To Gentle’s eye the most fascinating sight was not the tanks or the machine guns, however, it was the presence among these troops of a subspecies he’d not encountered hitherto. Oethacs, Pie called them. They stood no taller than their fellows, but their heads made up a third or more of that height, their squat bodies grotesquely broad to bear the weight of such a massive load of bone. Easy targets, Gentle remarked, but Pie whispered that their brains were small, their skulls thick, and their tolerance for pain heroic, the latter evidenced by the extraordinary array of livid scars and disfigurements they all bore on skin that was as white as the bone it concealed.
It seemed this substantial military presence had been in place for some time, because the populace went about their evening business as if these men and their killing machines were completely commonplace. There was little sign of fraternization, but there was no harassment either.
“Where do we go from here?” Gentle asked Pie once they were clear of the crowds around the station.
“Scopique lives in the northeast part of the city, close to the temples. He’s a doctor. Very well respected,”
“You think he may be still practicing?”
“He doesn’t mend bones, Gentle. He’s a doctor of theology. He used to like the city because it was so sleepy.”
“It’s changed, then.”
“It certainly has. It looks as though it’s got rich.”
There was evidence of L’Himby’s newfound wealth everywhere: in the gleaming buildings, many of them looking as though the paint on their doors was barely dry; in the proliferation of styles among the pedestrians and in the number of elegant automobiles on the street. There were a few signs still remaining of the culture that had existed here before the city’s fortunes had boomed: beasts of burden still wove among the traffic, honked at and cursed; a smattering of facades had been preserved from older buildings and incorporated—usually crudely—into the designs of the newer. And then there were the living facades, the faces of the people Gentle and Pie were mingling with. The natives had a physical peculiarity unique to the region: clusters of small crystalline growths, yellow and purple, on their heads, sometimes arranged like crowns or coxcombs but just as often erupting from the middle of the forehead or irregularly placed around the mouth. To Pie’s knowledge, they had no particular function, but they were clearly viewed as a disfigurement by the sophisticates, many of whom went to extraordinary lengths to disguise their commonality of stock with the undecorated peasants. Some of these stylists wore hats, veils, and makeup to conceal the evidence; others had tried surgery to remove the growths and went proudly about unhatted, wearing their scars as proof of their wealth.
“It’s grotesque,” Pie said when Gentle remarked upon this. “But that’s the pernicious influence of fashion for you. These people want to look like the models they see in the magazines from Patashoqua, and the stylists in Patashoqua have always looked to the Fifth for their inspiration. Damn fools! Look at them! I swear if we were to spread the rumor that everyone in Paris is cutting off their right arms these days, we’d be tripping over hacked-off limbs all the way to Scopique’s house.”
“It wasn’t like this when you were here?”
“Not in L’Himby. As I said, it was a place of meditation. But in Patashoqua, yes, always, because it’s so close to the Fifth, so the influence is very strong. And there’s always been a few minor Maestros, you know, traveling back and forth, bringing styles, bringing ideas. A few of them made a kind of business of it, crossing the In Ovo every few months to get news of the Fifth and selling it to the fashion houses, the architects, and so on. So damn decadent. It revolts me.”
“But you did the same thing, didn’t you? You became part of the Fifth Dominion.”
“Never here,” the mystif said, its fist to its chest. “Never in my heart. My mistake was getting lost in the In Ovo and letting myself be summoned to earth. When I was there I played the human game, but only as much as I had to.”