Appleseed

by John Clute

  All the same, Freer’s earring whuffled softly.

  ‘The cohorts of the folk,’ Appleseed said, overriding the Sniffer, ‘are alarmed. The Made Minds of Klavier want to call them back to barracks. But no need to panic yet. Yet. This is a big day for us. But we must keep moving.’

  Freer gazed about.

  Between his feet, he could see the rigging and spars of the tiny ship of air, and the gansas guiding it into position. He could feel the flapping of wings. They breathed hoarsely. Delicately, the smiling tile faces of the gondola touched the soles of his feet, and he was standing. Appleseed stood beside him. The tiles beneath his feet trembled, hyperventilated.

  The ship began to descend.

  ‘Welcome to Klavier,’ whispered some of the painted faces.

  —Okey dokey? asked Freer.

  —Okey dokey, said SammSabaoth down the commlink in a rusty calm ensemble of voices. —Gansas are faithful. They are Minds, though tiny. We’re monitoring the guidance system. You’re being taken down to the plaza. A choo- choo train is due. Scenic route to the Throne Room. More formalities. Predecessors did nothing without incense, especially marrying out.

  The gondola continued slowly to settle, slanting in a slow spiral downwards into shadows upcast by searchbeams within the portal to the world below.

  A flotilla of smaller craft, each girded by a flock of gansas, followed them down in single file. Each of these smaller craft carried one flesh sophont ensconced in a saddle perch, at the heart of the rigging, applauding rhythmically.

  The effect was curiously formal.

  An interlocked pair of toon cigars woofed upwards from the very depths, sighed eloquently, unwrapped themselves from their helix and stood revealed in the dark air as two translucent, heavily veined umbrellas. One slipped into Appleseed’s waiting hand, the other nuzzled at Freer’s wrist until he took it.

  The gondola fell through a quick spindrift of silken capillaries, some almost microscopic, some thick as an arm. The capillaries were swirling slowly in a kind of helical dance, and Freer could see that the dance was part of the great infolding of capillaries around the slow spin of the stamen. This infolding gathered silken ropes and orange trapezes and translucent tubes — clearly capillary braids — into an outstretched filigree which twisted and trembled. Above them all, Tile Dance continued to pull the web — the fume of lace interstices — into its spin. Suspension bridges, woven from root and grass — or perhaps they were woven of monofilament with an appearance of grass — shot across the inner portal, ricocheted around the central stalk, climbed vertiginously towards the brilliant sky as Tile Dance pulled them in. Through the walls of the larger braids, as they cross-hatched through the enfolding web, could be seen passengers in lantern-shot shadows, shooting upwards, downwards, corewards.

  As Freer and Appleseed descended, other gondolas began to follow them, like a caravanserai of singing sheep. They were already sinking below the higher tiers of the town, which seemed to have been engraved to the sides of the portal in gold enamelling. Cupolas shone like gold above them. A susurrus of air wafted against the flesh sophonts constantly.

  It was like falling into the heart of a great flower populous with faces. Just as its stamen had swallowed Tile Dance, so Klavier was swallowing them, like honey.

  The gondola continued to sink, surrounded on all sides by the chymical marriage of the capillaries as they wound around the bobbin. Increasing numbers of bilaterals were visible now, some floating alone or in groups along calm trajectories from the walls of the town, others angling inwards from other launchpads. Many of them had slightly wobbly heads and spindly bodies; they gave signs that seemed welcoming to the two smiling homo sapiens males. Other bilateral figures could be seen — some as large as a grown homo sapiens, others smaller, with biggish patch- work skulls — floating and falling and climbing, leaping sideways into vertical darkness from the open gates of the city, which now ringed the flesh sophonts. Many of these bilaterals carried lanterns. They glittered like fireflies.

  The descent sharpened; the cauldron ringed with city enlarged its particoloured maw; a seething of innumerable small lights stared up at them, synapses and umbraculae of the innards of Klavier. Dirigibles with painted visages, laughing or crying, continued to shoot upwards from veined depths.

  Moisture rained from somewhere above, making rainbows.

  They were not wetted.

  —Kath! murmured Freer. —Do you hear music?

  The cache-sex throbbed, purring softly.

  —We love it when you hear music, Stinky.

  —Why?

  —Because you smell good when you hear music, Stinky.

  The cache-sex warmed his balls.

  —Vipassana? said Freer.

  —My lord? crooned Vipassana after a brief pause.

  Any Made Mind pause alarmed Freer.

  —Have you been meditating, Vipassana?

  —I have been accessing formularies of description suitable to a homo sapiens such as yourself, sirrah.

  —So orient me. Slow augment, please.

  The world slowed nearly to a stop.

  Freer waved his arms in all directions. He spoke the ritual words:

  —Sacred is the new. Tell me a story.

  —The city we are approaching, from what has become above, crooned Vipassana obediently around his neck, —is built in tiers around a portal which penetrates — unless we are mistaken, which we cannot anticipate — into the centre of Klavier. Around this portal you may see the flat carapace of the vast spiral root we used as a landmark on our way down.

  Freer gazed. The city changed every Heartbeat.

  —As with Klavier itself, continued Vipassana in his croon, —there is no point of vantage from which best to see the whole. The lines of sight with Klavier ask us to continue moving. We can only see the inside of Klavier by passing through it.

  Teardrop showed Freer a schematised root. The point of view shifted so that a great knot in the bole of the root was not a knot but a portal, while at the same time the root had spiralled bowl-like around and above the knot.

  —This root is of a substance we have chosen - for convenience — to call yew. It is in fact a laminate comprised of filaments and capillaries packed almost infinitely tight, a laminated condensary whose joinings are story-shaped, hence its resemblance to the azulejarias that make up the inner walls of Tile Dance . . .

  —Continue to call it yew, Vipassana.

  —It is one of eleven similar roots, which twine around one another to form the walls of an abyssal central shaft — which resembles, therefore, from within, the bore of a rifle, though we must not carry that image too far: because this shaft is no straighter than the eleven roots of yew which shape it, taking the shape, rather, of a tight coil, like the tautened mainspring of a watch from below the well of the past on Human Earth, though you must visualise this mainspring as coiling spirally around the central axis of the core, so that from a distance — I now move your mind’s eye to a point sufficiently distant — it has the appearance of a ball of string or, as you murmured in your mind’s eye several Hundred Heartbeats ago, tumbleweed. Our descent into Klavier has been a constantly slewing spiral — an exceedingly complex course which the onboard schematics simplified on visual readout. We have in fact circumambiated Klavier five times in order to reach our present point. We have been spiralling around inner Klavier as we descended and we are a thousand klicks deep along this path. All this is of course double. It is twinned. I was not lost.

  —I did not ask if you were lost, said Freer.

  —It is a topology difficult to enunciate in your language, sirrah, but it is possible to say that, from this point inwards, now that Tile Dance has joined them together, the root and its twin have become the portal that penetrates it. So we are continuing inwards. We are not lost.

  —I did not ask if you were lost.

  —Watch the pheromones, murmured the cache-sex.

  —Perhaps, said Vipassana in a voice which may have
been intended to soothe, —it is not intended for homo sapiens to perceive the topology of entry.

  —Oh. I feel better, said Freer very softly. —I am glad to know my ship is mired at the heart of a furball. I am glad to know the docking orifice which has swallowed my ship is the inside outside of the outside of the inside. That my ship is scrubbing Predecessor cunts.

  Over the long pace of Heartbeats of his life, Freer had killed several homo sapiens with his hands.

  —Continue, Vipassana.

  He could smell Appleseed beside him in the gold-flecked gloaming as the gondola slid downwards like the bed of Little Nemo in the Universal Book; but he did not turn towards the master of Klavier at this point, given the danger of direct eye-contact for homo sapiens, particularly during moments of stress.

  —Calm me, he whispered to his cache-sex.

  —Quondam’s siblings are already doing that, she whispered back.

  Indeed his vision was beginning to clear, and — within the frame of slow augment — the beating of his heart slowed. He could look at Appleseed again, who seemed made of wax through vision augment.

  —Down through the centre of the abyssal coil we have traced a very complicated path along the spine of yew - I did not once lose the track nor did I confuse it with its twin — this far into Klavier, much further inside than the service modules where customers normally dock. We have been accorded the privilege of penetrating atmosphere. Beside has become below. Out is in. There then is here now. Boompsadaisy, sirrah. There is here. There is here. We are entering the portal. It adheres tightly to the curve of the world. We are about to travel further in. A train is coming into the station now.

  Freer peered over the railing. Above him, tier upon tier of the city peered back. Below, the portal narrowed into a funnel mouth, and the city widened there into plazas. Train tracks were now visible, spiralling up from somewhere underneath, occasionally obscured by bridges and pagodas in the lee of which bilaterals with wobbly heads joined in scrums to utter — or so it sounded to Freer in slow augment — benign ululations under lemony parasols. Around a red pagoda, whose walls extended into space, came into view a brightly coloured toy locomotive pulling two coaches and a caboose along the silver tracks, and into a hollow pearly structure no larger than a conch.

  —It looks like a toy. How far up are we?

  —It is difficult for human eyes to judge. Five hundred metres, Stinky.

  —Ah.

  He stared down at the world.

  —Sacred is the new, said Freer.

  —As a whole, continued Vipassana in a tone which did not expect interference, —Klavier is divided into two halves. Your own homo sapiens brain is constructed similarly, though it is not as simple as that. Each half of Klavier has been accreted from the intersections of five abyssal shafts, each similar to the central shaft we followed down, which makes eleven.

  —Okey dokey.

  —Tile Dance has now joined the halves together, by knitting together the commissural gap which had until now fractured the central shaft.

  —So. Are you finished? Then . . .

  —But I must clarify! crooned Vipassana almost shrilly. The intersecting halves of Klavier in its prime were topologically distinct, though no human eye could trace the separation. Each of the eleven shafts — as we have adumbrated — could be visualised as a spiral mainspring coiled around each of its siblings. Each of the eleven roots which shape each of the eleven shafts also shared data with all the other roots of Klavier, through a system of capillary branches and rootlets. For you, as a homo sapiens, all this would have seemed inextricably entangled, had Klavier been fully alive, for your eyes are flesh and cannot follow turns; so remember only that this complexity — or at any rate the archaeological traces of the fully operational Klavier - increased as we moved inward, for all eleven main shafts, all hundred and twenty-one roots, joined centrally at the core of Klavier, which resembled a knot. Like a thousand thousand ratkings (shrilled Vipassana, higher than high in its pearly ‘throat’)! There are no maps to trace the swarm of the innermost knot which guarded the throne room, though I will certainly know the way, when we enter. For now we may. Klavier is mending!

  —So you must stick close, Vipassana, said Freer. —Around my neck.

  —We are bound by duty, sirrah, crooned Vipassana more softly. —The task of this one has been written. Above us . . .

  —Make it fast, Vip, said Freer.

  —At the surface of the world, said Vipassana, becoming shrill again, —the hundred and twenty-one Made Minds of Klavier stand on guard, each gazing into vacuum through a face skin of Klavier, of which there are a hundred and twenty-one. Each face flowers from the tip of a single root. Like the flowers which ate Tile Dance.

  —A fine krewe, said Freer.

  —Each Made Mind has sovereignty over its single root, continued Vipassana unstoppably. —Around each face skin, or glass island, brachiates a great leaf of toughened epidermal matter, which conceals the countenance of the Made Mind from visual access, when necessary. Each of these leaves is a skin which enwraps the whole of Klavier, like a cigar. A total of one hundred and twenty-one skins enwraps Klavier, like a hundred and twenty-one layers of bark around a Tree.

  Freer felt a thrust of something from within, like the And Then of a story told once but lost.

  The maze of plazas below them became streets and crannies and agoras at a pace which, because of slow augment, seemed inchworm. The world was exceedingly populous. Gazebos swung into the void like Christmas ornaments.

  Balloons dodged them slo-mo.

  Vipassana had paused, as though rust had caught the necklace.

  —Why elevens? said Freer.

  —Predecessors preferred to count in elevens. For reasons of grace and state and trust. One ring to bind the ten. Gorgons are decimal plus one. At this moment we are at gravity shift on the strand that binds two fives. We are in a Predecessor cathedral, sirrah, primal era. Klavier is a gorgon of the deep. It is a gorgon of threshold. It guards the inner stars.

  Flickers of meaning beckoned again at Freer from somewhere inside his head, as though something were whispering to something.

  —By linking the halves of Klavier, sirrah, we have awoken the gorgon, said Vipassana in a voice whose croon was stifled.

  —Kath? KathKirtt? End augment, please.

  The world obediently swiftened.

  Freer shook for a second under the blow of speed.

  The cache-sex stroked his hot scrotum, tickled the veil of pubic hair. Her lion head stared up at him, foliate and green and grinning.

  —Bind me, Stinky. Bind me, bind me.

  At this point she did not display the grimace of the flyte gorgon.

  —Are you decimal plus one, KathKirtt?

  —Are you, Stinky?

  Behind his eyes, gauze flickered like whips: about to expose something to an intolerable light.

  —Watch and ward, Stinky.

  The siblings of Quondam were doing their job.

  —Okey dokey, Made Mind, murmured Freer.

  He turned to the master of Klavier.

  ‘That was a fair résumé,’ said Appleseed.

  ‘Fuck you, Johnny. How could you hear? We were in augment.’

  Appleseed lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Just doing what comes naturally,’ he said.

  Below them, packing the plazas which extended into darkness like wings, continued to gather the representatives of the hundred and twenty-one cohorts who had come to greet the pilot, some standing solo, some of them nonbilaterals inbent into triads or aslant, some in scrums like washed insects of polished stone. The Munchkin chitter of the thousands of voices began to separate into individual words, rapt filigrees of acclaim.

  Toon dragons launched into the air, trailing flags.

  ‘Well?’ said Appleseed.

  ‘I am touched by the music of your flock.’

  ‘Do you hear music?’

  ‘Of course. I have been hearing music from the moment
we left the ship.’

  Johnny Appleseed turned face on to Freer.

  His eyes were wet.

  ‘They have been with me a long time, some of them. Meat puppets are very frail.’

  This did not really seem to explain the tears, or the erect penis.

  ‘And now I’m bringing Insort Geront down on your neck.’

  ‘O fuck that,’ said Johnny Appleseed, fingering his genitals. ‘They’ve been overdue for a Billion Heartbeats. Fuckheads. And now they’re too late.’

  ‘Too late for what?’

  ‘Why, sonny, too late to keep us from saving the universe, of course.’

  Lanterns shone down upon them from the higher tiers of the city. In the centre of the portal, the stamen spun. A central plaza overlooking the black depths of the portal seemed to be their setdown point. The surface of the plaza was a great mosaic, laid in a spiral pattern whose still centre point they were now approaching. The gondola touched ground, just to one side of the centre, at a gap in the mosaic tiling. It could now be seen that the tiles were set into patterns the same size as the gondola itself. It retracted its railings. It settled itself with a sigh, fitted itself neatly into the gap. The painted faces with bee eyes woven into its base tittered softly and fell silent. The gondola stilled, becoming a tile story in the mosaic once again, like its thousand siblings.

  • • •

  They were on the ground of Klavier, in the heart of a great circle of flesh sapients, of sigilla buffed and polished in their fifteen minutes of fame, and eidolons flickering their codes, and blissful toons. Far above them Tile Dance continued to turn like a slow top where the two conjoined stamens met, and shot a shaft of lightning and thunder down, but not rain. Fragrance sifted down upon their heads, through the light-shot darkening air, from higher tiers. A veil of spinning capillaries arched over the two homo sapiens males and made a palanquin.

  The umbrellas turned into caduceus staffs.

  ‘Welcome home,’ said Appleseed in a slow voice which creaked. ‘O daily growing.’

  Toon dragons wheeled above them through hanging lanterns.

  Freer woke his Sniffer, which whuffed.