The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Page 20

  Harold steps forward. “Okay. That’s enough. I’m here.”

  The ringleader looks at Harold with positively manic glee. “And now, my friend”—he points one end of the pipe at Harold’s forehead—“you have got to get knocked out—”

  Out.

  TWENTY-ONE

  From the diary of Prospero Taligent, cylinder #361:

  —After I’m laid to rest I want to be remembered as a man who keeps his promises, even those that might have been considered rash or fantastic. The tens of millions of dollars I’ve spent fulfilling the heart’s desires of those hundred boys and girls that attended Miranda’s tenth birthday party, money spent retaining the services of dozens of private detectives, cosmetic surgeons, parlor magicians, professional actors, barbershop singers, fortune-tellers, prostitutes, and, yes, the occasional hit man—most others would look at it as a waste, I imagine. I could have sent them all gift certificates to a department store, for fifty-dollar shopping sprees, and no one would have raised an eyebrow. But I want to keep my promise. Thirty-four have been satisfied; sixty-six remain. I think there’s still time enough.

  But as those children grow older, and more complicated, and their hearts become darker and harder to see into, as they learn the wretched talents of inscrutability and subterfuge that my own daughter seems to have mastered, seeing what their hearts want for them becomes so difficult. More care has to be taken; more money must be spent. My guesses of the things they need to complete their lives are becoming slightly less certain.

  Except for that hundredth child, that luckiest storytelling boy. I know just the thing that he wants, as well as I know myself, and it hasn’t changed since those days in the playroom. His gift will be my masterpiece, I think.

  I wonder if he’ll begin to guess, when he awakes to see the girl in peril? Will it make him feel like the boy he was, on the magic island, ready to rescue the damsel in distress? Will his heart race, as mine would?

  This entry will have to be cut short—I’d like to spend some time with Caliban this evening. But it is to be hoped that Harold Winslow’s return to Miranda’s life, after ten years, will remind her of what she once was, or at least of what she pretended to be for my benefit. I think that, if she chose to take up the mantle of the virgin queen once again upon her return, I could find it in myself to forgive her. I still think the girl can remain pure.

  And if Gideon performs as he’s been instructed, then Miranda will hear those words at last that I don’t have the nerve or the strength to say to her myself.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “—don’t touch me.”

  “But I don’t want to—”

  “I told you don’t you touch me.”

  Harold comes back to consciousness, feeling a rickety wooden chair beneath him, its back digging into his own. He opens his eyes, groggy, and lifts his head to take in his surroundings. He doesn’t know where he is. He can hear two people nearby, a man and a woman, having words.

  “Stay over there.”

  “But I—”

  “You get over there and you stay over there. Away from me.” She’s shrieking.

  “Okay. Okay. I’m stepping back. I’m over here. You’re safe.”

  What’s this? He can’t move his arms. He’s tied to a chair with each of his wrists bound to one of its legs, firmly enough so that twisting his fists in an attempt to slip the knots does no good. He is in some sort of cavernous room—it looks almost as if it used to be some kind of warehouse, a simple shotgun structure whose only entrance is a pair of garage doors in front of him, at the opposite end. The walls are plated with warped aluminum panels. Low-powered lights that hang from the steel crossbeams of the high ceiling strain to illuminate the place, but do little more than make shadows. Moonlight shines murkily through high windows smudged with grime.

  On the wall near Harold hangs an out-of-date pinup calendar from a dozen years ago—it features a painting of a curvaceous woman in a bathing dress. The dress’s former deep red has been faded by the yellowing and bleaching of the calendar’s pages. The woman leans suggestively against the side of what must have been next year’s model of automobile, back then, smirking coyly with her back arched. Her eyebrows are cocked devilishly above a pair of goggles. The artist, not the most skilled, has given her a bright spot of rouge on either cheek, as if she were a marionette. Everything about the image seems dated: the numbers on the calendar itself and the decay of its paper; the automobile, whose long lines and gleaming metal curves are naïvely meant to suggest some dead engineer’s idea of a capital-F Future; the cheesecake woman, whose knees are apparently meant to be titillating, but whose supposedly immodest clothing wouldn’t even merit a second look on the street today. This building hasn’t regularly been inhabited for a while, it seems.

  Across the room, on the other side, are the two people arguing. One is one of the two costumed tin men who broke into the printing press and, apparently, kidnapped Harold (who, by the way, is done performing his little exegesis of the pinup calendar, and is now wondering why exactly he merits the honor of kidnapping). Though the man is wearing a similar outfit, complete with silver facepaint and the metal funnel fastened to his head, he’s not made out of pure muscle like the thug who took a pipe to Harold’s forehead—he’s lithe and birdboned and fey, and the tone of his voice has a certain gentleness. To Harold he seems as if he’d really rather not be kidnapping this woman, as if his heart isn’t in it.

  Both of the men seem familiar to him, but he can’t figure out where he would have seen them before. Some other guise, without the silver faces. Some long time ago. Tip of the tongue. Can’t figure it.

  The woman, Harold realizes all at once, is none other than Miranda Taligent, grownup. It seems as if, in ten years, she wouldn’t be the same person she was before, and different enough to be a stranger to him. But without a doubt he’s sure. I look just like my voice, which does not lie. She’s dressed as she was in the playroom the first time Harold entered it ten years ago, in a larger, adult version of the same outfit—white seersucker suit jacket, white slacks, white tie, a white fedora clutched tightly in her hands. Her red-blond hair is long, tangled and matted, and her formerly sharp white suit, perfect for stylish traveling, is soiled. She’s standing with her back against the wall, and she looks terrified.

  No one seems to notice or care that Harold is conscious, with his eyes open. Then a door opens behind him, and though he can’t see him with his back to the doorway, he recognizes the bellow: “Talus!” It’s the thug who knocked him out. “Taaaaalus! Get over here!”

  Talus spins to face the man, looking over Harold’s shoulder. “I’m in charge here,” he says, his voice slightly quivering. “I’m the one in charge, is what the boss said. You’re in charge in the streets, but I’m in charge here. I am the only one who is allowed to talk to the girl. If you speak to her by name he’ll cut your tongue out. He pointed at your face and said this to you.”

  “Oh, I ain’t sayin’ a thing to her, you better believe I got no interest in talking to her, if I do anything with her you bet your ass it ain’t gonna involve much talking, except for: uh. Uh. Uh!” The thug is walking up behind Harold now. “But don’t you go thinking you’re the boss of me. The boots are on the ground now, and the fact of the matter is I weigh two sixty-five and I am so tough that I can swallow coal and shit diamonds. Now I don’t give a shit what the big boss said, I think that makes me the boss of you! Now get over here!”

  Talus throws up his hands in frustration and feeble protest and crosses the wide room to approach the other man. It’s now that Miranda sees Harold, and just like him, she feels the sudden shock of recognition. Her eyebrows furrow, and she mouths a word involuntarily: What?

  The two men are standing just behind Harold now, and he can’t see either of them. “Artegall,” Harold hears Talus say in a low voice. “We have to be gentle with her.”

  “To hell with gentle,” says Artegall loudly. “Get her out of those clothes and we’ll see ab
out who’s gentle.”

  “Artegall, we can’t—”

  “Hey—ho-ho-hold it. You know what?”

  “What?”

  Artegall lowers his voice. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

  “What.”

  “I think,” says Artegall, “that our other guest over here just woke up, and he’s playing possum.”

  Talus says nothing.

  “Why,” Artegall says, “don’t I,” placing his hand on the back of Harold’s chair, “give him another love tap. Just to make sure.”

  —Out.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Again, it is dreamtime.

  It took two full-grown men to usher the struggling spitting girl into the operating theater, her fingernails raking welts down their arms. Get her into the chair. The room was dimly lit and almost empty, its principal feature being a dentist’s chair in which the girl was being restrained, her wrists and ankles tightly bound to it by turns of electrical tape, the broken halves of toothpicks slid under her eyelids to keep them open. A wooden stall of some kind was on the other side of the room, fitted with ropes and chains, apparently meant for the confinement of some large animal. Next to it was a surgical tray with tools too large for use on humans, and some of them better suited for carpenters than surgeons: pairs of pliers of different sizes, a large rubber mallet, a drill fitted with a long thick bit . . . Father came into the chamber with a spiraling horn in his hand, carved out of ivory. Father. What are you doing. Do not. Don’t.

  Darling daughter. I’m giving you your heart’s desire. Tomorrow you will be ten. Do you remember what I said about desire?

  Bring in the horse.

  They brought the white horse into the operating theater and harnessed it into the little stable, lashing it to the walls with ropes, fixing its head in a vise. Its eyes rolled in its head; foam spilled from its mouth. Now do what I told you to do. In front of the girl? Yes. He stuffed a snotty pocket handkerchief in her mouth to keep her from screaming. The splintered ends of the toothpick halves dug into the insides of her eyelids. Do what I told you to do. She has to learn. Without anesthesia? It doesn’t need an anesthetic. It’s a beast. I won’t do it. Then God damn it I’ll do it myself. Stand aside. Give that drill to me. Now darling daughter watch. A thick deep red jet of blood spurted out of the new hole in the horse’s head, drenching its white mane and spattering Father’s face and arms. Three sharp raps of the mallet drove the ivory horn home. There! That’s your birthday present a day in advance! Now you’ve learned what happens when you make wishes for miracles! There’s your unicorn. Flesh and blood, Miranda.

  Miranda.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Harold.”

  He starts awake again to find himself still in the chair. The ropes binding his wrists have begun to chafe. Before he opens his eyes, he stretches as much as he can, given the circumstances, rolling his head around on his stiff neck, extending his legs and wiggling his toes inside his shoes.

  When he opens his eyes he finds Talus before him, seated on the floor with his legs crossed beneath him. He’s removed the silver paint from his face and changed out of his costume into a loosely fitted linen shirt and slacks. Out of the costume he seems aged, but oddly elfin, with large watery pale green eyes, a beak for a nose, and an impish cast to his mouth. The shrinking shyness that Harold saw in him a few hours ago, when he was attempting to address Miranda, is entirely gone.

  “How do you know my name?” Harold says. Where has he seen this man before? Not Talus. Another name. Long ago.

  “How . . . do I know your name. Hm.” Talus cocks his head and strokes his chin in a mock-scholarly way, pondering the conundrum. “How. Do I know. Your name.” He isn’t much help.

  On the opposite side of the room, Miranda is curled on a pile of blankets, sleeping. Her hands are balled into fists, and her arms are folded and clenched to her chest. In her sleep she mumbles and shivers, as if she is deep in nightmare.

  “I won’t have done my job,” Talus says quietly, “if this whole experience, the kidnapping, doesn’t get your adrenaline running. If it doesn’t make you feel young again. Is this not an exciting thing, to imagine happening to oneself? I’ve certainly never been kidnapped.” He lowers his head. “I’m not important enough.”

  “I’m not important,” Harold says.

  “You’re important enough to be kidnapped. I think that says something. Frankly, I’m jealous.”

  Now Talus jumps to his feet in a single smooth motion. “We’re all playing a part here!” he says. “Me, um, Artegall—you, too. Miranda, too. Speak your lines.”

  Harold looks at Talus in confusion.

  “Imagine this,” Talus says. “I’m offstage in the wings, watching you, distressed because the play’s going all wrong. Because you’re up to your next line and you’ve drawn a blank. We can’t just skip it. You’ve got to play the hero here. You’ve got to give the villain the chance to reveal his motives. You’ve got to say—say it with me. Why—”

  “Why.”

  “Not enough righteous outrage. Try again. Why—”

  “Why—”

  “—have you kidnapped—”

  “—have you kidnapped—”

  “—Miranda!? Finish it off with indignation.”

  “Miranda,” Harold sighs.

  Talus rolls his eyes. “Close enough,” he says in exasperation, then sits back down on the floor to look up at Harold. “Let me tell you,” he says, “the tale of when I was a child and the century was turning, and my father took me to the Exposition of the Future. Then you’ll understand.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  —By the time the touring Exposition of the Future came to our town, all the signs were in the air that the age of miracles was almost at its end. It wasn’t uncommon to see sights like an angel staggering down the middle of a street in broad daylight, weaving like a drunkard, clutching its hand to its stomach and vomiting up blood. My father was a metalsmith, and more than half his income in those last days came from demons, who’d come to the back door of his establishment under cover of night, sacks of silver coins clutched in their clawed hands, begging him to use his tools to file off their magnificent curling horns.

  We had to clear out all the rooms in the city hall, our town’s largest building, to house the Exposition, plus a nearby barn that became the fabulous Hall of Dynamos. The century was about to turn, and though machines weren’t nearly as prevalent as they are now, they were still common enough not to take us entirely by surprise when we saw them, even though things with engines were primarily owned by the rich. But the single declared purpose of the Exposition of the Future was to awe us common men, to terrify us with visions of the coming twentieth century in the way that we were terrified of an inscrutable God Who killed and bestowed gifts according to His own unknowable logic.

  Most of the Exposition was fantasy, though—smoke and hot air, drawings and models, based more on artist’s fancy than scientific fact. I remember staring for minutes on end at a diorama of what was supposed to be an automobile driving on the barren landscape of the Moon, with little figures meticulously carved out of balsa wood behind the wheel and in the passenger’s seat, perhaps a husband and wife on an afternoon joyride. They were driving toward a symmetrically arrayed phalanx of Moon people led by a balsa-wood King, who wore a tiny brass crown and royal finery stitched out of a couple of scraps of velvet and lace, and who was accompanied by two dozen equally well-dressed handmaidens. His arms were outstretched in greeting, as if the two smiling people in the fast-approaching car were welcome guests, not colonizers. This was to be the Future.

  Of course, nothing like the scene depicted in that diorama has happened—the Moon and its inhabitants are just as far away from us now as they were in the days when angels and demons still had some life left in them. Half of the things I saw at that Exposition have never come to pass and probably never will. But amidst the flights of fancy there were more sensible exhibits, and technological wonders that seemed like t
hey belonged to the future, but that, to our surprise (and remember, we were common men), already existed. Nothing as elaborate as the mechanical men that are now commonplace, but still, to my eyes, they were wondrous. In one room of the Exposition there was a mechanical device like an oversized typewriter whose keys were all labeled with numbers and symbols, and when you pressed a series of numbers and a final key labeled with a mathematical sign, the device’s gears would click and whirl and it would spit a slip of paper out of its side with the solution to the equation you’d made up stamped on it. In another room my father saw experimental ways to forge new kinds of metal, easily malleable and amazingly strong, that he feared would put him out of business. They did, and my father died penniless after all the demons lost their horns, and those new metals make up the bones of this building in which we sit. But nothing we saw that day held the terror of the Hall of Dynamos.

  The Hall of Dynamos was designed to be the last stop on the tour, after you’d gone through all the exhibits in the city hall. You’d go out the city hall’s back door and get in a line to enter an enormous barn that had originally been built to house hundreds of head of cattle, and a young girl would hand you a pair of earplugs made out of beeswax. As you got closer to the barn’s entrance, you’d see people stumbling past you in the opposite direction, having already seen the things that lay in wait inside. All the color would be drained from their faces, and if you asked them to describe what they’d seen, they’d either refuse or, worse, they’d try and be unable and break down into stammers and sniffling sobs.