“My grandma told me once about a group called the Playboys. Their women dressed like bunny rabbits. They were obsessed with sex. They were an overreaction to a group called the Victorians, whose women dressed in black from neck to ankle. They were obsessed with modesty. In turn, they were an overreaction against a group called the Georgians, who were bawdier whoremongers than any period in history since the fall of Babylon. It’s a simple periodic cycle, like the swing of a pendulum, where the discontent of each era tries to solve itself by reversing the morals of the previous: but sometimes the pendulum gets stuck.”
Oenoe looked at him with her gleaming, mesmeric eyes, and for once her gaze was direct rather than flirtatious or playful. “You are a student of Cliometry? I had thought the study was lost when the Giants burned the world, the yesterdays before yesterday.”
Menelaus looked alert. “What do you know of it?”
Oenoe shrugged prettily, gazing at him sidelong through half-lowered lashes, any directness once more hidden. “If you were a woman, we could have an intelligent discussion of the matter. But men only like women who are free of care and thought.”
“Only bachelors think women are dumber than men. Besides, I don’t want to like you. I just want to ask you some questions.”
Oenoe shook her head and lifted her nose. “Again you mention marriage! You are obsessed.”
“I hope so.”
“Is she alive, this exclusive lifelong love-partner of yours?”
“I hope so.”
“Where is she, this exclusive lifelong partner?”
“I don’t think she is buried at this site. But I’ll find her. No matter how long. Even if I have to count to trillion first. No matter what. If I have to break the world in two, I’ll get her back.”
Oenoe hugged herself, her lovely eyes glittering. “She will share you with me! Then she and I will disport ourselves, and you may watch or join as you wish. There is no barrier to pleasure except the pleasure of breaking barriers. Will she find me irresistible, do you think?”
“Ma’am, she fell for me, and at that point I stopped trying to understand womenfolk—so who knows what she’d do? My wife is very kindly predisposed toward all human beings and some beings not so very human, and her heart is bigger than her mind, and that’s saying something, because she is sharp as a whip crack and twice as fast, and I can’t keep up with her.”
Illiance raised a finger. “I am having trouble following the conversation. What is being discussed now? You have exchanged many words. Why are you discussing your mate?”
Menelaus said in Iatric, “The lady wants to copulate with me, you, him, half the dog things in the room, and maybe the signal tower in the airfield, if she can climb that high. I am trying to be polite without nickering at her. We are talking about mating because that is all Nymphs talk about.”
“Does she suffer a glandular imbalance?”
“Well, for one of her race, she’s actually quite temperate and reserved. Nymphs exchange bodily fluids with chemical cues in them in order to maintain their chain of command. Or whatever they have for a chain of command. Their social order. They don’t use their sex organs for sex. They use them to say hello.”
Illiance said, “We are well aware of the peculiarities of the psychology of the Natural Order. Did you find out why she unclothed herself?”
Menelaus turned back to Oenoe. “He wants to know why you threw your prison uniform at the dog.”
“To strike the canine in the nose. The act is self-explanatory.”
“Sorry, ma’am, I mean, he wants to know why you took off the uniform to begin with.”
“Ah! I reject his suitor-gifts as unworthy, and my intent was to push a sharp thorn into his feelings. His glamour in the public eye must dwindle.”
“Why is that, ma’am?”
“I am highly beloved, praiseworthy among my kind, and have often been conscripted. This creates a corresponding set of pleasures and displeasures in those around me splendid as the wings of a butterfly, and the blue eunuchs fail to step their part in the dance!”
“Sorry, what? Is that a metaphor, or are you talking about a real dance?”
“It would diminish my pleasure to speak more plainly. The protest would be obvious to an open-songed heart!”
“No offense, ma’am, but I am a Chimera, and these blue snarks are plunderers, Tomb-robbers, and slavers, so if there is an open-songed heart anywhere in earshot, it must be among the dog things. You should explain, whether it delights or not, please. Because otherwise we won’t understand, and that would, um, not delight us in our delight-seeking pleasing pleasure-seeking pleasurable-ness. Get it?”
“Now is it you who mock me?” Her eyes flashed anger, but she smiled when she said it.
“Well, ma’am, maybe you got some stiffnesses of your own.”
She pouted. “I was entombed with my mantilla.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“It is the veil of brides of the world, held up by a comb, and it trails down the shoulders and back like a pelisse or short cloak. Those of greater glamour, theirs hang to the hips. Those of greatest glamour, theirs hang to midthigh. Mine came to my heels, and I had to wear cothurni, or to train dormice to carry the train.”
“A royal robe?”
“More! A companion! My mantilla was a living cloak, cellular-keyed to my biochemistry, and no one else can use it, and it bore the life-code of ten thousands. It was green and emerald and viridescent, a dance of leaf and woven fiber, and it assisted me in photosynthesis, and bloomed with scent and pheromone and it painted the world around me with all comeliness. The ruff alone contained blue roses of a breed hybridized only for me, found not elsewhere in the world. It was a robe of high estate, and it is a grievous insult to me, a wound, a stumblefooted dance-step, to give me mere dead fibers made of cotton, I who am a Conscript Lady, Mother, Matriarch, May-Queen, and Coryphaeus of my kind. They must return what was taken from my Tomb to me! They must!”
“Or else, what? You’ll flash your naked breasts at them? I don’t think that will scare them, huge as they are.”
“Or else they will have left the path of delight and giving delight. Did not the younger one establish that he willed to match my generous love with an act of love? To restore me mine is justice! And justice is but one type of love.”
Menelaus turned to Illiance. “Did you follow any of that? She wants her green cloak back. It’s made of leafy material. Some sort of symbiotic life.”
Illiance looked solemn. “The matter has several ramifications. To be frank, we cannot determine what molecular mechanisms the bioartifact contains, or what all of them can do. Some may be disturbing to our purposes, or be able to concoct deadly influences. The head-comb contains a neural interface we cannot decipher.”
Menelaus said, “If I were not so easygoing, I’d be offended. You have armed Chimerae in your camp. Between the three of us, we have a rock, and a bone club, and a stick. And I think the Gamma has a sling by now. Our womenfolk are pretty hard-core too. We could kill everyone in this camp if our honor demanded it. You also let a heavyweight Hormagaunt run around, and he has venom sacs and skunk glands and porcupine quills like a walking Swiss Army knife o’ Death, not to mention tusks and fangs and claws and a stinger on his tail. And you are afraid of some wiggly comfort girl from a pacifist era whose theory of military political economics consists of singing love songs, taking swims, eating fruit, and then snuggling each other’s sex organs till they squirt?”
Mentor Ull spoke with ponderous inflection. “Beta Anubis of the Chimera! Your opinion of our policy and judgment is of course of profound significance to yourself. Albeit, the significance to us, being proportionate to your very limited knowledge and your fixed and unimaginative principles of thought, enjoins us to ponder it with no more than the attention it merits.”
“Thanks, Ull. Likewise and so’s your mother, I’m sure. But you could have one of your dog things with his talky box sitting here instead of me
—because it is not the words you really need translated, it’s the psychology behind them, right? Well, if so, hear my advice. This minx’s cloak of petals and perfumes was designed to interact with ecological structures that went extinct about three thousand years ago. The trained poop-burying pussycats her scent-calls can call have been dead for thirty centuries, and probably aren’t in sniff-range anyhow. If you want her to open up about anything she knows, whatever she knows, return what you took.”
Illiance said, “Much is unknown of this mantilla.”
Menelaus threw up his hands. “Oh, hell! You robbers are poking in the Tombs without the slightest idea of who the hell or what the hell you might wake up from hell knows how long ago. I thought we were scholars, you and me, and that means we keep poking at the Unknown until it goes off, and then we carefully measure the blast radius. Don’t you think it is a little late to grow a sense of caution now? Isn’t that—what do you guys call it when you do things for artificial reasons?—isn’t that a little unsimplistic of you?
“Tell you what.” He continued, “Make you a deal. You get the little lady to wrap up her lovely flesh, milk glands and all, in her royal robes as she’d like, and I promise I can get her to tell her story, clear as clear and no more interruptions. What do you say? Send that dog there to get her robe.”
He pointed at the Doberman Pincer.
3. Of the Love of the Ages
O Nature, whose living breath inspires the world, and from whose gentle breath the twining ivy and clustering grape, the ripening roundess of the peach and plum beneath the branch, the dew-bright meadows in the dawnlight arise and praise the wind and cloud, the dark raincloud and the white cumulus where hawk and sparrow sail in circles, and sun and moon in golden light and silver grace the world, breathe into me now such song as will entrance all ears inclined, and with sweet soothing, as the luxurious honeycomb adrip with gold, assuage the sorrows of the soul.
Gather and hear, O lovers, for delight in song and hearing song engenders more delight, and I must tell my tale! Let it be birthed with slight travail.
Of myself, let me be Oenoe Psthinshayura-Ah of Crocus, Clover, and Forsythia, all intimately entwined, and I sing for your delight and mine, and do all I do for you. If you would have me otherwise, then cajole and tempt me, and I will yield as the clinging grapevine, full and ripe, yields when trained to recline the twining contours acquiescent along the firm and sturdy branch.
Of the origins of the Tombs, not I, nor any Chanter of my race, knows nor cares nor can be brought to care. Before yesterday was another yesterday, and to count beyond is grief.
To ask if the Tombs preserved knowledge for us from other yesterdays, or hindered our changes and progresses into far tomorrows, is a question no Nymph answers. What passes into the world is here, what was passes away is gone, and none can number or name the passage, for it grants no joy to count.
The Tombs are in the ground and the sun and moon are in the sky, and thus it was yesterday and a yesterday before that, and to say or to suppose the more, that is perpetually beyond my lore.
Who knows who gave birth to the cosmos? How could any Mother be, or where could she stand? If there were none to see how all was born, or from whom, then there is none to say. Why speak dull words when love-words await the yielding lip? Why tarry, when the lingering afternoon with gilded beam horizontal foreshadows an end of day?
Many have rumored that the Tombs are forbidden to the Nymphs. This is a telling told for the delight of dreamy falsehood, and I do not naysay what pleases, for are not all lovers’ promises sweet and all untrue? But I say it is not so, and, as you love me, you will gaze into my gaze and so believe.
We do not use the Tombs, for when we are marred or wounded, the Mothers will remake us, and with fumes of Nepenthe and wine of Lethe spun with poppies sponge all memory of pain away. We do not yearn for tomorrow, for where is it? You cannot close your fingers on the hair of the wind. The wind passes by and passes again, and caresses you, and you laugh only if you do not try to close your fingers. What is not within reach, it is folly to grasp, not when there are lovers to embrace, and much that concerns us now and here.
The Judge of Ages, we know him to be true, for our hearts would melt if the tale of his long-enduring love proved false. Truth is what is fair and comely to believe: if others say they hold another way to know the truth than this, well, this is too a telling told for their delight, and I do not naysay what pleases.
The Judge of Ages loves us, and he sends aloft at Jubilee those who need our crafts and arts to cure them, and those who are overborne by sorrows of past things which can never come again, whose sorrows we erase, all traces, from their nervous system, and blood, molecules and glands.
Ours is the time of joy, the promised time that all the sad yesterdays waited so long to meet.
4. Of the One-Fighters, and the Choosers to Be Slain
Rumor says no Nymphs descend into the Tombs, and that is as true as lovers’ promises, for it is sweetly said. The Mothers knew that discontentment would arise, even in our gardens and glades, and among the silken pavilions and self-woven tents covered with petals brought by songbirds, which we never pitch two nights in one same place.
Into the Tombs we place in slumber those whom pleasures will not please. They are not suited for our age, but must await another. From time to time there comes among us a young man and stalwart, who wishes not for kisses, but to see the tomorrow after tomorrow, when the Terror of the Stars shall fall on us, the End of Days of Liberty, when mankind shall be leashed and serve the Hyades in Taurus, and eat in those days from their hands, as here on Earth hound and cat and rat and hawk and hart serve us, and eat from our hands.
Such men are called Einheriar or “One Alone Who Fights,” for they are lonely and leave all the sweet kisses of the Nymphs—for is not our whole race willing to be his bride? But he renounces love, and seeks death in the cold future.
Also there are born at times when the genetic coding fails, and some throwback to older, wilder days, women who also have the warlike spirit, though this comes much more rarely. It is part of their duty, those most unhappy of women, to walk the gardens and babbling brooksides of our peaceful, sleepy world, and find young men who would prefer a painful death to a pleasant life. For this reason we call them Valkyrie, which means “They Choose to Be Slain.”
And as these Shieldmaidens march, their dainty feet all shod with steel, heavy spears tipped with stings of rays in slim hand, they kick the small pink cherry blossoms from their path, and scowl with their beautiful eyes when our scented zephyrs blow or songbirds trill, and when they hear the murmur of mandolins and lutes, the war-girls blow their lusty trumpets, and call the revelers and dancers all to leave their dance, and march!
And so the Nymphs gaze in wonder and astonishment at the armored maidens, and cower at the power of the high and shining battle songs the warrior-maidens sing, and we hide beneath the myrtle groves, dovelike hearts a-patter! But when the golden-armed iron-shod maidens pass, we Nymphs must laugh, drink Nepenthe, and forget them.
Woe to the Nymph who does not moisten her lip at the cup of oblivion!
5. Of the Last of the Chimerae, and the First of the Nymphs
Why, you ask, O why, does the Judge of Ages love the Nymphs? It is said he loved the Mother of our race, for she was his bride.
There is a race of primordial beings, called the Hermetic Order, who are necromancers that restore to life the dead Machine which first brought evil into the world. The Machine is called Exarchel, after its maker, but the poets name it the Ferox and Black Lace Weaver, because, like the spider of the same name, it paralyzes and consumes its own mother: for we, the human race, Earth herself, we give rise to the posthuman, the postnatural, the supplanter.
Machines have souls as men do, but which do not die as men die. Machine-souls are kept alive in little magnetic matrices, or held in photoelectronic crystals, or in rings, or in lanterns. And it is forbidden to restore them. There once was a
man of the stars, was a necromancer of machines, a Mechanecromancer, and he was the first to do the forbidden deed.
His name was Sarmento i Illa d’Or, and he was an Hermeticist, a knower of secret things. To him we owe great honor, for he is the Father of our race.
Great as he was, he serves a greater. The sultan of the Machines was the Ghost of a man who once ruled all the Earth, a great emperor named Ximen, called the Master of the World. Ximen dwells on the dark side of the Moon, and we see his handprint there, even to the day, for it is a sign of vengeance and vendetta against the Judge of Ages.
(Why the Master of the World lives not on this world, but in the Moon where no life is, that no one can say. Or how it can be that he is a Ghost while at the same time he still lives, this is a mystery. This we believe because it suits our story-love, and the storyteller will flee if we question the telling, and then what tales will there be?)
Upon a yesterday before all yesterdays, Sarmento the Mechanecromancer descended from the Moon. On a night when all the artificial moons of the Chimerae were set, and all eyes blind, he returned to a mausoleum of the enemy machines and brought their sultan to life again. And in return, the Machine, which was many times wiser than man, took the secrets of the Lotus King and deduced all the lore of RNA and DNA and enzyme coding as they relate to neuropsychology, and taught it to Sarmento.
Sarmento in a secret place, in a coffin, gave birth to the First of Nymphs, whose name was Rayura-Ah, and he instructed her in the arts of Nature, and so she commanded nature to turn against the Chimerae.
Then the First Mother walked among the world, and in her footprints vines and yarrow grew, and poppies and peonies, and the grapevines pulled down their towers of war, and the ivy vine overtopped the ivory towers of vain learning, and the owl and the cormorant built nests in their triumphal arches, and the unicorn came from the wilderness, and the dragon from the sea to sport and play with us.
Many seasons she slumbered walked, and with each season another plague she cajoled Nature to visit upon the Chimerae, hybrids of unnatural nature, an art of war none of their weapons could fight, and they were decimated softly by her unseen hands, never knowing a war was being waged. Their crops would not grow; their trees not yield fruit; their cows would not calve, nor fish be gathered into nets; and the wombs of the women of their race were closed, and so they dwindled, and soon passed into memory. And we drink wine, and the memory is forgotten.
The Hermetic Millennia Page 27
