TRUTH WINDOW: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose
The Nobodoi came to Earth a little after midday on 4 June 2023, accompanied by their support races: the Hoproi, the Matta, the Darzie, so many others. They brought with them the star Wormwood, a fragment of antimatter some said, and used it to begin their great xenoforming of the Earth, making it what they wanted. Then, overnight, the Nobodoi vanished—stepped back, withdrew, who could say?—leaving behind their Bridge Races, the remnants of a blasted Humanity and the great Patchwork they had made.
It was Light-Commander Raine Halva Belicrue who first raised the issue, tracked it, set his Human aides to doing the relevant searches, then made the query across the world. That powerful Darzie, Fist of the Stars, Arm of Law, localized and hurting as only the most determined and committed of the Darzie Race ever would, sat in his Rule-of-Hand tower at Dars-Bayas and learned of this growing movement among the crushed, long-conquered Humans, then took it that one step further. Made it a question to the full spread of the Flower.
What do you know of the Lady Mondegreen?
He expected little that was new. No surprises. Few surprises. For it had been expected, modelled, some sort of emergent belief system. It's what all peoples did, all sufficiently cognate conquered peoples, just one more inevitability. But Raine took it further. His localization was the finest, the most excruciating. Only the Darzie fighting elites, the Elsewheres and the Purple-and-Blacks, endured more, surrendering self, but they stepped back into a quasi-existence of hot-glass and reverie and barely knew what they did.
For Raine Halva Belicrue there was no stepping back. This Fist of the Stars, Flame of the Encosium, harnessed his pain, used his pain, did the search and posed the question.
No Humans replied, of course. They lacked the Cohabitation resources, probably would for centuries, millennia, eons, unless the Nobodoi overlords, the Recalled Ones, were to Return, intervene and decree otherwise.
But twenty-eight Matt scholars did, astonishing Raine, requesting enhancement, offering reciprocation, data-trade, asking questions of their own.
And one—Holding-in-Quiet—made the incredible offer of leaving its typhy, its home, its work of the life, to meet "in the reach of hands" should that be required. This one had a quest of the heart, it seemed, was no doubt building this religion of the Lady into an identity artefact that would mark its days. Who would have thought?
Raine should not have been surprised, that was the thing. After all, look at what the Cohabitation brought: access to the great Overlord nets—the Acrimba, the Tutifa, the Sarannas, the Wail Guydo. Keywords and encrypts like "Mondegreen" and "Lady" and "Goddess" would have been flagged: ideologically, sociologically, archaeologically. Philologically and etymologically, too, in current Human sayings alone: "By the Lady!" "Praise the Lady!" "Lady be with you!"
He blamed his localization. But even as he sat back in his Talking Chair, even as his manner became carefully businesslike and his crest spines settled, another astonishment occurred, even more amazing than the first: a stat-flash blazon and a voice on that closed alliance channel.
"Hey, you, Darzie-pants, Raine! This is Fond Louie hisself, so be paying the tensest tension, okey-doke! Know what's shakin' the Human tree. Know the Mondegreen Lady's first and best church! Know that, hey!"
Raine's crest flared again. Fond Louie? It truly was. The Hoproi warmaster at the Bassantrae Sequester. The screen filled with the image of this famous, crafty Hoproi, an image shot from a field link somewhere in its war-garden. The creature loomed three metres above its four elephantine legs, great grey-brown barrel body painted with stars and bull's-eyes and geometric patterns in the powdery reds and oranges of its shooting chapter.
Raine couldn't see those legs on the screen, of course, just three of its four cardinal trunks coiled in against the great barrel torso with the single dark eye peering out between each juncture, the body finally flattening at the top with the clustering of sensory fibres where the mouth was.
And resolutely speaking Antique, the Human occupation language all Hoproi so maddeningly insisted on using instead of Anvas or Kolack. Raine didn't care. This was wonderful, better than he had hoped.
Such participation—and about such an issue. This trivial but curiously robust Racial yearning, this quaint and inevitable first flowering of hope among the Humans was being transferred globally, and so cohesively, that was the thing, by what could only be word of mouth: solitary wanderers, tinkerers and minstrels, Human bureaucrats, travelling siswitch troupes—circus performers: Raine knew the term well—despite the culls, the checks and prohibitions, the sampling imposts. It was the cohesiveness that fascinated Raine, troubled him. Two hundred and thirty-eight years since Wormwood arrived, fifty-six years since the Recall, and despite the Great Work, the xenoforming and all that it entailed, such an effective degree of interfacing. Was mutuality the word?
All that came in seconds, moments, instants for Raine, primed as he was.
"Fond Louie, what do you know of this? How is your chapter involved?" Raine spoke the Antique terms carefully. The Hoproi were notorious for misunderstanding words, twisting language and meaning to suit themselves.
"Know this, you betchy! Know Humans using this to make a way. Crooning kumbayas aplenty."
Raine's fingers danced on the keypad of his chair, cuing additional flash translations, sending surge commands through a dozen monitoring systems. "There can be no prospect of insurgency in this."
"None," Fond Louie boomed, trunks flexing merrily. "We ruling the roost!"
"The what?"
"No mattress! No threat or intent. Namby-pambies behave, bejeez! But I got the goods. That church close by this Sequester, capisce?"
"We can visit?" Straight to it. Raine had to control this exchange, snatch sense from the dross.
"Certainment, mon capital! Ours for the done-deal. Name the day!"
"Fond Louie, a house-lord will accompany. You have no reservations?"
"Plenty of seats. More the merriest. When-so, great Raine?"
"Let me confer with this lord. But the sooner the better, once I've assessed the data coming in."
"Done deal. But limited, capisce? Just you. Just me. Just this one crimpy. No sharps."
"But you will have choi protection."
"My Sequester, best Raine. My turf. Natch."
"Then I shall bring a bodyguard."
"Fraidy cat! No scratch Darzie. No probable claws."
"I will call you shortly."
"Done deal." And the screen went blank.
The church, such as it was, sat ten metres back from the dirt road in what did indeed look like a prairie stretching off for miles: a small-enough, whitewashed stone building made from hand-fetched discardo, twenty metres on its long sides, ten on the shorter, a little under three metres high, with a small dome at the flat roof's midpoint. A simple pillar and lintel archway was the only entrance.
A Human place, old in design to those who knew such lore—Mediterranean Vernacular—but new, newly made.
Such a rare thing.
And equally rare on this plundered, extravagantly xenoformed Earth two hundred and thirty-eight years after the great Nobodoi rulers brought down their piece of controlled antimatter—controlled, the word said it all!—brought in three Bridge Races and dozens of Lesser Races to rule it for them, for a Matta, a Hoproi and a Darzie to meet face to face at a Human place.
Such meetings did happen between the Races, of course they did, but rarely away from sanctioned holds, optimals and vast dedicated protections, and rarely with just one member of each species present.
The scale of it was dazzling, thrilling. Bridge Races they were, the ruling elect, each judged sufficiently compatible by the Departed Ones that they could be left to do this job this time, interface with Humanity and with each other, marshal the less Human-coterminous Races in the great spread of the Donalty Flower. But an imperfectly localized Darzie could so easily lose phase and turn rogue. A Hoproi warmaster might suddenly discern a fine logic or status-enhancing joke in a trophy kill, despite—because of—the inevitable reprisals; a Matta's life journey, the callings of the Narrow Way, might demand some ultimate and crucial self-immolation. The mindsets, tropisms and imperatives were profoundly different; understanding so easily deflected down so many byways. Only elaborate compatibility totes, localizations and an abiding fear of the Nobodoi made it possible.
So they agreed to come, this unlikely, possibly unprecedented three, to this quiet, green-enough field outside the force-wall of the Bassantrae Sequester. Raine arrived first, phasing in from his swordship Nobion, shimmering in its containment field at thirty thousand feet. With him came six Elsewheres in full hot-glass armour, who stood quietly by the entrance tracking the scene at a dozen vested data-ranges unavailable to most Races in the Patchwork. They waited while the light-commander stepped through that doorway and entered the shadowy interior.
It was very much as Raine had expected: a dim, all-but-empty space with no windows save for the unglazed square opening in the building's rear wall. Four slender discardo columns supported the roof, but there were no other adornments, no pews laid out for worshippers, just a few makeshift Human-style benches along the wall, a spigot from a rain tank feeding a small dish to one side, a door into a curtained alcove on the other that stat-flash specs showed to contain a bench above a sump for a toilet.
Fiercely localized, sharp with it, Raine immediately understood why the structure was here, in this location, at this lonely, singular spot, saw too the desperate and probably guileless cunning of it.
Outside to the east was the Bassantrae Sequester, the Hoproi domain with its hazing of mighty force-walls sweeping upwards, held by the massive towers of the luda supports, sparking now here, now there, off into the distance, and with the heavy-gravity, phase-up markers themselves set within the perimeter, increment by increment until all was locked in a misty sepia sheen. Earth's lesser gravity made the Cohabitation a joy for the Hoproi and they gleefully set up their shooting chapters in the great Trade Cities by preference but, like any occupation forces, they too needed something of home.
To the west, plunging away into a distant haze to form the other side of this vast forsaken corridor, were the force-walls of an enclave of a very different kind, roiling and full of violence, rearing up into the purple-bronze sky like sheets of amber and pearl: the ley walls of Rollinsgame, a demon-ley, if intel showed it fairly. There the walls were honey-milk clear at first glance, though with sudden snatches of darkness beyond, darkness streaked with reds and quick stabs of scarlet.
But the thing, the chance, the wonder of it was—look ahead, look between those narrowing, converging walls with the Sequester to the right and the opalescent eye-trickery of Rollinsgame to the left and you had it. By quirk of physics, optics, photonics, purest luck, the turned grasses seemed green enough, the sky an ersatz blue enough, for it to give Humans a tricked-up glimpse of something they knew to yearn for: green lands, blue skies and, by the most precious serendipity of the lot, the sense of golden light. Golden. Taken together, it was the biotype's optimum: the Pre-Wormwood norm. How could they not come here?
So obvious, too, why the single window opened onto such a view, the only thing needed. Such was the power of his localization, Raine understood.
Who knew what sims and scapes, what museum photographs, salvaged celluloids and old-style digitals, what ancient hobbyist watercolours and children's drawings gave that reality, but here it was, and Humans found in this and a scattering of other such precious places enough of the dream.
By the Lady!
As they said. As they always said now. By the Lady!
But Raine knew more of the Lady than they did, grasped the terrible irony of how error and misunderstanding working with chance had made it possible. Such a joke.
A Human moved forward from the shadows, a slender older woman with her long grey hair tied back. She wore a plain white robe, unadorned but for a simple line-work square inside a circle at the right shoulder. Window on the world, it said. In the world. The old biome.
"Welcome, Great Lord. I am Josephine Cantal, custodian here."
Raine inclined his head slightly. "You are the priest, the priestess—what is the word?—the sacerdote?"
"Just custodian, Lord. I care for this Window."
"But priest. Is this the word?"
"For some, Lord. But the Lady is not a goddess."
"Not?"
"There is no divinity."
"Ah." As with so much else, the translation was instantly there. "Then what?"
"Just a way of remembering how it was before the Cohabitation. 'Mondegreen' is an old coining. It means 'green world' in a blending of two old languages."
Raine, fiercely localized, knew otherwise, and knew enough of the broken histories to have countless templates for convenient deities masking social unrest: Roman Judaea and the Jesuits—were those the right names?—many templates for errors as origins: the story of Romulus and Remus being raised by a wolf when in fact it came from the Etruscan word for Rome, Romula, or Hong Kong being named, quite wrongly, after the giant primate deity that once occupied its central tower. Such were the free radicals of circumstance.
He knew to proceed slowly. "No statues, no depictions. Just that insignia you wear. The square inside the circle. Not that heraldic animal many Humans choose. Explain that."
"The butterfly is a transformation animal, Lord. A rebirth animal. The Aviators at Wenna wear it because they pilot their kites above the city. It is a good sign for them. A good Old Earth animal."
"Once there was a fish. That was special too. And a raven. Many phoenix animals."
"I've been told so, Lord. This is just the Window."
"This window?"
"Yes, Lord. Others like it. What's called a Truth Window."
"So I have learned. I'm told this is the main one."
"Some say that. I cannot know. It is hard to travel."
"Too dangerous?"
Josephine Cantal knew better than to mention the culls, samplings and secondments, the impresses and imposts that kept the Human population small and docile. "There is this to do."
"Guarding a window?"
"Explaining it to interested parties like yourself."
Raine's localization allowed him subtleties and ironies, let him tease and provoke. "But you see me as an enemy, surely."
"No, Great Lord." She gestured back to the view of golden light on waving, green-enough prairie. "The only true enemy is forgetting."
"I sincerely understand. I am not your enemy. Not today."
"No, Great Lord. Today you came here."
"Possibly for reasons other than you think. This is not—favour." More terms came at once. "Not endorsement or sanction. Do not presume."
Josephine Cantal bent her head. "Forgive me, sire. Your localization is beyond compare. It is easy to forget."
"Continue then."
"Just as you have modelled this outcome for whatever purpose, Lord, we have modelled a day such as this. A member of the Great Races coming."
"Others will be here soon."
"Darzie?"
Raine turned back towards the open doorway, crest spines ablating as the rudiments of a distant hunt-cycle were diverted. "Perhaps. Perhaps something neither of us has ever modelled. Let us go and see."
* * *
Fourteen minutes later, the Matt house-lord arrived in an ornate, fieldwork charabanc, a hovering egg-shaped ground-effect vehicle whose curving outer hull deliberately resembled an ancient Pre-Wormwood circuit mat, but one stitched all over with goldwire extruded from its own body. No military accompaniment for Holding-in-Quiet, since there was always the sense, more than with any other Race in the Patchwork, that the Vanished Ones, the Nobodoi masters who had picked these reclusive archaeologist scholars of Matteras to be one of the three Bridge Races, could very well protect them in some special way. Fear as much as proven service and privilege held this great alliance in place.
Fond Louie must have been watching, waiting for the Matt's arrival, for suddenly he was there as well, rushing through the grass, massive legs pounding as he ran as a full choi fighting-star, trunks embedded in the spinal sockets of four armed and armoured Humans dressed in the glossy black beetlepoint of Nefarious Waylayers.
To watch them run, shouting and yipping, waving their hooks and long-bladed jerrykins, was a splendid, unnerving sight, a beautifully synchronized star-wheel with the elephantine host drawing on the disparate emotions of his companions. Only when the huge creature and his troupe had lumbered to a halt did the trunks release and coil back against the body in the no-threat mode.
Bringing them to Crisis Point One.
Raine had six Elsewheres, warriors whose minds were only provisionally here, their core selves forever focused on a homeworld they would never see again. The choi immediately deployed, fell back and took positions behind whatever rises and grassy knolls they could find.
For a moment there was silence, the sense of it at least with the wind stirring the grass, the distant roar of the force-walls and the poisonous sizzle of hot-glass on the air. With it, vividly for Raine with his biasing, was the sense of the world working, reality being made.
Fond Louie waited in the road. Raine and Josephine Cantal were by the door to the church. The line of Elsewheres stood to their right, held precariously to this task, heads averted, gazing beyond this place, but ready, ready.
It might have been all of ten seconds. Then the door of the charabanc lifted away, and Holding-in-Quiet emerged, seated cross-legged on its havel, moving forward as measured and stately as the Matt always were careful to be in public. No walking, no stepping out—only the file sims showed the Matta walking, running, striking—but composed upright. It had passed through a doorway just now, the most profound act in a Matta's life; this blighted, wondrous place was now briefly an extension of its house, however that could be construed.
Raine watched the creature approach. Like any fully quickened representative of the Encosium-on-Earth, he had studied the Matta, had had sufficient dealings with them, faux and actual. Fond Louie had. But Josephine Cantal had never seen one in the flesh, possibly in any form of accurate depiction; knew them only as fellow demons with the Darzie and the Hoproi in cook-fire and cradle stories. Raine saw her chin lift and her eyes widen just enough at her first glimpse of the long horse-skull visage, the articulated neck rising from the red robe draped about the shoulders, the chest like a clustering of tightly sheaved sticks, glittering with points and curls of goldwire that would later be used to make an identity artefact of this special day.
Raine turned to his Elsewheres, subvocalized a quick command. The warriors phased out, three back to Nobion high above, three into quarterhold stasis.
"Good move!" Fond Louie boomed, and began lumbering towards the building at last. "Parley party begins now. Come to church, pray-mates!"
The Matt scholar's havel fitted through the doorway easily enough, but Fond Louie didn't even try. He waited till the others had entered then simply blocked the entrance, pressing against the arch so that a trunk and a single eye faced into the dim interior.
Raine prepared to make the appropriate introductions, but even as Holding-in-Quiet lowered its havel by the eastern wall, Josephine Cantal moved as close as she dared and bowed to the creature.
"Lord, you have blessed this house. You have honoured this doorway by making it yours."
The horse-insect head canted up and out. "Honour to your household, gracious."
Then, before Raine could continue, this bold Human female took her host's right.
"Great Lords, may I ask why each of you came here today?"
"Can you guess?" Raine asked. He managed to excuse her manner, allowed that this would simply be a tailored version of her usual custodian question.
"It can't just be curiosity, Lord," the old Human female said. "Despite your fine localization. It might be maintaining constants. Population control. A contingency visit, I suspect."
Raine nodded in the Human way. "A bookkeeper's attention to detail and order, I believe some Humans say of us."
"I do not know that second word, sire."
"Me say it," Fond Louie boomed behind them. "Me go rote. Speech prepared for show and tell." And just like that the crazy patois mish-mash fell away, was replaced by the clearspeak recital of something carefully planned and considered, vetted by the protocol comps and choi impresses. As always, the modal shift was chilling to hear.
"You built this structure here by my Sequester. This ley corridor runs all the way through Otis Reach to Sallingen, then branches off down mighty leys to Focalstone and Blown Jetty. Blown Jetty, you hear me? Once it was just solitaries who came here, wanderers, nomads, Humans fleeing impresses or selling on their genetics to the scattered communities. Then it was the siswitch troupes stopping between performance destinations, lingering to cherish the light. The light grade here is sachel, Albatel 4, well quantified. I ask myself, my chapter, do we want this proximity, this corridor being this order of pass-through. What if it upsets a balance, tolerances in the Patchwork, draws reprisal: madonnas out of Calledal or Fonsy Halt, seeker spikes from Rollinsgame itself, right at our door? Demon ley or sentinel ley, it's a shifting one that, always changing. Should we worry? So we consider it together—you will smile at the prospect—and I consider it alone. Great Lord, me. My Sequester."
"What will you do, Fond Louie?" Josephine knew enough of the Hoproi to use both names, no honorific.
"Tricky business." He was falling back into his usual patter. "We like having Humans handy, going to church, building strained grass windows, being canon fodder! God's rockets, yes! Our fodder whose hart is in heaven! Love it! We get to mix the business. Careful is a pain. A point of intrigue, you betcha! A wait-see. A must-see wait-see."
Josephine Cantal had her back to the Window now, facing the great shape pressed into the doorway. "There is no formal movement here, Fond Louie. I swear it. No attempt at—destabilization, resurgence. It's just what it appears to be, a way of remembering."
"You say, Josephine Cantal, church-mouse, house-mouse. Home a hole in a bucket. This bucket. That bucket. Deer fodder in heaven. Where the hart is. Long as it has a handle, we don't care. We needing the handle."
"There are so few of us now, Fond Louie."
"Bad window just the same. Naughty window, this view-point. Bring this to my Sequester. No easy antlers now."
To those who did not know Hoproi, it sounded like anger, by the pitch, the rush, the volume and tone. But Raine knew it was excitement, even mirth. Fond Louie was delighted to have something, anything, to elevate into a threat, an issue, the prospect of a war-game.
"We have this to do," Raine said, then turned to Holding-in-Quiet. "What have you learned, edenye?"
The Matta leant forward, its head did, swinging out on that oddly jointed neck. Beneath the robe, its chest gleamed with goldpoint.
"The naming here: Truth Window. Fond Louie prepared clearspeak for this time. Such honour. I had this done for common ease. The name is from hay-bale residences on Pre-Wormwood Earth. A dwelling built from hay bales would be finished—sealed—with a coating. Whitewashed stucco. Smooth like this temple. But always a part was left to show what was within, a view into the substance of the house. This was called a Truth Window."
Raine was fascinated, delighted. "Coincidence, you think, edenye?"
"I do, aradenye. Not even metaphor. No equivalent to look into. For remembering."
"Josephine?" Raine asked. It sounded beautifully Human the way he said it, so natural and intimate.
"As this lord says. Just a window. A reminder for us. No agendas, Lord. Just for remembering."
Raine studied the woman with something like compassion. This exchange had to be so disconcerting for her. Here he stood in the "striking erect," the Darzie hunt stance, arms curved in, crest spines fully distended, maximum intimidation to so many Races. To the side was Holding-in-Quiet, imperturbable, so overtly calm but for a single gesture just now, a dramatic, downward sweep of the arm as it brushed the curls of goldwire from its chest so the tailings fell behind the containment rim of its havel. Behind them, the mass, the trunks, the single glaring eye of Fond Louie filled the doorway. So much that had to be confronting for the member of a Race used to suffering at our hands.
It was time for the rest of it.
"Then now I ask the question which brought us here today. Who is the Lady we hear about? I know more of her origins than you do, Josephine. A Pre-Wormwood writer, Sylvia Wright, coined the term long ago, published it in 85 PW, 1954 BCE. She had misheard the lyrics of an old song.
"Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Moray,
And laid him on the green.
"This Human heard that final line as the name of his consort, so it became They hae slay the Earl of Moray, And Lady Mondegreen. Years later, when she finally learned the truth, she collected other examples: Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear, Sinon the Dotted Lion, Round John Virgin. All based on mishearings. She called them mondegreens. There is no other history for your Lady."
Josephine Cantal actually smiled. "But of course there is, sire. You have given useful facts, details, and we welcome them. But the Lady pre-dates this misheard song. Lord Raine, you've read the broken histories. She is Mother Earth, the Earth Mother, nothing more, nothing less. The world personified, as a yearning, a recognition, an acknowledgment. There is no intention, no infrastructure, no need to make her anything more."
"But there is more to it, yes?" Destabilisation, Raine didn't have to say. A shift in the status-quo. "Make a case for continuance."
Continuance. Josephine Cantal understood the moment exactly.
"This then. A question which must cross all your minds. Lords, what if the Nobodoi approve of this? We're told they left the world this way deliberately, conquered, remade and withdrew, and now watch to see what happens. Not called away. Not simply moving on, but watching. Their were-suits wander the world; all that is left of them. I haven't travelled far, but I have seen the soul-stones littering the fields and roadways outside Kefa and Tresimont, sitting in the dust, those balls of chalk. You, Great Lords, know so much more but say Recalled Ones, as if they have truly gone. It is good to have a sense of irony. But their were-suits still come and go as they please. I've seen a few near here. Full triunes all of them, the way they're meant to be: suit, Companion, Snake, all three parts vigorous and strong with ghostworks sparking around them. These may not just be automated watch systems left to ramble about, not just sentinel engines with soul-stone mummies inside."
Raine smiled, a grimace few Races knew to read with confidence. We all had speeches prepared for today. "Your point?"
"Some people say the soul-stones aren't corpses, aren't Nobodoi remains at all, but a translation payload, a residue artefact: what's left of a Nobodoi when it withdraws, changes phase."
"Some people?" Raine was relentless.
"Humans, Lord." This woman knew how trapped she was. "It's natural that we're equally curious. But you—none of you are sure about any of this either. You must discuss it. No harm is done. No harm can possibly be done. But not Nobodoi corpses, that's what—"
"You truly think the Nobodoi might approve?"
Josephine Cantal didn't hesitate. "Lord, they have not intruded. Have not disallowed. A were-suit could destroy this place so easily. Send in its Snake, have its Companion—"
"By implication, this visit is their response. Our attention, our presence today, becomes the appropriate countermeasure, surely."
Pressed into the archway, Fond Louie humphed in delight. "Hah! Caught you, Goddy-two-shoes! You 'specting 'piphany, you phoney Josey Josephine! Big god moment. Ooh! Were-suit saving the day. You shrewdy-pants!"
Josephine Cantal swung about, hands up, imploring. "Not at all, Lord—Fond Louie! You've taught us well. The Nobodoi have always been absolute in what they do and don't allow. Remember the Link! The Advent itself! Ruthless, decisive! This place harms no one."
"An aide-mémoire," Holding-in-Quiet said, as if to itself. "Memento vivi!"
Josephine turned to the Matta and smiled fleetingly, probably not knowing those particular Antique terms, but cued by the gentler reflective tone of the Matt's words.
"It helps make life better." Again she turned to the Hoproi. "Like your war-garden, Fond Louie. A comfort beyond easy telling. Something to be proud of." She faced Raine now. "Like whatever tasks and diligence make your terrible ordeal easier, Great Lord. Like that flower Aspen Dirk speaks of."
Raine, of course, thought immediately of the overlapping circles that showed how the Races connected with each other, some directly, others through various interface species. "The Donalty Flower?"
"No, Lord. The other flower. There's a Human, a boggler of Nobodoi artefacts. The siswitch troupes speak of him. There's a flower he speaks of—"
"I know this one!" Fond Louie boomed behind them, scrinching so firmly in against the pillars that the walls creaked alarmingly. "This Dirk the boggler! He nosey-posey! Got flower too!"
"What flower?" Raine demanded. His hands were still at his sides, composed, curved into hooks. His crest spines were so fully displayed that a distension chime now rang in his skull, the tinnitus that for the unquickened meant amok and reprisal. His localization raged at it. Anything like anger, surprise, disengagement were neatly turned aside. Cool judgement remained. Cool decisions prevailed. Arm of Law.
"I know this! I know this!" Fond Louie could hardly contain his excitement, snatching whatever he could from the old rotes. "Ancient story. Celluloid by Lewis Carroll. Two royal houses. Two flowers. Lancaster, built Lancaster bombers. Red rose. York, famous for Yorkshire puddings, something. White rose. Two put together to build a Two-Door Rose for Henry the Aitch. Get it? Two flowers into one. Donalty Flower the same, bejeez! Hothouse mix. Forced growth. All overlaid, all in together. Dirk's flower the Bedlam Rose."
"The what?" Raine asked, ringing beautifully, perfectly, holding the tone.
"No mattress! All together. Best flowers. Nobodoi plan."
Part of it troubled Raine, part of it provoked, even delighted. "Three parts to this then. The Window, this flower and the false Lady who has become so real."
Josephine snatched at the possibility of reprieve. "Humans are good at finding signs, Great Lord. Making signs. All peoples probably, all Races. But Humans constantly. Leave us alone; it's what we do. It makes us meaningful to ourselves."
"Especially now," Raine said, the chime diminishing, pushing away, resolved but close. So close.
"Especially now, Lord. May I be direct?"
"Go on."
"Lords, what I've already begun to say. Listen to yourselves. Even calling the Nobodoi the Recalled Ones, as you do, suggests that they too have overlords controlling them, able to recall them at will once a task is done."
"Or much simpler. Their own leaders have Recalled them."
"I have to allow that too. But what if not? Perhaps your view comes from your habit of being in such a hierarchy for so long. Perhaps it is wisely judged. But what if not? Instead of feeling chosen, privileged to be called into service, you put your rulers in their place in turn. We as Humans, with our inclination for absolutes, go with Dirk's flower, would grant that they have absolute dominion and simply stepped away to see what would come of it."
"Which is the same self-absorbed arrogance you accuse us of. You reserve some special role for yourselves despite everything. This Bedlam Rose."
"They chose this world, Lord. This place, this combination this time."
"And they chose us to govern it. They accept—want—the solution we bring. By default, by implication, our decision will be theirs."
"But, Lord, I could say the same about Humans. They want the solution we bring. This Bedlam Rose they have made."
"Except that it remains our decision, our prevailing custodianship."
"Yes, unless that changes, Great Lord. Unless you accept the simple lesson of the flower. The evidence suggests it."
"Or doesn't, Josephine. Your world may have no special place in anything, is just another world they have chosen. The way it often is. We have been client Races for millennia."
"But what if there is a special purpose, Lord? What if the Nobodoi have not been Recalled? What if they are still here? Changed but here and watching? You've all considered it."
"This Lady Mondegreen is a dangerous Lady. You are a dangerous lady."
"Bad flower!" Fond Louie boomed.
Josephine ignored the outburst. "Or not, sire. Just showing natural curiosity. So new to no longer being at the top of the life hierarchy ourselves. What will you do?"
"Your question again?"
Josephine gestured to the Window, to the building around them. "Can we continue here? Will you leave us in peace?"
"This is not necessarily why we have come. Again, make your case."
"I needn't, Lord. The Window is not here, but here." She placed a finger against her forehead. "You know this. The Lady, whatever she is, however she is, is beyond one place, beyond facts from broken histories. The Rose is all around us."
"Very dangerous," Raine said, so keenly aware of the moment as this Josephine no doubt was, of the waving prairie beyond, of the distant roar of the force-walls, of the goldwire curling out of the Matt's chest, telling the moments of their lives.
"Lord, I am at that point where nothing I can say will save this place if you decide against it. But whether as fact, symbol or metaphor, the Window will remain. You know this of us. The Lady will stay, may even become stronger by seeming to be something worth destroying."
"Let us go outside," Raine said.
Fond Louie pulled back at once. Raine crossed to the entrance and stepped out into the day. The Matt activated its havel and followed.
"I can promise nothing," Raine said when Josephine finally joined them in the road. The sun was westering, already a fierce golden coin high in the washed sepia mirk of Rollinsgame. "Even if I withhold, Fond Louie and this house-lord will decide as they feel suits this special time."
"Lord, then there are a few possessions I'd like to retrieve before—"
The strike was like a scalpel of light, sharp and final. The temple was gone, shattered, just like that, the discardo, the dust, the shock wave and intense energy wash contained in a security sleeve that came an instant before and held nearly a full minute afterwards.
The strike echo came in those first seconds too, a tearing that snapped the day asunder but was quickly stolen away in the eternal roar of the corridor.
Fond Louie's summons rode that echo, a high-pitched keening that brought his choi running. The stink of hot-glass was instantly there as well: Raine's Elsewheres phasing in—three, six—their heads no longer averted, no longer in far-look.
"Agius!" the Matt house-lord said in its own tongue, one arm raised and pointing down the road.
And there moving towards them was a were-suit, the classic Nobodoi artefact: its off-white mummiform advancing with a roiling, twisting ground effect that almost but never quite looked like legs stepping out. Above its right shoulder, joined by a network of unseen energy, was the flattened horse-skull of the Snake. To its left, rolling along on a skirted four-ball platform, was the Companion, an elongated ovoid two metres tall, with a canted featureless dish at its top. Flickering about the whole triune were the ghostworks, the half-seen firefly glints that marked most things Nobodoi, made even more vivid by the shadowing early afternoon light of the corridor. Inside that dirty white mummiform talos was a soul-stone, a chalky ball with a leathery kernel at its heart, all that was left of its Recalled occupant.
Or not.
Fond Louie had made choi, trunks locked firmly in the spinal sockets of its four choi-mates, and now that mighty fighting wheel moved off the road to let the triune pass. Raine's Elsewheres did the same in one precise, mind-linked movement. All watched as the were-suit approached and passed them by.
Fond Louie humphed in pleasure. "So ends today's lesson. Holy roller come to play! Warn off piracy. Seamen on the Mount. Biggest pirate chip played."
"But why, Lords?" Josephine said. "Nothing changes. The Window is still there."
Raine gave the fierce Darzie smile. "Winning, losing. It is no longer easy to know who gets what?"
Then Holding-in-Quiet spoke, chest gleaming with goldpoint. "Build again, Josephine Cantal. It was not the Vanished One who took your house today."
"You, Lord? But why? Why?"
The hatch of the Matt's charabanc was even now lifting away, preparing to receive its master.
"What was said before. A Two-Door Rose. How can one resist this newest flower with two doors? It is the way through. Worth the intent. All coinage."
Josephine Cantal bowed her head, acknowledged the honour as best she could. "Thank you. Thank you, Great Lord, for this."
Raine listened to the exchange, wondering. He had not acted. And had, by not acting. Yes. Had kept to his task enough. In an instant he sent his Elsewheres back to Nobion, was vaguely aware of Fond Louie's troupe running off yipping and shouting through the grasslands to where the luda endlessly fired in the golden afternoon and the great force-walls of Rollinsgame and Bassantrae reared into the sky. He easily allowed that Holding-in-Quiet had departed, that only Josephine Cantal would be waiting in the road behind him.
You are a wise and very dangerous woman, he thought to himself. By the Lady!
But he did not turn to her yet. Rather he watched the were-suit continuing down the road, forever wandering the world. Amid his eternal agony, in spite of it, he smiled fiercely into the remains of the day. Arm of Law.