Sisyphean

by Dempow Torishima

  A row of dustboxes was lined up along that wall. I continued on into the ripway, wondering if there might be a clue there among them. The Archlearner’s bodily fluid had turned white as it dried, and now it was flaking off me like scales with each step I took. The throbbing in my head had only gotten worse. This wasn’t the usual pain.

  On the ground ahead, scattered bugpuddles came into view. Many of the gloambugs were on their backs, scratching vainly at the air with their many legs. I looked at the dustbox just to the right of them, where an aromaseal read Wastebug Disposal.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Surprised by the sudden shout, I accidentally stepped on a beetle, crushing it underfoot. I turned around to find myself face to face with an exhausted-looking Urume tribesman. The aromaseal on his armband read “Security Patrol.”

  “I’m here on a dodgejob—”

  Then I slipped on the sticky mucus underfoot and, stumbling again, trampled one gloambug after another. The patrol officer said, “Oh dear,” in the same tone one might use with a child who’d just pooped.

  Red mucus was sticking out of cracks in the crushed bugs’ carapaces. I knelt down and wiped some up with my fingertips, moving my fingers together and apart a few times experimentally. It was terribly sticky, and there was a sweet scent to it.

  “They’ve been sucking redslick or something. So, what sort of dodgejob are you on—?”

  Gloambugs certainly did like castellum redslick. They had to be exterminated whenever they latched onto a pipeline and started sucking refills. On a prior, unrelated case, however, I had once investigated the layout of the piping in this area and was well aware that no redslick pipelines passed anywhere near this spot. Besides, if it was redslick they were sucking, they wouldn’t smell the way they did.

  “I’m doing an investigation for the Ministry of Archaeological Contemplation,” I said, standing back up.

  “Oh, so this is about that vanished giant …”

  “Don’t tell me that story’s gotten out already?”

  “No, it’s just that the patrol guard on duty last night happened to be me.”

  “I see. You look pretty worn out.”

  “I’d finally gone home and had just gotten to sleep when a reverb came from the liaison officer and woke me up. Honestly, that woman … ! I told her no one had been in the autopsy room, but she still made me come back in. It was just two arcs ago I got moved to the third floor, and already there’s angry big shots putting me under the microscope.”

  “I’ve heard that there hadn’t been any change in the giant’s condition, but if you noticed anything …”

  “Do I have to go over all this again? All I did was look in from the doorway, but it was lying there same as always. At any rate, there was nobody in there, and I did check the lockbug like I was supposed to—”

  “Hey, I’m not doubting you.”

  “—been asked again and again if there was anything suspicious at the scene, but how could there be if there was nobody in there to begin with?”

  But the Ministry of Archaeological Contemplation was assuming an invisible perpetrator.

  “Hey,” the patrol guard said in a hushed voice. “I can’t ask the higher-ups about this; they’d just get mad and tell me to mind my own business, but … do you know what that thing is?”

  “No idea. What do you think it is?”

  “Well, rumor has it that thing’s an ancestor of ours. It was smooth, and its carapace had a reddish-yellow tint that was just a little bit translucent. When I shone my lantern on it, it had a glossy sheen. Its shape, too, made me think there might be something to those rumors.”

  “Oh? A glossy carapace …” I scraped my toes against the shellite pavestones, wiping off the yuck. I had my eyes trained on a gloambug whose carapace was split wide open. An image of the gloambugs squirming inside the proxy’s cranial shell rose up in my memory. “By the way, do wastebugs from the Ministry of Archaeological Contemplation’s autopsy room and bathroom empty out there?” I pointed a finger at a wastebug disposal bin.

  “That’s right.” The guard turned toward the wastebug disposal bin and opened the lid. Contrary to my expectation, it was empty inside. The bug drainage pipe that opened out of the wall was also clean.

  “The bugsweeps came by to get them just a little while ago.”

  Which meant the bugs on the ground must have spilled out at that time.

  “But all that aside, um …” —here a degree of reticence crept into the guard’s tone— “… I really think you ought to see a doctor.”

  3

  Thanks to my headache, my feet were starting to go wobbly. This was a symptom I had never had before.

  I descended into a pitway with unsteady footsteps and, taking the boreway, passed through Gukutsu Clifftown and Marov Clifftown, emerging on the loway of Suifu’ushi Riptrench. Here, it was unusually deserted. Was it just my imagination, or did everyone I pass on the street have an uncomfortable look on their face? Maybe they all thought I was drunk.

  I stepped into the waiting room at Saromi Clinic; with the Circlingseed Festival going on, it was no surprise to find it empty. I opened the door to the treatment room and found the head of the clinic inside, sitting in a chair. He was squeezing a blotterbug as he wrote in his medical log. The scents of antiseptic and fresh bodily fluid were present; someone must have been brought in due to an accident at the festival.

  Saying nothing, I seated myself in the chair in front of him. The abdomen of his blotterbug raced across the leafsheet as he spoke.

  “Lovely … you again. And here I thought I was finally gonna get a break.”

  “My headache’s really bad this time. Can you take a quick look?”

  “I told you; it’s phantom pain. You’ve sure turned into a worrywart.” Dr. Saromi finally looked up at me. “You’re not taking any namas-machina I didn’t prescribe, are you? That drug’s so strong they banned it in Castellum Saruga. You’ll only make your condition worse.”

  “That goes without saying,” I replied, not averting my eyes. There was a limit to how much of the stuff could be prescribed at one time, so I had to make the rounds of several other clinics and pharmacies. “By the way, about my prior request … ?”

  “Oh, you mean the one who saved your life? Sorry, I can’t hire her. Forget about it.”

  Dr. Saromi pulled an atomizer bug—notable for being nearly all abdomanus—out of his desk drawer, pointed it at me, and squeezed the abdomanus repeatedly. A bitter-smelling mist sprayed from its tiny mouth, which settled all over my body.

  “This carcass of yours is always a pain to examine.”

  His long antennae felt their way over my carapace as though they were dusting me off. He told me to turn around, and when I obeyed, a laugh rang out like a chisel cutting shellite.

  “You’ve got brain matter hanging out from between the segments in the back of your head. What in the world happened to you?”

  Unconsciously, I started reaching back to touch it, but he stopped me.

  “The Archlearner of the Ministry of Archaeological Contemplation forced a vicarious experience on me while explaining a job.” A bad feeling started to come over me. “You don’t think Tagadzuto might’ve sold me out to be a replacement for that dead proxy, do you?”

  “Radoh Monmondo?”

  “What?”

  “There, you still know who you are. There’s no way you’ve become a proxy.”

  “Well then, why did he—” Intense pain hit me, as though I’d just been punched in the back of the head. The gap between my cerebral plates was being forcibly widened. Then something was jabbed inside, and I vomited.

  “Looks like some foreign brain matter was injected. That’s what pushed yours out.”

  “Why that dirty—!”

  “But that tiny little brain of yours never could�
��ve handled the experience by itself. Without these cells, turning into a proxy would’ve been the least of your worries; you could’ve ended up an empty husk—uh-oh.”

  “What—?”

  “There’s one in your brain too. I’m seeing this a lot lately. Most of the patients who come in here complaining of headaches have these weird tumors. Benign though; they’re nothing to worry about. An investigation’s starting up at the Ministry of Clinics, so we should know what they are before too long.”

  With the increased weight, my head was unstable and my neck segments wobbled something awful. In order to protect my enlarged brain, the back half of my cranial plate had been removed, and an artificial plate attached in its place.

  I entered a forkway through one of the holes that opened sparsely onto the loway and was doing fine until I couldn’t remember how to get back to my grotto. Due to my secretion gland dysfunction, I’d been using aromatic oil as a marker, but now I couldn’t smell the difference between that and the scents left by others. It’s this way, I thought, but found the path I went down blocked by gloambug eggs and chrysalises and ultimately ended up going in circles. My dorsal vessel started beating faster, and my breathing grew rapid with agitation.

  It was because this place was such a complicated labyrinth that I’d chosen to live here in the first place. Who could blame me for getting lost?

  I kept telling myself that, trying to ease my nerves.

  At last I heard a familiar rattling sound. Somewhere, a reverbigator shell was vibrating. I followed the sound and finally came to a tiny, run-down grotto. There was no one inside. The reverbigator shell continued to rattle.

  Rather boldly, I approached it and removed the lidshell. Inside was the face of Tagadzuto. After silently reflecting on this for a moment, it occurred to me that this grotto was my own. I pulled down the lever that controlled its jewel-bits.

  “You’re awfully late getting home, aren’t you, Radoh Monmondo?” said Tagadzuto. “What’s the matter? You look a bit different somehow.”

  “Archlearner Meimeiru’s request … he wasn’t asking for a proxy contract, was he?”

  “… ello? What did you …”

  He was doing it again. I slammed the lidshell shut.

  And right after that was when it happened. A powerful blow to the back of my head. My consciousness took flight.

  Chapter 3:

  The Analogizing

  Addict

  1

  My carapace was broiling under intense light, and I was in a delirium. My elbows whistled like flutes as a ferocious wind whipped across their acoustic pores. Gradually, the whistling began to sound more and more like a human voice.

  “You, all right? You, all right?”

  From the midst of a mold-encrusted cephalothoracic shell, something resembling a face was calling out to my elbows. What was this old lady doing here? What had happened to me?

  “I’m sorry. I let myself in. I’m sorry.”

  A horrible wave of nausea washed over me. My head felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. I had the Archlearner to blame for that. No, wait—that wasn’t right. It was right here that I’d been struck from behind. I reached back and touched the spot experimentally. There was a dent in the artificial plate, and the fittings were loose.

  “You, you gave me food. Sometimes, you give me food. Remember?”

  The room was dimmer than usual. I looked up at the ceiling and saw pale, wrinkly ovoids dangling here and there among the glowjars.

  “What’re those things …” I said. The insides of my mouth were sticking together.

  “I wanted to thank you, but when I came here, another person—not you, came out through the door, strange man. When I, came inside, you were still on the floor, so I …”

  “A strange man?” A Zafutsubo tribesman? But there was no way a Zafutsubo could get into such a narrow forkway. “Tell me what he was like. Was he alone?”

  “He was alone. A common tribe, Urume, I think, but I don’t know.”

  Someone hired by the Zafutsubo, then? But if that was the case, why hadn’t he handed me over to them—?

  “There was something funny about how he moved. That can happen when you’re sick in the cranial nerves.”

  That’s when I remembered—this old lady used to be a nurse.

  “There may be something wrong with me too,” I said. “I’m seeing these weird things on the—”

  “I’m sorry, so sorry. I laid them for you to eat, but I couldn’t cover the ceiling …” As she clung to me with slender, mold-encrusted arms, my back went rigid and my temperature began to drop. Those things were eggs. Their unnatural wrinkles and color were characteristic of geriatric ovulation. “I’ve been worn down till I’m almost nothing but shellcoins, but, I can still lay eggs, so, just a few every arc, and …”

  “You saved my life; that’s plenty. Now, please stop that already.” I stood up and brushed off the old woman’s hands.

  “You can eat eggs from another tribe … if both sides agree. Please eat them. You’ve got to eat. Don’t hold back. You must still be in pain. You’ve got to get better. This is all I can do for you. I’ll work hard and keep laying them, so …” The old woman put her arms and legs against the wall and started to climb toward the ceiling.

  “I’m telling you, you don’t have to lay any more!” Unable to hold back my emotions back, I yelled at her as I dragged her back down. Powdery spores from all over her body danced in the air. “Come on, it’s time for you to go. Don’t come in here.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry—” She sounded like she was praying as I shoved her out of the room and closed the door. Then I stood there, unable to move. It was like my feet were held in stocks.

  At the end of the arc, I still didn’t feel up to doing anything. I took my namas-machina, but the headache didn’t get any better. After passing a sleepless night, I stumblingly emerged from my grotto.

  I made my way through the forkways and emerged into Suifu’ushi Riptrench, where the vegetation that grew thickly on its walls was just beginning to garb itself in leaflight. A still hush hung over everything. Leaf-shaped gloambugs were feasting on trash that had collected in the corners of the loway.

  I headed for Saromi Clinic, told Dr. Saromi what had happened, and had him look me over.

  “Again?” he groused. “And I’d just attached that plate; look at it now! Judging by how it’s bent, I’d say it’s been pried open.”

  A hard sound reverberated inside my cranial plate, by which I understood that the artificial plate had been removed.

  “… it just keeps getting stronger and stronger.”

  “What does?”

  I turned around and saw that Dr. Saromi’s antennae had withdrawn.

  “Can I get you to face forward?”

  I did as I was told, and right away the nausea hit me.

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Of course you don’t; I’ve got my hand stuck up your head—ah, there it is!” At which point a spatula covered in red mucus was thrust before my eyes. It had a faintly sweet smell. “There was a spot on your brain that had been pressed on and spread out; this stuff was stuck to it.”

  The man that the old woman had witnessed—this had to have been his doing, though I had no idea what he’d hoped to accomplish.

  Dr. Saromi’s antennae extended upward slowly. “It almost looks like you got de-bugged in there.”

  “You mean there was a parasite in my brain? Where did it go then?”

  “Maybe that man you described was nicer than you thought and assaulted you in order to clean you out.” The doctor laughed. “Just kidding; all I’m saying is that that’s what it looks like. I don’t know of any species of parasite that has secretions this color.”

  That can happen when you’re sick in the cranial nerves, the old woman had said. I re
membered that in the past, illnesses caused by brain parasites were sometimes misdiagnosed as diseases of the cranial nerves.

  “That man might have been a host as well,” I said. “I was told that he had the walk.”

  “I see. If that’s the case, what he did could also be taken as irregular behavior caused by a brain parasite. Though that still doesn’t explain the secretions.”

  I remembered the sensation of gloambugs being crushed underfoot. The broken shards of their carapaces, smeared with red mucus. That sweet aroma.

  “The dead proxy was a Monmondo like me. He suffered a seepage in a bugbath and had his brain eaten up. But what if his cranial plate had been pried open by the same man?”

  Dr. Saromi didn’t answer.

  “Red mucus came out of gloambugs that had likely been inside the proxy’s brain. There are some types of parasite that move from host to host. You think that maybe that man had tried to parasitize both of us?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Who would use a crude method like that? This is why detective work should be left to professionals.”

  “A new breed then?”

  But why were they only infecting Monmondo? No, wait—the man who assaulted me was Urume. Could different tribes be suited to different stages of their development?

  “And why did they fail in parasitizing us?”

  “They didn’t ‘fail’ or anything else. These parasites of yours never existed to begin with. We’re in the realm of paranoia now— Hey, you are taking the correct dosa—”

  “Yeah, that might have been a little far-out,” I said quickly, realizing that he was about to call me out for overdosing on namas-machina.

  “Well, I’ll let you know right away if I come across this ‘new species’ of parasite.”

  Dr. Saromi wore a displeased smile as I thanked him on my way out. From there, I headed over to the Seat of Learning.

  “I can see what you look like quite clearly today,” said the gate guard on the left, awfully sociable today as he opened the gate for me.