Read Online The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford - Free Book Online Page B

me and then, by force of will, trod along in my normal, determined gait. My eyes, devoid of the ability to measure, saw no meaning. Everything was just inexplicably there and brimming with uncertainty. “Structure determines existence in the physical world,” I said to myself. At least I had remembered this much, but the meaning of it melted down to the base of my spine and froze.
    I left her in the street outside the Hotel de Skree. “Tomorrow, ten sharp,” I said. “Don’t be late.”

7
    Up in my room, I pushed a vial and a half of the beauty into my favorite vein. I was perilously skimming the edge of overdose, but I needed strong medicine to tolerate my fear. I could feel the violet liquid almost immediately begin to perk in my head and chest, but before she had me fully in her grasp, I went over to my valise and took out the derringer I carried as insurance against hostile subjects. Placing a chair, back to the wall, I sat with my feet pulled up and listened hard for a lurking danger I could not put my finger on.
    Cursed Anamasobia had become the hell of physiognomists, and I prayed to everything—Gronus, Arla, the Well-Built City—that my amnesia was not permanent. If it were, my life would be lost, and I knew I would eventually have to turn the derringer on myself.
    â€œThe Flock vector, I like it,” said the professor who now stood before me, laughing. He was dressed all in white and as young as on the first day of class I had had with him.
    â€œThat damn Traveler has erased everything,” I said, unable to see the humor.
    â€œPerhaps you’ll be joining me soon,” he said.
    â€œBe gone!” I yelled. He evaporated instantly, but the sound of his mirth lingered like the smoke of an extinguished cigarette.
    In the wind outside, I heard low voices, passing on gossip. The lights flickered. The Mantakises were either groaning or singing, and the floor began to move like water. I bobbed in the tide, trying to think of numbers and rules, but all I was capable of seeing in my eye’s-mind was a parade of meaningless faces. The harder I thought, the faster they sped by, disappearing into the wall above the bed. During my career, I had read each of them, each revealing to my instruments and well-trained eye a certain measure of guilt, but now they might as well have been lumps of cremat for all the meaning they bestowed. I couldn’t find the sum, and, when I tried to divide, my brain went haywire, emitting showers of green sparks. If I even attempted to think of the mathematical formula for figuring surface-to-depth ratios, I would immediately picture Mayor Bataldo, leaning on his balcony, saying, “A first-rate beating,” and smiling like a classic moron.
    I was, though, able to read a message of doom written on my own countenance as it peered back at me from Arden’s mirror across the room. My hands shook from the beauty chills, those tremors of the nervous system that occasionally rack the long-time user, and the paranoia was exquisite. For a moment, I thought I saw the face of a demon at the window, staring in through the falling snow. To calm myself, I got up, grabbed my instrument bag off the dresser, and brought it to the bed. Still holding the derringer in my left hand, I opened the bag with my right and took the chrome instruments out one by one. I laid them on the bed in a straight line and then stood and stared. The sight of each of them brought back to me the damnable face of the Traveler. I was reaching for the calipers when I heard someone begin climbing the stairs to my room, one heavy step at a time.
    Even as I spun to face the door, bringing the derringer up for better aim, the question struck me, Why do they call this man-thing the Traveler? It seemed to me he hadn’t gone anywhere for centuries. But like an enormous dry cornstalk rattling in the autumn wind, I saw him in my eye’s-mind now coming to me, wearily mounting the