Appleseed

by John Clute

  At its highest peak, where the cupola nippled through the surface of the world into raw atmosphere and the sight of bare sky, Tile Dance was strobed by the wild fluctuating flare of the Insort Geront sigil beaming down from orbit; its slogan washed through the holo in repeated waves: ENKYKLIOS PAEDIA. ENKYKLIOS PAEDIA. ENKYKLIOS PAEDIA . . .

  There was a slight tremble within the ship just as she slid upwards into the great nipple.

  A herm gaped, as though swallowing.

  Beneath Tile Dance, in the blinking of an eye, docking country blacked out, swallowed its throat and died. The Insort Geront sigil blanched, shone brighter than the local sun, blanched again, died. Perhaps the ark that housed it was biting the dust, maybe. Data plaque fell - visible as a dance of dying readouts in the holo - through the air.

  —Punch us out, yelled Freer. ‘Punch us out!’

  In the sanctum of his own ship, he was yelling aloud.

  —Okey dokey, sang the ship Mind.

  A mask bearing the fist appaumy spoke.

  ‘Queens have died,’ said the Uncle Sam, ‘young and fair.’

  Tile Dance shot up through the stained nipple of the cupola, and into atmosphere. In its wake danced a crazy quilt of lasers, autonomic defence units perhaps, a random spat of tracer beams that could blind an ark. No matter, no matter. It was out. It had popped out like a cork. The polished, almost perfectly reflective Tile Dance - built in the style of a Predecessor Frigate from the previous Cycle, a creature of the light, a surfer of the galaxy — slid unscathed skywards and into vacuum, emancipating its flesh sentient from the gravely wounded world below.

  As they lifted, the curve of the planet bulged upwards in silhouette against its mother sun, scarred and umbral, increasingly silent, a shrunken Alzheimer ghost within its scar of plaque, another region of the known universe knotted into a lightless fossil silence, turned away from the light.

  ‘Heaven,’ said a voice in Freer’s realtime ear, in an accent he took to be the Uncle Sam attempting to do Human Earth, ‘is our heritage, Earth but a player’s stage. Mount we unto the sky . . .’

  ‘Queens have died,’ interrupted the Uncle Sam mask on the wall before him, in its normal voice, ‘young and fair.’

  His voice stopped for an instant.

  ‘I’m afraid the one line is all I know,’ said the Uncle Sam.

  The skin on Freer’s neck beaded with sudden sweat. Suddenly his merchant’s garb, which he still wore, seemed to choke him. He began to pull at the battle-stained greaves.

  —Ahem, Stinky, said Kirtt. —There’s something I have to tell you . . .

  Freer turned his head.

  In the passenger alcove behind him, as neatly ensconced within its failsafes as though they had been designed for this one particular creature, sat a long-waisted rubicund almost headless long-necked non-homo-sapiens bipedal with four attractive breasts.

  ‘I am sick, I must die—’ it murmured.

  —Eolhxiran. Female. In pheromone shock, Stinky, said Kirtt. —Please keep your clothes on. In fact . . .

  A translucent purple cape floated down from the ceiling.

  —Wear this, Stinky.

  —Okey dokey.

  He gestured.

  The cape wrapped itself demurely around his torso.

  The Eolhxiran’s small eyes were squeezed shut. Its head seemed to be trying to retract down its neck.

  ‘Freer, sirrah,’ said Kirtt acoustically, in a formal voice, ‘may I introduce you to Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, who has agreed to serve as transitus tessera for our long journey. She incorporates the Route-Only data I will need. Mamselle Cunning Earth Link will remain with us to Eolhxir, where Mamselle will disembark.’

  —Kirtt? said Freer. —Have you lost your great Mind? A flesh Route-Only?

  —She arrived just before you did. I had no warning either.

  The head, which had disappeared completely, except for a grasslike topknot, began to emerge from its neck, very slowly.

  ‘O gross,’ said the voice, still uncannily reminiscent of the voices of Human Earth, ‘O I am so perfectly fucked. I never knew it would be so—’

  The breasts began to pulsate.

  —A sign of embarrassment, I believe, said Kirtt. —Of course I’m brain-damaged down here in Law Well, but I think you will find she uses language in an attempt to bridge the aroma gap. Homo sapiens being scent-deaf. I think it is like shouting to the deaf.

  —Yes yes yes, we know all about that, said Freer. He was ponging like a boiler factory.

  ‘May I extend,’ said the voice from the tiny head once again, ‘my brilliant apologies, sirrah. In all my Heartbeats excessive in number had I ever guessed? Nay! Mortification pluribus enshrouds me O Freer sirrah.’

  ‘So this is your first actual encounter with one of my species?’ said Freer.

  ‘O nocuous to say yes, but not evitable to lie,’ murmured the Eolhxiran Route-Only. ‘I am O well-beloved the profoundest of experts vis-a-vis homo sapiens. I’m entirely in love with you all. But only by the Book learning. So!

  O daring warrior seeking light! Freer! O, berserker of much pulchritude! Freer! Ever since my earliest Heartbeat, brighter than bright down-galaxy far afar from here, have

  I ever longed to encounter homo sapiens, thou in the flesh! So here I am! So do I know about you, O verisimilitudinous you right in the here of hereness cripes? Aye! But did I guesstimate the potency of the hit of the O of the O of the presence? Nay! Aiyeeah! I did not reckon with the phat! presence of your flesh Freer sirrah O I did not!’

  Freer had begun to calm.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said. “I’m afraid you startled me. Perhaps you could sense my reaction.’

  The Route-Only closed her tiny eyes.

  —She means to say, You bet I could sense your reaction, Stinky, said Kirtt.

  ‘It has been a long day,’ said Freer. Her eyes opened like tiny lucent tulips and gazed upon him. ‘Life-threatening behaviour on the part of rogue godzilla grunts, augment,’ he said. ‘Data plaque, carcinomatosis of entire planet, deep personal grief, survivor guilt, exhaustion, stuff.’

  ‘O dear Freer sirrah,’ said the Eolhxiran, ‘you are terribly stinky. But so wry!’

  ‘Have you been talking to my ship Mind?’

  ‘I beg indulgence.’

  —You bet she has, Stinky.

  ‘Brightness,’ said the Eolhxiran Route-Only, ‘falls from the air.’

  Trencher shrank beneath them. A moon mugged over the rim of the planet opposite the sun and, as the ship rose closer to freedom, became fully round, beamed. Behind the advancing line of terminator, the darkness of the world became increasingly visible, the thousands of apertures into the city world lightless now. The Christmas-tree fluorescence of Trencher had been turned off. Like a toon, the moon jumped over terminator. Goodbye to Trencher.

  ‘O lamentoso chez moi,’ carolled Mamselle Cunning Earth Link softly, perhaps to herself. ‘My heart is breaking. To see advancing the anarch dark, O Trencher! Sad to see you go! Bye-bye, we must surmise. As of now-ish, an Eaten Land thou art, O memorious. God rot. I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens. O this is a savage downer.’

  Tile Dance slipped upwards into space; slid silently through the crammed sphere where orbitals and stations dwelled, and the several remaining godzilla arks, liners of space drifting into the rocks; edged gingerly around one sector dominated by the fragments of a vast mirror shattered from some impact, no longer beaming energy and teraflops of data every millisecond down Trencher’s open throat from the vast trapezoid of the portion of the galaxy known to homo sapiens, greatest of the space wanderers.

  The data arteries that fed the planet had been pinched shut.

  —Do we still have in ground link?

  ‘I am presuming the GO signal has reached Law Well perimeter, and that we will not be challenged,’ said Kirtt acoustically through his usual control-room guise: a flyte mask in the shape of an heraldic shield featuring a lion’s head caboshed
, with medusa hair, a single bulging eye, a beard, and tusks; beneath which, interweaving a dentilly of fuligin, could be deciphered, ornately incised, his full male name: Kirttimukha. To display only a single default face was a sign of bondage endured, especially through the nearberserker intensity of the flyte mask, forced to interact (as it was) with the phenomenal world. But Tile Dance was nearing Law Well limit, and he would be quantum again, KathKirtt again, she and he: the Janus faces of wholeness. The mask through which themself spoke would be double again; its two visages manifesting the two aspects traditionally unveiled by fully enabled ship Minds when serving homo sapiens, wanderers bound to home: the flyte mask, which expressed passionate love for the intersection of Mind and world, on behalf of the client; and the jack mask, which expressed the direction home of the inner Mind.

  —A large assumption, Kirtt?

  ‘Correct. Communications from control centre have ceased. No actual acknowledgement of the GO has been detected from the fuckhead planetary defences. Trencher is going fossil, but her automatic arrays may fire when we cross out of Law Well. The plaquing sequence, as you know’ — Kirtt was clearly addressing himself more to Mamselle Cunning Earth Link than to his master — ‘is both exponential and contagious. Uncle Sam and I are warding off infection, I believe successfully . . .’

  —But keep an eye open, he said inside Freer’s head. —This is going to be close, I’m afraid.

  —Okey dokey.

  ‘. . . and we predict successful emergence from Law Well within twelve minutes.’

  The Eolhxiran’s tiny head rose on its neck stem.

  ‘Frabjous to hear,’ she said. ‘When we emerge into the splendid glister of free space, please turn left.’

  Mamselle Cunning Earth Link’s bright eyes nictitated suddenly.

  —That was a joke, boss, said Kirtt.

  Freer chuckled aloud, for the Route-Only’s benefit.

  —I have a bone to pick with you, box, said Freer.

  But the shaped panels of sensors flecked over suddenly, for an instant, and Teardrop fogged.

  —Plaque? he vocalised.

  The screens began to clear.

  —Blizzards. But I think we can ride the storm, with the help of Vipassana. Have I permission to activate?

  —Who?

  —I have been remiss in not mentioning this earlier, but my memory is not what it used to be.

  Freer’s eyes widened.

  —In any case, we have been experiencing interesting times. Vipassana arrived with Uncle Sam, but only now am I in a position to activate him. He is our absolute-position battle mind, and he will keep me on the rails. We believe, Uncle Sam and I, that he can also chart wormholes.

  —That’s my job, said Freer. —I have perfect pitch.

  He sounded miffed.

  —We mean no offence, sahib. But we believe the Vipassana capable of charting wormholes by feel.

  —So?

  —From within.

  Freer shut his mouth.

  —While I remain halved, Kirtt continued, —I’m pretty easily flustered, as you know. We almost lost you down Trencher just before the ark hit. In ten minutes or so, I should have my mind back, but at the moment I’m beside myself. Stinky, may I introduce Vipassana?

  —Right away, old box.

  The mask immediately to the right of Kirtt’s burnished face took on the aspect of a rust-coloured sphere crisscrossed by rules and measuring devices; within this larger sphere, a smaller sphere rotated slowly, its surface covered with ornate depictions of gods and goddesses, beasts and warriors and women outflung into the animate stars. Beneath the mask, just where a bow-tie might have been found, had the mask been connected to a neck, a brass- coloured plate identified the two-sphered image as a Celestial Planisphere of the Northern Hemisphere, by Virtue of Which it was Possible to Locate the Constellations, and to Predict their Appearance. In smaller letters it was noted that the original had been conceived and executed by an English male artificer named Jehosaphat Aspin, around 1840 Common Era, on Human Earth.

  Freer’s skin prickled. His mouth dried.

  Mamselle Cunning Earth Link’s head began to retract again.

  —Good morning, sirrah, said Vipassana, his voice in Freer’s head alto, inflectionless, profoundly awake. It was a voice with no past. It was so profoundly of the present instant that it seemed to echo from somewhere beyond, from the present before the present had quite happened, certainly before it had registered down the perception aisles of a flesh sentient.

  The Vipassana was an avant-courier of now.

  Freer held on to himself.

  —Call me Stinky, he vocalised.

  —Stinky.

  The Vipassana’s voice, though it echoed Freer’s, seemed to prefigure it.

  —Your chosen face . . . said Freer, from inside his head, staring at the Celestial Planisphere mask. The inner sphere, with naked gods and goddesses of Human Earth performing homo sapiens sex activities between its burnished teeth, gaped vastly; it was the larger sphere’s mouth. A thousand fine protractor lines lacquered the mask suddenly, like fine antique porcelain, then faded.

  —Stinky? murmured Kirtt.

  —It’s all right, said Freer. —Let me continue.

  —Vipassana, he said, continuing to gaze upon the mask, —tell me about your face.

  —I regret arousing your fear response, said Vipassana, —and I hope that mamselle will soon recuperate from her proximity to you in such a state. I am an orienteering mind, very highly sophisticated, but am not programmed to engage in sensitive responses to demands entailed by the flesh bondage of dwellers in meat. The focus of my being is almost wholly restricted to detecting the odour of space- time. Or should I say spoor. In order to pinpoint the location of Tile Dance, I need to sense the aura of her birth. Your ship Mind fed me certain data while I was still inactive, and I was able to engage upon a hegira trace of your ship, which has proved of consuming interest, for during the course of her journeys up and down the tropics, and in between them, and widdershins, Tile Dance, as articulated through her ship Mind KathKirtt, has encountered much that is of relevance to the late evening Heartbeats of your universe, which is mine as well, and which is stiffening into nescience daily. I am able to assert this with especial vividness, for I have been long asleep, and it has changed, it has changed dreadfully, since I was last awake. I would perhaps mourn this encroachment of the dark, if I were not innately disabled from mourning, sirrah.

  —The pinpointing of the location of a flesh sentient, continued the Vipassana unstoppably in its alto croon, —must be — by virtue of the relative simplicity of its imprint upon the dermis that shelters the Real — less taxing for an absolute-position battle Mind to accomplish. It is still necessary, however, for me to incorporate into my chart of your position, sirrah, elements of your past. I did, therefore, while outwardly inactive, establish a rudimentary mapping of you through the good graces of ship Mind Kirtt, though his current disablement precluded my gaining a full one-to-one. Sadly, I am not programmed to take into account the possibility that you would be upset at this accessing of material from your past, even though it remains salient to your position of relative safety at this point. I am what I am, finished the Vipassana, sounding as calm as the instant of being before the world consumes the instant of being blindly.

  —And you are . . . ?

  The fine lines appeared again, porcelaining the mask; it may have been a map of something.

  —A simple but profound Mind of universal position, chanted the Vipassana, imperturbable as a monk in trance. —To know where you are now, I must know where you have been. That is my task. I am nothing but task, sir. The image of a Celestial Planisphere signals that task. Shall I wipe it, sir?

  —No no, not now, not now.

  ‘Mamselle,’ said Freer aloud to the headless Eolhxiran in the passenger alcove behind him, ‘I think it’s safe to come out. My apologies for conveying something of my state of mind to you without warning.’

 
—State of mind! boomed Kirtt.

  Cunning Earth Link’s head slid baldly up from her neck.

  ‘Welcome back,’ said Freer. ‘Perhaps I can explain something of my agitation to you.’

  ‘There is gratitude unbounding in these multi-tasked breast prostheses for such kindness of the open heart from Skipper,’ said Cunning Earth Link. ‘O dearest of all hopeful monsters!’

  Twin smiley-face countenances came into being on her upper breasts.

  ‘Neat?’

  ‘Neat,’ said Freer. ‘Very arousing for a homo sapiens.’

  The faces blinked out immediately.

  ‘In the first instance,’ said Freer, ‘Route-Onlys are not normally people. In my book, Route-Onlys are simple downloads. I don’t believe I have ever encountered one in flesh form. And Kirtt was perhaps too busy, or too brain-damaged, to mention your arrival. So I had resumed command of my ship in the presumption that, in the normal way, my voyage to Eolhxir would be undertaken solo.’

  ‘O chagrin!’ cried Cunning Earth Link, her head beginning to disappear again.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Freer. ‘Plenty of room in Tile Dance. This is a very old ship. It’s bigger inside than out. You simply shocked me down to my boots.’

  ‘I placate inexorably,’ moaned Cunning Earth Link.

  ‘Certainly. But let me continue. You understand, therefore, that I was not really ready for the second shock inflicted upon me in only a few minutes. The mask, you understand.’

  Her small head nodded with whiplash speed.

  —Not to worry, said Kirtt. —Her brain’s beneath her neck.

  ‘Battle Mind Vipassana’s mask, you understand, replicates a Celestial Planisphere executed on Human Earth about Twelve Billion Heartbeats before plaque death took the planet down. The original was one of several thousand Earth treasures acquired at great cost in lives and funds after Earth blacked out.’

  ‘The Malacandra Project!’ shrilled Mamselle Cunning Earth Link. ‘Obeisance worthy!’