The Great And Secret Show Part 3

It had got up in the last few minutes, coming straight off the ocean. When Fletcher followed Raul round to the front of the Mission, in the lee of which they'd built the Nuncio's pyres, he found the notes being scattered, many of them far from consumed.

"d.a.m.n you," Fletcher said, as much irritated by his own lack of attention to the task as the boy's. "I told you: don't put too much paper on at the same time."

He took hold of Raul's arm, which was covered in silky hair, as was his entire body. There was a distinct smell of singeing, where the flames had risen suddenly and caught the boy by surprise. It took, he knew, considerable courage on Raul's part to overcome his primal fear of fire. He was doing it for his father's sake. He'd have done it for no other. Contrite, Fletcher put his arm around Raul's shoulder. The boy dung, the way he'd clung in his previous incarnation, burying his face in the smell of the human.

"We'd better just let them go," Fletcher said, watching as another gust of wind took leaves off the fire and scattered them like pages from a calendar, day after day of pain and inspiration. Even if one or two of them were to be found, and that was unlikely along such a barren stretch of coast, n.o.body should be able to make any sense of them. It was only his ob-sessiveness that made him want to wipe the slate completely clean, and shouldn't he know better, when that very obses-siveness had been one of the qualities that had brought this and tragedy about?

The boy detached himself from around Fletcher and turned back to the fires.

"No Raul..." he said, "...forget them...let them go..."

The boy chose not to hear; a trick he'd always had, even before the changes the Nuncio's touch had brought about. How many times had Fletcher summoned the ape Raul had been only to have the wretched animal willfully ignore him? It was in no small measure that very perversity which had encouraged Fletcher to test the Great Work on him: a whisper of the human in the simian which the Nuncio turned into a shout.

Raul wasn't making an attempt to collect the dispersed papers, however. His small, wide body was tensed, his head tilted up. He was sniffing the air.

"What is it?" Fletcher said. "You can smell somebody?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Coming up the hill."

Fletcher knew better than to question Raul's observation. The fact that he, Fletcher, could hear and smell nothing was simply a testament to the decadence of his senses. Nor did he need to ask from which direction their visitor was coming. There was only one route up to the Mission. Forging a single road through such inhospitable terrain, then up a steep hill, must have taxed even the masochism of Jesuits. They'd built one road, and the Mission, and then, perhaps failing to find G.o.d up here, vacated the place. If their ghosts ever drifted through, they'd find a deity now, Fletcher thought, in three vials of blue fluid. So would the man coming up the hill. It could only be Jaffe. n.o.body else knew of their presence here.

"d.a.m.n him," Fletcher said. "Why now? Why now?"

It was a foolish question. Jaffe had chosen to come now because he knew his Great Work was being conspired against. He had a way of maintaining a presence in a place where he wasn't; a spying echo of himself. Fletcher didn't know how. One of Jaffe's suits, no doubt. The kind of minor mind-tricks Fletcher would have dismissed as trickery once, as he would have dismissed so much else. It would take Jaffe several more minutes to get all the way up the hill, but that wasn't enough time, by any means, for Fletcher and the boy to finish their labors.

There were two tasks only he might yet complete if he was efficient. Both were vital. First, the killing and disposal of Raul, from whose transformed system an educated enquirer might glean the nature of the Nuncio. Second, the destruction of the three vials inside the Mission.

It was there he returned now, through the chaos he had gladly wreaked on the place. Raul followed, walking barefoot through the smashed instrumentation and splintered furniture, to the inner sanctum. This was the only room that had not been invaded by the clutter of the Great Work. A plain cell that boasted only a desk, a chair, and an antiquated stereo. The chair was set in front of the window which overlooked the ocean. Here, in the first days following Raul's successful trans.m.u.tation, before the full realization of the Nuncio's purpose and consequence had soiled Fletcher's triumph, man ind boy had sat, and watched the sky, and listened to Mozart together. All the mysteries, Fletcher had said, in one of his first lessons, were footnotes to music. Before everything, music.

Now there'd be no more sublime Mozart; no more sky-watching; no more loving education. There was only time for a shot. Fletcher took the gun from beside his mescaline in the desk drawer.

"We're going to die?" Raul said.

He'd known this was coming. But not so soon.

"Yes."

"We should go outside," the boy said. "To the edge."

"No. There isn't time. I've...I've got some work to do before I join you."

"But you said together."

"I know."

"You promised together."

"Jesus, Raul! I said: I know! But it can't be helped. He's coming. And if he takes you from me, alive or dead, he'll use you. He'll cut you up. Find out how the Nuncio works in you."

His words were intended to scare, and they succeeded. Had let out a sob, his face knotted up with terror. He took a step backwards as Fletcher raised the gun.

"I'll be with you soon," Fletcher said. "I swear it. Just as soon as I can."

"Please, father..."

"I'm not your father! Once and for all, I'm n.o.body's father!"

His outburst broke any hold he had on Raul. Before Fletcher could take a bead on him the boy was away through the door. He still fired wildly, the bullet striking the wall, then he gave chase, firing a second time. But the boy had simian agility in him. He was across the laboratory and out into the sunlight before a third shot could be fired. Out, and away.

Fletcher threw the gun aside. It was a waste of what little time remained to follow Raul. Better to use those minutes to dispose of the Nuncio. There was precious little of the stuff, but enough to wreak evolutionary havoc in any system that it tainted. He'd plotted against it for days and nights now, working out the safest way to be rid of it. He knew it couldn't simply be poured away. What might it do if it got into the earth? His best hope, he'd decided-indeed his only hope-was to throw it into the Pacific. There was a pleasing neatness about that. The long climb to his species' present rung had begun in the ocean, and it was there-in the myriad configurations of certain marine animals-that he'd first observed the urge things had to become something other than themselves. Clues to which the three vials of Nuncio were the solution. Now he'd give that answer back to the element that had inspired it. The Nuncio would literally become drops in the ocean, its powers so diluted as to be negligible.

He crossed to the bench where the vials still stood in their rack. G.o.d in three bottles, milky blue, like a della Francesca sky. There was movement in the distillation, as though it was stirring up its own internal tides. And if it knew he was approaching, did it also know his intention? He had so little idea of what he'd created. Perhaps it could read his mind.

He stopped in his tracks, still too much the man of science not to be fascinated by this phenomenon. He'd known the liquor was powerful, but that it possessed the talent for self-fermentation it was now displaying-even a primitive propulsion, it seemed; it was climbing the walls of the vials- astonished him. His conviction faltered. Did he really have the right to put this miracle out of the world's sight? Was its appet.i.te really so unhealthy? All it wanted to do was speed the ascent of things. Make fur of scales. Make flesh of fur. Make spirit, perhaps, of flesh. A pretty thought.

Then he remembered Randolph Jaffe, of Omaha, Nebraska, sometime butcher and opener of Dead Letters; collector of other people's secrets. Would such a man use the Nuncio well? In the hands of someone sweet-natured and loving, the Great Work might begin a universal papacy, every living being in touch with the meaning of its Creation. But Jaffe wasn't loving, nor sweet-natured. He was a thief of revelations, a magician who didn't care to understand the principles of his craft, only to rise by it.

Given that fact the question was not did he have the right to dispose of the miracle, but rather, how dare he hesitate?

He stepped towards the vials, charged with fresh conviction. The Nuncio knew he meant it harm. It responded with a frenzy of activity, climbing the gla.s.s walls as best it could, churning against its confines.

As Fletcher reached out to s.n.a.t.c.h the rack up, he realized its true intention. It didn't simply desire escape. It wanted to work its wonders on the very flesh that was plotting its harm.

It wanted to recreate its Creator.

The realization came too late to be acted upon. Before he could withdraw his outstretched hand, or s.h.i.+eld himself, one of the vials shattered. Fletcher felt the gla.s.s cut his palm, and the Nuncio splash against him. He staggered away from it, raising his hand in front of his face. There-were several cuts there, but one particularly large, in the middle of his palm, for all the world as though someone had driven a nail through it. The pain made him giddy, but it lasted only a moment, giddiness and pain. Coming after was another sensation entirely. Not even sensation. That was too trivial a description. It was like mainlining on Mozart; a music that bypa.s.sed the ears and went straight to the soul. Hearing it, he would never be the same again.

V.

Randolph had seen the smoke rising from the fires outside the Mission as he rounded the first bend in the long haul up the hill, and had confirmed, in that sight, the suspicion that had been gnawing in him for days: that his hired genius was in revolt. He revved the jeep's engine, cursing the dirt that slid away in powder clouds behind his wheels, slowing his ascent to a laboring crawl. Until today it had suited both him and Fletcher that the Great Work be accomplished so far from civilization, though it had required a good deal of persuasion on his part to get equipped a laboratory of the sophistication Fletcher had demanded in a setting so remote. But then persuasion was easy nowadays. The trip into the Loop had stoked the fires in Jaffe's eyes. What the woman in Illinois, whose name he'd never known, had said: You've seen something extraordinary, haven't you? was true now as never before. He'd seen a place out of time, and himself in it, driven beyond sanity by his hunger for the Art. People knew all that though they could never have put words to the thought. They saw it in his look, and either out of fear or awe simply did as he asked.

But Fletcher had been an exception to that rule from the outset. His peccadilloes, and his desperation, had made him pliable, but the man still had a will of his own. Four times he'd refused Jaffe's offer to come out of hiding and recommence his experiments, though Jaffe had reminded him on each occasion how difficult it had been to trace the lost genius, and how much he desired that they work together. He'd sweetened each of the four offers by bringing mescaline in modest supply, always promising more, and promising too that any and every facility Fletcher required would be provided if he could only be persuaded back to his studies. Jaffe had known from first reading about Fletcher's radical theories that here was the way to cheat the system that stood between him and the Art. He didn't doubt that the route to Quiddity was thronged with tests and trials, designed by high-minded gmws or lunatic shamans like Kissoon to keep what they judged lower-cla.s.s minds from approaching the Holy of Holies. Nothing new about that. But with Fletcher's help he could trip the gurus; get to power over their backs. The Great Work would evolve him beyond the condition of any of the self-elected wise men, and the Art would sing in his fingers.

At first, having set up the laboratory to Fletcher's specifications, and offered the man some thoughts on the problem he'd gleaned from the Dead Letters, Jaffe left the maestro alone, dispatching supplies (starfish, sea urchins; mescaline; an ape) as and when they were requested, but visiting only once a month. On each occasion he'd spent twenty-four hours with Fletcher, drinking and sharing gossip which Jaffe had plucked from the academic grapevine to feed Fletcher's curiosity. After eleven such visits, sensing that the researches at the Mission were beginning to move towards some conclusion, he began to make the journey more regularly. He was less welcome each time. On one occasion Fletcher had even attempted to keep Jaffe out of the Mission altogether, and there'd been a short, mismatched struggle. Fletcher was no fighter. His stooping, undernourished body was that of a man who'd been bent at his studies since adolescence. Beaten, he'd been obliged to allow access. Inside, Jaffe had found the ape, transformed by Fletcher's distillation, the Nuncio, into an ugly but undeniably human child. Even then, in the midst of this triumph, there'd been hints of the breakdown which Jaffe couldn't doubt Fletcher had finally succ.u.mbed to. The man had been uneasy about what they'd achieved. But Jaffe had been too d.a.m.ned pleased to take the warning signs seriously. He'd even suggested he try the Nuncio for himself, there and then. Fletcher had counselled against it; suggested several months of further study to be undertaken before Jaffe risk such a step. The Nuncio was still too volatile, he argued. He wanted to examine the way it worked on the boy's system before any further tests. Suppose it simply proved fatal to the child in a week? Or a day? That argument was enough to cool Jaffe's ardor for a while. He left Fletcher to undertake the proposed tests, returning on a weekly basis now, becoming more aware of Fletcher's disintegration with each visit, but a.s.suming the man's pride in his own masterwork would prevent him trying to undo it.

Now, as flocks of scorched notes flew across the ground towards him, he cursed his trust. He stepped from the jeep and began to make his way through the scattered fires towards the Mission. There had always been an apocalyptic air about this spot. The earth so dry and sandy it could sustain little more than a few stunted yucca; the Mission, perched so close to the cliff-edge that one winter the Pacific would inevitably claim it, the b.o.o.bies and tropic birds making din overhead.

Today there were only words on the wing. The Mission's walls were stained with smoke where fires had been built close to them. The earth was dusted with ash, even less fertile than sand.

Nothing was as it had been.

He called Fletcher's name as he stepped through the open door, the anxiety he'd felt coming up the hill now close to fear, not for himself but for the Great Work. He was glad he'd come armed. If Fletcher's grasp on sanity had finally slipped he might be obliged to coerce the formula for the Nuncio from him. It would not be the first time he'd gone seeking knowledge with a weapon in his pocket. It was sometimes necessary.

The interior was all ruin; several hundred thousand dollars' worth of instrumentation-coaxed, bullied or seduced from academics who'd given him what he asked for just to get Jaffe's eyes off them-destroyed; table-tops cleared with the sweep of an arm. The windows had all been thrown open and the Pacific wind blew through the place, hot and salty. Jaffe navigated the wreckage and made his way through to Fletcher's favorite room, the cell he'd once (high on mescaline) called the plug in the hole in his heart.

He was there, alive, sitting in his chair in front of the flung window, staring up at the sun: the very act that had blinded him in his right eye. He was dressed in the same shabby s.h.i.+rt and overlarge trousers he always wore; his face presented the same pinched, unshaven profile; the pony-tail of graying hair (his only concession to vanity), was in place. Even his posture-hands at his lap, the body sagging-was one Jaffe had seen innumerable times. And yet there was something subtly wrong with the scene, enough to hold Jaffe at the door, refusing to step into the cell. It was as if Fletcher was too much himself. This was too perfect an image of him: the contemplative, staring at the sun, his every pore and pucker demanding the attention of Jaffe's aching retina, as if his portrait had been painted by a thousand miniaturists, all of whom had been granted an inch of their subject and with brushes bearing a single hair rendered their portion in nauseating detail. The rest of the room-the walls, the window, even the chair on which Fletcher sat-swam out of focus, unable to compete with the too-thorough reality of this man.

Jaffe closed his eyes against the portrait. It overloaded his senses. Made him nauseous. In the darkness, he heard Fletcher's voice, as unmusical as ever.

"Bad news," he said, very quietly.

"Why?" Jaffe said, not opening his eyes. Even with them closed he knew d.a.m.n well the prodigy was speaking to him without use of tongue or lips.

"Just leave," Fletcher said. "And yes. "

"Yes what?"

"You're right. I don't need my throat any longer."

"I didn't say-"

"You don't need to, Jaffe. I'm in your head. It's in there, Jaffe. Worse than I thought. You must leave..."

The volume faded, though the words still came. Jaffe tried to catch them, but most slipped by. Something about do we become sky?, was it? Yes, that's what he said: "...do we become sky?"

"What are you talking about?" Jaffe said.

"Open your eyes," Fletcher replied.

"It makes me sick to look at you."

"The feeling's mutual. But still...you should open your eyes. See the miracle at work."

"What miracle?"

"Just look."

He did as Fletcher urged. The scene was exactly as it had been when he'd closed them. The wide window; the man sitting before it. The same exactly.

"The Nuncio's in me," Fletcher announced in Jaffe's head. His face didn't move at all. Not a twitch of the lips. Not a flicker of an eyelash. Just the same terrible finishedness.

"You mean you tested it on yourself?" Jaffe said. "After all you told me?"

"It changes everything, Jaffe. It's the whip to the back of the world."

"You took it! It was supposed to be me!"

"I didn't take it. It took me. It's got a life of its own, Jaffe. I wanted to destroy it, but it wouldn't let me."

"Why destroy it in the first place? It's the Great Work."

"Because it doesn't operate the way I thought it would. It's not interested in the flesh, Jaffe, except as an afterthought. It's the mind it plays with. It takes thought for its inspiration, and runs with that. Makes us what we'd hope to be, or fear we are. Or both. Maybe both."

"You haven't changed," Jaffe observed. "Still sound the same."

"But I'm talking in your head," Fletcher reminded him. "Did I ever do that before?"

"So, telepathy's in the future of the species," Jaffe replied. "No surprise there. You've just accelerated the process. Leap-frogged a few thousand years."

"Will I be sky?" Fletcher said again. "That's what I want to be."

"Then be it," Jaffe said. "I've got more ambition than that."

"Yes. Yes, you have, more's the pity. That was why I tried to keep it out of your hands. Stop it using you. But it distracted me. I saw the window open and I couldn't keep away. The Nuncio made me so dreamy. Made me sit, and wonder: will I...will I be sky?"

"It stopped you cheating me," Jaffe said. "It wants to be used, that's all."

"Mmmm."

"So where's the rest? You didn't take it all."

"No," Fletcher said. The power to deceive had been sluiced from him. "But please, don't..."

"Where?" Jaffe said, advancing into the room now. "You've got it on you?"

He felt myriad tiny brushes against his skin as he stepped forward, as though he'd walked into a dense cloud of invisible gnats. The sensation should have warned him against tackling Fletcher, but he was too eager for the Nuncio to take notice. He put his fingers on the man's shoulder. Upon contact the figure seemed to fly apart, a cloud of motes-gray, white and red-breaking against him like a pollen storm.

In his head he heard the genius begin to laugh, not, Jaffe knew, at his expense but at the sheer liberation of shrugging off this skin of dulling dust, which had begun to gather upon him at birth, accruing steadily until all but the brightest hints of brightness were stopped. Now, when the dust blew away, Fletcher was still sitting in the chair as he had been. But now he was incandescent.

"I am too bright?" he said. "I'm sorry."

He turned down his flame.

"I want this too!" Jaffe said. "I want it now."

"I know," Fletcher replied. "I can taste your need. Messy, Jaffe, messy. You're dangerous. I don't think I ever really knew till now how dangerous you are. I can see you inside out. Read your past." He stopped for a moment, then let out a long, pained moan. "You killed a man," he said.

"He deserved it."

"Stood in your way. And this other I'm seeing...Kis-soon is it? Did he die too?"

"No."

"But you'd like to have done it? I can taste hatred in you."

"Yes, I'd have killed him if I'd had the chance." He smiled.

"And me as well, I think," Fletcher said. "Is that a knife in your pocket," he asked, "or are you just pleased to see me?"

"I want the Nuncio," Jaffe said. "I want it, and it wants me..."