For the love of hell, do not look at any news today.  In other sad things, David Lynch has passed away, and I had one thought on that.  And if you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries.  Meanwhile…

PENCILS DOWN!!!

I did my best, but met neither goal.  I did not finish the story and did not make the word count.  Didn’t even make the humbler goal of finishing act two, because my outline sucked.  This last chapter was like pulling teeth, and was meandering anti-climactic guff.  So even though it isn’t midnight quite yet (close), I am calling it in.

37, 251 words, a few chapters shy of the halfway point in my outline.

–

In the astrocielo around Borland 1, spirits looked up from their meals, from their eternity of grime and desolation amid a god’s bones, to see an unusual sight.  An astronave arrived, looking like a giant spiked black iron cage, suspended by rods from a slim, gold, coffin-like shape, embossed with stylized wings.

The cage suddenly burst apart, leaving desperate terrible creatures clinging to the dangling remains of it.  The coffin casually sailed around the world then, raining beasts whenever their strength failed.  As they fell, their survival instincts kicked in, and they fled the astrocielo for physical space just before they hit the ground.

They were effectively scattered across an entire planet, most of them very far from the nearest prey.  But they had senses that defied the physics of the material, a sense of smell that could take them halfway around the world.  The hellhounds had the power to heal these physical bodies, but they would need to eat.  The hunt began.

Josefina had promised to let Mallor’s children spend time with Ombunculita, which she would have to supervise – and so that time was committed.  She changed her diaper and cleaned and groomed her, in the basin of the guest suite living room, while Darter taught Umbrifer to play an electrified string instrument on the couch.

Darter looked at her with affection just the wrong side of salacious, but quietly so.  Umbrifer could not distinguish human expressions quite keenly enough to detect it, but noticed some flavor of distraction.  “The chords, Darter.  That’s a new one for me.”

“Ugh, just feel it out.  Real close to a F major, except…”

Umbrifer played a sour note in response.  “Guess the band isn’t going to make it.  What are you thinking?”

“She’s singing something.”

Josefina was singing quietly to herself, barely enunciating most of the words, but the tune carried just far enough in the warm quiet room.

Darter said, “You know you’ve really got it when you can play by ear.  Let me.”  He took back the instrument, palm muted the strings while he felt it out, and then began to play in time with her song.

She stopped singing and looked at him, which meant Ombunculita looked at him as well.  They both smiled sweetly.

The dead boy felt his hidden eye throb.  Could she really like him?  He kept playing until she started to sing again.  Unfortunately, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t project, so the song remained so much quieter than the accompaniment.

Umbrifer said, “That’s a neat trick, friend.  I commend you.”

“Thank you.”

Ombunculita mouthed like she was singing, not even well enough to match the time or shapes of the words.  Josefina picked up her little arms and danced with her, still singing.

Umbrifer smiled weakly.  What a strange scene!  It thought again of what Josefina was infamous for, and whether there was any contradiction in who she was today.  No, it thought.  A person could be a sex weirdo at sex time, and a perfect charmer the rest of their life.

Josefina noticed the smile and returned it, which Darter noticed, making him skip a note, face terse until he sorted himself out.  Umbrifer was also distracted, worried that she was going to find it sexually appealing.  It turned its weird face around and bugged Darter about the misstep, taking the opportunity to shake up the scene.

Josefina took Ombunculita away, leaving them behind.

Darter said, “It’s your fault she left.  She didn’t like your face.”

“Maybe that was it.  Hey, how old were you when you died?”

“Um, like sixteen.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A year ago?”

“You’re still so young.  I’ve heard young humans are fools for love.”

“That’s all dead and gone, my friend.  Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t.”

Blasfemia leaned against a water changing station in the middle of the village, trying to shake the sickness.  She’d been drinking too much; now she needed a sip to take the edge off every morning.  What a fool!  But not a lonely fool.  That seemed to be the norm for the village, especially among single youths.

Kabel was passing by and stopped to say hello.  The big lady had a way of discouraging other people, which was helpful.  Blasfemia wasn’t keen on getting mobbed.  She pantomimed the hangover, and made a production of getting her mobile out.

“Hey, Kabel.  Where can I get a little medicine at this hour?”

“Raise the wrist?”

“That’s the prescription.”

“If it’s just a little, I might have it.”

“It is,” she made praying hands around her mobile, “just a sip.”

Kabel produced a flask, and let Blasfemia wash her mouth with it.

“Do you think you’d be good to handle a gun today?”

“Hmm, yeah.  Why you ask?”

“We gotta save bullets, but we also gotta stay sharp, so there’s an allowance for practice.”

“What’s there to shoot?  Can’t imagine you want trouble with the Company.”

“Want’s got nothin’ to do with it, sometimes.”

“Alright.  What are we shooting at?”

It was a reasonable scheme to have Blasfemia to herself for a time – most of the others had burned their bullet allowance, but she still had some to spare.  She walked her past the end of the village proper, chatting lightly as they went.  They stopped at a disused algae field, only visible as odd lines in the snow, and a shack.

“So what kind of guns to you have?”

Kabel set her bundle down and unwrapped it.  There was only one gun inside.  Blasfemia had expected the blocky shape to be a case for the weapon, but it turned out to be the weapon itself.  It looked like a series of shiny silver blocks with slightly rounded edges, and the end had a very large opening.

“What the hell kind of bolt comes out of this thing?”

“Plasma.  The bullets flash to plasma in the chamber, and the pressure causes it to erupt from the front.  It’s not a very safe weapon to use, honestly.”

“What kinda risks are we talking?  They don’t explode in your hand, do they?”

“No, but when they miss, they can miss badly.  A misfire usually sends it down thirty-five or so degrees from where you were pointing it, so it’s good to keep that area clear.”

“So you can’t rest it on our cover unless you want a lap full of plasma?”

“Yeah.”

Blasfemia whistled.  “What do the bullets look like?”

Kabel had been wearing a utility harness and belt just covered in blocky pouches, and she took them off, laying them over a short length of ruined fence.  “I’ve got twenty-eight to spare.”

“Damn, girl.  You got the bombs.”

Kabel smiled bashfully and fidgeted with the belts.  “Um…  I’m really bad at this, but I have to ask…”

“What is it?”

“What the hell is that?”

Blasfemia spun to look in the direction Kabel had.  There was nothing – but a hint of tracks in the snow.

“I thought you didn’t have animals here.  Could it be a robot?”

They held their mobiles out in front of them almost like weapons, so they could keep an eye on the horizon and read each other’s words at the same time.  “Gotta be some Company shit.  It was headed to the village, and we’re all the way out here with the weapons.  I’m an asshole.”

“Call ’em up.  I’ll call my people.”

They both hit the mobiles, strapping on the bullets as they did, and at last were marching double-time back to Alish.  Running was unwise – running out of breath at the wrong moment a deadly mistake.  By the time they neared the village, they could see the big robots coming in from the other direction, and toughs in the street, brandishing identical plasma rifles.

Someone cried out from behind a building – they had found a victim.  There was no point going that way, because the toughs had found tracks, and were pointing this way and that, to coordinate closing in.  As they passed within line of sight to the body, Blasfemia shot a look that way.  Blood in the snow, but couldn’t make out anything specific.

The lines were converging on the area of the bugaster’s house.

Mallor and his wife Patria were relaxing in the master suite when the call came in.  Something that moved like an animal, heading toward the village.  They called their children’s mobiles, but were ignored.  It was likely no cause for concern – just brattiness, or forgetting to charge.  They couldn’t call Josefina because the technology of their mobiles was not even remotely compatible, so they split up, to check different parts of the grand house.  Snow began to fall, gliding off the grand domes, and the light from the heaters bloomed.

(note to future self: this is meandering too much, shoulda outlined much more specific.)

Patria met Umbrifer and Darter in the guest suite, where they had just gotten the call from Blasfemia, and were planning to ride out trouble in comfort.  She spat at them and marched away, which Umbrifer took as a threat to the hospitality they’d thus far received, and hustled after her to see if it could make nice.  Darter played a single sad chord and slumped, still bothered about the scene with Josefina.

Mallor found the children being entertained by Ombunculita in the downstairs parlor, Josefina taking a call from Blasfemia as she watched them.  She had a faraway look, not taking things too seriously?  She did agree easily to Mallor’s suggestion they all go upstairs.

Shortly, the whole family and most of the visitors were in the living room of the master suite, which had large window overlooking the village square.  They watched the gunners move through the streets.  Josefina pointed to Blasfemia, and Ombunculita pointed as well.

The village toughs had it cornered in the grand house’s back yard.  This was no garden though; it was a maze of utility sheds, storage, and machines used to support the house.  Someone called the bugaster to tell him, and they worked out a strategy.  Gunners would carefully aim their rifles so that there would be no crossfire, while covering every angle of egress from the garden.  More gunners would enter the house from the front and take up guard along any weak points where it might break in from outside.

But unless they wanted to wait however many hours for the thing to make a move, somebody would have to go into the maze to find it.

Meanwhile, Mallor and Josefina went to watch the back yard from the best window view.  Due to the thick walls, some windows were substantially recessed in them, and to get the best view, they had to crawl inside the frame, move up to the pane, and wait there.  Ombunculita put her little hands on the pane and looked, though she seemed more interested in the feel of the glass on her face.  Mallor was creeped out, but didn’t say anything about that.

“They say it killed a child, savagely.  I can imagine a killer robot, but not one that would treat a body that way.  How could it be a beast?”

“It must be from the spirit world, Bugaster.”  Josefina wouldn’t look him in the eye, but had the convenient excuse of watching for a sign of the thing.  “Many spirits are basically monsters.  Born from of all of our fears.”

“I’m aware there is a spirit world.  They all say the spirit of Borland 1 is dead.”

“I’ve seen it.  It is.”

“I’ve never heard of a spirit on Borland 1 itself.  It’s just not that kind of world, Mis Josefina.”

“Umbrifer shows that there is nothing to keep that from changing.”

As the people waited outside, Blasfemia grew impatient.  Kabel was going to share the gun at target practice, but there was no way to do that in this situation, and they had no guns to spare for her.  Rumors did the rounds on mobile chat.  It was definitely a monster of some kind, not a robot.  It killed this person, or that.  The things it had done to its victims.

Blasfemia stood up.  “If it’s just a monster, it doesn’t have a gun, so why hide under cover?  It’s surrounded, right?”

Kabel said, “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“I’m gonna go.”

“With just your knives?”

“Yeah.  Make sure nobody shoots me.”  The fence wasn’t a barrier to much more than weak winds and snowdrifts, and she hopped it before anybody could stop her.

She made both tools into blades and kept one pointed forward and one backward as she stalked.  The natives had no experience with monsters, but Blasfemia had cut her teeth on them.

The polar regions of Corazon 2 had a weak boundary between the spirit and physical world, with “faerie paths” developing in any overgrown area from time to time.  When the more bestial sorts threatened livestock, one could try to overwhelm it with firepower, driving it back to the spirit world.  But it could potentially just come back.  Blasfemia’s talents were such that she could banish a spirit with physical harm, pin it to the material plane so that it could not escape, or just kill it outright.  It seemed like this one needed killing.

(note to future self: ooh, this is going so badly.  i swear.  wotta mess.)

“Here kitty kitty kitty!  Come and get it!”

She came out into a kill zone – an open walkway through the garden, where the thing could come at her from a half-dozen different directions.  Surprisingly, it did not opt for stealth.

In the window above, Ombunculita pointed to her, and the hellhound.

“By God,” Mallor said, “What is that thing?”

The hellhound was two meters at the shoulder, largely metallic in a way that reflected the landscape – now reflecting so much plastic and metal.  It really did look like a dog, but with more heavily built shoulders and head, and a front lip that split all the way to halfway up the snout.  It opened and closed the slit as it breathed, and the blood of its first victim trailed from its jaws.  It was definitely larger than anything Blasfemia had ever banished.

“Ooh, a doggy.  A little puppy doggy.  Come on.  Let’s go.”  She held the knives back, so that she could connect with the power of a swing – not sure how much it would take to penetrate that hide.

Behind her, looking down from the window, Josefina slapped a palm on the glass.  Two voices came to her, of Noise and Peace, saying “know thyself.”  A light bloomed from her eye, pushing her head back, blasting the air like the bleat of a huge antelope.

Mallor was shoved against the wall by the force, and when he opened his eyes, she had vanished, leaving only Ombunculita – whose eyes were glowing like twin suns, both palms on the glass.  He looked out the window and saw Josefina floating in the air, before she vanished and reappeared again, closer to the ground.

The hellhound snapped at Blasfemia, but before she could touch it, sank back to the snow, like a dog about to get hit with a shoe.  Josefina walked by, almost drifting like a ghost.

“Know peace,” she said, her voice echoing across dimensions.  She plucked the blinding star light from her temple and gently tossed it at the hound, where it landed like an anchor, pinning it to the ground by its jaw, burning its hide.

Blasfemia’s head snapped between that and the hellhound, not knowing what to make of it, but afraid the beast would shake off her power, not willing to take that chance.  She plunged a dagger into each eye, willing the creature’s death, forcing herself to think only of hatred as she did.

The emotion was key.  Her power was always intuitive, before she even understood that it was a power.  She knew that if she wanted something to die bad enough, while she was stabbing it, that was the end.

The hellhound shuddered, bleeding and burning far more than its wounds would suggest, until it shook apart, melting to nothing in the snow.

–

For the love of hell, do not look at any news today.  In other sad things, David Lynch has passed away, and I had one thought on that.  And if you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries.  Meanwhile…

–

The wave of destruction in the astrocielo had fully run its course, and the Celestial Hierarchy had formed ranks to restore order.  Usael was still spinning slowly, but not dangerously, and could be used as a base for the reestablished angelic host.  The spirit world of Dio 6 was already on a path to rebirth, restoration.  But what would that be without Michael in the sky?

Pontiff-Regent Michael spent his time learning as much as he needed to administer the state.  Primarily, it was the broad strokes about what the papacy even directly controlled, and which cardinal or official would be the best appointee to perform the duties for him.  But there were a few responsibilities that cold not be delegated.

He presided over one mass every day, and a high mass once every seven days.  This felt like a distraction from his most vital work, but it was also a moment of peace, an affirmation of his own faith, and he came to appreciate that – as much as the people were enthralled with having a high angel preach to them.

It also could be used as a way to get his thoughts out to the Stars of Weal, without having to specially record papal transmissions.  The news bureau could just use recordings of those masses, followed up with official statements from the College of Cardinals, clarifying any points that might be muddled.

They didn’t like having to clean up after a reckless speaker, but at least his principles lined up well with their needs.  This was about righting a grievous wrong, and restoring Heaven and the worlds to their proper order.

And this left him enough time to pursue his greatest interest – understanding the assassins.  If he could understand them, he would know how to prevent anything like that from happening in the future, and know how to most properly dispose of them – dispense the most perfect justice that he, as a lesser creature than God, could create.

There were so many odd lessons along the way.  What was a university?  What were the differing thoughts on politics, which would lead some students to radicalism?  How had he never noticed that heresies and dissenting ideas still existed, from his place in the stars?  Omniscience wasn’t what it used to be.

There was the parade.  Everyone the assassins had ever known was interviewed and interrogated exhaustively.  By the end of it all, he knew what ages they had graduated from potty-training, what breakfast foods they liked, and what words they spelled incorrectly on standardized tests.  Christina was always the most interesting to find out about, but the answers never added up to the person in his captivity.  How could one such as she have come from such simple origins?

And there was an irritant that kept coming up: the one that got away.  Investigation concluded that they had brought a fifth assassin with them to the Walled City – and that one had escaped the planet.  It was the murderous iconoclast they had broken out of prison on Corazon 2.  It was hard to get coherent statements from the assassins on her.  Xihuani seemed terrified of her, Zochino blamed her for tempting him into the assassination plot, Jorge associated her in his mind with the Mandate of Heaven but was unclear on why, and Christina was just unimpressed, thought of Blasfemia as a country bumpkin.

Christina’s opinion held the most weight with Michael, and he decided this Blasfemia must not have wielded the blade.  That could only have been Christina herself.  Yet Blasfemia was all the guard could talk about!  She had made some terrible display of herself on the tele, and tele carried more weight with the people than the life that was right in front of them.  Michael was terribly annoyed with it all.

God was, of course, on their side.  Exhaustive investigation had revealed she escaped in an astronave called the Leveret, and the College of Divination bent their best minds toward tracking that ship through time and space.  It would be found, and until then, all Michael had to do was wave off the pests when they came buzzing.

There was another issue shadowing his powerful mind.  Ever since the first day he had seen the assassins in the cathedral, he had not allowed himself to see them again.  The feeling that he had experienced that day, it had shaken him.  It was not the assassins that he feared, but the feeling itself.  Something within him would spark, would make him lose control of his psychic energy, and he did not know what would happen at that point.

At first it was just a sensible precaution, then it grew to be a great weight in his mind.  The only way to get over the fear was to just see them again – to have them brought before him, or to go to them in person – but what if the risk proved true?  At last, he realized that there was a way to handle that.  His power could be constrained by means other than his own willpower.  If he could simply limit his own power, the only consequences would be in his heart and mind.  Those he could surely handle.

And so Michael contrived a lamen to be worn upon his chest, beneath his cassock, imbued by powerful ideals with the enchantment to restrict his perceptions and powers to within his own corpus.  While wearing it, he could not extend his influence over others, which should prevent any damage to hapless bystanders, should his control slip.  The first time he tried it on, he was disappointed to find that everybody looked at him differently.  How much of their devotion came from his angelic aura?  He removed it, until next he was able to devise a way of limiting that talisman’s power over him.  A simple prayer strip could be adhered to it with consecrated wax, and easily removed when he wanted his powers suppressed.

Thus armored for spiritual battle, he went to face the one that inspired the most intense feelings in his young heart.  He flew to the hospital under the cover of night, that he would not draw a crowd there, and stole within.  The first guards that he encountered fell under his glamer and quickly took him precisely where he wanted to be.

Christina’s hospital cell was always dark.  The drugs destroyed her sense of time.  Was it day or night?  The only way to guess was how tired the attendants looked.  The window had been covered at first by simple screens, but those has since been replaced with a heavy sheet of metal carved to fit just right, bolted and welded in place so that none could get out any more than the light could get in.  The screens were still in the room, shielding various medical equipment from her eyes, glowing from wherever artificial lights touched them.  It was like being surrounded by flat ghosts.

At the door, something came over the paper doll string of guards.  Were they subtly changing, transforming?  No.  They were trembling. But their bodies stilled once more as they made way for a new arrival.

It was a pontiff!  So tall and young.  And winged?

“No.  No, no, no!  You can’t be an angel!  We killed you!”  With his powers gone, she was barely visible to him, beneath bandages and hair and tubes – she was just some thrashing pile of nothing.  Not right.

He approached her carefully, folding his wings back, arms low at his side.  “I am not the true Pontiff, though I hold his office until a proper man may be elevated.  It is true that you slew him, Christina, and his soul shall not be seen again until the End of Days.”

He could see her a little better then, leaning as close as he dared, lest his feelings return in power.  She was still slowly shaking her head, trembling.  Was it fear or disgust?  Michael felt ugly then.

Christina said, “Why are they hiring angels for this kind of gig now?  What are you, a church spirit?  Patron of the guards?  Where’d they dig you up, creep?”  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

He felt a stir of anger and stood to his full height.  “Know you that I am Michael, the Angel of God, a direct servant of your Almighty Lord.  Your sin brought me to land.  Your crime.  I merely respond to your invitation, fair Christina.”

She stopped shaking her head and looked at him with strange eyes, as if he was a dog with three heads.  “That can’t be true.  You’re up there, sleeping over the world, with your nasty dick out.”

“I walk the earth now!”  He clasped one hand over his heart and gestured desperately in the direction of the temple.  “I walk the marble tiles of that basilica, that has become the true pontiff’s sepulcher, because you made it thus!”  He came closer, not quite there, hands reaching like claws.  “Do you understand now, child?”

“Why?  Why couldn’t it be God?”

Michael remembered then her desire.  He remembered what she had done, when presented with the image of God Almighty –  reaching with fingers of unbridled malice for his sweet throat, closing hands around his neck even though they burn.  He again clutched at his heart, and knocked over screens with as sweep of the wing.

She asked, “Why are you such a drama queen?  You’re acting like a cheap tele star, bitch.”

Again, anger.  He flew to the bed and gripped the rails with his might hands, lowering his face until he could see her so close, so clearly.  His breath was hot on her cheeks.  “You mortals and your tele!  Can you not feel a thing?  Have you no heart in your chest, thou whore of the devil?!”

Christina had so often in life just reacted mindlessly to what was in front of her, used a disrespectful tongue that was faster than the leading edge of her mind.  But the reality of this monster was suddenly upon her, larger than life.  This was one of them – an angel.  It believed it was a servant of the creator of the Universe, did not realize that it was created or corrupted from its natural state by the beliefs of humans.  Essentially, it was an insane animal, with power to burn her to ash if it sneezed.

She smiled sheepishly.  “I believe.  I do.  Have mercy?  Please tell me that you have a heart!”

Michael could see her falsity, her contempt, her fear.  Why, oh why, did those poisonous traits lie behind a face so fair?  Even with all her makeup washed away, with black hair coming in beneath her heavenly white crown, countenance twisted with barely controlled mortal terror, with hatred, she was amazing.

Everything Michael had known as beauty before this, it was all statuary.  Marble edifice.  Light for light’s sake.  She was a creation divine, quickened flesh, tender and vivid, over pearly white bone.  Her eyes were the plain jelid orbs of a beast, rimmed in red, jagged black lashes like spider legs – but in that, somehow, a fascination he could scarcely comprehend.

His expression of anger softened.  He felt as if his face would fall from his body, rain down upon her, and his bones would just roll away, collapse at her feet.

And then he withdrew, like a frightened cat, fleeing the room.  On his way out the door, a feather came loose from his wings, and landed on the black and white tiles below.

The paper dolls folded back into their gate formation, and only by the sight of that feather could Christina know that what she had seen was not a dream.

EDIT TO ADD:

Michael flew to the palace, to the balcony, and to the relative privacy of his bedroom.  There he stopped in front of a full-length mirror, seeing himself as he seldom did.  What did this appearance inspire in Christina and why did he care?  He looked haunted.  It occurred to him that he didn’t know if the lamen was even working, and he pulled madly at the cassock until he could see it.  Yes, it was still there, slightly crusted with wax from the seal he had removed.

He reached for the chain, to remove it, but hesitated.  Was he in a good state to be without its protection?  Still, he felt he needed his powers just to focus on the matter at hand.  He called for a guard, and issued the order to have the palace cleared of anyone who might be susceptible to damage from his feelings.

The great angel meditated all through the night, putting his thoughts into order.  In the morning as he was headed to mass, a highly ranked guard brought him news.  The Leveret had been traced to a Heathen World, of course.  They had dared the Wall of Ice!  Fear makes the weak do strange things.

“What manner of security do we have at the Wall of Ice?  What forces?”

“The Wall is manned by few men.  More of autoesclavos, and many more of beasts.”

“Animals, in the astrocielo?”

“Monsters.  The Soldiers of Ice call them hellhounds.”

“Send these hellhounds to Borland 1, and let them know fear.  Watch for the Leveret to flee, and capture it if it does.  If it does not for a fortnight, send men to take this Blasfemia, and any who collaborate with her.”

“Yes, Pontiff-Regent.  It will be done.”

–

For the love of hell, do not look at any news today.  In other sad things, David Lynch has passed away, and I had one thought on that.  And if you want to read this novel from the beginning, see this article, read it, and hit the next button until you see more entries.  Meanwhile…

–

Bugaster Mallor’s house was the only place large enough to comfortably accommodate guests in the little algae farming village of Alish, which had the humbling effect of making the head of government into an occasional innkeep.  But in a sense, it was a privilege to host people from far away, to enjoy a greater share of the company of people you had never met, while most of Alish’s people were all too familiar with each other.

Construction in the wind-scoured hills needed to either have flexibility to bend in the wind, or solidity enough to stand unbowed – the middle ground would lead to disaster.  Most of the village’s houses had solid vertical metal beams sunk deep in the ground, but intentionally left unjoined by inflexible material to prevent cracking.  The rest of the structure would be layered flexible materials, with the outermost layers mostly a shiny corrugated white plastic.  The Bugasters grand house was, instead, built like a castle.  Not a large castle, but one with extremely thick stone walls, enameled with scallops of the same white plastic as the rest of the village.  All the openings in that stone were layered and sealed with perfect engineering to render the interior nearly immune to the discomforts of the weather.  You couldn’t open most of the heavy windows without machinery, but they let in the light and kept out the snow.

It had two levels above ground and one beneath, with the upper level reserved for the rooms that had to be the most impressive.  The three largest were the ballroom and the living rooms of the master suite and the guest suite, each topped with a clear dome, having microstructure that resisted accumulations of snow and ice.  When the lights were all off at night, through them you could see the stars.  When the lights were on, they provided only strange fishbowl reflections of the rooms beneath – lavishly appointed with eclectic furnishings and decor, over lacquered colorful stone tile reminiscent of riverbeds, lit by an assortment of warm white lamps shaped like tall rectangles and cylinders, and three huge decorative heating tanks, which each looked like a sequence of frosted translucent glass dominos that slowly pulsed with yellow-orange glow, as the chemicals within swirled and cycled through warming and cooling phases.

On a great couch mounded with furs, the sisters lay at opposite ends, Josefina with Ombunculita across her lap.  They still wore the finery from the endless party, but the details were getting shabby.  To survive the social pain, they had drunk to excess, and were nearing the limit of their consciousness.  But they hadn’t enough of each other’s company by the time the party ended, and so they shooed Umbrifer and Darter to their rooms, and dwelled in that fancy room a while longer.

Ombunculita snored soft and high-pitched, sounding more like a housepet than a human-derived creature.  Josefina would drift off, then get snapped back to bleary consciousness by a word from Blasfemia, then the same thing in reverse, over and over, allowing that family reunion to happen in slow motion.

“Josefina, hermana, what was in the Torre?  I just… can’t imagine what you were doing, with no food or water or fire…  For how many months?”

“Mm?”  She tried to open her eyes, roll her head to look more fully at Blasfemia.  “Witchery, hermanita.  You know how Umbrifer came from the astrocielo?  Before it did that, it did not need to eat or drink or breathe.  Spirits only pretend to do these things, like a feeling to experience.”

“Huh?”

“I was in the spirit, so I lived like a spirit.  I thought I was thirsty, but I wasn’t really drinking.  Everything around me was an illusion, but illusions were all my body needed.”

“God damn, that’s trippy.”  The answer didn’t satisfy her, but it did help her realize that no answer would.  She began to drift off.

“Hey.  Why did you ask?”

Blasfemia stirred with a snort.  “What did I ask?”

“About the Torre Alucine.  What it was like.”

“Oh, just, I still think about it, all the time.  I can’t stop thinking about them, back in the Stars.  Just planet after planet of jerks, being gross to you.  I thought …  it was smart to come to the Heathen Worlds.  These jokers don’t speak no language you’d see in Church bullshit.  How could they know about that crap?  They can’t.”

“That wasn’t the only reason I came here.”

“How did you end all the way outside the Ice?”

“I ran away to Abuela, told her everything.  She doesn’t watch tele, you know?  I felt like I was burning alive, like nowhere could ever be safe, like I should just die but I didn’t want to kill myself.”

Blasfemia shed a tear but didn’t say anything.  “Mmhm.”

“So she told me that the answer was to find peace with myself.  Some stuff like, every soul is alone, no matter who we’re with, so we all need to find peace with ourselves.  I needed to know myself to get through it all.  And being young, it made things harder.  She said when you live a long time, it happens all by itself.  But kids are too new, have changed so much so many times when they grow up, they don’t know who they are.”

“That does sound wise.  Maybe she isn’t just a freaky old weirdo.”

Josefina smiled.  “She’s a freaky old weirdo, but not just that, yeah…  Basically, I went to the Torre Alucine to experience some vision of my life that was so intense, it would show me who I am, without having to wait around for years to figure it out.”

“I know who you are, hermana.  You’re a funny lady with weird ideas, weird friends, weird things you like to do.  But you’re so nice, just the sweetest person in the world.  I can’t live without you anymore, OK?”  She reached out a hand, grasping at the air, but neither of them were in a condition to get up and make the physical connection just then.

Josefina made a grasping hand gesture as well.  I squeeze your hand.  Then she returned that hand to Ombunculita’s little ribs, and she shifted in her sleep.  “You do know me, but that looks a little different from inside my head.  And another funny thing about the Torre – I can see things now, so clear.  The ideals are everywhere.  It’s overwhelming, but also…  I can just let it wash over me.  Like a drop of water is too cold, but when you get all the way into the water, it’s less of a shock.”

“Is that intuitive stuff again?”

“I know.  I’ll shut up about it…  What about you?  I didn’t want to leave you, but I couldn’t do anything for anybody when it was like that.  Sounds like you got in the worst kind of trouble.  How the hell did it happen?”

“Aren’t you supposed to just know?”

“Not like that.  What I don’t get is that… you’re so wild, people treat you like a dangerous animal.  No way you just sweet-talked your way onto an astronave bound for the Walled City.  How did it happen?”

“Well, whenever people were being gross about you, I would cuss them out, or hit them.  But it was everybody, everywhere, all the time!  So they could laugh it off, because how can I punch everyone?  They felt safe in a big bunch like that.  Until I started hurting them, started killing angels.”

“Oh no,” Josefina said softly.  She bit her lips.

“All the places in town got angels, you know, like hospitals and fire stations and the tele station, whatever.  So I’m making a scene downtown and the angel of the tele station actually came out in the street to make fun of me.  You know what I can do.  It was a big fuckin’ mistake.”

“That’s when you changed your name.”

“I told them if God doesn’t like you, I don’t like God.  I killed some angels, killed some guys, got put in jail.”

“Was there a jailbreak?  Bunch of convicts hijacked an astronave and went after the pope?”

“No convicts.  These college kids.  Big revolutionaries.  They got me out, took me to Dio 6.  Anyway, I didn’t know it was going to mess up the world.  Who would know that?  A pope’s just a guy.  It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

“I’m sorry, hermanita.  Well, I’m sure it’ll all settle down eventually.  Like, the astrocielo, the politics of it all.  Not life for you and me, though.  We’re just done for.  Old lives over, no home left in the Stars.  But long space is long.  We can find a place where they’ll never find us.”

Blasfemia covered her face in a pillow.

“Are you OK, baby?”

“I blew it, huh?”

“If it was just what happened to me, we could live forever as whipping girls.  But what you did can never be forgiven.  They’ll want to kill you so bad.  Don’t let ’em do it, Ximura.  I need you, too.”

“Ugggh,” she punched the pillow away, “It should be like a school fight.  Each side has a guy.  Me versus the pope.  Whoever wins wins, and it’s fucking over.  I beat them fair and square.  How are they going to act like they got any right to get me now?  Put up another guy, I’ll kill him too.”

Josefina sighed.  “You hafta learn this lesson, mija.  You gotta get it through your head.  Nothing is like a school fight.  That’s not how it works.  You can’t just trade punches ’til it’s over, because the Universe will never run out of punch guys, so it’ll never be over.”

“I hate it.”

“At least now you know.”

Blasfemia closed her eyes and tried to let the booze soak up the bad feelings.  It didn’t work as well as she’d hoped.

Josefina said, “I love you.  Try to think about something else…  So you finally met my Abuela, huh?  What did you think about that?”

She chuckled.  “Those little clone monkeys are so gross.  At least when you have a baby it’ll grow up to take care of itself.  Is Ombonculita ever gonna grow up to be something?  God, I don’t even want to imagine.  They freak me out.  Cora freaked me out.”

“That’s her science.  Life.  She knows some other brujeria, but she actually studied biology at a University, I think.”

“What did she do to herself?  No way she looked like that when she was in school.”

“Vanity.  To make herself look young, with magic… the methods are far from perfect.”

“You’re tellin’ me.  She looks like somebody blew a baby head up like a balloon and stuck it on a kid with old people skin.  I just can’t help but think where that’s all goin’.  When she gets too old to do stuff for herself, when she dies and all the monkeys need to eat.”  She shuddered.

“Aww.”  Josefina wondered herself, but didn’t want to dwell on the subject.  “She made me this one, so I could have her with me forever.  It is her, more than a child would be.  It really has something of her inside it.  I don’t really understand what or how.  But it’s very interesting.”

“Don’t let me ever be interesting, Josie.”

By and by, they sorted themselves out for the night.  The sisters shared a bed, some little fear of being taken away from each other again, but they would likely start sleeping apart soon.  Who knows when Josefina would start bedding weirdos again?  And Blasfemia wasn’t as wild in romance, but would surely like the privacy to pursue love when they arose.

The awkwardness on Borland 1 did not improve with time.  They were most interesting thing to happen for an age, in that village of Alish.  Nobody would leave the visitors alone.  Day in, day out, cultural exchanges and learning experiences, and pleasantry so false none could believe it, yet it was necessary, enforced by the charitable nature of their stay.

Darter and Umbrifer learned to speak without translators, and became as thick as thieves.  Unfortunately for the sisters, they lost the excuse of language barrier, because the boys had worked out a translator from Borlante to Corazono and back.  Anybody in town could get their mobile to read each other’s words.

Blasfemia and Josefina began drinking to excess, though Josefina reined it in when once she badly distressed Ombunculita, by neglecting her for several hours.  When she could slip away from other obligations, Josefina spent some time studying the Leveret, seeing if she could talk with her.

One day she was there, Ombonculita over her shoulder, watching the machine spirit sleep.  The sky was overcast but not snowing at the moment, though the earth was still, as always, blanketed in white.  The Leveret was strange but beautiful, every mechanism and detail decorative in one way or another.  Josefina stroked one of the giant horse heads, with gloved hand, running her fingers through the grooves in the sculpture.  Where did the spirit end and the machine begin?  How had the machine been formed in the first place?  Wasn’t like the astrocielo had body shops, that she knew of.

The Leveret stirred within her metal.  There was no movement to see, just a vibration that Josefina could feel.  Josie said, “Good morning, guapa,” and listened for a response.  Nothing, but that wasn’t how she communicated with Umbrifer either, was it?

Umbrifer had given her a code to get into the astronave, when they had been keeping Ombonculita’s diapers and other supplies in there.  She used her mobile to transmit it, then clambered inside – careful not to bump the homunculus.

Josefina sat in the pilot seat, and looked over the control panel.  There was a resting spot on the dashboard for tools, beverages, and such.  She sat Ombunculita there, and took off her parka.  “How does this all work?”  She didn’t know why the question came out that way; it wasn’t what she really wanted to know.  She just wanted to talk with the Leveret – or if it was a nonverbal spirit, commune with her feelings.

Ombunculita was bored, but that was so much of her life that she had a way of dealing with it.  She just laid her hands in her lap, let her head loll, and spaced out.  Josefina had gotten used to it, was less worried when it happened, and thus able to focus on her current interest.  She touched the controls.

Another reaction.  Some kind of sound, from farther back in the craft.  She wasn’t sure if it was audible in the material world, or was a spirit perception.  She took off her gloves and began again.  As she touched each switch, each knob, each lever, she sensed their purpose, as if the Leveret’s body was her own, and she was feeling part of that body move.  It was intriguing, and she kept brushing her fingers back and forth over the controls, letting the ideas jumble and overlap, and add up to an impression of the whole thing, grinning foolishly.

Behind her, more sounds, and lights flicked on.  A groan in the belly of the craft became a groan in her own stomach, and she stopped cold.  For some reason, she instinctively gripped the helm with both hands as she did.

I need food.  Please.

She couldn’t help but reply to the Leveret through her own feelings.

I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry I woke you up, because I have no food for you now.

What came back was a vague sadness, with no concrete idea attached.  Josefina’s face was miserable, and Ombunculita did an impression of it.

She asked the Leveret, Can you go back to sleep?  I will leave you alone.

She powered down with a spiritual sigh.

Josefina heard the hatch open, and someone hastily scrambling to get in.  She had come to recognize the sound of Umbrifer’s paws on metal, and spun the chair to face it.

Umbrifer’s eye was furious, kitty mouth in a wild grimace.  “What did you do?”

Josefina had done nothing of consequence, but when Umbrifer realized that she could operate the Leveret, it felt threatened in a way it had never experienced.  Its lifestyle was such that threats of violence or death were not unusual, but the possibility of its ship flying away with someone else?

The unlikelihood of that happening was the only thing that kept it from being a total blowup, but Umbrifer soon found itself tempted to excess drink as well, bumming around the village with Darter.  It found the bar scene, where Blasfemia had, in Josefina’s absence, begun to party with the village toughs, and it receded into the shadows there.

The bar was all armwrestling and knife-throwing and sloppy dancing.  The big man Carr seemed to all the natural recipient for Blasfemia’s affections.  Why shouldn’t the town’s best man get the most interesting new lady?  But she didn’t let anyone monopolize her attention, even in a drunken state.

The most ardent were Kabel – a big woman with close-cropped hair, Carr – though he tried to act less eager than he was, and Dab and Blagh – two handsome young guys who were kind of indistinguishable to her eyes, as pleasant as they tried to be.

Dab said, “I swear, these knives of yours are making themselves fly true.  Why else would you have less accuracy with the house knives?”

She read his words off her mobile, which sat on the table amid towering mugs of alcohol.  “Think I’m cheating, Dab?”

He smiled at her over his own mobile.  It was a strange scene whenever people gathered around one of the women, everybody looking up and down over and over again.  “Not a problem because we can all just use the same knives, but I’d like to see how it works.  May I?”

Kabel and some other random toughs were also squeezed in around the table, jesting and drinking.  Kabel was drinking away her jealousy, more shy than the boys in vying for Blasfemia’s time.

Blasfemia handed him one of her tools, in its typical knife blade form.  Before she sat it down, she turned it into a chisel and back, to demonstrate its qualities to those who didn’t know.  Its knife shape was very consistent, seemingly down to the millimeter.

But Dab put it down on the table, and with one of the house knives, scored a line around it.  Then he handed it back to her.  “Throw it, and I will fetch it for you.”

She stood, readied herself in front of the target, and announced her intention to throw.  “Klate!”  It was one of few words she had learned in Borlante.  Hitting the target was not at all difficult.  The experienced throwers in the bar usually increased the challenge by getting drunk first.  Blasfemia wasn’t drunk enough to miss by an amusing amount at that time.

Dab brought it back to the table and sat it down, tracing its outline again in the same spot on the table.

“Stoppy tabbly glayig, yun zock!,” the barkeep yelled.

Everybody laughed it off, and people at the table leaned in to witness.  The knife had subtly changed shape when the threw it, the weight of the blade shifting its balance.  It was most noticeable where the curve altered course along the leading edge – under normal circumstances, the transition was smooth; in the thrown form, it had become a corner.

Blasfemia put the knife away and rubbed her head.  “I had no idea…”

Conversation gradually turned again to the Company caravan, as Blasfemia was unwilling to say much honest about what lay behind her.  She was bored about the Company caravan.  People were far too comfortable repeating themselves in that little village.

It was set to happen before their hundred days elapsed. A Company caravan would visit the village, and levy its tax of protection money, among other forms of banditry. As long as they left enough to live on, the Alishers had no intention of rocking that boat. But would it be enough to live on? And should a conflict arise, just what were the visitors capable of?

Blasfemia was dismissive.  In part, because she knew Josefina, Umbrifer, and Ombunculita were dead weight in a fight.  In part, because all she wanted to do was take Josefina and leave – find some place to live with more to eat than reconstituted protozoa.

The awkwardness didn’t stop.

And in the background, a big pink eye would occasionally look her way, in annoyance.  Umbrifer asked Darter, in their shared hybrid language, “You used belong to this Company.  Do you think the caravan will cause trouble while we are here?”

“I really don’t know.  I’ll say this: it’s not like a war.  Just a little dust-up.  If everyone is careful, nothing horrible happens.”

“What’s careful?”

“Be submissive when someone else has a gun, but also unyielding – don’t look like moving through you is going to be easy enough to be worth it.  It’s a tough balance and nobody can do it perfect every time.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve done that.  I’m pretty good at it, actually.  But if we mess up, what’s a horrible thing?”

“Rape, murder, the farm gets messed up and people starve.  Sometimes it’ll just be a couple of tragedies, like, the bastards will be OK with a tribute of suffering.  Messing up one victim while everybody else has to watch.  If it blows up, that’s when more people get hurt.”

It covered its eye.  “Ugh.”  It looked at Blasfemia’s little group of drunks again.  “Why does the Company always win in these stories?  Better weapons?  More soldiers?”

“Yeah.  Even if a village wins, it loses, because they’ll send more guys the next time.  Again, if the bugaster is smooth, submissive but not yielding, and there’s any question about how much it would hurt, the Company might let it go, with just a tribute of pain for their trouble.  Better to not win a fight with them in the first place, not have to depend on that negotiation.”

“I’ve got a problem, Darter.”

“Yes, Umbrifer?”

“If there’s a fight, Blasfemia might be able to help them win.  She has done things that you would never believe.  And this is good, because we could leverage that to purchase my fuel, and leave here.”

“But if you win a fight and leave here, we are defenseless against the Company’s next move.”

“What’s it like, being dead?”

–

See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

–

Xihuani was so much human meat.  Could there be anything else left of her?  Once there was a sense of self, a sense of a place in the world.  Pride, people, humanity.  She had let herself be swept up in grievances, in annoyance at the ways the system just didn’t live up to her ideals.  But that led to murder.  So many murders.  How many had she personally killed?  It was impossible to be certain, when all her friends were pulling triggers at once.  And there.  The linchpin.  The beast.  Blasfemia.

The very fact that the heavens fell when she slew the pope, that justified the idea that the Church truly was special – truly deserved its place of primacy over all the peoples and cultures of the Stars of Weal.  Who was she to question that?  To seek to undo it?  The shreds of her childish daydreams seemed so provincial after all that.

And more importantly, after the consequences of it.  The hours of terror, running, cowering in darkness, knowing that it was all so inevitable.  The dragging, the beating, the stripping.  They were all the same, in that room where Blasfemia had cut down the sky.  They were blood and bone and flesh suffused with cruel, cruel pain.

Then it was off to be healed, to be put in proper order for a no doubt even more sadistic sentence.  Deserved, perhaps, but what was right and wrong no longer had any meaning at all.  There was only a body – a vehicle for torment – and a soul that would never know hope again.

Jorge was atomized, so many grains of experience spilled across the tiles, adding up to nothing.  Coherence had been beaten out of him.  His last thought was to escape to the spirit world, to set his soul free.  He had learned something of the principles of transubstantiation in seminary.  But he was still a novice, and worse, he could not focus enough to exercise the most basic workings of all.

The spill happened over and over again.  Gather as much of yourself as you can, put all the bits back in your skull, and focus.  Just focus, if you can, on anything.  The pain itself, why not?

But he couldn’t see anything.  It was all bursts of this and that, moments like firecrackers on a string, flying apart one after another.  He was nothing.

Zochino had, under the ministration of the Church’s medical scientists, come farther than Xihuani and Jorge, able to make more sense of what was actually happening to them.  They were being held in a normal enough hospital – the only one within the Walled City.  The floor had been cordoned off to serve no one but the assassins.  The security was performative, but what a performance!  There was always, always a line of men outside that door, side by side by side, like paper dolls.

He had his own room, and imagined that was true of the others as well.  By that time, their identities must be known, and who knows what was happening to the other people in their lives?  To friends, to families?

Jailbreaking Blasfemia was the real beginning of the end for them.  It made them – especially Christina and himself – feel like anything was possible.  It wasn’t just principles anymore; it was praxis.  And then she entered the discussion.  It went so quickly from destroying the Church to just killing all the priests.  Her sister was humiliated before the whole damn Universe, and she wanted to see that Universe drown in blood for its insult.  How could such a savage turn the minds of civilized people?  What power did she possess?

None.  Zochino had let her do it.  He reveled in feeling powerful, feeling like he could do something – anything at all – in the face of an eternal status quo, an unbreakable dogma.  It all just seemed so abstract, from that hospital bed, knowing that all his remaining life would be spent in unimaginable punishment.  He cried for himself, but there was enough left of his former idealism to weep for everyone who had suffered and who was going to suffer for his weaknesses.  Especially for his comrades.

And a scant ten meters away, in another room, the last of the comrades felt another way entirely.  Christina’s tortures had never stopped.  Some part of her mind was convinced her fingers had been burned away, and strapped down and drugged, she could not tell it otherwise.  Her body was mutilated, unjustly.

Who would be called to account?  How could it be made right?  It could not.  Only God could make it right, by dying.  Jorge used to say there was an old legend that God had come to earth as a duende, killed by barbarian persecutors, and that the sacrifice of that body had given some gift to the whole human race.  Why had the legend been forgotten?  Who cared?  It was forbidden knowledge by that point, because it was heresy.

She’d always liked heresies, and that’s why her only prayer was to see that one come to pass.  To see God in the flesh again, suffering as she was.  To burn off his fingers, to burn off his dick.  To slash his throat and pull his tongue out through the wound.  Her body was her own.  How dare anyone, no matter if it was the creator of the Universe, take from Christina any part of herself?  If the saints wanted her fingernails, she wanted their fingers.  If god wanted her fingers, she wanted his life.

Burn, o Heaven, burn.  Hatred kept her alive.

–

See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

THE BEGINNING OF ACT TWO.  Satan, let me at least finish this act as well, before Monday at midnight.

–

The fachasistema of Borland 1 had never borne pleasing fruit.  The world was too cold for unsupported life to take root, outside of certain algaes and bacteria.  In the millennium since people had come to the world, whatever ancestral spacefaring civilization they had once shared with the Stars of Weal had been lost to memory.  Now pitiful algae farmers skirmished with company brutes that controlled trade routes within Borland, as well as the spaceports that let one travel and trade without.

The farmers didn’t hear much about the worlds beyond, just a very loose sketch of it.  There was a wall of ice in spirit space patrolled by forces from the Stars of Weal, who occasionally made their disdain known by sending beasts to torment the heathen planets.  For their part, the company brutes knew that even other heathen planets were largely hostile, only trading with each other out of sheer desperation.

So why was a spacecraft landing in farmer territory?  Didn’t they know they were supposed to use the spaceports?  The farmers didn’t care as long as it didn’t stay overlong, or attract company attention.  The little white thing looked like an airhopper, with larger legs and much more elaborate decoration – each leg carved like the head of a horse.  Those carvings might as well be abstract gibberish; nobody on Borland 1 knew what a horse was, nor had they the resources to support one if by chance it had been available through trade.

Boxy two ton robots gathered around the craft, awaiting orders, should anybody have an opinion on how it should be best dealt with.  People began to drop out of a hatch on the bottom, and quickly encountered the local toughs.

A dozen men and women stood around the new arrivals in a semi-circle, staring and waiting to see what would happen.  They had light eyes, rosy faces, and pale brown hair in somewhat foreign styles.  The “fur” lining their cold weather garments had rubbery looking fibers in densely packed ribbon-like strips, and the scuffing and patching on their clothing spoke of limited resources.

The new arrivals were two dark-haired women and a fuzzy black monster that may have been a man of its kind, with eclectic styles and attitudes.  One of the women held an infant child tightly to her, bundled invisible.  The one thing they seemed to have in common was a lack of preparedness for the weather of Borland 1.

The creature tried to do the speaking for them, coming forth to meet the village’s bravest man, Carr.  It tried speaking aloud, encouraging Carr to speak aloud, and using a mobile computer to see if some linguistic common ground could be reached.  It turned out they must have been some kind of refugees from the Stars of Weal, because their language was closest to Lenko – the secret trade speech of the Companies.  That wasn’t of much use to the people present, so they resorted to pantomime.

Clearly they all needed better clothing, and presumably food and water.  They also somehow nonverbally negotiated an assurance their spacecraft would not be attacked by the robots.  The robots communicated their part by simply walking back to their appointed chores.  The villagers had labors to return to as well, though several had no pressing engagements, and were curious enough to follow the visitors.  In the streets, every man, woman, child, and robot stopped to stare.

Carr gestured, did they want clothing or food first?  They chose clothing, and he brought them to Fank the Clothier.  The little entourage made efforts at helping the visitors, or having something like pleasant exchanges with them, but it was challenging.  The women were exotically beautiful, but a little wild and strange – like they’d been through a war.

It happened when the weirder woman took off her coat, to start trying things on.  She rested the baby on the counter – revealing it to be no baby at all, but a strange little monster.  The women Dolia, Jolia, and Kabel were the most intrigued.  The strange woman saw their reactions and put a defensive hand over her pet, but the curious ones were quick to make soothing gestures of their own.  As soon as the strange woman had cautiously accepted that and resumed shopping, the locals resumed chattering among themselves.

Jolia went to Carr and asked for confirmation of a rumor – had the village’s new boy once been a Company child?  Might he know Lenko?  He believed it true, and she rushed away to see if they could get a translator, and start to find out just what the hell these weirdos were about.

Jolia found the new boy wiping vents on the southern tanks, and talked his boss into letting him go.  His name was Darter, and he was the unhealthiest looking creature she had ever seen.  He must be alive because he was still walking around, but his skin lacked all color – seemed almost grey.  He was a natural-born Borlander, with hair the same color as anyone else, so it wasn’t a racial difference.  And seemingly he was not a spirit creature, fallen from the sky.  Aside from the ashen complexion, he seemed young and hale enough to work, so he earned his keep.

And now he could earn favors in another way.  Jolia brought Darter into the clothier’s shop.  They had already chosen overcoats for snow, and Fank had moved onto selling them more garments for wear about town.  He was willing to give them quality fare for free, just for the privilege of meeting such unusual people.  The old man was as fascinated as any, watching their every move, smiling awkwardly whenever their eyes met his own.  Darter and Jolia interrupted, soon joined by Carr and the whole crowd.

Darter cautiously tried to speak with the strange woman in Lenko.  She waved him away and the one-eyed alien took over.  It couldn’t understand him, but again used its mobile computer to try some kind of trick.  It coaxed Darter into rattling off a small litany of miscellaneous speech, and the device tried to make sense of it.  Darter used his own mobile in the same way, or his best approximation of it, and after a several tense minutes, they could communicate through translation.

Each would speak, and then the person spoken to would read a translation off of their mobile.  It was only possible because of the similarity of Lenko to the language of the Church, which the computers could sort out much more quickly than the living creatures could.

Darter said, “They just got too curious about you folks, and had to scratch that itch as quickly as possible.  I’m the only one who speaks anything sort of like your language here.”

“My name is Umbrifer.  Those are Blasfemia, Josefina, and Ombunculita.  My starship is called the Leveret.  What else does anybody need to know?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, what the hell are you?”

“A spirit in the flesh.  You aren’t exactly a human either, are you?”

“How can you tell?”

“Big eye.  Do they know?”

“I was human, so close enough to true.  They can remain ignorant of me, but I don’t think they’ll accept a non-answer from all of you.”

“Alright.  I told you what I am.  My starship is also a spirit in the flesh, so don’t think you can use it for parts.  She’ll just die and rot if she gets pulled apart, right?  Ombunculita is a kind of imperfect clone of Josefina’s grandmother.  Like a living doll that she keeps for sentimental reasons.  The women, well, they’re as human as any of this village.  Except you?”

The young grey man stared at the words rolling over his screen, back up to the big pink eye, and down again.  It was all so absurd.  But who was he to judge?  “You couldn’t tell my secrets to them if you wanted to, and I’m tired of keeping them.  I was just another psychic for most of my life, until I made a terrible mistake and got killed.  I concentrated my intelligence and all my powers in one part of my body as I lay dying, and have been able to use those powers to drive around this awful corpse.”

“Amazing.  I feel truly privileged that you have told me.  Thank you.  But how are you are not rotting?”

Darter cocked his head, considering how much he should say.  “You may find out another time.  But for now, I will answer that question the same way you answered me.  Big eye.”

Umbrifer smiled for the first time in ages.  That was equal parts amusing and intriguing to him.  “Very well.  I sense your translations are in demand.  I’ll let you get to that while we start shopping again, although… one more question before we do.  Did we understand Fank right, that these products are given without a demand for recompense?”

“I’ll find out…”  He asked and confirmed it, and the tension was relieved for a time.

The best clothing in the shop which were close enough in size to the small visitors were leathers from Sus 7 and cloth from Tanis 4.  Everyone wanted to see them dressed up, but the women didn’t want to ruin the clothes by wearing them before they’d had a hot bath.  They used Darter and the mobiles to sort out arrangements for the other goods and services they’d require, before they even managed to escape from Fank’s now crowded establishment.

Meanwhile, Ombonculita proved a good distraction herself, drawing attention from the villagers, the bravest of whom would have inscrutable gestural exchanges with her.  The little creature liked to mimic gestures, and convince other people to mimic her own gestures.  She never seemed to attach meaning to the symbolic language, however.  It was all some kind of game to her.  And she was shy too, so no small amount of that diversion was from helping her feel safe enough to play again, whenever she grew upset.  Josefina threatened to hide her away whenever the villagers seemed too rowdy around her.

In the end, it was determined that the visitors could have all the food, drink, and time in lodging they required, for a time of one hundred days.  But the other thing they needed would cost some appropriate barter, and this was a problem.  Umbrifer needed food for the Leveret, which could be contrived by condensing and fortifying algae crops over a few weeks.  But none of the visitors had anything valuable enough to Borlanders that it they could afford to trade away that much of their harvest.  Still, they had a hundred days to work something out, and the subject was soon dropped – for the night.

At Bugaster Mallor’s grand house, the visitors were offered guest rooms, in exchange for entertaining Mallor’s family that night.  When the freshly groomed and attired visitors came down the stairs, Mallor’s children took pictures on mobile and sent them all throughout the town.  Everyone would see them.

Blasfemia and Josefina wore matching black leather dresses with uniquely fashioned sleeves and skirts, incorporating sparkling sheer fabric layered deep enough to protect their private places.  Fank had enough of the same materials to craft Ombunculita a little dress in similar motif.  The women had done up each other’s hair, Blasfemia’s with four tails atop her crown, closed at the base with short thick braids; Josefina’s with a single high pony tail cinched with decoratively embossed black leather.  They wore makeup to smooth their complexions, and decorate about their eyes, and completed accessorizing with cheap silver jewelry.

Umbrifer wore a dashing man’s ensemble from Tanis 4, with crisp grey-blue slacks and flowing ivory shirt.  With its weirdly narrow shoulders, the tailoring at that area was more like very precise butchery.  It wore high and shiny black boots from Sus 7, and a black leather vest with separate leather sleeves pinned in place by large silver epaulets.

Darter had no choice but to attend as well, leaving behind his miserable shack for the night.  Fank had let him take a cheaper new outfit, all close-fitting and thick black cloth from Sus 7, vertically ribbed and velvety.  He had cleaned himself up at the last minute, and his hair was still damp and stringy in the pictures.  He wondered that he shouldn’t also start using makeup for his complexion, but the thought was idle and soon departed.

After the fashion show, they were granted the best food one could get in farmlands, for the small cost of tooth-grinding, faux-genial, and endless interrogation.

The visitors together made for such an unusual ensemble that it was easy to miss more subtle things about them.  But for Darter, it was becoming impossible to avoid familiarity.  By her eyes, by her body language, by her reactions and reflexes, he could tell that Blasfemia was a woman of violence – as hardened at least as the company warrior that had ended his own young life.

Umbrifer was harder to peg, so incredibly banal compared to the rest.  When questioned it would not commit to a gender, and its personal history was quite exotic, but all it seemed to want to do was work for a living, travel, meet people, and solve the basic problems of life – food, shelter, and rest.  It could talk about anything, and its stories of spirit space were unbelievable.  But what was it all about?  Nothing but practicalities – perhaps the most unbelievable thing of all.

Ombunculita was a clever performing animal at best, and easily ignored.  But her granddaughter Josefina, that was a more compelling mystery by far.  She was Blasfemia’s older sister, and having heard this, one could easily see it to be true.  Blasfemia has a smaller forehead, thicker eyebrows, and larger, darker eyes.  With her tall forehead and prematurely tired, light brown eyes, with the softness of her face and hands, one could imagine Josefina to be an infant that had grown to a woman’s size with less development than it should have.  But still, the fundamental shapes of their faces were the same.  But why was Ombunculita always Josefina’s grandmother, and not Blasfemia’s?

Josefina was as shy and animalistic as Ombunculita, but it was expressed differently.  She could pretend to be human for a time, but avoided eye contact, and was worn down by social situations even worse than Blasfemia.  She was always seeking something, running her fingers over every new surface, watching people’s bodies, or just looking into another world.  And what for?  Maybe just escape from the tedious present, from the nowhere town.  Darter could relate to that.

She claimed they were just fleeing from oppressive religion in the Stars of Weal, but when asked what was so oppressive about it, she was vague – just that they had to imagine so-called Heathen Worlds must be a better place.

Watching her hands move and feel and fold like paper art, watching her slim mouth kiss a glass when she sipped her drink, watching the delicate change in the hairline at the side of her head, from long lovely darkness to downy sideburn to the pale fuzz at her jaw.  Admiring the sculpture of her narrow little ears, the rise of her thin eyelids as the lens passed behind it.  He wished he still had a sense of smell.  He could imagine her scent.  He could imagine her touch.

Darter wished he could not remember the lure of physical love, but it was creeping through his cadaver like a new form of rot, blossoming cruelly from the source of his only remaining life and power – the terrible third red eye that hid behind his lank brown hair.

–