Then there are those who simply hate what Duncan represents, those who cannot accept the truth and thus must reject the messenger along with the message. It’s common enough in life, isn’t it? Mary is a prime example. She’s still waiting there, at the party, but I honestly don’t want to write about that yet. There are more important things to discuss first, and it’s possible I won’t have time to finish this account, but I’ll soldier on because there’s nothing left to do.
A gate. A mirror. A door.
Somewhere there’s a door, surely?
* * *
One afternoon, after I had guided a family from Stockton on a tour centered around Trillian the Great Banker, Sirin appeared at the head of the stairs leading to the second floor. He beckoned to me with one long, graceful finger, and disappeared up the steps.
His office was the same as it had always been, down to the butterfly paradise residing in glass flasks at his back.
“I have a job for Duncan,” he said, without preamble, smiling from behind his desk.
At the time, Duncan hadn’t yet begun to “benefit” from the pittance Frankwrithe & Lewden would pay him for the infamous omnibus and still made his marginal living editing the AFTOIS newsletter for a Lacond whose health had begun to fail. So the money would come in handy. But I couldn’t imagine that Sirin, whose current fortunes depended on the continued publication of the great Mary Sabon, would have anything of value for Duncan.
“What sort of job?” I asked, sitting down heavily. My stump was throbbing against the strap and wood of my artificial foot. If Sirin had been a kinder man, he would have met me on the first floor.
“A writing kind of job,” he said, and smiled again. “The sort of writing job I think might appeal to Duncan, if presented to him in the right way.”
I already didn’t like the sound of it.
“What is it?”
“We have a pamphlet we need written. The original writer proved unreliable and it’s scheduled for publication in less than three months.”
“Unreliable how?”
“He was blown up by a stray fungal bomb.”
“Oh.”
“But,” Sirin hastened to add, “it had nothing to do with his assignment. Wrong place, wrong time. Strictly.”
“What’s the title of the pamphlet?”
“The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris. Do you think Duncan would do it?”
I didn’t know how I felt about this proposition. Sirin had more or less abandoned us after the war. On the other hand, he had gotten us a job during it. He had helped Mary more than us of late, but no one could say his choice didn’t reflect good business sense.
“A travel guide?” I said.
“Yes. A travel guide. Duncan will have to understand that up front. There will be no place for his outlandish theories in the piece, unless they add an element of entertainment. We don’t want to upset the tourists—think of the effect it would have on your own business.” Again, the smile, the upturning of the lips as his eyes acknowledged the debt I owed him for my position.
He named a compelling price for completion of the project.
“I’ll try,” I said. “Thanks for thinking of us.”
I don’t really know how I felt. My expectations of influence and power had decreased so rapidly and so monumentally that I believe at the time I felt Sirin was bestowing a great honor on Duncan. I believe I thought that Sirin was attempting to usher us back into the ranks of the Privileged, the Chosen. I was mistaken, but can anyone blame me for hoping?
At the door, I turned and asked, “Why didn’t you give the assignment to Mary Sabon?” (And if not Sabon, surely a member of her flesh necklace would have welcomed the opportunity?)
“She’s busy with other things,” and then, catching himself, “but more importantly, she’s not the right person for this. Your brother is somewhat unique in that regard.”
* * *
It did not take much convincing—by then Duncan had begun to chafe under the restrictions and limited audience of his AFTOIS soapbox. He welcomed the opportunity to do something different. (I welcomed the promise of money.)
“It’ll be like old times,” he said in this very room. “It will be like before the war.”
His right eye writhed with gold-green fungi. His left index finger had formed a curled purple tendril, like a fern. His neck was encrusted with a golden patina that pulsed like the skin of a squid. His smell was indescribable. Yes, it would be like old times.
For two months, Duncan lugged thousands of pages of books, magazines, and old papers down here. For weeks, he labored on this very typewriter, creating his early history of the city. I believe he thought he might be creating a Machine of his own, made from the city’s leavings. (The assignment came at the right time—it came as I was attempting to synthesize and explain all that I had learned over the years. It took two months, yes, but also thirty years to write that account. My findings might have been destined for a travel guide, but that didn’t mean I had to make them shallow or incomplete.)
I left him to it, after a while. I stopped in every few days to see how it was going, but that was all—I had my own life to lead, and an ever-growing list of tourists to exhume the city’s highlights for …
When Duncan showed me pieces of his essay so that I could report to Sirin on his progress, he did so by reading selections of it to me aloud.
“The importance of squid to the Ambergrisian economy cannot be overstated,” he would say.
“Not squid again,” I would say, and he would make a hushing sound.
“Certainly the rebel Stretcher Jones learned to appreciate the freshwater squid, as it sustained his army for long periods of time when they were relegated to the salt marshes on the fringes of the Kalif’s empire,” he would intone.
I would catch Sybel’s eye and he would fold his arms and shake his head, while I nodded in agreement. (How like you to conjure up a dead man to agree with you.)
“The type of cannonballs used by the Kalif during the Occupation proved useful in the creation of walls during the rebuilding efforts.” (A very interesting fact that many a tourist would have found useful, if it had survived Sirin’s sword.)
And on and on. It didn’t sound much like a tourist guide, based on my experience guiding tourists around, but at least Duncan was making progress toward completion. I didn’t think it productive to give him advice until he had finished it.
* * *
But, at the end of two months, Duncan bypassed me completely and sent his finished manuscript to Sirin via courier. It was six hundred pages long. Of those six hundred pages, two hundred and fifty pages consisted of long, convoluted footnotes, some of which had their own footnotes and additional annotations. I think he knew what I would have said had I read it first.
Sirin called me up to his office, where we could both contemplate the green-stained pages that lay in an awkward lump on his desk. Some of the pages looked like dried, veined lettuce leaves. Others had the consistency of moist glue. Still others had a dark phosphorescence to them. I could have sworn I could hear a low hum coming from the pile.
“What,” he asked, “am I to make of this?”