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.