The Gone-Away World

Epilogue

After.

PINE SMOKE and the smell of snow; Cricklewood Cove in winter-time. Elisabeth is with her mother for the next few hours, and Leah has taken Gonzo’s parents off on some vital jaunt. There is a very strong directive inherent in this curious circumstance. Gonzo and I are to get together and talk. We are to sort things out. Otherwise, we will brood and be unmanageable. This is not an acceptable outcome.

The Battle of Jorgmund Actual was two months ago. On the whole, given that the plan was a failure and the enemy ambushed us, it was a roaring success. It helped that Ike Thermite and K are devious beyond all reasonable expectation, and that Master Wu laid his ninja trap deeper than his own grave. Laid it, in fact, in me.

Humbert Pestle died. Jorgmund did not. You can’t kill a machine.

On the other hand, you can own one.

The ownership of Jorgmund is vested in the Clockwork Hand. The Clockwork Hand is controlled by the present master. That master is chosen by acclamation, or by combat, meaning that the present master of the Hand and chairman of Jorgmund Inc. is, well . . .

Me.

I thought about trying to do good with it. I sat in the Nameless Bar and we all discussed it drunk, and sober, and half asleep, and perky with Flynn’s coffee. I almost persuaded myself it could be done. I could turn the monster around. And then Elisabeth wandered over and dumped the Spawn of Flynn in my lap. He looked up at me through a field of snot.

“What do you think?” I said.

“The lady with the flower on her back is having a baby,” said Spawn of Flynn, “but you’re not to tell anyone.”

Sally Culpepper went bright red. Jim Hepsobah choked on his coffee.

“The coughy man is the daddy,” the Spawn of Flynn added.

I wound Jorgmund up. I marched into Dick Washburn’s office and dumped the entire sordid truth on his desk, without omission. I told him and Mae Milton to break the company up and do good things with the bits. Sally and Jim’s baby didn’t need a world with a thing like that in it. We made the whole thing public too, and I put the Clockwork Hand to writing letters to all the relatives of the Vanished. Most people didn’t want to believe it, but they’ll come around. The last of the FOX will dry up in about six months. Already the pressure is slackening, and the unreal world is coming closer to ours. People will have to choose how to live.

Jim Hepsobah and Sally got married. Gonzo was best man. I sat at the back. A surprising number of people nodded to me. Old Man Lubitsch gave the happy couple a beehive, complete with lethal bees. Ma Lubitsch gave them socks. I smiled. Gonzo’s father smiled back. Well done, boy. Well done.

Ike Thermite and the Matahuxee Mime Combine have resurrected Master Wu’s school in Cricklewood Cove. There never was a master mime who lived there. Ike thinks he’s extremely clever for slipping that one past me, and he probably is.

Nq’ula Jann, having figured out Humbert Pestle’s dastardly plan, showed up with a vast number of Zaher Bey’s pirates to rescue everyone. When it was established that we’d taken care of that ourselves, the rescuers got drunk and sang songs about shepherdesses.

Rao and Veda Tsur demanded that they should be godparents to Sally and Jim’s child.

Ronnie Cheung took one look at Elisabeth’s mother and announced to her face that there was a sack of bones he wouldn’t mind rattling. She hit him with a ladle. Their third date passed without sex, but Assumption has given her daughter to understand that on no account is she to show up unannounced tomorrow morning.

So now here I am, knocking on Gonzo’s door and feeling five years old.

He opens the door and lets me in. His right arm is still in a cast. The left one, it turns out, was only cracked. We walk into the living room and sit in front of the fire.

“So,” Gonzo says. And that’s all.

Well, don’t look at me. This is the most awkward moment of my entire life. What do you say to a man whose brain you have stolen? To someone who shot you in the chest and shoved you out of a truck? What does he say to you, now that you have saved his life and the world?

We say nothing for some time. Then we talk about how well everyone’s doing and how weird the world is going to get. And then we dry up, because you can’t make small talk with someone you’ve known for ever when there’s an elephant in the room. And yet it all seems so clear. What’s to say?

“You know I don’t have a name yet?”

“You’re kidding me . . .”

“Well, you never gave me one, so don’t look at me like I’m the idiot.”

“That’s true,” Gonzo says. “I never did.” He ponders. “Are you . . . going to do more of that?”

“Of what?”

“Derring-do.”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not,” Gonzo says definitively. “I’m done. I want to be . . . I don’t know. But I want it. I need to be quiet for a while.”

“Oh.”

“So . . . if you want . . . you could be Gonzo Lubitsch.”

I think about it.

“No. But thanks.”

Silence. We stare at each other for a while, measuring.

“We could pretend,” Gonzo says at last, “that we finished this conversation.”

It’s an interesting idea.

“We could,” I tell him cautiously.

“We wouldn’t have to actually talk about it all.”

“No . . . Yeah, exactly.”

“Hm.” He trails off.

“We’d have to have a pretty good story, though. In case we were questioned.”

“That’s true.” He muses. “I suppose we could say that I started by saying I’m sorry I shot you. Because that’s a good opening line.”

“Or that I’m sorry . . . I don’t know exactly. I’m not sorry I exist. But I’m sorry I didn’t realise sooner what was happening. I didn’t mean to try to take her from you.”

“You think we should start with that?”

“It sounds a bit flaky. But you know what I’m getting at.”

He nods.

“I think we should tell them,” says Gonzo Lubitsch, “that I said I was sorry for shooting you.”

“Okay.”

And then he throws himself at me, wraps me in his heavy arms and shakes on my shoulder, and I am murmuring things like “It’s okay, it’s all right” and I have to sit him down and rock him.

I honestly don’t know what we say to each other. It goes on for hours, and at the end of it I’m not sure if we are friends or brothers or anything except me and Gonzo. I don’t feel easy around him. But the thing is done, and from here it’s all about forwards.

ZAHER BEY gets out of the car. The sun is setting over a huge green forest. Below us, in the valley, water flows and there are birds. Something huge is stalking through the trees, making them shake. A moment later something smaller squeals sharply, and then stops. In the distance there’s a walled town, high towers and pale houses. The wind carries a murmur from its streets.

“The Found Thousand,” Zaher Bey says.

The world we knew is gone for good this time. The new one is beautiful and dangerous. It is us. I sit with Elisabeth and Zaher Bey and watch the stars come out overhead.

“Are you ready?” the Bey asks.

Elisabeth breathes out onto my cheek. We both answer him at once.

“Yes.”