Nothing as naughty as the last chapter, time to be boring again.  The emotions run high in this one.  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, stopping with II:V, then starting again at this one.  And stopping again here at II:X, because I have had a terrible time writing lately, and that time is over!  I might pick this beast up again in July.

–

Josefina took advantage of the secrecy of her existence to sink into despair.  The difficulties of their situation were obvious enough, but her feelings went beyond that.  Perhaps it was the melancholy nature that had followed her since childhood, momentarily forgotten in the wake of her time in the Torre Alucine and reunion with Ximura, finally returning.  The wisdom of her crucible had not cured the depression, only allowed her to briefly forget it.

Or it was something else.  She muddled through leading meditations, but was losing whatever spell she had cast on the students.  Her hair was a mess, her clothing disheveled.  Ombonculita refused to entertain the children anymore, scowling at everyone as she clung to Josefina’s breast.

Umbrifer lost track of its own lessons, focused on cleaning up after her messes and social missteps.  It would make nice with anyone she had bothered, then follow after her and do whatever it could to help her feel better.

On one such occasion, with white afternoon sun filling the guest suite, Umbrifer followed her in and closed the doors behind her.  As it turned back to face her again, it seemed her steps had slowed, almost like the sunlight was stairs that she was about to ascend.  Instead she collapsed to a couch there, almost crushing Ombunculita, who crawled free of the mess squawking.

It came to them, laid fuzzy black paws on her arms, and rolled her over to face the world.  “I try not to impose on humans, not ever, but this is starting to look risky to me personally.  Is there anything I can do to get you playing nice with the Alishers again?  Or at least less of this…”  It gestured at her as if she was a pig sty that needed cleaning.

The anger in her tiny dark eyes increased her resemblance to Blasfemia, which successfully intimidated the spirit.  Long dark hair half-concealed her face.

Umbrifer slow-blinked that big pink eye and tried again, gently.  “You deserve to feel as well as you can, Josefina.  I don’t like to see this.  Can you at least tell me what is happening to you?”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “I don’t know the answer.”  She bit her lip and looked off to the side, lost in thought.  “Maybe I just need a hug, heh.”

“I can go find your sister.”

She looked at him wryly.  “Why not hug me yourself?  Afraid you’ll fall in love?”

Umbrifer’s eye was too big to conceal thoughts or feelings.  It darted to the side and back.

“What is it?”  Her face went slack, eyes piercing.

“I don’t want you to…  Don’t make me say it.”

“What,” she spat.

Umbrifer threw up its hands and stood up to flee if it needed to.  “I saw the video, alright?  I’m sorry!”

Her face stiffened in horror.  By then the spirit was halfway to the door.  Suddenly, Ombonculita opened her mouth and roared like a lion.  But instead of a roar, some eldritch ball of sound waves erupted and struck Umbrifer in the chest.  It flew back, tumbling over furniture and crashing into the wall.

The spirit scrambled to its feet and looked at the homunculus in alarm.  She was propped up on her arms at full extension, body rigid, thorned head trembling.  Distortions in reality dripped from her silently screaming mouth like foam from a sick dog.  Her eyes were livid with hate.

Josefina wanted to apologize, to do something to reprimand her Abuelita for this violence, but she was still in the grip of sorrow and horror, trembling.

Umbrifer gave her one last sad look and fled the room.

It had to find Blasfemia.  Only her sister had any chance of seeing this right.

–
Darter slumped against a post, wishing he was more capable of getting drunk.  He was slowly sinking further into the snow, not melting it as much as a living person would.  It was like he was daring anyone to notice.  A shadow loomed above him.

“Boy, you need to get back to work.”  It was his old boss, Graldon.

“They need me.”

“Alish needs you, needs all hands on the machinery.  I am shocked the Bugaster hasn’t sent you back to the works yet.”

“I’m translating Corazono and Lenko, man.  Get off my back.”

“I see you translating alcohol into stupor while we’re working on a double ransom.”

Don’t blow it, he thought, his secret eye seething.  “I’ll talk to Mallor.  If he still needs me for something, I’ll do it.  Otherwise, Ill help.  Alright?”

“Alright, boy.  Fair enough.”  His words faltered at the end as he was distracted by Traders laughing across the street.  He didn’t want to cause trouble either, and hurried on his way.

Darter dragged his corpse upright, swayed lightly in place, and wondered.  What was the point of prolonging an existence where he could no longer enjoy any of the things he had once lived for?  Rage at the injustice of dying young, or just animal panic, had driven him to reanimate in this unnatural way, but neither of those feelings remained in him.  Maybe all that he had left was the half-assed ambition to make his death interesting.

A few Traders noticed him and walked over.  “Oy!  Why are you staring at us, kid?”  “And why are you blue?  It’s nasty,” said another.

“I’m sick.  Probably not a good idea to touch me.”

That did bring them up short.  “Well, just mind your eyes, fool.”  A few gestured at their weapons.  They didn’t have to touch him to hurt him.

“Mmhm.”  He was already distracted by the sight of Umbrifer crossing the street a few blocks away, so averting his eyes was easy.

–
In the tavern, Blasfemia was on Kottor-sitting duty.  She figured that alone should be worth the cost of the Leveret’s fuel — keep the old goat entertained so he didn’t get any more dangerous ideas for extracting diversion from the Alishers.  By then his favorite lieutenants also had translators, and spent most of their hours reading her words and carousing.

“I kill duendes, what can I say?  Everybody has to do some kind of job.  You find out stuff about them, like, which ones talk with each other and which ones are just stupid animals.  You can’t always tell just to look at them.”

“And the hellhound?  Just a stupid animal?”  Kottor’s voice was thick with a plug of chewing algae in his mouth, slowly releasing a mild intoxicant.  Probably best to keep a clear head instead of doing every drug in sight, but he couldn’t resist having a little taste of each.

She tipped her computer down.  “The stupidest.  Now cañacorbos, they look like a bird with a little goblin face, they seem like they’d just be a dumb animal, but one time I cleared a field of ’em and the next time I saw some, they knew.  One must’ve gotten away and squealed.  Watch out for the girl with the knives.”

“What’s a bird?,” one of the lieutenants asked.

Kottor said, “Like acrife, from Catedra 3.  I’m more interested in what you didn’t tell us about the time you broke out of jail.”

No one asked about goblins, knowing that was what she sometimes called Umbrifer.

The goblin itself appeared at the door, looking agitated.  “Ursula, I need your help with something at the Bugaster’s house.  If you can excuse us, good people.”

They laughed at the polite description.  Every time they laughed, the servers and their guards braced for something unamusing to happen.

Blasfemia said, “Well.  Sounds urgent.  I’ll be right back.”  She was glad for the reprieve, but felt the importance of hypnotizing the jerks with her bullshit, every time she saw a young Alish lady flinch at them.

Kottor waved her off and went into some rapid patter of Lenko.  The translator on Blasfemia’s computer worked on it, but she paid it no attention.  Umbrifer was glad they hadn’t made an issue of the interruption.

Out in the street it hustled her away from the nearest Traders that were milling around, and said, “It came out that I saw that horrible video.  I never told her before.”

“You never told me before, puto!”  She slapped it in the chest with both hands.  “What the fuck?  How is she?”

“Bad, or I wouldn’t have gotten you, would I?”

“Is she hurting herself?  Somebody else?”

“I don’t know what to expect.  Maybe I shouldn’t’ve left her with Ombonculita.  I don’t know what she’s capable of!”

“You’ve known us for months now, come on.”

“So she wouldn’t hurt the homunculus?”

“Duh.”  They never stopped walking, getting to the house quickly in the small village.

“Ombonculita might hurt you.  Be careful.”

“You’re coming with me, goblin.”

Under normal circumstances the doors would only open for family members and people with temporary permission, but while the Traders were in town, they would open for anyone without a Trader within six paces.  They had to wait for some Traders to move down the street, and flashed fake smiles at them as they went.

–
Mallor patrolled Alish end to end, watching for any scene that might erupt into violence with the Traders and defusing them.  This was his life during their visits, a task he entrusted to few others in the village.  Only the coolest heads with the most experience of the brigands could deal with all the possibilities – to the extent no situation cropped up that was truly impossible.  All it would take was a power-drunk whim from one of the violent characters.  The patrol duty was whim management.

He’d passed Darter a few times, but didn’t feel free to spend a minute on the kid.  Maybe the Traders were being exceptionally well behaved, because he’d run out of situations to deal with, and stopped to bother him this time.  “Darter.”

The boy had been leaning on a post, hanging his head, underdressed for the weather.  “Oh, I was supposed to talk to you.”

“What’s the matter?  Why aren’t you with Umbrifer?  You were thick as thieves a month ago.”

“It’s personal.  Anyway, Graldon wants me back on the machines.  Is there anything I can do for you instead?  You know I’m not the best worker.”

“I know.  As luck would have it, I can use you.  But only if you can keep your act together.  Look at you out here, in your indoor pants.  Absurd.”

“Sorry, please.  Tell me what the job is.”

“Pretend to be a drunk.  Hang out at the tavern.  Listen for anything important they say in Lenko, and for your own sake as much as ours, do not let them know you understand the language.  Can you do it?”

He bobbled in place, unsure of himself.  Could he avoid giving a subtle look of recognition at any of their words?  Would he even be able to sit close enough to understand them without arousing suspicion?  “I can.  I swear I can.”

“Good boy…”

–
Blasfemia and Umbrifer came into the big central lounge of the second floor and had to shoo some ladies who were wrapped in furious rumor.  Earlier it had told them to stay away from Josefina for their own sakes, now it had to tell them again, get away from the door to the guest suite, out of sight altogether if they could.  Then they took up positions on either side of the door, like cops about to do a raid.

“Josie!  I’d like to come in, Hermana.  Is it safe for me to do that?”

There was no response.  Umbrifer gestured for her to just go in.  She gestured after you, and it rolled its eye.

“Josie, I’m coming in now.”  She grabbed Umbrifer’s collar and dragged it in with her.  The creature was reasonably strong for its size but its inhumanly low weight made it easy to push around.

Josefina and Ombonculita were out of sight.  The suite had a few rooms, and she must have retreated to a bedroom, or a bath.  They heard no water dripping and headed to her preferred bedroom.  This time Blasfemia let Umbrifer stay outside, but insisted it stay close to her door.

“Josie, I’m coming in.  Don’t blow me up, OK?”  The door was not locked.

A massive decorative wardrobe was blocking the window, no doubt moved by sorcery, clothing falling out of it in a landslide.  The room would have been pitch black but for a halo that escaped the edges of that barrier, and one small skylight.  It was still dark enough to make it hard to tell where the bedding ended and her sister began.

“Eyy, um…  I don’t know what to say.  You know my usual answer is killing somebody.  Want me to kill the Corsario?”

A soft golden light bloomed on the bed, in contrast to the pale white light from outside.  It was in the hands of Ombonculita, illuminating her feral face.

“Come on, Hermana, don’t let this thing burn the house down.”

A hand snaked out of the blankets and touched the little creature’s thorny head, and the light went out.

“I’m really glad to see that.  It means you’re still thinking, not totally loco.”  Blasfemia picked her way through the darkness and came to Josefina’s side of the bed, avoiding her little Abuelita.  She felt around until she was touching something she recognized, then got an arm all the way around her.

“I love you.  Don’t be alone anymore.  I can’t stand it.”

Josefina pulled away, making room for her sister in the big bed, and Blasfemia got in, put a hand around, assuming the role of the big spoon.  The homunculus was not of a mind to be the littlest cucharadita, and held herself up on Josefina’s arm, staring at Blasfemia in the dark.

She squeezed her sister and tried to give her some mental room by waiting to talk again.  She could not be as patient as she preferred.  “You don’t hafta do anything for these ding-dongs.  I’ll do it all, OK?  And whenever I can I’ll come see you wherever you hide, and I’ll hold you just like this, until you feel better.”

Josefina finally spoke, quiet, hoarse.  “Don’t kill that duende.  I still like it.”

“When you don’t like it, can I kill it?”

“Mmhm.”

They stayed there quiet a moment longer, before Blasfemia’s impatience got the best of her again.  “I brought it.  Umbrifer’s probably waiting outside the door there.”

“I can’t…  I can’t stand it.”

“Don’t be sad; I can get rid of it without killing it.  It’s real easy to push.”

Josefina shuddered and Blasfemia hushed, waiting her out.

“Does it really think I would try to have sex with it, just because of that video?”

“Did it say that?  I’ll smush it like a motherfucking bug.”

“Don’t, don’t…”

“Yeah, yeah.  You don’t make it easy.  You know, it had to have seen that video before the first time you ever met, right?  So it’s no different now than it was before, with you.  And it’s been all nice to you and stuff, right?”

“I guess.”  She sobbed.  “But that means this whole time I thought it was cool, it was afraid of me, feeling weird about me, looking at me like that.”

“But it was being nice to you because it liked you anyways.  You know Umbrifer always liked you a lot more than me.  You know why.”

“I just wasn’t ready to think about anybody…  anybody who saw that, seeing me…  I can’t do anything.  It’s all too crazy.”

“I don’t know what to do about that!  I don’t!  It’s the kind of thing like, if I could cut the memory out of everybody’s head one at a time, go door to door with these knives, I’d spend the rest of my life doing that.  I wish I could!”

Josefina rolled onto her back, so she could hold Blasfemia and Ombonculita at the same time, and kissed Blasfemia on the head.  “Hush, hush, Ximura.  You did everything you know how to do, and that’s all we have to do.  I’m the one who has to figure out how to deal with this.”

“Maybe it would help if the Corsario promised to not be weird about it with you?”

“Oh I don’t know.  Maybe…  I just wish I could…  I don’t know, hug it.  Like a normal person.”

“Is that all it would take?  I could bully him into that, no problem.”

“It’s ruined.  Umbrifer can only see me as a crazy sucia who wants to fuck it.  I’m ruined.”

“That goblin has been watching you with its bug eye for months now, and never once has this come up.  It has to be able to trust you by now, or it wouldn’t have got me to help, wouldn’t have tried to help you even when I’m not around, so many times.”

“You think so?”

–
Umbrifer wondered for the thousandth time how its life had come to this, when suddenly there was a whistle from inside the room.  It had to be Blasfemia.  She called it in.

It came in and switched on the light.  The ladies winced and it turned the light back off.  “I can see just as well without it, just a habit, I’m sorry.”  It stepped in a short way, and looked at the weirdos on the bed.

Blasfemia stood up and came to it.  “Listen.  If you are OK with Josie hugging you, it would make her feel a lot better.  She would never wanna do anything to make you feel uncomfortable though, so only say yes if that’s true.  But it would really help her, y’know?”

Umbrifer crossed its arms and looked sadly at Josefina’s tear-dappled face.

She said, “I promise, I’ll never ever come onto you.  Really.  I just need you in my life as a friend.  It’s just too…”  She broke out crying again.

“Hey,” it said.  “I’ll do it.  I do care about you, Josefina.  Life is crazy; you never know what’s going to happen.  All I ever wanted to care about was the Leveret, but now I care about you too, OK?”  It came to the bed and got in beside her, and then awkwardly put an arm around her.

She embraced it back and cried herself out, leaning on the weird thin duende for comfort.  Its body was warm, everywhere that was not covered by clothing bristling with stiff fur.

Josefina knew she could keep her promise not to come onto Umbrifer, but to her surprise, she really did feel a romantic impulse.  She really did want to fuck it.

Suddenly, all three of their computers buzzed to life with a message.  They checked them out.

The screens were filled with bold block lettering in Borlante, and the phones took a moment to catch up and letter in the translation.

//Surrender to the Celestial Hierarchy the one known as Blasfemia or face destruction.//

–

Some of the text here is extremely NSFW, I say as if any of my readers are still working.  Pensioners reprezent.  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, stopping with II:V, then starting again at this one.  Meanwhile…

–

In long space sat a plain metal orb, in a galactic orbit seemingly unaffected by all of the nearest stars.  Not that any stars were especially near – the closest light years away.  Closer the details became clear – utility panels, bulky machinery to facilitate human survival within – but nowhere could an exhaust port be seen, nor a sign of how it could control its movement in space at all.

In astrocielo, the orb was buried within the impossible works of a cyclopean mechanical angel, itself half embedded in the outermost layer of the Wall of Ice.  The creature was gold and silver wheels within wheels within wheels, moving in response to the will of the Celestial Hierarchy.  Any mortal with a rank above the laity could move in and out of the wheels with barely a thought, the machinery sliding around to accommodate them.  Any other mortal would likewise be kept out.

Surrounding the angel, labyrinthine trenches were carved into the crust, infested with hellhounds, sustained by dispassionate autoesclavos tossing lesser spirits into the pits.  Those autoesclavos in turn manned larger autoesclavos that were built from mangled and lobotomized astral spirits, bound with armor and engines, bristling with weapons.  They were roughly humanoid astronaves that supplied the station with meat harvested from nearby heathen worlds – walking iron maidens.

In the heart of the angel, the marines came and went between worlds as they pleased.  The orb’s interior was doubled, half occupying long space and half in astrocielo, but both integrated into an impossible whole.  The floor plan was consistent, at least, and the crew found it all very uninteresting.  The mortals spent most of their time in the long space corridors, to avoid the side effects of long term stays in astrocielo, and only went into the astral corridors to do necessary labor and upkeep.

It was in the astral corridors that communication could most easily be made with both the autoesclavo keepers and the Stars of Weal.  On a shift in the astral control center, a tired captain idly fantasized about having sex with all of his subordinates, barely aroused by the notion anymore, just keeping his mind in motion.

There he was, with his short-billed peaked cap and grandiose epaulets, no pants and legs parted enough to admit the next person in line, his cock and balls much larger than they were in reality.  Only two women served on the bridge crew at that hour, and the men would take turns pushing them onto his cock, holding them aloft in a gentle bondage of flesh, rocking them back and forth, so that the Captain did not even have to thrust to achieve the required friction.  Whoever wasn’t currently occupied with that task waited their turn, all clustered around him, masturbating furiously.  He imagined the smell of their cocks and pussies.  Whatever.

In the world where he was wearing pants, his crew played video games or chit-chatted away eternity, only the requisite level of attention paid to the instruments and computers arrayed at their stations.  This was the night shift, their circadian rhythms kept in time with Dio 6 by way of adjustments in light warmth.  They were sleepy but they were supposed to be sleepy.  Having different crewmen on different times was logistically unfeasible.

They were not exactly the cream of the crop.  They’d already drawn a short stick to get the border assignment, and of the people living in that orb, they were the ones who had to do a night rotation.  Still, qualifying for the Navy required some physical fitness and mental resilience, and long exposure to the strange experience of transubstantiation meant they had the latter in spades.

Resisting the effects of stays in the ectonic realm was about mental discipline, and the most effective way to combat psychoanatomical drift was to cling to normalcy, to force oneself to think in the most banal and human ways possible.  Plan your chores, talk through your job duties, tell each other the same life stories over and over again – job interviews, bad dates, achievements in high school athletics.  They were obstinately sane and boring people.

Also very human.  In the Stars of Weal, all entertainment was conducted by virtual characters, the depictions of which had become very standardized into flawless dolls.  Envy of that perfection drove an escalation of distaste for natural human appearance to the extent that all still images and video had been replaced with filtered cartoon avatars in a very similar mold.  Even military surveillance footage allowed people to be replaced with avatars of their choosing, over-ridden with security clearance only when strictly necessary.  These marines were robust primates with thick necks and millions of tiny wrinkles and hairs and blemishes texturing their skin.  Even the whites of their eyes had more texture than preferred.

Many, when confronted by the reality of human bodies, found them utterly repulsive.  Yet the natural attraction was there, now heavily poisoned with self-loathing and disgust.  There was a perverse thrill in the natural human form, and only a perverse one.  Good people spent their romantic feelings on illusions, only having sex reluctantly and with eyes closed.  Conversely, someone like the captain had wallowed his imagination upon the idea of those lurid real bodies so long that nothing was especially thrilling anymore.

He swiveled very slowly in his chair, taking in the view of all the stars of his little fantasy.  Closest was Nightwatch Commander Giuchiratti, with his back to the captain, reading something lengthy on his computer.  His silver and slate hair was very precisely trimmed, barely present below the band of his cap.  He was one of those people with richly hued skin, even in a world without sun.  Beyond him on a lower tier of the dais sat the subofficers for the shift – the Second Furiere, the Vice Capomachinista, and the Second Cappelano.  The 2F and VC were having one of those repetitive conversations, having the best rapport for it, while the 2C – Father Jaocepfi – was chatting with two of the enlisted men on the floor, both from his homeworld of Laia 4, and speaking that language.

The enlisted on the floor were mostly prematurely aging men in their late twenties and early thirties, former athletes whose bodies were getting soft in various ways, and the aforementioned ladies, who were both at Communications, Petty Officers Nicola and Pienela.  There weren’t many women in the Navy.  Those that desperately wanted into the line of work were put into the safest positions, which generally meant they weren’t stationed at the Wall, but here they were.  PO Nicola was shaped like the kind of man who wouldn’t meet the physical requirements, although she had, and her shimmering black hair the only thing somewhat beautiful about her.

PO Pienela had a womanly figure, though stretched to an unreasonable height, and her nose projected like a beak.  Her blonde hair looked dry, but she wore nice makeup.  Both women were squeezed into the mandated alternate woman’s uniform, with skirt and hose and frilly bow tie, hair identically braided and looped into a bun beneath their black and gold sidecaps.  The Captain could notice similar levels of detail in the men but was less specifically interested in them, and so he did not bother, beyond noting who had the biggest dicks in the fleeting moments where that was easier to tell through their loose slacks.

The Captain, Don Uomino Philotesta, brought his chair to a stop facing Communications, looking down at the women with very professional regard.  Good evening, Petty Officers.  They gave him polite nods and resumed their own conversation.  The dim honey colored light was a gentle film separating them from his lust.  Then, for the first time in weeks, the elevated communication chime startled them into uncrossing their legs.  No thrill there, as they were instantly turned away, pushing buttons.

“Just send it directly to me, thank you.”  He raised his work computer, and sound mites in his ears buzzed as they engaged with it.

PO Pienela gave him another polite nod and resumed work.  It was mostly bureaucracy, teasing apart the metadata to see how the communiqué would need to be logged in local systems.  As the only person certain to have the clearance for it, Captain Philotesta started playing it back.

//Prepare an extraction team to post in Borland 1 astrocielo.  Heavy broad spectrum transmission to global surface in local language:  Surrender to the Celestial Hierarchy the one known as Blasfemia or face destruction.  Follow immediately with doubled hellhound deployment, double autoesclavo surveillance.//

Damn, he thought.  The Amiralo will have expectations.  The post was a very safe place to wait for one’s retirement, the hardest work done by autoesclavos, but expectations meant possibility of taking a fall for failure to meet them.

“Furiere Enriges, we need to double the hellhounds on Borland 1, but deploy them all at once – not in stages.  We also need twice the eyes over that world, no need to hold anything back there.  Commander Giuchiratti, assemble one shuttle of marines and an escort of fighters, staging them in the Borlante astrocielo with the dogs.  No deployment until I say.”

–
It was all she could do to bathe, to eat and drink, to keep herself alive in the tower.  Cora Calumnia leaned heavily on esoteric sorcery to achieve even basic things.  Her state of cleanliness and grooming were properties of a moment in time that she accessed through those powers, taking the external qualities she possessed in that moment.  If only she could do the same for her internal organs, for the cells whose telomeres had been fully eroded, for the cells that had already betrayed her to form new cancers.

This was why she would create no more homunculi.  She could not care for them properly anymore.  One old autoesclavo hung onto its own existence out of respect for the task, but she couldn’t know how long it would hold up any more than she could know the same of herself.  Certainly it was making mistakes.  Two of the little creatures had died in recent years.

And yet she could not make herself sit still.  All of her life had been lived for herself, following strange curiosities, bending reality to her will.  The tower was a testament to that – a nest made out of magic scraps, keeping the heavy hand of physical laws at bay as much as it could.  But now someone else had become much more important, and she could feel her acolyte’s story overtaking her life.

She had to know what was next in that story, because she was almost certain she would not live to see it.  And so she called on the autoesclavo to set her homunculi in a safe room, and attend to her.  They ascended the tower, the hobbled leading the hobbled.  At least no one was feeling rushed.  The old machine’s disabilities had a rather different expression but were, generally speaking, no less disabling.

At the highest chamber, they were surrounded by the elements.  Half of the tall windows were missing panes, and perpetual wind made a mess of everything.  The chaos of that mess spoke to the intuitive inside Cora, let her set aside the science and view magic like a witch ought to.

The autoesclavo was a kind machine, living out its designed purpose well.  When she’d purchased it, it was a shiny pink plastic affair with white rubber bumpers that were impossible to keep clean, a secondhand servant that had helped raise children for an unsentimental family.  Cora had renamed it Maricela.  She still had the energy for craft projects then, and had refinished it in blue-lacquered hardwood with silver filigree, the rubber replaced with more sophisticated black gripping material that was easier to clean.  Now as some old pieces of wood had become too warped or cracked to function, they’d been removed, leaving the original pink plastic exposed.  It no longer shined, covered in a film of hardened old adhesive like a dense smooth layer of spiderwebs.  The gripping material was held together where it had cracked with tightly wound, thin, black, vinyl-coated wire.  Maricela’s face was a black screen with dim white LEDs that formed expressions and displayed where its attention was focused.

Cora instructed Maricela in how to array the ritual components, and helped as much as she was able.  The machine was slightly less dexterous in its hands and less strong than the human, so she was careful to keep its limitations in mind as they worked.  Together they wound gold wire around pegs on the floor in an intricate pattern, and ran copper wires from that array to the lids of jars containing special ingredients, placed at just the right intervals throughout the magic circle.

They rested in folding chairs at the end of the preparations, which had taken a few intolerable hours.  Maricela asked, “Do you have some power or device to send warning to Josefina at the Torre Alucine, if you discover some danger in her future?”

“Not that far away, no.”

“Then what is the purpose of knowing her path?  Is it just to satisfy your own curiosity?”

“Yes.  It feels more important than that, but ultimately it can serve no other purpose.  Can it, Maricela?”

“True, Dama.  But we must see to our needs in life, and this is one of yours.  I have a curiosity of my own.  When you say it feels more important, can you describe what you mean?  Maybe understanding that will help me to help you.”

“To express the inexpressible…  If I knew how to do that, dear, I’d have become a poet.  But I should try, shouldn’t I?”

“I would appreciate it, only if it is not too difficult.”

“Josefina fills my thoughts.  It is not love, though I am fond of her.  In a population of organisms, the young generation replace the old, and in turn are replaced.  It’s natural I should think about legacy at my age, yes?  But that isn’t it either.”

“But it feels related, or you would not have mentioned it.”

“I’m circling the truth, but like a logarithmic spiral, I may never reach the center.”

“You have told me that reality can never be perfectly defined, but approximation could still serve a purpose.”

“Maricela, I have no idea why some people dislike autoesclavos.  You are still finding ways to remind me that I love you.”

“I love you too, Dama.  Can you go around the spiral a few more times for me?”

Cora clutched at the air absently, as if she could grab the idea, and closed her big baby eyes.  “I set her on a path to understanding herself, but maybe that’s another unending spiral — one whose revolutions will be cut short with death.”

“You are contemplating your mortality again?  I do not want to make you think about that.”

“Not necessarily my end, but what happens immediately before it.  What understanding could I reach there?  This feels like a necessary step to satisfying that particular curiosity.  Perhaps.”

“I hope your end is still far away.”

“So do I, Maricela.”

–
One would imagine that with the post-defining boredom of his captaincy, Philotesta would leap up to personally oversee the odd bit of excitement to come his way, but it just wasn’t like that.  Looking out the windows, even looking at monitors, it would remind him of where he was.  Better to maintain the mental anesthesia of daydreaming, and the delegation of authority let him do exactly that.

Previously, the orgy of his mind had focused on the Petty Officers, but it was time for the Senior Officers to get some.  Commander Giuchiratti had the sort of commanding presence Captain Philotesta had never bothered to muster, which made for an obvious role in any pornographic scenario.  His cap was pulled even lower over his eyes, giving him an air of mysterious power as he wordlessly dominated the others into sex acts, gesturing here and there with strong sweeps of the hands and arms.

The Second Furiere Enriges and the Vice Capomachinista Tripoli Timmi were standing face to face at full attention, saluting each other with the right hand and stroking each other off with the left.  Could they maintain their posture, or would they be whipped by the Second Cappelano?  Father Jaocepfi was wearing no pants of course, his prodigious member snaking luridly from the black cassock as he leered and chattered obscenities in Laianes – a stereotype of the greasy oversexed foreigner.

All the men among the Petty Officers did endless pushups, blindfolded and naked but for their boots.  PO Pienela made shocked expressions, face blushed to a furious pink, as she watched the scene.  Her pants had been ripped to pieces and PO Nicola’s face was buried in her pubis, making very sloppy noises.

Behind the women, the lights on comms were a little too bright, pulsing slowly on a beat, like the heart of a great ectothermic beast.  The erotic pantomime gradually dimmed in comparison, the noise of it thinned to weak irregular tapping and animal whining.  Was his lust actually so different from the artifice of the sexless dolls on tele, or had he just constructed a different kind of falsehood that would eventually fail under the weight of its own abstraction?

“Captain,” said the Commander’s voice, spoken from the wrong position.  He was on the Defense Systems side of the dais resting a boot on the back of a naked man doing pushups, right?  The voice was too close.  “You seem half asleep.”

He turned to look at the source of the voice and saw the strangest creature he had ever seen.  Not one of the outrageous chimeras of the astrocielo, but something that distorted the idea of human form with a wrongness as subtle as it was thorough.  The face of an infant on a head too large, the body of an elderly woman with thin wrinkled flesh, reddish gold hair taut in a pearl crown.  She wore a funereal black dress with a fan-like white ruff, like that big head sat severed on a plate.

In Giuchiratti’s voice she said, “Are you sure you don’t want to oversee the operations?”

At his own look of alarm, she looked alarmed, and backed away with nervous steps.  She tripped and fell, injuring herself and crying out in mute pain.

A flicker of an eyelid and she wasn’t there, only the Commander, fully clothed.  “Captain?”

Philotesta squeezed the sleep out of his eyes and angrily grasped at understanding.  It all came together quickly for him.  “DefSys, seventy-five percent more power to ESO shields, now.”

The young men jumped in their seats and pushed the right buttons, then waited in position for another order, still tense.

“Maintain that, for now.  At ease.”  Philotesta took off his cap, wiped sweat from his brow.

Giuchiratti said, “The ESO shields aren’t there to protect you from bad dreams, sir.”

The Captain rolled his eyes.  “I never would have imagined such as I just glimpsed.  A witch scries on us, and I saw her.”

“Your imagination could not have conjured a witch?”

“Not like her.”

–
One grueling task begat another.  Cora required medical care but had made no arrangement with the civilized world to come fetch her in that situation, so she was caring for herself.  To her best effort at diagnosis, the priorities were getting blood pressure back up, then operating on the hematoma.  The joint damage was a lost cause, just a new disability to add to the list.  She waited more than three hours for the slow old autoesclavo to synthesize artificial blood and return with that and the equipment.  Moving her to the laboratory would have been faster if it was at all possible, but it wasn’t.

At the brink of death, the blood began to revive her.  Revived nerves transmitted pain afresh and she was pushed near death again, only the slow escalation brunting the shock just enough to prevent that.  Maricela made fussy gestures with its hands in between tasks, a human-like neurotic display that emerged naturally from its programming, not mere mimicry.  Cora’s thin eyelids lifted again, weakly.

“Her crossroad lies in the heart of an angel.  How magnificent!”

–