Day Seven

"Semon, don't you dare. I know you're awake," said Betaine, prodding the man's licorice whip arm with his foot.

"I know you can use the Catalog, or are you so busy ogling the white-haired chit that you forgot your manners?"

The Archivist lifted himself from the floor, his limbs bending and creaking like rusty scaffolding.

"I certainly can't pick them up spending so much time around your lot," the young man replied, "and I'd pay good money to see you say that to her face."

Semon snorted, wet and ripply.

"I have before and I'll do it again. She just laughs. Worth a million of you, knows how to respect her elders."

"Last I checked, she didn't have any. You're what....still under three thousand?"

"So what the hell do you want, analyst?" Semon began tightening the recorder strap to his head. It acted as a focus, amplified the electric pulses to a strength where they could be shared.

"I need Planet's most recent recording, the one from Regulskek."

Semon stopped, his chin wobbling as he jerked his head to stare at Betaine.

"You're out of your brain pan. We haven't gotten anything new from that quadrant in decades."

Betaine's fingers drummed on his thigh.

"Wake up Rubyat if you can't do it, but her last assignment definitely occurred after the Solstice. For the Heir Presumptive of Regulskek."

The Archivist tugged off the forehead strap, snorted again.

"I heard you the first time. We don't have it, not Rubyat, not Vermilli, not Loranisck, Carew, or even that wet behind the ears Matchal. All the others have their hands full with keeping track of our mistress."

"Nothing? That's not possible."

"Well, it's true, you shitling. Nothing from the College either except for a speech from the Council three weeks ago and some fool Advisor called Ovid."

Betaine turned away, rubbed the spot between his eyebrows.

"Why would she not send in a recording?" he murmured to himself.

Semon let out a soggy cackle as Betaine made his way back upstairs.

"You look pensive," said Bala and waved her flashing fingers under Betaine's nose. He looked up at the goddess smiling playfully. "A blessing for your thoughts."

"I always look pensive."

"I was going to say you're a wet blanket, but thought I'd be nice."

She reached up, caught a brilliant, velvety rose that had been thrown from the crowd, crushed it in her fist, released a blood red pea hawk that cried the tones of the bells.

"Are you not enjoying the procession? I can certainly send you back to the tower...might do so anyway as you've been exceedingly morose. I can't have you depressing my people."

Betaine shook his head to dislodge a rose petal from his nose.

"My pardons, Bala, I didn't wake up this morning expecting to be center stage of a royal peregrination. How did you possibly get this organized so quickly?"

They passed below an array of onyx arches, supported by beardless titans, each muscle smooth and polished, their faces stern, ivy leaves twined around their stone heads in celebration. The goddess inhaled the sweet smoke and beamed, looking more radiant the further they traveled.

"The priests and concubines are always clamoring for another parade and things have been, hmmm, rather oddly quiet on the war front. Even Seultat, that old rheumy bastard, seems content to sit on his hunk of frozen rock and doze. If it continues on, I may have to stir things up myself. You can't let the soldiers and war mounts muck around at home too long or they start looking for trouble. While chaos and death and great bloody battles where the brain goes white and the scent of carrion burns your nose and if you survive, there's no cheering because your vocal chords are stripped from the screaming are all well and good, it's better to give than to receive. Plus, these walks give me time to think."

Betaine did a terrible job suppressing the expression of disbelief that squatted on his face as clearly as the the raised eyebrows and the tightened corners of his mouth.

"Ha ha aha... it's quite funny an impressionist-trained analyst wouldn't be able to understand why this show of consumption and revelation seemingly devoid of a point is so important. Do what you were hired to do, boy, reason for me. Find the purpose behind the gaud and the glitter."

Bala's normally honeyed voice carried a glinting edge of anticipated violence, of danger if she was not satisfied with his answer. Had her eyes taken on a ruddy overtone? Would she abandon her current peaceful posture in favour of her aspect known as the Murderer, where silken robes were replaced with the skins of her victims, her hair soaked and matted with gore, the golden needles on her fingertips disemboweling a man with one deceptively soft gesture?

He had read accounts of her viciousness in battle, crushing a soldier's armoured skull in one clenched fist, hurling curses that caused skin to blacken and sag away from the bone, leaving a disgusting mess of slag that scorched the earth, where afterwards nothing would ever grow. Betaine saw hints of mania in her wide, dark smile and had a sudden vision of her scattering his intestines to the awe-struck crowds, who would wail and fight each other for a scrap of his guts. He shivered uncontrollably, forced himself to inhale once deeply through the nostrils, fell back into the silvered black waters that lay at the center of his subconscious.

Here there were no currents but the ones he created, no sound beyond a distant, slow heartbeat. He'd once had a doctor acquaintance monitor his vital signs while he fell into the trance state, only to discover that all indications of life ceased when he went below himself. This was the home of cellular memory, infinite capacity that both shaped and was shaped by time. From this point of balance, he calmed his still-shuddering muscles, moved upward into the rapid-fire traces of lightning that held his impressionist recordings.

When a brief second had passed...two...three, he returned to the surface, what he thought of as the front of himself, eyes clear, hands steady.

"The city is a circle, the planet a sphere, it moves in unhurried paths through space and duration around the sun, which itself moves in rhythms ever more complex. This process extends downward as well, as the strange organisms we are composed of work in concert in fractions of a dimension, all the way down to the dark pits where the unit that is the soul resonates. We are lines along programmed paths and require outside impetus to start creation. Our vices are used to slow us, our passions to force us down new byways, in the hopes that we will reach a crossroad where orbits no longer intersect, where instead is the unexpected.

The olive branch in the hand becomes a weapon, the fear becomes fascination. We are reminded that we are not chaotic beings, must push it down our throats, must choke on our own inertia until we learn to escape it. The festivals are a failure for, as soon as they are planned, they lose the spontaneity necessary to prompt a true frenzy."

Damn, he hadn't meant to say that last bit, and the soft-skinned concubines stared wide-eyed at him, their censors no longer waving. Bala's face was fixed with a sneer, but slowly, ever so slowly, it was replace with a warm, peaceful smile.

"Interestingly enough, the analyst is correct. These large affairs are too diluted to really stir the passions, but they're an amusing diversion and safe enough for those without courage to trade their warm homes and the minor bickering their arguments amount to for the danger of chaos. However, *that* is the path of a god, and I have no desire to create my own competition...yet."

The divan jerked, pulled Betaine from his reverie. The noise returned to deafening levels, and he realized they had not stopped, the roaring hadn't ceased at all during his impressionist state. Feeling honestly tired, he recalled why he had spoken to Bala in the first place.

"I will be heading to Regulskek in the next day or so, to pay a visit to the Heir Presumptive. If the Archivists are correct, Planet either failed to record her last session or perhaps destroyed the sensory recorder so to avoid it turning up here and leaving clues for her present location."

The goddess spun slowly above the half-canopy, once again radiating serenity.

"Planet? Destroy her little crystal? Why, it's been her friend almost as long as I have. But if you believe that fat blob has anything worth telling you, I'll book you a cabin on the next passenger ship to head in that direction."

Betaine drummed his fingers against the linen cushions.

"Where else is there to go? You could try to ransack your memory for more strange gaps in her speeches and I can rot along with a gaggle of crusty old men in your library or go to the last place we both know she at least appeared."

He sighed, increased the tempo of his fingertips.

"Your hospitality has been exceptional, and I don't really want to travel to such a xenophobic system, but even if I discover she completely skipped her appointment there, that will be as telling as anything the Heir Presumptive might say, or might not say. Do you think he'll avoid communication?"

Bala threw back her head and laughed.

"Him? Oh no...you'll have trouble shutting him up. He's a weak, burbling sack of garbage who latches onto anyone who pays him the least bit of attention. The Magistrate is something of an insensitive whore-monger who would slit your throat if he thought he could get the marrow from your bones, but he's fair when you're not worth killing. You'll be fine. I'll make the arrangements this evening and make sure none of the Magistrate's...men, for lack of a better term, decide to turn the oxygen off in your caul tank. Now, face forward, attempt to smile, please. Isla is only a few hours away, and there will be feasting and dancing and a thousand people to introduce you to."

This one, called Ce by itself for the benefit of those lucky enough to fill all dimensions, had been discovering the golden dawn that poured through the holes in itself when the words had come. It was a steeping, a drowning, the whole of Ce slid like oil over ice onto the words. Here now, here was something new. Ce flowed between planes, was pleased to discover that the words stayed themselves however itself changed. The dawn, the quivering paper trees, the soft curve of ground faded until there was nothing but the polished shimmer of the words and for once, the desire came with them, a subtle, insistent companion, to share.

It understood that on a certain level, what it did now was not natural. [Ce being a variety of those strange beasts which vibrated on a sub-atomic level so erratically that it filled this plane then that, in depth but not time, time but not length. Seen only as a shifting blank due to their interference with light, they were frequently called Blind Spots. They were driven by a deathless curiosity and would have been despised if they could utilize what they learned.] Distance was all one thing, the only thing when there to Ce and his sort, and intersections, like sheets of Phylo pastry, occurred frequently.

The words were shared, appearing slowly and permanently like a relief rubbing over stone, defined in Ce's way by the space around them, only hinting at the depth of the cuttings.

"On the other side of time is a hole lined with blue glass. It is deeper than a heart, wider than your sight, slick as your mother's skin. Everything that has ever been is etched into the walls and as you go, the story grows. Those who come, who fall with faith, who taste the blood on their tongue and hear the scream in their brain, will read the history of all and come away with understanding. The strong will push on, fall further, the resistance growing as they drop, for knowledge of what is to come is a painful beauty and not to be wished on anyone. At the bottom, where no one has been, is a child whose limbs are fine silver, whose face swarms with eyes. A bottle of blue glass in held carelessly in his hands."

Shock, light, the warmth of curiosity. The other beasts leave, carrying the words like a brand. Ce, alone, is satisfied.