Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  “Blood transfusion.”

  “My blood?”

  “There was no choice, so don’t give me a hard time. Your blood was a cesspool. Bacterium and residues of the distillates pumped into you over the years. I’ve installed a shunt in your occipital, so you shouldn’t go into hemolytic shock. You’re done. Good to go.”

  “I can just walk away?”

  “Yep. And don’t say thanks.”

  He rubbed at the back of his neck with his bare fingertips but felt no tender area. There were strips of gauze on the tiles near his feet and an array of tiny metal tools at his side. Ephemera. A skittish device parked very close to his waist. Vaguely sentient, the machine was mostly a skinny, transparent tube, which must have been tending to him, or at least involved in the procedures, with a pipette face and thin, threadlike legs. But when Crospinal moved to touch it, to see what it might be, a ridge of cilia oscillated around the lateral flange and the device drifted out of reach, very quickly. Crospinal could have lunged and brought the stupid thing down but he held back. He thought about his feverish climb down, the ribs of the fixed ladder enclosing him as if he’d been swallowed by the world. How far had he descended? With solid pressure against the thin backshell of his tricot—relieved, at least, to know he had not been delivered into the past again—he said: “Tell me how I died.”

  The metal rat shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. All told, you’ve made it pretty far. Especially considering you’re a low average conversion.”

  Crospinal got to his feet with ease. He could see aspects of the other person’s face better from this vantage: a hint of cheekbone; the shape of lips, pressed against the polymethyl visor like a kiss. Enough to feel some confidence that it was a boy, sleeping there—peacefully, he hoped—in helmet and clean uniform. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Something happened when the manifestation showed up. He made them sick.”

  “That he did,” agreed the metal rat.

  Crospinal brushed off what was left of his tunic with pipe cleaner arms. “Aren’t you bound by some pledge or oath, or some shit like that, to be nice to me?”

  “I gave you your life back. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You followed me all the way here to save my life? I don’t believe any of it.”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not the same individual that fixed you in the outback. Not the one who sutured your intestines. Not the one who aspirated your lungs or straightened your bones or nursed you back to health. No. I’m not the one you tore apart.”

  Crospinal didn’t like where this conversation was going. He put his hands on his hips, where there remained a nylon ridge, and rested his knuckles against the waistband. The catheter unit chugged weakly, detecting the added pressure, so Crospinal made adjustments. He could hear voices, coming through the wall behind him. There were other people nearby. “I said I was sorry.”

  “The unit you destroyed was the same configuration as me—hardware wise, anyhow. Components are re-assimilated, endrohedral atoms dispersed, but the reactor that gave that unit life is gone.”

  “There was a misunderstanding. I already explained.”

  “That’s it? A misunderstanding? You broke components down to the point where the business plan to put them back together made no sense, and all you have to say is that there was a misunderstanding? You know what? If you attack me, or even try to damage me in any way—ever—I won’t save you again. None of us will. None of us rats. We’ll let you stay dead for good. Nothing will get better. No one will win your struggle. We won’t care.”

  “Get better? What do you mean?”

  “Just go, all right? Spare me your false questions. Your act. Everything’s fine now, so go. The girl you’re looking for is through the arch, in the back there. She has problems, too, maybe not as bad as this guy here. At least she’s on her feet. Hypo perfusion. When one of the paladins trigger, they all shut off. Potassium accumulation’s keeping your friend here down.”

  But Crospinal was already shouldering through the archway, breaking away soft flakes of composite with his exposed shoulder in his haste to see the girl again—

  Stopping in his tracks pretty quick.

  The low-ceilinged chamber (a bigger space than he’d been expecting) was packed, perhaps twenty people or more, some sprawled on stools, others reclining on the floor or leaning against the walls in various states of duress and exhaustion. All wore fresh uniforms. And blue helmets, which were the rarest type. Voices died at his entrance. There was a tension, though he could not be sure if he had brought the state with him or if it had been here, in the room, before he arrived. He had only ever seen one blue helmet before, maybe two, ill-formed, in the belly of an ancient dispenser that had eventually crawled into a cupboard outside the major toluene station to retire.

  All these blue helmets faced him now, visors ashen. He stood, decrepit in the archway, arms exposed, feet bare against the threshold’s tile, his own uniform nothing but a sagging tricot and disintegrating pants.

  “Crospinal.”

  To hear his name meant a spell was broken, or cast. From the rear of the chamber, through the crowd, the girl approached. Even without seeing her face, he knew it was her, by her stature, the movements of her frame, the cadence of her voice. She came toward him through the others, supported either side by another. Despite her helmet and fresh uniform, she seemed almost as damaged as he had once been, her legs not working properly, one foot dragging, left arm curled in tight to her chest. He felt a clenching inside, a sympathy, and a repulsion.

  “They won’t be back,” she said, “until the next console. We were waiting. We need to go. Are you able now? Have you been discharged?”

  Her words were slightly distorted by a remoteness helmets inflicted, which had always creeped Crospinal out as a kid, whenever his father had made him put one on. He recalled recitals, a voice coming from the comm around the chin ridge. He took a step back.

  Was he expected to share some fundamental knowledge with these people? He did not know what this knowledge might be, nor have any clue how to access it. Common knowledge lurked, elusive. These people expected him to act, to lead. They wanted some monumental decision, or words that would change the direction of their lives.

  Behind the girl and the two helping her, rising from the floor of a smaller chamber, set even farther back, he saw the three dream cabinets now, arranged in a ring, doors facing out. Emerging from the material of the floor, they had been exposed, so far, maybe a quarter of their length, glistening fresh, pushing up from the ring of dissolving tiles. He approached, drawn, pushing through. The girl stopped to watch him pass. Purple fixative stained the pit: a veil of polymer mists blurred the area where the cabinets had broken through. All around the fresh doorframes, though not yet fully regurgitated, the ring of lights had already started to flicker.

  “Luella’s here? Is this her?”

  Helmets turned as he walked; the crew seemed to tense at the sound of his sister’s name, as if they expected the simple phonemes might trigger some monumental event.

  “She’s not here,” said the girl. She was no longer angry with him for invoking. “These are new sailors. Never awoke. They’re coming up all along the promenade. A hundred or more. That’s why the prosceniums are being built. That’s why the batches were sent. We came to protect the sailors, hook a batch or two, if we can.”

  Even when the girl looked up, Crospinal could not see her eyes through her visor.

  “And to wait for me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “We have to go to the cockpit now. You’ll understand soon.”

  Around the base of the booths—though damp with a tacky film of toluene and roils of meshing polymers—beckoned the familiar green carpet, just like the one that had offered him those rare moments of comfort over the past few years, when his rel
ationships had been faltering. Staring at the textures, he wanted only to stand upon it, move his bare toes, even as the floor transformed. He would close his eyes and drift off to a place of dreams and peace. He might step inside a cabinet, if one happened to be empty, and if he could connive it to open—

  Close enough to touch the nearest door, his bare hand hovered centimetres from the surface. The smell, expelled with these sailors, from where they’d been dreaming, and the low roar of time, funneling through the booths, washed over him: he imagined a man, much like his father, stirring inside each cabinet, drawing cold liquid slowly into his lungs, a man utterly unaware of what had transpired since he went to sleep, unable to decipher present nor past when he would finally step free.

  “Everything is changing,” Crospinal said. He turned. His father had told him composites were encroaching on the pen, and must be held at bay, like darkness, but that wasn’t true, either; composite was transformation, and transformation was inevitable. “This,” he said loudly, to the gathered crew, who were all looking at him, “is endtime.”

  Highlights of physiognomies through the matt visors reflected fear and awe, but no more than he felt at hearing himself say such a thing. Endtime? He heard his father’s voice. Now Crospinal put his bare hand flat against the door of the dream cabinet and felt the chill, like a shock travelling up his arm. Was the passenger inside dreaming of monsters? Were all dreams tainted now? Or was this father in a more pleasant place, where Crospinal used to go, when indications of struggles and questions of meaning and purpose and responsibilities were wiped clean?

  When he removed his hand from the door, a tingling in his skin remained. Were these viruses from wherever the cabinets came from burrowing into his flesh? Crospinal turned to the girl. “Are you all right?”

  The girl straightened, and nodded.

  “Then take me.”

  To expedite their retreat, they would have travelled (she explained) down the chute, or along it, which, Crospinal deduced, must be the airless shaft he had drifted in, unconscious—the pylon—to be rescued by the men with the symbiotic animals on their backs. In a full uniform and helmet, the chutes were negotiable, but Crospinal had no arrangement for oxygen, nor would a fresh helmet mate with the damaged flange around the collar of his compromised unit, even if they had a spare helmet and the integrity of his uniform wasn’t shot. So the group was forced to employ a secondary means of transit, where oxygen was consistent, and gravity held them down, bare feet, bare arms, and all.

  Three people left the chamber where the dream cabinets were budding. Crospinal, the girl, and a shorter but broader boy, whose uniform conformed tightly, and who was lending a shoulder to assist the girl’s hobbling progress. Crospinal knew this other was a boy because the visor was set clear, and his features were craggy and heavy. Like several people Crospinal had encountered since the pen exploded, though clearly not a batch, this boy seemed incapable of speech. Yet to be seen, Crospinal supposed, if this were truly the case. He had been wrong before.

  Beyond the arch, as they departed the chamber, the metal rat and its patient remained. Crospinal did not hold the gaze for long, though he knew those red eyes followed him. Exposed by their stare, he worried that the scrutiny could undermine his newly budded determination.

  The patient, he saw—the crew member on the floor—had rolled onto his side now, mitts clasped together, and was breathing regularly, tricot swelling.

  The corridor extended for some distance, past the makeshift triage area, before becoming too narrow for any comfortable passage here; they slipped behind a bowed panel, into a crawlspace, transversing inside the wall. Pale green ambients in the composite swelled and proceeded them in fits and starts. There was the stench of dust, and recycling. This place was like a slipway between transfer tubes, where Crospinal had first ruptured the sleeve of his uniform, on his way back from the harrier, a lifetime ago. The day his father had died. He recalled where the shell of the world had split, the overnight damage, and the vision he’d had, dissolving into the wasteland outside. He marvelled, now, at this memory, and began to tell the girl what had happened, feeling that the events, and the correlations, must be important.

  She stopped to listen, looking back over her shoulder. The boy, too. In this dim lighting, her visor had become translucent, as well, and Crospinal saw her face clearly again: her blue eyes darker now, her frown.

  His head was thudding.

  There wasn’t much room in the crawlspace.

  She didn’t understand the point of his story.

  Neither did he.

  She said: “You’re a pilot, Crospinal. You know that?”

  He shook his head. Somehow his name had returned. This girl was trying to evoke the intangible. Perhaps she had succeeded.

  “Paladins can’t hurt you.”

  He almost said, One broke my heart. That pain could never be excised.

  When they walked again, light slid easily over the helmets.

  “The rat told me I had died. Is that true?”

  “Elementals don’t have power over you, unless you give them power. You should avoid them. They seldom tell the truth.”

  The floor felt rougher against the soles of Crospinal’s feet.

  He hadn’t made the recess fall, or the console and the people inside. He’d just stepped across the threshold tile as the world shifted, wanting to take the hand of the stricken boy, to help him.

  Ahead, the other two moved shoulder to shoulder. Crospinal followed them. When they reached a juncture, a branch of darker tunnels, she raised the forearm of her uniform to touch it to a comm plate, mounted in a frame, and held it there, which was a futile gesture—Crospinal was about to tell her—since these sorts of plates were inert and did nothing at all—

  Something came rushing from the darkness. Along the passageway, headed for them, bringing with it a glow—something large—hissed to a sudden stop. Crospinal, stepping back, saw a primitive machine, certainly a vehicle, with a teardrop-shaped body and three saddles, each big enough for a person to straddle. This was no elemental, no device with personality or intelligence, but an appliance, to serve, to take them from here to . . . someplace else.

  They got on: Crospinal at the back (after a series of missteps), the girl in the middle, the silent boy in front. There were controls there, with which the boy fiddled. He held both forearms against the plate and the vehicle lurched forward.

  A second later, accelerating through the wan slipway, Crospinal had to duck to stay out of the growing wind; no protective shield would rise before his face.

  More people waited, in fresh uniforms, but with no helmets on. They were watching the transit emerge from the aperture—into light—and pull into the landing, settling there with obvious deference, perhaps even trepidation. Crospinal dismounted awkwardly and stepped toward them. Their faces were similar, hair shorn, and he could not tell the gender, nor distinctions among them. From behind the two who had brought him here, he stared these people down, until they averted their gaze. They each held an arm out, slowly. A pattern of flickering gold lights shimmered in the air itself, and the whiff was ozone.

  Crospinal was led past a hump in the floor, stepping off the platform and up to the rim of a large, bowl-shaped area, under a domed ceiling.

  Arcs of small consoles, arranged in several rows, lined the slope of the basin. Thirty, thirty-five consoles, and at each stood a crew member with their back to him, in fresh uniform and blue helmet, sleeves deep into the holes. He stood there, gazing down, thinking for the briefest of moments that this could be a trap to conjure an angry manifestation, or maybe even his girlfriend. Instead, he saw apparitions, so faint he had to blink to bring them into focus, and even then, drifting aimlessly, they moved languorously past the features of the cluttered room, past the oblivious people. Were these phantoms compromised somehow, slowed? Certainly there were no frantic dogs, or any mercurial projections. No incessant chatte
r and worry and energy.

  A crackle of brilliance from above made him look:

  Where the walls curled in on themselves to form the ceiling, banks of dark gates angled out, washed in the growing light, as if they had arrived to watch over the proceedings. Large banks, like the one in the pen, with the same grey, null sheen. Tethered beneath each, in suspended thrones, was a father. A gathering of passengers, of sailors, connected.

  The network of conduits bobbed toward the gates, but also fanned out, laterally, connecting the fathers to each other. There were ten in all. The ozone reek of their connections intensified, and Crospinal tried not to gag, or turn away.

  “This is the cockpit,” said the girl. “This is what Luella gave us. She said you would come.”

  Engines thumped in their distant haven. He took a step closer. “Luella told you?”

  “Generations ago. Long before I was saved.”

  The name seemed to echo. At the farthest end of the cockpit, several more crew stood, hard to see how many, because they were blurred, crammed shoulder to shoulder, flickering somewhat in what could only be a haptic. Watching them, reacting and countering with scenarios and educations and images only they could see, Crospinal knew how absurd he must have looked all those times to his own father. The ghostly fractals, seen from the outside, where Crospinal watched, might be figments of an unhealthy mind.

  “Crospinal—”

  He had already started toward the crew.

  THE SAILORS’ HAPTIC

  Vanished now from all but seemingly irremediable fragments of memories, scattered in recesses and crevasses, subsumed by the structure, juxtaposed and drifting through foetid back rooms, the other world once had permanence, and primordial history, never swayed by mere bursts of instructions or the whims of some remote generator. There had been a stillness, and patience, and the linear passage of eons. No engines turned over in unreachable depths, no landscape of false ruins, painted on lenses of the portholes. Toluene didn’t dissolve chambers only to have them reconfigured and flash-hardened by mindless machines to suit the capricious agendas of an unfathomable power.