But even as Zalophus rolls over and over in his sleep, that other stab of memory, that tiny voice, welcomes this new and hurtful, thing: because what has frightened Zalophus is color, a rush of remembered blues and violets and golds and greens that the other thing, the thing that was once a man, recalls.
And the memory of the man rejoices. As suddenly as the terror flooded Zalophus, it is gone. The voice inside him is abruptly silenced. Across the glowing grid of the whale’s thoughts there rolls the image of a vast and shining plain, a surface smooth and gleaming and alive even though it is not the sea. It stretches forever, from one horizon to the next, an immensity of hills and fields and prairies and mountains gleaming beneath a sun that is not deadly, a sun that flickers not silver-gray but golden, where rains that are not poisonous sweep the blue-washed sky. Everywhere that plain shines and gleams in a way that baffles the zeuglodon. And if Zalophus had only understood what it was that he glimpsed, the sad monster would have known to name these colors, known to name them green; would have seen the silvery rains and known they were the massive storm system whorling above the western ocean, the storm that battered the coast year after year, growing stronger through the decades as the coast fell away like splintered shale; the storm they called Ucalegon.
Zalophus does not know this. But that other thing, that mote of human consciousness trapped within him— it sees and understands. Ucalegon the Prince of Storms is coming; Baratdaja the Healing Wind is shrieking northward across the peninsula. Beneath the domes of Araboth the Ascendants dream of blood and steel, the Architects of grids of light; but Outside the Green Country grows nearer. Somewhere within the ancient whale’s brain that jot of humanity sees the Green Country, and it understands and remembers. The tiny imprisoned voice exults, to have glimpsed it thus for one last moment; and then is forever silenced.
If Hobi had been a more patient young man, he might have waited for Nasrani Orsina to return. If he hadn’t been so frightened by his father’s madness, he might have recalled that it was unusual for more than a few days to pass without a visit from the exile. Nasrani and the Architect Imperator were both grand masters at the intricate and ancient word-game tanka, which involved creating an image in five words. Not surprisingly, Sajur Panggang was adept at verbal landscaping—
Sanguine tapestry,
moldering leaves:
Autime—
Never mind that he had never seen real leaves moldering anywhere, save within the vivarium. Nasrani did not share his friend’s sentimental disposition but preferred a type of verbal portraiture, often scabrous. For example,
Drooling imbecile,
his clothes
smell—
An unkind reference to a member of the Reception Committee who had annoyed Nasrani during his brief incarceration. Nothing save an event of truly calamitous proportions—say, the murder of one of Nasrani’s sisters—would have canceled the weekly tanka game, with its bursts of rude and delighted laughter and the scent of Amity heavy in the air. If Hobi had been a patient and prudent young man, he might have waited—although, as it turned out, he would have waited in vain.
But Hobi was not that sort of young man. In twelve hours Sajur Panggang had not moved from his chair by the ruined mercury lamp. The replicant Khum brought him tea and whiskey and cardamom-flavored cakes, but Sajur only sat, snoring loudly or else waking to finger Prophet Rayburn’s crucified image among the slivers of broken glass. He did not hear Hobi when the boy spoke to him; he did not fight when his son and the replicant tried to move him, only let his body grow slack and slumped back grinning in the chair. Hobi finally left him alone, sickened and terrified. He tried to tune into the ’files for news of the inquisition or reports of executions, but the ’files had been locked: the screens showed only the calm eyes of the Architects and the words Sorry out of service. Tomorrow it would be Æstival Tide; the ’files should be showing preparations for the Great Fear, the immense Lahatiel Gates being oiled and primed to open, the prostitutes and imperial courtesans and myriad cultists costumed in hideous array for the timoring rites and mad rush into the sea.
But without the ’files Hobi couldn’t see any of this. He felt like a prisoner, although he really was not—the doors were not locked, he could come and go as he pleased; but Hobi was afraid to leave. No one called; there were no visitors. Khum brought him lunch and poured endless glasses of brandy; his father snored and grinned, until Hobi thought he might go mad as well. Once the entire chamber trembled. The brandy in Hobi’s glass rocked back and forth, and one of Sajur’s holographic anaglyphs glittered into view and just as quickly sputtered into black again. Too stunned to move, Hobi waited for nearly an hour, certain that this was it: the breach he had seen on the monitors only a few weeks ago had finally spread to the very domes, and the entire city was going to come crashing down around him.
But nothing happened. Sajur did not speak, or seem to notice. There were no aftershocks, no emergency bulletins on the still-dead ’files. Nothing. Finally the boy got up and stumbled to his room. He reached beneath his bed and withdrew a small silver flask, the last of the Amity he had hidden away. He drank it, sitting on the floor and leaning with eyes closed against the bed.
So. His father had gone mad. Terrifying as the realization was, it was neither unusual nor even unexpected. Each year a score or so of the Orsinate’s inner cabal went insane, varying from Musach Alvin’s unsuccessful attempt at flying from a third-floor balcony to Shiyung Orsina’s increasingly ridiculous involvements with bizarre religious sects. As a blood relation of the Orsinas, Sajur Panggang was practically doomed by birth to some form of mental anomaly. Fortunately Hobi was too young to consider even momentarily the notion that he himself might be similarly affected one day.
What Hobi was more concerned about was the fact that the city was very probably falling into ruin, even as he gulped the last burning mouthful of Amity. In other circumstances he would have gone to his father for help. Now the only person he could think of turning to was Nasrani, but god knew where Nasrani was to be found. If he were to go to the margravines, they would either laugh at him or, worse, believe him; and upon discovering his father’s failure to halt the destruction, Hobi would no doubt be imprisoned and executed along with Sajur. One thing Hobi was certain of: the margravines would do nothing to aid the failing city or its people.
That was when he thought again of the Undercity, and Nasrani’s hidden children. The exile had said that the nemosynes knew things; that if only they could find a way to wake Nefertity, she might be able to help them relearn all the secrets lost to the centuries of the Long Night.
Hobi stood—unsteadily, the flask falling to the floor with a soft chink. He had that terrific clarity that Amity brings to an empty stomach and a head primed for dreaming. He knew what he must do. He had to find the nemosyne again; find Nasrani too, if he could, but Nefertity was most important. Just because Nasrani had never been able to wake her didn’t mean that Hobi couldn’t try. He was not unlettered in certain kinds of stories that his mother had been fond of, ancient tales that involved quests and tasks and very often the salvation of certain individuals, usually women, who through no fault of their own had come to be imprisoned in cells of glass or stone or even unfamiliar bodies. And while Hobi knew that Nefertity was no such thing, and the near-certain demise of Araboth a matter of considerable gravity, still he was rather a young boy, with a passionate (if shy) nature; and there had been all that Amity.