The Physiognomy (3 page)

I thought for a moment that the drug had played one of its time tricks on me, compressing the usual two-hour hallucination into mere minutes, but that was not the case, for standing behind me, looking over my shoulder into the mirror, was Professor Flock, my old mentor from the Academy of Physiognomy.

The professor was looking rather spry, considering he had passed away ten years earlier, and he wore an affable expression, considering it was my own prosecution that had sent him to the most severe work camp—the sulphur mines at the southern extremity of the realm.

“Professor,” I said, not turning around but addressing him through the glass in front of me, “a pleasure, as always.”

Dressed in white, as was his habit back at the academy, he moved closer to me and put his hand on my shoulder. I felt its weight as if it were real. “Cley,” he said, “you sent me to my death, and now you call me back?”

“I am sorry,” I said, “but the Master could not tolerate your teaching of tolerance.”

He nodded and smiled. “It was foolishness. I have come to thank you for eradicating my crackpot notions from the great society.”

“You hold no grudge?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “I deserved to be baked like a slab of ham and strangled on fumes of sulphur.”

“Very well then,” I said. “How should I proceed with this case?”

“The Twelfth Maneuver,” was his reply. “Anamasobia is a closed system. Merely read every subject in town, review your findings, and look for the one whose features reveal an inclination toward larceny and a religiopsychotic reliance on the miraculous.”

“How will the latter be revealed?” I inquired.

“As a blemish, a birthmark, a wart, a mole with an inordinately long black hair growing from it.”

“As I suspected,” I said.

“And Cley,” he said as he began to vanish, “full body exams. Leave no stone unturned, no dark crevice unexamined.”

“Naturally,” I said.

I lay down on my bed and stared across the room at the illusion of Arden slowly moving, the mirror becoming a waterfall in his hands. Off in the muffled distance, the Mantakises were emitting screams of either lust or violence, and I recalled my own last romantic encounter.

One night, a few months earlier, after working on the Grulig case, a ghastly homicide in which the Minister of Finance had had his head separated from his body, I decided to stop at the Top of the City for refreshment. I rode the crystal enclosed elevator up the sixty floors to the roof, where, beneath a crystal dome, there was a bar with tables and chairs, a woman playing a harp, a twilight view of what seemed like the entire world.

I walked up to a fetching young thing seated by herself at a window table and told her I would buy her a drink. I cannot remember her name or her features, but I recall a certain aroma, not perfume, more like a ripe melon. She told me about her parents and some problem they were having, about her childhood, and then, when I could no longer tolerate entertaining the inconsequential, I offered her fifty belows to take a coach with me to the park.

While riding along I mixed her a cocktail, and when she wasn't looking, poured in a good measure of sheer beauty. The general public was not permitted the drug, so I had an idea it might create an interesting effect. After finishing the drink, she soon began screaming at whatever it was she saw before her, so I put her on my lap to comfort her. Eventually it became clear that she was having a conversation with her dead brother while, all the time, I was busy soothing the flesh.

As she lay on the marble slab of an old war monument, beneath giant swaying oaks, her skirts pulled up, her legs pointing the way to the Dog Star, I inserted my instrument of pleasure into the index finger of my leather glove so as not to come in contact with her inferior chemistry. It was over in an instant, a technique I had worked diligently to perfect. “I love you,” I said, and left her there. In the following weeks I wondered how often she had thought of me. With a warm feeling of melancholy, I drifted off to sleep as the hideous wallpaper undulated and the cold wind of the territory rattled the panes.

I was awakened at four by the voice of Mrs. Mantakis. “What is it?” I called.

“Mr. Beaton is here to escort you to the mayor's house.”

I got quickly out of bed and began to freshen up. I changed my shirt, combed my hair, and licked my teeth. It was only as I was putting on my topcoat that I caught the name Beaton. By the time I reached the lobby, I remembered him, and there he was, hunched over, blue, threatening to fall. As he saw me approach, he shuffled forward and, slowly enough so that I might have drunk a cup of tea, handed me a letter from the mayor. When he mumbled, a few grains of blue dust fell from his open mouth and drifted to the carpet.

Your honor, read the letter, since you expressed such interest in Beaton's condition this morning, I thought you might like an opportunity to study him up close. Should he stiffen irreparably on your journey, simply continue on the road he takes you to and you will arrive at my house. Yours, Bataldo. But by the time I had finished reading, it appeared Beaton had already traded his human status for that of mineral. There had been no sound from him at all, no last grunt or cry, no whispered crackle of flesh giving way to stone. He stood staring up at me with a look of insipid expectation, his hand forward, the fingers parted only the width of the letter. I reached out and touched his face. It was as smooth as blue marble, even the wrinkles and the beard. When I drew my hand away, his eyes suddenly shifted to stare into mine and then froze solid. The unexpected movement momentarily frightened me. “Perhaps you will heat my apartment this winter,” I said to him as an epitaph. Then I called for Mantakis.

The missus came in, and I asked her how to get to the mayor's house. In less than two minutes she told me five different ways to get there, none of which I truly committed to memory. But there was still plenty of light before sundown, and I had a general sense as to where I was going. “Do something with Beaton, there,” I said. “He seems to have taken a stand.”

She took one look at the blue miner, shook her head, and told me, “It is said that when he was born, they dropped him on his head.” I hurried out the door of the de Skree as she rattled on.

The street was empty as I headed north to find a certain alley between the general store and the tavern that had been mentioned in all five sets of directions. The sun was on the decline and a strong wind blew down on me. As I walked along through the shadows of the buildings, I wondered if the mayor was playing a joke on me or if he was truly trying to satisfy my well-known scientific curiosity. I had seen nothing in his face that would lead me to believe he had the courage to make light of me, so I dismissed the idea of a slight and turned my attention to finding my way. The cold air was invigorating and it drove off the last few tentacles of the beauty.

I had not gone far when I heard someone approaching from behind. “Your honor, your honor,” I heard over the wind.

Before turning I thought that they might have sent someone to lead me, but instead it was a young woman carrying a baby. She wore a shawl over her head, but from what I could see of her she appeared quite attractive. I greeted her.

“Your honor,” she said, “I was hoping you would look at my son and tell me what to expect from him in the future.” She held the baby up in front of me so that I was eye to eye with a squashed little face. One glance told the story all too plainly. In the lout's features I read a brief novel of debauchery and dissolution unto death.

“Brilliant?” she asked as my eyes probed the child's form.

“Somewhat less,” I said, “but not exactly an idiot.”

“Is there any hope, your honor?” she asked after I had told her full well my conclusion.

“Madam,” I said with exasperation, “have you ever heard of a mule whose excrement is gold coin?”

“No,” she said.

“Nor have I. Good day,” I told her, and again turned north.

When I entered the long alleyway that ran between the general store and the tavern, the sun was resting at a point just beyond late afternoon, but as I exited the alley, I stepped out into dusk and felt the great beast of night begin to murmur. There, standing next to a bush, was one of the hardened heroes, holding a hand-painted sign that read
THIS WAY, YOUR HONOR
. An arrow beneath the words pointed the way up a path that twisted ahead into a darkening wood.

The wind ran through me, quickening my pace. I cursed the moronic statue with its blue-toothed smile and pop eyes, and then a large black bird suddenly swooped low out of nowhere and shit on the arm of my topcoat. I screamed after it and followed its flight upward toward the snowcap of Gronus, where it was obvious some wild storm was raging. The stain sickened me with its aroma of pineapple, but it was too cold to take the coat off.

As I passed beneath the boundary of the treetops into the shadows of the wood, I remembered Beaton's eyes, how they had shifted and froze, and then I realized that night had come. The branches were barren, and I trod through piles of yellow leaves that littered the path. Stars shone clearly beyond the skeletal canopy above, but none of them seemed to be where I expected. I made a mental note to repay the mayor's kindness when it was his turn to step before the calipers. “There's always the possibility of surgery,” I said aloud to comfort myself. I walked on slowly, sticking to the path as best I could and hoping at every turn that I would see the lights of a house.

Rationale was what was needed to keep my mind clear. I was not much for the unknown. Ever since childhood, the dark had been one of my greatest challenges. There was no face to it, no signs to interpret, no clues to decipher in an attempt to discern a friend or foe. The physiognomy of the night was a great blankness that scorned my instruments and harbored the potential for true evil. I can't tell you how many of my colleagues had this same problem and were prone to sleeping with a light on.

I attempted to concentrate upon the case, what I could expect and how long it would take to diligently read the features of the entire town. It was precisely here, stumbling through the woods, that I had a brainstorm, one of the rare ones that came without an injection. “If these fools believe in the potency of this stolen fruit to cause miracles,” I thought aloud, “perhaps what I need to be on the lookout for is someone whose character has changed drastically since the crime was committed.” Be assured, I was not affording the fruit any strange powers—that was all drivel to me—but if one did believe that it would make him a genius or bestow the power of flight or cause him to become immortal, would he not then comport himself differently? As I had told my students at the academy each semester of my tenure there: “The physiognomist is more than his chrome instruments. The acute and reasoning mind is the mother of all tools; let her suckle you to insight.”

As this grand thought played itself out, I rounded a bend and came in view of the mayor's residence. Two hundred yards up what appeared to be a steep incline, I saw the glow of candlelight shining through a battery of windows lining the front of the house. I was about to begin the climb, when I heard something approaching on the path behind me. The noise started small and far away, but grew exponentially with each heartbeat. I thought absolutely nothing in the few moments before it burst from the darkness like a monster clawing free of a nightmare and stopped only inches from me, hooves pawing the air.

What had materialized was a coach and four, being driven by the porcine mystic who had brought me from the Well-Built City. He sat grinning in the light from the lamp that hung beside him. “The Master has sent me to escort you,” he said. I had a million imprecations to shower upon him, but his mention of the Master stopped me cold. I nodded once and got in.

3

“Where is Beaton?” the mayor asked me. “I wanted to send him to town for some ice.” The guests, dressed in their pathetic finery, broke out in fits of laughter. If I'd only had my scalpel, I'd have cut them all to ribbons, but as it was, I smiled and gave a slight bow. In a mirror on the other side of the room I watched the mayor put his arm around my shoulders.

“Let me show you my house,” he said. He smelled strongly of alcohol, and I gracefully slid him off me.

“As you wish,” I said, and followed him through the crowds of guests, drinking, smoking, jabbering like a room full of monkeys. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Mrs. Mantakis and wondered how she had beaten me to the party.

One drunken fool stopped me and said, “I see you have been talking to the mayor,” and pointed to the bird excrement on my topcoat. The mayor laughed uncontrollably and patted the fellow on the back. Amid this sea of gabbling wretchedness was intertwined a discordant music played by old men on strange instruments made from pieces of trees. “Absence,” the drink of the evening, a clear liquid with a bluish tinge, was brewed by the miners. The hors d'oeuvres were chived cremat—something like grass on a dog turd on a biscuit as hard as a dinner plate.

We stopped to greet the mayor's wife, who pleaded with me to get her husband a position in the city. “He's upright,” she said. “He's an upright man.”

“I'm sure he is, madam,” I told her, “but the Well-Built City is not looking for a mayor.”

“He can do anything,” she said, and tried to give him a kiss.

“Get back to the kitchen,” he told her. “The cremat is running low.”

Before leaving, she kissed my ring with all the passion she had intended for him. I wiped it on my trouser leg as we continued through the crowd, the mayor shouting at me over the noise of the party. I couldn't make out a word of it.

We finally left the main room, stepping out into a long hallway. Bataldo waved over his shoulder for me to follow him. He showed me up one flight of stairs, and when I reached the landing, he pushed back a set of doors that led to his library. Three of the walls were lined with books and the third held a sliding glass partition that opened onto a balcony. Once inside, he moved to a small table that held a bottle of absence and two glasses. I stared at some of the titles on the shelves and before long found four of my twenty or more published treatises. I was sure he hadn't read Miscreants and Morons—A Philosophical Solution, since he had not yet committed suicide.