Little, Big (71 page)

"No," Smoky said, eating.

"When will it be?" He touched one sphere, and then quickly drew his hand away when, with the smooth ease of heavy counterweighting, it moved.

"Oh," Smoky said, "about the time the world ends."

Bud looked at him in awe, and then laughed. "Aw come on."

"Well, I don't know," Smoky said. "Because I don't know yet what makes it go around."

"That thing," Bud said, pointing to the black case like a safe.

"Okay," Smoky said, and went to it, cup in hand, "but then the question is what makes
this
go around?"

He pushed up the lever that opened the gasketed door (dust-proof, but why?) and swung the case open. Inside, cleaned and oiled and ready to go if it could, which it couldn't, was the impossible heart of Harvey Cloud's machine: the impossible heart, so Smoky sometimes thought, of Edgewood itself.

"A wheel," Bud said. "A bent wheel. Wow."

"I think," Smoky said, "it's supposed to go by electricity. Down under the floor, if you lift up that door, there's a big old electric motor. Only—"

"What?"

"Well, it's backwards. It's in there backwards, and not by mistake."

Bud looked over the arrangement, thinking hard. "Well," he said, "maybe this makes this go around, and this makes this go around, and this makes that go around."

"A good theory," Smoky said, "only you've just come full circle. Everything's making everything else go around. Taking in each other's washing."

"Well," Bud said. "If it went fast enough. If it was smooth enough."

Fast, and smooth, and heavy it certainly was. Smoky studied it, his mind crossing in paradox. If this made that go around, as it was obviously meant to do; and that made this go around, which wasn't unreasonable; and this and that powered that and this. . . . Almost he saw it, jointed and levered, its sentences reading backwards and forwards at once, and couldn't just for a moment think why it was impossible, except that the world is as it is and not different. . . .

"And if it ever slowed down," Bud said, "you could come up once in a while and give it a push."

Smoky laughed. "Should we make that your job?" he asked.

"Yours," Bud said.

A push, Smoky thought, one constant small push from somewhere; but whosoever that push was, it couldn't be Smoky's, he had nothing like the strength, he would Somehow have to inveigle the whole universe to look away for a moment from the endless task of itself and reach out an enormous finger to touch these wheels and gears. And Smoky had no reason to think that such a special mercy would be his, or Harvey Cloud's, or even Edgewood's.

He said, "Well, anyway. Back to work." He pushed gently on the leaden sphere of Saturn, and it moved, ticking a few degrees, and as it moved all the other parts, wheels, gears, rods, spheres, moved too.

"But perhaps," Ariel Hawksquill said, "perhaps there's no war on at all."

"What do you mean?" asked the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, after a moment's startled thought.

"I mean," Hawksquill said, "that perhaps what we think of as a war is in fact not one. I mean that perhaps there is no war on at all, after all; and perhaps there never was one."

"Don't be absurd," the President said. "Of course there'sa war on. We're winning."

The Emperor sat sunk in a broad armchair, chin resting on his breast. Hawksquill was at the grand piano which took up much of the far end of the room. She had had this piano altered to make quarter-tones, and on it she liked to play plangent old hymn-tunes harmonized according to a system of her own devising, rendered oddly, sweetly discordant by the altered piano. They made the Tyrant sad. Outside, snow was falling.

"I don't mean," Hawksquill said, "that you have no enemies. Of course you have. I was speaking of the other, the long war: the Great War. Perhaps that's not a war at all."

The Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club, though exposed (their drawn cold faces and dark overcoats appearing in every newspaper) had not fallen easily, as Hawksquill had known they would not. Their resources were great; for whatever they were charged with they had countercharges, and they had the best legal counsel; but (they hadn't listened when Hawksquill had warned them it might be so) their part in the story was over. Struggle only prolonged the end, it was never in doubt. Money gathered at junctures of the case and went off like bombs sometimes, causing temporary outlandish reversals of members' fortunes, but these firebreaks never seemed to give the Club time to recoup. Petty, Smilodon & Ruth, after accruing enormous fees all around, withdrew from their defense amid mysterious circumstances and bitter recriminations; shortly thereafter, masses of paper came to light whose provenance couldn't successfully be denied. Men once made of power and cold blood were seen on every television screen to weep tears of frustration and despair as they were led away to trial by the gloved hands of marshals and indifferent plainclothesmen. The end of the story was not widely known, for it was in the winter of its most shocking revelations that the universal grid of communications which had for a glorious seventy-five years or so lit up the nation like the strung lights of a Christmas tree was for the most part roughly cut: by Eigenblick himself, to forestall its takeover by his enemies; elsewhere, by his enemies, to forestall its takeover by the Tyrant.

That war—the war of the People against the Beast who had seized power and trodden on the institutions of democracy, and of the Emperor-President against the Interests on the people's behalf—was real enough. The blood shed in it was real. The fractures that had run through the society when it had been struck thus hard were deep. But: "If," Hawksquill said, "if those whom we have thought to be at war with men came here to this new world in the first place at about the same time the Europeans did—at about the time, that is, that your latter Empire began to be predicted; and if they came for the same reasons, freedom and space and scope; then they must have eventually been disappointed, just as the men were. . . ."

"Yes," said Barbarossa.

"The virgin forests where they hid themselves gradually logged, cities built on the river-banks and lake shores, the mountains mined, and with no old European regard for wood-sprites and kobolds either. . . ."

"Yes."

"And, if they are in fact as long-sighted as they seem to be, then they must have themselves seen this result, known about it, long ago."

"Yes."

"Before the migration even began. As long ago, in fact, as your Majesty's first reign. And, since they could see it, they prepared for it: they begged your long sleep of him who keeps the years; they sharpened their own weapons; they waited. . . ."

"Yes, yes," Barbarossa said. "And now at last, though much reduced, having been patient for centuries, they strike! Issue from their old strongholds! The robbed dragon stirs in his sleep, and wakes!" He was on his feet; flimsy sheets of computer printout, strategies, plans, figures, slid from his lap to the floor.

"And the bargain made with you," Hawksquill said. "Help them in this enterprise, distract the nation's attention, reduce it to warring fragments (much like your old Empire, they counted on you to do that part well), and, when the old woods and bogs had crept back, when the traffic stopped, when they had recouped as much of their losses as would satisfy them, you could have the rest as your Empire."

"Forever," Eigenblick said, stirred. "That was the promise."

"Fine," Hawksquill said thoughtfully. "That's fine." She stroked the keys; something like
Jerusalem
came from beneath her ringed fingers. "Only none of it's true," she said.

"What?"

"None of it's true; it's false, a lie, not in fact the case."

"What . . ."

"It's not
odd
enough, for one thing." She struck a twanging chord, grimaced, tried it again a different way. "No, I think something quite different is occurring, some motion, some general shift that is no one's choice, no one's . . ." She thought of the dome of the Terminus, its Zodiac reversed, and how she had at the time blamed that on the Emperor who stood before her. Foolish! And yet . . . "Something," she said, "something like the shuffling together of two decks of cards."

"Speaking of cards," he said.

"Or one cut deck," she said, ignoring him. "You know the way small children will sometimes, in trying to shuffle, get one-half the deck upside down? And then there they all are, shuffled together, inextricably mixed backs and faces."

"I want my cards," he said.

"I don't have them."

"You know where they are."

"Yes. And if you were meant to have them, so would you."

"I need their counsel! I need it!"

"Those who have the cards," Hawksquill said, "prepared the way for all this, for your victory such as it is or will be, as well or better than you could have yourself. Long before you appeared, they were a fifth column for that army." She struck a chord, sweet-sour, tart as lemonade. "I wonder," she said, "if they regret that; if they feel bad, or traitorous to their own kind. Or if they ever knew they were taking sides against men."

"I don't know why you say there's no war," the President said, "and then talk like that."

"Not a war," Hawksquill said; "but something
like
a war." Something like a storm, perhaps; yes, like the advancing front of a weather system, which alters the world from warm to cold, gray to blue, spring to winter. Or a collision:
mysterium coniunctionis
, but of what with what? "Or," she said—the thought suddenly struck her— "something like two caravans, two caravans that meet at a single gate, coming from different far places, going toward different far places; mixing it up, jostling through that gate, for a time one caravan only, and then, on the far side, unwinding again toward their destinations, though perhaps with some few having changed places; a saddle bag or two stolen; a kiss exchanged. . . ."

"What," Barbarossa said, "are you talking about?"

She turned her stool to face him. "The question is," she said, "just what kingdom it is you've come into,"

"My own."

"Yes. The Chinese, you know, believe that deep within each of us, no larger than the ball of your thumb, is the garden of the immortals, the great valley where we are all king forever."

He turned on her, suddenly angry. "Now listen," he said.

"I know," she said, smiling. "It would be a damned shame if you ended up ruling, not the Republic that fell in love with you, but some other place entirely."

"No."

"Someplace very small."

"I want those cards," he said.

"Can't have 'em. Not mine to give."

"You'll get them for me."

"Won't."

"How would you like it," Barbarossa said, "if I
got
the secret out of you? I do have power, you know. Power."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I could have you—I could have you killed. Secretly. No one would be the wiser."

"No," Hawksquill said calmly. "Killed you could not have me. Not that."

The Tyrant laughed, his eyes catching lurid fire. "You think not?" he said. "Oh ho, you think not?"

"I
know
not," Hawksquill said. "For a strange reason which you couldn't guess. I've hidden my soul."

"What?"

"Hidden my soul. An old trick, one which every village witch knows how to do. And is wise to do: you never know when those you serve may turn resentful, and fall on you."

"Hidden? Where? How?"

"Hidden. Elsewhere. Exactly where, or in what, I won't of course tell you; but you see that unless you knew, it would be useless trying to kill me."

"Torture." His eyes narrowed. "Torture."

"Yes." Hawksquill rose from her stool. Enough of this. "Yes, torture might work. I'll say goodnight now. There's much to do."

She turned back, at the door, and saw him standing as though stuck in his threatening pose, glaring at her but not seeing her. Had he heard, or understood, anything she had tried to tell him? A thought took hold of her, a strange and fearful thought, and for a moment she only looked at him as he looked at her, as though they were both trying to remember where, or whether, they had ever met before; and then, alarmed, Hawksquill said, "Goodnight, your Majesty," and left him.

Later that night, in the Capital, the episode of Mrs. MacReynolds' death appeared on "A World Elsewhere." In other places the time of its showing varied; it was no longer in many places a daytime drama, often it was a post-midnight one. But shown it was, broadcast or cabled or—where that wasn't possible, where lines had been cut or transmission interdicted—smuggled into small local stations, or copied and carried overland by hand to hidden transmitters, the precious tapes beamed feebly to far small snowy towns. A walker on this night through such a town could pass along its single street and glimpse, in every living room, the bluish glow of it; might see, in one house, Mrs. MacReynolds carried to her bed, in the next, her children gathered, in the next, her parting words spoken; in the last house before the town ran out and the silent prairie began, her dead.

In the Capital, the Emperor-President watched too, his eagle-browed but soft brown eyes dimmed. Never long; longing is fatal. A cloud of pity, of self-pity, rose in him, and took (as clouds can do) a form: the form of Ariel Hawksquill's aloof, amused and unyielding face.

Why me? he thought, raising his hands as though to exhibit shackles. What had he ever done that this awful bargain should have been struck with him? He had been earnest and hard-working, had written a few cutting letters to the Pope, had married his children well. Little else. Why not his grandson, Frederick II, now there was a leader; why not him? Had not the same story after all been told of him, that he was not dead but slept, and would awake to lead his people?

But that was legend only. No, he was here, it was his to suffer this, insufferable though it seemed.

A king in Fairyland: Arthur's fate. Could it be true? A realm no larger than the ball of his thumb, his earthly kingdom nothing but wind, the wind of his passage from here to there, from sleep to sleep.