Celebrant

  The repacitaser will kick in now (the woman says)

  Burn looks up, startled. There is a woman in a black satin tunic standing beside the wall. She would have been just about immediately on Burn’s right as she came in, but Burn doesn’t usually miss people like that.

  There’s a low, muffled click. Like a cat, the water in the tank suddenly leaps, switching around its own meniscus, which stays where it was, at the halfway mark. A second click. The water drops, turning like a cat. It doesn’t slosh or break up into even a single droplet, but, stiff as gelatin, lands with a quivering thump like the blow of a giant fist.

  That’s bachelorization energy, that makes it do that.

  Can you drink it? (Burn asks)

  The woman shakes her head, the whites of her eyes streaking in the gloom. Her legs and feet are bare. The tunic hangs down as far as her thighs.

  What stops people from drinking it? (Burn asks)

  Death. That’s light water.

  Poison?

  Poison.

  The woman’s voice tightens in the dark.

  Just working around it, you can get water blindness. The only cure for that is to set out in the blazing sun, stare right up into it, until you can see again.

  Burn imagines being in the tubes, like Beaula, drive along a steel tunnel struck through clear landscapes. Caravans of identical bubbles sail over her head.

  But the light hurts so bad you can’t stand it (the woman says)

  There is a tunnel angling down into the earth. There she sees reflections of light thrown onto the wall, feathers and rods, wires, and curling gauzes like smoke sails.

  So you stay blind (the woman says)

  What’s down there?

  The woman crosses her arms casually against her breasts, sighing.

  That down there is whrounim stuff and we’re good and careful with it. There’s a residue of the High Whrounim. Which some day or other—it was ooohh

  (she cocks her head)

  fifff-teen years ago I think? Before you were born, anyway.

  (That was almost a reproach)

  It tumbled down the mountainside and was deposited.

  Burn imagines the bank, where sacks of coins were enclosed in clay capsules and sent to and fro around the building in wind tubes. The whole city for a moment is revealed to her as a huge arterialism of tubes tubes tubes.

  I have my own ideas what to do with it (the woman says)

  Can I see it?

  Can you? (the woman says)

  Is she going to make that old joke? (Burn wonders to herself)

  I suppose. But it’s haunted by a ghost.

  Burn looks at her.

  Oh I haven’t seen it (the woman says nastily)

  With one hand, she strokes her fingers across her forehead from temple to temple.

  It’s just a white brow. Nothing else.

  Burn walks over to the tunnel and looks back. The woman remains where she was, an impassive set of features that seems rooted into the wall, like a fantastic, tawny-brown plant.

  The tunnel is like an intestine, doubling back on itself. The plaster lining wrinkles at the bends. She space beyond is cavernous, and might go on in subterranean galleries for miles, neither wholly natural or wholly artificial. The air is fresh and nearly odorless. The noise of the water system, in which these cellars are nested, is just a whisper down here. The roof is perforated with skylights, scattered at random, which sparsely dapple the floor with thick, slanted pillars of glare. Smaller lights hang from the ceilings or are embedded in the walls in some sort of overall pattern Burn can’t quite encompass. The wall-mounted ones blink as she walks tentatively into the void here; going over to them, she sees why. They’re reflectors, not lamps, angled to reradiate light from the nearest skylight.

  That’s why it’s kind of golden in here (she thinks)

  It’s true, the visibility here is like the sun-glow from a dark blonde head, distributed in space. But, actually—as Burn goes further into sprawling emptiness—there are colored lamps, in fanciful shapes, a little off in the distance, all near the ground. From that direction, too, comes profuse birdsong.

  Going over to the lamps, Burn suddenly rushes forward and bursts into a wilderness of wild alien plants. They all seem to be facing each other, and the birdsong is coming from them. Each plant makes a continuous tone or chord, and pitchtangles, brittle chirps, tempo-switching trills, forming together an enveloping chorus around an empty middle, traversed by fragments of music in darting shafts and slow-spreading plumes. This wilderness is confined toward one of the chamber walls with what looks like a breakwater made of stone slab baffles.

  There is no prevailing color. The plants are like sharply-defined petals of white and yellow on slack, lazy-looking blue, green, and red ribbon nerves.

  She jogs past something enormous, white, man-shaped, like a statue, stops and turns to look as it strides from between two baffles. Then, with a cry of fright, Burn starts back and disappears. She flees, looking for an aperture in the breakwater, some way to get around—what she saw is between her and the tunnel mouth. There’s enough light to see it—she can’t tell if it’s coming for her—it doesn’t move quickly—

  She goes around a corner and stops, peers back just barely clearing cover. Burn watches it, breathing hard—silently, through open mouth, not through the nose, which makes noise.

  It’s a massive, naked man, white as a sheet, with a white barrel up his ass and his head cut off and stuck on a pole protruding from his chest and his body split open from the waist and another body stuck inside. Burn’s eyes race over the figure, trying to take it in. The arms are striped blue and yellow. For a moment she imagines torture and humiliation. The other body is a mummy, all bundled up, holding its lower jaw in its skinny fingers. The withered face looks like dried melt around the eyesockets. The teeth are all exposed, nothing left of the cheeks but one strap angling down from the cheekbone to the chin.

  It moves like tons of weight effortlessly and precisely controlled. It doesn’t lumber and reel around. Noticing the way it moves, Burn feels her fear slacken. If it lurched, if it jerked and shuddered, or if it crept, she would have been terrified. But there’s nothing hurried about the way this thing is moving, and there is something almost graceful about that way, and this converts much of Burn’s fear to curiosity.

  It heard me (she thinks)—unless it can’t hear.

  The thing isn’t coming after her.

  Maybe there’s no way out this way and it doesn’t have to hurry just keep me from getting around it (she thinks)

  It appears to be addressing its attention to the plants, which murmur, pipe, hoon, and warble to themselves on all sides of her.

  Burn watches the being. It holds in one hand a thing like a suitcase, made of white smooth shiny stuff, and with a big nozzle. This it uses as you might use a watering can, applying it, with a deliberate tilt, toward the base of each plant in turn.

  Suddenly this creature seems to her entirely of a piece with the scene, the chirping plants, a bower underground, and she loses all unreasonable fear of it.

  She approaches cautiously.

  Following what she presumes to be its gaze, she looks for a few seconds at the plants at its feet.

  What are they? (she asks)

  They are botanophotophones.

  A buzzing purr of a voice, that just comes out of the air.

  What’s a botanophotophone?

  Plants of visible sound.

  They’re made of sound?

  Yes. They are sounds.

  They’re living?

  Yes.

  Can you eat them?

  Ah. Hah... Hah. (it gradually throws itself back a bit, and is still)

  Burn goes on looking at it. It remains motionless for a few minutes.

  No (he says then)

  I wish you could (Burn says)

  He seems thoughtful.

  My laughter is unpleasant (he says)

  When no words follow, Burn looks up,
into the skull face. She gets the idea that it is waiting for her to speak.

  She shrugs, with a toss of her head.

  Usually, I laugh in silence (he says) I experience this laughter as a tremor in the mind. What an awkward sound.

  Then laugh silently from now on (Burn says)

  (It says:) Yes.

  It holds out the glistening white box to a trumpet-like blossom that looks like a striped, transparent skirt.

  What’s that do? (Burn points)

  It’s a resonator.

  Does it hhh—is it watering them?

  They drink the heavy water that trickles from the leaks (says the being) My resonator adds frequencies they need to remain alive. The frequencies must be very soft, or the sound might damage them.

  Can I touch one?

  Wait.

  The being comes over to where she stands, by a blue-white calyx with scalloped edges that sprouts from a straw of sulky green smoke.

  I must strengthen it first (he says)

  He places the resonator next to the stem and adjusts its control. The flower becomes steadily more intense, the blue turns to indigo, lightening at the edges of the petals, burning into the gloom like a bubble of blue magma. The plant hums.

  Now you may touch it.

  Burn immediately puts out her hand to it, as if she were going to pet it. Her teeth buzz the moment she touches it, her hand hums, and she pulls it away quickly. She looks first at her hand, which is as it was, and then up at the being, towering over her. Burn tries again. If she only just touches it, she can feel burring that makes all her nerves vibrate like a single guitar string. She steps back, holding her hand.

  The being turns down the resonator and the blue plant resumes it former appearance.

  If I did not strengthen it with my resonator (he says) your finger would have muted it. These plants die if they are muted too much.

  It turns toward her. The movement requires three steps.

  What is your name?

  Burn shies a little away, and looks down.

  Would you rather not say?

  She nods.

  Make up a name for me to call you.

  Burn tries to think of a completely new name no one’s ever called her.

  Kundri.

  Hello Kundri. My name is Goose Goes Back.

  The name strikes Burn as so preposterous that she presses her fingers against her mouth to hide her grin. She giggles.

  What kind of name is that? (she splutters)

  That is my bardo name.

  What’s a bardo name?

  The name I have while I wait to be incarnated again.

  What’s incarnated?

  Getting a body.

  Isn’t that your body?

  Which?

  Burn shakes her head.

  Do you refer to this (the huge hand swings out and points to the mummy) or to this? (the hand sweeps down the white body)

  Burn shakes her head again and shrugs.

  This (points at the mummy) was my living body. This (the other) is a machine my spirit inhabits while I wait.

  You aren’t alive?

  As you see, my body is dead. My spirit lives in this.

  Who put you in there?

  I don’t know.

  Is that your face? (With a flip of her hand, Burn gestures at the glowing, baby face inside the shining loop)

  I’ve never seen it. I can’t see my reflection.

  Why not?

  I don’t see the same way you do. I can’t explain it further.

  So you don’t know if that was what your face looked like?

  No.

  Why doesn’t it move?

  It moves.

  ...I mean, move its mouth when you talk.

  It doesn’t seem to take notice of what I do.

  Burn is momentarily out of questions in this line. She squats to look at a plant.

  ...Will you get another body?

  I have thought a great deal about that. I don’t know, but I believe I will be drawn forth into a newborn child. Or perhaps a newly conceived one. But I can’t say when this will happen, or why.

  They sure gave you a big long peter didn’t they?

  Goose Goes Back is a he (she selects)

  Or whether I will be a man or a woman, or a demon, or a god, or an animal.

  Are the natural robots reincarnations?

  I don’t know. That’s an intriguing question.

  Maybe you’ll be one of them next.

  What makes you say that?

  Um. I don’t know.

  She follows him as he makes his round, tending the botanophotophones. Their voices mingle with the song of the plants—the melancholy, portentous pipe organ of Goose Goes Back, and Burn’s bugle voice, stern and clear.

  Do people turn into gods too?

  Do you mean, people, as distinct from me?

  Yes.

  (after a pause) Yes, they also become gods.

  How?

  By reincarnating as gods.

  How?

  I don’t know.

  Now they enter an area like a ruptured dome where the roof gapes open to the sky. A pool lies flat against the floor, all its ruffles spreading in the same direction. Fluorescent trees with black trunks of gleaming radio surround the pool with loud chirps. One chirps, and this seems to set off all the others one at a time in random sequence.

  I have met a man who will be a god, I believe.

  How can you tell? (Burn looks up at him)

  He follows the god he will be.

  Burn shakes her head.

  Gods are immortal (Goose Goes Back explains) and that means they live throughout time, without past, present, and future. So they can meet the people they were before they were born, although they may not always recognize them.

  Goose Goes Back sets down his device on a table, obviously specially prepared for it.

  They may not recognize each other, but meet by chance. The god in this case travels far and wide, and encounters many. He may have met this man, and neither of them knew they were going to be the same.

  The water enters the pool through a broad, flat aperture in the wall, and falls over a little hump with a steady rush, forming curved shells of water streaked white and black. The smell coming off the water is so intensely fresh it might have been a kind of perfume, almost harsh.

  You must not follow me past that point.

  Goose Goes Back indicates a marker standing between them and the pool, marking the boundary of the future part of Votu.

  That’s nothing (Burn says) I go in there all the time.

  That’s unusual.

  They advance toward the marker.

  You just stop remembering things? (Burn asks)

  It makes no difference (Goose Goes Back says) I am not alive. Do you stop remembering things?

  I don’t have anything to remember (she says) Is that the water they use?

  Yes. It comes from the ocean beneath the mountains.

  Is it poisonous?

  It’s forgetting water (Goose Goes Back says)

  A weird, inverted magnetism hits her in the air past the boundary—it’s like a magnet pulling all your skin, or flesh, outwards, so that it is slightly off the bone. Burn can feel her bones move inside her flesh, and feel herself moving inside an invisible envelope in her shape.

  Goose Goes Back strides off among the trees, having picked up another weird device. Burn kneels at the water’s edge and watches it forming swift-skating triangles. The water pants in her face, cool and astringent. She can see all the way down to the marble basin bottom, and from time to time an invisible fish made entirely of current twists below the surface and arcs away toward the deep center.

  Burn thrusts her hands into the cool water, lifts them to her face, and takes a drink.

  deKlend:

  deKlend was just admiring the awnings, the elaborate awnings that he sees everywhere here. Whatever the name of this town is. If he could only get a straight answer.

 
; The little girl steps toward him, smiling roguishly. Then she abruptly turns, flits away, giving her narrow little behind a vulgar wiggle before she goes. A wand of dark breaks her jump, and she emerges from the other side, alighting on a windowsill. Her leotard she has left somewhere in between, and she perches naked with her side to him and her elbows between her knees.

  Er—say! (deKlend says, sort of wagging his finger in the air) You’ll catch cold!

  It isn’t such a good thing to say—actually he feels he’s failed—but it’s still better than nothing.

  The little girl giggles at him and then very abruptly sniffs long and loud and ragged.

  deKlend stops with a rap of his heel.

  Phryne!

  A fleeting look of frustration disappears behind that gloating expression. The girl extends one leg and eases down into the shadow running along the wall. As she comes toward him in the dark she is preceded by a heavy wave of despair, the confirmation of the worst expectations. And out of that, and the dark—a milk person caught in some dark medium. Now Phryne puts the pad of her bare foot deliberately on the toe of deKlend’s shoe, steps up onto his other foot and laces her arms around his neck.

  deKlend kisses her, so tenderly it takes her aback.

  Where did you see that girl?

  You talk in your sleep (Phryne forgets to be miffed and says) Who is she?

  deKlend is having fingers run through his hair and this is making it harad to htinihk—I don’t remember (he says)

  Perhaps you saw her in Votu?

  In Vot... Votu...

  The air of tragedy he can’t resist gathers all around him, raising up its columns in the dark.

  Be careful of the sink (Phryne says)

  deKlend examines the sink. Giving it a little push with his hand, he nearly knocks the basin off its column.

  Be careful of the balcony (she says)

  deKlend notes the iron bolts, bright orange with rust, relaxing in their holes fixing the balcony rail and platform to the wall.

  Watch out for the door (she says, with an imperfectly suppressed grin)

  The door to the closet, which comes off in his hands and nearly falls on him, the hinges being loose. deKlend has to shove it back with his legs.

  The handle on the pitcher’s loose, too (Phryne says merrily) Oh, and the drawers in the dresser fall on your toes if you don’t pull them out just so.