The Great and Secret Show. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ face beyond the fire registered surprise.

      ‘You know a great deal.’

      ‘No. Not really. Just bits and pieces.’

      ‘Very few people know about the Shoal.’

      ‘I know of several,’ said Jaffe.

      ‘Really?’ said Kissoon, his tone toughening. ‘I’d like their names.’

      ‘I had letters from them …’ Jaffe said, but faltered when he realized he no longer knew where he’d left them, those precious clues that had brought him through so much hell and heaven.

      ‘Letters from whom?’ Kissoon said.

      ‘People who know … who guess … about the Art.’

      ‘Do they? And what do they say about it?’

      Jaffe shook his head. ‘I’ve not made sense of it yet,’ he said. ‘But I think there’s a sea –’

      ‘There is,’ said Kissoon. ‘And you’d like to know where to find it, and how to be there, and how to have power from it.’

      ‘Yes. I would.’

      ‘And in return for this education?’ Kissoon said. ‘What are you offering?’

      ‘I don’t have anything.’

      ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Kissoon said, turning his eyes up to the roof of the hut as though he saw something in the smoke that roiled there.

      ‘OK,’ Jaffe said. ‘Whatever I’ve got that you want. You can have it.’

      ‘That sounds fair.’

      ‘I need to know. I want the Art.’

      ‘Of course. Of course.’

      ‘I’ve had all the living I need,’ Jaffe said.

      Kissoon’s eyes came back to rest on him.

      ‘Really? I doubt that.’

      ‘I want to get … I want to get …’ (What? he thought. What do you want?) ‘Explanations,’ he said.

      ‘Well, where to begin?’

      ‘The sea,’ Jaffe said.

      ‘Ah, the sea.’

      ‘Where is it?’

      ‘Have you ever been in love?’ Kissoon replied.

      ‘Yes. I think so.’

      ‘Then you’ve been to Quiddity twice. Once the first night you slept out of the womb. The second occasion the night you lay beside that woman you loved. Or man, was it?’ He laughed. ‘Whichever.’

      ‘Quiddity is the sea.’

      ‘Quiddity is the sea. And in it are islands, called the Ephemeris.’

      ‘I want to go there,’ Jaffe breathed.

      ‘You will. One more time, you will.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘The last night of your life. That’s all we ever get. Three dips in the dream-sea. Any less, and we’d be insane. Any more –’

      ‘And?’

      ‘And we wouldn’t be human.’

      ‘And the Art?’

      ‘Ah, well … opinions differ about that.’

      ‘Do you have it?’

      ‘Have it?’

      ‘This Art. Do you have it? Can you do it? Can you teach me?’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘You’re one of the Shoal,’ Jaffe said. ‘You’ve got to have it, right?’

      ‘One?’ came the reply. ‘I’m the last. I’m the only.’

      ‘So share it with me. I want to be able to change the world.’

      ‘Just a little ambition.’

      ‘Don’t fuck with me!’ Jaffe said, the suspicion growing in him that he was being taken for a fool.

      ‘I’m not going to leave empty-handed, Kissoon. If I get the Art I can enter Quiddity, right? That’s the way it works.’

      ‘Where’d you get your information?’

      ‘Isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes. And I say again: where’d you get your information?’

      ‘I can put the clues together. I’m still doing it.’ He grinned as the pieces fitted in his head. ‘Quiddity’s somehow behind the world, isn’t it? And the Art lets you step through, so you can be there any time you like. The Finger in the Pie.’

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘That’s what somebody called it. The Finger in the Pie.’

      ‘Why stop with a finger?’ Kissoon remarked.

      ‘Right! Why not my whole fucking arm?’

      Kissoon’s expression was almost admiring. ‘What a pity,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t be more evolved. Then maybe I could have shared all this with you.’

      ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘I’m saying you’re too much of an ape. I couldn’t give you the secrets in my head. They’re too powerful, too dangerous. You’d not know what to do with them. You’d end up tainting Quiddity with your puerile ambition. And Quiddity must be preserved.’

      ‘I told you … I’m not leaving here empty-handed. You can have whatever you want from me. Whatever I’ve got. Only teach me.’

      ‘You’d give me your body?’ Kissoon said. ‘Would you?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘That’s all you’ve got to bargain with. Do you want to give me that?’

      The reply flummoxed Jaffe.

      ‘You want sex?’ he said.

      ‘Christ, no.’

      ‘What then? I don’t understand.’

      ‘The flesh and blood. The vessel. I want to occupy your body.’

      Jaffe СКАЧАТЬ