Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  “What?” asked Boris mischievously.

  “The water. When will it stop rising?” Her two voices spoke with a desperate unity.

  Boris laughed again and waited until the water carried them higher. Paxaea put her hands to the roof in a panic, tilting her head as it came near. Boris enjoyed the fear and surprise in her eyes. It was like playing a wonderful prank. He dropped his head beneath the water and was seized by panic himself. No matter how much his mind told him to breathe in the water, his lungs would not do it. The water had now filled the whole chamber, and he looked over at Paxaea’s desperate eyes. His lungs still refused him, and he found himself straining. Everything slowly faded to white, and his lungs burned, as if they were aflame. He sucked in a big mouthful and, his body heaving, his lungs filled up with water. He convulsed a couple of times, though there was no pain. Again he looked across at Paxaea, whose black hair wafted around ethereally. She grimaced and opened her mouth and then she, too, breathed the superoxygenated water.

  He took her by the hand and they dived down into the center of the chamber and to the circular passage that had opened up on the side of the sphere. Along the circular tunnel they swam, into the labyrinth of the water palace.

  They passed through a succession of rooms and passages, which were slowly filling with kaleidoscopic lights cutting at angles. Before long, they seemed to drift through an aqua sea, at times forests of seaweed wavered around them, schools of exotic fish, of brilliant yellows and oranges moving in unison. They entered caves, dark and craggy and in those murky depths watched giant lobsters retreat beneath little rocky outcrops. The caves opened out to a vast open seabed, where giant crabs scuttled along the floor.

  The world shifted and they were flying like birds, high above Caeli-Amur. Beneath them the city gleamed white in the summer sun like a miniature version of itself, and across the water Caeli-Enas still sat upon the water, beautiful and white, like a gleaming jewel on the sea. They kicked their legs in its direction and flew across the high winds. From above, Boris could see white-robed figures gently walking through the tree-lined promenades. The buildings of the ancients below were cut so cleanly and smoothly, not at all like the newer, crumbling versions in Caeli-Amur, which were piled upon each other. The magnificence of that city, there in the light!

  But already Paxaea was kicking ahead of Boris, southeast, toward the Taritian Archipelago. He kicked his legs and followed her. They passed above cutters sailing through the water below. They passed over reefs breaking through the surface of the water like bones breaking through skin, perched on them the ruins of ships, like the decaying bones of beached whales. Finally, in the distance a hundred and more little islands came into view: rocky little things with craggy peaks. Waterfalls fell from their yellow cliffs into the surrounding shoals and reefs. Deadly water currents coursed through narrow channels as the islands spun and shifted around one another in their wondrous geological dance. Boris looked at Paxaea, and a gurgling sound came from her throat.

  The world shifted and they were swimming out among the stars, as if their bodies were ships passing through the blackest night. A terrible cry pierced that space. Paxaea had opened her voice and it came through the water and Boris covered his ears with his hands. Still he heard that voice, resonating in his body, vibrating his cells. A blinding pain seized his head like a clamp. He kicked out and gurgled; he could barely breathe. He was being swept away on a dark sea, about to lose consciousness. He struggled to remember the word. What was it?

  “Taritia,” he spoke into the water and the scream was cut off suddenly. The pain disappeared and Paxaea struggled and kicked as she held the torc, which closed around her throat. Boris spoke again and released the torc.

  He swam then to Paxaea, who held her hands to her eyes. He held her and they floated through an asteroid belt, a million drifted by, a thousand rocky ships. Little sounds escaped from her throat as her tears were lost in the water around them.

  As they took the carriage back toward the Opera, Boris stared down the narrow alleyways and the lamp-lined canals, romantic in the night. Paxaea sat next to him, silent. She was like the water herself, one moment stormy and gray, the next moment a flat surface, hiding hidden depths, sunken cities that he couldn’t venture to. He looked across at her dress, which molded itself to her, accentuating the curve of her belly, the strong thighs. Energy radiated from his chest and his groin. He needed her; he needed to be beside her, within her. He wanted to leap upon her and take her that very moment, but instead he looked away and drank deep from his flask. Inside him, the hot-wine still burned, stoking a fire of murky emotions.

  He followed her along the corridors of the Opera. When they reached her room, she said, “I’m tired. I think I might sleep now.” She started to close the door, but he placed his hand against it.

  “I want to talk to you, don’t you understand?” He looked at her dress, so flimsy around her body.

  Paxaea stared at him coldly. “I’m tire—”

  “But don’t you want me to stay?” Confusion reigned in Boris’s mind. She had said that they would travel together. She had given him indications that they would be together. Yes, he understood that she was a prisoner, but he had sought to build a bond between them beyond that of master and servant. He had been true and honest to her, offered her the world. And yet, as he thought these things, hidden far away in the corner of his mind was a soft voice that said that these were nothing but delusions. In his mind he silenced that voice. He needed her now. He could not wait any longer.

  She looked at him angrily. “Want you to stay? I never wanted you to stay. I never wanted to see you in the first place. I never wanted you and your bloated body and your petty ambitions and your grubby past.” With both voices, she said something more, something incomprehensible to him, and he took his hands from the door as she closed it.

  Anger welled in him. He grasped the door and tore at it, the hot-wine coursing through his veins, his muscles, his nerves. There was a terrible cracking as the door broke from its frame. He threw it open and it hung like an old and battered coat. Paxaea was already halfway across the room.

  He pointed at her. “Don’t use your voice.”

  Again she spoke and he turned and walked out through the door. He forced himself to stop, turned, placed his hands over his ears. “Don’t use your voice!”

  She turned away from him. “You don’t scare me. You may be Director now, but we both know you’re nothing but a deluded tramworker.”

  He slammed the shattered door back into its cracked frame where it lodged. He turned again and strode across the room. Paxaea opened her mouth to speak, but he spoke first. “Taritia.” Her eyes filled with fear. She raised her hands to her throat as the torc tightened. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the room and threw her onto the bed, scrabbling and crawling. Again he spoke the word and the torc tightened further. A little gurgle escaped her lips and the emerald eyes were filled with alarm. Those eyes—the same ones he had seen at the water palace—excited him. He pushed himself down onto her and the warmth of her body close to his aroused him further. He reached down and undid his pants. As he forced up her dress which he felt shift around his arm, Paxaea’s hands still held the torc. He looked down to see her high and wide ribs, too high to be a human’s. As if to protect her, her nictating membranes closed over her eyes. Beneath the milky white eyelids, her pupils were just visible. All around Boris the shadows moved, like animals fighting in the dark.

  Boris strode down the corridors; they shifted around him as if they were made of some ethereal substance, like gray sheets blowing in the wind.

  He returned to the great bed in the Director’s chambers, but he could not sleep. Part of him wanted to return to the Opera, to see Paxaea, to apologize to her, to make love to her properly, to take her again and feel that exquisite pleasure. A flash of her eyes came to his mind, and he was again excited, and then immediately repelled by himself. He lay on his bed and the world around him seem
ed composed of shadowy shapes. The very walls of his apartment seemed insubstantial wavering things. Shadow walls from the shadow world wavered where no walls should have been. Stairs climbed up to rooms in that second plane’s existence, where things scuttled in the blackness. Then a great black shadow seemed to emerge, darker than the darkness, and loom before him. It had a familiar shape, a tramworker’s shape. It shifted toward him, and he backed himself up against the wall behind the bed.

  “Get away, get away,” he whispered.

  But the shadow remained in front of him and Boris thought he saw eyes there in the darkness, staring evilly at him.

  “Mathias, is that you? Mathias?”

  The eyes bored into him, and they were red now, like blots of blood in the darkness.

  Boris closed his eyes. “Go away,” he whispered.

  He held his eyes closed for the rest of the night, in the darkness, alone. Slowly the strength of the hot-wine drained from him. Dawn broke and when he finally opened his eyes, the shadow was gone, disappeared with the shadow world around it.

  Determined to acquire more hot-wine, Boris ventured to the markets. But the New-Man Quadi was not there. Boris needed the wine’s strength and power. But search as he might, the New-Man was gone. A horrible thought crossed his mind as he rushed back to his office. He scoured the images captured by the scrying ball, and he saw the New-Man, walking among the subversives—that was what he had tried to remember, days ago, that vague notion nibbling at the edge of his thoughts.

  Knowing he would be drained for a while, he took the ball with him to his old apartment, where he collapsed on the bed. As he surveyed the images, he heard the seditionist Maximilian discussing a plan to build some kind of air-cart. Boris rubbed his temples with powerful fingers. The hot-wine, the time spent with Paxaea, his plans to unify the Houses—they had taken his focus from the seditionists. Rather than have a subofficiate monitor the seditionists, he had chosen to perform the task himself, and keep the knowledge to himself. Now he was about to pay a price. He tried to raise himself from the bed, but his limbs were leaden and lifeless. Around him everything started to lose its color, as if it were painted in a shade of gray. He was filled with a terrible anxiety. The image of Paxaea on her bed rose in his mind like a floating corpse, and each time he tried to push it away, it rolled up again. He pressed his palms hard against his eyes, but that was no help. Things were falling apart.

  TWENTY-THREE

  After House Marin’s guard followed Ejan’s group to the hideout, Maximilian began to feel the pressure of events. Aya’s Day was three weeks away. Finally, a meeting had been secured with the Collegia, who were essential to the plan, for they united the small traders, craftsmen, shopkeepers. If the seditionists could ally themselves with the Collegia, then the masses of the Lavere and the slums might march with them. The meeting was set for the coming Jolisday, five days hence.

  Meanwhile, the members of the Call to Arms group were out in the streets with their broadsheets and graffiti. During the days, Ejan’s group piled head-sized canvas-covered incendiary devices, tightly wrapped and tied with rope, along a wall already lined with swords and long-knives. He had seen Josiane walk from the workshop with Ejan, who talked fervently. She shook her head at whatever he said but he took her arm and led her back into his workshop.

  Meanwhile, building the air-cart was proceeding apace. Maximilian knew that he should leave the journey to Caeli-Enas until after Aya’s Day. He should ally his own followers with A Call to Arms. Together they still outnumbered Ejan’s group, but not for long.

  But the pull of the Great Library of Caeli-Enis was too strong. Yes, it was a risk, but one worth taking. He would discover the Library’s secrets, and return a few days later, well before Aya’s Day. He would return with all the knowledge necessary for a great thaumaturgist. He needed Odile to provide the equations for the weaving of chymistry, zoological thaumaturgy, and transmutae. Then, under Quadi’s direction, they could finish the cart. So he was pleased that his street urchin had delivered news from Odile: They were to meet in two days at the café La Tazia.

  That morning, when Max arrived in the machine room, neither Kata nor Quadi were at work in the workshop area. He frowned, marched forward, stopped. Kata looked up from where she was squatting. Quadi lay beneath her, unconscious.

  “He collapsed,” she said. “He just collapsed.”

  They carried Quadi back to the central cavern and laid him on a bed. When he awoke they gave him water. Maximilian paced beside Quadi, up and down. Emotions ran through him, one after another: frustration, disappointment, anger. Omar’s disappearance had disturbed Maximilian. At nights he lay awake wondering where Omar was, and what was the function of this strange underground world they inhabited. Now Quadi was possessed by this strange death wish. The New-Man had been gaunt when he had joined them. Now he was positively cadaverous. This self-starving was common among New-Men in Caeli-Amur, but to Max it was alien and inscrutable. It grieved him to see the New-Man’s bony features.

  When Quadi had regained consciousness, Maximilian gathered his circle in the machine room and explained that they would abandon the plan to build a second air-cart. He would travel to the Sunken City alone with the first.

  “You cannot go alone,” Kata’s voice seemed to tremble a little.

  Maximilian had figured her to be a hardened member of the group, but more and more she seemed soft to him, as if she were unveiling weakness underneath. He liked it, and yet they needed weapons made of steel, not of tin. A few days earlier, he fancied that she had moved to kiss him. He felt confused by the event. First, he had been surprised and turned away. Yet later he had thought about what it would have been like, to kiss her, to touch that athletic waist. Something stirred within him, not just an interest—a desire. She was lovely, precisely because she was imperfect, had weaknesses as well as strengths. He sensed that she was lost and he thought of Nkando..He brushed his hand through his hair, found the knot that had been there for sometime, pulled away at it angrily. There was no room for such things in his life. He had dedicated himself to seditionism.

  “There is no time to build a second air-cart. I am the most qualified to recognize the tomes in the Great Library. I have memorized the code. And you,” Maximilian looked at Quadi; again he thought of Omar. “You shall start eating. We need your strength.”

  “Have I failed you yet?” asked Quadi.

  “I cannot have you fail at the last hurdle.”

  Quadi broke into one of his distinctive grins. “Oh, the last hurdle is a while away. Until then I’ll be fine.”

  Kata said, “I think we should work tirelessly to keep these plans secret. There may well be House agents among us now.”

  Maximilian nodded: that was better; that was why he valued Kata.

  Two days later, the cart stood in the workshop, an image from a fevered imagination. Round carriage wheels held its weight. Delicate slats ran ran vertically along the inside of the cart, like a boat’s sails, able to shift in the wind, to which the fish gills would be attached. From these slats thin tubes ran into a central oxygen chamber, just as from from this chamber larger tubes ran forward to the suit. Attached to the cart’s sides were compartments and pouches. Now it was time now to perform the thaumaturgy and animate the fish gills.

  Maximilian, Quadi, and Kata left the hideout and ventured into the city. They would meet Odile at La Tazia. It was two months since he’d seen her at the printworkers strike. How things had changed since then. Kamron had been deposed, the seditionist group had grown, the streets were alive now with anti-House sentiment.

  As the little group passed along Via Gracchia, tension seemed to hang over the cafés and bars. Even the cats seemed on edge, pacing up and down on the cafés’ roofs. A nasty-looking one-eyed black cat scurried along the street as they approached La Tazia. It stopped and looked back at them ominously, then darted along an alleyway and was gone.

  In La Tazia, two small groups of philosopher-assassins were drinki
ng coffee and stretching out languorously. As Max and the others found seats in the corner, they surveyed the scene. On one balcony outside, a couple held each other’s hands lovingly and seemed in the midst of profoundly intimate talk. Five thaumaturgists sat on the other balcony where they argued animatedly, gesticulating as they spoke. This was a strange sight, for thaumaturgists rarely ventured to the cafés; even more infrequently did they argue in public. Inside, a fat philosopher-assassin sat alone at the bar, a huge bowless bolt-thrower hung from his waist.

  One group of philosopher-assassins baited the other. “You gratificationists wouldn’t understand. The Aya’s Day demonstration will rearrange things in this city, you mark my words. But you gratificationists, you’re incapable of thinking of the future. Wouldn’t you say, Fat Nik?”

  The fat man at the bar turned his head, looked silently and turned back to his coffee.

  The café’s owner, Pehzi, walked from behind the bar to Maximilian’s group. “I’ve some new mince pies if you’d like to try some.”

  Maximilian screwed his face up. “Mince pies?”

  Pehzi cackled until the cackle became a wheeze and then a burbling cough.

  “Some cheese, please,” said Kata.

  “What’s so funny?” said Quadi. He rolled a cigarette with one hand, almost like a magic trick. Max was horrified to realize he’d grown accustomed to the smell.

  Pehzi wandered off without answering.

  On the other side of the room, one of the gratificationists spoke loudly. There was a charge to his words that grabbed Maximilian’s attention. “Perhaps the Aya’s Day demonstration will turn out to be a hitherto unseen moment of pleasure. Perhaps it will be extremely gratifying. Perhaps you’re wrong to assume that we wouldn’t understand. And if you’re wrong about that, what else might you be wrong about? Perhaps your entire theoretical foundation? Perhaps thought is not the most pure form of experience. Perhaps feeling is.”