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Description

                                                              “Blind unicyclists ride around the rim,

                                                              Not yet gone but well forgotten.

                                                              In musty pockets waits the sin,

                                                              We must grasp to see it's rotten.”

                                                                              -The Edwin Mysteries

It was not until the 14th year of the New Order that I again encountered my old acquaintance Walter Wusmunn. I had long since retired from duties abroad after a long and exhausting campaign in the Orient. When last I'd seen Wusmunn we had been in a fort on the Bosporus, each about go his separate way, posts on opposite sides of the globe. I heard little of him in the intervening years until word spread of seditious writings that had somehow escaped the sensor and swept Europe. Apparently he was in disgrace with the military, whereas my own career had been cut down by illness.

For my part I received the best medical care as is accorded any veteran or loyal servant of The Order. We citizens of the American continents found ourselves warmly embraced by our foreign masters, the New Order having brought us a world based on real merit, having eschewed all the destructive notions of class that once divided us.

No man living, least of all myself, would have dreamed of hurtling word or deed against the intelligent and compassionate mastery of the New Order and the Supreme Council. Therefore, I was extremely troubled, even sick at heart to learn that my old comrade in arms might have turned traitor.

The New Order gave me every consideration after my nearly fatal bout of fever while serving in strange and fabulous far-flung lands. Doctors observed and care for me in state sanitariums for two years before I was pronounced sane and well.

On my pension I lived a happy existence in my tall townhouse in New Brookdale, and trophy city erected by the New Order on the banks of what was once called Lake Superior. My honor and station provided me with a staff of servants and I was invited to the social gatherings of the city's leading citizen. However I seldom attended social gatherings as I tire easily and am prone to headaches.

Although I hardly feel any ill effects from the severe fever that ended my life of soldiering, I must regularly take pills provided by the doctors to keep up my strength and to combat the headaches which sometimes ambush me.

In the throes of one of these headaches, after I collapsed in the third floor library of my townhouse, is when I made the rediscovery about my old friend Wusmunn. White-hot tongs gripped the center of my brain and my vision swam so that for a moment I almost again saw crowds of strange Hindoos leaning over me and the smell of the queer smokes and herbs of the Orient. My maid, Agnes leaned over me and as she did an object fell from her apron and laded in the crook of my arm. She hardly noticed it, but after she'd given me my pills and a drink, I picked up the object, a book, and read the crude red cover:

The Crimson Council

by Lt. Walter Wusmunn

I was in complete ignorance as to the book's contents and notoriety, it had already caused considerable sensation. At first Agnes would not even admit the book was hers, the ban was in effect all across the continent.

Somehow the manuscript had been smuggled into Europe for publication, in a diplomatic pouch, or so the rumors said. It sold in the millions there and so the black market met demand and smuggled it back to the Americas. No one would freely admit to having owned it, much less read it, but everyone seemed to have a good idea of the contents.

On small thin pages, like those of the prayer books in days of old, shabbily lines related a toxic outpouring of blasphemies against the leaders of our beloved empire. It seemed the book equated our high Council with depraved gamblers, playing dice in shadowed rooms, recklessly playing for the fate of the world.

Not only was this book officially treasonous, but authorities on both sides of the Atlantic had determined that the book itself was mentally harmful. Stories circulated about self destructive behavior and hallucinations from those known to have read the book.

In all cases the readers were known to have been normal sane individuals before exposure to the book.

Never one to court danger or to disobey the advise of a learned doctor, I never so much as opened the book. I kept it on my night-stand, under a bound copy of “The Joys of The New Order” by Prince Friedrich Zoroff II. I dutifully read the state book nightly before sleep, but as I nodded off I always stared at the forbidden book, at my long lost friend's name on the spine.

In time I worked up the will to ask about Walter, to my oldest friend, Xie Fujiwara, leader of the Ministry of Thought. Xie and I sat in his mansion overlooking the lake and drinking the finest brandy of the capitol when I asked him.

“A dangerous proposition, dear Maxwell,” said Xie, looking very fine and thoughtful in his silken robes. “However much this man was once your friend, he is now an enemy of the state. Think of the reputation you have cultivated and your social standing. The doctors say that you are well but you are still impressionable and enfeebled from your ordeal.

“And did you not yourself tell me on several occasions that in Turkey your old friend Wusmunn betrayed your trust and failed to return borrowed money?”

I ground my teeth and drained a glass “He couldn't have meant it, not that way. Old Walter was never very good with money and he was forgetful.”

“Maxwell, my dear Maxwell, forget not the wisdoms of Nietzsche, as the Prince wisely quoted in 'The Joys of the New Order', that a good and kind man should seek goodness and kindness. Such a man has no used for deceit and evil. Did not the doctors also tell you to keep the company of the familiar at first and to be wary of obsessions?”

I drained another glass of brandy and stood up sharply. From my pocket I unfolded the weathered piece of paper I'd received at the sanitarium and thrust it on the table “The doctors also said something far more important, Xie, or have you forgotten? Yes, I may be a good man, an honorable man, but I am, most of all, a sane man!”

My friend Xie stood and gently took my arm, a slight smile forming on his face “I meant no offense, Maxwell. I only ask if you believe it is prudent to pursue this inquiry at this time. Have we not both found that life is more rewarding when one proceeds slowly and soberly?”

I hung my head and nodded slowly. “Hang it all, Xie... You know how much I respect you. I don't know if there's a man I trust more than I do you. Look, if Wusmunn has done what they say then you must let me find him and ask him in person. I have to know how a man like him can do a thing like that. I have to understand, do you see?”

“You say you are ready for this, so I must trust you. I will do what I can to help you, but I want you to call out to me should you ever be in doubt or need help. Send a telegram any time.”

Within two weeks, Xie had set an inquiry in motion, and at my request he kept it unofficial. By that time the new moon had turned and the entire empire was lit up with celebration for the new year, 1966 was the year, although we were generally encouraged to adopt the new calendar, the year 15. Fireworks were bursting over the lake and the ships were covered in multi-colored lights through Xie's window when he handed me an envelope and reminded me to be careful.

I wanted to leave immediately, but a headache came on and I had to sleep.

In the morning I set out from my townhouse in a fine carriage drawn by four white horses, the finest carriage on the streets on a bright winter morning. I carried with me only the envelope, the two books from my night-stand, my letter from the sanitarium, and my bottle of pills. In my wallet I had my veteran's identification and my state credit token. I could only take the carriage as far as Rossburg, from there I traveled by train.

The territory through which I traveled now lacked the finery of New Brookdale. I saw little sign of the celebration and jubilation that should come with the new year. Some rumor had drifted around that in back country places the old calendar was embraced and loyalties remained for the old corrupt American empire.

The car I sat in was crowded and the smell of the people nauseated me, I had to take a pill to keep from collapsing. I shouldered my way through the common passengers and found a free spot on a bench next to an intellectual looking man with glasses, a scarf, and an uncommonly fine hat.

At first he didn't notice me sit down, he was immersed in a book.

I simply sat and stared into space until he said “You come from the city.”

I nodded “That's right. You as well?”

“Yes, from Philyorgton. It's a pleasure to meet a man of culture in a place like this.”

“Yes... I'm afraid I don't deal well with crowds. I suffered an illness in the service and I'm afraid I have to keep calm and solitary.”

He looked down at my coat pocket “Ah! I see we are reading the same thing.”

Only then did I notice which book had poked out from my pocket and which same shabby red book he held in his hands. Suddenly I felt very hot and trembled.

“Yes, Wusmunn's vision is extraordinary!” the man fairly raved. “Did you know that it is such a sensation in Europe that it has been adapted into a play? Yes, it's being staged for cheering crowds in Brussels as we speak.”

“Don't you... don't you worry?” I managed to choke out. “Aren't you... concerned for what they say about the book?”

“The censors? Oh, I hardly take that seriously. You know that at first all the works of Goethe and Tolstoy were forbidden here, but in time they changed policy and we can now all read them right from the state press. No, I'm confident that before the year is out we shall see a sanctioned printing of 'The Crimson Council'. After all, we are an advanced society and the advanced society will permit advanced writings.”

What more he talked about, I don't know. At first I nodded and politely agreed until my mind wandered and he grew silent.

I disembarked from the train at a place where the tracks ended, towards the bottom of the Tuksuri territory. I found a man with a motor truck who agreed to take me as far as the southern border, but even this slovenly fellow would not cross into Wottoga territory, even for the money I offered.

Just as the sun set, the fine soldiers in brass buttons approved my paper and ushered me past the checkpoint and into Wottoga. A veteran always likes the look of men in uniform, and so it was that I strode with unusual confidence down the dirt road to the town where Xie assured me I would find Wusmunn.

Trees on either side of the road formed thick deep walls of green and chill breeze blew softly through their needles.

Ahead I could hear the sounds of humanity, of children playing and common people talking. A child raced past me riding a donkey and in no time the wall of trees opened on my left and in a clearing stood blocks of faded tall houses around a grassy court broken by poles for electrical wires.

The squalor of the people here was disgusting, many of them unwashed, unshaved, hatless... As I stepped from the dirt road up onto the concrete sidewalk, I was nearly run down by a tall tramp in a long coat with a head wild curly gray hair. He shouted “Don't you look at me!” and moved on.

I did not tarry long among the broken wagons but looked over my letter from Xie again. Walter Wusmunn lived in number 36. This house proved to be the one I'd passed on the way into town, a tall three-story house with attic that had once been yellow but was now faded to gray.

As I walked towards the front door, the town's gas lights came on and lent an eerie quality to the gray forest glen and the sad ghost of a town.

The man who answered the bell was Wusmunn himself, or perhaps his ghost. His hair had grown long and his chin was now hidden by a scraggled billygoat beard. In his bloodshot blue eyes I saw a flutter of recognition and it seemed then that a mist between us vanished. In spite of all the nagging questions I wanted to ask and the outrage I wished to express, we embraced and I found myself almost weeping for how good it was to see him. The ocean of time evaporated and we were old friends again just as we had been on that last day in Turkey.

We talked lightly, saying little of substance, and he lead me inside the shadowed house.

I can hardly recall what we said then, but as we entered the drawing room I noticed a woman sitting at a table by the wall. She was shoeless and almost a dwarf, a rotund woman engaged in the act of eating a plate of something I could not identify.

The air was thick with flies.

The house was dark and cold and the walls greasily reflected back the bluish haze of early evening, yet flies buzzed everywhere as on the ripe corpse of an animal in mid summer. The house was odorless, yet I found myself screwing up my face, trying not to take the air.

“Amber,” Walter said to the woman. “This is Maxwell Davies, my old friend from my days in the service.”

She stared and asked “Are you still in the service?”

I removed my hat and said “Why no, I have retired for medical reasons. Walter and I were in many a campaign together though.”

She put down her fork and turned in her chair “Walter is a writer now. He's famous.”

I sat against the back of a couch and nodded “Yes, I remember. Walter, you had a passion for writing even then. Why, when we were at the academy together I had a job in the library. His penmanship was terrible and neither of us could afford a typewriter, so at night I'd sneak him into an office in the library. The machine was coin-operated and we had to carry bundles of coins in with us, carried them in socks stuffed in our pockets...”

Walter had a slight smile on his face and stood simply, as if lost in the past.

Amber, however, had turned back to her plate.

“Man alive,” I said suddenly. “Where are all these flies coming from?”

Amber turned abruptly and stared hard at me. I could feel her hatred blasting like a cannonball and my vision swam as the pain grew.

Walter hurried up the stairs and was gone for a moment. I shrank to the far side of the couch and sat quietly, trying not to hear the buzzing of the flies or the scraping of the fork on the plate.

I considered briefly the great distance I had crossed and how truly removed I was from the things I knew. Were it not for the presence of a civilized tongue, I might well have been back in my fever bed among the spires and domes of the far east.

From my pocket I pulled Prince Friedrich's book and the letter certifying my sanity.

I was about to open the book and read a passage I had marked when Walter's voice came down from upstairs “Maxwell, come up and join me.”

Glad for any excuse to leave Amber's presence, I climbed the three flights as quickly as I could manage and joined my friend in a curtained room that looked out towards the courtyard and dying light in the sky. We each sat at opposite ends of what might have been a craftsman's table on top of which sat lumps wrapped in what looked like sack-cloth.

Only when Walter picked one of them up did I realize it was a crude doll, shaped vaguely like a military officer, complete with a plumed hat. A horsefly alighted on the plume.

He picked up another, this one stitched in red twine and shaped like a High Councilman.

I felt the smile dropping from my face.

Walter was about to speak, but I asked “Walter, my old friend, why? You have to tell me why.”

“Amber is an actress, Maxwell.” He held up both dolls and didn't look up from them. “That's how she found me, she wanted to stage the play they made of my book. Naturally, I was flattered, but I don't know very much about the theater.”

My head throbbed and the dusk seemed to eat up the room. Flies made orbits of the room, forming triangles, trapezoids, pentagons, buzzing nearer then further and over again.

“She inspired me, though. I feel like I may have found a muse. Remember how I always said I wanted one? I'm satisfied well enough by my book, I know people like it, but I think my new one will really be the one.”

“You...” I stuttered. “You are writing another?”

He nodded. “That's what these dolls are for, to sort of play out my ideas. It's not really fantasy though, not really. You might call everything I write autobiography. You see, this proud soldier might well be you, Maxwell. A fine man, sitting on a white stallion, pride of an invading force, ready to sweep the globe, and this...”

He was about to pick up the High Councilman when he thought better of it and set down both dolls.

“Wait,” he said. “Why don't I just show you what I've written. You might have been my original muse, I'd like your opinion...” he walked to the corner and opened a roll-top desk and began rummaging through a pile of papers.

Somehow when his back was turned I regained the power to speak “Walter, you must know the trouble your book has caused. The empire has banned it. It's doing harm to people. They say people all across Europe are throwing themselves from rooftops after reading only a few pages. Dammit man, didn't we used to stand for the same things? Everyone told me not to come find you, but I knew that if we met, I could...”

He lay a bundle of yellow twine-bound pages on the table in front of me “It's not nearly finished, but just the same I'd appreciate your input. I hardly know what to call it. I'm sure it'll speak for itself though. Would you mind?”

As I read the room disappeared and the shadows no longer seemed to veil my vision. In time the flies seemed to fade from the room and I breathed in the smell of the ancient timbers. I forgot the woman who hated me in the drawing room and the unwashed hordes who turned my stomach. I was lost to the words on the sheets in front of me.

I could not tell you now what was in Walter Wusmunn's sequel, I don't know if at the time I even interpreted the words.

In flashes, between the beats of invisible dragon's wings, my mind rushed over youthful days of sneaking Walter into the hallowed library to type, of sweating my life out in a military hospital, of playing soldier on the banks of the stream that crossed behind my grandfathers house, of scouring a bookseller's rooms looking for the right kind of history books.

I don't know how long I swam over the words before me, but it seemed I was transported, no longer reading, merely dragged along by a story that told itself to my secret mind.

The words swam before my eyes, a heat haze I couldn't penetrate. Smoke and shadow absorbed me and the dragon's wings beat again.

I hovered through a black void towards a lightened place. A section of velvet floor was caught in a spotlight and in the light seven grandly clothed figures wrapped head to foot in crimson. Not one inch of skin showed anywhere, all covered by masks, robes, gloves, slippers. Around a table they stood, moving pieces of carved jade over blasphemous designs. Somehow I knew it was some nefarious game and that only I could see them playing.

Each move they made shot a bolt of agony through my tortured brain. I reached for my pills, fumbled with the bottle, and dropped them down through the shadow and onto the table. As I fumbled, the Prince's book fell from my coat and landed on top of the pills.

Red masks turned up towards me and the table burst into flames.

The air was filled with their screams, some horrible exotic tongue. I knew somehow that they cursed me and felt their words begin to fade me. Only when I shouted back did I feel my strength returning and the pain dull from my skull.

Suddenly I sat on a white stallion in full dress uniform. My mount's hooves shattered the pieces on the table and the red-cloaked plotters shrank back. I waved my saber and them and shouted louder, drowning all confusion.

My words echoed hugely and heroically against the crimson council. The flames consumed mounds of money, gambling chips, stacks of cards, and wheels of chance. As they burned, the divine white horse righteously kicked apart the ashes, scattering the stain onto the unblemished red enemies. Although I shouted in my own mother tongue, I couldn't understand my exact words, only the message was clear. At the climax I shouted a clean clear word:

“Liars!”

The red cloth flew from the seven bodies and beneath it seven sunken faces in withered discolored flesh glared their hate back at me.

With my saber I slashed down into their corrupted flesh and brought forth not blood, but dust!

The dust inundated everything. I lost sight of the table and the dying mummies and even my fine white horse. A sandstorm flew before my eyes and blotted out all trace of the recognizable world. In it's course it slowly broken down, melting into billows of continuous smoke. I coughed and shook and my eyes smarted. Tremors ran through my sweat soaked body and hands held sheets across me, cold hands toweled my forehead.

When the smoke cleared I saw my hospital room and the mosquito netting around my bed.

Turbaned Orientals assisted the military doctors who stood on all sides of me. I was too weak to talk with them, but they talked on in hushed voices. Through an open window I could hear the din of crowds of Hindoos walking the streets of their city.

Yes, this was my sick bed of two years past. Every sensation rang true, especially my bewildered detachment at the sickness boiling in my brain. Strange vapors burned in the hospital and the moans of other patients reached my ears.

A figure appeared from my left and clasped my hand. In another moment I realized it was Walter, beardless and his eyes still clear and healthy.

I tried to speak to him, tried to question how he had come to be here.

“Maxwell,” he said. “Don't try to talk. You're too weak.”

I shook my head and tried anyway, but the words wouldn't come.

“Maxwell,” Walter said again. “There's a chance you'll live. You've heard people talk of immortality? You've heard of the fountain of youth? There's some truth in it, you know.”

I kept straining to reply. The doctors commented on my efforts, but none of them seemed to react to my friend's presence. I coughed and managed to say “Coins... in my coat, if you like...”

Walter shook his head “No, listen, my friend. It isn't a fountain at all, do you hear? It's a well, near my home in America. It's some immortal test given to the world in ancient times. If one falls into the well and drowns, it proves that he isn't worthy. But if he can float above the water, then he is worthy. Do you understand me?”

I tried weakly to nod, but the doctors and attendants crowded in again and my friend was pushed away from the bed.

The image of the room wavered before my eyes. A cold hand landed on my forehead and I convulsed.

The world dissolved into blotches of floating abstract color and I felt nothing.

I lifted my head from the work table in the front room on the second floor of the country house. The dolls and the manuscript were gone and I saw no trace of my friend.

I called out to him and even to the woman he lived with, but no one answered. As near as I could tell it was now early morning, the weak daylight bloomed glacially from the other side of the house. No trace seemed to exist of either person or of any person within the house. Only the furniture, minimal as it was, gave any hint the people had once lived there.

Even the flies seemed to have departed entirely.

I was alone.

As soon as I had established that I had somehow been deserted, I made my way outside. I had no idea what to think following the strange events of the night before and what could only have been a queer dream brought on by failing to take my pills in time.

I walked out to the dirt road in hopes of seeing another car or perhaps a wagon that could take me back north. The sun was nearly up when I gave up waiting and walked back into the sad village of worn houses.

The tramps and crowds of common people all seemed to still be asleep. The cold seemed strangely absent considering the winter season, even the grass lacked frost.

I passed the far corner of the courtyard and found a gap between the houses.

An unaccountable crowding of flies filled the air and a foul smell met my nostrils.

In the ground, near the edge of the trees, a concrete well broke up through the hard ground. Above the well hung a tattered white object, at first I thought it was a sheet hung on a clothesline. When I looked closer I realized it was a dead man, stripped to the waste.

It was Walter Wusmunn, disheveled and bearded as I'd seen him last night. He has not been hanged and he did not stand on anything, but his dead body floated directly above the mouth of the well.

I must have stood looking at him for hours because eventually men came and took hold of me.

The fine uniformed men from the checkpoint and local guard manacled me and dragged me away from where my friend floated. It took four of five of them to take me as I didn't want to leave the well of immortality.

I was raving by the time they brought me into the wagon for the sanitarium that had rolled up on the road. They had come to take me away.

I can only think that they'd found my copy of “The Crimson Council” and assumed I'd read it. They took that away and the Prince's book and even my paper proclaiming my sanity.

I fought them every inch because I didn't want to leave Wusmunn's corpse. I couldn't understand how they could drag me away after having seen the same miracle I'd witnessed.

As his dead body hovered perfectly still above the mouth of the well at the edge of the forest, his head was wreathed in a halo of flies.

The End

Description

                                                              “Blind unicyclists ride around the rim,

                                                              Not yet gone but well forgotten.

                                                              In musty pockets waits the sin,

                                                              We must grasp to see it's rotten.”

                                                                              -The Edwin Mysteries

It was not until the 14th year of the New Order that I again encountered my old acquaintance Walter Wusmunn. I had long since retired from duties abroad after a long and exhausting campaign in the Orient. When last I'd seen Wusmunn we had been in a fort on the Bosporus, each about go his separate way, posts on opposite sides of the globe. I heard little of him in the intervening years until word spread of seditious writings that had somehow escaped the sensor and swept Europe. Apparently he was in disgrace with the military, whereas my own career had been cut down by illness.

For my part I received the best medical care as is accorded any veteran or loyal servant of The Order. We citizens of the American continents found ourselves warmly embraced by our foreign masters, the New Order having brought us a world based on real merit, having eschewed all the destructive notions of class that once divided us.

No man living, least of all myself, would have dreamed of hurtling word or deed against the intelligent and compassionate mastery of the New Order and the Supreme Council. Therefore, I was extremely troubled, even sick at heart to learn that my old comrade in arms might have turned traitor.

The New Order gave me every consideration after my nearly fatal bout of fever while serving in strange and fabulous far-flung lands. Doctors observed and care for me in state sanitariums for two years before I was pronounced sane and well.

On my pension I lived a happy existence in my tall townhouse in New Brookdale, and trophy city erected by the New Order on the banks of what was once called Lake Superior. My honor and station provided me with a staff of servants and I was invited to the social gatherings of the city's leading citizen. However I seldom attended social gatherings as I tire easily and am prone to headaches.

Although I hardly feel any ill effects from the severe fever that ended my life of soldiering, I must regularly take pills provided by the doctors to keep up my strength and to combat the headaches which sometimes ambush me.

In the throes of one of these headaches, after I collapsed in the third floor library of my townhouse, is when I made the rediscovery about my old friend Wusmunn. White-hot tongs gripped the center of my brain and my vision swam so that for a moment I almost again saw crowds of strange Hindoos leaning over me and the smell of the queer smokes and herbs of the Orient. My maid, Agnes leaned over me and as she did an object fell from her apron and laded in the crook of my arm. She hardly noticed it, but after she'd given me my pills and a drink, I picked up the object, a book, and read the crude red cover:

The Crimson Council

by Lt. Walter Wusmunn

I was in complete ignorance as to the book's contents and notoriety, it had already caused considerable sensation. At first Agnes would not even admit the book was hers, the ban was in effect all across the continent.

Somehow the manuscript had been smuggled into Europe for publication, in a diplomatic pouch, or so the rumors said. It sold in the millions there and so the black market met demand and smuggled it back to the Americas. No one would freely admit to having owned it, much less read it, but everyone seemed to have a good idea of the contents.

On small thin pages, like those of the prayer books in days of old, shabbily lines related a toxic outpouring of blasphemies against the leaders of our beloved empire. It seemed the book equated our high Council with depraved gamblers, playing dice in shadowed rooms, recklessly playing for the fate of the world.

Not only was this book officially treasonous, but authorities on both sides of the Atlantic had determined that the book itself was mentally harmful. Stories circulated about self destructive behavior and hallucinations from those known to have read the book.

In all cases the readers were known to have been normal sane individuals before exposure to the book.

Never one to court danger or to disobey the advise of a learned doctor, I never so much as opened the book. I kept it on my night-stand, under a bound copy of “The Joys of The New Order” by Prince Friedrich Zoroff II. I dutifully read the state book nightly before sleep, but as I nodded off I always stared at the forbidden book, at my long lost friend's name on the spine.

In time I worked up the will to ask about Walter, to my oldest friend, Xie Fujiwara, leader of the Ministry of Thought. Xie and I sat in his mansion overlooking the lake and drinking the finest brandy of the capitol when I asked him.

“A dangerous proposition, dear Maxwell,” said Xie, looking very fine and thoughtful in his silken robes. “However much this man was once your friend, he is now an enemy of the state. Think of the reputation you have cultivated and your social standing. The doctors say that you are well but you are still impressionable and enfeebled from your ordeal.

“And did you not yourself tell me on several occasions that in Turkey your old friend Wusmunn betrayed your trust and failed to return borrowed money?”

I ground my teeth and drained a glass “He couldn't have meant it, not that way. Old Walter was never very good with money and he was forgetful.”

“Maxwell, my dear Maxwell, forget not the wisdoms of Nietzsche, as the Prince wisely quoted in 'The Joys of the New Order', that a good and kind man should seek goodness and kindness. Such a man has no used for deceit and evil. Did not the doctors also tell you to keep the company of the familiar at first and to be wary of obsessions?”

I drained another glass of brandy and stood up sharply. From my pocket I unfolded the weathered piece of paper I'd received at the sanitarium and thrust it on the table “The doctors also said something far more important, Xie, or have you forgotten? Yes, I may be a good man, an honorable man, but I am, most of all, a sane man!”

My friend Xie stood and gently took my arm, a slight smile forming on his face “I meant no offense, Maxwell. I only ask if you believe it is prudent to pursue this inquiry at this time. Have we not both found that life is more rewarding when one proceeds slowly and soberly?”

I hung my head and nodded slowly. “Hang it all, Xie... You know how much I respect you. I don't know if there's a man I trust more than I do you. Look, if Wusmunn has done what they say then you must let me find him and ask him in person. I have to know how a man like him can do a thing like that. I have to understand, do you see?”

“You say you are ready for this, so I must trust you. I will do what I can to help you, but I want you to call out to me should you ever be in doubt or need help. Send a telegram any time.”

Within two weeks, Xie had set an inquiry in motion, and at my request he kept it unofficial. By that time the new moon had turned and the entire empire was lit up with celebration for the new year, 1966 was the year, although we were generally encouraged to adopt the new calendar, the year 15. Fireworks were bursting over the lake and the ships were covered in multi-colored lights through Xie's window when he handed me an envelope and reminded me to be careful.

I wanted to leave immediately, but a headache came on and I had to sleep.

In the morning I set out from my townhouse in a fine carriage drawn by four white horses, the finest carriage on the streets on a bright winter morning. I carried with me only the envelope, the two books from my night-stand, my letter from the sanitarium, and my bottle of pills. In my wallet I had my veteran's identification and my state credit token. I could only take the carriage as far as Rossburg, from there I traveled by train.

The territory through which I traveled now lacked the finery of New Brookdale. I saw little sign of the celebration and jubilation that should come with the new year. Some rumor had drifted around that in back country places the old calendar was embraced and loyalties remained for the old corrupt American empire.

The car I sat in was crowded and the smell of the people nauseated me, I had to take a pill to keep from collapsing. I shouldered my way through the common passengers and found a free spot on a bench next to an intellectual looking man with glasses, a scarf, and an uncommonly fine hat.

At first he didn't notice me sit down, he was immersed in a book.

I simply sat and stared into space until he said “You come from the city.”

I nodded “That's right. You as well?”

“Yes, from Philyorgton. It's a pleasure to meet a man of culture in a place like this.”

“Yes... I'm afraid I don't deal well with crowds. I suffered an illness in the service and I'm afraid I have to keep calm and solitary.”

He looked down at my coat pocket “Ah! I see we are reading the same thing.”

Only then did I notice which book had poked out from my pocket and which same shabby red book he held in his hands. Suddenly I felt very hot and trembled.

“Yes, Wusmunn's vision is extraordinary!” the man fairly raved. “Did you know that it is such a sensation in Europe that it has been adapted into a play? Yes, it's being staged for cheering crowds in Brussels as we speak.”

“Don't you... don't you worry?” I managed to choke out. “Aren't you... concerned for what they say about the book?”

“The censors? Oh, I hardly take that seriously. You know that at first all the works of Goethe and Tolstoy were forbidden here, but in time they changed policy and we can now all read them right from the state press. No, I'm confident that before the year is out we shall see a sanctioned printing of 'The Crimson Council'. After all, we are an advanced society and the advanced society will permit advanced writings.”

What more he talked about, I don't know. At first I nodded and politely agreed until my mind wandered and he grew silent.

I disembarked from the train at a place where the tracks ended, towards the bottom of the Tuksuri territory. I found a man with a motor truck who agreed to take me as far as the southern border, but even this slovenly fellow would not cross into Wottoga territory, even for the money I offered.

Just as the sun set, the fine soldiers in brass buttons approved my paper and ushered me past the checkpoint and into Wottoga. A veteran always likes the look of men in uniform, and so it was that I strode with unusual confidence down the dirt road to the town where Xie assured me I would find Wusmunn.

Trees on either side of the road formed thick deep walls of green and chill breeze blew softly through their needles.

Ahead I could hear the sounds of humanity, of children playing and common people talking. A child raced past me riding a donkey and in no time the wall of trees opened on my left and in a clearing stood blocks of faded tall houses around a grassy court broken by poles for electrical wires.

The squalor of the people here was disgusting, many of them unwashed, unshaved, hatless... As I stepped from the dirt road up onto the concrete sidewalk, I was nearly run down by a tall tramp in a long coat with a head wild curly gray hair. He shouted “Don't you look at me!” and moved on.

I did not tarry long among the broken wagons but looked over my letter from Xie again. Walter Wusmunn lived in number 36. This house proved to be the one I'd passed on the way into town, a tall three-story house with attic that had once been yellow but was now faded to gray.

As I walked towards the front door, the town's gas lights came on and lent an eerie quality to the gray forest glen and the sad ghost of a town.

The man who answered the bell was Wusmunn himself, or perhaps his ghost. His hair had grown long and his chin was now hidden by a scraggled billygoat beard. In his bloodshot blue eyes I saw a flutter of recognition and it seemed then that a mist between us vanished. In spite of all the nagging questions I wanted to ask and the outrage I wished to express, we embraced and I found myself almost weeping for how good it was to see him. The ocean of time evaporated and we were old friends again just as we had been on that last day in Turkey.

We talked lightly, saying little of substance, and he lead me inside the shadowed house.

I can hardly recall what we said then, but as we entered the drawing room I noticed a woman sitting at a table by the wall. She was shoeless and almost a dwarf, a rotund woman engaged in the act of eating a plate of something I could not identify.

The air was thick with flies.

The house was dark and cold and the walls greasily reflected back the bluish haze of early evening, yet flies buzzed everywhere as on the ripe corpse of an animal in mid summer. The house was odorless, yet I found myself screwing up my face, trying not to take the air.

“Amber,” Walter said to the woman. “This is Maxwell Davies, my old friend from my days in the service.”

She stared and asked “Are you still in the service?”

I removed my hat and said “Why no, I have retired for medical reasons. Walter and I were in many a campaign together though.”

She put down her fork and turned in her chair “Walter is a writer now. He's famous.”

I sat against the back of a couch and nodded “Yes, I remember. Walter, you had a passion for writing even then. Why, when we were at the academy together I had a job in the library. His penmanship was terrible and neither of us could afford a typewriter, so at night I'd sneak him into an office in the library. The machine was coin-operated and we had to carry bundles of coins in with us, carried them in socks stuffed in our pockets...”

Walter had a slight smile on his face and stood simply, as if lost in the past.

Amber, however, had turned back to her plate.

“Man alive,” I said suddenly. “Where are all these flies coming from?”

Amber turned abruptly and stared hard at me. I could feel her hatred blasting like a cannonball and my vision swam as the pain grew.

Walter hurried up the stairs and was gone for a moment. I shrank to the far side of the couch and sat quietly, trying not to hear the buzzing of the flies or the scraping of the fork on the plate.

I considered briefly the great distance I had crossed and how truly removed I was from the things I knew. Were it not for the presence of a civilized tongue, I might well have been back in my fever bed among the spires and domes of the far east.

From my pocket I pulled Prince Friedrich's book and the letter certifying my sanity.

I was about to open the book and read a passage I had marked when Walter's voice came down from upstairs “Maxwell, come up and join me.”

Glad for any excuse to leave Amber's presence, I climbed the three flights as quickly as I could manage and joined my friend in a curtained room that looked out towards the courtyard and dying light in the sky. We each sat at opposite ends of what might have been a craftsman's table on top of which sat lumps wrapped in what looked like sack-cloth.

Only when Walter picked one of them up did I realize it was a crude doll, shaped vaguely like a military officer, complete with a plumed hat. A horsefly alighted on the plume.

He picked up another, this one stitched in red twine and shaped like a High Councilman.

I felt the smile dropping from my face.

Walter was about to speak, but I asked “Walter, my old friend, why? You have to tell me why.”

“Amber is an actress, Maxwell.” He held up both dolls and didn't look up from them. “That's how she found me, she wanted to stage the play they made of my book. Naturally, I was flattered, but I don't know very much about the theater.”

My head throbbed and the dusk seemed to eat up the room. Flies made orbits of the room, forming triangles, trapezoids, pentagons, buzzing nearer then further and over again.

“She inspired me, though. I feel like I may have found a muse. Remember how I always said I wanted one? I'm satisfied well enough by my book, I know people like it, but I think my new one will really be the one.”

“You...” I stuttered. “You are writing another?”

He nodded. “That's what these dolls are for, to sort of play out my ideas. It's not really fantasy though, not really. You might call everything I write autobiography. You see, this proud soldier might well be you, Maxwell. A fine man, sitting on a white stallion, pride of an invading force, ready to sweep the globe, and this...”

He was about to pick up the High Councilman when he thought better of it and set down both dolls.

“Wait,” he said. “Why don't I just show you what I've written. You might have been my original muse, I'd like your opinion...” he walked to the corner and opened a roll-top desk and began rummaging through a pile of papers.

Somehow when his back was turned I regained the power to speak “Walter, you must know the trouble your book has caused. The empire has banned it. It's doing harm to people. They say people all across Europe are throwing themselves from rooftops after reading only a few pages. Dammit man, didn't we used to stand for the same things? Everyone told me not to come find you, but I knew that if we met, I could...”

He lay a bundle of yellow twine-bound pages on the table in front of me “It's not nearly finished, but just the same I'd appreciate your input. I hardly know what to call it. I'm sure it'll speak for itself though. Would you mind?”

As I read the room disappeared and the shadows no longer seemed to veil my vision. In time the flies seemed to fade from the room and I breathed in the smell of the ancient timbers. I forgot the woman who hated me in the drawing room and the unwashed hordes who turned my stomach. I was lost to the words on the sheets in front of me.

I could not tell you now what was in Walter Wusmunn's sequel, I don't know if at the time I even interpreted the words.

In flashes, between the beats of invisible dragon's wings, my mind rushed over youthful days of sneaking Walter into the hallowed library to type, of sweating my life out in a military hospital, of playing soldier on the banks of the stream that crossed behind my grandfathers house, of scouring a bookseller's rooms looking for the right kind of history books.

I don't know how long I swam over the words before me, but it seemed I was transported, no longer reading, merely dragged along by a story that told itself to my secret mind.

The words swam before my eyes, a heat haze I couldn't penetrate. Smoke and shadow absorbed me and the dragon's wings beat again.

I hovered through a black void towards a lightened place. A section of velvet floor was caught in a spotlight and in the light seven grandly clothed figures wrapped head to foot in crimson. Not one inch of skin showed anywhere, all covered by masks, robes, gloves, slippers. Around a table they stood, moving pieces of carved jade over blasphemous designs. Somehow I knew it was some nefarious game and that only I could see them playing.

Each move they made shot a bolt of agony through my tortured brain. I reached for my pills, fumbled with the bottle, and dropped them down through the shadow and onto the table. As I fumbled, the Prince's book fell from my coat and landed on top of the pills.

Red masks turned up towards me and the table burst into flames.

The air was filled with their screams, some horrible exotic tongue. I knew somehow that they cursed me and felt their words begin to fade me. Only when I shouted back did I feel my strength returning and the pain dull from my skull.

Suddenly I sat on a white stallion in full dress uniform. My mount's hooves shattered the pieces on the table and the red-cloaked plotters shrank back. I waved my saber and them and shouted louder, drowning all confusion.

My words echoed hugely and heroically against the crimson council. The flames consumed mounds of money, gambling chips, stacks of cards, and wheels of chance. As they burned, the divine white horse righteously kicked apart the ashes, scattering the stain onto the unblemished red enemies. Although I shouted in my own mother tongue, I couldn't understand my exact words, only the message was clear. At the climax I shouted a clean clear word:

“Liars!”

The red cloth flew from the seven bodies and beneath it seven sunken faces in withered discolored flesh glared their hate back at me.

With my saber I slashed down into their corrupted flesh and brought forth not blood, but dust!

The dust inundated everything. I lost sight of the table and the dying mummies and even my fine white horse. A sandstorm flew before my eyes and blotted out all trace of the recognizable world. In it's course it slowly broken down, melting into billows of continuous smoke. I coughed and shook and my eyes smarted. Tremors ran through my sweat soaked body and hands held sheets across me, cold hands toweled my forehead.

When the smoke cleared I saw my hospital room and the mosquito netting around my bed.

Turbaned Orientals assisted the military doctors who stood on all sides of me. I was too weak to talk with them, but they talked on in hushed voices. Through an open window I could hear the din of crowds of Hindoos walking the streets of their city.

Yes, this was my sick bed of two years past. Every sensation rang true, especially my bewildered detachment at the sickness boiling in my brain. Strange vapors burned in the hospital and the moans of other patients reached my ears.

A figure appeared from my left and clasped my hand. In another moment I realized it was Walter, beardless and his eyes still clear and healthy.

I tried to speak to him, tried to question how he had come to be here.

“Maxwell,” he said. “Don't try to talk. You're too weak.”

I shook my head and tried anyway, but the words wouldn't come.

“Maxwell,” Walter said again. “There's a chance you'll live. You've heard people talk of immortality? You've heard of the fountain of youth? There's some truth in it, you know.”

I kept straining to reply. The doctors commented on my efforts, but none of them seemed to react to my friend's presence. I coughed and managed to say “Coins... in my coat, if you like...”

Walter shook his head “No, listen, my friend. It isn't a fountain at all, do you hear? It's a well, near my home in America. It's some immortal test given to the world in ancient times. If one falls into the well and drowns, it proves that he isn't worthy. But if he can float above the water, then he is worthy. Do you understand me?”

I tried weakly to nod, but the doctors and attendants crowded in again and my friend was pushed away from the bed.

The image of the room wavered before my eyes. A cold hand landed on my forehead and I convulsed.

The world dissolved into blotches of floating abstract color and I felt nothing.

I lifted my head from the work table in the front room on the second floor of the country house. The dolls and the manuscript were gone and I saw no trace of my friend.

I called out to him and even to the woman he lived with, but no one answered. As near as I could tell it was now early morning, the weak daylight bloomed glacially from the other side of the house. No trace seemed to exist of either person or of any person within the house. Only the furniture, minimal as it was, gave any hint the people had once lived there.

Even the flies seemed to have departed entirely.

I was alone.

As soon as I had established that I had somehow been deserted, I made my way outside. I had no idea what to think following the strange events of the night before and what could only have been a queer dream brought on by failing to take my pills in time.

I walked out to the dirt road in hopes of seeing another car or perhaps a wagon that could take me back north. The sun was nearly up when I gave up waiting and walked back into the sad village of worn houses.

The tramps and crowds of common people all seemed to still be asleep. The cold seemed strangely absent considering the winter season, even the grass lacked frost.

I passed the far corner of the courtyard and found a gap between the houses.

An unaccountable crowding of flies filled the air and a foul smell met my nostrils.

In the ground, near the edge of the trees, a concrete well broke up through the hard ground. Above the well hung a tattered white object, at first I thought it was a sheet hung on a clothesline. When I looked closer I realized it was a dead man, stripped to the waste.

It was Walter Wusmunn, disheveled and bearded as I'd seen him last night. He has not been hanged and he did not stand on anything, but his dead body floated directly above the mouth of the well.

I must have stood looking at him for hours because eventually men came and took hold of me.

The fine uniformed men from the checkpoint and local guard manacled me and dragged me away from where my friend floated. It took four of five of them to take me as I didn't want to leave the well of immortality.

I was raving by the time they brought me into the wagon for the sanitarium that had rolled up on the road. They had come to take me away.

I can only think that they'd found my copy of “The Crimson Council” and assumed I'd read it. They took that away and the Prince's book and even my paper proclaiming my sanity.

I fought them every inch because I didn't want to leave Wusmunn's corpse. I couldn't understand how they could drag me away after having seen the same miracle I'd witnessed.

As his dead body hovered perfectly still above the mouth of the well at the edge of the forest, his head was wreathed in a halo of flies.

The End