Ian Tregillis - Something More Than Night Read online

  THE SIMPLE ART OF INTERROGATION

  “Go spit in your hat,” I said. And hacked up a glob of bloody gegenschein.

  They were playing good Throne/bad Throne with me. Honestly, though? I couldn’t tell the difference. You’ve seen one wheel of ice covered in shifty quicksilver peepers, you’ve seen ’em all. The bull repeated its query.

  “You’ve been playing it low among the humans. Why?”

  Now, I admit that’s not exactly what it said. It didn’t really say anything, for that wise. They don’t have mouths as such, and don’t think much of human languages. But that’s the gist of it, more or less.

  “What, down at the raisin ranch? I already told you I was visiting an old friend. Clean the wax out of your ears, why don’t you.”

  That’s not what they meant, and I knew it. And they knew I knew it. And I knew they knew I knew it. That was our jolly little trio. We should have taken this act on the road. What a scream.

  The vipers bit me again. It wasn’t deadly, their venom, but it didn’t tickle, either.

  After the seizures subsided, I said, “I always wondered something about you guys. How do you manage to roll without getting those serpents wrapped around the axle?”

  Strange pugs, the Thrones. A prismatic fog obscured the center of each wheel, but the snakes emerged from roughly where the axle would have been. I truly did wonder about it. I wasn’t just being charming, though I figured it couldn’t hurt to show a little personal interest. I’m famed for my tendency to form a quick rapport with folks. People enjoy my company.

  “We know you’re not working alone,” said the other one.

  “I’m guessing you’ve got a pair of gimbals tucked away down there. Or do you have to untangle the asps before bed every night?”

  “Tell us about your client,” they said for the umpteenth time. “You’ll sing, eventually. Everybody does.”

  “Go climb your thumb,” I said for the umpty-first time.

  These jokers were keen to hang a pinch on Molly. Nuts to that. Rather than haul her in, though, they opted to keep her on ice and start with me. I’m lucky that way. But Thrones are nothing if not steadfast in their quest to mete heavenly justice. So we’d been at it for a while. By then, I’d been sweating under the bright lights for what felt like a few hundred thousand years. I had to see a man about a horse.

  The bulls’ clubhouse had seen better days. Used to be a solid piece of Magisterial architecture: walls ten feet thick, built of the unanimous ontological consensus of all the Thrones believing, with every bit of their precious little hearts, in the impenetrability of their nest. Bars on the windows, the whole nine yards. When they decided to get friendly with a detainee they had even cooked up some trick where any sort of metaphysical awareness generated a blistering light centered on the crooner; I guess that was easier than adjusting the lampshade each time the collar shifted in its seat. As the story goes, it even had a cell or two for holding those who needed to sleep one off. However pointless that was in the Choir, you couldn’t fault the bulls for lack of effort. All that gumption was wasted, though, thanks to METATRON. Their carefully crafted Magisterium, honed over countless eons for the purpose of interrogation and intimidation, had been erased.

  Nothing so grand for me. They’d tossed me into a storeroom and kicked a folding chair under the lightbulb. And by “lightbulb” I mean the integrated optical luminosity of a local Seyfert galaxy. METATRON had kicked them in the teeth but good; they were scrounging up anything they could find. I’d let out a little chuckle when I saw how small-time their operation had become. I think it hurt their feelings.

  One of the bulls tipped sideways, and orbited me like a saucer on a string in a second-rate alien abduction documentary. Its partner rocked back and forth on its rim. Eerie, the way those silvery eyes followed you as they wheeled around the room.

  “We know you’ve allied yourself with a human,” said one. “Yes,” said the other. “Talk about your pet monkey.”

  “Hey, now. That’s offensive. Some of my best friends are mortals.”

  I’m not a fan of close shaves. Too much excitement upsets the humors; just ask Hippocrates. This one I’d cut extra close. I destroyed that memory fragment just in the nick of time. Had they shown up a few minutes earlier, the Thrones would have found it on me and they would have had Molly dead to rights. I’m glad I’d hocked the feather while I was at it, too; the bulls tend to frown when they find a piece of a dead guy in your pocket. They already knew some poor monkey had to get promoted when Gabriel checked out; they weren’t born yesterday, these Thrones, and it’s pretty clear such was the only triage that might have prevented our prison warden from going on a tear to rival Jericho. In particular, they knew Molly was the uplifted mortal plug chosen to fill the hole left by Gabby’s murder—that twist had her good points, but staying inconspicuous wasn’t one of them—but they didn’t know why that honor had fallen to good old flametop. They assumed I’d picked her for a reason. Couldn’t blame them on that point; she wasn’t an obvious choice. But I wasn’t about to tell them I’d been played for a sap. I had my pride. And besides, until I better understood the connection between Gabby and our girl, I wasn’t about to offer it up to the bulls. Bad habit of jumping to conclusions, these dopes.

  And anyway, she was my client. That had to count for something.

  “How is it possible a small-time chiseler like you came to choose Gabriel’s replacement?”

  Again, not exactly what they said. But you get the sense of it. And do you detect a note of jealousy? Yeah, me, too. Maintaining order fell under their bailiwick, but somehow they’d been left holding the bag when the biggest thing since Jericho came along. It poked them where it mattered, right in the professional pride. The question also carried an implication of disdain. Maybe they would have preferred it more if I’d been wearing fancier duds and thousand-dollar shoes when they hauled me in. But I’m not without sympathy. I chose to overlook the class snobbery. Big of me, I know.

  So the Thrones wanted to know who put me up to it. They’re the type to smell the rank odor of conspiracy in every dark corner and see Reds under every bed. Plots and plans and wheels within wheels, that’s how they see the world. But maybe that makes sense, all things considered: the poets and philosophers have a lot to say about form, function, and perception.

  Unfortunately it also makes for a one-track mind. They didn’t appreciate it when I told them the truth: “I’d been down there a long time. Somebody must have figured I knew the monkeys best of all. So yeah, I got tapped for it.”

  “Somebody isn’t an answer,” they said. “Who tapped you for the work, and when?”

  “I have secret admirers. They never sign their letters.”

  For the past century or so, the swirl of windblown leaves had been known on occasion to make unusual patterns in my presence. Radioisotopes had a tendency to spew alphas, betas, and gammas in a tripartite Morse when I cared to give a listen. But I’d managed to ignore all that racket until the messages dropped the veil on the veiled threats. What’s a nickel-grabber to do?

  Everybody called these starched-collar boys “Thrones,” but it had started as a joke. With their upright posture and vestigial senses of humor, they seemed ideal candidates for guarding the Throne of God. If there was such a thing. Sort of like the way we called METATRON the Voice of God even though we didn’t know what it really was. Once our warden got that nickname, it wasn’t long before we started referring to other bits and pieces of this mysterious “God.” Whether or not some corner of the Pleroma contained a shiny chair fitted in crystal and gold (a sucker’s bet, if I ever knew one), the Thrones were the ones who took it upon themselves to keep things peaceful. Doing that meant keeping those shifty eyes peeled. They watched everybody, and sooner or later they saw just about everything that happened in the Pleroma. They were our very own secret police force.

  I suppose that to an outsider the Thrones’ self-imposed duty might have appeared an act of community-min
dedness. But don’t let them fool you. The Thrones enforce a certain level of order on the Pleroma because they hate and fear METATRON more than anybody else; they go around flashing the buzzers, reading the riot act, and giving troublemakers the Baumes rush so that our warden won’t go on another tear. They talked big, but at heart they were just as confused and frightened by the Jericho Event as the rest of us. They’re cowards, so they bully the rest of us to cover their shame.

  I said so. They didn’t like that.

  “What happened to the Trumpet?” they asked. “Where did she stash it?”

  “She stashed nothing,” I said. “Go fry a stale egg.”

  The egg crack earned me more love taps from the vipers.

  “Why’d you steal it, Bayliss?”

  “You buttons turned out my pockets when you hauled me in, but you didn’t find a damn thing. So what say you we dispense with the good Throne/bad Throne routine. It’s about as fresh as last Tuesday’s halibut special.”

  “You’re in this, and you’re in this up to your eyebrows,” said Tweedledee. Well, he didn’t actually say “eyebrows.” I had taken my true form when they hauled me in for questioning. Same difference, though. At least he didn’t punctuate this one with sock in the kisser.

  I said, “Yeah, it’s true, I am in this. I’m in this deep. I’m in this just as deep as you and you and everybody else in the whole gummed-up Choir. And we wouldn’t be in this pickle if you buttons had been doing your jobs. Somebody pinked the best of us right under your noses, and where were you? Instead of worrying over who did the deed, and how, you’re hauling people off the streets for a bit of the rubber hose act. Some bulls you are. You couldn’t guard your own socks. Love to see you try. That’s rich.”

  “Your partner has a head full of rocks if she thought she could violate the MOC. We don’t like thickheads. They cause trouble, and they keep causing trouble until they’re gone.”

  The other Throne chimed, “Yeah. Plenty of folks feel the same. Maybe whoever did Gabriel will take a shine to your wren, too. Ever think of that?” Too many times to count, pal. “She needs protection, and that means she needs us. So tell us what you both know about the Trumpet and we’ll bring her in before she hurts herself.”

  I hate it when the bulls try to play clever. It’s embarrassing. Didn’t point it out, though. I’d hate to hurt their feelings again.

  Instead, I said, “I think it’s safe to say she doesn’t give two hoots about that dingus. She wants to be left alone. And given the welcome she’s had from the rest of you chuckleheads in the Choir, can’t say as I blame her much.”

  At that point I figured I was in like Flynn. They’d have to keep me a while longer, make it look like they’d carried out their jobs as good stewards of all that taxpayer dough, but I could see where this was going. I could answer everything truthfully, and eventually they’d get frustrated and give up. The bulls hate it when you have something to hide, but they hate it even more when you don’t. Yeah, I’d covered Molly’s tracks and they still had nothing on me. I was home free.

  Or so I thought. Until Tweedledum said, “What did you lift from Gabriel’s Magisterium?”

  Damn those shifty peepers. But I covered my surprise nice and smooth. Innocent as a choirboy, I said, “I don’t know what you mean, officer.”

  The Throne rolled right up to my pan—I could smell the mercury. His serpents produced something with a little flourish, and waved it in my eyes. “So this doesn’t belong to you, then?”

  I looked down at a fragment of my own consciousness. Guess I’d neglected to retrieve my hairpin after popping the lock on Gabby’s digs. Oops. Before I could deny ownership, the fragment wiggled free of the fangs and insinuated itself into the rest of my body. Plain as day, the ungrateful little creep. I got a crash course on what it felt like to cower hidden in a broken lock for weeks on end.

  “Hey,” I said, “I’ve been looking for that. Where’d you guys find it?”

  “You took something from Gabriel. What was it?”

  “He owed me a raft, the bum. Figured he wasn’t likely to make good on it, so I pinched his bus tokens. I got enough to go to Kalamazoo and back.”

  They didn’t like that, either. A few bites later, one said, “We don’t appreciate keyhole peepers like you playing sharp and getting in the way of our investigations. You leave a mess and make it harder for us to do our job.”

  “Cry me a river, mac. We’re all stuck in this jam because you clowns do your job so well. Where’d you get your buzzers, mail order from the back of a funny book?”

  “We also don’t like penny-ante gumshoes who think they can do one better. We’re on to you, Bayliss. We know you were there. We have witnesses who put you there before anybody else could get in—”

  “The Cherubim? Tell me you’re not taking those puffed-up jaspers at their word.”

  “—so what did you take? And don’t say ’nothing’ or we’ll give you something to cry about.”

  “You know, a person could start to think you’re prejudiced against the little guy. Just because I don’t have the sword and the wings and the bovine pucker you act like I’m too small to matter. Yeah. I bet you never braced your pals with the hot faces. But I wouldn’t put it past those creeps to rob the feathers off a stiff.”

  It’s not theft if a silver feather just drops out of the sky and you pick it up. That’s common sense. Nobody could argue otherwise. Let’s not get sidetracked.

  “The only people to enter Gabriel’s Magisterium are you, the Cherubim, and us. The Cherubim sought the Trumpet, nothing more. They’re clean. We examined them after going over that Magisterium with a fine-tooth concept filter,” said one Throne. The other picked up the ball and marched it into the end zone: “Funny thing about that. We didn’t find anything pertaining to Gabriel’s investigation. Almost like his findings had been pinched.”

  I said, “Investigation? You guys are all wet. I never knew Gabby to care to stick his nose in anything.”

  I suppose—technically—that was a lie, given what I’d lifted from his apartment. I’m not proud of it, but luckily for me and flametop, I can spin a convincing yarn if I have to.

  One Throne spun on its axis, precessing like a gyroscope. “Get a load of this guy. He thinks Gabriel wouldn’t have cared to get a line on the revenants.”

  And that’s where my imperturbable sangfroid failed me. The expressed concept held a connotation of some truly unusual metaphysical hiccups. The kind you don’t expect to find in a system that’s been running without a hitch for billions of years. “Let’s pretend for a minute that I didn’t know what you were yakking about.”

  “Hey, this guy’s a comedian. Says he never heard of the Nephilim.”

  “Where you been all this time? Hiding under a rock?”

  Yeah, a rock called Earth. Talk about comedians, these guys were about as funny as a rubber crutch.

  “I usually read the financial pages first,” I said. “Lots of investments.”

  One Throne touched me on the third eye—none too gently, either; can’t have people thinking the bulls have gone soft—and filled my head with unwelcome truths.

  I had thought everything went haywire when Gabby punched out. I remembered that moment down in the laneways when the mortal plane skipped like a phonograph needle bounding across a scratched record; sure as I’m handsome, his death hadn’t done the Pleroma any favors. But what I learned from the buttons just then was that there had been signs of trouble in paradise before Gabriel’s death nearly tore a hole in the fabric of the MOC. Because that’s when the first of the Nephilim appeared in the Pleroma.

  Nephilim, revenants, lurkers on the blurry edges of existence … Lots of names but no understanding. And that’s saying something. It isn’t often we hit something beyond our ken. But this counted.

  They weren’t members of the Choir. Not even like our gal Molly—she was still a category all her own, the doll. And yet they made their digs in the Pleroma. The first encounter report
had come from some weak-tea heiligenschein type charting the edges of the quantum information paradox in realities with anisotropic causalities. (Kids these days. Whatever happened to popping down to Earth to play burning bush to a roving band of shepherds?) Lurking silent as a mute shark with an acute case of bashfulness, that first revenant just hovered in the far reaches of the Pleroma, watching. It didn’t react to the angel, who wouldn’t have noticed it at all if the kid hadn’t tripped over the intruder. There must have been some red faces after that one. The lurker caused nary a ripple in the MOC, and didn’t spin its own Magisterium. It existed in the implied spaces of the Pleroma, and made about as much impression as the shadow of a candlelit alabaster window makes on a sheet of diamond. Not the slightest whiff of sulfur wafted from its formless presence; it shed not the tiniest gyre of warped reality. It was, seemingly, a dormant consciousness tossed adrift on currents of non-reality like so much spiritual jetsam.

  It’s a mistake, I figured, while the Throne’s viper gathered itself for another pulse of venomous knowledge. An oversight, or a joke. Somebody left a piece of themself behind, a crumb of consciousness too small to sustain itself, too weak to find its way home. That’s how I saw it. And so did the rest of the Choir, once they chose to see the truth behind the lowly angel’s report.

  Until they tried to dislodge it. The revenant was embedded in the Pleroma: a topological defect in the structure of divine cosmology. Expelling the revenant made about as much sense as trying to eject the inside from a circle—you can do it, but you don’t have a circle any longer. Of course, there are plenty of ways to construct a reality where something like that makes no end of sense … but that would require building a Magisterium around the revenant. And it was too firmly embedded in the substrate of the Pleroma for that. I gather some of the big money players took a flutter at it, too, but fell flat on their pretty faces.

  Been a while since somebody dreamed up something the Choir couldn’t do. Since the Jericho Event, in fact. That old chestnut about the immovable object and the irresistible force? We licked that eons ago. The sound of one hand clapping? Please; countless are the realities where the substrate axioms would make a tax legislation read like a Zen koan.