Liquid Crystal Nightingale

by EeLeen Lee

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HERE’S A MAN who enjoys playing god too much.

  Moonlight and the perfume of jasmine—the garden inside the Madrugal Tier gave off the illusion of a courtyard. Saurebaras watched Madrugal rearrange the Archer’s Ring in a sand garden the length and breadth of Polyteknical’s driveway. She doubted if he or the late Ignazia had been religious, or even remotely spiritual, but she could not deny the serene order he brought to his creation, a spiral of fine black sand bordered by white pebbles. A polished boulder was half buried in the centre of the spiral. This represented Gachala, and the moss covering the rock approximated the sun’s hue, depending on Cabuchon’s atmospheric conditions.

  Spreading out from the boulder and placed at regular intervals were the other settlements and bodies in orbit. A rough crescent-shaped block of sandstone was Tahel, but did no justice to the streamlined parabola visible on a clear night. On the neighbouring spiral arm lay four rhodochrosite spheres arranged in a square: Synarc, a Tagmat military complex of interlinked bases.

  In an inspired improvisation, Madrugal had used quartz pellets for the Demarcation, ever-shifting in its distribution according to the defence of the Archer’s Ring.

  She stumbled across a violet sphere of amethyst under a bougainvillea bush.

  “You’ve found the Archives!”

  A servitor rolled towards the bush, extracted the sphere and restored it to its rightful place. Purple to represent knowledge, and there was plenty of that in the Archives, a repository housed in a hollowed-out moon.

  “Could you entertain a personal request?”

  “It depends.”

  “I’m expecting visitors tomorrow night. You’d do me an honour if you danced for them.”

  “That was my previous life, which ended yesterday.”

  “But that was only yesterday.”

  “Yesterday’s gone, along with everything else,” insisted Saurebaras.

  Madrugal scratched his chin thoughtfully. “By next week it’ll indeed become your previous life. Indulge me—in Ignazia’s memory and for old times’ sake?”

  “You invite the wrath of the Aronts by letting me stay here.”

  Madrugal laughed. “Let’s pray they’re that stupid to break the accord. My Sarisses haven’t seen action for a while. Here comes one now for a little demonstration.”

  The Sarisse guard wore moss-green armour trimmed with black.

  “Slice the armour,” Madrugal told Saurebaras.

  She opened a concealed pocket in her skirt and took out her caltrop, and swiped at the guard’s chest. Slivers of armour fell away, but the armour was already healing itself.

  “This looks like skin.” Saurebaras examined the slivers on her caltrop. They fell to the grass like shaved mica.

  “Skin is the first armour we wear.” Madrugal beamed as he dismissed the guard.

  “You’ll tell that to your investors?”

  “From the outset. The wearer suffers minimal damage when the fibres slough off. Physical force is neutralised or dissipated. Plus, there’s almost instantaneous regeneration provided at least eighty percent of the armour is still intact.” He coughed. “So, may I repeat my request? Please dance for my guests tomorrow night?”

  Refreshed by the calm surroundings, Saurebaras agreed. The Madrugal Tier seemed to have shed its claustrophobic feel since Ignazia had died, and she didn’t want to think about next week or month.

  He left her in the garden under a trellis decorated with bamboo and leaping carp motifs. The subtle scent of syringa hanging in the night air was undercut by dessert cubes opening in the warm air, with twig-thin carrots called hairpins piled up in a dish next to the cubes. Saurebaras had never liked the sweet fermented paste mashed out of high yield corn.

  She retired to the guest room, the embroidered curtains now faded. A miniature Gachalan disk rested on the family altar. The red femtopaper cutouts reconfigured themselves into phoenixes, dancing around longevity peaches and dragons clutching fiery pearls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PLEO OPENED THE bathroom door and peered inside. No one was there. Sink, recessed toilet seat, and tub all done over in fashionable black bonded ceramic. The only incongruity was a small cube sitting in the sink.

  Pleo reached in, picked up the cube of synthamber and felt a heavy sense of anticlimax. So much grief over the object suspended within it, an apparently mundane sphere of black rock. Synthamber required a specialised converter and a coded sequence to soften it, but she shook the cube anyway, hoping to dislodge its contents.

  Gia had been more arduous than Pleo in trying to make the cube give up its secret. Scuff marks and scratches disfigured one side, blurring the view of the object, and a straight crack stretched uninterrupted from one vertex to the sphere of rock within. She turned the cube over and over in her hands like a child’s puzzle.

  The crack in the cube drew her attention. It was too straight and wide. Pleo looked closer, and realised Gia had tried to drill through the cube at some point with a large bit. But… if the cube could be scratched, the sythamber could only be imitation. Theory class had taught Pleo that only Constabulary had access to the real stuff. It was durable, but not impenetrable.

  Pleo tried the glasscutter-configuration with her forceps, but only succeeded in adding to the tableau of scratches.

  She inserted her ring-finger forcep into the hole starting at one of the cube’s vertices and pushed through a few millimetres at a time. It was not easy: the hole was coarse and uneven. After an impatient five minutes, the tip of her forcep flicked against the black sphere.

  Shock and disbelief at what she detected almost made Pleo drop the cube. She held on and inserted the forcep again.

  Carbon, calcium, keratin… iron.

  Keratin meant the sphere contained vestiges of skin, hair and nails. Iron was present because there were traces of blood.

  My brother is in the bathroom.

  Gorgons turned people to stone, according to ancient myth.

  Matriarch Aront had had one of her children turned to stone.

  Creating memorial gems out of cremated remains was a common practice, but miners shunned it. Expense was no barrier, wearing them on one’s person was seen as morbid.

  Pleo took a deep breath and put the cube on a nearby shelf. Then she sat on the cleanest area of bathroom floor, thinking about how Gia Aront must have felt at this discovery. Everything rushing away, all vestiges of her existence breaking up. Her vision clouded over with tears. It occurred to Pleo that Gia could have tried to destroy the cube and its contents, and then had second thoughts.

  What had Gia done—what was she going to do—with such terrible, dangerous knowledge? Pile dirt onto her parents’ reputation? Not that it mattered now, since she was dead.

  And Pleo was going to end up like her soon if she did not make a move.

  She was certain of one thing. The cube and its contents were coming with her.

  Pleo took off her canal-soaked clothes and found a clean set stashed under the sink, along with a sling bag of expensive black leather and the asymmetrical black coat; they had all belonged to Gia. The stiff black sheath dress came up to Pleo’s knees: Gia had been shorter than Pleo. The sling bag contained a week’s worth of fare tokens and a thick roll of uta.

  Then she opened the door of the room and checked the outside corridor. The coast was clear. Pleo ran down the stairs and into the empty lobby, on the lookout for Dogtooths.

  Waiting at the bottom of the stairs was a hooded figure.

  Pleo stopped in her tracks. Not again.

  She screamed at it, “You’re not Ceri!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  RETAIL ARCADES ON Chatoyance were once built to recreate the womb.

  Marsh stepped inside and looked ahead as the hoarding snapped shut behind him. An empty street-within-a-street lay before him. There were various similar projects back on Cabuchon—self-contained and sealed off streets for the elite to wander down and play t
he flaneur. He was now walking in the idea’s failure on Chatoyance. Piles of mortar, steel reinforcement rods and sheet glass lay on both sides of the street.

  Something fluttered on the nearest pile of steel rods: an outdated highlight, stirred by the air circulating inside. He picked it up and wondered why it had not already dissolved years ago. Maybe it was made from a substance more durable than insect silk. He read the faded words: Stop Work Order. Korbuhauss Incorporated. He recognised the name from Cabuchon. Worse than being within an idea’s failure, he was walking in the aftermath of a family’s failure.

  Something flew past his head, a flash of white against the dimness, and an object landed on the hoarding. It was light and yet it shook the boards. It was also sharp, aerodynamic and lethally star-shaped. But it had missed him.

  When he looked back, three hooded figures stood before him on the street.

  “State your purpose here before I give you another star,” said the centre figure in a woman’s voice.

  “I need an evaluation,” he said to the trio.

  “Of what?”

  Marsh decided it was better now than later. He took Pleo’s forcep out of the sheath strapped to his arm.

  “Gachala’s teeth,” exclaimed the centre figure. “Finally. We were concerned that our diversion had worked too well.”

  “Killing innocent people in DryWare?” Marsh asked in utter disgust.

  “They are not harmed severely. Urtic from trichome bombs dissolves quickly—or is absorbed by the body.”

  “Wait, who are you?”

  The centre and left-hand figures removed their hoods, to reveal a man and a woman. The man’s arm bore the copper bands of a Polyteknical instructor, whereas the woman had a blue veil tucked away from her face.

  “We are the Charons. We take the unwanted dead and the Nosebleeds, and give them something better than dignity. We imbue them with new purpose.”

  “What purpose is that?” Marsh felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. Something strong filled the man’s gaze and Marsh was not sure if it was serenity or zeal.

  “For our crystalline deities,” said the woman with similar intensity.

  “A new religion to rival the Temple of Gachala?” Marsh asked. When the couple did not reply, he took a step back towards the broken hoarding, and held Pleo Tanza’s forcep up in front of him. “Don’t you want this? It’s worth something. Consider it my donation to your cause and pretend we never met.”

  “Keep it,” said the man.

  “It’s your connection to Pleo Tanza we want,” said the woman. “She’s the fulcrum.”

  That was accurate. His life had been relatively ordered until she turned up. Chatoyance roiled because of what she was involved in.

  “You will hear of us again.”

  Marsh lifted the boards and left. Daylight and the bustling street stirred his heart, glad to see them after the abandoned gloom of the Arcades.

  EXCERPTS FROM

  COLLECTED NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS ON GACHALAN DEVOTEES

  (Volumes 7-9, Year 3444-3445, private collection, Temple of Gachala on Chatoyance Archives)

  In acknowledgement of the various religions and beliefs brought over by successive Waves, we remain humble and grateful. Without these faiths we would not exist ourselves.

  The Temple does not deny that belief in our Emerald Sun and Shield is a new faith. It is a religion set up by committee, and to fulfill a need. Our aims and motivations are continually questioned, but we believe it is vital in these troubled times to rise to the challenge of being more than just a spiritual palliative.

  Our practice is kept simple by including the following rules:

  First, no birthdays of deities to commemorate. Multitudes of stars are born in fiery splendour across known and unknown space all the time; Gachala is no more special than them.

  Second, and by extension, no birthdays of saints are observed, because we do not recognise sainthood when humans possess the potential to transcend sainthood.

  Third, our faithful are not compelled to make offerings or donations.

  Of late, we Reverend Sisters have noticed a trend in the devotees and visitors to the Temple. More come in greater numbers from Cabuchon to seek out our Sun and Shield, although smaller-scale temples to Gachala were built there before our temple on Chatoyance. We believe our location in the Eye of the Archer’s Ring contributes to and enhances the Temple’s accessibility and importance as a religious site.

  We would be glad of this upsurge under normal circumstances.

  But all the Cabuchoners come with the same story.

  They speak of the Artisans, telling a tale all heard in childhood. Of how humans overthrew Artisan overseers and fled into deep space. As if brought in by a collective impulse, they ask the nuns if this story has any historical basis, because of the recent events on Kerte Yurgi.

  We tell them such a story arose from the need to make sense of or cope with the turbulence that arose during the early years of three systems. We encourage them to gaze skywards to allow the light of Gachala to pierce the shadows of doubt and fear within.

  Some resist our advice and even welcome the resurgence of the Artisans. A few have taken our advice too much to heart and broke through the heatshield barrier to the temple courtyard at noon. They wanted Our Emerald Sun and Shield to not only burn away their fears but also their eyes.

  An improvised explosive device was found wedged between the ceremonial gongs at the south gate.

  The Temple has taken protective measures: we have reinforced the heatshield barrier and Constabulary officers now guard the entrance to the courtyard.

  But we try as we might, we cannot reinforce and safeguard the minds of our followers.

  Note

  Before her death at the age of 112, Sister Asenju Icro offered her view on the behaviour of the Cabuchon followers and insight into Artisan origins. She was an ex-Tagmat in the Cabuchon military and had seen action against the Artisans during her time.

  (Reproduced verbatim from audio of Icro’s top secret night lectures, given exclusively to the nuns of the Temple. Original transcript destroyed to safeguard the Temple’s security, according to her deathbed request.)

  Beauty and brutality… and godlike ancestors. The origins of the Artisans are unknown. Theories abound from many xeno-scientists and study teams in their corresponding xenofields who have examined cadavers and specimens.

  But theories are just theories. Thus I’m asking all of you to use your imagination to make sense of them.

  Imagine a remnant or an offshoot of an alien species, possibly biologically modified or engineered by another elder alien species. The Artisan homeworld was Earth-like in its geology, as evidenced from the composition of soil samples kept as mementos by inmates at [name redacted] Facility. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. A little quartz and feldspar as well.

  But why are they humanoid in form and appearance? Xeno-biologists believe this is not evidence of convergent evolution with Terran humans. The Artisans are avatars of another related species in their homeworld, who have been dubbed Overguides, according to the closest translation of their language. These Overguides are dormant subterranean dwellers who have eschewed the burden of individual physical bodies and agendas. They live in city-sized warrens in a kind of hivemind and never emerge, since everything they need is underground.

  But emerge they have, in their avatar form, due to human encroachment of their territories. They appear human because they have chosen to do so. Possibly to try and blend in with us for espionage purposes. Perhaps to mock our inferiority to them.

  Kerte Yurgi was not humanity’s latest encounter with the Artisans. They have hung around the edges of the Kuiper Belt surrounding the old Solar System, watching and biding their time. Fascinated yet provoked by the evolution of humans, they tested the waters by flinging comets into the system, hoping to hit Earth. They did not account for the fortuitous protection of Jupiter’s gravitational influences; indeed, they decided Jupiter was t
he Solar System’s first line of defence and retreated in mistaken awe after many failed attempts.

  According to xeno-anthropologists, the current Artisans retain none of the godlike technological prowess of their Overguide ancestors, and their present Overguide descendants remain in semi-reclusion underground. The cause of this absence is yet to be established and inmates at [name redacted] Facility were not forthcoming about it. One inmate did make a reference to a geological devastation on the homeworld which nearly destroyed the planet.

  This past destruction could explain their expansionist behaviour which, however, is not to be equated with aggression. If they are truly aggressive, we would have been at war before the Downturn. There are small mercies: the Inner Council are in contact with minor dissenter groups within the Artisans who seek to thwart the plans of the majority from succeeding.

  It is not known who first coined the name “Artisans.” The whimsicality belies the serious observation that inspired it. Intricate patterns similar to grass script calligraphy were found etched on utensils, and friezes discovered running across sections of cell walls detailing scenes from their mythology.

  Kerte Yurgi has struck fear into us because it showcases their eons-long patience. Instead of flinging comets at humans, the Artisans have taken the fight to the site of one of our key industries.

  [Audio ends here when the lecture is paused for a recess. The second part of the lecture recording has been lost.]

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX