Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  Crospinal was distracted by the voices inside him. He could no longer understand their language. Time seemed to stutter.

  “The sailor that chose you,” Clarissa said, “was able—”

  “My father.”

  “Your father.” She struggled to persevere. “The passenger. He made two pilots. Luella, and you. Luella brought sailors together, took them from stats. She slung them, plugged them. She rescued us from darkness when we were sent to stop her. I remember looking into her eyes that first time. I remember blackness leaving me. Luella showed us how to call trains and cycles. Dispensers grew wherever she went. Objects fell from the walls. She knew everything, because she was also a pilot.”

  Crospinal closed his eyes and saw faint, stuttering images, hazy landscapes and scenes that could not possibly exist. Mountains, he thought. He opened his eyes again. “If she was hurt, why didn’t a metal rat fix her?”

  “A what?”

  “An elemental. The smart machines. With red eyes.”

  Clarissa blinked. Finally, she said: “They’re tempters, and detractors. They ask too many questions that can never be answered. When Luella was hurt, she went to sleep before elementals found her. But there are none left now, anyhow. They’ve been banished.”

  He looked out over the expanse, where once he’d imagined mountains, but he knew now that mountains were part of the sailors’ dream. As if agreeing, those within him flittered.

  “Why did you name me?” Clarissa whispered.

  He turned to look her in the eye, met her gaze for a long while, his jaw working. He saw the struggle, inside. Reaching out—an action that surprised even himself—he touched Clarissa’s face with his bare hand and, as his fingertips broke through the faint shield created by her collar, felt the electrostatic charge, like a tingling, and the fine hairs of her cheek, the bone under her warm, soft skin. She drew in breath sharply. She was crying, trembling. A fallen teardrop began to roll, whisked quickly away.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said. “Where are you taking us?”

  His fingers were still touching her face. Like everyone else, she was tormented by a past she could not recall. “Did Luella ever kill anyone?” he said.

  Her blue eyes averted. She would not look at him. She moved away from his touch. “Luella converted when she could. Or she ended a life, if she had to. Batches are not like us. Seventeen stats rose from the floor when Luella was here. And when the batches came, most died, but some were saved, and converted. Like me. Even sailors were attacked, in their thrones, some who’d just come awake. They were torn from their gates and left to bleed. Memories were lost. You’d kill batches, too.”

  Out over the vista, clouds were clearing. He looked at the distant garden, visible now, and the hazy patterns of the floor. To walk to the horizon would take many days. “We all die soon enough. That’s one thing I know.”

  “A batch lives for twenty years, until their year of transgression. Without a jumpsuit, without food, without thought. Attached to the hub. They are not like us.”

  Crospinal had never heard of the year of transgression; it sounded like a difficult one. He was thinking about the boy with the dead rats, who had bitten him. Was he a batch, far from the hub? And the men in the pylon, breathing through symbiotes: had they once been crew, and batches before that? The world was not as clearly divided as Clarissa had been taught. “And how long will Luella live?”

  “Forever. She’s in a stat.”

  “What about outside the dream cabinet?”

  “A thousand years, maybe more.”

  Believing an untruth does not make it less of a lie. “And me?”

  “Sailors can live for a thousand years. Have you forgotten? Until the year of miracles.”

  Crospinal frowned. “I’ve seen the world that sailors came from. When they went to sleep, nothing was like this, not like what we see.” Watching faraway ridges, where a cascade of lights, flickering like sparks, meant the addition of yet another new feature, a hall or budding station, or perhaps their dissolution. “Something came into the world while they slept.” Recalling the girder, fallen from the ceiling, smashing the cabinets back home, he added, “And it lives there,” pointing down, at a slight angle, toward the horizon, “at the hub. Creatures found their way into their dreams.”

  Clarissa did not respond. Sobs shuddered her frame. Either she did not know what else to say or had run out of energy and hope of convincing Crospinal; she slumped now, as terrified of following him as she was of her inability to stop.

  When he got to his feet, breezes moved over his naked skin. He filled his chest, held his lungs full, and adjusted the ruined waistband of his uniform.

  “Farewell,” said the controller. “Safe travels.”

  Two drones approached. Slow and steady, side by side, the blunt crafts came on, a crackling aura of energy roiling between them, wreathing their spinning forms. They were coming for Crospinal.

  Above them, white helixes of lumens whirled, taking form, and as he raised his arms to greet the apparition, Richardson sat up, trying for the first time to speak, but his words were garbled.

  In a blinding white uniform and radiant helmet, a figure of light appeared, reclining in a throne made of lumens. Legs open, high boots, sheathed arms snug and resting on the armrests. White mitts. The landscape beyond the projection was limned in brilliance; Crospinal, trying to shield his face with a bare forearm, could see nothing else. So bright because the source was close; some form of father was within range.

  “Nice lecture, little brother,” said the apparition. “You called?”

  He could not see his sister’s face through the glare off the visor, but he knew as she hovered before him that she was not happy with him. Beyond the representation of reflective polycarbonate, her expression was hardened, and cold. Wonder was gone. He knew this, like a kick to the gut. His sister’s disdain washed over him.

  “What have you done to yourself?” she asked.

  Losing himself in the light, he did not respond. He thought she would have been happy to see him. She had other expectations.

  “Father’s dead,” he said.

  He wondered what her snort of laughter could mean.

  “I heard. And I heard you went missing, stumbling off, half-cocked. I see those awful machines are looking out for you. What goes on in your head, Crospie? What the fuck goes on in there? You’re a lunatic.”

  He was not surprised that drones had come for him. They had been watching him all along. Since he’d been born.

  “The pen is gone,” he said.

  “The pen.” Luella laughed again, head back, visor flashing. “I can’t believe you made it this far. You are an absolute reject. Talk about miracles. What do you remember, brother, about me? About when we were together?”

  “Haptics. Us being bathed. The expression on your face.”

  She hesitated. “When I left, you weren’t walking. You couldn’t even talk. Your legs were bent and you slept in your little daybed. You should have been put down. Father wasted his life trying to educate you.”

  “Where are you projecting from? Down there?” He pointed. “Are you coming from there? Or are you inside the drone?”

  “Look at you. Making demands. When I was four years old, brother—four years old—I was already a pilot. While you were half-baked and drooling.”

  He looked away.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Luella said. “They’re just having a nap.”

  Richardson and Clarissa were indeed asleep.

  Had his first visit to the dream cabinet begun his downfall? Physical ability to enter—with his arms picked clean—and the yearning desires to seek solace beyond the hemisphere of his father’s range, were dubious gifts. Maybe he didn’t have the ability to fulfill a clear role in the world, like Luella had at a young age, but he had a yearning nonetheless.

  Had that first visit undone wh
at his father had been trying to achieve?

  While he had dreamed, time crossed over itself. He drowned in cold fluid. Stealing away from the pen to climb the ladders of the harrier and invoke his girlfriend, or tucking himself into the oblivion of the stat, had changed him. He would never know what he might have become had he resisted. A sentry? A leader, like his sister?

  A killer?

  Waking groggily, tingling with dim euphoria, he pushed the cabinet’s door open. He presumed each visit brief, an hour, maybe less, yet his stay might have been weeks, if not years, pulled into forgotten dreams.

  Sailors could travel between worlds while they slept.

  Why couldn’t he?

  Well-being started to diminish as soon as the soles of his boots touched the green carpet. Enough to go back to his dad, to his daybed, to his little corner.

  Luella had been there. Passengers, too. Some of them, still asleep in their stats, drifted through the same way they drifted through him now. Others had woken, and were tethered, connecting. Maybe his father had joined. That’s what dream cabinets could do. He had been inside, and connected. He knew this now, lifted by the drones, held aloft and barely conscious, while they hummed and strained and spun. His back arched, meager arms flung wide.

  He had been connected.

  From the ledge of fused polymers, the crew members lay inert, paralyzed by the paladin. Through slitted eyes they were still able to watch as Crospinal rose. The glare was powerful and pain was a throb that faded and surged with each slow heartbeat. Inability to resist the manifestations was one thing crew would always share with batches. Their heritage was undeniable: before a paladin, both were equally helpless.

  Neither Clarissa nor Richardson saw Luella, not the way Crospinal did, sitting in her throne. They saw only the light, and Crospinal, transfixed, ascending.

  For Clarissa, eyes watering, processor whining to transmute the waste she’d voided when the paladin made her drop and curl inward, this was a moment of revelation, of order, and even relief; she felt, in her fervour and pain, absolution.

  Richardson, who was powerful and calm, knew the presence of lives within him, perhaps even more so than Crospinal. He managed to prop himself up. Shielding his face, with his body turned away—squinting through his fingers—no discernable impression betrayed his features. Since the jumpsuit was fitted, Richardson had witnessed and taken part in many struggles. He had seen and could recall wonders too innumerable for him to account or contextualize. This place, and this other human, whom they’d been travelling with recently, and who had initiated further changes, seemed hardly more remarkable than the litany of others. Before encountering the crew, Richardson recalled nothing. Not so long ago, he had been caught, pulled up from the formless black of existence in the hub. Now, when he fought or stood at a console, he watched batches coming in, attacking almost mindlessly, and he studied their faces as they skirmished. Even as he struck at them, to keep them away, he sought, as Crospinal did, familiarity, a common bridge.

  Yet, new to motives, beyond the capacity of his burgeoning thoughts, Richardson nonetheless sensed, like his mentor, that a circuit was closing. Crew had waited a long time for Crospinal to appear. Now, watching him elevate—snared alive, naked and crackling with energy—he knew why.

  Soon, Richardson would talk.

  He would name people.

  He would tell them a story.

  “Stop fighting me!”

  The bonds had tightened but could not fully hold him.

  “Listen to me, Crospie. You were right about endtime. You were right because you bring it with you. You are endtime.”

  “What have you done with her?”

  “You don’t think I’m Luella?”

  “I’m asking about my girlfriend. What have you done with her?”

  “You’re an idiot, Crospinal. How could you have a girlfriend? You should’ve stayed in the pen.”

  He felt heat spreading through his chest. The sailors inside darting about, as if seeking cover, or taking stations. Their voices hissed.

  “From day one you were a failed experiment, little brother. A disaster.”

  Between them, the drones had taken him away from the wall. The abyss all around, the floor far below: he ceased his struggle, to listen, as the apparition commanded, and to breathe. What he heard were echoes of the sailors’ lives. Their home might have been flawed, and alien, but lives were lives, replete with disappointment and pain and small joys, even here, at the end of the world, at the end of time.

  “Empathy for you is a weakness. I don’t know how you ever convinced any thing or any one to help you. Sit back now, brother, let me drive.”

  If this was Luella, something truly awful had happened to her since leaving home. He remembered Fox and Bear standing over them, their father smiling proudly, all hooked up—

  With all his strength, and the strength of those dreaming within him, Crospinal twisted away.

  The apparition screamed.

  He could not be subdued. Because of what his father had done to him, because of his difference, he could not be subdued. He felt the threads of the others stitching through him, tightening, and he felt the crew, even flickers from Clarissa and Richardson, who were recovering now. The drones continued to move farther away from the ledge, and down. His body lurched sideways through the grip and the drones had to spread out to compensate. Crospinal dropped a metre or so before becoming buoyant again, bouncing in the invisible sling.

  As a phalanx of data orbs rushed in, dozens of them from all around, to assess and add to the net, the projection of his sister vanished, replaced briefly by another, and then by one of his girlfriend, who appeared pained and beautiful, reaching out to him, about to speak, to confess, before she too vanished—

  Lattices of support were failing. If Crospinal continued to struggle, they would have to let him go. With no choice but to descend—as quickly as they could, before the grip was fractured altogether—the drones whirred and spun and headed down.

  Ambiguous projections stuttered around Crospinal’s flailing body, belying anxiety from the source now that he had finally come into range. Crospinal was stronger than they had expected. He was a multitude. They could not hold him.

  With a final twist, he broke free; for a moment, at least, liberated.

  BATCHES

  Darkness. He had known all along there would be darkness. And that he would end up there. More pervasive darkness in life than light. Certainly more in the reaches and recesses of the capricious world. If, indeed, the world was where he now found himself.

  He understood nothing about his predicament, except for darkness. Had he been falling? Was this death? Then he was wrong about eternal oblivion.

  The floor was cold and hard under him; he was seated upon ancient tiles.

  A faint rustling—

  The conversation about darkness had been with a girl. A crew member. Her face, the cast of her eyes upon him, and his hand touching her cheek: he could not imagine another chance to experience such wonders.

  Then a faint glow—from quite close—bloomed. He recoiled slowly, blinking to see faces ringing him, brown and silent. Synchronous shadows moved across the bland expressions as the small lantern—a fibre of light (he’d seen these before, held them?)—was lifted higher, so they could see him better.

  Batches. He remembered what these people were called. In this darkness, he was ringed by batches.

  Another glow sparked, and another; the aura of the combined glows expanded:

  He sat in a large, old room, the extent of which could not be discerned. Portions of smooth, metallic wall rose to his left, passing beyond the pale hemisphere of light. Detritus, fabrics, broken tubes and fibre clusters, strewn about; the smell of sweat, urine, faint smoke. He remembered his name—Crospinal—and a scattered series of vignettes that did not fit together in any satisfactory way.

  There were actual
ly twenty batches, maybe even more, in concentric rows, crowded about. Some younger, some children, all naked, with similar features: broad head; full lips; high cheekbones. Like his own. At least one toddler, dirty and naked, stared from the pack. In the year of growth, probably. Crospinal could not find any traits that distinguished gender: what he could see of the bodies was smooth, and equally grimy, highlighted by the glow. Identical. He was much paler than any, somewhat taller than the tallest, and a whole lot thinner.

  Crouching at the fore, those with the lanterns (his father had kept a stash of these next to his throne for occasions when the ambients were dormant) caused harsher light as they leaned forward, fracturing their faces, chests, clenched hands.

  The wall towered up, steady, indicating—

  From the remaining dark, something was coming.

  Crospinal had heard it, and he stepped back.

  He was at the bottom of the hub.

  Remembering the ledge now, and the cockpit, the face of the dead batch, he called out.

  His voice was loud, yet swallowed abruptly: no echo, no answer. The batches did not flinch, nor change expression, though the glow quavered as one scratched at a stomach with the hand that held the torch.

  “What’s out there?”

  They blinked and stared.

  Had he been rejected by the apparition? Or had he escaped? He knew the figure had not been Luella’s, but a projection, a lie, yet he was disappointed by her ire. If he had fallen—well, that wasn’t even possible. Pointless to consider: the drop had been huge. He felt no pain in his body. He had once thought polymer clouds might catch him if he plummeted.

  His chestplate flapped free. One of the straps detached in his fingers, so he tore the plate off altogether and tossed it before him. Still the batches did not react. Some shuffled, looked elsewhere. Already the material of his tricot was breaking down, reintegrating. He could smell the process. Crospinal felt his cool, bare chest, the minute bumps of his nipples smooth against the now-rougher skin of his fingertips.