Splendid Chaos (v1.1)

by John Shirley

  Till he had a wall of them, whirring, cranking, humming, glowing, singing things, interlinked into a gestalt of sheer but unidentified appeal that made him buzz with possessive delight.

  He was distantly aware that Angie was doing more or less the same thing, at another of the growths; that Zickorian and Calum were taking tribal fetishes of some sort from their own gem-eggs, were twining them on themselves and hearing them sing out the cries of beasts from their home world, messages from the plane of animistic spiritism.

  And Yoshio was at work on objects that seemed melded together of various cybernetic modalities, objects that were programmable, responsive, material things that spoke to you with digested concepts the way a guitar responds with attuned sounds. Yoshio chattered to himself in exhilaration.

  He, too, was caught.

  It was as if they each had a hollow place inside, and now, holding the object, they felt it filling the emptiness, the hollow-place, snugly and exactly.

  Jack stood back, saying something that wasn’t quite intelligible; the Pezz danced a warning and uttered cryptic squeaks that confounded the translator.

  Zero was aware of all this through a sort of lAMton-fed psychic peripheral vision, but he was mostly indifferent to it. The thing he had been constructing in his niche came together as he’d known it would, forming a cinematic continuity, so that images flashed in membranes that stretched like soap bubbles between the exquisite materializations. He saw the movie from its beginning: his arrival on Fool’s Hope; his struggle to accept his lot; the confrontation with the alien at the Neutral; his vision of an exile to drudgery in the settlement; his decision to seek the technological Ark of the Covenant, the Progress Station; his journey through sweet dreams and nightmares; Dennis’s death and the teeming foreignness of the plains and forest; his sense of being both the manipulated and the manipulator; and their arrival here. All were neatly edited into a seamless cinematic flow, a thing with Kubrick’s lucidity and scope, Roeg’s luscious intricacy, Zefferelli’s lyrical faith, and Wertmuller’s moral force but this was Zero’s film! His own! His own creation; His raison d’etre, completed, here and now; The consummation of his life; The bits and pieces he’d taken from the gems were like jigsaw-puzzle parts connected into this perfect cinematic composition, so that he was sure that he had come here, to this world, for this moment, and—

  “It’s false,” Jack said, gripping his shoulder so it hurt him. “It’s a fake movie. It’s not something you created. “It’s an idealized hallucination.”

  Irritably, Zero shook himself free. “You’re disturbing the images.”

  “If you let this thing capture you, it won’t let you go—”

  “Why shouldn’t it capture me? I filmed it, I created it to hold me.”

  “No, listen to me. You didn’t do this. It wants you to believe that you did so you’ll fall into it.”

  Zero snorted. Jack was raining on his parade; he was an obstruction to ecstasy. Zero turned his back to him and went back to his rapt, masturbatory self-congratulation.

  He was distantly aware—and irritated by the knowledge now—that Jack was talking to Angie. “Angle, listen to me—listen! You’re seeing objects that seem to embody your desire for a home and your ambition for a sort of matriarchal influence on your community. You want to be a woman with a family and a leadership role, too. So the objects seem to embody that. When people buy things on Earth, they’re buying psyche-symbols framed to represent reassurance and resolution of uncertainties. The Overmind—at Fiskle’s prompting—is doing the same thing to you now. You are being manipulated. Don’t you resent it?”

  Why doesn’t he leave her alone? Zero thought. Why doesn’t he—

  ”Zero?” It was Angie at his side now, tears streaking her face. He had never before noticed that her face was grimy, that her eyes were kind of funny-looking, that one of her front teeth was inexplicably more yellow than the other. Her breath was not as fresh as it might have been. Why didn’t she go away?

  She stepped between him and the construct, the perfect film. He raised his hand to strike her. She reached out and touched his lips with the tips of her fingers, sending something into him there, a pulse of knowledge she’d stored up from the night before.

  Zero hesitated.

  “Zero,” she said, “he’s right. We’re being pushed around.”

  Yoshio was there, too. “She is right. When I heard her say it, I knew.”

  Zero shivered and felt dizzy, as if he’d awakened standing on the edge of a precipice. He stepped back and made himself look away from the growths.

  Sirens called to him from the far side of mythology. But Angie had tied him to the mast now, and he sailed past them.

  “Come on,” he said hoarsely, turning toward the High Clansmen, moving slowly, slowly, feeling he was moving through syrup. “Let’s get Zickorian and Calum. We’re going to have to take them by force. And then let’s get out of here.”

  “We have asked too much. We have taken a great deal from the spirits,” Zickorian said, “but we have given back nothing. They came to ask us a price, and you defied them. You carried me by force away from them. Now they will punish us. There is a beast we call [uncertain translation] the Unmasculator, who has a serrated mouth where his face should be; his teeth are his eyes; his teeth are his nose, too; his tongue is his heart; and his heart wishes to take your reproductive facility and grind it into paste, which he will spread on his Nightmare Eggs. This Unmasculator is the one who will come to punish us, Zero. Or his [uncertain translation] incarnation on this world.

  “We have the tale of Erythmanna, who desired the soft pelts of the infant cave-diggers, the [untranslatable] lambs, and who roamed the countryside stealing the lambs from their cave-digger mothers and murdering them for their soft flesh and pelts. He could not pay his great debt to the growing places, and they sent, first, a warning, in the person of [untranslatable] feathers, which grew about his loins; and this feathered beast had no male sex about it. And when he did not heed this warning, and refused to make the Seventeen Submissions, and did not cease his lamb raiding, his four children were turned into belly-slugs with the heads of children, and they crawled into holes and cried out to him from within the dirt-places in horror; but still he did nothing. And a cloud came from the sky onto his wife and wrinkled her into a dried (untranslatable), taking her juices with it so that it was a great red cloud when it floated away, and all the female juices were gone from her; and still he did not see. And then the (untranslatable) beast itself came, and took his sex in its jaws, and chewed it slowly, carrying him about with it, so that he lived with his crotch in its wet jaws for one hundred fifty years precisely, whereupon—”

  “That’s quite enough, Zickorian,” Angie said.

  Calum reproached her. “But he has attempted to tell you the classic story of Erythmanna, who stole the (untranlatable) lambs and was visited with—”

  “You too, Calum, or I’m going to start with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and go right through the story of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Grinch who Stole Christmas,” Angie snapped. “And when I get to the autobiography of Shirley MacLaine, you’re going to be really sorry.”

  “Besides, Zickorian,” Jack said, “all this prophecy is false prophecy.”

  “What if it’s not?” Cisco said. “What if he knows the damned spirits better than we do? I mean—” He broke off, his lips trembling, his face pinched with fear he couldn’t articulate. Zero watched him, wondering how much longer he’d last.

  The High Clansmen fell silent and went on trudging. They were near the edge of the forest, Zero reckoned. He kept himself busy looking around at the details of things to distract himself from the sense of loss he felt at having left … the objects.

  They were all depressed, their movements sodden. They were hungry, and irritable from being hungry. Their packs seemed nothing but irksome crosses to bear, and the pikes were painful weights in their hands. They had seen too much.

  So they
were relieved to be shed of this paradise when they reached the chute at the end of the forest, where Jack said, “Escalator to the first floor, ladies’ shoes and imported cosmetics, no wheelchairs or baby strollers.”

  And they descended the chute, left the forest behind, and stepped into the uncertainty of the Hillserlive Hills.

  Swanee tasted pity in his mouth like bile as he watched the Groyn child playing by the creek-worm.

  The Groyn kidling looked rather like a teddy bear. It was three feet tall and plump and brown and pleasantly furry and mild-muzzled. Almost disgustingly adorable. Nearby, at the far edge of the clearing from the kidling, was its shaggy brown mother, using a crude iron tool to root through the soil for the bulbous hibernating things—little round yellow creatures like puffer fish in the dirt—that she stowed in a leather bag slung over her broad back. Mother was less preciously cute: she was big as an Indian elephant. She had no legs, for in the second growth phase Groyn legs fused into a single supportive base that moved on thousands of tough cilia, surprisingly quickly. The adult Groyn, in fact, looked as if it were cut off at the hips. It moved over the ground like a snail, though faster, much faster.

  It wouldn’t be fast enough, Swanee knew.

  It was another perfect day. If not for the burning weight of his duty, Swanee would have enjoyed it. The wind soughing through the coral trees, the cool ssssss-sssss of the creek-worm, the light playing in its dull, quartz-colored depths. Swanee shifted on his perch in the thicket of coral trees at the edge of the clearing; he was not far above the kidling but was out of its line of sight. Swanee looked at the creek-worm with a friendly appreciation, thinking what a benign marvel it was, what a challenge it would be to paint accurately. Unlike the Groyn, it was a native of Fool’s Hope, a single being twenty or thirty miles long and five yards across (a little narrower here at this curve, a little wider there at that straightaway), curving through its own trench in the land, a mass of protoplasm that simply dissolved minerals from the dirt and dead proteins from munch. A gelatinous, transparent thing made of the stuff you found inside earthworms back in Tennessee but without a skin and with no visible spine.

  (What did it use for nervous tissue or organs? No one knew.) Curving through the land, it looked exactly like a creek from a distance, with ripples on its surface. Only, when you got closer, the ripples were slow-motion wallows and freeze-frame waves, and the thing was moving only as fast as snake on Valium.

  The Groyn kidling tottered on the edge of the creek-worm—and fell in, disappeared beneath its surface as if under hungry quicksand. The Groyn mother ran up to the edge, snarfling mightily. And then the surface of the gelatinous river erupted, and the kidling was lifted clear on an arm of protoplasm and set on the banks directly in front of its mother. The kidling was sticky and confused, but unhurt. The Groyn mother snarled gratefully at the creek-worm in her own language and caressed its slow ripples once with her ropelike upper limbs (the creek-worm shimmied politely in response), and after soothing the child, she turned away, letting the kidling wander once more, knowing it was being baby-sat.

  If only it really were safe, Swanee thought.

  He looked up and saw the Meta’s watching sphere, striped with shadow and sunlight, as it floated between the boughs of coral trees. It stopped over the clearing, fifty feet up, to hover expectantly.

  There: an Earther, big and pink and mightily sexed, a Phylum Two, was huffing through the undergrowth. It paused and looked up at Swanee. He shifted on his perch to see the mother Groyn better. Yes, she was far enough away. He turned and, sadly, nodded to the Phylum Two.

  The Two sprinted from cover, ran across the little clearing, grabbed the infant, and carried it away, flailing and whimpering, into the woods. Mother gave chase, but the Two ran into a thicket of coral trees that were too close together to allow her entry. She wasted time trying to push the outer fringe of coral trees down—and succeeded after a moment but only encountered more of the same. Realizing her error, she tried to circle ‘round the thicket.

  Swanee dove from his perch, angled down, and whipped close past the mother’s head, shrieking at her. She swiped at him, so that he felt hot wind against his ribs. She pursued him, and he led her away from the thicket.

  The kidling was lost.

  Swanee eluded the Groyn, after enough time had passed, and returned to the Twist camp in the woods on the far side of the thicket, hoping to see to it that the kidling had a merciful end. But he was too late. His duty was a sulfurous smell high in his nose as he watched what was done.

  The Groyn mounted a search party, eight enormous warriors, both male and female, caparisoned in leather harnesses that contained their throwing weapons. They traced the child quickly by smell, but they were far, far too late. They found the remains of the kidling spitted and roasted, its charred carcass already cool.

  The Emperor sat back in his throne of flesh, and Swanee squatted before him, head inclined.

  “A Groyn war party makes plans to march on the human settlement,” Swanee said. “I saw them sketching a map of the settlement in the dirt. Like you figured it, they don’t know about human Twists. They saw the Phylum Two and thought: Earther.”

  The Emperor Harmony’s posture of easy recline informed everyone there—in lieu of a novel facial expression—that he was pleased. The living cave contracted the folds of its walls just a little to show its empathic pleasure in its master’s happiness. Bella smiled and stroked the long penis of a Phylum Two like a spinster stroking a cat. The Two gave out an inarticulate sound of frustration as his erection sprouted. Bella made big eyes at the erection and pretended surprise.

  Swanee watched in a torment of jealousy, although he knew she was only taunting the thing.

  “Don’t tease him, Bella,” the Emperor said. “I’ve told you before. It makes them bella-cose.” Everyone dutifully chuckled at his little joke. He waved peremptorily at her. “Take him outside and make him mount one of his brothers. It’s too crowded in here anyway.”

  “Certainly, my lord,” she said. “Come on, Hunky.”

  Swanee flattened into the too-friendly folds of the living wall as she squeezed past. She smiled mockingly at him.

  “Swanee, come here,” the Emperor said in honeyed tones. He knelt before the Emperor. “You’ve done well.”

  “For once, for once, the sky-slitherer didn’t shit it up!” Kelso snickered, scampering up and down the Emperor’s leg.

  “Really, Kelso, he has almost always done very well for me,” the Emperor said. “Now I have something else for you to supervise, Swanee. You have seen, I trust, the pavilion of the Whorebugs in the Neutral. You are to—”

  “Uh, begging your pardon, my lord”—Swanee had heard this phrase used in a movie about Elizabethans—“but I would be a bit obvious in the Neutral. Doggo’s successor, Sanchez, is in charge there, and he knows about my part in Doggo’s kidnap.”

  A great weight slid off Swanee when the Emperor said, “Hm … very well. I’ll send Bella to do it. She’s a clever thing. It’s true: she can be disguised more easily than you. If we do it right, the Whorebugs will ally with the Groyn against the human settlement.” He clapped his hands together.

  “What splendid colors I am bringing to the canvas!”

  Jamie and Trish and Sanchez stood together on the settlement’s front wall, looking over the small army of Groyn massing in the field outside. “How’s the gate going?” Jamie asked Sanchez.

  “It’s shored up as much as we have time for.”

  “We wouldn’t have any time at all,” she mused, “if they hadn’t decided to wait for something or other.”

  “They’re aliens,” Trish said. “They might have any kind of motive at all. A ritual or some certain time of day they prefer for attacking or … anything.”

  She raised a hand to shade her eyes against the sunlight as she looked out over the field. The Groyn milled restlessly about, more like cattle than soldiers. But they were strapped with weapons, and armor of wood and iron
. From here, blurred by the low clouds of dust rising about them, they were a little reminiscent of Hannibal’s martially decked-out war elephants, sans riders.

  “Maybe,” said Trish, “we should try another emissary. He might’ve made a mistake.”

  Sanchez shook his head. “No. As lawkeeper I have to veto that. He didn’t do anything wrong. They’re just too pissed off to negotiate. One of their kids roasted alive—can’t blame them. Even for that.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the red splash, halfway across the dusty field to the Groyn, that was all that was left of the last emissary. He’d come running back when he’d seen them charge him, and he hadn’t run fast enough. “I—I don’t want to waste anyone else that way.”

  “We could send another emissary to explain that it wasn’t us. A woman this time,” Jamie said.

  “What?” Sanchez looked at her, startled.

  “Their leaders are women. They’re matriarchal. Perhaps they’ll sense another female, agree to talk to an equal. As opposed to talking to an inferior. Sending a male might have been an insult.”

  “An equal. I see. Jamie, we can’t risk any of our women. We have too few.”

  Jamie turned on him, nostrils flaring. “You want to protect the female commodity for breeding, is that it?”

  “I—frankly, yes. And we can’t risk you, you’re too valuable a leader.”

  She shrugged her anger away. This wasn’t the time. Then she smirked.

  “You’re discounting me as a breeder? I have news for you. I’m pregnant.”

  Sanchez’s mouth dropped open.

  Trish and Jamie laughed. With destruction shuffling restlessly outside the gate, it was sad, bitter laughter.

  “Doggo helped us out on that,” Trish said. “He was a nice guy about it, too. Very understanding.”

  Jamie winced. “Do we need to go into all that? It was brutish enough once, without having to relive it. Ugh. But I got pregnant and I always wanted to raise a family. And Trish had a hysterectomy on Earth. But I wish Doggo were alive to see the baby. He could’ve been godfather or something. And babysitter.”