فصل دوازدهم

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Riddle of the Sphinxes

The rain was easing off when they turned off the Strand and headed downhill toward the Embankment. As they slowed a little, George asked a question that had been troubling him.

“What happens to statues when you shoot them—like you did—and they sort of go to dust and blow away?” The Gunner spared him half a glance and less of a smile and kept on walking.

“You don’t kill all statues like that. Not spits, anyway. But you kill a taint, they do go to pieces, and the wind or something takes them and winnows them off. I mean, they’re gone from the walking world. They do end up reconstituted back on their perch or their plinth after turn o’day, but they never walk again. They’re just lumps of rock or metal.” “And spits are different?”

“Chalk and cheese, mate. We don’t go to pieces like taints do. It’s like we got more to hold us together—the spirit part. At least that’s how I see it. It’s like a sense of who we are is just enough glue to stop us getting blown away like a taint. We can get hurt, mind, and if we’re hurt too far from home, same thing happens to us. But if we get back on our plinth or whatever before turn o’day—that’s midnight to you—we get better.” “You get better?”

“It’s like we wake up next day mended. Recharged, like a … like a …” “Like an electric toothbrush,” said George, getting it.

“A what?” said the Gunner, almost offended.

“Like an electric toothbrush,” said George.

“Electric toothbrush, my Aunt Fanny!” snorted the Gunner. “No such thing. What kind of banana would put electricity in their mouth? Stress is getting to you, mate.” “No—” began George.

“Adam Street.” The Gunner jerked a thumb at the street sign as they passed. “That’s a good omen, if you believe in ‘em.” George didn’t know what to say.

“Not really sure what to believe in after today.” The Gunner jumped over the railings into Victoria Embankment Gardens and lifted George after him.

“Well, believe in good luck, then. Got to be good luck coming to the Sphinxes down Adam Street. Adam being the first man, and all. I mean, this is man’s business you’re on now, young ‘un, so a good sign don’t do any harm. There they are.” He hunkered down behind the railing and pointed with his chin. George crouched next to him and looked across the traffic to the edge of the Thames. A tall stone obelisk soared up into the night sky, and on either side of it, looking in opposite directions up and down the river, lay two crouched figures with the massive bodies of lions and the smooth faces and ribbed headdresses of ancient Egyptian royalty.

“It’s Cleopatra’s Needle,” whispered George.

“’Course it is,” said the Gunner. “I said we needed to talk to the Sphinxes. Though don’t call it Cleopatra’s whatsit if it comes up in conversation. They’re a bit touchy on the subject.” “Why are they touchy?”

“Because they’re Sphinxes and they’re stuck in London and it’s a lot bloody colder than Egypt—how do I know? Anyway. They don’t like the rain, one of them really doesn’t like people, and they get really narked if you call it Cleopatra’s Needle.” George remembered walking past this place with his dad and mum when things were great and he was smaller.

“Right. It’s not Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s an obelisk to Thutmoses or Tutmosis or someone. …” The Gunner dropped his head and watched the last of the dwindling rain pour off it and splash on his boots.

“Probably shouldn’t have said that. I mean you’re right, but… you probably shouldn’t have said that.” “Why?” George asked.

The Gunner stood up and swept his cape back over his shoulder, staring across the road.

Edie’s voice came from behind them.

“Because they heard. And now they’re looking at you.” The Gunner’s eyes flicked at Edie and then dismissed her. “Both of them. And we only wanted to talk to the nice one. Enough trouble getting a straight answer out of her as it is. Come on …” He stepped over the railings and hoisted George over after him. Edie stood there with her hands on her hips.

“What about me?”

The Gunner shrugged.

“Not my problem. You got in there, you get out. But I’m telling you for real this time. Stay away. I won’t harm you. I’m a spit. Them Sphinxes, half-human, half-animal? … well, they’re something in between: half-taint, half-spit. Get on the wrong side of them, it could go either way.” He pulled George across the traffic, oblivious to the cars and buses swishing past, but avoiding them as if by magic or blind luck. He spoke quietly into George’s ear.

“It’s because they’re half-spit, half-taint that we’re talking to them. If you’ve stirred up the taints, they’ll know what’s to be done—if anything’s to be done.” As he got closer, George realized the Sphinxes were really as big as small elephants, and they both had their heads turned toward him. The faces were women’s faces, as alike as identical twins, but not, somehow, the same. The Sphinx on the right had a kind, amused smile on her lips. The Sphinx on the left had the same smile, but something wasn’t right about it. It wasn’t kind. It was pained. George found himself edging toward the kinder-looking Sphinx. He heard the Gunner whisper under his breath.

“Good choice.”

And then the Sphinx spoke.

“Thutmose the Second—to be exact.”

“Not that we like to be exact,” purred the other Sphinx. “We like to be enigmatic. Do you know what ‘enigmatic’ means, clever little boy?” The Gunner nudged George.

“It means mysterious,” he croaked. It really was very difficult having a conversation with a mythological creature the size of a minibus. You didn’t know where to look.

“It means much more than mysterious. It means obscure, it means questionable, it means unreliable.” George couldn’t help thinking they probably weren’t the best things to come to for advice then, but he knew instinctively that it would be a really bad idea to mention it.

“You’re probably not the best people to come to for advice then,” said a tough little voice behind him.

“Who is she?” purred what George was beginning to think of as the nice Sphinx.

“I’m Edie Laemmel,” said Edie before the Gunner could answer for her.

“She’s a glint,” hissed the other Sphinx.

And now even the nice Sphinx didn’t look so friendly either. They both tensed and drew back, like cats seeing a terrier approaching.

“Why did you bring a glint?” she asked the Gunner, using the word like it was something dirty. “We thought there were no more glints. We thought the gift had died out.” “She’s not with us. She’s just following us. She won’t leave us alone.” “Of course not. She’s a glint. They make pain for everyone. You shouldn’t have brought her.” The Gunner spun and pointed at Edie.

“Back away. Double-time. Across the street. Now.” Edie stood her ground. Her lower jaw came forward and a strand of hair dropped in front of her eyes as she lowered her head, never breaking eye contact with the Gunner. George watched her nostrils flare and her lips whiten as she pressed them together.

“Look—”

The Gunner waved her off. “Go away.”

“Listen—”

The Gunner stepped toward her suddenly. “Go away—please.” “I don’t even know what a glint is.”

The Gunner stopped. His head came back as if he hadn’t thought of this possibility, as if he needed a beat to consider it. Edie stuffed her bunched hands into her pockets and looked at George.

“I’ll go, if you tell me what a glint is.”

It was George’s turn to shrug helplessly. The Sphinxes hissed behind the Gunner. It was a cat noise, but coming from bodies their size it had the effect of a steam valve opening. The Gunner shook his head.

“No. You go. We ask these ladies our question. Then I’ll tell you.” Edie’s lips thinned down into an ever tighter line. Then she gritted out one word. Fine.

George watched her walk off down the pavement and lean against the wall, looking across the river as if she suddenly wasn’t interested in them anymore. The Gunner put a hand on his shoulder and turned him back to the Sphinxes. They looked more relaxed—although, as they spoke he noticed one or the other of them was always looking over his shoulder, keeping an eye on the small girl silhouetted against the Thames. The Gunner edged him closer to the statues. George’s head craned back as they loomed above him.

“We have a question.”

The not-nice Sphinx spat an answer without taking her eyes off Edie.

“Everyone has a question. That’s why they come to us.” “The boy, he’s done something to stir up the taints. They’re after him.” The other Sphinx, who wasn’t looking so nice anymore, stared at him.

“So what?”

“So the question is, how can we stop them—”

“Killing him?” finished the Sphinx.

“That’d do for a start, yeah,” said the Gunner.

“And that’s your question?”

The Gunner looked at George. George nodded.

The Sphinx on Edie-watch suddenly turned her huge eyes on George. Her movement was so fast, and the headdress so like a cobra’s hood fanned out on each side of her face, that George could only think of the three stone serpents rearing back to strike just before the Gunner had stepped off the monument. He could suddenly see exactly how half of her, at least, was a taint. The impression was reinforced as she hissed her question.

“You’re sure? You’re sure that is the question you want answered?” Since George couldn’t think of anything more important than not getting killed, he nodded again.

“Ask it, then.”

He cleared his throat.

“How can I stop these things killing me?”

They looked at him expectantly.

“Oh, please.”

The Sphinxes leaned against one another with a sinuous feline familiarity.

“Anyone can ask us a question, and we must answer, but only if the questioner first answers a riddle or a question we ask them. That is the way of the Sphinx.” George looked at the Gunner. The Gunner nodded.

“That’s how things work with them.”

“But I’m terrible at riddles.”

The not-nice Sphinx smiled. At least, George thought it was the not-nice Sphinx. Since Edie arrived, it really was becoming harder and harder to tell them apart.

“Then you won’t get an answer; and you can go away and take your glint with you.” “She’s not my glint.”

“You can take her away anyway.”

George saw a look in her face, a flash of malice, a spark of the same bored unpleasantness he’d seen in Killingbeck’s eyes. It made him angry. The anger flickered awake in his belly, like a flame in a woodstove when a log has been lying smoldering all night without flames, waiting for someone to open the door and let enough air in to reignite the blaze. It wasn’t a blaze, it was just a cat’s tongue of flame, but it was the first time George had felt anything except fear and confusion since the pterodactyl had unpeeled from the frieze, so he held on to it. It felt familiar, and comforting. He faced up to the Sphinx.

“Ask your riddle.”

The Sphinx lowered its head to the pavement. George could see its shoulders hunched high behind it. He knew he was getting the mouse’s eye-view of a big cat. And he knew cats liked playing with mice.

Before they ripped them apart.

The Sphinx’s head began to move in a small serpentine zigzag as it spoke. George wondered if it was trying to hypnotize him.

“I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings, Yet no man goes without me.

What’s got by me shall be well known.

What lies at me is the reason for things.

All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone.

Lose me and you will falter—yet if I am taken, you will find courage anew.” The other Sphinx purred the question over the first one’s shoulder.

“What am I?”

George stood there. Traffic hammered past on the road behind him. He could hear the hiss of tires on the wet tarmac. He knew the real world was right there, a world where boys didn’t have to answer impossible questions asked by even more impossible creatures like giant bronze cat-people. But he also knew that answering this question was the only way he could get back to that other safe world. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. And because he knew this, and couldn’t begin to think what the answer to the riddle was, he let that flicker of anger build. Frustration hit the anger like pure oxygen hitting a flame, and the flicker turned into a blaze and a roar that blocked everything out. He clenched his fists and turned to the Gunner.

“It’s not fair! I don’t know the answer! It’s stupid!” He felt the rain on his face trickling down the side of his nose. Then he realized it wasn’t raining, and that the rain on his nose was tears, and that made him angrier still. He swiped his hand across his face, wiping it off.

“It’s not fair, it’s just—”

The Gunner crouched down. Gripped his shoulders. Looked into his face. Shook him twice, hard.

“You’re angry. Sometimes angry gets things done. This isn’t one of those times, right? Angry stops you thinking. And this is one time you need to do exactly that.” George breathed in through his mouth, out through his nose. He did it again, trying to slow things down. It was something his dad had showed him how to do. Sometimes it worked. He looked up at the Sphinx.

“Can you say it again?” he asked.

“I don’t have to.”

George felt the flame flare. He tried to shut the oxygen off by controlling his breathing again.

“You must be scared I’ll guess it, then.”

The bronze eyes held steady. “Must I?”

George tried not to blink. The Sphinx shuddered and stretched.

“I am a suit no men may wear, neither peasants nor kings, Yet no man goes without me.

What’s got by me shall be well known.

What lies at me is the reason for things.

All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone.

Lose me and you will falter—yet if I am taken, you will find courage anew.” The moment the Sphinx began to talk, George closed his eyes. He just concentrated on what he was hearing. He thought of different kinds of suits: business suits, diving suits, suits of armor, tweed suits, lawsuits, sailor suits—nothing made sense. It just didn’t. It was like the crosswords his father used to do, clues within clues, cryptic like a code that only grown-ups understood. His father used to try clues on him, and he hardly ever understood the answers, even when he explained them to him. There were words that meant secret things, other words that meant you had to take words to bits and use their letters to make new words, and lots of shorthand winks at the puzzlers that the regulars would get to help them on their way.

He could see his father laughing at some particularly clever clue when he’d solved it. He could hear him saying it was simple if you remembered that words could mean more than one thing, saying you had to read the clues again because they might not mean what you first thought, saying that sometimes they were there to send you down the wrong alley.

He opened his eyes. The Sphinx’s smile was especially annoying. He closed them again. Suits—what other kind of suits were—And then it hit him like a bright flash, and he was talking before he had finished the thought.

“Hearts. Hearts! You’re a heart.”

His eyes opened fast enough to see the surprise ripple between the two Sphinxes. The Gunner gaped at him.

“Heart?”

George knew he was right. It all fell together as he spoke, and he felt something like clean air blowing through his mind.

“I am a suit no men may wear—that’s ‘suit’ like suits of cards, so it’s got to be clubs, spades, diamonds, or hearts. No man goes without me? Well, it’s got to be a heart, because if you don’t have a heart you’re like a thing without a battery, you don’t go at all. What’s got by me shall be well known? Easy—if you’ve got something by heart, you know it well. What lies at me? i.e. what lies at the heart of something—is the reason for things …” He could feel the Gunner looking at him in amazement. More than that, he felt elation sweeping him onward, his mind becoming faster and clearer as the rest of the riddle almost seemed to solve itself as it tumbled out of his mouth.

“All may touch me when I am soft, none when I am stone? A soft heart is easily touched, but a stone heart isn’t affected by anything; it’s untouchable! If you lose heart, you falter, but if you take heart, you get your courage back. Heart. The answer is heart. You have to answer my question!” He realized he was jabbing his finger at the front Sphinx, like he was in charge. It didn’t feel particularly wise or polite, but it felt good.

“You want to know how to stop the taints killing you?” “Yes. I answered your riddle. You have to tell me!” The Sphinx sat back on her haunches and looked at her sister. The sister spoke.

“Your remedy lies in the Stone Heart, and the Heart Stone shall be your relief. To end what has begun, you must first find the Stone Heart, and then you must make sacrifice and amends for that which was broken by placing on the Stone at the Heart of London that which is necessary for its repair.” George looked at the Gunner. The Gunner looked at him.

“What’s the Stone Heart?”

The Gunner shrugged. They both looked at the Sphinxes. The Sphinxes looked enigmatic.

“What’s the Stone Heart?”

If a cat can shrug, that’s what the Sphinx closest to George did.

“We answered your question. If you don’t understand the answer, maybe you should have asked a better one.” All the good feelings that had been washing through George seemed to stop and start to curdle all at once.

“That’s not fair!”

“We’re not fair. We’re Sphinxes. Now go away.” The second Sphinx looked a little shamefaced as it turned away and headed for its plinth. It was the nicer of the two.

“You cheated!”

“We answered your question.”

“But…”

“But you didn’t answer mine.”

There it was again. That gravelly little voice. The Sphinxes turned back. George turned. So did the Gunner. Edie was standing right behind him.

“He’s right. You cheated him. So now answer my question.” The Sphinxes got that cat with a terrier look again.

“We don’t have to.”

“Yes, you do. You’re Sphinxes. Answering questions is what you do. You’re just nasty about it. Both of you.” “Both of us?”

It was the not-nice Sphinx. Edie stood her ground.

“We’re both the same, are we? You’re sure about that?” “Yes. No. Hold on—that’s a trick, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” The Sphinx smiled.

Edie nodded. She walked toward it. George wasn’t sure what was going on, but he got the strong impression that the Sphinx was controlling the urge to shy away from the approaching girl.

“You asked me if you’re both the same. I think you mean that to be your question, so I get it wrong before I even know you’re doing one of your riddles and you don’t have to answer my question. I think that’s a twisted sphinxish way of tricking people.” “You have a very suspicious mind, little girl.” “Thank you.”

Edie walked up one side of the Sphinx, then down the other. Then she walked over to the other one and did the same. Then she smiled.

“You look the same. But you’re different. You”—she pointed at the nicer of the two—”you are perfect. You’re smooth. Unlike you”—she walked up the side of the other one and pointed to its side—”you’ve got holes. Something has put holes in you.” George squinted. She was right. There were small jagged holes in the flank and foreleg of the bronze body. The Sphinx looked down at itself.

“Very clever. Very sharp. But I’m afraid that wasn’t my question.” Edie shook her head.

“We both know it was. But if you want to cheat, ask me another.” Before the not-nice Sphinx could answer, the nice one spoke.

“How did we become different?”

The other Sphinx turned on its haunch and hissed in something that might have been anger but was also close to alarm.

“No! She’s a glint. She’s a glint! She’ll—”

The two Sphinxes were suddenly eyeball to eyeball, tails writhing in slow irritation with each other.

“I know. But the girl was right. You were cheating. That’s not being an enigma. That’s lying. Let her answer. You have become too taintlike of late, sister—” “Do you wonder I have turned against men after they made me as I was, then marred me as they did, as they did when—?” “No, sister, enough. Let the girl tell us, if she can… .” The damaged Sphinx held herself still as Edie walked up to her.

“What’s happening?” asked George.

The Gunner looked at Edie running her hands along the huge flank of the bronze Sphinx. Her hand stopped as she found a hole. He turned away and reflexively pulled his collar up, like a man expecting a sudden squall.

“Mind your shoes.”

George couldn’t take his eyes off Edie. Her hand disappeared inside the Sphinx.

“There’s a hole.”

The Sphinx stared at her, unimpressed.

“A hole isn’t how. A hole is what. You told us I have holes already.” Edie closed her eyes. A small shudder passed through her.

“Wh—?” began George. Then it happened.

Edie stiffened. There was the sense of a silent detonation at her epicenter—the blast wave of whatever was happening to her blew her hair out in a fan, and before it had a chance to fall again, all the leaves on the trees blew flat and the street garbage blew away from her in a three-hundred-and-sixty degree arc. George opened his mouth.

Edie screamed. Her back arched, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth opened wide, her neck tendons snapped tight as violin strings, and a sound that wasn’t a just sound ripped into George’s head. He threw his hands over his ears to protect himself. It didn’t make a difference. The scream was stuck inside his head and just seemed to get louder and louder as it echoed around with no way to escape.

Edie felt the past slam into her through her hands like a massive electric shock, as if the metal of the statue had been storing the memory of pain and horror deep within it, waiting for her to touch it and receive the full power of it in one distilled jolt.

Her eyes snapped open. Then shut. Then open. Again and again. And as they did, she saw the past in fast juddering time slices, some freeze-frames, some slow-motion fragments of light and sound. Every time she closed her eyes to escape the unbearable pain that the past seared into her, she found an intolerable pressure built up in her head, and she knew it would burst if she didn’t open her eyes and let the past in once more.

And what she saw in the jarring slices of her vision was this: The Embankment was different. The road was thinner. The trees shorter, and some were in different places. The modern office blocks were gone. The bridges were not as they are now. People stood looking up into the sky. It was bright day. The city did not roar with the sound of thousands of unseen motorcars growling through its entrails. The people wore the long skirts and formal coats of the early twentieth century. A nanny in a uniform was smiling as she tried to fasten the bonnet on a laughing child. A newspaper seller was shouting something about the “British Expeditionary Force” and Flanders, though he stopped shouting and swore when he saw the thing everyone else was looking up at loom into view over the tops of the buildings.

A long slow rocket shape hummed overhead, whirring propellers pushing it between Edie and the sun. It was almost dreamlike in its slow immensity.

People stopped shouting and just stared at it. In the sudden calm Edie could hear the clopping of a horse approaching as a hansom cab came out of Adam Street—the cabbie lowering his whip as his mouth fell open at the sight above him. She heard him swear softly, “Bloody hell. A zeppelin!” Then small dark dots fell slowly out of the belly of the zeppelin, and time broke into fragments again. But like shards of glass, the fragments seemed to cut deep into Edie’s brain and increase the pain tenfold.

She saw the dots get bigger. Closer. Resolve into bomb shapes. She saw a woman scream and a man throw her to the ground, covering her body with his.

She saw the newspaper seller jump over the edge of the Embankment, down into the Thames.

She saw the first bomb hit the road.

She saw the flash.

She felt the blast rip her lips back off her screaming mouth.

She felt the blast heat sucking into her lungs.

She screamed louder.

She saw the holes blown in the side of the Sphinx.

Saw a child’s bonnet blow into the iron railings of Adam Gardens.

Saw the man and the woman blown into the top of a tree.

Saw the horse in two parts, slowly pinwheeling twenty feet into the air; wet bits of it, that should never be seen, ribboning apart in a hideous mind-scarring arc.

And then it stopped.

And the present was back.

George and the Gunner were bent double, shielding themselves. The screaming noise suddenly stopped scouring around George’s head. He convulsed as the rising wave of nausea hit him, and he threw up for the second time that night, a thin spatter of bile all over his feet.

The Gunner tried to force his face out of the pained grimace it was stuck in.

“Told you to mind your shoes.”

George sat down on the pavement. Every joint was aching, and the nausea had changed to something like ancient dread or deep sadness, or the memory of both. Edie was staring at her hand. She sat down suddenly, a plan her body had decided on without consulting her mind.

“That was—bad,” George managed to say.

The Gunner nodded. He looked as shaky as a solid bronze man can look.

“She’s a glint. I told you.”

Edie was looking up at them from across the pavement. Behind her, the Sphinxes were dragging themselves back onto their plinths. They still looked like big cats. But now they looked like big sick cats. The Gunner rubbed his face.

“Glints are people bad things happen around. Glints can make even the stones weep.” Edie looked at the Gunner. Then at the Sphinxes.

“Why?”

The closest Sphinx stopped and looked at her.

“How can you not know what you are? Everything knows what it is.” Edie pulled herself to her feet.

“I thought you answered questions. Not asked them. A bomb put holes in the one of you that’s damaged, right? Now answer my question.” “You want to know why glints can make stones weep?” The Gunner stepped forward, between the girl and the crouching giant cat.

“No.”

Edie pushed him aside. George was struck by the fact that such a small girl could make such a big statue move out of her way. In fact, he’d later wonder if the Gunner hadn’t sort of shied away from her hands pushing at his knees.

“It’s my question. I earned it,” she spat fiercely.

“But—” began the Gunner.

“No buts. No more buts or waits or go-aways!”

She punched her finger at the Sphinx’s face.

“Answer my question!”