Chapter 30Only a Building

Andrew crouched. His left knee bent first, and halfway down it made a sound, dull and old. He stopped and waited until it was quiet, then bent all the way. The stone was cold, and the cold crept up his trouser legs. The toes of his boots were eleven centimetres from the scored line, the same figure he had measured when he landed. With that, his face and the mask were at the same height.

The Liberty Mask was kneeling. Andrew did not know when he had knelt. A moment before, the Liberty Mask had still been standing behind the torch, his body not moving, only the torch moving. Now he knelt in the centre of the altar, his knees pressing on the stone; the stone bore no mark of the pressing, and not one blade of the fine grass had bent. His back was still straight, straight and very neat. His left hand rested on the outside of his knee, palm down, pressed on the stone, pressed very flat. His right hand still held the grip of the torch, the knuckles bent at a fixed angle. The cloth on either side of his knees was very old; the seam had split once and been sewn up again, with very fine stitches.

A fine crack had opened down the middle of the mask. It ran from the centre of the forehead downwards, past the bridge of the nose, all the way to the jaw. It had opened without a sound. The crack was very fine, its edges new, a shade brighter than the shell of the mask. The colour beneath the crack was not verdigris; it was pale, much paler. In the crack was a very thin line of light, coming through from inside the mask, not the light from the stone. The seams at the shoulder plates, the seams at the elbows, the seams at the knees were all empty inside, so empty that the dark inside them could be seen. The tags in these seams were gone.

His chest did not move. Andrew watched it, watched for a long time, and did not see it move once.

There was no shadow beneath him. Light rose from the cracks in the stone and lit the stone under his knees, yet the place where he knelt was empty; there was no shape of him on the stone.

The last nine price tags slid down between the fingers of his right hand. His hand still kept the shape of holding the torch, the knuckles loosening one by one, and the slips of paper dropped through the gaps. One, two, three. The fourth caught on the joint of the ring finger, turned over once, and only then fell. All nine landed on the stone, backs upwards, without a sound. As the last one fell, the scored line in the stone lit up once and went dark again.

The currency hologram behind him lit up again. The numbers fell one square at a time, down to the bottom, and went back to the top. One number stopped at a certain point and did not jump again. He did not look back. He was looking at Andrew’s hand.

Andrew’s right hand reached out and stopped between the two of them. Palm up, nothing in it, only a little sweat. The wind cooled the sweat, and quickly. The hand did not draw back, and it did not move forward. Andrew did not pull him up. On this hand there was no place for a signature, and no approval box.

This hand had signed its name on paper before. That substitute form, the recipient’s name written on the line above. He had read it letter by letter, and every letter was right. When he signed, the pen point had paused over the paper before it came down. The pause was very short, so short he had not even marked it himself. Now the hand paused in mid-air, longer than that pause.

The other four did not step forward. Qingluan’s silk shawl hung at her side; the points of light at its ends had long since scattered, leaving only the weight of the cloth. The shawl was wound round her wrist, twice, and she did not unwind it. Mitsuki held the straight blade across her chest, point down, her eyes on the ground. The blade’s shadow lay on the stone, a thin line of black, not wavering. Her wide left sleeve held a sheet of paper, one corner showing; her left hand pressed the cuff, pressed once through the cloth, and let go. The satin toe of Swan’s left shoe was drawn in on the stone, perfectly still. The trainer on her right foot stood in the dust, the tread of its sole pressed in deep. Jaewon stood furthest out, the shadow print still on his back, neither slower nor faster. All four had stepped back past the scored line and stood where the light did not reach, and not one of them took another step forward.

The wind on the altar was slight. It came in through the gap in the star-shaped wall, pressed the fine grass down, and let it stand up again. No one spoke.

The Liberty Mask drew a breath first. His shoulders rose first, then his chest, breathing in all the way, and then a little more. The crack in the mask opened a hair and closed again. It was the first breath he had taken. When it was done, his chest did not fall at once; it stayed there, half a beat behind the count, and only then fell.

He spoke. His voice was very soft, so soft that the fine grass on the stone did not stir.

“No one ever bought my freedom. I put the price tag on it myself. …But even the words ‘I chose this myself’ were handed to me by them.”

As the sentence fell, the stone caught it, and the star-shaped wall caught it too. After it was caught, it came back once, half a beat slower than his voice. For the first time his voice had somewhere to go. What came back that once was an echo. Andrew heard it very clearly.

As the echo travelled back, the fine grass in the cracks of the stone bent once more, towards the centre of the altar, then slowly stood up again.

Andrew’s fingers moved. His fingertips were cold, and the sweat in his palm was still there. He did not draw it back. The voice went once round the stone, out to the foot of the wall, and back again, back to the centre of the altar, stopped there, and only then dispersed.

His right hand was still held out there. His wrist ached, and he did not turn it. Half the sweat in his palm had dried; the other half cooled very slowly.

Qingluan unwound the shawl from her wrist, then wound it back, tighter. The point of the blade at Mitsuki’s chest lifted an inch and dropped again. On Swan’s left wrist one scale flipped open and stayed there, not closing. Swan’s right foot moved on the stone. The trainer landed with a dull sound, dull and solid, the sound a well-worn shoe should make. Mitsuki did not look at the Liberty Mask; she was looking at Andrew’s hand. The currency hologram behind him stopped for one beat, the numbers no longer falling, and only then went on falling. The twenty-four hologram dancers scattered in that one beat, not one of them left. Jaewon’s shadow print lagged half a beat before it settled on his back again. The wind lifted the tags off the stone one by one and carried them out through the gap in the star-shaped wall.

The torch slid out of the Liberty Mask’s right hand. That hand was shaking, shaking until at last it let go. The missile-shaped torch lay at a slant on the stone, its nose pointing at the edge of the altar, its tail still leaking thin numbers that went out as they reached the stone. That stretch of the number stream broke off in mid-air, hanging in pieces, not falling. The fire went out.

One. Two. Three.

On the fourth, the fire lit again. This time it was not numbers; it was fire. Its edges shook, not neat the way numbers were. The root of the flame was very small; it came out of the crack in the torch’s tail, wisp by wisp, with black between the wisps. Mitsuki’s blade reflected the fire. The spot reflected on the back of the blade was very small, and it slid away quickly.

From two or three steps away, Andrew’s face was already drawn tight by the heat. The flame bit at a fine blade of grass in a crack of the stone, and with a crackle the grass burned and bent, burned into a scorched black stub. The wind poured in through the gap in the star-shaped wall and blew the flame sideways, towards the edge of the altar, now left, now right, not evenly. The wind paused, and the flame stood up, very straight, then the wind blew it sideways again. The fire was orange-red, just one small knot of flame.

The Liberty Mask’s left hand lifted from the stone. It lifted very slowly, the fingers leaving the stone first, then the wrist, then the elbow. The fingers were very long, and at the joints there were seams, one after another, the threads in them all broken. The scored line lay between the two of them, a very faint line of light. The hand came to the line and stopped. It was still a finger’s width from Andrew’s hand. It stopped, and held for a beat.

Then it crossed the line by itself.

On the far side of the line it stirred up a little dust, which rose once and settled again.

The fingertips touched Andrew’s palm. Not a grip, only a touch. The fingertips were cold. Not the cold of metal; the cold of a human hand that had rested on stone a long time. In that moment, the sweat in Andrew’s palm was drawn away by that bit of cold. He did not wipe it.

The Liberty Mask pushed on his own knees and stood up, and no one helped him. When his knees came off the stone, they left no mark on it.

※

Beside the scored line, the stone had split open, a gap one step wide, running from the inner side of the line all the way to the outer. In the gap were stone steps, going down one after another, their lines all running the same way. These were the steps of the Star Corridor. The edges of the steps were a cold light, and below them there was no wind. The edges had been worn round by many people’s shoes; only the top few steps were still sharp. Along one side ran a very fine white line, from one step down to the next, unbroken, and not wide: the stone’s own grain. A little white light came up from beneath the break, from very far away, and fell on the back of his hand, lighting up the thread of the screw.

On the first step lay a small scrap of white paper, its edge straight, the strip torn from a tag. The scrap lay back upwards. He did not pick it up.

Andrew walked to the edge of the gap and looked down. The hammer lay on its side beside him, and the command ring above his left forearm was still turning, very slowly. He crouched, and counted down one step at a time. The steps were not evenly spaced; the further down, the narrower they became, and somewhere past the tenth step his boot heel had only half a foot’s length to land on. His footsteps landed without an echo. His breath landed on the steps and did not come back either.

On the thirty-first step there was a stroke, deep at one end, shallow at the other. On the forty-fourth step there was another stroke, shallower than the one above, its edges furred and curling up. The stroke on the fifty-seventh was very flat, too flat to look cut by hand. The stroke on the seventieth was very short, not crooked, the same depth at both ends. Four strokes.

He looked at each one in turn. Their depths were different. No two were equally deep. Beside the fifty-seventh step there was a shallow mark that had been smoothed away, leaving only a patch brighter than the rest. He did not touch it, and he did not count it.

When he had counted to the seventieth step, his lips had not moved. The numbers lined up in his head in a column, and at the end of the column was a blank.

The seventy-first step, the seventy-second. He kept counting down, to the eighty-third. His knee pressed on the edge of the eighty-third step; the edge was thinner than elsewhere, and when he pressed down, the stone gave a slight spring. He paused before shifting his weight onto it. The break was new, the stone brighter than elsewhere, and there was not a single mark on its face. At the edge of the new break was a tiny grain of white, salt, dried onto the stone.

He opened his left hand. The screw was still in his palm. M6, with a mark on its thread where a spanner had bitten. The screw had been taken out in the clinic doorway, and when it was put in his palm, the veteran had said only three words: “You keep it.” He had asked why. The veteran had not answered.

The screw had spent nearly a month in his outer pocket and worn a round hole through the lining. Later he had moved it to the palm of his left hand, and whenever he gripped something, it kept digging into him.

He turned the screw over, thread down, against the stone. He did not press. The thread went by itself, travelled across, scraped into the stone, and scraped out a broad line. As it scraped there was a very fine sound, so fine that only he could hear it. The middle stretch was deeper, the two ends shallow, so shallow they could hardly be seen.

One stroke. Grit fell, and he did not hear it land.

When he had finished, he lifted the screw and looked at it once against the light from the break. The thread was coated with greyish-white stone dust; he wiped it off with his thumb, and the screw went back to its old shine.

The fifth stroke. He did not say it aloud; he only counted it.

The tag that had been pressed against his dog tag, he took off and dropped on the stone. The dog tag at his chest lay against his collarbone, its face blank. He had thought about carving letters, carving his own name. There were no letters on the dog tag, and none on the stone either. What he had carved was a stroke.

He stood up and went back to stand at the edge of the scored line. He clenched the screw in his palm, and it dug into the lines of his hand, deeper than before. His left knee made a sound again, and he did not stop.

Then came the rise.

The stone of the altar shrank away, layer by layer. The old star-shaped wall ringed a flat piece of ground, and on that ground the gap shrank to a fine thread. Beyond the wall was the harbour, and the water of the harbour was black, with streaks of white reflection on its surface, the city’s lights fallen into it. The lights of a bridge ran in two lines, with cars on the lines, their headlights flickering, all white. On the river to the east lay a barge, the light at its bow not on. At the far end of the harbour there were waves, striking the embankment one after another, very far off, and very dull. The sky to the west was very low; cloud pressed over the harbour, its underside lit greyish-white by the city’s lights. Beyond the harbour was the city, and in the city the lights were on window by window, people’s windows, one storey on top of another. The statue on the island still stood, its right hand raised, the torch in its hand verdigris green, without fire. The verdigris on its crown was mottled in patches. The base of the statue was star-shaped, and the gap in the old wall faced it directly.

The night lights of the five buildings were still on. Those five towers had lit in the same second, standing in five places in five cities, tower after tower, and none had fallen. In their light there were no longer numbers jumping upwards, only stretches of white and stretches of dark. They were no longer the shape of cages. They were only five buildings. The top of each one could be seen now, and on the tops were lights, aerials, lightning rods that people had put up.

Above the water beyond the island hung four small warm points, side by side, none of them coming closer. They were the throats of four ships, each lit only a little. Their light was very low and did not reach the water. One of them stayed lit the longest, went out once, and came back on. The four ships did not come down, and they did not fly away.

Further up came cloud, the edge of the atmosphere, a whole expanse of the night side, its lights on.

Just then, a voice came up from below. It was Andrew’s voice, steadier than it had been at the centre of the altar, every word landing where it should land. The voice did not rise, and it did not drop.

“The tower is still there. It’s just that from today, it’s only a building.”

There were footsteps behind him. Qingluan came over first, the shawl trailing on the stone, walked to the outer side of the scored line, stopped, and did not move. Mitsuki put the straight blade away behind her shoulder, came over, and stopped beside her. The toe of Swan’s shoe tapped the stone, tap by tap, up to the edge of the line, and stopped there too. Jaewon came last; his shadow lagged half a beat and fell behind them. Jaewon said nothing. His breathing was very soft, softer than anyone else’s. The four of them stood in a row on the outer side of the scored line, and not one of them stepped across. Andrew did not look back. He knew they were there.

He bent and picked his coat up off the stone, shook it out, and put it back over his shoulders. His gaze came back and fell on his own hand. He took his right hand out of his trouser pocket; the palm was empty. The second copy of the form was still in his trouser pocket, folded twice, the creases white. This time there was nothing that needed approving.

※

The veteran stood at the pharmacy door and did not go in at once. He stood, thinking of nothing, only letting the cold come up through the soles of his shoes. The wind came from the sea, carrying a little salt, blew past the end of the street, and blew in at the pharmacy door.

From the knee down, his right leg was that length of prosthetic. He stood very straight, his weight on his left foot; on the right, the connector only rested on the ground, rested very steadily.

His shoulder bag was still on the steps. Its flap was not fastened, and the corner of a receipt stuck out; the wind went past along the street and turned over a page of it. He did not pick it up, and he did not go back for it. He did not need to look at the pencil figures on the back of that receipt, worked out three times, to know where the rings were.

The puddle at the foot of the steps reflected the sky. He did not look up; he looked at the water. The sky in the water was black, and the stars were all straight, not twisted. The patch to the west was empty. Where that crescent had hung, there was nothing now. A patch had gone empty. The puddle lit up once and went dark again.

The window on the second floor across the way, where a television had always been on, was dark now. Far off a train went past; its sound came up through the ground in one rush, then a pause, then another rush.

The roller shutter had been pulled all the way up, rolled to the top. At the end of the track was a catch; the catch had come loose, so the shutter stayed at the top and did not come down again. A strip of dust in the track had been rubbed away, showing the iron beneath, bright. The mat by the door was still wet. He stopped on it, wiped his soles dry, and only then went in. The connector on his right foot knocked against the threshold and made a sound. The wet shine on the threshold lit up once too.

The chiller in the shop had stopped humming. Every time he had come in before, the hum had pressed low in his ears, pressed for a long time. Now it was gone; there was only the wind blowing in at the door. When the wind blew, a hook at the end of the shelves knocked once, iron on iron, a very short sound. A clock hung on the wall, its second hand stopped, stopped on a number that was not quite round. He did not look at the time.

He had spent six years in a warehouse. That was another place, another kind of shelf. At the end of every month they took stock, counting one row of shelves after another, and reported the count upward, and the count reported had to tally with the count in the books. If it did not tally, they counted again. He counted slowly, but he seldom got it wrong. The counts he made, he copied into a small notebook, writing very small to save space. The shelves in this pharmacy he had counted too. Anti-inflammatories, painkillers, skin, row after row, every row counted. The skin row, eleven boxes, not one missing.

There was no one behind the till. The notebook on the counter still lay face down, and he did not turn it over. The sign on the wall was still there, “Please pay at the counter”, its corners curled, stuck down with tape. Under the glass of the counter lay a price list, its corners curled up, the same as the sign on the wall. He glanced at it and did not go to the counter.

The shelves ran all the way to the far end. At the far end there was only a row of empty metal hooks, no tag on any of them, their points facing down.

On the middle shelf, in the bay nearest the door, the white box was still there. The small tag on its side was gone, leaving only a white mark that had not faded.

He reached out. His hand did not stop in mid-air. His fingers opened, came down on the box, and took it down.

The box was light, lighter than he remembered. One corner of the cardboard had a crease pressed into it, left by being moved many times.

He did not turn it round to look at the side. He remembered that string of shapes. He ran the sums through his head once, and the second time through, he could not make them come out. He had never made that ledger add up, and he did not mean to work it out again.

Last time he had put it back, label facing out, lined up with the boxes beside it. This time he did not put it back.

The date on the back of the box was still a long way off. Next month’s business: he had thought about it many times on the steps, and each time it could wait another month. This time he did not say so.

He put the box in his coat pocket. The key in his trouser pocket clinked once as he moved, very softly. He looked down at his palm. There was nothing in it, only a ring of white, pressed in just now by gripping the box.

As he reached the door and turned, the strap of the shoulder bag scraped on the steps, and another sheet of paper slid out of its mouth and landed on the second step. He did not bend down.

Someone was coming along the street. A man in a work uniform came up out of the metro entrance, passed the steps, looked at him, and nodded once. He nodded once too. The man did not stop; he went into the convenience store opposite. The convenience store’s door swung open and shut, and the bell over it rang once.

The street lamp outside the door was still the same one. The bug in its shade was gone, perhaps flown away; nothing was circling. Round the rim of the shade was a ring of dust, and in the dust a very small handprint; he did not know whose. The lamplight leaked in at the door, orange-red. The same orange-red had come back.

This time it did not stop on one patch. It fell across the whole back of his hand, and the old scars on his knuckles, those pale ones, line after line, were all lit up. He breathed out, and the white cloud of his breath was lit orange too, spreading, spreading very slowly. The orange-red fell only on the back of this one hand; everywhere else was still its old colour.

He came down the steps. Across the street the white steam from the exhaust vent rose, puff after puff, and scattered as soon as the wind blew. The black stain on the third step was still there; he did not look at it. With every step, the connector on his right foot made a sound, not fast, not slow.

As he passed the shop window, the glass reflected his face, and the roller shutter behind him. The shutter was up, and in the glass that stretch of doorway was empty. Over the convenience store’s door, the bell rang once more. He did not look back.

He pulled the zip of his coat up to his chin. The red light at the end of the street was on. There were no cars on the road; he stood behind the line and did not wait. He crossed the line.

On the other side, he put his hand in his coat pocket, pressed the medicine box once through the cloth, and then gave a laugh, very short.