The Last Revelation Of Gla'aki (11 page)

At last all the inert misshapen lumps were behind him. He refused to imagine that he'd seen tiny greyish nails on any of the finger-like protrusions, still less that he'd glimpsed one gelatinous slab beginning to extrude features that suggested a rudimentary face. He needed sleep, that was all, once he'd spent time with the book. Just now he could hardly control his thoughts, which was why he needed to fend off the notion that all the creatures washed up on the beach were only playing dead. The prolonged slithering noise somewhere behind and below him must be a wave on the beach, but it made him look over his shoulder. As the fog surged towards him, hiding the stretch where he'd seen all the jellyfish, he was sure he glimpsed an utterly deserted beach.

He was about to hurry onwards when he heard the movement again. It sounded close enough for its source to be hidden at the base of the sea wall. Fairman gripped the chilly railing and made to crane over, and then he dodged across the promenade instead. As he hastened past the hotels, all of which were lit only by the streetlamps, he kept glancing behind him. Were lumpy greyish shapes crouching almost flat on some of the ramps that led up from the beach? While he couldn't be sure about that, he was glad to see people seated in the shelter opposite the Wyleave, though the scarves around their faces made them unidentifiable. "Sea wall," their muffled voices called—no, surely they were telling him to sleep well, not even to see that way. As they raised their left hands to wave to him if not to dab at their glistening foreheads, he let himself into the hotel.

Apart from the lobby and the upstairs corridor, it was dark. The silence felt as expectant as a held breath, and prompted him to make even more noise with the plumbing than usual. He was shutting himself in his room when he thought he heard a restless movement, too large and undefined to be anything except a wave, not an indication that all the neighbouring rooms were occupied. Just the same, he couldn't help reminding himself of Headon's reassurance as he sat down with the latest book.

"We are all but symbols of the vagaries of the becoming of the universe. May a symbol read a symbol?" Presumably the book was setting out to convey how that was possible, but Fairman found the text at least as obscure as the colophon, a circle that appeared to be blank until his fingertips traced a series of irregularities that might form a secret diagram or motif. "The old dances conjure the ancient patterns and celebrate the imminence of revelation..." This was among the more intelligible sentences, and even then he felt he hadn't entirely grasped the point. "Most potent are the words of becoming, which shape the voice and the mouth when spoken, and mould the brain which seeks to comprehend them. No wholly human lips may pronounce the language of creation, and the brain must yield its customary form to rediscover the making of the universe..." Beyond this the book might as well have been composed of the language it regarded as unfathomable by the ordinary reader. When Fairman shut the book at last he felt as though it had been a dream he was already forgetting, its details sinking out of reach in the depths of his mind.

He might have liked to think the view from the window was a dream. The denizens of the shelter had entirely covered their faces with scarves, and their hands lay so slackly on their knees that there might have been no fingers inside the whitish gloves. The clumps of hair perched on their heads accentuated their resemblance to waxworks. People were still sitting on the beach in the restless fog, which blurred their outlines so much that he couldn't even tell which way they were facing. Perhaps all the pallid heads were bald, but he had the odd notion that every figure had its back to the sea. The view was enough to send him to bed.

His night thoughts were waiting for him. He saw the monstrous shape as vast and spiky as a cathedral burrowing into the earth, and then all sense of time deserted him. As the passing of ages reshaped the landscape a lake was formed, and perhaps it remained unvisited for at least as long before the inhabitant was roused from its monstrous torpor by wanderers whose dreams had been touched by its reverie. It found a crude way to bind the intruders, injecting them with a trace of its essence through its spines. Fairman had heard rumours of this relatively modern legend, which he'd assumed to be a variant on tales of alien abduction, but now it felt as if the volumes of the
Revelations
were carrying on a dialogue in his head, composing annotations there. At some point the entity was injured and retreated to its sanctuary beneath the lake. Over the ages it had withered to little more than a seed of itself, but now it rediscovered its primal substance, extending its spines through the land. Or was this yet another symbol—a veiled account of how it was reaching for the world? It was just a dream, Fairman reassured himself, or rather it would have been one if he were asleep. At some point he was, since daylight wakened him.

Not just the greyish light did, nor even the suspicion that he could have been mumbling in his sleep. He'd had an idea during the night, and his gaze drifted towards the safe. Had he been less thorough than he ought to be? He lined up the books on the dressing-table before he opened the first volume at the rear flyleaf. The breath he released felt like starting awake once again, and he saw his eyes widen in the mirror. The book and all the others had been annotated on the flyleaf.

The addition that he'd previously seen wasn't in the same handwriting as the others, although they looked similar. They were even more loosely scrawled than the first example had been. Perhaps the writers had been drunk or half asleep, which might explain the vagueness of the annotations too. "The mage need not speak the words nor shape them in his mind, for reading them has made of him a conduit for their power." This had been added to
On Conjuration
, while
On the Purposes of Night
now ended by exhorting "Embrace the night, that the old dreams may walk by day" and
Of the Secrets of the Stars
had acquired an extra scrap of wisdom. "Gaze not upon the stars but into the gulf beyond, where you may glimpse the eternal watchers whose sport is the shrivelling of worlds." Fairman was distracted by a knocking—more a series of loose flat thumps—at the door. "Mr Fairman?" Janine Berry called. "Leonard?"

His lips were unexpectedly difficult to wield, and he saw his mouth try out shapes beyond the books. "One moment," he said indistinctly.

"Don't go hurrying yourself. We know you're busy. Only wanted to make sure you know breakfast's whenever you're ready."

He couldn't have guessed the time from the clogged daylight, but his watch showed it was nearly ten o'clock. "I shouldn't be long," he called, and his lips mimed the words in the mirror.

He hadn't heard the landlady depart when he turned to the next book. The
Revelations
told how Gla'aki roamed the universe, the annotation said. "His great mind guided the vessel, but even He could not revive the denizens of the dead city which formed its carapace. The city and its secrets far older than humanity were destroyed as the vessel fell to our earth." The scrawl at the end of the following volume seemed to continue the theme. "The disciples of Gla'aki have described the dead city which lies in the depths of Deepfall Water, yet none of His evangelists have understood the greater wonder. What is the apparition of the vanished city but a token of His power to shape His domain through His dreams?"

"What indeed," Fairman muttered. He turned his back on his twin once they'd both shut their books, and carried a trinity of volumes to the safe. Had he learned anything at all from the annotations? They felt to him as if the books had been talking to themselves. He locked the other volumes in the safe and headed for the bathroom.

Someone had been in it recently. The mirror was befogged, and a trickle of water was snaking into the plughole of the bath. Fairman made the plumbing muffle his noises next door and ambled downstairs once he was dressed. He'd hardly taken his place by the window, outside which the fog hovered wakefully above the beach, when Mrs Berry appeared with a trayful of breakfast. As she transferred the plate and the other items to his table she said "We saw you at the theatre last night."

Fairman was distracted by the sight of the occupants of the shelter opposite the hotel. Could they really have been there all night? Their faces were still hidden, suggesting that they could be asleep if not worse. When he saw one of them stir, flexing his floppy gloved fingers on his knees, Fairman said "What did you think of the show?"

"What you did, that's all that matters."

"Surely not all." His response seemed to drive her gaze further back in her eyes, and Fairman said "You have to be impressed by how much they can do."

"You've not seen the half yet."

He had no idea what to say to this. The empty tables all around him prompted him to murmur "I'm sorry to be putting you to trouble."

"You aren't at all, Leonard. None of us."

"Eating after everybody else, I mean."

"You're not. You're our only one."

"Haven't your other guests eaten? Someone was in the bathroom before me."

For an instant Mrs Berry hesitated. "What makes you say that?"

"It was steamed up."

"I expect the fog got in." Before he could argue she said "Look at me keeping you from your meal. That isn't what I'm for."

She stumped away softly but rapidly, returning as Fairman downed the last pliant mouthful. He was gazing at a bunch of sluggish joggers who might almost have been imitating animals from the zoo, some with their fists raised in front of them like paws while others dangled their arms from a simian crouch. "We all need to keep ourselves in shape," Mrs Berry said.

Rather than admit this Fairman said "Could you tell me where I'll find Phyllida Barnes?"

"You'll be seeing our littlest ones, of course. She has them up on Haven Way."

"Not quite the smallest, surely? They'll be at your hospital."

"We've none of those in Gulshaw."

"The nearest one, I mean. The nearest maternity."

"We like to keep it here. Us Gulshaw women don't need all that paraphernalia."

"Some people must, surely."

"If what we drop can't get on without that kind of help, it isn't meant."

Fairman wasn't anxious to learn how much she might be drawing on her own experience, and made haste to fetch his coat instead, together with a carton for the next book. The old folk in the shelter had partly uncovered their faces; the scarves had sagged below their eyes, at any rate. "Good day," they called, two syllables so muffled that he could easily have thought a less commonplace word.

The light was more stifled than ever. The icy disk of the sun gleamed for a moment before vanishing into the wall of fog above the sea as if it had been engulfed by gelatin. No jellyfish were visible beyond the promenade, though at first he had the grotesque fancy that some of the people standing about on the beach were ankle-deep in them. Of course the people were wearing plastic beach shoes, which made their feet look translucent and discoloured and swollen.

A side street led uphill past Gulshaw Face & Body, apparently both a beautician's and a gym. Perhaps this was where the local folk acquired their tan, though Fairman hadn't seen much of that lately; even the ones he'd previously encountered—Janine Berry's, Frank Lunt's—had begun to fade as if there was no further need for such a sham. Though the slope wasn't especially steep, he felt sluggish by the time he reached the top. Not far around the corner was Sprightly Sprouts, a long grey single-storey building that might originally have been some sort of hall. The exterior was painted with large animals so cartoonish that they hardly seemed to belong to any species Fairman recognised. As he closed the gate of the yard, which was provided with miniature climbing equipment and infantile rides, he heard a woman cry "Here's our visitor. Let's see you all shape up."

He felt abashed and resentful of being used as some kind of threat. As he made for the merrily yellow doors, they were flung open by a buxom woman. Her voluminous dun gown hung straight to her feet from her considerable bosom, which quivered visibly inside the material when she took a step towards him. He might have thought her chubby face quaked too, twitching the tips of her fierce smile and almost closing her small eyes, not to mention jerking her greyish nostrils wider. Though her russet hair was parted well to the left, it framed her face with identical waves. "Phyllida Barnes," she said not much less vigorously than she'd addressed the children. "Good to meet you at last, Mr Fairman."

Once he'd accepted the clammy Gulshaw handshake, she made a tremulous bustling movement with her entire body to urge him over the threshold. "No ceremony, Mr Fairman. They're all waiting for you."

He could hear the children beyond the lobby, where dozens of miniature jackets and overcoats hung in an alcove. As he shut the doors behind him the hubbub seemed to swell up, growing shriller. Perhaps his face betrayed some nervousness, because Phyllida Barnes blinked at him. "Don't you care for children?"

"I've had very little to do with them."

"Maybe you should see to that," she said and appeared to realise to some extent that she was being presumptuous. "We know how much you're doing already, but still."

Without waiting for an answer she opened a door opposite the cloakroom. The babble of children subsided, isolating a few wordless sounds, as Fairman ventured into the room. Most of the toddlers were behind dwarfish desks, though a few children, not necessarily the smallest, lay on plastic mats on the wooden floor. Every child was gazing at Fairman, who had an unsettling sense that he was the focus of attention of a single mind. "We like to start them young," Phyllida Barnes declared. "You're never too young to learn, or too old either."

He supposed she was referring to the classroom ambiance. Quite a few of the toddlers were unduly plump while others were equally unhealthily thin. He was restraining any comment when Phyllida Barnes said "Diane?"

Diane was just as stout but more sluggish, and wore a gown like hers. Fairman was disconcerted to observe how similar her hair was to her colleague's, virtually a mirror image with the parting on the right. "Show Mr Fairman your pictures, everyone," she urged.