The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  We forced some industry into them.

  He scratched furiously at his sunburned ear, now swollen with insect bites. “Why?”

  To perpetuate the battle.

  Ghaldezuel stumbled in the undergrowth, a network of yellow-flowered brambles as thick as his wrist, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “You keep them fighting? What for?”

  Well show you.

  Through the dense palms, he caught his first glimpse of the valley they were heading for, seeing how absurdly deep it was, perfect for Spirits. He wondered how many other Oracles had made this journey before him, passing information back and forth between the ghosts of the Firmament and Investiture. It must be such a slow business, he mused, waiting months, perhaps years, for news. But then, the invisible peoples possessed nothing but time, he supposed; maybe for them ten years shot by in the blink of an eye, a message from their Spirit friends on other worlds coming back almost instantaneously, like a real, physical conversation. He thought about that as he travelled, remembering someone telling him once that flies lived life in slow motion, that their short lives felt of perfectly normal duration to them. Perhaps the opposite was true for these artificial minds: perhaps they lived fast.

  A wheeled, top-heavy vehicle, mottled all over with peeling crimson and blistered with gun emplacements, had laboured up the jungly mountainside to meet them and was opening its hatches. Ghaldezuel climbed on top with two of the web-fingered Prism, another gliding down from the trees and thumping onto the roof.

  They rolled along bright yellow terraces of water root and pumpkin, making their way down the zigzag of mountain paths to the valley floor, a hissing trail of smoke pumping form the vehicle’s chimney. Small, stagnant-looking fish ponds dominated another section of hill, winking in the sun, while arteries of wood-lined trenches had been dug along the mountainside. A barrage net of bomblets, strung up by wire and raised on teetering wooden stumps like hundred-foot telegraph poles, covered the valley. Ghaldezuel gazed up at the primed, hanging bombs above his head, undecided on how safe to feel.

  A platoon of gliding Prism followed them down the hillside, leaping deftly through the trees and gliding on towards the valley floor, easily outpacing the vehicle. Ghaldezuel had seen flying Monkmen and Monkbats—hairy, brainless things with webbed arms and legs—but these were quite different. They fell slowly through the air using only the skin between their fingers, their arms and legs extended into the wind. Lower down the mountainside, Ghaldezuel could see the openings of cave-like hovels bored into the rock, noticing after a while that the base of the valley was dotted, like a sponge, with holes.

  In their midst, there appeared to be a vast field of moving colour, Ghaldezuel’s eyes only making it out when they had begun their descent down the final terrace. It was a rubbish tip strewn with colourful plastic, all of it blowing gently in the hot wind and giving the impression of movement. Why dump their refuse in the middle of their town? At the centre of the rubbish tip, lying in the shade of the hills, was a ring of stones that contained a small, dark, undisturbed pond, perhaps the local cesspit.

  The vehicle slowed to a rumbling crawl, its occupants jabbering to one another and climbing quickly out. Ghaldezuel was helped from the roof by a Lingatra that reeked of alcohol. The Prism looked him over with its cloudy red eyes, pointing one of its webbed fingers in the direction of the pond.

  Ghaldezuel felt his body being overtaken again as he glanced up at the looming valley, and it occurred to him then that perhaps those who inhabited his body did not know precisely where to go. His feet were pulled out from under him, marching him stiffly across the wasteland of plastic towards the ring of standing stones. At their centre, the pool was brackish and calm and buzzing with the peculiar large gnats native to these moons.

  Ghaldezuel’s body stopped between the stones and he looked out at the water, waiting.

  See, came the rich, vivid voice from somewhere between his ears.

  The gnats, crawling on the meniscus of the pond, began to struggle, as if the surface of the water had tightened to trap their and legs and tails. Their incensed, whining drone increased in volume, like a thousand flies swarming a corpse. Ghaldezuel hated that sound: the sound of death. Now they were stuck, squirming, to the water, the meniscus black with their wriggling, whining bodies.

  Then from the middle of the pool something began to rise.

  Ghaldezuel had no choice but to watch: his eyes were glued to the spot, gripped by the tips of invisible claws.

  The skin of trapped gnats, writhing and droning, little legs pawing at the air, rose higher, until something the size of an Amaranthine had swollen within the meniscus of the pond. It seemed to breathe in, vacuum forming into shape.

  The obscene bulge, standing connected to the pond like a stalagmite of moving insects, resembled a cocoon. Ghaldezuel knew that whatever lurked inside that shell of living things was trapped, just like them, by the gravity of the moon.

  Ghaldezuel felt his feet slide out from under him again and he was forced forward through the rubbish to the edge of the pond, the sound of the insects loud now in his ears. He was made to open his arms and tried to fight it, receiving a little hiccup of a heart palpitation in return for his stubbornness. He relaxed himself, dripping with sweat: they could kill him and inhabit his body any time they liked; it was only out of some deference to the future, to something they saw in him, that made them keep him alive. He supposed he ought to be grateful.

  The shell of insects reached closer and their fingers touched. Ghaldezuel wanted to recoil again as he sensed their squirming, biting bodies— indeed, many had already opened their jaws and latched on to him, perhaps only in an effort to get away. He tried to avert his face as they moved closer, drawing together, and some small mercy allowed him to angle his head.

  They embraced, a Lacaille body bloated with who knew how many Spirits and the gnat skin containing another group, separated by light-years, together again after aeons apart.

  Biting, all over his flesh, the flickering of tiny wings tickling him. A hideous warmth.

  And something more.

  Ghaldezuel almost forgot about the pinching, needling pain of the insect bites, for in that moment he felt the connection between the cousin Spirits. He breathed in the stagnant reek of the water, mixed as it was with the sharp metallic stink of the insects, and suddenly there were new memories in his head.

  Memories not of the past, but of the future.

  The drone of the gnats changed around him as they released their grip, Ghaldezuel finding that control of his fingers—but only his fingers—had been returned to him. They combined their whine to produce sounds, which at first made sense only in a vague, intuitive way. After a second’s listening, however, Ghaldezuel understood the Spirit of the water and flies was talking in a language he knew, a language he could even somehow speak.

  “How are you here?” the water spirit asked, its incredulity apparent in the high drone of the gnats.

  “He is our vessel,” Ghaldezuel replied, his teeth pinching sharply down on his lip when the Spirits closed his mouth again. “Do you recall the invention? We must send for every Oracle.”

  The fly-covered shape bent to peer at him. “But it is still alive. You have not taken it for yourselves—why not?”

  “Because he is a king now. Our king. And he will help us. Won’t you, Ghaldezuel?”

  He was given back the use of his mouth and throat, an expectant silence falling over the pond. Even the gnats quieted. Ghaldezuel moved his eyes experimentally, saying nothing, spotting a yellowed Prism femur lying in the rubbish-strewn mud at the edge of the pond.

  At once, his own hand curled into a fist, punching himself in the temple. Ghaldezuel saw stars, unable, on legs of concrete, to stumble. “Yes,” he managed, instinctively choosing a word that must have been Reflective: Ahh.

  They seemed to understand and his fist relaxed.

  “Does it know what we do here?” asked the water spirit. “Will it appreciate?”
>
  “Ghaldezuel,” said his own mouth. “These four moons—Pandemonium’s Daughter, Niece, Aunt and Sister—are our grand experiment. They are our game, a simulacrum of a contest happening far from here.”

  Ghaldezuel sat in the valley of rocks, among the blown scraps and shards of multicoloured plastic. Exquisite red dragonflies settled over his damp white armour, crawling, investigating. More bones lurked in the crevices, he noticed, though these had been painted in jolly blues and yellows. Ghaldezuel began to form the opinion that the things here were prized for their colours and had been thrown as offerings for the Spirits.

  He’d been given a breather, a space of a few minutes to relieve himself and take a drink, and now that both were accomplished he waited, dreading the stiffening of his muscles that signalled their desire to return.

  So now he knew. Now he knew why these moons, of all the worlds in the Investiture, were the most dangerous and seldom visited. They were the playthings of the Epir Spirits, a war organised and perpetuated by the dead, their every fortification and border zone recreated from slowly gathered information, like an old Lacaille plotting the movements of armies while listening to radio frequencies from a distant land.

  They were using these poor folk, untold millions who had perished under a regime of perpetual war, to simulate and game the battles in the distant galaxies—the Thunderclouds, as the witch Nazithra had called them—studying the outcomes to see which way the cards would fall.

  Through observations of the galaxies, delivered by hundreds of far-flung “Oracles”—Prism and Amaranthine pressed into service by the ghosts of their moons and planets—the Spirits of Indak-Australis had built up a network of communication so comprehensive that it infiltrated the entire Firmament and Investiture. Here, on the moons of Pandemonium, they gathered what they knew, managing their divisions of acolytes in their own galaxy while simultaneously peering into those in the near vicinity, mapping out the early moves of an apparently colossal conflict developing among the kingdoms of the Thunderclouds.

  But there was more: merging together in their own powerful gravity had afforded the ghosts of the Epir machines some unnatural farsight, a comprehension of an underlying destiny that permeated the universe.

  It was in you and your ancestors, Seerapt had told him. Waiting. The desire to hold another in your arms: to embrace them in love, to penetrate them in lust, always seemingly unfulfillable. It was the same for the Epir, perhaps for all higher forms of life. When the Epir made us, they used a template of their own minds. That same compulsion to enfold another in our embrace resulted in the merging of two great gravities, and within it the spark of a singularity, a vision of the future.

  Someone had designs on us all, Ghaldezuel, and gifted us this power. It is here that we have focused it.

  From what Ghaldezuel understood, the Spirits had organised the warring kingdoms precisely as they appeared in the galaxies, with country borders representing galactic arms, star clusters and systems, each place exhibiting the same strengths or weaknesses as its corresponding galactic region. They had even named prominent Lingatra after galactic rulers, assigning them their names from birth and watching them rise to fight and die for their territory.

  Ghaldezuel sat and waited, hoping for just another minute without their ghostly interference. He could feel their pressure again, just behind his eyes and in the base of his skull, and an aching, dead weight resting between his shoulderblades.

  He guessed that now, after a couple of thousand years’ worth of simulation, the Spirits here could predict what was going to happen in the Thundercloud wars quite a few moves before they actually happened. Ghaldezuel had no real idea of how far away the other galaxies were; no Prism or Immortal he knew of had ever voyaged there—they were like islands on the far side of unguessably vast oceans, one day to be visited, perhaps, but not in this lifetime. And to what end? he wondered. Why sacrifice ten million lives, besides the obvious pleasure these beings derived from such cruelty? What did they hope to achieve?

  Come back now.

  He stayed where he was, fearful of standing in case they took him and he fell.

  Come back, unaided.

  Ghaldezuel took a moment to realise what they were asking of him, and a wave of dumb gratitude swept through him. He sipped a last mouthful of the fruity local wine and stood, hoisting up his britches.

  “Thank you.”

  “Our Oracle, Charoen, can no longer use the Optic at Cancri.”

  “Why not?”

  “It has been seized, they say, by someone.”

  “Well, that does not matter for now, now that we are joined.”

  Ghaldezuel felt their attention on him.

  “With this one’s plans for the eternal city of Napp, we shall have no trouble repeating what has been done today. We are separated no more.”

  “And then we shall see everything.”

  THE VISIT

  And so Grand-Marshal Ghaldezuel, handsome though he had been, was gone. His meddlesome second, the old Lacaille named Vibor, remained, but Nazithra would see to him soon enough. And then the Spirits could have the city for themselves.

  The witch came again to the city’s keep, creeping past the gambling and drinking at the gate and taking the shadowed stair to Ghaldezuel’s old chambers. The smell grew fouler as she ascended, rising up the levels from dank excrement to rotten meat, and into the flyblown air of the upper reaches where Ghaldezuel, and Cunctus before him, had taken their rooms. Cunctus, of course, had ceased to matter long ago, when the Spirits of Port Maelstrom first told her of their plan, commanding her to visit the prison in the hills and gain the inmates’ trust, there to wait for the one who would come and liberate them. It was a long, slow wait, and many times she had questioned them, only to be rewarded by the accuracy of their visions. The Spirits knew all, the Spirits saw all.

  Nazithra took out her stolen key and let herself in, stepping lightly into the darkness. Her round eyes, proportionately the largest of any Prism breed, were in their element here, made as they were for the darkness of the Threen jungles, and she looked quickly around.

  The Bult had not, as far as she knew, left these rooms since Ghaldezuel first installed her here. Since no guard in the city would go near an adult Bult, all meals were brought and left at her door. Nazithra wrinkled her nose at the pungency of the place; in all honesty, she was rather disappointed, having heard so much in her time about these renowned cannibals of the Investiture. This Jathime, as Ghaldezuel had called her (almost certainly a bastardization of a completely unpronounceable name), seemed as meek and homesick as a little child, not even worth the sport of taunting. Nazithra had come here occasionally to whisper into the Bult’s sleeping ear, trying in vain to elicit a response, but the creature was dull as dishwater: perpetually away with the fairies.

  She crept towards the bed, conscious that the heap of furs and blankets was rising and falling with the breaths of someone awake and waiting, not wanting to get too close.

  The first thing she did every time was to squat and piss in the room, claiming it for herself, asserting her dominance. This she did now, a smile spreading on her lips.

  “Hello again, Bultess,” Nazithra whispered in the dark, standing from her squat. “Still in bed, I see.” She crept closer to the pile of furs, careful to keep her distance. “Poor Ghaldezuel must be almost there by now.” She smiled again. “Do you miss him? I do. I can’t help but think, night after night, on all the things he and I will do when we are wed.”

  The shape stirred—forced, since she was speaking in the ancient Reflective, to understand every word.

  Her smile widened. “Oh yes, didn’t you know? This is the Spirits’ decree: they see great things in Ghaldezuel’s future.” She looked around the cluttered chamber. “Best not to get too used to this place, I think. We’ll need that bed”—she tittered, imagining it again—“for our nuptials soon enough.”

  She moved closer. “But you mustn’t take it personally, my dear Jathime
. You never had a hope of keeping him; not someone like that. From one female to another, I mean you no ill will. It’s just the case with first loves.” Her tongue began to snake from her mouth. “It never lasts.”

  She reached out and ran her hand along the furs, twining them in her fingers. “I understand your plight, I do. Just say the word and I’ll help you get away from here, from all of this.” She risked one last step. “This, all of this, has nothing to do with you, a simple Bult. You don’t belong here.”

  The Threen waited, breath bated, a line of drool drip-dripping from her tongue. She’d expected more of a reaction by now.

  Nazithra pulled slowly at the fur, dragging it back, inch by inch.

  “Hello in there . . . ?”

  The top of a scabbed head came into view, the haunted eyes turning in Nazithra’s direction. She stepped quickly back, registering the gagged mouth, the bound wrists, all extremities nibbled off. It was one of Cunctus’s generals, he who had most recently been hanged from the wall. Jathime must have been stealing them from the parapets while they were still alive, then putting them back.

  She turned towards the new sound in the chamber, the scream rising in her throat.

  SLAATHIS

  Aaron had lost track of time, skimming through celestial darkness like a deepwater fish, the lanterns of surrounding life flickering out.

  The moon Slaathis rose ahead, painted with the stained-glass colours of its mother, Zeliolopos. Aaron reached out to the tracking team he’d hired, awaiting their signal, and descended into the moon’s brushed smoke of atmosphere.

  As he dropped, he shrivelled to the size of a mouse, darting ahead of a stream of vapour and down to a cold land of farmed volcanic mudflats, seeking out the stand of trees.

  Cold fear overcame him as he spied the swollen fruit in their branches, knowing that so many lifetimes of planning ended here. No greater, more romantic act of revenge had ever been carried out, he was sure; but what was on the other side, not even Aaron the Long-Life could know.