But Zalophus? Zalophus was the folly of those who had hoped to create the ultimate affront to the hated world Outside. Using human cranial matter and cellular tissue from the preserved carcass of a zeuglodon, an Eocene whale found in the channels of the Empire’s northernmost reach, they had engineered Zalophus. A sentient carnivorous whale, his fellows extinct for æons, kept alive for these hundreds of years by the ministrations of the Architects and their human disciples. Among all the creations of the Ascendants, he was the most grotesque and feared; save only for the Compassionate Redeemer, which lay mired in its decade-long sleep until awakened for Æstival Tide.
Like the rest of the Orsinate’s menagerie, Zalophus languished forgotten until Nike or ziz or—more likely—Shiyung recalled him. Then the margravines might troop down to Dominations, party entourage in tow and stoned on negus or lucifer, to toy with the great sad-eyed monster. They would command him to call forth his memories of the First Days, the flames of the Biblioclasm, the silent holocaust of the Third Shining. Or Shiyung might ask his advice on some difficult piece of gene-splicing, or beg him to tell her of the chilly Eocene seas where he had preyed on eels the size of fougas.
Reive had been at one of these reckless gatherings. Alone among the drunken guests, she had been touched by the plight of the captive monster. Since then she came here often. Zalophus terrified her. She knew he was half-mad from the ages of his incarceration and would devour her as easily as speak to her. But still she came.
“Zalophus,” she called softly to the still water. A whale louse lay on its back at her feet, twitching its scorpion head. Reive kicked it into the pool. “Zalophus!”
His head erupted so near to her that she screamed and tripped as she scurried away. “Zalophus—”
“She was sad,” he repeated. The tolling voice was immeasurably sorrowful. “So sad.”
Reive stared at him warily. “We are bored, Zalophus. Do you have any news? Do you have a dream for us?”
Zalophus rolled onto his side so that one eye glared up at her. Water poured smooth as oil across his gray flank. “You are the one brought me the bird girl.”
“Reive. That’s right.”
“Reive.” One immense flipper slapped the surface, sent up a fountain high as her head. “Bring me another one. I had not tasted that before.”
Reive shrugged. “We will try. Can you tell us a dream?”
The bloated body righted itself, the huge head turned to regard her with what might have been construed as longing, or even sorrow, in a less horrible form. “A dream? I have nothing but dreams now, in my sleep I hear the icelands moving, I hear my sisters calling and the winds gathering for the great storm, I hear the voice of Ucalegon shouting in its sleep…”
Reive stepped back, uneasy.
“…in the Undercity the rift is widening, soon it will breach the open sea and I will be free! but only come with me now, human child, come with me and prise the gates open, free me—”
Reive shook her head, frightened to see the water roiling about the huge thing, the madness bleeding into his black and empty eyes. “We can’t,” she stammered.
Zalophus raised his head so that she could see his long jaw, the row of spike teeth where parasites raced to feed upon shreds of flesh and dripping strings of plankton.
“Free me!” he bellowed. From across the vivarium came high-pitched shrieks and whistles as the dolphins raced terrified about their tanks. “Soon the fissure will spread and my sisters will come for me, they are waiting in the icelands, they are waiting waiting waiting, FREE ME!”
The voice exploded in a screaming howl. Crying out, Reive fell back as he leaped, fins cutting long troughs through the water, the great body blotting out the light so that she saw only his skull silhouetted there, the prow of his jaw, the cruel mouth grinding as he fell and bellowing crashed into the pool. A wave rushed onto the walkway and she fled, while behind her the last zeuglodon roared and wept.
In the chambers of the Architect Imperator sat Nasrani Orsina and Horemhob Panggang. They were waiting for Hobi’s father to return from a meeting with Shiyung Orsina and the imperious ziz.
“I’m sorry he’s not here to see you,” said Hobi. He felt distinctly uneasy entertaining the exiled Nasrani alone. This close to Æstival Tide, one always sensed that something terrible might happen. Ten years ago, when he was only seven, Hobi had watched horrified as ziz sentenced a boy his own age to death for crying during a purification ceremony. “But I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”
He offered Nasrani another pickled apricot. “I think he’s gone to the ceremony at the palace. The—” He put the tray onto the floor and frowned. “The what-is-it, the Investiture.”
“Mmph,” replied Nasrani Orsina. At the word investiture he winced. He lay on a stack of pillows stiff with brocade and metallic trim. Not especially comfortable but sumptuous to look upon, the decor was in keeping with Sajur Panggang’s architectural theories. He took another apricot and drained a glass of Amity-in-Occis, a rare and powerful liqueur distilled from kelp and wormwood. “Eee s’a vern guh, Hobi.”
Hobi (correctly) interpreted this to mean that the Orsina in exile found the potent fruit to be very good. “Thank you.” He nodded politely. Like his father he was small and slender, but more muscular. His mother had been a cousin-german of the Orsinate. From her Hobi had inherited slanted eyes of an amber color and the surprising delicacy of his features—a strong chin that still seemed childishly rounded beneath Hobi’s recent attempts at a beard, high cheekbones, and long hair the color of the oak—real oak—paneling of the sitting room. “My father is very fond of them—I think they were something Mother liked.”
Nasrani nodded. “Do you miss her?” He sipped his liqueur, gazing at Hobi through slitted eyes. He was not unaware that the two of them were related: it was the eyes, mostly, that showed it. Tiger’s eyes, like Shiyung’s. She was the beauty of the family, and Nasrani had always thought it a pity that she had no living heirs. There had been a child, once. His child, he was certain; but the baby had been monstrous—a morphodite, Shiyung whispered to him months afterward. But that had been a long time ago. If the child had lived it would be nearly as old as Hobi now. Nasrani sighed and finished his Amity. The boy looked younger than the last time he’d seen him. He supposed the scrabbly beard did that. Nasrani smiled and said gently, “Your mother was a fascinating woman, Hobi.”
With a clumsy shrug Hobi reached for the decanter. “Yes. My father misses her horribly, I know.”
Nasrani nodded. Angelika Panggang had been poisoned last spring by a woman in the Toxins Cabal. A tiny venomous frog, sleekly orange as its innocent brethren and served with flaming raisins to Angelika after her morning sauna. The taster had looked on bemused as Angelika had a seizure. Later she claimed she thought her mistress was exercising, and was acquitted by the Orsinate. Because of her husband’s prominence, and her own relation to the Orsinate, Angelika was given a pyre with full funeral honors, including the sacrifice of her entire personal staff. The rumor was that her death had been a warning to her husband, whose predilection for very young girls had embroiled him in an affair with ziz Orsina’s favorite bedmaid. The bedmaid, too, ended up in a fiery eclipse, but that was some months later.
Since his wife’s death the Architect Imperator had grown introspective. His attention had turned to arcane matters: divination by means of broken glass; a penchant for the nearly unlistenable form of sadist opera known as Fasa; an inexplicable fondness for the company of Rudyard Plank, the dwarf whose legendary bad taste had made him a favorite of the margravine Nike. Sajur had also developed a burning hatred for the Orsinate, and a taste for flouting it—for example, in his weekly tanka games with Nasrani Orsina, the infamous margravin now exiled (for a failed assassination attempt upon his sister ziz) from the Orsinate’s Level.
Several more minutes passed. Nasrani fiddled with the glass buttons of his crimson greatcoat and drank another tumbler of Amity in thoughtful silence. Hobi was surprised th
e exile did not yet appear drunk, but experience had taught him that Amity caught up with everyone, sooner or later. The thought troubled the boy and he gnawed at a fingernail.
The decanter was nearly empty. Nasrani stared at it with bemused affection, as though regarding a beloved but naughty child. Hobi leaned forward to press a button beneath the table. A moment later a replicant appeared, ram-headed and wearing the same long linen shift and trousers that Hobi did.
“Khum.” The boy indicated the decanter, now empty. “Bring us more of that, please.”
Nasrani watched the server, amused, as it gathered the tray and glasses and retired to the pantry. “That is a very old one,” he said after a moment.
Hobi nodded, somewhat embarrassed. “I know. It was—well, it was a gift, I think, or something, I think we inherited them, my mother always said we should get some new ones—”
Nasrani shook his head. “No—it’s a very good one, they don’t make them like that anymore. Third Ascension: a vogue for things Egyptienne. And animals, of course, the fashion cabinet says that animals will be very popular this season. So your father’s old replicants will actually be quite stylish.” He smiled. The boy looked relieved. “Are you interested in such things?”
Hobi shrugged, started to say no when he recalled that Nasrani Orsina was an Orsina, even if an exile, and he was being kept waiting by his father. “Yes, I am.”
“Would you like to see some others?”
Hobi looked startled. He glanced around the room suspiciously, as though these others might be lurking behind the priceless oak paneling. The ram-headed Khum returned bearing a new tray and several full glasses gleaming with emerald liquid.
“Very good, then,” Nasrani announced. He stood, the tails of his greatcoat swirling, and swept up one of the glasses. “Khum, tell the Architect Imperator that as punishment for his tardiness I am not only drinking all of his Amity but stealing his son. Come on, Hobi.”
Hobi started to stammer something by way of protest— oh, no you needn’t trouble, he’ll be right back, help! —but Nasrani was already out the door. It seemed rude to remain. And since rudeness was often punishable by death within the Orsinate’s cabal, Hobi hastily decided to follow.
On the promenade outside, the pagoda-shaped houses of Araboth’s Imperators shimmered in the perpetual twilight, mauve and pink and faintest gold. Here on Cherubim Level the air smelled of some warm spice, cinnamon or galingale perhaps, piped in to counteract the briny scent of the heavily filtered breezes. Only a few yards away the heat fence crackled, and Hobi could glimpse the tops of buildings on the next level down.
“Should have thought of this sooner,” Nasrani was muttering to himself. “Inadequate education these days, never see anything outside their own homes. Good idea.”
Hobi hurried after him. In the middle of the next block the boy stopped, for a moment losing sight of the exile’s crimson coat as the older man strode on. At Hobi’s feet fluttered several paper billets. He stooped and slowly brought one to his face.
10,000 PRAYERS TO UCALEGON! he read, and PRAY FOR THE HEALING WIND! When he looked up he saw Nasrani waiting impatiently.
“Look at this,” Hobi said as he caught up with the exile. He held up one of the flyers. “Isn’t this treason?”
Nasrani glanced at it and sniffed. “But there is rebellion everywhere, my dear,” he said. He turned the corner near the Cherubim Level gravator. “That is why you Imperators have all those replicants with horses’ heads and rubber feet. But my sisters can afford the luxury of treachery, and so they employ human help. And humans won’t put up with this sort of thing forever. Public executions, children kidnapped for torture parties, people killed to be made into rasas, houses torn down while one sleeps. You can see how it would wear one down after a while.”
“But it’s religion,” said Hobi. From one of the lower levels he heard watchmen hoarsely chanting the midmorning call to prayer. He looked up; the nuclear CLOCK said nineteen. “I mean, Prophet Rayburn said that only the children of the chosen should be allowed to—”
Nasrani rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Hobi! I’m an exile, you don’t think you need to talk like that to me? ” Then, in a singsong voice, “ Here we are—”
Ahead of them was the gravator. Nasrani made a grand gesture and held the door open for Hobi. “Now!” The exile beamed as the doors folded shut and the ancient machine shuddered. “I think you will find this very interesting, Hobi.”
The gravator, while not as elegant as the one that served the Orsinate’s Level, was still quite ornate. Elaborately carven benches ran along the walls, heaped with pillows, and small round lanterns cast a rosy light on the faces of the two passengers. In the center of the moving chamber the Architects had installed a small perfumed fountain shaped like an argala, a popular motif several seasons ago. As the gravator descended, minty-smelling water spewed from her mouth onto the boy’s feet. He hastily moved to the other side of the room.
Nasrani sank heavily onto a bench. The gravator gave a horrible lurch and plummeted a thousand feet, then slowed as it passed through Thrones Level. Another sickening plunge. The chamber filled with the musky scent of the vivariums as they passed Dominations. Then Virtues, where the dream-mantics lived; and down to Powers, with its faint background hiss of electrical equipment.
Then, “Did we miss it?” Hobi asked, alarmed.
The gravator pitched, water slopped from the fountain onto the floor, and they dropped another level. Hobi tugged aside one of the heavy indigo curtains covering a window. He looked outside and then turned to Nasrani, his face white. “Nasrani—we’re still dropping—shouldn’t we have gotten off sooner?”
Nasrani smiled, hitched up the tail of his greatcoat to scratch his leg. Hobi swallowed. Beneath his flowing trousers the exile wore high boots of burgundy leather; and tucked neatly into a flap on each one was a stiletto of gleaming steel. “No, no, Hobi,” he said, flicking his fingers dismissively. “This isn’t an ordinary visit. You’ll see.”
The boy shivered. It struck him that there was a good reason Nasrani Orsina had been exiled; that he was not merely the polite and epicene dinner guest his mother had been so fond of. And with a small electrical thrill of terror—because of course this was something he should have considered all along—Hobi wondered just what this man was doing with him, the son of the Architect Imperator.
“Should we—maybe we should have waited for my father—” he stammered.
Nasrani shook his head. He frowned, pulling at a stray thread on his greatcoat, then slid one of the stilettos from its sheath and neatly cut it off. He twisted his head, gazing at Hobi with studied casualness. “Have you ever been to the Undercity?”
Hobi felt his whole body freeze, as though he had walked into a replicant’s holding chamber. “Level One? Angels?”
“Mmm mmm,” Nasrani said absently. He glanced at the window, marbled gold and black where they passed through the refineries of Archangels. “Yes, that’s right. The Undercity.”
Hobi bit his lip, grabbing on to the edge of the bench as the gravator bucked and rolled. Near the door hung a slender golden cord with a small neatly lettered sign dangling from it. Pull in case of emergency, it said. He and his friends used to joke about it, and once Magya Electroluxe really had pulled it, with exciting results. But doing such a thing now would mean admitting to himself that in a few minutes the damned thing would stop at Level One, Angels: the Undercity. When he looked aside at Nasrani he saw that the exile was smiling. Hobi reddened. Abruptly he let go of the bench, straightened, and tossed his long hair. “Oh, I’ve been there ,” he lied.
“Really?” Nasrani looked interested. “Weren’t you afraid you’d be tortured or go mad?”
But before Hobi could reply (tortured?), with a sudden boom the gravator jolted and was still. In front of them the heavy metal doors were fanning open. And he had no choice, really, but to follow Nasrani Orsina into the Undercity.
The rickshaw driver slowed to a trot a
s they rounded the entrance to the vivariums. Ceryl could hear him panting. She shook her head; she should have engaged another before returning to this level. She was thinking of walking the rest of the way when she sighted the gynander strolling by. As the rickshaw rattled past her, Ceryl looked over her shoulder at the slender figure, her mind racing.
The dream inquisition she missed last night; her failed attempt at timoring; and most of all her nightmares…
“Stop!” she ordered the driver, leaning forward until her head peeked out from the rickshaw’s bamboo shell. “Right here, please, stop—”
The rickshaw slowed to a halt. The gynander continued walking, singing to herself and not even raising her head. Ceryl stumbled to her feet, tugged at the rug covering the cab’s floor, and threw it onto the bloody seat beside her as she got out.
“You—”
The gynander stopped. For a moment Ceryl thought she had mistakenly called to a real woman. But no—the slender figure had an elaborately painted face, small breasts emblazoned with colored whorls and waves; and through her diaphanous trousers Ceryl glimpsed her penis, no longer than a finger. Perhaps it was just that she was taller than most morphodites, and had done something to straighten her hair. She looked to be about fifteen. Ceryl knew she could have been twice that age, though not much older—morphodites didn’t live very long.
“Yes?” The gynander’s tone was haughty, and for a moment Ceryl thought of flouncing back into the rickshaw. But then the gynander tipped her head, and for the first time Ceryl got a good look at her face. She gasped. Beneath the oily plaits of lank black hair, behind their heavy swirls of kohl, the eyes she turned to Ceryl were wide and cold as the open water that crashed relentlessly through her dreams, and green. Leaf-green, sea-green, poison-green. The forbidden color; the color of death.
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