Æstival Tide w-2

by Elizabeth Hand

  The two margravines stood staring at the corpse of the Architect Imperator. Then, “We’ll die! I told you, she was right, it’s all going to come down!” Nike screamed and whirled to run from the room. Before she reached the door her sister grabbed her.

  “Don’t be an idiot! He’s lying, he was drunk and half-mad, Nike, listen to me, there is nothing to worry about! ”

  There was a dull grinding overhead. The hissing of incense from the ventricles abruptly stopped. The smell of burning petroleum filled the air, and a sound like crackling paper. As the margravines slowly raised their heads, hail began to fall in the Four Hundredth Room.

  Book Two THE FEAST OF FEAR

  Chapter 8

  SHADOWS OF THE THIRD SHINING

  THE DOORS OPENED ONTO the Undercity. “I’ve forgotten my lumiere,” Nasrani said. He leaned against the wall of the gravator, cradling his bleeding hand, and looked as if he were about to faint.

  “There will be no need,” the Aviator replied. “Give me your hand.”

  Nasrani shook his head and started for the door. “No, please—” he stammered. “I’m all right, I can see fine—”

  The Aviator stepped beside him. His hand when it enveloped Nasrani’s was warm, then hot, so hot that the exile cried aloud. There was a small hissing sound, like a fly caught in flame, and the stink of burning cloth. The exile choked, reeling backward, but the Aviator caught him. When Nasrani looked down at his hand, the bleeding had stopped and the skin glowed a translucent red.

  “We will have no need of light,” said the Aviator. As the doors began to slide shut again he grabbed them and pushed them apart. The wood and metal buckled and bulged outward. Nasrani covered his face as splinters of glass and wood flew everywhere.

  “Don’t!—you’re destroying it, we won’t be able to return—”

  Metal gears shrieked and ground futilely against each other; then there was silence. Tast’annin stepped into the darkness. When he turned to face Nasrani the exile caught his breath. The rasa glowed softly, a dull crimson glow like the Flames of the Eternal in Blessed Narouz’s Refinery.

  “Do not be afraid,” he said, his voice echoing in the void of Angels. “Come, Nasrani.”

  The exile stumbled after him, stammering, “You ruined it—the other gravators—wait—”

  “There will be no need,” the rasa repeated. Above him reared the immense shadows of the Undercity, the faint and distant glimmerings of blue and gold and crimson where the refineries and medifacs burned far overhead. From beneath their feet rose a heavy smell, an odor as of things newly exhumed from the earth. Nasrani gagged and covered his mouth with his sleeve. The rasa waited for him, a ruby taper burning in the endless night.

  “Where is she?” he asked after a little while. “I will go before you if you tell me the way.”

  Nasrani coughed, nodding. “Augh—that smell! I will show you, this way—”

  He began to feel his way very slowly, the rasa beside him silent, his feet making almost no sound upon the broken earth. The labyrinth of walls and buildings the exile had used before to guide him had changed. Smooth surfaces crumbled beneath his outstretched hands, great blocks of metal and concrete sheared away at his touch, plummeting into unseen chasms just a few feet from where they walked. Nasrani trembled and chattered to himself, stopping to stare about him in wonder, as though he’d forgotten where he was. More than once the rasa’s hand roused him, so hot that it singed his torn shirt.

  “Something has happened—something terrible has happened,” Nasrani said again and again. The ground felt different than it had on his earlier visits—soft and friable, as though it had been churned by the passage of an immense nematode. Into this raw earth the remains of familiar buildings had been swallowed, and other things disgorged. A huge smooth dome of glass, miraculously unbroken. Beneath it rows of emaciated human figures embraced blocks of steel, their empty eyesockets staring up at Nasrani and Tast’annin as they passed. Wrecked autovehicles and boats bulged from the ground, their hulls scorched and fused together to form one great misshapen machine. Where before there had been only a smooth expanse of dead earth and concrete now erupted a heap of broken forms of wood and metal. From them spilled bones, bones and skulls and sleeves of deep blue and scarlet, trimmed with metal brocade. The rasa paused to stare at them. Where his hand brushed the edge of one uniform a tiny spiral of smoke rose, and a crackling sound.

  Nasrani stopped and gazed overhead. An eerie red glow suffused the darkness. In the distance clouds of black smoke seemed to billow and rise, obscuring the silhouette of the monstrous ziggurat looming above them. An uneven but ceaseless current of sound swelled beneath it all, a rush like running water, punctuated by soft retort’s and sudden explosive roars, as of huge buildings being pried apart and thrown to the ground. Beneath his heavy clothes the exile sweated and shivered; his wounded shoulder ached and his hand throbbed almost unbearably. He wiped his face, squinting as he struggled to see something of the rest of Araboth—flames leaping from the refineries on Archangels, and a white pulse that might have been distress lights from Seraphim. And closer he saw other flames, and pallid greenish globes that bobbed in the distance but never seemed to grow any nearer. Another smell choked him, along with the fetid reek of decay; a smell of burning, of acrid chemicals and gas. He coughed and stumbled, and nearly fell into a narrow crevasse that slit the earth at his feet like a razor tearing through skin. When the rasa’s hand touched his shoulder he jerked back. It was burning hot, as though it had been cast into a furnace.

  And suddenly Nasrani realized that was exactly what had happened. The Undercity was burning. The rasa’s metal form was heating like an ingot thrust into the heart of a forge. Nasrani stopped, weaving in the near darkness.

  “I can’t—we can’t go on,” he gasped. His eyes were wild. “Margalis—the Undercity is burning, if we go on we’ll die from the heat. I don’t understand,” he whimpered.

  “Look.” The exile shrank as the rasa gripped his shoulder with one fiery hand. “Can you see—there, at the base of that shattered pyramid?”

  Nasrani swallowed. He nodded, peering where the rasa pointed. “Yes,” he whispered. “I see, Margalis, but—what is it?”

  The rasa’s eyes glowed, brighter and brighter until they were like two holes of flame. In the distance they heard a hollow rasping. “It is a rift, a chasm at the bottom of the city. See—? Boiling up there, that is water, it is the sea coming in from Outside. That smooth wall behind it is one of the conduits that supplies the vivariums. The fulciment of the entire city is rupturing.”

  Nasrani stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “There!”

  The Aviator pointed at the pyramid, gleaming dull gold in the murk. The steady rasping grew louder and louder, until suddenly a terrific crack rent the air. For an instant the pyramid flamed brilliant white; then like a heap of ashes it collapsed and sank all at once into the darkness.

  “How can it—” Nasrani staggered forward as the rasa shoved him.

  “We have no time!” Tast’annin cried harshly. “We must find her quickly, the city is falling around us—”

  Nasrani stumbled and halted, hugging on to a broken steel post. “Margalis—Margalis, please, listen to me. I don’t know where we are. It’s changed—if what you’ve said is true, if the city is collapsing around us—it’s all different. The landmarks are gone—there used to be an alley, there, and a, a sort of archway—”

  Tast’annin looked over his shoulder, nodding. “It is still there. See—the arch has fallen, it is caught on that narrow landing—”

  Nasrani shielded his eyes, then exclaimed, “It is! I see it—the doorway is still there, behind it—”

  He picked his way through the rubble, the rasa at his side like a flickering crimson shadow. Every few minutes the ground beneath them shuddered, and once where Nasrani’s foot had been a moment before a fissure tore the earth apart with a noise like rending cloth. Nasrani shouted and nearly fell; but the
rasa caught him, and then he was running the last few yards to collapse within the ruined doorway.

  “My keys—I forgot the keys,” he gasped after a moment. The stone and metalwork felt wet beneath his fingers. His trousers were soaked. Warm water streamed from a crack above his head, spilling onto the ground and running off into the rift spreading slowly across the earth. Tast’annin stood above him and shook his head.

  “We won’t need them. This is the entrance?”

  At Nasrani’s nod he raised his arms and took hold of the broken edges of a lintel. The door crashed inward. Silence, broken only by the gurgle of water.

  “Where is she?” The Aviator’s harsh voice hung in the empty air. Nasrani got to his feet and followed him into the room, shaking his head in disbelief.

  At one end of the room the ceiling had caved in. Beneath twisted spars of steel and piles of plaster he saw Maximillian Ur’s cabinet, smashed into a heap of wood and glass. A few feet away the replicant’s bladed arm twitched rhythmically, its fingers curling and uncurling around a shard of metal.

  “No,” Nasrani whispered. “My children—no—”

  Slowly he circled the room, the ruined cabinets and crumpled banners adrift in pools of black water. In one corner the shattered body of the Anodyne Physician sat upright, her head askew, one side of her torso crushed so that her ruined circuitry glittered coldly, a frozen explosion of glass and wire. “No known remedy,” her clear voice repeated over and over. “No known remedy, no known remedy…”

  Weeping, Nasrani stooped over her, yanked a golden filament. The Physician’s head rolled into her lap and she was silent.

  “All my children?” he murmured, and turned to where a girder had fallen and covered Moghrebi’s gilded case. His voice rose to a shriek. “ All? ”

  In the middle of the room a pile of wreckage hid where the Titanium Children had slept, where Apulieus had laughed and the Mechanical Baboon chattered with her brazen cubs. There was nothing left. Only, pinned beneath a corroded metal beam, something stirred and moaned piteously.

  “Yes?” Nasrani cried, hurrying to kneel beside it, but then drew back. “Aaah—the miserable thing!” he spat.

  It was a rasa, or had been—its arm had been sheared from its body and lay beside its shoulder. There was no blood, only a watery ammoniac fluid. The creature murmured to itself. It could not lift its pale head, only twist to gaze at Nasrani with one bleary eye. The man grimaced and turned away. The other eye bulged from its socket, black and swollen as a grape. It stank of ammonia.

  “Mother,” it whispered. “Mother, please—”

  Nasrani looked back down. “Mother? The nemosyne—is she here? Did she escape?”

  The rasa moved its head feebly. “Mother is gone—the once-born took her, gone, gone. Please…”

  Nasrani stood and wiped his hands in disgust. The thing mewled, trying to move. The rasa crossed the room, pushing Nasrani away, and knelt beside it.

  “Which way?” he asked. His voice was almost gentle.

  The rasa stared at him, then whispered, “There is another door—a tunnel—”

  Tast’annin glanced over his shoulder, turned back to the creature silent now, twisting feebly beneath the weight of the twisted beam. He stretched out his metal hand until it covered the rasa’s face, then with a quick motion snapped its head back, severing the spine. The rasa twitched and was still. Nasrani made a hoarse sound and looked away. The Aviator stood, gazing down at the wretched corpse.

  “It said she escaped. It said she went into the tunnel,” he said at last.

  Nasrani stared at him dumbly, shaking his head. His face was streaked with tears. “All of them,” he said again.

  “No.” The rasa shook his shoulder and pointed. “There is an opening. A tunnel, it said.”

  “But she couldn’t—how could she? She has never moved, she never woke for me—”

  Tast’annin pulled him through the wreckage.

  “Then she has awakened for someone else,” he said, and ducking beneath a broken column he entered the passage.

  It happened almost before Hobi realized it. His ears popped; one of the rasas swiveled its head to stare at the ceiling. Nefertity continued to recite in her clear child’s voice the story she had begun many hours before—

  “ ‘… Were you ever happy, when you were a man, since you left the womb, unless you were trying to get back into it?’ and she gave me a virgin’s look of disdain.

  “ ‘Will I be happy now I am a woman?’ I demanded.

  “ ‘Oh, no!’ she said and laughed. ‘Of course not! Not until we all live in a happy world!’ ”

  Hobi yawned, as much because his ears ached as because of boredom. The nemosyne had been reciting from her memory ’files, stories and poems she chose seemingly at random. This was how she had enthralled the fallen rasas, those poor creatures starved for any kind of companionship, even the chilly voice of a nemosyne chanting oddments of useless data.

  At first he had thought he could listen to Nefertity speak forever. Now he knew that even wonderful things—maybe especially wonderful things—are best enjoyed in small doses. All around him the rasas sat in perfect silence, unmoving, their glowing eyes fixed on the shining figure in front of them. Hobi scratched his nose, thinking that perhaps he might take a walk, just across the room of course. He had just started to his feet, his legs prickling from having been still for so long, when suddenly the floor tilted beneath him.

  “Wha—” the boy cried, and was knocked to his knees. There was a horrible crashing noise, hollow hooting cries from the rasas. The candles went flying; burning wax spattered his face and then it was dark, except for Nefertity’s cool blue glow.

  “Mother—” someone whispered, and said no more.

  “Perhaps I will continue this later,” Nefertity pronounced softly. But Hobi could no longer see her. Something heavy struck his head, knocking him to the floor. For a moment he thought he had been blinded.

  “Nefertity,” he choked. His arm hurt when he raised it, but he could raise it, and now when he moved his head he could see, too.

  The ceiling had fallen in upon the room. The replicants in their cabinets, the rasas who had been listening to Nefertity: all were buried beneath twisted beams and plasterboard and heaps of rubbish that seemed to smoke, but that was just the dust and plaster. A few feet away he saw the rasa that had brought him here, pinned beneath a girder. Across the room the Anodyne Physician’s case had been shattered and she was speaking solemnly to herself.

  “Oh, my god,” Hobi whispered. He stumbled to his feet, biting his lip against the pain, and tried to get his balance without touching anything. He was afraid that if he breathed too deeply the whole room would disintegrate around him. The ceiling was completely gone. Where it had been were only the exposed guts of the ancient building, a horrible mass of wires and steel beams and metal joists, writhing and rippling as though made of windblown silk. “He did it, he really did it….”

  “Who did it?”

  Hobi turned to see Nefertity, standing calmly amid the ruins like a shining beacon of glass. On the floor beside her two rasas lay side by side, faces white as plaster save where greenish fluid trickled from one’s mouth, giving her a grotesque harlequin’s smile.

  “My father,” Hobi said, dazed. He stepped toward the nemosyne, abruptly stopped. The floor shook ominously beneath him, and eddies of fine dust cascaded down from the broken ceiling. He froze, gazing desperately at the nemosyne only a few feet away.

  “I can’t move.” His voice cracked; dust in his throat made it hurt to speak. “It will all come down—my father did this, he programmed the Architects to destroy the city—”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I overheard them.” He was practically babbling now. “A few days ago—in his study. They said there was a—a breach, somewhere down here. I didn’t understand…. He was indoctrinating the program, he ordered them to do this—”

  The nemosyne stared at him, her emerald
eyes serene. Pale blue light pulsed about her hand as she raised it and reached for him. “I will go with you, Hobi. Let us leave this place now.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “Go? We can’t go —it’s falling to pieces around us—”

  A distant explosion. The room shook again, and one of the rasas whispered a name. Nefertity looked down at the broken creature, then back at Hobi, her hand still extended toward him. “We can leave the city,” she insisted gently. “Perhaps we will find the others of my kind, Outside.”

  Hobi swallowed, shut his eyes, and breathed deeply. He thought of the tunnel that had brought him here, the overpowering smell of brackish water. He remembered how only a day before he had dreamed of this, madly: to find the nemosyne again and leave Araboth, venture Outside and die there if needs be.

  “Hobi.” Nefertity’s voice was soft. He opened his eyes to see her in front of him, her crystalline hand upon his shoulder. “Hobi, it’s time.”

  And at that word time he heard it again—the same sweet high chiming that had rung in his ears the first time he saw her. He nodded dumbly, glancing around until he saw the door at the far end of the room, the entrance to the tunnel. Part of the wall had collapsed beside it, the door itself hung open; but he could see the faint green glow of phosphorescence inside, hear the distant purling of water.

  “That way,” he croaked. He began to pick his way through the rubble, stepping over an unmoving rasa and averting his eyes from the sight of the Titanium Children crushed and splintered into arrows of golden glass. Beside him Nefertity walked in a nimbus of azure light, her hand upon his shoulder firm and cool. Once the floor shifted beneath them, sliding so suddenly that Hobi cried out and nearly fell. But the nemosyne caught him, and as in a dream he walked the last few steps until they stood within the doorway.

  Nefertity’s hand slipped from him and her voice came soft in his ear. “Do you know the way?”

  Hobi shook his head. “No. But I think the tunnel leads out—at least once it did, it was a sewage tunnel. I think it might lead to the sea.”