Beneath Ceaseless Skies #205 Read online

  “She’s beautiful. Come here, Arrow.” Orana put the child in his arms. He stared down at it blankly, wide-eyed. Fish and Cubit darted out with the news. The children started cheering.

  “That’s your daughter,” said Orana, a little harshly, as she toweled the baby off. “Don’t you care?”

  He looked up at her, and she saw that his eyes were wet and red-rimmed. “All these months I’d been afraid that she would come and it wouldn’t mean anything,” he said, seeming not to have heard her. “I felt nothing. Nothing at all! And now—” His voice broke, and he sobbed.

  Orana looked away. Her eyes also were wet.

  “I want my baby,” said Skate.

  Orana nodded to Arrow. “Best let her nurse. She’ll be wanting to sleep soon.”

  Just then the group became aware that the cheering had turned into screaming. Fish put her head in the door. “Tiamat took Cubit!”

  Orana rushed to the cleft, followed by Arrow. Day was dawning. Away in the west several black specks showed against the luminous sky.

  “She never comes off schedule,” said Arrow, “except—”

  “Good morning!” said a strange voice. It was ebullient but affectless, almost mechanical, as though an animal were imitating human speech.

  Orana turned to see a drone hovering near at hand. “With whom am I speaking?”

  “Little ones,” said the voice. “I saved you. I protected you. One by one I have borne you to my bosom. All I have asked in return is your trust. And how have you repaid me?”

  “Listen to me, children,” said Orana. “Would someone who really loved you make you afraid? Would they threaten to take away their love? Would they remind you that you’re in debt to them?”

  “Little ones,” said the voice, “look at your new friend. What is different about her? Look at her head!” The children all turned, and Orana became aware that her hair had fallen to her shoulders. “She is a witch and an alien!” said the voice. “She is your enemy!”

  “Is that true?” a boy asked.

  “I am a witch of the moon,” said Orana, “but if I can bring back Cubit, I will.”

  “Little ones,” the voice began. It was cut off by a spear ripping through its shell. Arrow lowered his hand as the drone dropped to the earth.

  “We’ve had enough of queens,” he said. “We’ll take witches for a change.” He looked at Orana. “Are you ready? I’m coming with you, you know.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Orana. “Skate needs you. And I may not make it back. If worst comes to worst, you’ll need to make some kind of defense.”

  She didn’t tell Arrow that his “help” would be more trouble than it was worth.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he said, hanging his head.

  “Now, tell me about this tower. Am I likely to miss it?”

  “Miss it!” he said. “On the flats?”

  * * *

  An hour later she was walking westward, swathed in her sheets again. In one hand she carried a borrowed mattock. A bundle of dun, black-headed stalks was slung over her shoulder. Her satchel hung at her side.

  She was threading her way between salt-cones. Each spike stood a few feet high in the otherwise level flats. Their sharp shadows shrank as the sun rose higher, becoming blue circles at noon. Hard-looking white clouds materialized in the sky.

  The sound of a light footfall brought her up short. She spun, mattock uplifted. But it was only Fish.

  “Why are you here?” hissed Orana.

  “I just wanted to see what you’re doing. Please don’t send me away.”

  “I would if I thought you’d obey. Don’t you know I probably won’t return?”

  “If you don’t, what difference will it make where I am? We can’t fight Tiamat without you.”

  “Well, time’s too short to take you back,” said Orana, glad of the company in spite of herself. “Just do as I say.”

  Fish slipped her hand into Orana’s, and they went on.

  They emerged from the cone field. The sun sank before them. When it touched the horizon they decided to stop for the night.

  Under Fish’s guidance, Orana used the mattock to break through the crust, revealing a pool of brine. Fish slid one of the stalks into the sludge, taking care that the black head should rest on the edge.

  They then made two pallets from Orana’s sheets. Sitting cross-legged on hers, Orana spread a handkerchief on the salt. She took out her compact, selected three of the four seeds, and laid them side by side on the cloth. They were like polyhedra with tufted stalks protruding from their vertices.

  She began singing an unearthly lullaby. The light in her antennae waxed and waned with the rise and fall of her voice. The stalks writhed. Their cilia waved.

  When her song came to a close, she folded the cloth over them and lay back beside Fish.

  “What were you doing?” asked Fish.

  “Growing my seeds.”

  “I didn’t see them grow.”

  “Wait until morning.”

  “Is it magic?” asked Fish.

  “No more than that stalk over there.”

  “But you didn’t even touch them.”

  “Didn’t I? Distance and space aren’t the same thing. Those seeds are the germs of unlife. With my brain-elements I cause them to unfurl.”

  “Where did they come from?” asked Fish.

  “They were made by the powers of the air. But a hundred thousand chiliads rendered the daemons too weak-willed to handle them. Then man came and learned their secret. Because man is mortal, his youth springs ever anew. The daemons can act in concert with the will of one whose faculties permit it. That’s how I shape my seeds. I can’t make them myself. They were with me when I was found as an infant.”

  “What if you run out?”

  “Then my antennae will atrophy, and I’ll be just another woman in the world.”

  “Will you run out?”

  “I have only one in reserve now. All my life I’ve been saving them, Fish, using them only...when necessary. Today seems as good a time as any to spend them.”

  They bedded down then, wrapped in their sheets, but talked late into the night, watching meteors streak across the sky.

  * * *

  By the morning the ova had swelled into strange shapes. Orana wrapped up the wriggling forms and put them her satchel.

  The stalk had also developed. It was as limp as a wet noodle, and its black head had become a red fruiting body nearly bursting along its seams. Orana and Fish each took a piece for their breakfast, sucking out the fresh water it held, and put the rest away for later.

  It was late morning when they first spied the tower. The structure stood like a white giant over the flats, watching them from afar while they were still miles away. No doubt the island was visible from its crown.

  Orana was reminded of a refinery as they came within hailing distance. Its base was mostly hidden behind the thicket of pipes that rose vertically from the salt. Round windows of various sizes protruded above. A bricolage of machinery comprised its hull.

  Here and there hinged valves released jets of steam. The warm clouds that wafted toward them had the sickening smell of a brewery. The irregular crown shimmered uncertainly in the bright sunlight.

  There were no openings at the level of the salt that Orana could see. She wondered if Tiamat actually lived in the tower. Perhaps they had caught her unawares, while away from home. Or perhaps she didn’t even exist.

  A sphincter at the tower’s base hissed open, revealing a tube of clacking machinery, a miniature assembly line. Some of the jointed arms sprayed a white fluid that dried into papery sheets and tubes; others joined the pieces together. A rolling belt conveyed the product, an insectile missile, into the open air.

  Instinctively, Orana swung the chain-sword erect and raised it. The missile shot straight at her with an angry whine. It was like a robber fly with a drill bit for its head. At the last instant she slashed downward, cleaving it in two halves. Fish crushed the
pieces into fragments.

  Sphincters all over the tower began opening and closing, sending out drone after drone. Orana threw off her sheets. The chain-sword flashed as she whirled this way and that, cutting the attackers down from the air. Her pink tresses swung freely now, and her knobs pulsed with inner fire, taking up the rhythm of her dance. The wriggling parts rained down on the salt to be crushed beneath Fish’s heel.

  And then, all at once, the onslaught ceased. A circle of fragments surrounded the two fighters. The tower stood silent. Perhaps it had to rest; perhaps it had run out of material.

  Now was Orana’s chance. She placed a chimera on the salt. It had grown even larger and continued to develop as she concentrated, drawing air in through stoma and converting it into tissue. Soon it was like a great sea cucumber, with rugose crimson skin, a cluster of glowing tentacles at its tip, and thousands of tiny tube feet below.

  “What will you do with it?” Fish asked.

  Orana didn’t hear her. Her senses flowed through the chimera’s feelers. She drove it to the tower’s base, used its feet to pry open a sphincter, and crawled down the tube to the central shaft.

  It was dark, but her scout’s senses functioned on a broad spectrum. She climbed a spiraling groove to a high chamber. There, instead of the windows she’d expected, she saw only bundles of tubes joining the outer wall to a nexus, which in turn hung from a stem through an opening in the ceiling.

  Gingerly, she transferred her tube feet from the floor to the suspended mass and squirmed past the cables. Then came a moment of fearful disorientation, and she found herself sprawled out on the salt.

  “What’s the matter?” Fish cried. “Orana? Are you all right?”

  Orana sat up. “That’s never happened before,” she said. “I lost contact.” She looked at the round windows. “She’s watching us through those. And I’m certain she can see the island as clearly as she can see you and me.”

  She took out her second chimera and set to work on it, forming it into a thing like a brittle star. Its five feathered arms radiated from a ridged stalk with tube feet for its base. She sent it along the same route.

  This time, when she reached the upper chamber, she wrapped her delicate arms around the cables and shore through them with tiny, razor-sharp pennules. The tower set up a strange whining hum. She worked through bundle after bundle.

  Then, once again, she found herself thrown out on the salt, this time violently. A queer sobbing met her ears.

  “I’m going in,” she said. “She won’t be able to see you here now. Don’t come after me. Understand?”

  “I’ll stay here,” said Fish.

  Orana went to the opening and wormed her way to the central shaft, which was warm and humid and dark. From there she climbed to the upper chamber.

  Feeble light filtered in past the rims of the window-eyes. Cables dangled loosely from several, oozing black fluid. One bundle had been only partially severed, and her chimera’s body lay beneath it, crushed to a pulp. There was a smear of its white ichor on a section of wall.

  She looked around uneasily. There was no sign of an enemy. But she couldn’t keep climbing with an invisible foe at her back.

  Her gaze returned to the mess on the wall. The ichor was spattered over an arrangement of projecting shapes. One of these moved slightly, settling into a recess.

  So that was it: a trap had crushed her scout. The same could happen to her at any moment. But there was no sense in staying where she was.

  She scaled the nexus using the bundles as a ladder and wriggled her way up the stem. The sides of the shaft were honeycombed with open tubes. Her first chimera lay in one, useless to her now. Shreds of clothing suggested that this was how the children were brought in. The stem was fluted, but she saw no mechanism by which a body could be drawn higher.

  Her quandary was answered when hundreds of papery myriapods swarmed down from above. She crushed a dozen with a single swipe, but that was only a fraction of the horde. They took hold of her clothing and pulled her up.

  Nausea washed over her in a moment of apparent weightlessness. Then gravity reasserted itself, but from the opposite direction. She found herself plunging head-foremost through the top of an orbicular chamber.

  At the last instant she seized hold of the opening, swung her feet down, and threw herself to the side. She landed lightly beside a vat of tarry ooze.

  Dim, desolate light filled the chamber. The stem branched overhead into cables that lost themselves amongst the conduits, valves, bellows, and bladders that made up the domed ceiling. Myriapods poured out of the openings between them.

  Cautiously, she threaded her way to a window and peered out. A starry black sky met her gaze. The stars were brighter than she could remember ever having seen them. They did not twinkle. She recognized the constellations, but the celestial sphere had been spun out of place, as though she were at a different latitude.

  One star only was new. It was smaller than the full moon but much brighter. It hovered down near the horizon, framed by needle-sharp peaks. A plain of ice stretched toward her from their shadows, glittering bleakly.

  And then, somehow, she knew that the great star was the sun, and that she had climbed to a planetoid beyond the farthest wanderers known to Enoch. She was looking out of a tower whose crown was the base of Tiamat’s tower on earth. It was in truth a column between two worlds.

  Shuddering, she turned toward the vat again. Cubit’s face protruded from the oozy surface. His body was invisible. His eyes were open but vacuous.

  “You have no right to be here,” the boy said. The voice was his own, but the tone was Tiamat’s, ebullient and artificial.

  “Why don’t you show yourself?” said Orana.

  “I am as you have seen me,” the voice said.

  As you have seen me. Suddenly she understood: the tower was Tiamat. It was alive, but with a life not native to earth, nor even to earth’s dimension, and of an order of intelligence alien to man.

  “Why do you take the children?” she demanded.

  “I desire only to love them. Why will they not let me love them?”

  “Because you devour them.”

  “I clasp them to my bosom and shower them with all I have to give.”

  “You envy their happiness,” said Orana. “And when they want a little less of your ‘love’ you retaliate.”

  “But they know not how I need them. Oh, I stepped down to the blue planet for Id, and sojourned there alone for long ages, drawing my sustenance up from the plain. But then they came, and gave me purpose. If they go now, I shall die.”

  Orana wondered if Tiamat were dissipated like the spirits of the sublunary sphere, drained of will through aeonic ennui. Love, she had been told, was the perfection of the will. But she knew that Tiamat was parasitizing Cubit’s mind in speaking, and that her humanity was illusory. She shuddered to think what embryo of dark conception corresponded to “love” in her vocabulary.

  “I am sorry for your sufferings,” she said. “But I’m not leaving without the boy.”

  “Take him, then, and break his mind,” said the voice. There was a note of hateful gloating that had not been audible in its self-pity.

  Orana guessed that the black ooze represented Tiamat’s brain and that she was feeding on the boy’s soul. If she yanked Cubit out of that embrace, she might save his body, but his mind would be torn to shreds. Could there be a way of loosening Tiamat’s hold?

  She recalled the bottle of liquor she still carried in her satchel. She drew it out and unstopped it. Mescat fumes filled the chamber. With a silent prayer she up-ended it over the vat, draining it down to its last drop. The clear fluid vanished without a trace into the viscous mass. Bubbles began forming on the surface.

  “What are you doing?” the boy’s voice screamed. “What—I—my—mind—I—oh—”

  The ooze exploded in a shower of stinking globules. Cubit’s body was thrown into Orana’s arms. The vat continued to bubble and squeak, sending up streams
of black ichor and bits of rotten bones and teeth. Lifeless myriapods rained down from the walls. The tower rocked on its foundations.

  “What’s happening?” the boy mumbled.

  “Be still,” said Orana. “I’ll get us out of here.”

  Already she was developing the last chimera. It grew into a segmented worm with short legs at the tip of its tail and a pair of ridiculously tiny wings close behind its head. She sent it slithering onto the edge of the vat. With its powerful feet she gripped the rim, then fluttered its wings to elevate its head to the opening above. There she seized hold with its mouth.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” she told Cubit.

  With him hanging down her back she wriggled up the worm, using its segments as handholds. Within the shaft the going became easier. Gravity reversed itself. They dropped into the upper chamber.

  Here, too, the tower was reeling. Orana kicked an eye out of its socket. She held Cubit up so he could crawl through to the pipes. She followed, and they climbed down to the base and ran, hand in hand.

  Fish was where she had been told to wait. They made toward her as fast as their legs would carry them. Without a word Orana seized the girl’s hand and kept going.

  A sickening groan went out over the flats. Sanity-threatening colors played over the salt despite the fierce sunlight.

  “Don’t look back, children,” panted Orana.

  They obeyed. Before long they were back amongst the pillars of salt.

  * * *

  As they neared the island the next day, Orana sensed that something was wrong. A hush lay over the mosses. She ascended to the cleft with Fish and Cubit and found that the huts were all empty.

  All but Arrow’s, where the boy phylarch was laid out on his pallet, his face pale, his bloody hands crossed over his breast. Skate was beside him, holding their baby and rocking.

  Orana dropped to her knees. “What happened?”

  “After you left a man came,” said Skate, speaking lowly. “The others let him on the island because he said he was your friend. Arrow tried to make him leave.”

  Orana took the boy’s hand. He was dead. Her antennae throbbed. “Where is he?”