The Book of the Night

by Pearl North

  Endymion settled the book in her lap and opened it. The moment she turned the cover over, a picture sprang up out of the book and hovered in midair.

  Seven kids about eight years of age, wearing party hats and waving noisemakers, cheered and laughed. They appeared to be in some kind of conveyance. The seats looked like the ones Haly had seen illustrated in Buses, Trains, and Space Shuttles: A History of Post-Terrestrial Transit Design. The windows behind them were reddish black, like the color you see when you close your eyes.

  “The seven of us came for my birthday party,” said Endymion. “This was me.” She pointed at a girl with shoulder-length ash-blond hair, brown eyes, and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose. “You see, even then we wore skins. The fashion was for hyperrealism at that time. I was supposed to get an upgrade the following week, but of course that never happened. Once we realized we were never going home, we made our own modifications. When you’re on your own, you lose track. Forget to look in a mirror, even. I suppose I look very different now.”

  Haly did not answer.

  “This was Grant.” With her remaining hand she pointed at a boy with dark hair and a solid jaw. “No matter how many upgrades he got, he was never as smart as the rest of us. He was the first to go.” She sighed. “It was so soon, we didn’t even know how lucky he was.

  “Now this was Pierce.” She pointed to another dark-haired boy, this one with angular features and brilliant blue eyes. “All the girls loved him. He was so beautiful…” Her finger moved to a girl with curly red hair. “Rebecca. I used to hate her. But she was right, in the end. And Nancy…” Her finger moved to a blond girl who had her head turned away, looking out the window. “Always thinking of something else.”

  “Dylan thought he was better than everyone else, because his mother was the granddaughter of the first Transcendent. And she was an engineer. He wore the emblem of the Fly, so no one could ever forget the fact. We used to laugh at him, but he was the one who brought the pen along. He stole it from his mother and smuggled it along in his backpack. We weren’t supposed to have such a thing, of course.

  “And Lysander.” Her finger moved to a girl with blond hair who looked right at the viewer with a frank, confident expression on her face. “We used to call her the Lion, because she was so brave. She was my best friend. We did everything together. The Ilysians were our idea,” she said, great pride in her voice.

  “The Ilysians?”

  “Yes. We added them. With the pen. After we killed Dylan for it. But you see, we weren’t supposed to be able to die. But I’m the only one who didn’t.”

  “Do you miss your friends?” Haly could not imagine what it must be like, to be trapped in here for centuries, all alone.

  “I don’t know if they’re really dead,” she said. “Or if something else happened to them. There’s a ring of life around the edge of time, you see? And they jumped off it, into the abyss.” She made a strange grating sound that might have been weeping. “Nobody who hasn’t leaped knows what’s there. Imagine, all those people, just … jumping. It was my idea, you see, to come here in the first place, and it was my idea to send them away.

  “I miss them. I wouldn’t even care about the player or the pen anymore if I could just … leave. Maybe you can help me.”

  “Because … some of me is outside of … um … cube space? Because of what the Nods did when I was born?”

  “That’s right, little meat puppet. You’re special: part song and part book. Made of equal parts this world and mine. If anyone can carry me out of this prison, it’s you.

  “Now you’re going to see something, hear something, that will frighten you. Just take the ball. That’s all you need to do, for now.”

  Endymion opened her mouth, and kept opening it, wider and wider, and just as Haly thought it could open no farther, her jaw unhinged, and the upper half of her head fell back to reveal a little platform where her throat would have been had she been human. Resting in the center of that platform was a silver sphere about the size of Haly’s thumb. She’d never seen anything so horrible and so strange.

  The sphere began to move. It rolled around the edge of the platform in a lazy circle, then picked up its pace. The faster it went, the tighter the circle became until the sphere vibrated in place in the center of the platform where it had started.

  A sound emanated from it, complex and multitonal. At first Haly thought it might be the Song, but it wasn’t. For one thing, the Song did not hurt.

  At first her hands and feet tingled, as they had when the Horn of Yammon sounded, but then the tingling became burning and it spread to the rest of her body. Haly jumped up, expecting to see flames, but there was nothing. She clapped her hands over her ears, but it did not block out the sound.

  This was the opposite of the Redemption. Haly’s thoughts fragmented as the sound pulled her apart into tinier and tinier components, each one awash on the surface of a vast dark sea, cast about with the movements of forces beyond her understanding.

  It was a moment and an eternity, and when it was over Haly found herself lying on her side on the cold marble floor. She sat up and wiped drool from the side of her chin. She felt as if she’d awakened from a dream in which impossible things had seemed perfectly normal and rational.

  Haly stood and found Endymion, or at least her carapace, still sitting in her chair, the top half of her head hanging from its hinges.

  The metal ball rested on its platform, unmoving. The sense that it was dormant now came to her, from the same place that book voices and the Song came. Did that mean Endymion was dead? She wasn’t sure. Haly picked up the ball.

  It was heavy in her hand. The smooth polished metal was pitted in places. Something leaked out from the tiny fissures, something oily. Haly wrapped the orb in a handkerchief and put it in her satchel. What on earth was she going to tell the Compensation Board? Their clockmaker was gone. Would they ever let her and Gyneth go now?

  Maybe. Something told her the Thesians might not be entirely upset about the loss of their leader.

  On the table beside Endymion’s husk, where the picture album had been, sat another book. It was small. Haly recognized it as a paperback novel of the Old Earth late period, when paper and gasoline were still readily available and books were produced by the millions.

  On the cover, a golden flying machine sailed over a desert plain. In the foreground, a girl and a boy held hands as they ran from three enormous beetle-shaped creatures. The girl led a goat by a tether, and the boy, a tall youth with sandy-brown hair, held a mind lancet in his hand.

  Haly couldn’t breathe. She looked more closely. The beetle-shaped creatures had silver faces, and what had appeared to be tentacles were in fact tongues, bifurcated many times over. The golden flying machine also had a face on its underside. It was the wing.

  The top portion of the cover, where the title would have been, was torn away. Haly opened the book to the title page. “The Book of the Night, a novel by Roger Theselaides” it read.

  11

  The Queen’s Consort

  Every night after they made love, Thela talked to Po. She spoke of her mother, of Selene, and of her frustration with the more traditional elements of the Ilysian nobility.

  “If we could recruit men for the army, we could rebuild our forces in months,” she complained.

  Admit men to the army? Was she insane? Po’s thinking on a great many things had changed since he’d first left Ilysies, but giving men weapons seemed foolish and extreme. Of course he couldn’t say that, and probably wouldn’t even if Thela wasn’t controlling him with the pen. He leaned back and looked at her.

  The set of her mouth was rigid. A muscle jumped in her jaw. She was really upset. “I can tell you anything,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “Things aren’t going well. I may be facing a challenge.”

  The thought of being the consort of a failed queen, with all the uncertainty that entailed, soon gave way to a deeper drea
d. He wasn’t thinking right. Thela would do anything to maintain her position. She’d use the pen. That was what he needed to worry about.

  “What if you did?” he said, the words seeming to come from outside himself. “What if you were challenged, and lost the throne? What if you conceded without fighting? You’ve done so much for Ilysies already. Would it be so bad to retire to a quiet life in the country with a male who adores you?”

  She stroked the side of his face, her eyes glittering. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?” she surprised him by saying. “I get so tired sometimes.” She closed her eyes and tears dampened her lashes. “Tired and lonely.”

  He rested his hands on her arms, caressing her inner elbows with his thumbs. He let part of his mind slip into kinesthetic trance and he said, “Well, why can’t you?”

  She looked at him with such yearning it burned a hole in his heart, and through it flowed the waters from the sunken temple of her guilt. The empty gown floated up in his mind’s eye and wrapped around him. He couldn’t breathe. “It can’t be for nothing,” she said.

  Po released her arms and broke the trance. He gathered Thela close and held her. “She forgives you,” he said. “She knows why you did it and she’s grateful to you. Ilysies is grateful to you. You’ve done so much. It’s enough, Thela.” He didn’t care anymore if the words were true.

  She was quiet a long time and then she said, “And Selene? I sent her to her death. I thought I had to.”

  “It’s not too late. She could forgive you, too, if you gave her the chance.”

  “Do you say these things because of what I wrote with the pen, or because you were redeemed and this is your wisdom?”

  He couldn’t answer that. “Would you like to be redeemed?”

  “I saw it, but I was too far away. I couldn’t feel it.”

  “I can help you. The ultimate goal of kinesiology is integration, and integration and Redemption are the same thing. But you have to know, it’s not something you’re ever finished with. You have to recreate it every day.”

  She sighed. “Can I be redeemed and do what I must as a queen?”

  “Haly is redeemed.”

  She said no more, but held him close until she slept.

  * * *

  The next time Po treated her, he focused on the submerged temple. The first thing he did was pull the gown out of the water and take it outside. He spread it on top of the reeds to dry.

  * * *

  “I think I’ve made Myr very unhappy,” said Thela the next day. “I don’t want you to be jealous and I don’t want either of you to harm each other, but I think he’s lonely. Will it bother you greatly if I visit him tonight?”

  Po looked up from the book he was reading. “I’ll miss you, of course. But no. It’s only fair. He’s secluded for you; you shouldn’t neglect him.”

  She smiled and turned to go.

  “Just don’t stay away too long, please.”

  * * *

  Po hung the gown, now dry and restored to its former glory, from the branch of a tree on the island that represented the energy center corresponding to Thela’s willpower. Then he turned his focus to doing something about the temple itself. He debated the relative merits of raising the temple above the water level, or simply draining the swamp. Ultimately, he chose the latter.

  He became an alligator the size of an elephant and he swam up and down the river, using his snout to deepen the channel.

  * * *

  “Come with me.” Thela stood in the doorway of his room.

  “With you?”

  “Yes. I have a full day of meetings. I want you to experience this part of my life.”

  “You’re going to bring a male into your conferences?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He could say nothing more. Po dressed and accompanied her.

  He served drinks while she met with the trade minister about the new treaty with Shenash. The woman, in her eighties, kept glancing at Po and then back at Thela with a bemused expression.

  “The Shenashian ambassador of trade will be less than pleased,” she said.

  “Yes, but there’s nothing she can do about it. They need our barley and we know it.”

  “Just so, Your Majesty.” Her gaze drifted to Po once more. “If Your Majesty will permit me to comment…”

  “Speak freely, Uphine.”

  She looked even more nervous now. “I don’t like to question you, but … Is it wise to include your consort in conferences of state?”

  Thela raised her eyebrows. “Include? He is serving us.”

  “Yes, but males talk. Everyone knows that.”

  “Well, yes, but he’s not like other males. He will do nothing to displease me, I assure you.”

  Uphine sighed. “I tell you this as an old friend and your most steadfast supporter, Your Majesty. There’s talk. Some say you are besotted with your new consort and your lust has clouded your judgment. Others … well, it gets worse.”

  Thela sat back, her eyes gleaming beneath lowered lids. “Tell me, Uphine. Tell me all.”

  “Well, some say that it’s a fetish. Your fixation on a male so far below our standards. Others call you … dick whipped.”

  Thela laughed. “Dick whipped. Really? Oh, that’s good! Who’s saying these things?”

  “Do you need me to tell you?”

  “Plata.”

  “You made an implacable enemy the day you assassinated her mother.”

  “There’s no proof I did that.”

  “But it would not have been effective unless the hand behind it was obvious.”

  Thela shrugged. “Well. So she slanders me. Losers lie, everyone knows that.”

  “If that is all it comes to, then you have no worries,” said Uphine.

  * * *

  What had once been a stagnant swamp was now a thriving river, studded with islands. Fish leaped and birds flitted from tree to tree. Po was a breeze that swept the last of the swamp debris from the temple. It was just an ordinary structure now, not gold, not perfect. Its twin in the mountains, in Thela’s perception center, was no longer perfect, either. It still gleamed, but it was bronze, not gold, and it wore a patina of age.

  “Remember when you thought I was just a farmer?” Thela asked him one afternoon when they lay side by side in bed, resting as the day melted into evening around them.

  “Yes,” said Po.

  “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  She paused. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

  “I understand,” said Po.

  “That’s the pen talking,” she said.

  “No,” he said, but it was.

  She sighed. “The only person I can be honest with can’t be honest with me. But if I removed the control I put on you with the pen, you’d turn against me. I’d lose you, too.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “How can you, really?” she said. “I was wrong. I see that now. I could have offered the Libyrinth true friendship, not aid in exchange for control. I couldn’t see it as anything but a rival. It seems strange to me now. We could have worked together.”

  “You still can.”

  Thela shook her head. “Selene has Haly’s ear. She won’t trust me, she can’t. And Haly has every reason to listen to her, to hate me herself.”

  “Haly’s not like that.”

  “All the same. Selene—”

  “Then make amends with Selene first.”

  She started. “How?”

  “First, you could say you’re sorry. Then … I don’t know. What could you do that would most help the Libyrinth now?”

  “There’s nothing I can do to help them. They’ve won.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They have everything they need. They’ve got plenty of food now, so long as I don’t take it away with the pen. I suppose they’re worried about that—the pen. And I’m sure they’d like to know what’s become of you.”

  A sudden jolt of raw emot
ion made Po jerk. “Me?”

  “Of course. I know Selene, and I can guess at Haly. They’ll feel terrible about you disappearing. But I don’t want to send you back.” She paused. “I suppose we could visit. It might not be a bad time to leave Jolaz in charge of things here again. We could go there and they could see for themselves that you’re all right. And you could do a lot to get them to trust me.”

  Something squirmed in the pit of Po’s stomach. The way she said that … How complete was her integration? But she had no need to dissemble with him, to pretend. He could not act against her. He could not even refuse to help. The thought made him shiver.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No.”

  Thela regarded him. “You’re afraid. You think I mean to trick them again.”

  Po could not answer.

  She sighed. “It is in the back of my mind, it’s true. I can’t help it. I can’t stop seeing all the angles. But I don’t intend it. I really do want to mend fences.”

  But would she still want to, if the opportunity to take advantage presented itself? Po lay awake, listening to Thela’s breath slow and deepen. When she was asleep, he eased himself out of bed and sat on the couch, watching her. She showed no sign of waking.

  How horrible it must have been for her, to stand out there in the desert, seeing the Redemption happening but not taking part in it. To be so close to what you needed, and to be denied it. Well, he knew what that was like.

  * * *

  The next time Thela came to him, she brought the pen with her.

  Po fought for calm, but he felt like his heart was at war with his lungs. They battered against one another and he could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  It must have shown in his face.

  “Don’t worry,” said Thela. “I’m not going to use it. But I want you to try something. Since you are an adept and you were able to use kinesiology on an Ancient, and since everyone knows that the devices of the Ancients are alive, I thought it would be interesting if you performed kinesiology on the pen as a way of learning more about it. You’ll report everything you experience to me, of course. That will make me happy.”