The Golden Cut

by Merl Fluin

  “I recognise you now,” said Theta. “You were the Eleven Twenty-Threes’ gladiator in the arena combat. Quite a habit you’ve got of stealing our prisoners.” She glittered with all eighteen eyes, hands at her holsters.

  “Which proves my point,” said TJ. “If I were with the numbers, I wouldn’t have taken off like that with your guy, would I? I’d have been handing him to the Eleven Twenty-Threes, not saving him from them. And I definitely wouldn’t have brought this one back.” She indicated Mei-Lin with a twitch of the head.

  “Maybe,” said the five Theta. “Yeah, ok, maybe.” But her hands did not move from the holsters as she surveyed TJ with a frown. “So what’s all this about the Directrix?”

  “The man I rescued turned out more dangerous than I knew, and I realised I’d made a mistake. The Directrix wanted him back, and it promised to help me get away from him in return for his head. He must have captured the Directrix while I was making my getaway. He went crazy-wild when the Directrix sent him to sleep in your caves that night. He’s sure to be hellbent on some bloody revenge or other. I owe the Directrix my life, and we had all better go and save it before it’s too late.”

  Theta’s hands went to her brows. “How do we find it?”

  “By finding Cantos Can. And I can help you track him down.”

  ***

  TJ and Theta drank coffee by the campfire while the rest of the Star gang prepared food and tended the horses. The camp nestled beneath the tall cliffs by the old bathing pool. The mouths of the Star gang’s sleeping caves glowed darkly above in the high rocks.

  Mei-Lin was tethered to a tree. Her feet were bound with rope, and TJ’s homunculi stood guard around her. The gang eyed Mei-Lin and the homunculi alike uneasily as they bustled by.

  TJ spread her hands and smiled. “Nothing up my sleeve.”

  “Exactly how dangerous is this Cantos going to be?”

  TJ spoke slowly. “Well, for one thing he’s probably hooked up with the other Eleven Twenty-Threes by now.”

  “But he betrayed them. He was dead to them.”

  “He was. But now they’re homeless and desperate, and if he turns up with the Directrix as a hostage they might be in a forgiving mood.”

  “The Directrix captive. It’s unimaginable.”

  TJ’s mouth twitched. “It seemed pretty scared of him by the time I got away.”

  Theta’s eyes went wide. “Then he must have become mighty powerful. How has he done it?”

  “He’s nabbed himself a clever toy that doesn’t rightly belong to him – a toy that by rights should be mine, for my own purposes. That’s why I think you and me should join forces and take the bastard down.”

  A song without words filled the air. One of the Star gang was serenading a wooden cage. Inside crouched a woman with an elongated head, unkempt and wild-eyed. As the song continued, the woman’s limbs turned yellow. Other gang members stopped to watch, calling encouragement to the singer. The caged woman’s yellow skin sagged, softened and took on a granular texture. The singer’s voice rose high and the woman’s whole body changed from yellow to brown. The flesh was soft and crumbly, moist and tempting.

  “Cake for the feast,” announced the singer. There was a hearty round of applause.

  “All right,” said Theta to TJ. “Say we find him. What’s our plan to rescue the Directrix?”

  “We have to go in hard and fast, with dreams and bullets blazing. Take the numbers by surprise, get the Directrix, take Cantos’s magick toy, leave no one standing.”

  A commotion broke out on the other side of camp. One of the gang had caught an enormous land crab. Its legs shuddered on either side of its body as she picked it up with both hands. A rack of shells opened upwards like a concertina as she pulled it from the ground. She yelped: “It’s a monster! It’s a monster!” Ripping the top shell from the frantic animal, she plunged a long, thin needle-like blade into the centre, thrusting down and pushing her arm into it almost to the shoulder. The animal’s legs spasmed and went still. The woman’s bloody arm re-emerged to whoops of excitement from her companions.

  “Ok, I’ll buy it,” said Theta. “You help us save the Directrix, we’ll help you get what you want from Cantos, and between us we finish off the Eleven Twenty-Threes for good and all.”

  “For good and all,” said TJ.

  37.

  After the feast was finished, TJ took some leftover food to Mei-Lin. “I’ve probably just saved your life,” she told her, putting the plate on the ground. Mei-Lin ignored her.

  TJ walked back across the campsite and beyond the dried-up basin of the bathing pool. The moon had risen, and the sun was settled on the horizon.

  Something glinted in front of her. Two mounds of earth lay in shadow with a silver star between them. TJ stopped walking and the mounds shifted.

  “Ahoy there,” she said, “friend or foe?”

  The mounds and star resolved themselves into a young woman stretched across the earth on her belly. She was dressed in buckskins of the same honey colour as her hair and skin. The silver glint in her hand became an astrolabe. TJ sat beside her and gestured at it. “What you looking for?”

  “Invisibles.”

  “Find any?”

  “Never seen one. Have you?”

  “Once or twice.”

  The young woman sat up and gave TJ her hand. “My name’s Lala,” she said.

  Later, high up in a sleeping cave, TJ watched her undress. Lala’s right upper arm bore an enormous scab that glittered like a jewel in the lamplight.

  “How did you get that wound?”

  “I’ve been on guard duty today. Your prisoner friend is quite the tigress.”

  Lala smiled a sleepy smile and drew closer. She smelled of blood and cake. Her body was soft and warm and sticky as honey beneath TJ’s palms. Time passed, or perhaps it did not. TJ gripped Lala’s two wrists in her five-fingered hand.

  Afterwards Lala said, “Would you like to sleep with me?”

  “I prefer to sleep alone.”

  “I’d like to stay with you.”

  TJ stroked Lala’s nuzzling body. “Told you to watch me to make sure I really do sleep, huh?” Lala made a face. “All right, you can stay and check on me. But seriously, alone. Don’t touch me while I sleep.”

  Lala let go of her. TJ made a bed space a few feet away, lay down on her left side and went to sleep.

  ***

  She was playing cup and balls in the street outside the Two Slits. Coins tumbled this way and that through her fingers, but her tongue clanged inside her mouth like iron, and the undertaker across the street was a man of mud. She was conning the hicks, but the hicks were animals, and they were all disguised as other animals: bears wore caterpillar heads, horses stood on their hind legs in crocodile costumes, winged beetles had bird beaks strapped over their mandibles.

  Two huge bull elephants with big burning eyes stepped out into the ring. A group of people took up position between the elephants around a cauldron in the centre. Inside the cauldron were heaps of round gold coins, fat and yellow. The heat of the cauldron had turned them soft as honey.

  The people plunged their hands into the cauldron and threw the sticky coins upwards and outwards through the air. The coins landed on the elephants’ hides and stuck there. The elephants looked as if they were wearing soft gold armour.

  “The golden ratio appears when the neutrinos coincide with their own image,” said Irrie Corrie.

  ***

  TJ woke before dawn. She sat in the cavemouth and watched the sun rise over the empty campsite and the silent town of Neutrino beyond. Lala snored behind her. Below her Mei-Lin was sitting bolt upright beside the empty plate.

  Leaving Lala asleep, TJ climbed down the rocks and headed for Neutrino’s main street. She skirted the campsite and passed along the path the little boy had so proudly described as the scenic route. Now all was desolation.

  When she reached the town she stopped short at the sight of strangers. Looming out of the g
rey dust rising off the street, a wizened, shirtless man in shabby trousers rubbed at his own colourless skin. He was leaning against the doorframe of one of the shacks, talking to a woman or child that hunched on the ground at his feet. Scrawny chickens scratched the dirt in time to the man’s scratching fingers. Without changing position he reached an arm into the darkness of the shack and brought out a mask as big as his whole head. It was carved from a dark, hard material, with small eyeholes and a grimacing mouth between distended cheeks.

  When he caught sight of TJ he ducked into the shack, slamming the door.

  TJ returned to the Star gang camp and went looking for water to rinse her mouth.

  ***

  “We move out today. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Good,” said Theta. “You know which direction to take?”

  “There are more dimensions than directions. I think our best hope is to start with a touch of space-time compression.”

  “That sounds like magick.”

  “More like a train,” said TJ and let out a long loud whoop that made the homunculi stand to attention. “Where’s the nearest railroad station?”

  Theta gave the order to strike camp fast. The gang gulped down the last of their coffee before putting out the fire and packing their things into bedrolls and saddle bags. For the first time TJ could see how many of the Star gang she had at her disposal: the nine Theta plus thirteen more. Lala smiled at her often, but otherwise kept her distance. The others acted wary and subdued as they busied themselves with the gear and horses.

  TJ untied Mei-Lin’s feet and shoved her tight into the arms of two of the homunculi. Then she started saddling up the grey Shire. Lala caught her eye and raised her eyebrows in warning.

  “That’s the Directrix’s horse,” said Theta.

  “The Directrix isn’t here,” said TJ.

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” TJ averted her face from Mei-Lin. “A horse is just a horse.”

  Theta laughed. “Well, that’s reassuring. I guess you really aren’t an Eleven Twenty-Three.”

  38.

  TJ trotted the Shire to the head of the line. “Why have we stopped?”

  “Look.” Theta pointed.

  They had been riding for hours across a flat and featureless plateau, goaded or perhaps merely shepherded along by dust devils that twisted up from the horses’ hooves and streaked ahead of them on the wind. Riding with her arms locked around the Shire’s neck in a low embrace, TJ had barely lifted her head since they left Neutrino. Now she could see two distant figures far away on the plateau. She squinted and made out the shapes of an adult and child, apparently walking towards them into the wind.

  “Any idea?” asked Theta.

  TJ shrugged and Theta kicked her horses into movement again. TJ resumed her place at the rear, but kept her eyes on the figures ahead of them as she rode.

  It was an old woman and a little boy. The old woman was wrapped in layers of colourful clothing, skirts and scarves that snapped in the wind. She held a long staff in one hand. The other rested on the shoulder of the boy, whose elongated head was wound in bright green cloth.

  “It’s the kid from Neutrino,” said one of the Star gang.

  Everyone holstered their weapons. The boy capered and bowed with a laugh and a flourish.

  “Where you headed, son?” asked TJ.

  “Home.”

  “This your grandma?”

  The old woman released the boy’s shoulder and approached TJ, probing the ground with her staff as she went. As she came nearer TJ saw that her eye sockets were empty. The old woman produced a small wooden bowl from within her clothes and held it out in her free hand. She leered. “Ante up, little huck,” she said.

  TJ swore and unsheathed her rifle. The Shire shied, almost tipping her out of the saddle. She looked around wildly. The boy was dead and dismembered on the ground. The old woman removed an earring and tossed it to Mei-Lin, who caught it in both hands and stared into it. Mei-Lin’s face drained. Everything went dark.

  A flock of birds filled the sky, white and screeching. The flock rippled like a tentacled thing, then wheeled and attacked. It flew straight down at the Star gang’s heads and faces, pecking their horses’ eyes.

  TJ ripped her blanket from behind the canticle and unrolled it over the Shire’s head before shouldering the rifle and firing up at the birds. The others around her did the same, rifles and six-guns blamming. Swooping birds became falling feathers and then turned to snowflakes that the wind drove into the gang’s faces. Within seconds TJ’s flesh was red and raw with the cold.

  She retrieved the blanket, wrapped it around herself, and dismounted to pick up the scattered contents of her bedroll. The boy’s body was strewn around the settling snow. The old woman was gone.

  Theta dismounted too. One of them came over to TJ. “Nice shooting.”

  “That was too easy. I don’t like it,” said TJ.

  “A warning?”

  “First cut of the cards, I’d say.”

  “The railroad is still several hours’ ride – maybe longer in these conditions.”

  “Push on, then.”

  ***

  At nightfall they made camp. Lala took first watch and went to sleep while two of Theta dug a fire pit. The snow was thick on the ground, and the earth was cold and granular. Bricks of snow hung in the trees, dropping to the earth or onto the backs and shoulders of the tired riders slumped beneath them.

  TJ and Mei-Lin sat apart from the others. Nobody spoke much except to issue instructions in low voices. Dig there, not here. Pass me my pack. Got a light? Maybe if you’d paid attention in the first place we wouldn’t be in this fix.

  Seven of Theta lounged together, smoking pipes and rummaging in their packs while they watched the other two at work. Those two struck at the snow with bowie knives, loosening dirt and scooping it out of the hole with their fingers.

  A homunculus approached with rocks in each hand and put them down in the middle of the pit they were digging. One of Theta picked the rocks up and threw them out again: “What are you doing, you dumb fuck? Put the rocks around the pit, not inside it.”

  The homunculus moved stiffly to where the rocks had landed, yards away, and stooped to pick them up. The Theta started throwing handfuls of dirt at it as it approached the pit again. It dropped the rocks and stood limply beside the fire pit, hanging its hands at its sides. The Theta poked at its legs with the tip of the bowie: “Get on with it.”

  Black liquid stained its leg where the knife had penetrated. It threw back its head and opened its mouth wide. The interior showed stark against the white twilight: red-purple, wet, writhing.

  TJ looked away. The homunculus shambled off. Its companions lurched in and out of the trees, revealing their raggedly open lips as it passed by.

  It returned with more rocks. Again the Theta cursed and struck it, this time beating its thighs with the flat of the blade. “Dirty fucker. I could do it myself in half the time. We were better off without you fucking freaks.”

  “Leave it alone,” said the second Theta. “None of this is the homunculi’s fault.”

  “They stink, though,” said the first Theta. She spat at the homunculus’s feet. It opened its mouth again. The thick flesh inside convulsed. The homunculus thrashed with its arms at its own torso.

  “Shit, it’s having a freakout.”

  It fell to the ground. The big heavy body writhed in the snow. Its legs left smears of black as they struggled and contorted.

  The two Theta leapt away from the jerking limbs. Some of the others rushed to join them at the edge of the fire pit. Their breaths formed a pall of mist above the silently flailing creature.

  Limbs detached themselves from the homunculus’s torso: first the wounded leg, then the other leg and both arms. Elbow joints and finger knuckles melted into pools of sludge in the snow. The mouth opened wide enough to split the head in two. It was matched by a dirty crevasse that suddenly yawned ope
n at the bottom of the half-built fire pit.

  Green leaves and shoots emerged from the homunculus’s broken body, twirling upwards in the fading light. The shoots were wet and tender. Pushed along by the rapidly growing green, the body parts dropped into the crevasse one by one.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Don’t tell me the fucker’s coming back to life! TJ, you know what’s going on with this?”

  “No,” said TJ. She watched from a vantage point by the tree line. “I have no idea.”

  “I suddenly don’t feel so great about this as a campsite,” said one of the gang. It was the woman who had sung her prisoner into cake.