“What brings you here at a time like this?” said the owner’s familiar voice. Only the head of the short Tsuamo tribesman could be seen peeking above the counter. “I was just about to close up shop.”
“Flamecaller ale,” I said.
“We’re sold out.”
“Then make it a ragerum,” I said, ordering their second-strongest nectahol.
Reluctantly, the owner took a shellite bottle down from the shelf, stretched, and poured some of the liquor into a cupshell. There was hardly any bouquet to it at all. This place had only bottled spirits. Although the owner was capable of coughing up raw liquor if asked, his alcohol content was so low and the flavor so bitter that no one ever ordered it.
Suddenly, the castellum went into a wide swing, and many bottles came sliding off the shelves, shattering on the floor with loud pops and the tinkling of shellite.
“Yikes!” the owner cried, rather pitifully. “Well, if you don’t mind broken bottles, you can do as you like with those.”
So I knocked back one shot of stale liquor after another, trying to fool my aching and longing. Even so, the more I drank, the more unbearable it all became. When I should have been making small talk with the owner, I instead found myself shoving a shellcoin in front of him and asking where I could find a black market dealer. At some point the castellum’s swaying had settled back down.
The dealer’s establishment was located in the subterranean maze of forkways under Bohni Clifftown. He was Urume, and I found him leaning against a wall at the edge of a weak circle of light filtering down from a vertical forkway. He had a listless demeanor and a long, dried earthworm in his mouth.
I showed him the aromasealed letter of introduction I’d gotten from the owner of that crappy bar. The man shifted his mandibles, tilting the dried earthworm upward, and turned away from me. Placing four hands against the rock wall, he applied his weight against it. A part of the wall slid sideways, opening up a narrow entrance. Bending down, the dealer went inside, and I followed along behind.
Inside was a pitch-black cave. No light reached it, but the stench of namas-machina swirling about in its cloying air made the whole room seem dazzlingly bright. I looked up, and right before my eyes I saw namas-machina faces. Countless faces. They were tied up in bundles that hung from the ceiling so thickly there was no space in between.
“That was quite a tremor we just had. The war’s already started, hasn’t it? These’ll sell out in no time, so get ’em while you can.”
Speaking with a knowing look, the dealer reached up with both upper arms, untied a single bundle from the ceiling, and held it out in front of me.
When I saw the price tag, I couldn’t believe my antennae. Just one bug cost what I’d expected to pay for three bundles.
“These are all fresh and lively,” the man said, showing off the bundle as he turned it around and around in his fingers. There were about twenty-four of them in it, and all were as still as death. I paid the price asked. He grabbed just one from the bundle, but when he pulled on it, it wouldn’t come loose. Its threadlike legs were tangled up with those of his fellows. Annoyed, I grabbed hold of the bug myself and wrenched it loose, not caring that its legs were ripped off in the process. Then right before the dealer’s unbelieving eyes, I bit into its backside with my mandibles. The raw, fishy flavor made my stomach want to climb up my throat in protest, and I clenched my gastric teeth tightly. The cracked carapace was cutting the inside of my mouth to ribbons, but I couldn’t stop biting, crushing, and grinding. However, when I was finally ready to swallow, it wouldn’t go down. Something was blocking the passage. I imagined a squirming fetus lodged in my esophagus, which made my throat constrict even tighter and set off spasms in my thoracic plate.
“Oh dear …” the remaining half of the namas-machina said drowsily. “You don’t look so good. You’d better … go to a clinic …” Utterly discombobulated, I coughed hard and blew out what I had already chewed up. “Please, sir, get that looked at,” the remaining half went on, its concern for my health quite evident.
Fury welled up inside me, and I flung the namas-machina into the wall. Or at least I tried to, but the torn legs were still clinging to my hand and wouldn’t come loose.
I turned away from the dealer and got out of that cave. From behind, I heard a dirty laugh, and the dealer calling out, “Aw, he really loved you!”
The spasms wouldn’t stop. I wandered in a daze through boreways, across suspension bridges, and along gougeways, and while I was doing so, somebody snatched the namas-machina from my hand and took off running with it. I kept on walking. Walking was just another kind of spasm. Moving as though all my joints had come loose, I wandered through every back alley worthy of the name until at last I found myself standing in the very spot where I’d hit the pavement after taking that header from Maidun Reproducing Pharmaceuticals.
Maybe I wanted to believe that everything that had happened since was just a dream I was having in the last instant before I slammed into the ground. If that were the case, it would take care of not only the withdrawal symptoms but the whole war to boot, and I could just die quietly. Maybe that’s what I wanted to believe.
I collapsed at the side of the road. The convulsions of whole body segments were becoming more violent.
That’s when I sensed someone’s presence and extended my antennae. Somebody’s butt had appeared right in front of my face. Its owner was rubbing it hard against the ground. Then the hindquarters rose up, exposing a translucent ovoid shape, tinged with light. Steam was rising up off of it. I reached a hand out reflexively and pushed the still-damp egg into my mouth. As I was chewing on it, my stomach turned inside out. I vomited out emptiness, and everything else that lay beyond.
Chapter 4:
Names Exhumed
from Ebon Dunes
1
I awakened to the shock of being harshly shaken up and down.
My body, the grotto, no, the castellum itself was rocking violently. I sought to escape, but there was no strength in my limbs; every joint felt like it was dislocated. A terrible chill took hold of me, and I felt like I might throw up at any moment.
“Da-da, Ma-ma, o’tay, Da-da, Da-da—” My field of vision was motion-blurred from the shaking, and I was experiencing an auditory hallucination of shrill, strange voices. “Da-da, Da-da, ’old on, Da-da—”
“It’ll be a little while, before you can walk again,” a voice said suddenly by my elbow. It was a woman’s voice, and one I’d heard somewhere before. “Have to fix you up quickly. If we don’t, we’re going to be buried, in this grotto.”
Buried? What in the world was this about?
“… castellum’s people, are starting to move. Starting to move in great numbers.”
Where are they moving to? What’s going on?
“Fix’yu, Da-da, Da-da, ’ang on, Da-da—”
“Take this.”
A rubbery something was pressed up against my mouth—Stop it!—and turned back and forth to wedge it inside—“Da-da, Da-da, Da-da—”
“Da-da, ’ang on …”
“Ma-ma, i’Da-da otay?”
“Da-da, ’et well, Da-da …”
“Da-da, ’ake up …”
“Da-da, Da-da—”
Their noisy, drawling voices dragged me out of slumber.
Segments creaking, I sat up in bed. Namas-machina pupas were gathered beneath my danglebed. Through gaps in the netting, they were massaging my carapace, stroking it with their filament-limbs.
Ro was sitting by the wall with her back bent deeply over. Why did I know her name? That’s right! After I collapsed, she lent me her shoulder and brought me back to my grotto, stopping to rest so many times along the way. That was when I asked her her name for the first time, and she told me it was Ro. Ro Namas-machina.
“Da-da ’oke up!”
“Da-da’s awake!”
“Da-”
“Daa-daa”
“’ood mo’nin”
“Stop it!” The fresh, ripe smell of the pupas clung to my antennae until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Are—are you making them talk?”
When I looked up at the ceiling, nothing remained except the egg bottoms, resembling receptacles of flowers left behind after the petals had all fallen. “Don’t tell me, these guys hatched from the eggs up there?”
The grotto shook violently. There was a muffled sound like when my elbows ring. A fusillade from Castellum Sosoga.
“They’re still fighting, are they? How long has it been?”
“You were, more than ten arcs, with withdrawal symptoms—”
“Ten arcs! Wonderful! Just wonderful! So I’ve just been lying here while the castellum’s in danger—”
I sat up straight and stepped down to the floor, but unable to stand, I collapsed on the spot. It felt like my body’s center of gravity was lagging behind me. I heard the dry sound of something slender snapping into pieces. When I looked at the floor, there were several long white legs scattered about. Some gloambug’s apparently. Had they belonged to a relay bug?
Surprised by the pupas that had gathered around, I somehow managed to stand up again. I advanced forward with long, wobbly strides.
“Da-da”
“Da-da”
“’Ere you ’oing?”
“Da-da—”
I tumbled forward into the wall, then grabbing hold of the doorframe, shoved myself out of the grotto.
Was it just me, or did I hear Ro murmur, “Goodbye”?
I stepped into the forkway and started walking. Strong quakes rattled the walls intermittently. After proceeding for some time, I found my way forward blocked by a pile of black, granular potassium nitrate. Gloambugs were busy digging in it, turning it over; maybe their nests had been buried underneath. I switched to a forkway that continued forward on an upward slope, but soon found the path blocked again with more potassium nitrate. I backtracked some distance, then advanced up the incline of a different forkway. Light from the exit at last came into view.
When I looked up over the lip of the hole, I saw the rolling dunes of a dark, dark desert, spreading out across a sharply tilting world. I was looking up from the end of the Mebohla Riptrench loway, and there before my eyes was Nazumo Clifftown, transformed into a gargantuan slope that had been buried up to around its third level by a deluge of potassium nitrate.
The leaflight from the wall’s vegetation appeared to be weakening. The potassium nitrate dunes continued off into the distance until the riptrench’s curvature hid them from view. Suspension bridges between the lower levels were all buried on one end.
I crawled up out of the hole and started walking across the black dunes with dry, crunching footfalls. Carts loaded up with household goods were stuck where they had sunk into the black sand.
A man came up from behind me at a hurried pace and passed me by. On his back, he was carrying a bundle of namas-machina. Their cloudy black eyes were looking at me. “Da-da,” “Da-da,” said each one. “’ake a break,” “’ake it easy.”
Was I hearing things, or were the words of the little ones propagating through them to me? I had no idea. One thing was certain: I really did need a break. In someplace other than that grotto.
I stopped at the top of a low hill to check my position, looking up at the inclined ceiling that the leafy wall of Gukutsu Clifftown had become. Perhaps sensing the danger, flowers were blossoming all across it, sticking out their sharp pistils and stamens.
“Hey there! Why didn’t you come?” cried a voice from behind. I turned around but didn’t see anyone.
“Over here! Over here!” he said.
I looked around, trying to find the speaker.
An inverted triangle-shaped head was peeking up over the ridgeline of a tall dune that had a suspension bridge sticking out of it. The rest of his grass-green body was revealed immediately as he crested the hilltop and started down the slope. Again and again he waved at me, but I couldn’t remember who he was.
Now he was coming up the low rise where I was standing. “How about you moving a little yourself?” he said, a sound like broken flutes whistling in his spiracles as he came to a halt in front of me. An Urume tribesman.
“I’ve been looking for you since yesterarc. I wanted to evacuate early, but I couldn’t get you on the reverbigator, and none of the relay bugs I sent ever came back. The forkways were all buried, toOAH—!”
A strong tremor struck, and the man slid down the slope, although his posture was unchanged.
Seeing that I was at a loss to answer him, he opened up a briefcase and pulled out a wide-mouthed bottle made of shellite. “It’s the mystery parasite!” he said. “Someone at the Ministry of Reverbigation was forcibly hospitalized, and this thing came out of his head.”
I hurried across the rolling dunes, carrying the bottle, feeling the weight of the squirming parasite inside.
We reached the Seat of Learning, but there was no sign of the gate guards, and the door had been left half open. I went inside and crawled up the tilted staircase on all fives. When I reached the seventh floor, I turned the corner leading to Archlearner Row and started walking. Noi Meiyuru came into view right away, her back turned toward me. She was cornered by three learners—probably the same three we’d seen Arch-learner Ryofin of the Ministry of Castellum Contemplation kicking out of his office earlier.
Antennae unconsciously raised, a flustered-sounding Noi was saying, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t help you.”
Then she turned around to face me and said, “Do you have any idea how worried we were, Archlearner? We even sent relay bugs.”
“What’re you calling me Archlearner for? I’m—”
Unable to remember my own name, I fretted for a moment, but then the Seat of Learning started shaking wildly. Fluoroflesh flies came tumbling down, and with an ominous rumble like the sound of a great millstone being turned, cracks began to appear in the passageway’s ceiling.
“Hurry, please,” said Noi. “All archlearners are to be moved to Castellum Saruga by morrowarc.”
“A moment, please, Archlearner Meimeiru,” one of the learners cut in, glaring at me. “Archlearner Ryofin still has not approved any kind of response or countermeasure. Which is to say, the Ministry of Castellum Contemplation is not functioning.”
Next, a female learner leaned forward. “There’s no longer anything we can do. As learners at the Ministry of Castellum Contemplation, we ultimately had no choice but to conduct an unauthorized, independent investigation.”
From behind them, the third learner murmured as though talking to himself: “But the Seat of Defense has no elbows for unauthorized advice.”
Pleadingly, the first learner asked me, “When the time comes, would you be willing to testify for us in court?”
A memory came back to me of the reverbigator malfunction records I had glimpsed in the Ministry of Reverbigation’s aromaterials depository.
“It isn’t just the accumulated amount of potassium nitrate that’s the problem—”
“Its three-dimensional distribution is abnormal. Unlike a so-called ‘suiseeding,’ this one will not blow outward in all directions.”
“That’s right. The blast will have a downward directionality; more than half of the castellum will be preserved.”
“But in any case, the explosion can’t be avoided.”
“All right, everyone,” said Noi, “it’s about time to attend to your own evacuations now. The Archlearner is in a hurry.”
The learners continued to talk at me, but urged on by Noi, I started walking. The black double doors were both open, like the mouth of an infant waiting to be fed.
Waiting for me.
The instant I set foot inside Archlearner Meimeiru’s skull, the
long legs of the lunming bugs on either wall wrapped around me, and I scarcely had time to brace myself before being shoved into his pleated flesh. I sank into it as his bubbling secretions enveloped me.
Behind me, I heard a voice groan in agony, as well as a noise like backed-up plumbing. It went on and on, grating on my elbows. It felt so good I could barely contain myself. If the Archlearner was synchronizing with me, he had to be getting a vicarious taste of my withdrawal symptoms as well.
“I see. Your predecessor was no different; it would seem you Monmondo are easily given to indulgence. In any case—”
It’s the job that’s to blame, most likely, I thought. It isn’t easy having somebody’s brain forcibly jammed inside your head.
“—to think that’s why namas-machina withdrawal is so severe fresh egg in antagonist factor and surprising potency through window-shopper prescriptions of dependence and retention that the clinics can see how Maidun’s racking up the sales while even the Ministry of Archaeological Contemplation ample research funds but what ought to worry them females egg-laying age of thirty rounds laying without a break speeding up aging discarded one after another still young also retreated from proposal to cull and the expense problem look around the riptrench emaciated females all over the place not so much gloambugs as old women bad influence on the castle folk casting doubt on the Hypothesis—”
The stream of the Archlearner’s clouded thoughts had backed up and overflowed, and I was left stunned at the facts I found bobbing on the surface. Why hadn’t I realized right away? I’d gotten it into my head that Ro’s nurse work in Castellum Giri had been a lot farther back. She’d treated wounded soldiers until she was twelve, she’d said. Hadn’t it been thirteen rounds ago that Castellum Giri sank in that huge three-way battle? So even though she looked so old and decrepit … she had to be still in her twenties.
“—thoughts grew too distracted due to impurities there’s no time back to the matter at hand which is to say this is what I thought: that the castellae are intelligent—”
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