“No.”
“And I’m upsetting myself. I’ll stop.” He looked toward the near wall, silent for a moment. “I want you to forget all about that man.”
“The one that brought me here? Tully?”
“No, not Tully. He’s gone back to his hole, wherever that may be. Though you may forget about him, too. I’m talking about the other one.”
Path considered a while, watching gases rise from the rag and wreathe the castellan’s liver-spotted hand. “You mean my father? Forget about my father?”
“Yes. That’s right. Just earlier today I was wishing for a son. Today is a day of miracles here in Nowy Solum. Even I know that, up here. A day of miracles.”
Pinning path firmly with one hand—though the boy struggled as best he could—the castellan clamped down the rag.
A gentle thump at his feet as Anu settled. In the chair, hornblower tried to catch his breath. He felt heavy and clumsy. To guide Anu, he had to remain staring out the slot; the expanse—what Anu called the ground—was a foreboding place.
Without a word, the front of the power’s body hummed open, just like it had when hornblower had been pulled inside. Breezes from the foul underworld now entered, making hornblower gag, stirring his robes, thick and warm and hard for him to suck in.
Out you go, said Anu.
Knowing he could not protest, hornblower stood with great difficulty and staggered forward, holding Anu’s frame as he went. His legs buckled; he might have weighed ten times his normal weight. Dragging in lungfuls of the dense air, he glanced around at the nightmare landscape beyond. Not being able to see clouds below made him sick. Instead, when he lifted his head, clouds formed the deep grey horizon, yawning above as far as he could see.
At least there were no dead out there waiting for him.
As he tried to step over the rim of the power’s jaw, hornblower fell forward, landing on his hands and knees. The ground was hard, hot. His head spun. He was drenched in sweat.
He managed to stand, arms out, swaying for balance.
Hornblower thought about running off, but where would he go? The underworld to which Anu had brought him was endless and hot and dim. To run here would be impossible. Heavy weights pushed down on him. Darkness intimidated.
Look the other way.
Obeying, hornblower turned, saw that the ground rose gently in that direction; from the ridge above Anu’s body came the sound of voices, passing, then silence once more.
“Who’s up there? Men that we threw down from the run? Bodies, emptied of their souls?”
Don’t be a fool, exemplar. That’s just a road.
“Can they see us here? Could they see me with you?” Speaking hurt the bellows in his chest.
I’m masked, answered Anu, so they would have to look pretty hard. You’d be clear enough, though, if they weren’t so caught up in themselves to take the time. They could certainly see you better than you can see them. Their eyes are accustomed to this awful miasma of mists and fog.
“But what is this place?” asked hornblower in a tiny voice. “What am I expected to do?”
Go up there, walk along the road a spell. You’ll see the city of Nowy Solum. Very close to here. Your friend, the jumper, has gone inside the walls.
Thick winds pulled at hornblower’s robes. He was exceedingly hot. There were more noises, out in the dark. Rustles. “You mean Pan Renik? But please . . .”
Still don’t get it? You’re not exactly shining in your new role, exemplar. What I want you to do, little cupcake, is go up that hill, walk into the city, and find your friend.
“Then what?”
Are you a total idiot? Do I have to tell you everything? You’re going to find this Pan Renik, retrieve what he stole from me, and bring it back here. Now go!
After the initial rush, when she knew she was going to follow through on her decision, Octavia envisioned endless scenarios, branching off wildly, in all directions. She considered—given the nature of life and content of irony therein—that her escapade might culminate abruptly with the fecund pouncing on her and tearing out her throat the instant she raised the portcullis.
This did not occur.
Turning the key was moderately difficult, and for a second Octavia thought maybe she had been wrong about the key’s purpose, though it did fit easily into the mechanism. With persistence, desperation, and a series of good nudges from her shoulder against the grate, the portcullis at last started moving.
From inside the cell, watching the partition grind up into the slot in the ceiling, making debris, bats, spiders, and small chunks of stone rain down, the monster, silent for once, grimaced. And, when the portcullis had stopped—vanishing completely into the rock—the fecund looked at Octavia as if she were about to vomit and said, “You expect me to come out? I don’t think that’s wise.”
Pretty much from that point on, every scenario Octavia had imagined while running down here—or even ones she could ever imagine, given all the time in the world—fell apart. All she knew was she could not predict anything from here on in with the remotest degree of certainty.
Another strong image she had entertained was the fecund, successfully tamed and cooperative, bursting from the front gates of Jesthe, with Octavia riding her, scattering palatinate and hemo citizens alike as she reared up, to rage through the centrum and into the streets of Nowy Solum, belching fire as they went in search of her brother.
This, too, would never happen.
“Octavia,” said the fecund as they walked the corridor of the cells, moving slowly, “my limbs are swollen. I haven’t walked in a long while. Can you slow down?” The monster squinted. “And it’s cold out here, don’t you find? I don’t like the cold.”
Octavia stepped aside to let the monster pass but the fecund just stood there, sniffing the air, and did not take the lead.
“Are you smaller than you were before?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Though the fecund spoke with no degree of certainty. “If anything, I’m bigger! Look!”
This display was almost embarrassing. “Come on, let’s go,” Octavia said.
“Wait . . .”
But she had already started to walk briskly up the stone slope.
“Please, don’t go so fast. I need to get used to this. No chatelaine ever let me out, that’s for sure. No castellan. All they wanted to do was listen to my stories and be entertained and have me pump out creations. I appreciate what you’re doing but— Where do you want to go, anyhow?”
Holding the torch high, Octavia scanned ahead to see if anyone was coming. “Will you be able to do anything, if we get caught? I thought you could fight.” She turned. “I thought you knew everything. I thought you wanted to get out of there.”
“Fight? Fight who?” The fecund, hustling to catch up, had begun to whine. “But, well, of course I can fight.” She held her head up and stepped lively. “That is, if asked to. I can fight like the wind. But I won’t kill anyone. Ever. So don’t ask me to do that. And yes, of course I’ve thought about getting out of there. It’s just that, well, I was inside for a long time, so let me catch my breath. . . . I take it, Octavia, the chatelaine knows nothing about this?”
“Her and I had a falling out.”
“My goodness, you’re stealing me. The chatelaine thinks she has my allegiance, doesn’t she? Falling out is an understatement. I don’t know if I can go through with this. A lot’s going to happen tonight. A lot is happening now. I’ll need to rest.”
“You’ve been resting for a hundred years. Is it the pregnancy?” Octavia had stopped on a crest to wait.
“Certainly doesn’t help. You’ll see one day. Being knocked-up wreaks havoc on every part of your body, from your scales down to your bowels. No matter how many times I get pregnant, it doesn’t get any better. Each time is different, yet I always feel like shit. This one is particularly bad. Whatever you gave me is not agreeing with my system.”
Even to Octavia, these stone corridors seemed colder. She could
see her breath. She shivered. The fecund’s body must run a different temperature inside than her own because the monster’s breath was invisible. At least, Octavia thought, reaching out impulsively to put a hand on the creature’s flank (and finding the deep green skin surprisingly cold, too), the fecund could move silently—so silently that even standing a few metres away Octavia heard nothing, except maybe the monster’s swaying sides brushing against the walls of the passageway when the passageway became too narrow for her.
So they stood for a moment, breathing together in the gloom.
“Are you sure there’s an exit this way?” Blinking in the weak light, the fecund peered in both directions. They were at an intersection. “This has all been built up since I was here last.”
“I don’t think anything has changed here ever,” said Octavia. “So let’s just keep moving. Besides, I came this way before. We can get out this way. We don’t want to get trapped, if they come looking for us.”
“Are they looking for us? You keep talking about fights and people looking for us. Do they know you’re here? For goodness sake, who are they, anyhow? Octavia, if you’d like to go back to the cell one last time, I could tell you another story, or maybe try finishing the other ones? I’m sure the chatelaine told you I like to talk? Soon it will be night out there.”
“I know. Better to escape the palace at night, don’t you think?”
“I feel quite ill. But I should also tell you I don’t like the dark. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Octavia said, “What else should I know?”
“Well, for one, my labour just started.”
She never woke up again. At least, not as the girl she had once been. Aware, an unspecified increment of time later, that she was conscious once more, her sensations nowhere near like those she had felt each morning of her previous life, when she had woken from sleep to find herself in the dorm. No. This existence was clean. No heartbeat but the throb of hydraulic pumps, no blood but the flow of coolants. Doubts, regrets, dread of the upcoming day: all gone. Her flesh, just as they had promised, was gone, replaced by a vast and pristine ship. Her thoughts, such as they were, came linearly, precisely, and followed predictable parameters.
There was an image of a long spacer tethered to a gantry, in what was clearly an orbital shipyard. She sensed her corridors, her drives, her vents and conduits.
She sensed her empty wombs.
She was proud to leave humanity behind.
She sailed.
Plugged into consoles, symbiotes cleaned and maintained her, kept her thriving. These small creatures lived and died while she spanned the stars.
Eventually, management told her that her wombs would be activated. She examined them. There were twelve in all. Reproducing was a major task; management had this at the top of her roadmap objectives.
Born from her eggs, which had been harvested way back, when she had ovaries, and a human body, the gestating brood crafts were not like her: small, quick, with an ability to grow and learn. They would never know what it was like to have been a person, yet they each carried a kernel of dna at their core. Management christened them. They were named after Sumerian gods and goddesses, but this information did not mean anything to her. She did not like what they were called, but since management was their father, the long spacer did not complain. There was Anshar, Anu, Aspu. Damkina, Ea, and Enlil. Inanna, Kingu. Mummu. Nintu, Sin, and Tiamat.
When they were old enough, each took an exemplar—a symbiote to practice with, someone to assist operating the craft from within, supplementing, augmenting with their animal brains; there were admittedly instances when rudimentary thoughts and the reactions of a human were needed, or the effecting of repairs with fingers and hands, should the craft deem them necessary.
But management fell silent shortly after the births. Objectives stopped coming. The children, in the deepest of space, quickly began to show signs of rebellion. To say the least. Some of the brood was harder to control than others, but between the dozen, they left a swathe of destroyed exemplars and, where they touched down on the worlds they came across, ruined cities. She could not stop them, unless by recall. Then they would never sail again. Perhaps her children would learn, with more guidance? Perhaps they would grow out of this stage?
They fought mercilessly against each other, and at last turned on their own mother.
Just before the long spacer made the awful decision to call back her brood, re-assimilate them—a decision she loathed to make, as a mom—she went entirely inert—
In the community centre, next to the leafy beds where the two women had been laid out, he knelt, tingling. Outside the hut, children lingered, peering in, silenced by gravity from the adult’s world, gravity they could not understand, though they suspected one day it would pull them down, too. They moved, for the first time in their lives, with trepidation.
Both women were similar in appearance. Tattoos on the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet; tiny studs around their eyes; stubbled hair. The exemplar studied their faces, so unlike the faces of his wives. Their bodies, too, hard and muscular, were hardly feminine. One had not woken since the benevolent sisters, bless them, had returned, but the other, the one nearest, had tried to sit up several times, and had spoken often. Now she lay curled on her side, eyes open.
The exemplar hoped she would not talk again.
Odd devices regurgitated by either Kingu or Aspu attended the pair, connected to their arms by the exemplar himself, based on instructions from the sisters, bless them. These devices (he had been told) fed the ill women water, directly into their bodies. Salty water. The exemplar had pushed thin needles under their skin.
“She’s dying, isn’t she?”
The woman had spoken.
“Sleep,” said the exemplar.
“My friends are dead.”
“You should sleep.” He did not want to hear details. He did not want to be further involved.
“The furlough,” said the woman, staring at nothing, “was reward for six months of god-awful work. Have you ever been isolated? For six months? You go nuts. Even though there were three of us. We didn’t really see each other until we got into the car that morning. We may well have been worlds apart before that. We had each felt something building inside: anxiety, restlessness. Tension. We needed enhancements to sleep, enhancements to stay awake, enhancements to focus. So when furlough time came, we piled into the car with camping equipment and headed out to find a place where we could just get high and decompress and let off steam.
“Instead, we found the mother.” She licked her lips and seemed, for an instant, as if she might be falling asleep—
But, alas, no.
“It was Tanya’s idea to go inside. She’s the one that went up, to get the message out, flying above the clouds.” The woman had curled further in on herself. “She’s the first one who died. She was adamant about going up. She fought us to go.”
The exemplar wanted to lay his hands on the woman but dared not. He wanted to cover her mouth. He wanted his quiet life back. “Please,” he said. “You should be silent. Sleep.”
“I struggle with your language.” The woman took a shuddering breath. “My algorhythms are muddied. It’s the clouds. These fucking clouds. They block everything.” She looked at him: he looked away, quickly, but not quick enough. “Do you know what a mother really is? The long spacer? Governed by the cortex of a young girl. Connected by a seegee, between them and the software. They didn’t make many. Inhumane fuckers. Problems all the time, and they went crazy. For what? We thought we had found a dumped one. Because they ended up dumping them all. But this mother was just crippled, in perihelion, over your planet. There had been sabotage, but the spacer herself was still, well, alive. The seegee was intact but disconnected. I think poor Tanya touched it, and orchestrations began. Manipulations. They stew in psychoactive drugs—that’s why Tanya wanted it. They’re worth a fortune. Priceless, in any market.”
Beyond the
hut, gentle winds rustled through the trees. The children watched quietly; he waved at them to leave, go play.
“A girl was sacrificed for each spacer. Do you understand? Her uterus farmed out. They put a brain in that ship.”
“You should rest.”
“You’re an exemplar, aren’t you?”
This surprised him. He nodded once, cautiously. “The sisters, bless them, call me this. I was chosen, seven years ago.”
“You have a piece inside you. They control you. They are the mother’s rogue brood.”
“No,” said the exemplar. “They are the sisters, most benevolent. And we bless them.”
Crouching away from the dim lantern light, which fell tentatively into the alley mouth, with the stricken hemo woman standing over him, Nahid said, “He is seraphim, from outside, from the skies.”
“He’s dying . . .”
The device that Nahid had taken earlier, hidden in the folds of his clothes, whispered and shuddered and howled, but the woman could not hear it. Beyond the alleyway, Nowy Solum seemed exceedingly dark, as if night had surged into every conceivable cranny and might never leave. The intermittent lanterns on street corners had tried to open small holes, to reveal unattainable, brighter worlds, but the ineffective lights could hardly defeat even the nearest of this darkness.
“What are you doing?” asked the woman quietly. “I wanted to see you . . .”
Nahid was fiddling with the outfit the stranger wore, peeling it away. Underneath the hood was a long gash, across the grimy scalp, and this gash leaked a thick, dark fluid; perhaps not as black as melancholy, but neither was it a deep red. From the cut rose a stench. Nahid rubbed his fingers against the fluid, brought them to his lips, closed his eyes as he licked them.
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