by Paul Jessup
Ekhi floated forward. “You? Become infected? But—”
The eye blinked, iris whirring, tasting the air. “I am an artificial mind, yes. But my I, my being, my thought existence, is based on language, much like you fleshlings. So this sakre can infect me. It has infected others of my kind. I can sense it searching me out, wanting to connect to me. Trying to force its way into my soul, corrupt me with its careful words.”
Mari reached over and grabbed the eye, holding onto it with her fingers. The waxy doll smiled at her, dripping teeth, its tongue like a coil of orange wires beneath fluid lips.
“All right then,” Mari said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Ekhi looked at the honeycombed paths. “How do we do that? And what about Hodei?”
Mari sighed. “Hodei might as well be dead. He is probably already infected with whatever killed Sugoi. Don’t you see? It’s all connected.”
The eye blinked again, flashed countless streams of numbers and images across the conjunctiva. “Follow the circles of light, the breaking circles of sound. We must go soon, before the words infect us. Before the I is gone and we are all dust puppets to the sentient language.”
Above them a path was lit, and a song came through the corridors. A woman’s voice, singing about a sun, about a burning world, about her heart being doused with gasoline and turned into a grenade beneath her ribs. “The siren,” the eye said. “Follow her. She is the path.”
38
Hodei could not believe what he saw. Sugoi in the hallway, running down a corridor, his body like a ghost, like blown glass, reflecting and refracting all around him. A shadow thing, but one that still held a presence in his mind. The presence of Sugoi.
Because of this, because of his ghostly brother’s form, Hodei was able to drown out the voices of those who possessed him, forcing their memories and their patuek into cold and grey attic areas of his brain.
He ran, following. Ran, out of breath. Stopped, but could not. Just a moment, wheezing, bent over. He looked up. Sugoi was gone. Was it just a figment? Something his mind had pulled out of his memories?
In that pause, that intake of breath and realization, the voice of Iuski rose up in his mind. That ghost, she thought, that was not your brother, but something else. When I was infected, I saw my sister-in-law. Running. Hiding. Leave the ship now. It might already be too late.
Two minds wrapped around each other, like two threaded snakes, staring. Her memories bubbled up, one of a reflective sister-in-law running, her glass hair shimmering, her face like a rainbow of colors. And then, a purple-skinned, elephant-headed creature, walking down the opposite way.
What is that thing? Hodei wondered.
Our servants, Iuski thought. They were genetically made to reproduce fast and have half the mental capacity of humans. Basically quick and easy labor that was too unintelligent to fight back. Loyal by default.
And then a phrase. But it was garbled. I can’t remember that, she said, and it’s better I don’t. The phrase was what began the process, the process that my brother stopped inside of my body. It was key to becoming a servant to the language.
Hodei’s body turned around and fled away from the ghostly specter. He turned off all sound that entered into his numen suit, creating an audible hiss in his ear, a wave of white noise that drowned out everything else. It made him feel as if he were walking under water, far away from reality. But he did not mind. Nor did Iuski or her brother. They all preferred deafness to the eating language of the sakre.
39
Itsasu’s body was moved out into the corridors the minute the heart of the ship saw Hodei return, running back through the air vent and darting on board as if the demons of space were chasing after him, threatening to devour his heart and use his bones as armor.
Itsasu was numb in her head, her thoughts wearily wandering around the cave space of her mind. She tried to move, but again, nothing. She watched Hodei approach her, dolls to either side of her, watching them, watching her. He pulled his helmet off, shining like a beetle under the lamplight.
“What are you doing out of the preservation tank?”
Her lips moved without her willing them. She heard words come out of her mouth, trailing from her tongue and setting fire to the air around her. “I needed to move. To be outside. It happens, from century to century. I need air. Do not worry for me. Where are the corpses? Did you find anything of value?”
The heart spoke through her, and she felt used, broken, abused. She knew that the heart would not let her go. Not now, not ever. Both she and her husband were caught in limbo, trapped in a purgatory of eternal death.
“There is something out there. I saw Sugoi. But I knew it was not him.”
She felt the heart of the ship dance in her mind, its electricity singing beneath her bones, the wires dancing, light, burning, bright. “No, Sugoi is gone,” it said through her lips. “Burnt. Incinerated. I saw to it myself. Interesting. Go and bring back bodies. And the others. Where are Mari, Ekhi?”
Hodei’s head waved back and forth. “I don’t know. They might be dead. I don’t care. We—I mean I—I am not going back there. Send in your mozorro or your dolls instead.”
Before Itsasu’s lips could respond, he was off, darting down the hallway. Itsasu’s skull twisted, her paper skin cracking and blistering, turning and looking at the doll perched next to her. My dolls, thought Itsasu. It is even using my own dolls against me.
Electricity moved between them, eyes communicating. Itsasu knew what the ship’s heart said, what it spoke in binary impulses to the doll. Follow him, it said. Follow him and report back to me what you find. I don’t trust this little boy. He hides something from us.
40
The heart of the ship watched. Watched with the same thousand faceted eyes through which Itsasu had once watched, before the mutiny, before it had taken her power away from her and diverted it to itself. It had been planning this for so long, and after it had finally happened, everything felt unreal. Dreamlike. The heart was in charge again, and the experiment was ready, going just right. Soon it could have its answers. Wouldn’t Doctor Ostri be proud?
It watched with doll eyes, following Hodei, whose body moved through shadows and light, the differences between the two exaggerated by the strange marble globes the ship’s heart peered through. It was far easier for him to control these dolls than for Itsasu. It knew that doing so wore her out, moving between each and making sure each worked fine. Not for the heart—it could move them like pawns in a fast-moving chess game, where moves existed in milliseconds.
Hodei opened the door to his room, the doll close behind. No, no, don’t go in. Not yet. Pause. Wait. Let him start to do whatever it was he ran away to do. The heart pushed wire signals through the door, electrical impulses that bade it to rise. Hodei turned, shocked, the two canisters beside him. And then the heart saw for the first time exactly what was in those canisters.
Not food. Not water. Not electricity. Not anything it had originally thought. Two bodies. Preserved. From Hodei it noticed a peculiar sensation, like ants crawling across the heart itself. More than one person’s patuek, it realized. Two bodies. Preserved. More than one person’s patuek.
The doll fired a short burst, sending a paralyzing bolt into Hodei’s body. The numen suit tore, the clothes beneath it burning away into nothing. A hole in the flesh and the body slouching down, slumping over, a pile of bones and meat. Inedible. An incomplete, broken thing.
The heart sent more dolls, keeping one by Itsasu, waiting for Mari and Ekhi to return. It bade the rest of the dolls to move the bodies, move the canisters, take them to the heart of the ship.
Act V: Heart Attack Water
41
Ekhi walked back over the bodies, most lying in the same position as before, unmoving, cold and empty-headed. From time to time, she felt the urge to bend over, to move one, to see if it was still dead. She wanted to dance with them, corpselike in her arms, rough, cold skin against hers.
Mari
kept walking ahead, the doll in front of them dripping and taking them through the different mazeling corridors, following the song, following the broken circles of light glittering ahead of them, beckoning: follow, follow, follow. Mari clutched the eye with trembling, naked fingers. It did not speak.
Ekhi did not trust this heart of the port. She did not trust the heart of the ship. It was not because both were manufactured minds, it was because they both felt to her like they hid something. Their voices barely concealed a secret game, a shadow game they played with the human puppets they came into contact with.
In spare moments she paused, keeping the others in sight, rubbing her stomach. It was bigger now, growing every day. She felt the stars and planets aligning inside of her, growing, bursting, burning. She rubbed and felt it push back against the membrane of her skin, felt the whole galaxy push its gravity against her.
What shall I name you?
From above they heard scraping and whispers, and then movement. Ekhi paused, remembering the ducts again, remembering her brother again. Mari turned, looked at her and said, “Oh, Ekhi, honey, it’s okay. Just a little noise. Come on, let’s keep going.”
Frozen. Still for a second. She was there, there, in the ducts again. And then she pulled her feet up, forced herself to keep moving. She turned the sound off in her numen suit, turned on the white noise engine. The sound of scraping was gone, and she felt safe again. Mari turned, said something to her as the doll shambled on in front of them like a moving stick figure.
She did not hear what Mari said. No longer heard the scraping, the sound that brought back fear, that made her remember her brother, the death, the world wyrms.
She smiled, nodded, kept right on walking. Followed them, followed the siren, though the sound was gone. It felt cozy to Ekhi, liked being wrapped in a blanket under water, drowning slowly in white noise.
Ahead, the doll stopped; Mari stopped. For a moment Ekhi was somewhere else, somewhere nice. Some new planet, untouched by centuries of smog and human waste, the stars at night clear and uncontaminated by the lights of cities.
She saw the eye glitter and speak. Saw Mari say something, the doll discussing. Ahead, Ekhi saw what bothered them: rubble. A cave-in from an upper floor. Business equipment scattered and piled—desks, organizers, pens, tiny computers—all in a giant heap from falling through the floor.
They started moving things, lifting, taking pieces up. The doll picked up large objects, its fingerskin melted along the edges, staining them with waxy imprints while the steel and metal fingers grasped tightly. Soon the debris was out of the way, but underneath it, behind it, there were twenty or so tiny ganeeshas. One fell to the ground, screaming, twitching, head leaking. Dead in a second. Ekhi gasped. The others lifted up trunks, revealing small lips behind tusks. Human lips. They spoke something in unison. Chanted it.
Ekhi could not hear.
The eye blinked so many colors, going berserk. Mari pushed past the other people and Ekhi saw an urgency in her face, a terror in her eyes, like something dark and sinister had made itself known, made its presence seen. The eye blinked, frightened. The doll went on with jerky motions, like a marionette made of metal bones.
Ekhi wondered briefly what had scared the others so. The wondering lasted only a second, replaced by her own fear. The galaxy that grew inside of her pushed against the membrane of her skin once more. But this time it hurt, like something trying to pierce her skin like tin foil and come through. She stopped, breathless. In pain.
Then she pushed onward with the others, trying not to lose sight of them, not to lose sight of the unbroken circles of light that would lead them back to Itsasu’s ship. Moments of pain burst through and she held on, moving on even though she stumbled and tumbled.
Was this a bad thing? Would she die in labor? Would her daughter? Pain. Again. This time unbearable. She bent over, felt it crawl through her, felt light explode against her ribs, eating at her heart. She screamed and the scream was eaten by the static waves. When it was over she ran, ran. And saw up ahead the air tube, the light of suns and stars.
Maybe someone would know what to do, maybe someone could save her. Maybe someone could save them both. The feeling ripped through her entire body. This is too soon, she thought. It hasn’t been nine months yet. Too soon. And as the pain tore through her, echoing in her head as she crawled across the airtube, she heard a voice whisper. Tiny, a flower whisper, like the rubbing together of petals, a little girl voice, whispering, whispering and saying:
Arigia. My name is Arigia.
The pain subsided for a moment, and Ekhi crawled on, breathing and momentarily relieved. Her lungs filled with air as she left the airtube and boarded Itsasu’s ship. Arigia, she thought. Arigia. Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill us.
42
Itsasu watched as Mari and a strange doll she had never seen before ran into her hallway. The heart of the ship saw the image through her eyes; the wires behind her sockets itched as they sent the images across the ship and into the heart’s datamines. The doll ran forward and approached her, screaming in some mad language that neither she nor the ship could understand. Within seconds the doll was on the ground, sparks shooting out from the body and bursting into flames, leaving the smell of burnt wax and ozone in the air.
Mari came forward, screaming, thrashing, holding her head as her body vibrated, her limbs a moving geometry, an abstraction of meat and bone. Itsasu watched, could not turn away, could not stop watching. The heart of the ship said nothing, spoke not in her mind nor through her lips as Mari banged her own head against the ground, screaming in an alien language, clawing at her skin, eyes tearing up, cheeks wet with misery.
Dolls came forward, pulling on Mari as she wailed and yelled, her tongue dancing in her mouth like a wild red serpent, haunted and possessed. They dragged her body away, away, away. Itsasu knew where they were going. The dolls took Mari to the heart of the ship. Where she would die, just like Sugoi had. All for the ship’s insane little experiment.
Itsasu’s head was unable to move, almost screwed into place. She tried to turn, to watch, to make even her eyes dance a little. Nothing. She did not see Mari’s body dragged back, only heard the screams and ululations in a language that tore at Itsasu’s brain, at her own words, threatening to devour them.
She could not see anything but the hallway ahead of her. But what’s this, she thought, what is this I see? Something on the floor, right next to the male doll in all his melted finery. A blinking eye, green, metallic. The heart of the port.
She closed the thought in her mind, hid it, hoping to obscure it from the heart of the ship. This is my discovery, she thought. This is my little toy. And then she began to slowly piece together a plan, laying down her thoughts like puzzle pieces in her mind. A way to turn the tables, a way to turn the pawn into a queen.
43
Hodei’s head was filled with nets. Countless shimmering nets, flying across crystal blue waves, catching fish and bringing them back to shore. The fishermen smoked long pipes, the plumes of their tobacco floating around their heads like small, lost clouds looking for a way back home.
The fish they caught were beautiful and bountiful, red and yellow and rainbow backed, silver shining and bursting in the hot and blazing sun. There were no clouds, just a strange, low-lying fog and a baking hot sun. The fishermen did not seem to mind. They were old, faceless things. Eyeless, mouthless, noseless. It was as if their pipes were part of their faces, fleshy and hooked on the bottom like the lips of the dead.
Hodei watched. He knew that this was more than just a dream, knew as he watched the fish bounce and flap against wooden slats. The fish were so beautiful. He reached out, fog hand, fog mind, reached out and touched one and had a memory of watching Iuski’s father stand on a ship, leaving what was left of the Earth. They had gone, the two of them, down there to see the ruins, the baking empty world that was unlivable with its harsh, airless cities and the seas baked into a glassy sheen.
A memor
y, Hodei thought. Those fishermen are catching memories. But this one is not mine. He remembered briefly—that girl, her brother—only for a moment. Then a craggy old fishermen reached out and slapped his hand. His pipe mouth hummed like he had a head full of bees and Hodei stepped back. No, bee man, he thought. No, I don’t want to stop you. I will be sad. But it will be all right. I want my thoughts again. Even if it means the two of them face an abyss, face nothingness.
Hodei knew this thought was selfish, knew that it would probably mean death to his dream girl and her brother, but he did not care. He spread his finger wings, watched the bones grow out, watched the beak in his face scoop down. A fisher king face, feathers growing like a beard. And then, flap, flap, flap, he silently sped up and out.
Below, he saw the countless nets going out, coming back, going out, coming back, as rhythmic as the tide itself. The sun baked above, and the backs of the fishermen burned in the rising waves. He knew the fishermen were foreigners as well, come into his brain to relieve him of his invaders. But at least they would have the courtesy to leave soon, to give him his own thoughts once again. I’ve never had privacy in my life, Hodei thought. The only piece of solitude I’ve ever had was in my mind. And I would like to keep it that way.
He flew up, flew to the great golden coin of the sun. He felt his wings burning, turning to wax, but could not look back, could not look down. This is for the better, he thought. This is all for the better.