Out on Blue Six

by Ian McDonald

  She caught herself screaming at herself, screams of alternate encouragement and despair, and no one could hear them but herself, and even she poorly. Snow-blind. Winter kills. Embedded in a globe of whirling white atoms forever and ever and ever and ever, amen, amen, praise Yah … She became vaguely aware that Xian Man Ray was shaking her by the shoulders. Didn’t she know how important it was that she kept counting one step, two steps, three steps, four, one step, two steps … What? Here? Where? Then everything white went black and everything black went white, and incredibly, there was an ending. And heat. And warmth. And light. And faces.

  The Tabreeni were vain creatures of paradox. Loftiest and least of the eighty castes, they dwelled a little lower than the angels (whose astral forms could be seen shimmering over the capstones of the Wall) in a land of bitter poverty and permanent cold. These they accepted without question: a little asceticism was small price for nearness to the angels. The house in which they accommodated their guests was nothing more than a cluster of wicker grapes suspended from a stone bollard, niggardly heated by stone fat lamps. Yet the Tabreeni lived on so exalted a spiritual plane that they could not speak directly to their guests (a defilement so dreadful as to warrant three weeks solitary purification in a wicker hermitage up where the ice fields reached cold lingers down into the demesne of the Tabreeni) and communicated what little information they thought necessary through notes dictated to lower-order agriculturals and scratched by them onto wax tablets. They lived on birds, bugs, eggs and a variety of high-altitude potato that was the only staple that would grow under the breath of the ice, and once Courtney Hall realized she was finally out of the cold and the wind and the snow, once a little warmth and a little life had returned in the glow of the camping stove (an abominable luxury to the Tabreeni elders), she was able to appreciate what poor, paltry, vain creatures these lords of spirituality were. Their oil lamps gave as little warmth as their smiles, their food was cold and watery, and the wind found every gap and flaw in their wicker shelters. No one slept well in their macramé hammocks that night.

  The blizzard had cleared by early next afternoon, and both Tabreeni and Expedition were glad to part company. Three hundred meters above was the End of the World: a holy place of ice and fire, hypnotic in the way the aurora light hovered over the ramparts of ice like the seven million veils covering the face of God, a place that beckoned, called, fired, inspired.

  And with divine capriciousness, betrayed.

  One hundred meters from the top of the Wall, the stairway to heaven vanished under a lobe of green ice. Three hundred steps from the End of the World. Three hundred light-years. The Expedition failed, its fire blown out in frustration and depression. Everything was over. The End of the World was unattainable. What to do now but return with humility to the inhabited lands and await the inevitable with some dignity.

  The inevitable King would have none of it.

  “Either we get to the top or I exercise command option Omicron.”

  “You sick old bastard!” hissed Angelo Brasil.

  “What is command option Omicron?” asked Courtney Hall, just another bastard from a world of legalized bastardry.

  “An emergency contingency should soulschip ever fall into unauthorized hands,” said Jinkajou. “Wipe all stored memories. Blank. Clean as toilet bowl, as His Majesty, Bless ’Im, say. The lot. Erased.”

  The sick old bastard smiled. “Now,” he said, “I have a plan. Who’d like to hear it?”

  It was not a brilliant plan, not even for a sick old bastard, but in the absence of any other it had a certain intelligence. It involved Xian Man Ray’s flipping to the top of the Wall (“Don’t know if I could flip that far in one go, the further you shift through unspace, the more it takes out of you”) with a two-hundred-meter coil of polyrope (“Oh, come on, the energy expenditure increases with the square of the mass”), which they could just about make if they knotted together all the available sections they had scavenged from the raft. Once there, she could use the stove to melt and freeze a pulley into the ice (“How much you think this is going to mass; twenty, fifty, hundred ks, eh?”) and run the rope through it to form a kind of winch. (“Angelo, tell this suck this is impossible. Flatly. Categorically. I am not doing this.”) Angelo took his pseudosister a few steps back down the stairway to/from heaven. They argued while Courtney Hall pastelled down her impressions of the cold and holy ice-scapes of the End of the World.

  It took many hours for the Expedition to complete all necessary preparations; the sky was dark, the aurora bright, when Xian Man Ray, furious and apprehensive and laden with a seventy-five kilo pack, made the series of five flips that took her to the top of the Wall. The hands of the ormolu fob were closing up on midnight by the time the last load had been hauled up the icefall to the End of the World.

  The End of the World was a wind-polished plain of metal one kilometer across, an almost geometrical abstraction of finality bounded by knuckles of ice gripping the Wall like a desperate man. Exhausted, the Expedition camped on the open plain, drawn into a huddle around the portable heater. Above them the sky was huge and close, and beyond the aurora’s shiftings and seemings, the stars were vaguely threatening. Jonathon Ammonier babbled quietly, almost devotionally, to the ghosts of his ancestors, and everyone could smell how close he was to death. He should have died that night, a shivering carcass of cancers. Only his will to be King kept him on the warm edge of death. While dawn was yet an hour off, his comrades carried him across the steel plain and over the fringe of ice to the far side of the Wall. There were no complaints. No whispers. No words at all. Portents of something enormous waiting beyond the ice out there in the morning took away their words. They set the litter down and waited for the End of the World.

  The End of the World came slowly, in little shafts and slivers of revelation, each successive revelation the key to comprehending what had already been revealed. The sun rose, and Courtney Hall beheld the Beyond.

  Oozing. Seeping. Steaming. Rotting. Rainbow sheens of oil. Scabrous patches of radioactive green. Lakes of boiling sulfur, chrome-yellow fumaroles. Rafts of crusted sewage kilometers across floating on soft-slowing lava-sheets of polymer slag. Geysers. Gushers. Fountains of oil. Volcanoes of boiling sludge. Bergs of wax pushed up through the lap and flow of putrid waste. The morning wind kicked sprays of bubbles from frozen waves of foam. Atolls of stringy garbage, bale upon bale upon bale upon bale upon bale upon bale of it. Protruding girders, rust-rotted like decaying rib cages. Low, evil acid-mists hurried from popping mouth-holes and vents. Lightning played with continuous, manic glee. Numinous, luminous aurora ghost lights. Blazing flares of gas bubbles percolating up from beneath, pillars of fire by day and by night by which the eyeless things that lived out there sought and fought each other. Not human things. Not even properly living things. The dregs and lees of biotechnology recombined and nurtured by the sludgelands of the Beyond and given some almost-life by the lightning and the radioactive glow. Things that crept and inched and poured in search of each other. Here a quivering pagoda of melting leaves dripped caustic sap onto the carpet of eyes and teeth that was gnawing at its root. In the center of the Beyond, they fought, in the heart of the nothing, the Ginnungagap that reached to the horizon where a line of yellow fire poured black smoke like oil into the atmosphere, as if the edge of the world were burning.

  It was Xian Man Ray who broke the silence after a second, a minute, an hour. She sat down on the ice and cried; silent tears of absolute heartbreak. Courtney Hall knelt to comfort the small woman. When it spoke, Jonathon Ammonier’s voice was a whisper, a song, a prayer. “Didn’t you always wonder what they did with it? Didn’t you always wonder where it all went: all the pain and the hurt and the sorrow; didn’t you wonder where they put it, the shit and the piss and the pus and the poison and the pain of the Compassionate Society? Or did you think that it just disappeared, vanished into the air? Well, now you know. Now I know.” The King of Nebraska laughed; a dry bark that became a racking co
ugh. He spat bloodstained saliva. “One more gob in the ocean, Sam. I suppose I always knew it was here. Rationally, I knew it all had to go somewhere, but dammit, dreams and visions, they aren’t rational, are they?”

  Courtney Hall surveyed the wasteland to which the Compassionate Society had condemned all the hurtful things. The wind from the Beyond caught the sixteen-o’clock dream and tore it like a scrap of tissue into shards and sent them whirling back across the ice to the flames and towers of Yu.

  Crushed.

  There was nothing here she could take back.

  Broken.

  The glowing wind hummed over the flat metal plain of World’s End.

  “And you’re King of this?” asked Angelo Brasil unexpectedly. “King of the Beyond? King of Sludge? King of Poison? King of Ashes? King of Shit?”

  “King of Shit,” said the King. And he was. Finally he was King, and the fire burned inside him and those who saw it felt awe and respect and reverence; because he might be only King of Shit, but that was more King than any of them could ever aspire to be, and that was King Indeed. Sensing the end come flocking about him like dark birds, sensing that when the final glow guttered into darkness there would be no more kings, he ordered everyone except Courtney Hall from his presence. Because he was still King, they obeyed.

  “I’m giving it to you,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want it,” she replied.

  “Madam, I don’t care. I’m giving it to you. You’re the only one I can trust with it. It’s a precious thing. Perhaps the only precious thing left in the world: its history.”

  “I’m scared,” she said. “I’m scared of all those other people being in my head. I’m scared I’ll lose myself.”

  “Who do you think you are? I just want you to be its guardian until you can give it to the properly ordained Elector. It’s not for you to use, anyway, you’re not socketed. This is what you do. When I die, the biochip will extrude from its socket under my ear, here. Touch it now.” She did so. Something as unliving yet alive as the shapes out in the Ginnungagap squirmed beneath her fingers. “Good. It’s imprinted onto you. Wasn’t it good of the designers to have all these contingency programs built into it? Now, when I die and the chip slides out, quickly pick it up and press it to your eye.”

  “What?”

  “Touch it to your eye. It’s quite smart, it’ll know what to do. It’ll slide in around your eyeball, up the optic nerve, and come to rest under your frontal lobe. It’ll be inactive so you needn’t worry about hosting a permanent cocktail party in your head. You’ll be able to access their memories but only in the form of stored engrams, they won’t be discrete personalities, only assemblies of memories. So, should you decide you want to tell them where their damn Unit is, you can.” He laughed, another bloody gob in the ocean, Sam.

  “I can’t do this.”

  “Of course you can’t. But you will. You won’t disappoint me, this time. I can trust you. Now, please leave me alone to contemplate, madam.”

  Courtney Hall went to share a desultory cup of lukewarm tofu soup from the catering racoons. Jonathon Ammonier heaved himself onto his elbows to look out over the wastelands. Sometime later Courtney Hall thought to offer him a cup of soup. He had not even the strength to sip down the tepid, watery brew.

  “Yah’s teeth, this is terrible. I could have wished for something a little more … toothsome … for my last meal.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re fit enough for plenty more banquets when we get back,” said Courtney Hall. The lying platitudes tasted foul and oily in her mouth. Jonathon Ammonier was not so easily deceived.

  “Please, do not lie to me, do not humor me, and above all, do not patronize me. This is it. No questions. I can feel them, out there, as far as I can see, all around me, the shadows. I wonder, is there a bottle left in Jinkajou’s cellarette? I should like them to toast me into their company.”

  A pause. A silence. Courtney Hall stood uncertain, unwilling to remain, unable to leave.

  The King of Nebraska’s voice suddenly rang out, shrill with fear: “Madam! Madam! Where are you?”

  “Right here …” Courtney Hall felt a terrible dread clutch at her spirit. A hand, uplifted, searched for her contact.

  “I couldn’t see you, I couldn’t see you, all of a sudden the shadows gathered around me and I couldn’t see …” His hand tightened on hers. “I said I wasn’t, but that’s not true. I am afraid. Very afraid. I had so wanted for it to be dignified, I had so wanted to pass offstage with the glory and pathos of some Shakespearean tragic hero … don’t they teach Shakespeare anymore, did they teach you Shakespeare, madam, they ought to … but all I can feel is this dreadful, slobbering fear. Oh, why is it so cold? That blanket, there is no heat in it, pull it up around me, would you, madam, can’t you feel the cold? Cold feet. Cold hands. Cold heart. Cruel, slobbering fear.” And he rallied himself, in grand defiance of the universe; all the madness and fear and sickness was burned away like mist beneath the sun, and Courtney Hall knew that, at last, this was the end.

  “You know?” he said. “You know what really galls me about this? I can’t think of any parting words. A king should take his leave with some pithy, poignant phrases, and dammit, I can’t think of anything! That really, really pisses me off.”

  And then something black and cancerous burst inside him and blood welled from his mouth and his eyes and his hands withered into something dry and stiff and chitinous and he was dead.

  Courtney Hall numbly closed the eyes. Then she did what he had instructed her to do, and with the biochip wriggling up her optic nerve to her brain (a peculiar sense of violation), she went to tell the others what had happened, what she had done.

  She stood with the wind from the Edge of the World blowing through her as the Man with the Computer Brain raged and the Amazing Teleporting Woman tried to ameliorate and the cybernetic cat hissed and arched its back.

  Jinkajou the Chamberlain came with the remnant of the Tinka Tae nation.

  “Madam, the King is dead, long live the King. Last respects will be paid duly; first, as thou art now our King by right of carrying the personas, our loyalty is freely given to thee. What wouldst thou have us do?”

  She could not think. “I don’t know. I suppose you are free to go if you wish. Do what you will.”

  Jinkajou bowed again.

  “Thank you, madam.” As they left to prepare their late King for whatever rites befitted the Compassionate Society’s last monarch, Angelo Brasil returned with his pseudo-sister.

  “So, are you going to tell us where it is?”

  She knew by the light in his eyes that she had always been right not to trust him too much. “Jonathon is not even ten minutes dead and you want to know where your precious Unit is.”

  “Life goes on, sib.”

  She looked down at him with utter contempt. “All right. All right. You want your precious Unit, you can have your precious Unit. But you’ll have to let me lead you to it.”

  The Man with the Computer Brain prepared for another tantrum of flailing arms and dreadlocks. Courtney Hall picked a spot just under his left eye to hit. Xian Man Bay put her hands on his chest and said, “It’s a deal. You lead us. We’ll follow. Keep you safe.”

  “Well, do you mind if we don’t leave right away? I have respects to pay.”

  Freed, the Tinka Tae nevertheless performed one final gesture of submission by agreeing to accompany the three travelers as far as the midlatitudes of the Wall. There, explained Ankatiel the interpreter, they would part company. The lush vertical bamboo forests were an Arcadia to his racoon-kind: a new nation would be founded there, a racoon Utopia.

  “How far do they think they’ll get when they run out of biochips and sockets?” said Angelo. “Ingrates!”

  Courtney Hall gave them her blessing.

  The first stars were shining through the curtains of the aurora by the time the Expedition from the End of the World was mustered. As they trekked toward the cityside icefall, Courtney H
all could not resist one look back to where they had left the body of Jonathon I, forty-fourth Elector of Yu, King of Victorialand, Nebraska, and Beyond, overlooking his domain. And to the small dark shape perched on his chest, Jinkajou his Chamberlain.

  West/Celestial/Byrne

  THE GODDESS RECEIVED THEM in a small gazebo atop a grassy hillock. The children, the angel-children who had come flocking along behind them, had all fallen back as they approached the knoll, returning to their endless games and toys and playthings; alone, Kilimanjaro West and Danty his guide entered the gazebo.

  “Chocolate?” asked the Cosmic Madonna.

  Kilimanjaro West was not certain what constituted proper etiquette for a goddess with six breasts and four arms (one holding a chocolate pot, two holding cups and saucers, the remaining one held palm up, thumb to fingertip in an attitude of contemplation) who was floating in lotus position above a lacquered afternoon-table. “Danty won’t have any, will you, Danty?” The guide said nothing, but Kilimanjaro West caught both the goddess’s bantering tone and the matt sheen of resentment in eyes that should have been incapable of expressing such an emotion. “Me, I really just take it out of politeness, I’m only a construct after all. And you, Citizen West?”

  “If you please, madam.”

  “Ooh. Madam. Nice manners, he has, Danty.” The arms performed ritual gestures. “But please, not so formal, cizzen. After all, we are relatives, in a sense.” The moving arms did something rather complex that Citizen Kilimanjaro West could not quite follow. In the absence of seats he contented himself with the velvet-smooth turf.