alt.human (36 page)

Someone, me, a lanky young man edging through the crowd towards her, looking her in the eye, a moment of sudden bonding, and then I reached out, touched her gently on the arm. Confusion in my look, and then a jolt, a fizz where skin met skin, and I had shared my pids with her, given her a blood-deep identity that would be enough to get her past the grunt’s scan, get her out, stop them from seizing her.

On impulse, with a transitory moment’s insight, I had saved her.

And now, she felt that discord, that sense of something wrong, that sense that this real was not
her
real, was not the real she had discovered where a stranger could impulsively save your life. This real was different, it was
other
, and that realisation was enough to bring her back to herself. She focused, found a sense of her own body again, her boundaries, the bundle of sensations that defined who she was, where she stopped.

And she knew that she cared, and that she was not a person to give up like this.

She remembered in the forest, the twisting trees enfolding her.

She straightened, pushed, and felt a yielding, a parting. Able to wriggle and twist now, she worked herself loose and pushed, pushed, pushed, and then she was breaking free, staggering forward, and the mass of human bodies was gone from around her, nowhere.

She was on her hands and knees, gasping for breath. The others were there: me, Skids, Marek, Jerra and Frankhay. A moment later, Saneth was at her side, materialised from nothing, false eye swivelling.

She looked ahead, and that was when she saw Harmony, just as she had seen it in her dreams.

Chapter Thirty-Three

W
E EMERGED FROM
that hellish wall, one by one.

When I popped out, Skids was sitting cross-legged on a rock, as if he had been waiting for a long time. He smiled and dipped his head in greeting as I struggled for breath, my hands and knees on bare, hard rock and my head full of swirling memories of raw meat enfolding me, hair and skin up against me, a wailing chorus of voices all around.

We were on a craggy hilltop. I peered back over my shoulder but there was no wall, just a landscape of dark, gently folding forest.

Ahead, the river cut a gouge through more trees, the water lashed white by the rocks that occasionally broke the surface. I tracked its course, slowly taking in the broader view.

And there, in the distance, like a dream: a city, nestling in the snow-capped mountains, lit by a shaft of sunlight. At its centre was a cluster of towers, great twisting spires that dominated the city.

It was exactly as Hope had described it from her dream.

The city of spires.

We had found Harmony.

W
E HAD TO
make camp in the forest again, and it was late the following day before we finally approached the city.

The forest thinned here, on the rocky ground of the foothills, and as we approached it was as if the trees were peeling away to either side to afford us a view of our destination.

The first buildings we encountered were widely-spaced, built to a human scale and only rising two storeys at most. They were constructed from the local blue-grey stone, and had long since fallen into disrepair. None had roofs or doors or windows, and many of the walls had collapsed. Twisted, gnarled pine trees grew through the ruins, and great clumps of grey and orange lichen formed broad scabs on the walls and ground.

A stone road followed the straightened course of the river through this abandoned hinterland.

Now that we were entering the city, the towers dominated everything. Some had straight walls, squared corners and neat rows of windows, like some of the blocks in Pennysway and Cheapside. Others twisted and curved in organic, asymmetrical formations. Most striking were the five towers that thrust high above them, twisting improbably like some great ribbon coiled around itself. Occasionally, the ribbon showed gaps, as if eaten away, or never completed; here, a skeletal framework of slender ribs was revealed.

It was impossible to see how such apparently flimsy structures could support themselves. They were clearly of alien construction, and at that I briefly panicked, wondering if this was Harmony after all, or if it were some alien settlement waiting to entrap us.

I looked around our small group. Skids knew, a mad grin plastered across his features; Hope knew, too, from the determined set of her jaw.

This really was Harmony.

We had made it.

W
HEN WE REACHED
the second great wall, Marek assumed control.

It first appeared as a shimmering barrier, a play of light mostly hidden by the buildings through which we passed.

As we drew closer, it became clear that the shimmering light was another wall. Semi-transparent: beyond it, I could see more buildings, and people moving about. The buildings beyond the barrier looked more complete; this was the living part of the city.

The spires loomed above us, staggering in their scale. From this perspective it would be easy to believe that they ascended all the way to the stars.

We stopped before the wall.

Currents of light passed through it, separating and recombining, distorting what could be seen of the city within.

I opened my mouth to ask Saneth how we should proceed, but before I could speak a face appeared in the wall before us, and then a body.

The figure bulged outwards, as if a man was pressing against a stretchable membrane, pulling the flow of light and colour around his form.

“Identify yourself,” said the man.

Marek stepped forward, and said, “!¡
authority
¡! I am Marek Moon, poet and historian from the city of Angiere, agent of the Vanguard, friend of Callo Hart. I have sent many refugees here to Harmony. They will vouch for me. I bring more refugees, this time from the city of Laverne. The persecution continues, and we ask for sanctuary.”

The figure in the wall froze, and I wondered then if it was a real person or a projection from the city’s guardian starsinger.

Then the figure dissolved and the barrier of light thinned, giving ever more substance to the city within, until finally, there was a gap, an archway.

Marek stepped forward, passed through, and one by one we followed.

Two men and two women, dressed in heavy trousers and furs, stood a short distance from the barrier, waiting to greet us.

Marek appeared to recognise them. He opened his arms wide, and gasped, “!¡
recognition | delight
¡! Mazar! Alya! You made it. What a delight!”

A tall man with near-black skin and a full beard grinned in response. “Marek,” he said in a deep voice. “The poet who never pens a line of verse. Good to see you!”

Marek laughed. “!¡
warm
¡! Poetry is in the head and heart,” he said. “Tell me, Mazar: how many are here? How many made it?”

“We are a good number,” said the tall man. “Many from Angiere, but we are gathered from all about. You are the first from Laverne.”

“!¡
hierarchy
¡! And maybe the last,” said Frankhay, stepping forward. “I’m Frankhay, clan-father of the Hays. And this here is Saneth, a chlick but a friend; and Dodge, Hope, Skids and Jerra.”

“This is all of you?” asked a woman. She was tall, like Mazar, with long, chestnut hair and pale, almond skin.

Frankhay nodded. I almost spoke up, but then decided it might be wise not to mention those we had left behind in the hills. We did not want these people to feel swamped by our sudden arrival.

Then Jerra spoke, unexpectedly for one normally so quiet. “!¡
hesitant | impassioned
¡! Do you have any food?” he asked, and I realised he was close to tears, a flood-barrier about to break. “Any
real
food? We’s been eating grubs an’ weeds an’ shit, an’ my belly hurts to fuck...”

W
E ENTERED THE
ground-level atrium of one of the great spires, through a wall that dissolved upon our approach.

Alien technology.

I looked at Skids and he grinned. Alya inclined her head towards us and said, “This is an ancient city, its creators long since gone. Much of what they left behind still functions. It is a smart city, an intelligent city.”

“!¡
eager
¡! And how much of it functions because it’s sung to be so?” asked Skids.

Alya smiled, but didn’t reply. Already, I was sensing a continuation of the barriers, an air of reserve about the residents of Harmony. Then I stopped myself: I had just spent the longest time in the close, claustrophobic company of a handful of people. We had been privy to every aspect of each others’ lives, seen each other puking and shitting and washing, seen the highs and lows. There had been nothing hidden. Now, back in civilised company, just about anything would seem reserved in comparison.

I smiled back at Alya, and wondered just how filthy and uncouth we must appear to these people.

Inside the building, we passed through a foyer of some kind of exotic polished stone, all cream and pink swirls. Strange grooves and symbols appeared across walls and floor; I knew from the few glimpses I’d had into alien buildings in Laverne that these markings indicated functions, concealed openings, phreak zones, areas that could reconfigure at some ineffable signal or command.

The inner area was an atrium, like a small park. Our four hosts shed their furs, stripping down to light leggings; for the rest of us, it was a strange thing to suddenly feel warmth on our skin and not a sharp chill through our thin clothing.

Alya had dark tattoos that twisted and swirled around her belly and breasts. I tried not to stare, but inevitably my eyes were drawn.

It felt like a dream. A vast, heady dream. The warmth, the exotic landscape of ferny trees and sweet-scented creepers within the building; the gold and blue birds darting amongst the foliage and occasionally pausing to hover in a rainbow-coloured blur; the massive butterflies, jerking and twitching through the air as if tugged by invisible wires; the intense, erotic Alya and her swirling tattoos, and a sensuality that grabs you like only a dream can grab you...

Someone was talking, and I jerked myself back to awareness. Frankhay. Something about the trees, the heat. “!¡
embarrassed
¡! Hnh, yes,” I replied. “It’s like another world, isn’t it? After the snow and cold outside.”

He looked at me oddly, and then I wondered if there was more than just the shock of a changed environment affecting me. I remembered the markings in the foyer and wondered if this building was phreaking us, giving us this sense of dreaminess.

I didn’t care.

I felt a loosening of muscles I had not felt in the longest time. As if I was being lifted up and no longer had to support myself.

We sat on a grassy slope and allowed our hosts to ply us with slices of roast meat, salad leaves and even fresh fruit.

It was not until we were seated that I looked up.

The atrium extended upwards as far as I could see, and the twisted ribbon building wrapped around it. This must be one of the tall, helical spires we had seen from afar. Daylight seeped in through the gaps in the outer layers, but not enough to explain the brightness and warmth. It was a dizzying sight, something only an alien could build.

Our hosts wanted to know of the world, and so we took our turns to tell them, and gradually the barriers of reserve fell away. Marek spoke of the final exodus from Angiere; I spoke of Laverne, and of the unsinging of Cragside; Frankhay told them of our escape on his barge.

In their turn, Mazar and Alya, and their two friends, Kedra and Faith, told us of their city.

“We are blessed with the protection of the Singer of the City,” said Alya, and I was lost in her eyes in an instant. “All this” – she gestured at the atrium with a hand, and I saw that she had long red nails, like elegantly crafted claws – “is sung to be.”

Mazar leaned towards her and continued, “If it were not sung, this great helix would be a shell, just another ruin left by those who created our city.”

“But it is sung,” continued Alya, and I was struck by their eagerness, by how novel it must be for them to receive visitors from beyond the city. “It is sung and so we are able to live this life.”

That was when I recognised this place. I had been somewhere very similar back when I had searched for Skids. I had gone to Constellation, the district where the skystation was to be found, and a wraith had shown me to a building where a ’singer had taken up residence. The grassy slope, the idyllic parkland. Then, a group of small humanoids, like chubby pale children but with high feathery wings, had appeared. Looking around now, I half-expected to see them again, but there was only a butterfly, wobbling in mid-air on gaudy wings.

It was as if this was a stock reality, something a starsinger knew to conjure up because it pressed the right human buttons, made us feel secure, lifted our spirits; an idyll for our kind.

Food and warmth were a combination impossible to argue with.

Mazar and Alya showed us to a row of chambers that opened off from the atrium. There were enough for each of us to have a room, but without consultation we drifted into the largest of the spaces, even Saneth, who had become somewhat distant since our arrival in Harmony.

I dropped to my haunches, then sat, and immediately the floor reformed itself around me, soft like a pit of feathers.

I lay.

I
OPENED MY
eyes and knew that some considerable time had passed.

And then I sensed the body against mine and I saw that it was Hope, her honeyed hair close to my face, her back and arse curved into me.

I didn’t know if this was deliberate on her part, or if, settling close together, we had just drifted into this familiar position in our slumbers.

I moved, and she turned her head.

“!¡
sincere
¡! I’m sorry,” I said, although until the words tumbled out, I had not realised that I was. “!¡
self-pity | self-hate
¡! I was scared. I learnt that you were different. I backed away.”