Free Force Majeure by Daniel O'Mahoney Page B

dragons, doctor.’
    Despite the honour, or perhaps delusion, of Doctor Arkadin’s company, Esteban’s thoughts were still turned to sex. He imagined himself as a knight, slaying dragons to rescue grateful and willing virgins. The virgin and the dragon were the same. She embraced him with biting claws, her eyes were coal-red and her pores sweated gold.
    Doctor Arkadin chuckled to himself. ‘There are no such thing as dragons. They don’t exist, and it’s their non-existence that gives them power over us. They ride us in our dreams and our accidents. The sleep of reason brings forth monsters. We – you and I – everyone in this city, even our enemies, are at the mercy of forces we can’t control, and our only consolation is the knowledge that those forces are tormented and bedevilled by monsters of their own. You should wonder. This is our door.’
    There was no door, just the gap. For that moment, at least, Doctor Arkadin was a huge man; his bulk filled the jamb and hid the interior, but Esteban, squeezing after him, smelled cooled oil, soot and stale electricity. The doctor was an engineer, and this gap had the smell of an abandoned forge. Rag carpeted the floor and scuffed beneath his feet. On the workbench-altar, in its column of light, was the brass-headed god that Esteban had heard described but never seen before with his own eyes.
    ‘ Challanco ,’ he murmured, and Doctor Arkadin, by his silence, confirmed it.
    It was three times the size of a normal human head. There were no lines or joins visible on its skin, but its eyes and toothless mouth were round, hollow sockets. It was antique and smeared with preserving grease, which had congealed into a caul half-wrapped over its bald dome. Esteban thought he caught the doctor’s own likeness in its silently howling features, but that might have been a trick of the half-light. Doctor Arkadin himself gazed at his creation, and traces of pride and revulsion and sorrow could be read from his face.
    ‘Does it speak?’ Esteban asked.
    ‘No. It doesn’t speak. You must remember it was built in an age when its purpose could not be fully described. Had I known of the Lady Lovelace and her machine-muse, I might perhaps have thought of it, but no. The idea of giving it a tongue or a voice was preposterous. What could it possibly say that we’d understand? It observes. It orders. It computes. I conceived it after the Oracle of Delphi, as my gift to the city. This and the officer corps and the grand designs.’
    Esteban had assumed it was meant to be a man, but that no longer seemed clear.
    Through layers behind Esteban’s eyes, Kay realised challanco was exactly how she’d imagined God when she was a child, before she was old enough to understand what that meant. God was bald and empty and terrifying. Even then, she hadn’t believed in Him.
    She wore Esteban like a suit of ice. She wanted to move his fingers to touch challanco ’s skin and find out if it was as chilly as she imagined, but he stayed locked in his dream and his hand hung warily at his side. ‘Did challanco summon me?’
    Doctor Arkadin’s head tilted slowly from side to side. ‘It causes things to be moved and sorted. It has been assembling a dossier on the current crisis. You must take its findings and do with them as you see fit.’
    ‘Me? Just me?’
    ‘That’s up to you. I notice you seem unconcerned by the idea of crisis.’
    ‘Candida swallows threats. They are its meat and drink, so the witches say. It gobbled you up, doctor, if Flower-of-the-Lady is to be believed.’
    The doctor’s eyes were glossy brown, the same shade as his brass creature. ‘Please reach into challanco ’s mouth and remove what you find there. You may still decline.’
    Esteban rolled up his sleeve and sank his arm into the head. He expected a soft, tight hollow with damp, fleshy-walls, but there was just rust and cool metal. His fingers touched the edge of the package. With a little difficulty, he pulled it