The Physiognomy

I left the Weil-Built City at precisely 4:00 in the afternoon of an autumn day. The sky was dark, and the wind was blowing when the coach pulled up in front of my quarters. The horses reared against a particularly fierce gale and my papers—describing the case that had been assigned to me no more than an hour earlier by the Master, Drachton Below, himself—nearly flew out of my hands. The driver held open the door for me. He was a porcine fellow with rotten teeth, and I could tell from one look at his thick brow, his deep-set eyes that he had propensities for daydreaming and masturbation. "To the territory," he yelled over the wind, spitting out his words across the lapels of my topcoat. I nodded once and got in.

A few minutes later we were speeding through the streets of the city toward the main gate. When the passersby saw my coach, they gave me that curious one-finger salute, a greeting which had recently sprung up from the heart of the populace. I thought of waving back, but I was too preoccupied with trying to read the clues of their physiognomies.

After all my years of sweeping open the calipers to find the "soul," skin deep, even a glimpse at a face could explode my wonder. A nose to me was an epic, a lip, a play, an ear, a many-volumed history of mankind's fall. An eye was a life in itself, and my eyes did the thinking as I rode into the longest night, the dim-witted driver never letting up on the horses, through mountain passes, over rocky terrain where the road had disappeared. With the aid of the Master's latest invention, a chemical light that glowed bright orange, I read through the particulars of the official manuscript. I was headed for Anama-sobia, a mining town of the northern territory, the last outpost of the realm.

I reread the case so many times that the words died from abuse. I polished my instruments till I could see myself in their points. I stared out at moonlit lakes and gnarled forests, at herds of strange animals startled into flight by the coach. And as the Master's light began to dim, I prepared an injection of sheer beauty and stuck it in my arm.

I began to glow as the light failed, and an image from the manuscript presented itself to my eye's-mind— a white fruit said to have grown in the Earthly Paradise, purported to have all manner of supernatural powers. It had sat under glass on the altar of the church in Anamasobia for years, never spoiling but always at the perfect moment of ripeness.

Years before, the local miners who worked the spire veins beneath Mount Gronus had broken through a wall into a large natural chamber with a pool and found it there in the withered hand of a mummified ancient. The story of its discovery had piqued the interest of the Weil-Built City for a time, but most considered the tale primitive lunacy concocted by idiots.

When the Master had handed me the assignment, he laughed uproariously and reminded me of the disparaging remarks concerning his facial features I had whispered into my pillow three years earlier. I had stared, dumbfounded by his omniscience, while he injected himself in the neck with a syringe of sheer beauty. As the plunger pushed the violet liquid into his bulging vein, a smile began to cross his lips. Laconically, he pulled the needle out and said, "I don't read, I listen."

I bit the white fruit and something flew out of it, flapping around the interior of the coach and tangling itself in my hair.

Then it was gone and the Master, Drachton Below, was sitting across from me, smiling. 'To the territory," he said and offered me a cigarette. He was dressed in black with a woman's black scarf tied around his head, and those portions of his physiognomy that had, years earlier, revealed to me his malicious hubris were accentuated by rouge and eyeliner. Eventually he broke apart like a puzzle that put me to sleep.

I dreamed the coach stopped on a barren windswept plateau with a shadowy vista of distant mountains in the moonlight. The temperature had dropped considerably, and, as I burst out of my compartment, demanding to know the reason for the delay, my words came as steam. The absolute clarity and multitude of stars silenced me. I watched the driver walk a few yards away from the coach and begin drawing a circle around himself with the toe of his boot. He then stood in the middle of it and mumbled toward the mountains. As I approached him, he unzipped his pants and began urinating.

"What nonsense is this?" I asked.

He looked over his shoulder at me and said, "Nature calls, your honor."

"No," I said, "the circle and the words."

"That's just a little something," he said.

"Explain," I demanded.

He finished his business and, pulling up his zipper, turned to face me. "Look," he said, "I don't think you know where we are."

In that instant, something about his garish earlobes made me think that perhaps the Master had set the whole excursion up to have me done away with for my whispered indiscretions.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He walked toward me with his hand raised, and I felt myself begin to cringe, but then he brought it down softly on my shoulder. "If it will make you feel any better, you can kick me," he said. He bent over in front of me, flipping his long coattails up in the back so as to present a clearer target.

I kicked the seat facing me and came awake in the coach. As I opened my eyes, I could already sense we had stopped moving and that morning had finally come. Outside the window to my left I saw a man standing, waiting, and behind him a primitive town built entirely of wood. Looming over the town was what I took to be Mount Gronus, inexhaustible source of blue spire, the mineral that fueled the furnaces and engines of the Weil-Built City.

Before gathering my things together, I studied the stranger. Cranium derivative of the equine, eyes set wide, massive jaw—a perfectly good-hearted and ineffectual political functionary. I deemed him trustworthy and prepared to meet him. As I opened the door, he ceased his whistling and walked forward to greet me.

"Welcome to Anamasobia," he said, holding out a gloved hand. His obesity was canceled by an insistent chin, his overbite by the generosity of jowls. I clasped his hand and he said, "Mayor Bataldo."

"Physiognomist Cley," I told him.

"A great honor," he said.

"You are having some trouble?" I inquired.

"Your, honor," he said as if on the verge of tears, "there is a thief in Anamasobia." He took my valise and we walked together down the hardened dirt path that was the only street in town.

The mayor gave me a tour as we walked, pointing out buildings and expounding on their beauty and utility. He taxed my civility with colorful tidbits of local history. I saw the town hall, the bank, the tavern, all constructed from a pale gray wood full of splinters and roofed with slate. Some of them, like the theater, were quite large with the crudest attempts at ornamentation. Faces, beasts, lightning bolts, crosses had been carved into some of the boards. On the southern wall of the bank, people had carved their names. This tickled the mayor to his very foundation.

"I can't believe you live here," I said to him, mustering a shred of sympathy.

"Heaven knows, we are animals, your honor," he said, slowly shaking his head, "but we can certainly mine blue spire."

"Yes, very well," I said, "but once, at an exhibition at the Hall of Science in the Well-Built City, I saw a monkey write the words T am not a monkey' five hundred times on a sheet of parchment with a quill. Each line was rendered with the most magnificent penmanship."

"A miracle," he said.

I was led to a sorry looking four-story dwelling in the center of town called the Hotel de Skree. "I have reserved the entire fourth floor for you," said the mayor.

I held my tongue.

"The service is magnificent," he said. "The stewed cremat is splendid and all drinks are complimentary."

"Cremat," I said through tight lips, but it went no further, because coming toward us on the left side of the street was an old blue man. Bataldo saw me notice the staggering wretch and waved to him. The old man lifted his hand but never looked up. His skin was the color of a cloudless sky. "What manner of atrocity is this?" I asked.

"The old miners have lived so long in the spire dust that it becomes them. Finally they harden all the way through. If the family of the man is poor, they sell him as spire rock to the realm for half what a pure sample of his weight would bring. If the family is well-off, they register him as a 'hardened hero,' and he stands in perpetuity somewhere in town as a monument to personal courage and a lesson to the young."

"Barbaric," I said.

"Most of them never get that old," said the mayor, "cave-ins, natural poison gasses, falling in the dark, madness. . . . Mr. Beaton, there," he said, pointing after the blue man, "he'll be found next week somewhere, heavy as a gravestone and set in his ways."

The mayor showed me into the lobby of the hotel and informed the management that I had arrived. The usual amenities followed. The old couple who presided over the shabby elegance of the de Skree, a Mr. and Mrs. Mantakis, were, each in his own way, textbook examples of physiognomical blunders. Nature had gone awry in the development of the old man's skull, leaving it too thin to house real intelligence and nearly as long as my forearm. I realized, as he kissed my ring, that I could not expect much from him. Not in the habit of beating dogs, so to speak, I showed him a smile and gave an approving nod. The missus, on the other hand, exhibited ferretlike tendencies in her pointed face and sharp teeth, and I knew I would have to check my change after every monetary transaction that passed between us. The hotel itself, with its tattered carpets and fractured chandelier, spelled out a gray, languorous rage.

"Any special requests, your honor?" said Mr. Mantakis.

"An ice-cold bath at dawn," I told him. "And I must have complete silence in which to meditate upon my findings."

"We hope your stay will be—" the old woman began, but I cut her off with a wave of my hand and demanded to be taken to my rooms. As Mr. Mantakis took my valise and led me toward the stairway, the mayor announced that he would send someone for me at four. "A gathering to stand as an official welcome for you, sir," he called after me.

"As you wish," I said and mounted the rickety stairs.

My lodgings were fairly spacious—two large rooms, one to serve as my sleeping quarters and one as an office with a writing desk, a lab table, and a divan. The floors creaked, the autumn breeze of the northern territory leaked through the poorly caulked windows, and the wallpaper of vertical green stripes and an indefinite species of pink flower gave rise to thoughts of carnival.

In my bedroom I was startled to find one of the hardened heroes the mayor had told me about. An old man dressed in miner's overalls stood slightly bent in the corner, supporting a long oval mirror.

"My brother, Arden," said Mantakis as he put my valise down next to the bed. "I didn't have the heart to send him to the city as fuel."

As the old man was about to leave, I asked him, "What do you know of this fruit of the Earthly Paradise?"

"Arden was there when they found it about ten years ago," he said in his slow-witted drawl. "It was pure white and looked like a ripe pear you want to sink your teeth into." As he said this, he showed me his crooked yellow teeth. "Father Garland said it should not be eaten. It would make you immortal, and that flows against the will of God."

"And you subscribe to this twaddle?" I asked.

"Sir?" he said, unsure of my question.

"You believe in it?"

"I believe whatever you believe, your honor," he said and then backed out of the room.

I studied my own image in the mirror held by the petrified Arden and considered my approach to the case. It was true that the Master had banished me to the territory as a punishment, but that was not an invitation to perform shoddily. If I were to shirk my duties, he would immediately know and have me either executed or sent to a work camp.

Not every fool and his brother could achieve the status of Physiognomist, First Class in less than fifteen years. Time and again I had conducted hairsplitting physiognomical investigations. Who was it who had discovered the identity of the Latrobian werewolf in a six-year-old girl when that beast had wrought havoc among the towns just beyond the circular wall? Who had fingered Colonel Rasuka as a potential revolutionary and headed off a coup against the Master years before the would-be perpetrator even knew himself what he was capable of? Many, including Drachton Below, had said I was the best, and I wasn't going to damage that estimation, no matter how trivial the case, no matter how remote the location of the crime.

Obviously, this was a job for one of those first year graduates who can't help wounding himself with his own instruments. The religious ramifications of the affair elicited a distinct aching in my hindquarters. I remembered the time I had pleaded with the Master to do away with all religion. Its practice had died out in the City, replaced by a devotion to Below that seemed born of the people's desire to participate in his own unique form of omniscience. Out in the territories, though, lifeless icons still held sway. His answer was "Let them have their hogwash."

"It is a corruption of nature," I countered.

"I don't give a fig," he said. "I'm a corruption of nature. Religion is about fear, and miracles are monsters." He reached over and, with graceful sleight of hand, pulled a goose egg from behind my ear. When he cracked it on the edge of his desk, a cricket jumped forth. "Do you understand?" he asked. That was when I noticed his continuous eyebrow and the small tufts of primate hair adorning each of his knuckles.

The sheer beauty was coursing through me, transforming the ineffable into images, susurrations, aromas. In the mirror, behind my reflection, I saw a garden of white roses, hedgerow and morning glory vine, that drop by drop melted into a view of the Weil-Built City. The chrome spires, the crystal domes, the towers, the battlements all shone in the sunlight of a more hospitable region of the mind. This also began to swirl and eventually settled out again into the drab surroundings of my room at the Hotel de Skree.

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 Weil-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.

"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 Weil-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.

"You've read my work?" I asked as he handed me a drink.

"Very interesting," he said.

"What did it tell you?" I asked.

"Well ..." he said and fell silent.

"Did it tell you I don't care to be toyed with by an ape such as you?" I asked.

"What do you mean, your honor?"

I threw my glass of absence in his eyes, and, when he cried out and began rubbing them, I drove my fist into his throat. He reeled backward, wheezing noises escaping his mouth, and eventually fell onto the floor where he writhed to catch his breath. I hurried over to him. "Help me," he whispered, and I kicked him in the side of the head, drawing blood. Before he could plead again, I stuck the heel of my boot into his gaping mouth.

"I should kill you for sending Beaton," I said.

He tried to nod.

"Take one more liberty with me, and I will relay to the Master that this entire town is in need of extermination."

He tried to nod again.

I left him there on the floor, opened the door to the balcony, and stepped outside, hoping the breeze would dry my perspiration. I abhorred violence, but I was called to use it occasionally. In this case, as a symbolic gesture to slap the town awake after a long dream of ignorance.

A few minutes passed before the mayor came staggering out to join me. His head was bleeding and there was vomit on his shirt front. He had a glass of absence which he sipped in between groans. When I looked over at him he leaned back against the railing and raised his glass to me, "A first-rate beating," he said and smiled.

"Unfortunately, it was what the moment called for," I told him.

"But if you look out here, your honor, you will see something," he said, pointing into the dark.

"I can't see a thing," I said.

"We are now at the northern border of the town. Out there, a few yards away, is the beginning of a vast, unexplored forest that may go on forever. It is believed that the Earthly Paradise lies somewhere deep in its heart." He took a handkerchief from his vest pocket and laid it against the cut on his head.

"What does this have to do with me?" I asked.

"One year we sent an expedition of seasoned miners in an attempt to discover the celestial garden, and all perished but one. He barely made it back alive and when he wandered into town two years later, dazed and broken, he told stories about demons in the Beyond. 'With horns and wings and ridged backs, like in a child's catechism,' he said. They had also encountered a fire-breathing cat, a black reptilian hound with tusks, and herds of a type of reindeer whose antlers grow together into nests where a bright red bird usually took up residence."

"I'm not beyond another painful encounter. Get to the point," I said.

'The point is, you must understand the people of Anama-sobia. There is a certain sense of humor here born from living in the shadow of the ungodly. For the past few years, the demons have been spotted on the northern border of town. One of them flew out of a fog one night and snatched up Father Garland's dog. You see, in the face of this threat, we must continue, so we laugh as often as possible." He nodded to me when he finished as if that would help me to understand.

"Get cleaned up," I told him, "and meet me downstairs. I will address the townspeople."

"Very good, your honor," he said and then spun quickly around. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"What?" I said.

"Out there, in the bushes," he said.

"The demons?" I asked.

He pointed at me and started to laugh. "There, I had you," he said. "You have to admit it."

I punched him as hard as I could in the left eye, chafing my knuckles. While he leaned over, swimming through the pain, I told him I would leave my topcoat in his library and that he should have it cleaned for me by the time the party was over. Then I left and returned to the purgatory beneath me.

The mayor's wife handed me a chived cremat as I ordered her to set up folding chairs for the guests. "Right away," she said and was already overseeing the operation when I turned to look. The aroma of the hors d'oeuvre was penetrating, and instinctively I tossed it off the plate I held. It rolled onto the carpet. For some time I was taken with watching the unwitting guests come within a hairsbreadth of stepping on it—a metaphor for their search for meaning. Finally, a woman ran it through with a slender high heel and carried it off into the crowd.

"We are ready for you," said the mayor's wife, awakening me from my reverie.

I had a method I employed when speaking to large groups of the dim, a way of making them focus on my message. I began by doing some quick readings of faces in the crowd and making predictions. No one could resist its appeal. "You, ovei there," I said, pointing as I strode back and forth in front of the assembled guests, "you will live in poverty for your entire life. You, the woman with the flowers in her hat, should you really be cheating on your husband? Dead within the year. A child on the way. Worthless as the day is long. A mockery of nature. I see a marriage to a man who will beat you." I bowed to thundering applause.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Anamasobia," I began as silence returned, "just as Mr. Beaton was transformed from flesh to spire rock this afternoon, you too have been changed. You are no longer citizens; you are no longer mothers or fathers, sisters brothers, et cetera. You are now suspects in my case. Until I leave, that is all you are. I will be calculating each of your physiognomical designs in order to flush out a criminal. Most of you, I should think, are aware of my credentials. You will disrobe for me. I am a man of science. I probe gently with an educated touch. If I am forced to delve into the topography of your private areas, I will do so wearing a leather glove. My instruments are so sharp that even if they do happen to nick you, you will not discover the cut for hours. Remember, move swiftly. Pose for me in utter silence. Don't ask me to tell you my assessment. I guarantee, you won't want to know it."

My oration was smooth and cleanly, and I could see that the women, though failing to understand, were taken by my innate command of the human language. The men nodded and scratched their heads. They knew enough to know I was their superior. It was a job well done. I moved through the crowd so they could get a better look at me. The beating I had given the mayor gave me newfound energy and I conversed roundly. They asked me what books they should read, how to raise their children, the best way to make money, how many times a day did I bathe. I told them everything.

Someone had lowered the lights to a faint glow, and I had had a glass or two of absence when from out of the crowd stepped a physiognomy that my eyes slid over without a scratch. She walked up to me and said, "May I ask you a question about Greta Sykes?" Stunned by her beauty, I nodded, not realizing what she was asking. "How could you have been sure that she was the werewolf simply by an insufficient nostril-to-forehead measurement when the elegance of her jawline canceled out all upper facial anomalies?"

I stared at her features for a minute, then stared away for another. "My dear," I finally said, "you've forgotten about the Reiling factor, after the great Muldabar Reiling, that states that a pitched gait, such as Greta Sykes had, reinstates the importance of the upper facial features even after they have been canceled by elegance."

She stared away for a minute, and in that time I eyed her hair, her eyes, her figure, her long fingers.

"Did you see her in her wolf form?" she asked, as I skimmed over the red and yellow paisley of her dress.

"Did I see her? I beat her on the head with my umbrella when she went for my ankle once. In her wolfen form, she was hairy and—no lie—a veritable saliva factory. Her teeth were like daggers, her nails as long as knitting needles. All this from a seemingly innocent child."

"Were you frightened?" she asked.

"Please," I said and then someone turned the lights out all together so that the room was pitch-black. I reeled from the sudden attack of my old enemy night, and thought for a moment I would fall, but then I heard the voice of the mayor.

"For your honor's pleasure, we have tonight the rare fire bat found only in the veins of Mount Gronus."

I heard a box being opened. Then the mayor cried out, "Shit, it bit me," just before the sound of flapping leather wings was heard overhead. It circled toward me from out of the dark, a phosphorescent flying rat, and I jabbed at it with my glass. It gained altitude and then flew in circles above the guests. Every time it made a complete loop, a round of applause went up.

I said to the person I felt standing next to me, "This is Physiognomist Cley. Get word to the mayor that I have had as much of the bat as my patience will tolerate."

A few minutes later, I heard Bataldo scream, "Bring up the lights." The minute the lamps were lit the bat went crazy, smashing into things and diving down to snatch at women's jewelry. The mayor had, standing next to him, a particularly limited looking fellow with a bald head and a faraway grin. "Call it back," the mayor said. The man of limitations stuck his pinkie fingers in his mouth and blew nothing but air. The bat continued on its destructive course. The man blew. The mayor called for a shotgun. A chandelier, a wounded valet, and two windows later, the fire bat of Mount Gronus fell dead atop a platter of chived cremat. It remained there for the rest of the evening while the guests danced the quadrille.

"Find me that girl," I told the mayor as I was leaving. "Send her to me. I need an assistant."

"You are talking about Aria Beaton."

"Beaton . . ."

"His granddaughter. Beaton was the one who returned from the expedition to the Earthly Paradise," he said as he helped me on with my topcoat.

"And what did he find when he finally reached Paradise?" I asked as the scent of pineapple rose up to greet me.

"He never said."

The tub was cast iron, crouching atop lion paws, and it sat on a screened porch at the back of the Hotel de Skree where I boldly disrobed in the first rays of a dim morning. Thick hedges bordered the grounds, and the wind scattered yellow leaves across the lawn. Stepping into the ancient vat, my feet and ankles and calves went almost instantly numb. As my hindquarters submerged, a fist of ice grabbed me by the brain stem and tugged. I held my peace and sank into it. These were harsh gray waters, and the beauty was no match for them.

While I soaked, my teeth chattered and I contemplated the expedition to the Earthly Paradise—miners, carrying pickaxes and wearing lantern hats, wandering off into an uncharted wilderness, searching for salvation. All that now remained of that exquisite folly was a blue statue standing in the lobby of the hotel. I then went on to think of the Mayor and the infernal fire bat before I realized it was imperative that I read Beaton. In my eye's-mind I saw him holding out a message to me he had come all the way from paradise to deliver.

I called loudly for Mantakis, who eventually appeared on the porch, wearing an apron and carrying a feather duster. He displayed a long face and was as tiresome as could be with his sighs and labored step.

"Snap out of it, Mantakis," I commanded.

"Your honor," he said.

"What's your problem, man?"

"I missed the party last night," he said.

"You missed nothing," I replied. "The Mayor loosed a dangerous animal on his people and there was nothing to eat but turds."

"The missus said you were quite eloquent in your oration," he said.

"How would the missus know?" I asked, soaping my left armpit.

"The missus—" he began, but could I really have let him go on?

"Mantakis," I said, "I want you to send Beaton up to my study."

"Begging your pardon," he said, "but I think the family wants him."

"The family can have what is left of him when I am through," I said.

"As you wish," he said and lightly dusted the air in front of him.

"Mantakis," I said as he was about to leave the porch.

"Your honor?" he asked, looking back over his shoulder.

"You missed the party quite some time ago," I said.

He nodded in agreement as if I had told him the sky was blue.

I heard them lugging Beaton up the steps to the study as I dried off in my room and prepared an injection. The voices of the two workmen who wrestled with the stone echoed up the stairway and through my door. Their curses became a boys' choir as the beauty put her arms around me and began to slowly breathe. I dressed amid waves of an inland sea, my eyes twin lighthouse beacons casting visions on reality. Professor Flock made an appearance to help me with my tie, and then the fire bat circled and swooped for five minutes while I hid beneath the bed. Down on the floor there in the dark, up to my nose in dust, I heard the Master whisper in my ear. I felt his breath and the presence of his body nearby. "Now answer the door," he said. "There is no bat."

As I slid out from beneath the bed, I heard a knocking at my door. I hurried to my feet and dusted myself off. "Who is it?" I called.

"Miss Beaton, is here to see you," shouted Mrs. Mantakis.

"Bring her to my study," I said. "FH be in shortly."

I went to the mirror and tried to compose myself. I studied my features, a mock physiognomical exam, in an attempt to win back my reason. I was doing quite well, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Arden's blue lips begin to move. They remained stone, yet they moved like flesh. A strained voice struggled like a mole burrowing up through a landslide to call faintly for help.

I closed the door behind me and went across the hall to the study. She was there, sitting next to my desk. When I entered, she stood and bowed slightly. "Your honor," she said.

"Be seated," I told her.

As she sat, I watched her body bend.

"Where did you learn the Physiognomy?" I asked her.

"From books," she said.

"My books?" I asked.

"Some," she said.

"How old were you when you began your studies?"

"I began in earnest three years ago when I was fifteen," she said.

"Why?"

After a lengthy pause, she explained: "Two of the miners of Anamasobia had developed a grudge against each other. No one knew exactly what the cause was. Things got so bad between them that they decided to settle things by having a pickax duel in the stand of willows on the western side of town. The willows were at their peak and their tendrils hung almost to the ground. The two men entered from different sides, wielding axes, and two days later someone went in and discovered that they had killed each other. Simultaneous head wounds. The senseless horror of the event upset the town. In response, Father Garland told us one of his parables about a man born with two heads, only one mouth, and a shared eye, but this did ttttfe to explain the tragedy for me. The Physiognomy, on the other hand, has a way of dismantling the terrible mystery of humanity."

I reviewed my findings on her breasts. "And what do you see when you look in the mirror?" I asked.

"A species striving for perfection," she said.

"I love an optimist," I told her. She smiled at me, and I was forced to turn away. To my surprise, facing me was her grandfather, newly nestled in the corner of the room. The sight of him nearly made me jump, but I controlled the impulse. "What do you think of your grandfather, that ill-figured boulder there?"

"Nothing," she said.

I turned to look at her, and she was staring peacefully at the old blue man. "I may have to do some chiseling during my analysis," I told her.

"I'd be honored to help in excavating that head," she said.

"What might we find?" I asked.

"The journey to paradise," she said. "It's there. He told it to me when I was a young child. Sometimes a moment of the story will come back to me all in a flash and then, a minute later, I will have forgotten it. It's there, encased in spire rock."

"I suppose we will find a white fruit at the center of his brain," I said.

"Or a cavern," she said.

I acquiesced with a smile and quickly asked, "Who is the thief?"

She uncrossed her legs, and I pulled up a chair. Leaning forward, as if in the strictest confidence, she whispered, "Everyone thinks Morgan took it and fed it to his daughter, Alice."

"Why?" I asked, leaning close enough to smell her perfume.

"The child is different now," she said, pursing her lips, her eyelids descending.

"Does she fly?" I asked.

"People say she now has all the right answers."

I took out a cigarette and lit it as a means of changing the subject. "Have you recently been in contact with any members of the opposite sex?" I asked, staring directly into her eyes.

"Never, your honor," she said.

"Do you have any aversion to the naked human form?" I asked.

"None at all," she said, and for a moment I thought she smiled.

"Does the sight of blood or suffering bother you?"

She shook her head.

"Are either of your parents dim-witted?"

"To some extent, but they are simple, kind people."

"You must do whatever I say," I told her.

"I fully understand," she said, moving her head suddenly so that her hair flipped back over her shoulder.

I couldn't help myself and leaned over to measure the distance from her top lip to the center of her forehead with my thumb and forefinger. Even without the chrome exactitude of my instruments, I knew she was a Star Five—an appellation reserved for those whose features reside at the pinnacle of the physiognomical hierarchy. It sickened and excited me to know that if not for the fact that she was female, she would have been my equal.

When I pulled my hand away, she said, "Star Five."

"Prove it," I said.

"I will," she said.

We left the hotel, and as we proceeded up the street toward the church, I asked her to recall for me the essence of the renowned Barlow case. She hurried along beside me, her hair twisting in the wind, as she recited from memory exact facial measurements I had made myself ten years earlier on an obscure doctor who had flatly denied having written subversive poetry.

To be candid, Aria Beaton reminded me of my first love, and I knew she would mean nothing but trouble for me. Involving a woman in the official business of the realm was strictly forbidden, but how could I ignore her? In the work I had done all my life, she was for me, in the concise elegance of her features, my earthly paradise. As she driveled on about the case in question, quoting me, quoting Barlow's rotten poetry, I temporarily lost my head and allowed myself to remember.

When I was a young man studying at the academy, we had a series of classes in the human form. These were early classes in "the Process" (a term used to describe the eight-year curriculum of the physiognomist), and they were extremely difficult so as to weed out those who were not worthy.

I had an advantage over many of my classmates, because I refused friendships and eschewed social life. In the evenings, when the others were out visiting the cafes of the City, I took my notebooks and returned to the academy. Every night I descended to the bowels of the enormous old building to the Physiognomy labs. The human form lab was a small room with just enough space inside for a table and chair. When you sat down, you faced a window with a curtain drawn across it. Simply by speaking, you could command the curtain to open. As it did, a stark white, well-lit room behind it appeared. The academy saw to it that a subject for study was in that room twenty-four hours a day. These were naked forms, and by speaking you could order them to bend and pose for you. I often wondered how much these human puppets were paid or if they were paid at all. They were usually of inferior physiognomical design—who else would do such work?—yet this made them all the more interesting as subjects.

I saw my first Zero there—a person devoid of any craniome-tric, facial, or bodily merit. This fellow was a real favorite with the students. He was often there late at night, I supposed, because he was so dim there was nothing else he could have been doing. Reading him, though, was like staring into infinity, seeing nature with her pants down, so to speak—both unsettling and sublime. I went one night expecting to find old Dickson there, as blank and crooked as a half-melted snowman, but when the curtain drew back at my command, I found something completely different.

She had the most exquisite body I had ever seen. All perfection and her nipples were like the points of straight pins. I had her twist and turn and jump, get down on all fours and lie on her back. Still, I could not find the slightest blemish. Her face was smooth and radiant, her eyes the deepest green, her lips full, and her hair a cascade of auburn that moved like a divine sea creature swirling in a tidal pool. That first night I stayed with her till dawn, and my commands for crude motor movement slowly gave way to whispered pleas for the wink of an eye or the flexing of a pinkie.

I should have been dead tired that next day, but instead I was filled with a strange excitement, a smoldering in my solar plexus. I could not concentrate on my studies, all the time wondering how I might meet her and have a chance to converse instead of merely command. I returned the next two nights, and to my delight she was there behind the window. On the third night, I told the curtain to open, and the sight of Dickson, drooling, brought an audible groan from me that in turn made that idiot simulate silent laughter. Right there, I devised a plan to discover who she was.

The following morning, I bribed the old fellow who oversaw the operation of the labs. "Just a name," I said to him and slipped fifty belows into his jacket pocket. He said nothing but kept the money and walked away. What I had requested was clearly against the law, and I waited for two days, wondering if I would be turned in. On the night of the second day, the authorities showed up at my apartment. Four men in long black coats, one holding back a huge mastiff with a chain thick enough to haul an anchor. "Come with us," the leader demanded, and they hustled me outside and into a carriage that swept me across town to the academy. During the ride I had given myself up to being sent to the sulphur mines or, at best, executed on the spot.

I was shaking and my mouth was incredibly dry as the four silent agents and the dog ushered me down into the basement where the labs were located. We entered a hallway I had never seen before and from that hallway entered a large stone chamber with metal doors fitted into the walls.

The agent who had spoken to me at my apartment said, ' The Master, Drachton Below, has taken a special interest in your progress and has decided to grant your request." He then walked over to one of the doors, pulled on its metal latch, and slid out a table holding the body of my love. "You requested her name?" said the agent. "She is number two forty-three."

"But she's dead," I said, tears coming to my eyes.

"Of course she's dead," he said. "They are all dead. This one was a suicide, distraught over the indictment of her parents in court by Physiognomist Reiling. Her body has been hollowed out and preserved and then fitted with special gear work and the grafted neurons of dogs—all of the Master's invention."

He leaned over and touched her behind the head, turning her on. She opened her eyes and sat up. "Sing," he said to her and she began to grunt pitifully. The other agents laughed. "Now go home and don't speak a word of this to anyone," he said. As I hurried toward the door of the chamber, I looked back and saw the men gathered round her, removing their black coats. The dog, free of its leash, was madly running in circles.

The architecture of the church at Anamasobia elicited two initial reactions in me, neither of which I allowed myself to act on. The first was to laugh uproariously at the absurdity of its conception; the second, to light a match and burn it to the ground. Composed of that horrid gray wood, the structure had been built to resemble the outline of Mount Gronus. Had Aria not been with me to explain, I would have thought it just an enormous pile of splintered lumber that came, somehow, to a point. As on the summit of the true mountain, there were representative crevices, cliffs, and sheer drops. None of the steps that led to its crooked doors was the same width or height; there was no symmetry to the placement of the windows, which were paper-thin slices of spire rock engraved with holy scenes. Set atop its highest peak was what appeared to be a miner's axe forged from gold.

"Who is responsible for this mess?" I inquired.

"It was entirely conceived of by Father Garland the first year he appeared in Anamasobia.

He swore God had controlled the hand that drew the plans for it," Aria said.

I took her slender hand, pretending to help her up the steps, but before we reached the door, it was I who stumbled and momentarily leaned against her. She surprised me with her strength, and the smile she gave in helping me drained all of mine.

"You must be more careful," I told her before pulling back the taller of the two doors.

'Thank you," she said, and we entered into the darkness.

The bad joke that was the exterior of the building was drawn out to nauseating proportions within, for to enter the church was to enter an underground cavern. There were splintered wooden stalactites and stalagmites affixed to the ceiling and floor. Shadowy constricting pathways led off from the entrance to the right and left of us into utter blackness, while directly in front was a rope bridge that traversed a miniature ravine. Across the bridge and through the sharp outcroppings, like the partially open mouth of a giant, I could make out a large cavern lit only by candlelight.

"Isn't it incredible?" asked Aria as she led the way across the bridge.

"Incredibly insipid," I said, feeling the surrounding darkness like a weight against my eyes. "Church as high adventure."

"The workers and their families feel at home here," she told me.

"Undoubtedly," I answered and nervously began inching my way out above the abyss.

In the altar chamber the pews were hewn from spire rock, and lining the walls were occasional statues that I slowly realized were more of the blue, hardened heroes. Large white candles flickered here and there, dripping wax and infusing the scene with a dim shifting light that was like the last few moments before nightfall. The altar itself was also a large flat boulder, and behind it hung an immense portrait of God as a miner.

"When Father Garland gives his sermons do they represent the release of methane gas?" I asked.

She did not seem to understand that I was joking and answered in earnest, "Well, he does refer to sin as a cave-in of the soul."

As she went off down a dark corridor to search for Garland, I stood alone, staring at God. According to the portrait, the Almighty's physiognomy suggested he might be well suited for digging holes and little else. To start with, his face was dotted with all manner of fleshy wens. There were hairs protruding from the ears, and the eyes looked in two directions. I could not see his general physiognomy as being influenced by the animal kingdom, but there were certain breeds of dogs and an entire line of simians he might have influenced. He held an axe in one hand and a shovel in the other, and he flew upright, long blue hair streaming behind, through a narrow underground tunnel. He came at the viewer out of the dark with an expression that suggested there had been a recent cave-in in his overalls. Obviously, this was a scene from the Creation.

This was not my introduction to the odd religious practices of the territories. I had read of the existence of a church, out in the western reaches of the realm, built of corn husks. Their deity, Belius, takes the form of a man with a bull's head. These strange Gods scrupulously watch the miserable lives of the out-landers and sit in judgment over them. The illusory guiding the ignorant to some appointed heaven beyond life where their clothes fit and their spouses don't drool. On the other hand, in the City, there was Below, a man, and the Physiognomy, an exacting science, a combination of reality and objectivity capable of rendering a perfect justice.

I heard Aria and Garland approaching down the corridor behind the altar and was about to look away from the portrait when it struck me I had seen that face somewhere before. My mind raced to think, but already Aria was introducing me to the father. Making sure the thought was filed away for later, I turned and found before me an exceedingly small man with white hair. He held out a doll-size hand with tiny fingernails sharpened to points.

He showed us to his study, a small cave at the back of the church, and offered us a liquid derivation of cremat. We kindly settled for a glass of something he said he had brewed himself—an amber-colored liquid that smelled like lilac and tasted like dirt. I couldn't stop drinking it.

Garland's voice had a strange whistling sound behind it that was most irritating. Combining this with his freakish little face and his aphorisms—"When two become one, then three becomes none and zero is the beginning"—he was hopelessly less than adequate. Aria, on the other hand, stared at him with a certain reverence that bordered on the unseemly. I could see I would be forced to shatter her perception of this pretentious runt.

"Tell me, Father," I said, after we were settled in and he had said a short prayer, "why you should not be my primary suspect."

He nodded as though it were a fair question. "I already know the way to paradise," he said.

"What about the fruit?" I asked.

"Plump and sweating sugar every minute. I touched it, and it felt like flesh. Did I ever think of biting it? Even having only heard of it, did you not already think of biting it? Everyone here wanted it. But as long as we left it alone, the power of that combined desire kept us on the path of righteousness. Now we are heading for a blizzard of sin."

"Did anyone show a particular interest in it?"

"One or two," he said.

"Who took it?" I asked.

He slowly shook his head. "For all I know demons swept down one night from out of the wilderness and crept into the altar chamber while I was sleeping."

"I've heard a lot of talk recently about an Earthly Paradise. Can you tell me exactly what that is?"

Garland pinched his nose with the fingers of his left hand and then sank into a pose of deep thought. Aria leaned forward in her seat, waiting for him to speak.

"The Earthly Paradise, your honor, is the one small spot in this enormous world where nature has made no mistakes. It is God's last best work before he was buried alive. It is a place that accommodates all sin and all glory and turns them drop by drop into eternity."

"God was buried alive?" I asked.

"Every day we dig closer to him," he said.

"What will happen when we get there?"

"We will have reached the beginning."

"Of what?" I asked.

"The beginning of the end." He sighed when he was through and looked over to smile at Aria. She smiled back and he said, "Tell your mother thank you for that whipped tadberry pie."

"Yes, Father," she said.

"I hear from the mayor that your dog was recently taken by a demon," I said.

He nodded sadly. "Poor Gustavus, probably rent to pieces by a pack of the filthy creatures."

"Can you describe it?" I asked.

"It was as Aria's grandfather said, like the way you always supposed a demon would look. It left a strange smell behind as I saw it flapping away."

"Did it have sharp nails?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?"

"I think you are equating me with the demon in some way because of my nails," he said, never losing his composure. "I keep them sharpened in order to pull out splinters like the one now lodged in my heart."

"I've got a pair of chrome tweezers you can use," I said. Then I turned to Aria and asked her to leave the room. "The father and I have personal business we must discuss."

When she was gone, I told Garland I would need his church in which to perform my investigations of the townspeople.

"You mean they will disrobe in my church?" he said, standing.

"That is the procedure," I said. "You will be on hand to keep the crowd orderly and silent."

"Impossible," he said and took a step toward me, thrusting out those two little hands as if he intended to use them.

"Easy, Father," I said. "I'd hate to have to enlighten you."

Then he grimaced, and I noticed his front teeth had also been sharpened. He was turning red in the face and shaking slightly. I put my hand in my coat pocket and around the handle of my scalpel.

"Grace is God's lantern." He grunted, and instantly he began to relax. He stood very calmly for a few moments.

I nodded. "You can see this is better," I said.

'Come with me, your honor. I have something here that will interest you," he said. He walked over to the wall behind his desk and gave it a gentle push. A door swung back behind which I could see a flight of stairs leading down. He stepped through and then began to descend. "Come, your honor," he called back weakly.

My first thought was that he meant to ambush me in some dark alleyway underground, but I followed, one hand on the railing and one in my pocket on the scalpel. I had decided that with the first pass of the instrument, I would take an eye, after which I would finish him with my boot. As I continued down the long stairway, the prospect of a challenge began to appeal to me.

I found Father Garland kneeling in a marble room, well lit by torches lining the walls. Before him sat a huge wooden chair, holding what looked like an enormous and badly abused cigar. But as I drew closer, I made out the distinct features of a long, thin man, with a long, thin head. His skin, though leatherized by time, had remained completely intact. It even appeared that there were eyeballs still behind the closed lids. There were webs between his fingers and one was pierced by a thin silver ring.

"What have we here," I asked, "the God of cremat?"

Garland rose and stood next to me. "This is the one they found in the mine with the fruit," he said. "Sometimes I think he is not dead at all but just waiting to return to paradise."

"How old is it?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I don't know, but even you must agree there is something unusual here."

"It isn't the unusual I doubt," I said.

"What then?" asked Garland. "The fruit, the Traveler—they are miracles, surely you can see."

"All I see is a dried-out cadaver with the craniometry of a vase, and all I hear coming from your mouth is superstitious twaddle. What am I supposed to gather from this?" I asked.

"I will turn my church over to you tomorrow, but tonight I would like you to do something for me."

"Perhaps," I said.

"I want you to read the Traveler's face."

I looked up to see if it would be worth it, and I noticed a few tantalizing features. The long forehead was misshapen but gracefully so. "It might be interesting," I said.

Garland offered his paw to me and I shook it.

Outside, I found Aria sitting on the bottom step of the church. She was staring out across the huge field that separated the end of town from the beginning of the wilderness. The wind was blowing the long grass, and dark clouds were gathering over the distant trees.

"The snow is coming," she said without turning around.

That afternoon, I had Mantakis take a message to Bataldo stating that the populace should assemble outside the church the next morning at ten. Then Aria went to my study to make the preliminary readings on her grandfather's face while I took the beauty to bed. As I lay there waiting for the warmth to begin to creep, I thought two things. The first was that perhaps someone had taken Garland's dog so the church would be unguarded at night while the father slept. The second was that the physiognomy of the child the woman had begged me to read in the street the previous day seemed utterly familiar to me. Then Professor Flock appeared with a brief report from the sulphur mines. "Hot as can be," he said, puffing and grunting. Sweat dripped from his reddened face. From behind him, I heard shouting and the cracking of whips. "And my god, the smell, the very elimination of excrement." He moaned before disappearing. Soon after, I sank into an hallucination involving Aria and the demons that quickly burned the beauty's wick. When I awoke, two hours later, three inches of snow lay on the main street of Anamasobia and more was being driven down on fierce winds from Gronus.

Snow, almost nonexistent back in the Weil-Built City, was an inconvenient little miracle I could have lived without, but as I changed my shirt and freshened up, I felt invigorated by the thought that I would soon get a chance to do some real work. When I was ready, I grabbed my bag of instruments and my topcoat and went next door to the study to inform Aria that we were to return to the church. On my way across the landing, I called down to Mrs. Man-takis to bring us up some tea. She offered to also prepare dinner, but I declined, since a full stomach was likely to put me in too generous a mood.

I found Aria at my study desk, writing in a notebook of her own. She sat rigidly upright, but her hand moved furiously across the paper. In the minute I stood silently and watched her, she had filled an entire page and gone on to the next.

"Tea is coming," I said finally to alert her I was there.

"One minute," she said and continued writing.

I was slightly put out by her failure to officially acknowledge my presence, but there was something about the controlled desperation with which she wrote that prevented me from interrupting her. She was still writing when Mrs. Mantakis brought the tea.

She entered with a look in her eye that suggested she did not approve of my young female guest. "Did your honor enjoy the mayor's party?" she asked while setting the silver tray down on the table before me. She wore the most ridiculous bonnet and a white apron with ruffles and angel appliques.

"Quite a gala," I said.

"Just after you left, they barbecued the fire bat and there was enough for everyone to have a little piece. You know, they say it makes you see better at night."

"Before or after you vomit?" I asked.

"Oh, your honor, its taste is quite special, like a spicy rabbit, or have you ever had curried pigeon?"

"You're through," I told her and pointed to the door.

She scurried out with her hands folded and her head bowed.

"A regrettable woman," I said to Aria as I lifted my teacup.

"I'm coming," she said.

Finally, she came and sat with me. The top button of her blouse had unfastened and her eyes were tired and beautiful. As she poured herself a cup of tea, I asked her if she would like to assist me in performing a reading that night.

I saw great promise in her when she did not ask who the subject was but simply replied, "Yes, your honor." She showed no sign of excitement or fear. She barely even blushed. When she sipped her tea she nodded vacantly at a spot an inch away from my eyes. It had taken me years to learn that technique.

"Now then, what did your grandfather reveal?" I asked, breaking her spell on me.

"He's a classic sub-four with traces of the avian," she said.

"Did you notice anything unusual, as I did, about the eye-crease-to-jaw measurements?" I asked.

"That was the most interesting part," she said. "It's only a hairsbreadth off the Grandeur Quotient."

"Yes, so close, yet so far."

"Holistically, he's a three," she said.

"Come, come, there is no place for nepotism in Physiognomy. I'll retire my calipers if he is any more than a two point seven. Anything else?" I asked.

"No," she said, "but as I rubbed my hands across his face, I had a memory of him telling me a piece of that story he had referred to as the 'Impossible Journey to the Earthly Paradise.' It is just a fragment, but I remembered it vividly. I wrote it down in my notebook."

"Give me a few particulars," I said.

She set down her tea and leaned back. "The miners had come to an abandoned city in the wilderness and stayed there for three nights after having done battle with a pack of demons. Grandfather had killed two of the creatures, one with his long knife and the other with his pistol. He had pulled their horns out with a pair of pliers in order to keep them as souvenirs.

"The city was near an inland sea and composed of huge mounds of earth riddled with tunnels. On the first night they stayed there, they witnessed strange red lights in the sky. On the second night one of the men reported seeing the ghost of a woman, wearing a veil, walking through the crude streets. On the third night, Mayor Bataldo's uncle, Joseph, was killed in his sleep by something that left a hundred pairs of puncture wounds. Whatever it was that had killed him followed them out into the wilderness for many days till they crossed a river and lost it."

The night was frigid and the snow blew relentlessly against us as we made our way toward the church of Anamasobia. A flock of urchins was working on a snowman out in front of the mayor's office. If I didn't know any better I would have thought it was meant as an effigy of myself. Had Aria not been beside me and had I not been on an errand of official business, I'd have put my boot through it. "No matter," I thought, being in a good mood, "their congenital ignorance is sufficient punishment."

A few moments later, Aria called over the wind, "Did you see those boys were building a likeness of the Traveler? It has become a childhood tradition ever since he was discovered."

"Children," I said, "a race of bizarre deviants."

Then she said something and actually laughed aloud, but her words were swallowed by the wind.

I never thought I would be pleased to enter that Temple of the Off-Kilter, but not to have the snow driving into my face made the church almost acceptable. As Aria closed the big misshapen door behind us, I stood for a moment, listening to the immediate silence and behind it the wind howling as if at a great distance. Her hair was wet and the smell of it seemed to fill the dark foyer. My hand involuntarily came up to touch her face, but luckily she had already begun to move toward the bridge. We crossed over, myself a little unsteadily, reeling with her wet-forest scent. I'd have given a thousand belows to have been reading her that night instead of Garland's six-and-a-half-foot dried-dung manikin.

The father was there, waiting for us, and somehow he had moved the Traveler to the flattened boulder that was the altar.

"Your honor," he said and bowed, his disposition apparently having lightened since that afternoon.

I waved halfheartedly to acknowledge him.

"Aria, my dear," he said, and she went over to him and kissed him on the forehead. As she did, I noticed him rest his pointy little hand lightly on her hip.

"How did you get him in here?" I asked, wanting to shorten their coziness.

"The Traveler is light," he said, "almost as if he were made of paper or dried corn stalks. Of course, I had to drag his feet, but I barely lost my breath bringing him up the stairs."

The thought of Garland losing his breath seemed a near impossibility.

I stepped up to the altar and rested my bag of instruments down next to the subject's head. Aria followed and helped me off with my topcoat. As she removed her own, I began laying the tools out in the order in which I would need them.

"Can I be of assistance?" Garland eagerly asked.

"Yes," I said, not looking up from my work, "you can leave us now."

"I thought I might watch. I'm keenly interested," he said.

"You may go," I told him without raising my voice.

He sulked over to the corridor that led to his office, but before he finally left, he offered an aphoristic blessing: "May God be everywhere you are about to look and absent where you already have."

"Thank you, Father," Aria said.

I turned to look at him and quietly laughed in his face before he disappeared down the corridor.

"Hand me that cranial radius," I said to her, pointing to the first instrument, a chrome hoop with representative screws at the four points of the compass; and, with this, we began.

In order to perform the reading, I had to overcome my initial revulsion at touching the brown shiny beetle-back skin of the Traveler. One of the first things we learned at the academy was that dark pigmentation of the flesh is a sure sign of diminished intelligence and moral fiber. In addition, the consistency of it, like a thin yet slightly pliant eggshell, put a fear in me that my sharp instruments might leave a crack in the subject's head. I put on my leather gloves and then set to work with the radius.

The slender nature of the cranium made Mantakis's thin head seem almost robust, but at the same time there was something so concise and elegant about this expression of Nature that the computations, when I figured them in my workbook—a tiny leather-bound volume in which I recorded all my findings in secret code with a needle dipped in ink—at once pointed to both a severe paucity of rational thought and a certain sublime divinity. The numbers seemed to be playing tricks on me, but I let them stand since I had never read anything before quite like the Traveler. Is he human? I wrote at the bottom of the page.

"Pass me the nasal gauge," I said to Aria, who stood close by me, rapt with interest. Now I could see that to have invited her along on this venture might have been a mistake. I did not want her to sense my uncertainty in the face of the Traveler. What could be worse than a pupil discovering a lack of confidence in her mentor?

"He is most peculiar looking up close," she said. "Nothing physically would suggest anything but the weakest link to humanity, yet there is something more there."

"Please," I said, "we must let the numbers do the thinking." I fear she took this as a reprimand and was from then on completely silent.

The bridge of the nose began almost at the hairline, and instead of flanging at the nostrils tapered to a sharp point with two small slits, like the puncture wounds of a penknife on either side. "Madness," I muttered, but, again, I put down precisely what I found. Instead of the math solidly confirming my suspicions that he represented a species of prehistoric protohuman, the measurement was in direct ratio to that of a Star Five, my own and Aria's illustrious physiognomical evaluation.

The hair itself was long, black, and braided, and appeared as healthy as Aria's beautiful tresses. There was a point where the braiding ended, but the hair had continued to grow a full six inches. From the look of it, I was forced to wonder if it was still not growing beyond death, slowly reaching outward through the centuries. I removed my glove and tentatively ran my fingers through it. Soft as silk, and I could almost feel life in it. I wiped my hand on my trousers and quickly put the glove back on.

I continued, calling for Aria to pass the various instruments— the Hadris lip vise, the ocular standard, the earlobe cartilage meter, etc. I took my time, working slowly and carefully, recording, as always, precisely what I found, yet all the time a feeling of frustration was mounting in my intestines. The representative mathematics of this strange head was acting more like magic, conjuring something utterly superior to even my own features. When all I had left to apply was the calipers, my specialty, I stepped back from the altar and motioned to Aria that we would take a break.

I turned away from the Traveler and lit a cigarette in order to calm my nerves. Sweat trickled down from my brow, and my shirt was damp. Aria said not a word but gave me an inquiring look, as if I should relate to her my findings so far.

"It is too early to make any determination," I said.

She nodded and glanced past me at that long face. From the cast of her gaze, I knew what it was she was looking at—the same eye-crease-to-jawline measurement we had earlier discussed about her grandfather. I didn't need the calipers to know that I would find a measurement there well within the bounds of the Grandeur Quotient.

"Your honor," she said, "I think he is moving."

I spun around, and she brushed past me. She put her hand out and laid it on his chest. "I feel it," she said, "the slightest movement."

I reached over and withdrew her hand with my own. "Now, now," I said, "at times we can doubt what we see, but I'm afraid there is no doubting Death, especially since it has had residence in this fellow for a thousand years or more."

"But I felt it move," she said. There was a look of fear in her eyes, and I could not let go of her.

"Garland probably upset the internal structure of the thing when he moved it. You must feel the breaking of brittle bones turned to salt or the rearrangement of petrified organs. That is all."

"Yes, your honor," she said, but still stepped back with a look of horror on her face.

How could I have told her that all of my calculations to this juncture pointed to an individual of great awareness and subtle nuance? How could I admit that this freak of nature, with his insect skin and webbed fingers, was, as far as I could tell, the very pinnacle of human evolution? "Where does this put me?" I wondered. I wanted desperately to change my findings. It would have been easy, and I knew, for all involved, it would have been better, but the magic that had infected my computations had put a hex on me that tied me to the bitter truth.

I spread the calipers wide and once again approached the subject. For the first time since beginning, I saw the face devoid of geometric and numeralogical inference. Instead of angles and radii, I saw that he wore a sly, close-lipped smile, and that from the shape and position of his lidded eyes, he had been a man of great wisdom and humor. Then I looked up to see the candles flickering all around the dim cavern that was the church. The Master's voice ran through my head. "Cley," he said, "you are buried alive." I began to feel trapped and claustrophobic. I forced myself to hide my fear and placed one tip of the instrument at the direct center of his forehead and the other at the end of his long chin where grew a small pointed beard. I tried to take the reading, and then instantly realized I had no idea what I was doing. The Physiognomy, with its granite foundation in the history of culture, suddenly dissolved like a sugar cube in water. I stood between my love and that slab of living Death and felt Garland's blizzard of sin sweeping over me.

"Aha," I said, a bit too theatrically, "here is what I was looking for."

"What is it?" Aria asked.

'Well, if you take into consideration the meager nostril slits and divide them into the center forehead to center chin measurement, as I have just done, this activates the Flock vector, which in turn conclusively proves our subject is little more than an animal with an upright stance."

'The Flock vector?" said Aria. "I'm unaware of it."

As was I, but I created a history for it and talked at great length about the brilliance of my professor.

A look of disappointment crept across her face, and I was unsure if it was for me or for her own desire to be witness to a grand discovery. At that point, though, all I wanted was the beauty and to sleep for a very long time.

As I put away my instruments, Aria asked if I would like her to get Garland. I brought my finger to my lips and waved for her to follow me. She looked surprised, but she helped me on with my topcoat and then put on her own. I took one more glance at the Traveler before fleeing. His expression seemed somewhat different now. The mouth was slightly open, as if satiated after having devoured the Physiognomy right out of me.

I couldn't, for the life of me, recall the most basic theories, and the geometery of things had all become circles. The sudden nature of the loss made me dizzy, leaving me sick to my stomach. I no longer had an angle on the world, an anchor in myself. Aria helped me across the swaying bridge, through the doors, and down the steps. When she did not let go of me out amid the swirling snow, I knew she knew there was something wrong.

After a few deep breaths I insisted she unhand me and then, by force of will, trod along in my normal, determined gait. My eyes, devoid of the ability to measure, saw no meaning. Everything was just inexplicably there and brimming with uncertainty. "Structure determines existence in the physical world," I said to myself. At least I had remembered this much, but the meaning of it melted down to the base of my spine and froze.

I left her in the street outside the Hotel de Skree. "Tomorrow, ten sharp," I said. "Don't be late."

Up in my room, I pushed a vial and a half of the beauty into my favorite vein. I was perilously skimming the edge of overdose, but I needed strong medicine to tolerate my fear. I could feel the violet liquid almost immediately begin to perk in my head and chest, but before she had me fully in her grasp, I went over to my valise and took out the derringer I carried as insurance against hostile subjects. Placing a chair, back to the wall, I sat with my feet pulled up and listened hard for a lurking danger I could not put my finger on.

Cursed Anamasobia had become the hell of physiognomists, and I prayed to everything— Gronus, Aria, the Weil-Built City—that my amnesia was not permanent. If it were, my life would be lost, and I knew I would eventually have to turn the derringer on myself.

"The Flock vector, I like it," said the professor who now stood before me, laughing. He was dressed all in white and as young as on the first day of class I had had with him.

"That damn Traveler has erased everything," I said, unable to see the humor.

"Perhaps you'll be joining me soon," he said.

"Be gone!" I yelled. He evaporated instantly, but the sound of his mirth lingered like the smoke of an extinguished cigarette.

In the wind outside, I heard low voices, passing on gossip. The lights flickered. The Mantakises were either groaning or singing, and the floor began to move like water. I bobbed in the tide, trying to think of numbers and rules, but all I was capable of seeing in my eye's mind was a parade of meaningless faces. The harder I thought, the faster they sped by, disappearing into the wall above the bed. During my career, I had read each of them, each revealing to my instruments and well-trained eye a certain measure of guilt, but now they might as well have been lumps of cremat for all the meaning they bestowed. I couldn't find the sum, and, when I tried to divide, my brain went haywire, emitting showers of green sparks. If I even attempted to think of the mathematical formula for figuring surface-to-depth ratios, I would immediately picture Mayor Ba-taldo, leaning on his balcony, saying, "A first-rate beating," and smiling like a classic moron.

I was, though, able to read a message of doom written on my own countenance as it peered back at me from Arden's mirror across the room. My hands shook from the beauty chills, those tremors of the nervous system that occasionally rack the long-time user, and the paranoia was exquisite. For a moment, I thought I saw the face of a demon at the window, staring in through the falling snow. To calm myself, I got up, grabbed my instrument bag off the dresser, and brought it to the bed. Still holding the derringer in my left hand, I opened the bag with my right and took the chrome instruments out one by one. I laid them on the bed in a straight line and then stood and stared. The sight of each of them brought back to me the damnable face of the Traveler. I was reaching for the calipers when I heard someone begin climbing the stairs to my room, one heavy step at a time.

Even as I spun to face the door, bringing the derringer up for better aim, the question struck me, Why do they call this man-thing the Traveler? It seemed to me he hadn't gone anywhere for centuries. But like an enormous dry cornstalk rattling in the autumn wind, I saw him in my eye's-mind now coming to me, wearily mounting the stairs, his very skin creaking, his exhalations, heaves of dust. I wondered if he was using the banister. "Mantakis," I yelled at the top of my voice, yet only the slightest murmur escaped me.

The sound of steps ceased at the landing and I cocked the trigger. I had never fired the gun before, and I wondered if it was, in fact, loaded. Three methodical raps sounded upon my door and in the silence that followed I detected the faint wheeze of labored breathing. "Come in," I said.

The door opened, and it was a good thing I did not give in to the urge to pull the trigger, because standing before me was the pig-faced driver of the coach and four. The miserable wretch stared, glassy-eyed, as if he were walking in his sleep.

'The Master requested that I fetch you," he said without the slightest trace of his misbegotten humor.

"Drachton Below is here?" I asked, unable to hide my astonishment.

'You must accompany me," he said.

"Very well," I mumbled. I put on my overcoat and gathered up my instruments. Hastily I put them in the bag and snapped it shut. When the driver turned to begin his descent, I slipped the derringer into the pocket of my coat. Shaking like a leaf, my mind swimming through rough seas of beauty, I staggered toward the door. I knew that whatever came of this, it would be no good.

The driver took each step at the same dense pace with which he had ascended. When I reached the landing outside the Mantakis's bedroom door, I heard Mrs. Mantakis gibbering on and on about something, and the very sound of her voice drained the energy out of me. I leaned, exhausted, against the wall for a moment and closed my eyes.

"Your honor," said the driver.

I instantly awoke and somehow we had gotten outside the hotel. The moon was bright, and I was startled that the weather had turned warm and the snow seemed to have all melted.

"But how could this be?" I asked.

"The Master is waiting," he said, holding open the door of the coach.

I nodded once and got in.

As we drove down the main street of town, I wondered where he could be taking me. I had a million questions, but soon I realized that the whole episode must be the result of the beauty, working its magic on me. "It's not real," I said to myself. When we passed the church and headed across the field to the boundary of the wilderness, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I hoped that if I could fall asleep and wake up, I would be back in my room at the Hotel de Skree, or better yet, back in the Well-Built City.

I must have fallen asleep, because I was awakened by the jolt of the carriage coming to an abrupt stop. "Persistent hallucination," I whispered. Looking out the window was like looking into a pool of ink. I could not make out the merest glimmer of light. Suddenly, the door of the coach swung open and there was the driver, holding a lit torch in his hand. The flame from it blew and sputtered in the warm wind, and the way it lit his inadequate face made him appear now more sinister than stupid.

"Where in Harrow's hindquarters are we, my good man?" I asked, stepping out into the night. I slid my left hand into the pocket of my overcoat and put my fingers around the derringer. My right hand followed suit with the opposite pocket and found the handle of my scalpel.

"The entrance to the mines of Mount Gronus," he responded. "Follow me, your honor."

We walked a few paces up a dirt path to the timber-lined opening of the main shaft. "Are you quite certain the Master is here?" I asked.

He said nothing but plunged into the deeper darkness and forged unhurriedly ahead. I scrabbled to keep up with him, the whole time my mind turning over the possible questions the Master would ask me. "No matter how bad it gets," I told myself, "if you know what is good for you, you won't mention Aria."

We walked for a long time through pitch black. It is true, he had the torch, but what could it light? For every few yards of night it burned away, there were oceans more that would flood in. This darkness everywhere had me constantly on the verge of screaming. I have no idea how I was able to continue, but continue I did. We seemed to be traveling down to the heart of nothing when all of a sudden, we turned to the right and stepped into a small cavern that was lit as brightly as day by some luminescent source I could not detect. Sitting in a high-backed chair situated in front of a garden of waist-high stalagmites, legs demurely crossed, smoking a long thin cigarette, was Drachton Below. Curled up at his feet with its back to me was a very large doglike creature covered with long silver hair.

"Cley, good to see you," he said and blew a stem-thin trail of smoke from his lips. He wore burgundy silk pants and a lime green jacket. The pale skin of his hairless chest almost reflected the brilliant light that was everywhere.

"Master," I said, bowing slightly.

"And how is the investigation going?" he asked, inspecting the back of his right hand.

"Splendidly," I said.

"Really ..." he replied.

"But are you real?" I asked. "I recently took the beauty, and I am in a jillywix as to the corporeality of this meeting."

"What do you mean by real?" he said and laughed.

"Are you here?"

"Not only am I here, but, look, I've brought along an old friend of yours." With this, he nudged the creature lying at his feet with the sole of his sandal. "Up," he commanded. It growled slightly, kicked its back legs spasmodically once, and then began to rise. I was astonished when it did not come to rest on four legs, but continued till it was standing on two like a dog convinced it is human.

"Wait . . ." I said, because something about it began to appear familiar to me. Then it turned and I saw the lupine face of Greta Sykes, the Latrobian werewolf. "Not this," I said, taking in her form. She was larger than when I had first tracked her down, and there were two rows of metal bolts that pierced both scalp and skull at the crown of her head. Her incisors and claws still appeared as sharp, but now beneath the thick coat I could detect the human breasts of a young woman. Trapped in her eyes was a look of great suffering and sorrow.

"Your little werewolf. I've done some work on her, messed around with the brain and added some new pain centers. She doesn't change into a little girl anymore; now she is an effective agent."

"Your genius astounds me," I stammered.

"Down," he told her, and she lowered herself to the floor, curling up at his feet once again. "Cley, your genius had better astound me at the completion of this case. I want that white fruit."

"I am about to enact the Twelfth Maneuver," I said.

He laughed at me. "Whatever," he said, waving his hand. "If you fail, I will have Miss Sykes here perform the Last Maneuver on you and the rest of that tedious town."

"As you wish, Master," I said.

"And what is this I hear about a certain young lady who is serving as your assistant?"

"Just a secretary, sir. There are a lot of bodies to read down there. I need someone to help me keep track."

"You're a sly one, Cley," he said. "I don't care what you do with her. I want the fruit. The Weil-Built City needs me to live forever."

"But of course," I said.

"Now," he said, turning his profile to me and placing the much-diminished cigarette in his mouth, "take that surrogate penis out of your coat pocket and let's see some of the old scientific exactitude."

"Am I to shoot?" I asked.

"No, you are to stand there till the end of time. I'm not giving medals for stupid questions this week. You'd better get to it," he said speaking out of the smiling side of his mouth.

I pulled out the gun and raised my arm to aim. The derringer swerved and dipped at the behest of the beauty, my fear, and the increasingly pungent odor of Greta Sykes. "What if I were to miss," I thought as I closed one eye for clearer vision. That thought exploded in my mind a moment before the gun went off, its report ricocheting off the blue walls of the cavern.

I came awake suddenly, sitting straight up. Across the room from me there was a neat hole in the center of Arden's mirror and a sleet storm of shattered glass on the floor in front of it. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. The bright day outside my window revealed an end to the snowstorm. I threw the derringer on the floor and took out a cigarette. There was the sound of rustling a floor below, and then I heard Mantakis hurrying up the stairs. His pounding at the door thickened my headache and spiked my eyes.

"Your honor," he called, "did I hear a gun go off?"

"A little experiment, Mantakis," I said.

"An experiment?" he asked.

'To see if you were awake," I said.

"I am," he said.

"What is the time?"

"Your honor, it is nine-fifty."

"Draw me a bath and bring me a steaming bowl of that excrement that passes for sustenance here."

"The wife has made a cremat goulash that is a testament to her abilities," he said.

"My very fear, Mantakis."

I almost lost consciousness while adrift in the acrimonious waters of my bath. With the freezing temperature, the blowing snow, and the fact that I felt as if I really had traveled to Mount Gronus through the night, my mind reeled and my consciousness began to constrict in the manner of my other apertures. Just as I was going under, Mantakis appeared and swept a steeping bowl of goulash under my nose, which had the miraculous effect of smelling salts. I actually thanked him for that whiff of death and then ordered him to take it, and himself, away.

I sat, frozen, and searched every inch of my mind for the lost Physiognomy. I couldn't turn up a single digit, not even a fraction of a chin. "What do you do when the surface gives way and you fall in?" I said to the snowdrifts beyond the screen. Then the Master came to my thoughts, carried by a chilly gust of wind, and for a moment I wondered if perhaps he had not truly contacted me by somehow swimming through the beauty and into last night's hallucination. The memory of Greta Sykes standing before me led me to believe the entire incident was nothing more than a nightmare concocted from my own worst fears, but the Master was rich in magic, a primitive phenomenon I had no knowledge of. For all their grotesque weirdness these thoughts did not concern me as much as the prospect of facing the faces of Anamasobia empty-headed.

Mayor Bataldo was standing in a small snowdrift waiting for me outside the hotel. He was dressed in a long black coat, and atop his bulbous head was a ridiculous black hat with a broad brim. Seeing me, he flashed a grin so full of whimsy that I wanted, right then, to give him another beating.

"Beautiful day, your honor," he said.

"Contain yourself, Mayor, my patience is a brittle thing today," I told him.

The people of Anamasobia await you at the church," he said, his smile fading but never quite completely gone.

We started down the street, snow crunching beneath our boots, the town as still and silent as a graveyard. As we walked, the mayor reeled off the details of his preparations.

"I have assigned you a bodyguard, the most vicious of the miners, a fellow named Calloo. He will protect you in the event one of the citizens protests the protocol. Father Garland has set a screen up on the altar so that those who must disrobe will have some privacy. By the way, the father is beside himself with the idea of both nudity and science infiltrating his church on the same day."

"Keep him away from me," I said. "Whatever status he has in this town due to his religious station means nothing to me. I'll have him whipped like a mongrel if he interferes."

"Aria has suggested that you would like to see Morgan and his daughter, Alice, first, since they have generated some suspicion in the town."

"Very well," I said.

"Look, there are your specimens," said Bataldo, pointing ahead of us.

We were close enough to the church for me to appraise the haphazard line of oafish reprobates. When they noticed us approaching, they grew silent, and it did me some good to see a suggestion of nervousness and perhaps a tinge of fear come into nearly all the faces. Some of the bigger and more brutal looking of the miners showed no emotion at all. How could I really frighten them after their having spent such a large portion of their lives in darkness with the possibility of a cave-in or the invisible danger of poison gas always lurking? At least they did not openly show their contempt.

I was about to head for the door of the church when the mayor took my arm and stopped me. "A moment, your honor," he said. Then he turned to the crowd and, waving his arms in the air, called out down the line, "All right, as we practiced. Ready, one, two, three ..."

The townspeople broke into a raggedly coordinated chorus of, "Good morning, your honor," yelling like a pack of schoolchildren greeting their teacher.

It took me by surprise, and all I could think to do was give a half bow in acknowledgment. This brought peals of laughter from them. Bataldo was beside himself with glee. My anger surged in me, and for a moment I almost lost sight of the situation. Had I actually taken out the loaded derringer and shot the mayor as I so wanted to at that moment, it might have jeopardized the entire case. Instead, I took a breath, turned away, and made for the entrance to the church. It did not help that I tripped on the first of those crooked steps, for that brought forth another torrent of hilarity at my expense.

I realized I was sweating profusely as I made my way over the unsteady bridge just inside the doors of the church. With the Physiognomy nowhere in sight, I knew my only recourse was to pretend. In short, to put on a mask of competency, behind which I could hide my emptiness. The shadowy nature of the church was a blessing that would aid me. My greatest problem would be Aria, who now came toward me beaming with beauty and an uncanny knowledge of that which had once defined my importance.

"Are you ready to do some work?" I asked sternly as I handed her my bag of instruments.

"I was up all night rereading my texts," she said. "I hope I will be of service."

She wore a plain gray dress and had her hair pulled back in what I took to be an attempt to appear more professional by appearing less feminine. Still, with all the problems circling in my head like a coven of crows, I was instantly overcome by her presence. I touched her shoulder lightly and for a moment was transported to the Earthly Paradise. Then I saw Father Garland appear from behind the wooden screen he had erected on the altar, and heaven turned instantly to hell.

He came toward me like the strident possum that he was, his sharpened teeth gleaming in the torchlight. Pushing his way in between Aria and me, he said, * The mayor has warned me not to interfere with your proceedings, and I have agreed to suffer this humiliation for the good of the town, but you, you will pay in the hereafter. There is a certain chamber in the mine of the afterlife set aside for the sacrilegious where the torments surpass the living pain of loneliness and loss of love."

"Yes," I said, "but does it surpass one unbearable moment of having to listen to you?"

"I noticed you did not stay to discuss your findings on the Traveler with me last night," he said, smiling sharply. "It was our deal, I recall, that you would apprise me of your results."

"Prehuman," said Aria, coming to my defense.

"That is correct," I said, "a creature preserved from before the ascendancy of man. Interesting for its novelty as a museum piece but physiognomically empty of revelation."

"I will pray for you," said Garland. He turned and walked to the first row of stone pews, kneeled down, and clasped his hands.

"Spare me," I said and accompanied Aria to the altar. Waiting for us there was the fellow the mayor had assigned to accost unruly subjects. It seemed Bataldo had gotten the right man for the job, because Calloo, as he was called, was the size of the full-grown bear I had once seen in a traveling circus outside the walls of the Weil-Built City. He had a thick black beard and hair nearly as long as Aria's. I did not need the Physiognomy to see that his hands, his head, in short, every part of him was an affront to the common sense of nature. In addition to his strength and size, he exhibited few outward signs of human intelligence. When I gave him his orders, he relayed to me that he understood by means of grunts and nods. I sent him off to fetch the first of the subjects and then set out my instruments on the stone altar just as I had the night before.

If the eight year old girl, Alice, whom everyone suspected of having been fed the fruit by her father, had all the right answers, what I wanted to know was who was asking the questions. I sat before her naked form, making believe I was jotting down notes in my tiny book with the straight pin and ink. Along with the loss of my knowledge went this notation system, which now seemed to me an extravagance of the minuscule I could no longer grasp the genius of. Aria was doing a cranial reading as I questioned the girl.

"Alice," I said, "did you eat the white fruit?"

"Eat the white fruit," she said, staring at me with an expression that made Calloo look like a savant.

"Alice," I said, "have you changed recently in your thinking?"

"Stinking," she said.

I shook my head in exasperation.

"Have you seen the fruit?" I asked.

"Clean the suit," she said.

"Am I missing something here?" I asked Aria.

She shook her head and came over to whisper to me that the girl was a retrograde two on the intelligence scale and that the measurements showed her to be pure of heart.

"Next," I yelled.

It turned out that her father was no less brilliant than she. He had an inordinately large penis, which obviously revealed the curse of his ignorance. Aria showed great diligence in measuring this organ, but I cut her off in the middle of her work, saying, "There's nothing there. Next!"

With our lead suspects cleared by Aria's computations and my necessarily more intuitive approach, we began to go to work on the rest of the town. So far, my plan to make it seem as if I was using this opportunity to mentor my assistant had worked well. "And what did you find?" I would ask her with each instrument she applied. She handled the chrome tools with great adeptness, calling out numbers for me to record in my book. I was, of course, going to allow her to catch the thief for me. Occasionally, her confidence would falter, and she would look to me with a question in her eyes. Then I would say, "Go on, continue. I am watching. I will let you know when you have made an error." With these words of encouragement, she would smile, as if thanking me for my generosity, and I began to think that the whole affair might work out better than I had imagined.

They filed in one by one, a never-ending nightmare of the repulsive and displeasing. With my new blindness, picking a thief out of this populace was like trying to identify a scoundrel in a room full of lawyers. Their nakedness was very unsettling. All that flesh and their blatant sex staring me in the face made my stomach queasy. When Aria ordered the mayor's wife to bend over, I lit a cigarette, hoping the smoke would obscure from me her dilapidated mysteries.

Then, on our twentieth subject, a man named Frod Geeble, the owner of the tavern, Aria stopped in her application of the calibrated navel standard and said to me, "You'd better double-check me here."

I gave her a nervous look, and she squinted as if for an instant she saw through to my unknowing. Quickly, I put down my notebook and approached the subject. She held out the instrument to me; although I could recall the name of it, I had no idea how it worked. Instead of accepting the standard from her, I bent over and put my left eye up to the fat man's navel, looking in as if peering through the end of a telescope. Unable to think of what else to do, I stuck my index finger into the flesh ditch. Frod Geeble belched.

"Interesting," I said.

"What number do you come out with?" she asked.

"That was my question for you," I said.

"I feel uncertain after having discerned evidence of depravity in the abundance of eyebrow hair," she said.

"Forget your uncertainty," I said.

"But I read last night, in your work The Blemished Corpulence and Other Physiognomical Theories that the physiognomist should never operate out of uncertainty."

In order to circumvent her discovery of me, I stood up and looked Frod Geeble in the eyes, asking myself, Could this man have stolen the sacred fruit? It struck me then that this was the only method of judging another human being that the uninitiated had. The slovenly nature of such a method of discovery made me shudder at the utter darkness so many lived in. Still, I had a feeling he hadn't done it.

"He has brown eyes," I said. "This negates your concern."

"Very well," she said. "He is innocent."

"Free drinks at the tavern for your honor," said Frod Geeble as he dressed.

Calloo was on his way out to fetch the next subject when I called him back. "Bring me the mayor this time," I said.

The hulking miner broke into a broad grin at this suggestion and, for the first time, spoke intelligibly. "Pleasure, your honor."

I had to smile myself.

The mayor held his hands cupped over his privates as he stepped forward for inspection. Aria showed no timidity but went at him with all of my devices just as she had the others. When she was done calling out her findings to me, and I had gone through the charade of jotting them down with the pin, I asked her to step aside. She moved back. The mayor, though no physiognomist himself, took one look at me and very astutely read the malicious intent in my gaze. The folds of loose flesh on his chest and stomach as well as his bottom lip began to quiver.

"I know," he said, giving a nervous laugh, "you have never seen such a resplendent specimen."

"On the contrary," I said, "very piglike."

"I am not a thief," he said, losing his sense of humor.

"Undoubtedly, but I do see a small character flaw that I may be able to adjust," I said. I got up and went over to where my coat hung on the back of a chair and retrieved the scalpel from its pocket. With the instrument in hand, I walked up in front of the mayor, waving the blade inches from his eyes. "I detect an asinine sense of humor that may be your undoing if we cannot correct it early enough."

"Perhaps I can simply work at being more serious," he spluttered.

"Now, now, Mayor, this won't hurt a bit. I'm just trying to see where to make the appropriate cut. Perhaps lower down, near the seat of your intelligence," I said, and stepped back in order to run the dull side of the blade across his testicles.

"Aria, please," he said over my shoulder.

Then I remembered that she was there, watching. I wanted badly to vent the entirety of my frustration on him, but the stronger urge to not let Aria see my anger stole my initial impulse to cut into him like a cake.

After I had dismissed him and he was dressed and gone, Aria said to me, "I saw through you."

"Whatever are you talking about?" I said.

"You were trying to get him to confess," she said.

"I was?"

"You did notice the aberrant nature of his posterior, did you not?" she asked.

"Be specific," I said, as if I were quizzing her on her determination.

"The patch of hair he had growing on his left buttock. I believe it is called the Centaur Quality? Unremitting proof of the potential for thievery."

"Very good," I said. "I have already put him in the suspect category."

We saw half the town by nightfall, and I was as far from resolving the case as when I had started. For all I knew, the Traveler had awakened and stolen the fruit. Aria had come up with a short list of possible criminals, but none of them seemed as if anything miraculous had befallen them. Perhaps they were hoarding the fruit till the case was over. I paid Calloo a few belows for his work and just barely caught myself from thanking him. My near slip came, most likely, from the fact that I was so thankful the day was over. I packed my bag, put on my coat, and watched longingly as Aria let her hair down.

"Meet me at the hotel in an hour," I said to her.

She nodded and left the church. Her abrupt departure made me wonder if she was on to me. I needed to consider if I could safely put my trust in her. But what I needed more than anything was the beauty. I could not remember when I had gone so long without it. My hands were shaking slightly, and I was beginning to feel my skull itch, a sure sign that I was overdue for a violet fix. Garland was still kneeling there praying as I left. I slammed the front door behind me as hard as I could, hoping his wooden Gronus would topple down upon him. Instead, I tripped again on the bottom step and landed facedown in the snow.

Mrs. Mantakis was behind the desk at the hotel when I entered, counting belows and chittering furiously to herself like a weasel caught in a leg trap. I wiped the snow off my feet onto the welcome mat and approached her. Even when I was standing before her, she paid no attention to me but went on with her monologue: "If he thinks I'm going to stand out in the cold all day waiting and then be told to come back tomorrow so that he can lay his greedy eyes on my—" I cleared my throat, and she looked up suddenly.

"Your honor," she said, "so good to see you. You must have had a long, hard day. What can I do for you?" She swept the money off the counter and smiled insipidly to cover her rancor.

"Today was wearisome," I said, "but tomorrow will be twice that, seeing as I will have to spend time studying you and your husband."

"Why will that be difficult?" she asked. "My mother used to say I have fine attributes." Her smile turned into a sneer with the wrinkling of her nose, the widening of her nostrils.

"I didn't know your mother was a veterinarian," I said.

She held her tongue, as well she should have, knowing I was tired.

'Send two bottles of wine up to my office. Also, dinner for two, and it had better not be any form of cremat. I don't care if you have to fry that dim-witted husband of yours. Then get to bed early; there will be a long wait in the snow again tomorrow."

"As you wish," she said, eyeing my jugular.

"A town of militant morons," I said to myself as I trudged up the flights of stairs to my room. Once inside, I took off my topcoat, slipped off my shoes, and lay on the bed. What I wanted was a moment of rest, but, of course, my mind could not leave the case alone. When I tried to recall some of the subjects we had seen, all I could get a picture of were amorphous blobs of flesh. Aria then came to my eye's-mind, and even in my diminished condition stirred my desire. There was no doubt, I was falling in love with her. This never would have happened had I retained the Physiognomy. I could see now that the loss of reason proceeds in a geometrical progression until unholy chaos pushes every methodical theory from one's mind. What was worse, I was not completely hostile to the sensation it engendered.

There was only one thing that could clear my mind, and I got up and went to my valise for a clean hypodermic. Since Aria was most likely on her way, I only administered a sparing dose, seeing as I did not want her to witness one of my deep stupors. The beauty was all I had left to rely on, and true to her form she came to me splendidly, growing out from the point of entry between the big and second toe of my right foot in spreading tendrils of bliss.

I believed the dose too small to bring hallucinations, although the lamps in the room did emit a very faint music—strings and oboes, if I recall. It was just a fine, light feeling that lifted my spirits and gave me the energy to dress. At least the luckless Mantakis had cleaned up the shards on the carpet and replaced the glass in the mirror his hardened brother would hold for eternity. I made a mental note to commend him at bath time the next morning.

He came to my room a half hour later to let me know that dinner had been served next door and that the Beaton girl had arrived. I quickly dabbed a touch of formaldehyde beneath each ear, an aroma the scientific mind cannot resist, and went next door with a low smoldering of excitement in my bowels.

When I came in the room, I found Aria standing in front of the statue of her grandfather, her palms resting gently on either side of his face.

"Communing with the family tree?" I asked.

"Make that rock," she said and turned to smile at me.

I was pleased to see she appeared to have left the business of the case behind for a while. I was also pleased to see her dressed not so drably as earlier. She wore a dark green dress with yellow flowers on it that hung well above her knee. Her hair was down and, to my beauty-enhanced vision, literally shining. When her eyes met mine, it was all I could do to keep from smiling.

On the small table, Mantakis had laid out two plates of food. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a real caribou steak, vegetables I could recognize, and not the faintest scent of cremat anywhere. Beside the plates were two bottles of wine, one red, the other blue, along with two fine crystal glasses. I sat down before one of the plates and motioned that she should join me.

She took a seat and immediately cut into the steak and began eating. I poured us each a glass of blue wine, hoping she did not realize it was the more potent of the two. Then I leaned back in my chair and said, "You did some very fine work today."

"I told you I would," she said.

I desired a slightly more respectful response and perhaps that she did not chew so loudly, but these were minor annoyances lost amid the deluge of her charm. We ate and exchanged pleasantries, had a good laugh over Morgan and his daughter, Alice, possibly having anything to do with the crime. Just when everything was moving along smoothly and I had gotten her to accept another glass of wine, Professor Flock materialized behind her. I had momentarily forgotten that at least half of my contentment grew from the beauty.

"You didn't think I'd miss this little get-together, did you, Cley?" he asked.

Aria looked up and around at this moment as if she detected the buzzing of a mosquito, but I realized she was merely reacting to my reaction. I couldn't very well yell to my old mentor to be gone in front of her. I focused on her eyes and worked hard to ignore him.

"Quite the little brisket, old boy," he said, "and I'm not talking about dinner, though I may be talking about dessert, eh?" He was dressed in a loincloth and carried a shovel. His face was haggard, and the sweat dripped off him.

Aria took a drink and then said, "I have had more daydreams in which I remember pieces of my grandfather's journey."

"Interesting," I said.

Flock leaned over her and looked down the front of her dress. "I suggest the Twelfth Maneuver," he said, snickering sardonically.

"Yes," she said, "I recall him telling me, surprisingly enough, about a being he met that closely fits the description of Father Garland's Traveler."

"You don't say," I said, watching the professor make lewd movements behind her.

"Yes," she said, "and I remembered him saying that this being told him the name of paradise."

Flock said to me, "Watch, Cley, this is how I died." Then I could see fumes rising around him, and the smell of sulphur permeated the room. Dropping the shovel behind him, he grabbed at his throat with both hands. His face turned red and then quickly to purple, his tongue protruded, his eyes popped wide.

"Wenau," she said.

The professor fell forward over Aria, her head piercing his incorporeal chest, and I leaped to my feet in an attempt to keep him from crushing her. The hallucination faded in a moment, and I was standing before her, leaning over.

"Almost my very reaction," she said.

"Interesting," I said and sat gracefully back down, trying to disguise my agitation.

We finished dinner with no more interruptions from unwanted guests. Aria stood up, taking her wine, and went over to the window. She looked out at the moon, which shone in full view, and asked, "Do you think we have seen the thief yet, or shall we discover him tomorrow?"

"From the information we have so far, I cannot tell. Remember, the Twelfth Maneuver requires that we read all inhabitants."

"Tell me about the Weil-Built City," she said.

"It is all crystal and pink coral, spires, and ivy-covered trellises. There is a large park and broad avenues. It is the brainchild of Drachton Below, the Master. The story goes that he had been a pupil of the great genius Scarfinati, who had taught him a memory system by which you construct a palace in your mind and then adorn it and fill it with ideas that have been transformed through a mystic symbology into objects. Hence, when you need to remember something, you simply stroll through the palace in your memory, find the object—a vase, a painting, a stained-glass window—and the idea in question is again revealed to you. Below had been such a curious youth that instead of a simple palace, his knowledge could be housed in nothing less than a city. By the time he appeared in Latrobia, a young man of twenty, he had constructed every inch of the metropolis in his mind. He knew where every brick was to be laid, how every facade was to be ornamented before the work even began. It was said that he whispered something in the ears of the men and women he sought to work for him, and from that moment on, they were like joyous machines, tireless unto death, with no need of instructions. It was built well before I was even born, in so short an amount of time that that in itself is as much a miracle as its actual construction."

"And did he bring the Physiognomy with him?" she asked.

"The Physiognomy had been in existence in one form or another dating back to when the first people looked into one another's eyes. But Below, needing some law to govern his creation, codified it and made it a mathematics of judgment concerning humanity."

"I always hoped to go there someday to study in the great libraries and perhaps even attend one of the universities."

"You are truly idiosyncratic, my dear. No woman there would ever dream of going to a university; no woman has access to the libraries."

"And why is that?" she asked.

"They know full well that they are inferior to men in general, just as certain men are inferior to others. Not only do they know it, it is a law," I told her in my softest voice.

"You can't really believe that," she said.

"Of course I do," I said. "Look, you've read the literature. Women's brains are smaller than men's; it is a scientific fact."

She turned away from me with a look of disgust.

"Aria," I pleaded, "I cannot change nature." I could feel her growing cold. She took a step away from me, and I tried to think of something that would bring back her tranquillity. "Women have certain attributes, certain, shall we say, biological possibilities. They have a place in the culture, but ..."

She seemed to brighten and turned to face me. "Oh, I think I know what you mean," she said, smiling.

"You do?" I asked. My mind reeled, and I felt gravity drop away. The beauty, the wine now thought for me as I put my arm around her and prepared to kiss her. In the back of my mind, I was wondering where I had left the leather glove I habitually employed in such crucial moments.

Then it came, as unexpected and devastating as the loss of the Physiognomy. She slapped my face and tore away from my grasp.

"Women have their place in the culture," she said, mocking me. "Just remember, it is I who am conducting this investigation. I may be a woman, but I am smart enough to know you have somehow lost your abilities."

"Aria," I said. I had wanted to speak her name sternly, but instead my word came like the cry of a child.

"Don't worry," she said. "I won't tell anyone. I will finish the investigation, because I want you to know, even if it remains a secret, that it was I who solved the case."

I could not believe what I was thinking, but I was actually going to apologize. By Harrow's hindquarters, my world was shredding in every direction. "I'm sorry," I said and the words were like a pound of cremat on my tongue.

"You are sorry," she said. "I will see you tomorrow at ten. This time, don't you be late. Hopefully you will exhibit a more professional demeanor in the morning." With this she grabbed her coat, crossed the room, and was gone.

I was completely immobilized by both her revelation that she had perceived my loss of the Physiognomy and of her opinion of me. This was true humiliation—and worse, true loneliness. Because I felt the greatest need to get away from myself, I went next door, quickly put on my coat, and went after her.

Outside, the darkness of the night frightened me more than usual as the brisk wind, following Aria's lead, also slapped me in the face. I saw her distant figure as she made her way up the empty street. My plan, if you could call it that, was not to confront her—I knew that would be a mistake—but merely to follow her. I could not bear her leaving. Sticking to the deep shadows in front of the buildings, I ran, a skill I hadn't utilized since childhood.

She stopped once and turned around, standing and watching for a moment. I too stopped, hoping she did not see me. Then she took to the alley between the bank and the theater. I moved up to the end of the alleyway and waited until she had traversed its entirety. When she was out of sight, I made my move. In this manner, I tracked her from a distance through a thicket of pines and then across a small meadow, running along on the toes of my boots so that she would not detect the sound of the hardened snow crunching beneath them.

On the other side of the meadow there stood a one-story ramshackle house made of that splintered gray wood everything in Anamasobia was constructed of. I could see a warm light glowing from its one front window. She entered and closed the door behind her. I tiptoed up to the front of it and then, if you can believe this, got down on my hands and knees like a dog and cautiously crawled up beneath the window.

I peered in on a living room furnished with crude chairs made of tree limbs. Sitting in two of them, staring at each other, were an old man and woman. In the light thrown off from the fireplace, I could see that he had the telltale blue tinge that suggested he was well on his way to becoming one of the ghastly hardened heroes. Here was a tableau of utter dullness. Obviously, she had not lied about the mental capacity of her parents. I scowled and crawled around to the side of the house.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw there was another window. Making my way up beneath it, I reached into my pocket and took out the derringer. I had resolved to shoot myself if she discovered me. It would have been a humiliation I could not have endured. From inside I could hear someone moving around, and then I heard the most unworldly noise, a strange crying sound. "Perhaps she is repentant for having treated me so shoddily," I thought. This gave me the courage to look.

To my utter astonishment, it was not she who was crying. It was, of all things, a baby. I watched, hypnotized, as she held the bawling runt in one arm and took down the top of her dress, revealing her naked breasts. I could not help it, but I sighed audibly. In spite of the hazardous situation I found myself in, I felt my manhood give a tiny nudge against my trousers.

At that moment, I heard a strange hissing noise behind me and turned quickly to look, adrenaline shooting through my system. I saw nothing at first. The noise came again, and I could make out that it was up high. In the lower branches of a huge tree approximately twenty yards behind me I detected a pair of yellow eyes glaring at me. I did not have time to wonder what it was, because as soon as I saw it, I noticed the huge batlike wings begin to move.

Now I thought nothing, cared for nothing, but stood straight up and began to run. I could hear the demon following above me, could feel the air it sent out from the beating of its wings. I dashed across the meadow, actually running like an athlete, with the monstrosity in close pursuit. Even with my terror to drive me on, I was quickly winded. I tripped and went sprawling in the snow. Hearing it hovering just above me, I turned on my back, raised the derringer, which was still in my hand, and fired. Through the residual smoke of the blast, I caught a vague glimpse of the creature as it quickly ascended. With that momentary, hazy glance, I could tell that old man Beaton had gotten the description right: a hairy, horned devil with cloven feet and a spiked tail—exactly as I remembered from the religious books I had collected as objects of ridicule during my student years.

When it was almost completely out of sight, I could barely make out that it had released something it had been carrying under one arm. "A boulder," I thought and began rolling over in the snow as fast as I could, there being no time to get up and run. The missile hit with a distinct noise, like a large melon squashing against the earth, only a foot or two to my left. When

I was certain the demon had departed, I crawled over to it. On inspection, I found it was not a melon but, instead, the head of what I took to be poor Gustavus, Father Garland's missing dog. I don't recall my walk back to the hotel. I was surprised no one had heard the gunshot and come to investigate. I do remember taking a large dose of the beauty and crawling beneath the covers. Of course, I left the lamps burning, for now the evil night had shown me the face of its minions. Sometime near morning I woke in a cold sweat, filled to brimming with a nauseating anger born of jealousy. "So," I said to my reflection in Arden's mirror, "not only has Aria lied to me, but she has already cheated on me." I spat out the word "impure." By dawn, the only regret I had was that I had apologized to her.

My miserable rooms at the Hotel de Skree were a veritable earthly paradise compared to the thought of what I would face at the church that morning. I would have preferred to wrestle a demon than go and meet Aria and pretend at cordiality, while all the time I knew that she knew I had, through the diseased magic of Ana-masobia, been transformed into a fraud. "The slut could easily give me away in front of the whole rogue's gallery," I thought. Even if I were to make it through the day's proceedings without trouble, I had given up hope of ever solving the case, which meant that whatever tribulation and torture I would escape in the territory would later be heaped a hundredfold upon me by the Master.

Still, I got up, bathed, dressed as neatly as always, put my instruments in order, donned my coat, and went to work. It was lightly snowing by the time I left the hotel. Standing outside, dressed again in his absurd black hat, was the recurring nightmare of Mayor Bataldo, smiling as broadly as ever. After having run the scalpel over his testicles the day before, I now wondered what it would take to subdue his idiocy. For a moment, I pictured cutting it out of him, a large laughing black mass, like a comedic tumor on the brain.

''Your honor," he said, waving as though we were longtime friends who had not met in months.

I had run out of imprecations and could do no more than nod tersely.

"A splendid selection of our populace awaits your educated opinion," he said and took up walking next to me.

Then it struck me that if I could not shoot him, I might make some use of him. "Why was I never informed that the Beaton girl had a child?" I asked.

"An excellent question," he said and stopped to look bemus-edly at the falling snow. "I suppose I never thought it was important."

"How is it she has a child and is not married?" I asked.

"Please your honor," he said with a laugh, "need I really explain to you, a man of science, how it happens?"

"No, you dolt. I mean, what was the situation?"

"Well, I believe she was in love with one of the young miners, a fellow by the name of Canan, who, after creating the situation, as you so delicately put it, was done in by another situation, namely a cave-in," he said.

"They were not married?" I asked.

"You have to understand something about Anamasobia," he said. "The rules of refined society are sometimes bent a little here and there, living as we do in such proximity to the ungodly, as I explained to you a few nights ago. I'm sure they would have eventually taken the vows."

"I see," I said. "Is the child male or female?"

"Male," he replied and we continued on our way toward the church.

"She is a promiscuous young woman," I said.

"Promiscuous in her mind, making love to many ideas, and always has been very rebellious."

"How can you allow such things to go on among your people?" I asked, stopping again.

"In the territory, such qualities are not always a detriment," he said- "She is a fine person, though, sometimes too serious for me."

"And who might I find who would not be?" I said, ending the conversation.

He laughed quietly all the way to the church.

Aria awaited me at the altar. I greeted her with an emotionless hello and she returned the salutation in the same curt manner. I laid out the instruments, and we began at once.

I wondered how life could be any more disappointing when, after sending Calloo for the first subject, he brought back with him Mrs. Mantakis. Not having the stomach to face her in the flesh, I told the old marsupial to leave her clothes on.

"But, your honor," said Aria, "do you not wish to inspect her biological possibilities?"

I lit a cigarette and said, "Very well," with as little reaction as possible. As Aria put her through her paces, having her assume all manner of horrid postures, I sat with my arms folded and stared like a man facing a wall. As she applied the callipers and other instruments, calling out the mathematics of her findings, I did not bother with the charade of the tiny notebook and pin, but simply nodded as if I were committing it all to memory. When Aria measured the earlobes, I believe I heard Mrs. Mantakis growl.

"A thief, for sure," Aria said to me after the old woman had dressed and left the church.

"A thief but not a liar," I thought to myself.

The morning wore on, a steady stream of the bereft, the congenitally damaged, geniuses of stupidity passed before my sight without leaving any impression but one of vague disgust. Aria, for her part, though I could palpably feel her hatred for me, worked methodically, keeping her snide remarks to a minimum.

I knew that eventually I would have to accuse someone of the crime if I wanted a chance to save my own skin. I knew also that the punishment for so serious an offense would be execution—the Master's new and efficient system of justice for any crime more serious than spitting on the sidewalks of the Weil-Built City. "Who shall it be?" I asked myself with each subject that passed before me. Then Calloo brought in Father Garland, and I conceived of my plan of revenge against Anamasobia.

Aria was visibly upset by the presence of the little holy man.

Her clear skin blushed a deep red as the father appeared before us, dressed for paradise. I took a quick glance to see if his shrunken penis came to a needle's sharpness like his teeth and nails. Imagine my surprise when my sight corroborated my suspicions. He said nothing but moved his hand in a sign of a religious blessing for us. I had so hoped that he would act up so that I could call Calloo and have him squashed. Aria's hands shook as she moved the instruments over his face and body. When she applied the Hadris lip vise, I almost told her to leave it on him as a good deed to all mankind.

After he was dressed and was preparing to leave us, he turned and said to me, "I have committed no crime but that of love."

"The charge is tedium," I said as he left, and I began working out in my mind how I would convince the town that he had stolen the fruit. I knew that a good measure of my scheme would need be lofty rhetoric, a commodity so exotic in Anama-sobia it would convince by way of its novelty.

"Next!" I yelled and Calloo made for the door. I thought that I could work out my speech as we went through the next few dozen unfortunates.

But Aria called out, "Wait, Willin," to the giant. "Go wait outside for a moment and we will let you know when we want the next one."

"Do you need a break?" I asked flatly.

She sat down and looked at me as if she were about to cry. Seeing her in this state melted my anger at her somewhat. "She has seen her error," I thought, "and is about to apologize to me for last night."

"Is there something you wanted to tell me?" I asked, speaking like a schoolmaster to a favorite pupil who has done some minor wrong.

"It's him," she said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, confused by her response.

"Father Garland. He is the one." Tears began to roll down her face.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"I tell you, it's all there. It's as clear as was your face in my window last night," she said.

I remained silent. My guilt at being found out was canceled by my excitement at the thought that I might survive this nightmare. She then launched into a detailed explanation, using the logic of Physiognomy, which of course meant nothing to me but sounded mightily convincing.

"I wish it weren't so, but I can't deny what I read in his face." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I hate you and this damn system," she said.

"Good work," I whispered. Then I bellowed for Calloo. When he appeared, I told him to get the mayor and to have him gather the citizens into the church.

The people of Anamasobia began filing into the church, filling the pews and then taking up positions in the shadows along the walls beneath the torches where the gallery of hardened heroes stood. There was a great hubbub of hushed conjecture punctuated occasionally by laughter or a loud proclamation of innocence uttered by those who naturally assumed guilt for everything.

The mayor came up onto the altar and shook my hand. He looked genuinely relieved that we had discovered the thief. To offer my congratulations to your honor," he said. 'T do not understand your methods, but they are obviously amazing."

I gratefully acknowledged his adulation and asked him to place one of his people at the door in case the suspect tried to escape. He motioned to Calloo to come to him, and then he whispered something in the big man's ear. Calloo made his way through the crowd to take up a position at the entrance to the altar chamber.

As Aria took down the screen and began putting my instruments neatly into my bag, I scanned the room in order to find Garland. I knew he must have been at least somewhat suspicious that we had called no one in after him. I found him easily enough, sitting in the front row, glaring up at me. I smiled at him and stared into his eyes for a good long time. When he did not avert his glance, I did, in order to look out at the crowd and call for silence. I clapped my hands as if calling a pet dog and the talking turned to whispers and then to silence.

Now that it was time for me to speak, I paced back and forth gathering my thoughts and turning them into the raw material of oration. The crowd watched my every move, and I felt powerful again for the first time in days. In a dramatic flare, designed to heighten the tension, I turned my back on them and stared up at the droll portrait of the miner god that hung behind the altar and for the past two days had born witness to the entire investigation. The idea came to me that I would start by relating my run-in with the demon, so that they might see me as a man of action as well as a superior intellect.

All the time I was strutting and posing, Aria had continued putting away the chrome tools. I wanted to wait until she was finished and had left the "stage" so that all attention could be focused on the revelation I was about to proclaim. She was almost done but for the callipers. When she went to lift them, they slipped out of her grasp and hit the floor with a sound that ricocheted off the cavernlike walls of the chamber. As she bent over to pick them up, her gray work dress hiked up an inch or two, and my eyes automatically traced the shapely lines of her legs from ankle to thigh. That is when I saw it.

There, on her left leg on the back of her thigh was a prominent mole with what appeared to be an inordinately long black hair growing from it. I blinked my eyes and took a step closer, forgetting that there was a crowd of people awaiting my determination. She must have heard me move, or perhaps she felt my eyes upon her—I was staring so intently—for she turned before straightening and looked up at me. In that very instant, with an audible popping sound in my mind like a cork being pulled from a bottle of champagne the knowledge of the Physiognomy returned to me completely. My eyes again teeming with their old intelligence, I saw immediately that she was no Star Five, as I had been somehow duped into believing by her youthful, feminine beauty, but that those features seen anew brought back Professor Flock's original profile of the criminal: a tendency toward larceny and a religiopsychotic reliance on the miraculous. I remembered why the child the woman had begged me to read in the street that day had later on seemed so familiar. He had many of the same facial features as I now perceived Aria to have. The woman had, in fact, been her.

I turned to the crowd and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of Anamasobia. We have in our midst a thief." I stepped back and pointed at Aria, who was now closing the clasp on my bag. "It is Aria Beaton who has stolen the miraculous fruit of paradise."

She turned and stared at me dumbfounded. Garland sprang from his seat and made a move toward the altar with his claws out. With all my regained confidence, I stepped gracefully forward and kicked him in the head before he could jump me. As he landed on the bottom step leading to the altar, I took the derringer out of my pocket and fired a warning shot into the ceiling. Splinters of wood fell on those in the first row of pews, and the near riot subsided back to near silence.

Aria sat down slowly in the chair I had used for the past two days and stared, as if in shock, out over the heaving sea of physiognomies.

The mayor stood up and begged everyone to be quiet. Then he turned to me and said, "This is a serious offense, your honor. Can you please explain for those of us who do not comprehend the intricacies of your science. If I may say so, this comes as a great shock to us all." For once, he wasn't smiling.

I wanted nothing better than to explain. "It is accepted among the learned," I began, "as certainly as the sun comes up in the morning or that Drachton Below is our munificent Master, that the visible structure of our physical features, when analyzed by the well-trained eye, reveals one's moral aptitude in general and specifically exhibits the details of one's personal foibles and virtues. If you take a look at the subject ..."

Here I approached Aria, who did not move a muscle but continued to stare as if dead. I ran my finger the length of her nose and then pointed to the small hollow just beneath her bottom lip. "In these features, I have just pointed to," I said, "we find a combination of intrinsic signs that disclose a personality prone to reckless action."

I moved around her to the other side and pointed to the arch of her eyebrow. "Here we see an effect known to my colleagues and me as the 'Scheffler conclusion,' named, of course, for one of the fathers of the Physiognomy, Kurst Scheffler. What this effect denotes is, amazingly, both a tendency toward thievery and a desire to participate in miraculous events. There is also a mole on the left thigh, with a long hair growing from it, that nails shut this case once and for all." I stepped forward and brushed my hands together as if wiping the taint of crime from them.

By the number of open, expressionless mouths in the audience, I could tell that I had made my point. I bowed and applause broke out in the pews and along the walls. Father Garland had just then come to and was crawling back to his seat when the first cries of "death to the thief," were heard to echo through the hollow heart of the wooden Gronus.

"And what now?" asked the mayor.

We stood outside the church as evening fell. The stars and moon were beginning to appear, and the snow had stopped falling sometime in the day. The crowd had gone home, many of whom had thanked me personally for having apprehended the criminal. From the words of appreciation, I got the feeling that these simple people had, for their own reasons, always harbored a certain fear of this girl. As for Aria, she had been taken away to the one cell in Ana-masobia—a small, windowless locked room in the town hall.

"I suppose justice must be served," I said.

"If you'll beg my pardon, your honor, you may have found the criminal, but the white fruit is still missing. How are we going to retrieve that if I have the girl executed?" he asked.

"Interrogate the prisoner," I said. "You must be aware that there are methods for making people talk. Search that hovel she lives in. My belief is that she probably fed part of it to her bastard child in order to offset its obvious physiognomical deficiencies."

He nodded sadly, which took me by surprise.

"Nothing to laugh at, Mayor?" I asked.

"Torture is not my strong suit," he said. "For that matter, neither is execution. Is there no other way to go about this? Couldn't she, perhaps, just apologize?"

"Really, now," I said, "the Master would not perceive such leniency with a kind eye. With that course of action, you might jeopardize the entire town's very existence."

"I see," he said. "It's just that I've known this girl from when she was a child. I knew her grandfather. I know her parents. I saw her grow up, and she was such a sweet, inquisitive little thing." He looked into my eyes, and I could tell he was on the verge of tears.

Although I met his gaze with complete silence, his words about Aria forced me to remember those things about her that had, for the past days, kept her constantly on my mind. I was now certain that it had not, after all, been the Traveler who had blinded my perception, but instead it was Aria's own special beauty and intelligence that had bewitched me.

The mayor, getting no reply from me, began walking away, and, with this, I experienced an unfathomable emotion, almost like sadness. I wasn't sure if it was because I also could not bear the thought of Aria's execution, or if it was that, although I had my thief, little had truly been resolved.

"Wait," I told him.

He stopped but remained with his back to me.

"There is something I might try."

He turned and came slowly back to stand before me.

"It is an experimental procedure that I am not sure will work," I told him. "I wrote a paper on it a few years ago, but it was not favorably acknowledged by my colleagues, and the idea died out after a few weeks of heated debate."

"Well?" he said as I searched my mind for the particulars of the theory. When I hit upon it, it seemed rather daring if not reckless, but in light of my newly regained powers, and the feeling of great inner strength their rediscovery gave rise to, I began to think that this case might be the perfect opportunity to test this untried method.

"Listen closely," I said to him. "If the physical features of the girl's face are an indication of the character traits she harbors deep within, then does it not make sense that if I were to * rearrange those features with my scalpel, creating a structure that would indicate a more morally perfect inner state, would she not then be re-formed from the congenital criminal malaise, resulting in the willingness to reveal the location of the fruit and rendering her no longer in need of execution?"

Bataldo rolled his eyes and took a step back. "If I am understanding you," he said, "you are saying you can make her good by performing surgery on her?"

"Perhaps," I said.

"Then do it," he said, and like the lion lying down with the lamb, we each smiled for different reasons.

I made arrangements with the mayor to have her brought to my study at the hotel the next morning promptly at nine. He then asked me if I would join him for dinner at the tavern, but I declined, knowing that there was much preparation to be done if I was going to rescue her from herself.

For the first time since I arrived at Anamasobia, I truly felt at ease. On the way back to my quarters people greeted me with the deference befitting my station. Even Mrs. Mantakis, seeing me enter the lobby of the hotel, addressed me with a certain air of subservience that had obviously been lacking heretofore. I told her to send away all visitors and to bring me some of that blue wine and a light dinner. She told me she had prepared something special for me that evening that had nothing to do with cremat, and I couldn't believe myself that I actually thanked her. She purred like a cat at my grateful response.

Had I still been in the thick of the mystery, I would have been alarmed to see how little of the beauty I still had in my valise—only enough for three or four real doses, but with my new self-assurance that the case would be completely resolved by sometime the next evening, I took a full vial without a second thought.

Then I undressed, put on my robe and slippers, and had a cigarette. True to my old form, I was able, with the enhanced power of the drug, to readily envision Aria's face and the changes that would have to be made to it in order to save her life. I quickly got pen and paper and began sketching my vision of the new Aria.

It must have been hours after Mrs. Manktakis had delivered my dinner and wine that I finally finished making my plans. By now the town was perfectly quiet, a condition, after having come from the City, that I could never really get used to. The sheer beauty was still active in my system, bringing me intermittent visions of splendor. Not one paranoic image found its way into my head as I worked, but occasionally I would daydream vividly about my idyllic childhood on the banks of the Chottle River.

Finally I sat down on the bed to consider the fame this next day's procedure would bring me if it was successful, and that is when Professor Flock made his appearance.

"You again," I said.

"Who else?" he asked, now dressed in his teaching uniform and toting the dress cane with an ivory monkey-head handle it had been his practice to carry at official events.

"You're a traitor," I said to him.

"Did I not suggest the appropriate method with which to apprehend the criminal?" he asked, smiling.

"That you did, but I'm done with you. I'm going to banish you from my mind," I told him.

"That may be a little difficult since I am really you talking to yourself in a drug-induced haze," he said. "I can only say and do, can only be, what you desire."

"Well, what do you think of my plans for tomorrow?" I asked.

"Be certain that you cut some of the intelligence out of the poor girl; she's too smart for her own good. And, by all means, let's have a cut in the center of the chin to ward off those delusions that there is anything in store for her but the meanest existence here in this shit village at the end of the world. The rest of it seems quite good. I don't think I could have done better myself," he said, tapping the cane on the floor.

"Very well," I said, "I can't argue with that."

"My real reason for coming tonight is to bid you farewell. I don't think I will be seeing you again," he said. Then he held the cane up and out toward me, and the ivory monkey head came magically to life, screaming in its small voice, "I am not a monkey. I am not a monkey." As always, Flock left his laughter behind, and I bid him good riddance.

That night I fell into a deep sleep from which I struggled to escape. I revisited again my childhood, but this time what came to me were only the scenes of my father's unbridled anger and the resultant early death of my mother. I woke at sunrise, crying into my pillow as I had done so many nights of my early life. What a relief I felt when I finally opened my eyes and realized I was free of it.

After I bathed, ate a light breakfast, and dressed, the mayor and two of his miner thugs escorted Aria to my study. I greeted her cordially, but she said nothing and would not make eye contact with me. I had prepared the lab table with straps in order to hold her down in case she became unruly.

"I pray you are successful, Cley," said the mayor, a note of skepticism in his voice.

I stepped up to Aria and looked directly in her face. "I will do for you what I can, my dear," I said.

She looked now directly at me and spit in my eyes. I took a step backward and at this instant she brought her knee up into the crotch of one of her detainers. With the suddenness of it all, she was able to break free, and she bolted from the room across the hall into my living quarters with the other miner in hot pursuit. She almost got the door closed, but the man was, of course, stronger and was able to pry it open before she could lock it. We all followed immediately.

When I came into the room, she was wielding the knife that had come with the breakfast service and swinging my valise at the fellow who had managed to corner her. ' 'Murderers," she was yelling. The mayor made a move for her, and she heaved the valise at him, hitting him square in the head. It was finally the miner whom she had kneed in the groin who was able to jump in after one of her lunges with the knife and subdue her. They dragged her next door, kicking and yelling for help. Quickly I prepared a rag with a strong general anesthetic and buried her screaming face with it.

The miners were helping me strap her to the table when the mayor appeared, rubbing his head. "Feisty," he said with a laugh, but I could see the ordeal had shaken him.

"Don't worry," I told him. 'Til cut that out of her, along with quite a bit more. By the time she awakens, she will be a new woman."

"Anamasobia was never so strange," said the mayor, staring at the floor.

Then I told them to leave and come back the next afternoon.

I put pads beneath her head in order to catch the blood that would result from my cuts, and then fitted her with a headband that had a long piece of cotton attached to it that could be flipped back over her skull while I worked and then brought down over the face in order to mop up the gore that might obscure the area of flesh I intended for incision. With this completed, I methodically laid out my scalpels and picks and clamps, and then brought out the drawing of the new Aria. Through the night, as I had worked on it under the gaze of the beauty, that picture had spoken words of love to me. I was determined for it to become more than an illusion.

The scalpel ploughed smoothly through the skin of her left cheek, and with this first pass, I could feel nothing but the ultimate success of the experiment. I whistled a tune that was popular in the Weil-Built City just prior to my departure, a sweet ditty about endless devotion, as I leveled her willful lower lip. 'There goes that vain intelligence," I whispered to her sleeping form while scoring the upper lids of her eyes. I relieved her nose of a weight of cartilage that I knew was at the root of her troublesome curiosity. There was no other choice with those haughty cheekbones but to employ the chrome mallet. My concentration became so intense that all I could see was her face, and it became like the topography of some untamed country that I manipulated from above with artistic finesse and a transcendent vision of perfection. It was all a matter of subtraction, and for a time I wished that the sublime mathematics would never end.

I had worked diligently through the morning and well into the afternoon, taking no break for lunch, when I began to lose my way. The map I carried in my head of where I wanted to end up, began to lose its clarity. My self-assurance flickered in and out like a flame in the wind. It was the telltale itching of my skull that let me know I was in need of the beauty. I reasoned that with the drug to bolster my innate genius, I could easily finish the job successfully by dinnertime. Besides, I cwrfd not go on without it, because the chills were beginning to run through me, making my sight wobble and my hands shake. I set down the scalpel and went next door for a fix.

I found my valise on the floor where it had landed after making contact with the mayor's head. The thought of that actually brought a smile to my lips as I opened it. I pulled out an unused vial, and to my horror found that it was cracked and empty. Frantically, I pulled out another and found it in the same condition. Then I noticed that there was a violet puddle on the floor. All of the vials were broken. I was without sheer beauty, and the pains of withdrawal were breaking out all over my body like the blows of an invisible enemy. I groaned, but my mind screamed and then dove straight down into a turbulent ocean of confusion and fear. The only thing that kept me from passing out was the thought that I could not leave Aria in the state she was. If I were to fail to retrieve the fruit, it would surely mean my life.

I staggered across the hall, determined to finish the job before I lost all my senses. My mind was already reeling so terribly I could barely stay on my feet. I held myself up with one hand resting on the lab table and with the other I lifted the scalpel and tried to concentrate amid the quaking of my internal organs. The first shivering cut I made I knew was wrong, but there was no erasing here. I pushed on in an attempt to make another cut that would offset the one I had just made. This became a trap, and I pictured myself running headlong, deeper and deeper into a labyrinth from which there was no possible escape. My earlier precise incisions now became a desperate slashing, and the blood flowed freely, sometimes spurting across my shirt. Droplets of it momentarily blinded me. They landed on my lips, and the taste of it brought me to my knees. I struggled back to my feet, fighting off the flashes of blankness that turned my mind into a ball of night.

I continued like this, basically unconscious for some time, before, far off at a great distance, I heard myself scream in agony. Then I fell through the nausea, the freezing and burning of the chills, the tearing of my brain, the silence of my heart to a place I supposed was death but unfortunately wasn't.

I got an urgent message from the mayor that there was one more person I should definitely read before making my ultimate decision. "At this time of night?" I said to Mantakis, who was carrying his feather duster.

I put on my topcoat and took my bag of instruments. It was again snowing hard outside, and I only made the slowest headway down the street in the face of the fierce gales. The children had been out in the storm, I could tell, because the street was lined along both sides with frozen effigies of the Traveler. They appeared every now and then from behind the driving blizzard, staring down with cold eyes like a gauntlet of righteous judges. I trudged along for what seemed an eternity through the murmuring, twirling dark, and then suddenly I had arrived.

I knew I was going to trip and fall on the bottom step leading to the church and I did. Opening the big, crooked door that creaked with sounds of mirth, I entered. I took it slowly over the bridge, which seemed more unsteady than ever. In the altar chamber, only half the torches were lit. "Hello," I called, but there was no answer. The screen had again been set up, and the chairs we had used for the reading were sitting in the same positions.

"Hello," I called. In the dim light of the torches, the arms and faces of the hardened heroes appeared now to be flesh instead of stone. Either the wind outside or the echo of my own breath created a faint sound of breathing as if the church itself had life. The eyes of the painted God stared down on me.

From behind the screen came the sound of someone coughing.

"Hello there," I said. "Why didn't you answer?"

I set down my bag, took my coat off, and went to view the subject. As I stepped behind the screen, the torches blew out, bringing instant night. In a panic, I took a step forward. I felt two hands grab my wrists and pull me in. My hands were placed on a face and were made to glide over the features. At first it was all too unusual, but I felt the owner of the hands would do me no harm. Then the Physiognomy took over—math turning numbers to images in a most brilliant display of color in my mind. My body began to vibrate with energy as if I had become a machine.

Suddenly, the torches rekindled, shedding their blurred light. I found myself with my arms out, my hands manipulating thin air. This angered me greatly. In a fury, I put my coat on and grabbed my bag. Back out into the storm I went, muttering invectives at Anamasobia as I stumbled through another eternity.

I woke all too suddenly from the dream and could tell it was early the next morning by the bright light that streamed in through the window. I was shaky and nauseous and had a headache that nearly blinded me. Still, from where I sat in the chair by the small table Aria and I had shared dinner at a few nights ago, I could see her form. The cotton cloth that was attached to her head, now reddish brown with dried blood, was draped over her face. I could detect, by the gentle movement of her chest that she was still alive. I wanted to get up and see what I had done to her, but I was still too weak to move.

At first, I thought that it was all in my mind. Then I realized that the screaming voices I heard were not coming from the Mantakises but from out in the street. There was a great commotion going on somewhere, and if I was not mistaken there was the sound of either gunshots or fireworks. My first inclination was to think that perhaps the town was celebrating in their belief that the white fruit would soon be restored to the altar of the church. I wondered through the fog of my illness if perhaps I might not have been successful and that everything still might work out well, when I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs leading to my rooms.

I had no time to try to get up before the door to my study burst open. It was Garland.

' 'My god, what have you done?" he said, seeing Aria laid out on the table, her head surrounded by the bloody pads.

I reached into the pocket of my trousers for the derringer, but then remembered that I had left it in my topcoat the day before. I was about to yell at him to get out, when another figure appeared in the doorway. I thought it might be Calloo, judging from the size of him, but then my eyes focused and I saw the Traveler bending his head down in order to pass through the opening. What made the scene even more fantastic was that the thin, brown creature carried in one arm a baby swaddled in blankets.

"What kind of a circus act is this?" I asked, trying to sound powerful from within the cloud bank of withdrawal.

Garland walked over to stand before me, but I paid no attention to him. My eyes were on the Traveler, the way he moved, his long braided hair, the unearthly look of calm on his face.

"Your Master, the great Drachton Below, is here in Anama-sobia," said the father.

"What?" I said. Now Garland had my full attention.

"Oh yes," he said. "His soldiers are systematically murdering everyone. He has with him some wolfen creature that has torn the throats out of women and children. Hell has come to the territory."

"But how does this thing live?" I asked, pointing to the Traveler, who smiled gently at me.

"The fruit. I fed him one single bite of the fruit weeks ago when I first took it from the altar. Since then he has been recovering slowly. When you applied your ridiculous instruments to him, he was already well on his way back to life."

"So, Aria was right," I said. "The Physiognomy was right."

"When I ran at the altar and you kicked me, I was trying to confess, to spare her the consequences of having foolishly become involved with you. I can't waste my time on you," he said. "We are taking the girl and heading for Wenau. You, on the other hand, must go down and take your bullet. You're a vain, stupid, man, Cley. I would have killed you myself, but I think it more appropriate that your Master do it for me."

Everything was moving too fast for me to protest or even get out of the chair, and the sight of the Traveler paralyzed me with a fear, not for my safety but that the world could be so absolutely strange. They walked over, one on each side of the lab table. The baby began to cry and the Traveler softly touched the child's forehead, quieting it.

"Let's see what horror your nonsense has created," said the father. He reached out and lifted the cotton veil that covered Aria's face. The Traveler automatically brought up one of his huge hands to shield his sight as if the girl's visage were a blinding beacon. Garland was not so quick. Taking the invisible blast full in the face, it snapped his head back. He fell to the floor, and with a groan, expired, blood trickling from his nose and the corner of his gaping mouth. The holy man's face was transfixed with a look of absolute horror I had to turn away from.

With his free hand, the Traveler reached into a small pouch he wore around his waist and took out the white fruit. He gracefully brought it to his mouth and took a bite. Then he put the fruit away, took the piece from his mouth, and forced it between Aria's lips, all without casting a glance at her. Instead, he looked into my own eyes and told me silently but as clearly as if he were speaking that what I had wrought through my work was the very face of Death.

I cringed in my chair like a child, unable to look away from him. Then, I don't know where he found the strength in his willowy frame, but after replacing the cotton veil over her face he lifted her with one arm and slung her over his shoulder. Now carrying the baby in one arm and with Aria's form draped over him, he walked lightly to the window. There, he lifted one of his enormous feet and kicked the glass out with two well-placed blows. I could hear the shards breaking against the wooden sidewalk four stories below. With his passengers still secure in his grasp, he stepped up onto the windowsill and crouched so that his height fit into the opening.

"No," I said, knowing what he was about to do.

He turned his face to me and smiled.

I jumped out of my chair in order to try to stop him, my head pounding and my intestines tightening like a fist. I took three steps and then fell over the body of Garland. On my way to the floor, I watched them fall. I listened but did not hear anything hit the ground. With all my strength, I scrabbled to my feet and made my way to the window. Looking straight down, I expected to see them all sprawled like broken dolls on the walk. Instead, I saw nothing. They had vanished.

The fact that the ugliness I had projected onto Aria's face had killed Garland was too much for me to accept. I knew, even through the dizziness, as I staggered to the lab table and vomited, that he had been right and that, at this point, the Master would kill me as if I were just one more piece of human trash from the territory. My only chance was to try to make it out of town and hide in the surrounding forest. This seemed rather unlikely, considering the condition I was in. I had a feeling that it was over, the end of the line. I wanted to cry, seeing how far I had fallen in one short week. He was right: I was a vain and stupid man. One cannot serve a monster and expect not to be devoured someday. As I straightened up and cleaned myself off, my first thought was that worse than death would be my being sent to the sulphur mines. If I was to be brought back to the Weil-Built City for trial, I would have to find a way to commit suicide.

I left the room and staggered down the stairs to the lobby. There, lying in the middle of the floor, beneath the broken-down chandelier, were Mr. and Mrs. Mantakis, dead in each other's arms. A pool of their commingled blood spread out around them. It looked as if they each had been shot no less than twenty times. I stepped past them and could not believe that I felt a pang of remorse. Unbelievably, actual tears were welling in my eyes. I ran past them and pushed through the front door, knowing that the gruesome tableau I fled was a fraction of what Garland had seen in Aria's face.

Outside, the morning sun blinded me for a few moments as I tottered down the street, reeling from the aching of my head and joints. The continuing pains of withdrawal weTe era>wgh to make a bullet seem welcome. As my vision cleared, I saw bodies strewn everywhere in the street, fresh blood turning the fallen snow a deep red. Up by the church, I could make out the uniformed soldiers of the city. Gunshots sounded, and those without uniforms fell face first in a race to the ground. Flames billowed from the tops of buildings, devouring gray wood, and thick smoke spewed forth from the broken windows of the bank.

"Cley," I heard a familiar voice yell. I turned and saw the Master standing a hundred yards away. He was dressed in furs and wore a broad smile. Greta Sykes strained at a golden leash he held tightly. He waved to me. "It's been nice working with you," he called over the din of the mayhem. I saw him crouch down then, and he appeared to be whispering something in the werewolf's ear. Even from the considerable distance that separated us, I could see she looked exactly as she had in that vision or dream in which I had met them in the mines of Gronus. Then he unhooked her collar and she was dashing toward me.

I turned and tried to run, but at that very moment the coach and four came charging out from the alley between the bank and the theater. I lost all my will to live, knowing I was trapped. The breath left me in one great torrent as I prepared myself for the sharp fangs and long-suppressed revenge of Greta Sykes.

"Cley," I then heard another familiar voice call. I looked up and saw that the driver of the coach was not the Master's porcine henchman as I had expected but instead Bataldo. I thought I was going to be crushed beneath the horses' hooves and the wheels, but at the last moment, they swerved to my left and came to an abrupt stop. "Get in," said the mayor.

For a second, I could not move. When I did, it was to turn and see the werewolf push off the ground fifteen yards away, springing directly at my throat. The door of the coach opened and out stepped Calloo. He strode over and grabbed me with one hand, pulling me back out of the way. Then turning with a grace and precision I would not believe him capable of, he made a fist and drove it into the side of Greta Sykes' head, burying one of her metal bolts deep beneath the skull. She shorted out on the ground before my eyes, jerking, sparking, spewing yellow liquid as he dragged me to the coach and threw me inside. The door closed with a bang and the horses responded. We flew past the sound of whizzing bullets, children screaming, the Master laughing eternally deep behind my eyes.

We stopped briefly at the mayor's house to collect guns, ammunition, and warm coats and blankets. Calloo staved in the wooden wheels of the coach and turned the horses loose. He told me that it was held to be true that the demons of the wilderness had a special appetite for the flesh of domesticated animals, and the smell of the beasts would attract them like a magnet. Bataldo could not stop crying as he ran from room to room, setting the drapes and shelves of books, the bedding and the furniture on fire.

Outside, we stood for a moment at the boundary of the woods and watched the smoke pour from the open windows. The mayor told Calloo and me that he had watched as Drachton Below's werewolf ripped out and devoured his wife's intestines on the main street of Anamasobia.

"Why did you save me?" I asked as he wiped his eyes clear.

"It doesn't matter what we were, Cley. I was no innocent; none of us were. We will head for paradise. There is no room for hatred there."

Calloo simply nodded and then rested one of his huge hands on Bataldo's back as much to hurry him along as to comfort him.

We set out into that vast forest that the members of old man Beaton's expedition had referred to as the Beyond. I was still nauseous and aching from withdrawal, but I ran on and on, determined not to slow the others down, pacing myself a few yards behind Calloo, who seemed tireless. It felt good to run amid the tall barren trees, over the hardened snow. I felt like a child running away from my guilt. I did not care if I froze to death, if I was rent to pieces by demons, if I was caught and killed by the Master's troops. Had it not been for the elusive promise of Wenau, I probably would have sat down where I was and waited for Greta Sykes.

After running for an hour, the mayor collapsed on the snow, heaving for breath. We decided to stop and give him a few minutes rest. I could not have gone on much longer myself. From our position on top of a wooded hill, we could look back and see smoke from Anamasobia rising high into the air. Even as far away as we were, I noticed that a flurry of fine, black ash was falling around us.

In the valley we had recently traversed, we could see the troops in pursuit. Some carried rifles and some the special flamethrowers that had been invented by Drachton Below. He himself rode in another of his inventions, an automated, gear-work carriage with a small compartment for two riders and eight articulated legs like a spider's, that carried him over rocks and fallen trees. I pointed out to Calloo a soldier holding a leash attached to the straining neck of Greta Sykes. Although I was astonished at the speed of her recovery, the big man just shrugged and spat. Then the two of us went and helped Bataldo to his feet and offered words of encouragement.

"Leave me behind," said the mayor. "I can see I will only hold you two back." His face was flushed and his formal, raccoon coat was ripped here and there and covered with all manner of twigs and burrs.

Hearing this, Calloo walked up behind the mayor and kicked him hard in the rear end. Bataldo jumped and then the two of them broke out laughing. I had no idea what I was laughing at, but I joined them.

"All right," said the mayor, and we crested the hill and started down the other side. We no longer ran, for fear that Bataldo would give up, but we walked quickly, heading due north, pushing ever deeper into the Beyond. Each mile of forest we traversed held natural wonders never before seen by civilized man, but we could not slow to inspect any of them.

There were certain trees whose barren branches moved like arms, swiping at the birds that flew just out of their grasp. A species of diminutive deer, the very color of grass, moved in small herds off in the distance. We saw them through the trees, and when they saw us they ran away, emitting the cries of a woman with her hair on fire. Small red lizards with wings flitted from tree to tree like dragonflies, and the songs of birds we could not see, for they flew too high, were hauntingly human. We witnessed all this in utter silence until we came to a brook where Calloo said we could rest for a minute. Then the mayor wondered aloud if we might not really have died back in Ana-masobia and were wandering in the next world.

I was leaning over, taking a drink of water to ease my burning throat, when the demons came swooping down from the trees and burst out of snowbanks we had never suspected. The mayor was the first to draw his gun and shoot. He hit nothing, but the explosion frightened our attackers, and both the ones on the ground and the ones circling above flew up to the highest of the tall trees. They peered down at us, hissing and dropping branches they had torn from their perches.

Calloo lifted the rifle he was carrying, took aim, and shot one of them. Its scream was like nothing I had ever heard. The piercing nature of it tore a hole in reality as the creature plummeted to the ground. There it writhed, its barbed tail slapping the snow. We did not wait to see more but started running as fast as we could. I bounded over the brook with an agility I did not know I possessed. Calloo made it over easily, but the mayor fell into the water, having twisted his ankle when leaping from the bank. By the time we could turn back to help him, two of the creatures had him by the arms and were lifting him toward the treetops. Even as they flew, one of the them had sunk its fangs in Bataldo's cheek.

Calloo reloaded in seconds, put the gun to his shoulder, and fired. He hit one of the demons in the back. The shot wasn't good enough to kill it, but it arched its spine as it screamed, releasing Bataldo's face from its jaws and letting go of him. The other demon could not support the mayor's great weight by itself and dropped him. He fell kicking and screaming from a height of twenty yards, hitting the ground stomach first. I heaved a sigh of relief when he got immediately to his feet and began hobbling toward us. He wore an expression of complete terror and his right hand was thrust forward as if leading him. No less than a dozen of the creatures left their perches.

"Run," Calloo said to me, but I didn't. I watched as he feverishly loaded the gun. He took careful aim, but not at the descending monsters. The shot hit the mayor in the forehead and blood blossomed from the dark hole just as the first set of claws grasped at his collar.

We were off through the woods like a pair of creatures ourselves. For the longest time, I swore I heard demon wings beating above me. At any second I expected to feel a claw as hard as stone crack my head like an egg. Finally Calloo called to me that we had lost them, and I was able to stop and see there hadn't been anything at all behind me. We slowed our pace to a walk and went on till nightfall like that, never speaking.

Although Calloo knew how it was done, we did not dare to light a fire to warm ourselves. We found a spot in a thicket of trees that had grown above into an odd tangle that offered some insurance against attacks from the air. Calloo told me I should sleep first and that he would stand guard. As I lay down on the cold snow, wrapping one of the blankets we had carried around me, he began cleaning the rifle that had saved our lives. The noises of the wilderness, the weird mating calls and death screams, frightened me—but not enough to keep me awake. I fell instantly into a hard sleep.

Of course, I dreamt of Aria. Her face was clear of the ravages of my physiognomical quackery. We were in the wilderness, standing on a mountainside, gazing across a gorge at a tall craggy peak, at the top of which was a plateau where grew a resplendent garden that glowed brightly with golden light.

"Look," she said, pointing, "we are almost there."

"Let's hurry," I said.

"Once we arrive, I will be able to forgive you," she said.

Then we ran hand in hand down the mountain toward the mile-long rope bridge that reached across to paradise.

I woke suddenly to what I thought was the brightness of early morning but soon learned, after rubbing my eyes, that our thicket was ablaze with torchlight. I heard whispered voices and sat up slowly to see where they were coming from. As I moved, I felt the barrel of a gun press into my back. Across the clearing at the center of the thicket I saw Calloo, gagged, with his hands bound behind him and a rope tightened around his neck. Two of the Master's uniformed soldiers were leading him away.

"Get up," said a voice behind me. Once standing, I was made to put my hands behind my head. The soldier kept the gun pressed into my back as we followed the torchlight of those surrounding Calloo.

We stumbled through the night for a half hour before coming upon their camp. It was well lit by torches everywhere fixed to the trees. The Master stood before a large fire heaped high with kindling, warming his hands. Off to his left there was a metal cage containing a live demon. The thing hissed and barked and rammed its horns against the bars. The gear-work cart stood off to the right of a large tent. There must have been a hundred soldiers milling about and another fifty on the perimeter, standing guard with flamethrowers.

I was led to the Master, who sighed and said, "Cley, you are the embodiment of disappointment. It nearly breaks my heart to think of it. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Kill me," I said.

"Sorry," he said, wrapping the cape he wore around him and shivering. "This territory is as bleak as your future, Physiognomist, First Class. You are going back to the City to face trial. Try to remember the frozen air here; it will be a pleasant respite from the heat of the sulphur mines."

Later, I was forced to watch as he turned Greta Sykes loose on the bound and gagged Calloo. The troops stood around them in a circle, cheering and laughing as the big man kicked at the nimble wolf girl. She took chunks of flesh out of both his legs before he toppled and she pounced on his chest. The metal bolts sparked as her snout burrowed down, shredding skin and cracking bone, to get to his heart. Every time I tried to close my eyes the Master would slap my face and make me watch. The gag prevented Calloo from screaming, so I screamed for him. Each time I bellowed, the Master would join me.

He had me ride along with him in the gear-work cart. We made our way out of the woods and were passing the charred remains of Anamasobia as the sun began to rise in the east. Our vehicle was surrounded on all sides by uniformed soldiers who marched in double time to keep up with its mechanical pace. Behind us rolled a wagon with at least three cages on it.

"Too bad you failed, Cley. It was a shame to have had to wipe out that town. Now I'm going to have to recruit new miners to work Gronus. I will mention at your trial that the increased heating costs this winter can be directly attributed to you."

I said nothing.

"Look here," he said, steering the cart with one hand. With the other he reached inside his cape and brought forth the white fruit. There were two distinct bite marks in it, but the rest of it was completely intact. The instant he brought it out, I could smell its sweet perfume.

"Where did you get that?" I asked, fearing what his answer might be.

"We had them before they even left the town," he said. "The girl and her baby and that big brown fellow."

"Are they alive?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm keeping all of them," he said. "The girl is worth her weight in gold with that face you gave her. Simply by staring at them, she took down ten of my best men before reinforcements could get a bag over her head. The Traveler, as I believe he is called, came peacefully when he saw that we had the girl. Him, I think I will put on display in one of the malls and charge two belows apiece for anyone who wants a look."

"What do you intend to do with the fruit?" I asked.

"First, I'm going to have it studied, and if it's free of poison and exhibits some proof for the outlandish claims made for it, I'm going to eat it to the core and plant the seeds." He put it away inside his cape and then took out his cigarette case. "Have one," he said and I did.

Pressing a button on the console, the glass canopy opened back and we rode along, smoking, in the fresh cold air of the territory. We continued on without conversation for a while, the Master whistling and I contemplating my fate in the sulphur mines. Then he suddenly reached back into his cape and brought forth a portfolio stuffed with papers.

"A little something for you, Cley," he said. "Let's say, a going-away present." He handed it over to me.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It was meant for you, but I hope you don't mind that I took a few minutes to peruse it. I nearly split a gut reading that thing," he said, smiling.

I took out the first page and saw that it was written in Aria's beautiful, rapid style. Dear Physiognomist Cley, it began. I soon realized that it was the notes she had assiduously been keeping on what she could remember having been told by her grandfather about the expedition. She had titled it Fragments from the Impossible Journey to the Earthly Paradise.

My trial took a week, there being fourteen physiognomists assigned to the case. Some of them had been my students and some my colleagues, but they all came forth to convince the public that I had somehow been marred by my experience in the territory. They all attested to the fact that my physiognomy had mutated into a symbolic representation of evil, which, of course, indicated that my personality was now irreparably ruined. The crowds in the Well-Built City called for my blood. I was to be executed by having my head inflated with an inert gas of the Master's discovery, resulting in its bursting like a grape.

At the scene of my execution, Drachton Below stepped in and commuted my sentence. Instead of being executed, I was to be sent to the sulphur mines on the island of Doralice in the southern latitudes of the realm.

I arrived at Dorahce in the middle of the night, empty in both heart and head. As far as the official business of the realm was concerned, I was already deceased. My suffering in the sulphur mines was merely a formality that must run its course through the lethargic bureaucracy of torture. There was no moon, no starlight that night, so I couldn't make out any of the features of the island as we approached. I could tell from the pitching of the small ferry carrying myself and four guards that the seas surrounding my new home were angry. My keepers joked about how I would slowly, over a period of months, bake to a fine crisp and then suddenly begin to smolder, my body parts turning to salt and blowing away on the island winds.

We entered a small stone harbor that dimly glowed with torchlight. There was no welcoming committee, no soldiers to receive me. The guards helped me up onto the wharf and threw my meager bag of belongings up next to me. I was left standing there handcuffed.

"There will be someone along to get you shortly," said one of the men as the boat pulled out into the channel. "I hope you have a fondness for the smell of shit."

"He looks the type," said another as they drifted slowly away from me, waving and laughing.

I stood there on the dock that had been cut from limestone. A wind blew off the ocean and I breathed deeply to see if I could detect even the slightest molecule of the fruit of paradise. As I suspected, the place was devoid of hope.

Back in the Well-Built City, while I awaited trial in my jail cell, I had used up my prodigious reserves of self-pity, crying and discussing aloud with myself how I had been wronged and how it had led me to a state of ignorance in which I had wronged others. Now I was washed up on the shores of hell with no will left—"a blob of flesh," as I would so aptly have put it in my previous life.

I waited for ten minutes and still no one came to take me to my cell. For a moment, I entertained the idea of trying to escape but then realized that there was nowhere to go. The waters surrounding the island—I had been told by one of the guards who had brought me—were teeming with shark and kraken, and the uninhabited parts of Doralice were home to a ravenous breed of wild dog. Both possible fates seemed more appealing than the mines, but along with my loss of self had come a sense of fatalism that eschewed action.

At that moment, I heard footsteps approaching along the dock. I looked up and saw a man with shoulder-length white hair, wearing an old military coat, the left breast covered with medals and pins. He drew closer and my first inclination was to apply the Physiognomy to him. I fought that urge and simply saw a face of folds and pouches, the eyes sunken, the nose a testament to voluminous drinking. Although he carried a drawn saber in his left hand, he did not seem at all threatening. Instead, there was a certain weariness about him.

He smiled as he approached and offered his hand to shake, but then realized I was handcuffed and said, "Good thinking." He sheathed his sword and told me to turn around. I did as he said. Then he approached behind me, and I could feel that he was releasing my wrists.

"Good enough," he said as he pocketed the key and cuffs.

By the way he spoke, I did not think he would mind my turning back around. When I stood looking at him, he put his hand up and we shook.

"Corporal Matters," he said. "I am the corporal of the night watch."

I nodded.

"You are Cley," he said. "I suppose you can see now what a lot of rubbish that Physiognomy nonsense is?" He waited for a reply, but I remained silent. "Welcome to Doralice," he said with a tired laugh. "Follow me." He brandished his sword, and I followed him off the dock. We took a sandy path that led us through a thicket of stunted pine trees which reminded me of the Beyond.

"Excuse the sword," he called back to me over his shoulder, "but every once in a while one of those execrable wild dogs will be waiting for me here in the dark. Don't worry—I've gashed my share. Besides, they are usually at the other end of the island this time of year."

We continued on, clearing the pines, and then wound through a maze of enormous dunes. Beyond that, we came to a white beach where the ocean broke. We kept to the shore for about a mile and then walked up the beach, through another maze of dunes, at the center of which was a large, dilapidated inn.

"The Harrow House," he said, pointing.

I stood beside him and looked up at the ornate architecture in varying stages of decay.

"You know the expression 'Harrow's hindquarters'?" he asked, smiling.

I nodded.

"This was built by that Harrow," he said. "I could never quite figure out what that saying meant. Anyway, he built this inn here years ago, hoping that the island would attract visitors from the City. No one ever came, and Harrow swam out to sea one afternoon and was drowned or was eaten or something."

"This is the prison?" I asked.

The corporal pointed to his head and said, "This is the prison."

"Is this where I am to stay?" I asked.

"Yes. I bet you were expecting much worse," he said. "Sorry to say, at this juncture, we have no other prisoners. You can choose any room you like, though. In the morning before dawn—for one of your punishments is that you should never again see sunlight—my brother, the corporal of the day watch, will be here to roust you out of sleep and drag you off to the mine, where you will work till sundown. Is that clear?"

I nodded.

"You will meet Silencio. He is the caretaker of the inn. There is a well-stocked bar on the back porch, and he loves to play at being a bartender," said the corporal.

'Thank you," I said.

"Remember something, Cley. My brother is not so accommodating as I am. The night watch is sleep; the day watch is death." Then he smiled and waved to me, heading off through the maze of dunes.

I stumbled through the dark inn, across the main barroom, and then up a flight of stairs where I thought the living quarters might be. On the second floor there was a long hall lined with doors. Halfway down that shadowy corridor, I could see that one of the doors was open and that a soft light shone forth.

It was room number 7. I stepped inside and saw that it had been newly cleaned. The linen on the bed was uncreased and the curtains were spotless. There wasn't one grain of sand on the polished wooden floor. The light came from a gas lamp, whose light could be lowered or brightened or extinguished by turning a key like knob.

There was a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a closet of moderate size. Next to the closet was a small bathroom that, instead of a door, had a curtain that could be pulled across. Inside hung a mirror over the sink that was too large for my liking, but the walls were painted a soothing sea green. I lay on the bed and pushed off my boots.

The two windows had been left open, and the white lace curtains billowed. I could hear and smell the ocean cutting through everything. The salt air had sunk into me and turned me to lead. My eyes closed and I lay there for a second or two, grappling with the future.

A minute later it seemed, I felt a stick come down across my back. Someone kicked me in the rear end. There were hands on me, pushing me onto the wooden floor. It was completely dark and outside I heard birds screeching.

"Wear only your underwear," roared an angry voice. "You have two minutes in which to be out in front."

I was groggy and aching from the beating I had gotten, but I rose to my feet, stripped off my clothes, and followed him. On the bottom step, I stumbled and fell against my tormentor's back. He turned to push me off him and struck me with his stick.

"Get off me, you shit," he screamed.

He let the screen door slam in my face on the way out. I came to stand before him on the path that led through the dunes. Hugging myself against the early morning chill, I peered through the darkness and saw the face of the corporal of the day watch. With the exception that he had long dark hair, he was the image of the corporal of the night watch. He wore the same coat with the same pins and medals, but his face was atwitch with red anger and fear.

"Get down on the ground," he said.

I did.

"Draw me a circle in the sand," he said.

I did.

He hit me with his stick. "A bigger circle," he shouted.

I drew a bigger one.

Then he crouched down in front of me and showed me a pair of dice he held in his right hand. I think they were red with white spots. He put his fist around them and brought them up to his mouth to blow on. Once this was accomplished, he shook them and threw them into the circle I had drawn. The white dots of a three and a four glowed in the dark.

"Seven pounds," he said, sweeping the dice up in his hand and standing.

I got up.

"You'll be digging seven pounds today," he repeated.

I nodded.

"All right, walk forward with your hands on your head," he called from behind me. I did as he said, and before I had gone one step I could feel the tip of his saber resting against my spine.

We walked a different route through the dunes, and within a half mile, over loose sand, mosquitoes biting my arms and legs, we came to the entrance of the mine.

A sick yellow light shone out from the timbered shaft, making visible the fumes that drifted up. I gagged several times at the smell. It was overwhelmingly corrupt.

"Breathe deeply," yelled Corporal Matters of the day watch. "You will become this stench in a matter of weeks." He paused for a moment. "I will issue you a pickax and a shovel. You will also be given a bag to carry your sulphur to the surface, one gourd of putrid water, and three moist cremat disks." He walked off into the shadows and soon returned with those items.

I put the shovel and axe over my shoulder and took the string of the gourd and the brown-wrapped package of food with my opposite hand to show the corporal that I understood.

"There are a few things that my prisoners need to know," he said, pacing back and forth in front of me.

I wondered if the Corporals Matters were really twins or just the same twisted fellow switching wigs. The similarities were unnerving.

"My first dictum," he shouted. "Every miner must dig his own hole. This means that you must find a barren piece of rock and create your own tunnel. You will be requested to chisel your name over your tunnel after you have been with us for six months. Your remains, whatever they may be, will be interred in your tunnel, proceeding your demise. You are your tunnel. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

"My second dictum is: the mine is the mind," he said, then suddenly reached out with the stick and whacked me in the shoulder. "Say it," he yelled. "Say it."

"The mine is the mind," I said in a near whisper.

"Say it again," he yelled and I did.

Then he stepped up to within an inch of my face, breathing his alcoholic breath on me. "The mine is my mind," he said. "While you work, you are in my mind, tunneling through my head and I see you always. My mind is always killing you as you dig through it. Dig hard. I will teach you a zest for the battle."

I nodded again and waited for my next order. He came at me, brandishing the stick and reaching for his saber. * To work, you idiot," he bellowed. "Seven pounds or I'll feed you to the kraken in the lagoon."