During the
Circlingseed Festival,
in Celebration of the Castellae’s Marriage
1
The din from up above was just barely audible inside my tiny grotto.
A crowd of over ten thousand had gathered over in Mebohla Riptrench, and the eruptions of cheers from their ranks—stretching off toward the outer shell of Castellum Raondo—came vaulting over Gukutsu Clifftown, spilled down into neighboring Suifu’ushi Riptrench, permeated the labyrinth of forkways that spread still deeper into the ground, and at last found their way to my grotto.
In the past, this small cave had been used as an egghatch by some sort of giant gloambug. The walls enclosing its narrow, hemispherical space were fortified with a hardened mixture of dung and saliva, and the ceiling was just high enough to stand up straight in and walk around.
I lay suspended from the ceiling, supine in a danglebed woven with fibers spun from the anuses of Hagu tribe artisans. It was somewhat elastic and felt pleasant against my wounded body.
As I lay there gazing up at the countless, cup-sized glowjars growing densely on the low ceiling, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this grotto was sinking steadily into the depths of the Mudsea—apart from the rest of Castellum Raondo.
Inside those brown, faintly translucent vases, I noticed whitish, phosphorescent mollusks squirming about, but just as that was registering, the grotto tilted sharply. I held onto the danglecords and the edge of the bed with all three of my hands.
Here in the midst of the Mudsea’s verilucent layer, Castellum Raondo and Castellum Saruga had pressed their backs up against one another.
Both castellae were shaped like upright bicones, but their axes were tilted slightly off center, causing them to bend to one side, creating the gently rolling surfaces known as their “backs.”
Within the belt of light that filtered down from the Seasky, the two castellae formed a gourdlike shape as they sank their outer shells into one another. Innumerable combtongues, growing thickly on their surfaces, became entangled and pulled hard against one another, breaking apart the castellae’s shellite surfaces and fusing them together with the fluids they secreted. The castle folk inside both castellae were bashing huge, pillarlike battering rams against the high walls sealing off the ends of their semicylindrical riptrenches, and cracks in those walls were beginning to appear. Not that it was a sight I’d ever actually seen myself.
Something did stir in me at the sounds of the bustling festival, but I certainly didn’t have strength enough to go marching around and around in the loways of the newly conjoined riptrenches, fighting my way through jostling crowds carrying along seeds the size of submuddies.
All castellae traced out sinusoidal paths as they advanced, moving back and forth between the verilucent and nihilucent layers, creating a cycle of day and night for their interiors as they made their leisurely migrations through the vast Mudsea that covered seven tenths of the planet’s surface. The time it took to complete one of these migrations we called a “round.”
An unmarried castellum grew its seeds over the course of many rounds, all the while increasing the potassium nitrate content of its body. If, in that state, it failed to gain a spouse, it would detonate the potassium nitrate in its riptrenches and blast its seeds out into the sea. Due to the many castellae that sank immediately from the resulting shockwave, this process was known as “suiseeding.” Now that ours was married though, there nothing more to fear. The conjoined cities would, for a time, enjoy a season of prosperity.
Provided the castellae didn’t contract any serious illnesses or go to war with other castellae, this state of affairs would probably continue for about two hundred rounds. By the time the castellae sank into the Mudsea at the end of their natural life spans, the little castlings they bore would be well on their way to adulthood. There was hardly anyone in the castellae who wasn’t resting a figurative hand on his thorax in relief.
The cheering grew louder, grating on my elbows. I folded my three arms, with their thin smatterings of pinhairs, so that my palms covered the acoustic pores in my elbows. The sound of breath entering and leaving from the rows of spiracles in my sides grew considerably louder and more hollow-sounding.
A sharp pain ran through my thorax, causing my antennae to retract into my forehead. Dr. Saromi at the clinic had told me that it was phantom pain, but illusory or not, pain still hurt.
I looked down at my body. It was about four times the length of my head. My sense of my own existence was so attenuated that even I felt like I was losing my grip on reality. The rounded segments of my body were lined up right in front of me, but I could see almost nothing there except the danglebed.
As a tribesman of the Monmondo clan, my carapace blends into my surroundings no matter where I may be. Most likely, this is because our ancestors were preyed upon for so long.
But for some reason—maybe a psychogenic reaction brought on by that miserable failure of mine back in my birthplace of Castellum Gakugu—I can no longer secrete the decoromas that would normally adorn my body. If I were from an ordinary tribe, this would amount to nothing more than having my bare carapace exposed, but in the case of the Monmondo tribe, this kind of dysfunction makes one’s very existence all but imperceptible.
I could hardly even see the crack that was most surely tracing a vivid course from the right side of my thorax to the left side of my body. Following it with my hooknail, I could feel the ridge where viscous sealant that had been squeezed from the gap had hardened. For the twenty arcs it had taken for the crack to close, I had been cooped up in this grotto like an embryo waiting to hatch.
I reached out an upper arm and grabbed several leafsheets that were stacked haphazardly on the tabletop. I always prepared my reports using excerpts from these logs and had given Dr. Saromi instructions to deliver the whole bundle to my mother in Castellum Gakugu if anything should happen to me.
I lowered my antennae to the leaves and began tracing them over the rows and rows of scentences …
It had all started with an inquiry from the Ministry of Welfare Contemplation, over at the Seat of Learning. The usual procedure was to reply through my manager at the dodgejob agency, but partly because I’d been fed up with his way of doing things, I accepted the request directly. The job was to investigate some secret documents that had changed hands twelve rounds ago between Maidun Reproducing Pharmaceuticals—operated by the Zafutsubo tribe—and the Ministry of Legal Contemplation, which was another part of the Seat of Learning. Maidun Reproducing Pharmaceuticals? That was an emerging company that had been making a killing recently with a painkiller called “namas-machina.”
At the time, I was still living halfway up Nazumo Clifftown, over on the outer loop of Mebohla Riptrench. This was up against the outer shell, so when the ocean currents were violent, it could get pretty noisy there, making it impossible to get any sleep.
I left my room before we went into night. The succulent plants that grew throughout Mebohla Riptrench were still glowing brightly, but the castellum was picking up speed as it began sinking into the lower depths of the verilucent layer. I felt the disorienting sensation that came with the plunge as I made my way across a hanging bridge, and then I was entering a boreway gouged into the facing cliff of Gukutsu Clifftown. Passing through the thick cliff wall, I continued on toward the other side, in the direction of the castellum’s spinal girder.
The castellum was composed mostly of layers upon layers of shellite. The structure was formed by fluids that a mass of organs—supported by the thick spinal girder running vertically from the castellum’s base to its crown—secreted as it grew to adulthood. The concentric rings of the castellum’s two deep riptrenches had been formed by imbalances in the stress field caused by the castellum’s growth. The circular curves of both riptrenches were interrupted where they intersected with the castellum’s back, forming dead ends on either side. The four vertical cli
ffsides within these riptrenches had been transformed into clifftowns by the castle folk’s tireless excavations.
As I continued on through the boreway, I was entering Marov Clifftown, on the side of the cliff’s inner circumference. A swarm of fist-sized wingbugs that had gathered by the entrance took flight at my approach, and then the wide, vertical space that was Suifu’ushi Riptrench opened up before my eyes.
A diffuse mist of pollen was drifting through the open air, beyond which was my destination: the vast expanse of Bohni Clifftown on the other side. The face of that cliff, curving sharply so as to loop around the castellum’s central region, was covered in a variety of succulent plants whose leaves gave off a faint glow as they squirmed sluggishly about. Their rootleaves grew in thick bunches on the upper reaches of the castellum’s outer shell. There the translucent fibers in their stalks absorbed light from the Rimblaze, sent it in through the castellum’s shellite wall, and caused the plants inside to glow.
Windows and ventilation holes gouged into the cliffs peeked out from among the leafy shadows. Nectarvectors could be seen here and there. Wearing catchpouches slung before and behind, they stood on the thick, fleshy leaves, using them as scaffolds as their long proboscises drew nectar from flowers the size of their heads, as well as from the nectar glands in the leaf stalks.
I passed between two pillars jutting upward from the foot of a suspension bridge, stepped out onto the planks (a great many of which were missing), and began crossing over Suifu’ushi Riptrench. Numerous suspension bridges were strung at random intervals between the vertiginous arcs of the two facing clifftowns. Starting far off in the distance, I saw the bridges begin to sway, and then a mist of pollen came dancing downward. My row of stepping planks sagged, and I held on tightly to a rope that served as a handrail. Over on the face of the clifftown, the nectarvectors were hiding themselves behind leaves. A warm, clammy, powerful wind was beginning to blow through Suifu’ushi Riptrench. The castellae were exchanging gases.
I waited for the wind to die down, made my way to the other side of the suspension bridge, and headed into one of Bohni Riptrench’s ripways. It made use of a natural crack in the shellite; the ceiling overhead narrowed to a sharp edge. I followed the path until I reached its inner wall, then entered a vertical pitway that had been dug there. As I started up the ladder, I could feel it vibrating against my fingers and feet. In the backgirder region that lay beyond that wall, there were fully grown organs whose autonomic operations controlled the exchange of gases, the circulation of redslick, and so on. It was said that the largest of them reached a height of five stories.
Many companies had crowded into Bohni Clifftown to take advantage of the natural resources there, including organ heat, redslick pipeline pressure, nutrifluid, and filtrates. I passed such businesses one after another during my vertical climb. When I reached the top level, I ducked into a boreway, then emerged onto a surface-facing gougeway. Gougeways were long roads shaved horizontally into the surface of a cliff. One side faced open air, so if I were to lose my footing, it would mean a headlong plunge all the way down to the riptrench’s deep loway.
Looking upward, I could see a gently rounded canopy bearing down from about two stories overhead. In its surface was a sparse arrangement of large holes used for gas exchange; from the edges of each hung strands of algaelike moss.
The leaflight grew weaker as I was walking. On the dim wall of the gougeway, a line of figures carved in relief was coming into view. Each had a wide head and a figure that did not narrow at all at the waist and was posed for prayer with both hands raised asymmetrically. These were the twenty-eight saints of the Zafutsubo tribe. After walking past each of these ferocious-looking saints, there appeared an open, rectangular entrance. Here was the uppermost floor of Maidun Reproducing Pharmaceuticals, which crowned a drilding that sunk to a depth of five stories underfoot.
As I was meticulously brushing off the pollen and spores that were stuck all over me, the world was falling into utter darkness all around. The castellum had reached the nihilucent layer, where the light of the Rimblaze did not reach. Even as it became impossible to see, however, the fragrances of the various types of plants growing throughout the riptrench grew exceedingly distinct to my senses, completely changing the world’s appearance from what it had been in the daytime.
Dimly glowing workers emerged one after another from the hardshell-tile entryway. In addition to their company scent, they reeked of exhaustion. Once their presence had faded, I stepped inside. Walking across the mossed floor, I quietly made my way downstairs and in short order found myself standing in front of the room that was my destination. I placed an elbow against the door and was just getting a handle on the state of things inside when the door suddenly began to swing open, and I drew back in alarm. Out came a senior executive of the Zafutsubo tribe, his body swathed in the gaudy aroma of his position. In the instant before he shut the door, I slipped inside.
Inside the recessed chamber, one person still remained on night duty, just as my information had indicated. She was doing clerical work, and her posture made it look almost as though she were biting into her desk. She had that barrel-like build peculiar to the Zafutsubo tribe, and even sitting down, she was taller than me. Her hard, rust-colored carapace was covered in leaf-vein patterns secreted from the decoroma glands in her joints and, due to a trashy balm she’d applied on top of that, was overscented for her position.
As for me, I had taken a bugbath beforehand and gotten all the balm I used in place of decoroma licked off of me. Except to the Banon tribe—whose sonivision could hear outside my audible range—and to those old ladies sometimes seen begging at the bottom of this riptrench, I was now undetectable.
I closed my spiracles so as not to be sensed by the flow of air. The dorsal vessel that ran through my body tensed as I passed silently by the side of the night-duty worker. I headed toward the back of the suite, hid myself behind a divider wall, and at last relaxed my spiracles, untensed my body segments, and exhaled slowly.
Bending down in front of a bookshelf by the window,I pulled on a drawer with both of my lower arms. The lockbug lurking in its foreplate made no reaction to my scentless presence, and the drawer slid right out. I pulled out a sheaf of reports and started tracing the scentences with my antennae. I was looking for a certificate issued by the Ministry of Legal Contemplation that had classified namas-machina as gloambugs, as well as the old attachment that had given the basis for that decision. The attachment had been created when namas-machina were first imported as maintenance tools for the reverbigation net and included mostly the details of their intelligence tests: able to speak like people … powers of mimicry, but only acquired as a survival strategy … intelligence level no different from other gloambugs … though trainable—such things were recorded therein, and in the corner of each leaf was the aromaseal of the previous Archlearner of the Ministry of Welfare Contemplation. As I was pulling out these documents, however, I became aware of an oily pressure bearing down over me.
A hulking figure nearly twice my size was standing right beside me.
Six dark red eyeballs were arrayed on an oblong face as wide as my shoulders, but none of them were able to detect my presence. The problem was her branching antennae, moving above my forehead as if tracing my outline. They were red, swollen, and twitching—signs of spawning season. Only during that period did they become especially sensitive to certain heat signatures, which made it easy to find creatures suited to be their eggbeds. And the Zafutsubo tribe’s favorite kind of eggbed was none other than the people of my own tribe, the Monmondo. Even worse, the Zafutsubo were an endangered tribe with a lot of political clout, and the Ministry of Legal Contemplation had recognized their right to choose their eggbeds freely.
Chewing noisily on something, the Zafutsubo woman came sidling up to me, and everything that was about to happen was perfectly legal. In the shadows of her two arms, small under-arms that had devol
ved into beaklike projections twisted and turned meaninglessly. The abdomanus hanging down from between her legs bent forward though, and a fat, whitish spawning tube slowly slid out from its tip.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “You had to have known things might turn out this way when you decided to come here.”
A bitter memory of my estranged wife came back to me.
Monmondo women use people as eggbeds too, but they don’t lay anyone but their own husbands.
It had been such a joyful time; being together with my wife, choosing names for our soon-to-be-born children. But then, on the very arc when our relatives had gathered for the spawning ceremony—right before that first pairing that I’d been burning for so passionately for so many rounds—something deep inside of me had snapped. Engulfed by a boundless terror that had come geysering up from inside, I left my wife decked out in her spawning dress and fled from Castellum Gakugu where I had been born and raised. Yet now here I was, about to have fifty or so eggs injected into my thoracic cavity by some strange woman from a completely different tribe.
I crouched low on both my short legs, then sprung off the floor as hard as I could, leaping backward. Better to go flying through a window and fall to my death than be messily eaten by infants who could have come from anywhere.
Windowfilm caught my back, stretched to its breaking point, then snapped away from me as it ruptured. I shot out into open air and plummeted into the shadowed riptrench’s deep crevasse.
Tiny wingnubs on either side of my back began vibrating furiously, fanning my terror. I fell for a time that seemed long enough to prepare a gourmet dinner for five—ah, that memory! The time we invited my mother and both my grandmothers to our new house before the spawning ceremony … my wife giving off the charm … turning a blissful smile my way … the ladies at ease, chatting pleasantly … and then just when I was taking my seat and about to dig in, I slammed magnificently into the surface of the loway.
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