The woman climbs a dusty hill, her skin caked and cracked, the healthy rosey glow now ashen. Breath ragged, a soft, rattling warning, her hair is gone and it took all her willpower to sever it before she was sent away to this strange place in the hopes she might remember where she left it and one day return, somehow knowing something momentous was occuring, that she was part of it. The knowledge drove her to this place, a planet she had never visited before, yet navigates as if born to it.
At the zenith, she pauses on one knee, sucking on her tongue in order to produce enough spit to speak. She doesn't taste the grit, doesn't hear the vultures, doesn't feel the heat. Looking up, she sees a narrow, deep cleft in the ground, layered stone upon stone all the way down into darkness. There is stillness except for the stupid birds who never fly above the hole. Her real self, a teacher of hyperbolic geometry, might wonder at this, might attempt to draw on old lessons of her own about the vacuum of the depths. The, could it be called a canyon? it's so narrow, was free from the grip of the sun but massive, human-like profiles could be seen even through the gloom. Her heart hammers in her chest, but what drove her must be done.
"There is a green water sea that bathes the feet of mountains. The black rock does not flinch from its chilly touch or the sliding caresses from the tails of the sea people, who cover their eyes with shells and grow coral along their spines. The war of flames is beneath the waves, and the icy silver stars fall, swim gracefully down to fight the great beasts with hearts of magma. They are endless, spawning with every breath of the earth. The glitter-skinned stars and the sea people, hair of anemone, barnacled hands, ride the great whales as chariots into the battle, leaving their dances behind in the hopes, one day, a door may be found deep within the mountain."
An invisible wave passed over her face and she sighed as the memories left her, the dream, the fugue state, gone as softly as a kiss. She looked around, saw a murky sparkle to the north and realized she was close to a city. A pressure on her hip, wrapped in stained layers of muslin, turned out to be a gurgling water bottle, anti-fatigue pills and a thick packet of dried meats and fruits.
"Was it a vacation? I know I've always wanted to visit the deserts," she asked and a fresh breeze grabbed her words and tugged them along to the north. Running a thin hand along the stubble on her head, she nodded once, twice, and quickly wrapped a length of the cloth around her head to prevent sunburn. Setting off with suddenly vigorous strides, she failed to hear the deep rumble of the canyon as beings of stone, veins of calcified water, stirred and stretched. Their words were the murmur of the breeze and all through the rock, the human's speech moved like quicksilver. They could not travel, could not seek the source, but deep within, they all knew, had listened and became restless.
The kitchen was a purgatory for the privileged. Comform mats surrounded low ashwood tables and slick oilskin curtains hung from the ceiling, reducing the clank of dishes and providing a sense of intimacy for the diners. There were tumbling trellises of purple flowers scattered around the room, each one anchored in a bubbling fountain that provided a place to wash before and after eating or simply a refreshing drink. Smaller passengers had occasionally attempted to bathe in them, only to have the incredibly powerful filter pointed out by a smiling Steeress. Most stayed out of the fountains and the stubborn few became amusing posthumous tales.
Betaine watched from a higher platform, the floor a graceful marble mosaic, the table carved with tittering nymphs chased by fat-bellied bears, honey on their muzzle, pregnant roasts in their paws. Vines curled around the legs, twirled together around the tabletop, sheltered the upper class passenger from the curious stares of those eating below. Despite the sound dampening, it didn't keep out all the whispering. He attempted to ignore the annoyance; it wasn't him they were interested in but who he worked for.
The meal was delightful, thick, steamed sweet rice mixed with slivers of a tender hotly-spiced meat and crumpled ugly lumps of a black mushroom that was said to grow only on the undersides of rocks overhanging the ocean. Betaine eyed it curiously at the end of his chopsticks, like a clump of brain, the sort of flower that blooms where Death walks. Sampling it produced a salty, chewy sensation and then the memory hit. He felt it explode behind his eyes, fought to gain control over the view of a sea that commanded his vision, its wild, chill churning casting clouds of spray into the clear, violet sky. Giant iridescent bags floated far over the horizon, kemket, they were called, trailed miles of tentacles to the water below. The feeling was a vast and fantastic freedom, lightly touched by loneliness.
His fingers drummed on the table in an automatic sequence, pinky twice, thumb twice, then ring, middle, index in three quick thumps and pulled him from the memory. There was a moment of silver dark waters and then the kitchen refocused around him. He sucked a morsel of the mushroom from his teeth and stared at the attendant Steeress, a dusky, curvaceous girl whose uniform barely constrained a figure that clashed with her smile, a slow seductive dance against an anxious, polished blankness. The right half of her face was covered with an elaborate tattoo that shifted as she moved. showing a familiar gold-clawed hand plucking the sun from a rose in a shower of petals. She was an obvious attempt to appease him, a subservient worshipper of his patron, similar to the ones that had tried to attend him for months.
"Do you always feed your passengers noetic hallucinogens?" he asked in between bites. The mushrooms were neutralized automatically as he ate, their memory demand denied.
"It's quite a celebrated dish and we've never had a complaint so far. Usually they enjoy the visions," the Steeress replied, "we can prepare you something else if it's causing interference with your abilities, but your teliphrase scan indicated no allergies or susceptibilities to this variety of morenel."
"No, but a warning would be appreciated next time."
"As you wish, sir. Oh, a Master Ober of the Red Dragon Cell respectfully inquires if he may join you after dinner."
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Day Twelve
The hall was gleamingly, achingly white, airy and brilliant with the gentle undulating carvings Bala loved. Pillars, each a unique, blissful statue of one of the goddess' early disciples, snaked their taut forms up, supported a lattice-style roof that let in tantalizing snippets of sky. It was a smooth darkness now, but gusts of perfumed breezes poured in, bringing the scents of her gardens, her orchards, the wide green fields. With the orbs that sparkled like stars, some milky and rippling with a wild nebulous rainbow, that hung in the air and wove graceful, carefully-timed paths that kept the vast expanse softly and evenly lit, the guests agreed their hostess' coastal celebration hall was tasteful, wonderful, a thousand congratulations to her.
It was the fourth day of the festival and some of the attendees were still moving slowly around the edges of the vast expanse, admiring silver-thread tapestries showing the purifying of the Bay of Isla, Bala, wearing a crown of fangs like a halo, breaking the necks of the sea serpents that coiled in nests of thousands just below the surface, their viscous black blood pouring down her arms, her legs; the same crown of fangs, glowing with a rusty aura, thrown into the deepest part of the bay, sealing a pact between the restless spirits that moaned with the creaking voices of dead ships, that they would watch over the waters, that none of her people would drown unless willfully and one of their kinds would be pulled into Bala's paradise every hundred years.
The scenes blended into one another, the spread of the goddess' power across the planet through the depths of the seas that covered most of the surface, into the heated rock until every cell of every plant and beast bore an awareness of her...it wound like a ribbon around pillars, slid across carefully placed screens. One end was laid across a simple ivory loom, threads tattered and unfinished and while certain historians and one or two Narrators recognized the machine, most were puzzled and bemused by the notion that this clumsy, delicate device had produced this continuous expression of splendor. Jokes were hushed when a suspended projector informed them that the loom was the goddess' own and this, not the library, not the vast reservoirs of Archivist memory, was the true history as made, thread over thread, by Bala's hand.
When asked about it, she would dismissively wave her fingers at the inquirer, laughing low and saying only that it was "good to keep a hobby going."
The mistress herself was floating out on the promenade where one end of the hall had been removed and converted to a wide, sweeping balcony overlooking the murmuring waters. Her gowns were black but so heavily beaded with fire opals and pearls that they rippled with the colours of a seductive, carnivorous plant, fluttered rather stiffly in the soft winds. Feathers of a long-extinct bird bloomed from her collar and framed her perfectly painted face. Small bells were hidden in the glossy sheet of her hair and the tiny sparkling tones chased each other around the goddess' company, a suspended, angelic-faced head that radiated serenity and was said to be amongst the leading linguists of the times, able to create a language precisely suited to any person it spoke to, a deeply personal construction of sounds that echoed all the truth a person held within them; the bartender from Planet's favourite place, who bore the strained nonchalance of someone bursting at the seams with recent thrills, the songs of Bala's skin on his lips, in his brain; and the pouting Brigadier General Electorus Majour of a small, agricultural planet far from anything of note. He boasted he was all the soldier the world needed and was quite correct in that regard. It was a sleepy place of perpetual dawn, dense, smooth-trunked trees and low, worn-out foothills. The native humans had a bad habit of whispering wherever they went and wore flowing skirts and robes in a dozen layers, of golds and tawny hues, the tans of wood smoke, looking like clusters of dreaming flowers.
The head, who insisted upon being called nothing more than Thee, which annoyed the Brigadier, who placed status with name, claimed to be a construct that projected the sweetly beaming face into the current set of dimensions to facilitate its favourite hobby and anyone who wandered behind it through a space of several yards felt a strange vibration in their bones, moved quickly from the spot no matter how crowded it became elsewhere. There was so much empty space in the celebration hall that people flowed together in erratic clumps, occasionally foraying across the smooth floor to another cluster. Perhaps long ago, molecules bonded together in such a way to avoid the frightening, inviting voids around them.
"Your ability doesn't solve the problem of mutual communication, I'm afraid. While the notion is lovely, I can't see the collective sentience agreeing to a Babel state," said Bala.
Thee's teeth were small, wonderfully even with a pale bluish sheen. An aura like the dreams of butter floated around the construct.
"You operate under the conviction that communication is egalitarian, that it is to be shared between everyone. Standard or any language not built by the speaker, it is my observation, pleases none and creates deep-seated frustrations that are further compounded when those frustrations cannot be adequately expressed. Perhaps we should restrict those we talk to by restricting those we are capable of talking to."
"How does that work precisely? Won't it be rather lonely?" The bartender, despite his fugue state, attempted to impress by joining in.
"Loneliness is not a condition soothed by speaking but by receiving," said Thee, "also, psychological and emotional resonance between two beings will allow for translation of said resonance. The truths you hold, whether love or fear or hatred, will be conveyed more simply and perfectly than any current possible assembly of words. We all know you cannot lie to others from your subconscious. To yourself, you can, but others would remain free of duplicity."
"Sounds like the garbage back home."
Thee arched its head slowly towards the Brigadier General but said nothing. Bala purred in the back of her throat and smiled brilliantly.
"Master Rotham, this is surprising to hear. Your home's language is regarded as one of the last truly evolving varieties of Old Arkeen. I had arranged for some singers later in the week to attend us."
The Brigadier General rubbed his shiny forehead, curdles of steam almost rising off his meaty skull under Bala's glittering gaze. His cheeks looked packed with suet and shook slightly as he spoke.
"No....no offense meant, mistress. If they were speaking Old Arkeen, I'd have no damned problem with them. They speak..." a hand rough and red, like a slab of ribs, waved jerkily in the air, "Standard gibberish. Stuff about deserts and bones and holes in the earth. It puts a man off his course to see his own staff with nothing to say besides this crap, and then boom...back to normal. Why, my wife..."
"A compulsion plague?"
The jowls shook harder.
"We've had them all tested, every one! I thought maybe it was this wave of tourists, the trees are a popular place this time of year, but there was nothing, everything clean. We even brought in a clear-skilled impressionist fellow."
"They just say these things and then are fully functional again? Do they retain memories?" Thee asked, craning eagerly towards Rotham, who wrinkled his fat red blob of a nose.
"My wife, Etylline, she fair remembers enough for both of us, would lose my head without the girl, came home one day talking about the eyes of hope opening and listening or something like that, and when she was done, just clammed up, sat down on the table and then looked up at me. 'Rotham, how was the market projection conference?' as if nothing had happened. Couldn't for the life of her remember anything she'd said. I got the clear in, then, and he found nothing. Headache for a week and he found nothing."
He bit the edge of his fluted glass savagely before gulping the rest of his honey-smooth drink.
"That is fascinating," murmured Bala, "if it is specialists you would like to study this strange thing, I can make arrangements with my priests."
"I'll find whatever did that to my Etylline, mistress, and I'll end it faster than it can blink."
Thee sighed, a tremulous low note that pricked at Bala's ears. The feeling touched at the base of her spine, rolled upward to areas of higher functions. It felt oddly intimate and she realized this was his own language resonating within her and smiled inwardly at the sentiment.
[That is what we are afraid of.]
"If you are available sometime tomorrow, Brigadier General, I would appreciate it immensely if you made a quick stop over at one of the memory halls. I don't doubt the capabilities of your clear, but a fast scan would take no time at all. I would like to make sure my other guests remain safe."
"Security procedures, I understand," said Rotham, then nodded at the gathered company, "I'm not feeling as good as I was earlier. I think I'll call it a night."
He stumped off, leaving the trio momentarily thoughtful.
"You'll be sending someone anyway," said the bartender, looking up at the goddess. Even perfectly still, her breathing deep and calm, the air seemed to shiver around her, excited like a puppy, eager to be filled with her action.
"I may go myself if this dry spell continues. This is the first interesting thing I've heard, aside from your sweet words, in months. With Planet gone and no upstart gods to smite, I've had next to nothing to do. If something doesn't happen soon, I may die of boredom."
She rolled smoothly onto her back and locked eyes with the bartender, who trembled as she grazed his high cheekbone with a gilded nail.
"But you can keep me busy in the meantime."
It was the fourth day of the festival and some of the attendees were still moving slowly around the edges of the vast expanse, admiring silver-thread tapestries showing the purifying of the Bay of Isla, Bala, wearing a crown of fangs like a halo, breaking the necks of the sea serpents that coiled in nests of thousands just below the surface, their viscous black blood pouring down her arms, her legs; the same crown of fangs, glowing with a rusty aura, thrown into the deepest part of the bay, sealing a pact between the restless spirits that moaned with the creaking voices of dead ships, that they would watch over the waters, that none of her people would drown unless willfully and one of their kinds would be pulled into Bala's paradise every hundred years.
The scenes blended into one another, the spread of the goddess' power across the planet through the depths of the seas that covered most of the surface, into the heated rock until every cell of every plant and beast bore an awareness of her...it wound like a ribbon around pillars, slid across carefully placed screens. One end was laid across a simple ivory loom, threads tattered and unfinished and while certain historians and one or two Narrators recognized the machine, most were puzzled and bemused by the notion that this clumsy, delicate device had produced this continuous expression of splendor. Jokes were hushed when a suspended projector informed them that the loom was the goddess' own and this, not the library, not the vast reservoirs of Archivist memory, was the true history as made, thread over thread, by Bala's hand.
When asked about it, she would dismissively wave her fingers at the inquirer, laughing low and saying only that it was "good to keep a hobby going."
The mistress herself was floating out on the promenade where one end of the hall had been removed and converted to a wide, sweeping balcony overlooking the murmuring waters. Her gowns were black but so heavily beaded with fire opals and pearls that they rippled with the colours of a seductive, carnivorous plant, fluttered rather stiffly in the soft winds. Feathers of a long-extinct bird bloomed from her collar and framed her perfectly painted face. Small bells were hidden in the glossy sheet of her hair and the tiny sparkling tones chased each other around the goddess' company, a suspended, angelic-faced head that radiated serenity and was said to be amongst the leading linguists of the times, able to create a language precisely suited to any person it spoke to, a deeply personal construction of sounds that echoed all the truth a person held within them; the bartender from Planet's favourite place, who bore the strained nonchalance of someone bursting at the seams with recent thrills, the songs of Bala's skin on his lips, in his brain; and the pouting Brigadier General Electorus Majour of a small, agricultural planet far from anything of note. He boasted he was all the soldier the world needed and was quite correct in that regard. It was a sleepy place of perpetual dawn, dense, smooth-trunked trees and low, worn-out foothills. The native humans had a bad habit of whispering wherever they went and wore flowing skirts and robes in a dozen layers, of golds and tawny hues, the tans of wood smoke, looking like clusters of dreaming flowers.
The head, who insisted upon being called nothing more than Thee, which annoyed the Brigadier, who placed status with name, claimed to be a construct that projected the sweetly beaming face into the current set of dimensions to facilitate its favourite hobby and anyone who wandered behind it through a space of several yards felt a strange vibration in their bones, moved quickly from the spot no matter how crowded it became elsewhere. There was so much empty space in the celebration hall that people flowed together in erratic clumps, occasionally foraying across the smooth floor to another cluster. Perhaps long ago, molecules bonded together in such a way to avoid the frightening, inviting voids around them.
"Your ability doesn't solve the problem of mutual communication, I'm afraid. While the notion is lovely, I can't see the collective sentience agreeing to a Babel state," said Bala.
Thee's teeth were small, wonderfully even with a pale bluish sheen. An aura like the dreams of butter floated around the construct.
"You operate under the conviction that communication is egalitarian, that it is to be shared between everyone. Standard or any language not built by the speaker, it is my observation, pleases none and creates deep-seated frustrations that are further compounded when those frustrations cannot be adequately expressed. Perhaps we should restrict those we talk to by restricting those we are capable of talking to."
"How does that work precisely? Won't it be rather lonely?" The bartender, despite his fugue state, attempted to impress by joining in.
"Loneliness is not a condition soothed by speaking but by receiving," said Thee, "also, psychological and emotional resonance between two beings will allow for translation of said resonance. The truths you hold, whether love or fear or hatred, will be conveyed more simply and perfectly than any current possible assembly of words. We all know you cannot lie to others from your subconscious. To yourself, you can, but others would remain free of duplicity."
"Sounds like the garbage back home."
Thee arched its head slowly towards the Brigadier General but said nothing. Bala purred in the back of her throat and smiled brilliantly.
"Master Rotham, this is surprising to hear. Your home's language is regarded as one of the last truly evolving varieties of Old Arkeen. I had arranged for some singers later in the week to attend us."
The Brigadier General rubbed his shiny forehead, curdles of steam almost rising off his meaty skull under Bala's glittering gaze. His cheeks looked packed with suet and shook slightly as he spoke.
"No....no offense meant, mistress. If they were speaking Old Arkeen, I'd have no damned problem with them. They speak..." a hand rough and red, like a slab of ribs, waved jerkily in the air, "Standard gibberish. Stuff about deserts and bones and holes in the earth. It puts a man off his course to see his own staff with nothing to say besides this crap, and then boom...back to normal. Why, my wife..."
"A compulsion plague?"
The jowls shook harder.
"We've had them all tested, every one! I thought maybe it was this wave of tourists, the trees are a popular place this time of year, but there was nothing, everything clean. We even brought in a clear-skilled impressionist fellow."
"They just say these things and then are fully functional again? Do they retain memories?" Thee asked, craning eagerly towards Rotham, who wrinkled his fat red blob of a nose.
"My wife, Etylline, she fair remembers enough for both of us, would lose my head without the girl, came home one day talking about the eyes of hope opening and listening or something like that, and when she was done, just clammed up, sat down on the table and then looked up at me. 'Rotham, how was the market projection conference?' as if nothing had happened. Couldn't for the life of her remember anything she'd said. I got the clear in, then, and he found nothing. Headache for a week and he found nothing."
He bit the edge of his fluted glass savagely before gulping the rest of his honey-smooth drink.
"That is fascinating," murmured Bala, "if it is specialists you would like to study this strange thing, I can make arrangements with my priests."
"I'll find whatever did that to my Etylline, mistress, and I'll end it faster than it can blink."
Thee sighed, a tremulous low note that pricked at Bala's ears. The feeling touched at the base of her spine, rolled upward to areas of higher functions. It felt oddly intimate and she realized this was his own language resonating within her and smiled inwardly at the sentiment.
[That is what we are afraid of.]
"If you are available sometime tomorrow, Brigadier General, I would appreciate it immensely if you made a quick stop over at one of the memory halls. I don't doubt the capabilities of your clear, but a fast scan would take no time at all. I would like to make sure my other guests remain safe."
"Security procedures, I understand," said Rotham, then nodded at the gathered company, "I'm not feeling as good as I was earlier. I think I'll call it a night."
He stumped off, leaving the trio momentarily thoughtful.
"You'll be sending someone anyway," said the bartender, looking up at the goddess. Even perfectly still, her breathing deep and calm, the air seemed to shiver around her, excited like a puppy, eager to be filled with her action.
"I may go myself if this dry spell continues. This is the first interesting thing I've heard, aside from your sweet words, in months. With Planet gone and no upstart gods to smite, I've had next to nothing to do. If something doesn't happen soon, I may die of boredom."
She rolled smoothly onto her back and locked eyes with the bartender, who trembled as she grazed his high cheekbone with a gilded nail.
"But you can keep me busy in the meantime."
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Day Eleven
A brawl was brewing amongst the mercenaries, their curses thick molasses in the heavy atmosphere. Small blue-green sparks began to flicker across the ceiling tiles, causing the orbs to shiver. The one who had attempted to set Betaine's coat on fire was almost screeching, dashing back and forth in a half-circle, his shouts rippling the air. Books were flung about, fluttering like crows to the floor and hands used to a dozen different weapons twitched impotently or clenched in concentration.
"You sick, rotten son of a slut! I'll wrap your intestines around your heart until it pops..."
The words fell, clunky, stone-like, on sudden silence. Glasses had been gathered and a peaceful tableau resumed in the group, save for the screamer. The anger on his face spasmed with nervousness and uncertainty as he stood alone, still bouncing from foot to foot. Betaine opened his eyes and saw the same bubbly Steeress from before, smiling the same brittle smile.
"Bethany, I can explain," said the smaller mercenary, "he's young and stupid. I'll thrash him well when we get to Regulskek."
The girl took one, two steps forward, was less than a meter from Betaine, ignored his presence completely.
"Yes you will, Ober, but his disruption of the lights has disturbed the Controller, not to mention the teeny infraction he's committed against the esteemed guest of the goddess, Bala. The captain wishes to see him."
Ober paled under his leathery tan, glared half in pity and disgust at his now scared piss-less companion.
"You dumb sack of waste, I hope you enjoyed that potshot at the uptight little fucker (no offense meant). I'm canceling your contract when we get home."
"But sir..."
"Don't sir me anymore, you get stupid enough to hit a VIP, I'm not having you at my back. He's all yours, Bethany."
She clapped her thin, pale hands together twice, softly and the man simply wasn't there anymore.
"He'll be back within the hour."
Ober snorted softly, nervously fingered his rolled collar.
"You can kick him off and charge me the fees. He was out of my jurisdiction the moment he used that igniter and I apologize for the problem."
Bethany tilted her shiny blond head to the side.
"Was this before or after you tried to get him yourself, Ober? We would not like to disturb his mistress. She owns the only landing field large enough for the wheels in this system."
She watched him squirm for a moment, then folded her hands behind her back and widened her smile before pivoting on the heel of her thick-heeled boot. Even when her eyes met Betaine's, there was no acknowledgment there.
"I do hope you will not take offense, please, at the actions against you by the ah, former member of the Red Dragon Cell. If you require medical assistance, please let me know. All expenses will be covered by Master Ober."
The mercenary's gaze flickered between Betaine and Bethany as if expecting the air between them to crack and freeze.
Betaine felt the glossy wall of her personality, the obsidian shiny core that blacked out the frenzied noise of the other passengers and spoke of heavy rejection training. Of course she would have it. There was no better protection against the abilities of the passengers, even at the cost of being sealed away from the cycles of ambient energy that fed sentient existence in the Universe. A shortened life span, the indescribable aloneness of being a null point in your own racial memory...
"There will be meals served shortly, please, in the main kitchen for general passengers who so desire. You, sir, may dine when you please."
The words bounced like a soap bubble through the lounge and Bethany turned sharply, left the commons area down a lemon yellow corridor.
"You sick, rotten son of a slut! I'll wrap your intestines around your heart until it pops..."
The words fell, clunky, stone-like, on sudden silence. Glasses had been gathered and a peaceful tableau resumed in the group, save for the screamer. The anger on his face spasmed with nervousness and uncertainty as he stood alone, still bouncing from foot to foot. Betaine opened his eyes and saw the same bubbly Steeress from before, smiling the same brittle smile.
"Bethany, I can explain," said the smaller mercenary, "he's young and stupid. I'll thrash him well when we get to Regulskek."
The girl took one, two steps forward, was less than a meter from Betaine, ignored his presence completely.
"Yes you will, Ober, but his disruption of the lights has disturbed the Controller, not to mention the teeny infraction he's committed against the esteemed guest of the goddess, Bala. The captain wishes to see him."
Ober paled under his leathery tan, glared half in pity and disgust at his now scared piss-less companion.
"You dumb sack of waste, I hope you enjoyed that potshot at the uptight little fucker (no offense meant). I'm canceling your contract when we get home."
"But sir..."
"Don't sir me anymore, you get stupid enough to hit a VIP, I'm not having you at my back. He's all yours, Bethany."
She clapped her thin, pale hands together twice, softly and the man simply wasn't there anymore.
"He'll be back within the hour."
Ober snorted softly, nervously fingered his rolled collar.
"You can kick him off and charge me the fees. He was out of my jurisdiction the moment he used that igniter and I apologize for the problem."
Bethany tilted her shiny blond head to the side.
"Was this before or after you tried to get him yourself, Ober? We would not like to disturb his mistress. She owns the only landing field large enough for the wheels in this system."
She watched him squirm for a moment, then folded her hands behind her back and widened her smile before pivoting on the heel of her thick-heeled boot. Even when her eyes met Betaine's, there was no acknowledgment there.
"I do hope you will not take offense, please, at the actions against you by the ah, former member of the Red Dragon Cell. If you require medical assistance, please let me know. All expenses will be covered by Master Ober."
The mercenary's gaze flickered between Betaine and Bethany as if expecting the air between them to crack and freeze.
Betaine felt the glossy wall of her personality, the obsidian shiny core that blacked out the frenzied noise of the other passengers and spoke of heavy rejection training. Of course she would have it. There was no better protection against the abilities of the passengers, even at the cost of being sealed away from the cycles of ambient energy that fed sentient existence in the Universe. A shortened life span, the indescribable aloneness of being a null point in your own racial memory...
"There will be meals served shortly, please, in the main kitchen for general passengers who so desire. You, sir, may dine when you please."
The words bounced like a soap bubble through the lounge and Bethany turned sharply, left the commons area down a lemon yellow corridor.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Day Ten
There was something here, something important about Planet that even Bala had missed, drove her through ten thousand years, was in every footstep she took, every story she told. What could the possessor of such a lifetime consider as a vacation? A sequence of words came to him as he sunk deeper into memory recall: garden in a far corner. There was...
"There's a wall there."
Betaine looked up, shot out a hand quickly enough to catch himself from slamming his nose into a projection window sill. Someone was snickering, a flat, wheezy noise like a whine being pushed through a broken nose in spurts. He looked up for the speaker and a cluster of red and brown lumps around a sleek tan table resolved into a group of human mercenaries, their clothing heavily layered and stained, lines of embroidery flashing here and there. He recognized some of it as elaborate wards and curses and they glittered in the soft light. One, the man who had spoken, had a black, spiraling mark on his bandana that twisted under Betaine's gaze, was like a brand, a cankerous sore on the fabric.
Their weapons were absent but worn patches, a crease in a pair of trousers, an empty leather harness sewn into a boot, indicated they were usually very heavily armed but acted no more ill-at-ease for the loss of their gear. A cluster of small cobalt glasses was gathered neatly at the center of the table and thin booklets of carbonweave paper filled the rest of the surface. One or two were thumbing through them, taking care to read without their lips moving.
"Thank you," said Betaine, eyeing the reading material, "nerve pulse triggers?"
It came faster than a wish, a burning itch that snaked up his spine. He recognized it as a warning shot, not intended to cause serious harm and let it pass through, subdued the twitching in his right arm that made him want to salute. They wouldn't injure him, not on the ship, not openly, but forcing excessively inquisitive passengers such as himself into small and humilating gestures often relieved the boredom of travel. The source was a smaller, lumpy man, muscles like a sack of potatoes, who leaned almost bonelessly on the table. He was staring away from Betaine, but the silence made him turn.
The mercenary's eyes were slightly bloodshot and he arched a frizzy eyebrow at the young analyst, who smiled just a little too tightly to be called pleased or pleasant.
"No offense meant."
"I'm sure," said Betaine and moved away towards a low cream-coloured divan that looked achingly comfortable.
There was a disorienting flash and the smell of burnt hair. He rocked slightly on his feet but kept walking.
"What the hell? Are you some kind of fucking idiot?"
Words exploded from the smaller mercenary as he grabbed a no longer smirking companion by his elaborate kerchief from across the table, scattering cobalt glasses that pinged as they fell.
"Sir, I..."
"I don't care if he called your God damned grandfather a crechewhore! You don't use an igniter on an impressionist unless you want us all to die, you endstain! Remember Ysorri? He thought it'd be funny..."
"...not funny, sir..."
"...to implode that roundcar and now he's a greasy fucking stain on some wall in the God damned Doric system! They teach these internal bastards weird shit...they're all wired to take out the whole fucking ship if you cross the noetic flows."
The divan curved around his back like a hello, the buttery soft suede making him almost dizzy as Betaine attempted to relax, simultaneously amused and annoyed at the argument going on at the mercenaries' table. The rumors of an impressionist mind-burning everyone for miles around if attacked with external psionics was a school tradition, a bit of protection for alumni who couldn't keep their mouths shut.
The stories were as old as dirt and new students delighted in making up new permutations, passing around ever more realistic tales about someone who'd been stupid enough to set their psionic focal point close enough to a master of internal energies. It was true the contact between fields allowed the impressionist access to the nervous system of his antagonizer as if physical contact had been made, letting him spread pain sensations through everyone within the external psionic's field, but when no harm could be done anyway to the internalist, why amplify the problem? The jokes went "How do you kill an external? Mind burn. How do you kill an internal? A stick."
"There's a wall there."
Betaine looked up, shot out a hand quickly enough to catch himself from slamming his nose into a projection window sill. Someone was snickering, a flat, wheezy noise like a whine being pushed through a broken nose in spurts. He looked up for the speaker and a cluster of red and brown lumps around a sleek tan table resolved into a group of human mercenaries, their clothing heavily layered and stained, lines of embroidery flashing here and there. He recognized some of it as elaborate wards and curses and they glittered in the soft light. One, the man who had spoken, had a black, spiraling mark on his bandana that twisted under Betaine's gaze, was like a brand, a cankerous sore on the fabric.
Their weapons were absent but worn patches, a crease in a pair of trousers, an empty leather harness sewn into a boot, indicated they were usually very heavily armed but acted no more ill-at-ease for the loss of their gear. A cluster of small cobalt glasses was gathered neatly at the center of the table and thin booklets of carbonweave paper filled the rest of the surface. One or two were thumbing through them, taking care to read without their lips moving.
"Thank you," said Betaine, eyeing the reading material, "nerve pulse triggers?"
It came faster than a wish, a burning itch that snaked up his spine. He recognized it as a warning shot, not intended to cause serious harm and let it pass through, subdued the twitching in his right arm that made him want to salute. They wouldn't injure him, not on the ship, not openly, but forcing excessively inquisitive passengers such as himself into small and humilating gestures often relieved the boredom of travel. The source was a smaller, lumpy man, muscles like a sack of potatoes, who leaned almost bonelessly on the table. He was staring away from Betaine, but the silence made him turn.
The mercenary's eyes were slightly bloodshot and he arched a frizzy eyebrow at the young analyst, who smiled just a little too tightly to be called pleased or pleasant.
"No offense meant."
"I'm sure," said Betaine and moved away towards a low cream-coloured divan that looked achingly comfortable.
There was a disorienting flash and the smell of burnt hair. He rocked slightly on his feet but kept walking.
"What the hell? Are you some kind of fucking idiot?"
Words exploded from the smaller mercenary as he grabbed a no longer smirking companion by his elaborate kerchief from across the table, scattering cobalt glasses that pinged as they fell.
"Sir, I..."
"I don't care if he called your God damned grandfather a crechewhore! You don't use an igniter on an impressionist unless you want us all to die, you endstain! Remember Ysorri? He thought it'd be funny..."
"...not funny, sir..."
"...to implode that roundcar and now he's a greasy fucking stain on some wall in the God damned Doric system! They teach these internal bastards weird shit...they're all wired to take out the whole fucking ship if you cross the noetic flows."
The divan curved around his back like a hello, the buttery soft suede making him almost dizzy as Betaine attempted to relax, simultaneously amused and annoyed at the argument going on at the mercenaries' table. The rumors of an impressionist mind-burning everyone for miles around if attacked with external psionics was a school tradition, a bit of protection for alumni who couldn't keep their mouths shut.
The stories were as old as dirt and new students delighted in making up new permutations, passing around ever more realistic tales about someone who'd been stupid enough to set their psionic focal point close enough to a master of internal energies. It was true the contact between fields allowed the impressionist access to the nervous system of his antagonizer as if physical contact had been made, letting him spread pain sensations through everyone within the external psionic's field, but when no harm could be done anyway to the internalist, why amplify the problem? The jokes went "How do you kill an external? Mind burn. How do you kill an internal? A stick."
Monday, November 12, 2007
Day Nine
The cabin was no larger than a broom closet, lined with a slick, red metal that made Betaine feel distinctly uncomfortable. The hostess [or stewardess...what had she called herself? Steeress.] with him rocked back and forth on her heels, her face bright and fresh, smiling out the frustrations of her job. She had escorted him to this odd room, with its pressurized door and obvious lack of a bed or bath. Betaine took a step forward into it, turned once slowly, his nose wrinkling at the sharp scent of ozone which seemed to be coming from the rear wall.
He had been more than a little surprised that Bala had booked him passage on one of the relatively new Dyson ships, spherical vessels built like a Russian nesting doll, each inner chamber connected by massive bearings of a truly frictionless alloy. At the heart of the ship was still the Controller, this one with shaggy hair and large insect wings, slick brown and iridescent, grafted in pairs up each arm. They fanned and hummed spasmodically when Betaine had seen the pilot dashing down the gently sloping corridor, shouting for someone named Butterfly.
According to the steeress behind him, who's cheerfulness was solid and unwavering, the Dyson ship was in all ways like riding on the normal passenger rings, but with an increase in storage space by over sixteen hundred percent. The free spinning levels created a more gentle sensation of gravity and absorbed outer impact much better in case, well, you never know what you'll bump into out in space, our Controller tries, he really does. She had also asked three times if he had ever been off-planet before, despite his records showing his birthplace over thirty seven million light years away.
Betaine was thoroughly and unabashedly disgusted with her, the neat little boots, the trim little oil blend suit, wanted nothing more than to collapse after two dizzying days of the festival. After dancing, which he did passably, for the thirteenth time with the something-or-other Countess or Margravess or Creche Mother of somewhere he forgot, he'd wearily asked Bala how anyone had energy left afterwards for a month. She'd ceased the animated discussion about nano-precise security perimeters she was having with a kivin emissary, who looked quite human outside of the energy grid he was composed of, duck egg blue helixes of light shifting slowly through the shape of his limbs, and told him the festivities would continue for a week or so more.
Betaine had spoken to her Majordomo discreetly afterwards and discovered that Bala had already gotten him a cabin on the White Pearl, a Dyson ship that was one of the few allowed near Regulskek, currently docked in orbit for minor repairs. He'd been amused to find the goddess had anticipated his limits in regards to social gatherings such as this one and had spent the remainder of his time in Isla transfering funds to an account that required the proper series of dream impressions to access and avoiding a stone-skinned Duch who had repeatedly tried to purchase him from Bala and had eventually left on the second morning, furious his offers had been laughed at.
After the rich, masterful dishes, glass after glass of smooth liquors and the shallow and demanding company of a series of lovely young women Bala had thrown him at like a puppy to a herd of cats, all he wanted was to disconnect, re-establish his mental balance and sleep without dreaming. Instead, he was faced with a hellish robotic womb of a room.
"Thank you, and this is well and good, but where do I sleep?" he'd asked finally, when he realized the steeress wouldn't volunteer the information.
She slid past him smoothly into the cramped cabin, not brushing even a thread of her suit against him.
"There's a seal on the back wall here that's been tuned to your bio-electrical resonance, please. If you place your hand on it, you'll be granted access to the rest area. You can choose from a wide variety of sleep aides, please, as well as intraveneous or osmosis-type nutritional feeds in the event our kitchen is not to your liking."
Betaine stared at the barest lip of a protrusion that she had pointed at. He turned and she was once again on the outside of the cabin, clapsing the edges of her suit jacket and rocking back and forth on her thick heels.
"There is a commons area down the corridor to your left, should you feel like mingling with your fellow passengers. Please remember your manners, as our security staff would be very unhappy if an unpleasant incident occurs. Enjoy your stay, please."
And she was gone down the hall with a choppy wave of the hand.
His reinforced satchel was placed carefully in a rounded nook by the door, containing nothing more than a spare change of clothes, a small metal-bound book with seemingly blank pages, a bundle of dark blue indelible ink pens, a sensory recorder that was a retarded, crippled cousin to the Archivist creation, a bottle of anti-fatigue pills, and an opaque, indestructible box no larger than his palm that contained a full identification kit, including a composite teliphrase scan, a time-lapsed genetic signature that couldn't be replicated.
Betaine leaned against the glossy back wall, caught himself when the rest area gave way beneath him like a rubber sheet. No, maybe later he'd sleep in it, but for now, even as weary as he was, the chamber made his skin crawl. Checking that the contents of his inside shirt pockets hadn't shifted and they were still sealed shut, he let the cabin door close behind him and set off with long, forceful strides down the left corridor.
The ceilings were high, set with frosted half-orb lamps that were meant to give the impression of daylight, their brightness waxing and waning on a cycle carefully balanced between the departing and destination planets. Panels on the walls were stamped with clean, geometric patterns of parallel arcs and lines and painted in muted forest greens, plums, marigolds. Faux windows looked out onto incredible projected star scapes that rotated slowly with the subdued motion of the ship. The floor was a rubberized plasticene, muffling sounds at a ten yard range. He passed occasional sitting areas, comfortable over-stuffed couches, sling chairs and suspended lounges clustered for a feeling of intimacy. The young analyst wondered if they would let him sleep there.
He felt disconnected, rubbed at his temples in the hopes he could stop thinking so sluggishly. Everything seemed a fever dream, this strange ship, this sterile hall. The procession had shaken him strangely. Betaine had studied theology, modern and ancient, as well as the process by which gods came to be. A perceptual psionic such as himself saw the Universe as a rippling sheet, sentient beings like drops of inky rain against the surface, a black mark against the snow field purity of empty space before dissipating into the background. Those who'd found their purpose were heavier, more solid, wrapping time and energy around themselves as their spiritual signatures expanded.
Gods were darker yet, like marbles, so dense that space itself warped around them, forming a funnel for forces still undefined, called belief, faith, that damnable lie [for the few who still clung to atheism like tar to a lily]. Talks with Bala had revealed that they no longer even saw the Universe in the old way, but became aware of the ebb and flow of belief, watched the boundaries of it shift, clouds of coloured fog, existed on a sensual seesaw where either you felt the rush of being fed or the chilly stiffness as faith slid away.
Faith. Betaine had never had a use for it, wondered occasionally if it came as a revelation, like purpose. There was never a time when there wasn't an explanation for something. The insatiable search for knowledge had started out as a simple thing, to please the authority figures that he quickly eclipsed, and had evolved into a ferocious desire to understand, to follow every searing train of thought until the epiphany came, not through chance or luck, but through the connections made between seemingly disparate data sources.
He had been more than a little surprised that Bala had booked him passage on one of the relatively new Dyson ships, spherical vessels built like a Russian nesting doll, each inner chamber connected by massive bearings of a truly frictionless alloy. At the heart of the ship was still the Controller, this one with shaggy hair and large insect wings, slick brown and iridescent, grafted in pairs up each arm. They fanned and hummed spasmodically when Betaine had seen the pilot dashing down the gently sloping corridor, shouting for someone named Butterfly.
According to the steeress behind him, who's cheerfulness was solid and unwavering, the Dyson ship was in all ways like riding on the normal passenger rings, but with an increase in storage space by over sixteen hundred percent. The free spinning levels created a more gentle sensation of gravity and absorbed outer impact much better in case, well, you never know what you'll bump into out in space, our Controller tries, he really does. She had also asked three times if he had ever been off-planet before, despite his records showing his birthplace over thirty seven million light years away.
Betaine was thoroughly and unabashedly disgusted with her, the neat little boots, the trim little oil blend suit, wanted nothing more than to collapse after two dizzying days of the festival. After dancing, which he did passably, for the thirteenth time with the something-or-other Countess or Margravess or Creche Mother of somewhere he forgot, he'd wearily asked Bala how anyone had energy left afterwards for a month. She'd ceased the animated discussion about nano-precise security perimeters she was having with a kivin emissary, who looked quite human outside of the energy grid he was composed of, duck egg blue helixes of light shifting slowly through the shape of his limbs, and told him the festivities would continue for a week or so more.
Betaine had spoken to her Majordomo discreetly afterwards and discovered that Bala had already gotten him a cabin on the White Pearl, a Dyson ship that was one of the few allowed near Regulskek, currently docked in orbit for minor repairs. He'd been amused to find the goddess had anticipated his limits in regards to social gatherings such as this one and had spent the remainder of his time in Isla transfering funds to an account that required the proper series of dream impressions to access and avoiding a stone-skinned Duch who had repeatedly tried to purchase him from Bala and had eventually left on the second morning, furious his offers had been laughed at.
After the rich, masterful dishes, glass after glass of smooth liquors and the shallow and demanding company of a series of lovely young women Bala had thrown him at like a puppy to a herd of cats, all he wanted was to disconnect, re-establish his mental balance and sleep without dreaming. Instead, he was faced with a hellish robotic womb of a room.
"Thank you, and this is well and good, but where do I sleep?" he'd asked finally, when he realized the steeress wouldn't volunteer the information.
She slid past him smoothly into the cramped cabin, not brushing even a thread of her suit against him.
"There's a seal on the back wall here that's been tuned to your bio-electrical resonance, please. If you place your hand on it, you'll be granted access to the rest area. You can choose from a wide variety of sleep aides, please, as well as intraveneous or osmosis-type nutritional feeds in the event our kitchen is not to your liking."
Betaine stared at the barest lip of a protrusion that she had pointed at. He turned and she was once again on the outside of the cabin, clapsing the edges of her suit jacket and rocking back and forth on her thick heels.
"There is a commons area down the corridor to your left, should you feel like mingling with your fellow passengers. Please remember your manners, as our security staff would be very unhappy if an unpleasant incident occurs. Enjoy your stay, please."
And she was gone down the hall with a choppy wave of the hand.
His reinforced satchel was placed carefully in a rounded nook by the door, containing nothing more than a spare change of clothes, a small metal-bound book with seemingly blank pages, a bundle of dark blue indelible ink pens, a sensory recorder that was a retarded, crippled cousin to the Archivist creation, a bottle of anti-fatigue pills, and an opaque, indestructible box no larger than his palm that contained a full identification kit, including a composite teliphrase scan, a time-lapsed genetic signature that couldn't be replicated.
Betaine leaned against the glossy back wall, caught himself when the rest area gave way beneath him like a rubber sheet. No, maybe later he'd sleep in it, but for now, even as weary as he was, the chamber made his skin crawl. Checking that the contents of his inside shirt pockets hadn't shifted and they were still sealed shut, he let the cabin door close behind him and set off with long, forceful strides down the left corridor.
The ceilings were high, set with frosted half-orb lamps that were meant to give the impression of daylight, their brightness waxing and waning on a cycle carefully balanced between the departing and destination planets. Panels on the walls were stamped with clean, geometric patterns of parallel arcs and lines and painted in muted forest greens, plums, marigolds. Faux windows looked out onto incredible projected star scapes that rotated slowly with the subdued motion of the ship. The floor was a rubberized plasticene, muffling sounds at a ten yard range. He passed occasional sitting areas, comfortable over-stuffed couches, sling chairs and suspended lounges clustered for a feeling of intimacy. The young analyst wondered if they would let him sleep there.
He felt disconnected, rubbed at his temples in the hopes he could stop thinking so sluggishly. Everything seemed a fever dream, this strange ship, this sterile hall. The procession had shaken him strangely. Betaine had studied theology, modern and ancient, as well as the process by which gods came to be. A perceptual psionic such as himself saw the Universe as a rippling sheet, sentient beings like drops of inky rain against the surface, a black mark against the snow field purity of empty space before dissipating into the background. Those who'd found their purpose were heavier, more solid, wrapping time and energy around themselves as their spiritual signatures expanded.
Gods were darker yet, like marbles, so dense that space itself warped around them, forming a funnel for forces still undefined, called belief, faith, that damnable lie [for the few who still clung to atheism like tar to a lily]. Talks with Bala had revealed that they no longer even saw the Universe in the old way, but became aware of the ebb and flow of belief, watched the boundaries of it shift, clouds of coloured fog, existed on a sensual seesaw where either you felt the rush of being fed or the chilly stiffness as faith slid away.
Faith. Betaine had never had a use for it, wondered occasionally if it came as a revelation, like purpose. There was never a time when there wasn't an explanation for something. The insatiable search for knowledge had started out as a simple thing, to please the authority figures that he quickly eclipsed, and had evolved into a ferocious desire to understand, to follow every searing train of thought until the epiphany came, not through chance or luck, but through the connections made between seemingly disparate data sources.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
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.
"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.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Day Six
The day was fresh and brassy, the waves of cheering and thousands of ringing bells chasing the clouds from the brilliant blue sky. Plump marble minarets lined the road that ran from Bala's tower to the great harbor of Isla two hundred miles to the west. The paving stones were smooth, diamond-hard, fitted expertly together without the need for mortar and cut into fantastical shapes that, up close, looked like cavorting angels and demons that shimmered iridescent in the sunlight. From a great distance, the stones formed letters in Betaine's original language, now called proto-Indostani. Less than two hundred people living in the Universe currently were capable of reading the prayer, the prayer that unlocked Bala's divinity as she laid and wept next to her husband's make-shift grave over seventy centuries ago. It had been translated into Standard, carved into a small, unassuming oranium plaque located at the center of the goddess' water gardens.
'I, who have stepped softly to avoid the notice of Death, who have suppressed a thousand thousand words of love and hatred, who have covered my face from the sun lest the gods despise me, know now that I have been wrong, that it was only my cowardice that made me walk through my life as a sleeper still in a dream. Never again will I quiet the beating of my heart or feel shame at the rage that courses through me. Let the gods come that would curse me for I will no longer sit at their feet like a child. There was never a thorn not worth grasping for the beauty of the rose.'
Betaine had stumbled upon the plaque several weeks ago while wandering the gardens, pretending to ignore the damp, watched the monstrous loan swim lazily through the gently curving canals. They were a favourite of Bala's, their scales a shocking blue-green, fins of a gauzy and ephemeral crimson. Semi-intelligent, they recognized Betaine as someone who never carried bread crumbs or stopped to scratch their slick, rubbery underbellies and ignored him. The presence of their mistress or the head gardener made them tousle like puppies for attention. It had taken several hours of coaxing on his part to get Bala to admit she had once been human, had possessed no supernatural abilities until the grief had overcome her.
Betaine then spent several days in the mundane sections of the library, crouched over huge, restored tomes of leather, carbon-weave paper, human skin, pressed flowers, his eyes and nose watering from the over-powering smell of the preservative used on the books. Arguments happened frequently over dinner, in the conservatory, on processions through the holy city much like the one today, about the nature of Bala's purpose, the arguments Feynerman's contemporaries had posed to him that the circumstances under which the awakening occurred usually determined the purpose itself, that the perpetual cellular re-growth characteristic of those who'd found their place in the Universe was not stimulated until the proper state of awareness was reached, brought upon by a crisis that allowed the blossoming of their innate personality.
Bala had begrudgingly agreed to assist with this particular train of thought at his insistence that, lacking purpose himself, and her being one of the few that possessed a longevity that nearly rivaled Planet's, studying the peculiar events of her ascension to godhood might help him understand the unique perspective her kind developed over the millennia. She had become increasing obstinate the further he attempted to dig, however, until one night at dinner when she set his pant leg on fire for asking about her parents.
"There aren't many secrets I keep," she had told him, her perfect lips, red as guilt, pursed angrily, "but the ones I want to, I will, and no brat academian will think he can steal them from me."
Betaine had dropped the discussion, but continued his private research when he wasn't filling his head with sessions of Planet's. It was true that while some godlings had impressive and sometimes bizarre new forms thrust upon them, Bala had changed very little, although as he sat next her on a heavily embroidered divan, or rather, he sat and rocked awkwardly with the motion of the procession as forty curvaceous, joyful courtesans of the goddess surrounded him on the cushions and waved censors to which great bunches of colourful ribbon were tied while Bala floated in a lotus position above him, her gauzy robes trimmed in amethyst mingling with the sweet-smelling smoke, perhaps her evolution was merely a more subtle one. She cast blessings on the crowds that lined the road, which was so wide that a hundred elephants could walk abreast, and red lights sparkled on the filigreed caps that adorned her fingers and toes as they moved sedately towards the distant harbor.
He squinted up at Bala, as power flowed from her like the tide, was returned fourfold by the adoring worshipers that clustered thickly along both sides, their mouths opening and closing as their goddess passed, the sound almost deafening. Betaine compared her unbelievable presence with the subdued sepia illustrations that were all the remained of her as a human. She had possessed an unearthly beauty even then, but now seemed as distant and unreachable as the heart of the sun that now painted the city with a golden brush.
Betaine had awoken that morning with an itch in his palms, the speed of his thoughts causing a roaring in his ears. He washed quickly, scarcely noticed he had failed to request the water warm. Dressed in flowing dove gray slacks and a trim black jacket, his hair slicked back out of his eyes, he ignored the rumblings of his stomach and padded in soft, low-heeled sandals to the Archives, swore when he noticed both Vermilli and Rubyat missing. An almost identical wrinkled coot in a tattered white robe was stretched out on the floor of the pit, eyes closed and let out a hilariously fake snore when he saw it was Betaine that had showed up.
'I, who have stepped softly to avoid the notice of Death, who have suppressed a thousand thousand words of love and hatred, who have covered my face from the sun lest the gods despise me, know now that I have been wrong, that it was only my cowardice that made me walk through my life as a sleeper still in a dream. Never again will I quiet the beating of my heart or feel shame at the rage that courses through me. Let the gods come that would curse me for I will no longer sit at their feet like a child. There was never a thorn not worth grasping for the beauty of the rose.'
Betaine had stumbled upon the plaque several weeks ago while wandering the gardens, pretending to ignore the damp, watched the monstrous loan swim lazily through the gently curving canals. They were a favourite of Bala's, their scales a shocking blue-green, fins of a gauzy and ephemeral crimson. Semi-intelligent, they recognized Betaine as someone who never carried bread crumbs or stopped to scratch their slick, rubbery underbellies and ignored him. The presence of their mistress or the head gardener made them tousle like puppies for attention. It had taken several hours of coaxing on his part to get Bala to admit she had once been human, had possessed no supernatural abilities until the grief had overcome her.
Betaine then spent several days in the mundane sections of the library, crouched over huge, restored tomes of leather, carbon-weave paper, human skin, pressed flowers, his eyes and nose watering from the over-powering smell of the preservative used on the books. Arguments happened frequently over dinner, in the conservatory, on processions through the holy city much like the one today, about the nature of Bala's purpose, the arguments Feynerman's contemporaries had posed to him that the circumstances under which the awakening occurred usually determined the purpose itself, that the perpetual cellular re-growth characteristic of those who'd found their place in the Universe was not stimulated until the proper state of awareness was reached, brought upon by a crisis that allowed the blossoming of their innate personality.
Bala had begrudgingly agreed to assist with this particular train of thought at his insistence that, lacking purpose himself, and her being one of the few that possessed a longevity that nearly rivaled Planet's, studying the peculiar events of her ascension to godhood might help him understand the unique perspective her kind developed over the millennia. She had become increasing obstinate the further he attempted to dig, however, until one night at dinner when she set his pant leg on fire for asking about her parents.
"There aren't many secrets I keep," she had told him, her perfect lips, red as guilt, pursed angrily, "but the ones I want to, I will, and no brat academian will think he can steal them from me."
Betaine had dropped the discussion, but continued his private research when he wasn't filling his head with sessions of Planet's. It was true that while some godlings had impressive and sometimes bizarre new forms thrust upon them, Bala had changed very little, although as he sat next her on a heavily embroidered divan, or rather, he sat and rocked awkwardly with the motion of the procession as forty curvaceous, joyful courtesans of the goddess surrounded him on the cushions and waved censors to which great bunches of colourful ribbon were tied while Bala floated in a lotus position above him, her gauzy robes trimmed in amethyst mingling with the sweet-smelling smoke, perhaps her evolution was merely a more subtle one. She cast blessings on the crowds that lined the road, which was so wide that a hundred elephants could walk abreast, and red lights sparkled on the filigreed caps that adorned her fingers and toes as they moved sedately towards the distant harbor.
He squinted up at Bala, as power flowed from her like the tide, was returned fourfold by the adoring worshipers that clustered thickly along both sides, their mouths opening and closing as their goddess passed, the sound almost deafening. Betaine compared her unbelievable presence with the subdued sepia illustrations that were all the remained of her as a human. She had possessed an unearthly beauty even then, but now seemed as distant and unreachable as the heart of the sun that now painted the city with a golden brush.
Betaine had awoken that morning with an itch in his palms, the speed of his thoughts causing a roaring in his ears. He washed quickly, scarcely noticed he had failed to request the water warm. Dressed in flowing dove gray slacks and a trim black jacket, his hair slicked back out of his eyes, he ignored the rumblings of his stomach and padded in soft, low-heeled sandals to the Archives, swore when he noticed both Vermilli and Rubyat missing. An almost identical wrinkled coot in a tattered white robe was stretched out on the floor of the pit, eyes closed and let out a hilariously fake snore when he saw it was Betaine that had showed up.
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