by C L Corona
HIGH TOWER GODS
CL CORONA
Copyright © 2019 by CL Corona
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing, 2019
For the self-medicators and magicians.
You’ve got this.
Breathe.
A Guest at the Door
Maxwell House clung like an oversized barnacle to the edge of the low cliffs, protected on one side by a rocky surge below, and on the other by scrubby desert. When approaching the squat mansion, eager visitors had the choice of being pounded to a bloody pulp on the seaweed-slick rocks, or walking through a blinding white shimmer of endless sand.
Most people chose the sand.
Elian Maxwell sat at the vast window of her upstairs laboratory, looking down at the Wilderstrand road as it wound between the dunes. A lone speck trudged through the sinuous ridges; their path a slow meander as they followed the curves of the road. In some places, the speck had to stop and clamber over the ridges that had grown up across the tarmac track.
The near-constant winds could cover whole sections of the dull black ribbon overnight. Occasionally workers from distant Leeburg would drive down Elian's road with their machines and ploughs in a hopeless attempt to clear the way once more.
Elian could have told them not to bother, but her assistant Martyn was under the impression that a road linking Maxwell House to civilisation was, in fact, a good thing.
She snorted, though seeing as how he was the one who made the infrequent supply trips into town, she supposed he had a point.
The figure lurched to one side, buffeted by an especially strong gust. Sand sailed in fine plumes from the tops of the dunes, making them look like echoes of the white horses in the ocean on the opposite side of the house. The figure lay on the ground for a moment, before jerkily pushing itself upright and beginning its trek once more. Elian wondered which variety of fool she'd be dealing with this time. Was it to be a bright-eyed worshipful alchemical student, desperate to speak with the great Elian Maxwell, or an indignant activist on their way to deface her house and yell pointless slurs.
When she did get visitors—which was a rare occurrence—Elian preferred the latter. They were generally more entertaining than their counterparts, and it was a wonderful way to keep up to date on changing patterns in modern vernacular.
A lady had to have hobbies. And she'd been around long enough to collect a few.
Once her infrequent visitors calmed down and had spent as much of their frustrated rage on her house and character as they could, Elian would usually have Martyn offer them some tea and cake.
Not because she was particularly concerned for their welfare; she just liked to watch their confused expressions from her laboratory window. If she was feeling particularly contrary, she'd send them off with a signed copy of The Alchemical Dynamics of Chimera Interfaces, and a note thanking them for their continued interest in her work.
If the visitor was of the more fawning variety, Elian pretended to be dead. Or at least dying. Martyn's role then—a role he confessed to hate but which he entered into with such relish and spirit that Elian was convinced otherwise—was to sorrowfully usher in the poor bewildered twit and explain in hushed tones that no, it’s sadly impossible to see Dr. Maxwell, she's taken a turn for the worse, she's really very frail. He might even whisper of dementia, and how Dr. Elian Maxwell no longer remembered being part of the Chimera Three, or any of her work in the creation of the biochanicals. Most days she barely remembered her own name or where she was, he would tell them, his face solemn. Depending on how much of his own alchemical "experiments" he'd tested that day, it was not unknown for him to start making comments about bats in the belfry. Since Elian Maxwell was now ninety-three, this sad news was treated with revered nods and hushed acceptance.
Idiots, the lot of them.
Still, it would take a while for her guest to arrive and there was no need to rush downstairs yet. She could get a little work in before breakfast. Elian stepped away from the window to feed the bats. The glass-fronted enclosure for the colony covered nearly one half of the lab, which itself took up the entire uppermost floor of Maxwell House. It left a distinct taint of guano to the air, no matter how often Elian had Martyn cleaned. The Carmaline ghost bats were a necessity—a key element in one of her longest-running projects. Unfortunately, it had to be bats. These bats in particular.
She checked the food hoppers, refilled the kibble and fresh water while the bats blinked at her from their huddles in the nesting boxes. They were the second largest breeding colony of Carmaline ghost bats in captivity, and the largest in private hands.
"And you cost me a bloody fortune, you flying pigs," Elian muttered as she closed the tops of the food hatches.
Bats taken care of, she spent another few minutes observing her current project, decanted some of the latest experimental admixture, made a series of precise notes in her neat, mouse-small writing, and set the next round of beakers and glass into the racks in the steamer.
Elian had been working for years on this particular project. Decades, and with no end in sight. A tiny part of her thought that perhaps trying to find the cure for her particular problem was a waste of her mind and energy.
Indeed, some would think her curse not a burden but a gate opened to heaven. A piece of magic in a world of science.
Which again, just showed how stupid humans were.
"Speaking of idiot humans," Elian muttered. It was time to check on her visitor's progress. Perhaps she'd be lucky and they would have given up and turned back for the city. She frowned annoyed by the faint ping of worry. Usually her visitors came by vehicle. It took a special combination of lunacy and brainlessness to attempt the trip from Leeburg to Maxwell House by foot. It wasn't a particularly long journey, by modern standards of transport, but it was a far from pleasant one. During summer the heat could be bad enough to cause hallucinations, bizarre suicidal thoughts, confusion and death. Whoever this was, she supposed he or she would at least deserve a moment of her time. As long as that didn't encourage more of the rotters to come on some twisted pilgrimage to her.
She wasn't a god. Not quite. And certainly not publicly.
The figure was still making fairly good progress, and Elian estimated that at this rate her visitor would arrive in time for breakfast. She squinted. Something about the gait seemed almost familiar, in a way that made her spine prickle.
It reminded her of someone long dead, someone who'd walked with that same curiously brisk and jaunty gait. Elian shook her head. Though the figure was still too far away to make out any distinguishing features, from this distance it appeared not to be wearing the fashionable long tight skirts and wasp-waisted jackets of the women of Leeburg--though that meant nothing. Students and activists tended toward trousers and loose tops branded with slogans and companies and musical influences, and even if they didn't, it would take a depth of idiocy even Elian hadn't yet encountered to march across a semi-desert in heeled button boots, hobbled by a ridiculous skirt.
Elian sighed and pulled the cord that connected the attic speaker tube with Martyn's private rooms. In a moment, she heard him, muffled, half-asleep, but still annoyingly pleasant. The Bonelady herself could come knock on Martyn's door and find the man smiling. It was positively unnatural.
"Yeah?"
"Breakfast for three today, Martyn," she snapped, then added as an afterthought, "thank you." She really had to work harder at these little human niceties. They had long begun to feel pointless, but she knew mortals liked them. Neede
d them, even.
"For three," Martyn repeated, but did not question why. That was one good thing about Martyn. She left him to do what he pleased without casting a judgemental eye, and he responded to her indifference with unwavering loyalty. It was rather like having a very intelligent cocker spaniel about the place. Albeit a spaniel who could walk on his hind legs and didn't hump the legs of unsuspecting visitors. And he could cook, which definitely put him on the list above cocker spaniel. Notoriously bad chefs, dogs.
"You feel like anything in particular?" he asked, voice still sleep-slow.
"No, the usual will do. And set the papers up on the widescreen. All of them. Except the Leeburg Chronicle; ghastly waste of time."
"I cancelled your sub to the Chronicle last year, after you called it a festering pile of unresearched shit written by journalists who wouldn't know the pointy end of a pen if you stabbed them with it," Martyn said. "Normal time for breakfast?"
Elian stretched the cord of the speaker tube so that she could peer out the window again. "Make it...fifteen after eight," she said. "Just the tea for then, breakfast on the half hour, I should think."
"Yeah. Will do." When he'd first arrived, shaking and still wide-eyed from his expulsion and near-arrest, Martyn had tried to behave at his best, formal and polite. Elian had soon broken him of the habit. Politeness was for liars.
A soft click was followed by the buzz of a disconnected speaker and Elian returned the speaker to its two-pronged cradle. A faint electric feeling prickled under her skin. It had been a long time since she'd felt something like it, and it took her a moment to recognise.
Anticipation.
That's what it was. Someone was coming to her, and they were bringing the storm with them. Elian shook her head. She was being melodramatic. As a young girl she'd had a penchant for drama and emotion bordering on hysteria, but it had eroded over the decades. These days she'd replaced it with cynicism and a world-weariness buffed and polished by the passing of friends and family. "When one outlives one’s children, it's best to arm oneself with indifference to the world," she said softly to the room. There was no one in it but herself and the chittering bats, the softly hissing burners, the racks of glass tubes, the dark storage racks and the pervasive atmosphere of a lifetimes' work devoted to the same unreachable goal.
◆◆◆
Martyn was waiting for her downstairs in the breakfast room; the table set for three as instructed. Technically Martyn had taken his place in her household as an alchemical apprentice; in reality he'd never shown much promise in the wider applications of the art. Unless one was looking for an excellent supplier of pure haze or rache, he was, at best, mediocre. And he knew it. The fiction that he was her laboratory assistant, here to learn under her immense talent, was one they all pretended to believe in. Even if these days the most interesting chemical reactions Martyn created was by the careful admixture of hot water, dried leaves, and sugar.
Elian had only grudgingly tolerated his addition to her household of one as a favour to her grandson Theudor. After all, the boy wasn’t getting any younger. And having Martyn here hadn't turned out to be all bad, Elian admitted as the took her seat at the table and poured a generously-sweetened tea. Cup in hand, she skipped through the widescreen channels. The pages turned in a curious flickering motion meant to emulate a real book, albeit a book that took up half a wall. Elian scanned the headlines, and frowned in recognition and dismay.
"Tea not good?" asked Martyn. He'd long since given up the pretence of lab coats and formality, nowadays he sprawled about the house in comfortable trousers and ragged thin sweaters over equally ragged shirts. Elian thought he cultivated this urchin look as a desperate attempt to cling to his rapidly fading youth.
"Tea perfectly good." She flicked to another news-channel, and another. They were all reporting the same story. "It's the news that leaves one sour."
"Oh?" He glanced over his shoulder at the headlines. "Yeah, saw that. The activists are going to have a field day."
"Idiots." Elian was still frowning. She added a fourth lump of sugar to her tea. "Murder is never enjoyable."
"Certainly not for the poor sod who gets killed."
"That too," Elian said. "But he's dead, so it hardly matters to him now. It's the fallout that's going to be a problem."
◆◆◆
Francis Olsten MURDERED!
◆◆◆
screamed the headlines, in varying degrees of gravity. Depending on the political bent of each paper, this was either a tragic loss to society, a new medical future for humanity, or an excuse for a handful of subs in the newsrooms to outdo each other with terrible puns. Presumably, society would eventually be appraised of what it should actually feel, but until then, only one fact really concerned Elian Maxwell, co-creator of the very first biochanical chimera—the servant class that kept the modern world turning.
For Francis Olsten, the billionaire owner of one of the biggest medichemical laboratories in the world, had been murdered by his own personal chimera.
Elian stared at the jerky loop of the moving cinephoto, a sequence of still images connected in an eternal circle. The chimera was there, albeit in grainy black and white. Still, for Elian, who remembered her partner Aleksia's diagrams, her moulds, the gentle care she had put into sculpting the model's carapace and gold-cartilage skeleton, the work they'd done together melding the gelrubber musculature and the network of veins for the alchemical fluid-system, it was easy to recognize the model. A U-38. It had been discontinued decades ago. Only a handful of these particular chimeras still existed. Most had been disposed of. Their position in society as neither human nor machine, living creature or living code left them in a nebulous grey zone. The U-38 models had been Aleksia's personal favourites, and to a large extent modelled on her physical movements and tells. Elian had always found it subtly disconcerting how they had even walked just like her.
She frowned.
The later models were more machine than human, the gelrubber stripped back to porcelain and aluminium. They were designed to take over menial labour, to serve as the proles of this new enlightened society.
"Impossible," she said. "It has to be a mistake." Still frowning, she glanced to the wall as though she would be able to see through it to the desert beyond.
"They're all saying it." Martyn pointed at the screen for emphasis. "Every bloody report. They're looking for the damn chimera now, but the cinefootage shows everything. There's no way to fake that security cine."
"Then the cinefootage, and every bloody report is wrong," sniffed Elian. "I made the chimeras, and I know they cannot turn on their masters. We made it that way. I have no idea how Olsten died, but his chimera had nothing to do with it."
"How-" began Martyn, then shut up promptly.
"I can be sure," said Elian, slowly and deliberately, standing up to take a large veiled hat from where it had been casually hung on a lamp, and setting it in place so the veil fell over her face, hiding away the lack of wrinkles, the still firm skin, and the fact that she looked closer to fifty-seven than ninety-three, "because I made sure. And because-"
The front doorbell rang, a gentle, jaunty chime, of the type that befitted a little old lady with floral-print dresses and a cheerful smile.
Elian Maxwell, who was neither dumpy and apple-cheeked, and was currently sporting plaid trousers and a waistcoat over a wrinkled white shirt, smiled thinly. "And because, our chimera is at the door. Do go answer, Martyn, and best drop the fish impression while you're at it."
THE CHIMERA
"Our what is at the door?" Martyn fumbled, and dropped his toast, jam side down, onto the table.
"Chimera," Elian replied, her eyes narrowed. If it had been any other creature—human or otherwise—at the door, she would have gone back upstairs and let Martyn deal with it.
The thing outside was almost like a child to her. Elian was no longer given to sentiment; years of watching the world around her slowly age and die had stripped away those tender emo
tions, but she had managed to hang on to curiosity.
Perhaps the most human thing about me these days, Elian thought wryly. It was something to hang on to. As long as she kept asking why, and wondering about the world, she supposed she could still pass for a functioning human being.
The bell rang again; a plaintive little tinkle.
"Oh, do open it, Martyn. You're ruining my reputation as a gracious host."
"You have nothing of the sort," Martyn mumbled as he left.
From the hallway came the clack of the door opening under Martyn's palm-keyed command, the murmur of greetings, and the faint hiss of wind-blown sand.
Elian lifted her veil to have a final fortifying sip of tea, before setting her cup down and sitting straight, watchful and silent.
Like the bloody Bonelady judging the dead.
It was almost accurate. After all, wasn't the chimera her creation? She was part of the triumvirate that had given it life, and thought, and love. Her brow wrinkled. And no choice. She'd been coerced, convinced, and in the end, come to believe that Judikael had been right. "I still believe it," she whispered to herself as her hands tightened their grip on the chair. The chimeras were, at the end of the day, more machine than human, and giving them the power to choose would have pushed them far over a line the Chimera Three had always been too scared to cross.
As things stood, the chimera could not have murdered its owner, and Elian was going to prove that. She bristled at the thought that people could even imagine that it had. That they doubted the work the Three had done.
Martyn stepped back into the room, his pale cheeks already flushed from just the few minute's exposure to the wind and sand. "Doctor Maxwell," he said, "this is chimera model U-38, name-imprinted-"
"Ulixes." Elian grimaced. She could see that now. There had been several U-models made but this was one of the last, completed only days before the terrible cityclicker accident that had killed Aleksia, and left herself and Judakael in hospital for months.