The Pillars of Eternity

Romrey had dealt five cards. ‘He is,’ he said, pointing to the first, which was the Vehicle, showing a gorgeous chariot-like ship surging through space, sometimes dipping into planetary atmospheres, past shining cities or even under oceans.

‘This is the perfect card of assent and victory,’ he said. ‘It tells us we are right in our assumption. Now, we have two picture cards and three suit cards – two wings, and one cubes. Wings predominate, and stand for north. Therefore he is in the north of the city. But cubes are also present, and they stand for west. So he’s in the northwest, or more probably the north-northwest.’

He peered thoughtfully at the other picture card, as though hoping for some extra clue in its motions. It was the Inverted Man. ‘Note that his head enters a deep shaft. It could mean that our target is underground.’ He darted a look at Boaz. ‘Can your beams reach down there?’

‘It depends how deep,’ Boaz said. ‘Shall I begin?’

Romrey hesitated, fingered the next card in the deck, then pushed it back. ‘OK.’

Boaz slumped, his fist falling to the table with a thump.

He called on his ship, and down below them the innards of one of the big casings geared up, sending beams lunging softly forth. Out, out, up into towers, down into basements, sorting through a collage of Wildhart’s innumerable private scenes.

As on previous occasions, Boaz noted to himself how repetitious were those scenes. Human life centred around only a few activities. People ate, drank, slept, quarrelled, fought, made love, gambled, studied, worked. It was like a number matrix in which nearly all the numbers were the same. But of course this was Wildhart, a border town. In a hundred places around the city men and women were submitting to sex death. There was much robbery, as well as murder – a crime cheapened today by its erotic associations. As well as debauchery in all its most inventive forms.

After getting his bearings, Boaz followed Romrey’s suggestion and concentrated on the substreet levels, muttering a monologue to which Romrey listened intently while laying down more cards, trying to interpret them into suggestions as to which direction Boaz should veer in.

Such a rapid, bewildering overseeing of the life of the city was tiring. And frustrating. After an hour Boaz stopped, exhausted. They had got nowhere.

‘This is no use,’ he said. ‘We are making fools of ourselves with those cards.’

‘I don’t reckon so.’

‘It is ridiculous. I grant they have a lot of adp. So what? How can that affect their order when shuffled?’

Romrey frowned. ‘I heard something about that once, but I didn’t understand it. These cards are locked into the structure of the world somehow. They are never wrong, provided you trust them. But sometimes you have to do a rerun.’

Boaz snorted, glancing scornfully first at Obsoc and then at Mace. Romrey was shuffling again. ‘We’ll start from the beginning,’ he decided stubbornly.

Once more he laid down five cards. The first was the Vehicle. ‘Again the Vehicle!’ he announced triumphantly. ‘Again the Inverted Man! But look here.’

The hand was uncannily similar to the first one, so much so that Boaz suspected sleight of hand. There were two picture cards and three suit cards. And two of the suit cards were wings, as before. But the other was laser rods, not cubes.

‘The first reading misled us,’ Romrey muttered. ‘Of course – the cubes had a low value, and was not reliable. Here we have the nine of rods, which is more definitive. The co-ordinates are to be found in the north-northeast, not north-northwest.’

Wearily Boaz took up the hunt again. And suddenly he seemed to go in rapport with Romrey. He was telling him where he was and what he saw, and Romrey was slapping down card after card, telling him which way to move and whether he was getting closer or farther.

Romrey himself seemed to go into a daze. He held each hand of five fanned before his face as if playing one of the old games like poker or gin-rummy. And he talked, spinning a story out of the cards, sometimes seeming to be ahead of Boaz. Like an invisible spirit, the shipkeeper moved into a semi-derelict area, drifting past broken walls of HCferric that inadequately hid the derelict human beings who sheltered behind them, gliding over dusty unused roadways littered with urban detritus.

Again and again the Inverted Man was turning up, like a flashing locator signal. It told them that Boaz was warm. Then he went through the wall of what appeared to be a deserted warehouse. The ship had found something there, he knew. Mouldy abandoned bales of some sort of fibre were stacked to one side. Without pause, the floor rose up to him. He went through it, down into a series of cellars.

One of them had been converted into makeshift living quarters. On a low couch lay a sleeping figure. Beside it, on the floor, was a dish containing a white powder.