Ink (76 page)

But here's a more important if: If the bitmites created the Book then there was a time before it, there
is
a time, a fold of the Vellum, where the Book does not exist, before the Hinter and the Evenfall, before the death of that lost deus of Sumer. Or perhaps a time after it. I've been watching for the signs of that… that spring. And I think I've found it.

As the birdsong starts outside, I lean forward in my armchair and click my fingers. Suddenly—

Suddenly the forest-green wallpaper of Club Soda's back room surrounds us, dark as a wildwood at dawn. The six of us sit round a table, drinks in hand instead of guns. A stitch in time.

“Palestine, 1929,” I say. “Four hundred sixty-ninth parallel. EonX-seven.”

“Fuck's sake,” says MacChuill, “it's like a fuckin’ inside-oot Easter egg.”

Inside the Beth Ashtart, the walls, the wooden pews and altarpieces, the museum cases and exhibits, everything, the Weeping Angel most of all, writhes with an ink that is not black but every color in the world. The greens of vines and veins, of glass or grass, we are. The blues of skies and robin's eggs and oceans, azures and ceruleans and indigos, we are. Scarlets and purples from the robes of emperors and madonnas, we are, crimsons and vermilions. Red, brown and yellow ocher of the autumn leaves, we are. Ambers, umbers, embers, we are. We are a crucible of color.

Only the altar do we leave pristine and clean for Jack to gently lay Tamuz on, push the hair out of his eyes and ask the barely conscious boy a simple question.

“Where is it?”

Tamuz smiles weakly, raises his arm just high enough to point at the altar-piece behind the last of the teraphim.

“There is a gap,” he says. “Where it meets the wall.”

Anat's face is all confusion and disbelief, but Tamuz nods at her and she walks over to the wall, kneels down by a panel carved with some pagan version of the Last Judgment. She leans in, shoulder pressed against the wall, hand squeezing in between wood and stone, searching and finding, pulling something out, and—

She starts cursing Tamuz—Jack assumes its cursing from the tone, at least—in whatever common tongue the Enakites use between them at the hearth or on the horse, when they're not laying waste to cities; it sounds very much like a dialect of Yezidi. The lad shakes his head, replies with his excuses, pleas of innocence; it's so
much in the tone of domestic sibling banter—as if the boy had read her diary, thinks Jack, or rifled through her private things—it brings a wry smile to his face. Von Strann is laughing, MacChuill letting loose profanities filled with wonder—
ya sneakit weefuckin bastard
—and Jack finds himself laughing, his hand on the lad's shoulder.

“The Professor,” says Tamuz so earnestly, “he tell me to do this. Exactly this. Tell no one until now, this moment here. He tell me it must be this way.”

“I know,” says Jack.

“I am sorry. I do not want to lie to you, Jack, to hide—”

“I know,” says Jack. “It's OK.”

He looks at Anat, standing there with it in her hand, held up for all of them to see, a single page of vellum covered in a profusion of cryptic marks, a mass of tiny flicks and squiggles, curlicues and accents all somehow so familiar in a way that Jack can't put his finger on. There are bloodstains on it, and one corner of the page has been burned away to a scorched crinkle, whatever symbol was once written there now lost forever to the fire.

Six million lives on one page, thinks Jack. Minus one. Minus Hobbsbaum, who had burned himself out of the book of life rather than suffer his bloody written destiny.

It happens so fast. Von Strann's sudden slump, his crutch of a rifle clattering to the floor, MacChuill's distraction, cursing as he tries to get the man to a bench, Pe-chorin on the floor before they know it and then up again, the rifle in his right hand, steadied along his knee, the box under his left arm. He points the gun at Anat.

“I will take that, Princess Anat. The page, please.”

Pechorin swings the rifle round even as Jack reaches.

“No, Captain Carter, I know what you're thinking. One shot, then I have to reload, and by then one of you would be on me. You are willing to risk the sacrifice, as is she. I have no doubt of it.”

He swings the rifle round to point at Tamuz.

“I think neither of you wish to sacrifice the boy, though. Am I right?”

Carter raises his hands. Still watching him, Pechorin addresses Anat.

“Put the page down on the altar beside the boy, and go stand beside the captain, please.”

A quick flick of the eyes, as she moves slowly in between Tamuz and—

“No, go round the
other
way, please.
Behind
the altar, yes. Thank you.”

He rises steadily to his feet, circles sideways and in, until he's standing behind
the altar, barrel of the rifle pressed to Tamuz's temple, putting the wooden box down on the boy's chest and picking up the page. He unsnicks the latch of the box, opens the lid.

“My colleagues will be pleased. The Secret Name of God. The Book of All Hours. And when their… anointed arrives, as he should do very soon, they'll have all they need to—”

As he fumbles to get the page into the box with the rest of the Book, Pechorin glances down and stops. He looks at Jack and there's a question on his lips, in his eyes, and the barrel of the rifle is rising to force an answer, but, with the rifle pointed at him now rather than Tamuz, Jack is already making his move, swinging sideways as his Webley snaps up. Two shots fire at the same time, and Jack hears the mosquito whine, feels the buzz of a bullet past his ear, but he's frozen in the moment, still as a frieze, eyes locked on the round red hole in Pechorin's Adam's apple. The blackshirt staggers back against the altarpiece, looks at the page in his hand, and then slides down, the rifle clattering to the floor.

Jack vaults the altar and Tamuz grabs the page as it flutters out of the blackshirt's slackening grip, folds it roughly—it cracks, dry and brittle, as he does so—and stuffs it in his trouser pocket with a quick glance over his shoulder. He snicks the latch of the box shut and tucks the box under his arm, kneels down beside the crumpling man, and holds the blackshirt's lolling head as the eyes blink at him. Breath gutters wet between lips trying to shape the words, to spill the secret. The only thing Pechorin can spill now though is blood, frothing in red bubbles from his throat and mouth.

Jack listens to him as he speaks a name that can be spoken only with a man's last breath. The
Y
of the tongue reaching up to the palate as if to cup saliva or blood to swallow or to spit. The first
H
a sharp intake, air rasping through a suddenly dry, constricted throat as the chest spasms in a panic of realization, of suddenly, Oh God, knowing that this is death. The
W
of lips brought together, not closed but tightened a little, pursed in pain and confusion. This word, this
YHW
, is
WHY
sucked in backward as a gasp, a last grasping at breath, at life.

And then the air seeping out through a larynx relaxing, the rough aspiration of that final
H
drawn out—
HHHH
—slowly dissipating, softening into
hhhhhh
, and then fading into silence.

YHWH.

And the silence after it which is the Secret Name of God.

Jack closes the dead eyes, lets the head roll to the side and down.

If gods can die, he thinks, then Death is god of gods.

They stand on the roof of the Beth Ashtart, Jack and Reinhardt, looking out over the city of Tell el-Kharnain, the city that has fallen once, twice, a thousand times, that seems to still be falling even now, as if in some eternal destruction. Both Azazel and Michael have settled on the Jericho Gate, one on each side, perched on pillars of stone, wings folded behind them like vultures. The Silkmarket below them is filled with salt statues of the Enakites, the tribe wiped out now but for Anat and her brother.

“Perhaps the other gate…” says Reinhardt. “If we stay together, if we can get out into the desert, we can disappear. Anat and I know how to survive there—”

“No,” says Jack, “Samuel's notes are clear. We hit these bastards head-on. You take Tamuz… for safety. The rest of us open up the way for you. With Anat's little toys we should be able to break through the circle, hold them off till we get you to the airfield. You go on foot, on horse, even car, and they'll catch you, believe me. We need to get you to an ornithopter.”

“What if Samuel's notes were wrong? The Book has as many lies in it as truths. What if he translated it wrong? And now we have…”

Jack grins. No way to know, he thinks. He runs his fingers absently across his chest, unscarred now… cleansed by angelfire.

“Into the valley of death,” he says. “Charge of the Light Brigade and all that. Just trust me.”

“But Pechorin mentioned an anointed. Did the notes—?”

“Trust me,” says Jack. “Besides …”

Jack points out to the northwest horizon where the sky is clouded with black specks, like a swarm of flies or a great flock of crows in the distance. Prussian merchant zeppelins outrigged in Syria, fitted for war, and flying now under the Futurist flag.

“Air travel is the way of the future.”

“How do these work?” says Jack.

Anat and MacChuill sit on a bench in the corner of the Beth Ashtart, working on their contraptions—Turkish rifles and Enakite spears, railings and barbed wire, jingling dog tags, rosaries and God knows what else, salvaged from the ruins around them and lashed together with strips of leather. They look like harpoon guns, crossbows, insane and monstrous, bastard hybrids of weaponry from every time in history.

“Unsympathetic magic,” says Reinhardt.

Jack takes the weapon offered by Reinhardt, aims with it, testing the weight, the balance.

“You say the word I taught you as you pull the trigger,” says Anat. “The bullet will carry it through their shield. Aim well, Captain Carter. We do not have many bullets. Take what Tamuz has finished.”

Sitting up on the altar now, the youth is scratching sigils into bullets with the point of a knife, loading them into cartridges; his tongue sticks out from one corner of his mouth, a picture of concentration.

“Hey,” says Jack.

Tamuz doesn't look up—but of course. Carter walks over and taps him on the shoulder, points at the cartridges—
are these ready?
Tamuz nods, mouths the word
yes
, but there's no sound.

There's no sound at all within five feet of the boy. A silent echo of the Name of God hangs around him as a cloak, a zone of absolute quietude which no language, not even the Cant, can penetrate. It will die, fade away as echoes do, but if it holds for the next few hours …

The rest of them will have to stay outside of it in order to use these
disrupters
, but if Reinhardt sticks close to Tamuz all the fire of Heaven won't be able to harm a hair on his head. Jack picks up two full cartridges, tucks them into his belt. A hand on Tamuz's arm—the boy looks up into his eyes, smiles.

They don't really need the words, but he mouths them anyway.

“Captain Carter, are you ready?” says Reinhardt. “Captain Carter?”

Jack closes the wooden box and turns to the open doorway of the Beth Ashtart, where MacChuill and Anat stand silhouetted against the daylight. A single shaft of sunlight streams into the temple through the opening, catching blue wisps, the smoke of us, as we dance in the dark air. From the single eye of the Weeping Angel we gaze down on him. We gaze down fondly on the many Jacks in our multifacet vision, all these Jacks who have fought their way to this sanctuary of chaos, fought for love, fought to the death. Over there he lies dead upon the altar, beside the body of Tamuz. Over here he lies just short of it, arm stretched out and reaching in his final moment, tears streaming down his face because he does not have the strength. He sits huddled in one corner, rocking back and forth, insane. And slumped in another, with his back to the wall, a cigarette in his mouth and a revolver in his hand, waiting for his death. The room is as full of Jacks as it is of us, though the others do not see this—just as they do not see us shifting on the walls, only the painted glamour of pagan illustrations. They hear us, Anat, MacChuill and Reinhardt, but they hear our whispers as the echoing of the Cant.

Only Tamuz hears us properly,
understands
us entirely, in his hearing, his understanding, of the silence that gives our whispers meaning.

Jack, of course, both hears and sees us as we do ourselves, the closest to us in the nature of his soul, in the shapeless force of his Sekem. We love Tamuz, the fluttering-eyelashed, fluttering-lifed Ba, the very heart of us. We do not hate the shadowy Pechorin, the Khaibit, this thing of darkness which is also ours. We are in awe of Anat, our ferocious warrior, our huntress Khu. We smile upon MacChuill, our cursing and complaining Sekhu, serving us well for all his mutterings. And Samuel and Reinhardt…

“Captain Carter, are you ready?” says Reinhardt. “Captain Carter?”

“I'm ready,” says Jack.

He turns back to the altar, where Pechorin's body now lies—a shadow offered to the shadows, a betrayer betrayed—and draws the copy of the Song of Solomon out of his pocket. He lays it upon the dead man's chest, unsure if he's offering them both to the Weeping Angel as a sacrifice or for safekeeping; it just doesn't seem right to leave a part of our soul with no marker for its grave.

As MacChuill's gruff voice urges him
to get a fuckin move on
, Jack picks up his disrupter and walks out into the blinding sunlight.

The drone of zeppelins is getting louder out here.

Anat takes his hand, clasps it with a strong and certain grip.

“I wish that we will meet again someday,” she says. “In another life.”

“Heam,”
he says. “May it be.”

“Mektoub,”
she says.

He looks at MacChuill, who just snorts.

“Aye, an’ wan day Partick Thistle'll win the League.”

The old soldier shades his eyes with a hand, searching the sky to the north. The zeppelins are visible now as cigar shapes dark against the blue sky, but flashing silvery now and then with reflected sunlight. The first of them looks like it must already be over the Ink Wells.