The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,171

was not the door that would lead to Mount Coglians. But I could not hold back from entering it.’

‘I did not see anything like that,’ Quare said. ‘I saw … But I do not have the words for it.’ A shiver ran through him. ‘Madness. That is what I saw. Madness.’

‘Yet even that may be proof of a kind,’ Longinus said.

Quare gave a sickly laugh. ‘Proof that the universe is mad?’

‘Or that we humans, for all our vaunted intellect and powers of reason, are helpless when confronted by the true mystery of existence.’

‘That is no comfort,’ Quare said.

‘Why, the truth seldom is,’ Longinus answered, raising his eyebrows. ‘At least, not at first. It is always painful to have one’s illusions dispelled. But salutary. Would you not rather know the truth than continue in ignorance?’

‘But what good is that knowledge if it merely reveals the extent of our helplessness, our ignorance?’

‘Every increase in knowledge is beneficial in and of itself,’ Longinus answered. ‘And perhaps we are not so helpless after all, Mr Quare. What seems like magic or miracle – or, indeed, madness – may be nothing more than a mechanism we do not yet understand. But that does not mean it lies forever beyond our understanding. Or our mastery.’

‘It sounds as though you would make yourself one of them,’ Quare said. ‘Raise yourself above the human and become a god.’

Longinus’s eyes flashed; suddenly Quare was reminded that the man, for all his eccentricity and fondness for disguise, was an aristocrat, a peer of the realm. ‘We are beings of reason and self-awareness. Our birthright is one of dignity and freedom. No one has a right to be our masters. If I would raise myself to their level, what of it? How better to pull them down?’

‘Why? To take their place? Exchange one pantheon for another, make yourself the Zeus to Doppler’s Cronos?’

‘I am an Englishman, sir,’ Longinus responded with heat. ‘I am no advocate of absolute monarchy, not in this world or any other. I have not forgotten Corinna’s words: that Doppler and the rest are not fallen but risen angels, and how their sin lay not in rebellion but rather in the act of setting themselves above others. And yet, is it right that we humans, through no fault of our own, find ourselves locked out of the Otherwhere and whatever lies beyond it?’

‘I do not know,’ Quare said. ‘I wish I had not learned of it, or seen it with my own eyes. I wish I could forget it now – all of it.’

‘Yes, but not even Doppler’s watch can turn back time and erase the past. What’s done is done and cannot be undone. I am afraid there is no forgetting, Mr Quare – for either of us. Fate, or some other power, has touched us, changed us. We are no longer what we were. For us, there can be no going back. Only forward.’

Quare nodded grimly. ‘Then let us go forward, by all means.’

Together, side by side, they returned to the Otherwhere. And this time, Quare did not flinch or close his eyes, but faced as squarely as he could the madness that he saw there. He did not try to make sense of it, to squeeze its disparate dimensions into the Procrustean bed of his reason; instead, he let it wash over and through him. And to his surprise, he did not go mad. He did not become so attenuated, so stretched out, that nothing remained of him, as he had feared might happen. He was not swallowed up. He felt it now: this place, for all its terrible strangeness, was not foreign to him … at least, not any longer. Longinus was right. He had been changed. He was no intruder here, no trespasser. He belonged. It was as if something that had been within him all his life, but so deeply asleep he had not known of its existence, or even suspected it, had awakened at last, and was now sitting up in bed and rubbing the last grains of sleep from its eyes, looking out with wonder and eager anticipation upon the home it had been dreaming of. That part of himself did not see madness here. Instead, it grasped the order within the chaos. How could he have failed to see it before? Why, the path back to Wichcote House was so clear a child could not miss it! Laughing now, he brought his foot down and finished the step he