“If I were not alive, do you suppose I would sound or seem or behave very differently than I am doing?”
“I don’t think so…”
“If you shut your eyes and only listened to my voice and didn’t know that I was a Tyguerrotype and not a Tiger, if you couldn’t see that I am an image on a silvered plate and not a fat, roly, orange and black gentleman with an advanced degree, would you assume that before you stood a real and living Great Feline? With a noble constitution and an eye for composition?”
“Yes, I expect so…”
“Then I am as alive as makes no difference. I do all the things an alive thing does,” said Turing. “Do you know another test for living?”
September could not help looking at Aroostook. She changed by herself, into sunflowers and golden hands and phonograph bells. Only living things could change without someone changing them. She drove himself when he saw fit and she had said no to the Blue Winds (though that might have been a jammed lever) and she had to eat or else she would stop, just like her. She Had Rights, if the King was to be believed. But September could believe a photograph of a tiger was alive more readily than that her car was.
“It’s a handsome machine,” said Turing, following her gaze.
“Do you think-” September cleared her throat. She had said nothing to her friends about Aroostook and his changes. “Do you think it might be alive as well? You seem to know something about the business, is why I ask.”
The Tyguerrotype roared laughter.
“Do I know about living? Do I know about Alive? I know about seeming, little primate. I know about how a thing looks. It looks like a handsome machine. But then, so do you. And I wouldn’t, I really wouldn’t come into the house. I’m sorry you’re wet and hungry but if you stood where I stand and ate my strawberries you’d come down with a fantastic case of mercury poisoning at the very least. If you came into the house you’d end up in my Country, backwards and upside down and black and white.”
“You said when a picture’s taken a body goes all the way through the Country of Photography,” said September slowly, trying to figure out where her mind was tugging her. “As fast as a shutterclick. But that country has to be as big as anything that’s ever stood in front of a camera. How long have folk been taking pictures in Fairyland? They’ve been at it for quite a while in my world. Have you seen a Fairy city in there? With a great giant paw on display in the middle of it?”
The Tyguerrotype stroked his striped cheeks. “It’s possible. I can’t be sure. There are ever so many cities in Country. But I think I saw a place like that when I was first developed.”
“Don’t you see?” cried September to her friends. “We can do better than the Glasshobs’ lenses! It all has to be in there-the Paw, Patience, even the Fairies! If we are lucky, we can see what happened to it. When you live as fast as the Fairies did when they could Yeti away anything they didn’t like you’d just have to take pictures! Their lives outraced memory, kicked it, and jumped on its head.”
“But we couldn’t really,” protested Ell. “You go through in a blink. The tiger said so. There’d be no time to look around.”
The Tyguerrotype shoved his paws in his pockets. “I suppose you know about Physicks, little one. They don’t work the same way in Country. Seeing is magic. A lion I once knew called Werner, photographed in a zoo for chessmasters and scavengers, well, he told anyone who would listen-but no one would. Seeing is magic. When you look at something you change it, just by looking. It’s not an apple anymore, it’s an apple your friend Turing saw and thought about and finally ate. And it’s worse than that-anything you look at changes you, too. A camera takes a picture-but the photographer can’t escape the picture. She’s there, even if you can’t see her. She’s the one holding the box.”
“It’s like what Candlestick said about Pluto. People see my clothes and they say I’m a Criminal,” September said, chewing over the Physicks of it. “And I know I’ve acted like one-but only when I had to!” Or when I desperately wanted to, she thought, a flash of guilt bursting in her stomach over what she’d done.
The Tyguerrotype nodded. “They see you and they change you and you change because you’ve been seen and you change them because they’ve changed you. I hope that sounds very confusing because it’s much worse in Country. There’s nothing but seeing and being seen in the Country of Photography.”
“That’s all very well. But you haven’t said there’s no point in it because we’d flit through in an instant. So there must be a way not to,” said Saturday shrewdly, tugging on his topknot.
Turing the Tyguerrotype furrowed his furry brow. “I should have to catch you as the flash goes off,” he said, “to stop you silvering right through. But I am very vivid. A strong image, clear and dynamic!”
Saturday looked longingly at the silver-plate house. “It sounds like home in there. Everyone all together, all of themselves round the supper table, baby pictures and holiday portraits and wedding albums.”
“And perhaps I will be safe in there-you can’t photograph a curse, after all,” added Ell softly. “But I do not like it. I do not want to be flat and colorless as well as small. I like my own country. I like being red in it, and warm, and round.”
“But photographic processes are caustic!” whispered Saturday. “We shall certainly be scorched, and what if we should come out a mile into space or back in the Jungle? Let’s not be reckless!”
Turing had already pulled an old studio camera out onto his silver plate. He positioned the tripod and peered through the lens, pulling a curtain over his striped ears.
“I am reckless,” said September to her friend. “You have to be, in my line of work.” She paused. “Our line of work.”
“Scoot together now,” called the Tyguerrotype. “Around our handsome machine. I’ve got to get you all in frame at once!”
Turing spread his great, wide arms as wide as he could. His fierce mouth opened, showing silver teeth and a silver tongue lined in black. In one paw he squashed the squeezebulb.
“Everybody say ‘Observer Effect’!” he roared.
At the last moment, Ell could bear it no longer. His flame burst out in fear and doubt and great lizardy distress. The violet jet arced over the silver-plate houses, sizzling and hissing through the raindrops.
The flash exploded like a star.
CHAPTER XVI
THE COUNTRY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
In Which September Is Observed and Observes Herself
September saw nothing but blackness.
Her feet stood in something warm and wet-at first she thought it was a puddle where they all dripped together out of the storm. But as the wetness rose up, past her knees, past her waist and her tummy and her chest, panic rushed up, faster than the wetness, clutching her throat so tight she could not cry out. Liquid flowed over her face in the dark, seeping into her eyes and her mouth. September thrashed and beat at the stuff, but she could see nothing, feel nothing, move nowhere.
And as suddenly as it had engulfed her, it left, draining away into nothing. September opened her eyes, wiping at them, coughing. And everything was full of light.
The Tyguerrotype’s house had no rear wall; it opened up onto another Azimuth, wide and silver and black and white, shade upon shade of charcoal and ash and pearl and oyster and gunpowder and smoke. Not just another Azimuth-many Azimuths, lying one on top of the other like the pages of a book. Everywhere September looked, she saw images wriggling together and apart. A Glasshob-she could not be anything else, her heavy lantern hanging down on a seaweed-wrapped stalk before her eyes, her goat-legs furry and gray-took one step toward them. But a dozen copies of her leapt out in every direction, bolting off in every direction. Houses vibrated, their images layered three and four and eight deep. Yet you could not really call it deep. Depth seemed to have fallen asleep and forgotten to set its alarm. The Tyguerrotype, the thirteen bouncing Glasshobs, the quivering houses-and September and Saturday, A-Through-L and Candlestick-had a little thickness, but no more than a thick sheet of paper. They were all black and white, the Marid swirling with dark and light like tarnished silver, September a floating pale face in the sea of her inky silks. September looked down at Ell. It took her a moment to realize what she’d done-looked down. Down, at a Wyvern. He was the size of a wolfhound now, just a hair below September’s own height. White tears welled up in his silver eyes-but did not fall. She put out her arms and pulled Ell into them, and in her heart she thrilled a little, for she had always wanted to be able to hold him all entire this way, snuggle him even though she knew very well he was not a dog. But the poor Wyverary turned his face away in terror and shame and the thrill died away in an instant.