Masks
The rain came as he spoke, a cold rain that
struck the rude, gray stones of the castle with a million icy
fists. I sat down, clamping Terminus Est
between my knees to keep them from shaking.
“I had already concluded,” I said with
as much self-possession as I could summon, “that when the islanders
told me of a small man who paid for the building of this place,
they were speaking of the doctor. But they said that you, the
giant, had come afterward.”
“I was the small man. The doctor came
afterward.”
A cacogen showed a dripping, nightmare
face at the window, then vanished. Possibly he had conveyed some
message to Ossipago, though I heard nothing. Ossipago spoke without
turning. “Growth has its disadvantages, though for your species it
is the only method by which youth can be reinstated.”
Dr. Talos sprang to his feet. “We will
overcome them! He has put himself in my hands.”
Baldanders said, “I was forced to.
There was no one else. I created my own physician.”
I was still attempting to regain my
mental balance as I looked from one to the other; there was no
change in the appearance or manner of either. “But he beats you,” I
said. “I have seen him.”
“Once I overheard you while you
confided in the smaller woman. You destroyed another woman, whom
you loved. Yet you were her slave.”
Dr. Talos said, “I must get him up, you
see. He must exercise, and it is a part of what I do for him. I’m
told that the Autarch—whose health is the happiness of his
subjects—has an isochronon in his sleeping chamber, a gift from
another autarch from beyond the edge of the world. Perhaps it is
the master of these gentlemen here. I don’t know. Anyway, he fears
a dagger at his throat and will let no one near him when he sleeps,
so this device tells the watches of his night. When dawn comes, it
rouses him. How then should he, the master of the Commonwealth,
permit his sleep to be disturbed by a mere machine? Baldanders
created me as his physician, as he told you. Severian, you’ve known
me some time. Would you say I was much afflicted with the infamous
vice of false modesty?”
I managed a smile as I shook my
head.
“Then I must tell you that I am not
responsible for my virtues, such as they are. Baldanders wisely
made me all that he is not, so that I might counterweight his
deficiencies. I am not fond of money, for example. That’s an
excellent thing for the patient, in a personal physician. And I am
loyal to my friends, because he is the first of them.”
“Still,” I said, “I have always been
astounded that he did not slay you.” It was so cold in the room
that I drew my cloak closer about me, though I felt sure that the
present deceptive calm could not long endure.
The giant said, “You must know why I
keep my temper in check. You have seen me lose it. To have them
sitting there, watching me, as though I were a bear on a
chain—”
Dr. Talos touched his hand; there was
something womanly in the gesture. “It’s his glands, Severian. The
endocrine system and the thyroid. Everything must be managed so
carefully, otherwise he would grow too fast. And then I must see
that his weight doesn’t break his bones, and a thousand other
things.”
“The brain,” the giant rumbled. “The
brain is the worst of all, and the best.”
I said, “Did the Claw help you? If not,
perhaps it will, in my hands. It has performed more for me in a
short time than it did for the Pelerines in many
years.”
When Baldanders’s face showed no sign
of comprehension, Dr. Talos said, “He means the gem the fishermen
sent. It is supposed to perform miraculous cures.”
At that Ossipago turned to face us at
last. “How interesting. You have it here? May we see
it?”
The doctor looked anxiously from the
cacogen’s expressionless mask to Baldanders’s face and back again
as he said, “Please, Your Worships, it is nothing. A fragment of
corundum.”
In all the time since I had entered
this level of the tower, none of the cacogens had shifted his place
by more than a cubit; now Ossipago crossed to my chair with short,
waddling steps. I must have recoiled from him, for he said, “You
need not fear me, though we do your kind much hurt. I want to hear
about this Claw, which the homunculus tells us is only a mineral
specimen.”
When I heard him say that, I was afraid
that he and his companions would take the Claw from Baldanders and
carry it to their own home beyond the void, but I reasoned that
they could not do so unless they forced him to produce it, and that
if they did that, it might be possible for me to gain possession of
it, which I might fail to do otherwise. So I told Ossipago all the
things the Claw had accomplished while it had been in my
keeping—about the uhlan on the highway, and the man-apes, and all
the other instances of its power that I have already recorded here.
As I spoke, the giant’s face grew harder, and the doctor’s, I
thought, more anxious.
When I had finished, Ossipago said,
“And now we must see the wonder
itself. Bring it out, please,” and Baldanders rose and stalked
across the wide room, making all his machines appear mere toys by
his size, and at last pulled out the drawer of a little,
white-topped table and took out the gem. It was more dull in his
hand than I had ever seen it; it might have been a bit of blue
glass.
The cacogen took it from him and held
it up in his painted glove, though he did not turn up his face to
look at it as a man would. There it seemed to catch the light from
the yellow lamps that sprouted downward from above, and in that
light it flashed a clear azure. “Very beautiful,” he said. “And
most interesting, though it cannot have performed the feats
ascribed to it.”
“Obviously,” Famulimus sang, and made
another of those gestures that so recalled to me the statues in the
gardens of the Autarch.
“It is mine,” I told them. “The shore
people took it from me by force. May I have it back?”
“If it is yours,” Barbatus said, “where
did you get it?”
I began the task of describing my
meeting with Agia and the destruction of the altar of the
Pelerines, but he cut me short.
“All this is speculation. You did not
see this jewel upon the altar, nor did you feel the woman’s hand
when she gave it to you, if in fact she did. Where
did you get it?”
“I found it in a compartment of my
sabretache.” It seemed that there was nothing else to
say.
Barbatus turned away as though
disappointed. “And you …” He looked toward Baldanders. “Ossipago
has the jewel now, and he got it from you. Where did you get
it?”
Baldanders rumbled, “You saw me. From
the drawer of that table.”
The cacogen nodded by moving his mask
with his hands. “You see then, Severian, his claim has become as
good as yours.”
“But the gem is mine and not
his.”
“It is not our task to judge between
you; you must settle that when we are gone. But out of curiosity,
which torments even such strange creatures as you believe us to
be—Batdanders, will you keep it?”
The giant shook his head. “I would not
have such a monument to superstition in my
laboratory.”
“Then there should be little difficulty
in effecting a settlement,” Barbatus declared. “Severian, would you
like to watch our craft rise? Baldanders always comes to see us
off, and though he is not the type to rhapsodize over views
artificial or natural, I should think myself that it must be worth
seeing.” He turned away, adjusting his white robes.
“Worshipful Hierodules,” I said, “I
would very much like to, but I want to ask you something before you
go. When I arrived, you said you had no greater joy than seeing me,
and you knelt. Did you mean what you said, or anything like it?
Were you confusing me with someone else?”
Baldanders and Dr. Talos had risen to
their feet when the cacogen first mentioned his departure. Now,
though Famulimus remained to listen to my questions, the others had
already begun to move away; Barbatus was
mounting the stair that led to the level above, with Ossipago,
still carrying the Claw, not far behind him.
I began to walk too, because I feared
to be separated from it, and Famulimus walked with me. “Though you
did not now pass our test, I meant no less than what I said to
you.” His voice was like the music of some wonderful bird, bridging
the abyss from a wood unattainable. “How often we have taken
counsel, Liege. How often we have done each other’s will. You know
the water women, I believe. Are Ossipago, brave Barbatus, I, to be
so much less sapient than they?”
I drew a deep breath. “I don’t know
what you mean. But somehow I feel that though you and your kind are
hideous, you are good. And that the undines are not, though they
are so lovely, as well as so monstrous, that I can scarcely look at
them.”
“Is all the world a war of good and
bad? Have you not thought it might be something more?”
I had not, and could only
stare.
“And you will kindly tolerate my looks.
Without offense may I remove this mask? We both know it for one and
it is hot. Baldanders is ahead and will not see.”
“If you wish, Worship,” I said. “But
won’t you tell—”
With a quick flick of one hand, as
though with relief, Famulimus stripped away the disguise. The face
revealed was no face, only eyes in a sheet of putrescence. Then the
hand moved again as before, and that too fell away. Beneath it was
the strange, calm beauty I had seen carved in the faces of the
moving statues in the gardens of the House Absolute, but differing
from that as the face of a living woman differs from her own life
mask.
“Did you not ever think, Severian,” she
said, “that he who wore a mask might wear another? But I who wore
the two do not wear three. No more untruths divide us now, I swear.
Touch, Liege—your fingers on my face.”
I was afraid, but she took my hand and
lifted it to her cheek. It felt cool and yet living, the very
opposite of the dry heat of the doctor’s skin.
“All of the monstrous masks you’ve seen
us wear are but your fellow citizens of Urth. An insect, lamprey,
now a dying leper. All are your brothers, though you may
recoil.”
We were already close to the uppermost
level of the tower, treading charred wood at times—the ruin left by
the conflagration that had driven forth Baldanders and his
physician. When I took my hand away, Famulimus put on her mask
again. “Why do you do this?” I asked.
“So that your folk will hate and fear
us all. How long, Severian, if we did not, would common men abide a
reign not ours? We would not rob your race of your own rule; by
sheltering your kind from us, does not your Autarch keep the
Phoenix Throne?”
I felt as I sometimes had in the
mountains on waking from a dream, when I sat up wondering, looked
about and saw the green moon pinned to the sky with a pine, and the
frowning, solemn faces of the mountains beneath their broken
diadems instead of the dreamed-of walls of Master
Palaemon’s study, or our refectory, or the corridor of cells where
I sat at the guard table outside Thecla’s door. I managed to say,
“Then why did you show me?”
And she answered, “Though you see us,
we will not see you more. Our friendship here begins and ends, I
fear. Call it a gift of welcome from departing
friends.”
Then the doctor, ahead of us, threw
open a door, and the drumming of the rain became a roaring, and I
felt the cold, deathlike air of the tower invaded by icy but living
air from outside. Baldanders had to stoop and turn his shoulders to
pass the doorway, and I was struck by the realization that in time
he would be unable to do so, whatever care he received from Dr.
Talos—the door would have to be widened, and the stairs too,
perhaps, for if he fell he would surely perish. Then I understood
what had puzzled me before: the reason for the huge rooms and high
ceilings of this, his tower. And I wondered what the vaults in the
rock were like, where he confined his starving
prisoners.