The Soul Continuum

by Simon West-Bulford

  “Diabolis?” Ninsuni unfolds her arms and glances at the others.

  “It is nothing,” I say. “My body is . . . still changing.”

  “The gulf!” Moss scratches his cheek, and I now see the subtle growth of new spores inside his skin cells. “What’s in it? What’s inside the gulf?”

  “Leave Diabolis alone,” Phalana says. “He needs to rest. As much as I want to hear what he has to say, I think it is cruel the way we expect him to teach us the moment he wakes up.”

  Moss blinks nervously and cocks his head, scolded.

  Ninsuni shakes her head. “He wants to speak.”

  She is right, of course, but it surprises me that she does not think the same as Phalana, and again I worry about her need to hear me teach. My concern does not stop there, however. This inexplicable fusion of human DNA and reconfigured matter should not exist, and I can feel my human part fading away as the structure of my brain begins to change. I do not know how much longer I will be able to speak to them.

  “The gulfs are simply areas full of things that you are unable to see or interact with,” I tell them. “A deaf person cannot hear, but it does not mean there is no such thing as sound. Blindness does not mean light does not exist, and substances in the spaces between matter still exist even though we do not have senses or tools to perceive them. The universe—”

  Again the sensations return, stronger this time and irresistible. It is as if I had been bathing in a deep pool of tepid water, gradually sinking, until sudden realization dawns that I have touched the bed of its murky depths where the cold currents have dulled my senses. I am slipping away again, ready for the human in me to take over. I cannot think. I cannot . . .

  EIGHT

  I wake to more agony. The pain is not brought just by the newest transformation but by the burning heat of a raging fire. The Chambers of Veneration are an inferno, and I am being moved. Several guards cough as they struggle to support me, and I reach out to steady myself. A body writhes on the floor to my right, floundering to reach the pool at the center of the room, but I think he is already dead before his body slides limply into the water. Oily smoke churns across the ceiling and the air in the room thickens with noxious fog.

  Someone else is in the room, barking commands at the guards. “Quickly! Move, you imbeciles!” It is Nitocris.

  She tosses a seven-branched candelabra behind her so that the candles fly from their holders into the bath, and I guess instantly that she is the one who started the fire, but I do not know if she expected it to spread so violently. She gathers up her scarlet robes and swings a fist into the lower back of the closest guard before covering her nose and mouth. “I said move, before we all burn.” Her muffled voice through her palm is now a high-pitched, strangled screech. “Get them out of here now!”

  As flames lick the bottom of my own robes, she stamps them out but immediately steps back aghast when a row of pustules squeeze through the straps on my back and burst like bags of rancid water, spraying thick fluid behind me over two of the guards and into the flames, sizzling like acid. The guards almost drop me, but driven by the heat, smoke, and Nitocris’s shrieks, they double their efforts to drag me toward the door and up the spiral staircase.

  There are no people outside when we reach the relief of the passage. A glance above us through the open roof reveals that we are in the depths of night; only the fire burning behind us provides light. The guards collapse, coughing up bile and wiping themselves as they fight to catch their breath, but Nitocris is not concerned with them. Blinking away tears from the smoke, she finds one of my hands and grips a frond tightly, pulling me, but I resist, dropping down to concentrate on managing my pain.

  She shows her small teeth in irritation and looks me over with her catlike green eyes. “Are you able to walk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to.”

  My strangely jointed legs tremble as I push myself up. “Where are you taking me? Why did you burn everything?”

  She squeezes her eyes shut and purses her blackened lips for several seconds, as if my questions cause her physical pain. “Just come with me.”

  “Where is everyone else? Where is Ninsuni?”

  “Stop asking questions and come,” she snaps. “I’m taking you to her.”

  With a grimace, one of the guards gets to his feet. “What do we do now? Should we put out the fire?”

  “No, you fool! I just started the fire. Why would I want it put out?”

  The guard, young and uncertain, falters. “But . . . the palace!”

  Nitocris scowls. “Let the wretched thing burn.”

  “But . . .”

  Nitocris pulls at me again, leaving the guards to their own devices. “If you do not come now, you will never know the truth about your beloved Ninsuni.”

  Shocked into silence, I shamble beside her, trying to ignore the new growing pains of a fetus-sized cavity swelling below my abdomen. She leads me quickly to a second passage and down three flights of stone steps so that we are doubling back but underneath the first passage.

  “Where are we going?” I ask her. “Is there a room underneath the Chambers of Veneration?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are we going there? What is this about?”

  “It is best that you see for yourself.”

  We continue along the passage until we reach the open door of a long room lit by the flickering glow of many candles. Nitocris steps through first but cups her huge face in her hands when she sees inside. “No!” she cries. “I am too late. They have gone, and they have taken the body with them.”

  I fall in behind her to a room that resembles the central area of the chambers from which I have just been rescued. Other than the small tables supporting the candelabra, there is no decoration and no furniture, save one horrific thing—the low-roofed chambers have been stripped of everything so as not to distract from its sordid centerpiece. Where the customary bathing pool should be, a sandstone slab covers the bricked rim. A thick wooden pole, with leather restraining straps nailed to its top and bottom, stands proud from it. The realization that I am looking at an instrument of sacrifice spreads cold, writhing tentacles of nausea through my stomachs. Naively, I had come to believe that the limits of Babylonian cruelty were to keep undesirables belowground in dungeons. I thought them incapable of human sacrifice to their gods, but I was wrong. Blood coats the pole and the plinth, still sickeningly fresh, and I want to weep for whoever was cut apart for a god that is no more than a statue.

  “Whose body?” I whisper. “Who was killed here?”

  Nitocris takes a deep breath and looks at the pole. “Phalana.”

  “Phalana! But why?”

  “She asked too many questions. Probed too deeply about Kaliki. He was the previous victim.”

  “Kaliki too?” The sickness rises in me. I can scarcely think as I try to process her confession and the weight of my own guilty contribution to Kaliki’s death. “Why did you bring me here, Nitocris? Am I to be next?”

  “What?” She is outraged. “You, a sacrifice? You are a creature that is supposedly limitless in wisdom and understanding, with more eyes than Azraeil—how is it that you are unable to see something so plain and so simple?” She marches over to the closest table, pulls the cloth from its surface, and kneels to scrub with vigorous futility at the blood on the plinth.

  “I am not blind,” I tell her, and tearfully, I try to put the image of Phalana’s sleek frame struggling on the pole from my mind. “What god would demand such a terrible act? What purpose could such a thing serve to anyone?”

  Nitocris stops scrubbing, lifts the soaked rag, and turns to me, furious. “This!” She squeezes the rag so hard that her charred fist trembles with the effort as drops of blood slap the stone floor. “This has nothing to do with Marduk or any of the gods. It’s you! Don’t you see? It’s all for you.” Nitocris lowers her voice a little and pauses, as if realizing that she might draw unwanted attention, from however fa
r away. “Ninsuni cared for us for so long, and she has gained great respect in the royal court, but your arrival has blackened her heart. You and the chief priest. She has become a seeker of knowledge, obsessed by the need to know more, but she knows that you will only reveal the secrets of the heavens when you are awake, and you only ever wake up when there is death nearby. This is why she sacrifices people, and she believes every word you tell us.” Nitocris draws closer to me. “Ninsuni is careful, though. Devious. She has taken great advantage of my father’s weakness for those who are malformed, and she kills those who would never be missed. Outcasts and freaks.”

  She releases the cloth, and it splashes at my feet. I cannot describe my shock and I cannot accept what Nitocris says, and yet I know that it must all be true. Since my integration into the Blessed Ones, my tortured awakenings have always been followed by Ninsuni’s sudden visitation and expectation for teaching, and I too have been blinded by obsession: my own desire to please her and to share my knowledge. I never seriously questioned how it was that I could have been stirred back into consciousness and how it was that she knew when to come and see me.

  There is a loud crack from somewhere above, and with my newly sensitized vision, I can see the heat of the stone slabs on the ceiling. The fire raging above has no doubt become uncontrollable by now. Here and there, through thin cracks forming above us, molten gold drips down and hisses into the candles. Nitocris looks up. Perhaps she too understands the danger.

  “Why did you show me this?” I ask her.

  “I needed you to see,” she says. “I had to make you understand the truth, because I believe you are the only one who can persuade her to stop. If she comes to her senses and stops the bloodshed, she may also be able to put a stop to the corruption that has infected the royal court. It is the chief priest who is at the root of this. He is the one who stirred up the greed in Ninsuni’s heart.”

  “The chief priest?”

  “Yes, he has become far more powerful and dangerous than any of us could have guessed. Most of the royal court fear that it was he who cursed my father and drove the soul from his mind. The king has been crawling around the grounds like a beast, and nobody can help him. I think he found out about the sacrifices and was about to put a stop to them, but the priest intervened.”

  “Who is this priest?” I ask.

  A whispery voice creeps like an icy breeze from behind me. “Priest is such an ill-fitting description, do you not think, Diabolis? But I suppose it has served my purpose well enough.”

  Nitocris’s eyes widen in horror, and she is seemingly oblivious to the sticky blood on the pole as she steps backward, grabbing it for support. I have no need to turn to see who spoke. The eyes probing through the cloth covering the back of my head see his shape well enough, but the chilling voice is all that I need. It is Keitus Vieta. Ninsuni stands beside him, anguish filling her expression.

  “My Diabolis, I wish you did not have to see this,” she says before flashing a glance of anger at Nitocris. “I know it is hard to justify what we have done here, but you must believe me—I had no choice.”

  Nitocris suddenly finds her courage again and takes a step forward, enough to spit in Ninsuni’s direction: “You had more choice than either Phalana or Kaliki. You had more choice than—”

  Vieta shushes her. It is a long drawn-out hiss, like the warning rattle of a desert snake, and Nitocris drops back again, instantly fearful.

  “What would you have me do?” Ninsuni asks her. “If I refused him, what do you think he would have done? You don’t know how powerful he is.”

  “Whatever it is he would do if you refused to help, at least you would have kept your self-respect.”

  “At the expense of hundreds of lives,” Ninsuni cries back.

  Vieta lifts his cane and examines the jewel locked into its clawed socket. The soft indigo light pulses like a heartbeat and I am certain I recognize it, and not just because I saw it many years ago when he killed my siblings. “I had hopes for you, Diabolis,” Vieta says. “Dim hopes, but hopes nonetheless. You were different from your brothers and sisters. I sensed you had an intelligence, a wisdom and intrinsic knowledge of the cosmos; I hoped it was a product of my careful design, but now I see it is simply the human part that has managed to assert itself more so in you than it did in the others. It is a shame you have not lived up to my expectations, but still, I may yet be able to nurture you. You still have powers I can use.”

  More rumblings shudder through the ceiling and I am sure I can hear screaming too. Nitocris’s fire has still not been put out, and the cracks above are widening. If we do not leave soon, the room will cave in and we will all be crushed.

  Yet now I wonder why I should survive, or why any of us in this macabre room should survive. I thought I had escaped my enemy, but Keitus Vieta has been my shadow all along, watching me from a distance, probably manipulating my meeting with Ninsuni to engineer better circumstances for his plans. Even more desperate than this discovery is the pain of my heart, for it has been flayed by the revelation of his partnership with Ninsuni. If Vieta meets his end here, it will be a good thing. It is only the death of Nitocris I would regret. She only ever offered me her spite, but now I understand her, and she does not deserve to die here.

  But there is someone else. A solitary skulking figure has sneaked in behind Ninsuni and Vieta without them noticing. I had almost forgotten Moss. He has escaped the fire, but he has not abandoned us.

  “Killers!” he screeches.

  Before anyone has time to react, he leaps lithe and aggressive onto Vieta’s back. Vieta is a frail figure—he seems to enjoy the oxymoron of immense power contained within an aged body—and crumples at the weight of Moss’s dense arboreal physique. Screaming, Moss snatches the cane from Vieta, leaps away from him, and swings it down in a wide arc so that the jewel crashes into the back of Vieta’s head. Instantly there is a release of energy, but it feels more like an immense vacuum is suddenly present where the blue jewel once was, and with a violent lurch, the implosion pulls us all to the floor as a tornado of indigo light swirls about us in tangled ribbons.

  I have enough time to see Moss scramble out of the room, beckoning me to follow, before the effects of the brief fight take their toll. Chunks of stone slab rain down from above, bringing with them the smoking, fiery remnants of the dungeon chambers onto our heads. Masonry and splintered wood pierce me in several places, and though I cannot move or see through the thick black cloud of debris, I can feel the cells in my body reacting to the threat: trying to heal, trying to adapt. But I do not think it is enough. I am content to die here as long as Vieta dies with me. Whether the others escaped, I cannot say, but I know my time is almost over, not just for Diabolis Evomere, but for the human part that has fought so strongly to survive despite the disadvantages. Soon, if I do survive this, only the alien part of me will remain; the human will be no more and I will not see the world in the same way again. I may not be conscious or even sentient at all.

  NINE

  A garden. I am in a garden. I think I may actually be the garden. The world is a beautiful canopy of wide green leaves dappled by sunlight. I see it all with eyes that would go unnoticed now by casual observation: round knots of bark with a fixed gaze. There is pain, but different than before. It is deeper, wider, but manageable, as if it is spread across a large distance. My only movement is not of my own will, but from the soothing breeze that ruffles my fingers, which are now tall branches reaching skyward, coupling with those of the trees surrounding me like dead ivy. Most of my cells have adapted to the environment and bonded with it. There is peace here. A dreamy river of consciousness along which my human mind is slowly drifting, succumbing to the gentle beckoning of eternal sleep. It is not an unpleasant way to die. But something has woken me to experience these last few hours of life. For that to happen, someone must have died.

  I begin my search, feeling through the grass of my landscape, invisibly extending my sensory adaptations through the sap o
f the trees, into their hungry roots and up into their lofty heights, and it is not long before I find the soul who has chosen to die here. A sadness moves me when I see the craggy body curled up at the trunk of a tree on the outskirts of the garden. Moss is older now, much older. Many years must have passed since I was last conscious at the temple, and the human part of me must have waited for him, content to leave now, knowing at least some level of closure for a friendship that was never truly given the chance to blossom. Moss’s fingers are laced as if in prayer, and his lichen-covered face presents a picture of smiling serenity as it rests in the dry soil. A few inches in front of his hands, resting in the center of a wide leaf like an offering, his silver trinket box lies open. Like Moss, I have found a strange symbiosis with the plants. It is no wonder he has chosen to rest here with me at the end.

  Any suffering I have lived through would be inconsequential if my last moments of consciousness were to end here with my friend, but someone else approaches. Like a disease, the infestation of evil creeps inside my sphere of awareness, but there is nothing I can do to ward him off, and I cannot escape him. It is not fear of what he could do to me that instills a desire to escape, but revulsion. The sensations of loathing and malice increase as Keitus Vieta steps over Moss’s body, pausing to recover the little silver box before walking softly toward my center. My cells are still primed for metamorphosis and I can feel them responding to my desire to leave, adapting, reconfiguring, multiplying.

  Vieta’s lips stretch wide in an ugly smile to reveal yellowed teeth as he comes to a stop. He still has his cane, and the jewel is still absent after Moss smashed it. He fingers the empty socket, staring straight ahead in anticipation. “Yes, Diabolis, yes,” he whispers. “You are ripe now. Ripe and ready.”

  He stands before the heart of me. Where once was a human shape, there is now a wide and twisted cage of bone, flesh, and gristle. Veins and capillaries have merged with the bark of an ancient tree, pumping not sap or blood, but a luminescent blue substance more like malleable crystal than fluid. A pulse of indigo light beats out from a nook at the base of what might be a trunk, and it is this for which Vieta has come. He has waited a long time for it, and my desire to leave has encouraged its growth. In skilled hands it is the means for travel, the raw material of a truth that reaches even deeper than the quantum trappings of space-time and gravitational law that govern this cosmos. It would have been the blood of my purpose had it not been for the way Keitus Vieta has twisted it to his own flawed designs. Now he will use it again, not only to move to new destinations when he needs to but also to harness the exotic energies embodied in objects abandoned by those who have recently died. He will continually repeat his experiments, breeding creatures stranger even than me in his efforts to reshape the universe into a design that fulfills a purpose he does not remember. But he will always fail.