Imajica. Clive Barker

inch of their bodywork chased and filigreed. Others, with spindly wheels twice the height of their roofs, had the preposterous delicacy of tropical insects. Still others, mounted on a dozen or more tiny wheels, their exhausts giving off a dense, bitter fume, looked like speeding wreckage, asymmetrical and inelegant farragoes of glass and metalwork. Risking death by hoof and wheel Gentle joined the traffic, and put on a new spurt as he dodged between the vehicles. The leaders of the pack behind him had also reached the road. They were armed, he saw, and had no compunction about displaying their weapons. His belief that they wouldn’t attempt to kill him amongst witnesses suddenly seemed frail. Perhaps the law of Vanaeph was good to the very gates of Patashoqua. If so, he was dead. They would overtake him long before he reached sanctuary.

      But now, above the din of the highway, another sound reached him, and he dared a glance off to his left, to see a small, plain vehicle, its engine badly tuned, careering in his direction. It was open topped, its driver visible. Pie’oh’pah, God love him, driving like a man - or mystif - possessed. Gentle changed direction instantly, veering off the road, dividing a herd of pilgrims as he did so, and raced towards Pie’s noisy chariot.

      A chorus of whoops at his back told him the pursuers had also changed direction, but the sight of Pie had given heat to Gentle’s heels. His turn of speed was wasted, however. Rather than slowing to let Gentle aboard Pie drove on past him, heading towards the hunters. The leaders scattered as the vehicle bore down upon them, but it was a figure Gentle had missed, being carried in a sedan chair, who was Pie’s true target. Hammeryock, sitting on high, ready to watch the execution, was suddenly a target in his turn. He yelled to his bearers to retreat, but in their panic they failed to agree on a direction. Two pulled left, two right. One of the chair’s arms splintered, and Hammeryock was pitched out, hitting the ground hard. He didn’t get up. The sedan-chair was discarded, and its bearers fled, leaving Pie to veer round and head back towards Gentle. With their leader felled, the scattered pursuers, most likely coerced into serving the Pontiff in the first place, had lost heart. They were not sufficiently inspired to risk Hammeryock’s fate, and so kept their distance, while Pie drove back and picked up his gasping passenger.

      ‘I thought maybe you’d gone back to Tick Raw,’ Gentle said once he was aboard.

      ‘He wouldn’t have wanted me,’ Pie said. ‘I’ve had congress with a murderer.’

      ‘Who’s that?’

      ‘You, my friend, you\We’re both assassins now.’ ‘I suppose we are.’

      ‘And not much welcome in this region, I think.’

      ‘Where did you find the vehicle?’

      There’s a few of them parked on the outskirts. They’ll be in them soon enough, and after us.’

      The sooner we’re in the city the better then.’

      ‘I don’t think we’d be safe there for long,’ the mystif replied.

      It had manoeuvred the vehicle so that its snub nose faced the highway. The choice lay before them. Left, to the gates of Patashoqua. Right, off down a highway which ran on past the Mount of Lipper Bayak, to a horizon that rose, at the furthest limit of the eye, to a mountain range.

      ‘It’s your choice,’ Pie said.

      Gentle looked longingly towards the city, tempted by its spires. But he knew there was wisdom in Pie’s advice.

      ‘We’ll come back some day, won’t we?’ he said.

      ‘Certainly, if that’s what you want.’

      Then let’s head the other way.’

      The mystif turned the vehicle on to the highway, against the predominant flow of traffic, and with the city behind them they soon picked up speed.

      ‘So much for Patashoqua,’ Gentle said as the walls became a mirage.

      ‘No great loss,’ Pie remarked.

      ‘But I wanted to see the Merrow Ti’ Ti’,’ Gentle said.

      ‘No chance,’ Pie returned.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It was pure invention,’ Pie said. ‘Like all my favourite things, including myself! Pure invention!’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

      1

      Though Jude had made an oath, in all sobriety, to follow Gentle wherever she’d seen him go, her plans for pursuit were stymied by a number of claims upon her energies, the most pressing of which was Clem’s. He needed her advice, comfort and organizational skills in the dreary, rainy days that followed New Year, and despite the urgency of her agenda she could scarcely turn her back on him. Taylor’s funeral took place on the ninth of January, with a Memorial Service which Clem took great pains to perfect. It was a melancholy triumph: a time for Taylor’s friends and relations to mingle and express their affections for the departed man. Jude met people she’d not seen in many years, and few, if any, failed to comment on the one conspicuous absentee: Gentle. She told everybody what she’d told Clem. That Gentle had been going through a bad time, and the last she’d heard he was planning to leave on holiday. Clem, of course, would not be fobbed off with such vague excuses. Gentle had left knowing that Taylor was dead, and Clem viewed his departure as a kind of cowardice. Jude didn’t attempt to defend the wanderer. She simply tried to make as little mention of Gentle in Clem’s presence as she could.

      But the subject would keep coming up, one way or another. Sorting through Taylor’s belongings after the funeral, Clem came upon three watercolours, painted by Gentle in the style of Samuel Palmer, but signed with his own name, and dedicated to Taylor. Pictures of idealized landscapes, they couldn’t help but turn Clem’s thoughts back to Taylor’s unrequited love for the vanished man, and Jude’s to the place he had vanished for. They were among the few items that Clem, perhaps vengefully, wanted to destroy, but Jude persuaded him otherwise. He kept one in memory of Taylor, gave one to Klein, and the third to Jude.

      Her duty to Clem took its toll not only upon her time but upon her focus. When, in the middle of the month, he suddenly announced that he was going to leave the next day for Tenerife, there to tan his troubles away for a fortnight, she was glad to be released from the daily duties of friend and comforter, but found herself unable to rekindle the heat of ambition that had flared in her at the month’s first hour. She had one unlikely touchstone, however: the dog. She only had to look at the mutt and she remembered - as though it were an hour ago - standing at the door of Gentle’s flat, and seeing the pair dissolving in front of her astonished eyes. And on the heels of that memory came thoughts of the news she had been carrying to Gentle that night: the dream-journey induced by the stone that was now wrapped up and hidden from sight and seeing in her wardrobe. She was not a great lover of dogs, but she’d taken the mongrel home that night, knowing it would perish if she didn’t. It quickly ingratiated itself, wagging a furious welcome when she returned home each night after being with Clem; sneaking into her bedroom in the early hours and making a nest for itself in her soiled clothes. She called it Skin, because it had so little fur, and while she didn’t dote on it the way it doted upon her she was still glad of its company. More than once she found herself talking to it at great length, while it licked its paws or its balls, these monologues a means to refocus her thoughts without worrying that she was losing her mind. Three days after Clem’s departure for sunnier climes, discussing with Skin how she should best proceed, Estabrook’s name came up.

      ‘You haven’t met Estabrook,’ she told Skin. ‘But I’ll guarantee you won’t like him. He tried to have me killed, you know?’

      The dog looked up from its toilet.

      ‘Yeah, I was amazed, too,’ she said. ‘I mean, that’s worse than an animal, right? No disrespect, but it is. I was his wife. I am his wife. And he tried to have me killed. What would you do, if you were me? Yeah, I know, I should see him.