Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  Her perfect, ivory-pale face was calm; but old, old sorrow haunted her eyes.

  “Sometimes, I look for it, you know. I look to see some shadow of Myriagon in the far distance, a shadow or reflection of her musical cross-section in the fifth or seventh dimension. Or something comes to me like a scent of apple blossoms, or the tremor of an energy path or thought-reflection issuing from the time-trees in those gardens.

  “Once I saw what I thought was a golden dot, and senses I never had before and have never had since, opened up in me. I saw it only for a moment, but I was able to superimpose multiple shadow-pictures in my memory until an image built up.

  “That dot was a globe of finite surface area but infinite volume, with towers and formulations extending in each direction. Each tower and each window opened up into a new direction, a new domain, and I could see gravity and time-flow folded like origami, engineered as part of that great structure.

  “Time, space, and gravity were not there (as they are here) simply imposed from above. The gravity was manmade there, its moment and constants and characteristics. The time, and the space, and all were designed to serve the pleasure and convenience of those who dwelled in those towers, or in the private vest-pocket dimensions hanging like silver bubbles on the beyond-sides of those windows.

  “The city with its towers and its gardens and its private time-space continua, occupied more than four dimensions, more than five or ten or a hundred. There were a thousand surfaces, a thousand volumes and hypervolumes, a thousand dimensions, or ten thousand.

  “And there was reflected light shining from it, not merely the flat, thin light of this three-dimensional place we are in, but a solid, full, massive light, filling up volumes and hypervolumes of increasingly higher dimensions. Myriagon was orbiting something, something which shed that light, some singularity of ever higher and ever smaller dimension I could not see.”

  Miss Daw was silent for a time, and then said softly, “In a way, that one moment of seeing my home was and is more solid in my memory, more meaningful, more real, than all my other life besides.”

  2.

  I asked, “Are there more than four dimensions?”

  “Many more, but they do not exist here, in the created world. When Saturn rebelled against Uranus and created the world of time, of entropy and decay, he knew he would be attacked both by those he had trapped within the orbit of his creation, and by rescuers from outside—other sons of Uranus.”

  “In other words, us,” I said. “The Uranians.”

  “To limit the Prelapsarians—your people—he made this world to collapse the higher dimensions into infinitesimal volumes. He needed only a fourth dimension, in order to erect a superstructure of time, space, order, and to establish universal laws of nature.”

  “What is it like out there? In Myriagon?”

  “I know only the old tales and stories repeated by my sister, Parthenope, and she had them from our grandfather.

  “There is a singularity, called the Unknown, which retains the condition of time-space as it was before the lapse of reality into the Big Bang. Myriagon orbits this singularity. From the depths of its event horizon there arise, from time to time, lapses or folds in the substance of reality, which can be collapsed to form various areas and conditions of time, space, matter, and dimension. Most of these vest-pocket universes are small, no more than ten light-years across or ten years old, and containing trivial mass-energy.

  “Larger universes can be created, she told me, if a diver is willing to go closer and ever closer into the event horizon. There are methods to create a disturbance within the deeper layers, which will cause the ejection of larger areas of time-space, more mass-energy ylem.

  “No matter how swiftly or slowly your personal time is running, however, the deeper you go, the longer your journey seems to take from the point of view of outside observers.

  “Saturn is a creature from the very earliest times of Myriagon, back when it was called Polygon, and only occupied two or three dimensions. He fell far more deeply toward the event horizon than any other of the Early Ones. Millions, billions, countless ages of time went by; albeit, to Saturn, it was but a single journey of a single day.

  “When he emerged he controlled an area of time-space so great, and containing a mass-energy so large, that it created its own event horizon embracing the other universes. All the tiny realms of all the innocent people of Myriagon were unfolded and collapsed into his. This collapse of all life into his macro-cosmic universe created time and entropy. Countless people died. Cosmos was created—the established world.

  “Parthenope told me that no one knew why he did it. Whatever events had prompted him, whatever insults he was seeking to avenge, or ills he was trying to cure, had been forgotten in the billions of years since his departure. Only those few spirits ranging far afield, beyond all the established structures and private universes of the Prelapsarians, were spared. They returned to the wreckage of their great home, and slowly, despite that they were so few, rebuilt Myriagon.

  “From time to time, certain of the Prelapsarians, driven by grief or compassion, attempt the long journey to enter into the established world, to rescue their trapped comrades, or to free other victims of Saturn’s deed. Those who escape reach a world where there is no entropy, and nature’s laws are subscribed to voluntarily, rather than imposed.

  “Parthenope told me that the Prelapsarians have neither law nor crime. Scientific examination of their mental systems has achieved a state of perfection; and the moral order is obvious to their senses; they know neither mental disorder nor moral corruption.”

  I said, “Then they are not monsters.”

  “Far from it.”

  I said, “What about me?”

  “What about you, Phaethusa?”

  “I am not morally perfect.”

  “You do not know the secrets of their mind-science; and the eyes you use to sense the moral order, in this world of matter and decay, are shut.”

  “Why? Why make a world where people cannot see right and wrong?”

  “This world, the material world, is a false and shallow copy, inside the realm of time, of something perfect which Saturn stole from Eternity. I do not know his reasons; no one does. The Olympians overthrew Saturn, but they saw no cause to change his system. They derive their power from having others break the rules of law and of morality.”

  “Where is Saturn now?”

  “Confined in Tartarus, black realm of the Unseen One, and guarded by Tisiphone and by the huge hundred-handed Hecatonchire, whom Saturn had once imprisoned there; jailers where they once were jailed.”

  “You don’t remember living there? Myriagon?”

  She shook her head. “My father is Achelous, the son of Oceanus, eldest son of Uranus. Oceanus is one of those who, for the sake of pity, entered this world to battle the grim Demiurge. He was deceived by the nature of time, and did not know what it was he was entering. It took him fifteen billion years to cross the Pontic Ocean of ‘false vacuum’ surrounding this reality; by the time he reached here, Saturn was overcome, replaced by children, the Olympians, who were far worse than Saturn ever had been.”

  “Worse?”

  She nodded. “If Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost at least remembers what bright virtue he once had, and regrets its loss, imagine how much worse sons of Satan would be, raised from birth in the inferno. They would be devils softened by no living memory of Heaven.”

  “And what happened to you? I mean, how did you come to be here?”

  3.

  “Once, long ago, there seemed to be the possibility of peace between Lord Terminus and Oceanus. Lord Pelagaeus the Earth-shaker was given lordship over the inner ocean, where life is, and Oceanus the outer. Saturn was gone; Oceanus knew of no more reason to fight.

  “As his granddaughters, we were treated with royal privilege. The Morae, the Fates, taught us how to sing, and showed us much regarding the future, and we studied the energies and forces that make up the nat
ure of time. We became the companions of the Maiden, who was the daughter of Demeter. When the Maiden vanished, carried off by an unknown power from the fields of Enna, we were granted leave by Lord Terminus to use our powers within this world, and to fly from place to place, seeking her.

  “Our powers, however, began to show us something of the nature of time and morality. You have the same senses I do. You know what we began to see. The internal nature and moral darkness of the Olympians became more and more evident.

  “The Maiden had been abducted by the Unseen One, and raped. When the crime of the Unseen One finally came to light, instead of punishing his brother, Lord Terminus (who feared him) gave him the Maiden as his wife.

  “We have never forgiven Lord Terminus his crime, this cynical and smirking act of corruption. What kind of punishment is it to a rapist, to have the victim of his outrages be given to him in bounds of matrimony, his victim to be his, forever after? Lord Terminus decreed that when a husband takes a wife by violence, it is not rape, but holy matrimony; honor is satisfied once the wedding is performed.

  “Honor was satisfied, but we were not satisfied. The Sirens began to work against the Olympians. Secretly at first, and then more openly, we began to undermine their power.

  “The power of the gods is augmented by the belief of men, in much the same way that Grendel’s power comes from his own beliefs. We became famous for telling the truth to men, both the truth about the gods and the truth about the future, and the jealous gods killed them when we told them too much.

  “Despite this, truth began to leak out. Your poets tell more about the Greek gods than others, don’t they? Their tales portray them as more human and fallible than the gods of other peoples, who, after all, committed crimes equally as foul as those of the Olympians. The Greeks were a rational people, less in awe of their gods than other folk. That was our doing.

  “Eventually, we were stopped. The Muses, to whom we had taught our songs, now challenged us. Oaths were exchanged. Our songs were sent against their songs in over-space, and the spirit world raged with the clash and clamor of the music of the spheres gone wild.

  “The Morae, who had once been our friends, betrayed us and fated our downfall. The music of the Nine conquered us. We were given the choice between slavery and death. Some of my sisters chose death, and they dwell in the Dark House, with our old companion, the Maiden, who is Queen there. Those of us not bold enough to make so hard a choice, we had our wings plucked from us, and our feathers now adorn the crowns of the Nine Muses.

  “Do not pity me. Slavery is a mercy if you live, as I did then, in a time when no conqueror could afford to let any member of any family whom he defeated left alive. The institution benefits the conquerors, and this spares the conquered from an otherwise certain death.

  “And my first Mistress, the High Queen Basilissa, also called Hera, is the kindest and most upright of all the immortals of Olympus. Only she had some concern for morality, courtesy, propriety. Yes, I know how Homer and the other poets depict the Lady Hera. But they were inspired by the Muses, who are bastard daughters of Lord Terminus, and who hate her. My servitude in the house of my Mistress Hera was not hard.”

  4.

  I said, “If they have no government in Myriagon, what makes me a hostage? I can’t be a princess if I am from a land of anarchists.”

  “Your father is the Titan Helion. He is famous and influential, and enjoys the esteem of his peers, which is how the Prelapsarians count wealth. Because of his wisdom, he is the strategist whom the other Prelapsarians consult to coordinate the war effort. It is merely out of pity and sympathy for him that they forebear, despite that he has not asked them to.”

  I said softly, “Help me to escape, all of us.”

  She smiled sweetly and sadly. “Your wish is unrealistic. Put it from you.”

  Desperation edged my tone: “We won’t hurt anyone. You can send a message or something to the people in Chaos telling them we’re safe, and they won’t have any reason to attack.”

  “Matters are not that simple. I cannot break my word to my captors, lest the next defeated in war with the Olympians is killed, instead of taken. My sister, Aglaope, has already paid her mistress and been manumitted.”

  “At least, you should agree not to help recapture me, if I should get away. Can you do that? Or drag your heels, or do it badly. I know you don’t obey every order they give you, or else you would not be talking to me now.”

  She patted my hand with her glove. “Everyone is in service to something or someone. Your service, no matter with whom you end up, will probably be relatively light. Whoever ends up using your talents will, no doubt, want you to… ”

  “You mean using me! You mean owning me!” I said hotly.

  She said, “Hush,” because, at that moment, Dr. Fell came marching around the corner of the building, with his stiff-kneed gait, his hands folded behind his back. The black man was not with him.

  Fell said thinly, “Matters are prepared. Miss Daw, if you could bring your patient…?”

  I said, “I don’t want to go back into that cell. It’s horrible.”

  Fell turned his narrow face toward me. At that moment, even if Quentin had never told me, I would have known his eyes were nothing but hard marbles, painted to look like eyes.

  “Do not make a fuss. You will be released by tomorrow afternoon. All conditions will be reset to the status quo ante, and we will continue as before.”

  5.

  The cell did not look any different, except that the heavy black iron chain had been replaced by a modern chain of machine-forged steel links. Miss Daw’s compact disc player was atop the little shelf near the door where it normally rested, out of my reach, playing beautiful clear music.

  I spent the afternoon with selections of concertos by Brahms floating past me. I had noticed that the music did not repeat in the same order, as a phonograph record might have done. I wondered if this kind of music box was common in the outside world, if every child owned one, or only the rich.

  I tried to turn on my other senses, but Grendel’s curse was still on me. I wondered idly if I looked prettier to other people now, if Grendel’s lust had made me look more like his daydream image of me.

  That evening I was given a freshly pressed school uniform to wear, and a hurried and cross-looking Sister Twitchett told me to don it quickly.

  While I was getting dressed, she frowned at the compact disc player, and shut it off. “Mustn’t let them think we are mollycoddlers… ” she said to herself.

  When footsteps sounded in the corridor, she looked around worriedly, and hid the disc player beneath one of my two buckets.

  “Look smart!” she snapped at me.

  And she curtsied toward the barred door of the cell. She had closed it behind her when she had entered, which was unusual.

  I could hear Boggin’s voice. “…Your Lordship will forgive us if we have nothing prepared. The unexpected nature, one is tempted to say, surprise nature, of Your Lordship’s visit, left us with no time to… ”

  A voice of gravel answered him, a voice as harsh as a clash of gears in a broken gearbox. “Heh. If your spies didn’t warn you I was coming, cut their pay. You’re not getting value for value.”

  “I am not certain I… ah… can permit myself to comprehend, yes, that is the word, comprehend, every nuance of Your Lordship’s, ah, implication.”

  “Then think.”

  A grotesque man stomped up to the door. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored blue pinstripe suit with a fashionable overcoat atop that.

  He was hunchbacked, and his hump made him look as if he were carrying a bag or a small child piggyback. His shoulders and chest slanted from left to right, but the slabs of muscle there would have made even the chest of a bull seem puny. It looked like he was wearing football pads. His arms were larger around than other men’s thighs. His legs, on the other hand, were thinner than other men’s arms, and one was crooked, like a monkey’s leg, while the other was long an
d straight. He stood on them at an angle, with his knees pointed different directions, and his feet splayed out, so that his walk was a rolling sidelong shuffle, like the walk of a crab.

  The crooked leg was clamped in a complex brace of shining steel, with gears and motors at the kneecap and ankle. In his hand he held a short steel bar. I assume it was a cane, but he never leaned on it.

  His face was round and slablike, his mouth ringed with muscle, his brows jutted like an ape’s. His skull was covered with short stubble. His eyes were narrow slits, and his wrinkles seemed to be scowling, squinting, and grinning, all at once.

  I should mention that the suit was perfectly cut, but it did nothing to detract from his twisted hugeness. He had diamond cufflinks in white cuffs, but his hands were still hairy and heavy, and his sausage-fingers were brown with calluses.

  He squinted (and scowled and grinned) at me.

  “So this is the little bottom you’ve been spanking, eh?”

  Boggin was behind, looming tall. The squat man’s head was on a level with his navel, although the man’s shoulders and hump were more nearly level with Boggin’s chest.

  “Your Lordship’s meaning, ah, escapes me.” Behind the squat man, Boggin waved his hand at me, and rolled his eyes toward Sister Twitchett. He wiggled his brows suggestively. It took me a moment to realize that he wanted me to curtsey, too.

  The squat man said, “Well, you did on a bell tower in plain view of anyone within a mile. And my spies do give me value for value.”

  I took my plaid skirt in hand and curtsied. The steel chain running between my neck and the ceiling rattled.

  “Let’s see her close,” said the squat man.

  Boggin said, “Sister Twitchett, the key, if you please? Open the door for Lord Mulciber.”

  The Sister straightened up from her curtsey (which she had been holding for at least a minute) and made a great show of patting her pockets and frowning, as if she had forgotten where the key was.