by Daniel Six
Ione watched the lovemakers, keenly conscious of their separation into couples and singles. The mechanics of their various social conjugations seemed stilted; there were few couples engaged with other couples. Ione understood why—jealousy and improper sexual interest inevitably ruined the goodwill that brought them together. Even she and Emma could not “swing” with other couples without fear of conflict. Cooperation and competition quickly became confused, then magnified to love and hate, their ultimate manifestations.
Her time in the City had rendered her far more aware of the problem, and she had gradually become convinced there was a solution. This led her to consider social-sexual interactions in symbolic terms, which proceeded to contemplations of identity, and eventually the most elemental concept of all; boundary.
She knew the problems of social sexuality could be reconciled by a deeper understanding of numbers, which were placeholders for identity. There was a simple combinatorial scheme that could change everything, lurking just beyond conception…
But there was time for that later.
The crowd below was in a frenzy from the cumulative effect of stillwater and sex and danger, a sound that was surging up the levels in a deafening wave. The music had stopped. Dean was taking a break, probably to let some thirsty slipper suck him off on the swinging bandstand.
Over by the balcony a short fellow who was still fully dressed watched a trio of women making love under the blue glow of a gnome. Ione saw tattles peeping from their buttocks, heard one clinking to the characteristic rhythm of climax, a unique muscular signature.
She padded over to the man, who looked to be the only clothed and sober guest remaining. His features were shadowed by an elegant hat.
“C’mon! Drink up!” she cheerfully invited, gesturing to the untouched glass in his hand.
The Gnomon turned to her. “Perhaps another time.” He gestured to the balcony. “There’s trouble, Ione.”
She backpedaled, staring at him in shock, belatedly turned to look down in the atrium. An inarticulate wail escaped her lips and the others rushed to her side. Emma screamed and dropped her drink.
Below them the guests were being attacked by mannermen. Not just a few that had pushed their way through the vestibule, but many dox of them manifesting all at once. Some of the bigger guests were fighting back, but the mannermen were expert grapplers and could overwhelm an opponent by numbers in the rare situation where it was necessary. They left a hysterical trail of naked revelers bound at the ankles and wrists behind them and were forcing their way onto the second level already. Their suits were sopping wet.
Ione saw Dean ascend to view on the gnome-powered lift, shouting as he raced around the balcony to them.
“We have to get out!”
“How?” Mark shouted, whirling about. They were trapped.
Ione closed her eyes, momentarily excluding the horror of their situation.
“They’re almost here!” Manassa warned. “They’re coming up the stairs!”
Ione blinked, surveyed the situation with new clarity and took charge.
“Over to the laundry chute!” she ordered, leading the way to the far corner. She whipped the blanket wide that curtained its opening, one of many decorating the walls.
“Go!” she screamed, pushing Emma into it, gesturing the others to follow. She jumped inside just as the first marauders emerged on the third floor.
Limbs slamming the side of the chute, she fell to the basement, landing heavily on Mark.
“Oof!” he moaned, tried to crawl from under her.
This was problematic. In an attempt to create as much space as possible on the main floors they had packed all the extraneous laundry into the far end of the basement where the chute emerged. Ione had decided at the last possible moment that this vast pile offered their only salvation.
“Burrow into the laundry,” she whispered. “But stay together and keep quiet!”
They began a difficult and energy-consuming journey inward, arresting when the clothes grew sodden, then wet. They had reached the water table in the big sink inset into the basement floor. Ione submerged herself to the neck.
The water was heavier than the fabric mass above them, taking some of the weight off her aching neck. The others gathered next to her. It was silent in their improvised bunker but for Emma’s quiet sobbing.
Ione was reeling from the revelations of the evening, a tangle of facts that could be somehow woven into truth. For the first time she felt the whole structure of the metropolitan society, a shape almost within apprehension.
“What can we do?” Dean whispered in despair.
“We could try to dress ourselves,” Manassa considered. “There’s plenty of laundry.”
“They saw everyone naked and they’ll be looking for us specifically now,” Mark objected. “When we don’t turn up they’ll think of this place.”
“There’s a gnome in here with us,” Manassa noticed, yanking at its nearest limb.
Ione desperately reached for the point of view that would explain what had happened, but it would not come. She blinked away tears, heard one fall to the water with a delicate sound.
“It must be storming, but I can’t hear it,” she whispered. There was a long silence.
“No,” Emma absently muttered.
Ione almost didn’t bother to question her. “What?” she morosely inquired.
“The skylight was totally clear just a moment ago. It never rained.”
And with that pronouncement the last detail fit ever so delicately into place.
Ione gasped at the sweeping revelation of the various lacunae that finally wove together as visible truth. The problem of the third judge, the missing women of the Lap, the impossibly large theater Manassa visited, the strange tower in the forest, the secret entrance to the party the mannermen had used… They all had a common root; plant vascularity.
She dove under the waterline, flailing laundry aside, kicked deeper till she touched a sloping stone contour and followed it down. Her fingers encountered the peripheral ridges of a spiraling wooden tunnel.
“They’re in the clothes with us!” Mark hissed when she surfaced again. Ione could feel the laundry shifting about from the muscular excavations of the huge men.
“There’s a passage down there. Like Manassa described in the other warehouse.”
“Won’t it just take us to the top of the building or something?” Emma demanded in confusion.
“No. It goes to the Merkin’s real Tent. High in the clouds, cloaked by the permanent vapor rising from the park. It was no tower we saw deep in the trees, but the stem of a great plant.”
The others were silent for a moment, awed by the illusion that had been worked on the denizens of the metropolis.
The mannermen could be faintly heard now, lurching about the laundry overhead. “They know we’re in here,” Dean whispered. Ione wondered how many of them had come through the tunnel below her, massing silently in the clothing till they were ready to charge the ramp. As many as possible before the channel reversed direction, she realized. It would be flowing skyward now.
The laundry shifted precipitously.
“They’re here!” Emma cowered.
Manassa pushed the left nipple on the gnome trapped with them. Its arms and legs began to gyre. “Get back,” she warned, and slapped its other nipple rapidly. Its limbs accelerated to flail about with berserk speed.
“Dive!” Ione commanded and led the way.
The water swallowed her up and she kicked down to the tunnel entrance, hesitated for an instant at the realization she would arrive naked at the very nexus of style. So be it. She heard the dull thud of the gyro gnome as it flailed someone, hoped it would guard the sink long enough for them to escape.
Emma swam into her arms and Ione held her love. They lingered to kiss one last time at the boundary of their crazy tenure in the City.
Kicking together, they permeated the tension membrane at the head of the phloem channel. Ione gulpe
d carefully, swallowed a tiny quantity of sweet, airy water that nourished the vast plant on which the Merkin’s Tent rested high above. It was breathable, as Manassa had promised. She felt others entering the tunnel behind them, could only hope it was her friends.
She clutched Emma close as the nutrient flow took hold of their bodies, slowly translocating them along a wide arc down under the forest.
Then a great force gathered to send them hurtling into the sky.