Celebrant

by Cisco, Michael

  Other pigeon girls pass them by, and Burn joins them presently. Burn walks with her hands behind her back. Lowering her gaze for just a moment, she’s alone when she raises it again. How long a moment?

  She’s gone a long way. There are incubators all around her. They’re too large, just at the moment, to gain admittance to her mind. Or just the name. Burn looks, but she doesn’t see any modets. Nor anyone else.

  This area is a patch of desert transplanted into the city. Sulfurous, yellow desert, with a few bleached and dry shrubs that look like dead spiders on their backs. Here, at all but random intervals, the incubators vent unbearably foul, unbreathable exhaust. This exhaust lives, briefly, and can infect those who breathe it or get too much of it on their skin with Third Degree Fever, or the Waste-Away, or a disease similar to rabies, known in Votu as he gwa chormo. (The name means “dreaming of being thirsty.”)

  A few highly intuitive types, and some old experienced hands, can tell when the incubators are about to vent. When questioned about the signs, they all seem to be noticing different things, and so no technique or warning system has come about yet or is likely to.

  Burn trots between the hive-like incubators. The ground is the color of cornmeal here, and nothing grows in it but a few resinous, brittle thornbushes and long stalky grass, dead dry, with wheatlike clusters of seeds that hiss. The grainy, plum-colored metal of the incubators is hidden under a layer of congealed dust that clings to them like paste. A chute emerges from each one, and waste, in the form of a mixture of real and plaster bones and ceramic casts and plant molds, drops from these chutes into colossal bowls of thick, clear glass. They subside in sections from time to time with a friable tinkling sound.

  Burn keeps one hand near her face, to clap it over her mouth and nose in case she hears anything that sounds like venting gas. She doesn’t even know if that can be heard.

  Some black thing—she just catches glimpse of it—like a ripple travelling along the edge of a tarp, from behind one of the bowls. As she comes around, cautiously veering toward the bowl, she sees a peculiar shadow lying stretched out on the dirt. The bowl creates a curving wedge whose base is the ground and whose innermost angle is a glaring white seam—now interrupted with something black. The black thing slides along the curve and lengthens as the curve rises. The Bird of Ill Omen stands there over its shadow, like a vulture perched on the corpse of a stricken, sun-scorched man. It leers at her with its tiny fangs, and eyes that, even here, are like two icy autumn moons. Its throat palpitates, as if it were panting, or chortling silently to itself.

  Burn has never been this close to it. Her surprise and fright vanish as quickly, quicker, than they came over her, and she returns its blank gaze levelly. The air stops moving altogether and—it’s just as she thought. She’s actually looking a man in the face. She’s never seen him before. Not his face. It was always covered by the veil that now lies cast aside in the dust, with his silk hat caught in it like a black stump trapped in a bank of tar. He is sitting on his knees, all blanketed in his cloak, looking at her, surrounded by the shadows and outlines of small flames. The flames are transparent and the shadows are not.

  Coming closer, the aura stings the skin, like heat, but without heating her. It brushes her skin, but there’s no pressure, and her hair isn’t stirred. His features don’t swim, there’s nothing from the fire to trouble the air. He regards her neutrally. As if he were only taking a casual interest in her, observing her from afar the way you might look at a famous view, or detachedly imagining her.

  Burn bounds through the flames that scorch like acid and flings her hands around the man’s neck, squeezing the windpipe shut under her thumbs. Her face is blank with fury. She shakes him, half standing on his leg. He tumbles over backward in sections like a column collapsing. She rides him to the ground and perches on top of his quiescent body, crushing his throat with all the strength in her hands. His face is as closed as a dummies’, not even looking up into the sky, and yet it almost seems as though she can see his eyes bulging and the sun glisten along the sides of his protruding tongue. Blindly she shakes his neck, banging his head against the ground.

  Abruptly Burn stops, throwing his head down and quitting him all in one movement. She walks right through the forgotten fire and is only momentarily surprised and angered when it splashes her with pain. Head down, Burn strides blindly away from him, feeling him lying there behind her.

  She stops, and then turns to look back. A black crumple. Hands lying on their backs in the dust. He lies as she left him, it seems.

  Is he dead/was he alive?

  She goes instantly cold.

  Or just a dummy?

  With horror she wonders if she’s been handling a dead body, or something worse. A mocking fake. Did she fall into a trap, and are things that had been inert now coming to life? Like the life she had expected to find was, by dint of substituting that place-holder body there, malevolently alive somewhere else? Burn can’t clearly think such thoughts, but she doesn’t have to, she answers to them.

  She has already turned and is walking away again, without thinking. For a flash she sees him hovering just behind her his fingers almost brushing the ends of her hair and she turns to see him still lying there, apparently as he was. For a moment she considers returning to inspect him.

  Her head is muffling up. She feels a little sick... no, it’s coming from too far down to be her stomach. She turns again. He’s looking at her. He’s sitting up as before, exactly as before.

  Not too emphatically, not hurriedly, he raises his left hand and points.

  Burn follows his finger. The shutters that normally cover the exhaust vents on one of the incubators are already flung open, and there’s shady movement within the aperture. The grilles are unlocking. Burn jumps up onto the rim of the nearest bowl and from there onto the top of the chute. She rushes up its length to the crown of the incubator and then, with as many steps as she can take before the slope begins she launches her body into space, toward the neighboring machine. She stays high, knowing the exhaust is heavy and will flow along the ground first. Her head splits and becomes light as she jumps. The ground far below is oozing by. The distance to the next incubator’s bowl of plaster bones she traverses like a ship coming up to a pier in a calm bay. Air rustles past her abdomen and chest, and gathers in weightless heaps against her arms, although she might be said more to resemble a leaping monkey than a bird in flight.

  She lands on the bones without a sound and scampers up the chute to the apex. The open vent behind her is beginning to emit a wild, weak squeal, scribbling up and down in pitch. Without a moment’s hesitation she flings herself again toward the next bowl, which is only half full. The bones subside and crumble beneath her feet and she has to leap and leap, scrambling, trying to get a purchase on the sleek glass or the rim. With a hoarse crash, the whine explodes in a voiceless bellow. Something is banging. Shadows flit on all sides of her as she clinches the rim in both hands and hauls herself out, up to the chute. Up to the incubator. The noise is like a corpse blowing into a hollow bottle. The ravenous exhaust is alive only for a few moments—she can hear it frisking the bones in the dune just behind her. Ahead of her is a wall and she jumps at it, arms up high, well above her head, out of her sight, so she doesn’t know whether or not she’s right to think that a pair of strong hands very briefly seizes them and pitches her forward just slightly longer and slightly higher.

  Burn alights on the wall and flees quickly along its narrow top. The wall turns a corner and veers into the city. Turning that corner, she can see a thin, transparent cloud, like powder dissolving in water, billowing up, stymied by the high wall. It piles back on top of itself, a wave rebuffed by a cliff, scattering in long-fingered raccoon paws that rot in the bright air. The cloud is crumbling in silence. Burn watches it settling, as the sun sets behind her.

  The air weighs so little. It frisks around her shoulders, raises and lowers her hair. Burn needs to find other pigeon girls again. She makes her w
ay into the dimming streets by short hops down onto projecting masonry and awnings. People come from doorways carrying their lamps. The moon is already setting.

  *

  Burn knows her friends will be gathering in a certain spot where the stale bread of the day is often abandoned. To get there in time to meet them, she must go through a set of arcades that can be treacherous. Most of the shops are closed for good, there are drunks to be dealt with, and even guard dogs in places.

  The arcade is a chain of caves, shaped like a train. Burn passes a few eateries with blazing, clear windows that throw bright spots on the shutters.

  Now she’s in a deserted stretch, and she knows there’s a dog—a sizeable, aggressive dog—around here. There are a number of such dogs, owned by people who have shops in the arcades, turned loose at night to keep watch.

  Up ahead, there’s almost a fog there, way away at the end of the passage. Burn hears the click of the dog’s claws, and then it whuffs hoarsely to itself. The sound is magnified by the stone arcade. Quickly, Burn flits up onto a window-ledge, and from there to the narrow gutter for collecting the condensation water that drips down the concavity of the vaulted ceiling. The dog appears, unable to see her, crouched well back in the shadows, and sniffs around for her.

  It goes back the way it came. She waits.

  Some barking.

  Now footsteps.

  A man is coming, alone. There he is, all wrapped up in shawls. He has a strikingly pallid face, and a black, silky moustache, and, like many people, he seems familiar to Burn.

  As he comes, Burn edges forward. As he passes, she alights nimbly on top of him, standing with her feet in his shawlly shoulders, and bent a little at the waist to avoid the ceiling.

  I wonder how high up I am?

  The man isn’t aware of her, and she rides along on his shoulders, listening for the dog behind them. If it comes rushing up, barking, as it barks now, the man may turn and she may have to jump for it. As it is, she is leaving no scent trail for the dog to follow.

  The man, who seems lost in thought, rolls his shoulders a little, adjusting them. She is jostled only slightly, and keeps her balance. She fixes her eye on the corner coming up on the right where a signboard-post sticks out into space—the sign having been taken in for the night. As the man turns the corner, she simply takes hold of the post and lifts her feet. While he straightens up a little, and seems to sigh faintly with relief, he does not notice, and goes on his way. Burn has climbed on top of the post, which feels shaky—did the dog bark again? The echo isn’t so near, but that could mean anything. She takes hold of a window sill and lowers her legs onto the end of a projecting beam, then takes hold of that to the ground.

  The man is already out of sight.

  deKlend:

  MOON SET

  but maybe it’s deKlend who’s flabby and listless in his misbebuttoned shirt, and they are all moving normally in toe-tapping silence

  or maybe it really is the imbecility of these walking men, or just their swinging, bile-colored hairy arms, with their woofing voices and hoo-hoo coughing

  How. To. Escape? He remembers, as he parted company with the black-globe-headed sarkoform, known as Lyrical, that a tiny purple constellation had detached itself from its starry surface and gone trembling off into the dark on its own. He even remembers that it emitted a regularly-oscillating chirp. A machine—so of course, this was the constellation he was meant to navigate by. And he utterly failed to realize that at the time it would have been at all useful to.

  He would have to look for it. If it had gone on ahead, following its own route, he would have to foreswear it as lost, but if it were somehow attached to him, then it should still be lingering somewhere in the neighborhood.

  I must not work (he says to himself earnestly) I mean, I must avoid becoming regularly employed, to make sure all my energies are devoted—unswervingly—to the purpose. That can be a hard thing to know, but you can know for certain that you aren’t devoting your energies to the purpose if you’re regularly employed. Those two things are mutually exclusive, at least that much is plain.

  Ravenously hungry, deKlend can find nothing to eat but the odds and ends the others left behind on a silver tray on the sideboard. With fastidious distaste he cuts away whatever portions of the bread and fruit that seem inedible or contaminated, and makes an inadequate repast of the rest, staring dejectedly out the window. He has a dissatisfied feeling, a mothlike stirring at the back of his memory; a dream, in which he’d been charged to find something—a palace, a cursed gemstone, an enchanted weapon, what was it? Whatever it was, it had a name: “The Laughter of the Maniac.”

  That’s not a bad name for a gemstone, or a constellation—but I was already looking for the constellation! (he thinks, suddenly peevish and frustrated)

  And for black radio, and for that veiled man... or was I looking for him? But the main thing is always to get to Votu, isn’t it? Or is this the way? Another name for the way? Wait—which takes precedence, the constellation or the radio? The radio sent me, didn’t it? Or did he? But then the constellation was emitted at roughly the same time. All right, so the constellation is an emission of the radio and therefore leads to it, good. I’m glad I’ve gotten that mess sorted out at least (he thinks)

  Standing up and brushing the crumbs from his lapels roughly, he stumbles away from the window and out into the arcades.

  Where was I?

  There’s unusual bustle. Something excites everyone. They are hurrying on all sides of him.

  The Laughter of the Maniac? Was it a person? No, you imbecile. You maniac. Of course not. So, a place or a thing.

  He tries to picture it, but he sees only the security guard’s radio, the constellation, other things he’s seen before, and then, concentrating on the idea of a significant object, he sees in the mental frame labelled “Laughter of the Maniac” a protean succession of neutral images, like an abstract gemstone, a costly volume with gold decorations, a sleep-watered mask discolored with age.

  You know (he interjects) your propensity to represent yourself as a stoic who has renounced pleasure and happiness in favor of something like a higher labor... that has a... hm.

  How is it possible to estimate the truth of this? And how is it possible to determine to what extent this restraint, or resignation, or what have you, is not merely cowardice? Or incapacity?

  I don’t know.

  He walks on.

  Not a gate up here. It’s in the twilight.

  Peace. I feel it in my throat, like a wad of burning thirst.

  He walks on.

  Strength came into me from that “I don’t know.”

  He stops to look out through a gap in the arcades, through which he can see the grey-haired hills.

  Looking at the plants, the palms, the landscape, and thinking necessity.

  I’m in love with necessity! Inevitability, implacability.

  Shrinking, getting farther away and too close.

  What am I after? I am (he thinks, idly picking up a sort of brass appliance hanging from one of the stalls that are still open) avoiding the things that I know are on the loose seeking to destroy intelligence and dignity.

  Half-formed ideas that dart back into the reef. Why catch them and trap them? Let them go. Come and go.

  Wanting to be sad, not wanting to be happy—this is perverse, but some sadnesses are better than some happinesses, sometimes it is nobler to refuse to be happy.

  There, standing at an intersection, with the people rustling around him the way water rustles around a stone in midstream, is Yolk Eye, whom deKlend knows from the party. Wise old dark-skinned Yolk Eye. There he is. Now what?

  Yolk Eye walks with deKlend.

  There’s no machine I can’t wreck (he says, smiling) Light a fire, I’ll break the fire.

  —You’re not my teacher?

  Yolk Eye: Nobody is.

  —Where do I find nobody?

  Yolk Eye: Nowhere.

  —Where is nowhere?
>
  Yolk Eye: Too close!

  deKlend turns and returns his gaze intensely.

  Do you not forget (he says)

  I. Am. An. Idiot.

  Just celebrating life is stupid.

  Remember that.

  Don’t do it.

  Of course, this is my point of view. But don’t think that, by saying that, I’m trying to weasel out on you—you’re still not as stupid as I am.

  deKlend passes Yolk Eye, where he stands in the intersection. Yolk Eye doesn’t seem to notice him. deKlend imagines the two of them, walking together, having a conversation, seeing language as he used it, like a quilt or tilefloor, dark blues and bright yellows, plastic dyes. Timelessness shines in on me through leaf shadows and glints.

  Imaginary Yolk Eye tells him solemnly: a Celebrant will be made from you. It can be a rib, a hair, a preserved baby tooth...

  deKlend steps through a doorway into a rambling sort of public house on many levels. The ceiling is a tangle of small vaults. From the back comes singing, lively and solemn echoes. Coming in, he passes a man in the hallway, his coat flapping behind him like... he were going into the past, but from where. Coming in, deKlend sees a grey apparition of water in white pot in dim.

  He wanders in farther, toward a table against the wall, from the center of which emerges a preposterous object. He stares at it for some minutes. It is a sprig of broccoli. He sits down to contemplate it for a moment. There are tiny turds of whitish grey ash in an old mint tin on the dusk uh desk. The circular shadow around the base of the candle sways like a living thing, hovers like a phantom. When he turns his head abruptly without knowing why, the little loop of shadow is still there. The candle light dabbing with bright nameless angles and curls the edges of the salt shaker.

  There are musicians floating around. One with two cigarettes in his mouth, one singing a trombone solo. There seem to be several bands blaying at once, I mean playing, I must say playing, or else what? With whose will I get in trouble, I mean with whot. The melody seems to go on after the song is over or am I humming it?