Thunderer (52 page)
Authors: Felix Gilman
T
here was a stationer’s shop
near the Cere House. Arjun bought paper, a pen, two envelopes. He wrote,
Olympia, Professor, my friends. The Typhon is gone. It wasn’t big enough to swallow the city after all; the city swallowed it, instead.
I do not believe it will return in our time, though I may well be wrong. If you choose to come back, I will not be here. I wish you well.
Before she left, Olympia had given him the address of a place she planned to stay, to begin with: the home of a friend of a friend of a correspondent of Dr. Branken’s, on the other side of the Peaceful Sea, in Ghent. Arjun went down to the docks and gave the letter to the captain of a departing ship, with the last of his money, and the promise that Olympia would pay more on receipt. Probably she would never get it, but you never knew.
He realized that he’d forgotten to ask Jack whether he had in fact killed the Chairman.
Oh well.
He gave the captain another letter, for the Choristry, that promised,
I am still searching. Remain hopeful! The city is much larger than we had thought. There is still time and hope.
He thought it very unlikely that it would reach its destination.
He listened for a moment, then followed the sound of a sailor’s swaying shanty, and then the sound of church-bells, and then a drunkard, lying in the gutter, howling a lonely song into his vomit. With every street, he turned inward, and further inward, the city’s hidden inner reaches unfolding around him.
He thought of the Typhon, alone in that empty place. Despite what he had said in his letter to the Atlas-makers, he was fairly sure it would never be able to find its way back. It was a crude and stupid monster. Everything depended, then, on the nature of the empty place in which he had left it. Was it a place in the future of the Atlas-makers’ city? If so, then every day that passed would lead the city further down into the mouth of a waiting doom. If that place was in Ararat’s past, every day would be a step forward and out of the darkness. Perhaps there was no difference; perhaps, as Lemuel had said, everything in the city’s past would come round again and again, and so there was darkness on all sides of every brief bright effort its citizens made. If the Atlas-makers did decide to return, he wished them well with whatever time they had.
There was a concert-hall on the corner, from which a droning music escaped. There was a sign on the arch over the door that said
ENTER HERE AND KEEP LEFT FOR TICKETING
. Under that sign, if you looked properly, was a long silver street under a row of arches. He walked down it.
He turned under an arch where a thing perched that was like pictures he had seen of
angels,
and also like pictures he had seen of
banshees.
It was keening and crooning something that was a distant echo of the Voice’s sacred song.
He thought of what he’d done to Shay, Lemuel, Cuttle, whatever the man’s name was. He wasn’t afraid of Lemuel’s curse—he thought it was just bluster—but he regretted his own treachery. True, he had had no choice, and Lemuel had been a terrible, reckless, selfish man, but it was treachery, even so. He feared it might be a discord in him, which would keep him from the Voice. The Voice would not show itself to him while he had that ugliness in him. But he had time to work his music pure again.
The whole city, and all its past and future, was open to him now. What he needed existed
somewhere,
he was sure, and he would find it. He’d go deeper and deeper behind the fabric of things. He’d make himself a ghost in pursuit of a ghost. Alone again at last, as he had been when he came into the city, and ready to begin, he turned left, and then left again, down a steep golden hill, spiraling always inward.
About the Author
F
ELIX
G
ILMAN
lives with his wife in New York City.
Thunderer
is his first novel.
THUNDERER
A Bantam Spectra Book / January 2008
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Felix Gilman
Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gilman, Felix.
Thunderer / Felix Gilman.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3607.I452T47 2008
813'.6—dc22 2007033756
eISBN: 978-0-553-90449-9
v3.0
