83 - With Your Permission, Head

Kyrus and Ilax had, despite all sensible ideas of protecting their offices, had been two of the last men into the shelter.   

The Nadumon birds had stampeded past them as the doors opened, in bird-brained panic.

The stink of burnt dust and ozone and other things vaporized flooded in with the weird light outside.  Dust had been flung into the air turning the sun dim and orange red as if the air had been burned.

Even the best fowl can only be driven so hard and Kyrus had not only the Head of the Nadu council on his armoured bird but himself and two other councillors.  His bird’s beak scraped the stone.  It staggered sideways a few steps outside, despite the hood, then collapsed onto its side, thrashing as it died.

Ilax’s wasn’t much better, but he’d managed to squeeze some water from his waterskin over his bird’s lolling tongue and it had not collapsed, though it trembled all over.

“Head,” Kyrus said, turning to the woman he was still half supporting.  “With your permission and understanding, I am no longer considering this a water negotiation or conflict resolution talks but an emergency and a disaster relief mission.”  He could feel Ilax beside him as he spoke directly into Filchang’s shocked eyes.  Her headgear hung askew, tangled in her hair, half way down her neck. Ilax didn’t have to say anything.  He knew his husband’s mind well enough on this.

“My feather-spitters and medics are here at your disposal, the Asses of Lainz –“ “—And the medics and my entourage,” Ilax chimed in.  “We are here to help you, but only at your request.”

The two other council members had sunk to the floor of the cavern with their hands over their faces, coughing, as the dust and stink blew in thickly around the doors.  In the distance screams and cries for help rose now that the burning wind had stopped roaring.

“Please,” she said, coughing herself.  Ilax dug out his spare veils and Kyrus’s Amir began fetching everyone’s spares to hand out, so that everyone could breathe.  “We… were disallowed.  He just tried to smash us into our component amino acids!”  Even shocked, hurt from the code backlash that had happened the last time she'd tried to access their laboratory codes under Prime, and recovering from the flight, she still sounded shocked.  And surprised and angry.

“At your request, Head.  We can set everything else aside till we aren’t in a state of emergency any longer.”

“Thank you.”

“I think we should make this canyon our camp,” Kyrus said. “Someone get those doors closed down to one bird-width. We need to clear these hale people out of here and get the medics set up.  It looks like… yes, Amir?”

“Burn injuries, Radiance.  Some crush injuries… a lot o’ toxic dust dragged inta unveiled faces.”

“Thank you.  Medic!  I am uninjured -- your crew--”

“Yes, Radiance, we have the field station on my bird, Radiance, sit… it made it in.” Ignoring Kyrus's assertion he was uninjured, the medic began checking him where he stood.

“Coordinate with the Milari Zon… their Manders and Cliners will be able to assist you.”  Ilax just nodded sharply and the Zon, as if they knew, were already helping the Lainz haul frames and filter curtains out of bird packs.

The warbirds still capable of walking were being ridden out, in order, people shared out their veils and the racking coughs diminished.

I’ll be with the medics, inam,” Ilax said quietly, picking up the youngster he’d carried out of danger.

“I’ll join you in a few moments, deovar,” Kyrus answered back, absently.  His mandery would be more useful once things were set up and running well enough.  “I love you.”

“I love you too.  Here, lass, take these packs with us, they have my storm hood… in case of Haboob so if we can use it to give someone breathing space…”

Kyrus could see out  the doors from where he stood, began stripping off his dirt-streaked armour.  “Emir-al! Amirs! If you aren’t already working… gather!”

“Radiance!” Three Emir-al and four more Amir materialized out of the crowd, offering the war salaam.

“Ah… good.  Erkonish, you round up a hundred able bodied, riders and foot, track-back to fetch wounded and incapacitated.”

The Head spoke up from where she sat on a stone.  “There are four other Bug-Outs.  Samuel can give you a map.”

“Thank you, Head Filchang.” Kyrus turned back to his waiting Amirs.  “D--Amardad... get a unit together and start watch for Sand-sheets and Gray Tigers.  We’re on the edge of both their ranges as far as I know and they’ll be haunting us before we know it.”

“Aye, Radiance.”

“And Helios.  If we have any fast birds left, put your lightest courier on it. Head if you could pen a note for him? We need to make contact with the other shelters and begin to see how much of the population survived the strike.”

A stream of injured were beginning to flow into the shelter and the uninjured were beginning to rig shades outside.

“There is a good water source inside,” one of the other councillors spoke up.  “And a second one, covered, outside.”

“Excellent,” Kyrus relaxed a little inside. With all these people there had to be water.

A runner came from where the medic’s tents were going up, scraping the rock above with their tent poles, but the tent was needed to hang the curtains.  Dust billowed everywhere, and the wind rose and boomed down the canyon once more.

"Someone get a curtain to nail over that gap… we can’t close the doors too tightly.”

“Radiance!”

“Yes?”

“Your… husband says he can set up a temporary lin.  There’s a stone basin here that he could fill with water and fibre.”

“Wonderful.  Run back and tell him thank you.”

“Yes Naser!”

Someone handed him his water flask and he drained it in a few enormous swallows.  He was as dry as just before a battle.  It was a battle.  He tried not to hear the cries of the people being brought in on bird litters.  The ones closest to the doors actually hadn’t been injured that badly.  The blast had blown over the canyon walls.  It was the ones who hadn’t left the city quickly enough and had been on the hard pan when the rocks from the sky began to fall.

I can’t help them any faster than to get them to every medic we have.  And the Nadu are going to help too, of course. We are going to have to rig lights soon.  The sun is already low enough that we’re in deep shadow down here.  Lights inside will not be visible from the air.  Heat… I need to set someone to find heat sand mixtures if they are around here.

The Head drank as well, looking around hopefully, though not calling anyone’s name, like so many other people.  Calling for their family, separated in the crushing flight.   

“Mum!”  At the shout from across the cavern, her face eased as if a band that had been wrapped tightly around her chest had suddenly snapped.

“Archibald!  Come help us.” She said, her voice full of relief.

“I brought the Siwion and his friend,” the boy said, pushing through the crowd around them.  “They have birds that are still fresh enough to go out, he says.”

Kyrus, still snapping out orders to his officers, reached out blindly and wrapped one arm around his son’s shoulders, hugged him hard, once.  “Son, if you and your wing brother would join those searching for wounded?  Perhaps those who cannot call out?  You are good at that.” Ky’s grin showed wide and white through his veil. 

“Sure, da.  Werfas?  We can get these lazy fowl out again?”

82 - Robotic Kangaroos and Elephants

While he straightened out his clothing, one of the brightly painted robotic kangaroos hopped over and offered him a flower, a real, earthan, batchelor's button.  He took it, said ‘thank you’ and pinned it onto his lapel, all the while aware of the way it watched him.  Even in a dream he was being monitored, as the pupil of its eye irised open, then contracted down to a black pinhole. It hopped away.

“I have two questions for you,” he said quietly.  “Well, three or more actually but the most important two.”

 “Yes?” The woman leaned on the top of the pachyderm’s head, resting her chin on her arms.  Her eyes were extraordinary, and strikingly blue over her veil.  He found himself wanting to see the rest of her face.  Stop that, Terence.

“First of all, is there another place on this planet than Xanadu where people can live?  I’m asking for myself only.”

She regarded him solemnly, the ferret lying on her head peering at him imitating her pose on the elephant.  A bee bumbled out of the rose bushes and landed on the flower in his lapel.  He glanced down at it, but made no move to brush it away.  She smiled suddenly.  He could see that even through the face covering. It made her eyes crinkle up enticingly.  Another bee settled on the brim of his hat and as if that were somehow a trigger, she made up her mind.  “Yes.  There is.  Right now, right here, I won’t say any more about it.”

Something about this whole strange situation made Terry suddenly wild to run and grab a beribboned cane from one of the mannequins in straw boaters and striped coats and start smashing the perfectly manicured pavilions of the arcade.  “My second question.  If I made it to this mythical ‘other place’… especially if I managed to rescue one of your own… would I be welcome?”

Her eyebrows went up.  “Unity, yes!”

He ducked his head as every carnival animal in earshot reacted to the word.  Their painted wooden and mechanical heads turned towards them, on the carousel, the swans on the pond, even the elephant froze under her.  “For goodness sakes don’t say any kind of word like that!  Except, of course –“ He raised his voice, babbling inanely.  “—the union of matrimony is something you cannot speak so boldly about!  Where is your Keeper?” The false animals ratcheted their heads back around to a neutral position and Terry dropped his voice to almost a whisper.  “Please don’t set off the security!  If you use words even close to the ‘U’ word it sets them off!”

The woman had her hand over her mouth, pressing the cloth to her closed lips, gazing at the vapidly beautiful carousel, and then down at the elephant she rode.  “I… see.  I think.”

“May I interest the young lady in a ride on the Ferris wheel?” He indicated the towering ride on the other side of the grove of trees.  In his dream… and supposedly her dream as well, there were no other patrons in the garden.  From the distant bandshell came the whistling, merry music of a steam calliope, that clashed oddly with the carousel tune.

She smiled and slid down the ladder and the pachyderm ambled away, mirrored ears flashing. His brand new resolve hardened.  “I believe I shall very much enjoy meeting with you in the flesh.  So to speak.”

Hara laughed.  “So to speak.  Is there some way, in this code, that I can help you make your—“ she glanced around at the garden fixtures around them.  A gigantic mechanical  rabbit, wearing a brocade waistcoat and top hat, hopped past them, touching its paw politely to the brim of its hat, ears flopping.  “--Bold and dashing venture a success?”

Terry offered her his elbow.  “At the moment, just finding out desperately needed information… makes my venture possible.”

“I will have to make sure that our party is well planned on my end,” she said as he handed her into the gondola and sat down beside her, securing the strap over his lap.  The ferret was snuggled around her neck, peering at him through the veil.  “Once you are out of this…” she waved a hand indicating the ground spread out below them as they swept up to the top of the wheel… “you’ll need to get in touch with me, and we’ll be able to talk without the circumlocutions.”

“Exactly… oh… oh no… I’m waking up.” The carnival was thinning, growing foggy and pale, the bright colours bleaching out as everything did under this brutal sun.

“Get off of Xanadu,” she called, her reaching hands fading away from him as the carnival dream broke into a shattered mirror of images, robotic animals, bright rides, the striped jackets of the mannequin barkers… the irising open and closed eyes of the animals on the merry-go-round all flew away around his head, slipped through his hands, clutching the strap across his lap.  “You’ve decided, I can tell.  Get away safe. I’ll make sure there’s somewhere for you to run!”

Run, run, run, swim, fly, the steam calliope music swelled around him and thundered in his ears until he put his hands up, knocked off his hat, he closed his eyes – and when he opened them, tangled in his bed sheets, there was a small, crushed flower in his fingers.  His hand spasmed open and the crumpled thing stained his pristine sheets as he stared wildly around the empty bedroom.

Another day off

A second day without.  I had a client today and I'm sitting here at 1:32 with only half an idea.  I'm sorry.  I need to go to sleep now.

Good night, readers.  Dream nice... hmmm.  That gives me an idea for tomorrow...

Possible Broken Bones

My husband may have broken his hand at work yesterday... I'm sorry the post will be delayed a bit.

81 - Dream Carnival Garden

Terence turned over and punched his pillow, hard, several times, though it certainly didn’t deserve such punishment. He had to give Gerald an answer.  

He knew his brother well enough.  He wouldn’t quit with this idea of sending his two lab rats and his little brother haring out into the sand to some unknown place.

Terry tried.  He really tried to be good.  Weren't these strangers enemies of Xanadu?  The boys… they really were just boys… were spies for someone and that they were enemies and… and…

Gerry had brought him into the laboratory, in secret, to see the young men.  They looked like Illiterates.  They looked like most of the servants he’d grown up with.  They didn’t look evil.  What haunted Terry more than the tormented look on the older boy’s face, was the blissful smile on the other one.  It looked frail and fragile, with as much depth and opacity as a windowpane. He looked like a doll, with every emotion erased from his face.

“The ones we worked on, before.  Before they died, they were struggling to get back things they’d lost when we erased their rebelliousness.” Gerald’s eyes were haunted.  “Their faces would twitch into emotions as if playing with them, trying them on until they found one that almost fit.  But it was all masks.  They were disconnected from those emotions.  Their creativity is gone.  Their resourcefulness.  Their autonomy, really.  They sit until they are told to do something.”

Terry leaned forward to the screen.  He couldn’t take his eyes off the young man in the laboratory cage, still struggling to distance himself from this crack-brained scheme. “Gerald, this is not a good idea.”

He couldn’t get the image of the boys out of his head, even as he lay on his clean pillows, in a cool, firmly sheeted bed.   “Prime wouldn’t like it. Prime wouldn’t like it,” the younger boy kept saying and the older one… “I’m myself. I’m myself.  I’m still myself.”

“I’m myself,” Terry said in his dream.  He dusted off his gloves, straightened his cravat.  He was at the carnival garden, an indulgence he’d only seen the once, like any child of the Second class, since it was usually reserved for Firsts and their children.  His cane tapped on the cobbles as he strolled in the rose and primrose lined paths.

The carousel ahead of him was blue and white and gold, almost blinding as it whirled around in its stately course.  The ship swing was off to his left and there was an artificial pond… actual surface water... on the other side of the lilies where paddle boats shaped like gigantic white swimming birds floated slowly around their track.

He was just wondering how many litres of water that really was when suddenly he was snatched up from behind.  He dropped his cane and tried to yell but by the time he found his voice he’d been set down, surprisingly carefully on the neck of a gaudily dressed elephant, behind a veiled person.

A snowy white ferret climbed up on the shoulder and chattered at him. *Caught you! Found you!*

In his dream his heart contracted and he made to leap off into the flower bushes, but the elephant still had him by one ankle and held him before the man… woman?... driving the elephant.

“Please stop that.  I’m not from Prime, I’m looking for Terence Cameron.  Terence Charles Arthur Cameron.  I met his program on the moon, looking for me.  We almost met, the once.  I’m Haraklez Vania aht Ruikart.  We need to talk.”

“I’m… I’m Terry Cameron… look I realize this is a dream but could you put me down?  This is terribly humiliating.”

“Oh, sorry.  I had to fix what Tizrav…” he (she) waved at the ferret now bouncing on the pachyderm’s head.  “fooled you into thinking, and I couldn’t let you run for it.”

She let Terry down and the elephant waited, making an odd chuffing noise as it slowly swayed back and forth, while he straightened his clothing.  “What an odd dream this is,” he said.

“Yes… it’s the only way I can talk openly to you in the code without having Prime’s security turn your brain into bleeding mush and me into a mindless husk."

80 - You Looked Like I Could Talk to You

“Your mother is the Head of your council.” The doors were open enough that he could see the kid’s face… unveiled, it was easy to read.  He looked caught-out.

“Well, yes.  It was one reason I came to speak to you.  You’re the Siwion, right?  You’re wearing all that silver.  You looked like I could talk to you.”

“I… see.”

The seed eaters burst out, barely restrained by their riders pulling their heads down almost to their chests, the cavern suddenly full of warbirds hissing and honking and stamping, but standing still because their hoods were still closed.

The dust kicked up filled the enclosure for a moment, making the Nadumon double over, coughing.  Kyrus pulled a filter veil out of his sleeve and tossed it over Archie’s head. “Oh, thank you…  You, Lainz and your filters.  My mum thinks we’re too lax outside cleanroom facilities but—“

So, Archie,” Kyrus interrupted.  “Why did you want to talk to me?”

The boy looked uncomfortable.  “Well, at first I just wanted to talk.  Now I’m hoping that you might be able to explain the phenomena we just… um… fled from.”

“To be honest, I don’t know.  I’m assuming that Prime tried to kill us.  Why don’t we ask my dads?  I think that’s them over there,” Kyrus waved at the one side of the cavern.  “With your mum.”

Before they could push their way through the still tightly jammed warbirds, the Amir’s called ‘move out’, at a sign from His Radiance.  “Oh, here, come back up on my bird…” Kyrus leaped into his saddle even as Werfas did and held out his hand to Archie.  “This time please make sure your fluffy doesn’t bite.”

“Oh.  Oh, sorry.  Yes, sure, certainly.”

**

Even hidden in the swarm of the Great Hive, with Tizrav hunting out the tiniest holes in Prime’s code, it was hard going.  It took hours just to establish a code foothold that didn’t get instantly crushed, burned or sanded off the outside of Prime’s space.

Hara had to come out of code and eat, and sleep, but she sent a note to Shashi explaining she was not feeling well so would not be out of her loggia for a day or two.  Her sleep was odd and when she woke, she found that her dreams had somehow opened a door into Xanadu.  It was an odd garden park of some kind with brightly coloured green and blue… well it seemed that they were rides.  Warbirds covered with ribbons and earthan roses trotting bare headed and open beaked around a circle track with children shrieking on their backs… then she realized they were carved in place under the tent.

Doors painted to look like silent story-dancers so that people could enter a building by walking into someone’s mouth. 

Tizrav bounced on top of a gigantic grey animal that looked like a friendlier version of Prime’s dragons with a tentacle on its face and teeth that were as long as her arms.  “See!  See!  You dream... You dreamer than pachyderm!” The pachyderm was dressed in mirrors and the ears that flapped like sails twinkled in the sun.  “You come in dreaming… wake up here, wake up!  Prime sees dreams and goes away.”

Hara blinked at the idea.  Dreams were the way into Prime’s code?  So she had to find Terence and dream her way into his.  Probably while he was asleep so he wouldn’t get crushed by Prime either.

There was a ladder on either side of the pachyderm, flapping, and she scampered up to settle on the seat right behind Tizzy.  “All right, Tizrav, let’s find the not-machine boy.”