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By Root 1554 0

sea contrived of roof peaks and chimneys from which darkling smokes trickled upward to commingle with an overcast of much the same color. Four cylindrical sections had been cut out from the eastern side of the roof, and the machines had been set down in the holes thus created, approximately a third of their height hidden from the view of whoever might peer at then from the adjoining houses. The concentric silver rings (I say, silver, but that word refers merely to their color—I never ascertained the name of the metal from which they had been fashioned) that constituted their exterior rose some fifteen feet above the roof and were pitted and discolored; but the new machine was shiny and taller by half. Altogether they resembled Christmas trees of a futuristic design, three stubby and one attenuated, and appeared quite alien in contrast to the blackened bricks and tiles of their surround. I wondered why this bizarre construction atop Richmond’s house had not been paid more notice by the residents of Saint Nichol, especially considering the noise it produced; but then I recognized that most had little interest as to what happened in the heavens, their eyes being fixed upon the ground, their ears attuned to baser sounds.

Crouched amidst a clutter of tools (awls, hammers, and so on), Richmond and several workmen were busy bolting down the new machine to an iron plate—I could see the tops of their heads from the edge of the hole. The machine itself differed from the other three not only in height, but also in that various dials and switches occupied the interstices between certain of the concentric rings. I poked around the rooftop for a few minutes more, finding nothing to hold my interest and then, as I prepared to go back down through the trapdoor, I caught sight of an opaque, oblong shape, roughly the size of a man, hovering close by the fourth machine. It trembled, fluttering as would a leaf in a strong wind, and subsequently was drawn out into a thinner, scarflike shape that clung to one of the concentric rings, gliding along it, fitting itself to the ring as though it were a sleeve . . . and then it vanished. I had grown accustomed to ghosts during my stay at Richmond’s house, even to the point of being on speaking terms with one, and their formal apparitions, the images, fragmentary and otherwise, of the men and women they had been in life had almost no effect upon me; but this glimpse of the raw stuff of the spirit—that was how I countenanced it—left me petrified, my heart squeezed and stilled for an instant by cold, steely fingers, and made me fully aware of the depths of the pit into which I had lowered myself.

MY WORK WITH Christine had reached an impasse. What I had seen on the roof made me reluctant to engage her, and I spent less time with her than I had, dallying with Jane instead. Richmond remained concentrated on the installation and, though I saw him each and every day, he spoke only in monosyllables and then in passing. He was oblivious to everything but the matter at hand and seemed to have lost interest in talking further about Christine. For once I was happy to accommodate him. However, on the day after the new machine had been activated, he invited me into his study and notified me that he had turned off the fourth machine and from now on, for the duration of my visit the new machine would be the only one functioning.

“You must do as you see fit,” I said. “But this is certain to impede my work.”

“On the contrary, my dear Samuel,” he said with gleeful satisfaction. “It will assist your work no end. Tomorrow or the next day, a window will be installed in the chamber beneath the new machine.”

I absorbed this. “So the purpose of this machine is not to purify the atmosphere?”

“It is intended to restore Christine. Not entirely—I don’t believe that is possible, though my notion of what is possible changes day by day. But by using the damaged settings on the fourth machine as a starting point, I have devised a means of strengthening her effect. At least that is my hope. This may serve to quicken her perceptions,