Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  There were few greater deterrents to those seeking immortality than the sight of immortality gone wrong.

  One of the most tragic categories of all was that of the defective immortal. Those living in agony for millennia beyond measure. Those rendered into formations of stone with staring eyes, screaming mouths. Those doomed to walk their worlds when all of their kind had become dust, doomed to guard a holy relic or tend to an arcane machine while knowing nothing but grief and ravenous hunger. Those doomed to stand, locked in a moment cauterised from space and time, and watch while the urverse spun on without them.

  Oh yes, there were ways in which one could regret becoming immortal. Because true immortality was a lack, not a gift. It was a creation with one critical piece overlooked. It was a failure to adequately plan a proper being.

  Generally speaking, if it didn’t come from an Infinite, immortality was going to be something a life-form … well, lived to regret. In fact, even if it came from an Infinite, a life-form was almost certain to regret it after a few lifetimes, particularly if it happened to be a life-form of the true-mortal, organic variety. Animals are ill-equipped to deal with eternity. Their biological imperative has a limited span, after which insanity becomes seductive – becomes inevitable.

  They were few, but they were forever. And they would stand beside the Firstmades at the end of days, and weep with joy.

  LEAP OF FAITH

  Moskin looked dubiously at the device Blacknettle was holding.

  It looked – there was really no other way to say it – it looked like a musical instrument made by someone with an unhealthy obsession with purple metal, wrapped around a large black tuber and fixed in place with claw-shaped roots. It was among the least scientific things Moskin had ever seen, and would not have looked out of place on a dining table set by his old Gróbi friend Scad.

  “What is that?” he inquired.

  “That,” Bayn replied primly, Blacknettle’s smile widening as she held up the object in front of Moskin’s capsule, “is a cryptoplasmic energy coil integrated into a Barmath cell, with custom-fabricated interlink points for micro-whorl compatible storage and sequencing.”

  “That explained nothing,” Moskin complained.

  Bayn sighed. “It’s a device for intercepting a soul in transit from body to unreality,” she said, “and holding it temporarily in a special interface chamber I am still in the process of designing. All of it, I might add, constructed from unrelated components and against every standard and regulation in my specifications.”

  “That’s better,” Moskin said.

  “It’s a ghost trumpet,” Bayn added. Blacknettle held up the instrument, flared-end out, and put the imaginary mouthpiece to her lips.

  “Now I feel you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Sorry,” Bayn said, but Blacknettle was grinning again with her funny little teeth. “Still, it was quite a masterpiece of against-spec thinking and design, and I’m rather proud of it. Provided we can activate it in the correct time and under the correct conditions, it will do what we need it to do from this side.”

  “Very nice.”

  “And since neither it nor the interface can under any circumstances extract energy from the intercepted soul, it circumvents the most important strictures regarding interference with a revered Firstmade’s person.”

  “It’s not even really a person,” Moskin noted.

  “Yes, that navigates us around some of the other strictures,” Bayn said smugly. “Of course, it’s still rather severe interference with a Pinian Disciple, but I am confident that the circumstances are sufficient to warrant an exception.”

  “What about the interface chamber?” Moskin asked.

  “It’s taking shape behind you,” Bayn said, “on the far side of the chamber – which I have finally repaired and to which I have restored atmosphere, incidentally. The chamber will be ready before Gabriel has indicated he will be carrying out his side of the procedure.”

  Moskin paused to admire this phrasing, before asking, “I assume this means we’ve managed to coordinate the time and place?”

  “As much as we can,” Bayn said. “The probability-cluster of souls that most likely contains the Second Disciple will be gathered, and Gabriel will send them through our interception system, according to this timetable,” a shifting, complex sequence of overlapping timestamps appeared in Moskin’s field of view on the shell of the pod. “As you can see, there are still uncertainties involved.”

  “And is Gabriel aware that this ‘cluster’ will probably require him to kill several actual humans as well as the one human who is hosting the Pinian?”

  “That is part of the uncertainty,” Bayn said, “and there is a solid case to be made for the probability that these deaths would occur at this time anyway, and we are just taking advantage of predictive models–”

  “A solid case?” Moskin said doubtfully.

  “An optimistic case?” Bayn countered. “We will only draw the Pinian soul through the veil, there is no risk to the humans.”

  “No risk aside from their dying,” Moskin said, rather than voice any concerns he might have had about mysterious passenger-entities that could potentially come along for the ride, breaking a quarantine Limbo had decided was worth risking worlds full of people to keep in place.

  “When dealing with soul energy, there are considerably graver dangers than dying,” Bayn declared. “Regardless, I think you’ll find the Archangel Gabriel is historically not averse to sacrificing human lives if the need is great. The biggest question I have is whether he has truly decided this is the case now.”

  There was nothing much for Moskin to do except double- and triple-check the processes and wait while the overlapping timetables trickled towards zero. The new interface – a leg-slender pillar of milky white that ran floor to ceiling in the chamber right behind his own, and visible if he swivelled around in his suspension – slowly took shape and Bayn declared that it was in perfect working order. As much, that was, as she could be certain it was, given that the only way to test it was by intercepting a soul as it retracted into unreality.

  There was something wrong with the overall picture he was seeing. Moskin was uncertain at first, but gradually grew apprehensive – and finally spoke up.

  “The actual interception, with the ghost trumpet, can’t be done from here in the chapel,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Bayn asked. “Obviously, I will ensure that the conduit terminus on this side is at the proper location and will accelerate steadily along the requisite pressure line, and this chamber within my hull will provide the correct conditions for the trumpet–”

  “No, it’s your hull that is the problem,” Moskin said. “Well, the consecration of this chamber, as well as the properties of your hull. Don’t you see? It sets up an interfering resonance with the veil, and it will push the folded space on the other end of the conduit out of alignment. The soul will get drawn off-course, sort of drift sideways, and then enter unreality. We won’t get it.”

  “Blacknettle has to orientate the device using her knowledge of the conduit,” Bayn said. Blacknettle, standing on the hard white chapel floor, frowned. “The Barmath cell and sequencers will activate automatically when the conditions are right. This is the only place on board she can do it. Even though she could operate in the gulf, the same interference would apply. Blacknettle is a glorified undead – a deeply complex metaphysical event.”

  “That’s all true,” Moskin said. “And that’s why you’ll have to let me out.”

  “What?”

  “I have the same sense of the conduit and the interplay,” Moskin said, “but I don’t share Blacknettle’s attributes. I can activate the device. It needs to be external to the ship – you’ll have to set me adrift at just the right speed–”

  “I haven’t got any sort of extra-vehicular suits or equipment,” Bayn scoffed. “I just barely managed to save you the last time.”

  “Then I’ll have to hope these timetables ar
e accurate.”

  Bayn was silent for a long time. Blacknettle stood, fingering the ghost trumpet and looking worried.

  Before Moskin could rally more arguments, Bayn retracted the pod walls down into the floor in a hot-cold cascade of nourishing sludge. He collapsed to the hard, slippery floor and spasmed, retching and coughing as the long dependence on the suspension left him in shock – but only for a short time. He filled his lungs with air, rasped out a harsh breath, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. The stink in his nostrils was abrupt and shocking. He looked up, blinking momentarily in the harsh, sourceless light. Blacknettle was standing next to him, examining her slime-sheathed feet with a look of placid curiosity on her face.

  When Bayn spoke next, her voice was small and skin-crawlingly childlike.

  “I don’t want you to leave me.”

  “I’m mortal,” Moskin said, and illustrated this by retching again, hawking, and spitting another warm mouthful of shit-flavoured paste into the mess on the floor. “Sooner or later I’m going to leave you,” he pushed himself to his feet, grimacing. “But not today.”

  Blacknettle beamed up at him, raised a delicate hand and almost sent him tumbling to the floor with an encouraging clap on the arm.

  The timetable melted away, one phantom deadline at a time, only Bayn capable of deciphering the signals. The Flesh-Eater made what preparations she could to ensure Moskin’s safety, given that she was still suffering considerable lack of structural integrity following the attack of the Gorgoña.

  And then Moskin was standing in Bayn’s airlock, ghost trumpet heavy enough to make his still-feeble arms ache.

  “We are approaching the velocity and ambient conditions,” Bayn said from the nearby wall in a solicitous murmur. “And the time is close.”

  “I’m ready,” Moskin said, raising the trumpet.

  He’d never been vented out of an airlock before, certainly not just after having spent months or years in a womb-like medical recovery tank. After the surprisingly gentle puff of escaping air from the airlock around him, Moskin became aware of a deep, terrible cold and – obviously – a pressing inability to breathe, but he wasn’t flung out into emptiness. The downward pull of Castle Void turned the gulf into a dark chasm, the bottom of which was invisible from their current elevation. Moskin, feeling his extremities tingling in the encroaching freeze, forced himself to step forward to the outer airlock door.

  It was the same rounded archway, he realised with mild interest, that he had leapt into from Thrabney Point all those years ago.

  He looked up. Heaven wasn’t really visible from here either, since there was no light … but he could see the scattered jewels of the Cursèd’s Playground starfields, occluded by a great shadow that he assumed was the flatworld floating in between. He could almost make out shadings and outcroppings, could possibly have located the hole where the Eden Road met the realm above and the spotlight beam of the sun shining down past the airborne farms … if he’d had the luxury of sightseeing.

  He pushed off from the rounded lip of the airlock with creaking legs, and plummeted towards the Rooftop millions of cubits below.

  As he fell, he became aware that there was atmosphere of sorts, albeit extremely thin. It was enough to keen past his ears, draw sketches in the hoarfrost forming on his eyes and cheeks. He arrowed downwards, tumbling away from the Flesh-Eater, away from Heaven … into, or so it seemed in his mind, the unknown tangle of folded and intangible space-time events just on the other side of the veil from where he was dying.

  Baring his teeth, hearing them shift and crack in the cold through his skull even though the soundwaves wouldn’t transmit to his ears, he raised the trumpet and pointed it.

  Now, he snarled to himself, to Gabriel, to the Pinians, to anybody he thought might be listening. Now. Now.

  Blackness didn’t so much swallow him, as finish swallowing him.

  “I never truly appreciated before now,” Bayn’s voice said from a great and fuzzy distance, “how tough Elves are.”

  Moskin opened his eyes, hissing with the pain of his ice-blasted eyeballs and the glare of light that assailed him. He was lying, racked with pain, on the hard white floor of the chapel. The slush of the interface pod had been cleared away, and he was now spread-eagled in a lighter puddle of his own thawing expectorations and skin extrusions.

  He drew a harsh, ragged breath into burning lungs, tried to move. Some of his medium-sized joints spasmodically obeyed his numb brain’s commands, but his large muscles and extremities were still lagging behind.

  A shadow loomed over him, and he blinked painfully until Blacknettle came into a semblance of focus. Her form, as always, was soft and visually soothing, at once difficult to look at and as pleasant as a balm.

  “Kag,” he said harshly, and spasmed.

  “Are you alright, Moskin?” Bayn asked, her voice matching the anxious look on Blacknettle’s face.

  “Ay,” Moskin said, and coughed, and then wished he hadn’t. “I’ll live,” he finally managed to croak.

  “I imagine you will, at that,” the Flesh-Eater congratulated him. “To be perfectly blunt, I was less worried about you freezing or suffocating this time, and more worried about some vital part of you cracking off when we flew in and retrieved you. You banged against the hull quite hard before I could compensate and … well, I’m afraid you lost some spines again.”

  Moskin tried to raise a hand to his hair, but his arms still weren’t obeying completely. He hacked another agonising lungful of air in and then pushed it out.

  “Do we have him?” he wheezed.

  There was a considering silence, and Blacknettle’s perfect little face wrinkled in an uncertain frown.

  “We have something,” Bayn said, sounding oddly hesitant.

  THE PILLAR OF FIRE

  Moskin hadn’t been sure what a trapped soul would look like. He finally lurched to his feet with Blacknettle’s help, and as he began to hobble across the chapel floor the Angel moved in to help him. She really was tiny, he realised in bemusement.

  “Thank you,” he said roughly. She didn’t answer, but he wasn’t really expecting her to. His eyes, clearing satisfactorily, were already fixed on the far side of the room.

  It was funny, he continued to reflect in the same disjointed way. If he’d told anyone in Fade, let alone Orbonyville, that one day he’d be walking off a near-death experience with an Angel of God propping him up under one arm, they would have…

  Well, they would have said he was crazy. And they probably wouldn’t have been wrong. But they wouldn’t have believed him, that was the point. He wouldn’t have believed him.

  The chamber, the milky pillar that Bayn had cobbled together to contain the energy dredged out of the exiled sphere by the ghost trumpet, stood at one side of the chapel like a great smooth candle, a column stretched from floor to ceiling.

  It would be temporary, Bayn kept warning them. No more than a month, most likely much less. That was the limit of the Flesh-Eater’s ability to hold onto the burning brand that was a disembodied soul.

  And this wasn’t even a metaphor, Moskin could see. The leg-thick storage column Bayn had built was no longer white, nor was it the clear fluid-filled amber of the old interface. It was filled from top to bottom with a burning orange-white glow with blinding tongues of blue flame rising and coiling through it.

  It was beautiful.

  “So,” Moskin said, rubbing his neck and grimacing at the raw, shredded feeling in his throat and lungs. “Is it…?”

  “We’re not sure,” Bayn said. “It certainly didn’t come out of what’s left of my power core, and it didn’t come out of the gulf. Not the gulf on this side of the veil. It came directly through the trumpet, as far as my sensors can tell, transmitting here just as it was designed to do. Whatever it is, it’s got more energy, of a different order, than I have ever attempted to contain. We’ll be lucky to hold it for a week, but I’ll shore up my buffers and see what I can do. If it isn’t a soul, I
have no idea what it is.”

  “Can it communicate?”

  “Hmm,” Bayn said, “not exactly. I shut down the transmission shortly after it began – it’s really only an estimation of communication, just as the appearance itself is just a visual interpretation of the energy. Symbolic, perhaps, but … it’s transmitting, yes, but it doesn’t seem as though the transmission contains data as such.”

  “Would you mind?”

  Blacknettle nodded – agreement, or compliance – against his ribs.

  And the pillar of fire began to roar.

  It rose to full volume as Bayn returned the transmission to its original level, until the air of the chapel felt like it was on the verge of breaking and Moskin’s already-damaged ears tried to curl up like scrolls. It was anguish, agony, a frenzied rage of suffering the likes of which Moskin had never imagined possible. It was distress on a level that left him convinced that he was only hearing a fraction of it, those elements that were capable of translation into soundwaves and being translated by the Elven brain. It was misery beyond misery, and he very nearly demanded that Bayn release the blazing entity right then and there.

  “It doesn’t seem to be doing anything else,” Bayn said, as she lowered the volume to a more bearable level. “But it definitely sounds like the voice of a person, interpretation or not. It’s not a mechanical sound, or the sound of any simple chemical reaction.”

  “Let it howl,” Moskin said, as the volume dropped further. “Full force. Please,” Blacknettle looked puzzled. “If it is a soul, if it is the Disciple, then it’s just experienced death,” he explained. “What it thought was death, at least. And if it was convinced it was a human at the time, it would have had no context for it. Let it scream.”

  The pillar of fire screamed for a day, before finally petering out into whimpers and weeping and growls. Then, between one sob and the next, it started to laugh.