by John Clute
Opsophagos gestured with all the arms it had.
Alderede downed shields to welcome in Tile Dance with its prey, the homo sapiens whose arrival had begun to trigger an impermissible awakening.
Tile Dance blinked out.
It had never been.
Something like a sound exited the great open mouth of Johnny Appleseed.
It was faster than the speed of light.
The death voice of Vipassana sounded throughout the deep.
The skull of flayed skin in the iron mask turned to dew. —Anna, said the death voice of VipassAnna faster than light.
And went out.
The mouths of the skull opened, all the stars of the universe clustered at the verge of the mouths, which began to utter the true name they bore. For the smallest possible fraction of the beating of a Heart, within Alderede, a nova opened its mouth.
—A-n—
And went out.
Opsophagos had already begun to shriek, Alderede had already begun to raise its shields again, but far too late.
The star went out.
The death of the Made Mind burned inside out.
Within the command chamber of Alderede, the rain caught fire. The charred guts of Opsophagos came unstuck from its carapace and adhered to the melted cart. The brain of Opsophagos turned to smoke and fled through eye sockets and choked the tripartite visor of screens and blinded the Quorum God. Plaque melted, singeing the mouths of the God.
The carapace of Opsophagos gazed through hollow eye sockets at the ruined Alderede.
Opsophagos was stone dead.
But within the central stomach of its largest body part, within a safe-house creche of cuticle and bone and plaque, the only son opened its mouths, which began to sharpen. The brain of the only son was void, but would soon find food for thought, just as Opsophagos had found its inheritance in the deepest gut of its own dead father. In the heart of the ruin, the only son of Opsophagos began to chew the burned meat which was its birthright, practising on its sire the same gluttony God practised on the world.
thirteen
Mamselle lowered her arms and saw that those in her charge were safe.
—La de da, she said, breathing out at last.
The gust of her breath shook the Handfasts and herms on their stems.
—La de da.
Aftershocks of the dying continued to shake the air.
In the centre of the command chamber, FreeLance stood amidst flames that did not burn, the sword still shivering in his hand. The blade, which was furnace-hot, gave off a moire glimmer.
The flames blinked out.
Clutched to its post, the lion of KathKirtt, which had gazed unblinking into the passing of Vipassana, began to regain its lustre.
Around them glowed the bee eyes of Ynis Gutrin within their traceries of tile, menus within menus applauding. The eyes of the Predecessor ship gazed through the skins of Klavier into vacuum, showed a silence under the stars, the Alderede adrift, the Harpe englobement fraying already, rescue frigates flickering out of their berths in an outer skin; they began to bracket the imploded hive ship.
Conclave-space winches began to haul it back into space-time.
Within Ynis Gutrin, the Doc Punch eyes awoke. Paint tears leaked down the porcelain face. The eyes focused on the grass of Vipassana.
Doc Punch tocked reprovingly.
—Permission granted, said the Knight Captain of Tile Dance.
The medic hopped across the shaking floor.
The Knight Captain moved his sword to one side, so as not to incinerate the Doc, which began to mow the grass, sucking it up through the base of its herm and into its gut, where nutrients mulched the detritus of the fallen foe.
—Redeem what you can, said FreeLance.
Doc Punch gave a nasal medic humph and tic-tocked with its precious cargo to the iris of Ynis Gutrin, which opened. Slow augment hit the Doc in the corridor, but it kept its balance. Soon, deep within their coffers, new golem eidolons would sprout.
Before the iris shut, a new coffer slid inside, guided by several medics.
—La de da, said Mamselle yet again from her alcove, —we have come a far piece. Time to end.
The posse of Doc Punches surrounded her, prostheses and nutrient tubes dangling. The alcove drew its curtains around the medics and the coffer and the rose gaze of the Predecessor Queen.
—Magnifico Knight Captain Sir! she belled from inside. —Tell them to stop tickling.
—Ma’am, said the Knight Captain. —You beggar praise.
—Curioso plaudit, flyte cuirass of sainted ship!
His homo sapiens body had begun to shiver, perhaps from aftershocks, perhaps from augment load. The body had been in heavy augment for more than Thirty Heartbeats, more than thirty seconds according to the commonest system of reckoning used on Human Earth. If this went on much longer, the body would suffer demise.
The aftershocks, too, were constant and severe.
The death of a Made Mind demoted the universe.
—Stinky? said the shrouded Predecessor Queen.
—Ma’am? said Freer.
—I think we need to prepare to turn again, mon cheri. Ask Tile Dance to ready herself. It is time to turn the lock in the door. It is time to end.
It was time to end.
—All we need now is a path dance for the maze.
Sweat steamed into Freer’s eyes.
The Predecessor Queen had drunk most of the heat, had massively reduced the acoustic impact of the implosion, of the multifold screams of shantih, of the lance of going. Glass Island normally maintained itself at homo sapiens body heat, and was rapidly cooling to that point again.
But the air still burned.
The death of Vipassana would have melted unsealed flesh.
Freer picked at an earlobe, pulled off the earring.
He tossed the tiny Sniffer corpse at a stray Doc Punch, which sucked it from the air and swallowed it safely.
—Ma’am, he said. —What path? What dance? Do we not simply turn, as Tile Dance has? Downwards? he said.
—O simplex laddie! belled the Predecessor Queen behind her arras. —Merry-go-round-go-round around the skins is all that simple turning comes to, she said. —Heavy- footed heterocrony plop, circum plop, circum plop, forever, round and round the core cake, circum plopping. O my tiger rugs! O my skins! Such trickster skins of Klavier, big-domed invigilator! Heterocronies rife! No way in! Inside Klavier is inside a hundred and twenty-one time slices, slice your head off on your way back before you start!
—But—
—She is saying that the gate to Eolhxir is wormholes, Stinky, murmured KathKirtt, —seven wormholes, or a hundred and twenty-one, or as many as the grains of sand that rim the World Ocean. One wormhole inside another wormhole inside another wormhole, the last wormhole inside that gave it birth, and inside the last wormhole the first wormhole doing phoenix, Stinky. Round and round and round.
—Ah.
—How is it do you think our most sagacious Johnny Come Home never found the way in?
—Okey dokey, said FreeLance.
—Why do you think he was so anxious for you to fuck?
—Fucking is a sight for sore eyes?
—Nix, Stinky. Something else, too—
—But Vipassana . . . interrupted FreeLance.
—Vipassana had to abscond with you before you reboarded Tile Dance. Because once you were safe inside, and your guide safely with you, Tile Dance would have disappeared down the rabbit hole.
—No, said Freer. —Vipassana was Made to know where he stood.
—Exactly. He was not standing in the right place. You have to start somewhere to know the next step. Here is the dancing floor.
A hundred masks of KathKirtt pinwheeled through Ynis Gutrin.
—Tile Dance.
—Tile Dance is our dancing floor, Stinky. Find a guide. She knows the steps.
The Knight Captain blinked, shrugged.
—Okey dokey, he said. —So
who will show us the way, now that Vipassana has gained his heart’s desire? You, transitus tessera?
—Moi? pealed Mamselle.
—Ya.
—If I knew my way home, if I knew how to retrace the steps of the labyrinth, said Cunning Earth Link almost monotonally and stopped. —If I had known my way home, she said finally, —I would have gone home.
—But you are our Route-Only, said Freer.
—Fiddlesticks, said Mamselle. —Cobblers, fabuloso wobblies, fibs, prevarications, sweet boykins. I did whoppers!
—You lied to us?
—Kitchee sure thing coo tickle wickle! belled the Predecessor Queen. —But not always. Eolhxir is big smiley face at heart of maze, true! Just that she is inside not outside, big dijf! My folk live in Eolhxir, true! Merely a small chronology gap in my wholesome tale.
—How long? said Freer.
She was silent.
—How long have you been lost?
—Since plaque. Since Tile Dance came too close to Human Earth one time and ate plaque and forgot how to boogie. Since Tile Dance went beachcomber with a coffer full of Freer. Since before you guys, said the Predecessor Queen and her mouth shut and she said no more.
—I am weary, utterly weary, said the male homo sapiens made of meat and bone. —I think it is time to down augment.
But she said no more, either aye or nay.
—Down— said the Knight Captain of Tile Dance.
But a herm opened its mouth and roared.
—Retain augment, FreeLance said into conclave space.
—Okey dokey okey dokey, he said to the jittery war herm. —You may present menu.
Out slid the long wide tongue through the menu teeth, revealing a thousand displays. A second Harpe flotilla was visible. It had sutured its way into normal space. It was less than a light-year distant and closing.
—KathKirtt? said Freer. —SammSabaoth? His naked body glowed with sweat.
—Nix problem, murmured the janus lion of KathKirtt, gazing jack inwards through conclave space at the infinite tumbleweeds of the cards of memory, gazing flyte through bee eyes at the world behind the jaculating herm menus.
—Nix problem, growled SammSabaoth.
A fist appaumy glared through a thousand displays within the herm head.
—Black Mass Harpe faction, said KathKirtt.
—They have been within our compass, said SammSabaoth. —For a long time.
—Ambush time, said one of the Made Minds.
—They hope to ambush Opsophagos while the fleet’s occupied, said the other. —For the heads. Must be a hundred thousand flesh sleepers in Alderede alone.
—The death of the twin is confirmed? said the Knight Captain of Tile Dance.
—She was designated Anna. She was a dolphin of the Planisphere. She counted the birds of the field, he located them. She did wave, he did particle.
—Aye aye, boyo, said a chorus of voices. —She is dead.
—Johnny? said the Knight Captain of Tile Dance. —Did it work? Are we secure? Did we burn Opsophagos’s head off?
—Ya, said AppleSeed. —Opsophagos is an ex dung beetle.
—Is Klavier secure?
—Close thing, Stinky. A few stray incursions, laser shit. Some skin damage. We damn near lost a face. But we are intact.
—Okey dokey, said FreeLance.
—Scram. You are sticking in my craw.
The voices of the Lord Marcher sounded from all the skins.
—Scram now, said the Moses parched in limbo.
—Vale, said FreeLance.
He raised his face to the full face of the ship.
—Down augment, he said.
The world hit him with a great whump.
The thousand faces of the ship began to dance.
Finally, the Mother spoke again.
—Nathaniel, she said.
—We are ready, Mamselle. Tell us what to do?
There was an amused clicking of parthenogenete claws. The alcove she sat within began to unfold.
—Easy, she rustled. —Do what you do so well. But first you must say hello to Beatrice.
He lifted his eyes, for the curtain that had concealed the Mother was open and her womb gaped. The inside of her womb was dense with arches and stairwells and fireflies and Wisdom Fish and tilework and magi and all the other cards and icons of the Triple Goddess chased in copper filigree and the son. The inside outside of the Predecessor Queen was an isomorph of conclave space.
From deep within came a smell of human skin.
Something tinier than the eye could see grew into sight as though blown by a great wind.
—Ferocity? he whispered.
She stepped through the Triple Goddess, which jangled in the wind of time. She stepped towards Freer. She climbed stairwells and passed under arches and stroked the Wisdom Fish who paced alongside in their viaducts of marble. Long had they gazed through aquarium windows at the cornices where golems hopped, their waters shaking to the breath of engine brother; they had waited since the beginning of time to return to Ocean. She passed through stage after stage upwards. In one tiny hand daily growing she held the lens from the innermost coffer of Tile Dance.
The inside outside of the holy parthenogenete was an isomorph of the inside outside of the lens.
Ferocity Monthly-Niece grew daily, she grew as swift as the wind, she slid naked from the womb full-grown.
She stood on sandalwood.
The top of her head reached as high as before.
Her hair was clean, there were a million hairs.
Her body was so new it bristled.
She had been anointed in oil and juices. Steam came off her thighs, heat braised in her cunt, her breasts shivered slightly as though a million siblings of Quondam were jostling for the best seats, this was the case.
Her cunt smelled of fresh bread.
Freer was fully erect.
Once in the world of Ynis Gutrin, she had begun to cool.
She cooled all the way down to body heat.
Her eyes were the eyes of the woman.
‘Bejasus,’ said Ferocity Monthly-Niece acoustic, in the voice of her womb twin, and her face flared from within, tattoos aborning, the face-like countenance of Quondam peering jack through the tough integument and skin of the flesh sapient who served flyte for cuckold Arturus.
‘Bejasus what a honker,’ she said in the voice of her jack.
Freer glanced down at his erect penis.
He smiled.
‘Hello,’ said Ferocity in her voice. ‘Hi there. Husband. Thank you for not letting go.’
‘Thank you,’ said Freer, ‘for being on the ball.’
Above them, from the portable throne within the alcove, came a sound, something resembling a chuckle.
‘You mean in the ball, in the ball,’ shrieked Mamselle. ‘Such a catawampus hee haw, oooh golly. In the ball, in the ball, in the ball.’
Mamselle hee’d and hawed for a fraction of a Heartbeat in the world.
‘Thank you for being so in the ball,’ she pealed.
But slowly her claws became silent.
‘Okey dokey,’ she said finally. ‘Proceed. Follow the lens, Ferocity. Do what you were bred to do.’
Ferocity gazed for an instant into Freer’s eyes.
The war herm — its head was of bilateral provenance — blanched at the heat of the direct homo sapiens gaze.
She opened her hand.
The lens in her palm glowed so bright it could be seen with the naked eye.
‘This is the seed of the Tree of honey,’ she said. ‘It will guide my steps.’
She lifted the lens to her mouth and swallowed it.
Then she spread her arms, bent her elbows, twisted her torso, paced out a swift intricate pattern around the motionless male homo sapiens, her knees lifting sharply. She stopped short when she had finished measuring out a quincunx.
She stood in the centre of the quincunx with Freer.
‘Fuck me,’ she said.
/> ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘I have perfect pitch.’
The two homo sapiens were beaded in sweat. They slid to their knees and sniffed each other formally. The beckoner embraced the beckoned, or the other way round.
‘Fuck me,’ she said. ‘Fuck me, I know the moves. Fuck me. Husband.’
Ferocity Monthly-Niece touched Nathaniel Freer with the spiral contours of her wet tongue, touched him with her ten fingers, with her ten toes, with her hard tits, each in place. His hands touched her, toes, nipples, each in place.
Every touch moved thus and so, thus and so. They danced through the quincunx thus and so, thus and so.
It was like tracing a map, like bees dancing.
Slowly, almost gingerly, Tile Dance could be felt shifting, engine brother stamping deep within her; she pulsed to each move of the homo sapiens, thus and so.
‘Get inside me now,’ whispered Ferocity Monthly- Niece. Their bodies were glued together.
As the penis of the male homo sapiens slid into the slippery female homo sapiens cunt, Tile Dance began very slowly to slide through the first of the orifices into the true inside of Klavier. The helices of commissure that veiled her spun slowly around the axis of the ship; the hollow they made hummed from the bottom of its throat, like a conch in the wind. The dolphin flanks of Tile Dance sounded the deeps.
From many klicks above, where the skins of Klavier stood against the vacuum of space, it seemed as though a plug had been pulled.
Tile Dance sank closer to the gates of Ocean.
—Vale, said the hundred and twenty-one voices of the convener.
The inside of Klavier was not black but sooth, not fire but hale, not smooth but walled, not hollow but dense with palimpsests, not eyeless but thick with murals. It was the maze of grief and joy, turn which way you might.
‘Now!’ cried Ferocity.
Tile Dance passed through the first gate.
‘Turn!’ she cried.
‘Turn!’ she cried.
The foam-specked silver flanks of Tile Dance slid through the second gate, into perpetual rain. Their oiled bodies moved as one, as a commissure now healed.