The Black Dream

by Col Buchanan

  What plan? If this is anything at all, it’s the absolute lack of a plan.

  Ash curled the corner of his mouth into a smile. He liked this spicy woman with her sharpshooting mouth, whose wit somehow reminded him of Nico.

  Rumbles and judders as the glass box rose through the air along the sloping underside of the Sky Bridge leg. He stood there jittery with energy, his forehead pressed against the cool glass he was gazing through.

  You okay?

  Yup.

  In fact he was humming a song from the old country, full of life this morning, light on the balls of his feet. Earlier, standing over the bowl that was a latrine in the apartment bathroom of Juke and Triqy, he’d drained the last of the Milk in a frothy jet while wondering again how long the effects would continue, this buzz of energy that was like being a young man once more, ready to take on the world all over again.

  Ah, the hopeful rebellion of youth, he reflected. We should never lose this.

  A faint bloom of moisture spread upon the glass he was leaning his forehead against. Ash rubbed it clear with his hand. At this height, he could see the mountain peaks that surrounded the crater city and the saddlebacks ranging between them, where fingers of the metropolis extended outwards into outlying suburbs.

  This morning a layer of white clouds surrounded the crater and peaks, and the sun shone fiercely down on them as far as his eyes could see, so that the city and its outer regions looked like islands in a sea of white froth. It pleased him to see the city in this way at last, a poetic vision of the name given to it by the Alhazii, these so-called islands in the sky, though the image was marred somewhat by the thick mist of pollution sitting upon the caldera, obscuring everything.

  Beneath the Alhazii robe he wore, Ash could feel the farcry she had given him hanging against the hairs of his chest, a smooth stone shaped like a kidney, the same breadth and thinness as his hand. Amazing to speak in his head like this with the woman, to know that she was seeing all that he saw.

  Damned heavy though, for all the size of it.

  Heavy, this farcry of yours.

  You must be joking. Those crappy obsolete farcrys we sell the Alhazii are the size of barrels.

  Yes, but then you do not have to carry those about with you.

  You know, I really can’t tell if you’re joking or not.

  Does everyone here possess such a device?

  Mostly. Though the city’s network is hidden from the outside world. Our people invented the Black Dream you know, long before their exile.

  A bell rattled and the glass climbing box came to a stop with a conclusive clunk.

  You’re there. Top floor.

  *

  Left here, I think.

  You think?

  Yes. Fairly certain.

  Then why do I feel lost?

  I got you through those security checks, didn’t I? Trust me. It’s left here.

  Ash pulled a face then strode down a corridor identical to the last one, save that it was wider and busier with use. He was in the central hub now, making his way through a labyrinth of spaces that was the administrative heart of the Sky Bridge and the city. The same windows ran along the same cream walls, showing what could be the same people sitting in bright offices at desks; talking, reading from flickering screens, punching their fingers into black contraptions. Along the carpeted corridors, Anwi men and women in fine suits of grey or cream passed him by with quick glances at his hood and burnoose, but nothing more.

  My message. Have you sent it to the Falcon yet?

  Juke’s riding down to Guallo Town with it now. Says he has another pickup to make anyway. Turn right here, then left again.

  It was warm in these corridors. The light was like crisp daylight though it shone from orbs along the ceilings. The swirling brown carpets gave way a little beneath his treads.

  You’re there.

  Ash turned a corner and found himself approaching a pair of guards in black uniforms, the duo standing on either side of a doorway between blue flags hanging limp on poles. They raised their gazes from the floor at his approach, looked at the pass swinging from his neck, and said nothing as he stepped through into the room beyond.

  He found himself in a kind of lobby, oblong in shape and vibrant green with potted plants. A door at the far end was guarded by another pair of bored guards. Assorted Anwi looked up from comfortable settles lining the white walls to take in his sudden Alhazii appearance, before returning their gazes to newspapers or the bland stubble of the cream carpet.

  ‘Name?’ inquired a middle-aged woman from behind a high desk, her eyebrows pinched together in a face heavy with cosmetics.

  ‘Call me Ash.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘The Archon. I must see him.’

  ‘You don’t appear to have an appointment with us, Mr Ash.’

  ‘It is very important that I see him.’

  She laughed quietly at that, a little chuckle like the twitter of birds. The people waiting around the room were listening with pricked ears.

  ‘Without an appointment that’s simply out of the question. His schedule is over-filled for the day as it is, just as it is every day he chooses to hold office. If you leave an enquiry with me, I’ll make sure to pass it along.’

  She blinked as he swept his hood back from his head. The Alhazii ink markings on his face had faded in the bath the previous night. Ash flashed his canines for show and spoke with the pent-up force of his will.

  ‘Tell him an old farlander is here to see him. An old Rōshun. Tell him now.’

  ‘Well,’ she said in a sudden fluster. ‘I can’t guarantee anything. But I’ll let him know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he told her before she could change her mind. His boots rip-ripped across the carpet and took him to an empty chair directly across the desk in her eye-line. He sank down into it deeper than he had been expecting, holding out his hands to steady himself while he floated on its wobbling surface. The woman watched him for a moment, then left the desk and entered the far door between the guards.

  It’s true then. You’re a real life Rōshun?

  In the flesh.

  This is going right off the scale. Juke will freak when he finds out. He loves you guys.

  After a time his body stopped bobbing in the chair, and he looked about for the music he could faintly hear. The sound of musical pipes was coming from a gauze hole in the wall behind him, and he craned his head round to peer through it, but could see only darkness.

  From the corners of their eyes, every Anwi in the room was watching him.

  They seem nervous.

  Little wonder. You should be nervous too. The Archon isn’t just the ruler of the city. He’s a Dreamer, Ash. He can snuff you out with a pinch of his fingers, and he has the reputation to prove it.

  Huh. I’ve met more kings and self-proclaimed gods than I care to remember, Triqy. Enough to know they are only people like the rest of us.

  He’ll never see you anyway. Not on the spot like this.

  We will see.

  The woman returned and glanced at him over her desk but said nothing. She sat down and returned to whatever she had been doing before his arrival, reading it seemed, flicking her gaze towards him occasionally from beneath her thickened lashes.

  What followed was an endless time of waiting, just as he’d been expecting would happen. Triqy grew quiet in his mind. People entered the inner door then left a while later with varying expressions. Others replaced them where they had been waiting. He wished that he had his sword with him, if only to grip it reassuringly, stroke the grip with his thumb while he sat there passing the time. His fingers started drumming against the chair to the music coming from the wall, wanting to annoy the woman behind the desk with his presence, to remind her that he was still there.

  The old farlander popped his mouth open then closed it again. Craned his neck back and forth and stared up at the arching ceiling overhead. A painting covered the ceiling, depicting a watery landscape:
a blue sea crashing white against the coast of an island where a circle of stones stood tall, with an entire world hanging across half the sky.

  You people really believe you fell from one of the moons?

  We don’t believe it. It’s an historical fact. We were cast out, and had to settle here on Erēs.

  Cast out why?

  Because we lost a civil war.

  He nodded, understanding at last.

  Exiles, Ash thought, looking up at the alien vista again, beautiful in its own strange way. People yearning for their home.

  It’s what our name means, Anwi.

  The Lost?

  More than that. Anwi is that mood we sometimes experience when we look up into the sky and see the moon of Mangala shining there in its whiteness, our first home before it was gripped in ice, and Sholo brilliant and blue, knowing we can never return to either. Anwi is the yearning in our hearts for what we have lost and what we long for.

  He felt a lump in his throat; a sudden ridiculous burst of sentiment at what he heard.

  With a newly found appreciation Ash examined the people around the room dressed in their fine silk outfits, sporting jewels and immaculate hairstyles that seemed to defy their own weight, their faces old yet glowing with vitality.

  Are all these people Elect?

  Of course.

  How long have they been living for?

  Some could be five hundred years old. Some might only be a hundred. The Hort, the truly ancient, are said to live for millennia. They would never have to wait like this to see the Archon.

  Let us follow their lead then.

  What?

  He was tired of waiting. Ash rose as best he could from the shifting embrace of the chair and crossed the carpet, heading for the inner door.

  ‘Excuse me, you can’t go in there!’

  What are you doing?

  Triqy, did you really think I came here to sit and wait all day long?

  What? But—

  Ahead the guards were yanking out their batons now, and Ash snarled and grabbed an arm and spun the stick around so that it struck the other guard in the chest, shocking him with its violet light. The man dropped and an instant later his partner dropped next to him, jerking and convulsing on the floor.

  It happened so fast that the first scream sounded out even as Ash was through the door and hurrying along a corridor, stunstick still in his grasp.

  More guards shouted after him. He was stopped by a round door of bronze like a massive coin set on its side, and he flung his weight against it, found that it rotated easily from the centre. Bright daylight shone at him through the opening and Ash stepped through, glancing back at the guards running to catch him. He spotted pistols in their hands.

  The room was as spacious as the empty floor of a warehouse, and brightly lit by a wrapping of windows overlooking the city of Mashuppa. On a raised platform on the carpeted floor, a lean and tanned man dressed in a white smock stood above a table, surrounded by a group of children, all of them watching what he was doing.

  Ash tossed the stunstick in his hand clattering across the floor, catching their attention, then threw back his hood.

  ‘Sosay!’ one of the guards shouted from behind, and suddenly two of them were pointing guns at Ash’s head. ‘Get down now!’

  From across the room the man called out in a clipped voice that fully occupied the vast space, speaking in their native tongue. The guards hesitated, exchanging uncertain glances. At last they holstered their pieces and withdrew back through the door, glaring at Ash as they did so.

  Once more the figure returned to whatever it was he was doing. Though now the children whispered and studied the old farlander standing in their company.

  Again the man’s voice rang out, echoing from the glass windows, and the children returned their attentions to his work on the table.

  What does he say to them?

  What?

  Translate!

  He says, ‘Right there, children. Do you see its heart beating?’

  Intrigued, Ash stepped across the floor for a better look at what lay upon the table. The first thing he saw were the bloody cuffs of the Archon’s white smock, and then the man’s gloved hands smeared red too. A small blade was held delicately in his grasp, above what seemed to be a hairy corpse splayed open to reveal its vivid internals. Ash stopped a few steps from the table, staring down in disbelief at the form strapped upon it.

  The creature was still alive, whatever it was. Some kind of ape as large as a human, its oversized teeth fixed in a snarl of pain upon its hairy features. From throat to navel it had been cut open and the flesh peeled back from its ribcage, with the ribcage too sawn through and spread apart. Ash could see its heart beating in the open air.

  ‘One moment,’ the Archon said to him in Trade, then cut away at something again, causing the animal to clack its teeth and flinch against the straps that pinned it down. Some of the children gaped in astonishment and leaned forward for a better look. Others glanced away.

  Ash took a step closer.

  Again the Archon spoke to the children excitedly.

  Triqy?

  Don’t worry, children, translated Triqy’s voice. It doesn’t feel the pain, not like us. It’s merely an animal after all. A living mechanism, like that clock over there.

  The Archon sounded just like one of the priests of Mann, echoing their belief that only humans were sentient beings.

  Ash glared at the scene, feeling a sickness coiling in his stomach. He looked up to take in the lean form of the Archon, standing there in his butcher’s smock above his victim. The man’s face and hands were long and olive in complexion, and his skin gleamed wetly in the same manner as the Dreamer Shard back in the Free Ports. His eyes were thin and folded just like Ash’s. Two streaks of white curved from his temples in what was otherwise a head of jet-black hair formed into a quiff. Likewise his lips were painted black, and his fingernails.

  How old is this man, Triqy?

  It’s something of a secret. Some say a thousand years. Don’t play games with him, he’ll break you. He’s well known for—

  Triqy?

  ‘I’ve broken the connection,’ announced the Archon without looking up, and Ash tried to cover his surprise, wondering how much the man had overheard. ‘I hope you don’t mind. At my age, you will understand when I say my privacy is a serious matter to me.’

  The Archon’s voice was calm and lyrical, like the voice of a man soothing an animal before he cut its throat, or prising apart its living organs for the satisfaction of his reason.

  With a sniff he straightened from his work to inspect it for a moment, then stepped to a sink next to the table to peel off his bloody gloves. Washing his hands and arms his voice sang out to the children, who obediently walked hand in hand for the door without making a sound.

  ‘Now, what can I help you with, old Rōshun from Honshu? Don’t tell me I’ve gotten myself mixed up in some vendetta nonsense without knowing it?’

  Again Ash glanced down at the creature strapped to the table and its fevered stare, then back up at the blue eyes of the Archon.

  ‘Not yet,’ he answered carefully.

  ‘A threat, so soon. How delightful!’

  Their voices echoed through the great empty space, which was bulbous and tall and shaped like a closed tulip, and seemed to bulge from the side of the Sky Bridge so that most of the walls were lined with spotless glass filled with blue sky. Few furnishings of any kind, Ash noted, seeking to learn more of this man through his chosen environment. Little but space and light, a blank frame for the clouds in the sky and the city caldera far below. As though, indeed, the man wished to give nothing of himself away.

  He watched the Archon tug off his bloody smock and toss it upon the floor. The man turned to face him, snapping the cuffs of his snug-fitting cream silk suit. His blue eyes danced within his lean face. ‘I understand the Rōshun order was recently annihilated by the Empire. Somewhere in Cheem, I’m told.’

 
; ‘You are well informed.’

  ‘We maintain our sources in the Heart of the World. Idle curiosity more than anything else, it’s so easy to grow bored otherwise. Still. Here you are, a living breathing Rōshun. I must say I’m rather thrilled.’

  High above the man’s head, shapes hung from the curve of the ceiling lit by a lattice of artificial lights. Some forms he couldn’t recognize, like the giant bird creature with a great curving bone sweeping from the back of its head and its leathery wings stretched far to either side. But then he spotted a fire elk hanging there on its wires as though running across the thin air, and next to it a kree warrior, poised to rear up and attack.

  Ash stood facing the Archon, with a distant clicking clock the only sound in the room. The Archon didn’t look a thousand years old; more like fifty, and well maintained at that. Even considering Ash’s habitual lack of expectations in anything, he found that he had been expecting something different from this. A withered old crone perhaps, sombre and wise from his aeon of experiences. Not this hawkish wire vibrating before him, carrying himself in such a way as to remind Ash of a coifed Mannian actor and major celebrity he had once slain on vendetta, immaculate in every detail of his presentation.

  ‘You are holding a friend of mine in custody,’ Ash declared boldly, wishing there and then to cut to the heart of the matter. ‘I would like to discuss the matter of his release.’

  ‘Ah, the spy,’ replied the Archon and nodded as though a great many things were falling into place. The man spun around and strode across the room in his smart shoes, tugging his cuffs again. ‘Come. Let us talk somewhere more fitting than here.’

  But Ash remained unmoving, lingering next to the splayed animal on the table. It was looking up at him now with its bloodshot eyes, some hint of a question in its gaze. He found his breath catching in his chest.

  The Archon had turned and was reading his expression with a repressed smile.

  He flourished his hand through the air and something snapped upon the table too fast to see. Ash saw that a bolt had shot from a metal clamp through the animal’s skull. The shadow of life faded from its eyes.

  ‘Satisfied?’