The Cydonian Pyramid

by Pete Hautman

  Lia said, “It’s a pyramid.”

  “The Pyramid of the Lambs. Once, it was no bigger than a shepherd’s hut, but it grows ever larger. The Lambs believe it will bring them closer to heaven.”

  Just above the pyramid’s flattened top, a disk of light caught her eye. It flickered, then disappeared.

  Artur spoke. “They are your people, nu?”

  “The Lah Sept,” she said, still staring at the spot where she had seen the Gate.

  Artur grunted. “In this day, they call themselves the Lambs of September.” He gestured at the building. “You have seen the finished structure?”

  Lia nodded. “It is at the center of Romelas.”

  “Romelas is not yet, bubeluh. The Medicants call their city Mayo, as it has been for half a millennium.”

  Lia did not know how long half a millennium was, but she gathered it was a very long time.

  “The Lambs bide their time,” Artur said. “They are buzzards, waiting for the Medicant beast to die so that their own rough beast might rename the city once again.”

  Lia flinched as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something pale and gauzy swoop past them. She turned toward it, but there was nothing there.

  “What did you see?” Artur asked, looking at her intently.

  “Something flew by.”

  He nodded slowly, then shook the reins. The cart moved back into the stream of traffic.

  “Do you know us yet in your day?” he asked.

  “You mean Boggsians?”

  Artur chuckled. “Boggsians, yes. What the goyim call us. It is better than some of the old names. You have met my descendants, yes?”

  “Once I saw a family dressed like you. Outside the palace, in a horse cart. But the horse was real. It left a nuisance upon the pavement.”

  Artur laughed. “Yes, yes! We nuisance the pavement, we Boggsians. Like the cockroach and the carp, we abide. Six thousand years in this world, yet still, we abide.”

  “You use numbers,” Lia said after a moment.

  Artur nodded. “Numbers do not harm us.”

  “What of the Medicants?”

  “You have met them, nu?”

  “They have machines on their bodies.”

  “They compensate for the damage they have done to their souls.”

  “You mean Plague?”

  “The Lambs call it Plague. The Medicants call it evolution. I call it autismus.”

  “They are sick with numbers.”

  Artur raised his prodigious eyebrows. “So say the Lambs.”

  The traffic thinned as they approached the outskirts of the city. After a time, Lia saw a tree, and then another, and then an open field planted with some sort of crop. Soon they were surrounded by more land than buildings, and the only other traffic consisted of a few larger transport vehicles. The open areas grew more expansive — one field planted with corn stretched as far as she could see. Artur did something with the reins. The “horse” vanished, and the cart accelerated rapidly. Lia gripped the armrest with both hands. Within seconds they were traveling so fast that the wind stung her eyes and blew her hair straight back. Fields and trees became a blur as they raced down the highway. Artur’s face was wide open, his mouth drawn into a joyful smile.

  They maintained their speed for some time. When nothing terrible happened, Lia’s fear turned to exhilaration. She was filled with wonder at the distance they had covered. The tall buildings of the city sank into the horizon. Flat fields became rolling hills. The road carried them up a long slope, then down into a valley and along a meandering river. The cart slowed. They turned off the highway onto a narrower road. Artur twitched the reins, and the horse reappeared before them. The clopping sound resumed.

  Artur raised an eyebrow at her. “You like that, bubeluh?”

  “It was . . . fast,” Lia said. They had slowed to a walk. It felt as if they were crawling. “Why do we now go slowly when we could be moving quickly?”

  “Better you should ask, ‘Why go quickly when we could take our time?’”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I will tell you.” A boyish grin cut through his bearded face. “Because it is joyful fun to race the wind, but only when no one is watching.” They entered a forested area. The pavement ended, and the road surface became hard-packed dirt. Trees and brush pressed the sides of the road; an occasional branch dragged across the sides of the cart.

  “You don’t want people to see you go fast?”

  “It is unseemly to motor free before worldly eyes.” The road curved toward the river and led onto a low wooden bridge. Lia leaned to the side and looked over the railing into the water as they crossed the river. She could see fish holding their places, facing into the current.

  The narrow road climbed slowly, making frequent turns, back and forth, up the side of the lush river valley. Artur withdrew into his own thoughts as Lia watched the numberless trees pass them by.

  AS THEY FOLLOWED THE CLOP, CLOP, CLOP OF THE not-horse up the switchback road, Lah Lia thought back to her time as a Pure Girl. In her memory, hardly a day had passed since she had stepped through the Gate on the pyramid, but already her years in Romelas felt like another life, distant and gone. The Lait Pike had once remarked upon this.

  We travel into the future by leaps and bounds, he had told her. Each step opens a gulf between our present and the past. Wherever we go, there we are, moving toward what is to come.

  Even though the Gate had taken her to the distant past, she was moving inexorably into her own future. Clop, clop, clop.

  They came up over a rise and out of the woods into a wide-open treeless space, rolling hills displaying a checkerboard of cultivated fields. Artur pulled back on the reins; the cart slowed.

  “Listen,” he said.

  Lia heard a faint sound, like a gurgling creek, becoming louder. Artur pointed at the field just ahead of them on the right. The surface of the field was moving, as if covered with a living soft, pulsating layer of dusky blue and gray. The gurgling sound became a rumble, almost too low to hear. Lia could not imagine what she was seeing. Artur brought the cart to a halt, dropped the reins, and clapped his hands loudly.

  The field exploded. Birds! The flock erupted at the edge of the field nearest the cart, peeling up from the earth, a rising blanket of feathers and noise. More birds than she had seen in her lifetime. The sound of their gurgles and chuckles hit her with the force of a gale — Lia gasped and gripped the armrest. Birds continued to rise from the field, an area larger than the central zocalo of Romelas, larger than a hand of zocalos. The avian sheet twisted and wrapped around itself to become a gyrating, sky-darkening cyclone.

  More birds, she thought, than could possibly exist.

  Another chuckling sound came from beside her. Artur was laughing.

  The last birds lifted from the farthest corner of the field; the flock reorganized itself to become a vast flying carpet and moved off at tree height. They watched until it merged with the horizon.

  “They gobble our crops, yet I love them still,” Artur said. “They were once extinct, you know.”

  “Those were Pigeons of the Prophet?”

  “So say the Lambs. I call them by their old name: passenger pigeons.”

  “They were returned to life by Father September.”

  “So say the Lambs. But the Lambs did not build the diskos.” He grasped the reins and shook them. The cart moved forward. “And now, Harmony,” he said.

  “Is that where the other Pure Girls are?”

  “Yes.” They proceeded past the pigeon-gleaned millet fields and up over a long, low rise. “Do you see him?”

  Lia looked where Artur was pointing and saw a dark shape standing out against a bright green slope.

  A horse.

  Artur put a pair of fingers to his lips and whistled. The horse raised its head, then trotted toward them. As it drew closer, Lia saw that it was a twin to the not-horse in front of the cart. The horse slowed as it approached, walking the last few st
eps slowly and nervously, all its attention on its illusory twin. As they were about to touch noses, Artur did something with the reins and the not-horse vanished. The real horse danced back and snorted.

  Artur climbed down off the cart, reached into his coat pocket, and came out with a crab apple. The horse eyed the apple, sneezed, and took a few tentative steps toward him.

  “Come, child. Gort says he would like to meet you.”

  Lia climbed down. She had never seen a real horse close-up before, but she could tell even from several paces that this horse was no illusion. She felt the heat coming off his body. She smelled his horsey smell.

  Gort stretched his neck toward Artur and took the crab apple delicately between his enormous teeth.

  “I think he is more interested in meeting the apple,” Lia said as Gort crunched and swallowed the walnut-size fruit.

  Artur winked at her, pulled another apple from his pocket, and tossed it to her. Gort swung his head in her direction. Lia offered him the apple.

  “Let it rest in the flat of your palm, child. Unless you wish to feed Gort a finger as well.”

  Lia did as Artur said, holding her arm out rigidly. Gort stepped toward her and lowered his huge head to her hand. His soft, bristly lips brushed her palm. The apple was gone.

  Gort sneezed again, causing Lia to jump back. Artur laughed. “Best count your fingers, little one.”

  “I do not count,” said Lia.

  “Then how will you know if you are missing a finger?”

  Lia examined her hand. She showed him her hand, spreading her fingers wide. “I am missing no fingers.”

  Artur laughed again, even harder. Lia made a fist and scowled. Still chuckling, Artur set about coaxing Gort into a harness he had unpacked from a concealed compartment at the front of the cart. Lia marveled at the way Artur used softly spoken yet confident words and gentle but firm hands to control the beast. Within minutes, Gort and the cart were one. Artur climbed back into the driver’s seat and helped Lia up. Taking the reins in his hands, he made a loud kissing sound with his lips. Gort started forward; the cart jerked into motion.

  The experience of being pulled by a horse was completely different from riding a cart propelled by digital magic. The horse slowed on the rises, sped up on the downgrades, and sometimes changed speed for no apparent reason. The slightly jerky motion of the cart was letting her know that she had already been sitting on that hard seat for a very long time. She could see how using the real Gort to travel all the way from the hospital would have been impractical.

  The dirt road became a single lane with rutted tracks for the wheels and a grassy strip down the middle. On either side were cultivated fields. She recognized corn and wheat, but most of the crops were a mystery to her. The road dipped. They passed through a shallow swale, then climbed a gradual rise. A collection of buildings came into view as they crested the rise: a few hands of houses with peaked roofs, a row of long, low wooden barns with rounded metal roofs, and several silos.

  “Harmony,” said Artur.

  A man dressed in the same somber black and white as Artur was driving a team of horses from a barn toward a field to their right. A pair of women dressed in similar colors were hanging white sheets from a line. A man on a ladder was painting one of the houses. An older woman, bent over a row of bushes, filled a small basket with red berries. A young boy wearing shorts and a straw hat guided a small flock of sheep along the edge of the field to their left. Lia tried to catch the boy’s eye as they passed him, but he would not look at her.

  “It is good to be home,” Artur said.

  None of the Boggsians looked at them as they made their way through the settlement. They might as well have been invisible. Lia had the sudden thought that she was no more substantial than a not-horse. Had the not-horse known it was an illusion?

  “Why doesn’t anybody look at us?” she asked.

  “They think I am meshugeh,” said Artur.

  “What is that?”

  “Crazy.” He laughed, crazily.

  THE LAST BUILDING IN HARMONY WAS ANOTHER metal-roofed barn, somewhat longer and wider than the others. Its roof was mottled and streaked with rust, its wooden sides were long overdue for a coat of paint, and it was surrounded by a fringe of ragged-looking weeds. It looked like the sort of barn that might belong to a madman.

  Artur stopped the cart in a shady area along the side of the barn.

  “We are here,” he said.

  Lia regarded the barn suspiciously. “What is in there?”

  “My life’s work.” Artur clambered down from the cart and held out his hand. “Your future, perhaps, nu?”

  Lia looked from his broad, thick-fingered hand to the neglected barn, then back toward the rest of the settlement, feeling increasingly uneasy.

  “You said there were Pure Girls here,” she said.

  “I tell you only what is true.”

  With a sense of foreboding tinged with hope, Lia took his hand and stepped down. She stood by as Artur unhitched Gort. The horse moved off, sniffing the weeds by the barn, then tossed his head and trotted off toward a nearby field.

  “Always looking for food, that one,” Artur said, patting his own belly. “And you? Are you hungry?”

  Lia shook her head. She was hungry, but she was more interested in meeting the other Pure Girls.

  “Goot. We eat later.” He led her to the front of the building and pushed through the wide double doors. Lia followed him inside.

  The cavernous interior of the building felt larger than it had looked from the outside. The first things she saw were several long tables and desks loaded with equipment. There was a video display, its screen crowded with unfamiliar symbols, along with several complicated-looking machines in various stages of assembly or disassembly. Cables and wires in a variety of garish colors were coiled and piled on tables and benches, snaking across the floor, hanging from the high ceiling, connecting everything to everything else. The floor looked as if it had never been swept — every square foot was littered with bits of wire, dust balls, metal shavings, and unidentifiable debris.

  As her eyes adjusted, she noticed several clouds, or patches of mist, drifting in midair. They moved as if they were alive, but faded when she tried to look directly at them.

  She saw no Pure Girls.

  At various points during the day, Lia had been frightened, confused, dumbfounded, and despairing. Now she felt simply numb. How had she come to this strange, incomprehensible place with this strange, incomprehensible man? Artur gazed proudly over his cluttered, filthy domain, a little smile peeking through his beard.

  “Where are the girls?” Lia asked.

  “They are waiting,” he said.

  She thought about Yar Song — what would she do? Probably kick Artur in the face and run. Lia did not think she could kick that high, but she could run. Artur seemed to sense the direction of her thoughts. He dropped a hand to her shoulder.

  “Come, let us greet them.” He guided her toward the far end of the barn. It was darker — more tables and benches and machinery, more filth. The floating, misty things followed. He stopped in front of a large table with a glassy top.

  “Look about and tell me what you see in the air,” he said.

  Lia shook her head helplessly. One of the floating things settled directly before her. She could see it better when she looked slightly to the side and blurred her eyes. It was person-shaped, and it seemed to be looking at her.

  “Ghosts,” she said.

  Artur laughed and touched the edge of the table. Its top flashed and glowed. Several small icons appeared, hovering above its surface. It was a larger version of the entertainment table in the Palace of the Pure Girls. One of the clouds drifted across the table and coalesced into the image of a girl, wearing a simple silvery-gray shift.

  “Hello, Lah Lia,” said the girl.

  Lia felt her heart in her throat. She could not breathe.

  “Lah Kim?” The girl looked exactly like Kim, the Pure Gir
l whose blood moon had preceded Lia’s, but the scarlet birthmark on her forehead was missing.

  The girl laughed delightedly. “You remember me!”

  Lia stepped forward and reached out to touch her. Her hand passed through Lah Kim’s arm, leaving behind a storm of pixels.

  “That tickles,” said Lah Kim as her image reformed itself.

  “You’re not real,” Lia said.

  “I certainly am real!”

  “You have no birthmark,” Lia said.

  “I did not like it. I made it go away.”

  Another misty form drifted over the table and swam into focus. A Pure Girl, but one Lia did not know.

  “Hello, Lah Lia,” said the new girl. “I am Lah Glah.”

  Lia looked at Artur. “They are like your horse,” she said.

  “No,” Artur said. “Gort — the Gort you met in the city — was a recorded projection. These girls are as real as you or I.”

  “They have no substance,” Lia said.

  “They have transcended.”

  “What are they?” she asked.

  He was smiling as proudly as a father displaying his newborn child.

  “I call them Klaatu.”

  LAH KIM AND LAH GLAH WERE JOINED OVER THE TABLE by a grinning dark-haired boy in Boggsian garb. He introduced himself as Aaron.

  “We’re going feather skipping,” he said to Lia. “Do you want to come?”

  “What is feather skipping?” Lia asked.

  “She’s still corporeal, Aaron!” said Lah Kim. “She can’t skip.”

  “She could watch.”

  “What fun is that?”

  Another figure drifted into focus above the table — a woman with long reddish hair, wearing a polka-dot dress. She peered intently at Lia, then said something in a strange language.

  Lia shook her head. The woman repeated what she had said. It sounded like inglés, but with a peculiar accent that made it impossible to understand.

  “She wants to know if you are from Hope Well,” said Lah Kim.

  “What is Hope Well?”

  “We don’t know. She asks everybody the same question.”