You played with stray impulses, gnawed on the raw assumptions of her personal reality, dominated her cognition. Such a satisfying conquest of the female mind by the lusty intelligence of the male. She was sweet, this one…yet something untouchable lingered beyond the curtains of her memory…something she refused to share with any client, including you. Your thoughts slammed against those gates like battering rams…you wanted to know her every secret. You wanted to claim her utterly, never caring that you might discover what caused her to fall from grace, why this Beatific maiden became a Doxie trollop. In the heady grip of your blind need, you strove to penetrate deeper.
That’s when it must have happened…someone in that dingy alley grabbed your bronze-topped cane and brought it down against your forehead with all force. The mental link was broken immediately as you lost consciousness. Your mind yanked from hers as your body fell to the filthy flagstones. She must have had a partner. But why? What could she…they… possibly gain by stealing your heart-key? If they wanted you dead, they could have killed you right there.
The wind picks up, pelting you with clouds of sandy rust. The twisting street (you never caught the name) is narrow, and few other figures move in the pre-rabid gloom. Outside the doorway of a ramshackle saloon a pair of Clatterpox ramble noisily. The neon placard above the door reads THE DISTENDED BLADDER. Three more Clatterpox lumber across the street ahead of you, heading for the tavern. Their cylindrical bodies rumble and clang, supported by thin iron legs and metal-slab feet. Their chest furnaces burn hot, exuding foul vapors and smokes from the various holes, tubes, and vents placed about their grotesque frames. They turn oval heads toward you as you walk past, staring with flat optical lenses of gray glass.
Poor souls. You do not envy their mean existence, hearts fueled by chunks of burning anthracite, their days spent working mindless jobs just to afford the black rocks that keep them ambulatory. They are the poor of the Urbille, the wretched working class. If they recognize you as a Beatific, they may assault you. Class distinctions are dangerous among the rust. If they knew you were the head of House Honore, what would they do? Tear you apart and sell your gears for scrap?
Now it comes to you: Could the Doxie have known? She might have been someone important at one time. She might even be an ancestral enemy. Someone your father or grandfather ruined in some forgotten business dealing. Could the theft of your heart-key be some form of belated revenge?
One of the Clatterpox shouts something as you hurry past, but you turn the corner without looking back. The sound of their rattling bodies follows you down the street, but you turn and turn again, finally losing them in the shadows of a lightless thoroughfare. Here the sky is clear, and you see the swirling constellations of night. Unfortunately, this welcome sight does you no good because the rabidity has arrived.
It swoops down upon the dark streets like some predatory bird of legend. A tightening of the air itself, a freezing and cracking of atmospheric forces. It keens in your ears like a wailing tea pot, and the wind takes your hat into the night. Fissures in the fabric of space/time erupt along the street. You’ve walked right into the heart of this one. The air splits open not six yards away, and you see another world revealed beyond the throbbing gash.
It’s green and steaming…a jungle like the ones from ancient botanical texts. Colossal lizards feast on one another, tearing flesh, skin, and tendon with terrible fangs. The sounds of their shrieking flows from the vacuity. The gravity of that primeval world pulls at your lapels. If you let it, it will pull you through and your life will wind down in that nameless wilderness. The gears of your legs grind as you pull away from the hovering fissure. The wind screams. You walk against it and pass another vacuity, a rip in existence that pulses and expands, bleeding gravity. Beyond this one you see a night-dark sea and a distant shore lined with luminous towers.
Golden-skinned beings sail the waters in skiffs of pale wood. They must see the vacuity from their side as well because their glowing emerald opticals turn toward you as you walk past. The vision dies as the vacuity begins to shrink.
You stumble into the dying wind as the storm subsides. A dozen more vacuities glimmer in your vicinity. You ignore them. At a meeting of four streets ahead, you see a Clatterpox staring at one of the fissures as it closes completely. Then his round head turns toward you with a fresh burst of vapor and a hissing sound. Is it the same one, who called after you? He stares uncertainly in the post-rabidity calm. You step toward the windows of an all-night merchant on the corner.
Above the doorway the name HOFFSTEIN’S gleams in torrid blue neon. You walk inside and find yourself hemmed by rows of crowded shelves. The proprietor is a handsome Beatific, but he greets you with a suspicious glare as you approach the display of porcelains. No time to be choosy. You pick the first masculine face on the stand and carry it to the counter.
“You’re out late, Sir Honore,” says the proprietor. “Some wild party, eh?”
“Something like that,” you say.
“Must have gotten a bit rough…” He nods toward your busted face.
You say nothing, avoiding his glare.
“Anything else?”
“No,” you say. “Yes…a hat. That one.” You pick a simple black topper. It’s been nearly an hour since you awoke in the alley. You must move quicker.
“Seventeen brilliants,” says the merchant.
“Put it on my account,” you say. Earlier tonight you emptied your pockets to pay the Doxie.
“Very well. Have a good morning, Sir Honore.”
You cast your old face into the store’s dustbin and replace it with this splendid new one.
New hat sitting firmly on your head, you head back into the street.
Making for the Steeple Road, you notice a shadowy figure trailing a block behind you. You stop near a pile of metal sculpted into a hideous beast and stare back at the pursuer. A Clatterpox, of course. Now you can hear his hissing, rattling locomotion as he draws nearer. He carries a club or a dark blade in one of his metal fists…you cannot tell which.
Now you run. The Rusted Zone becomes a blur of gray, brown, and dirty neon, and you ache to put it all behind you. The Clatterpox could never move as fast as you. Soon you see the Steeple Gate, and the faces of its stone gargoyles glare at you like old friends. You speak the word of command and the gate opens. On its other side the streets are well-lit with spherical lanterns kept shiny and clean. As the iron gate closes behind you, you realize the Clatterpox might know the command word as well. So you hurry, shuffling between the houses of ornate stone and their lawns of crushed glass until you see the spiked fence of the Keymaker’s estate.
A great brass bell hangs at the gate, and you hate to ring it so late. Your pocket watch says 4:03 a.m. But it can’t be helped. You ring the bell once. Wait. Again. No lights go on inside the stone mansion. You ring it a third time and notice the front gate is ajar. You pull it open just enough to creep inside. The lawn is immaculate, filled with sculptures of glass and stone in the shapes of skulls, fantastic machinery, and abstract forms recalling the Organic Age. Your shoes sound far too loud as you walk across the crushed glass toward the Keymaker’s door. He will be annoyed to be awakened so late (or so early), but you will offer him whatever price he demands to cast a mold of your chest lock and make a new key before 9:00 a.m. You have little choice. His workshop is attached the mansion, a domed miniature factory of green stone, possibly jade. Certainly you cannot be the first panicked Beatific who has come to him after hours with a lost key emergency.