"Are there many of you?"

"Many," the Nulh'anac said. "Minus one." It looked in Gentle's direction, "But you know this, of course. You killed him."

"He would have killed me if I hadn't."

"And wouldn't that have been a proud boast for our, tribe," it said, "to have killed the Son of G.o.d?"

It made a laugh from its lightning, though there was more humor in a death rattle.

"Aren't you afraid?" Gentle asked it, "Why should I be afraid?"

"Talking this way when my Father may hear you?"

"He needs my service," came the reply. "And I do not need to live." It paused, then said, "Though I would miss burning the Dominions."

Now it was Gentle's turn to ask why.

"Because it's what I was born to do. I've lived too long, waiting for this."

"How long?"

"Many thousands of years, Maestro. Many, many thousands.": It silenced Gentle, to think that he was traveling beside an ent.i.ty whose span was so much vaster than his own, and antic.i.p.ated this imminent destruction as its life's reward. How far off was that prize? he wondered. His sense of time was impoverished without the tick of breath and heartbeat . to aid it, and he had no clue as to whether he'd vacated his body in Gamut Street two minutes before, or five, or ten. It was in truth academic. With the Dominions reconciled, Hapexamendios could choose His moment, and Gentle's only comfort was the continued presence of his guide, who would be, he suspected, gone from his side at the first call to arms.

As the street ahead grew denser, the Nullianac's speed and height dropped, until they were hovering inches above the ground, the buildings around them grotesquely elaborate now, every fraction of their brick and stonework etched and carved and filigreed. There was no beauty in these intricacies, only obsession. Their surfeit was more morbid than lively, like the ceaseless, witless motion of maggots. And the same decadence had overcome the colors, the delicacy and profusion of which he'd so admired in the suburbs. Their nuances were gone. Every color now competed with scarlet, the mingled show not brightening the air but bruising it. Nor was there light here in the same abundance as there'd been at the outskirts of the city. Though seams of brightness still flickered in the stone, the elaboration that surrounded them devoured their glow and left these depths dismal.

"I can go no farther than this, Reconciler," the Nullianac said. "From here, you go alone."

"Shall I tell my Father who found me?" Gentle said, hoping that the offer might coax a few more tidbits from the creature before he came into Hapexamendios' presence.

"I have no name," the Nullianac replied. "I am my brother and my brother is me."

"I see. That's a pity."

"But you offered me a kindness, Reconciler. Let me offer you one."

"Yes?"

"Name me a place to destroy in your name, and I'll make it my business to do so: a city, a country, whatever."

"Why would I want that?" Gentle said.

"Because you're your Father's son," came the reply. "And what your Father wants, so will you."

Despite all his caution, Gentle couldn't help but give the destroyer a sour look.

"No?" it said.

"No."

"Then we're both without gifts to give," it said and, turning its back, rose and went from Gentle without another word.

He didn't call after it for directions. There was only one way to go now, and that was on, into the heart of the me tropolis, choked though it was by gaud and elaboration. He had the power to go at the speed of thought, of course, but he wished to do nothing that might alarm the Unbeheld, so took his spirit into the garish gloom like a pedestrian, wan dering between edifices so fraught with ornament they could not be far from collapse.

As the splendors of the suburbs had given way to deca dence, so decadence had, in its turn, given way to pathology, a state that drove his sensibilities beyond distaste or antipathy to the borders of panic. That mere excess might squeeze such anguish out of him was revelation in itself. When had he become so rarefied? He, the cra.s.s copyist. He, the syba rite who'd never said enough, much less too much. What had he become? A phantom aesthete driven to terror by the sight of his Father's city.

Of the Architect Himself, there was no sign, and rather than advance into complete darkness Gentle stopped and simply said, "Father?"

Though his voice had very little authority here, it was loud in such utter silence, and must surely have gone to every threshold within the radius of a dozen streets. But if Hapexamendios was in residence behind any of these doors, He made no reply.

Gentle tried again. "Father. I want to see you."

As he spoke he peered down the shadowy street ahead, looking for some sign, however vestigial, of the Unbeheld's whereabouts. There was no murmur, no motion. But his study was rewarded by the slow comprehension that his Father, for all His apparent absence, was in fact here in front of him and to his left, and to his right, and above his head, and beneath his feet. What were those gleaming folds at the windows, if they weren't skin? What were those arches, if they weren't bone? What was this scarlet pavement, and this light-shot stone, if it wasn't flesh? There was pith and marrow here. There was tooth and lash and nail. The Nullianac hadn't been speaking of spirit when it had said that Hapexamendios was everywhere in this metropolis. This was the City of G.o.d; and G.o.d was the city.

Twice in his life he'd had presentiments of this revelation. The first time when he'd entered Yzordderrex, which had been commonly called a city-G.o.d itself and had been, he now understood, his brother's unwitting attempt to recreate his Father's masterwork. The second when he'd undertaken the business of similitudes and had realized, as the net of his ambition encompa.s.sed London, that there was no part of it, from sewer to dome, that was not somehow a.n.a.logous to his anatomy.

Here was that theory proved. The knowledge didn't strengthen him but, instead, fueled the dread he felt, thinking of his Father's immensity. He'd crossed a continent and more to get here, and there'd been no part of it that was not made as these streets were made, his Father's substance replicated in unimaginable quant.i.ties to become the raw materials for the masons and carpenters and hod carriers of His will. And yet, for all its magnitude, what was His city? A trap of corporeality, and its architect its prisoner.

"Oh, Father," he said, and perhaps because the formality had gone from his voice, and there was sorrow in it, he was finally granted a reply.

"You've done well for me," the voice said.

Gentle remembered its monotony well. Here was the same barely discernible modulation he'd first heard as he'd stood in the shadow of the Pivot.

"You 've succeeded where all the others failed," Hapexa- mendios said. "They went astray or let themselves be crucified. But you, Reconciler, you held to your course. "

"For your sake, Father."

"And that service has earned you a place here," the G.o.d said. "In my city. In my heart."

"Thank you," Gentle replied, fearful that this gift was going to mark the end of the exchange.

If so, he'd have failed as his mother's agent. Tell Him you want to see His face, she'd said. Distract Him. Flatter Him. Ah, yes, flattery!

"I want to learn from You now, Father," he said. "I want to be able to carry Your wisdom back into the Fifth with me."

"You've done all you need to do, Reconciler," Hapexamendios said. "You won't need to go back into the Fifth, for your sake or mine. You 'II stay with me and watch my work."

"What work is that?"

"You know what work," came the G.o.d's reply. "I heard you speak with the Nullianac, Why are you pretending ignorance?"

The inflexions in His voice were too subtle to be interpreted. Was there genuine inquiry in the question, or a fury at His son's deceit?

"I didn't wish to presume, Father," Gentle said, cursing himself for this gaffe. "I thought You'd want to tell me Yourself."

''Why would I tell you what you already know?" the G.o.d said, unwilling to be persuaded from this argument until He had a convincing answer. "You already have every knowledge you need-"

"Not every one," Gentle said, seeing now how he might . divert the flow.

"What do you lack? " Hapexamendios said. "I'll tell you everything."

"Your face, Father."

"My face? What about my face?"

"That's what I lack. The sight of Your face."

"You've seen my city," the Unbeheld replied. "That's my face."-"There's no other? Really, Father? None?"

"Aren't you content with that?" Hapexamendios said. "Isn't it perfect enough? Doesn't it shine?"

"Too much, Father. It's too glorious."

"How can a thing be too glorious?"

"Part of me's human, Father, and that part's weak. I look at this city, and I'm agog. It's a masterwork-"

"Yes, it is."

"Genius."

"Yes, it is."; "But Father, grant me a simpler sight. Show a glimpse of the face that made my face, so that I can know the part of me that's You."

He heard something very like a sigh in the air around him.

"It may seem ridiculous to you," Gentle said, "but I've followed this course because I wanted to see one face. One loving face." There was enough truth in this to lend his words real pa.s.sion. There was indeed a face he'd hoped to find at the end of his journey. "Is it too much to ask?" he said.

There was a flutter of movement in the dingy arena ahead, and Gentle stared into the murk, in the expectation of some colossal door opening. But instead Hapexamendios said, "Turn your back, Reconciler."

"You want me to leave?"

"No. Only avert your eyes."

Here was a paradox: to be told to look away when sight was requested. But there was something other than an unveiling afoot. For the first time since entering the Dominion, he heard sounds other than a voice: a delicate rustling, a muted patter, creaks and whirrings stealing on his ear. And all around him, tiny motions in the solid street, as the monoliths softened and inclined towards the mystery he'd turned his back upon. A step gaped and oozed marrow. A wall opened where stone met stone, and a scarlet deeper than any he'd seen, a scarlet turned almost black, ran in rills as the slabs yielded up their geometry, lending themselves to the Unbeheld's purpose. Teeth came down from an unknitted balcony above, and loops of gut unraveled from the sills, dragging down curtains of tissue as they came.

As the deconstruction escalated, he dared the look he'd been forbidden, glancing back to see the entire street in ross or petty motion: forms fracturing, forms congealing, forms drooping and rising. There was nothing recognizable in the turmoil, and Gentle was about to turn away when one of the pliant walls tumbled in the flux and for a heartbeat, no more, he glimpsed a figure behind it. The moment was long enough to know the face he saw and have it in his mind's eye when he looked away. There was no face its equal in the Imajica. For all the sorrow on it, for all its wounds, it was exquisite.

Pie was alive and waiting there, in his Father's midst, a prisoner of the prisoner. It was all Gentle could do not to turn there and then and pitch his spirit into the tumult, demanding that his Father give the mystif up. This was his teacher, he'd say, his renewer, his perfect friend. But he fought the desire, knowing such an attempt would end in calamity, and instead turned away again, doting on the glimpse he'd had while the street behind him continued to convulse. Though the mystif s body had been marked by the hurts it had suffered, it was more whole than Gentle had dared hope. Perhaps it had drawn strength from the land on which Hapexamendios' city was built, the Dominion its people had worked their feits upon, before G.o.d had come to raise this metropolis.

But how should he persuade his Father to give the mystif up? With pleas? With further flattery? As he chewed on the problem, the ructions around him began to subside, and he heard Hapexamendios speak behind him.

"Reconciler? "

"Yes, Father?"

"You wanted to see my face."

"Yes, Father?"

"Turn and look."

He did so. The street in front of him had not lost all semblance of a thoroughfare. The buildings still stood, their doors and windows visible. But their architect had claimed from their substance sufficient pieces of the body he'd once owned to recreate it for Gentle's edification. The Father was human, of course, and had perhaps been no larger than His son in His first incarnation. But He'd remade Himself three times Gentle's height and more, a teetering giant that was as much borne up by the street He'd racked for matter as of it.

For all His scale, however, His form was ineptly made, as if He'd forgotten what it was like to be whole. His head was enormous, the shards of a thousand skulls claimed from the buildings to construct it, but so mismatched that the mindit was meant to shield was visible between the pieces, pulsing and flickering. One of His arms was vast, yet ended in a hand scarcely larger than Gentle's, while the other was wizened, but finished with fingers that had three dozen joints. His torso was another ma.s.s of misalliances, His innards cavorting in a cage of half a thousand ribs, His huge heart beating against a breastbone too weak, to contain it and already fractured. And below, at His groin, the strangest deformation: a s.e.x He'd failed to conjure into a single organ, but which hung in rags, raw and useless. "Now," the G.o.d said. "Do you see?" The impa.s.sivity had gone from His voice, its monotony replaced by an a.s.sembly of voices, as many larynxes, none of them whole, labored to produce each word.

"Do you see," He said again, "the resemblance?"

Gentle stared at the abomination before him and, for all its patchworks and disunions, knew that he did. It wasn't in the limbs, this likeness, or in the torso, or in the s.e.x. But it was there. When the vast head was raised, he saw his face in the ruin that clung to his Father's skull. A reflection of a reflection of a reflection, perhaps, and all in cracked mirrors. But oh! it was there. The sight distressed him beyond measure, not because he saw the kinship but because their roles seemed suddenly reversed. Despite its size, it was a child he saw, its head fetal, its limbs untutored. It was eons old, but unable to slough off the fact of flesh, while he, for all his naivetes, had made his peace with that disposal.

"Have you seen enough, Reconciler?" Hapexamendios said.

"Not quite." "What then?"

Gentle knew he had to speak now, before the likeness was undone again and the walls were resealed. "I want what's in You, Father." "In me?"

"Your prisoner, Father. I want Your prisoner." "I have no prisoner."

"I'm your son," Gentle said. "The flesh of your flesh. Why do you lie to me?"

The unwieldy head shuddered. The heart beat hard against the broken bone.

"Is there something you don't want me to know?" Gentie said, starting towards the wretched body. "You told me I could know everything."

The hands, great and small, twitched and jittered.

"Everything, You said, because I've done You perfect service. But there's something You don't want me to know."

"There's nothing."

"Then let me see the mystif. Let me see Pie 'oh' pah."

At this the G.o.d's body shook, and so did the walls around it. There were eruptions of light from beneath the ; flawed mosaic of His skull: little raging thoughts that cremated the air between the folds of His brain. The sight was a reminder to Gentle that, however frail this figure looked, it was the tiniest part of Hapexamendios' true scale. He was a city the size of a world, and if the power that had raised that city, and sustained the bright blood in its stone, was ever allowed to turn to destruction, it would beggar the Nullianacs.

Gentle's advance, which had so far been steady, was now , halted. Though he was a spirit here and had thought no barrier could be raised against him, there was one before him now, thickening the air. Despite it, and the dread he felt when reminded of his Father's powers, he didn't retreat. He * knew that if he did so the exchange would be over and Hapexamendios would be about His final business, His prisoner unreleased.

"Where's the pure, obedient son I had? " the G.o.d said. : "Still here," Gentle replied. "Still wanting to serve You, if You'll deal with me honorably."

A series of more livid bursts erupted in the distended skull. This time, however, they broke from its dome and rose into the dark air above the G.o.d's head. There were images in these energies, fragments of Hapexamendios' . thoughts, shaped from fire. One of them was Pie.

"You've no business with the mystif," Hapexamendios said. "It belongs to me."

"No, Father."

"To me."

"I married it, Father."

The lightning was quieted momentarily, and the G.o.d's pulpy eyes narrowed.