real work begins. There is much to harvest, and only so many hours before dawn.
The improbable road spools onward, and outward, and the journey continues from here.
THE IMPOSSIBLE CITY
Timeline: 10:22 CST, July 3, 1986.
Reed hasn’t felt this good in years.
Leigh is safely back at the compound, up to her elbows in small-minded fools who can, hopefully, be more use in death than they were in life; the three sets of cuckoos have been split up and whisked away to their new homes, to be raised by ordinary people in an ordinary world.
(The fact that three of those supposedly “ordinary” families belong to him, body and soul, is irrelevant. They are failed alchemists all, scholars who had the desire but not the skill to serve him more directly. They will play at being lovers—perhaps some of them will actually fall in love—and they will raise his experiments with dedication and care. They are scientists. They have been given a project to complete. Failure is not an option; it would result in their bodies being given over to Leigh’s tender mercies, and no one who has met the woman would ever take such a risk. They are almost there. The Impossible City will be his.)
The car stops. Reed adjusts the collar of his shirt before he opens the door. Gone are the jewel tones and eye-catching runes, replaced by proper funereal black and a high-buttoned shirt that lends an almost parochial tone to his appearance. The Congress is not susceptible to the same showman’s tricks as his erstwhile investors. They must be handled with a more . . . delicate hand.
(Asphodel at the end: Asphodel the phoenix, on the verge of bursting into flames from the sheer force of her frustration. “They’re so sure they know what’s possible that they’ve limited themselves,” she snarls, and he could listen to her rage forever, could help her tear down the foundations of the world if that’s what she wants. She is his only love and his only superior and his only regret, for they both know what comes next in the story of their lives. They both know he’ll have to be the one to hold the knife.)
As he expected, they are waiting for him when he steps into the hall, his heels echoing in the stagnant air. The locals think this is a church, although none of them can name the denomination or remember anyone who comes to services here. Still, the shape of it is right, and when they drive by on a Sunday morning, there are always people standing on the green, dressed in modest suits, in sensible gowns. What else could it be?
Sometimes the easiest trick is hiding something in plain sight. That which can be found without looking can’t possibly be dangerous, after all.
Reed regards the four men in front of him with a smile on his lips and murder in his heart. “I see you heard my news,” he says. “I thought I was coming to inform Master Daniels of something that might surprise him. Where is he?”
“Master Daniels has better uses for his time than consorting with the likes of you,” says one of the men, a pale whisper of a thing with barely visible eyebrows.
“I am a member of the Congress, am I not?” Reed continues to smile, and wonders whether the lack of facial hair is natural or the result of a laboratory accident. In either case, it could be resolved with simple cosmetics, and then the issue of the man’s faintly alien appearance would be resolved. “I have as much of a right to appear before our principal as any of you.”
“You tread dangerous ground,” says the next man, stout and solid in his charcoal suit, his businessman’s pose. “The Doctrine is not to be interfered with. Did the death of your master teach you nothing?”
Reed’s smile doesn’t flicker. “You have no right to speak of her, whose heart you broke, whose work you disdained yet do not shy away from using to your own advantage. Or have you retained your boyish figure through some mechanism other than her elixir of life?”
The man’s cheeks redden; he turns his face away. Reed steps forward.
“I will speak with Master Daniels. I will inform him that I have embodied the Doctrine, and give this Congress one more chance to grant me the position and power my accomplishments deserve. If I am refused, I will be quit of you, and my eventual command of this world’s defining forces