Victory was mine.
“He is banished,” I told the crowd. “Take the body to the mountain top and leave it there. Fill a container with water of life and leave it beside his body. Cuzco will not be of our family until ten years have elapsed, and he has earned my forgiveness.”
No one demurred.
Sharrock was staring at me, astonished; and he smiled with open joy.
I recoiled at his approval; I was revolted by the love of the crowd.
For before, I had been right, and yet I had been mocked. And now-now I had proved I was nothing but a violent thug, with more flair for war than even the powerful Cuzco- now, the mob would follow me anywhere.
This was the quintessential predator-prey mindset; the belief that only power endorsed by violence should command respect.
And I despised them all for it.
And, in all candour, I despised myself too, for playing their pathetic game. For I believe in love and not war; yet to save my world, I have to be a monster.
And so a monster I have become.
I went to the storm zones and let a hurricane bombard my hard carapace. A few times I thought I would be swept away and smashed against the icy clouds.
I roared with rage into the hurricane’s open mouth, and felt anguish and guilt that hurt me more than the wind’s sharp knives.
My outer skin grew back. The Rhythm of our Days returned. The Temple was demolished; and then we began to rebuild it. Stories were told. Science was discussed.
And Cuzco was now a memory; he lived in solitude on a mountain-top eyrie, the very emblem of the way we should not be. And my world was safe; and, to such degree as it was possible to be content in such a place, my people were indeed content.
And I was revered now, and not despised. My smallest request was treated as a command; no one ever interrupted me. I felt like a god.
And I loathed it.
The fields had to be tilled every month. Armies of polypods thundered across the artificial soil, kicking with hooves and ripping with claws, and aerials swooped down and sifted soil. And at the end of this long process, the soil was no more fertile than it had been before.
The trees and bushes needed to be pruned every week. Some of the vegetation ran riot and grew at a terrifying rate, and the arboreals used saws and swords to hack pieces off the runaway shrubs and trees to reduce them to a manageable height.
But what would it have mattered if the trees had grown to the heavens? There would still have been space enough to move in. And though the browsing animals ate the grass, and chewed the tree bark, there was no nourishment to be gained from that. It was a squandering of time to tend this garden, for our bodies were fed by other means.
The ice clouds soaked up moisture from the air and grew daily, and so they had to be regularly milked. To achieve this, the aerials flew inside the jagged clouds-clouds which had once floated in the skies of the icy world where Quipu had lived-and pissed their hot urine downwards, melting the ice. And the urine-tainted rain fell upon the land and the lake; and the ice-clouds shrank. And all of us felt the mixed blessing of being rained upon by water filthily stained with piss.
Thus, every time it rained, bleak irony drenched me as much as did the raindrops.
And so there was always work to be done. And it was always futile, desperate, purposeless work. Such was the rhythm of our days.
It was Day the First and I was climbing a mountain, and I could not resist the urge; I went to see Cuzco.
My claws gripped the cliff face tightly, and I was able to clamber up the steepest slopes, despite my bulk. I enjoyed this kind of physical effort; it invigorated me.
I had no idea where Cuzco was dwelling but I followed my instincts; it would be the highest crag, the most remote spot. I reached the top of the mountain summit and looked for him in vain. Then I hurled myself off and glided to the next summit; and when I found him not, I leaped again, and reached the next summit. And then the next. Then I landed on an icy crag and found myself sliding across a glacier. Strange ice-creatures peered at me, and I marvelled that I had never seen them before.
I called out to Cuzco, again and again, with a shrill whistling noise that I knew he would recognise as my ocean-call.
The day passed, and I found no trace of Cuzco.
It was Day the Second and I was due to be at the Temple to help raise the stones. But instead I returned to the mountain peaks and searched again for Cuzco.
It was Day the Third; my search continued.
At the end of Day the Fourth I was frustrated and weary and I made a wild decision; I would not return to my cabin when the black night fell.
And so I waited, buffeted by cold winds, as the sun set and cast its rosy glow upon our fake and evil world. Then the daylight in the air was switched off; sheer blackness descended. There were no stars, there was no residual light. The entire planet was black and all the land animals sheltered in their cabins; the aquatics in the lake and rivers slowed to a sluggish pace in their swimming; the aerials cowered in their nests. Only a few, just a very few, of the echo-locating species ventured abroad, and even they were wary.
I crouched on the high plateau and listened to the sounds of the night, and at length I heard a sound I recognised: a wild howling. It was Cuzco, baying at the stars, except there were no stars.
I spent twelve cycles on the mountain tops gliding from peak to peak, following the sound of the howls; and then one day I found my friend.
“You’ve changed,” I told Cuzco.
Cuzco snorted, and I felt the heat of his flames on my soft outer skin. There was a wild look in his eyes. He did not speak.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
Cuzco’s claws scratched the hard rock.
“I had no choice. I had to banish you.” I said. “Otherwise-”
Cuzco roared at me. I’d never heard his roar from so close. It was a scream that possessed his whole body. He was a fierce-looking creature at the best of times-with a hide made of sharp spikes and horns erupting from his skull. And the furnace of his body-the inner heat that allowed him to spit and exhale flame-made the patches of hide that were visible beneath his body armour glow.
And yet I knew that Cuzco, in his best moments, had a generous and a gentle spirit. And, too, as well as his killing claws, he had fingers that were supple and soft and could be used to manipulate tools, or create great art works, or stroke, affectionately, a subordinate being.
“Have you become insane?” I asked Cuzco calmly, and he snorted again, and spat fire over me and I was engulfed in flame.
Once more my soft skin burned away; and I clenched my extremities into my core, and my shell joints instinctively sealed and I allowed the fire to burn down before my head re-emerged.
“You are indeed,” I concluded, “insane.”
Cuzco laughed. “Not so.”
“You murdered Djamrock.”
“We made a bargain.”
“An insane bargain.”
Cuzco snorted again, and acid dripped out of his eye sockets. This body language I knew; he was laughing.
“I’m tired of stories,” said Cuzco, as the sun set, and the blackness descended again.
“Then tell me no stories.”
“I find your company irksome.”
“I love to irk.”
“You succeed triumphantly, you ugly sentimental shittier-than-an-arsehole monstrosity.”
“Now I recall why I’ve missed you; your squalid absence of a personality makes me feel much finer and wiser by comparison.”
A spurt of acid dripped out of Cuzco’s eyeballs; he was laughing again.
We were silent together a while. A long while.
“I should return,” I said. “To my cabin.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a life down there.”