It took me the better part of an hour to traverse the maze of stairways that led to that field, but I was glad for the puzzle, hoping the concentration might clear my thoughts of Anotine's body. Finally, I ascended a long set of steps and, upon reaching the top, strode onto the grass. Although I should have been sleeping, I needed to see if Misrix's description of the island had been accurate.
The trees were almost perfectly straight, and the entire forest seemed so strategically laid out in a crisscrossing, geometric pattern, I was sure it must have been planted. Leaves fell around me in great numbers as I kept to a crude path that snaked through the shadows. I walked quickly, thinking that each one of the trees, even the leaves, could be a symbolic representation of one of Below's grand schemes. But when I touched the rough bark and smelled the sap, I could only think of them as devoid of anything but reality.
"Cley," said a voice from within the dark outline of a tree.
I turned quickly, half-expecting to see the Mayor again. "Who's there?" I said.
Nunnly, the engineer of useless machines, stepped forward so that his lean face and frame emerged from the shadows.
"Out for a walk?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, unsure if I was supposed to be on my own.
"You are curious about the edge of the island, no doubt," he said.
"I am," I told him.
"How did you hear of it?" he asked.
"I can't recall."
"Follow me, Cley," he said, and started off ahead of me.
"You are lucky that you are Anotine's specimen and not Brisden's," he said. "The last one that old gasser had, he literally talked into a coma. We had to send the poor fellow back and request another one. By the time we took him to the chair in the parlor, he was extraordinarily dull, as if Brisden's babble had eaten his wits. Anotine, on the other hand, will do anything for her specimens."
"She already has," I said.
"That's the spirit," he said.
We walked a few more paces, then Nunnly held up his arm, preventing me from going on.
"Do you hear it?" he asked.
Behind him, I could hear a strong wind and beneath that a very distant sound of waves.
I nodded.
"Don't get too close to the edge" he said. "It's very dangerous now." Then he lifted his hand and let me continue.
I walked up a small hill, and when I reached the top, I found myself staring out over the end of the island. There was a fallen tree next to me, which I leaned against as I tried to encompass the entirety of nothingness beneath us. Far below, through the trails of passing clouds, I could see the liquid-mercury ocean, shining a distant silver where the moon and the tower's brightness touched its surface. I felt a great rush of my blood as I stood there staring and wondered how glorious the fall would be from that height.
"Look down there," said Nunnly, who, I just then noticed, had stepped up and was standing next to me. He was pointing to the very outline of the island.
"What is it?" I asked, searching for his meaning.
"The edge of the island," he said. "Brisden discovered a few weeks ago that it is slowly disintegrating. Close your eyes and listen carefully."
I did as he said and tried to listen at a point between the wind and the far-off waves. "I think I hear it," I said.
"Now, look again," he instructed.
Concentrating my sight on a jutting root just at the rim, I noticed, the way one might notice, with the proper focus, the hour hand of a clock moving, that it was almost imperceptibly diminishing in thickness. It seemed to come apart into tiny crumbs that did not fall but instead crackled into nothing.
"Is that bad?" I asked.
"Well," said Nunnly, tapping a cigarette against the back of his wrist and leaning almost elegantly against the fallen tree, "when you are on a disintegrating island, a mile above a sea of liquid mercury, I would consider that cause for a modicum of concern."
"Do any of you know why it is happening?" I asked.
"No," he said, striking a match, "but Anotine has calculated that in a matter of a few weeks or so, we will have to worry about it while we are falling."
"How long have you been here for?" I asked.
"Forever, it seems," he said. "We were all hired some time ago by a fellow none of us had actually met by the name of Drachton Below. Everything was done through correspondence which offered handsome payment for us to come here and do research in our particular fields. Since we have arrived, we haven't seen him. We keep working in good faith, but, my god, I wouldn't mind leaving at this point."
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"I tell you, my head is so full of designs for machinery, I can hardly think of it. I vaguely recall having had a family before I arrived here, but I can no longer see their faces. That's why I come out into the wood at night, to try to remember. I experience all of the loneliness and loss, but for whom or what remains a mystery. I am beginning to wonder if I ever really knew."
We left the edge of the island and walked back through the trees toward the village. Nunnly asked me about my own life and how I had been chosen to serve as a specimen. I told him I had been chosen for my good looks.
"You too," he said, and laughed. "You'll be interested to know that Doctor Hellman believes that neither we nor the island exists. Everything to him is dreams."
"What do you say to that?"
"What can I say? I'm an engineer. My work is with matter, not with mental indigestion."
We walked on across the field, and then Nunnly showed me a shortcut back to Anotine's rooms. Before leaving me, he shook my hand again, and said, "Cley, for a specimen, you are a bright fellow. Be diligent at your work. It would be pleasant to have you around for a while."
I lay down on the brown rug in the middle of the room and stared at Anotine's back as it rose and fell with her breathing.
"The Master, asleep in the clutches of the disease, is wasting toward death," I thought. "His memory is evaporating with his life, and that is why the island is disintegrating."
As my eyes shut, and I began to doze, I remembered the drawing of the hourglass on that scrap of paper I had discovered. Particles of light passed through the neck of the figure eight.
10
I CAME AWAKE TO THE GLARE OF SUNLIGHT FLOODING the room reflecting off the smooth whitewashed walls. There was an unreal, immaculate clarity to it, a vitality that offered perfect warmth and submerged me in a sense of well-being that ignored the countless dilemmas I faced. After rubbing my eyes and reminding myself as to who and where I was, I looked around and saw that Anotine was no longer lying on her bed.
"Hello?" I called as I stood up and stretched.
As if in answer, a shrill, steady note, like the cry of a thin-throated pig, sounded from down the hall. There was no modulation to the tone at all, and its relentless nature forced me to cover my ears. In this manner, I proceeded to search out its source. I passed a room to the left, also sparsely furnished and brimming with sunlight. Somewhat smaller than the bedroom, it appeared to be a dining area, for there was a large wooden table, surrounded by four chairs.
A few paces farther along on the other side of the hall was a small, windowless space, almost a closet. I could make out that its walls were lined with shelves and that they were filled with shadowy objects, but by then I realized that the sound was coming from the room at the end of the hall. From my limited vantage point, it appeared to be a much larger space than the others. I moved up to the opening, my hands still protecting my ears, and leaned forward to peer inside.