I rolled the object around in my hands, rolled it along my forearms and my face. I rested it atop my head, thinking that its symbolic meaning might penetrate my skull through some kind of osmosis. Occasionally, an image would jump into my mind, and I would see the black dog, Wood, or the jagged column that was the remains of the Top of the City, but there was no feeling of certainty accompanying any of these mental pictures. I thought for a moment of Misrix and wondered if I would ever escape the reality of Below's memory.
I spent a good hour and a half there on the floor of Ano-tine's bedroom with the ball, rolling it, dropping it, whispering and shouting at it, tapping it with my knuckle and banging it against my forehead. My growing frustration finally got the better of me, and I threw it against the wall. In my desperation, I thought this might jolt the meaning out of it, but it didn't. It merely struck the smooth plaster with a dull thud and fell to roll some way back to me along the floor.
I stood up and stretched in an attempt to disperse my anger. 'Til clear my head," I thought and walked over to the window opening at the back of the room that gave a view of the field below and the boundary of the wood just beyond. I spent some time staring out at the peaceful, sunlit scene, and the sight of it relaxed me. Eventually, I turned away from the hypnotic tranquillity of the view and took a seat at the table that stood just to my right.
"Come on, Cley," I admonished myself. "You must …" But I never finished the thought, because lying now on the table in front of me was a pack of Hundred-To-Ones, my brand of cigarettes from the days of the Weil-Built City. Next to them was a box of matches and an ashtray. My hand shot out instinctually to the cigarettes, and I lifted them to make sure they were real. On the front of the green package was the usual red insignia of the wheel of fortune. I flipped it over and on the back was the expected image of Dame Destiny, wearing a blindfold. In her right hand she held a revolver, and in the left, a flower.
I opened the pack, retrieved one of the cigarettes, and immediately lit it. That first blast of smoke against the back of my throat was a great relief. With this aid to concentration, I turned my attention again on the steel ball. As I stared at it now, from a distance, my mind wandered and I came up with a theory about the sudden materializations of food and cigarettes.
These, it seemed to me, were incidentals. The mnemonic world was very convincing in its important detail, but one could never plan for all of the contingencies of logic, so things that weren't really necessary were created extemporaneously, so to speak. The memory filled in the gaps when the reality of the island was found wanting. Food, cigarettes, probably alcohol, were unimportant. That is why when I ate, it was not because I felt hungry. I realized then that since I had arrived on the island, I had yet to use a bathroom. There probably were no bathrooms, which was just as well, since I felt no urge in that direction at all. Hard, fast rules and definite limits abounded, pain and probably true death among them, but then there was a gray area where the memory created as fast as the need arose.
With my second cigarette, I began laughing at myself, picturing my crude attempts to break through the shell of symbolic representation. While I was puffing away, an indescribable urge began to take hold of me. This feeling increased until, upon stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray, I rose and approached the shiny sphere of frustration. Then, I lifted my foot and brought the heel of my boot down on the thing with as much force as I could muster. To my surprise, the ball collapsed, splitting open in three places and crushing down into a flattened, ragged disk of steel. I stepped back and inspected my work. There had been a degree of satisfaction in the act, but in all I was no wiser than before.
"What are you doing, Cley?" asked Anotine.
The voice momentarily frightened me. I looked up to see her standing in the entrance, wearing a puzzled expression.
"Looking for the moment," I said, and forced a smile.
She shook her head. "Leave the experiments to me."
I nodded and looked away, embarrassed at the thought of how I had gawked at her body through the night.
"Come, we have work to do," she said.
Imagine my relief when instead of heading down the hallway to the laboratory, she turned and went back through the entrance into the sunlight. I hurried after her.
She walked quickly, leading me up and down stairways, across terraces, through a labyrinth of winding alleys lined with flowering vines drooping down from planters situated high above. It was the first time I had been outside in the sunlight since arriving, and now I could see just how beautiful and complex the village was.
I looked ahead to where Anotine waited for me at the bottom of a short set of steps. She wore a loosely fitted, white-muslin dress that the breeze had its way with and the sunlight had no difficulty penetrating. Her hair was tied back and woven together in an intricate braid.
As I caught up to her, she said, "You had a difficult time with the experiment yesterday."
"I apologize for not being more help to you," I said.
"There was a period after I took you from the chair that I thought you might expire on me," she said. "The other specimens never exhibited such a dire reaction to it."
"Why do you think that was?" I asked.
She began walking again, and I could see that we were now heading for the field that lay between the wood and the terraced village.
"There seems to be something quite different about you," she said. "You are more like my colleagues and I than the other specimens that were sent. You are more …I suppose I would say substantial."
"Are you saying I am thick?"
She laughed and placed her hand on my shoulder for a moment. "No. I can't quite put my finger on it, but you have a kind of aura about you. You actually seem to have feelings."
"I do," I said.
"Yes. After having to lie with you last night in order to make sure your heart rate and breathing returned to normal, I determined that it would not be right to subject you to the chair again. I'm not looking to discover death, only the present."
I could not help but smile.
"I dreamt about you after I fell asleep," she said. "I'll have you know I never dream. As long as I have known Doctor Hellman, he has always spoken to me about his dream theories. I understood the concepts, but I always doubted their validity because I had never had the experience. Quite startling, it is."
We reached the wood and entered it along a dirt path. I could see now what I had missed in the darkness the night I had arrived. The leaves that fell everywhere around us, twirling slowly in the breeze, covering the ground, were not brown and dead, heralding the approach of autumn. They came from the branches with the deepest green.
Anotine saw me stop to watch their descent. I stooped over and picked one up. "They began falling only last week," she said. "Something is seriously wrong with the island."
"Nunnly told me it was disintegrating," I said.
"I'd rather not think about it," she told me, and began walking again.
"Can you tell me what your dream was then?" I asked.
"I saw you wrestling a monster," she said. "You were fighting for your life. It was very troubling."
"A monster?" I asked.
"Yes, a creature with horns and fur, great flapping wings and sharp teeth. It was much like the one that visited the island years ago."
"The creature had actually been here?" I asked.
"A foul beast—it flew in from out of the clouds one afternoon. We were all quite frightened. Nunnly and Brisden threw rocks at it. The Fetch was beside itself, flying about it, biting at its back and arms."
"What came of it?" I asked.
"They managed to chase it off, but for weeks afterward we lived in fear that it would return."
"And how did I fare in the dream?" I asked.
"I think you lost," she said quietly.
It was obvious that the experience had upset her, so I did not ask for more details. After rounding a turn in the path, we came to a grassy clearing in the wood near the rim of the island. Doctor Hellman stood there, dressed in a black suit and coat, staring up as if studying the wispy clouds that moved slowly across the sun. His right hand rested on his beard, and in his left, he held the handle of a small leather bag the same color as his attire.