Fearful Symmetries (4 page)

“Fine tactics, yes—very born-again barbarian. Your own pocket Ragnarok, with all that the term implies.”

“Yeah, yeah: clam up, Legion, if you don’t have anything useful to contribute.” To ’Lij: “You ready, sound-boy?”

“Uhhhh . . .”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

Done with Katz, she swapped places with ’Lij, handing him the knife as she went, and tapping the relevant sigil. “Like that,” she said. “Try to do it all in one motion, if you can—it’ll hurt less.”

’Lij looked dubious.
“One can’t fail to notice you aren’t volunteering for impromptu body-modification,”
Eshphoriel noted, through Goss’s lips, while Camberwell met the comment with a tiny, bitter smile.

Replying, as she hiked her shirt up to demonstrate—”That’d be ’cause I’ve already got one.”

Cocking a hip to display the thing in question where it nestled in the hollow at the base of her spine, more a scab than a scar, edges blurred like some infinitely fucked-up tramp stamp. And as she did, Goss saw
something
come fluttering up behind her skin, a parallel-dimension full-body ripple, the barest glowing shadow of a disproportionately huge tentacle-tip still up-thrust through Camberwell’s whole being, as though everything she was, had been and would ever come to be was nothing more than some indistinct no-creature’s fleshy finger-puppet.

One cream-brown eye flushed with livid colour, green on yellow, while the other stayed exactly the same—human, weary, bitter to its soul’s bones. And Camberwell opened her mouth to let her tongue protrude, pink and healthy except for an odd whitish strip that ran ragged down its centre from tip to—not exactly
tail
, Goss assumed, since the tongue was fairly huge, or so he seemed to recall. But definitely almost to the uvula, and: oh God, oh shit, was it actually splitting as he watched, bisecting itself not-so-neatly into two separate semi-points, like a child’s snaky scribble?

Camberwell gave it a flourish, swallowed the resultant spit-mouthful, then said, without much affect: “Yeah, that’s right—‘Gallu-Alu, the Terrible Immoel, who speaks with a dead tongue . . .’” Camberwell fluttered the organ in question at what had taken control of Goss, showing its central scars long-healed, extending the smile into a wide, entirely unamused grin. “So say hey, assfuck. Remember me now?”

“You were its vessel, then, once before,”
Goss heard his lips reply.
“And . . . yes, yes, I do recall it. Apologies, huntress; I cannot say, with the best will in all this world, that any of you look so very different, to me.”

Camberwell snapped her fingers. “Aw, gee.” To ’Lij, sharper: “I tell you to stop cutting?”

Goss felt “his” eyes slide to poor ’Lij, caught and wavering (his face a sickly grey-green, chest heaving slightly, like he didn’t know whether to run or puke), then watched him shake his head, and bow back down to it. The knife went in shallow, blunter than the job called for—he had to drag it, hooking up underneath his own hide, to make the meat part as cleanly as the job required. While Camberwell kept a sure and steady watch on the other well-riders, all of whom were beginning to look equally disturbed, even those who were supposedly unconscious. Goss felt his own lips curve, far more genuinely amused, even as an alien emotion-tangle wound itself invasively throughout his chest: half proprietorially expectant, half vaguely annoyed.

“We are coming,”
he heard himself say.
“All of us. Meaning you may have miscalculated, somewhat . . . what a sad state of affairs indeed, when the prospective welfare of your entire species depends on you not doing so.”

That same interior ripple ran ’round the well’s perimeter as ’Lij pulled the knife past “his” sigil’s final slashing loop and yanked it free, splattering the frieze in front of him; in response, the very stones seemed to arch hungrily, that composite mouth gaping, eager for blood. Above, even through the heavy-pressing rubble-mound which must be all that was left of the temple proper, Goss could hear Journee-Zemyel swooping and cawing in the updraft, swirled on endless waves of storm; from his eye’s corner he saw Hynde-whoever (
Arralu-Allatu, the Terrible Ashreel,
Eshphoriel supplied, helpfully) open one similarly parti-coloured eye and lever himself up, clumsy-clambering to his feet. Katz’s head fell back, spine suddenly hooping so heels struck shoulder-blades with a wetly awful crack, and began to lift off, levitating gently, turning in the air like some horrible ornament. Meanwhile, Lao continued to grind her fisted knuckles into both eyes at once, bruising lids but hopefully held back from pulping the balls themselves, at least so long as her sockets held fast. . . .

(Ekimmu, the Terrible Coaib, who seeds without regard. Lamyatu, the Terrible Ushephekad, who opens the ground beneath us.)

From the well, dusty mortar popped forth between every suture, and the thing as a whole gave one great shrug, shivering itself apart—began caving in and expanding at the same time, becoming a nothing-column for its parts to revolve around, an incipient reality fabric-tear. And in turn, the urge to rotate likewise—just let go of gravity’s pull, throw physical law to the winds, and see where that might lead—cored through Goss, ass to cranium, Vlad Tepes style, a phantom impalement pole spearing every neural pathway. Simultaneously gone limp
and
stiff, he didn’t have to look down to know his crotch must be darkening, or over to ’Lij to confirm how the same invisible angel-driven marionette hooks were now pulling at
his
muscles, making his knife-hand grip and flex, sharp enough the handle almost broke free of his sweaty palm entirely—

(Namtaru, the Terrible Yphemaal, who stitches what was rent asunder)

“And now we
are
Seven, without a doubt,”
Goss heard that voice in his throat note, its disappointment audible.
“For all your bravado, perhaps you are not as well-educated as you believe.”

Camberwell shrugged yet one more time, slow but distinct; her possessed eye widened slightly, as though in surprise. And in that instant, it occurred to Goss how much of herself she still retained, even in the Immoel-thing’s grip, which seemed far—slipperier, in her case, than with everybody else. Because maybe coming pre-Inscribed built up a certain pad of scar tissue in the soul, in situations like these; maybe that’s what she’d been gambling on, amongst other things. Having just enough slack on her lead to allow her to do stuff like (for example) reach down into her other boot, the way she was even as they “spoke,” and—

Holy crap, just how many knives does this chick walk around with, exactly?

—bringing up the second of a matched pair, trigger already thumbed, blade halfway from its socket. Tucking it beneath her jaw, point tapping at her jugular, and saying, as she did—

“Never claimed to be, but I do know
this
much: Sam Raimi got it wrong. You guys don’t like wearing nothin’
dead
.”

And:
That’s your
plan
?
Goss wanted to yell, right in the face of her martyr-stupid,
fuck all y’all
snarl. Except that that was when the thing inside ’Lij (Yphemaal, its name is Yphemaal) turned him, bodily—two great twitches, a child “walking” a doll. Its purple eyes fell on Camberwell in mid-move, and narrowed; Goss heard something rush up and out in every direction, rustle-ruffling as it went: some massive and indistinct pair of wings, mostly elsewhere, only a few pinions intruding to lash the blade from Camberwell’s throat before the cut could complete itself, leaving a shallow red trail in its wake.

(Another “hunting” trophy, Goss guessed, eventually. Not that she’d probably notice.)

“No,”
’Lij-Yphemaal told the room at large, all its hovering sibling-selves, in a voice colder than orbit-bound satellite-skin.
“Enough.”

“We are Seven,”
Eshphoriel Maskim replied, with Goss’s flayed mouth.
“The huntress has the right of it: remove one vessel, break the quorum, before we reassemble. If she wants to sacrifice herself, who are we to interfere?”

“Who
were
we to, ever, every time we have? But there is another way.”

The sigils flowed each to each, Goss recalled having noticed at this freak-show’s outset, albeit only subconsciously—one basic design exponentially added upon, a fresh new (literal) twist summoning Two out of One, Three out of Two, Four out of Three, etcetera. Which left Immoel and Yphemaal separated by both a pair of places and a triad of contortionate squiggle-slashes; far more work to imitate than ’Lij could possibly do under pressure with his semi-blunt knife, his wholly inadequate human hands and brain.

But Yphemaal wasn’t ’Lij. Hell, this very second,
’Lij
wasn’t even ’Lij.

The Mender-angel was at least merciful enough to let him scream as it remade its sigil into Immoel’s with three quick cuts, then slipped forth, blowing away up through the well’s centre-spoke like a backwards lightning rod. Two niches on, Katz lit back to earth with a cartilaginous creak, while Lao let go just in time to avoid tearing her own corneas; Hynde’s head whipped up, face gone trauma-slack but finally recognizable, abruptly vacated. And Immoel Maskim spurted forth from Camberwell in a gross black cloud from mouth, nose, the corner of the eyes, its passage dimming her yellow-green eye back to brown, then buzzed angrily back and forth between two equally useless prospective vessels until seeming to give up in disgust.

Seemed even angels couldn’t be in two places at once. Who knew?

Not inside time and space, no. And unfortunately—

That’s where
we
live
, Goss realized.

Yes.

Goss saw the bulk of the Immoel-stuff blend into the well room’s wall, sucked away like blotted ink. Then fell to his knees, as though prompted, only to see the well collapse in upon its own shaft, ruined forever—its final cosmic strut removed, solved away like some video game’s culminative challenge.

Beneath, the ground shook, like jelly. Above, a thunderclap whoosh sucked all the dust away, darkness boiling up, peeling itself away like an onion till only the sun remained, pale and high and bright. And straight through the hole in the “roof” dropped all that was left of Journee-turned-Zemyel—face-down, from a twenty-plus-foot height, horrible thunk of impact driving her features right back into her skull, leaving nothing behind but a smashed-flat, raw meat mask.

Goss watched those wing-lungs of hers deflate, thinking:
she couldn’t’ve survived
. And felt Eshphoriel, still lingering, clawed to his brain’s pathways even in the face of utter defeat, interiorly agree that:
It does seem unlikely. But then, my sister loves to leave no toy unbroken, if only to spit in your—and our—Maker’s absent eye.

Uh huh
, Goss thought back, suddenly far too tired for fear, or even sorrow.
So maybe it’s time to get the fuck out too, huh, while the going’s good? “Minish” yourself, like the old chant goes.
 . . .

Perhaps, yes. For now.

He looked to Camberwell, who stood there shaking slightly, caught off-guard for once—amazed to be alive, it was fairly obvious, part-cut throat and all. Asking ’Lij, as she dabbed at the blood: “What did you
do
, dude?”

To which ’Lij only shook his head, equally freaked. “I . . . yeah, dunno, really. I don’t—even think that was
me
.”

“No, ’course not: Yphemaal, right? Who sews crooked seams straight . . .” She shook her head, cracked her neck back and forth. “Only one of ’em still
building
stuff, these days, instead of tearing down or undermining, so maybe it’s the only one of ’em who really
doesn’t
want to go back, ’cause it knows what’ll happen next.”

“Maaaaybe,” ’Lij said, dubious—then grabbed his wound, like something’d just reminded him it was there. “Oh,
shit
, that hurts!”

“You’ll be fine, ya big baby—magic shit heals fast, like you wouldn’t believe. Makes for a great conversation piece, too.”

“Okay, sure. Hey . . . I saved your life.”

Camberwell snorted. “Yeah, well—I would’ve saved yours, you hadn’t beat me to it. Which makes us even.”

’Lij opened his mouth at that, perhaps to object, but was interrupted by Hynde, his voice creaky with disuse. Demanding, of Goss directly— “Hey, Arthur, what . . . the hell
happened
, here? Last thing I remember was doing pick-ups, outside, and then—” His eyes fell on Journee, widening. “—
then
I, oh Christ, is that—who
is
that?”

Goss sighed, equally hoarse. “Long story.”

By the time he was done, they were all outside—even poor Journee, who ’Lij had badgered Katz and Lao into helping roll up in a tarp, stowing her for transport in the back of the one blessedly still-operative truck Camberwell had managed to excavate from the missile-strike’s wreckage. Better yet, it ensued that ’Lij’s backup sat-phone was now once again functional; once contacted, the production office informed them that border skirmishes had definitely spilled over into undeclared war, thus necessitating a quick retreat to the airstrip they’d rented near Karima town. Camberwell reckoned they could make it if they started now, though the last mile or so might be mainly on fumes.

“Better saddle up,” she told Goss, briskly, as she brushed past, headed for the truck’s cab. Adding, to a visibly gobsmacked Hynde: “Yo, Professor: you gonna be okay? ’Cause the fact is, we kinda can’t stop to let you process.”

Hynde shook his head, wincing; one hand went to his chest, probably just as raw as Goss’s mouth-roof. “No, I’ll . . . be okay. Eventually.”

“Mmm. Won’t we all.”

Lao opened the truck’s back door and beckoned, face wan—all cried out, at least for the nonce. Prayed too, probably.

Goss clambered in first, offering his hand. “Did we at least get enough footage to make a show?” Hynde had the insufferable balls to ask him, taking it.