Linda Perdido: A Novel

Four.

linda perdido 21 Four. They are like poor spiders adrift in the howling storm, she thinks. Thinks Linda Perdido, all ablaze like the scratch and fireburst of a wooden match. now they see how big i am, and how small they are. indeed, the creatures of Saint lydia’s, children and adults both, scurry about in aimless confusion as their tormentor glares down at them from above, at her perch on the very tip of the Gothic Revival pinnacle that tops the edifice, and has been her symbol for as long as anyone can recall. She grins: Why, the little people wonder, for what reason, they speculate, in order to accomplish what end? High above she hangs, supported only by a knotted rope looped around the crescent-tipped minaret (a freakish afterthought of architect randolph phelps remainder whose mind had become remote); she cambers; she bobs; she sways, and waves to a distant speck on the gauzy orange and purple horizon. The tormented whine, interlaced and interwoven, of distant but fast approaching police vehicles seems to promise an end to the hullabaloo , and a surcease to perdido’s calamity; but now the distant 22 MaC WellMan blip has emerged from a low cloud bank and is revealed to be some kind of hot-air balloon. a man aboard the rapidly nearing craft has waved back to linda perdido and is lowering a rope ladder, though in the late afternoon smear of haze this is uncertain. Wisps of low clouds and rising mist obscure the view, and smoke from below—the demolished complex of Saint Lydia’s, not to mention, at a distance, the dark and oily particulate dust-storm which conceals a boiling conflagration at the Silo Heights WalMart. (Linda’s firebomb has detonated with perfect isotropic blast-force in the deserted warehouse area no one was monitoring.) linda perdido smiles her lovely smile, her wicked grin. Who is this new person? The balloon belongs to the new Baskets Silvertone Hot air association, a society of senior citizen singers who perform lite classics on the order of the djorsey Brothers and perry Comma. Bojangles pee Flatley and SlowWood James. a certain gentleman, not at all a gentleman, has hijacked their vehicle , employing a savage and ugly nail gun for the purpose. This is Spike Narthex, a person of some notoriety stemming from the rumor of an alleged appointment with the evil one at the ivory Room of the Astor Hotel over in blackest New Benefit. Who’s that, asks the track coach, Sister Monica de la Fan. Who’s that, asks Officer Underwood just now re-arriving on the scene. Who’s that, ask the six members of the SWAT team from the adjoining county seat at neighboring new Kachina. Well, i’ll be, says one of the six, adjusting the heft of his long-barreled rifle, what the hell is that? Indeed the reflex of light off the airship, the curious cast of low dark clouds, purple and scarlet in violent swaths and ghoulish shapes, combine in an effect that can only be described as spectral , blindingly so. linda perdido 23 But now linda perdido has joined her accomplice, and a wind of the sort that troubles the Floating World in certain Japanese woodcuts drives the little vehicle, like a receding soap bubble or the afterimage of an air-bleb, so that as the burning ruin of Saint lydia’s crumbles and makes bone-cracking noises, all that the assembled constabulary and harried victims of perdido’s terror can do is stand as though rooted to the earth, and watch as the tiny, almost iridescent, spot shimmers and fades, curling away behind the curve of the darkening earth. ...