The Water Bear

by Groucho Jones

  They descended into a small farm, a tangle of garden, clotted around a stone farmhouse, surrounded by fields of waving grass. Children ran out shrieking to greet the Blue warriors, who snarled fiercely, before laughing. The farmers came to meet them, a smiling coffee-skinned couple.

  “Are these the ones?” asked the woman, shyly.

  Marius nodded.

  “Then we are blest,” said the man.

  Box waved. She was already understanding this language. The farmyard smells assaulted her face: the heavy ammoniac stench of chicken shit, and musky barn manure, and freshly turned, moist soil, and hay curing in the mow, more real than real.

  The children waved back, delightedly.

  “Red Lady,” whispered the woman.

  Past the farm, they continued down towards a country railway station, with beelike creatures bumbling in the long grass, between ceramic railway sleepers. As they descended, the air grew warmer. Here it was like summer. A train surged into view, flowing from a perplexing middle-distance, and some of it peeled away, and slowed to a stop in their station. The Vikings led their horses into freight cars, where they tied them into horseboxes – incongruous timber against the pristine ceramics of the carriages - and the train surged forward. Soon, they were travelling at high speed though a harlequin countryside.

  “This is the centerline train,” said Ito. “Welcome to Flipside.”

  Marius stood to be introduced.

  “Marius, this is Ophelia Box, known to your people as the Red Lady, and Brin Lot and Kitou Gorgonza, her shieldmaidens. Team, this is Marius D, a warrior of the Blue people. Marius’s riders are Markus, Velo, Viki, Alis, Ox and Bravery. Also here, but not currently visible, is my ship, the Water Bear.

  “Ride of the Spinifex Reach, meet the hand of the Water Bear.

  “As the Blue people say, this is a great day.”

  Marius bowed, and unsheathed his bone sword, and presented it, grip-first towards Box.

  “What do I do?” she asked Ito.

  “Accept it,” said Ito.

  She took it. It was as light as a feather, constructed like a samurai sword: a katana.

  “Now give it back to him, grip-first.”

  She did. It was like rotating razor-sharp air.

  A grin split his face.

  “As you say, Ito, a great day.”

  “He’s now yours to command,” said Ito.

  “I only just met him.”

  “He’ll gladly die for you. Now for the others.”

  One by one, she accepted their weapons. One of the women boldly kissed her full on the lips, before blushing and backing away.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  [You did perfectly,] said the Water Bear.

  [How do you know?]

  [Comparative ethnology. Also their vitals. They love you.]

  The Flipside universe was the shape of a Möbius strip, embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space, like the Möbius machine itself, although the exact relationship between the shape of the machine and the shape of the universe was unclear. To its inhabitants, Flipside seemed spatially flat, but self-referentially twisted, so that it turns on itself from every direction.

  Box learned this from a book, a beautiful physical book, printed on beautiful vellum. Travel from side to side, away from the centerline, was a mystical experience: to dreams, and the shadow. Travel along the centerline brings the traveler back where they started, after a journey of some four thousand kilometers, including a thousand kilometers of vacuum.

  The part they lived in was called the Upside.

  The vacuum below is called Downside.

  Around the cylinder is Farside.

  The centerline train traverses the whole universe, and the direction of its travel is called Spinwards.

  Everyone knew the origin of the train.

  It was sung into existence.

  They were put up in a building called the Chancery, a sprawling stockade owned by the Chance family, built on a series of arch bridges, above a meandering river, where it emptied into a wine-dark sea. It was the informal seat of government in this southerly, or Spinifex Reach of the Möbius universe. Amelia Chance was its leader. She was a descendent of the original Chance, who was the last living Horu, and also the first Reanimated, as the Horu people of Flipside liked to call themselves.

  The Blue people were just called the Blue.

  Kitou and Brin brought two razor-sharp bone swords into their rooms.

  “I thought you didn’t like weapons,” said Box.

  “These knifes have a spiritual importance,” said Kitou.

  Brin agreed. “When in Möbius, do as the Möbians do. Everyone has swords here. It’d be unwise to be at an untrained disadvantage.”

  They started to improvise. Box blanched. The consequence of an unintelligent fist was a broken nose. The consequence of an unintelligent katana was a severed hand.

  “Stop!” she yelled.

  [Water Bear?] she said.

  [Yes.]

  [Can Ito send Marius please, urgently?]

  Five minutes later, Marius appeared with four sticks and protective gear. He passed out the gear, instructed them in its use, and taught them. Box was frankly hopeless. “Don’t worry, he said. You’re the brains of the creature. It’s why you have shieldmaidens.” Brin was a natural, a superbly balanced athlete, but Kitou was in another dimension.

  [Watch,] said the Water Bear.

  She replayed Kitou’s moves in Box’s sensorium. Kitou riposted before her opponent started to move. Sticks banged on facemasks and heads.

  [She’s faster and better than anyone here. All she lacks is any semblance of control. You were right to take the sword off her.]

  [How is that even possible?]

  [Every once in a while, Po throws up a genius player. This is what it looks like.]

  [Why now?]

  [Because I’ve stopped slowing her down.]

  Marius seemed happy to be beaten.

  “Goddess,” he grinned.

  “My head is spinning,” said Box.

  “It’d be broken if it wasn’t spinning,” said Ito.

  The nights were bitterly cold; something to do with the way the prevailing winds spiraled through vacuum. There were five seasons, named after parts of the day: Dawn, Morning, Day, Dusk and Dark. Now it was Dusk. From here it got colder.

  The Chancery was delightfully homespun. Rough woolen throws covered overstuffed furniture, in front of a roaring log fire. The floor was real timber, and through it she could hear the trickle and splash of the river. There was no sign of honeycomb composite here.

  It was like her dreams of holidays.

  “Upside, Downside, Flipside, Farside,” she said, not complaining. “It’s like being tossed in a word salad. Only the Blue people make any sense to me.”

  “That’s because they’re Pursang,” said Kitou.

  “Of the old blood,” said Ito.

  “They really sung this place into existence?”

  “We saw it happen,” said Kitou.

  “Maybe,” said Ito.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe they did. Maybe it already existed.”

  “You said that before. That it’s our unconscious.”

  “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “A place?”

  “A physical place, now.”

  “Now? What does that mean?”

  “Lacking the right words, I can only speak in metaphors. I believe the Möbius machine hollowed a new spatial universe out of the human psyche, where there had previously only been a single, timelike dimension.”

  “But how? Why did that happen?”

  “A shortcut, I think. They modeled this world on their brains.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “I likewise can’t explain. I don’t have the mathematics.”

  “What does that make us?” asked Kitou.

  “Imaginary,” said Brin.

  “Marius is going to take Brin and
me on a sortie, to see the Grays,” said Kitou the next morning, over breakfast, which Ito was cooking.

  Box had decided to increase her training. She’d spent an hour already that morning with a stick, with the two female riders, Alis and Viki, barely more than girls themselves, who’d smiled warmly at her ineptitude, before beating some rudimentary skills into her.

  “Not without me,” she said, through a mouthful of porridge. “What’s a Gray?”

  “They’re the Enemy’s soldiers,” said Kitou.

  “You’ll be needing a horse,” said Ito.

  A half-hour later, a Blue horseman led them into a field beyond the Chancery wall, where frost like spiderwebs covered the trees. It was still before dawn, with the slightest hint of pearl in the north. The horseman seemed as old as the world itself, with rheumy gray eyes and wrinkles within wrinkles. There were a dozen horses in the field, some as old and weathered as he was, covered by blankets and rugs, nervously alert.

  Kitou and Brin had already chosen their horses: Kitou’s a piebald called Chaos, Brin a black mare she called Raven. These trotted over, followed by a bandy white beast, all muscle and pugnacious attitude. It was the stallion from her dreams. He wasn’t as big as the others, but with his tail in the air, looking intelligently about, there was no doubt who was in charge.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “He knows you,” said Kitou.

  Kitou was right. The bandy white horse was staring at her. It wasn’t a challenge. It was more like a question.

  “You must name him if you’ll have him,” said the old man. “And if he’ll have you.”

  “Don’t they come with names?” she asked.

  The man shook his head. “Names have power,” he said. “By giving a warhorse a name, you claim a right, and accept a responsibility. He’ll do as you ask, within reason. If you’re stupid, he’ll leave you. If you prove trustworthy, he’ll fly down a mountain for you.”

  “There’s a story that horses evolved on Earth,” said Ito. “What about a grand mythological name?”

  Box shook her head. “No way,” she said. “I’m calling him Seabiscuit.”

  They assembled in an inner yard, and the horses’ hooves crunched in the frost as their riders cantered about, preparing for the sortie.

  Brin and Kitou were as frisky as their horses, excited by the prospect of action, and by the idea of riding out with Ito. The rightful order had been restored. Box, who was already regretting her early start, requested the local version of coffee, and was given it by one of the riders. Her ride, Seabiscuit, was having none of her sleepiness. He was like a pent-up ball of energy, waiting to be released.

  What had she let herself in for?

  Marius produced a large tub of pearlescent ooze. He waved it around, and shapes moved in its depths, before settling on a periodic tiling, which he held up to show them.

  “This is Cerulean wax,” he said. “It exposes a pattern, which you can see, keyed to the laminar structures of the world, like the layers of bone in the armor we wear.”

  The patterns in the wax were like a kaleidoscope, frozen in place. The closer she looked, the further into the wax they reached.

  More fractals, she thought.

  He rubbed some of the wax into his shield, which glowed faint blue, and held it aloft at the precise angle of the tub. Then he lifted himself into the air.

  “It isn’t the wax that does this,” he said, lowering himself to the ground. “It’s in our minds. For now, you may trust in your horses. They know what to do.”

  The riders rubbed wax into their faces and shields, painting sigils that resembled animals and birds, and pressed it with their open hands onto the flanks of their horses, until they resembled an ethereal parade, which lit the Chancery yard with an eerie blue glow.

  “This is hardly inconspicuous,” said Box.

  “The Enemy can’t see it,” said Ito.

  Marius wheeled his stallion towards the cylindrical sun that was rising over the stables. The rest wheeled to follow, and by the time they’d passed the innermost fields, they were fifty feet in the air.

  For the first half-hour they climbed through cloud, and it was like riding through a dense fog at first light. Light came from everywhere, and nowhere at once. She could feel her horse’s hoofs connecting with an imaginary ground, soft underfoot like long grass. Below them were fields, glimpsed through clouds, arranged around settlements, between bands of dense forest. It was bitingly cold. They rode in a series of spirals, that carried them far from the Chancery yard.

  “Like thermals,” said Box, through chattering teeth.

  “A good analogy,” said Ito.

  Ito pointed out the centerline train, travelling fast in the opposite direction. A curious Box clocked their relative speed in her wetware.

  “Bloody hell,” she said. “How are we going so fast?”

  “We’re surfing the airwaves,” said Ito, “like moving bubbles of spacetime.”

  “Like a warp drive,” she said, and he nodded.

  She should’ve been frightened, but Seabiscuit knew the way. If she half-closed her eyes, she could half-see the wide-open grasslands he rode on.

  After an hour of this uncanny form of travel, they came to a place where the checkerboard fields gave way to unbroken forest, then blasted moors. These weren’t the highland landscapes of her childhood, but recent battlefields, literally blasted, by what she guessed must be beam weapons; voids sliced between ructions of dirt, sage-green on black, just starting to grow over. In the distance rose a steep-sided hill, like the one they’d arrived on, but twisted.

  She saw its entire far side was missing.

  “An uplink,” said Marius.

  “The necropolis Thea’s,” said Ito.

  “I know that name,” said Box, heavily.

  “What happened to her in the Real?” asked Marius.

  “Flux destroyed her,” said Brin, and told them the story of the boneyard fleet.

  Marius turned away, and Ito rested a hand on his shoulder.

  The cold morning became a hot day, as a sun like an industrial heater beat down from a cylindrical sky. The Cerulean wax on their faces and clothes took on a filmy appearance, and the riders seemed to melt in the air, like a mirage. The clouds burned away, and Box got to see the full extent of the sortie. Apart from the riders she knew, she could see at least fifty more, spread out in a vee, like geese, ahead of the main party.

  “Are all those your soldiers?” she asked.

  “Some are,” said Marius. “There are twelve in my Ride. The riders you know. The others you see are ordinary people, giving their time as rangers and scouts. Most of the sortie you can’t see, which is our intention.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t need to know.”

  “How many?”

  “This pattern of 1, 12, 144 is called a gran sortie. The Ride of the Spinifex Reach is a reconnaissance party. In a war, we’d be the eyes and ears of a Blue army.”

  “So 167? A hundred more?”

  “About that.”

  “No Horu?”

  “No, the Reanimated don’t ride with us.”

  “Why?”

  “They believe us to be morally questionable soldiers.”

  “In what way?”

  “We fight to win.”

  Their conversation was split by a splintering roar. Two jet aircraft Dopplered through the sky, a hundred meters below; a sound so loud they could barely hear it, followed by two rumbling booms.

  Box blinked back her astonishment.

  “They always fly at exactly that altitude,” shouted Marius, as the jets were departing.

  “Pilotless drones,” said Ito.

  They were ugly machines, with widely splayed tails and drooping snouts, bristling with weapons. They banked around the far side of the ruined tor and climbed, spearing up towards the edge of space, and flew back the way that came.

  “Zooms,” said Marius.

  “Like clockwork,”
said Ito.

  “Devil weapons of the Enemy,” said Marius.

  They rode on, towards Farside. If Flipside was a tube, then Farside was directly overhead, concealed by a twisted column of air. As they ascended the side of the tube, the moors became mountains and forests, then tundra and snow. They were moving as fast as an aircraft now. Then a smudge appeared on the horizon. It was a camp, pressed up against factories. A cold, flat wind whipped smoke from industrial smokestacks. It stretched north and south for as far as she could see. In the distance was a greasy murk, lit from within by gas flares and flickering furnaces.

  Here it was cold. Box saw a snowstorm dance over the landscape, whipping up grimy whirlwinds of snow. It was the third or fourth different weather of the day.

  Somehow, the edge of the camp seemed to lap at the natural world, like an unnatural sea.

  “What is this place?” asked Brin.

  “Look,” said Ito.

  In their sensoria, he created a lensing effect. Uniformed guards patrolled barracks. There were no prisoners on view, but the squalid appearance of the camp suggested extreme deprivation. The buildings seemed to be all made of pasteboard, and rivers of ordure ran down the streets, pooling in lakes on the edge of the camp; a moat of excrement, frosted by rime. It reminded Box of the vast internment camps of the climate apocalypse.

  The guards were humanoid, but with a slippery, unfinished appearance, like mucus.

  “Grays,” said Marius.

  “Who lives there?” Box asked. She imagined millions of prisoners.

  “We don’t know,” said Marius. “Not our people. Perhaps the unconquered people of wherever the Enemy comes from. We get their bodies sometimes, washing up in the Spinifex Reach.”

  “But humans?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a barrier,” said Ito. “A human shield. We’d have to fight our way through this, to get to the Enemy, while he can advance unopposed.”

  That night, Marius came to her room.

  “Red Lady, would you like to make love to me?”

  Box sat up and stared. She was still troubled by the day’s events. Marius was standing there, naked and ready. It seemed he was serious, and she wasn’t dreaming.