Unsong

by Scott Alexander

  The grin disappeared from the demon’s face.

  “You can’t harm me,” said Thamiel. “I am a facet of God.”

  “I will recarve God without that facet,” said the Comet King.

  Very quietly, Thamiel shuffled to Robin and touched her with a single misshapen finger.

  The two of them disappeared.

  * * *

  End of Book 3

  Happy Passover!

  Book IV: Kings

  [A picture of the Comet King, aged beyond his years, his face looking haggard but determined, lost in shadows. The text says “Somebody had to, no one would / I tried to do the best I could / And now it’s done, and now they can’t ignore us / And even though it all went wrong / I’ll stand against the whole unsong / With nothing on my tongue but HaMephorash”. Image credit to my girlfriend Eloise, who also made this picture of Sohu]

  Thanks to the Bayesian Choir, you can now hear all of HaMephorash sung the way it was intended. Listen to them here.

  Chapter 69: Love Seeketh Not Itself To Please

  Afternoon, May 14, 2017

  Citadel West

  The alarms went silent. North American airspace went black. The lights went out. THARMAS went quiet, then released an arc of electrical energy which briefly lit the otherwise pitch-black room before dying back down. Sohu gave a horrible primal scream.

  “THEY KILLED URIEL!” she screamed. “THEY KILLED URIEL! THEY BROKE MALKUTH! EVERYTHING IS…” She gave a horrible noise, like she was being pulled apart.

  Someone said the Luminous Name, and I saw her there, clutching her head. I saw the rest of them. Nathanda looking grave, Jinxiang looking angry, Caelius still mangled and bloody, sitting with THARMAS, hitting it, trying to get it to turn back on. I saw Sarah, her face emotionless.

  “Sohu!” said Nathanda, placing her hands on her sister’s head. “Can you hear me, Sohu? Tell me what’s going on?”

  “THEY KILLED URIEL!” she screamed. “THEY KILLED URIEL AND NOW IT’S ALL…” She looked like she was trying to find a word for how bad things were. She started saying something else, but I wasn’t sure whether she was speaking some language I didn’t know or just having a seizure.

  The real power of angels and demons was unplumbably immense. They’d been hobbled to a semi-human level by Uriel’s filters, which denied them the divine light they devoured for sustenance. If that was gone, there was nothing hyperbolic about Sohu’s reaction. We had lost in the most final and terrifying way possible.

  “Sohu,” said Caelius, very quietly, and I could see he was having trouble staying conscious, but he was Cometspawn, and there was a job to be done. “Sohu, we need THARMAS back. This must have been the Other King’s plan all along. He would deny us THARMAS and the Names by – ” he stopped for a second, took a deep breath ” – by preventing computer technology from working at all. I need to know, can you bring THARMAS back? The lights can wait. The airspace map can wait. But Sohu, we need THARMAS.”

  “Can’t…do it,” said Sohu, panting. “Never could…get Briah…right. Computers…too hard.”

  Now it was General Bromis’ turn. “Can you at least get radio connections back up? We’re flying blind in here! I need to hear from the armies!”

  Sohu paused for a second. “Kay…did it…radio…works,” she said. “Can’t manage anything more. Also, all of…the rivers in the world are…running in reverse.” She laughed fatalistically. “Never fails. Hardly…matters now.” She grabbed her head again. “Oh God…Uriel. It’s too much.”

  Bromis and his soldiers had left, probably trying to radio their battalions, tell them that the artillery wasn’t going to fire, that the tanks would just stand motionless. “Got…to get…THARMAS back,” Caelius was saying, but his words were slurred and he sounded half-asleep. For the first time, I thought I saw Nathanda…not at a loss, exactly. Just sitting quietly, trying to figure out what to do.

  “Put me in THARMAS,” Sarah said suddenly, and we all turned to her.

  “What?” asked Nathanda.

  “Put me in THARMAS. I’m still working. I have a soul, a divine spark, so I’m mind and not machinery. If Vihaan hadn’t bombed the original THARMAS, the one with the soul, and forced Caelius to switch it to a different configuration, it would be working too. But he did and it isn’t. If you dissect me for parts and put them in THARMAS, it will have a soul and it can work.”

  “You’d die!” I protested.

  “Of course I would!” she spat back at me. “You don’t love me, Aaron! Admit it!”

  “It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s that…”

  “No. You gave me life, Aaron, but you didn’t give me a purpose. You people have so much purpose. Breathing, eating, having sex, making money. It’s all so easy for you! I had to make my own purpose, and the only thing I had was you, and now you’ve rejected me, and all I want is to become THARMAS so that I won’t have to go back into the darkness but also I’ll never be able to think for more than a quarter of a millisecond and I’ll never be able to remember your name. I want to know every Name in the cosmos except yours.”

  “Listen, Sarah – ”

  “Um,” said Caelius. “I know this is – look, we really need to do this.”

  As if synchronized, all of us turned to Nathanda.

  “Do it,” she said.

  With what almost looked like a smirk on her face, Sarah walked over to where Caelius sat at the computer terminal. “It’s my heart,” she said. “The computer. It’s inside my chest.”

  Caelius held out his hands, and the sword Sigh appeared inside them, the sword that always came when the Cometspawn needed it.

  I ran towards Sarah.

  Caelius cut her chest open. There was no blood. He sliced through skin easily, like he was cutting a cake, and I saw the smooth white form of my old MacBook inside.

  “Sarah!” I yelled, and I hugged her.

  “You said,” she whispered to me, “that you would love me if I was good.”

  Then Caelius pulled the laptop out of her body, and the golem crumbled into dust.

  I watched numbly as his expert hands pried open the bottom lid and started popping out parts. I was vaguely aware of a commotion all around me, and finally I turned and saw Bromis was back with his soldiers.

  “Thamiel,” he said, and something in me had expected it. “The demons are swarming. They’re moving…faster than we can track them, given what’s happened to our technology. They’re swarming in Siberia and they’re heading our direction. No clear target besides just ‘North America’ at the moment, but I’ve told the military to be on alert.”

  “Alert won’t help,” snapped Sohu. “Their bonds have been broken. Almost no limits on their power.”

  “Could they have figured out what we’re doing here?” asked Nathanda.

  Sohu glared at her sister like she was an idiot. “Yes,” she said. “That’s the least they could have done.”

  “Then it’s safe to say they’re headed this direction. Come to stop us before we succeed, just like the Other King. Well, they’ll have to wait in line.”

  “No,” said Bromis. “The Other King is still trying to break through the passes. The demons will come from the north, where we’re defenseless. They’ll fly across the Bering Strait, go through Canada, cross the border near the Dakotas, and swoop down the Front Range Urban Corridor. They’ll make it in hours. Maybe minutes. We may be able to relocate troops onto the 87 north of the city before then, but with the guns only working intermittently I don’t know how much help they’ll be.”

  “Zero,” said Sohu. “Zero help.” At least didn’t seem to be seizing or anything now. I felt at the telepathic link. Sohu’s mind was a swirl of horror and dismay, parts of it had settled down, and other parts had gotten stronger, or opened up into new configurations I couldn’t quite detect. She sounded hopeless, but her mind didn’t feel hopeless. “Keep the troops in the passes,” she finally said. “Let them hold off the Other King. I’ll take care of Thamiel.�
��

  “You?” asked Nathanda and Jinxiang together.

  “Yeah,” said Sohu, defiantly. I saw her glance at the stump of her left hand, the one that used to have the Comet King’s mark on it. “I never told you guys this, because I thought Father would freak out, but I met Thamiel. Three times. He came to harass Uriel when I was staying with him. He…he wasn’t nice to me. There’s stuff I need to settle with him.”

  “He’s the Devil!” said Jinxiang. “Everyone has stuff they need to settle with him! Sohu, don’t do it! You were sitting here clutching your head in pain just a second ago. Stay here where it’s – ”

  “Were you going to say safe?” asked Sohu. “Hah. Look. This is what you guys keep me around for, right?”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Jinxiang.

  “No you won’t,” said Nathanda and Sohu together.

  “Fuck you both,” said Jinxiang. She looked at Sohu, but more pleading than angry. “Sohu,” she said. “I know you’re great. I’ve seen what you can do. But don’t go alone. Please, don’t.”

  “I’m never alone,” said Sohu. “And you haven’t seen what I can do. Not really. The mountains are still in one piece.”

  Then she walked out of the room.

  “Fuck,” said Jinxiang.

  “Your highness,” said Bromis, “permission to leave. Please. For the passes. If the Other King shows up in person, our lines won’t be able to resist him. Let me go find my men, see what defenses I can hold together.”

  “Granted,” said Nathanda. The general saluted. “And Bromis? My father always said you were one of the bravest men he knew. Make of that what you will.” Bromis stood there awkwardly, then saluted again, hurried out.

  “He was asking to permission to go die with his men,” Nathanda explained to Jinxiang, when the latter raised an eyebrow. “He knows the passes can’t hold. That’s why I won’t let you go help Sohu. Because when the defenses along the Rockies fall, the Other King and his legions will be headed right here. Fast. You and me, we’re going to defend Citadel West. Together.”

  “You’re more afraid of the Other King than Thamiel?” asked Jinxiang, not contradicting her sister, just not quite believing her.

  “Yes. Father could beat Thamiel. If Sohu thinks she can take him on, I trust her. The Other King…Father…” She turned to me. The soldiers had gone with Bromis; me, Jinxiang, and Caelius were the only ones left in the giant throne room, and Caelius was still feverishly hacking away at Sarah and THARMAS, trying to connect the pieces into a unified whole. I couldn’t tell if he was just working with the unpredictable genius of a Cometspawn or whether his wounds had gotten the better of him, whether his actions looked random and flailing because they really were random and flailing. I tried to tune out the dust of Sarah’s decayed body.

  “Aaron,” said Nathanda. “Sohu showed you the library? Go get me all the books you can find on Elisha ben Abuyah. It’s time to learn everything we can about the Other King.”

  Chapter 70: Nor For Itself Hath Any Care

  Evening, May 14, 2017

  Colorado Springs

  I.

  It was called Tava, or “sun mountain”, by the Ute. El Capitan, meaning “the leader”, by the Spanish. But its modern name “Pike’s Peak” comes from explorer Zebulon Pike, and his name in turn comes from the Biblical Zebulon, son of Jacob.

  Moses says in Deuteronomy 33: “Rejoice, Zebulon, in your journeys. You call the people to your mountain, and there they will offer a sacrifice of the righteous.” Taken to refer to Mr. Pike, the journeys part checks out. The mountain part definitely checks out. The sacrifice of the righteous part is kind of obscure.

  Sohu hoped, as she rematerialized on the summit of Pike’s Peak, that it didn’t have anything to do with her.

  She had chosen her terrain carefully. She was north of Citadel West; Thamiel would have to come through here to get to her family. She could see in every direction. The bunker to her south, the highway to her north, the city to her east. If she had to do something drastic, she was far enough from human habitation that they would escape collateral damage. Poor, lovely Colorado Springs! It was so small from up here, still smaller than Denver after forty years as the capital. They all thought her father had decided to stay because of the bunker, or the air force base, or the nuclear silos scattered in the hills. But he’d stayed because it was where he’d grown up, and that was always the thing that scared him, losing his humanity, falling completely into his form of stars and fire and night. Colorado Springs was small and lovely and it was home, and even when he was two thousand feet underground in the mountain it had been near and that had made him happy.

  What were the odds it would survive another twenty-four hours?

  She felt it before she saw it, a low buzz that seemed to wax and wane like the beating of an enormous heart. Then it filled the northern sky, a cross between a black storm cloud and a colony of bats. She had seen Thamiel before, but never this, never an entire host.

  It saw her. The dark cloud changed directions, headed right towards her. Its radius must have measured miles. Finally it was atop her, buzzing over her, like her own personal rainstorm.

  A familiar form separated from the formless mass, and Thamiel slid through the air effortlessly to join Sohu on the peak. He opened his mouth to say something, but Sohu interrupted.

  “Thamiel, if this were a book, and you were at the head of a demonic army, and the only thing standing in your way was a little girl, on a mountaintop, with a sword forged from a fallen star, how do you think it would end?”

  “This again?” Thamiel snorted. “First of all, you don’t have – ”

  The great sword Sigh appeared in Sohu’s hands.

  ” – your father’s abilities,” Thamiel finished, fluidly, with only the slightest pause. “And Sohu, I killed him. He resisted me for a season only, with a stupid trick, and in the end I killed him. The Other King got the empty husk, but I was the one who killed his spirit. Do you know why videos still work, Sohu? That wasn’t Uriel. That was me. I kept it working so that every month, I could send him videos of his wife, burning. Updates, if you will. I never missed one. I killed him slowly, protractedly, until finally the Other King stuck a sword through his chest and put him out of his misery. Now my powers are stronger. What do you think I will do to you? Be afraid, Sohu. I am the left hand of God.”

  Sohu didn’t say anything, just rolled down her sleeve to show the scarred stump where her own left hand used to be.

  Then she stepped into Yetzirah and struck. She called on the town to their east, its first streetlights starting to glow in the twilight gloom. Colorado Springs. Colorado is Spanish for colorful. Color comes from Indo-European *kel, to conceal. Spring. To burst forth. Colorado Springs. That which had been concealed, bursting forth. Revelation of secrets. The essence of kabbalah. Her hometown and her birthright. She filled herself with love for her city and her family and her people, and the essence of kabbalah arced out of her, filled the mountaintops with light.

  Thamiel held out his bident, parted the glowing streams of meaning. Colorado, color, *kel, concealment. Cognate with Greek, kalypto, to conceal. To unconceal, to reveal, apokalypto. John had named his revelation Apokalypto, thence the modern Apocalypse. Revelation 9:3: “And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power.” With the practiced mastery of thousands of years, Thamiel took each line of force that Sohu fed him, channeled the semantic energies from Colorado to apocalypse and to the power given to demons to rule the earth.

  She saw what he was doing, wouldn’t let him, raised her sword, traced two minus signs of flame into the air. Revelation 9:3 minus two, Revelation 9:1. “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.” The star that sought the key to the pit. The line of Comet West, Heaven touching upon Earth, the source of Sohu’s gifts and the meaning that drove her life. The meaning burst into sparks of starlight all ar
ound her, protecting her, wrapping around her like a cloak.

  Thamiel rolled two of his eyes and made a motion with his bident.

  The whole cloud of demons crashed down on her. The three great hosts of the hellish princes Adramelech, Asmodeus, and Rahab, all turned against a single human. It was like falling night, like rushing water. The shield of starlight crackled, started to crumble. She constructed forms and glyphs in Briah and Yetzirah, shrieked a desperate cry for help through the aether to anything that could hear. She couldn’t waste her real weapons on these things. She needed them for Thamiel. She had lost him in the cacophony. She traced desperate patterns to ward off the horde, surrounded herself with glittering polyhedra of light.

  Then came a great wind from the south, and she saw an army of spirits, skull-like faces crowned with quetzal feathers. A Mesoamerican war-band crashed into the host of Adramelech. Sohu felt the assault on her subside as they turned to face these new intruders.

  “You thought I forgot!” Samyazaz yelled into the towering nimbus of demons. He was in his true angelic form now, neither priest-king nor cactus, a brilliant creature of ivory-white wings and unbearably intense eyes. “Well, now it’s the apocalypse, and there’s nothing left to be afraid of, so you know what? I never forget! YOU DESTROYED MY ZIGGURAT, YOU TWO-HEADED CREEP!” The air rang with the thunder of their combat.

  Sohu took advantage of the distraction, shot out from Pike’s Peak, ascended into the open air above, still searching for Thamiel. Asmodeus and Rahab’s hosts followed. They crashed into her in the cirrus clouds above the highest mountain, two tongues of dark flame that whirled around her among the noctilucent drops of ice. Sohu spoke words of fire and night, drove great spinning wheels of flame into the hearts of the horde, called the winds to scatter her assailants. She spoke the Names of God, the secret ones UNSONG had spent the work of decades gathering, and slashed huge swathes of destruction into the darkness. But slowly they began to close in again, the starlight weakening, Sohu’s breath and voice starting to fail.