Beneath Ceaseless Skies #36 Read online

  Above them, most magnificent of all, turned another world. The roofs of its gyri, glass and metal, flared in the sunlight. The sulci, narrow dark canyons, wrinkled the globe like an ancient face. An alien god tumbled through the sky, about as large as my fist at arm’s length.

  And under these marvels what did the Motor subjects do? They went about their business, diverting wagons laden with goods into smaller tunnels through the gyrus, allowing in war machines for the coming parade, smoking cigarettes and cracking wise.

  I wandered among the traffic until I found Terrence, looking morose. He handed me a slim, heavy briefcase, and together we looked through the balconies until we found one with blue-blossomed vines climbing the walls. Just as in my vision, the seating was divided into private boxes. Sheet-metal walls sectioned off seats in groups of half a dozen. Most of their gates bore fluttering tags indicating a reservation, but Terrence found an unreserved box, ducked into a nearby office, and claimed it.

  Inside, he leaned against the door while I assembled the rifle, checked the magazine, and tested the telescopic sight. In my vision, the bride and the Motor King passed at a stately pace—she on foot and he in his arachnoid truss. This box should afford me a fine angle of fire.

  There was nothing left to do but wait. Terrence leaned forward to point at a tall, slender spire sprouting from a distant bluff. “The Motor Palace,” he said, “under that tower.” I squinted. Tiny windows glimmered. I couldn’t tell where the palace began or ended: like the Mirror Palace, it was just a cluster of rooms partitioned off from the rest of the gyrus for easy defense.

  But somewhere behind one of those little windows, Nadia was either being crowned Motor Queen or executed.

  * * *

  Wheels rumbled. Bootsteps snapped in unison, quaking the ground. Laughter and footfalls had filled the other boxes, and now in front of us we saw the tops of officers’ caps and their ladies’ towering coiffures.

  Cheers swelled—and what could I do but join?—when a gleaming war machine rolled by. The spirit of the crowd, or maybe the interminable wait, helped to calm my anxiety. In an hour, possibly less, I might be dead. Spent, like so many others, by Nadia’s lust for glory. I’d always recognized the monarchy for what it was, yet I’d still given it my loyalty. Only now, imagining the crack of the rifle, did I wonder, Is it worth dying for?

  The crowd’s cheering rose to a distant roar. I felt it grow, like a distant wave traveling towards me. “The Motor King,” Terrence whispered in my ear.

  “Then go,” I said. His eyes were wet, and the roar of the crowd swelled closer, slowly, as if it were tracking the King’s progress. “Go,” I said, and Terrence went. Then I worked the rifle’s bolt: the first cartridge, like a golden tooth, slid into the breech. I raised the rifle, setting the scope to my right eye.

  In the telescopic sight there were fine crosshairs, which presently alighted on the head of an obese, gray-haired general. He passed, followed at length by a train of soldiers. Then, like figures in a mirror, the royal couple crawled into the scope’s view. How odd, I thought, as I pulled the trigger and King Stefan toppled. He must have gotten a new truss; he is taller than her.

  I manipulated the bolt to eject the shell. My hands seemed to work of their own volition, while my mind was far away. I relived in an instant Nadia’s abandonment of me. I recalled her self-pitying tears and the good men who had died—as I would die, most likely. My hands did their work efficiently, and only when the scope was again at my eye did I understand how completely I hated her.

  I squeezed the trigger, sending her down in a cloud of blood.

  * * *

  I remember little of what followed. Everything collapsed into pandemonium. The balcony of blue flowers erupted in screams. I threw down the rifle and ran into the promenade, where yelling throngs poured in from every doorway. Soldiers ran about, shouting. Somehow, they recognized me despite my uniform. They must have beaten me, because my vision went black.

  I awoke in some kind of medical ward: ugly and functional with clean tiles gleaming. In a mirror opposite my bed I saw my own face: bruised, gaunt, pale, and hairless. In place of my scalp there was gleaming steel; in place of my hair, needles ending in wires. I was wearing an urchin crown, just like the Motor King’s.

  My hands were strapped to the sides of the bed, presumably to keep me from killing myself by pushing the needles in. The wires were bound into a cable that disappeared into a hole in the far wall. So they were monitoring me, which meant they knew I was conscious. And yes, as soon as I’d taken stock of myself the steel door squeaked open.

  I heard quiet voices: one asking questions, another answering. I don’t think I was truly afraid until I heard the metal legs ticking on tiles. The door screeched wider and King Stefan entered.

  As in his portraits, he wore a gauzy white shirt like a hospital garment. On his head—or rather, replacing the top of it—was the urchin crown. Otherwise he was naked, although his trunk disappeared so completely into the metal truss that it was hard to say how much of a lower body he had. His skin was chalk-pale and utterly hairless. When he spoke, only the right half of his face moved.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “What?”

  “I said, are you comfortable?”

  He spoke in a whispering sort of croak, a deathbed voice. Palsied and stammering, half-paralyzed, he seemed more fit for a sickbed than I. With his good hand he reached forward, spider legs stretching, and pulled the sheet down over my body. Bruises lumped my flesh; my left leg was an unrecognizable pulp encased in blood-soaked bandages. From the crook of my elbow sprouted a thin, clear tube, pumping in food syrup or medicine.

  “I never meant this to happen,” he said, as if excusing himself. “She asked me to spare you, as much as possible. I told my guards to try.”

  “She?” I said. “Queen Nadia?”

  The Motor King nodded. “The couple you killed were stand-ins. They trained years for this day and gave their lives willingly.”

  I shook my head. “Nadia will be a good wife to you.”

  He smiled—a one-sided sneer. “I could’ve taken the bullet myself. Do you think I’m afraid of that? But the whole kingdom would have collapsed. Anarchy, famines. My cerebromancers have heard it.”

  I dismissed this with a wave of the hand.

  “You doubt me?”

  How couldn’t I, when he was clearly at death’s door already? The Motor King was a different man from the one I’d heard stories of: a weaker man. The king of legend would never have tolerated that dismissive gesture. Yet a kernel of arrogance remained: if he truly cared about his subjects, he would have stepped down in favor of a healthier king.

  Which made perfect sense. I leaned forward. “Was your invasion a pretext to install Nadia as your successor?”

  His face sparkled with amusement. “No.”

  “Then what?”

  He paused, as if dredging something complex from memory. Then, as if catching it, he leaned out the door and spoke. Minutes later, a pair of porters came in holding a small table and, on top of it, a recording device of some kind. A long scroll of paper stretched over its top, and many armatures tipped with graphite rested on the clean white surface.

  One of the porters picked up the cable from my urchin crown and plugged it into the machine. At once the machine sprang to life. The paper rolled smoothly while the pencils jittered, tracing jagged lines.

  “What do you think cerebromancy is?” the Motor King asked.

  I looked at the machine. “To be frank with you, I don’t care anymore.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening. He turned off drawing machine and examined the roll of paper.

  “I used to think of it in terms of telling the future,” I said. “But look where that’s brought me. As far as I’m concerned, cerebromancy is useless.”

  “That is gravely wrong,” he murmured, scanning the paper, “though I can see why you’d think it.” He unclipped the scroll and showed it to me. About thirt
y rows of gray lines zig-zagged across the paper. “Every fluctuation in a line,” he said, “records a transaction between two citizens of your brain. Which two—” he ran a hand over the needles piercing his own crown— “depends on where the needle strikes. Now look here.” He showed me a part of the scroll where several of the lines narrowed into sharp, precisely aligned peaks. After that, they dissolved into chaotic jaggedness.

  “This surge in communication,” he said, indicating the jaggedness, “occurs when you speak. And this—” he pointed to the precisely aligned peaks— “occurs just before you decide to speak. In fact it is your decision to speak.”

  “What does it matter, though?” I said. “Of real consequence is what is said, how it affects people. Can lines on a scroll feed anyone? What do they mean to the creatures occupying my skull, who died when the needles were put in?”

  He replied with his sneering smile. “The men in your skull, like those in the world, are of little consequence. The system is what matters. But this is the point: the invasion wasn’t about wealth or territory. It wasn’t about Nadia. It was this.”

  And he pointed again at the scroll, at the point in my brain activity where I’d decided to speak. “Really, it was about mirrors. In the human brain, mirrors are a metaphor: there are beings in your brain who allow us to understand other people’s intentions and feelings. In order to speak, those ‘mirrors’ must be yoked to the muscle control centers—the so-called motor system—for the mouth and voicebox. We call them that because in reality they aren’t metaphors: the Great Being is indeed about to speak, and for this to happen mirrors are needed. That, Daniel, and no other reason, is why the Motor lands had to conquer the Mirror.”

  I shook my head. It was insane. War for defense, war for glory and conquest—these things I could understand. But going to war for the Great Being, who neither knew nor cared of our existence? It was too much for my fatigued mind to grasp. “I don’t understand,” I said, yawning. My limbs felt heavy. Numbness spread from the tube in my arm. I heard the Motor King speak to a doctor on his way out.

  When I awoke, my ruined leg had been cut away. A steel limb was bolted into my hip.

  * * *

  The doctor who taught me to walk again was a quiet man with the tea-colored skin of a surface-dweller. He exuded the tang of alcohol. It was nothing like gin or melonwine, but like the solvents used to clean glass. He wore a paper mask over his mouth and a cloth cap over his silver hair. He never told me his name.

  I found the false leg strangely easy to accept. I knew I was marking time until my execution, which would surely come when the Motor King offered me a place in his service and I refused. For the same reason, I no longer worried about my role in the Great Being’s cognition. I had myself, my own experiences, and that was enough.

  When the doctor came in I sat up and greeted him warmly. Here was another being, as complex as a whole world. With little time left, what gave me comfort was to savor each speck of experience: the gray mortar between the wall tiles, the sheets crisp against my skin. I confess too that it gave me a grim satisfaction to be alone in my understanding. Nadia bent all her efforts to greater acquisition; the Motor King saw people as signals, pencil traces of information. Only I perceived the core truth of existence.

  So, as much as possible, I tried to enjoy my final days. I submitted humbly to the doctor’s care. He plugged the cable from my urchin crown into a socket on the back of the new leg’s thigh. Then he asked me to try moving.

  “But there’s nothing to move,” I said. My left leg was gone. The nerves were cut.

  The doctor answered patiently. “I didn’t say to move it. I said to try moving it.”

  I tried.

  “Try flexing the knee.”

  I tried again, and this time the metal leg twitched, kicked slightly.

  “Again.”

  He drove me through hours of exhausting practice. By the end, I was using that metal leg almost as though it were my own: bending the knee, turning the lower part—even clenching the clawed foot, which had more in common with a hand.

  I had no concept of day or night anymore, but I guessed it was about a week before I could walk with confidence. The rhythm of walking with one metal leg and one flesh unnerved me at first, but I soon grew used to it.

  When I heard the boot soles thumping the floor outside, I rose to open the door. King Stefan, fist poised to knock, looked me up and down with approval. “Walk with me,” he said. I tugged on a linen hospital shirt and stepped out into the echoing, white-walled corridor. A pair of guards followed close behind.

  I quickly noticed that I wasn’t in a hospital at all. Nor was I in prison, precisely. The scent of alcohol was strong and every surface spotless, as one would expect in a medical ward. But the doors were heavy with external bolts. Armed guards were posted everywhere. Through the occasional window I saw shackled men wearing urchin crowns. In each room, a cerebromancer dressed as a doctor commanded the prisoner: some of them were writing with chalk; others were reading or speaking or solving some puzzle with their hands. One silver-capped face turned to me in anguish. We walked past.

  “Have you thought about what I said?” the Motor King asked. “About the greater meaning of cerebromancy?”

  I shook my head. “I’m finished with cerebromancy. I spent a decade reading visions for Nadia, and for what? To keep her on a throne she didn’t deserve? To advise her on getting the best return for the lives of her men? No, I’m done. Kill me if your laws demand it, but I’m done.”

  I expected to die shortly—to arrive at an execution site where King Stefan would lecture me again about cerebromancy, a veiled offer to join his service. Instead, he said softly, “As a matter of fact you’re going to be exiled.” He saw my expression. “It surprises me, too, frankly.”

  It had to be Nadia. Only a queen’s command could justify such expensive treatment for an exile. For King Stefan, it would have been less trouble to send me off one-legged, or to keep me prisoner in this hellish research clinic of his.

  We reached the end of the hall, a door of thick steel flanked by a further pair of guards. We waited there while they recited a complicated series of salutes, credentials and pass-codes, convincing those at the exit that this was indeed the king and not one of his doubles.

  King Stefan said, “I imagine you’ve often wondered about the citizens of your own brain. How do they live? What sensations, dreams, desires do they have?”

  I nodded.

  “My cerebromancers tell me that the Great Being wonders the same thing. They tell me that this... conversion of yours—this notion that individuals have some value—is the first embodiment of this fancy. The Great Being will speak of this idea, and—” he coughed— “after some coaxing from my queen, it seems that you are to be the message.”

  At last, the two sentries were satisfied. One of them pushed a button. The heavy door slid away.

  “Darling!” the king cried.

  “My love!” squealed Queen Nadia, standing in the small room that was revealed. She wore a gemmed, brocaded cloak. A pair of guards flanked her. The Motor King scuttled forward, sweeping her into a one-armed embrace. She bent slightly to kiss his cheek, then cast a stage grimace and wink at me.

  “Daniel,” she smiled warmly, inviting me into the little parlor as if it had been years, not days, since we’d seen each other. As if instead of leaving me to seek her own glory she’d simply fallen out of touch, as old friends occasionally do. As if she didn’t know I’d shot her double in the head.

  I stepped inside. The door slid shut behind me. Some distant mechanism creaked into motion, cables groaned, and I felt my legs press into the floor as the room ascended. “I suppose I should thank you,” I said.

  “I never forget my friends, Daniel.”

  “Your friends.” I shook my head. “I thank you again, Nadia, but I’m not your friend.” I pointed to my leg. “You did this, and worse, to countless men. You abandoned me for your own ambition when it suited
you! How can you look me in the eyes and smile?”

  We must have been deep within the gyrus—as deep as the old Mirror Palace—for the room continued to rise. For the first time since the invasion, my body felt buoyant, even light. I whirled on King Stefan. “And you! You spend people like coins, and what does it gain you? You’re dying, you know, and your own wife—” A cold dagger touched my throat. The guard had moved with such furtive purpose that I hadn’t noticed him until he was on me.

  Nadia waved him back. “Have you understood nothing, Daniel? If you want to condemn injustice, look into your own skull. Do you think, if you lost a finger or stopped using a foreign language, the patch of your brain devoted to it would go on living in peace? Of course not. Its neighbors would invade, enslave the inhabitants. Would you cut the evil out of your own cortex, then? You disappoint me.”

  I said nothing. I was leaving this world, if I could believe the Motor King; and if I couldn’t believe him then I was about to die. Nothing I said to them would matter. My body felt lighter still as the room ascended, unnaturally so. My shirt floated around me; the cable along my back bobbed in the air like a rope in water.

  “I forgot to ask you,” Nadia said to her husband, “did he ever ask about his friend Terrence?”

  “He never did,” the Motor King answered, with mock sadness. “We looked in on Terrence in the research clinic, and Daniel didn’t even recognize him.”

  In a single moment, my pretense of enlightenment fell to pieces. I’d renounced all I had: my position, my loyalties, even my faith. If I’d still held onto anything in this world, it was my certainty that at least I had saved Terrence from a fate like mine. That had been my secret, the one thing Stefan could never take from me.

  “What a shame,” Nadia said.

  “That’s plain to see on his face,” Stefan remarked. As if imparting a valuable lesson, he said to me, “Hold onto that shame, Daniel. Treasure it. Think of the worth that Terrence has for you: quite apart from its place in the Great Being’s mind, his life means something in itself. I confess I don’t understand it. But if the Great Being finds it so interesting, I urge you to speak of it as you make your way in the new world.”