"How long have we been connected in reality?" I asked.
"Almost an hour."
"An hour …" " I found the discrepancy in time impossible.
"You've got to hurry," he told me. "The chances of retrieving you grow slimmer by the minute."
"My plan is mad," I told him.
"I can see what you are thinking."
"Absurdity seems to be the order of the day, though," I said, hoping he might try to talk me out of it.
A minute passed, and I thought he was gone. I prepared to leave.
"Cley," he said, frightening me again, "you are going to use the woman, aren't you?"
"For her own good," I said.
A wheezing laughter broke out around me everywhere, echoing in the small room. As it diminished, I could hear him very faintly call, "I'll be watching."
I brought the Lady Claw out into the bedroom and laid it on the table alongside the signal gun that the Doctor had left with me. Seeing the gun, I thought it might be better to have a weapon more truly suited for self-defense. Until very early in the morning, I meditated upon the derringer I had at one time carried, but no matter how precisely I saw it or desired it, it never appeared in the closet. I realized in dejection that there were probably limits to the complexity of the objects that could be materialized. As the dawn began to show itself out beyond the field and wood, I crept back to bed.
17
After a late breakfast the next morning, as the sun climbed a final step toward noon, we returned, at my insistence, to the bed. With Anotine sighing, "Now," and myself wrapped in ecstatic concentration, like a child in a final round of split the mug-gen, together we discovered the present, a gift from the future and the past.
This event was meant to be the initiation of my plan, but when I rolled onto my back and was breathing heavily in unison with her, I forgot all about disturbing Below's mnemonic world. If anything, I wanted it to remain as it was forever. What I had found in her was not the fulfillment of lust, but the origin of love. All of those questions of reality and illusion had disintegrated more completely than the edge of the island.
"Did you feel the moment?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said, "it exploded inside me. I was transported to another place." She reached out and put her hand around my wilting member. "Cley, you're a genius. Who would have thought."
Her comment about having gone to another place reminded me of Bataldo's revelation that sexual union was a temporary fusion of memories. I pondered this notion, and found that it coincided with the feeling that I had finally, after all my errant wandering in thought and deed, come home to myself. There was nothing left but to tell her I loved her, and that is precisely when the Fetch arrived.
It slowly drifted backward in through the window opening above us, its hair alive, its expression a startling mask of ecstatic rage. Anotine sat up to take its gaze as the green light streamed toward her eyes.
I rolled out of the bed in a fit of jealousy and made my way to the table across the room. There, I lifted the signal gun and turned to aim, determined not to share our intimacy with the creature. As I was about to pull the trigger, I realized that I might hit Anotine. Lowering the gun, I walked cautiously up behind the Fetch, steeled myself as if on the verge of thrusting my hand into a fire, and reached out to grab a shock of serpentine hair.
The instant I closed my grip, it began to scream. The unnatural sound of its cry roused me to action, and I pivoted on my heels, swinging the disembodied head facefirst into the wall. There was a sickening crunch, and I thought I had broken its nose. Behind me I heard Anotine cry, "Cley, what are you doing?" as I let go of my victim. The Fetch wavered in midair, then dipped toward the ground but managed to stay aloft. As it turned to lunge at me, its shrieking mouth wide with pointed cat teeth, I lifted the gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
It all seemed to happen at once—a pop, a cloud of smoke, and a sizzling explosion of red light. The force of the blast slammed the Fetch into the wall as I was thrown back a few steps in the opposite direction. I saw it hang there for a moment, like some strange decoration, before it slid to the floor and onto its face. With great care, I approached it, waiting to see if it was feigning death. The limpness of the singed hair convinced me it was safe to touch. Using the end of the gun, I flipped it over to reveal a blackened, tattered visage of melted green flesh.
I turned to look at Anotine and found her sitting straight up, her face pale, her mouth open wide. "Quickly," I said, "get dressed. The plan has begun." Only then did I remember that I had intended to kill the Fetch all along.
By the time the others had arrived, we were both clothed and had dragged the lifeless head into Anotine's laboratory.
They entered by way of the bedroom, and I heard the Doctor call to us.
"In here" I yelled.
They came down the hallway with Nunnly in the lead and Brisden bringing up the rear.
As they entered the lab, Nunnly said to me, "Brisden and I have been thinking this over, Cley, and we believe …" He never finished his statement, though, because at that moment I stepped away from the table I stood in front of, allowing them to get a look at what I was working on. Nunnly took a step back. The Doctor immediately brought his hand to his beard, and Brisden said, "Fa," closed his eyes, and turned his face away.
"There's no going back," said Anotine, casting a sick glance at the mutilated remains on the table.
"I should say not," said Nunnly, now stepping closer to study it.
"You know what this means, Cley," said the Doctor.
I nodded.
"The Delicate," said Brisden.
"It's the only way we can get inside the tower," I said.
"Do you think we'll be invited after this?" asked Nunnly.
"That's the part I'm unclear about," I said. "All I know is that the doors have to open for us to get inside."
The Doctor stepped closer and peered down at the head. "How did you stop it?" he asked.
"The signal gun you left the other night was a better weapon than I imagined," I said.
"What is that in your hand?" asked Nunnly, pointing to the Lady Claw.
"An instrument for cutting through flesh and bone. It's called a scalpel."
"Do you think it's necessary to dice the little beast up?" asked Brisden, grimacing at the sight of it as he moved alongside the others.
"I want to get inside the head," I told them. "I need to determine what it is that allowed the Fetch to see into each of your minds."
"Cley thinks there might be something there that will help him to discover the antidote," said Anotine.
"Stand back a little" I said. With this, I lifted the scalpel and began to cut away at the long strands of hair. My facility with the tool came back to me all at once, and I found a kind of pleasure in wielding it again. The Physiognomy also tried to pry its way back into my consciousness along with my appreciation of the grace of the instrument. It was all I could do to suppress the tenets of that crackpot philosophy, which slithered in mind-speech and flashing images through my thoughts.
I had shaved nearly the entire head when I stopped for a moment and looked up to see the others staring with expressions of astonishment at my work.
Brisden broke from his trance, and said, "Things have certainly grown more complex in the past few minutes."
"They're going to get absolutely intricate," I said, and went back to playing the barber.