The Poison Master Page 13

  “You won't come to any harm if I'm with you.”

  Alivet forbore from comment and followed him from the observation lounge. They walked down silent passages, the walls concealed by etched metal panels. Whatever Alivet might think of the morals of the people of Hathes, she could not fault their sense of design. Yet there were no windows: no way of gazing out upon the passing stars.

  “And in here,” Ghairen said, drawing aside a tall, folded metal door, “is where we'll be sleeping.”

  Alivet looked at him. “ ‘We’?”

  “Of course.” He smiled at her and she saw a flicker in his eyes like a flame. She felt her mouth grow dry, a fluttering deep within.

  “This is where everyone sleeps,” he added. He ushered her through into an antechamber. Above her head rose row upon row of honeycomb cells, glistening golden-red. Each was approximately the length of a human being. Alivet peered into a nearby cell and saw that it was padded.

  “Tell me when you wish to sleep, and I'll lock you in.”

  “You're going to lock me in. And why is that, exactly?”

  “It's for your own protection,” Ghairen said, solemnly. “We don't want someone getting ideas and deciding to test a preparation on you, do we?”

  Alivet glared at him. “No, we do not. But why would they?”

  “I do have enemies, Alivet.” He seemed slightly hurt, as though she had expressed doubt that anyone might take him seriously. It was a most unpleasant thought that some unknown soul might seek to kill her purely because of her associate. From this perspective, Hathes seemed little better than her own society. And there were more immediate considerations.

  “What happens if I need to visit the lavatory in the middle of the night? And where is it, anyway? Don't tell me that's out-of-bounds as well.”

  “The washing facilities are over there, behind that door. I will be in an adjoining cell. Knock on the wall and I'll let you out. Don't worry about waking me up.”

  “You don't normally sleep like this, do you? In cells such as these?”

  “It's the usual arrangement, when voyaging. In case a member of the poison clans is on board.”

  “Don't you trust one another?”

  She was speaking ironically, but Ghairen answered with an air of mild affront. “Of course not.”

  “What a horrible society yours must be, Ari Ghairen. And I thought we suffered with the Lords.”

  “I see that you have entirely misunderstood our culture,” Ghairen said. “However, it is entirely forgivable, since you can know so little of it. You seem to see us as guided wholly by animosity, by continual attempts to gain the upper hand.”

  “And aren't you?”

  “We would never have survived. Our current state is a function of our advanced civilization. Primitive tribes must trust one another, draw close. Yes, we play games, of life and death, health and sickness. The poison clans have their own way of doing things, but they are only one aspect of our society. Moreover, some things are sacred, and sleep is one of them. It must be protected. People must be permitted to sleep soundly, and therefore dream. After all, what is a life without dreams?—as

  I'm sure you know. What else is the Search, after all?”

  “The Search seeks truth,” Alivet said.

  Ghairen frowned. “Let me ask you something. If the Search revealed the origins of your people, through someone's drugged vision, and this revelation was then corroborated by others—a chorus of voices, all clamoring that this was the reality for which you have been looking for so long— would that be held as truth?”

  “I would think so, yes.”

  “Even if it was not open to any confirmation by evidence? Even if you still could not travel to that world, and see for yourselves? Would there not be a lingering doubt?”

  “In the lack of evidence, truth must come from consensus.”

  “Is science based upon consensus, then?”

  “Science is based upon agreement, that is so, and its ultimate goal is transformation. That is what the alchemical sciences are all about. We draw up theories to explain the world, and the more evidence that we find, the more the world becomes transformed. But first, we must agree as to what counts as evidence.”

  “Is that the goal of the Search, then? For all to agree upon what is real and what is not? Is that not an invention of the past rather than true discovery?”

  “But perhaps,” Alivet said, surprising herself, “it would be better if we could not travel to that world and see for ourselves. Perhaps invention itself, and consensus upon it, is the real goal.”

  Ari Ghairen became very still. The red gaze focused on her face. “And why is that?”

  “Because the Search is already our shared dream. It is the secret which unites us—and yes, before you make some other clever remark, I know that there has been speculation that the Lords know of the Search and do nothing about it, holding the Unpriests back for their own reasons. I know that there are those who say that the Lords prefer us to waste our days in drugs and dreams than in an organized resistance which we have al ready realized to be futile. But whatever the truth behind the Search, I do believe that it is a unifying force.”

  The Poison Master looked at Alivet for a long moment. Then he said, “I hope you'll dream as well on Hathes, Alivet.”

  She did not know whether it was encouragement or a warning. In silence, she followed him back down the metal passageways.

  They ate together. The other passengers kept their distance and Alivet noticed that there was much evidence of phials and potions at the beginning of the meal, with tests conducted in tiny bowls upon a rack. Glances were cast in the direction of Ari Ghairen. There was distant muttering. Ghairen followed the same methods: shaking a thin black powder over the surface of a bubbling broth, dipping a delicate pipette into the sauce that accompanied steamed greens.

  “Is that why your people seem to like their food so hot?” Alivet said, eyes streaming after an incautious mouthful of the broth. “To fight poisons away, as spices are used to disguise bad meat?”

  “It's one reason, yes. Also I think we just like it that way. They eat blander food in the southern parts.” He regarded her solicitously as she took another gulp of water. “Is it too much for you? The galley could doubtless provide something less spicy.”

  “I'll be all right,” Alivet said. Fen cuisine was fiery, to combat the chilling effects of marsh and rain and to sustain the choleric humors. She refused to be fed pap like a child. The broth was ferocious, but after a few cautious sips the pain subsided. She might keep the roof of her mouth, after all.

  Ari Ghairen seemed approving. “We may make a gourmet of you yet.”

  “We've got a week. Better be quick.”

  “Don't be so pessimistic.”

  The other passengers conversed in low voices, forming a sibilant background to the meal. No one paid any attention to Alivet, for which she was grateful. Once the bowls were cleared away Ari Ghairen pronounced himself tired and suggested that they retire. Alivet was quick to agree. She did not relish the thought of making polite after-dinner conversation and it had been a long and exacting day. The image of Inki's face, with its sad missing eye, kept returning to haunt her. She returned with Ghairen to the dormitory. The washroom smelled clinical and clean. Ari Ghairen followed her in.

  Alivet spun around. “Am I to have no privacy? Would you care to watch me while I wash?”

  “This won't take a moment.”

  Ghairen took a small, flat wand from the pocket of his robes and drew it along the walls, above the sink, and across a small hole in the floor that Alivet deduced to be the lavatory. “All clear. Take your time. Here's something for your teeth—I bought it in Shadow Town and it's quite safe—and a cleanser. We do not have bathing facilities in the manner of your world; it's too easy to transmit toxins through the water supply. Instead, there is a hot-air system that transforms the cleanser into a fragrant dust. You'll find it entirely effective, I assure you.”

 
; “All right,” Alivet said glumly. “You'd better leave me to get on with it.”

  Once he had gone, she stripped and applied the cleansing paste. It worked much as Ghairen had described, and though the process was hardly refreshing, she did at least feel cleaner. She rubbed the paste over her teeth and spat down the lavatory hole. Once she had finished, she went back out into the dormitory. Ghairen was sitting at the edge of the honeycomb cell, wearing what appeared to be a voluminous dressing gown. He gestured to the neighboring slot.

  “In you go, and remember, just knock on the wall if you need anything. I do hope you sleep well.”

  Alivet levered herself into the cell and heard the door hiss shut behind her. She was encased in warm, red darkness. Thoughts circled her uneasy mind: dying alone on another world, her lungs constricting and collapsing, her nerves strung tighter and tighter, fraying against the touch of the drug. And Alivet thought, determined: That's not how I'm going to die. Nor Inki. Whether Ghairen gets his results or not.

  CRYSTALLIZATION

  … the knowledge and experience which the wiser sort hath had of counsels, forces, persons, times, and practices may minister more certain guesses in this case than all the stars and planets of the firmament…

  LORD HENRY HOWARD, A Defensative Against the Poison of Supposed Prophecies, 1583

  Chapter I

  LONDON, TWELFTH NIGHT 1559

  Beyond Dee's study the storm was raging, snatching at the tiles and whistling through the cracks in the eaves. Dee ignored the howling gusts as best he could and tried to concentrate on the astrological charts before him. Almost there… but the storm was distracting, as though Herne and his hounds coursed about the rooftops, chasing souls.

  And Jupiter being in Aquarius, Dee thought, denotes the qualities of statesmen: tolerance, impartiality, and justice, with Mars in Scorpio for passion. He squinted down at the ephemeris. January 15th it would be, a cold coronation to the new Queen's reign, but an auspicious date nonetheless.

  Auspicious for Dee himself, too. After the episode with the angel, Bonner had, with bitter irony, become a tacit convert to Dee's equally unspoken cause. In the aftermath of the angel's visit, looking through the shattered roof of his study to the cloud-raced heavens, Bonner had said shakily, “It appears I owe you an apology, Dr. Dee.”

  Dee, with what he later felt to be considerable presence of mind, said magnanimously, “God recognizes virtue, Bishop, in all its forms. No doubt He has sent his angels only to remind you of the fact.” It could easily have gone the other way, with a panicked and stricken Bonner ordering Dee's summary execution, but the Bishop had evidently taken the manifestation as evidence of divine protection rather than demonic intervention. That, to Dee's mind, had been the real miracle. Bonner, perhaps feeling that someone in Dee's position would be better kept close, rounded off the evening by offering him a place.

  Dee, who had entered the Bishop's study as a heretical conjuror bound for the stake, left it as Bonner's chaplain. He had taken care to keep Elizabeth informed, a wise precaution in these chancy times; once the political dust had finally settled, his reward had been to predict the most promising day for her coronation.

  Grateful though he was, however, Dee knew that he was destined for better things than the casting of horoscopes, even if it was a task dedicated to queens. The appearance of the angel had acted upon Dee's mind like the alchemical process itself. All of Dee's scientific preoccupations—mathematics and mechanics, astrology and alchemy—had become dissolved, to crystallize in a different, and more potent, form. In this age of exploration, Dee thought, I, too, will become an explorer. I will gather together a likely crew and venture out into the universe itself. I will draw charts of the stars, not as an astrologer here on Earth, but as a sailor upon the seas of space. I will seek out the very geography of heaven.

  It was a thought of utmost daring and heresy, and though Dee had neither committed it to paper nor voiced it to a single living soul, it had still given him a number of sleepless nights. Indeed, it had been swift to cross his mind that the angel had been no angel at all, but a star- demon sent to lead him into evil. A night on his knees before the altar had served to reassure him, but only a little.

  Rising from the table, Dee swept the parchments into a rough pile and picked up the candle, intending to seek out his bed. The storm gave a last buffet of wind, as though a wave had broken over the rooftops, and fell silent. Dee turned and dropped the candle. The light went out, plunging the room into darkness, and Dee could hear himself crying out in terror. In the last moments of light, he had seen the angel standing in the corner, looking at him.

  “Be still,” a voice said, at once inside his head and all around him, filling the room. Dee clutched at the table's edge to stop himself from falling. He could hear his own harsh, panting breath. Little by little, a dim glow appeared at the far end of the room. The angel stood in a column of red light, silhouetted against the oak-paneled wall. Its faces were as expressionless as masks. Its curiously bulky robes billowed out, as if the angel stood in a breeze that Dee could neither feel nor see. Its hands were invisible.

  “What are you? Are you angel or devil?”

  “I am star-born.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I will show you.”

  Slowly, a map began to spread out from the being's feet, until it resembled those portraits of kings that stood upon the world. It was like no map that Dee had ever seen, however, for it was moving. He saw a great river, vaster by far than the Thames, with a great scattering of tributaries like arteries and veins. The map rose up, spilling out into additional dimensions until Dee was standing within it, at the very edge of a lip of stone that looked out across a marsh. The illusion was complete: he could hear the cries of night-birds in the swamp, and smell the rankness of weed and water, like the river after heavy rain had sluiced out the Fleet and all the other sewers of the city.

  “See,” the being's hissing voice said in his ear. “They are all that is here.”

  “Is this real?”

  “It is an image, nothing more. To journey here will be difficult and dangerous.”

  And now Dee could see a huge gate, flanked by wooden columns, rising out of the waters of the marsh. A figure stood beside it, which Dee recognized: it was the jackal-headed god Anubis, the Egyptian Lord of the Dead. For a moment Dee thought that it was a statue, but then the long pointed head turned and the thing was staring at him. Dee stumbled backward and fell over the table. The illusion was abruptly gone.

  “The world of the dead,” Dee gasped. “I have visited hell.”

  “Not hell,” the being said. It came to stand by him, and Dee, who usually found himself looking down on men, was compelled to stare up into the nearest of its faces. “Another world. A world that is ripe for the taking, for those brave enough to make the journey.”

  “You serve only to deceive,” Dee said as boldly as he could, but found that his voice had retreated to a hoarse whisper.

  “I do God's work, as we all must,” the being said. There was no expression in its large, light eyes. Dee could not tell if it lied.

  “God's work? Or Satan's?”

  “I have come to you because you have knowledge. You understand science, mathematics, the first vestiges of star-craft. And you worship God, and understand the nature of His universe. The world that I have shown you,” the being said smoothly, “is a world before a Fall. Here, in this new world, humanity has the chance to begin again, to remake society in heaven's image.”

  “What is the world called?” Dee asked, before he could stop himself.

  “It has no name.”

  “A Meta Incognita, then, like the Terrae Incognitae of our own Earth.”

  “Think of this world, John Dee. It has the shape of your dreams, if you only have the courage to follow where they lead.”

  “How am I to do that?”

  “We will give you instructions—a set of codes by which you may open a gate between the worlds
and travel through. We will show you a craft like the ships that sail the seas of your own world. You may bring others with you, a colony like those that are being formed in other lands on your world. But in the place to which I will lead you, there will be no persecution, no bonfires of human bones, no human jealousy and hate. Only peace and the chance for you to carry out God's work.” Its voice was as smooth as a serpent's egg.

  “How do I know that this is true?” Dee asked.

  “Question your conscience. Pray to God.”

  Now the being was fading, becoming as transparent as a ghost.

  “Wait!” Dee cried, but it was almost gone. Its perfect lips moved, but no sound emerged. Dee was alone in the study, in darkness.

  Chapter II

  DRIFT-BOAT, ORBIT

  Alivet woke with a start, still encompassed in the cloying russet dark and with a memory of nightmares. But the dream was fading fast, slipping away from her, and the sounds outside her honeycomb coffin were real. Alivet lay still and listened. A deathwatch ticking echoed within the coffin, like a latent bomb. It grew steadily louder, then stopped. Alivet held her breath, trying to work out where the sound had been coming from. Then there was a hiss of released air and the hatch of her cell slid open. Alivet blinked.

  “Ghairen? Is that you?” There was a sudden tightness in her chest. “Ari?” She struggled to sit up. A cool hand reached in and helped her from the cell. Alivet slid down to the floor, her heart pounding. The dormitory hive was quiet, with only a single lamp. The figure who stood before her was not Ghairen, but the woman Alivet had seen earlier. The woman laid a finger across her lips with exaggerated care, a parody of a human gesture. The long nail was lacquered black. The finger crooked: Come with me.

  Alivet cast a doubtful look back at the cells to where Ghairen presumably lay sleeping. The woman stepped backward into the shadows. Alivet said, in a warning whisper, “If you have anything to say to me, you can say it here. I'm not going anywhere with you.”