The Transmigration of Souls (30 page)

Down below, hundreds of meters below as they passed over some high, dry plateau, he watched a fire-breathing dragon slay and eat a monster so huge it defied probability. A monster the size of two blue whales, a monster that must weigh in the thousands of tons. A monster that was grazing peacefully, munching the tops of dry brown trees, until the dragon came and slew it.

Not just any dragon. A special dragon. A familiar dragon. Tyrannosaurus rex vomiting a steady stream of napalm on the screaming, writhing herbivore’s back, raising blisters that grew to holes, exposing ribs, melting skin away, jellied gasoline pouring in to cook tortured flesh, tree-crunching monster falling and dying, familiar dragon bending to his feast. Things on his back, little tree-shaped spines, wriggling as if with pleasure, as he bit and chewed and swallowed.

Standing by his side, watching, knight-errant Amanda Grey said, “Lucky you came down where you did. Those well-watered highlands don’t support much in the way of really dangerous fauna.”

Why not?

Too soft, she’d said. Too easy.

Wouldn’t you say a sabertooth tiger was really dangerous?

She’d smiled, nodding at the scene below. What would
smilodon
be to a thing like that? A skin parasite?

Down below, the plateau of the fire-breathing dragons passed on, giving way to a huge canyonland, dark, red-orange rock eaten away to vertical walls, giving way to a desert country kilometers below, desert country of spires and columns, tiny mountains surmounted by dry, stunted trees.

No rivers, Ling whispered. No water at all. This is a valley of the winds...

Some people call it that, said Amanda Grey.

The people of Hesperidia?

The people of this place, which is a hole in nothing at all.

This place?

Hesperidia. What you see below is called the Aino Plains, the landscape around Aphrodite Terra, our destination. At his inquiring look, she said, Aphrodite Terra. The land of Yttria...

Meaningless, though the words themselves had meaning.

How is it you speak English so well?

A puzzled look. The language is called Têtonic. Why do you speak
it
so well?

Well, I studied hard in school and... He smiled, spoke a few words in Guoyü. She said, Ah. I’m not surprised. You certainly look like a Han, though obviously you’re not...

Everything so subtly twisted around. I must keep reminding myself what it
means
, for the Multiverse to
be
. To port, in what they referred to as north, another mountainous land appeared, dark rock, gray, like granite, weathered granite, with green stains here and there, as if the rock supported moss or algal growth. Lichens, perhaps. Lichens will grow on rocks, even very dry rocks.

Atop the mountain was what looked like a ruined city. A dark-looking city, a city full of shadows, as if invisible clouds hung overhead, blotting out that blistering spark far above. He pointed the place out, asked the obvious question.

Amanda Grey fell silent, gazing at the distant city, piled rubble visible now, fallen towers, blasted plazas, places touched by fire.

Places, Ling could see, where the very stone had run molten in the streets.

The mountain itself, she said, is called Bell. The city has no name.

It looks very old.

It is. No one knows how old. It’s the place where my people, the Têtons, were brought, brought from their original land, twenty thousand years ago.

Brought?

Brought here to be slaves of the Angels. Angels who built that city.

Another long silence, while they watched the ruined city atop the dark mountain named Bell drift away aft, then she said, For eight thousand years we served them at bed and table, served their every whim, served them while God slept on. Then the War of the Angels happened, and we got away, walked through the nightmare of Leda’s Land to remote, empty Ishtar Terra, Ishtar of the high, cold Maxwell Mountains, so like our old, forgotten home. Most of us died. A few survived to found Traanheim in Traanmark, which in time became the bright empire of Têtonland.

Ling said, And the Angels? What of them? Did their war last forever?

She shook her head. It was over soon, for the Angels bore terrible weapons indeed. Two only survived, Ahriman and Lucifer. They hold each other paralyzed. And the world survives because God’s Machine has yet to run down.

God’s Machine
.

No, I don’t want to believe in where I am.

Yet the reality, all about me...

He said, And what of... God?

God
.

The syllable hangs bitter on the end of my tongue. There is no God. There can be no God. God is an ancient dream, an excuse men made to explain away the world’s horror, long, long ago, in a land remote from my own...

Amanda Grey said, God sleeps.

That, perhaps, is the best kind of God.

Aft of the ship, a spark of light appeared, growing closer, brighter, pursuing them like some kind of missile. Like one of those old photon torpedoes, Ling thought. He pointed to the thing.

Amanda looked and smiled. She said, “I never saw Aarae burn so much energy before, keeping up with us. She’s... intent on your comrade. The fat man... Inbar? Is that his name?”

The spark grew into a plump ball of misty fire, whirling round and round the ship, like ball lightning. The fire extinguished, become a blur of tiny wings, and fell upon the afterdeck, where most of the others congregated, looking over the side at the landscape, or watching Edgar fly the ship.

Omry Inbar shouted, leaping to his feet, trying to dodge the little pixie’s attack, failing, squawking haplessly as she grabbed him here and there, while his audience started to laugh.

Amanda said, “You’re friend will have to give in. She seems... insistent.”

Ling said, “What could such a creature want with a full-sized man?”

Amanda smirked, eyes aglitter. “You’d be surprised.”

o0o

Soon enough, a high mountain land, a dry mountain land, rose before them. Aphrodite Terra, Edgar told them. Three high, dry plateaus strung along Hesperidia’s internal equator. Ovda, Thetis, and Atla, each unique, each splendid.

Equator
? Rahman wondered. What makes this an equator? Does Hesperidia spin around its inner sun?

Edgar staring at her. Something in his eyes. Something... of
knowing
. How would we tell? We call it the equator, always have. And just so, we define the poles. Ovda and Thetis, he said, are home to the lands of Haanan and Kmet. Edgar said something in a guttural language that sounded much like Arabic, but was not.

Inbar started, and said, They speak ancient
Ivrit
?

Edgar shrugged. Atla, he said, is home to the Yttrian people. Though Amanda’s father is a Têtonic
landsknecht
of ancient lineage, her mother hailed from Yttria. Some say she was a stolen princess, though Amanda prefers not to speak of her mother...

Fairy tales. He’s talking about fairy tales.

A city rose up before them now, Yttria, Edgar said, and the little ship slanted down out of the sky, lumbering clumsily, overloaded as it swooped toward a landing stage crowded with other ships large and small.

It feels, Rahman told herself, like midnight.

o0o

They walked through the city to Amanda’s house, which turned out to be a palace of sorts, palace full of magic servants, full of unbelievable things. Walked through a shadowed city under a noonday sun, a city full of the equally unbelievable.

Unacceptable, thought Ling Erhshan. That’s the word I want to use. Curious how I feel that way now. The bright dream of coming to space, itself colored more by all those old stories than by the reality of those who’d gone before, cast into shadow by the fact of the stargates, the fact of being given access to... to the whole of the Universe.

How did I feel then? Was I exhilarated? I don’t even remember.

On through the stargates, fleeing and fleeing, expecting to find myself out among the fixèd stars. That was the reality I clung to. Then what? Time travel? That poor man Ahmad Zeq, dying in Permian time, dying in the jaws of his ancestral monster. How closely related is
homo
to
dimetrodon
? I don’t even know.

Time travel. Incredible. Remember that old American cartoon? Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome...

And now, so they say, we can never find our way home again. One more step. One more after that. Space travel possible and real. Star travel a fantasy? Maybe, maybe not. Time travel. Almost but not quite out of the question. And then. And then.

Buildings all around them made of fine, smooth stone. Limestone and marble. Gray granite, brown sandstone. Empty windows, as if these people hadn’t discovered glass. That adds to the... look of the place. Amanda Grey’s palace looked as if it were made of acid-etched concrete, almost out of place in this here-and-now. Almost, but not quite.

Within, furniture and servants, servants human and otherwise, hangings and carpets with eldritch scenes. Vast tableau on one wall, scene of brooding mountains over a highland plain. Burning hamlet in the background, in the foreground a fire-breathing dragon, close-by, but not too close, peasants armed with pitchforks and scythes. Two horses before the dragon. On their backs, Amanda Grey, knight errant, and her squire, bald-headed Edgar.

Seeing him look at the thing, Amanda said, “I was given my errantry for that deed.”

They walked through the vast house to a steamy chamber, a room with a large swimming pool, steps down into it from every side, wisps of vapor rising off the water. A heated bath, like a Roman bath, like a public bath.

Pixie Aarae swept over their heads, skimming low over the water, wingtips dimpling its surface as she flew, then whirled on high, trailing a fine mist, spun round and round Inbar, settled on the floor before him, wings still, arms folded across her breast, grinning up at him, tapping one toe gently.

Servants came and started helping Amanda off with her armor. Bizarre, misty servants. Servants made, so it seemed, of fog...

Ling felt his breath grow shallow as he watched. Chain mail cast aside. Leather undergarments cast aside. Red-headed woman clad only in a thin film of lingerie, servants like ghosts floating around her, brushing that dark, red-gold hair. Woman then, only woman, identity lost, stretching, luxurious woman, stretching while those misty servants stripped away those last thin layers of translucent cloth.

Ling felt himself sigh. The transition was from mystery to flesh, from image to reality. Only a woman now. Only a real woman. Dreamgirl vanished, like a wraith of smoke. Still, this is a handsome woman indeed. When I was a young man, I would have danced gladly to her tune.

Others disrobing around him, as always, the women first. Golden Kincaid, with her muscles and solidity. Alien Tarantellula, all long black arms and legs. Amaterasu, wonderful robot maiden, made by woman for man’s delight. Mistress Laing, imaginary telejournalist, nothing special about her except fleshy perfection. And unremarkable Subaïda Rahman...

I must remind myself,
she
is the real woman here, the others, by varying degrees, manufactured.

Then men, last as always. Edgar, fat, yet so obviously well-muscled, like most bald men, covered otherwise by dense, wiry black hair. Inbar, fat man, plain and simple. Brucie with that ridiculous thing hanging between his legs, his pride and joy. Small, slim, handsome Genda, well suited to his robot bride. Sad, silent Jensen. Rhino Jensen of the most absurd cognomen, as flesh-perfect as his chronicler Laing.

And old Professor Ling, the least of them all. What is it a woman sees when she looks on me? A little old man with spindly shanks and a little pot belly? I always wondered. I never knew. Do they tell us only in words we cannot understand? Or is it just, as so many insist, that we refuse to listen?

Men and women, by ones and twos, descending into the steamy water. Brucie Big-Dick, he saw, was holding Tarantellula’s hand. The water warmed them, made them whole again, healed them somehow. Perhaps, made this world, impossible world, seem real, seem comfortable. That’s the problem, thought Ling. The world outside my skin seemed... like nothingness? As if only the world inside had any validity. What was happening didn’t matter, only how I felt about it.

They sat by the water’s edge, on the stone steps, some of them higher up, only their feet immersed, others down near the bottom, water up to their necks. Inbar sat thus, sat on the pool’s bottom, naked little Aarae perched on his head. The water’s magic seems to have worked on him as well. He’s... gotten used to her presence.

They sat together, and Amanda had the servants bring Lord Genda’s bronze briefcase of a Bimus combat computer, sat and watched as he swung it open, one impervious corner dipping into the steamy water, watched as he activated the bright gray screen and called up his maps.

Amanda Gray looked, listened to his explanation of their quest, finally said, “Synchronicity is an important natural force in Hesperidia.” She took in their not quite blank stares. “More so perhaps than it is in your own... world-lines? Is that the word I want to use?”

“It will do,” said Edgar.

“Bad times,” she said, “dark times, come now and again to the Land of the Têtons. They come more and more often as God’s Machine winds down, wears out for want of maintenance.”

So the Angels fight a war, and God doesn’t intervene. The Angels, charged perhaps with the maintenance of His Machine, destroy themselves, all but two. Now the Machine runs down and still God doesn’t intervene? This is a lazy God indeed...

She said, “The Archangel Michael came one day, one day years ago, and stole Crown Prince Ardry Bright-Sky, son of Traanmark’s Earl Oren, grandson of Erik IX Whitehall, Emperor of All the Têtons, whom some call Erik Rede-Miser...”

Rahman sat forward, stirring the water with one hand, liberating more steam, breathing it in. “I thought you said all the Angels but two were destroyed? Didn’t you say only Ahriman and Lucifer survived?”