Abarat: The First Book of Hours - Barker Clive - Страница 27

Where had Pixler found those first magical principles? In books he had paid professional thieves to steal from Carrion’s own library, among other places. Carrion had let it be known that he was aware of the theft and even of the price Pixler had paid the thief, a fellow by the name of John Mischief, for his illicit services.

Word had later reached him that Pixler—who was at heart a superstitious man—had become very agitated when he heard that his commissioned thefts were no secret. Fearing reprisal, he had casually offered the use of his “Sublime Verities,” as he called his marriage of science and magic, to Carrion, should he ever have need of them.

Well, that time had come.

Immediately following his interrogation of Shape, Carrion had sent one of his trusted lieutenants, Otto Houlihan, the Criss-Cross Man, to Commexo City. He was sent with a very specific demand. He knew for a fact that, like any man of power—especially one who had risen suddenly, like Pixler—the King of Commexo City was not only superstitious, but paranoid. He feared for his life and for his city. And with reason. No doubt there were people on every island who hated Commexo City and all that it represented.

Being a practical man—a man who believed in finding solutions, not simply stewing in his fear—Pixler had instructed his magical scientists to use their Sublime Verities in the creation of spies that would take the shape of living things and would be dispersed through the islands to watch for and report any sign of rebellion against him.

Only a month before, the Criss-Cross Man had brought a dozen of these automaton spies to the Twelfth Tower for the Lord of Midnight’s amusement. They were like exquisite toys to Carrion’s eye; he had amused himself by having Houlihan blindfold them, then watched them batter themselves to pieces against the walls of his scrying room. Some of the finest he had turned over to his own scientists for closer analysis. One, an artificial meckle bird, he had caged and kept for himself, because it needed no nourishment, and it sang so fetchingly, even when blinded.

Now he had a new reason for Rojo Pixler’s spying operations. He wanted to know if the girl who’d apparently been Mischief’s accomplice had survived the waters of the Izabella, and if so, where she’d gone.

So he sent Houlihan to Commexo City; a short while later the man returned, not with information, but with one of Pixler’s chief scientists, a certain Dr. Voorzangler.

The doctor appeared before Carrion dressed in a fine white linen suit, with white shoes and white tie; he wore one of the more peculiar ocular devices Carrion had ever seen. It had the effect of taking the image of his eyes and superimposing them, one over the other, in the middle of his face. Voorzangler’s eyes were not a perfect match. One of them was a little bigger than the other, and one seemed to be a little slower in its motion than its companion, so the cyclopic eye the device created was seldom whole. One image was always trailing half an eye behind the other.

Whatever the reason for his wearing it, the thing didn’t seem to impair Voorzangler’s vision. He was studying the paintings on the walls of the gallery when Carrion came in.

His voice, when he spoke, was high-pitched and weaselly.

“I hear,” he said, “that you are searching for somebody. Is that right? Somebody who has conspired against you? And you need Mr. Pixler’s assistance?” Before Carrion could reply, the doctor continued, his voice, after a few sentences, already annoying Carrion. “Mr. Pixler instructed me to tell you that he is more than happy to help a friend and neighbor. Could you perhaps supply me with a brief description of the miscreant?”

“No,” said Carrion. “But I have somebody who can.” He turned to Houlihan. “Where’s Shape?”

“I brought him up from the kitchens as you instructed, sir. He’s waiting in the next room.”

“Fetch him.”

While Houlihan went off down the length of the gallery to fetch Shape, Carrion turned his full attention on Voorzangler.

“So what have you brought to impress me with?” he said.

Voorzangler began to blink his one and a half eyes vigorously. “It was Mr. Pixler’s desire that you be given access to our most secret spying device,” he said. “The Universal Eye.”

“I’m honored,” Carrion replied. “May I ask why, if it is so secret, Mr. Pixler so honors me?”

“He looks to the future, Lord Carrion. He sees a time when—if I may be so bold—you and he may be more than distant neighbors.”

“Ah,” said Carrion. “Good. Then let me see what proof of his intentions he has sent.”

“Here,” Voorzangler said, bringing Carrion’s attention to a dark gray box, about three feet square, which was standing a little way down the gallery. He took a small control unit out from his white jacket and touched it with his thumb.

The response from the box was instantaneous. It rose into the air on a quintet of delicate legs on which it had been squatting. Then, without any further instruction from Voorzangler, it began to open up like a geometric flower, so that it now presented sixteen screens, four facing each wall of the room. An instant later, they all flickered into life, the images bright.

Carrion smiled.

“Well, well,” he said.

He started to move around the other side of the device, but as he did so it accommodated him by flipping around, so as to present him with four more screens. Some of the images were static, but more were moving, their motion sometimes chaotic, as the camera—wherever it was situated—went in pursuit of a particular suspect.

By now Houlihan had brought Shape in. He was still wearing the same shabby coat, except that it was now decorated with the remains of his meal in the kitchens. He looked embarrassed when Carrion called him to hobble forward and view the multiplicity of screens.

“I’m hoping we’re going to find our little Candy somewhere here,” Carrion said to him. He turned to Voorzangler. “What kind of creatures do this spying for you?” he asked.

“You saw some of them yourself, sir, a month ago.” His cyclopic gaze became sly. “I believe you still keep the meckle bird in your private rooms.”

The meaning of this remark was not lost on Carrion. Voorzangler was subtly telling him that even he, the Lord of Midnight, was spied upon.

Carrion filed the information away for another time, and simply pretended not to understand what he’d been told.

“How many reports do you have in this device?” he asked.

“Nineteen thousand, four hundred and twelve,” Voorzangler replied. “That’s just from the last two days. Of course if you want to go back further—”

“No, no,” said Carrion. “Two days is fine. Shape?”

“Yes, Lord?”

“Doctor Voorzangler is going to show you a lot of pictures. If the girl is among them, I want to know. Otto? Come and find me when you’re ready.”

Carrion left them to it and went out into the midnight, his thoughts straying from Voorzangler’s Sublime Verities to subjects more massive and remote.

It was the stars glimmering through the fog that were the present subject of his meditations.

He knew from his books that each one of those distant lights was a sun unto itself. And though their meager illumination did not disturb him, there were other creatures in the Abarat for which those little stars (not to mention the brightness of the noonday sun or the light of the pallid moons that hung over the islands) were a curse.

They were called the Requiax, these creatures, and their home was in the deepest trenches of the Sea of Izabella.

Their age and their capacity for evil were both beyond calculation. Such indeed was the scale of their wickedness and the extent of their age, that many learned men and women who’d made it their business to study the innumerable life-forms of the Abarat did not even believe they existed. Wickedness of such proportions was a mythic invention, they said. The Requiax could not be real.