Friday, January 31, 2014

Blackglass

Blackglass
by
Bobby Derie

A knight, with a face of old walrus ivory, a veritable fang with the barest scrimschaw suggestion of helm and horse and sword, looked obliquely at the two bishops it threatened; venerable dark-skinned fellows carved of teak wood. Above the board, on another plane from that terrible decision and yet apiece with it, Israel and Genbas sat in contemplation of their fate. The board was propped on a stack of fat bibles, and perhaps the gilt on the covers might had piqued the interest of some savvy scavenger, but at that moment Israel would not have sold them for a talent of gold: they supported the board.

Time passed, and Genbas cleared his throat. Israel stirred.

"Ah, a thousand pardons my friend. My mind was not on the game." said Israel.

Genbas raised an eyebrow.

"A city, my friend. In my mind I saw a city. I have, I think, been seeking it for many years, finding it here or there in books, but it never wore a name except lightly. Yet today, today while we have played, I think I have found the name of that city. Blackglass."

Genbas nodded, and Israel considered the board. He stretched out a finger almost to touch a pawn--a little man of teakwood, who stood next to another of ivory, who stood before... Genbas cleared his throat again.

"And what was that nature of this city, that so captured your imagination?"

Israel removed his finger.

"Ah, it was an old city, my friend. Among the oldest. There was...I will call it a tribe, though that is not what it was. Not as we know tribes today. Not as the Romans knew them. It was long ago, and perhaps we do not have the name for it, but it was sophisticated for its time. Why should it not have been? They had been as they were for a long time, and had greatly refined their way of life. There was division of labor. Some men hunted, perhaps women too. Traps were set, entire herds tracked and stampeded off cliffs. There were skin scrapers, and perhaps smokers for the meat. They were many, and they were efficient at what they did, but for this they required tools and tool-makers. They needed places to smoke the meat, hunting camps where perhaps they stayed for a season rather than a week or a month, places where they could hide hard seeds and dig them back up when they returned. Tell me, have you ever scraped a hide?"

Gerbas shook his head.

"In my youth, my uncle took me hunting. I killed a little rabbit with my gun, and I scraped the hide clean with his knife. How much work it was! But they had no steel knives. Perhaps not even copper. No, sharp stones. The sharpest stones. Obsidian. Blackglass. So this tribe, if I may call them that, this people, they knew where to get the blackglass. A deposit, a mine, men or women chipping away with hard rock, breaking pieces off, taking them to the masters to chip into knives and tools."

"This people," said Gerbas. "They had a name?"

"In their own language, they were only the people. Human beings. You know how it was, in the old days. Perhaps we shall call them the Nanni. That would do."

"The Nanni," Gerbas said. "The founded a city?"

"Not at first. Not near the mine. They were not alone you see. They hunted, and they moved, all of them at once, decamping from season to season, following the herds. But there were others. They met them from time to time, the strange people. They would have known them. They would eat different foods, drink different. Maybe make war on them. Take their meat, their women. How different could they be? Perhaps not very much at all, as we knew them. Perhaps in the past they had been one tribe, and had grown too large. Perhaps they could still understand each other, if they spoke, at least a little. Maybe they did not always fight, if they met, for many of them might meet accidentally. As I said, they were not simple people. Their technology was not our technology, their civilization not our civilization, and no-one wishes to risk being killed if they can help it."

"So, in addition to the Nanni, there were others." Gerbas said.

"Many others. The O-Dassi hugged the coasts and rivers, living off shell fish and following the fish back to their spawning; perhaps they knew of salt, though I think not. The Ganni were close kin to the Nanni, and had ties of kinship. The I-Bassi were outcasts from the other tribes, mutts of their ancient world, perhaps untouchables if such a thing could be back then, gatherers of seeds--ah, but maybe they knew how to brew beer. Though I think, given how long they had all been around each other, perhaps each knew something of brewing. It is not a hard thing, if one has some very basic materials and knowledge."

"So, that is four. Is four enough?"

"Enough for Blackglass. As I said, they were not all on bad terms. They would meet peacefully now and again, I think. Perhaps they traded. Yes, I would say they definitely traded. More than that, perhaps, they might have shared festivals, occasions to let new blood into each other's tribe...but, I get away from myself. For the Nanni, their great thing was obsidian. I think they had a trading camp, a place where the others would come to trade for this, because certainly the Ganni and O-Dassi would like the sharp obsidian knives for themselves. This would be the seed of the city."

"Hmm." said Gerbas. "Hmm."

"You do not agree." said Israel.

"It is only that I have heard--only heard, mind you--that before cities, there came farming."

Israel nodded. "So some believe. So? You think Blackglass cannot exist without farms? Why do you think that farming came first?"

"I had heard, I think, that so many people required much food. You said yourself, the Ganni split off from the Nanni, when the tribe grew too large."

"This is true, I said that." Israel said, and he laid a finger on a pawn. "And I have heard some say they think farming came from a desire for brewing. I do not know if I believe that." He pushed the piece of teak forward, and knocked a piece of ivory off the board.

A one-eyed teak bishop was blindsided by the scrimshaw knight, and Genbas lifted the holy man off the board.

"Why do you not believe that?"

"I have read--ah, you see what I say, how I glimpsed my Blackglass in so many books!--I have read many ways to brew beer. There are some which do not require settlement, or pottery, quite as we understand it. An empty gourd, some berries and water, a few weeks later...you see what I mean? That is perhaps not a sophisticated way to go about it, but as I have said, I think these were a sophisticated people, even if they did not have the technology we have today."

An ivory queen died. A teak king found himself in a canyon, his bishop too far away to be of help.

Gerbas broke the silence. "I like your idea. Though I do not think we got very far talking of the city of Blackglass."

"Tomorrow, perhaps, I will tell you more." Israel said. "For now, let us reset the board. I have a feeling we have played this game before."

###

Friday, January 24, 2014

Force Shiv

Force Shiv
by Bobby Derie

The bruises had mostly faded to blue-brown by the time the in-processing ritual had begun, but the drugs still had their hold on him. Eiven Task barely registered the proceedings, watching them dispassionately as though he had stepped outside his own head. The room was a bare cell, false stone flags, and the figure reading aloud his sentence and crimes was just a pale blue holoprojection, floating in midair. Task wondered if the Jedi from the hologram was alive, or just a recording. Below his feet, the floor hummed and vibrated. The cell was moving.
Eiven Task was human, or close enough; only the slight violent tint on the edge of his brown eyes and the gold creeping into his short-cropped brown hair suggested any alienage in his ancestry. At barely a meter and a half tall he was of average height for his species, and with the slim, stringy build of a marathoner or desert rat. The prison uniform they’d stuck him in reminded him of the bodysuits worn as underclothes by padawans, though perhaps a size too small.
Unconsciously, he tested his bonds. His right arm—he had only the one—was bound behind his back by a black sleeve. The stump of a prosthetic arm jutted out from his left shoulder, ending just above where the elbow joint should have been, and he wiggled it uselessly. Weird rings surrounded his feet at ankle and mid-calf, glowing slightly; Eiven wasn’t familiar with the technology, but he knew at this point he couldn’t even feel his legs below the knee. So he stood, thighs aching, trapped in the box. Waiting for it to stop talking.
Groggy from the drugs, disoriented by his seclusion, Task wasn’t prepared when the box opened beneath him. There was a brief sensation of weightlessness, followed by blinding sunlight on dark-adapted eyes, and then he fell. Pins and needles screamed in his legs and blood flowed back in the numb limbs, and he credited luck more than skill or the Force in managing a bit of a roll as he landed on the damp grass. One good arm still tied behind him, he sat blinking as his eyes adjusted, and pain began fading from his legs. Somewhere in the back of his brain he registered the rhythmic thumping on the ground of feet headed toward him.
When he could see again, he found himself in the middle of a small crowd. True Sith, humans and near-humans mostly, and a few more exotic species, including a practically emaciated Hutt. Hard men and women, by the look of them; lots of stringy muscle and fine grey hand-made tattoos. Like Task, they wore the thin grey bodysuits that marked them as inmates to this prison, but worn, stained, and mended from long use.
“Fresh meat,” the Hutt said in Basic. “Let me eat this one, Voss?”
One of the women stepped forward, about three heads taller than Task and built like a bodybuilder; with red skin and weird compound orange eyes.
“Simmer.” She said to the Hutt, her accent clipped and slightly mechanical. “Pecking order. You,” she toed Task. “Name?”
A glimmer of warning hit Task’s gut, and he tried to relax. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Eiven Task.”
The kick caught Task on the right temple; he’d half expected it, but couldn’t do much to avoid it. The blow was precise and powerful enough to split his scalp open, blood starting to flood over his right eye, but he responded almost instinctively, striking out with his own numb legs as it hit, catching Voss in the right knee. Task half-hoped the joint would buckle, but his kick lacked force. It just made her angry. She picked him up and grabbed the metal stump of his prosthetic left arm, then ripped it out of his shoulder. Eiven obliged her with a scream.
“I am Voss. You are Bitch. Jedi, Sith, don’t care. You do what I say, you live. Not, you die. Understand, Bitch?”
Task didn’t nod, for fear his head would fall off.
“Understood.” He managed.
Satisfied, most of the crowd dispersed. The Voss woman turned to a stumpy, long-necked brown alien. “Greenie. Cut Bitch loose.”
Then she dropped the remains of his arm and walked away.
From a sleeve, the brown alien produced a long-handled stick with a fragment of sharpened metal on the end, and waddled over to Task’s side, began sawing away at the material of the black sleeve holding his arm, humming all the while. Within a few minutes, Eiven felt a sudden slack and pulled the sleeve away. He stretched his fingers and wiped some of the blood from his eye.
The brown alien, Greenie, stuck out one long finger, which began to glow as from within. Eiven said nothing as the finger touched the cut, and the flesh seemed to burn—but in a few moments the blood stopped, and the pain receded to a dull ache. Task fingered the fresh scar on his brow.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome, Bitch.” Greenie said, amiably enough.
Still seated, Task started to massage some life back into his legs and feet, looking around, sniffing the air.
There were no walls to this prison, at least that he could see. He was seated on a sward of grass that inclined gently down to the sea, which was visible in three directions. Behind him, the land rose into a grassy knoll atop which where some stone buildings that had seen better centuries.
“Where are we?”
“Datooine. Jedi prison. Very old, very secret. Use, forget, use, forget.” Greenie said, spreading his arms wide. “Fallen Jedi, Sithspawn, padawans too dangerous to let go or train, masters grown senile or insane…all those the Jedi want to forget. What are you in for?”
An image flashed through Task’s mind: a Wookiee in Jedi robes, the flash of a lightsaber blade, that great furred head bouncing on the floor of the arena.
“Murder. You?”
Greenie smiled, raising its hands in front of it to display the pale grey Sith tattoos across its knuckles. Task sounded out the symbols in his head, translating it as something like “Reaper.”
“Any way off this rock?” he asked. Greenie chuckled.
“Supersith Bitch gonna fly? Or maybe swim? Hundred kilometers to main continent, easy. Datooine, sparsely populated. Food dropped in, thirty day cycle. Laced with drugs. Keeps us docile, keeps the rapes down. Voss’ posse say who gonna eat. Anybody try to escape, no food for a cycle. Eyes in the sky.” Greenie points up. “Transports, never come close enough. Been tried.”
Task nodded. “Any advice?”
Greenie slapped him on the ass, which was about shoulder-height for the small alien. “Make friends. Make shiv. Watch your back. Watch your butt.”
Eiven nodded, and as Greenie walked away, the human bent over and picked up the metal shaft of his left arm.
*
There were cells on the island, in the main structure; empty stone-walled cubes with thin window slits and communal toilets. They reminded Task more than a bit of the quarters he’d had as a padawan. He found one no-one else had claimed and laid down on the floor. It was a long night, and after Greenie’s bit of advice, Task would have opted to lay on his back if he was going to sleep. But there was no rest for him that night.
There was a story, before the first proto-sabers with their bulky power supplies were made, of the ancient Jedi wielding swords imbued with the Force. The Sith too, had their stories of terrific weapons, crafted with their strange alchemical arts, that could stand up to a lightsaber in combat. Task had faced such weapons before, studied the techniques, but he’d never tried to make one for himself.
Now was as good a time as any.
He lay awake before dawn, listening to the others in the darkness, opening himself up to the Force until he could feel the presence of his fellow prisoners. It was familiar and comforting in a way he hadn’t felt in many years, the pull of so many Force-users so close together.
With the sun came communal exercises, Voss leading forms for a group of about half the prisoners. Task watched them train. After that, everyone seemed to break off to do their own thing. Some sparred, other meditated, a few engaged in contests, most talked and argued. Real fights seemed few, but there was a definite animosity between different groups, individuals. Boredom was engrained in everyone, but Eiven was well aware that there were no guards for this camp—at least, not near enough to make a distance—and whatever they might look like, every single one of them was trained in combat.
Task tried to keep to himself, which didn’t win him any favors. As the emaciated Hutt had put it, he was fresh meat, and most of the prisoners wanted a piece of him one way or another. A new voice, new stories, a new opponent, a new piece of ass was all he was to most of them, and after Voss had shown that “Bitch” wasn’t going to topple the status quo, some of them decided he might even be a push-over.
The first fight came as Voss and her posse were passing out daily rations. Individually packaged with the minimum daily calories and nutrients for each prisoner, labeled with their name and species with little warning markers so nobody accidentally poisoned themselves. Task’s included a soft sugarwafer for dessert. A one-eyed Besalisk made a grab for it, and Eiven responded by punching the four-armed behemoth in its fat lips. That brought a smile to its broad face, and the rest of the prisoners made a circle to watch the fight.
The Besalisk was 1.8 meters tall, had four arms, and must have massed at least three times what Eiven did. Consequently, Task’s first attack was Force-fueled kick between the legs. The Besalisk brushed the kick aside with one sweep of its arms, and then barreled straight at the human, huge sweaty hands swinging and groping for holds as the smaller, thinner, nimbler Task dodged and weaved. Task didn’t know what the name of the Besalisk’s martial art was, but it was a wrestler’s art, and with the tremendous strength in those four broad shoulders Eiven didn’t want to think about what would happen if the Besalisk got a solid grip on him—and then it happened, and the four-armed brute slammed Task to the ground, using his weight to try and pin his arms and legs. The massive lips split in a huge smile, its top-left arm holding the sugarwafer in triumph.
Task smiled too, as the sharpened edge of his prosthetic arm dug deep into the bulbous pouch of flesh that the Besalisk had instead of a chin. There was only a momentary look of surprise on the Besalisk’s face, and then Task focused all his skill to telekinetically push the shiv straight up, right into the creature’s brain. It died almost instantly. Crawling out from under it took longer.
The crowd did not applaud as he struggled up, but nobody jumped the exhausted prisoner either, at least not with the shiv still in his hand. Most went back to eating, Voss had a couple of her boys take the corpse of the Besalisk away.
Greenie sidled up in his slow waddle, head bobbing.
“Was good fight, Darth Bitch.” the little brown alien said.
Task, nodding, bent down and picked up the blood-soaked sugarwafer and brought it to his lips. It tasted sweet.
###

Friday, January 17, 2014

Rites of Melchizedek

Rites of Melchizedek
by
Bobby Derie

Hart Island
5:48 AM

Something moved across the face of the waters. The fifty-year-old turned his grizzled face into the breeze, eyes closed, savoring the presence. He was dressed in woolen robes, the baggy mitznefet upon his head and secured by a gilded band, and his greying beard reached down to the gilded plaque of stones upon his chest, beneath which his heart fluttered in anticipation of the rite to come. Beneath the robes he still wore his silk suit pants and the cotton undershirt, though he had replaced leather shoes and black polyester socks for simple sandals. He could hardly imagine what his friends and business associates could say if they saw him, Julian Coen, printer and publisher, dressed as he was and standing here.

He opened his eyes and stared out across Long Island Sound at the morning lights of New York City. Dawn had not yet begun to break over that new Salem. It is time to begin the ceremony.

Hart Island was difficult for most to access at the best of times. It was not public land, but owned by the Department of Corrections, and visitors were allowed only rarely, and never past a certain area. Beyond that marker, prisoners toiled for pennies a day at the greatest mass grave in the United States...secret hands working on a sacred project of which they knew nothing.

Striding ahead, he strode over the buried but not unhallowed dead, stacked like cordwood in the earth beneath his feet, and up the little path that might have been a game trail - except there was no game on Hart Island. He had a flashlight in one hand, but chose not to use it, following the path by half-light and memory. Passing through the thin trees which autumn had stripped of their leaves, he came to the place. It did not look like much; just another of the island's ruins, blocks of tumbled stone laid out in a rough square to mark the boundaries of some old house. In one corner was a square block of paler stone with a rusty iron ring set into the middle of it. In all of its years as a prison, a fort, and finally a cemetery few had ever stumbled upon this sacred place, and none had guessed its true purpose.

Bending down and cursing at his years, the publisher set aside the flashlight and struggled with the heavy door to the sanctum. With much gasping and sweating, he managed to lift the stone aside, revealing a steep flight of stairs downward into the dark earth. The old man took a minute to catch his breath before descending, and that was when he heard the cold mechanical click from behind him.

The man stood before him in a dark suit and tie, not black but one of those dark greys that seems to drink in the night and become a part of it. Jutting shoulder pads gave menace to what was a slender figure, the breeze snapping the sleeves of his trousers around too-thin legs. The gun in his right hand was a flat, black thing. Unconsciously, Julian lifted his hands. The man with the gun smiled, and the metal teeth glinted in the pre-dawn glow. As if in answer, he raised his left hand - and Coen gasped at the figure burned into that hand. The stranger smiled wider at the publisher's reaction.

"Danke schön," the man said. "For this." A crack rang out.

Coen did not remember falling, only the sudden pain and heat as the bullet tore through his neck. He stared upwards at the dwindling stars. A leeching cold was working its way through his body from the terrible wound, and his neck and back were already wet with blood. He did not see the stranger disappear into the sanctum, but he knew that must be where he was going...and what he would be doing. Even as he lay dying, he knew he must get a message to those who came after him. With supreme effort the old man reached for the heavy black flashlight, mouthing the words of the shema, though nothing came from his lips but a bloody froth. On the glass of lens, in his own bulb, he drew out the symbol...

###

Friday, January 10, 2014

The Broken Trumpet

The Broken Trumpet
by
Bobby Derie

The damned sun did not dim in the sky, as the news went out, and the children played in streets that had never seen shot nor shell, not for the whole of the thing. It was with a numb wonderment that neighbor spoke to neighbor, and faster it spread through the invisible channels, so that soon it seemed everyone in the city knew it - and it was not hard to see if one had heard the news, for there was a look in the eyes of those who had heard it, and perhaps a strange but reluctant duty they felt to share it, though it did not lessen what they felt. The children, who knew little of it, did not comprehend the news when they heard it, and played on despite their parents' somber mood.

Some wept, though on reflection they might have wondered at their tears, for the empty statistics in every newspaper had not drawn any moisture from them, unless they saw the name of some friend or loved one. More drank, in quiet, each to their own thoughts, though appreciative of the company of others. The bartenders stood in painful sobriety to keep the flow; for the terribleness of the news was defined by the needs of the universe: the sun still shone, life must continue. Rage there might have been a little, but it was the impotent rage that flared when the time for it was long passed, and the only victims were a few who harmed only themselves - and even then, a few were saved. For most there was no tangible target for their emotion, save in meditation on the symbols of the old republic.

A crowd gathered around the flying flag, whose every wave in the breeze decried the reality of what had happened. Judges and police came out in the street with the common men to see it flap, and there was a grim finality as men with purpose came to slowly and somberly lower it for the final time. It was a respectful ceremony, and the men did it as they always had, perhaps this time with more care. They stood a little straighter, their movements never so crisp, though one's hands did shake as he grasped the rope, and in the end he held the folded flag to his breast. Without a word he took it with him back into the building, and perhaps that broke the spell.

The nights were alive with the sleepless, empty bellies rumbled against those who had forsaken hunger, food tasteless in their mouths - and yet, and yet the ache seemed to heal. Some gave voice to what they felt, and perhaps that helped; others simply lost themselves in the passing days, all work and bustle of life, and the children played.

Then the veterans started to trickle home.

There was an aura about them, almost of embarrassment. No parades, no medals. Some walked, others limped, a poor few rolled along the streets. They had served, it was true, and many with valor shown by scarred bodies and tortured minds; there was a gauntness that spoke of long nights and longer marches, a wild eye that had seen blood and fire, a sad one that had seen friends breathe no more forever. Listless, for the most part, they fell back to their old lives, their profession gone, along with their cause. In a way, they were the lucky ones - the front line, who could show the price they had paid. Yet no army marches forth alone, and there had been engineers and janitors, cooks and mechanics, secretaries and officers who had never heard a shot fired in anger. Harsh words were few, but harsh thoughts clouded them, not least their own. A pall of accusations hung over all but the most self-assured and self-centered - "Did I do enough?" was the terrible question, and it was left to each newborn civilian to measure for themselves.

The officers of the old regime had set themselves apart; they had been the face and body of the thing, but the spirit had fled, the trumpet had sounded and broken, and they were left each on their own to make their way. Some clung to power and position; empty vessels willing to be filled as the new tide came in. Others retreated into private life, for they who had been the face of the thing now found themselves in a strange country, at once familiar but alien to them. The final shot fired came from an old man, draped in the fallen flag.

Life would go on. It was not like the old time, if even the old times had been as they said. No rapine, no pillage; it was all politics and trade agreements, reparations and pardons. Life, industry, continued. There was money to be made, as they won the peace, and there were those there to make it. Yet forever after, while there were old men that recalled the snap of the flag and the strains of the anthem, they would carry with them the knowledge...that they were a defeated people.

### 

Friday, January 3, 2014

Machen, Remixed

Machen, Remixed

Text by Arthur Machen
Remixed by Bobby Derie

"Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that knife will effect."

"Certainly. And what about the book?"

"I was forgetting," he said, "that I too have something to tell."

"Well, would you mind confiding to me the circumstances that gave rise to the reflection?"

I broke the seals with a choking at my heart, and found an envelope inside, addressed also, but open, and I took the letter out. It was a piece of common dirty paper, to all appearance torn out of a cheap exercise-book, and in the middle were a few lines written in a queer cramped hand. Night after night he had labored on, persevering in his effort, even through the cold sickness of despair, when every line was doomed as it was made.

"But, you know, I was the real lunatic. Think of it, and you will see that from the literary standpoint, Catholic dogma is merely the witness, under a special symbolism, of the enduring facts of human nature and the universe; it is merely the voice which tells us distinctly that man is not the creature of the drawing-room and the Stock Exchange, but a lonely awful soul confronted by the Source of all Souls, and you will realise that to make literature it is necessary to be, at all events, subconsciously Catholic. I will not be too dogmatic."

Against one wall stood a heavy bookcase, with glass doors, solid and of dark mahogany, but made in the intermediate period that came between Chippendale and the modern school of machine-turned rubbish.

"Of course fine literature must have its gross and carnal body, we must know 'who's who,' for I don't think an old-fashioned receipt that I remember was ever very successful."

He touched the manuscript on the desk, and the feeling of the pages seemed to restore all the papers that had been torn so long ago.

"Well, the solution of the difficulty seems to me to be sought for in the remarks I was making just now about 'facts' in art. Remember; we have settled that literature is the expression of the 'standing out,' of the withdrawal of the soul, it is the endeavour of every age to return to the first age, to an age, if you like, of savages, when a man crept away to the rocks or to the forests that he might utter, all alone, the secrets of his own soul. Just as our remote ancestors called the dreaded beings 'fair' and 'good' precisely because they dreaded them, so they had dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be the very reverse. It is a wonderful resolve, an infinite career."

He touched the manuscript; whatever it was, it was the result of painful labor and disappointment, not of the old flush of hope, but it came of weary days, of correction and re-correction.

"Suppose that a few yards from this room—in the next house, in the next street—a woman is waiting for the return of her husband and son. He was rather an evil-looking old nobleman, but the clergy and gentry, their wives and sons and daughters welcomed him with great and unctuous joy. In that you have the contrast of social ranks: the 'two' are the Lady of the Manor and an educated peasant, but how utterly all thought of 'society' (in any sense of the word) disappears from those wonderful pages, as you advance and find that the theme is really Love. Indeed, on some homeopathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious."

"You have met Mrs. Beaumont?"

He gave me a black look and made as if he would go in, but he changed his mind, and faced me.

"Yes, and it's very possible that the woman may have more than one name. I, who have dealt with death all my life, and have dabbled with the melting ruins of the earthly tabernacle. Look how your hand shakes. You know it's not my fault; I have asked you to try Dr. Jelly's Cooling Powders again and again."

"Who is this woman?" he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.

The two men sat silent for some time, each weaving his own fancies of the story; but lust of the marvellous was slowly overpowering Dyson's more sober thoughts. He had gone free one bleak morning in February, and after those dreary terrible weeks the desk and the heap and litter of papers had once more engulfed and absorbed him.

"What is the 'Œdipus' but an appeal to the emotions? Lucian's father was late at the station, and consequently Lucian bought the Confessions of an English Opium Eater which he saw on the bookstall. A slight sickness, my heart beating rather more rapidly than usual, a choking in the throat, and a difficulty of utterance; such were my sensations as I walked to the Cosmopole. I was then privileged or accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The man was dead, but the smoke of his torment mounted still, a black vapor. It was a strange sickly smell, vaporous and overpowering, like some strong anæsthetic. I recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly too, in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory. He had not been able to give any information as to the present condition of Edgar Allan Poe's old school."

There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory.

"It is certainly an extraordinary letter," he said. "Magic is justified of her children."

###