by Apex Authors
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From one month to the next, his creations grew greener with algae. This reverie lasted until one evening he ventured to the surface seeking a particular carnelian glass. Ascending a cobblestoned slope slick with rain, he crept across a piazza to a glass shop he'd robbed twice before. Pyramus carefully removed a window and climbed inside. He wore a stolen scarlet robe of the confraternity, which concealed his mechanical appearance.
Standing in the moonlight of the workshop, Pyramus found that he was not alone. An old man slept, slumped in a corner chair, caged in bars of moonlight from the jalousies. The old man did not wake up at the racket of his entrance, so Pyramus felt no concern as he sought the glass in the cubbies where it was stored.
"Who is there?” the old man suddenly croaked.
"Only a visitor, old man,” said Pyramus. “I've come for glass, but I'm afraid that I cannot pay for it. I will leave if you ask me to."
"That voice, like wind resonating within a bronze bucket. Are you a ghost?"
Pyramus realized that the old man, whose irises were like two pearls in the moonlight, could not see him at all.
"Yes,” said Pyramus, feeling it safer to call himself a dead human than a living machine.
The old man smiled and pulled his chair closer to where Pyramus stood. “Wonderful. Did you cross over under the Pagode just this evening?"
"Yes, I did."
"What was your name when you were alive?"
"Pyramus."
"That's an unusual name; I do not think I've ever known anyone named Pyramus, and I've known almost everyone in Eusapia. You must have died a very long time ago. My own name is Calvino."
"Greetings, Calvino."
"Tell me something, Pyramus, about the underworld. Have you ever met my wife, Cordelia, there on the other side of the river?"
"Cordelia? Yes, I know Cordelia. She speaks of you often."
"Does she miss me, then?"
"Yes, she sits at the edge of the river and waits for you. I passed her on my way to your city."
Calvino lowered his head. “She waits for me,” he said, and then burst into laughter. He stood, raising his arms, and his laughter fell off into choking, arms circling in the air.
"She waits for me, does she?” he said. “Could you tell her something for me?"
"Of course."
"Tell that old witch I'm glad she's dead, and that life's been better without her. Tell her that when I get to the underworld—and it shouldn't be long now—that I plan to look up Mireille, a fine woman who knew how to treat a man, whom I should have married instead of her. Tell Cordelia that I won't need her nagging and her pity in the underworld."
He paused. “Could you do that for me?"
"Yes, Calvino, I will."
"Thanks so much.” The old man collapsed back into his chair with a shallow wheeze and folded his hands in his lap. “I am glad to have encountered a ghost instead of one of the unborn,” he said. “It's rumored that a Jinnee lurks in the canals of the city and ventures out to frighten little girls."
"Really? I find it difficult to credit such tales."
"Oh, there's nothing to believe in, really. The Jinn are a creation of the science we left behind.” Calvino lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. “My father, however, claimed that the unborn could serve as intermediaries between the city below and the city above, and that's why the Brothers banished them from fair Eusapia. Couldn't stand the competition!” He laughed again. “You're dead,” he said, “so I don't see any harm in revealing this to you."
"Thank you for your confidence. May I ask you a question?"
"Certainly."
"Could you tell me how to get to the Pagode from here? I seem to have lost my way."
"No sense of direction, eh? Start at the Campo di Confraternita on the Grand Canal...” Calvino gave Pyramus the directions.
"Thank you, Calvino,” said Pyramus, “I will now take my leave."
"Wait, Pyramus,” Calvino called, as the android swung a leg through the window frame. “If you braved the river to enter the city of the living, you should at least get what you came for. Take the glass you want, no charge. I know that the dead have no money. And please, leave through the door this time. I insist upon it."
Pyramus withdrew his leg but did not accept the glass. He did not return to the grotto that had been a shield against the city and his grief. If Thisbe could be found in the necropolis of Eusapia, then Pyramus would go there. As far as any of the exanimate know, his sculptures still stand in the grotto—lifeless, unseen.
V. The Three Noses of Cerberus
Still disguised in the scarlet robe of a brother, Pyramus followed Calvino's path from the Campo di Confraternita to the Pagode. He surmounted the high, crenellated wall without difficulty and found himself standing in an elegant parterre dominated by a temple whose façade was formed as an enormous human face, flower-festooned and vine-crossed, its mouth a gilded arch. If the face of Pyramus’ grotto seemed gripped with terror, this one seemed almost to guffaw.
Pyramus crossed through the arch into the nave of the temple. He heard voices behind the altar.
"That was bloody awful,” said one.
"It gets worse every year,” said another. “The city grows less pious by the day."
"One day, mark me, the funerals will turn to riots,” said a third.
"Until that day,” said the first brother, “we have our duty."
"Yes, let's dispose of this one and get some sleep."
Pyramus heard footsteps, a heavy thud, and a door slam. Then silence.
He stole behind the altar, where he found a curving stairwell. It unfurled into a chamber below, a dim circular room dominated by unfamiliar and archaic machinery. Behind the tessellated walls, he heard rushing water.
As Pyramus skulked in the dusky shadows at the foot of the stairs, he saw three brothers, their hoods thrown back, standing in a circle around a corpse. They had severed the head and placed it into a transparent sphere. The beheaded man had a handsome face, still young, with thick, black hair and high cheekbones. A second sphere sat next to the head, hollow but viridescent. In one rack along the far wall there sat a row of a dozen silver human skulls.
One brother removed a note from the coffin that sat in the center of the room. “He wants to be a famed actor in the underworld,” he said, reading it. The three of them laughed.
Not waiting to see what would appear in that second shimmering sphere, Pyramus retreated back up the stairs and found a passageway that curved above the chamber and then down a second stairway.
Pyramus stepped through a portal into a fulgurite cavern. A fast-moving river cut through the cavern, flowing into and out of the tunnel that was as dark as Thisbe's hair. Hundreds of sickles of light creased the cavern's glassy ceiling, flickering.
Pyramus approached the river and stood on its terraced earthen banks. As he gazed down into water, a shadow took shape in its depths. He stepped away. The shadow grew subtle and swelled to the surface. Three canine heads emerged from the water, and Pyramus retreated from the banks to the wall. As he did so, the whole metal blackness of the canine's body stood in the water and then on the banks, its ears brushing the top of the cavern, six violet eyes fixed upon Pyramus’ hooded form.
"You resemble one of the confraternity,” began the middle head, “but you do not smell like one of them,” finished the head on the right.
"Don't I?"
"No,” said the left head. The middle one growled, lips peeling back over rows of sharp teeth.
"What does my scent reveal?” Pyramus stepped away from the wall, drawing near the dog.
"That you have traveled from beyond Neptune,” said the first head, “but lived in the gutters of fair Eusapia,” said the second, “and then walked amid the brothers,” said the third.
"It's all true. You possess a highly perceptive nose."
"In fact, interloper, we have three noses,” said the first head.
"Dog, may I ask you how
one gains entrance to the underworld?"
"Is that what brings you to the river?” said the second.
"Yes. On the other side I seek my true love Thisbe."
"Your true love? We suppose that in your travels you must have gathered that among the living that only members of the confraternity are permitted to enter the city of the dead,” said the third head while the first one snapped at the air.
"So I have gathered."
"Why then should we allow one such as you to pass into the dead city we protect?"
Pyramus removed his hood, revealing his violet eyes. “According to your confraternity, I am not among the living,” he said. “Surely this is sufficient cause to let me pass."
The three-headed dog rose up on all fours and stalked the android on the wide bank in an incrementally tightening gyre, growls rippling from head to head. “Do you want to know what we are, Jinnee?” it asked.
"Of course. I am interested in the essence of all things."
"We are what divide the living from the dead,” said each head in turn. “When the barriers between the two realms began to fall on Earth, the founders departed for Neptune and hid the two cities of Eusapia in its sky. The people of Eusapia came here to escape one such as you, abomination."
The three heads leered at Pyramus. The teeth, he saw, were formed of stalagmites and stalactites of diamond, each mouth an icy, glittering cave.
"Are you not an abomination yourself?” said Pyramus.
The three heads reared up as one and roared across the glassy ceiling. As the roar died, Pyramus realized that the dog had been laughing.
"An abomination? Us?” it said. “Our form does not in the least resemble yours."
"My shell is of metal, as is yours. Like your own, my eyes glow violet and perceive heat as well as light. Do you breathe in the water or on land?"
"We have no need of breath."
"Nor do I. Do you sleep?"
"We must be ever vigilant."
"As must I. Neither of us knows what sleep is, do we? Nor do we know what it means to forget."
The first head lowered between the shoulders. “It is true,” it said. “I remember all who have ever passed this way. I wish it were not so. My head grows heavier with each moment..."
"Fool!” snapped the third head. “Why do you listen to this outrage? Do you not see that he is trying to trick us?"
"Do not speak to me that way!” said the first. “Too long have I tolerated your imperial barking!"
"Brothers!” said the middle head, rearing up above its counterparts. “Do not bicker, please, in front of the interloper!"
Taking advantage of the momentary diversion of the argument, Pyramus darted between the dog's legs and plunged into the rushing green river. He tumbled end over end through the water. Carried deeper by an irresistible current, Pyramus saw the dog's three-headed shadow blur and diminish and disappear behind him. The water stilled and seemed to freeze. Pyramus had the sense of tumbling once again, and yet he remained at rest. The invisible antipodes of down and up exchanged places. Colors took shape above him. A paddle dipped down and he passed under the narrow cloud of a boat's hull.
VII. The Spirit of Thisbe
Pyramus waited until the following night to leave the canal. When he finally climbed granite steps cut into the side of a pier, he found a city that was strangely reminiscent of the one he'd left. Yet nothing grew or swam in the Eusapia of the dead—indeed, there was little atmosphere to support the lives of plants or fish. As on the moon from whence Pyramus had come, vibrations traveled slowly through the thin air, leaving it a city of odd echoes and silences.
Perhaps only his machine ears could have heard the aria. He followed it, sung in a weirdly hollow voice, along the canals and over the bridges of the hushed and vacant nighttime, until he saw a lone figure garbed in a long saffron cloak standing at the parapet of the Grand Canal. He could not see the face, but he knew the voice—wintry though it was—as that of Thisbe. Pyramus approached, not daring to speak, knowing fear for the first time in his long life. As he reached for her shoulder, the artificial dawn broke over the buildings and the night collapsed into shadows that grew jagged in the new light. She turned at his touch.
"Pyramus!” she cried.
Pyramus drew back. Beneath the hood he saw a silver skull, its jaws opening and closing, mechanical as a museum clock. “My love, my unicorn, my griffin!” said the skull. “I have waited for you here, knowing that you would seek me out.” The eyes, darker than black, which had so entranced Pyramus that morning on the Via Vittoria, were gone. Two small red stars twinkled in the sockets that now faced him.
The spirit of Thisbe saw Pyramus cringe and, misunderstanding his gesture, said, “I forgive you, darling.” She flung back the hood and twirled around in her saffron robes. “See me now! I am as metal as you are. I could not live with the thought of having lain with you, but now that I am dead, nothing stands between us."
Daybreak stained the pilasters and pediments crimson. Hundreds of metallic voices rose in aubade, straining through the sparse medium. As Thisbe reached out with her phalanges to touch Pyramus’ nacreous metal face, he fled past her. A thousand doors opened as he ran. From them streamed a parade of skeletons draped in different styles of multihued robes, filling the streets and alleyways with bobbing hoary skulls and the clatter of metal bones. The necropolis kept changing as he ran, growing younger, becoming less and less like the city above it. Through the teeming lanes and past the gaudy façades, there was no hint of the rot Pyramus had found in living Eusapia. Dead children ran through the piazzas, dressed in costumes of the Sixth Crusade. Violinists played on rooftops, laughing with every muffled note. Acrobats tumbled through streets and over viaducts. Though there were no natural birds, convection-carried bright-feathered kites improved upon them.
Pyramus ran through the day until he found the littoral reaches of the city, which lay against the curve of the dome itself. Glittering waves stretched off to a far horizon, equivalent to Neptune's instead of Earth's, where the orange sun sat low over the long ocean. The sky-makers had done their work well: every new sunset was different from the one before.
VIII. The Recitations of the Exanimate
Here ends the story of Pyramus, for he grew derelict in the Arsenal at the edge of the city. Though living Eusapia has long since sunk into itself, he still haunts the dead manufactories of the Arsenal. The confraternity no longer looks for him, although Thisbe does. He must hear her arias as she searches among the listing carracks and boom cranes. One inimitable sunset succeeds another, although those who tell the story suspect that they all look the same to the android. Remembering him, we may suppose that Pyramus believes that he lives in a dream from which he cannot wake. It is not Eusapia that imprisons him, but his own thoughts.
For the exanimate citizens of Eusapia—and as we speak there are, alas, no others—Pyramus’ exile is a kind of performance. Nothing in the necropolis is prized more highly. While the living Eusapia fled care as well as change, the necropolis still seethes with invention and restless beauty. Many of the dead take extravagant new names and professions. The necropolis is crowded with aerialists, generals, alchemists, duelists, and terpsichoreans, and permeated with the recitations of artists and dandies, which begin with first aubade and end only at the final nocturne. To be sure, all the mundane trades of living Eusapia are practiced underground, often to little effect—fishermen, for example, mechanically troll the waterways with their nets, which come up empty every day. The stalls of the fish markets stand barren, although exanimate customers still arrive to haggle over the price of fish that are not there. To those customers, and to Pyramus and Thisbe, the necropolis is hell. To those of us who tell their stories, however, it is heaven.
Since 2001, Bev Vincent has been a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine. His first book, The Road to the Dark Tower, an authorized companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, was published by New American Library in 2004 and was nomin
ated for a Bram Stoker Award. He co-edited The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book with Brian Freeman for Cemetery Dance Publications.
He's published over forty short stories in magazines and anthologies, including Cemetery Dance, All Hallows, From the Borderlands, Doctor Who: Destination Prague, Blue Religion (edited by Michael Connelly), Corpse Blossoms, Shivers II & IV, and Dark Wisdom. You can visit Bev on the web at www.BevVincent.com.
"Sufficiently Advanced” was the winner of the 2006 Apex Halloween Short Fiction Contest.
sufficiently advanced
By Bev Vincent
The first native materialized beside Henry shortly after he clambered out the escape hatch of the Odyssey. The craft had crashed in a grassy field not far from what appeared to be a primitive village.
Until he'd expended the last of the fuel for the navigational thrusters, Henry had hoped to maintain a controlled descent all the way to the planet's surface. After tumbling the last several hundred feet, the Odyssey lay in ruins behind him. No amount of effort or material was going to make the shuttle airworthy again. He felt fortunate to have escaped the crash with only a few bruises, ringing ears, mild disorientation, and a nasty cut above his right eyebrow.
Henry was so preoccupied with checking his body for injuries, he didn't immediately notice the aboriginal person—a term he'd been taught in sensitivity training. He jumped with surprise when he looked up from his inspection and saw the man staring at him from a few feet away.
When the second abo popped out of thin air next to the first, Henry gasped. Now he understood why he hadn't heard the first man approach. Unless he was delusional, these people were either capable of teleportation or of making themselves invisible. He had witnessed many strange things during his travels but nothing like this.
