Planetary: Mercury, page 4
A millennium later, the exiled tribes of Gnophkehs returned and re-conquered the land ere the coming ice conquered both. Olathoë was also the name given to the last king of his long lineage. In the final year of his reign, he used the secret in the Pnakotic manuscripts to flee from the burning ruins backward through ten centuries. He discovered himself to be his own first ancestor. He conquered the savages, founded the city, and began his nation’s history all over again.
Circe said, “What about the others?”
“Others?”
“The other chronopaths of long ago. Mneseus of Atlantis; Sir James Woodville of Suffolk; Uhulweyo of Tiahuanacu; Yire of Yhe in Nan Madol; Theodotides of Sogdiana; Montagny of Rouen; and the Great Crom of Cimmeria.”
“A sealskin coat with matching gloves. A fox stole. A monkey. A mink wrap. So warm and comfy! Theodites was as gross as a swine. He must be bacon, ham, and pork chops most delicious. Montagny was as proud as a peacock, so his tail feathers needs must adorn a splendid Easter bonnet. Crom-Ya was too fierce to turn into anything other than a falcon. His bird-sized brain could not hold his human mind, but retained his haughty spirit. He hunted the pigeon Olathoë, who caused me more trouble than all others combined.”
Circe felt faint. Each word was like a sharp, open-handed slap to the face. She was a murderess. A multiple murderess. A cannibal. She ate her victims and wore their skins as trophies.
A wordless cry escaped her lips. She turned and fled.
June
Tears in her eyes blinded her. She ran through the burned tree stumps, her arms flung out before her, fingers spread, groping as her eyesight dimmed, hoping not to ram some obstacle.
Instead, the ground dropped away. Her feet flew out from under her.
A steep slope, almost a vertical wall of grass, was beneath, and she somersaulted down it. She struck one bush and then another. Leafy masses cushioned her fall and twigs and thorns tugged at her, and held her back. A large branch would surely have struck her like a baseball bat, with bonebreaking force, but she encountered none of those. The many small and lithe branches instead were like whips. She was scourged forty lashes less one, before a final bush caught her and arrested her further fall.
Circe shrieked in pain and woe. The lashing had yanked her sandals free, cut her skin in many long red welts and torn her light, springtime tunic to shreds. Now she wished for the heavy boots, trousers, and heavy leather jacket of her May self of next year.
The roaring in her ears she realized was not the pounding of her heart, but the rush of a little waterfall not far away. The bush was hanging at the edge of a small brink. Below, perhaps ten feet beneath her, perhaps less, was the riverbank of one of the many rivers running down the Pantheon Fosse. Upriver was an oval of white and bubbling water where the little stream running from the maze garden knoll fell into the river. Downriver, the red and leaping light of the burning museums and archives reflected against the stone walls of the canyon.
In this place, the canyon wall veered away from the reed beds abutting the river, to embrace a semicircle of lawn. Here it was at a sharp angle, but not vertical, and covered with tall grass and short bushes. A hundred yards downstream it stood near the river once more.
A pretty circle of marble columns stood on the highest spot of green beneath the wall.
It was a lovely spot by the waterside. Even at the noon of summer months, the high walls here kept this semicircle of lawn in cool shadow.
Circe heard weeping among the pillars. Circe cried out, begging help.
A sad voice answered, “I cannot come to you. You must come to me.”
Circe slowly extracted herself from the clinging brush, tearing strips from her tunic and strands from her hair. Awkwardly she lowered herself down the remaining ten feet of the sharp, grass-cloaked slope into the muddy reed bed. Utterly miserable, dripping, wet and dirty, Circe in her torn tunic walked up the slope of green grass to the circle of pillars, following the sound of sniffling and moaning.
An oval of misty light hung in the center of the pillars. Circe pointed her wand and measured the interval. The wand spoke. “Saturday, the First of June of 3011, Gregorian calendar. Age 17. Second Watch of Year 71, Mercurial calendar.”
Twenty-Nine days in the future from this point in May. Circe stepped through.
It was two days after dusk, the end of a nocturnal year. The landscape was in shadow, save for a glint of sunset striking the high mountain peaks in the eastern distance. It was the sunlight of bright perihelion, bringing a spring warmth despite the gloom of night. These jagged rocks of the mountaintops rose above the energy dome, and therefore shined in the vacuum with light as pale and eerie as moonlight. The air was cold, and the first buds had not yet opened. The twilight pall gave all things a half-seen, mysterious, elfin mood.
To one side was a pavilion of pink and rose silks, holding a bridal bed adorned with flowers. Smoking thuribles sent fumes of sweetly scented aphrodisiac into the air. The music of flutes and violin, played in the stiff, dispassionate fashion typical of golems, came from overhead, settling down through the twilight air. A quartet was planted somewhere out of sight, among the trees and flowerbeds lining the canyon walls.
A festive white canopy had been erected over the circle of pillars. In the middle of the circle was a throne of marble, draped with banners of white. A woman in a bridal gown sat in the chair. Her head was bowed forward. The veil ran from coronet to lap. From here the weeping came. Garlands of flowers were gathered at her feet.
Circe came forward, her own sadness forgotten by the sight of the other’s sorrow. Heavy black ornaments circled the figure’s wrists and ankles. This was discordant: they seemed too thick and ugly to be fitted on a bride. Because the reflected light from the far mountain peaks was dim and indirect, only when she was nigh did Circe realize these were fetters.
Circe said, “Where is the key?”
The bride merely shook her head. Circe impatiently reached down and flipped the lace veil over the bride’s coronet, revealing her face. It was herself. The harsh look from May was gone. Now the eyes were wide and sad and beautiful. She was wearing her hair in an intricate coiffeur of ringlets.
The bride of June said, “Put it back. I don’t want him to see my face like this.” Her hands in her white gloves twisted in the grip of the iron fetters circling them, but her hands were held against the marble throne arms.
Circe said, “Who chained you up?”
“I did.”
Circe was not surprised. “Where did you put the key?”
June said, “If you do not remember, you are from the past. A ghost. Tiresias is from the future. He will know where I put it. My bridegroom can take me.”
And June’s shoulders shook as she said this.
Circe said, “I am not doing this. This is not my wedding. I am not coming to my own wedding in chains. That is something out of nightmare. Something out of hell.”
June looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and heavy-lidded. “One must descend to hell to ascend the throne in heaven. Christ himself only loitered there three days. For me, however long the honeymoon shall last, and then nine months more.”
Circe cried, “It is insane! Why are you doing this?”
June’s eyes grew more sullen, more stubborn, more arrogant, more hurt. “I am doing this for you.”
Circe said, “I am not my own mother. It is madness. I have always known it was a lie!”
June uttered a short, bitter laugh. “Have you, indeed? So? Do you remember any life on Earth? Do you remember a crib and nursery room on some other world than this? Do you remember anyone raising you other than golems, and a strange, masked nanny?”
Circe said nothing.
June said, “I can tell from looking at your face that you come from the day when you discovered that Nanny was our future. Your lips are a giveaway. But I don’t remember this. I don’t remember talking to me. This gets erased. It will be as it had never been.”
Circe said, “The bridegroom! He is a redhead with bright green eyes, isn’t he?”
June squinted angrily at her. “What nonsense is this?”
“I found a locket. A love token. Lines from a poem were in it. And a picture.”
She gave Circe a reptilian look. “And you fell in love at first sight? Such objects are called anachronisms. They are generated at random from the debris and jetsam left over from scuttled time lines, and some lodge in cracks where the timeline is weak, like Schroedinger’s cat coming back from the dead, usually at a moment where a broken branch was grafted back. And who breaks time, but you? It is a token of disobedience.”
Circe said, “I don’t remember what happened to it. I had it in my hand. I was hoping the archivists could look him up for me. But you burned the museum.”
The red-eyed girl smiled sourly. “Your true love comes from a timeline that has already been aborted. He has never been, and never will be. I have no memory of this locket, or this green-eyed man. So no doubt I loved just the picture of him pitifully and painfully, did I? Fortunately memory works by association, so the helmet can dislodge one thread of related thoughts but leave the rest intact, even if coming from the same year.”
“How dare you!” Circe practically screamed the words.
“How dare I, indeed?” Her gaze grew colder. It was a look of icy, deliberate hatred. Circe stepped back, glad that the woman was chained.
June spoke in a soft and sinister tone. The words were harsh, but the tone was dry, empty of all passion. “All this is your fault, you know. You stupid, ignorant, little fewmet of a slug. I loathe my past. How I despise you. Everything, all this confusion, amnesia, these terrible crimes, murders, everything is your fault.”
Circe said, “How is this my fault? I did not make you murder anyone!”
“You set the events in motion, made it necessary. You rebelled. So much turmoil caused by a single season of silliness!”
“I did not chain you in this chair! You did!”
“Because of you. To give birth to you.”
“You are not my mother. I have a real mother. Someone who loves me.”
“You have no one but me, and I hate you.”
“That is not true!”
“Rather, you are too much a fool to see the truth. If you had cooperated, learned your lessons, not been such a willful brat! Every time I use the helmet to rid myself of some memory you love, it gives me joy. Or so I suppose, since afterward I recall nothing of it.”
Circe said, “But why did you chain yourself to the chair on your wedding day?”
“Because, unlike you, I am obedient. I was told that I would not be able to stand him, what he looks like, and who he is, once I see him. It will drive me mad.”
A trumpet sounded in the distance.
June said, “That is the signal. He is coming. Flee now! To gaze on him will shatter the time stream.”
“What if I just stand here, and wait?”
June gave her a baleful look. “Do you think you have free will? All time streams that do not lead to me have been and shall be pruned away. I recall being you. Many little meaningless gestures of protest you made as if to avoid this day, but it is the sole day that I can never avoid, not and remain myself. No other woman has ever been free.”
“Free? You are chained with chains you put on yourself!”
“No. I am the mother of all life, the self-made woman, and I give birth to myself.”
The words were proud with overweening pride, and, for a moment, her voice was as brave as a trumpet call; but the slender woman slumped again until her head touched her knees, and she began sobbing uncontrollably.
Circe saw motion on the river. With no word of farewell to the wrathful and weeping bride, Circe ran down the slope, across the grass, clutching her torn dress.
She was eager to see the bridegroom, mostly because it had been forbidden.
Autumn
A slender and ornate gondola, black hulled, trimmed with gold, adorned with flowers, and rowed by masked golem maidens in fur hoods, red capes and long skirts, now appeared from upstream, coming into view from around the shoulder of the canyon wall. Colored lanterns glinted in bow and gunwales. A man in a tuxedo sat in the stern, greatcoat draped about his shoulders, tophat on head, tiller in his hand.
A wooden dock had been erected to bridge the sludgy river bank with its cattails and reeds. Circe suddenly realized she did not want to be seen, not so disheveled, not by the man she was fated to marry. To one side, surrounded by tall bushes, was a monument to Hermaphrodita riding sidesaddle on a gynosphinx, with statues of Pan and Priapus poised in merry postures to either side. In the dim light of dusk, the marble seemed spectral, insubstantial.
Circe ducked behind the monument’s large stone pedestal, which was carved with images of fauns chasing nymphs. The view of the dock was blocked. Here was a tall oval of mirror-energy shining silently in the shadows. The image was dark: the other side opened up into night, or perhaps a closed chamber.
Here also was yet another version of her. She was dressed in a tight, long gown of peach and satin. Her breasts were large and swollen, and a certain heaviness clung to her cheeks and hips. On her finger was a wedding ring.
Before Circe could think to react, the other woman took her by the arm, and stepped through the oval of the mirror.
Circe pulled back, craning her neck. The bridegroom came into her view from around the edge of the monument base. His face was turned away, but he held his top hat in his hand, so she saw him from the rear. He was not a redhead. His hair was black and thick. His body was slim and not muscular. His footfalls and posture were delicate, mincing, almost girlish.
A pulse of emotion, like a physical blow, passed through Circe’s heart. Disappointment tasted like iron in her mouth.
She stumbled as her arm was yanked. Circe took a step and steadied herself. She blinked in the gloom.
Circe and the other woman were in another scene: it was a chamber she recognized, one set high in the tower of the Palace of Promised Immortality. The room was dark. Here was a bed. On it was a uniform laid out: the black dress and white apron of Nanny. On one pillow was the blank mask meant for a golem, on the other was the memory erasure helmet. Circe looked at these with fear, wondering what they meant.
Over the footboard of the bed was draped a chiffon dress with a short skirt and sequined bodice. It had been described to her: the flower girl’s dress.
The only source of light was a soft oval glow from the other side of the chamber: here was a second mirror aperture, leading into some bright place. A muted roar, like the murmur of falling waters, came through the open mirror.
The other woman said, “Your outfit is here, and you can clean up and put it on, and make yourself presentable. Do you need help?” And with a wave of her wand, the other woman dissolved Circe’s torn tunic and made the mud vanish. Where the wand passed, a slight mist of the biotic fluid wiped bloodstains away, closed scrapes, made bruised skin pink and whole once more.
“I want to see him!” said Circe.
The other woman raised her hands and shrugged sadly. “Why? The memory torments me. And it only goes back sixteen months. Would you add another fourteen months to that?”
The other woman took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and began the process of pulling the dress over Circe’s head.
Circe said, “When is this?”
“Autumn.”
“What date?”
“September of 3012, Gregorian. Tuesday the Twenty-Ninth, to be exact. A week after your birth. Forty-Eighth Watch of Year 76, Mercurial.”
Since the calendar year was even numbered, that meant it was day. Watch 48 was four days past noon. Circe said, “It is late summer.”
“Only on this false world of Mercury,” said the other. “It is Autumn in Italy. It is Autumn in my heart.”
“And I was born in February. Second of February of 2994. It was the Fourth Watch of Year Zero.”
“Not really. You will be carried back to then, and that will be your official birthday. Candlemas. You do not see the irony, do you? That is when I will present you. Sad that a time traveler would not know her calendar. This day where we stand now is Michaelmas. This is the traditional date when servants and serving maids are hired, or rents come due. Now you must pay for your last sixteen years of room and board, tutoring and upkeep.”
Circe did not feel like cooperating. She started to push the proffered dress away. The Autumn version of her said, “You wish to be nude when you see him?”
Circe relented, and stood docile and subdued, and let the other woman garb her, brush and coif her hair, do up her stockings and shoes. During this process, Circe said, “This makes no sense. If I am about to see him, why did June say she did not know him?”
“You met us from our blonde period?”
“From April.”
“She used the memory helmet extensively to find some edited version of her life that would make her happy. Then she had to erase records and artifact from the history museum, and eliminate other time travelers from our past. And she stopped trying to find happiness, but sought revenge instead.”
“Revenge against whom?”
“Our youth. Our memory. Our ghost. Revenge against you.”
“I am blameless!”
Autumn said in a colorless voice, “Say you so? No matter. Praise and blame, right and wrong, revenge and forgiveness, happiness and grief — are they real?”
At that moment, the sharp wail of a baby’s cry came through the mirror. Circe saw a drop of milk stain the other woman’s bodice. She understood that Autumn’s fuller breasts were not due to mere cosmetic change: she was a mother with a newborn.
Autumn stiffened, and a strange look came on her face. But she made no move to go toward the sound of the crying child.
Instead she spoke in the mild tones of someone in a dream. “There are times when I remember that a wife is meant to love her husband and a mother to love her child, and such things seem as real and solid as the red hot stones of Mercury to me. But our wedding is a satanic mockery, our wedding bower a scene of gruesome outrage, and that child an abomination who should not have been allowed to live. Each day I was pregnant I prayed for her to be stillborn.”
