Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

"Be my guest," Gentle said. "And forgive me if I don't brim with bonhomie."

"No apology required," Tick Raw said. "I'll leave you to sleep."

That evening, Tick did as Gentle had suggested and plied both Clem and Monday with questions until he had the full story.

"So when do I meet the mesmeric Judith?" he asked when the tale was told.

"I don't know if you ever will," Clem said. "She didn't come back to the house after we buried Sartori."

"Where is she?"

"Wherever she is," Monday said dolefully, "Hoi-Polloi's with her. Just my fuckin' luck."

"Well, now, listen," Tick Raw said. "I've always had a way with the ladies. I'll make you a deal. If you show me this city, inside out, I'll show you a few ladies the same way."

Monday's palm went from his pocket, where it'd been stroking the consequence of Hoi-Polloi's absence, and seized hold of Tick Raw's hand before it was even extended.

"You're a gentleman an' a squalor," Monday said. "You got yourself a tour, mate."

"What about Gentle?" Tick Raw said to Clem. "Is he languishing for want of female company?"

"No, he's just tired. He'll get well."

"Will he?" said Tick Raw. "I'm not so sure. He's got the look of a man who'd be happier dead than alive."

"Don't say that."

"Very well. I didn't say it. But he has, Clement. And we all know it."

The vigor and noise Tick Raw brought into the house only served to emphasize the truth of that observation. As the days passed and turned to weeks, there was little or no improvement in Gentle's mood. He was, as Tick Raw had said, languishing, and Clem began to feel the way he had during Tay's final decline. A loved one was slipping away, and he could do nothing to prevent it. There weren't even those moments of levity that there'd been with Tay, when good times had been remembered and the pain superseded. Gentle wanted no false comforts, no laughter, no sympathy. He simply wanted to lie in his bed and steadily become as bland as the sheets he lay upon. Sometimes, in his sleep, the angels would hear him speaking in tongues, the way Tay had heard him talk before. But it was nonsense that he muttered: reports from a mind that was rambling without map or destination.

Tick Raw stayed in the house a month, leaving with Monday at dawn and returning late, having had another day seeing the sights and acquiring the appetites of this new Dominion. His sense of wonder was boundless, his capacity for pleasure prodigal. He found he had a taste for eel pie and Elgar, for Speaker's Corner at Sunday noon and the Ripper's haunts at midnight; for dog races, for jazz, for waistcoats made in Saville Row and women hired behind King's

Cross Station. As for Monday, it was clear from the face he wore whenever he returned that the hurt of Hoi-Polloi's desertion was being kissed away. When Tick Raw finally announced that it was time to return to the Fourth, the boy was crestfallen.

"Don't worry," Tick told him. "I'll be back. And I won't be alone."

Before he departed, he presented himself at Gentle's bedside with a proposal.

"Come to the Fourth with me," he said, "it's time you saw Patashoqua."

Gentle shook his head.

"But you haven't seen the Merrow Ti' Ti\" Tick protested.

"I know what you're trying to do, Tick," Gentle said. "And I thank you for it, really I do, but I don't want to see the Fourth again."

"Well, what do you want to see?"

The answer was simple: "Nothing."

"Oh, now stop this, Gentle," Tick Raw said. "It's getting damn boring. You're behaving as though we lost everything. We didn't."

"I did."

"She'll come back. You'll see."

"Who will?"

"Judith."

Gentle almost laughed at this. "It's not Judith I've lost," he said.

Tick Raw realized his error then, and came as near to dumbfounded as he ever got. All he could manage was: "Ah...."

For the first time since Tick Raw had appeared at his bedside the month before, Gentle actually looked at his guest. "Tick," he said. "I'm going to tell you something I've told nobody else."

"What's that?"

"When I was in my Father's city..." He paused, as though the will to tell was going from him already, then began again. "When I was in my Father's city I saw Pie 'oh' pah."

"Alive?"

"For a time."

"Oh, Jesu. How did it die?"

"The ground opened up beneath it."

"That's terrible; terrible."

"Do you see now why it doesn't feel like a victory?"

"Yes, I see. But Gentle—"

"No more persuasions, Tick."

"—there are such changes in the air. Maybe there are the miracles in the First, the way there are in Yzordderrex. It's not out of the question."

Gentle studied his tormentor, eyes narrowed.

"The Eurhetemecs were in the First long before Hapexamendios, remember," Tick went on. "And they worked wonders there. Maybe those times have returned. The land doesn't forget. Men forget; Maestros forget. But the land? Never."

He stood up.

"Come with me to a passing place," he said. "Let's look for ourselves. Where's the harm? I'll carry you on my back if your legs don't work."

"That won't be necessary," Gentle said, and throwing off the sheets got out of bed.

Though the month of August had yet to begin, the early months of summer had been marked by such excesses that the season had burned itself out prematurely, and when Gentle, accompanied by Tick and Clem, stepped out into Gamut Street, he met the first chills of autumn on the step. Clem had found the fog that let onto the First Dominion within forty-eight hours of the Reconciliation, but had not entered it. After all that he'd heard about the state of the Unbeheld's city, he'd had no wish to see its horrors. He led the Maestros to the place readily enough, however. It was little more than half a mile from the house, hidden in a cloister behind an empty office building: a bank of gray fog, no more than twice the height of a man, which rolled upon itself in the shadowed corner of the empty yard.

"Let me go first," Clem said to Gentle. "We're still your guardians."

"You've done more than enough," Gentle said. "Stay here. This won't take long."

Clem didn't contradict the instruction but stepped aside to let the Maestros enter the fog. Gentle had passed between Dominions many times now and was used to the brief disorientation that always accompanied such passage. But nothing, not even the abattoir nightmares that had haunted him after the Reconciliation, could have prepared him for what was waiting on the other side. Tick Raw, ever a man of instant responses, vomited as the stench of putrescence came to meet them through the fog, and though he stumbled after Gentle, determined not to leave his friend to face the First alone, he covered his eyes after a single glance.

The Dominion was decayed from horizon to horizon. Everywhere rot, and more rot: suppurating lakes of it, and festering hills. Overhead, in skies Gentle had barely seen as he passed through his Father's city, clouds the color of old bruises half hid two yellowish moons, their light falling on a filth so atrocious the hungriest kite in the Kwem would have starved rather than feed here.

"This was the City of God, Tick," Gentle said. "This was my Father. This was the Unbeheld."

In a sudden fury he tore at Tick's hands, which were clamped to the man's face.

"Look, damn you, look! I want to hear you tell me about the wonders, Tick! Go on! Tell me! Tell me!"

Tick didn't go back to the house when he and Gentle emerged from the passing place, but with some murmured words of apology headed off into the dusk, saying he needed to be on his home turf for a while and that he'd come back when he'd regained his composure. Sure enough, three days later he reappeared at number 28, still a little queasy, still a little shamefaced, to find that Gentle had not returned to his bed but was up and about. The Reconciler's mood was brisk rather than blithe. His bed, he explained to Tick, was not the refuge it had previously been. As soon as he closed his eyes he saw the slaughterhouse of the First in every atrocious detail and could now only sleep when he'd driven himself to such exhaustion that there was no time between his head striking the pillow and oblivion for his mind to dwell on what he'd witnessed.