by Angels
Kaph was silent a long time. She ran her metal fingers through her black hair. Then, in a small voice, she said, “I remember . . . the Anubine. I remember . . . I was surprised, so surprised. Faces, laughs—they held me, something shiny with teeth bit into my skin, and then . . .” Kaph shuddered. She whispered, “Then they cut off my head. I saw my body fall down. Blood spouting from the neck. Then nothing.”
She seized Berrin’s arm. “Is that who I was? Is that who she was—?”
“Maddus. Yes. I think those may be her memories.”
Kaph bit at her lip. “They’ve stolen her from me. I won’t let them. I want her back!”
“It’s no good, Kaph. Let it go. You are who you are now. Best to—”
“No! The Anubine stole my self. I will go after them and get it back.”
“ . . . I don’t think they have it in their possession, Kaph.”
“Do you know so? Do you know the Anubine well?”
“No one knows or understands the Anubine. But I don’t think they could give you back your old self if they wanted to.”
“I’m willing to try. I’ll leave next morning.” Then Kaph paused, blushed. “Berrin, you have been very kind to me. I haven’t said thank you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to leave, because I think you want me to stay. But I’d like to be the one you loved. That’s the only way I know to thank you.”
There was much of Maddus in that speech, in the intentions behind it, and yet much that was utterly unlike her. Berrin took Kaph’s hand in hers.
“Do what you will. But if you go after the Anubine, I will go with you.” Berrin thought that, without a purpose, Kaph might collapse, that she would cling to that decision, beyond reason and hope, because she had no other way to live.
Kaph smiled; the corner of her mouth stretched to touch the metal plate of her right cheek, and the barbed wire that stitched her lips to her chin glittered in the light.
READJUSTING
They set off the next day in pursuit of the Anubine. Berrin’s travel equipment was intact, and half of Maddus’s—now Kaph’s—was usable. Berrin had laboriously cleaned out the hollow drum and the rainwater that gathered there was once more fit to drink, though it still tasted of bitter ashes. They filled their gourds with it.
The trail of the Anubine was easy to follow at first; their booted feet had left deep prints in the soil that drifted over the hollows in the skin of the Mechanism. They had travelled northeast, away from the civilized areas to the southwest. Whether because townsfolk maintained some organized defenses or for some stranger reason, the Anubine never attacked towns. Town-dwellers heard of them from travellers. Living in civilized regions all their life, Berrin and Maddus had been able to believe the Anubine were no threat in this area of the Mechanism. Berrin hated herself every time she recalled her former mindset; she knew she had succumbed to a typical Mere flaw, that of believing reality conformed to her wishes.
Days passed, and the trail led ever deeper into a country strange to Berrin. Her usual hunting grounds were east and south. Kaph, of course, had no relevant geographical memories.
At night Berrin wondered why she had followed Kaph on this journey. It could not be loyalty to Maddus, for Maddus was dead and gone. Nor could it be the emprise of the flesh she had once lusted for; Maddus’s body was now ravaged and scarred, and Berrin must concede to herself that it elicited in her nothing other than pity and revulsion. Was she then loyal to this new person, Kaph? Was it because she had, in a sense, given birth to Kaph that she followed her now?
She could not understand herself. Perhaps it was better to simply live and ask no questions. Within the Mechanism, answers were too often unwelcome in the end.
They traveled fast. This region of the Mechanism was mostly free of obstacles, a great plain divided into a semi-regular tiling by trenches no more than half a metre wide. In the middle of some of these tiles rose angular tiered mounds five metres high, without openings, shuddering and thudding to an internal movement. Clouds of rust-coloured steam leaked from their base.
Tracking the Anubine through this region might have been hopeless, for there was no accumulated soil to keep a record of their passage; but they had continued their labour of destruction, tearing open some of the mounds. From the rents, a thick fluid had poured in ropes and drapes and pillows, and swiftly solidified into bright green stone. From one destroyed mound to the next, it was a nearly straight line, still going northeast.
On the fourth day of their pursuit, Berrin and Kaph entered a fertile domain. Soil had drifted deep in this place of considerable relief, and plants of all sorts had taken root. Breadtrees grew wild, and though their fruit was small and somewhat dry, it filled the stomach. The two women refilled their packs. Berrin brought down a large white bird with a crossbow bolt.
That night they made camp in a sheltered quiet nook between two tall bluish cubes; they built a fire of dried branches in a small depression, and cooked the bird. After their meal, lying side by side in the tent, they talked of small things. Berrin told a joke, which brought crows of laugher from Kaph.
After a time, Kaph touched Berrin’s shoulder gently.
“Berrin . . . did you make love with Maddus often?”
Berrin sighed. “I guess so.”
“Do you . . . do you want me? You’ve been kind and . . .”
“Please, Kaph, it’s not meant to be that way.”
“I just want to be nice to you.”
“Do you want me? Truly?”
“I . . . no. I’m . . . well, Maddus wanted you, I’m sure, but I’m still Kaph. And I think . . . I think I’d like you to hold me, yes. But not . . . not really that.”
“It’s all right, Kaph. It’s all right.” In fact Berrin was relieved, and ashamed of it. She held Kaph in her arms, and it was a small measure of comfort, but next to the woman’s warm living flesh, her own skin touched chill metal. A socket she had used in reassembling the shoulder had traveled through the flesh, and now she could feel its hard square edges just beneath the skin of Kaph’s arm.
RECKONING
It was two days later, close to sundown, that they came upon the martyred Anubine.
This region of the Mechanism was dotted with branching antennas of flexible chromed metal. The Anubine had been lashed to one of these pseudotrees, his feet a full metre above the ground. The black leather bonds had dug deep into his flesh at throat, ankles, and wrists. His black-brown dog’s head was tilted upward, his eyes wide open, as if gazing into the empty sky. The flesh of his body was nearly white, and hairless.
Berrin felt her heart pounding, not only with excitement, but also with fear. Tied and dying the Anubine might be, but she did not trust him to be harmless. Kaph wanted to rush up to him, but Berrin held her back. “Stay at a good distance,” she warned.
The Anubine had heard them. Slowly he tilted his head forward. His yellow eyes blinked. His dog’s mouth formed words, the lips stretching over the fangs.
“Two Mere females come to look upon my dying. A small audience, but better than nothing. Won’t you come closer?”
“Why are you here?” asked Kaph. “Who bound you?”
“My own brothers. It is our way. We bring death to the folk who live on the Mechanism, nor do we fail to include ourselves among them. Ever and anon, we sacrifice one of our own.”
“Why do you do it?” asked Berrin, certain in the asking that the question would not be answered meaningfully. But she was surprised.
“The world is at its end, little sisters. The long dream of humanity is nearly over. It is just and fitting that the end of all things be celebrated; we of the Anubine have taken it as our duty. We travel hither and thither and hasten the ruin and downfall of the Mechanism. We kill, and break, and destroy. We are the harbingers of the changes to come. We know we are misunderstood, and we accept this. Yet sometimes, it pains us. Would you not comfort me in my dying? I have hardly the breath to talk
loud enough to reach your ears at this distance.”
“Do you remember me?” said Kaph. “A week ago, you killed me and destroyed my home.”
The Anubine tilted his head to the side, frowned. “Perhaps I do. If I make abstraction of all the metal . . . yes, what remains of your flesh is indeed familiar. Of course, now I recall it: you are our most recent kill! But calm yourself; it was not I that took off your head. In any case, you live again; what is your complaint?”
“I’m not who I was! You stole her, you stole Maddus, and I want her back!”
At this the Anubine laughed, a thin strangled laugh, for the bonds cut into his throat. “We do not steal,” he said. “When you were killed, the complex of electrical patterns you call your self was dispersed. So it is with everyone who dies. Within the Mechanism, some of these patterns may be picked up by whatever suitable receptors still function; they then enter a conductive net and may be rebroadcast at random moments. At the moment of your reassembly, your nervous system received and was imbued with hundreds of these fragmentary patterns, and these combined with the decayed chemical remnants of the personality that still existed within your brain. Whoever you were is not ‘gone’; she is rent, into a thousand pieces, each a distorted shred of the whole. You cannot have her back; or else you must ask the Mechanism, most humbly, to regather what lies scattered across its whole expanse.”
“Damn you, you fucking piece of abhuman filth!” cried Kaph, trembling.
The Anubine’s body twisted within his bonds; his hands clenched, and his penis engorged. “Such language, little sister. Education and refinement are sadly lacking in these latter days. . . .” He panted, his red tongue flickering between his teeth.
“How would you like to be killed? We’ve got a crossbow. We can put a bolt into your eye anytime! What would it feel like to be killed by two Mere women?” Kaph’s face was scarlet, and she shook with her anger.
“No . . . matter.” The Anubine’s breath now came in ragged gasps, as if he strove in vain to fill his lungs to capacity through the constriction at his throat. “Two Mere women, you say. . . . But even what we call Mere humanity is . . . not the human norm that was. We have changed so much . . . beyond the original . . . model. For thousands of . . . years now, no one alive on this world . . . would have been called human . . . by our forebears. We . . . are all . . . distorted . . . reflections.”
His eyes fixed on the two women then, and his pupils dilated until only a thin circlet of gold was left at the rim. Berrin had only a second to react, shoving Kaph sideways with a burst of terrible strength. With a convulsive jerk that nearly tore his bonds loose, the Anubine vomited a stream of blood at them. But the jet missed its target and splashed onto the skin of the Mechanism. Berrin, who had fallen on top of Kaph, rolled to the side and bounded back on her feet.
She took the time to check that none of the liquid had touched them. Then she unhooked the crossbow from her belt and released the safety catch. Legs braced, fists joined at the trigger, she aimed at the Anubine, now gasping and limp within his bonds. Berrin fired. The quarrel whistled through the air and buried itself in the canine head. The Anubine screamed and blood ran from his mouth again, a thin flow without any force. He thrashed and collapsed, dead.
Berrin turned to Kaph. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Kaph stood up, holding her right elbow in her left hand. “Yes . . . I guess. Why did he do that?” Some blood oozed between her fingers; but it was her own, a dark red, not the Anubine’s pale crimson.
“I don’t know. I think his blood might be infectious. My mother told me tales of the Paä; it’s said if only one drop of their blood enters your body, it changes you, so that you eventually become one of them. Maybe it’s that way with the Anubine.”
“I knew one of the Paä once,” said Kaph. “She was a tall woman with the most extraordinary hair, and she lived in a tower over the Third Flow—” She stopped, mouth still open; passed a hand across her face, and continued, “No. I didn’t know her. I dreamed her. I heard tales, and I made it up.”
Berrin went to her, held her gently. Kaph’s arm was loose at the elbow, and her fingers quivered in palsy. “I’m rent. That was what he said. I can’t get her back, can I?”
“I don’t know. Why should he tell the truth? I didn’t understand half of the words he used, anyway. He was telling us lies, to scare us.”
“No. He spoke like someone who knows. I’m sure he wasn’t lying. Maddus is gone. You said so yourself in the beginning. It’s hopeless, isn’t it?”
Berrin sighed. “I’m sorry, Kaph. If the Anubine spoke the truth, you can’t become Maddus. And even if he lied, I have no idea how you could do it. I don’t think his brothers could or would help you. I feel it would be useless to pursue them any longer.”
“I doesn’t matter. I’m just so tired. Let’s make camp somewhere away from that.”
They moved a good distance away, and sheltered at the foot of a large antenna. The Anubine’s corpse was visible as a small shape, and with dusk, it vanished. The riven moon rose, trailed by a cloud of glittering fragments. The chrome trees glowed in the moonlight, like frozen inverted bolts of lightning.
RETURNING
They set out at daybreak, back toward their home. But it was as Berrin had feared: deprived of a purpose, Kaph’s mind began to weaken. Since now she herself believed her identity to be an illusion, a patchwork-construct, the dissolution was accelerated. They travelled for a day, Kaph growing less and less focused by the hour. The next morning found her feverish and delirious. Berrin stayed by her side and gave her water frequently. She tried to soothe her, but nothing she did proved effective.
Like the metal parts adrift within her flesh, assemblages of memories travelled through Kaph’s mind and sometimes emerged briefly, crushing her in the grip of hallucinations. She remembered being a little girl, holding a furred pet in her arms in the sunlight, the ghost of a moon still whole riding in the summer sky; next she writhed and wailed like an infant, then screamed of the steel limbs that had rocked her to death; and then, in the voice of the old man she had been the first night, she said, “The Hand deserted me. I know it. They let me be winched down into the well and erased me from their remembrance, that they might sleep easily. Who are you who pulled me out? Who are you?”
“Kaph! Kaph!” Berrin called, and shook the other woman. “Remember yourself! Kaph! Maddus!” Kaph’s flesh stirred under Berrin’s hands, muscles rippled and metal joints flexed. Kaph spoke again, but her voice seemed to have become a chorus, and discordant words mingled in her mouth until only a burst of glutinous consonants emerged. In despair and grief, Berrin began to hit her, pounding her fists into the malleable flesh.
Kaph’s confusion only increased. Berrin struck her again and again, punching and kicking; finally she grasped Kaph’s head, her fingernails gouging the cheeks, and kissed Kaph on the mouth until her own lips had been torn open by the barbed wire. And then she drew her blade and stabbed Kaph in the heart.
It wasn’t enough to kill her. The Mechanism had imbued her with abnormal vitality. Her body still stirred; Berrin could imagine the metal parts migrating from now-reknitted flesh into the damaged heart tissue. A child-headed clamp would replace a torn valve; helical springs would stretch themselves along a damaged ventricle. . . .
So she did what the Anubine had done; tore Kaph’s body apart and scattered the pieces over the skin of the Mechanism. When she was finished, she felt a surge of relief overriding everything else she felt. She left the dismembered corpse behind and took the direction of her house.
Of the rest of her trip home she had only fragmentary recollections. She knew she was many days’ walk away, but it seemed to take only a few hours before she found herself in sight of her dwelling. Had the Mechanism drunk these memories? Would someone, one day, find herself reassembled, granted a life she did not deserve, owning these shattered recollections among a thousand incoherent
others?
She found herself remembering the Anubine’s words: We have changed so much beyond the original model. We are all distorted reflections. She felt a distorted reflection herself, of the woman she had been.
Her house was unchanged. Though she and Kaph had scrubbed the wall clean, she could still see the ghost of the symbol the Anubine had drawn with Maddus’s blood. She fancied she could grasp some of its meaning now.
She set down her pack, sat on a chair that had been destroyed and then rebuilt. She would grieve in a moment. Grieve for Maddus and for Kaph, and for herself too. And when the grief was past, she would be once more cold and hard, if cracked at the core. She would leave again. Return to Town Dulade for a time, probably, but then go on. Travel in other directions. Hunt for a city built high on a great turbine; for gardens wherein one could find leaves of steel and thorns of gold; or for some place even stranger, some place within the Mechanism where she might, perhaps, be at peace.
ANDROID SEX SHOW AT 8:00 NITELY
Silver hooks into and through my flesh
The points emerge unbloodied
They hoist me up—clatter of chains.
Now whips, of barbed wire
And now blood oozes and drips
Torn pieces of flesh litter the dirty floor.
The audience gasps and shouts
Some applaud the performance
Others just tremble and sweat.
Some have their cock in their hand
Grunt and heave, all together
Like an orchestra trying to tune up.
There can be no pain here
No true wounds, no true fear
Not even my job, this—my function.
And yet, and yet,
There is something that breaks
And I flex muscles, tear free of the chains,
