yours. Our insane asylums, prisons, and military hospitals may be full of them. But there are chinks… like the need to find human form. And they, or it, have some mission of destiny-a master stratagem. That is a strength and weakness, too. Great plans usually fail. On that we can perhaps hang our hats in hope.”

“Here’s to that then,” said the gambler, and tossed his fine brim into the river. “Good night, my friend, however old you are. Tomorrow we will play our last hand, and this hand will be kept under wraps. Perhaps when I reach my new destination I will find someone with the skill and discretion to remove it, as was my first inclination years ago. Sleep well, and may the dreams that find you be your own.”

The gambler headed for his stateroom. Lloyd remained on deck, watching the hat floating away in the moonlight. He had forgotten all about the music boxes-he was taken by the vividness of the hat bobbing along on top of the water. It was the vividness of the hat in the river that finally caused him to wake.

I waited for a moment to summon him outside the tepee-into the light of the deeper horror. He felt my call, even groggy and disjointed as he was. At first he imagined it was the creature somehow escaped from its chain and prowling about the camp, sniffing out the new arrivals.

As remarkable as he may have found that specimen, I knew that he would be more surprised to see me. Vague intuitions had flashed like ripples of star-strewn river through his dreams, but this would be absolutely different and decisive. It could cause untold rents in the spiral schema, but I had no choice. He was a long silent moment longer gathering the concentration and the courage commensurate with his curiosity. Then he appeared-and the image was almost as shocking to me.

To discover yourself standing in the moonlight in waiting is not an easy thing. His jaw cracked, and my green eyes shone back at me.

“What are they? Who-?”

“I think you know too well,” I said as simply as I could. “You are not who you think you are. Or where-or when, either.”

“But!”

“Shh,” I said. “I cannot help the intrusion. And I cannot remain master of the spiral if you resist.”

“I’m still dreaming!” he gasped, for what other explanation could there be? Except for-

“You are in a different kind of wilderness than you imagine,” I said. “And now I must take your place, because I need a deeper hiding place, and to lay a snare.”

“Who?” he hissed, and I could tell that the trauma was already accommodating itself to some terrible new acceptance of the larger hellequinade.

“The Vardogers? The Spirosians?”

I let him gather his wits. Or try to.

“You must go through the door,” I said.

“What door?” he demanded. Just as I would.

“One I have made,” I answered. “The bridges I will have to build now from inside. You will find it right behind me. And you will understand.”

“Are… are you a ghost?” he queried, trying to make sense of what was beyond his grasp.

“I would not put it so.”

“Am… am I… a ghost?”

“Say, rather, a hope. A strategy. A necessity. A casualty of war.”

“But you can’t be real!”

“Real enough.”

“But then what am I?”

Who does not seek the answer to that question?

“A desperate measure in a desperate contest. No more can I say that you could fathom.”

“What if I refuse?”

“You will not. The truth has come for you, and as difficult as it is to accept, you recognize it, as you do me.”

“You’re some kind of will-o’-the-wisp!”

I flung one of the stones I had picked up instinctively.

“Ow!” he whined. “Damn thing hit me.”

“I have more,” I said. “Everything is some kind of will-o’-the-wisp.”

“You’re a Vardoger trick! I’ve been trapped!”

“No, it is I who am in the trap. But they will not anticipate me hiding in the trap.”

He rubbed his eyes, trying to make me go away. An illusion of moonlight, a specter of the mind, a lucid dream. If only the technology were so simple. If only I understood fully how to use it.

At last a hint of a tear escaped from the brilliant green eyes, which was more than a little moving and disconcerting for me to witness.

“Am I going to die?” he asked.

“If life and dreaming are not what you have taken them to be, then how can death be, either?” I replied. “Think what Hattie would do.”

“What will become of her?” he asked. And I saw for myself how much he had grown.

“I can say no more about that than you can, now that I am here. I inherit all your uncertainties-save one.”

“Is this because of the slave, and the Ambassadors-a punishment?”

“I take responsibility for Mule Christian,” I said. “You are released. As to those you call the Ambassadors, they are more an enigma to me than to you. I take responsibility for what happened to them, too, although I suspect I have even less to say about them and their fate than you did in the kite. But now you must face another trial. Remember your teachers-the gambler and the runaway girl. Honor them, even as you doubt me.”

Then he did just as I would have done. He rebelled, with all the force of the meaning I had conceived. For that is the wondrous and diabolical nature of the technology. The coming to life. The independence of tactics and vision.

He charged at me, thinking to wrestle me into the oblivion from which he believed I had emerged to supplant him, not seeing that it was more a change of rider. He had no idea that I was the door of which I spoke-and the instant that he touched me he stepped through, fluorescing in a puzzle of hierograms, like fireflies and lost symbols swept into the cyclone.

I crept into the tepee as the last of the luminous hierograms spiraled into vanishing. I was as sorry to see him fade as he was to have seen the twins blown over the river-and not to have said goodbye to Hattie. Folks like us.

And now the trial was upon me.

The scent of the interior was a moment in hitting-and when it did it hit hard. Astounding. The depth and the texture.

I straggled into the bedding where the talismanic objects lay secret in their bag. Hephaestus turned from his rumpled sack of sleep and mumbled, then wiped his face and stared straight at me without the slightest hint of the unfamiliar. It was an eye-opening sensation, to say the least.

“You all right, son? You scared?”

Talk about the child being father to the man.

“Indeed I am, Farruh,” I said. And indeed I was.

Out in the moon-mad dark of this Enigmerica, I heard the cry of things I knew so well-and the call of things more obscure to me than to all others. My own unknown. So many “squeschuns,” as they say in Gullah.

The next day would bring more lightning… and thunder. The primordial answer to the lightning’s question-the original enigma that set the cyclone swirling. I lay down and closed my eyes, trying to master, for at least a few moments of illusory peace, the alien mechanics of this new sleep.

Rapture rolled over in her blanket. “De preechuh put on ’e shroud whin we beeried Boomer,” she said, sighing.

“It’s all right, Murruh,” I said. “It was just a dream.” The last time I would ever say those words.

Boomer.

Poor old Tip. You see the need to be ever mindful? To be mindful of the details? Sometimes it is wise to count the trees before they become a forest. Because if you see a tree clearly enough, others will see it, too. Stampedes start one hoof in the mind at a time. But learn to see the thunder… then you can call the lightning down.

Powerful though they were, they had taken the bait. As wasps are drawn to raw meat they had come, and would come closer still. That is the one true trick there will ever really be in time. Change the boundaries. Everything genuinely dangerous is afraid of itself, and so cannot resist a mirror.