Sisyphean

by Dempow Torishima

  “In compliance with regulations, your consent is required,” said the Investigative Bureau, who was still standing before them.

  Kugu-shi said nothing for a moment, but there was nothing he could really do except give his consent. Under these circumstances, the option of refusal was as good as nonexistent. Kugu-shi spoke and gave his answer.

  “Voiceprint recorded as proof of consent.”

  The canvasser turned its shrimp-arms toward the covered wagon at the end of the column and reached out for me.

  Another struggle to escape would have meant sacrificing more members of the caravan.

  My body was scooped up in hard, armored palms. I experienced a rough, weightless sensation, as well as vertigo-inducing discrepancies between my senses, which had roots spreading out all over the Vastsea. As caravan hands struggled to restrain the terrified momonji, they stared on as my age-stricken body was carried through the air. I too was watching as I was laid down in front of the Investigative Bureau. With another eye, I was following Romon and Homaru as they were moving along the wreckcliff, and then—

  The imposing form of the canvasser bent its body segments and crouched down low, and the leaves of its cabbage-head unfurled to form a bowl-like shape. A thorn-covered radula as big around as a man’s arm slowly emerged from the circular mouth in the center.

  The Investigative Bureau, dripping fluids from every inch of its body, grabbed the tip of the tongue-rasp and guided it to the hairless top of “my” head.

  “Wait! Stop it!” Kugu-shi shouted angrily.

  “Be quiet.

  “Right ten millimeters, up five millimeters …

  “His life is depending on this.”

  Having made contact with the top of my head, the tip of the tongue-rasp began to rotate with a high-pitched whine. It turned faster and faster. Everyone drew in their breath. A bright spray of blood rose up and then vaporized.

  Together with the tongue-rasp, a portion of my skull came away, and my brain, covered in spiderwebs of metallic fiber, lay exposed in a fist-sized hole.

  The tongue-rasp laid flat its thorns, spun for just an instant to shake off the fragments of skull, and then split its tip open four ways. White, fibrous things came out, with fine needles attached to them. They dangled in midair.

  The Investigative Bureau raised a hand and clumsily caught a needle between his fingers. Calling out coordinates to himself, he began the job of jabbing the needles into each of my brain’s vital spots.

  The Investigative Bureau’s internal conversation came slipping in through gaps in the folds of my brain:

  “Impossible … wasteflesh that can survive after Translation—!

  “His entire nervous system has been replaced by micromachines that existed even prior to nanodust. At the time, it was still illegal tech, so there were no model numbers and no compatibility with Yaoyorazu or Tsukumo either …

  “Well, in that case we can’t use snowflower bugs. So his nervous system’s become a transfer route for nanomotes?

  “But what about the shared consciousness?

  “Up until now, intermittent Whisperings were taking place, but the two consciousnesses were independent, like twins. Beyond their shared dreams, they hardly affected each another at all, but—”

  The vertigo wouldn’t stop. Overlapped fields of view were spinning round and round. I couldn’t hold back the nausea.

  Both of my legs kicked upward as I convulsed, as though struck by lightning. A stir rose up among the clan brethren.

  I felt like I’d seen one tiny ant in my field of view. Night was born from out of its blackness—it expanded explosively, scattering galactic fireworks as it grew, enveloping all in the twinkling of an eye.

  Countless stars glittered, forming beams of light that pierced this body of mine—

  The light slipped past the artificial animals, becoming verse for chanting the stars in shorthand.

  “It’s all right, there’s no need to worry …

  “Heart rate increasing.”

  I couldn’t tell which side the voices were coming from.

  “Activating containment shell …

  “Commencing extraction from infotumor …

  “Be careful not to sever the shared branches …

  “Heart rate increasing …

  “Extraction ongoing …

  “Irreversibly compressing the processed tumor and individual registry veriform …

  “Parish Control Organization has begun to stabilize. Recovery has proceeded to the point of having Real-textures and Sketchzones. Number of pigments and perceptory resolution increasing.”

  The needles were pulled from my head all at once.

  I’ve gone blind. That’s what I thought for a moment. But I could see the canvasser pulling its radula back in and closing its petals back up into a head. It had just felt like I’d lost my sight because of the sudden contraction of my phantasmagorically expanded field of vision.

  I was thinking back over what I’d experienced in that instant with the same sluggishness I feel after waking up after a night of hard drinking.

  I felt no particularly deep emotion over Hisauchi’s dissociation. Actually, I wasn’t even sure that he was the one who was gone. Even now, I could recall skewed memories of my double past. The one who’s here is the only one who can tell of them …

  Chapter 8:

  The Emerald City

  Ignoring Romon and the others’ cries that it was still too dangerous, Kugu-shi ran toward Master, who was lying on the ground like a dead man. Kugu-shi loosed his shadecap and tied it around Master’s drill-gouged head, then he laced both his arms under Master’s, hoisted him up, and dragged him back toward the covered wagon.

  Suddenly, countless steel cables burst out of the wreckcliffs that were hemming in the caravan. They shot past the canvasser’s sides and between its legs and stuck deep into the ground. More volleys followed, one after another. Trapped inside a geometrical diagram, the canvasser twisted and turned its armored body, but found itself pushed back each time.

  “What’s this? What’s happening?

  “Something’s taken hold of the cherub—”

  The Investigative Bureau was looking this way and that as the flesh melted away from its entire body.

  Kugu-shi shouted out in confusion. “What in the worlde’s going on?”

  The pleopods on the canvasser’s prawnlike arms started to turn, cutting through several of the steel cables, which snapped and flew high up into the air.

  Carrier tone was starting to flow from somewhere.

  One momonji on the other side of the canvasser started to jerk spasmodically. And then it charged.

  There was a blinding flash of light. A thunderous roar pealed out as a huge column of flame rose up into the sky, sending out a violent blast.

  Kugu-shi, who was next to the wagon, was blown into the air still holding onto Master. A sharp pain shot through his chest. Knives of heat sliced into every inch of his body, and every joint felt like it was being twisted off. As they landed facedown and curled up into a ball, palm-sized chunks of meat and powdery dust came raining down on their backs, so blisteringly hot that Kugu-shi’s lungs seemed to be on fire.

  Through the white smoke that hung in the air, Kugu-shi dragged Master away from the blast. Each step he planted sent a piercing pain through his chest. Ribs might be broken. Breathing raggedly, he made it to the shadow of the wagon, and in that instant the thundering roar of a second blast rang out. The wagon was shaken violently, and the whole world went orange. A powerful, scorching wind blew hard all around them.

  The roar lingered in Kugu-shi’s ears. When he poked his head out from behind the wagon, the worlde was blurred with haze and rippling with heat. His face flushed red in the simmering air and dripped with sweat.

  Looking up, he saw the canvasser leaning forwar
d on both its arms, fists buried in the ground. White smoke was rising from it, as though its outer shell were vaporizing. Of the Investigative Bureau, he saw not a trace.

  From the front of the broken caravan column, numerous momonji were advancing on the canvasser with their fur standing on end. Kugu-shi hurriedly took cover. He fired his tamer at the ground at his feet and pulled Master near. A translucent, gelatinous swell began forming up out of the ground, and the two men gradually sank into it, lying supine, until their bodies were entirely covered.

  Presently, another flash and explosive roar boomed out. The enveloping gel was shaken violently. The wagon was blown over onto its side in their direction. It broke apart into pieces that scattered everywhere.

  Though the view outside was warped by the gel, it was possible to make out the canvasser’s outline as it peeked in and out of view between the swells of white smoke and the twisted framework of the covered wagon. Several of its breastplates had been blasted loose and were tilting precariously; something that was apparently its bodily fluid was starting to run out of the gaps. Yet another explosion went off. The smoke made it impossible to see anything, and only the tremors—they summoned thoughts of bombardment in an air raid—continued on and on. Unable to breathe, the two men writhed in pain. Had their eardrums burst? They could no longer hear anything. Maybe the explosions had ceased.

  Sharp pieces of debris from the covered wagon were sticking out of the gel-case’s surface. Kugu-shi tried to rip it open from the inside, but with the pain in his chest, he couldn’t put enough strength into his hands. His panic mounted with the fear of suffocation, but then—had the effect of the eidos bullet expired?—the case grew brittle and began to crumble.

  Kugu-shi sat up and breathed in all the air that his body craved. Pain turned his exhalations into moans.

  When he looked over at Master, dregs from the gel-case were stuck to his nose and mouth, and his face had turned a pale blue. Frantically, he peeled away the dregs, and Master began breathing spasmodically.

  Before his eyes lay the covered wagon, now reduced to wreckage. Its arching struts had caved in and now lay atop one another like rings from a celestial globe. Transparent, melon-sized spheres were lodged between them like heavenly bodies. He realized that they were momonji eyeballs—something he should have been very used to. On the wreckcliff beyond them, he could see the blackened, overturned wreckage of what looked like a momonga.

  Little by little, the white smoke cleared, and the damaged canvasser was revealed.

  Everything from the middle of its trunk down was missing; it looked like it had rotted off. Only its upper body remained, suspended in midair by both of its multijointed arms. Its translucent, pale yellow contents steamed as they dripped from the open, severed edges. The shrimp-arms twisted, the upper body began to tilt, and then the whole thing came crashing down to the ground. The shock had left its multijointed arms bent in wave-patterns.

  “Incredible … just incredible!” Kugu-shi murmured again and again.

  Like corpses rising up from the grave, four arms reached up from the ground which had just moments ago been occupied by the three momonji ahead of the wagon. Shedding fragments of gel-case, the figures that crawled out were Romon and Homaru. Both were holding long, narrow devices in their mouths, like dogs carrying bones. From either end of those bars hung bags made of skin. Both tossed these devices aside, nodded at one another, and started walking toward the fallen canvasser. They passed one pitiful, scattered wreck of a momonji after another.

  Blackening momonji meat was sizzling all around. The wreckcliffs around them had activated and now rolled in imitation of smoke from the explosions.

  Enduring the pain, Kugu-shi squeezed out a hoarse cry. “Don’t tell me you two did this?”

  “That’s why I said this was dangerous,” Romon said, laying a hand on the black armor of its chest. A wide cross-section was exposed, and Romon let out an ouch! when he felt its heat. “Still, Brother, I trusted you’d save Master and make it through this alive. If it’d been Umari, she and he both would’ve been killed instantly.” So saying, Romon turned to Homaru. “We bungled it the first time, but by and large things went according to plan. Though that monster did surprise me.”

  “Yeah. Nobody said anything about that. Ah, now for the most important thing.” Homaru stuck one arm into the cross-section of the canvasser’s glimmering, shiny trunk. “Ugh, this feels gross. And this green vegetable smell …” Was Homaru having trouble? He pushed his upper body in even farther until it was halfway hidden.

  There was a noise from behind. From the shadows of some scattered dust-shoots Sagyoku-shii and a single apprentice appeared. Scraps of gel-casing clung to both of their shadecaps.

  “It was Homaru, I take it, who wove possession verse for the trick cables,” said Kugu-shi. “But filling up the air sacs of edible momonji with explosives—that’s not something those two could’ve pulled off alone. Judging by the force of those blasts, you would’ve had to encourage potassium nitrate secretion.”

  Kugu-shi glared at Sagyoku-shii. She gave him a vague smile, placed a handkerchief over her mouth, and coughed into it.

  “Tell me why. Why would you do something this cruel?” Coughing from the smoke, Kugu-shi looked out across what resembled war-scorched ruins. “There’s no way to complete the delivery now.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Romon said. “The techniques for making what we want have long since been lost, and it takes more than a hundred years for a canvasser to form from scratch. Besides, what difference does it make to the momonji? They were just gonna be butchered anyway. The old geezer won’t be waking up again either.”

  Enraged, Kugu-shi turned to face Romon. Romon was staring right back at him.

  “If he did wake up,” Romon continued, “we’d be at a deadend. Like they say, the most important teaching for Vastsea crossers is ‘don’t hope for anything.’ That doesn’t just go for caravan work. Recuperation blocks are being swallowed whole by the Vastsea one after another, and with all the radioactive mobiles running around out there, the number of living things is declining. That’s why we’ve placed our bets on the future.”

  “On the future? Do you realize what you’ve done here? You’ve destroyed a canvasser—one of the ghost cities.” Kugu-shi’s jaw trembled as he spoke, and his voice grew shrill. “And the ghosts, they’re all connected to each other through those trumpet-shaped heads of theirs; they’re gonna come here and attack us any minu—”

  “You’re the one doesn’t understand, Brother,” Romon said calmly. “This canvasser was cut off from the Whisper-net of all the other parishes. An infotumor was to blame. In addition, they were apparently grappling with some convoluted issue of heresy. Because of that, all factions were in agreement on this matter.”

  “Romon, how could you know anything about what was going on in there? Don’t tell me that all of this was ordered by those crawlbackers—by those people from the Kannagara sect, or whatever you call it. That’s crazy! What kind of nonsense did they fill your head with? When did this start?”

  “I don’t know; when did this start, Homaru?”

  Homaru was writhing about as he tried to pull his upper body free of the gluey substance packed into the cross-section of the canvasser’s stomach.

  “When I found out that Ms. Sagyoku-shii was in touch with them, I was furious too. Now, though, we’re members of the Kannagara sect as well.” As Romon was speaking, he moved over to stand behind Homaru. “Also, it isn’t like that city is really gone, Brother.”

  Romon passed both arms under Homaru’s and pulled on him from behind, using all his weight. There was a sound like that of something being skinned, and then they tumbled to the ground together.

  Homaru grinned and his silver teeth gleamed. Still sitting, he held up his right hand.

  Wedged between his mucus-slathered fingers was an emerald-hued jewel. It was cu
rved, fetuslike, and gleamed with a soft, slimy sheen. From the slightly protruding curvature of its back face there extended white, fibrous threads connecting it to the inside of the canvasser’s body. Romon cut it loose with his knife. Homaru turned the jewel around, staring at it intently. From time to time, specks of light flowed across its surface like fine grains.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sagyoku-shii said, approaching Romon and the others. “That’s a magatama. Time is now frozen for the city inside. And now it will become a seed of our future.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  Sagyoku-shii, who had come to a halt next to Homaru, pushed back her shadecap and gazed at the magatama in wonder.

  Many knoblike growths were appearing on the wreckcliffs behind them, bumping against one another as they expanded. Slowly, they flowed and swirled, as if trying to spool time itself.

  “This is one of the grand escape plans that was once discarded,” Homaru said as he was getting to his feet. “A plan to migrate to habitable planets using seedships. This magatama is vital for reviving that plan. Though only replayable intellects’ll be able to emigrate, of course.”

  “So you people intend to Translate yourselves and turn into ghosts?”

  “As you’re surely aware, the Kannagara sect is promoting Incarnation.”

  “Right,” said Sagyoku-shii. “We aren’t doing this to become ghosts. In lands beyond, in places that don’t even exist yet, we’ll—” Sagyoku-shii burst into a fit of coughing, one peculiar to those suffering from lung disease. With one hand against her ample bosom, she continued. “—we’ll be reborn … and one after another, we’ll multiply our offspring … until those worlds are teeming with more people than they know what to do with.”

  In a sudden flash of insight, Kugu-shi realized: Sagyoku-shii isn’t going to live much longer. He had a vague idea of why she’d left the maternitorium and what chain of events had brought her to the head of the Fatguard Clan.