Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  “Then again, it might not,” said the second apprentice matter-of-factly.

  Max lay there, staring out into the world. He thought of Ejan and the seditionist group. All that work destroyed. He thought of his expedition to Caeli-Enas, beneath the sea. He thought of the times when he had laughed as he had skipped over the skies in their skimmers, with Demidae and the others, when the world was young. He grasped his head between his hands and pressed hard. There were voices in his head, voices that raged like a storm. By Panadus, by Marinta! You shall not catch me. You shall not take my life and make it as you want it to be. He tried to stop the voices, which made so little sense, and yet made so much sense. I am a fragment, he thought. I am two broken halves of an unhealed whole. He could feel the smashed pieces of another entity gathering strength within the dark recesses of his mind, a lurking shadow growing. Every now and then, fragments of another mind rose up and forced themselves into him. Now, he thought, I do not know who I am. I am Maximilian, I am. I am. I am. I am.

  Maximilian started to cry, for now the pain in his head had spread to his body. He didn’t want to return to the terror-sphere. He didn’t want to be chased again by that blackened dead thing, that creature that he knew waited for him, with its disemboweling knife. The creature he could never escape, could never defeat. His body now was racked with pain, as if poison was coursing through his body, until finally he felt that he was just agonizing white light. His body was no more.

  The second self grew together in his mind, solidified. Stop struggling, a voice said in his head.

  —I should never have agreed to let you in—said Max.

  It is too late now for us both, Aya said. But perhaps there is a way out for us, somewhere in this world. In the meantime, stop struggling. You’re always trying to control things.

  Aya was right. He had reached the breaking point. All the years of struggle, of trying to get somewhere, of trying to control things, of living not now but in the future and the past, of living not in the present moment, but in the wheels and cogs churning in his head. He thought of all the time that he looked at the world as if through lenses, his mind ticking away, filtering, resisting, controlling. He thought of all the time that he wasted in the dark cave of his consciousness.

  He could feel Aya gathering his strength in the deep passageways of his mind, growing, reintegrating. Their identities dissolved at the edges. The barriers of their minds were permeable, bits breaking off and absorbing into the other. Just as Max caught fragments of memory, pieces of knowledge from Aya, so he felt pieces of himself drift into the other. Periodically, each identity would surge and Max would lose a sense of who he was, at other times they would draw away from each other and for a while he had clarity.

  —The secret of unification, what is it?—asked Max.

  Aya did not speak, but allowed a piece of his knowledge to drift toward Max. It rushed into him, like water into a sponge. Thaumaturgy, he saw, was written in a language derived from the structures of their world, the world of life.

  But there was another world of anti-matter, a second world, the Other Side, the world of darkness and death, where the Furies lived. That, too, was a part of the universe, and there was dark magic also, thaumaturgy that operated in that world. To use it, one had to learn and understand its laws.

  Still, unification had a third source. For each thaumaturgical language—that of the world of life and that of the Other Side—was a broken descendant derived from a primary language, a pure language, the language of the Art, austere and elegant. It was mathematics to present-day thaumaturgy’s physics, the primary foundation. It did not operate according to the disciplines like illusionism or chymistry, but according to its own subcategories of quantity, structure, space, and change. He could understand, then, how these four categories were internal properties of everything else.

  —Tell me the language. Give me the knowledge—said Max.

  No, said Aya.

  —But that was the agreement. I would allow you to live in my body, if you shared the pure language of the Magi with me.

  That was then, said Aya. This is now.

  Aya’s identity surged toward Max. The two of them crashed into each other, each suffused with the other’s mind. Max again lost a sense of who he was and was lost in feverish reverie.

  FORTY-TWO

  The door to Maximilian’s cell opened, and in walked a stub-nosed man whose unusually long arms and neck gave him the appearance of a spider. Along the side of his neck, veins the color of a bright blue climbed like a little luminous lattice.

  Unexpectedly the man sat on the floor next to Maximilian. “So here we are, the two of us.”

  Maximilian looked at his hands as if for the first time. “Did you know that during the war, armies leaped across the wastelands like a sea of fleas. I remember looking down from the mountains thinking, ‘We have no chance.’”

  The man looked at Maximilian. “Which war?”

  Maximilian continued to look out into space beyond the stone wall. “We cried and cried as they died, falling onto the battle ground like ash.” He could see the scene before him now: the thunderous roars of the weapons, the rush of the combat suits, the snarls of machines and projectiles burning through the shimmering haze.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re here to capture me and take me back to Alerion and Demidae. They plan to parade me along the Boulevard of Marshals in Varenis—the rebel defeated.”

  The man looked at him. “You’re raving like a madman.”

  Maximilian turned to the man, whose face looked somehow gaunt, despite its pudginess, as if its cheekbones were a little too high for the face. “You’re changing.”

  “Where would the rest of the seditionists have run to?”

  “What does it matter? Farther underground. Out into the city. Even if you destroy them, another rank will rise from the ground, like the dead themselves.”

  The man pressed his hands to his face. “I don’t have the heart for it. I don’t have the heart for all this death and torture. I’m just a tramworker. I’m out of my depth.”

  Maximilian looked out back into space. “We didn’t think we’d do battle there, on that desert plain, and yet what could we do? We couldn’t run anymore. There comes a time when you cannot run, when you have to stand and fight and hide no more. There comes a time when you cannot just let things stand as they are. Battle must be engaged; the conflict must be resolved.”

  The man said quickly and loudly: “I’m the Director now! A tramworker, the Director of Technis!”

  “What does it matter?” asked Maximilian.

  “What does it matter? It means I’ve escaped from the slums. I have influence, power. I have wealth, if I want it. I demand respect!”

  “And love? Do you have love?” Max thought of Iria. She had been so beautiful, dancing with him when the world was young. She had built her Tower on the rocky outcrop in the wild mountains, overlooking the Valley of Icons, built by Mountain Giants. Iria and Aya: they had loved. But he was not Aya. He was Maximilian.

  The man looked away, back at the door through which he’d entered. “Who among us has that?”

  Max spoke softly. “Some do, out there. The little people, living their lives away from great events. They have time for everyday cares. For love.”

  “We don’t have to torture you, you know. I’ll make sure you’re not tortured.”

  Maximilian stared back out at the battlefield in his mind. “There’s nothing we could do in the end, but flee. We fled like children into the mountains, across the sea. But at least we could always say that we tried. We could say that Aya and his followers tried, and that there was nothing else that could be done. That at least they fought for the world, even if they could not save it.”

  “You’re mad, you realize that. Is there any reason left in you?”

  But Maximilian was back in his memories. He could see the dead on the battlefield now, green and blue chemicals leaking like blood from
their ruined suits. The wasteland: that’s what they called it now, that place of desolation to the north.

  The man stood up. “I’ll try not to let them torture you. But it’s their job, you understand. The master torturer has studied the art for forty years.”

  Maximilian looked up as the man stopped at the door. “You’re changing. You’re becoming something else.”

  “I’ll try.” The man looked disappointed as he left the cell.

  Less than half an hour later he returned with the master torturer and the same two apprentices who had led Max to the terror-sphere.

  Maximilian sat up from the cold stone floor. The apprentices helped him to his feet. They led him, without a word, past the others and down the corridor in the direction of the terror-spheres. They turned right at an intersection, and entered a room with a reclining seat at its center. Already Maximilian could see the various pins and screws and clamps attached to the thing. He sat into it without a struggle, his feet slipping into great metal boots. He was strapped in, and a helmet closed over his head.

  “Should we begin our work?” One of the apprentices spoke matter-of-factly.

  The master torturer looked at the Director.

  In the light of the room, the spidery veins on the side of the man’s neck lit up like little streams of blue lava. There was a slight sheen to the man’s skin. “Just give him the mold and let us get on with it.”

  The master torturer took a vial from his bag and, taking the stopper out, placed it at Maximilian’s lips. Looking down, Max could see something brown and green start to move in the vial. Something furry pushed against his mouth. He pressed his lips tight as the thing tried to push between them, then moved like a small crawling animal, up, up, to his nose. His chest constricted with anxiety and he clenched his fists. He blew through his nose, but it made no difference, the carpetlike creature plunged into both nostrils and his eyes flooded with tears. Up into his sinuses the thing pushed, deep into his head. He cried out then, in desperation, while the whole room remained silent.

  — Aya, help! — he called.

  A memory—from where? He riffled through his mind. He remembered now. He was a child, sitting at the top of a great tower, the world far below. A bearded instructor said to the children, Rest, notice the state you are in, let go of all thoughts and really notice the things around you: the floor, the air, your fellow students. Speak the first words of pure speech and notice how as you do this, things seem to light up with new life, with a new sense of immanence. Beneath this, you see the Other Side, the dark world, superimposed on this one. It, too, burns with dark intensity. The two now, in balance. Life and death, matter and anti-matter.

  Maximilian spoke the words, he let go of himself, he noticed the air around him, the chair beneath him, the figures in the room. He noticed the thing inside him, slowly pushing up into his brain. The world lit up around him, the universe of light and dark, one on the other. Yes, now he could see things in their essence, not just their appearance. He understood now the ancients’ obsession with mathematical forms, with the purity of numbers and angles, with all those hexagonal prisms.

  Here, said Aya. Drifting toward him came the primary equations, formulae he—Aya—had learned in those years of training. He did not need to speak them aloud, Max realized. He pictured them in his mind, pure equations that dissolved into blackness. He brought them to mind, then forgot them. Thaumaturgy should be a forgetting. He could see inside everything, their molecules and atoms, and farther still, into the deep structure of the universe. He saw how things were connected to each other by a million minute threads of energy, how each thing supported the other in the motion of matter. The primary language, he knew, spoke the deep structure of the universe.

  In this space, looking into the skeletal reality before him, Maximilian realized that with these equations he could reach out—like that, just so—and change a piece of matter in its quantity and structure, or its space or pace of change. Like the creature, yes, with the correctly arranged words, like that, he could stop it moving, and slowly push it away, slowly push it back out of his sinuses, out though his nose, and—yes, like that—push it back into the bottle and hold it there.

  “What happened?” said one of figures.

  Maximilian opened his eyes. Everything before him shimmered as if it were new and alive—as if he were seeing it for the first time. Light and movement: the very walls were filled with energy. Dark and movement: another world beneath this one.

  “Use the vises.”

  Maximilian watched one of the apprentices approach the chair. The young man took hold of a large handle and twisted. The vise clamped to his forearm tightened. At first it was firm, then tight, and then, with a third twist, pain shot up his arm. He watched curiously as one collection of matter impressed itself upon another. He watched the structure of the vise deform the structure of his arm—atoms and molecules being rearranged by the force.

  Again, far in the background of his mind the formulae and equations hovered. He reached into the deep structure of things and rearranged the pieces of matter. The vice broke open. He shook his arm. Stood up, the chair bursting asunder beneath him, the helmet falling to the floor.

  One of the apprentices cried out. The other cowered. The master torturer backed away, his mouth open in shock. Only the Director stood still and straight.

  Maximilian walked past them. He tore the door off its hinges and walked through the tunnels, the orbs lighting up above him. Each time he came to a door he broke open its locks, sending particles of metal tumbling to the ground. Behind him the doors swung open, the way all doors should be, allowing people to enter and leave at will.

  Deep in his mind, Aya spoke: There is a price for this, you realize. No longer will the universe of the Other Side flood into you, warp you. But you will be driven away from the world of life itself. You will care less and less for its everyday concerns. Love, happiness—these are things you will lose. But don’t worry about that. Worry that you are now in my debt.

  FORTY-THREE

  Kata felt a deep throbbing pain in head. Her throat felt rough and she struggled to swallow. She reached up, touched a pillow. She was on her bed, somehow. She opened her eyes, sat up. Downstairs she could hear someone moving around in her kitchen. She tried to call out, but her voice came out as a whisper. She touched her throat; the skin was raw. Again she tried to swallow, this time successfully though painfully.

  She sat up in her bed, and looked around her room. She was fully clothed, but everything seemed in order. Recent events came back to her: her betrayal of the seditionists, the trip to the empty villa, the return home to die.

  Kata walked slowly down the stairs into her parlor. She poked her head around the corner of the doorway to the kitchen where little Henri held a pot in one hand. He turned it around, examined it curiously, as if he’d never seen one before. Noticing Kata, he turned and grinned.

  Kata groaned: the damned street urchin. “This is death, isn’t it? I’ve been sent to some hell, with you to torture me.”

  Henri grinned again and put the pot on the bench. “You were really heavy, you know. I had to drag you up those stairs.

  Kata looked at her bruised legs. “Looks like you did a fine job of it.”

  Henri squatted down onto his heels, the natural resting position of street urchins, who were unused to chairs. He watched her quietly.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He nodded.

  Kata examined the boy. About ten years old, and his face was dirt-streaked; his hair slicked back and chopped roughly around his neck. A quiet intelligence glittered in his eyes, which she knew were untrustworthy.

  “You saved me,” she said.

  The boy nodded and waited. She could tell he had no expectations. He was ready for cruelty as much as kindness.

  “I suppose I’m going to have to buy some of your fudge now,” she said.

  He looked up with great round eyes; somewhere in them and on his face was a hint of hu
mor. “Best Yensa fudge.”

  Together they made some potato soup from what was left of her supplies. The potatoes had begun to sprout and were a little green, but she showed him how to peel them. They dashed in a little gree, a pungent Caeli-Amurian sauce made from fish entrails. Later, she made Henri wash in the communal bathroom. He wailed and groaned as she poured cold water over him with the bucket. Then, as the sun went down over the baking city, she made him a bed in the parlor from old blankets.

  Something had broken in Kata. No longer did she feel the horror of her actions. No longer was she filled with anger or grief. In some way, she had died the night before and been reborn. He sins had been cleansed. She had been given a second chance. She had no immediate thoughts about her future but was content to see each day as it came. And tomorrow was Aya’s Day. What would happen? She wondered. Outside, thick, heavy clouds hung threateningly over the city. From her balcony she looked out over the city, which seemed caught in some moment of decision. Small birds darted around, people walked through nearby streets, faces strained with tension. A hot wind blew from the south and the ocean was choppy and gray. She left the feeling of apprehension behind as she closed the doors onto the balcony and returned to the parlor below.

  “You can stay here for a while,” she said to Henri. She thought about banning the Yensa fudge, but this was a street urchin; he would likely be gone in the morning.

  She retired to her bed: not a soft cushioned bed, yet large and comfortable and full of support. She threw a light sheet over herself, though the heat was stifling. Still, she had no trouble falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Rested in the morning, she awoke and found Henri sprawled on his own bed, legs splayed, half-covered with his own sheets in the humid morning. Beside him lay his little pouch of Yensa fudge, a dirty spoon, some coins, a model of a legionnaire from Varenis, its shield intact but the sword broken.

  She served them more potato soup for breakfast. As they sat at the table, watching each other curiously, Kata heard the sound of people outside, yelling and laughing. A little while later, she heard the booming of drums. Together they sounded like a great sea, roaring and crashing. Kata and Henri walked upstairs, opened the doors to her balcony and stepped out. The streets below were filled with people, all marching down to the square between the Opera and the docks in the center of the city. Above them black clouds churned. Some seemed to be sweeping in from the sea, others rumbling in from the north. Far over the ocean, flashes of lightning could be seen, and thunder joined the rumbling of the drums.