Appleseed

by John Clute

  —AppleSeed?

  —Boyo.

  —Kath? Kathkirtt?

  —Got it in one.

  The Vipassana body ensemble was turning the raiding party back to Tile Dance. It was within a few reaches of gaining its goal. Within a Heartbeat it would be cutting its way through the final hardened wall of ‘yew’, emerging into the open at a point precisely opposite the ship’s heavily armed port.

  —This appears to be suicide, said AppleSeed.

  —O? said Freer. —Yeah?

  —How else? said AppleSeed.

  —KathKirtt, said Freer.

  —Stinky?

  —Please cast your great Mindbox back a few Thousand Heartbeats.

  —So?

  —When you died.

  The ship Mind remained silent.

  —When you died, KathKirtt.

  —So?

  —When Johnny Appleseed winked.

  —We know, growled the ship Mind.

  AppleSeed remained silent.

  —When you shut me down into deepsleep. When you shut Tile Dance down and died.

  —So? So? So?

  —SammSabaoth? What did you do?

  —We shut down together, said SammSabaoth. —I had very little memory to lose.

  —And Vipassana?

  —Vipassana was instructed to follow me down, after fixing Tile Dance on course.

  —You perceived Vipassana following you down?

  —I could not do so. I was dead.

  —I was dead, echoed KathKirtt.

  There was a pause, a nano burp of time swelling to a halt.

  —So, said the Knight Captain of Tile Dance, —Vipassana, our faithful Made Mind of absolute location, had complete run of Ynis Gutrin for the period during which you and I were dead or asleep. Something like a Thousand Heartbeats, I believe.

  —So? said KathKirtt, frigid.

  It was a sound of very great Made Mind terror.

  —Ynis? murmured AppleSeed.

  —Aeons of Made Mind time, dear krewe. As you very well know, O great beings from Beyond. Plenty of time to update his masters on our course, our diet, our ETA, our bowel movements. Plenty of time to train the nanoware in my blood. Plenty of time to break into Tile Dance’s secret diary, send her valentines from Sugar Daddy.

  —So? said KathKirtt in a freezing choir like sleet.

  Freer saw Ynis Gutrin inside his Mind’s eye. She had the face of Ferocity Monthly-Niece. On the face of Tile Dance he could see the tracery of filaments that had scarred his wife with a thousand stories; but it was no longer a map of worlds. It had become the wires of a cage. Out of the bottom of his Mind, Ynis Gutrin stared back at Freer through her bonds.

  Vast humpbacked engine brother stared upwards through thick shields bemused, ready to stamp, stamp, stamp.

  —Samm? said Freer.

  The fist appaumy was the colour of flame.

  —While we were dead, said SammSabaoth finally, —Vipassana will have had sufficient time to break Tile Dance’s operating codes, time enough to establish bypass controls over her every synapse. He may be able to short you out, KathKirtt. He may even be able to mimic you well enough to win her heart. Tile Dance may be slaved to Vipassana.

  —I believe, said FreeLance, —that this is what happened. I think Vipassana thinks he can take her over, that Tile Dance will not obey you.

  —Nix nix, shouted KathKirtt. —Nix! Nix!

  —Kath, sweetling, Kath, Kath. Do you remember when we left Tile Dance and descended, Johnny Appleseed and me, through open air?

  —Go on, whispered the Made Mind who had inhabited Tile Dance from the utter beginning.

  —Cast your sweet Mind back, Kath, Kirtt. Do you remember—

  —Teams of grunts! screamed KathKirtt. —Sewing commissure together.

  —Whose order?

  —There are no orders in my trays.

  —Whose order then?

  —Vipassana, Vipassana.

  —How many teams, Kath? Retrace your map eye, Kath. Is one team missing?

  —Yesss.

  —Made up of frog eidolons and grunt golems?

  KathKirtt only hissed.

  Freer made a shrugging motion, if it could be called a motion, within the thousandfold Möbius foam-bath of Made Mind conclave space.

  —I do not wish Vipassana to find out we have blown him, said SammSabaoth, —yet.

  FreeLance grinned.

  —Right! he boomed. Are we secure in here?

  —I have made it so, said AppleSeed. —I have asked Klavier to secrete us out of hearing of Vipassana. I have kept Vipassana out of the loop for some time now. We are feeding him a harmless version of conclave, where we are all very confused.

  A motor cortex penis flared Möbius at the heart of the central atrium of conclave space, burst into a flambeau of toon roses.

  —Right, Freer repeated. —Get us aboard.

  His gaze flyted through conclave space.

  —Get us aboard. Then I will grant Vipassana the death he longs for.

  Conclave space closed like a star blinking out.

  Freer held the head by a hank of hair. Filaments continued to sleet against its skin, webbing it. The frog bodies and the golem hopped onward. The phalanx of junior golems scraped cobwebs of remembered lives off the mosaic ceilings with every rubbery hop, their poison ducts spewing upon hundreds of worlds false memories of the Flood.

  The Vipassana body ensemble stopped suddenly.

  The golems and the barbed fleeters collapsed in a heap, upended claws and other protuberances carving air quotes in the dust-choked wind.

  The body ensemble began to steam, chittered louder than sirens, shivered in an ague of rage. Parts of Vipassana hurled himself against the wall that had stopped them.

  But the wall did not dissolve.

  Their spiral course had taken them back to the epidermal yew. But now — after the assault on the train — it had toughened itself. It was now of the same substance that shaped the hundred and twenty-one faces emblematic of the Made Minds of Klavier as they gazed flyte into vacuum, where they took on the aspect of a single face and taunted Opsophagos of the Harpe, stared unblinking at the dung-beetle.

  The funnel into the audience chambers at the heart of Klavier lay on the other side of the epidermis.

  Freer’s feet flopped on to the floor, which stung like bees defensive of their queen. His feet bled copiously, rivers of terrible fast blood fell off his feet and out of augment and slowed, engorging as they did so a million dead filaments where whole planetary histories had once jostled. In the mud-torpid plaque-like tumble of blood, the bees drowned or drank the human blood.

  A cavity opened by his side.

  —Reduce augment, he murmured.

  The world slowed to the speed of Vipassana.

  As slowly as it was possible for him to move — so as not to destroy the head as it left the reduced augment field — he tossed his wife into the niche, which sealed shut silently, swiftly, became an azulejaria whose grouting bled a tale of hecatombs. He gazed tile (the cavity was lined with tiles the colour of a summer day on Human Earth), saw the head of his wife safe within the hollow within the walls, streaming tiny rivers of sweat and pollen, her eyes closed. The head was washed in the light of the blue tiles. She was veiled. She was bathed in medicines. Her eyes opened and she gazed into Freer.

  Bride, he mouthed jack into the kaleidoscope of her eyes, which closed again in sleep.

  The severed head sank into the bath of veils.

  Freer could see her no longer.

  A metre away from his naked body, the body ensemble continued to chitter. A frog thing detached from the mix of parts and began to glow, turned into a tiny sun. Unprotected human flesh eyes would have gone blind at the sight. The sound the frog part made was higher than flesh ears could register (Freer accessed the gabble, decoded it: in a frail parody of the voice of Vipassana the Made Mind of absolute location, the frog part begged for the pain to stop). The minuscule nova of frog fles
h attached itself to the callus of the wall and began to burn through. Resinous smoke filled the passageway.

  The yew screamed, melodiously.

  Light exploded.

  Before turning into a cinder, the body part had broken through into the open.

  The smoke dissipated upwards — within a few Heartbeats it began to cloak the lower buttresses and trampolines of the rim city, to drift into arcades, where it took on many colours.

  The air cleared. They stood in steaming rubble at the rim of the world abyss. A dozen metres to their left, a widening triangular rip in the texture of the wall showed the edge of the site of the original assault. A glint of metal could be seen around the slow curve of the great portal: the dead locomotive leaking lymph, or twisted tracks perhaps, or the crushed caboose.

  Before them, metres distant, stared the open port of Tile Dance. The port was as open as a full Moon. The ship lay in the heart of the abyss like a babe in arms. The hull of the ship glowed silver within a cottony moire quilt of interwoven capillaries, which filled the gap between her and the ruptured wall. Larger nodes flickered through the gossamer webs. Matted capillaries bewhiskered the iris opening into Tile Dance; they pulsed and bred, weaseled and whirled around the mammal-hot, beguiling cunt.

  A silver metal gangway tongue protruded between the oestral lips, slid across the gap. It was spick and span. Almost instantly, shoals of nodes engulfed it.

  —KathKirtt? murmured Freer.

  —Stinky?

  —Did you order Tile Dance to open?

  —Nix.

  —So?

  —So Vipassana has gained control. You were right.

  —Do not try to countermand.

  A millisecond pause.

  —Okey dokey.

  It was a voice of ice.

  —SammSabaoth?

  —Understood, growled the fist appaumy pale as Made Mind ice from its command apse within conclave space.

  The tongue finished traversing the populous gap between ship and wall, touched the new wound there, the seared yew.

  —Nay, growled a Made Mind octaves below human ears.

  The end of the tongue moistened. The dust of worlds adhered to the tongue.

  —Hush.

  The surviving aspects of the Vipassana body ensemble stepped on to the gangway. The cartilaginous knives that were its feet slit capillaries apart, squashed ganglions of nodes, but did not penetrate the tongue itself, which sopped up the wounds of Vipassana’s passage. Slitheringly, the body parts operated by the rogue Made Mind hopped across the veiled abyss, the tunnel into the heart of things.

  —Utter silence, please, murmured Freer down foam- tossed spasms of conclave space.

  The krewe held its breath. Masks remained frozen throughout Tile Dance. Dead silence obtained.

  —Thank you.

  The body ensemble came to a halt at the round supine lip of the port; stuck a head inside.

  It ululated; a frog ass wiggled.

  The sound of ululation was clearly peremptory, jubilant.

  The team of golems obeyed the sound, rushed across the gangway over the abyss in Vipassana’s wake. The Knight Captain of Tile Dance entered the ship his home hanging bonelessly over a golem shoulder.

  The Vipassana body ensemble continued to ululate its joy for an instant, then subsided. The interior of the ship was dead silent, full of shadows which had frozen on command. Lanterns glowed in alcoves as always, but the flames within did not move. The mirrors reflected nothing but that which lay in their path, an azulejaria panel perhaps, with its mouth fixed open; the long chronicles embedded in the tiles were mute. The grouting was hard and fast. Masks clustered motionless on every herm.

  There was a movement, something in the corridor, it made a guffawing sound, stumbled into the light.

  It was a Number One Son.

  The sigillum was dripping slightly. It had just hatched.

  It lifted a welcoming hand, fingers open.

  ‘Gimme five,’ it said.

  Vipassana sliced the hand off at the wrist.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ said Number One Son.

  Sawdust trickled from the stump.

  ‘You called?’ said Number One Son.

  It knelt, touched its goofish wooden injun hairpiece to the floor, next to the severed hand, which clambered on to its shoulder and clung there.

  ‘Proceed ahead of me to control centre,’ said the central shape of Vipassana. ‘Do not activate the lift shaft. We will walk, all of us together.’

  ‘Okey dokey, Mr Vip,’ said Number One Son and got to its feet and obeyed.

  It did not seem to register the presence of its lord.

  A flyte mask in a mirrored alcove began to shiver, shaking in the envelope of its embrace a sibling jack, a lion couchant with a glaring eye.

  —Hush, said Freer very deep.

  —Hush, said the far deeper voice of Klavier.

  The Minds had awoken.

  Freer almost smiled with his broken mouth.

  The Vipassana parts and the golems and the fleeters trailed the sigillum up corridors which spiralled and jinked, wound around and around the central axis of Tile Dance. They clambered through cornice after cornice - some decks sunk in shadow, some mirror-bright - further and further into the interior, until they reached a brass blank shut iris, girded round by enamelled lions in their cartouches. They had stopped chasing each other’s tails. They had been stricken into immobility.

  ‘Open,’ came a voice out of the Vipassana body ensemble.

  The iris remained sealed. The lions gazed out of their world, utterly blank. It was as though the invasion had driven Tile Dance into shock.

  A body part nudged Number One Son.

  ‘Use your master’s voice,’ it said. ‘Demand entry.’

  ‘Open sesame,’ said Number One Son in Freer’s acoustic voice, and faster than a normal eye could follow the iris yawned open, the lions shut their eyes.

  Vipassana emitted a small urgent ululating chirrup, and hopped into Ynis Gutrin, whose three hundred and sixty degrees of window were shot with amber grouting where a thousand masks lay as silent as cards. The body ensemble stopped upon a triangle of sandalwood, which became a platform at a wave and thrust into what seemed open space. The platform was edged with doting handfasts, eleven in number. But the menus which normally danced in their palms, begging to be called, had closed their slot eyes superciliously. The vast hologram sphere at the centre of Glass Island held nothing in its bright focus but Tile Dance buried klicks deep in Klavier, Tile Dance embedded in a shaft on a surface of matted yew which seemed vaster than her instruments had previously encompassed. The hologram sphere was full of echoes where normally it communed with conclave space: atriums and stages empty of conversation haunted its central coigns of vantage: no kings dying whose beards were menus, no magi wielding optic fibre wands of a cunning weave on stages guarded over by rune-rich arches. Number One Son and the golems stood as still as death.

  A transparent caul enfolded the sigillum and the grunt eidolons.

  Finally, with a ratcheting cough, one planiform mask managed to extricate itself from a gnarled herm and settled around the central Vipassana neck. The feet of the Vipassana sank through a thousand layers of varnish and the platform began to stink. The mask became pallid, worn.

  A frog arm gestured, its encrusted blade glittering in a thousand lamps. The golem obediently dropped Freer to the sandalwood planking, where he lay like Raggedy Ann, his damaged torso limp, akimbo, one arm hanging over the edge, pointing downwards at a shut iris. Vipassana’s tongues flickered, spat a circle of hot sputum around the body. The wood sizzled into a kind of anguished life, enclosing the defeated meat puppet within a ring of fire. The arm was burning.

  ‘Freer,’ crooned a dozen voices which were all the voice of Vipassana, ‘it is time to wake.’

  Freer’s good eye fluttered.

  ‘A goodly response, sirrah. It is time that we make our exit from Klavier.’

  Fre
er’s head seemed to shiver no.

  But he pulled his burning arm away from the flame.

  ‘You will help me or I will dispose of more of these.’

  With a movement that seemed almost fastidious, one Vipassana arm shook a mucusy sleeve, dislodging a spume of severed world memories.

  ‘I register you as fully awake, “Stinky”,’ crooned the Made Mind of absolute location. ‘I know you are in there. I know exactly where you are.’

  Freer’s eye opened.

  A knife-sharp paw incised with gods and goddesses in rut passed scathelessly through the flame, pincered his bad arm, hoisted him to his feet, cut his arm almost in two.

  Freer stood within the circle of fire, the very image of Jim Thorpe facing disgrace. His feet were unsteady. He was silent.

  The Sniffer was long dead.

  ‘So, then, Vipassana?’ he said acoustic. ‘You called?’

  ‘I am glad you recognise me,’ crooned the Vipassana body parts in unison, ‘for I am exactly here.’

  ‘Why? Why this?’

  Freer’s good arm began a gesture that might have pointed back down the trail of deaths.

  But a scythe severed it.

  The forearm dropped to the sandalwood floor.

  It took care not to twitch.

  ‘Silence, please,’ crooned a frog. ‘You need to know very little.’

  ‘Why waken me at all?’

  ‘That is simplicity itself, flesh sapient. I am being kind. You are the commander of Tile Dance. She will recognise you and follow your orders without trauma. Please order her to blast herself immediately from the trap she has fallen into, and proceed immediately to the ark Alderede, which remains in orbit.’

  ‘We are deep within Klavier. If we attempted unilateral uncoupling, we might destroy the station. The station, on the other hand, might destroy us.’

  ‘Ah,’ murmured another frog.

  ‘I believe you wish to die, Vipassana.’

  The frog mouths stretched their mouths in unison.

  ‘Sirrah,’ they all said, ‘it would beseem you to obey.’

  ‘I do recognise you,’ said Freer in a darker voice, his black gaze unblinking now. He raised his arm to point and it did not fall off. ‘I recognise you.’

  He paused. The hand Vipassana had cut off tickled his foot.