The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  STATE SECRETS OF APHASIA

  Stepan Chapman

  They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,

  In a Sieve they went to sea:

  In spite of all their friends could say,

  On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,

  In a Sieve they went to sea!

  —Edward Lear

 

  Cirrus densus, cirrus filosus, cirro-stratus nebulosus. Cumulus translucidus, cumulus castellatus, alto-cumulus lenticularus. Nimbus calvus, nimbus humilis, cumulo-nimbus capillatus.

 

 

 

  *** ***** *******, #*****­*****­.

 

 

  THE BLACK GLACIER

  In Aphasia the people could walk on clouds. In fact they had to walk on clouds, because the continent of Aphasia was entirely composed of clouds. And since these clouds floated in a sky that wasn’t connected to any planet, the Aphasians felt deeply grateful that they could walk on clouds.

  The ectoids of Aphasia were air people—weightless luminous stick figures who built on vapor, slept on fog, and lived in architectural drawings. The cloud continent supported whole civilizations of these ephemeral nonsense creatures. They felt perfectly secure on their free-floating empire in the sky. They never once fell through the ground beneath their feet. They never had to deal with the hazards of mass or gravity. But all that changed when the Black Glacier invaded Aphasia.

  The Black Glacier was first sighted at Mirage Lake in the year 500 AAA. (After Alba’s Ascension.) The first Aphasians to witness the glacier were the simple conceptual tangles that fizzed up and drizzled away amidst the snorkel grass of the Doubtful Marsh. A small pixilated sneefler fizzed into being in the bubbly blue air. It opened its eyeknobs and saw what there was to see. It noticed that a glittering crag of ice was rising from the silvery mists of Mirage Lake.

  As the sneefler marveled at the germinating glacier, the glacier watched the sneefler and exhaled a frosty wind in its direction. The sneefler was instantly transformed into soggy papier-mâché on a flimsy armature of coat hanger wire. It dropped dead and lay on the wilting snorkel grass, lopsided and smelling of mildew. Then two more sneeflers and a double-billed quanzu self-assembled. They too were transmuted into shoddy papier-mâché models of themselves. They fell on their sides in the swamp water and decayed into organicules in shame.

  The glacier humped itself up from the lake and slid north across the Amnesiac Waste. Soon its shadow darkened the lavender lowlands of the Southern Overreaches. All who beheld it turned to wet newsprint, sagged, and crumbled. A peaceful village of talking crockery was petrified en masse. Settlements of nomadic punctuation marks were slaughtered, and towns of sleep shovelers, and tribes of helium eyeballs. The Twelve Twisting Rivers of Mist froze solid.

  Frostbitten refugees crowded the cobbled roads that radiated from Lotus City. The stragglers fell into the glacier’s shadow and melted into white paste and paper pulp and brittle wire. Their remains were consumed by the swarms of fat brass cog-roaches that followed the glacier everywhere.

  Various picturesque tribes of the Overreaches rose up against the glacier. The counterattack was organized by Queen Ellen the Wickerwork Giraffe and her blood brother, the Great Stone Wheelbarrow—mighty sorcerers both. Queen Ellen loosed her venom goats against the glacier. The Great Stone Wheelbarrow assailed it with iodine kites and friendly shark robots. The Bronze Man and his crew of stained botflies flew their pirate blimp into the thick of battle and fired off cannonades of melon rockets at the ice wall. Two rival gangs called the Chromium Drain Bandits and the Hungry Jars joined forces that day. They fought the glacier with snow chains and cheese scorpions.

  All enchantments failed. All advantages of armor, speed, or weaponry proved futile. The resistance fighters collapsed into crumpled paper and crooked loops of wire. The flying warriors were sucked headlong into a vibrating slush that canceled their flesh and erased their memories. Foot soldiers were crushed beneath the glacier’s obsidian belly. Despite their bravery, the armies of the Overreaches were decimated.

  The Black Glacier slid across the Overreaches like a colossal smothering slug. A light-gobbling ice sheet shoved its prow against the towering cumulo-nimbal formations of the Dribbled Peaks. The only survivors were those who had scaled the peaks and reached the Plateau of Stratus. These displaced remnants of so many once-proud nations limped north. A bone-chilling gale pursued them across the cloudprairie, as they wended their weary way toward Lotus City.

  Lotus City! Flower of the cloud continent, where the sky is always sapphire blue, and the clouds are always clean and fertile and firm underfoot. Lotus City! An asylum in times of disaster, protected against all evil by the courtiers of the lotus empress.

  Rivers of footsore refugees trudged through the city streets, dragging wagons heaped with pitiful bundles. All these grief-stricken rivers converged on the base of the mile-high marble pedestal that supported the Lotus Palace. Above their heads, the fabled stronghold opened its gleaming white petals to the light of the morning sunbubble.

  Though the outward appearance of Lotus Palace was tranquil, its inhabitants were close to panic. There was much running in the corridors, many ambassadors waving reports at one another, much shouting behind closed doors.

  The throne room, by contrast, lay in the grip of a heavy silence, a silence that echoed between the pavilions of white jade. It was the silence of the dowager empress Alba, who sat on her throne of salt wearing an ivory crown and a white silk robe. The old woman held her head in her hands, deeply depressed. Strands of gray hair spilled down her face. A few of her personal servants, platinum-plated termites in tuxedos, moved around the throne room at a distance, tending to the candle sconces and the coffee samovar.

  Alba the First. Skinny Old Alba. Alba the Dowager. Alba the Senile. Sitting alone in her palace of milk glass. No one liked her anymore. But at least she’d held the place together. Until now. Now they could all stop pretending.

  Alba tried to come to terms with the inevitable. She saw no way to halt the glacier. She had no enchantments of her own. She was merely the particular imaginary woman who had, by an accident of birth, ascended this imaginary throne one fine spring day five hundred years ago. Now she must watch her kingdoms devastated, a fate more bitter than death.

  Alba’s herald, a plump little boy in white satin livery, entered the throne room and cleared his throat. “Announcing Lady—”

  “Announcing? Who gave you permission to announce? I’m not receiving.”

  Young Gumsnot shrugged and scratched his left calf with his right shoe buckle. “They insisted,” he mumbled.

  “Go on then.”

  “Announcing Lady Crane, Protector of the Eastern Colonies, the Stray Thoughts, and the Vague Notions. Also King Skronk, High Khan of the Cactus Trolls and Sultan of the Headless Knots.”

  Alba rose to her feet, a flush darkening her cheeks. “King Skronk? Here? In my palace? What is the meaning of this?!”

  “How would I know?” whined Gumsnot. “I just announce them. I don’t interview them.”

  “Get out of my sight.”

  Gumsnot ran and hid behind a tapestry.

  Lady Crane and King Skronk strode into the throne room through a jade archway. Lady Crane was seven feet tall. Her head and her long slender neck were those of a fisher crane, and her hands were long and feathered. She wore a ceremonial robe of crimson velvet.

  Skronk stood nine feet tall
and was woven from twelve varieties of cactus. His eyes were peyote buds, and his head hair was a serrated crown of yucca blades. For clothing he wore a chain mail tunic and his tool belt. Walking under the arch, he had no need to duck his head. The Lotus Palace was built on a grand scale.

  Alba found the pair disorienting. The lady was her closest friend, but the cactus king was another matter. Alba was used to seeing him at the vanguard of a horde of metal-eating trolls, all armed to the teeth and screaming for her blood. How many times had she driven this rash barbarian back to the Mad Slag Pits of Throatburg? And how many times had he hidden himself away to plot revenge? It was all so childish.

  Alba stamped her foot. “Skronk, you blot on your own escutcheon, are you behind that glacier? Lady Crane, what has this miscreant been up to?”

  The lady dropped a curtsy. “My liege,” she said. “King Skronk is not here as our enemy this day, but as my peer on the Ontological Controls Commission.”

  “The what? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Lady Crane, “it has existed since the dawn days of Aphasia.”

  “And both you and Skronk are members of this…secret council?”

  “We are, Alba. And that’s the least of the things you don’t know about Aphasia.” Lady Crane drew closer to the empress. “There are many state secrets.”

  “Too secret for my ears? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “Oh shut up, you old bitch,” muttered Skronk.

  “What?” cried Alba. “What did he say?”

  Skronk turned to Lady Crane. “Why are we here? Did we come here to humor her? Let’s get to work.”

  “Silence,” commanded Alba.

  “No,” snarled Skronk, advancing on her. “I don’t think so.”

  “Guards.” Jade trap doors in the throne room floor sprang open. Four iron crickets, as big as steam engines, scrambled up from hidden tunnels and surrounded the cactus king.

  “Voice control override,” Skronk said to the guard crickets. “Regression phase epsilon.” The crickets stopped in their tracks.

  “Authority?” said the biggest one.

  “Ontological Controls Commission.”

  “What are you waiting for?!” Alba shouted at the crickets. “Seize him!”

  “Seize him yourself, you old bat,” said the biggest cricket. “Come on, boys. Let’s get out of here before the world ends. I hear there’s beer and loose women in Moundville.” The four guards hurried from the room, congratulating one another on their liberation.

  “How dare you?!” Alba demanded of Skronk.

  “Just sit down and relax,” said Lady Crane, taking her arm. Alba shook herself free and made a run for her escape door.

  “Throne,” said Skronk. “Voice control override. Restrain the empress.”

  “If you say so,” said the throne of salt, turning on its base and extending its silver-plated tentacles. Two of the mechanical tentacles reached across the room and hooked Alba under her arms. A third looped itself round her waist. They dragged her back to the throne, lifted her into it, and bound her to it. With a whirring of tiny motors, the throne raised itself on a silver column and reclined the empress, elevating her feet. More and more it resembled a dentist’s chair.

  Lady Crane stood beside the breathless Alba and held her hand. “Sorry about this, Alba. Drastic times require drastic action.”

  Alba’s anger drained out of her. Now she was frightened. It was a palace revolution, and her closest friend was part of it. But why depose her at a time like this? The empire was crumbling. The glacier would soon destroy them all.

  Lady Crane made an announcement to the air. “All medical millipedes will now convene for the imperial regression.” Seven disks of white jade floor sank from floor level and swung aside. Seven cylindrical silver platforms rose into the room. On each platform was a semicircle of electronic consoles. The flickering read-out lights of the consoles illuminated the leggy ventral surfaces of seven copper millipedes, who were already busily tracing out engram boundaries, adjusting resostats, and generally crunching their proxological data. Skronk stood behind one of the millipedes and peered over its shoulder at the screen of its nerve radar. His spiny face was fixed in a disgusted frown.

  Alba struggled against her restraints. “Get these things off of me.”

  “If you behave,” Lady Crane told her.

  “Listen. I know I’m a tiresome old woman, but really that’s no excuse for treason. I’ve always done my best to be fair to you and to—”

  Skronk loomed above Alba and slapped her face, leaving cactus spines embedded in her cheek.

  “Doesn’t she ever stop talking?” he grumbled as he stalked away.

  “She certainly felt that,” said one of the medical millipedes.

  “Look at this tracing,” said a second.

  “Any minute now she’ll start crying,” suggested a third.

  “It’s standard procedure,” said a fourth. “He has to break down her resistance.”

  “You’ll pay for that,” Alba said coldly.

  “You must forgive the cactus king,” said Lady Crane, plucking spines from Alba’s cheek.

  “He has the good of the empire at heart.”

  “Tell me, what do you want from me? My crown? It’s yours.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Lady Crane said sadly. “The only thing that can stop the glacier is you. But the problem with you is, you’re not you.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No. You’re someone else entirely. And we could just tell you who that is. But just telling you wouldn’t snap you out of your Alba trance. You have to remember.”

  “Remember what? Some previous life?”

  “Your real life. Which is happening as we speak.”

  “And how is that going to repel a glacier?”

  “Trust me, Your Grace. It will. Why? Because this is all in your mind. Me. Him. Lotus City. The glacier. This entire majestic cloud continent. It only exists in your poor sick mind, Alba.”

  “And how did your mind get so sick?” Skronk interjected, standing opposite Lady Crane and leaning over the throne. His voice was like the buzzing of a jar of angry bees. “State secret. Can’t be revealed directly. Have to use the Secret Piano. Have to peel you like an onion.”

  Lady Crane poised her beak to strike and dealt Skronk a peck to his forehead. He withdrew, rubbing his bruise, and sat down in a corner with an audible crunching of buttock spines.

  Lady Crane walked slowly around the throne, on her long orange legs. “Just relax, Alba dear. This won’t hurt a bit.” Long cool fingers stroked Alba’s brow. “Do you remember how you ascended the throne, Alba?”

  “Of course. It’s all in the first chapter of Professor Clickbeetle’s Chronicles. I was enchanted by Scugma the Sewage Witch. She deposed my father and then turned me into Klump the Chewed Boy. She made me chop her wood. Then I was rescued by the Bronze Man and the Cardboard Dog. They restored me to my throne.”

  “But you were someone else before you were Klump.”

  “Of course. I was myself. A little girl. I was Alba.”

  “Well…” Lady Crane trilled in her long white throat. “…not exactly. That’s why we need the piano. Young Gumsnot. Announce the Secret Piano.”

  Gumsnot emerged from behind the tapestry and blew a strangulated trumpet fanfare. “Announcing the Secret Piano of Aphasia.”

  “You should clean that trumpet,” said Skronk.

  A white player piano trotted shyly into the throne room on its square wooden legs. It looked around, approached the throne, and made an awkward bow.

  “Your Grace. Nice to see you again.”

  Alba stared down from her throne in bafflement. “I’ve never seen this thing before in my life. What is it,
Lady Crane?”

  “It’s the Secret Piano.”

  “She certainly has gotten older since the last time,” said the piano.

  Lady Crane put a finger to her beak. “Hush. She doesn’t remember the last time.”

  “Ah,” said the Secret Piano. “I don’t suppose she would. May I introduce the piano rolls to Her Grace?”

  A lid flipped open in the side of the piano’s sound box. Four piano rolls with pipe-cleaner arms and legs bounded to the ground. They lined up neatly, saluted Lady Crane, and bowed to Alba.

  “Roll delta may insert itself,” said the piano.

  “About time,” Skronk muttered in his corner.

  Seven copper millipedes punched madly at ivory buttons. Seven teak abacuses chattered. Piano roll delta leapt onto the piano’s keyboard, opened a secret door, and disappeared inside. Internal piano clockwork began to whir. The piano began to play, softly at first, then louder, themes from some romantic symphony of epic sweep and poignant grandeur. Alba listened to the music and grew drowsy. Music always put her to sleep.

  “How do you feel?” asked Lady Crane.

  “I feel a dream coming on,” said Alba. “I can’t keep my eyes open. What’s that piano doing to me?”

  “Well, out in the real world, they’d call it a posthypnotic suggestion trigger. But since we’re in Aphasia, let’s just say it’s a magic spell. The piano will help you to remember a story. And since you’re the main character, the story should hold your interest.”

  The piano lifted its lid to a vertical position and unfolded it into four sections, making it taller and taller until it was ready to function as a film screen. A star field appeared on the screen, a flickering silent film. It was being projected by an invisible fiber-optic cable from the depths of Alba’s mind. There was blackness and sun glare and silence—a typical section of the solar system. “False memory on screen,” said a millipede. “Time codes running.”