The worm gang murders had been nearly forgotten. The journalist who took the litho-slide had become a casualty of the attack and his story turned to hearsay, brushed aside amid new turmoil surrounding the postwar and the tragedy at Burt.
The litho-slide, now property of the Iscan government, tormented Caliph for a while. He pondered the possibility of turning himself in. Sigmund had told him it was Zane Vhortghast who had replaced all the caged-up cats with human beings. It was a story that carried the ring of truth. Certainly Sigmund must have capitulated but Caliph didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about anything pertaining to the war. Instead, he shut down Glôssok and moved Sigmund Dulgensen to another project.
Caliph couldn’t feel the guilt anymore.
I died for Stonehold.
On a morning just a few days after his wake, Caliph met Sena in the library for breakfast. The meeting had jumped out at him from his itinerary for the day. The thought of her scheduling it with the new seneschal made him smile faintly as he entered the huge chilly room.
Sena looked up and smiled at him from across the hazy blue space. She didn’t move. She wasn’t breathing. His own breath was frosty in the air. Caliph walked toward her, studying her in that gray square of light below the window. Where shadows clung along her neck and beneath her arm, he could see the pale designs, the platinum tattoos that painted her with specular. So fluid and cunning. They glittered every time she moved. She had told him everything, about how they were the same kind of glyphs as those found in his uncle’s book.
The closer he got, the wider her smile became until finally, he reached out and touched her. She let him feel the lines as he always did. They were nothing like the raised ridges of scar tissue, tactually they were no different from her skin . . . except that they were cold. When he crossed a line he felt it tingle under his fingertips. Fleshy warmth veined with soft icy designs.
He could rest against her. The warmth of her body compensated. The designs were delicate and thin.
“You scheduled breakfast?” He asked it with obvious amusement.
“Yeah. I scheduled breakfast.” She got up from her stool and led him by the hand through the shelves to a great fireplace. There was a chaise and coffee table and a perfect breakfast spread out beside the flames.
“It’s cold in here,” said Caliph.
“I know.”
“Fire’s for my benefit?”
“Our benefit.”
Caliph sat down. Sena let her slippers drop and crawled up beside him on the chaise. She plucked a berry from the tray and put it in his mouth.
“I want something,” she said while he was chewing.
“More books?”
She shushed him. “It’s hard to explain what I want . . . the macroscopic . . . the microscopic. All those physicists trying to manipulate objects from the outside looking in. They can’t help it because their eyes are like stone. They can’t help the grains slipping through their fingers. Can you imagine? Creating from inside? An inflow of matter, without wind, attaching itself, precisely, without flaw, without smoke or machinery? Attaching itself to your thought, your intention, to the soul of what you’re trying to create?”
“What?” Caliph looked at her quizzically.
“It’s the evolution of engineering . . . perfect atomic alignment that transcends matter as we know it. Perfect alignment. Absolute attraction.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Caliph.” Her tougue peeked out between her lips as she wrestled with the words. “I want to have a baby.”
Caliph picked up a pastry and looked into her jeweled eyes, her perfectly sculpted face so convincingly inlaid with chromium. She sounded crazy. She hadn’t been herself since his funeral. He didn’t know if it was possible. He had listened to her chest many times in the past few days after they had made love and heard the silence, the absence of her heartbeat. She could always wear him out and her breathing never changed. She breathed for him, intentionally, to comfort him, to keep it as close to normal as it could be. But she didn’t grow tired. She never had to catch her breath.
The only sounds she made were for his benefit.
Caliph felt disjoint. He didn’t know whether she was really alive. Or whether she was really Sena. She seemed to be Sena. She had all of Sena’s memories. She had brought him back, given him life, if he was to believe everything that had happened in the last few days.
He looked at her; swallowed his berry. “A baby,” he said. “Are you sure we can . . . ?”
“I don’t know.” Sena’s smile faded. She looked down into his lap. Her hands tugged softly at his belt.
He ached for her suddenly.
Then the pastry in his fingers slipped and dropped, scattering flakes and icing across the floor. Not pleasure but fear.
Something dark, like a shadow or a wisp of smoke moved out of her. It brushed along the bookcase and curled toward the wall. It drifted quickly over the marble floor. Its movement was deliberate, its shape slightly stooped and very thin. Like an old man leaving a building, the shape paused for an instant. The impression of a clawlike appendage gestured faintly, as though waving. Waving at him. Caliph blinked and the horrible apparition with its familiar posture and gait disappeared.
“Sena?”
She lifted her beautiful face to him.
“What?” She smiled and stretched up to kiss him, tasting of fruit. He recoiled. She didn’t seem to notice. It was a familiar kiss, reassuring and strong. It held nothing back. Caliph felt his resistance slide away.
“I love you, Caliph. You and I belong to the stars . . .”
PRONUNCIATIONS
A in father. Mir
yhr.
Å
O in home. Dåelôc.
Â
I in high. Barâdaith.
AE
EY in whey. Sienae.
UE in hue. Mr
sh.
Ê
E in bend. Nêl
.
I in ill. N
s.
Î
E in eel. În.
Approximated with a glottal sound between k and h. hloht.
A slightly softened vowel articulated between the o sounds of over and on. S
th.
Ô
O in oat. Dåelôc.
Ü
Approximated by a punch to the stomach. A guttural u similar to that in fun. Ooil-Üauth.
OO in tool. Br
ak.
OW in now. N
mth.
A diphthong combining the e of hem and the oo of tool: eh-oo.