Appleseed

by John Clute

  The mask settled on Freer’s shoulder.

  —Sirrah, crooned Vipassana out of its lacquer mouth, —your sleep was deep. Do you need me?

  —Nix at the moment, murmured Freer. —But you may stick close.

  On the inner sphere of the Celestial Planisphere mask, caged within the teeth of the speaking mouth, minuscule gods and goddesses fluttered their limbs.

  The mask stuck to Freer like an epaulette.

  They moved on, the corridor became a polished black, highlighted by lanterns in which burned naked flames. Ventilator draughts dodged the flames. Tiles told stories backwards into mirrors. They passed an array of maps depicting Infernos from a dozen epics, at least one dating from Human Earth; from the corner of the eye, the maps rather resembled motor cortex homunculi. Freer and his burden passed the sigilla coffins, where a dozen Number One Sons awaited the brief flare of sentience. The walls were mahogany, dark as the sins of Human Earth. The air grew salt.

  They passed the iron-grey portcullis that sealed off the inferno of drive country. A dozen ceremonial masks, mourning the hardened goblin eidolons of KathKirtt that died hourly inside drive country, hung within their tile embrasure above the frowning portal. The masks were simplified versions of the flyte gorgon. Their single eyes shut in unison at the death of one of the goblin eidolons, who spent their brief spans liaising with the quasi-sentient engine brother that drove the ship through the demonic rapturous ftl maze of wormholes. Even for eidolons with hardened carapaces, to liaise was to burn and die. When Tile Dance plunged through the ashen caltraps of ftl at full thrust, the engine brother howling out something like anguish or joy all the while, its entirely imaginary ‘feet’ pounding the turns of the maze, goblins lived no longer than mayflies.

  The masks gazed down at Freer.

  In order to complete the rites of the attaining of captaincy of Tile Dance, he had once, very long ago, ridden a hardened Number One Son into drive country. The few seconds he could tolerate there shaped portions of his recurring dream, where he traced enamelled footsteps through a burning homestead, up the stairs and down the hall, into the chamber, following the breadcrumbs of Gretel. The whorl of his footprints was labyrinthine. Though he rarely accessed the incessant skirling backchat between goblins and the engine brother, it was always there, deep within the bones of Tile Dance, a tinnitus shrill with s’s and t’s and p’s, high behind his ears. It was the sound of supping with the devil.

  Vipassana clasped his shoulder.

  As Freer turned away from the row of masks to descend further, the eyes closed shut for a goblin death.

  —Shantih, he murmured into vacancy.

  Flames reflected in mirrors from corner niches, guiding them downwards into more intimate quarters. A hatch opened in front of them, exhaling a wave of steam and heat.

  ‘How sharper,’ pealed the voice of Mamselle Cunning Earth Link from within the escaping bath of steam, ‘than a serpent’s tooth it is!’

  A flyte mask banked through the fog, fixed upon Freer its swollen stony eye.

  —Don’t fret, Stinky, KathKirtt boomed. —She did find a son of her own at last.

  —We are here, sang Vipassana on his shoulder.

  The flyte mask wheeled back out of sight, showing for an instant the fuligin of its inner side, the inside hollow of its great transfixing eye.

  Freer stepped into the birthing chamber, where steamy maritime air half blinded him. He had never been comfortable here, as though it had never been designed for him. The Doc Punches — containing within their brightly painted bodies the partials of physicians long dead - had already cleaned the small hollow round table or fount Mamselle had given birth upon, and had retracted their flexible herms into wall alcoves. Wreathed in steam, Mamselle sat before him alone, her back region lying against the table, her neck extended enormously so that her tiny head wobbled on its stalk like a carnivorous bloom. Her eyes were shut tight. Her mouth was wide open. A couple of breasts had fallen to the floor. Around her lay fragments of the life support systems she had demolished while giving birth. She bore the shock to her system of the presence of the homo sapiens with an almost imperceptible shrivelling.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Freer in acoustic, ‘lass unparalleled.’ ‘Forgive, my captain, O forgive, this unbetimes accouchement,’ said the topiary parthogenete, her eyes opening a slit. ‘I had never thought to disgorge so unsapless a torrent as voilà, and to miss all the action aussi! O sophont, ’twas assuredly no thought of mine to litterbug Tile Dance! I have ever tidied neat! I am your transitus tessera. This is chagrin-R-us! A thousand pardons!’

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Freer. ‘Did you keep any?’ ‘Woe piled up on Ossa, lamentoso, Stinky, I thought at first. Woe Wagon Blues, tra la! Runts only, squiggly nits, belly fodder! I thought, nix son? No profit centre son? For a nonce eternal, it seemed, nowt but Néant-ville chez moi! “Hélas, a salad of orts!” I grieved. No primo in limo to sit at table. Out from these my fertile slots, lickety split, junk food! But no king.’

  Nervously, her prehensile claws slid together like scissors, snicketing softly. The tiny vestigial monitor eyes in her palms blinked in time through the fog.

  ‘So I trim!’ she pealed. ‘Yea I trim! Nip and tuck! Secateurs ahoy! Alphabet soup! Yipes! implore the fodder, but c’est la vie. Hee hee hee, hee hee. You are history, I say, you’re twigs! But then, at last . . .’

  She breathed out convulsively. Something like foliage sprayed from her mouth.

  ‘Bless us!’ she said.

  ‘Gesundheit,’ said Freer.

  ‘A son is born!’

  ‘May I see him?’

  ‘Right you are! Jovial aboundings! Will you join us at table, honourable boss?’ she said, squinting at Freer for an instant then shutting her eyes again.

  Her palm eyes did a Mexican wave and shut.

  —She wants to do Agape, whispered KathKirtt. —With the newborn.

  —I know, I know, said Freer.

  ‘I am honoured,’ he said acoustic.

  He glanced through a fog of droplets at the nearest wall, where an array of masks had clustered.

  ‘I pray all Made Minds to share!’ said Mamselle.

  A SammSabaoth skull mask closed its wet cinder eye in acquiescence.

  ‘We are honoured to accept,’ said KathKirtt acoustic.

  ‘Whizzbang!’ said Mamselle. ‘A whizzbang feast! Goodies soon!’

  Idly, her claws tinkered with a greenish mass, pulling at loose bits of something which resembled a tangle of vines, then put it to her mouth. The mass of greenery was almost larger than her head, but her jaws stretched to encompass it. While masticating this last organ of one of the offspring she had rejected, she was mute.

  —Where’s Appleseed? Freer asked the wall.

  —Gossiping with engine brother, said KathKirtt.

  —How?

  —He rode a sigillum into drive country. It wasn’t hardened, he’ll be back soon. Did you have a good nap?

  -—The dream again. More vivid than ever.

  —Ride it, sirrah.

  Mamselle’s neck bulged as peristalsis took the junked runt down.

  —Oh I ride, I do ride it, said Freer. He felt suddenly dizzy. His vital signs intensified, briefly triggering a Status Orange in the Freer aspect-model at the heart of KathKirtt, safe in the heavily armoured Made Mind cache at the physical centre of Tile Dance. But Freer calmed quickly, the Status Orange cancelled itself, and the aspect settled again, dreamlessly, into the trillionfold hum of the Made Mind ticking over.

  —Something is happening to me, Made Mind KathKirtt. My skin itches. I feel like a snake in spring. Where am I?

  —Here, crooned Vipassana on his shoulder.

  —There there there, murmured a jack mask, —you know deepsleep takes its toll.

  —Not like this, Kath. Not—

  The doorbell rang.

  The Sniffer whuffed sleepily.

  But it was the full human Johnny Appleseed. He stepped across the threshold
. His cache-sex was bulging.

  He looked down at himself.

  ‘La, la,’ he said. ‘Riding sigillum does that.’

  He shrugged himself free of the cache-sex, stood naked.

  Mamselle screamed.

  He came dangerously close to establishing eye contact with Freer, but desisted: perhaps as a gesture to the parthogenete.

  A SammSabaoth Jolly Roger articulated spiderishly into a shield, blocked the two homo sapiens from the anguished, complexly furred bilateral.

  —Augment? asked another mask.

  —Nix, said Appleseed through the comlink, in his soft unerring voice. —Do not augment, boyo.

  Only a few steps away from the two humans, who remained in close proximity to one another behind the shield, Cunning Earth Link began to wrinkle. Her head shrank into its bristling collar. The topknot made itself into a shutter. A low rrrring sound came from deep within her torso. The two humans, one with an erect penis, continued to emanate the complex array of pheromones and odours typical of homo sapiens males about to engage upon an interaction. Normally she would have retreated into her shell for an hour, until they calmed down; but she had just given birth; she was armoured now. Her claws snicked like scissors. She had visual access through her slitted palm eyes. Her lower limbs and torso puckered, the fur bristled into cartilaginous leaves, began to toughen automatically.

  ‘Mamselle!’ said Appleseed, stepping around the SammSabaoth shield, seemingly indifferent to the chance that the Eolhxiran might involuntarily eject poison darts at him, now that she was a mother. ‘Welcome back from the land of deepsleep. May I congratulate you on a successful hatch. I understand there is a son.’

  Mamselle’s head lifted, very slightly.

  Steam sifted upwards into ventilation ducts.

  ‘Honourable sir, astounding phallus,’ she murmured hoarsely, her voice coming from somewhere deep within. ‘You know my name!’

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘Let us be introduced. My name is Johnny Appleseed. Welcome aboard.’

  Her head lifted inches. Colour began to return to it.

  ‘Boss-boss of bosses!’ she warbled softly, beginning to sound like herself again. ‘I am unstrung with Honour! I disarm!’

  The darts smoothed into feathers, sank into her chest.

  The Jolly Roger shield shrank, floated to one side.

  ‘Honourable father of us all! Ducats of hyperdulia, sacred boss! Are we truly within the station? Are the paynim history? Dare I dream?’

  ‘We are now docked in Klavier,’ said Freer.

  ‘Hilarities!’ whooped Cunning Earth Link.

  ‘Your son was safe in Tile Dance,’ said Freer, slightly stiff. ‘Even before we docked.’

  ‘Our son, redoubtable sophont!’ she pealed. ‘Our son.’

  —Watch the pong, Stinky, murmured KathKirtt.

  ‘Do not think I doubt the sanctity of Tile Dance, sugar boss,’ said Mamselle. ‘But the kabooms of Insort tatter the rightful ease of a mother’s heart, you can guess! A son! A son!’

  Her neck undulated genuflectingly towards the scrawny torso of the owner of Station Klavier.

  ‘So honour us, boss-boss of bosses — I love your horny little feet, what a penis! — please join Stinky Freer and Made Minds KathKirtt, Uncle Sam, and Vipassana in a small feast of thanksgiving. My son begs!’

  ‘We are now SammSabaoth,’ purred an ochre jack mask on the birthing chamber wall, the eye within the pyramid gazing unblinkingly upon the mortal throng. Jack mask and Jolly Roger then came together, melted for an instant into an Uncle Sam aspect.

  ‘Land sakes, Uncle Sam!’ pealed Mamselle. ‘Have you been manumitted?’

  ‘We remain in service,’ said SammSabaoth, chorally, jack and flyte aspects breaking apart; a dozen sudden masks swirled into a fan.

  ‘As do we,’ crooned Vipassana.

  ‘It is an honour to join the feast,’ said Johnny Appleseed to the transitus tessera, but then glanced down at his wrist, where a toon watch ballooned suddenly, its eyebrows fluttering. The cigar and the cigarette which counted the hours pointed frantically at noon.

  Always alert for VR intrusions, the Sniffer whuffed softly from within Freer’s earring.

  ‘But we mustn’t dally.’

  The watch exploded into a hundred winged numbers which soared around the chamber.

  ‘Mustn’t dally, mustn’t dally,’ they warbled piercingly, and fled through a ventilation slot.

  ‘Mustn’t dally,’ came a diminishing female chorus through the walls of the birthing chamber.

  Silence fell.

  ‘Well then,’ said Mamselle, ‘pronto time. Let’s eat.’

  She turned to the small round table. Hands emerged and laid out a setting for three. The masks of the krewe of Made Minds separated into three floating haloes, one for each flesh sentient. Freer and Appleseed made seating motions; chairs rose to meet them.

  Mamselle gesticulated, rather grandly.

  Her midriff opened.

  Her son peered through the portal, all head and astonishingly flexible limbs. An seemed well. He sprang out of the belly of his mother, which snapped shut behind him, but not before Freer noticed that her interior seemed to be candlelit as well as gnarly, that something like beeswax coated its groined walls. The son clung to the edge of the table. He was hairless, featherless, leafless. He dripped royal jelly. The petals on his head, which was larger than his nacelle-slim torso, had now begun to open; he gave off a complex glow, like frangipani lit from within, regally.

  ‘Gang!’ said the son. ‘Good to see you in the flesh. A thousand remerciers for fathering me, Stinky Freer. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I feel properly snuggled. I have supped deep. There is so much to learn, before we come into the kingdom, ah me o my. But I must sleep again, very soon. Mother?’

  His head began to close in on itself, as though it were heliotropic, obedient to the dusk.

  ‘We bless you all in turn,’ he said. His voice was increasingly muffled. ‘We bless you KathKirtt, SammSabaoth, Vipassana. We thank you for the survival of our father. Bless you, as well, Johnny Appleseed. I wish you could have snuggled me too.’

  Obediently, Mamselle’s belly had swung open, and her son slipped back into the chapel of her womb, and the belly shut.

  The light died.

  Freer felt an impulse to break, once more, into tears.

  He loves me, he was thinking, he loves me not, he loves me.

  He blinked.

  ‘Mamselle?’ Freer said, his thoughts steady again. ‘What did your son mean? In what sense have I been supped upon?’

  —Kathkirtt? he added, from the side of his mind.

  ‘O,’ warbled Mamselle Cunning Earth Link, ‘think mother’s milk! tasty Stinky! Think tessitura! Think of your hero mind, like a volcano of nurture spume, shooting mooncalf-like into the noosphere of blessed Ynis Gutrin. Milk magma! Freer tit! My son supped the trickle-down magma of your milk from the circumambient ether, mighty sophont, but just mood milk, not (natch!) the exquisite Spindrift Posies of your thoughts themselves, Property of Puissant Stinky, Star-ranging Guy! When he was no more than a head on a stalk, you poured into him like milk. He drank you, like a maze drinks thread, until he was all direction! You grew within him, O Dad, and now from within you light him. One day, with such parentage to sip, he will become King of all the Eolhxirans.’

  —Okey dokey?

  —Okey dokey, sang KathKirtt.

  —Vipassana?

  Silence. The Planisphere mask on his shoulder remained mute.

  —Sorry, murmured KathKirtt. —We have just asked Vipassana to supervise docking procedures. He has vacated this chamber.

  This was normal decorum. Courtesy rhetoric between Made Minds and flesh sapients mandated local mask slumber when the Mind vacated primary focus on its interlocutor sophont. It was a rhetoric honoured in the breach within Tile Dance, given the long civilian intimacy between Freer and his Mind. It had a chip air.

/>   —Tell him to relax, Kirtt. Fuck the pack drill.

  —Okey dokey.

  ‘Okey dokey,’ said Freer to the new mother.

  ‘Whoopee!’ she pealed.

  She waved her snickersnee claws tablewards.

  Hands grew from beneath, holding platters. Greenish salads fluttered on the platters. Other hands broke a loaf of something like bread, and placed a morsel upon each platter.

  ‘Eats!’ said Johnny Appleseed.

  ‘Tuck in, guys!’ pealed Mamselle. ‘Fresh antidoron, hot and heilige from the womb, you bet!’

  ‘I thought,’ said Freer, ‘that you would be feeding us a salad of runts.’

  ‘Half and half, Stinky, half and half.’

  ‘Half what, Mamselle?’

  ‘I thought you liked me, Stinky?’

  ‘Okey dokey,’ said Freer.

  ‘Anyway,’ pealed Mamselle, settling her turnipy turreted midriff into a contorting seat, ‘don’t humans eat their afterbirth?’

  ‘Before my time, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ said SammSabaoth, through a mask plastered to the soft ceiling. ‘They did, but not recently.’

  The pain bénit was good, through grizzled. The salads seemed to resist the fork.

  ‘Manners!’ shrilled Cunning Earth Link.

  The salads stilled.

  After kissing the pain bénit, and brushing their lips gently against the salad of runts, the krewe of Made Minds wove itself into a single halo of leaf-masks, and hovered over the Agape. The platters were soon clean.

  Johnny Appleseed made a pushing-his-chair-back motion; the chair complied.

  He got to his feet.

  He scratched his groin.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said.

  A watch throbbed on his wrist, its lips pursing.

  ‘They would have died alone,’ said Mamselle. ‘But now they will live forever.’

  —KathKirtt?

  The ship Mind spoke to Freer in a millisecond blurt of sacred data, which he digested at leisure.

  —She’s speaking of her runts, Stinky, blurted KathKirtt shriller than a scared mouse. —Don’t be misled by the vast bulk of the son. Mamselle gave birth to several million runts, after all; only a very few of them were allowed to shrub. Think of the remainder as wee transparent microscopic tardigrade tykes, essentially indestructible: barges for nanos to do Cleopatra on up the Nile. Think of yourself as the Nile, Stinky. Think of yourself as brimming with tardigrades. Her runts have established a low-level symbiosis with your gut. We’re maintaining a full realtime on the interaction. We’ll pull them if they cause any conniptions. But unless we’re wrong, we figure they’ll digest anything, give you commensal share, ferry your nano medics to crisis points, burp you. It should be a fair trade-off: you feed them, they heal you. They can also sing harmony when you’re in the tub.