by John Shirley
The same night, a winged man all of black was poised on the edge of a roof, beside a giggling human skull.
Swanee perched just on the edge of the Pioneers’ dorm building, steadying himself with his hands between his taloned feet, his wings folded back so as not to catch the breeze. He extended his senses and listened. He could hear the man inside the room below him breathing in sleep.
“Yes,” Swanee whispered. “Now.”
Kelso, who was crouched beside Swanee, said “Goo-ooo-oood. I told the Phylum Twos.” Kelso’s telepathic rapport with the brutes was sharper than Swanee’s.
“Best keep your voice down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, sky-slitherer. I am the Emperor’s favorite.”
Swanee shrugged and watched the wall across the narrow way from them.
He heard an Earther guard on the front wall; for the moment this building, near the back wall, was unguarded.
But the back wall was not unoccupied. A hulking silhouette heaved itself up over the wall from the other side. The enormous Twist found his footing on the wall, then turned to help a second over. Swanee was a little disappointed. He’d been hoping the rickety ladder would break under the weight of the Phylum Twos. But the Twos made it over the wall and onto the roof adjacent to it. They crossed the roof to the next building, the dorm, and came to hunker down, stinking, beside Swanee. One of them uncoiled a rope from his waist and lowered it over the edge. The nearer end was looped around him. He braced himself against the little wall edging the roof leaning back, holding the rope as the other descended it.
In a moment there was the sound of rending wood as the climber tore the shutters from the window and forced his way inside. There was a muffled cry of outrage from within.
Swanee saw a shape moving against the stars at the front wall: the guard, coming back their way. Maybe he’d heard the noise, was coming to investigate.
“I smell rotten, rotten enemy stinks comin’,” Kelso said.
“Yes. I will take care of it,” Swanee said as he leaped off the rooftop. His wings caught the air, and he tilted, climbed, then dove at the guard. He had a glimpse of a young, very startled face, a blunderbuss angling toward him. He grabbed the weapon; it came away from the surprised guard with hardly a tug of resistance. Swanee flung it over the wall and swung about, flapping at the guard to keep him confused.
The guard saw a man-sized bat-shape against the sky, perhaps glimpsed starlight on talons. As Swanee had hoped, he turned and ran. Swanee was relieved he wouldn’t be forced to kill the boy. The guard was shouting, but hoarsely; terror kept the sound small in him.
Swanee turned and flapped back toward the dorm. He saw one of the Phylum Twos help the other up onto the roof; the second, the climber, was carrying a man slumped limp over his shoulder.
In three minutes, just as the other guards were arriving with torches and guns, the Emperor’s faithful had carried their charge over the wall and out into the wilderness. And Swanee, with Kelso tucked like a complaining football under his arm, was flying above them toward the distant shine of the IAMton beams glimmering from the holes in the Rug.
Swanee several times had to fight the temptation to drop Kelso from way, way up.
“Yes,” Angie was saying, “I think we’d have done it anyway, eventually.”
“Then what does it matter?” Zero asked. It felt good to hear her admit it: the inevitability of their coming together. He’d known it already, of course; he’d seen it in the river of knowledge that had flowed between them in the night.
She turned and looked at the spavined dawn. From up here the light was half occluded by the forest’s bulk. “I just—I wanted it to happen because we wanted it to. More gradually … by degrees.”
“Romantically?”
“Go ahead and sneer.”
“I’m not sneering. I feel the same way. I’d have liked that. But I do feel romantic about you.”
“I just feel cheated, that’s all. I don’t even know how to say what it was I wanted. But I know it was ripped off from me.” She shrugged and nestled against him. He put his arm around her.
The others were just beginning to move about the camp. The Earthers were careful not to look at Zero and Angie. It was respect, and a certain shyness, for their new intimacy.
Except for Jack, who grinned at them embarrassingly.
After a short, almost silent breakfast, the expedition set out. Everyone seemed distracted, brooding. The waves of sensation from the IAMton field had passed with the dawn, but there was a pressure in the air, an oppressiveness compounded of depression and a meteorological pregnancy.
Zero and Angie walked side by side, not touching but somehow moving in partnership, Yoshio was just up ahead. Zero said, “Yoshio, did you feel that thing last night? I mean, did anything wake you up? Uh—I don’t mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Yoshio said, dropping back beside him. “I slept through it, but I felt it. It gave me nightmares, more vivid than I’ve ever had. I dreamed of the settlement. I saw a man with wings drop a skull on the settlement, and it exploded like a bomb, and then Fiskle came in.” He scowled. “I don’t think about it. I felt strange all night. Cisco did, too. I did wake up once, actually: The Clansmen were”—he lowered his voice—“terrified. Hiding in their bedrolls. The Pezz got up and ran in circles for a while, then started throwing up pottery.”
Angie laughed. “Seriously?”
“Oh, yes. Gorgeous stuff. And I buried it this morning. Don’t ask me what that was about.”
“What about Jack?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
The expedition had been a half-hour on the road when Yoshio pointed at the onrushing clouds. They felt the damp wind skylarking about them, tugging at the fringes of their clothing, whipping their hair.
The Pezz danced about excitedly. “Another living rain! We should take cover; [approximate translation:] Livid phenomena are afoot! And [untranslatable] commingle!”
Zickorian nodded. “It’s coming quickly. In minutes.”
Everyone looked expectantly at Jack. “Oh, very well,” he said, shrugging.
“Though personally I think you should enjoy it.”
“I don’t enjoy being flattened,” Angie said.
Jack stepped off the road, knelt, and reached down to the vines. He pulled two out of the uneven surface and tied them together, then commenced to tug at them, first one way, then another, with an air of distraction.
In minutes a sort of igloo of forest life had bulked, rustling, up from the roof, and they’d crawled into its shadowy mouth—Cisco with some reluctance, muttering about being eaten by plant spirits—and huddled together away from the gathering force of the wind. Zero found himself pressed up against the Pezz; its skin felt like balloon plastic and was cool to the touch.
It surprised him by saying, “I forgot to tell you—congratulations on your marriage.”
“Oh. Well, it’s—” The sudden downpour interrupted him, smacking down on their inadequate roof with a thunderous clap. The igloo shivered and became a little more oblate, but held.
“Did you see him, too?” Angie asked, nudging Zero, shouting over the roar of the amino rain. Its salty smell and glutinous presence had transformed the world; already it was oozing through onto their necks in big sticky drops.
“See who?”
“The golden-eyed thing! That—that marsupial thing we saw in the clearing that day! I saw it just now. Just before the rain! It stuck its head up from below the roof!”
“You mean that thing Jack said was spying on us?”
“I can’t hear you! Never mind, the rain’s too damned loud, I’m going hoarse!”
Zero nodded and looked out the entrance of their igloo.
Things were happening out there. Towers raised themselves up.
Inseminated by the bulky rains, shapes reared and shrugged into intricate convolutions. When the rain stopped, the world outside was changed, and Jack said, “It would appea
r that Fiskle has erected an obstacle. And it’s one I don’t think I can do anything about.”
I looked everywhere,” Sanchez said, coming into the Council chamber. “He’s just not in the settlement. His room is a shambles.” He shrugged resignedly. “They got him.”
Trish choked off a sob. “I always liked that guy. He was so sweet to me when I first came. He kept everybody off me and—God, he was just like this neighborhood cop where I grew up.”
Jamie squeezed her hand and said, “We’ll find him.”
“You won’t have to,” Bowler said, appearing at the door. “He’s outside.”
Bowler led the Council outside to the front gate. They stood in the morning sunshine—it was a beautiful day—and stared at the gate.
Doggo’s head, and most of his skin, stripped from his body, was nailed to the front gate. His hide was flayed, with his intact head still attached. His head drooped down over the skin, (the inner side of his skin, scraped clean), which was nailed up like an animal hide in a log cabin. Or like a parchment containing a papal bull. Because on the skin, Harmony had written—with the black poison that dripped from his fingernails—a sort of declaration of intent, in baroquely calligraphed script: BE IT KNOWN
IN PARADOX IS DIVINITY. THE PREVAILING ORDER OF THIS
WORLD IS A RULE OF CHAOS: A PARADOX. I, THE
UNDERSIGNED, EMBODY THAT PARADOX, THEREFORE AM I
DIVINE: THE AVATAR. AND THEREFORE BY DIVINE RIGHT AM I
RULER OF THIS WORLD WHERE CHAOS IS THE META’S ORDER.
IF CHAOS IS THIS WORLD’S ORDER, THEN THE RULER OF THE
WORLD IS THE EXECUTOR OF CHAOS. THEN CHAOS IS MY LAW.
AND MY LAW IS GOOD, AS ALL THAT PROCEEDS FROM DIVINITY
IS GOOD. AND THE CHAOS OF THE LAND IS MY RAIMENT. FOR
CHAOS SPARKLES, AND SO CHAOS IS MY GLORY. MY WORLD
WILL BECOME A SPLENDID CHAOS THAT GLORIFIES MY RULE.
AND BE IT KNOWN THAT THE LANDS TO THE NORTH AND ALL
TREASURES AND GOODS TO BE FOUND IN THEM ARE THE
PROPERTY OF THE EMPEROR, WHOM CLEARLY THE META
INTENDED AS THEIR SPECIAL ENVOY; BE IT KNOWN THAT ALL
TRESPASSERS IN THE NORTH WILL BE EXECUTED, THE
DESIGNATION TRESPASSER WILL SIGNIFY ANYONE I HAVE NOT
OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED AS MY SUBJECT. ALL EXECUTIONS
WILL BE SWIFTLY UNDERTAKEN BUT SLOW TO CONCLUDE.
THUS IS ESTABLISHED THE FIRST LAW OF THE LAND, BY ORDER
OF HIS SUPERHUMAN MAJESTY, EMPEROR HARMONY, THIS
SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR ONE, ANNO HARMONY.
He is going to come and kill us,” someone said.
Jamie turned to a guard. “Take that thing down. We’ll cremate it. We’ll hold a service for Doggo.”
The guard stared at Doggo’s head. One of Doggo’s eyes looked up at the sky; the other looked at the ground. Worms crawled across the blackened, shriveled tongue in his open mouth, a mouth rimmed with dried blood. The hands had been cut away. The guard had to be asked twice, but at last he raised his pike and began to pry.
A tired old man named Carmody—he was only fifty but in the months here had come to look seventy—said, “They’re going to come and kill us unless we surrender. They can take people anytime they want. They have magic or something. They can fly. They are too strong.”
Jamie turned to the Council. “No,” she said. “This is grandstanding. And lunacy. We outnumber them. We have the fortress. No.”
Sanchez nodded. “Jamie’s right. If we give in, he’ll Twist us or kill us. We’d live in a Hieronymus Bosch place, shoving knives up our asses. No. We have to fight.”
10
The rain stopped, and after a while the puddles stopped crawling.
Zero and the others could feel the IAMton charge in the air as they stepped out of the wooden igloo. They could see it—no, they could almost see it, when they looked at the odd structures that had sprung up at the behest of the deluge. A sort of iridescent glamour clung to the new growths, a shine that was invisible except when the head was tilted just so and the eyes were squinted…
The growths reminded Zero of the fifteen-foot termite castles he’d seen in documentaries about the tropics, although these were of something like plant matter and were more intricately studded and vented. There were eight of them in a semicircle around the igloo, neatly spaced twenty feet apart.
The great gray clouds were still breaking up overhead, moving with unnatural speed to race away like a panicked herd of elephants. The sunlight struck through in wildly dancing shafts, chased by shadows that crawled frantically over the semicircle of organic monuments and seemed to make them move and shift.
One of them had moved. Hadn’t it?
Feeling giddy as he inhaled the mists rising in the aftermath of the downpour, Zero looked at Jack the Baptist. He felt a certain warmth as he saw Jack’s mood of uncertainty. Jack had supposed these sudden growths in their path to be a sending from Fiskle, but he wasn’t sure.
It was good to see him unsure. Easier to think of him as a friend when he was fallible. Zero looked at Jack more closely, trying to perceive him as an individual, as one does with real friends. Trying to see past the assumptions and misguesses, past the veneer others themselves generate defensively, trying to see the real Jack.
He saw that Jack was not there. It was as if, for a moment, he had become invisible, or opaque, or both. He was the silhouette of a man cut into the air, an outline with no interior detail.
Zero blinked and shuddered, and the effect passed. Jack looked normal. A puzzled, filthy, half-mad, long-haired, scruffy hermit, come out of his hermitage for a while like a precocious rat snuffling the daylight.
Jack saw Zero staring at him and smiled faintly. “Let’s leave here quickly,” he said. “These things are a function of the Overmind in an uncontrolled mode, and I mistrust them.”
But Cisco was standing at the base of the nearest growth, staring at something emerging from its grainy, dirty-blue surface. “Look at this!” he shouted.
“Best that you not,” Jack said.
But Zero and Angie had already gone to watch the thing bulging from the growth. It was an enormous gem. So they thought at first. A great cats-eye gem, as big as a beachball, emerging like a blister in fast-action, pushing through … a blue-green gem, polished but smokily obscure within.
They all felt it. The tug. The overwhelming desire to reach out and touch the thing.
They were dimly aware that the Pezz and the High Clansmen were standing at other growths, looking at similar glassy swellings. And that Jack was speaking stridently against further contact with them.
And then Cisco touched the gem, and it burst. It split open down the middle and oozed out a blue-green gel that, on meeting the air, sizzled and then evaporated. In moments it had steamed away, revealing an object that had been hidden in the smoky interior of the gem-thing.
Something blurry … till Cisco touched it, and then it instantly reshaped, became almost recognizable. It was artificial but effortlessly so, as if it had grown itself, using a manufacturer’s blueprint for its DNA. It was chrome and oblong, with artfully placed metal about it and glass panes that showed mysterious inner works defying articulation. Cisco caressed it and sucked in his breath appreciatively. He drew it out and cradled it and hefted it and felt it murmur against him. “It’s a—a … it’s a—” he muttered.
Zero and Angie looked at him enviously. But they knew it was his.
As if in response to their inchoate yearning, another great gem blistered from the grainy blue stuff, and then another. Zero and Angie each chose one and touched it. Zero’s burst and revealed a sort of camshaft-shape that played the tunes that drifted through the back of his mind all day. He could hear the songs whisper softly from between the interlocking, turning parts of the thing, as if it were cranking them out, an alien organgrinder playing bits and pieces of old songs and jingles that haunted every Earther brain, harmonizing all of them together with a
marvelous connective drone. When he held the torquing white metal thing against him, its touch produced a quasi-sexual stimulation, a delicious electric shock, its movements triggering responses in the secret chambers of his epidermis.
He saw that another of the growths was hollowing itself out invitingly, and there was niche where the squirming camshaft songmaker would fit. He was quite unable to keep himself from carrying it to the niche and installing it.
He returned to the first structure and found another gem blistering, swelling out, a precious bubo that split at his touch and produced something that shifted, under his attention, to become sharp-edged, compressed to glossiness in some places, fluffed to furriness in others, the essence of Tantalus in a material thing. It was a designer compact disc player; no, it was a gorgeous Mardi Gras headdress; no, it was a device with which, surely, they could communicate with Earth; no, it was a weapon, if worn just so on the arm, the essence of martial confidence and macho chic; no, it was a marital aid, an aphrodisiac if you merely gazed at it; no, it was…
Each object was heart-rendingly beautiful. Don’t take your eyes off it—it might vanish.
The objects (some part of Zero’s mind noted, behind the feverish wanting that occupied most of his consciousness then) were reminiscent of enticements seen in glass cases and expensive, artfully arranged window displays on Earth—but they weren’t those objects. They were abstractions of the glamour of those objects, extracted from the unconscious. They were the secret paradigms of material perfection, clockworked into the engine of desire itself. Zero knew this; the knowledge like a draught from the inner river that flowed through him from the IAMton ambience. He knew this in the objective filmmaker part of him. But it did him no good to know. He was as feverish as an amateur Vegas gambler on a winning streak, scooping up his shiny loot—object after object, another and another, till he was breathless from exertion (more and more!), each radically different from the last but of the same continuity—and carrying it to the niches in the growths to one side.
