Sisyphean

by Dempow Torishima

  One day, she tried asking Dr. Shibata, who answered, “I don’t really know, b—”

  The doctor stopped right after almost adding a “but,” and over and over Umari asked her about that, hanging onto that thread as though by her teeth.

  “I’ve told you this before,” Dr. Shibata said, “but Ol’ Dustclinger first brought you to this clinic seventeen years ago. I remember you looking a bit malnourished, but I was surprised at how healthy you turned out to be when I examined you. How could I forget? Thing was, I thought you were mentally impaired at the time.”

  “But I was a baby, wasn’t I?”

  “No, you looked pretty much the way you do right now.”

  Countless little incongruities she had experienced in her life suddenly clicked into place. Consciousness receded into the distance, and she felt like she was going to faint.

  “After that, Ol’ Dustclinger took you to the maternitorium and left you with the mothers there. Asked ’em to look after you as if you were an infant. And sure enough, you were learning to speak at about the same speed that a baby grows. To look at you, you were no different from the mothers, so the children all loved you. Come to think of it, Romon was in that bunch, wasn’t he … ?”

  Not long afterward, Umari miscarried. The fetus, no larger than a bean, was tangled up in dustwrought fibers.

  I was never a child, and I can’t even make decent arms and legs, Umari thought, heaping reproach on herself. No one like me could ever raise a child to think for himself and carry on after me. For many days and nights, she wandered about the recuperation block’s interior, weeping as her crutches and her sticklike prostheses moved awkwardly back and forth like compasses.

  Then without her realizing it, her wailing voice began to transform into a crystal-clear carrier tone.

  Motes of dust rose up from the ground as if in a vacuum and swirled around Umari as she walked where impulse took her, drawing nearer and nearer. These nanomotes were eating into her prostheses and replacing them, growing into ligaments that bound tibia to fibula, connecting layer after layer of muscle fiber to her tendons.

  When her tears had dried, and the skin was taut around her eyes, and every last tear had disappeared from her face, her staff fell away and struck the earth. Umari realized that she was standing firmly on the ground on twin legs of silver.

  Chapter 7:

  The Crosser of Boundaries

  “Didn’t you check them out before we left?”

  “They tested negative for pregnancy.”

  Sagyoku-shii the fattener had her shadecap pushed down on her back and was stroking a momonji’s abnormally swollen side, a grave expression on her face. Since it was injured, it had been moved in front of the momonga that pulled the wagon at the tail-end of the line.

  The rear half of the divided caravan was stuck between a pair of steep wreckcliffs that rose up on the left and the right.

  “They should never grow like this outside the environment of the fattening lake. And this is—”

  “We haven’t even managed to link up with Gei’ei-shi and the others yet, and we can’t afford to run any farther behind schedule.” Romon spat, and the crude stitches in his face started bleeding again. “Honestly, is breastfeeding momonji all you’re good for?”

  “Why, you little—!” Sagyoku-shii rose to her feet, bosom shaking as she came grabbing at Romon. Kugu-shi got himself between them right away. “Don’t you stop me!” she said. “I’m gonna pull this brat’s innards out through his poop chute!”

  “Ms. Sagyoku-shii, please don’t lose your temper over every little thing this idiot says. This momonji, it’s the same one that was wounded by the canvasser’s Hades thorn earlier, right? Could the pregnancy be related to that?”

  “I’ve never heard of any such precedent,” Sagyoku-shii said, smoothing her rumpled clothing. “In any case, though, it looks like it could give birth at any moment. Please, let’s stop here for just a little while. This momonji can’t keep going any longer.”

  Kugu-shi nodded and put the word out that they would be making camp here.

  In the trench between the two wreckcliffs, dust crystals about the size of roosting pigeons were beginning to form in midair. The dustmotes that comprised them were reacting to the humans’ brainwaves and combining to form wire-frame polygons. Buffeted by the wind, they underwent sporadic, spasmodic changes in shape. After so many unexpected disasters, even the seasoned caravan hands were on the verge of losing their usual relaxed dispositions.

  Suddenly, a brief scream rang out. It came from near the front of the column, where a young fattener who was on just his second momonji drive was leaning against a momonji, pressing one hand tightly over his left ear.

  “Well, that was smart, wasn’t it?” Sagyoku-shii muttered disgustedly and coughed. “Way to get your ear lopped off by that dust crystal! And after all the times I told you not to pay attention to them!”

  Another fattener called out for emergency aid, but Sagyoku-shii shook her head at him. “Leave him be. Saroku’s gotta live in the worlde, so he at least needs to be able to treat himself.”

  While this was going on, Romon and Homaru were arguing in hushed tones in the shadow of the covered wagon. Though they appeared to be using carrier tone, they were spoofing the lyrics with secrecy modulation, so no one could understand what they were saying. Horror was evident on both of their faces.

  Behind them, a section of wreckcliff nearly thirty meters in height was changing shape, transforming into a great number of tall steel columns supporting a wide, overhanging deck at the top. On this deck stood a box-shaped building, and from its roof, a tall tower rose even higher into the sky.

  It was so strange. Was the wreckcliff really changing shape, or was it an illusion? The strangest thing of all was the fact that “I” was standing up on that deck.

  From up on the deck, I looked down on steep, overhanging cliffs with striped patterns moving across them and over a vast spread of sea that blurred to a dark steel blue in the distance. Powerful gusts of wind came blowing in against me. When it became impossible to keep standing any longer, I opened a rusted iron door and retreated inside the building.

  The interior felt spacious, and the walls and the ceiling were covered in countless crisscrossing wires for conducting carrier tone. The floor and work desks overflowed with massive piles of technical drawings, as well as rulers and slide rules of all shapes and sizes. There was a ruin-grade computator with many stacked layers of circuit board exposed. Amid all this disorder, more than fifty people were hard at work, determination etched into each face. One was making his throat vibrate while facing a carrier tone wire; another was drawing technical diagrams. Like in a house of mirrors, people were multiplying, merging into one another, and moving elsewhere without warning. Time also seemed to be flowing at different rates in different places. Among this crowd were dustmancers with whom I was familiar, including Romon and Homaru; this was just like that place they say everyone stops by just before they die.

  A number of those standing in front of me moved away, revealing two figures sitting back to back in the center of the room. The one nearer me was Hanishibe. His entire body was secured with a metallic, skeletal framework; his eyes were open wide; and occasionally an eyelid or the corner of one eye would spasm. His head was nodding slightly forward, and his skull had been removed from the forehead up, exposing a grayish brain tinged cherry-blossom pink. Comma- and dash-shaped pieces of ore that appeared to be magatama and kudatama—excavated relics of the ancient world—were mounted all across his brain’s surface, with many carrier tone wires connected to them.

  Above his head there floated a circular mirror whose underside shone a light downward.

  It was the object Hanishibe had taken from the shrine—it could be nothing other than a Divine Implement. Chinju-no-kami and Ubusunagami still lived. Maybe the kosmetic box in my brain was responding an
d that was why I was seeing all this. But wouldn’t that mean that the Divine Implement I was looking at right now was kosmetic too?

  Still expressionless, Hanishibe moved his lips and said, “It’s time.”

  Everyone rose from their seats and headed toward a spiral staircase in the back of the room toward the left. I slipped into their midst as well, got in line, and headed up the stairs. We got up past the ceiling and went round and round inside the tower as we climbed ever higher.

  The observation platform was walled in with glass on all sides. Many dark human shadows were standing before a dazzling light streaming in from outside. Every face that was turned toward me was the face of Hanishibe.

  Through the glass, I could see cottony clouds drifting through the sky and could gaze across the immensity of the Vastsea, where sparse patches of dustwreck jungle flourished.

  On a dustwreck hill about a kilometer away was a giant hollow that reminded me of a strip mine. A metal disk sealed off its bottom, and from its center, a line with no thickness was stretching straight up toward the heavens.

  Suddenly, the worlde shone with pure white light, and I was shaken by mighty vibrations. As if rocked by a powerful earthquake, the glass windows trembled and the observation platform swayed. The lights dimmed. Up in the sky, the clouds became blurred in a radial pattern; on the ground, the distant dustwreck jungle rolled in concentric ripples while setting off flashes of lightning. With each roll of these continuing ripples, the dustwreck jungle would wither.

  Chalk-white crystalline lattices were beginning to sprout within the hollow from which all of this was emanating; they were growing into and on top of one another, forming the huge round pillars of a truss structure that rapidly rose to greater and greater heights.

  I remembered an interstellar transport I saw as a child. Clouds of exhaust piling atop one another as it climbed to boundless heights—but this was a Floating Bridge tying Heaven and Earth together—no, a backward-spinning halberd born from the chaos of the Vastsea—

  It felt like a powerful force was wringing my heart out, and then I was myself again. The momonji beside me was all tensed up, its back arched slightly. Its labor pains had started. Its heart was pounding violently, as though synchronized with its birthing sac.

  Romon recited carrier tone, causing the ground beneath the momonji’s hindquarters to sink in, forming a trench there that was like a bathtub. Sagyoku-shii crawled into it, with Homaru crouching right beside.

  “It’s no good,” said Sagyoku-shii. “The cloacal canal is too narrow. It won’t come out.” She opened her tool case and pulled out a hook-shaped blade. She jabbed it into the epidermis beside the cloacavity on its underside, then swiftly pulled the knife upward, cutting it open.

  One plate of its gastral ossiform appeared, covered in red goo. Once Sagyoku-shii had removed it, Homaru reached out both arms and lifted the epidermis. Sagyoku-shii then applied a pair of shears to the red, swollen membrane of the exposed cloacal canal. It tore open instantly, and something inside was immediately pushed out.

  With a shrill cry, Sagyoku-shii tried to crawl out of the trench. Right away, Romon and Homaru were there, helping to pull her up. Sagyoku-shii’s bloated body, however, was caught under the momonji’s protruding hindquarters. She couldn’t move.

  Sagyoku-shii cried out urgently. Kugu-shi pushed his large frame in between Romon and Homaru, who had begun voicing frantic carrier tone. He reached out with his long arms and in a heartbeat dragged Sagyoku-shii out from under the momonji.

  High-viscosity semisolids that looked like bits of vomit were spilling ceaselessly from the rent in the membrane. The trench overflowed in no time, and everyone backed away. Meaty chunks piled on top of each other and changed shape with each passing moment. Finally, the stuff began congealing into a form that might pass for human.

  It was slumped forward like a drunk who’d collapsed face-first at his table. Scattered tangles of blue and red blood vessels were beginning to appear on its scarred back, which rose and fell as it breathed deep draughts of air. Presently, the left and right motion of its back became uneven. With alternating swings of its bony shoulders, it began to wriggle its way up out of the trench.

  “W-what in the worlde is that thing?” yelled Romon. He shot a glance at Homaru as he was backing away. Homaru clenched his silver teeth and shook his head vigorously. Sagyoku-shii lost her composure altogether and grabbed onto Kugu-shi, crying, “What is that? What is that?” Kugu-shi, who had been observing Romon and Homaru’s earlier back-and-forth intently, rested his gaze on Sagyoku-shii for a moment, then shifted his eyes toward the man-shaped thing that was crawling on the ground.

  Its spine curled backward, and supported by both of its folded arms, it raised its upper body. When it attempted to stand, however, it fell clumsily back down. While everyone looked on in shocked silence, it rose and fell again and again, until at last like some ghost or devil, it succeeded in standing erect.

  Its face melted like the resin of a half-used beastfat candle, and its eyes and nose looked like holes caused by gangrene. Whitish things would suddenly come creeping out of furrows that snaked around its chest and stomach, and then they would burrow back in under its skin.

  Gasps escaped each of the onlookers as they surrounded it from a distance.

  Bubbles popped on the face of the humanlike thing as it came tottering forward, leaving gaping holes.

  “Expression of aural language … is possible—

  “This is the 153rd parish’s … Superordinate Investigative Bureau—

  “Clearing foreign matter from throat—

  “We are acting in accordance with Regulations for Colonized Worlds, Contact with Intelligent Life-forms.”

  It was a strange voice, one like many people talking all at once—it was the deathseeker by the seashore.

  From that day when I …

  I had to get away from it. But my body was spilled out all over the place … couldn’t scrape it all back together. Couldn’t tell which consciousness was which anymore.

  “Stay away from me!” Romon and Homaru were shouting. “Stay back!” Sagyoku-shii, on the verge of tears, cowered behind Kugu-shi, whimpering, “Keep away! Don’t you come near me!” Arms crossed, she kept rubbing her upper arms as if they had broken out in gooseflesh.

  “Everybody, how about you calm down just a little?” Kugu-shi said, even while he was backing away.

  “We’ve no time to splurp,” the half-melted face said as a bubble popped. “Pardon us for appearing in this unformed state.” It slowly shifted its center of gravity, interrupted by burps from all over its body as it spoke. “Heart rate decreasing—

  “Suppress sinoatrial node signal.”

  “You said ‘parish,’” Kugu-shi said, blinking his eyes and wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “That mean you’re the same as that Hanishibe guy? A ghost that lives in a canvasser? Can I take this to mean you’ve crawlbacked by way of this momonji?”

  I remembered stepping into a dustsunk facility. Momonji, lined up in a row, had been secured to various instruments, and there had been a decomposing human pushed halfway out of one of them. I went along opening up the other momonji’s bellies and found human beings in the birthing sacs of all of them. Half of them had had grotesquely long arms. Only one had still been alive. Had the facility been attacked before he received his soul-share, or had it been the replayable intellect who’d been captured on the other side? This was an unblemished possession seat.

  “What was that just now?

  “Regarding the interference, it’s unclear. The rest are the utterances of non-replayable intellects. Analyzing vocabulary …

  “—a crawlbacker. That’s essentially the case …

  “Heart rate stable …

  “Who’s Hanishibe … ?

  “An Eternal Pilot of the Kannagara Sect. He was a cleric prior t
o Translation …

  “Don’t lump us all in with him. This is heresy from your perspective and ours as well.”

  The Investigative Bureau slowly raised a putrefied right arm. Many lintlike tenants squirmed as they fell from it.

  “Don’t try anything funny,” Kugu-shi said, drawing his tamer and taking aim. Romon and Homaru circled around to the Investigative Bureau’s back.

  “We will now extract Mr. Yuuji Hisauchi …

  “Right fifteen degrees.”

  “You’re gonna distract who? There ain’t nobody in this caravan by that name.”

  The Investigative Bureau’s arm slid sideways toward the covered wagon at the end of the line, separated from the others by a single momonga.

  There came a resounding crash like the sound of a tree being felled, and the debris-strewn ground near the wagon erupted in a geyser of dustmotes, as though the land itself were coming to a boil. The ground heaved up in a bell shape that rapidly expanded. Panicked momonji left the guideline and went crawling off in whatever direction they could, climbing up on the feet of the wreckcliffs.

  Slowly, ponderously, the bulge jutted upward, soaring to heights well above the heads of all present. Its outer layer was a conglomeration of miscellaneous dustwroughts in scrap-iron state, stirring about like swarming honeybees. Suddenly, though, they all stopped moving, as if they had died. In the same instant, the structure began to break apart and collapse like a landslide. From underneath, a glossy black, cabbagelike head, a chest like a suit of seashell-plated armor, and two arms like mantis shrimps with rows of outward-facing pleopods were gradually revealed. It was a canvasser.

  With alternating strokes of its long, segmented arms, it crawled forward across the ground, pulling its lower body out from underground. Bifurcated appendages opened up from the undersides of its short legs, supporting its unwieldy body as it stood.