The Emissary Pt. 2

The Emissary Pt. 2

That night I walked with Matteus along the promenade. The town was dark. Only the occasional corpse lantern shone from the windows we passed, fluttering like votive candles, illusions of occupancy. Hurricane lamps lit the bazaars and walkways, silvery now that the sun has set. The power stored throughout the day was fading and it was as if the denizens of the brakes could sense it, an opportunity that they could not afford to ignore.
Since sundown the cacophony had grown in volume. Mating calls, hunting cries, the screams of hundreds of bio-forms killing or being killed, echoing amongst the labyrinths. And there was movement out there too. Every now and then I caught flashes of light among the reefs. Something out there had been designed for bioluminescence, a lure perhaps or simply a way to dispel the darkness.
“You see what we live with?” Matteus muttered.
I heard the lightning crack off to our left as another of the High-Way-Men found a target, just enough to trigger mass, motion or infra-red response and judge it wanting.
“They’re throwing themselves at the wall?”
“Usually they are not so persistent, but the last three weeks have seen a change.”
“Since Aya’s arrival?”
“The coincidence has not been lost.”
Something large erupted from the Brakes, snatched a low flying Sand Shark and slithered back into its crack in the world.
“They want her.” I said.
“They’re not having her.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I need to speak to her.”
“We all do. Where she goes during the day is anyone’s guess.”
“Is she going back into the reserve?”
“She could be sailing to the Moon for all I know.”
“Your son suspects she is a weapon.”
“We all do, but I’m much better at handling my suspicions than my son. He’s hot-headed, impetuous. He was attacked two weeks ago by one of the Sharks.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s far too proud to admit that he made a mistake. He goads them and when they find a way to turn on him he is surprised.”
“What happened?”
“I heard Thollum’s cry. When I got out to the terrace Aya was there too. As soon as the Shark sensed her it warded off.”
“She has an affinity with them?”
“It’s possible. She is a product of the Shores after-all. Thollum was near hysterical. He accused her of luring the Shark in, of disabling the Way Men. He was ranting. He would have killed her had I not stepped in.”
“And Aya?”
“She vanished for three days. Just like that.” He clicked his fingers.
“And what of Thollum’s theory?”
“I checked the house systems. The Way Men had been overridden, but not by Aya. The cipher carried a Tribal signature. Worse, within each one we found sub-routines that had been adapted to accommodate our tampering. The code seals were not only intact but had been reinforced, some within the previous week.”
“So the Way Men have been under tribal control all along?”
Matteus nodded, “The fact that they have been working in our favour is an illusion; that and any sense of protection that they bestowed.”
“Wouldn’t that start to look as though Aya was actually protecting Thollum?”
“It certainly would. I don’t like to think about what that could mean.”

I slept fitfully. There was too much at stake for me to relax and I woke frequently, couldn’t help but listen to the slaughter going on not fifty yards from the house. The denizens of the Brakes would not stop their attacks simply because the occupants of the house had retired for the night and I had serious doubts about Matteus’ faith in the Way-Men. The tribes had had ample opportunity to allow their monstrosities to overrun the place, opportunity that they had so far not taken.
I checked my Polymer Five and hid it within easy reach. When I was woken by footsteps in the early hours, I knew better than to ignore it.
I listened. Bare feet, slip-slapping upon the terrazzo. Aya I thought, waited until the sound had receded then slipped out into the moonlit hall. The house was swathed in shadow, although something in that darkness was more clearly defined. Light, flickery and corporeal, emanated from Matteus’ study. I approached silently, waited at the door. Aya was there, standing at Matteus’ desk, appeared to be studying the terminal intently.
Presently she moved to the window, stood at the glass making odd movements with her fingers. Coded hand signals, I thought, a communication with someone out in the Brakes.
Presently she paused, stood for a long moment without moving, then nodded, mouthed words that contained no sound. Finally, she turned and vanished into the recesses of the house.
I waited until certain that she had gone, approached the window, saw nothing out there but bewildering patterns of darkness, then something. I realised what she had been doing. She had been marking the glass with her finger-tips, leaving streaks upon the window, a collection of straight lines and angles. I shifted position and the pattern became clear. The marks corresponded to the position of the Way Men.
My thoughts turned to the terminal. Matteus’ interface lay on the desk. I used my comm to bypass his jury-rigged hacks, made surreptitious entry into the holo-map, was puzzled by what I found.
Aya had used the map to focus on a portion of the desert. I ran analysis but the routine read the area as blank. Yet there was definitely something there. A pattern laid out upon the desert. Perfectly circular and perhaps thirty feet across. What was that? An aerial array? A design of stone totems? Without oblique scan it was impossible to tell how tall they were, impossible to ascertain shape.
I copied the location to my comm., made a mental note to mention it to Matteus in the morning.

It was perhaps inevitable that what woke me the next morning was the sound of shouting. Thollum ranting. I heard him scream Aya’s name, heard two loud reports and feared the worst. The house systems placed him on the Western logia. I arrived at the same time as Matteus, heard him shout for his son to lay down the weapon.
I saw Aya cowering near the low wall, couldn’t help but notice the rifle in Thollum’s hands, his eyes wild and unfocussed.
“I caught her snooping,” He shouted, “She was about to turn the Way Men off, allow the Sharks in.”
I recognised the extent of Thollum’s paranoia then, the lengths to which he would go, saw the Sharks circling overhead, attracted by the noise.
“Thollum,” I whispered, “Lower the weapon.”
“She’s been sent against us. She’s part of their plan.”
“You can’t know that.” I said, “Let her explain. Let her tell you why she’s here. Aya?” I caught her gaze then, saw the special look of pleading in her eyes, a certain resignation. She swayed slightly and I saw the marks on her face that Thollum had already made.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Matteus’ voice now, harsh and entirely unwelcome. The situation was balanced precariously.
“Making sure she can’t harm us, something you should have done a long time ago.”
“Don’t you dare.”
I saw the rifle rise in that instant. Saw the barrel catch the sunlight and hold it like a wand, ready to cast that fearful light against anyone who stood in the way.
It all happened in an instant. I charged, covered the ten feet between us in less than a second, connected with Thollum, throwing him off balance.
The rifle bucked, splitting the air next to my ear and in that instant the Sand Shark was upon us. The blow from behind threw me onto the perimeter wall. I rolled, glimpsed the creature already in attack configuration. Stupid. Incredibly stupid. I should have noticed the signs. The hunting convention, the way it had detached from the rest of the flock.
I attempted to crawl to my feet, kept the creature in my eye-line, aware that Thollum lay prone to my right, should have been looking to my left. The second blow glanced the side of my head, left an iron taste in my mouth and a yawning sense of descent. My vision swam. I saw the sky do a dance, saw it fill with teeth and bone, heard the clicking of a jaw as it tensed. Heard something else on the edge of consciousness. A high-pitched ululation, a plaintive wail. The creature recoiled, seemed to shudder. I saw Aya advancing, fearlessly, waving her arms in a gesture of defiance. Then merciful darkness took me.

There was an image in my mind’s eye. A shadow in the haze that resolved into a flower, a Mandala, a circle divided by three, shockingly familiar. In that moment too, there was something else. A beach wide and smooth and bordered by high dunes. The sea breaking upon shallow reefs. The smell of the salt upon the wind. There was a tower there, blindingly white. A sky full of suns. Blue, then green, then red, then back to blue again. Eyes, blue eyes of impossible cerulean.
I came to, resolved a ceiling, walls, a string of glass beads hanging upon a window clasp. Scintillations of sunlight. My room at Lizard Point. Saw Maria at the foot of the bed.
“You’re alive.” She muttered. It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact, designed to reassure.
I rolled over, found my tongue in my mouth.
“What happened?”
“You can’t remember? You were attacked. A Shark. You were lucky you weren’t killed.”
I shook my head, saw only the lingering impression of teeth, remembered what had happened, Thollum’s wild accusations, the Shark, Aya.
I tried to sit up. Something hammered inside my skull and obliterated all vision. The image of a wheel left as an indelible impression. I saw it divide in the silence behind my eyes.
“Where’s Aya?”
“I don’t know. She’s been gone for hours.”
“She saw off the Shark?”
Maria looked away, “I don’t know what happened. It all occurred so quickly.”
“What about Thollum?”
“He’s not speaking. He’s taken himself off somewhere. Looking for Aya no doubt.”
“He won’t find her.”
“Strangely enough, I’m hoping he doesn’t.”
“She didn’t tamper with the house systems.” I said, “Despite what Thollum believes. The Unions have been in control of the Way Men from the beginning. They’ve been protecting this place.”
Maria sat. “To what end?”
“They’re watching maybe, waiting for something.”
“Then they will have seen her enter the Shores, going back and forth.”
“They’re allowing her that.” I said. My mind felt numb. Something on the Spoil Shores was out of their control. The mal-forms that attempted to invade each night, the battle of survival, for supremacy. Was any of it their doing? Life finds a way. That is what I told myself. Where harsh conditions prevailed, where life found it difficult to flourish, it adapted, it changed and eventually flourished anyway.
Was that what they were doing here – flourishing?
“How do we know she’s not working with them?”
“You still believe she’s capable of harming you?” I said.
Maria shrugged, “Right now I’d believe anything.”
“She had an affinity with the Constructs here.” I said, “Perhaps they’re getting organised.”
Maria shook her head, “Most of them can barely function as organisms. They’re rejects, genetic failures.”
“Then perhaps something out there has thrived in a way the Unions weren’t expecting.”
“Surely they would have put a stop to it as soon as it slipped from their control. How would it have escaped their scrutiny? They’ve been watching for so long.”
“Perhaps it hasn’t. Perhaps this is something so unexpected that the only course of action open to them is to sit back and observe, see how it develops.”
“That’s all we do around here,” Maria whispered, “We wait and we see what the shores throw up and each night they don’t disappoint. If your theory is correct, then she has some form of control over the Mal-forms and that’s ten times worse than any plot against us.”
“How is your father gaining access to the shore?”
She looked away, stalling for time perhaps, must have known that I would ask the question, must have at least prepared herself for that.
“There’s a dry dock on the South East lip. A concrete ladder there down to the sand. Recessed. Completely invisible to satellite scan except at the most oblique angles.”
She paused, “You’re thinking of going in?”
“I’m not sure what I’m thinking.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“So is staying here.”
She looked up, appeared to be considering something for a moment.
“There are coolant suits in the basement garage. Ultra-sound decoys too. You’ll need one of those. It won’t stop anything in its tracks, but it will disorientate, gain you valuable seconds.”

By early evening a wind rose bringing with it clouds of red dust from the sweeps. Sweeping them clean perhaps or providing the perfect cover for something to approach the house unseen. The remaining light became suffused with a red and bloody glow and it was not hard to imagine that the Spoil Shores themselves had somehow prepared this, somehow gained a form of geographical sentience borne from the random and complex patterns of sand, stone and mineral and directed it towards a more sinister end. The squall slammed the shutters, howled through the unguarded vents of the house and ruined any attempt at relaxation. I lay in bed listening to the villa calibrate itself, the Clatter Poles stealing energy from the wind, the Solar Snares winding themselves up for the night.
I got up as comfortably as the bandages that Maria had applied to my torso would allow. The pain had grown steadily worse throughout the afternoon. At least one of my ribs was probably fractured. My head felt heavy with the pain-killers as though a part of the afternoon still hadn’t caught up with me.
I went to the shutters, peered outside. It was a frightening and fearful scene. The constant movement, the moan of the wind, the distant winking of Thollum’s ranging beacons. The Spoil Shore whispered and evaporated, seemed to beckon, and left a whisper of something else. Movement inside the house. Slight and quick and bird-like. The motion of a small animal, at once clear and crisp on the oven wind. I heard a door slam and the sound ceased.

I moved through the darkened house like a restless spirit in a mausoleum.
There were footprints in the maintenance room, petite, unshod and child-like upon the sand floor. I paused there, if only to acknowledge the full ramifications of what I was about to do, cared little in that moment for tribal protocol, knew that Matteus would wonder where I had gone, knew also that there was only one conclusion he would draw.
I took a coolant suit and an ultra-sound decoy from the storage lockers, checked the charge and went through to the Solarium, found myself unlocking the French doors there, stepping out into the bluster.
Someone was there. In the billowing half light it was hard to be sure. The image lasted for a fraction of a second on the periphery of vision and was gone when I turned.
I moved along Lizard Point’s South wall, heard the Way Men sizzling with pent up aggression. Were they still active? What had they detected? Human? Or something else? Hard to know exactly who or what I was following. I followed regardless, wise to the way of things now, to the game being played, knew where I was being led. To the dry dock, a chasm that gaped in the orange light, terraced with steep steps like an ancient rice paddy, artificial but not convincingly so. I crested the lip, caught sight of the djelleba out in the Brakes as it disappeared from view, climbed down, only breathing again when my feet touched sand. The dock was open at one end. The concrete channel framed the Shores and offered only one possible exit. The wind sighed about the gully, left me lethargic and unsteady. It was all so subliminal, all so out of the ordinary. Who knew what was out here, what attributes and influences had been invested? I activated the decoy, heard its high-pitched whine rise rapidly beyond hearing range, then silence.
Ten meters in I began to come across remnants of the night’s conflict. Scraps of bone, picked clean. Indescribable marks in the sand. Splashes of blood, or its nearest equivalent upon the stones. Further in I found scapulars, hangings of dried bone and skin, arranged in macabre patterns, a sign of primitive intelligence perhaps, or that something out here possessed a ghoulish imagination.
I pressed on, crossed an area of low undulations, following the directions that I had downloaded from Matteus’ holo-map.
It was little under thirty minutes later that I began to make something out in the half-light. The swirling dust made for poor visibility but I could see a slight rise in the land ahead, a rocky platform upon which appeared to be mounted some form of construction. I drew up to the shade of the bluff, climbed the short embankment there.
The object was some kind of circular array, reminiscent of a merry-go-round or carousel. It was obviously a Construct, seemingly composed entirely of growth-bone, impossibly white in the dust wind. The entire circumference was ringed by a series of polyp-like protuberances, each mounted with a black lens, iridescent and opaque. Was that a series of sense organs? Eyes perhaps. A means for whatever it was to make sense of the world around it. They looked like the cilia of algae or fungi, monstrously magnified. I walked a little way around the circumference. The object appeared sessile, inscrutable, its purpose unknowable. Very obviously, it was a reject, an experiment gone wrong perhaps, abandoned here like so much else. I wondered what the tribes had been intending in it, why it had caught Aya’s imagination.
I heard the clicking off to me left then. I froze, knew immediately what it was without needing to look. The Sand Shark rested upon its haunches, nestled into a fold in the rock-face, wings shrouded about its body, its finned and angled head strangely bowed. My first thought was that it was asleep, although who knew if these things ever really slept?
“He won’t bite.”
I span on my heels.
“At least not while I’m around.”
A figure standing in the lee of the bluff, a young girl, her face round and angular, skin taught over a bone structure strangely fascinating. Aya.
“It’s a he?” I gasped.
“The Sharks are naturally reproducing.”
I stared at those eyes. “True Life?”
“If that’s what you call it. Yes. True Life.”
“You’re an empath?” I said. “You have common purpose with the other forms here.”
“I can only read the lesser forms. Reach out and touch them, soothe them a little. Higher life forms require something a little more specialised.”
“Is that what this is?” I indicated the array behind me.
“It is designed for resonance. As we all are. It is designed for looking into a person, for opening them up, for reading and making sense of those things that cannot be read or made sense of.”
I knew then why I had been led here, allowed here; why the tribes had turned a blind eye to this little sojourn.
“You have something that they want,” she said, and I knew what she was talking about.
“Given to me,” I said, “Placed inside me by a rogue bio-form that was destroyed soon after.”
She said something then that made me stop.
“Ours was scribed since inception.”
“Ours?”
“All the sacred and profane forms of life here. Encoded in us. We carry it like a talisman, a reminder. It’s like a virus that infects the mind. It grows and never goes away. Only one thing mystifies us. How we came to contain it. It is a thing that we were not meant to own.”
So Aya was a reject, brought here and abandoned for a transgression that she could not help. Had her only instinct been to alert the world to her presence, to shout “We are here. Look at us?” Was something on the Spoil Shores was out of tribal control? Had something here slipped from their grasp? The mal-forms that attempted to invade Lizard Point each night, the battle of survival, for supremacy, was any of it their doing? My mind felt numb. Life finds a way. That is what I told myself. Where harsh conditions prevailed, where life found it difficult to flourish, it adapted, it changed and eventually flourished anyway. Was that what they were doing here – flourishing?
”You have a choice to make,” she said, “Choose this and accept the revelations that it will reveal, but also that other parties are watching. Or else make it yours forever but never truly know of its importance.”
So that was it. A communication net. Aya, the empath, spying on Matteus. The array, a sophisticated, bespoke Construct intended for the sole purpose of prising the message open. There had to have been easier ways of spying on Trader’s Heal, of finding out just what had been imprinted on me all those months ago. The bird overhead proved as much. But then, the shores were a perfect venue for such wild experimentation.
So that was to be the choice. Accept what the tribes had intended for me out here, allow them to relieve whatever meaning had been carefully scribed into that Mandala. Or else leave and never know, never put meaning to that strange and elusive configuration that kept me awake in the small hours. Did such a choice even exist? Would the Way Men allow it?
“One condition,” I said, “Once this is through, you’re coming with me. You’re a sentient individual, with as much right to life as any other. I can get you away from the Brakes.”
Aya nodded imperceptibly, leaned closer, placed a hand upon my temple. The lightness of touch. The coolness of skin. She guided my head towards the nearest cilia. I felt a fire grow behind my eyes, searching me, groping like one might grope for a light switch in a darkened room. The black lens seemed to occupy my full attention, caught it like a torch-beam catches a moth. Was there a depth to that darkness? I saw the pattern, the repetition of the circle, recognised it for something that was already present in Aya, written into sequences of genetic code. I heard Aya whispering, caught the exclamation, “It’s there,” tried to form a reply, aware that I was opening myself up, a pot without a lid.
It happened then. A thought that was not entirely my own, a voice that was not a voice, a spark that came from somewhere deeper inside. I saw the circle divide by three. The connotation of society split along the same lines. The tribes, the Coastal Authorities. And the Constructs, the myriad forms of strange and artisan life, developing their own embryonic sense of self-determination, a desire for self-governance, finally realising a potential that had been there since the beginning, encoded within the first strands of fabricated DNA, within the Polybandros, the Amnethenes, the Ivorians and Peteberros; within the Objet d’art and Ornamentals. Within the Biology Houses themselves. Within every individual, of every innumerable strain, was hidden the aspiration for independence, secreted away like the stone within a peach. I felt weak with the significance of it. This was True Life, self-determined, with hope and limitless optimism.
I found the strength to pull away, staggered. Aya caught me.
“It’s there.” She whispered.

We said little on the journey back to the dry-dock. We walked like sleepwalkers, Aya leading the way and me following behind like some awe struck child. We encountered no resistance, saw nothing of the other denizens. Even the Sand Sharks, usually so numerous above Trader’s Heal, seemed to have evaporated.
As we climbed the concrete ladder, I closed my eyes, conjoured forth the Mandala, saw it split into three, still there, still mine. Although, more than mine now. The tribes too would know, would realise that they had lost control, that their life programmes, sacred and jealously guarded, had realised a potential that even they had not forseen. I wondered what they would do. What would any of us do?
Aya climbed over the lip of the dry-dock, extended a hand to haul me up. I should have known, should have realised then that although the Unions would be reasoned with, compromised with, eventually argued down, in the short term their anger would be quick to show itself.
I was not looking when it happened, only noticed the movement high up and off to the left, the Way Men shifting silently on their bearings to complete one half of a turn to face us.
Aya alone realised what was happening, was already moving when the first Way Man struck. A sound like a cracking whip and something passed barely a few feet in front of me. I fell backwards, the air sucked from my lungs by the vacuum, caught the odour of vapourised stone.
Aya was moving. She made it to the Brake wall and vaulted the low, concrete barrier, seemed to hang there upon the air for an impossible moment, a toy suspended upon a slender line that connected her to the nearest Way Man. A microsecond was all it took for her to be consumed. Her limp form fell out of sight below the line of the wall.
I lay on the promenade, too shocked to form words. Things happening too quickly. Things running away. Things slipping from my grasp. I heard screaming from somewhere. Maria running toward me, mouthing something, pointing toward the sky. I caught two words, “Sand Sharks.”
I stopped to absorb that information and in that moment, heard something else. A wind, high above the Way Men, the sound of air moving rapidly over a surface, over many surfaces.
I had lost sight of the fact that there were other agencies at work here, other agendas, rigorous in their pursuit, ruthless in their determination, willing to while string me along like a child on a promise. The tribes had known all along that it was Aya, and only Aya that had stopped the Sharks from overwhelming Lizard Point. With her death, the final eviction could begin.
How I got to my feet I do not know. I remember grabbing Maria and that Matteus was behind me as we reached the entrance to the crypt. I remember looking back over my shoulder as the Sharks flowed over the perimeter wall, as the Way Men made at least a cursory show of stemming the tide. I saw multiple flashes as the Way Men chose their targets, then only the writhing motion of the swarm as the greater number proved too many and came on towards the house.
I slammed the door behind me, fled down the steps into the darkness below and heard only the blind pounding of claws as the creatures finally broke free from the chains of scribed behaviour, finally started acting upon their instincts.