Cloud Country

by Futuro, Andy

  Saru beckoned, and the glittering ball floated towards her, to hover above her open palm. She gripped the ball, feeling its warmth, feeling the pulse of the thoughts within, feeling the narrow intersect of their structure, the margin of similarity where their thoughts could commingle. The cephereal came cautiously, unsure of her intent, stroking her skin, feeling the beat of electric current and rushing blood below the surface, probing to find a pattern they both could understand. Saru relaxed her chains more, granting the cephereal greater access, and it came further inside her, delving below the skin, into the knit of muscle and bone, the traffic of her cells, and the tumorous maze of organs.

  Saru felt as though she were there with the cephereal, exploring her organization like a new frontier, a boat arriving on an alien shore, and she was overcome with her own strangeness. Her body was not concrete, not an end product, just a wave, a gaggle of molecules flying in formation, same direction, same velocity, and she wondered at the conflict of her organs, and her genes, and who or what was really calling the shots within her. It seemed obvious now, the dynamism of life, that she was just a piece of a larger system, and that as her world changed so would she, growing more stomachs that ate different things, thicker or lighter skin, extra eyes or no eyes, and that to consider herself immune to or divorced from her environment was arrogance and weakness.

  The cephereal travelled up her arm, warmth and electricity, strange but not unpleasant, up to her shoulder, up at last to her neck. Saru paused for a moment, realizing the danger, summoning her will and freezing the cephereal in its tracks, with the knowledge she was sacrificing part of her edge. She weighed the risk of making herself vulnerable against the potential rewards of shared understanding. Then she relaxed her chains and let the cephereal creep up her spine and into the treasure trove of her brain. Cold, like eating too much ice cream, and then heat, like sticking your head in an oven, and then an ecstasy like her brain was having an orgasm. Discomfort then, pain, but slight compared to all the other pain she’d known, an awkward pain of stubbed toes and banged heads in too-tight spaces. Her arm jerked, and her knees and feet, so she danced in place.

  “You see,” Saru whispered. “I’m okay.”

  The cephereal slid down from Saru’s brain, down her arm, her wrist, back into the form of the orb. The orb cracked and diffused into a radiant mist, which solidified into the form of the dog. The dog glowed brighter and took more colors. It grew larger than Saru, and larger, a single paw the size of her body, and larger still, until it loomed, massive, dwarfing the temples and pyramids, sucking all the light until everything was darkness and a mountainous dog of color and flames. Saru straightened her shoulders and held her head high, and stared up at the dog. The dog stared back. Its eyes were black portals, black as the darkness around them, black, now speckled with stars, now prismatic with nebulas and galaxies.

  Saru saw through the eyes great things—battles raging, stars born and extinguished, fleets of ships launching rays of light back and forth, galaxies resisting, consumed. She saw the Earth not gray, but blue and green and gold, ringed with golden lights, stations and starships and the lights scattered like dust across the solar system, on other planets, other fleets, a civilization, an empire stepping onto the galactic stage. Plunging back to Earth’s surface, past the ringing ships and stations, she saw cities, buildings in the clouds or floating free, and the greatest of all, a pyramid of white gold, two statues of golden dogs at its pinnacle, flanking a cerulean throne, and on the throne she sat, Saru Solan, or a cousin, or a daughter, or a granddaughter, proud and relaxed, lounging. In one hand she held a golden rod, and with the other she stroked the fur of a golden dog. Saru blinked and the vision vanished. The cephereal was gone.

  The library shelves and the artifacts crumbled and dissolved into blackness. The displays faded and the marble floor shrank until it was a pedestal. She stood on a tiny pillar of stone surrounded by black. Dimly, it occurred to Saru that these places within the mirthul required attention to maintain, that they sipped computer power, or the Godly equivalent, and there was no sense in keeping them around if no one was using them.

  So. Ria’s cephereal was taking a dim view of humanity and if it wasn’t stopped the Blue God was going to destroy Philadelphia—at the very least. That was a problem because Saru lived in Philly, and she sure as hell didn’t want to live here, like a fucking computer program her whole life. Better to die out there with the spit and the grime than to live (forever?) inside the almost real, the almost true. What was she going to do about it? She needed to escape, that was step one. And step two, because once she got into the real world she needed to escape the Hathaway aircraft carrier too. Step three was probably also escape—fly to a bar and get almighty, drop-dead drunk, because holy hell, if she made it that far then she had fucking earned it.

  Saru’s hand wandered to the grass ring John had given her and she stroked it distractedly. Maybe it was her imagination, but the ring felt both warm and cool, and, focusing on that sensation, all the chaotic thoughts swirled around the ring, leaving her higher brain to its work. I am strong. I am invincible. My skin is gold. Bullets can’t touch me. Knives cannot harm me. The light is there. The light of the Blue God protects me. The words like cantrips, coming unbidden, time slowing, time immaterial, time illusory, the light, the light protects me, mumbling nonsense, the self-consciousness fading away, the words taking on their own rhythm, their own force and heartbeat and momentum, no longer words, no longer human sounds with human meanings, but sounds that were their own meanings long before humans existed, sounds that mapped into other schematics. Saru could feel them now, her own words forming into their own song, just barely within the grasp of her consciousness, a song that wrapped around her, and within her, and protected her pattern within its own.

  Saru looked down at her hand and saw a sheen of gold, her skin wrapped in golden bands so natural it was like they had been there all along, just waiting to be seen. Gold flowed from her skin into a liquid that she cupped in her right hand, and the liquid swirled and then rested in the shape of a golden rod. A part of her stared in amazement, and another part of her quickly shoved that part down into the bleachers of the subconscious. Concentration was a finite resource, the focus a rare and precious power, a leaf balanced on the tip of a pin.

  A stone archway appeared in front of Saru, and through the archway she saw herself, her body, in a dark room with a hunchback trumman sticking wires in her skull. It was still the moment she had entered the mirthul, no time had elapsed. She walked through the arch and it closed behind her. She stood in the torture room, behind the trumman. The scene was frozen, no sound, no motion, like they’d all been sprayed with glue. A giddiness rose inside her that steamed into ecstasy. Here was power! Here was strength! She had only touched the tip of the clit of possibility. She walked forward, right through the trumman, getting a taste of his blueprint, bitter and muddy, blurry, dumb thoughts and molecular configurations almost within her reach.

  Saru’s body hung, bloody drool, cut and broken, a frail rag of skin and bone. She stroked her own hair, hand disappearing into the skull, a tingle traveling up her arm, mind and body yearning to be joined. It taxed the body to be in this state, just as it taxed the mind, and she saw how easily the connection could be broken, how easy it was to get trapped in either the mental world, or the physical. Saru stepped forward, sinking her avatar self more into her body, smiling as the gold of her avatar skin traveled across her real skin, sealing the cuts, melting the wires stuck in her skull, melting the chains that bound her. The head of her body rose, and the eyes were blue, dazzling, astonishing, deadly blue. Further she went inside herself, a blink, world going dark for a second, like waking up in a strange place. Saru cricked her neck, and stretched, arms passing freely through the straps, and then she dropped lightly from the torture rack and stretched again.

  The trumman had stepped back, slowly—God, he was slow—and she couldn’t see his face, but she imagined the surprise that m
ust have been on it. She reached forward, casually, and put a hand on his shoulder, and a red-ember glow spread from her touch and travelled across his whole body until he was just a man-shaped flicker of red, and then he was nothing, a puff of ash. A part of her was horrified by this, that stupid fear jabbing in her back—what was she afraid of? She was a God after all, and could do whatever she wanted. She walked to the door; her knees sagged and she tripped forward, catching herself and leaning against the wall for balance. It irked her that there was still pain, that the cuts hadn’t all healed, and that some were serious and demanded attention, and that her skull was pounding like someone had shoved it into a turbine. She tried to open the door, but her hand fumbled on the latch, and so she punched it, arm going cleanly through, and then laughed, and held her palms against the metal until it melted to slag.

  Saru strolled into the hallway. It was a narrow, metal corridor that went left and right, with more doors like her own. There were screams and shouts coming from both ends of the hall—oh goody, no hard choices—and other sounds, staccato pftss, coming in bursts. It was gunfire, silenced. Escaping prisoners? Or execution, the food bill too high. Or something…else. There was a presence, a tingling in the back of her mind, a vague…something…coming towards her. She decided to go left—why not?—away from the presence, but she knew the presence knew her, and was coming. The door opened in front of her, a trumman in his mask and Hathaway uniform. He raised his gun, not fucking around, and she slapped him, ha!, causing his head to splash like a too-ripe cherry. She stumbled over the body and nearly fell again.

  The pain was nagging at the edges of her concentration, her hand was flickering, the beautiful gold static-ing back to an ugly pale hand of ripped-out fingernails. Forward, forward, she needed to get out, needed to escape, needed to get out so she could save the world or get drunk—what was the plan? The presence was homing in on her, escape, escape, vision blurring, hands pale, arms pale, chest naked and pale, where was her armor? Was she drooling? Blood, drizzling from a slack mouth, she couldn’t keep it closed, goddamarmnoit, she had to get out, had to escape, part two of the plan, escape, escape, where was she going?

  The door in front of her swung open. Another trumman. Saru tried to swat him away but she couldn’t even raise her arm. He was fast now, lightning, and his gun rose up to her head, barrel poking her in the forehead, boop! She froze; he did nothing…why? The presence was there, that niggling, nagging, whatchamacallit presence, a force field between the gun and her head, a single well-aimed thought guarding her from oblivion. Soft footsteps creeping up behind her. A pair of legs in a black caji suit and a pair of bare feet.

  ElilE walked past her and took the gun from the frozen trumman. In three seconds the rifle was disassembled and the pieces clattered to the ground. ElilE placed his palm on the trumman’s head and the trumman fell backwards like a board—dead? Asleep? More shouts behind her, explosions, gunfire. Saru stumbled to her feet and over the body of the trumman, away from the commotion. ElilE walked next to her, saying nothing. Someone handed him a foily emergency blanket, or maybe he wove it while she wasn’t looking. He tried to drape the blanket over Saru’s shoulders, and she tried to push him away, and managed to knock herself against the wall. She stumbled on, gritting her teeth, awake, awake!, escape!, past blood stains and bodies, trummans and men in uniforms she didn’t recognize, past hangars, and doors, and endless doors, and mobs of shivering prisoners or ex-prisoners, until she found herself at last in a small hangar in front of her plane. The door opened, and she crawled inside, sand and candy wrappers grating a welcome against her knees. She crawled up onto her seat and hit the button to send it all the way back, and curled herself into a ball. ElilE watched her, fading a little with each droop of her eyelids. He walked away.

  “You can leave the fucking blanket,” Saru said.

  And then she passed out.

  11. Acceptable Risk

  Escape! Saru jolted upright and—fuck! Her head smacked into the ceiling, and she tumbled off the seat, her body a frenzy of disconnected limbs. She landed with her knees prayer-bent, crouched under the dashboard, arms gripping the seat back like she was sliding off a cliff. The absurdity of her position froze everything for a second, and then she pushed herself free, and tripped out the door, and landed hissing on all fours outside the plane.

  She wobbled into a stand, the aches and pains waking and bum-rushing through her—dizziness and nausea, and sharp complaints from all the usual suspects. Someone had slapped Quick-e-Stitch bandages across her more aggressive cuts, and painted the smaller ones with gluey flesh fusers—she didn’t know whether to be angry or thankful. A brown uniform like a flight suit rested on a folding chair next to the plane door, with a pair of boots and socks tucked underneath. Saru yanked on the clothes and found they fit well enough. The second the zipper reached her neck, the hangar door slid open, and ElilE stepped through.

  He walked towards her and Saru stumbled towards him, his form wavering psychedelically in her blurred and crusted eyes. Words dribbled from her mouth—Escape! Danger! Cereal—cephereal! We’re all gonna die!

  “Listen,” she croaked, the first real word in the bunch, gripping ElilE’s arms for emphasis and support. “You gotta listen to me. It’s important. Something bad’s gonna happen. Real bad. The Blue God. People are gonna die.”

  ElilE said nothing. He looked at her in that still-bored mannequin mask, like she was an accountant rattling on about expense reports.

  “Hey!” She slapped him. “I’m not fucking around here. This is important! The Blue God is going to destroy Philadelphia. It’s gonna burn it, or burn away the sky, or send down a bunch of laser balls and shoot everyone.”

  Could he not hear her? Was she not speaking Glish? ElilE was just looking at her, not doing anything, not running around giving orders—all hands on deck!, raise shields!, or whatever leaders yelled.

  “You have suffered trauma,” ElilE said, talking in some bizarre other world, some other point of view where she was crazy and everything else was normal.

  “God damnit!” Saru yelled.

  She pushed her body right, wrapping her right knee behind ElilE’s, jamming her elbow into his chest and forcing him backwards over her leg. His response came a second too late, and he was already in the air, and then back-slamming against the ground. His breath oomphed out, and Saru was on top of him, pinning him with all the strength she could muster. She could feel the power roiling through ElilE’s body, knew he could toss her away like a fuck doll if he chose. His face was the broken mask, the anger blotched red and obvious, and thank you God, at last she was getting through to him.

  “Listen,” Saru said, bringing her face close. “I. Am. Not. Crazy. The Blue God is going to kill a lot of people. I’ve seen it. I don’t know when, but it’s going to happen, and it could be soon. It could be happening now.”

  She could see in his eyes he didn’t believe her. He was humoring her, letting her feel like she still had a scrap of control over her life.

  “Look,” she pleaded. “Look at the thought probe they stuck in my head, it’ll, it…” she faltered. Would the thought probe show her island? Would it show anything that happened inside the mirthul?

  “Go into my head!” she said. She pressed an elbow into his throat and let his right hand slip free. She grabbed the free hand and slapped it to her forehead. “Go into my memory. Go see that I’m not lying, that I’m not crazy. I know you can do it. Build a glane or take me to a mirthul or something.”

  ElilE studied her, eyes wide and then narrowing into the realm of calculation. His breath steadied. He was a clock.

  “Release me,” he said.

  Saru waited half a second, and then let him go. He stood and brushed himself off. Saru tottered a foot away, blur creeping into her sight, feeling the despair take hold, the weight of the responsibility dragging her down. ElilE spoke:

  “Let us go to—”

  “No,” Saru interrupted. “You’re going to listen to me.
” She grabbed at his arm and pressed his palm to her forehead. His arm flopped away. She felt the scream in her throat fizzle. ElilE didn’t know. He didn’t know any of it. He couldn’t care. The last time they’d spoken was at the police station, a million years ago. He didn’t know she’d found the holodomor and the Blue God’s scintillant. He didn’t know how much she had learned, how much she’d changed. As far as ElilE knew, Philadelphia had been attacked by the Blue God for no reason, and he’d just spent a hell of a lot of effort to save her stupid ass.

  “I’ll do it myself,” Saru snarled, snapping her hand to his forehead. They stood there, stupidly, her hand clenching ElilE’s skin, nothing happening.

  “Are you finished?” ElilE asked.

  “No!” Saru yelled. Her other hand clamped onto ElilE’s skull, thumbs pressed into his forehead. She focused on a single memory, a single image of the holodomor beneath Philly. She bundled the image tight, imagining the memory sharp and hard as a diamond and willing it to travel through the electric pulsing of her skin, into the unfamiliar pattern of ElilE’s skin, blasting the diamond memory like a bullet from her brain into his. Nothing. And then a flash. A gasp, ElilE’s. His body sagged, and Saru gripped tighter, holding him up by the head as she chiseled more memories into diamonds and launched them like bullets into his brain.

  “Enough!” ElilE bellowed. He thrust Saru away, and with the physical thrust came a mental one, like a force field repelling her weaponized memories. They both dropped into a combat stance and studied the other, as if considering the next move. A part of Saru thrilled at the idea—a whole new dimension in which to fight.