Æstival Tide w-2

by Elizabeth Hand

  “No one will come help you, Nasrani.” His eyes swept over the cowering exile and he lifted his head disdainfully. “They will all be in Shiyung’s chambers by now, discovering the body. Perhaps Nike will think to call you….”

  Smoke curled from the tips of the rasa’s fingers. He held them in front of his eyes, watching the thin gray trails turn to white and then disappear. The hollow voice cried, “You are all still children playing, aren’t you? You have your petty disagreements, you take sides and banish each other to your little rooms, but this is all just a game to you.” He turned and paced across the room, smashed his metal hand against the glass. A single crack flowed across the pane, like a flaw in the heart of a crystal. “All of this, this city and everything Outside—you mold it and burn it and twist it to your liking. People too: you contort us as though we were your friend Planck’s puppets, and then act surprised when we turn against you.”

  Nasrani leaned against the wall. The rasa ’s anger seemed to calm him; if a dead Aviator could be undone by emotions, perhaps he could be undone, period. The color drained back into Nasrani’s face.

  “They will regenerate her,” he said, groping in his pocket until he found a pipe and a leather pouch. He stuffed a wad of kef into the bowl, lit it, and inhaled noisily. After a minute he glanced up at the looming shadow.

  “As a rasa ,” the dark figure said. “You would wish that on her? Your own sister?”

  Nasrani’s hands trembled as he tapped kef ash onto the floor. “How did you—how could you?” Tears spilled from his eyes again. “A rasa —it’s impossible—”

  “How did I kill her? Let us just say that I have not been myself lately.”

  Nasrani sniffed. His rubbed his bloodshot eyes with an anguished expression. “Why do you want to see the nemosyne again?”

  The rasa turned from the window. Below and all around them the daylights began streaming on, gold and blue and red, cascading down each level in sheets of light until the entire vast ziggurat shone and danced like a pyramid of blazing glass. For a few minutes they watched in silence.

  Then, from the palace came a high piercing wail. Abruptly the daylights paled as overhead flames of white and blue swept the domes. Distress lights. Nasrani blanched. He had not seen them since the mass executions following the Archipelago Conflict.

  The rasa said calmly, “You said that you believed the nemosyne knows things. Well, I have— seen things —that I would ask her about. You said that she had many secrets. Now I have secrets too.”

  Nasrani joined him at the window, gazed up at the warning flares, the silhouettes of janissaries pouring like black water from their barracks.

  “You really did it,” he said softly. He turned to the grim figure beside him. “You killed my sister. And now you want me to take you to the nemosyne.”

  “Yes.” The rasa’s voice betrayed nothing of entreaty, but the pale eyes were clouded. “I must see her. I am—haunted by something. From before—from before I died. Someone. I want to question the nemosyne about her.”

  “And Shiyung?” Nasrani fairly shrieked. “What of her? You kill the margravine—my sister! —and you expect me to lead you around now, do whatever you wish—”

  “Yes,” the rasa said softly. From a pocket in its silken robe it withdrew a black kidskin glove and carefully pulled it over its shining metal hand. “I do. And you will do it, because you have no choice.”

  Nasrani’s expression folded into defeat. He patted his pockets until he found his pipe again and smoked another bowl of kef. Outside the sirens wailed on; the distress lights arced back and forth across the domes. The rasa stood silently and waited, until Nasrani looked up and snapped, “I have never been able to speak with her. The interactive mode is dormant; she does nothing but go through her random access files and read from them. There is a way to activate that portion of her memory, though I have never learned it. But there are other things down there, I have seen them in the room with her—”

  He laughed harshly. “Angels in the Undercity! I cannot speak to her, but those foul things cluster around her, and she hears them! And she speaks to them! Stories, poems—” His hands fluttered. “They call her Mother, and she answers. But she won’t respond to my questions. I have no reason to believe she will answer yours.”

  The rasa only nodded. Nasrani suddenly turned away, his eyes watering. He ran a hand over his face. “You didn’t have to kill her,” he choked. The rasa tipped its head back so that the brilliant light outside the window flashed blindingly against its mask. “She could have left you dead but she didn’t, she—”

  “I care nothing about your sister,” the rasa hissed. “I want the nemosyne. Which one is it? One of the military units? A meteorological display?”

  Nasrani wiped his eyes, then suddenly laughed shrilly. “Is that what you think? That you’ll have another monster to command? No, Margalis! She’s useless, utterly useless—women’s stories and songs and bankrupt histories, that’s all she’s good for….”

  “Then why do you hide her? Eh, Nasrani—”

  He grabbed the man’s arm. Nasrani felt the metal claws beneath the thin sheath of leather, their grip tightening until he gasped and then moaned. A dark stain spread across his sleeve.

  “I must see her.” Nasrani whimpered. The rasa’s touch was cold and foul as an open grave. “I need her to find the others, to see if any of the other units survived. I need them to track someone, someone Outside. Take me to her now —”

  He shoved Nasrani from him. The man fell to his knees, groaning and trying to stanch the blood soaking his robe. “Yes,” he gasped. “I’ll take you, of course I’ll take you…”

  The rasa nodded and extended his hand to help the man to his feet. “We will go then,” said the Aviator Imperator. His shadow filled the narrow doorway. “To the Undercity; to find the Mother of Angels.”

  “Zalophus—oh, Zalophus, please —”

  At the end of the zeuglodon’s tank the gynander stood, panting. She had run all the way here, past the first shift of biotechs and vivisectors on their way to the Chambers of Mercy, past the white masked guards who hurried from the gravator as she rushed past them on her way down to Dominations. They all seemed too intent on their own business to notice her; news of Shiyung’s murder had just reached the Orsinate’s security staff. For the moment she was safe.

  It was all too much, as though Ceryl’s dream had grown to envelope the city and all within it; and Reive was in it, too, she could not escape no matter how quickly she fled. Only here did she feel she might somehow outrun it, that huge green serpent coiling about the domes and squeezing them until she could feel the floor beneath her buckling, the very walls bulging in upon her until she thought she would scream—

  But that was just her heart pounding, her chest straining so that it felt as though stones bashed her insides. She stopped, panting, then began running again; because if she waited more than a moment, the Wave would overtake her.

  Now Reive was in the main vivarium chamber, where biotechs padded on their morning rounds, drawing blood and brain tissue from the palingenic dolphins, checking the stress monitors on the gentle manatees, who wept like women when their calves were taken from them. A few of the workers eyed her curiously, but it was too early in the shift, there was too much to be done, to worry about a white-faced morphodite running aimlessly among the tanks.

  “Oh, Zalophus, hurry, please—”

  Her teeth chattered and she skipped from foot to foot like a child playing. “ Zalophus! ” she wailed.

  An explosion; then a small island reared from the dark green surface. A single huge black eye stared at her, and teeth like a row of shinbones clashed as his voice boomed and filled the chamber.

  “Oh, happy day, child of the morning, you have come to play with me?” Zalophus rolled onto his back, his huge fins splashing at the water so that a wave rolled over the side and soaked Reive.

  “Zalophus,” she gasped, spluttering. “Oh, Zalophus, you must help us
—”

  “Of course,” the great whale crooned, “come here and I will sing to you, little thing, I will tell you about my sisters, and the icelands where they are waiting for us—”

  “No, Zalophus! We need you, you must tell us where we can go to hide!”

  Zalophus righted himself and stared at her with huge rolling eyes. “You have brought another siren,” he said hopefully. “That is so nice, sirens make such sweet companions.”

  Reive shook her head, shivering. “No, we haven’t. Zalophus, they will kill us, they think we murdered the margravine.”

  Zalophus snapped his jaw. “A margravine would be just as nice.”

  “No! She’s not here, they—” Reive wrung her hands. “Zalophus, you know all the levels here, you’ve been beneath the domes. Tell us where we can go, where they won’t find us. Tell us, please—we will come back, we will sneak here at night and bring you whatever you want—”

  Across the cavernous chamber a woman taking blood from a rorqual looked up and stared at Reive. Zalophus rolled over to shrewdly regard the gynander with his other eye. After a moment he said, “One of the margravines had a baby once. I heard them talking about it. A monster, a heteroclite. She sent it to the Chambers of Mercy; but the vivisectors did not kill it, they said it would bring ill luck. I remember, I heard them talking. I think you must be that monster. Come closer to me so that I can see you better.”

  The gynander ignored him, then lowering her voice she took a step toward the tank. “Zalophus, the Aviator Imperator has gone mad. None of us will be safe, not even you. If you tell us of a safe place to hide for now we will find a way to free you—tomorrow, at Æstival Tide. We will find a way, we promise.”

  Water raced down the zeuglodon’s snout as he raised his head to stare at her. “There is a way, little thing,” he groaned, a sound like crumbling stone. A summer smell filled the air. “Last night I dreamed of the other one, the little man they killed to make me. He told me that the world Outside is closer now, closer than it ever has been before. When I woke I sounded to the deepest depths and it is true, heteroclite child: the world is waking and moving in its sleep.”

  Reive shook her head. “There’s no time,” she said desperately. “We have no time for your stories now, you must tell us of a way to escape.”

  “Come with me.” Zalophus rose until his head hung above the dark water, a green-whorled sun blotting out the false daylight. “Come with me, little thing, and I will show you the new world. There is a crack where the water valves run into the Undercity. Each day it is widening. Soon it will be big enough for me to enter, and then I will find them, then my sisters will come to meet me—”

  “There is no way out! You have no sisters!” Reive shouted. The woman bending over the rorqual looked over in alarm. “They have been dead for a million years! I hope you starve here—”

  She turned and ran from the vivarium. The zeuglodon watched her leave, then rolled onto his back, sending another wave rushing from the tank onto the concrete floor. A moment later he disappeared, sounding the depths of his prison to where the chink in the walls was widening, and warm water poured in through a black mouth opening onto the world.

  In a chamber on the vivarium level, ziz Orsina sat gazing at the body of her sister Shiyung. Tubes and wires ran from the corpse to a series of vats and monitors, alembics and computers controlled by the Architects’ rehabilitation nexus. It would be days before Shiyung could be restored as a rasa, certainly not until after Æstival Tide. ziz wondered what effect this would have on the lower levels. Shiyung had always been the favorite of the moujiks and the biotechs, as much for her prettiness and childish enthusiasms as for her occasional sallies down to visit the toilers in the refineries and the vivariums. It didn’t matter that Shiyung never did anything besides smile and share an occasional pappadam with carefully selected drones. The others, the rest of the work force, would see her in person and later that evening on the ’files and puppet shows. They would see her, forehead daubed with blue and black to show solidarity with the Church of Christ Cadillac, smiling as she ate fermented beans with the refineries’ human supervisors, the rasas in pale ranks behind her, and still later they would watch as, her lovely white face flushed with excitement, she torched the pyres for the public burnings.

  How would they react to Shiyung as a rasa?

  ziz nibbled her fingernail and pushed her hair from her face. Beside her the biotechnician she’d chosen for the project watched nervously, making a great show of adjusting and readjusting the levels in the chemical bath that lapped at Shiyung’s pale form.

  “You can’t do it any faster?” ziz asked for the fourth time.

  The biotech sighed, shaking his head. “We’re already losing some resolution on her now, Margravine, doing it this quickly.” He gestured vaguely at the tubes curling up from the tank and into the brightly lit reaches of the lab. “There’s going to be some failure as it is, with her long-term memory, and her—”

  “I don’t care,” snapped ziz. She stood and paced to the other side of the tank, staring at her sister’s white face. Already the skin had grown slack; Shiyung’s mouth had drooped into a grimacing leer. “The festival is tomorrow. I need her by then. I need something by then.”

  The biotech opened his hands in a hopeless gesture. “Margravine, there’s no way—”

  A rumbling shook the room, sending the lamps swinging wildly. ziz started, grabbing the edge of a table until the shock subsided. She glared accusingly at the biotech. In the tank Shiyung’s corpse rocked back and forth, nucleic fluid sloshing onto the floor.

  The biotech steadied himself, his face white. “That’s been happening lately,” he stammered. “We don’t know why—here and in some of the other labs near the rim—”

  ziz looked as though she would throttle him. She pointed at her sister’s neck, where a reddish bruise shaped like a half-moon creased the swollen flesh. “Do something about that,” she spat, and stalked off.

  Back on Seraphim ziz returned to the Four Hundredth Room. Nike lay on a divan, gazing at a polyfile projected onto the ceiling—another work of Karvo’s, one that drew quite wittily upon ancient ecclesiastical motifs. It showed three galli in red and yellow cassocks singing, the sweetness of their voices marred somewhat by their expressions, which were rapt with horror. A disembodied hand appeared and one by one slashed the throats of the galli with a bright blue scalpel. In the past Nike had found the work moving; but in the wake of Shiyung’s death it seemed rather hackneyed, sentimental in fact, and when ziz entered the room she switched the sound off and turned to her, musing.

  “I was thinking we should revoke Karvo’s privilege,” she said, gesturing at the ceiling.

  ziz nodded wearily. She crossed to the divan and sank onto it. “Petra,” she called. A yellow-haired girl appeared in the doorway. “Bring me some warmed valerian, please. I’ve got a terrible headache.”

  After the girl left she turned to her sister. “He says he can’t do it any faster and we won’t have her before Æstival Tide. Well, not before it starts, at least. There’s some trouble with decay, memory loss, I don’t know.” She raised her hands hopelessly, dropped them into her lap as the yellow-haired girl returned with a steaming samovar and two porcelain cups. She placed them on a table and left. “Now if this had only happened to Nasrani, Shiyung could have done the regeneration herself.”

  Nike nodded, still staring with a frown at the silent images flickering across the ceiling. The last galli had fallen, lying atop a white rug with his fellows, their blood and their bright cassocks lurid against the calm background. “I can’t believe I ever thought his work was subtle. I am going to revoke his privilege.”

  ziz made a disinterested noise, stirred her valerian and sipped it, wincing. “You know there’s going to be an uproar if she’s not there when we open the Gate. She’s too popular, especially these last few days. With all these reports of structural problems, she’s the only one of us they would trust—we’ve got t
o try to have her rasa on hand, something to make them believe she’s still alive, still there to sympathize with them. But news of the murder has already gotten out, and with all this other confusion…”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam. After a moment she said, “I just need a little time to think of something, something to distract them. I don’t want any riots this year, things are bad enough with these damn tremors and that fire yesterday. We need something. ” She looked thoughtfully down at her cup. “Perhaps we could forgive Nasrani.”

  Nike clicked off the polyfile and stood. Yawning, she crossed the room to where her sister sat. “That would be nice. I wanted him at the next inquisition anyway.” She picked up her cup of valerian and stared at it, then cleared her throat and asked delicately, “You’ve taken care of them? The guests from last evening—”

  ziz shrugged. “I’ve ordered that they be rounded up. The Committee Head told me most of them are already in the Reception Area—”

  “Sajur?” Nike raised an eyebrow.

  Her sister shook her head impatiently. “We can’t detain Sajur. We’ve never arranged for his successor.” She tapped one front tooth with her fingernail and mused, “Although there is a woman, an ethical mathematician, who might be suitable….”

  Nike nodded. “So we can’t detain Sajur. What about that woman, what’s her name—Waxwing. The biotech. The one we traced the morph back to?”

  “She’s to be detained with all the rest. Friser, the Ambassador, Planck—Sajur’s going to be distressed about him.” ziz finished her drink and put the empty cup on the tray, dipped her fingers into a small bowl of borage water and flicked them dry.

  “Sajur.” Nike licked her lips and settled on the divan beside her sister. “What has he to say about all this? Have you seen him?”

  “No; there’s no answer in his chambers. But what is there to say? An unknown morph, a murderous interloper from the lower levels, what else can one expect? We make some new appointments to the appropriate cabinets and as soon as possible call another inquisition. Perhaps tomorrow night, that would be appropriate….”