A Greater Monster
Page 24
I am jarred. Slammed. Up and down. Grab on. I’m holding fur. I’m on Sphinx, his soft back, amid sound and fury. We are racing with the horde thundering out of the tent, the air is thick with dust, tesla-coil energy raging and zapping, a dull roar, thumping—hundreds of beings, all of them racing toward the City.
I remember.
The deer, Salvia. The twin hunters. The Squid. Buttons. DJ Morpheus. Baby Joey. Sys. Suddenly, I remember becoming them all.
No. No! I shout, I shout, but I cannot be heard. This is wrong. Stop!
I cannot be heard; I am battered side-to-side, holding on tight as I can.
We are there.
We’re at a featureless door. It’s torn upward, and we rush in.
Concrete buildings on both sides. We jolt to a halt.
Row up on row of squat metal vehicles block the road.
Movement, a blur in the air.
Baby hugs Button’s horn.
Baby is wrapped up. His head drops to the side. His skin draped in shreds around him. A bloody blanket.
More blurring of space. Gouts of barbed wire are spinning. I’ve been knocked off Sphinx. I’m against a wall.
WHOOSH!!! A blaze of metal bolos flings toward us—stampedes in every direction—I’m leaping up the wall, claws gouging concrete, tearing myself upward.
Onto a roof—running across. A distant, dull drumbeat.
Drop, spin, and look back.
Birdgirl is there, on the lip of the roof, her wings spread wide—
white against black—
a flash of orange behind her—
BOOOOOOM
She is serene in space and time.
Her wings burst alight
she flaps them twice
ragged curtains of light brushing the air with a glorious chime a hum a buzz a tingling note that strikes me like a tuning fork
she is singing
she falls backwards
the ground beneath me tilts slowly s o s l o w l y forward
pushes me gently upward
outward from the center
I slide toward her as she disappears over the edge
at the edge and
over
so many weightless fragments of building
clouds of smoke
quiet
glimpses of earth
broken bodies
dropping into clouds of grey
shedding gravity
falling like rain
stories falling away
broken furniture
metal vehicles
a flourish of dull green paper
scent of bones and fire
she spires below me, wings alive trailing flames
circling patiently
silently circling and sinking on tattered wings
a burning angel
I wake with a creak. My body aches. Excruciating. I open my eyes: the sky is scalloped in shades of purple.
I roll to my side. Ahead of me is the black bug, Anophelese, pulling. I’m on a cart lurching across uneven, desiccated land. I look behind me: a broken-toothed maw opens into the City. Bodies are everywhere. Nothing moves. Sphinx.
I am weak, close my eyes.
Awake again with a start. Something scuttles off. It’s dark. It’s quiet. I try to sit up, but my body is broken.
In the darkness, I sense the immensity of his body.
“It’s over,” I croak. “They destroyed us. Everyone. My Sphinx. Is dead. I think. Except the bug. And me.”
I’m lifted up. I can feel my legs, fractured matchsticks, my knees crunching, and immediately the pain is gone.
It stands heavily before me—a magnificent mane around the face and the body of a great ape. Cloven-hooved.
G’Nesh places me behind hes neck and leans forward on all fours. I flex my right knee and hip, and the pieces move easily without pain. My left, the same. He lumbers out of the building, head down—through a wall—boards explode about us and glance off my scales.
Soon we are out in the pale light, thundering across the dirt plane.
I take a deep breath through the holes in my face. I haven’t breathed in a long time. Feels good. My face buried in fur and musk behind hes neck. Now we must be in the woods. Dark and cool, mist and menthol. Bathed in blue. We’re out the other side, and it’s thick and rancid.
We stop. I’m clinging to G’Nesh, threatened by the lament of boundless beings. Exclamations of torture and misery. Fumes thicken the air. His hand coming—clutches me round like a toy and places me carefully on the bank of the River of Flesh. G’Nesh looks at me, and we appraise each other.
He’s the King. King Chimera. Pure power. I have seen enough. I am no longer afraid. Today is a good day to die.
We walk on the hard-packed bank along the river that curves ahead of us toward the City cracked like an eggshell, ruptured yellow yolk spilling out and plumes trailing upward.
“Aren’t you going to go try to help them?”
“It was time for the show to end.”
I consider.
“You knew.”
“Of course I knew. How do you think the Zirk started?”
“I don’t know.”
“I am the one who remembers. When we first created the company town, I was the Engineer. I created the Zirkus to visit other cities and bring back
a tithe.”
“So why did you have to let it end? Why?”
He turns and stops. Looks down at me.
“There is nowhere left to go. All the other cities fallen. This is the final and last one. The originator. The father. They would not have let us continue without being able to pay them. Not profitable. I know their plan because it’s what I would have done. You’d be harvested, and I’d return to the City.”
“You could have let them go out. Outside! Why didn’t you warn them? You knew they would be killed!”
“They chose a path of violence.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“They made their own choice, as did you. Where would you have me tell them go? The end of their selves beckons from every passage.”
We stop in a grassy area. The river froths, liquid and volatile. I’m burning, seething inside, the change comes on. He turns, looks at me, and lays a hand on my shoulder. I feel myself stabilize, grow larger, return to balance.
“I am weary of this,” he says.
“You just aren’t creative enough.”
“This is the river of power and control. It’s the river of selfishness and cruelty. Of indifference and ignorance. It’s the river of fear. It’s the river of undifferentiated lives. It has an easy flow to it. It takes unknown strength to swim against it. You haven’t lived long enough to realize that this river runs through life itself.”
“What about you?”
“What about me? I’m a force of nature, boy.” He points at the City. “I was one of them. We ruled the planet.”
“And look at them,” I reply. “Serving time. Trapped. Even to rule them is to be a slave.”
He rubs his knuckles across his forehead.
“Yes. I think that is true. I will not be going back. I have made up my mind. Instead of ruling them, I will peel them open. I expect you will be the last to remember them. What will you do with that?”
He rears up on four clawed paws—a wolf … a coyote. He grows over ten times my height and steps out into the river. The wailing increases as he wades out toward the middle, rolls of protoplasm bubbling around him, until the bedlam falls like a curtain, and the maelstrom ceases. G’Nesh sinks down until just his muzzle is visible above the surface. He opens wide, primordial ooze draining into his mouth. Change—he’s changing again—his nose has become a trunk curved up … dropping below … until … the tip … disappears.
The surface is smooth and quiet. I am insubstantial, barely held to the earth.
Faces appear in the flesh: mouths moving, eyes blinking, heads surface and drop back under. Holes, pockmarks, peaks and vall
eys, tears and gouges fissure through the river as if it is being stretched apart, curled, seared from within, sheets wrapping around themselves forming globs of meat.
I reach out toward him and hold the life beating all around me, the beings on all sides—tempestuous and clamorous with existence, and I touch them and swallow them and change them and condense them and cohere their minds around a single thought you don’t need a self find calmness in nothingness and I am shaping them like clay absorbing all the multifarious beings into myself containing worlds and we billow up from the surface I am a coyote and a lion and a goat and a snake and a pig and a bear and a bug and a whale and a squid and a slug and a bee and a lemur and a human and we are all these things at once in one body everything and nothing and it is a flash of a flash an infinitesimal infinity where being and becoming are one and I’m directing them at the City and I’m thrown out back into my lizardskin standing on the shore watching the river and the creatures thrust out of the river, forming shapes and bodies … and I know what that power feels like, how to use it, I learned in that moment … and the river is filled with round balls of flesh twice my height and they are surging out of the river toward the City and bounding toward it, bounding toward it, until they collide, and walls fold and tumble and the outside collapses in.
… and a flame, a click, and a rainbow of light blazes and …
I can see in all directions.
I see my friend coming to me.
Let him embrace me.
Falling.
And I fall into the grass.
I can see nothing. And feel nothing.
Is this the end?
Of what?
Of me.
I don’t know. What are you?
What are you doing now?
I am holding you.
What do you see?
The sky is getting darker. A spot in the sky—a spot behind the clouds is expanding, getting darker, becoming more diffuse and spreading.
I wonder if you are real.
I can’t answer that.
I can see nothing.
And I do not think I am speaking I do not think I am speaking.
This is not the end. I remember. I learned.
Let me get ahold. There it is. The helix. A little map of the good place to go.
Where did you find it?
Inside myself.
Are you hungry?
I am often hungry.
Why don’t you eat the body you hold?
I could not do that.
You should. Tear me apart.
Very well.
How do I taste?
Juicy.
Now I am a part of you. I can teach you.
Teach me what?
Becoming—anything. Yes. You’ll feel it as I did, in my bones, in my body—it’s a howl, a pure noise—and then you will be able to create too.
Me?
Yes.
Now?
Yes. Try it now.
Yes. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful!
And I can give this to everyone as I give it to you
because I can grow
because I can grow
inside a blade of grass
inside a blade of grass
inside a blade of grass
shimmering up the xylem and phloem
shimmering up the xylem and phloem
shimmering up the xylem and phloem
shimmering up the xylem and phloem
diffusing out through the green
diffusing out through the green
diffusing out through the green
diffusing out through the green
diffusing out through the green
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and bursting like a supernova through the membrane of the universe
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
and anything that touches me
will learn
will learn
will learn
will learn
will learn
will learn
will learn
will learn
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
will hear the sound
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the vibration
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
the universal hum of life
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
and everyone is free
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now
now