Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams

by Damian Huntley

  Stephanie looked down at her hands in thought, and when she looked up, she stared into Stanwick’s eyes, and Stanwick could see that she was on the verge of tears, “So if I’d been born in Allim, I wouldn’t live with my dad and Aunt Han?”

  “No, you would have been brought up in a house of a million sisters, each one of them dear to you. When you reached the age of fourteen, you would have been sent to live in the Ag, Tech, or Science Sectors.”

  Stephanie inhaled a little raggedly, a single tear spilling from the corner of her eye, “I don’t want to live in Allim.”

  Stanwick laughed, dropping Stephanie’s hands and hugging her gently, “Nobody lives in Allim anymore Stephanie, don’t worry.” Stephanie turned her head, feeling her cheek brush against the silk of Stanwick’s blouse. She looked at West, and read the words again, ‘I survived the collapse of Allim,’ and a smile formed on her lips, “When did Allim collapse?”

  “About thirty-thousand years ago.”

  Spoken softly, Stanwick’s words washed over Stephanie, “but you said you were in the,” she paused, preparing the words in her head, “Matriarchal divinity.”

  Stanwick ran her fingers through Stephanie’s hair, “I am Leechborn Stephanie, hated by Pretchis, the last king of Allim, kissed by the tongues of Antrusca; the leeches that live within me, ever hungry, thieves of blood, delvers of the flesh. The leeches are the seeds of the river Dannum, the river named for Allim’s first king, and I am a child of the blood of the river Dannum.”

  “And now dad is too?”

  “Yes.”

  Stephanie considered the information, spinning the words into webs, trying to imagine being hated by a king, picturing a wide river overflowing with leeches. She glanced at the tee-shirt again, but remembered West’s words before she saw them, “The Leechborn Wars … Is that how your country ended?”

  “The fall of Allim was caused by someone like your grandfather, a little too curious, and a little too smart for their own good.”

  Stephanie sighed, “I never met my grandpa.”

  “That my dear, is something even your dad wouldn’t be able to say for sure.”

  Stephanie sat up straight, looking Stanwick in the eye, “What do you mean?”

  Stanwick’s eyes widened, the full turquoise irises showing, “Well, it goes back to the great secret that he stumbled upon, like West before him.”

  David sat to attention now too, his hands on his knees, “My father died before Stephanie was even born, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Stanwick looked at West in disbelief, then at Charlene, “You understand don’t you?”

  Charlene blushed a little, embarrassed at being put on the spot and unsure if she’d missed something important, “I mean, I get that his dad’s alive …"

  David stood up abruptly, pacing the floor, “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand any of this. Will someone please explain what the fuck is going on?” He looked at Stephanie suddenly, his lips pursed tightly, but she let him off the hook with an exasperated shrug of her shoulders, “Dad, the leeches fixed you. The leeches are from the river of Dannum, and grandpa found them.” She turned to look at Stanwick, “Right?”

  Stanwick grinned at David Beach, allowing the weight of Stephanie’s words to sink in fully, “It seems that his genius skipped a generation, but yes Stephanie, your grandpa found out about the leeches.”

  West picked up the bottle of Drambuie from the side table and offered David another glass, “David, relax, have a drink, eat some food, and let me explain.”

  West sat back into the couch cushions and closed his eyes, “I was fourteen the first time I met King Pretchis the 289th king of Allim. I recognized him of course. I’d seen his face in public transmissions, but I was in no position to appreciate who the man was until my first meeting with him. Pretchis was a little older than he appeared to be, I mean to look at him, I would have guessed he was in his late fifties and yet he had held court for most of our lives, so he was certainly older. When I met him though, I realized that this man, this face … somewhere in the back of my mind, this face transcended the superficial recognition of first meetings. Pretchis was archetypal, his face typifying what we thought of as the face of King Dannum. His strong jaw line, deep set eyes, the lengthened bridge of the nose, these features cropped up again and again in the archives of Allim, in illustrations of the great figures from our history. If you had asked an artist to render a likeness of Dannum, there you would have the face of Pretchis.’

  Stanwick laughed, “You want to explain how you came to meet the king?”

  West licked his lips, trying his best to stir his recollection, “I was brought before Pretchis, because I’d been skim reading.”

  Stephanie’s nose wrinkled, “You mean, like when you read a few words from each paragraph of a book?”

  West opened his eyes, “Not quite. You see, there were great stores of knowledge held in the archives of the scientific academy of Arctum. It was an immense privilege to be given access to the archives, and there was a very clear protocol dictating how the archives were to be read.”

  Stephanie shook her head in disbelief, “There were rules for reading?”

  West nodded, “Certainly. Many libraries even now have very explicit guidelines for handling precious books. In the archives, you had to inform the administrators exactly what it was that you intended to research, and they would provide you with an index log which granted you access to specific files in the archives. Once you had located your file, you could only read one page at a time.”

  Stephanie lay down on the floor with her head resting on her arms, “So how could you skim read?”

  West smiled mischievously, “There was a device, common to every home in Allim. it was referred to with an initialism made up of our words describing the parts of the brain. In modern parlance, the acronym would be H.O.P.A.R, denoting Hippocampul, Occipital, Parietal, Amygdalic repeater, or the ‘hopper.’ When it was first introduced, it allowed its user to revisit dreams or memories in perfect detail, with the ability to abstract an out of body experience, or to slow down or speed up time. My description won't do it justice, but imagine being able to recall a dream as if it was a real experience that you’d lived. Skimming the archives was made possible because of the hopper. The ability to slow down a memory, and really take your time to examine the details was incredible, but additionally, events experienced in the hopper occurred outside of the normal scope of time. The brain would kick into a much higher gear, so something that would appear to take an hour in the hopper might only take a couple of minutes of real time.”

  David clapped his hands together, “Oh God, that’s awesome. So you were flicking through the information in the archives, then reading them at your leisure in this device?”

  “Do you not have one here?” Stanwick asked West, “I’m sure everyone would love to try it out later.”

  West replied, “I’ve got two; not here, but upstairs sure.”

  Stephanie looked at her dad, grinning from ear to ear, “Can you imagine?”

  David smiled at West uncertainly, “Why aren’t these things in the news?”

  “David, you have to understand, there’s been a war waging between two factions from Allim, and it’s a war that’s lasted for the entirety of human history. The two sides have always been in agreement over one thing; we will never share the technology of Allim with the rest of humankind. Our society wasn’t ready for it. Our society found ways to abuse it, and none of us harbors even the remotest hope that another society would have reacted to our technology differently. By the time of the fall, Allim was in many respects more advanced than civilization is currently. We hadn’t managed to escape the planet’s atmosphere, but there are a great many things that you take for granted now which were also commonplace then.”

  Stanwick rolled onto her front and propped her head up in her hands, “Of course, one could argue that if it hadn’t been for West’s abuse of the hopper, people might h
ave taken a different view on the dissemination of our technology. One would have to be very wary of whom one made such an argument with, and that in presenting such an argument, one would be inviting oneself to a full scale brawl. I for one, would never suggest such a thing.”

  Unable to contain her thoughts any longer, Stephanie asked West, “What were you reading?”

  West set his head back down and closed his eyes again, “It started with reading about the hopper, and the research that led to the creation of that device. It may sound pretty stupid, but I suppose it comes down to the fact that I was convinced that using the hopper, I could find a way to alter reality with my mind. It started with the death of my parents, and a desperate desire to bring them back … As crass as it sounds, that childish ambition was the reason I started to visit the archives, but I was a keen enough student to learn quickly that my desire was beyond the scope of science or technology, at least at that time. In reading about the hopper, I learned about the device’s inventor, Stracklin Kith Tiarsis. Reading about Stracklin led to more important discoveries.”

  Stephanie sat up again, too engrossed to lie still, “What was it? What did you discover?”

  “For one, I discovered that Allim had not always been peaceful. We lived in a society without weapons, and without a language of warfare. Granted, if you want to harm, or even kill a man, even the most innocuous household item can be put to the task, but to the best of common knowledge, no item was made in Allim with the sole purpose of causing harm to another human.”

  Charlene interjected, “Pff … You all were pretty naive.”

  West sat upright, turning to Charlene, “How do you figure?”

  Charlene laughed, “You don’t get to a place where nobody feels safe flicking through the pages of a book, not unless you’ve broken a few fingers along the way.”

  West relaxed again, “We were naive! We were scared, and naive. I couldn’t tell anyone about my discovery, because it ran contrary to the teachings of the book of Antrusca … Heresy.” West held up a finger, marking a point in the air, “Not the only culture ever to come to the conclusion that heresy should be punishable by death; however, the Kings of Allim were certainly some of the most ardent adherents to such thinking. Eventually, I was caught skimming the archives, I was brought before King Pretchis, and suddenly, my reading gave birth to another revelation. Pretchis’ likeness to the archetype of Dannum went far beyond a casual similarity.”

  West heard the hush sound of fabric on the hardwood floor, and he looked up to discover that Stephanie had sidled closer to him. Sitting by his feet now, she asked, “Did Pretchis know what you’d discovered?”

  “Actually no, at least, he certainly didn’t give that impression. Pretchis seemed to know only as much as my index logs revealed, that I’d been reading about Stracklin Kith Tiarsis, and his field work outside of the walls of Allim.”

  “In the void garden?” Stephanie asked enthusiastically.

  West touched his nose with the tip of his index finger, “Correct. King Pretchis explained that I was one of only four people that now knew the truth about the work of Allim’s greatest mind, and as Pretchis himself was one of the four, and the other two were his closest advisers, he needed me for a very special task.”

  “What did he want you to do?”

  West laughed as he sat forward on the couch again, “He told me that I was to leave Allim, find the base camp that Stracklin Tiarsis had established in the void garden, and learn as much as I could about whatever it was that had led to Stracklin’s greatest invention.”

  “Oh God!” Stephanie inhaled deeply, covering her eyes with her hands, “Did he let you take any friends?”

  “No, in fact he told me that because I had officially been arrested, the Dannustine guards would make a show of publicly executing me.”

  Stephanie slumped onto the floor dramatically, gurgling while she clutched her throat, “You had to play dead?”

  West nudged her with his foot, “There wasn’t really much pretending. I was given a drug which put me to sleep.”

  Stephanie lay on the floor now, pressing her arm against her forehead. She waved her legs about, feeling her feet swaying lazily as she mulled over everything she’d heard, then suddenly she kicked the floor, and lifted her head, rambling excitedly, “Pretchis, Dannum, Pretchis, Dannum!”

  West looked at Stanwick, and the two exchanged knowing smiles.

  “Go on Stephanie …" Stanwick suggested.

  Stephanie turned over and stared at the ceiling, sure that her sudden epiphany was correct, “King Pretchis was King Dannum! Because of the leeches right?”

  Stanwick lay down on the floor, with her head next to Stephanie’s, “Right.”

  Stephanie shut her eyes tight, her mind buzzing with a thousand thoughts. I want it, she thought to herself, I want to be a frickin Leechborn. She felt Stanwick’s head move beside her, then felt her breath as she whispered, “Not yet little one.” Stephanie’s body went rigid with excitement, her muscles warming from the sudden tension. Stephanie had known her whole life that it should be possible, that it was basically down to stupidity that no one could hear her thoughts, especially when they were so clear.

  David pushed a slice of meat around his plate, while he listened to Stanwick and Stephanie talking. Everything sounded so special, so full of mystery, but he was finding himself more and more pissed off. He looked at his leg, sullenly, some small thought on the tip of his mind, frustrating, and intangible. He listened to Stephanie’s gleeful exclamation, and it only made him feel more disconnected. There was that thought, peeking out of the shadows again, and it was stronger now; not Déjà vu, but rather a sense memory of another time, another almost mystical experience. He was seven years old the first time he’d had the communion wafer placed on his tongue by a priest, and he had walked down the isle of the church, wondering why he couldn’t feel the mystery of it, asking God guiltily, where was his special feeling? He stared at his arm now, asking that same question.

  Suddenly he jumped up from his seat on the couch, rubbing his arms frantically, “Oh shit, shit!”

  “What is it David?” West asked calmly.

  “I think I just saw one!”

  “You saw a leech?” Stephanie asked, jumping up from her lying place on the floor, “Let me see, let me see.”

  David held out his arms in front of him, stepping backwards as if he could somehow escape his own flesh, “I can feel them. I can feel them moving under my skin. How do I get them out?”

  Stanwick laughed hard, lifting her head off the floor and leaning back on her outstretched arms, “I’m surprised it’s taken this long for you to feel them.”

  “It’s horrible! How do I make them stop?” David yelled, his voice raising quickly in pitch.

  “Hold still.” Stanwick commanded him, “Stop moving and concentrate.” David continued to pitch backwards though, rubbing his arms, then bending over to rub his legs.

  “David, if you just stand still, I’ll tell you exactly how to make them stop.” Stanwick’s words fell on deaf ears, but David quickly ran out of space, his back pressed against the wall of the apartment, his eyes closed tight as he tried to block out everything that was going on around him. In the darkness, he started to see them move, only vague flashes of light at first, but soon there was a vast expanse of blackness, writhing with a million red bodies, pulsing and spiraling into one another, consuming each other, and evolving in shape. He heard Stanwick again, her voice calm and syncopated, “They have answered you David. They have answered your desire. They have answered your need. Now you need to take control and give them purpose.”

  In the blackness, David could still see their bodies, yes delving, yes tearing into him, but now they moved with the sound of Stanwick’s voice, and they were no longer chaotic.

  “What would you be David? Listen to my voice before you think. The delvers will adapt, they’ll learn whatever purpose you put them to, but not everything is quick with them. Some desir
es, they will bend themselves to over the course of mere minutes, and yet others will take months, or even years for them to achieve. Think on that, because right now, I can see it in you; you are in a perfect state of awe, and they are waiting for you to make a connection, they are waiting to impress you, and they are desperate for you to impress upon them your want for this life. So what would you be David?”

  He tried to open his eyes to look at Stanwick, but he was transfixed on the ocean of slithering bodies, “I don’t get what you’re saying. I’m David Beach. I’m a father. I am an assistant to the undersecretary of …"

  “Moron!” Stanwick slapped his forehead with her open palm, “This isn’t, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up.’ I’m not asking you to describe the most miserable path you can think of so you can piss away the rest of your days until you wheel yourself into a retirement home.”

  “What then?” David’s face was turning red, crow’s feet spreading from the corners of his eyes as he squeezed them tight, trying to grasp what Stanwick was talking about.

  “David, I can’t give you any hints here. This is your choice. If I put an idea into your head, you will resent me when you suddenly realize what you have shut yourself off from. You will be fast, no question, and strong, absolutely, but what else?”

  David let his mind melt into itself, darkness folding on darkness. He thought of the woods, the trees at Calvert, and the complete nightmare of trying to navigate the undergrowth at an uncoordinated jogging speed. You will be fast? Strong, fast, and uncoordinated sounded like a recipe for disaster. As clumsy as he was, the ability to avert tragedies of ineptitude was something David had thought a lot about over the years. How could that be improved upon though? He wracked his memory, certain he’d seen, or read something, somewhere that would help him right now. The shapes in the darkness of his mind’s eye shifted, separated, and started to move more quickly, thousands of dark lines moving chaotically, but never touching. Their movements reminded him of something, or rather, they were trying to remind him of something specific.