71

The Man of a Thousand Disguises stirred uneasily, almost awoke, almost recognized himselves.

OUT FOR A SWIM IN THE COLLECTIVE POOL OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

"Name?"

"Proteus."

"Occupation?"

"Shape-changer."

"Sex?"

"Any."

"Brocade?"

"Nexus."

Perseverance brings sublime success. Despite the pain, proceed by contiguities.

Premature closure is false healing. Do not anticipate.

All movement is a search, all expectation is of failure, all searches find completion in their origins. The entire pattern is implicit in the first stitch; the initial brushstroke is the ultimate ornament. But this is forbidden knowledge, since the entire dance must be danced.

Initial movement is always initiation.

Mishkin's presence must be inferred by his absence. Mishkin's engine part is found. All that remains is to find it.

DO NOT GUT ALONG THE LINE

72

The port of Arachnis is situated on a misshapen arm of land extending into the sun-shattered waters of the East Java Sea. It is a typical South Asian city compounded of chaos, and intershot with strict and inexplicable rules of behaviour. The scent of a hundred mingled and exotic spices perturbs the senses of the voyager while he is still many miles at sea. These odours, in their ever-changing combinations, touch hidden sensations in the Westerner that are incalculable in their effect. Memories are elicited of events never experienced by the individual; absurd and impossible sensations are stirred.

This sensory onslaught cannot fail to have its impact upon the voyager accustomed to the tepid reception afforded by the bland cities of the West. Effortlessly, the East penetrates the outer, rational, prosaic surface of the voyager's personality, shaping and changing him, subjecting him to fragments of vision, moments of horror and illumination, to inimitable languors and abrupt passions. The approach to Arachnis is the first step into a dream.

Of course, all of this is unacknowledged by the sturdy Western traveller. It was not even considered by the two men and a woman who, at sunset, sailed their steam launch into the crescent-shaped inner harbour of Arachnis. Their ignorance was childish and touching, but it was no defence against the unthinkable world that was engulfing them.

They docked in gathering darkness. Their plans had long been made. Provision had been made for everything, for all the anticipated permutations of chance. Everything had been calculated except the incalculable.

The Arab and the girl stayed on the boat and guarded the object in the burlap bag.

The fat man left the boat and walked away from the harbour into the walled city, past the Street of Bird Sellers, the Street of Dogs, the Street of Forgetfulness, the Street of Many Doors… Droll, the names they had, if one was in the mood for that sort of thing.

The fat man did not feel well. The motion of the boat had given him a queasiness that had not yet passed. His system had been subjected to various shocks, and he was not a man to adapt easily.

Still, the work was nearly finished. It was amusing to remember how it had begun. An elderly man had contacted him. The elderly man wanted a certain object — an engine part — delivered to a certain man, a relative, marooned on a planet called Harmonia, unable to return until he received the part for his disabled spaceship. The problem had seemed straightforward enough — a simple matter of logistics. But there had been unforeseen complications, which had mounted until finally there seemed no way of delivering the engine part — not until the young relative became an old man or a dead man. Therefore, businessman that he was, the elderly gentleman had looked into other channels. And he had come upon the fat man.

That, at least, was his story. It was as good as any other story, and almost as likely.

And now the thing was nearly done. Already the fat man had put behind him the unresolved complications he had encountered while dealing with Jamieson, and by extension, with the local chief, his priest, and the mysterious white man in the jungle.

Everybody was mysterious until you knew their motivations (every situation was complicated as long as you stayed within its frame of reference). But people didn't realize that a man could walk away, simply leave a situation unresolved, its riddles unanswered.

It required will power to do that and even more will power not to pursue unproductive questions such as: How had the engine part come to that unlikely village in southern Asia? Who was the white man in the jungle and why was he so interested in the part? Why had the chief come to a decision now, after years of indecision? Why had Jamieson, a shrewd trader, let the engine part go for so small a price? Why had no one interfered with the fat man and his helpers during their departure? And so on and so on, ad infinitum.

But the fat man had resisted the commonplace traps baited with curiosity. He knew that mystery is only a lack of data and that for all questions there are only a small number of answers, infinitely repeated, typically banal. Curiosity kills. One simply had to leave behind all the enticing problems, the delicious irrationalities, and move on at the proper time — as he had done.

Everything was going very well indeed. The fat man was pleased. He only wished that the nagging hollowness in his stomach would pass. That and the vertigo.

The Street of Monkeys, the Street of Twilight, the Street of Memory. What strange names these people chose! Or had the Tourist Board done the inventing? It didn't matter, he had memorized his route long ago, he knew exactly how to proceed. He walked without haste through the bazaar, past stacks of swords, baskets of green and orange nuts, piles of fat, silvery fish, past cotton cloth dyed the colours of the rainbow, past a group of grinning black men beating on drums while a golden youth performed a dance, past jugglers and fire-eaters, past a man who sat quietly holding a gorilla on a leash.

The heat was unusual even for the tropics, as were the smells — of spices, kerosene, charcoal, cooking oil, dung — and the sounds — chattering alien voices, squeak of a water wheel, groaning of cattle, high-pitched bark of dogs, jingle of brass jewellery.

There were other sounds, not to be identified: other scenes, not to be understood or assimilated. A man in a black headband was making a slow, deep incision in a boy's thigh with an inlaid shell knife while a crowd watched and giggled. Five men solemnly pounded their fists against a strip of corrugated iron, the blood running down their arms. There was a man with a blue stone in his turban that gave off wisps of white smoke.

And yet overall there remained that sense of vertigo that made everything turn and fall slowly to the left — and the hollowness, as if he had lost something large and intimate from within him. Business was not much fun when you were unwell: see a doctor in Singapore next week, meanwhile walk past the Street of Thieves, Street of Deaths, Street of Forgetfulness — damn their pretentiousness — down the Street of the Maze, Street of Desire, Street of Fish, Fulfilment, Nuts, Two Demons, Horses, and only a few more blocks to Ahlid's house.

A beggar clutched at his sleeve. "The smallest coin, compassionate one, that I may live one more day."

"I never give to beggars," the fat man said.

"Never at all?"

"No. It is a matter of principle."

"Then take this," the beggar said, and pressed into the fat man's hand a shrivelled fig.

"Why do you give this to me?" asked the fat man.