Sisyphean

by Dempow Torishima

  “It’s active! This whole area is active!”

  “Disperse the momonji!” Kugu-shi shouted in his deep voice.

  Renji ran toward the momonji in front of the corpse, and Sagyoku-shii ran toward the one behind it. Both were shouting, urging escape. The other hands dispersed along the line and began evacuating the rest of the momonji.

  Accompanied by a blistering agony, the crystalline lattice cracked and began to collapse, and dark red liquid gushed out from within. The dead momonji was now beginning to sink into the gore, and around it a circle of ground about fifteen meters in diameter—supporting both the momonji in front of the corpse and the one behind it—was melting and sinking, transforming into a gigantic pool of blood.

  Kugu-shi and Gei’ei-shi fired their tamers from both sides of the pool, but with the target in a liquid state, there was no effect.

  “This is … the momonji’s impact scar!” Sagyoku-shii cried as she pushed against her momonji’s head. “It’s replicating expansively!”

  Homaru jumped down beside Sagyoku-shii, and together they applied their body weight against the momonji they were trying to rescue. Homaru bared his silver teeth; sweat broke out all over Sagyoku-shii’s face. They sank about a foot deep into the bloody mire.

  “Move it, you lazy—!”

  Kugu-shi and Gei’ei-shi thrummed carrier tone for all they were worth, but the moment the ground crystallized, it would crack and split and become engulfed in blood.

  (So heavy … can’t breathe … ) Inside the covered trailer, my body was vomiting over and over.

  Already, the dead momonji was disappearing from sight at the bottom of the bloody pool. The two terrified momonji in front and behind still wouldn’t let go of the guideline, as beneath their claw-legs, the depression in which the blood had pooled began to sink even deeper.

  “There’s not enough time! Give it up and get out of there!” At Kugu-shi’s order, the caravan hands began to flee, climbing out of the bloody pool. Renji drew near to her momonji, bid it farewell, and placed a hand on the rim of the depression. At just that moment, the momonji twisted violently, and Renji was sent flying. She slid down the blood-smeared slope and sank in all the way to her hips.

  Gei’ei-shi held out his hand right away, but they were too far apart. She was growing farther and farther away. The pool itself was getting deeper and deeper.

  Still clinging to the guideline, the two momonji were beginning to tilt.

  Breathing in gasps, Renji disconnected the cable from her shadecap and threw it, holding on to one end. For blind Gei’ei-shi though, it was impossible to catch. From the other side, Kugu-shi threw a rope as well, but she was too far away from him for it to reach her. Mandala-patterned reliefs were spreading out all around Renji, who was now covered up to her solar plexus.

  (Hey! At this rate … ) But I can’t control the movement (You’ve gotta do something)!

  Romon came running and was just about to jump into the bloody pool when he was grabbed from behind by Kugu-shi, who pinioned his arms.

  “Renji!” he called.

  At the sound of his cry, Renji, now chest-deep in blood, turned around and smiled for him weakly.

  “I wanted … to go with you. I wanted you to show me … the worlde, like you’ve talked about.”

  Renji closed her eyes and started to chant carrier tone. As she sank from neck-deep to chin-deep, she caused the liquid around herself to transform and gradually sealed herself within a crystalline shell. Its pointed upper tip slipped beneath the surface of the lake of blood. In the same instant, the two momonji flipped over and hung suspended in midair. Now the puddle of blood was so deep that the depression looked like a mortar bowl.

  Kugu-shi released his hold, and Romon didn’t move from that spot. His lips were pressed tightly together, but trembling breaths were slipping through his open wound.

  “But she’d come so far,” Homaru muttered through tears.

  The guideline sagged down, and the other two momonji were lowered into the bowl of blood.

  Kugu-shi ground his teeth, then whistled with his tongue, signaling to Gei’ei-shi, who was standing on the other side of the bowl.

  Both unsheathed short swords they had dangling from their hips, placed the blades against the guideline, and sawed at it furiously. The intestinal fibers frayed and snapped one after another, but the line as a whole wouldn’t break. Finally, creaking with the weight of the momonji, it tore apart at last.

  Both of the dangling momonji plunged to the bottom of the bowl of blood and sank out of sight as though they had melted away. With the shock of the impacts, the nanodust became more and more active.

  (It’s already too late) to stanch the flow of blood there’s (not a thing I can do to stop it). First Umari and now even Renji. Did I really hear a gas leak? (Was my mind just playing tricks on me?) Could I have just mistaken the Vastsea’s movements for my own—?

  The ground began to shake with rumbling vibrations.

  Like twin dams being burst by mudslides, the left and right sides of the bowl began to collapse, gradually forming a very long trench. Ahead of Kugu-shi and Romon, Gei’ei-shi and the fatteners grew more and more distant.

  Romon spat saliva tinged with blood.

  The caravan had been divided.

  Chapter 6:

  Cuffs and Fetters

  Umari still hadn’t slept a wink and continued to stare into the soft illumination of the trioculamp hanging from the bedchamber’s ceiling.

  The hollow, hushed warbling of distant pigeons reached her. Umari extended her right arm to grab the bed frame and raised her upper torso. When she leaned forward from the frame to try to get out of bed, she unexpectedly turned over and fell. She hit the floor with her cheek and her shoulder, but the thick rug absorbed the impact and the sound.

  The maternitorium stayed open late, and the mothers had not yet started to wake up. Umari braced her elbows against the floor and made alternating steps with them to drag herself past the rug, then crawling forward across the cold tile floor of the entryway, she slipped outside through the doggie door.

  The indigo sky bore a faint, whitish tint, and customers were already beginning to gather along the lane of the outdoor market.

  She crawled onward with only the movements of her arms and body. At this time of day, there were always a lot of earthcreepers out, so no funny stares were directed her way. She was shocked at how much strength she’d lost while stuck in bed. She hadn’t been at it long before her elbows felt like they were going to splinter apart, and the pain became so bad she could no longer move.

  She wanted to just keep lying on her stomach like this. Give up on everything and return to the dust as she slept.

  It seemed like such a nice idea. Yet even so, tears started spilling down her face.

  From behind came the sound of someone dragging their carcass over the ground.

  The sound gave Umari the creeps, so she ignored the pain and hurriedly crawled on ahead, but the person behind her caught up right away.

  “You poor thing; Vastsea’s done gone and had a taste of you, has it?”

  The voice was terribly hoarse and raspy, but she could tell it was a woman’s. She ignored it and forged on ahead, but the woman continued along beside her, making metallic sounds like when you wash a bunch of spoons and things together.

  “I understand,” she said. “I was a dustmancer a few years back myself.” Coughing loudly, she continued: “My name, actually, used to be pretty well known.”

  Umari stopped moving. She had remembered a name—Junrin-shi, the one that Renji had always idolized. She turned to look at her and saw her stopped a short way behind, facing downward. She was just slightly looking up at her, with twisted locks of dirt-caked hair twined about her face. Several slender metal rods were sticking out from the stump of her left upper arm.

  “Why …
don’t you exorcise those dustwroughts?”

  “When your throat gets this far gone, your carrier tone’s just not what it used to be.” So saying, she made a purring sound in her throat. “And no matter how many I cast out, I just get possessed again, so there’s really no point. But never mind me; you may be young, but giving up’s really for the best. Becoming an earthcreeper was the smart thing to do. It finally set me free from that hell out there. Now there’s no need to struggle anymore.”

  “No, I—” Umari started to say, but the woman wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise.

  “Folks who won’t crawl have no right to alms, see? So above all, crawl. That’s the most important thing. After that, as long as you’re not doing anything uncalled for, you can eat somebody’s leftovers anytime you like. And by the way, if you’re new at this, you must still have some. So listen, I was wondering if I might get you to share just a little bit with me?”

  When Umari suspiciously asked her just what she was talking about, the woman’s tone immediately took on the character of a wheedling, flattering child who wants something.

  “Come on, pretty please? I’ll teach you all about earthcreeping from ɑ to Ω. So give me the stuff in the claw-legs … the stuff that works. I know you’ve got some. You’d never make it across the Vastsea without it. And if that’s no good, a barter ticket or something would be fine.”

  Strength seemed to well naturally through Umari’s body once more, and she started crawling forward.

  When a hand grabbed her shoulder with an entreaty to Waiiiit! she just shook it off.

  “You greedy little miser! Heartless witch! You think we’ll let an animal like you survive here?” Shrill epithets rained down on her from behind.

  Gasping for breath, Umari crawled on, dragging herself over the ground. She kept crawling, heedless as her clothes were torn and her skin was scraped raw.

  In her watery, stinging eyes a mountain of transparent red paste was reflected. It was a hemomochi stand.

  Dr. Shibata, out for her morning stroll, was sitting in front of the stand, followed by her assistant, whose eyelids were nearly sealed shut. “No need for a bag today. I’ll just take it as-is,” she was saying. She took a bowl-shaped hemomochi and bit into it with the teeth on one side of her mouth.

  The wheelchair she was sitting in turned and began to move along, but it came to a stop when she passed in front of Umari.

  “You’ve got the wrong corner,” Dr. Shibata said. She did not turn toward Umari but faced straight ahead, moving her wrinkly mouth like a bellows as she chewed. “If you’re looking for crutches, try a bonecrafting shop.”

  “I … want to keep going on caravan drives with Master and the momonji,” she said. “I don’t ever want to stop.” She lifted herself up on both arms and stared pleadingly at the spiderwebbed profile of the doctor.

  “Why are you so attached to momonji? To things without souls? Those things were originally called ‘planetary bioprobes’—something more like machines than what we’d call living creatures.”

  “Even if that’s true, though, they still die. A caravan drive is the reprieve from death that we give them—it’s the only time when their fates are actually up in the air.”

  “Then it’s practically a graveside service held before the fact. You may be getting prodded along by reasons even you don’t completely understand.”

  “I have nothing except the dust I read and the dust I chant when I’m with them.”

  “Then why did the Vastsea reject you? Wishes that never come true no matter how many times you ask are never going to be granted. You should see that as plain as day just by looking at the earthcreepers. There was once a dustmancer who could cross the Vastsea with only two arms, but even that’s an impossible feat for you. And besides, that dustmancer was swallowed by dustwrecks in the end.”

  “That’s why I want legs to walk on again.”

  The doctor, aware that this request was coming, naturally argued against it and tried to explain the truth to her.

  “You think I’d be riding in this thing if I could make something like that?” She slapped the wheel of her wheelchair. “When I was young, the artificial limbs and organs you’re talking about were all over the place. And thanks to Kosmetics, you couldn’t even tell they were there. But you have no idea of the tragedy it was when the Great Dust Plague hit. Also, eidos bullets are no good when it comes to making things for flesh-and-blood bodies. Just imagine chanting something that complicated into existence with carrier tone. Even if it did work, you’d need to spend vast amounts of time chanting if you wanted the shapes to hold. And for something like walking … an action that others just take for granted … that half-baked carrier tone of yours would never—”

  Umari, of course, knew all of this already. Even so, she pleaded on.

  “I’m worn out already,” Dr. Shibata said. “I’m leaving now.”

  Her assistant began pushing the wheelchair, and then the doctor was moving away from Umari.

  Umari followed after them. People sometimes swore at her and sometimes threw her their leftovers as she crawled forward between the crowded stands. The skin peeled away from her forearm and elbow, leaving both smeared in blood.

  “Hey there, weren’t you the one talking to Soho-shii a while back?”

  A handsome-looking man in a bloody apron was standing in front of Umari. Her face was wet with tears and mucus.

  “The Vastsea’s gone and done a number on you, has it? But what a superb dismemberment!”

  “Please, ged oud of my way,” Umari sobbed.

  “Whoa there, where’d you say you were going? I’ll carry you there if you don’t mind.”

  “Leabe me alone, please. I’ll go by mysel’.”

  Umari started forward once more. His voice called out to her from behind: “Anytime you need me, just say so.”

  By the time she had climbed up and down the many steep staircases of the residential district’s southwest quarter to at last arrive at the clinic, she was on the verge of losing consciousness.

  The doctor’s assistant carried her in and laid her down on the treatment room’s couch.

  “I’ll treat those wounds, but that’s all. Anything else you ask, the answer is no.”

  An ancient medical text the doctor had read was shoved in front of Umari, and she was treated to a fluent explanation of just how difficult a thing it was she was asking. Umari listened attentively and kept asking question after question about the points she didn’t understand. “You just don’t know when to quit … not too bright, are you … that’s enough, already!” Grumbling all the while, the doctor parceled her explanation out in spoonfuls, then somewhere along the way the conversation morphed into a discussion of how to achieve the thing itself. Starting that day and continuing for some time after, the two of them would spend their nights at the clinic.

  “Somehow I get the feeling I’ve been bamboozled by a fox,” the doctor said with a tired expression, regretfully thinking, I should’ve bought more hemomochi.

  The blueprint that Umari began drawing with the doctor was completed one month later. The composition of the possession verse took another two months.

  While this work was ongoing, Umari began powdering her face and wearing lipstick. To support herself, she became a mother at the maternitorium.

  The embraces of travel-weary men were as nothing to her. A good man or a bad man made no difference. Compared to having both her legs ripped off, they were no more significant to her than mosquito bites. Still, it stuck in her craw that things had turned out the way Romon had said. She had wrestled against those words of his for such a long time.

  And even in the maternitorium—or “where you belong,” as Romon had put it—Umari didn’t know how long she would be allowed to stay. They would probably kick her out the minute it became known that she couldn’t bear children. Only those wh
o had given birth at least once were allowed to stay on as “grandmothers.”

  There had never been many men who came wanting to be fathers. But there were men who were into stump-girls. That pleasant-looking beastbutcher came to see her often. Would he abandon her, she wondered, if she did get her legs back?

  After her work in the maternitorium was done, Umari would sit on the foundation that stuck out from the blockwall, and in the still, faintly lit hours before daybreak, continue to practice her chant, watching long columns of momonji as they sometimes receded into the distance and sometimes grew nearer.

  Under the wan violet glow of the sky at dawn, she would bare the rounded stumps of both legs and move one of them near to the curved ivory surface of a crystalline lattice. She would begin to chant the possession verse for her artificial leg, and the curvature would bubble and several protrusions come rising up out of it like the tentacles of some coelenterate. The tentacles would break through her skin, eat their way into the stumps of her femurs, and once the foundations were firm, start to extend the lengths of the bones. At this point, muscle fibers would come winding about it like complex skeins of knitting—only to suddenly start melting and run off the bones, liquefied.

  She repeated that chant countless times, but it never went well. Impatience and irritation ran through her as she kept recklessly, ruthlessly trying it over and over, and then somewhere along the way, she got pregnant. It was a miracle. Not even Dr. Shibata’s diagnoses were infallible, it seemed.

  Umari rejoiced in her pregnancy and accepted her fate. With this, she could finally give up. Someday when her child had grown up big and strong, he would probably cross the Vastsea with momonji. In her old age, he would visit her and tell her stories about the caravan drives. About the momonji. Monotonous tales, devoid of variation or interest, of marching fearlessly onward through the Vastsea.

  Already, Umari felt a desire to tell her own, true mother that she had conceived a child, to tell her of all the things she’d experienced. She had missed her chance to ask Master where he had picked her up, so she still didn’t know. She didn’t really think that her mother was still alive, of course. Most likely, Umari had been rescued alone from some recuperation block that had been swallowed by the Vastsea. That was what she’d always figured had happened.