Time's Mistress (17 page)
Authors: Steven Savile
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Short Stories & Anthologies, #anthologies, #Short Stories, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #magical realism, #Single Authors, #Anthologies & Short Stories
“A month, perhaps a year? Whenever …”
“No! I will have him brought to life! Now … I know just the place … San Lorenzo.” A vindictive smile played across the tyrant’s lips. Some faces were not meant for smiling. “Five nights from now.”
“But San Lorenzo is a church—I was assuming that Lucifer’s birth would take place somewhere less … holy. A theatre perhaps?”
“No, San Lorenzo is perfect for what I have in mind, believe me. Now, my Florentine god, are you suffering doubts? Frightened that the Lord might not look too kindly upon your foray into His territory? Do this, Da Vinci, do something truly worthy with your life. No more silly weapons,” and the way he said it made a cold shiver writhe down the vertebrae of da Vinci’s back as a new use for his Lucifer and his kind occurred to him. At last he understood the hunger in Medici’s eyes. “And city walls. Think on it. You have in your hands the wherewithal to create life, man.”
Suddenly the steady stream of donations to da Vinci’s coffers made sense. His sponsor was not some benevolent benefactor. His interest was far from altruistic. Medici stood to gain the world from the clockwork man.
This understanding should have given da Vinci the strength to turn back, to destroy his sketches and burn Lucifer or reshape him into a hundred harmless pots, but he knew that he couldn’t. He wanted to see the clockwork man take his first step. He needed to know that he could create life not merely mimic it.
“Leave me alone, Lorenzo.”
Surprisingly, Medici left without a word.
Da Vinci’s second visitor was no less predatory, no less dangerous, but the angel did, at least, fight for what he believed to be right—the glory of God, not the glory of the Medici’s family name.
Again, it was the faint trace of vanilla in the air that gave the heavenly creature’s presence away.
“Think about what it is you are doing,” the angel said without waiting for da Vinci to acknowledge his presence. “Make a man, a golem without a soul, make him live and breathe, what does it prove?”
“That we no longer need Him,” da Vinci voiced the fear that had been gnawing away at him for months. What would happen then, if God became unnecessary?”
“And a world without God is a good thing in your eyes? Who are you to decide for mankind if they should down their backs on their Father? Think, Scientist, Artist, Sculptor, Fool, what would be the consequence of a Godless world?”
Da Vinci stared hard at the angel, so hard it hurt, the white light searing into his eyeballs, stripping away whatever veil ego and vanity had shrouded them with.
“How does God give you life?” the angel pressed. “You profess to be a clever man: think!”
“The mechanics are known to me, I have studied them.” Da Vinci began, knowing it was not what Michael was looking for.
“Not mechanics! God is spiritual. His creations are spiritual. His greatest gift to them is their—”
“Soul,” da Vinci finished for the angel.
“And without a soul.”
“There can be no heaven.”
“Very good, Scientist, perhaps you can claim the skills of philosopher, too. Without a soul there can be no heaven. Can you comprehend the magnitude of your actions?”
The Archangel turned his back and left him alone in the tower with Lucifer.
Alone.
Gazing at the beautiful face he had shaped with his own bare hands, da Vinci was able to convince himself that the angel was lying to him—or rather following his own agenda and only telling part of the truth. God’s vanity was at risk. His immortal pride. They were trying to scare him away from the completion of his masterpiece. A creation of greater beauty and usefulness than any mere painting or sculpture.
“It will not happen,” he promised Lucifer, wetting his fingers to refine yet again the clockwork man’s features.
Five more nights Michael visited the workshop in the Cosimo tower and yet even his most impassioned arguments could not reach da Vinci.
“Do you think it is an accident that your thing is called Lucifer? Can you not sense the presence of the Prince of Lies in everything that you do? You are being used and manipulated by the minions of Hell. You are a fool to think otherwise.”
Was Satan’s hand directing his own? Was he just a puppet birthing a clockwork Antichrist, that would stride the earth reveling in Medici’s endless wars? Was he a fool? For that question at least, he began to suspect the answer was yes.
The Archangel’s final solution was the sword.
“I challenge you, da Vinci, you and your satanic mechanical thing—a duel. To the death. My immortal soul against the vacuum of his nothingness. Win and you get what you want, lose and we will take the pieces of your damnable Lucifer to God Himself so that he might unmake the monstrosity, and you will forget forever your vanities of creation.”
And Medici was right, they came in their droves to witness the spectacle of da Vinci’s clockwork man coming to life to duel the angel of the Lord, God’s sword an eternal blackness blazing in his clenched fist. San Lorenzo was packed suffocatingly full of spectators, every one of Lorenzo and Guillermo Medici’s boot-lickers, toadies and hangers-on crowded in to the Medici chapel.
A stage had been erected and the altar removed, so that the scene might unfold beneath the crucifix and the wounded Jesus, and upon the stage two finely crafted bell jars stood, one on either side of the crucifix. Michael had demanded that. They were empty, or so they appeared. One, the Archangel promised, would contain his own angelic essence, his angelus. The other he would fill with da Vinci’s immortal soul. If the clockwork man won Michael’s angelus would simply cease to be. The Archangel would fall from grace. If da Vinci’s monster was defeated by the angel, then Michael would take the would-be creator’s creation and leave him, soul still intact, in the bell jar, a fragile reminder of how close he had come to losing everything.
The inside of the church was cold.
The pilgrims had been locked out. Only Medici’s chosen ones made it through the ranks of armored soldiers blocking the Church doors. It took over four hours for the lucky ones to find their seats and longer still for the galleries and aisles to fill. Over fifteen thousand Florentines crammed into the San Lorenzo to witness da Vinci’s genius.
Da Vinci moved into the centre of the stage, awed by all of the upturned faces so intently focused on him. “Behold, Lucifer!” he roared, his voice filling the highest eaves and the lowest ducts. Two of Medici’s hired thugs dragged the lifeless golem out to join da Vinci on centre stage. “And the Angel!” He threw back his head, arms open wide, aping the crucifixion pose of the son of God behind him.
A reverential hush descended over the congregation. No one quite knew what to make of the revelation. Was it a joke? Some grand elaborate hoax engineered by the Medici’s to show them all how gullible they were? Or were they actually in the presence of the divine?
Michael’s light blazed as he strode across the wooden stage. Wisps of smoke rose from the smoldering timbers as feet scorched them. This time he carried the sword of God. It was a single sliver of darkness in the heart of white light that suffused his body. The sword that stole souls in the name of Elohim, Lord God. It sang in his hands, a slowly building thrum, drawing to it all the power of heaven and earth. The air crackled with lines of power. A sharp crack echoed through the roof of the chapel. Blue lines and sparks chased down the walls of the narthex and through the floor of the Medici chapel.
From his vantage on centre stage da Vinci saw the traces of power encase the room. The hair of the congregation rose, standing on end, brought to life by the soul-sucking power of God’s sword. The greatest transformation though was taking place on the stage itself where in their urgency to reach the Archangel and his harmonic blade the blue lines of force were surging through the twitching form of Lucifer. The Brightest One was being born from the energy of nature. The lightning strike that had hit the roof of the San Lorenzo church at the summons of Michael’s sword was the catalyst that da Vinci had been missing. The irony, even amidst the glory of this inhuman birth, was not lost on him. Even in this, his moment, God had to meddle.
He was livid. He railed at the heavens, challenging Elohim to do his worst or prepare to be vanquished from the mortal realm. Echoes of laughter filled his ears.
Michael leveled the sword, swinging it in a wild overhead arc.
Da Vinci helped Lucifer stand. His creation’s legs were unsteady, but he was alive and as he began to move he began to learn. And Lucifer learned quickly. He looked at his creator and assayed a mocking bow, and then turned to the Archangel and repeated his action, bowing lower than he had to da Vinci.
“Now witness the battle!” Lorenzo Medici roared from the front row, leaping to his feet.
Sickness began to spread through him as he saw the resolute determination of his creation. For all of his glories, the angel did not stand a chance against the clockwork Lucifer. With no weaknesses, nothing to hurt, the clockwork man simply kept on coming, the tempered alloy of its limbs blocking and parrying the angel’s soul-sucking sword. With no soul to lose, the blade was useless against Lucifer.
The faces of the crowd were devoid of expression as the spectacle of the clockwork man had them rapt. Medici himself, in the centre of the first row, appeared to be in the grip of some holy ecstasy, the look of rapture transforming his ugly face with its bliss. But none of them could see what was truly happening. They were caught up in the duel, immune to the crackling bursts of energy that sparked and danced around every inch of the Medici chapel and out through the San Lorenzo church and into Florence itself. They couldn’t see the Archangel’s increasing desperation as its every blow was blocked and it was forced back and back, the clockwork man an undeniable force of nature.
Lucifer forced Michael back into the chapel wall, directly beneath the statue of the crucified Christ.
Nor could they see the malicious look of glee that had settled on the features of the Bright One.
And then it was over.
The Devil, Lucifer, Prince of Lies, Clockwork Man, slammed his steel fist through the spreading ribs of the naked angel and for a second held its beating heart in its mechanical hand, and then it squeezed.
Fifteen thousand screams rent the inside of the San Lorenzo.
The bell jar that held Michael’s angelus imploded, fine slivers of glass showering the faces of those closest to the stage. The bell jar that held da Vinci’s soul imploded. The threads that bound the fifteen thousand souls of the congregation to their mortal flesh, severed abruptly and amid the screams, the fear and sudden desolation, the Brightest One, Prince of Lies, watched the wraiths of light that should have been souls on their way to heaven writhe and twist in the air of the chapel, lost, as they were sucked away into the nothingness that was the absence of divinity.
Stricken, da Vinci cradled the dead angel in his arms. “I didn’t understand … I didn’t understand,” he repeated, over and over. “I didn’t understand.”
“Oh but you did,” Lucifer denied him. “You understood what it meant to banish Him. And still you did it. Where Astopel and Mammon, Azazel and Beelzebub failed, you, da Vinci, succeeded. With your help science killed God.” Lucifer laughed, a laugh that was echoed from the front of the madding crowd where Lorenzo Medici’s awestruck countenance was still being wracked by what could only be pleasure. His lips were moving, forming the words:
“Your temple, Master.”
And the rest, the rest of the fools Medici had dragged in to witness the second coming of Evil in the body of the clockwork man, they screamed on as they were stripped of eternal life as the clockwork took the black sword of God from the dead Archangel and scythed through the lost souls orbiting around his head. Lucifer drank it in, like benediction owed to him. Turning, he pushed da Vinci aside as though he were irrelevant, an irritant to be brushed away, and stopped, bending low over Michael’s corpse.
“Farewell, brother,” the Prince of Lies said. “May He watch over your eternal soul … Oh no, forgive me. Thanks to you, there is no God. How ironic.” And so saying, he stood again and slammed the black sword into the angel’s chest. “So the Devil take your soul instead.” Michael’s body shuddered once, the black sword singing, the fragrance of vanilla suddenly suffusing the newly ordained church of Satan.
Lucifer walked out of the San Lorenzo, alive with the infinite possibilities of the flesh, free to walk among his new flock as a man eternal, no meddling God to stand in his way.
***
Loose Change
The Wanderer
The Wanderer listened to the busker as he played music of chance. He inhaled the melody note by note as they curled out from the busker’s battered old guitar, making patterns where there were none. In those patterns there was beauty.
He closed his eyes, savouring the tune, his fingers playing over the curious golden timepiece on the collar of his patchwork coat. And for that moment, that single second of perfection, he wished with all his heart that it would not stop, that the notes would not fall away and that silence would never hold sway again, such was the power of the heartbreak and hope hidden within those random notes.
The Wanderer reached into his pocket for a coin, felt along the edge of its milling and tossed it into the busker’s guitar case. The coin hit the rim, nicking its edge, rattled and fell, lost amid the silver and copper. Smiling, the Wanderer moved on. It was one random act of generosity in a nameless city but when the music of chance was involved anything and everything became possible.
The Busker
Si watched the clown of a man with a mess of blond curls and boyish charm walk away, waiting until he was out of earshot to stop playing. His fingers were raw and his stomach was killing him. All he wanted to do was eat. He gathered up the few coins he had earned with his music and stuffed them into his pocket. It was stubborn pride, he hated the idea of handouts. This way it felt like he was earning the pittance they dropped in his guitar case. With the guitar slung over his shoulder he walked down the street, following his nose and the seductive aromas of hot dogs and brine to the vendor’s stall on the corner, sandwiched between the red sign of an electronics store and the blue cross of a department store’s sale. “Give us a hot dog, mate.”
“Everything on?” the hot dog vendor asked.
“Yep, and stick a few extra onions on, would you?”
Si rummaged around in his pocket for the coins to pay for his food, his finger catching on the rough edge of one. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it; a deep groove had been cut across the milling. It didn’t matter, money was money, he handed it over to the vendor along with a few others, and walked off down the street, munching.
The Hot Dog Man
Jay was having a miserable day.
It was too cold. He had barely sold ten sausages all day. He needed to sell forty to even warrant setting up his stall. He rubbed his hands together briskly trying not to think about the cold.
“Don’t make a scene, granddad,” a muffled voice rasped in his ear, up close. “Just give us your money and no one needs to get hurt.” Jay felt the sharp dig of a knife in his back. Frightened, he did as he was told. There wasn’t more than fifteen quid in loose change. It wasn’t worth getting killed over. He started to turn as he unfastened the pouch from around his waist but the knife in his back kept him facing forward. “Just pass it back, and don’t get any funny ideas, I’ll be watching you. Just count to one hundred. If you can do that you might just make it out of this alive.”
He closed his eyes, and counted out one, two, three, on four he felt the thief pull the money pouch from his hand. He didn’t so much as flinch.
The Thief
Ellis emptied the coins into the deep pockets of his parka and dropped the pouch on the ground. He stuffed his hands in on top of the coins to stop them from rattling. The money felt good. Ellis thrust his fingers into the silver and copper, and in the process cut his finger on the rough edge of one of them. He winced. The hot dog man’s count had reached eleven before he stepped back and slipped into the mill of shoppers and effectively disappeared.
Ellis was bored so halfway down the street he ducked into the penny arcade and fed the coin that had cut him into the Space Invaders. Ellis was good, a real wizard when it came to vapourising pixels. He set the high score before he left, allowing the guy who ran the place to empty the machine. He had played for forty-five minutes on that one coin.
The Coin Collector
Jervis McCreedy watched the young scally leave, “The kids today,” he said to no one in particular as he set his key into the machine, with a pull and a twist a river of silver came tumbling out into his small Hessian sack.
He sat in his cramped booth amid the stink of sweaty kids and danger pheromones until closing time, watching their antics on the silent security screens. They were all the same, like pack animals. Jervis tried to tell himself the kids who hung around the penny arcade feeding the slots and hammering out high scores weren’t normal kids but he knew he was kidding himself, thinking of a better time that never was, when kids were sweet and sugar and all those things little girls were supposed to be made of but even the nursery rhymes knew they were snails and puppy dog’s tails really. Still, he had a while before he had to worry about that. Tonight, it was all about flowers and letting love decide.
He shut up shop, whistling another refrain from the music of chance, random notes spilling from his lips as he walked toward the florist’s kiosk across the street from the penny arcade.
“So tonight’s the night?” the pretty young thing behind the glass asked. She knew his story. Everyone around here did. Jervis McCreedy was in love, and tonight, with a white orchid and puppy dog eyes he would propose. She had the orchid wrapped and waiting for him. He handed her notes to pay for it, and then as an afterthought dropped a handful of coins into the small tin pot she had left out for tips—not that people ever left tips for her. They tipped waiters and bar staff, taxi drivers and concierges. As a rule they did not tip florists.
The chipped coin rattled in the tin pot.
The Flower Girl
It was moments like this, knowing that her flowers were going to play an important part in someone’s memories that would last forever that had convinced May to be a flower girl.
She couldn’t help but smile as she watched the coin collector skip away down the street.
He was her last customer for the night; she had stayed open just for him.
Feeling good about herself, she rolled down the shutters and locked the screens in place. She was halfway out the door when she remembered she had no change for the night bus. With the till tallied and the cash locked away in the pouch to deposit in the bank’s night safe, she grabbed the coins out of the tin pot and locked the door.
The bus was full of night people—these were the citizens of the city who didn’t come out during the day. They weren’t the tramps or the businessmen, they were young men on their way to clubs to dance to tunes where melody had been given up in favour of wild beats and passion, they were sallow skinned sweatshop workers, immigrants and the underclass of life the politicians never admitted to when they talked about the greatness of their city, their fancy words rusting and falling apart like so much else of the place.
May paid, the chipped coin sticking in the ticket machine. The dead-eyed driver took it from her and swapped it for a token that fed the slot. She sat in one of the chairs with her back to the window. She had no interest in watching the night world roll by. As the bus pulled out she caught the eye of a young man on the opposite row of bench seats and felt her heart skip a beat as he smiled and moved across to join her. May’s breath caught in her throat as he smiled—he had one of those smiles, a dangerous one, the kind that made hearts skip beats—and asked her name.
The Driver
At the front of the bus the driver smiled. Dave Mason loved the night shift. It wasn’t dangerous like the evening run when the drinkers spilled out of the pubs. It was a haven for the misfits, and every now and then even misfits found love.
He turned the radio up, not wanting to intrude on their getting to know one and other.
Outside it started raining. He watched mile after mile of city streets slick beneath the wet wheels of the bus, the wipers cutting back and forth across the huge windscreen. People came and went, the flower girl and her new man left four stops from the hospital where they changed shifts. Dave smiled at her as she left. She smiled back and he could understand immediately what had drawn the young man across the seats to talk to her.
Alone on the bus, he sang to himself, nonsense words that almost fit the tune of the day. He was still singing as he parked the vehicle in its bay and killed the engine.
“Evening, Georgie,” Dave said to his replacement as she came in out of the rain. Her hair was plastered flat to her scalp. She looked anything but happy. He grinned, relinquishing his seat. As the night air hit him, Dave Mason had a single thought: he wanted a smoke. Eight hours sat cramped up on the bus left him with a fierce craving. He crossed the street, ducking into the foyer of the hospital and fed the cigarette machine with coins, catching his fingernail on the wounded one. The machine rejected it so he rooted around for another. He pulled the lever and the machine dispensed a packet of cigarettes. He peeled away the shrink wrap and tapped out a coffin nail. He was about to light it when a grinning man asked:
“Excuse me, any chance I could bum one of those off you?”
“No worries,” Dave said, tapping out a smoke. He lit it for the man, the pair of them huddling over the lighter like delighted conspirators hatching schemes.
“Don’t suppose I can do you for change for the phone? I want to call my mother, let her know Becky’s had a little girl.”
“Hey, fantastic! Congratulations,” Dave pulled a few coins from his pocket, including the one with the ruined milling, and handed them over to the proud father.
The Proud Father
Chris Welsh fed the coins one after the other into the pay phone and dialed home. The chipped coin stuck in the slot so he had to bang the side of the phone with his fist before it tumbled into the mysterious guts of call box. He listened to the ring signal cycle over and over and suddenly stop.
“Hi mum, it’s me … yes, yes, she’s fine. They both are. Yes, a little girl. Couldn’t be happier. Yes, I know. Sleepless nights. Can’t wait …”
The angry peep-peep-peep of the pips cut him off before he could go into weight and all those other things grandparents wanted to hear.
“Love you. I will call you when I get back to the house. Love you!”
And silence.
He hung up, and went back to his wife and new baby girl in the maternity ward, all grins.
The Service Engineer
In the morning Vernon Little came round to empty the phone, scooping out the coins. The slot had been jammed with chewing gum during the night. He had to scrape it off with a knife. He couldn’t understand people; they had no respect for things, for property. If it wasn’t theirs they broke it. There was no social conscience these days. Vernon didn’t know whether to blame the kids, the parents or the politicians so he blamed all three and tried to forget about the fact that griping about it was a sure sign he was getting older. The chipped coin was stuck in the feeder, blocking the slot. He worked it free and stuck it in his pocket.
Whistling he carried the day’s take to the van and poured it in a stream of silver into the money pouch on the passenger seat. He had no idea what the tune was, he’d had it stuck in his head all morning. Probably some piece of nonsense on the clock radio in those few minutes between sleep and waking.
Vernon drove carefully, he always did, pulling up outside the small provincial office of the bank.
He walked in two minutes before the ski-masked robbers with their sawn-off’s and guttural barks:
“Everybody down, on the floor!”
The Bank Robber
“This is a robbery,” Andy Mills yelled. All he could think of was that movie,
Pulp Fiction
. How were you supposed to rob a bank without sounding like Pumpkin and Honey Bunny? “Nobody moves. Nobody says a thing. That way nobody gets hurt,” Andy waved his gun around, jamming it into the face of the guy in blue coveralls. His name badge said Vernon. “We don’t need any heroes, Billy. On the floor, now!”
The Service Engineer
Vernon knelt, heart hammering, his head filled with that damned stupid tune. He couldn’t get rid of it. He imagined being shot, dying, and being forced to spend eternity listening to it over and over and over.
“All right, my friend here’s coming round with a bag, I want everyone to empty their pockets into it, watches, jewelry, wallets, loose change, the lot. Don’t hold back. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will.”
When the bag man came to him, he reached into his pocket, felt his keys, a few crumpled notes, and the sharp nick of the damaged coin. He pulled them all out and dumped them into the plastic carrier bag.
“And the rest of it,” the bag man barked, nodding toward his wedding ring.
Vernon shook his head.
“Don’t make me hurt you, fool.”
“It’s my wedding ring … it’s all I’ve got … she’s gone. Please.”
“Stop bleating and take it off!”
The butt of the sawn-off cracked off the side of his jaw as the bag man jabbed it in his face.
“We’re done! Quick!” one of the ski-masks yelled, bolting back over the counter clutching a heavy sack of notes. Outside, sirens. One of the tellers had tripped the silent alarm. Inside, chaos.
“Give me the ring!”
The Bag Man
Stevie Carr hit the ring bearer so hard across the side of the head the stubborn fool crumpled. He leaned down, prizing the gold off his fat finger and put it in the bag with the rest of the stuff. It was good haul. No, a great haul, what with the cash from the tellers, a few diamond rings and plenty of plastic would keep them happy for a few months.
His blood was pumping. He was on fire!
Stevie pushed through the glass doors and ran into the street. The sirens blared as police cars streamed around the corner. He looked left and right, clutching his precious bag, and without thinking started to run.
Before he had taken five steps the plastic split, the bag ruptured haemorrhaging gold and silver, watches, coins, cuff links and notes all over the paving stones of the High Street.
“Armed Police! Stop!”
Stevie looked down at his feet, and saw a single silver coin with a deep cleft across its face and into its milling roll on its edge away toward the gutter.