Razor Mountain — Chapter 33.1

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Beyond the balcony the sun balanced perfectly between two mountain ridges, pouring its golden light down the creased slopes and highlighting deep valleys with their sharp black edges. Above the mountains, the clouds were streaked with purple and pink. Below, the forest was wreathed in mist that captured the fading light. The world looked too vivid to be real.

Everything was new again. He would be God-Speaker. It had taken thirty-two years, but he had finally, fully returned from the dead. His resurrection was complete. He had won.

Christopher thought ought to feel relieved. After all the chaos and fear he had gone through since waking on that dark airplane, it was a tremendous relief to feel that everything was under control. Even if he knew it wasn’t really under his control. He was fading into the background of his own life.

He drew an etched glass tumbler to his lips and felt the sting of liquor as he sipped. Christopher wasn’t a drinker. He wasn’t even sure what he had poured himself from the selection of unlabeled crystal decanters in God-Speaker’s apartment, but if there was ever a time when a toast was appropriate, it was surely this moment of ascendance. He raised the glass, alone on the balcony, and appreciated the prismatic light glinting off the glass before taking another drink.

Unfortunately, there was the matter of General Reese to deal with, and beyond that would be years of work slowly repairing the cracks in the foundations of his little society. Many of the secretaries were old. He would need to think about their replacements, get to know the people under them and who might have a suitable disposition for his inner circle. He would need to find more children to be oracles, to be his early warning system (for all the good that had done in this whole fiasco).

The time for relief was short. Christopher was beginning to understand that this was what it meant to be God-Speaker. There was always danger, always risk. It was a constant balancing act. He had been proven weak. Now, more than ever, the specter of death loomed over his empire, just waiting for opportunities to strike. He hadn’t lived for thousands of years without developing an understanding of that specter, learning the riposte and parry, the counter-play that kept the endless game going.

It was exhausting.

The past thirty-two years had exposed many new dangers. Or perhaps God-Speaker had grown complacent and let down his guard. Either way, these nearly catastrophic failures demanded equally extreme responses. So many things were more fragile than he had thought. He would need to rethink everything.

The memories were now clicking into place so quickly that he could barely follow them. No longer was it a vast sea of ink-black time, punctuated by little islands of recollection. Now it was a vast mountain range, the ups and downs of a geologically long life, with only a few dark valleys still hidden. The light of memory was creeping down into even those low spots.

He wondered if he would feel something different when the final memory fell into place. Would there be a seismic shift in perception, or would it be like hypothermia—a slow descent into diffuse darkness, a gradual fading away of the person named Christopher Lamarck?

As the sun sank beyond the mountains, he lay down on the cool stone of the balcony and searched for the light of the first stars. Again, he remembered reaching out for a hand, but this time, he knew the person it belonged to. She had such a soft smile, rarely even revealing her teeth, but always giving the impression that there was some beautiful joke shared between the two of them. Her eyes…her eyes were sad.

“There’s still time,” he had told her. “We can figure this out.”

“There is still time,” she had replied. “Let’s not waste it wishing for something that is not to be.”

“How can you say that?”

She exhaled softly. Her eyes twinkled with the reflected stars.

“Not everything is a problem to be solved. You told me yourself, even the stars die.”

“They live for billions of years,” God-Speaker countered.

“Sure. And what kinds of lives do they live? Are they full of worry? Do they scrabble greedily, always seeking more? Or do they just shine their light out into the universe until they run out?”

“It’s not the same. You’re a person. You are my love. I can’t live without you.”

“I am grateful for that,” she said. “I am a person, and I have lived the life of a person. That’s enough for me.”

“It’s not enough for me. How can I go on, if you leave me?”

She sighed. “I cannot answer that for you, my love.”

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