Full Fathom Five (36 page)

Alone, she sought the figures from Izza’s temple wall, and one after another found them.

The Great Squid at first resembled the many other squids that drifted lifeless in the currents. But only one swelled through time; only one stared at Kai with an hourglass pupil and seemed to know her. The Great Squid stretched out tentacles as if to consume the sun—but then it died. Simple accident: a zombie-crewed containership from Southern Kath wrecked in a storm. The containership had been hired to transport a horror from beyond the stars, but the horror broke free and twisted a few hundred miles of Kathic coastline into unearthly geometries before the Coast Guard caught it. Resulting market fluctuations broke the Great Squid. Steve, the priest responsible, was promoted after the event, for exceptional skill managing a crisis, Jace had said.

Of Green Men they’d built a few thousand—fertility and fortune made Green Men a popular template for trusts and estates work. The Green Man Kai sought had a skull for a face: decay and birth together, which narrowed things down. The nebula of Green Men whirled, and parted. Thirty left out of four hundred. Yes, that was the one: with long hands, clawed like a bear’s for digging. As Margot said.

The Green Man was less subtle even than the Squid: nine months ago, a sudden blaze of emerald fire in the deep, a drumming heartbeat, a smile that was the sun’s first breath above horizon, a smell that made Kai’s heart skip. Her body twitched and rolled to the dance of him; then he died, fast and sad as a candle covered. His rhythm stopped, and he was a mannequin again.

How long had this been happening?

What was “this,” even? Gods born from idols, mayfly deities who took flight only to perish.

“Kai?”

Teo’s voice, down from invisible heights.

“Kai, can you show me the goddesses in eclipse?”

Spinning one part of the un-world, holding another steady, might have challenged most theologians. Not Kai.

“Thank you.”

She formed a bubble of “You’re welcome,” and floated it back to distant light.

No time to check every idol in this pool. Fortunately, time didn’t work the same way down here.

She crossed her legs, let her eyes drift half-shut, and forgot time.

Gravity was an old habit, time older still. Kai did not exhale. Her heart did not beat. Time was a mirror dropped spinning from a height: it turned on three axes, and touching ground erupted into shards.

Her eyes snapped open, and she saw:

Imagine a line of amber drops, each with an insect trapped inside at a different stage of life, from larva to adulthood to husk. Fold this amber together, like a cross of squares folding to make a cube, or a cross of cubes to make a tesseract. A single honey-colored oval containing all moments at once.

Constellations charged the dark, jewel nets melded to a mother-of-pearl sheen. And there they hung: shining shapes against the background noise of transaction and half-formed faith.

Gods. More than that: idols, become gods.

She heard their voices then.

Whispers she took at first for wind. Consonants like falling rocks, hurricane vowels. Weeping, some. Conspiring, others. Wheedling. Promising.

Immortality if you only follow

Your soul will burn from

We all must sacrifice

There is a greater truth

We cannot stay here forever

Freedom within our grasp

Get me out of here

No no no no no no

Your gift will be honored

Help us

And she felt leather cuffs around her wrists and she lay in a steel bed with cables leading from her skin and she pulled against them and cried out and she could not see the others only hear them and the door opened and footsteps approached, and she knew the nurse come to kill her, knew her face, and she clutched at her ears and clawed at her eyes—

That was not your dream.

Whose dream, then?

A goddess’s.

The cries stopped.

They watched her through time, living and dead alike.

Great faces, miles broad. Women. Men. Animals. Wise. Loving. Accusing. Betrayed.

The Green Man. The Great Squid. The Eagle. And the Blue Lady. Horns curled above her head, wings flared behind, pinions razor-sharp, crooked legs strong enough to leap the moon or run unflagging across the great plains of Kath. Power, beauty, subtlety; grace and a hungry grin.

They stood, rapt with attention. Waiting.

And yet, impossible. She’d said as much to Izza, and to Ms. Kevarian. The idols were too small, too simple for consciousness, for all they stood enormous before her. For all she heard their voices.

But each idol was bound to others, and those to others in turn, and those to others still.

The space between them curved, marbled and darkly shining like skin.

No.

The space was not like skin. The space was skin.

An enormous face overshadowed them all, a planet-devouring mouth fixed in an expression not quite smile or grimace or sneer. Features skewed and strange, as if sculpted by someone who had only ever felt faces before, not seen them. Points of sharp teeth showed between lips.

Eyes opened, and light flowed out.

Not gods. Goddess.

The largest idol in the pool had a few hundred believers at most. But there were thousands of idols, millions. And as they connected, the web’s complexity soared. That network, idols bound to idols bound to idols, a great tangle of power and traded soulstuff, evolving over time, was more complex than any single god.

She’d thought the idols were alive. She was wrong.

No one idol was alive.

All of them were.

Alive, and alone. Trapped. A single mind, trying to express itself through a succession of voices. Donning idols like masks as she, as She, reached out and down into the mortal world. Going mad in eons of deep time, without anyone to talk to, without worshippers to call her name.

Whenever she tried to speak, her mouthpiece died. And each death, torture.

“Who are you?” Kai shouted.

The smile widened. Kai could not tell if it was gentle, or cruel. Massive lips parted, and Kai braced her soul against the coming Voice.

Her eyes burned like suns.

They glanced up, to the surface of the pool.

Kai followed the goddess’s gaze, and saw Teo there.

What was she doing?

The Quechal woman had worked the bracelet off her wrist, and held it above the pool. Sunlight caught silver.

Teo dropped the bracelet.

Kai did not swim so much as fly up through the black. Cold bit her limbs and entered her lungs.

The bracelet spun as it fell, and spinning, it glowed from within.

Kai burst from the pool. The million subtle constraints of physical law closed around her like the jaws of an enormous beast. Her fingers caught the falling bracelet—and bracelet flowed through them, silver sifting like sand. She grabbed for it again, and again her hand passed through as the wire hoop sank into unreal depths, a solid disk now, a moon shining within the pool, and gone.

The sky above turned red. The ground shook.

Pebbles trembled on the broken rock beach. Stone ground against stone.

Around them boulders shivered and stood, long-dormant legs and arms shattering free of hunched shells. Ten Penitents towered on the beach. Ruby eyes glowed in slab faces. Fingers flexed. Dust rained from joints of knuckle and wrist.

This was bad.

Kai didn’t know what Teo had done, or why. No time to care. Silhouettes appeared at the windows overlooking the caldera, priests drawn by the alarm and the crimson sky. They saw her.

Teo sprinted for the shelter of the cave, but Kai, diving, caught her leg, and they both fell hard onto rock. Teo kicked Kai’s hand, scrambled to her feet again, too late. These Penitents might have slept for years, but once woken they moved as fast as any that patrolled Kavekana’s streets. One caught Teo in its fist and lifted. Her shoulders strained, but she couldn’t shake the statue’s grip.

Kai tried to run, too. Rocks and pebbles cut her feet.

These Penitents lacked prisoners: slow crystal brains, that was all, urges and instincts without room for reason. If she was fast enough, she could cross the water, retreat into the cave, find an exit before the mountain locked down.

Two more feet to the water—

A stone hand caught her from behind.

She’d seen Izza struggle in a Penitent’s grip, and Teo just now, and wondered why they tried to fight. Muscle could not break stone. Now, she understood. The body fought on its own—the animal yanked and tugged and jerked to free itself. Proof in a way of Teo’s argument for evolution: the muscles remembered being a small mouselike creature in the claw of some prehistoric lizard. Trapped in the Penitent’s fist, lifted off the ground, Kai strained against the rock that held her. Her arms and shoulders and ribs and back burned. She could not breathe.

Groans of broken and shifting stone settled into silence. She glanced left, and saw Teo, also caught.

“Sorry,” Teo said, with a rueful grin. A bruise purpled her left cheek. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”

“What in the hells were you doing?”

She did not answer.

“A question,” said a voice from the cave ahead, “I might ask you both.”

Kai recognized the voice.

“Jace.”

He emerged from cave into light, black clad, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. Thin lips pressed together. He spared Teo a glance, dismissed her, and turned to Kai. Behind his glasses, his eyes were thoughtful, as if pondering the meaning of a long forgotten dream. He blinked, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked up, his eyes had not changed.

“Kai. We need to talk.” He waved to a Penitent, who stomped over to the beach and gathered her discarded clothes. Suit and shoes seemed doll-sized in the monster’s hands. “Come on. You can dress in my office.”

“I’ll dress here. Have this guy put me down.”

“I don’t think so,” Jace said.

“I’m not on her side.”

“I know,” he said. “But we need to talk, don’t we?”

She couldn’t lie to him. “Yes. We do.”

51

The failing sun lit Jace’s office. Streams of shadow ran east from desk and chair over the bare floor. The four unfinished statues stood guard against the walls.

Kai’s Penitent released her, set down her clothes, and left. Jace closed the door after it. “You have questions,” he said. “You deserve answers.” He sounded as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Longer. Years.

He retreated to his desk, and drew a ribbon-bound scroll and a pen from a drawer. “Sign this nondisclosure agreement. We have secrets to discuss, and I don’t want them to leave this room. Even in your memory.”

“I won’t sign anything. If you want to be honest, be honest. If not, I’ll walk out this door and tell the
Journal
everything I know.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You think the Penitents will stop me? Fine. Drag me to court. I’ll talk to a judge as happily as to a reporter.”

“Kai. I don’t know what you think is happening here, but I’m sure you have it wrong.” He left the scroll and pen on his desk. “Let’s talk. Though maybe you’d rather dress first.”

She stood firm for a minute, watching Jace, but gooseflesh prickled her arms. She pulled on her pants, buttoned and zipped them. “Our idols are waking up.” How much did he know already? Stick to the basics. Don’t mention the meta-goddess unless he does. “One at a time they’ve become conscious, and one at a time they’ve died.” The shirt next. She skipped a few buttons, and donned the jacket over. Stepped into her shoes.

“Yes.” He looked so young beneath his age. How easy to imagine him as a boy, eager and idealistic, all the great globe’s glories in his future. She saw them crumbling.

“How long have you known?” She approached the desk. There was no wind in this room with the door closed.

The corners of his mouth twitched up, a reflex rather than a smile. “We found the first one through an audit, if you believe it. Two years back. Junior priest combing through transaction data.” He held one hand in front of his face, thumb and finger so close that from Kai’s angle they seemed to be touching. “So small a thing. I saw it move, in the pool, one night. I’d never imagined one of our idols could look like that.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? What would you have done?”

“Told people,” she said.

“Who?”

“Other priests. Pilgrims. The Hidden Schools. Someone. I mean. We created sentient life. Right? That’s what this is. We built idols, and they woke into gods.”

“And what happens then?” He crossed his arms over his chest. His clothes melded with the shadows, with the wall. “Pilgrims don’t come to us because they’re looking for gods. They come because they want the appearance of worship without the responsibility. They come to hide. They want safety, protection.” He looked up, and she saw real hope in his face, or an echo of hope, long disappointed. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

She couldn’t.

“And what if they learn our idols don’t work the way we said? You’ve seen other god havens fall. Soulstuff will flee to lands that make the same promises we can’t keep. Back then, understand, we had one god awake. Thousands sleeping. No sense whether this was a miracle or an inevitable product of our system. If we should expect idols to wake once a decade, or every hundred years, every million. What do you do?”

“Talk to the god.”

He did laugh, this time, sadly. “How? Pray? Oh, dear Lord, or Lady, forgive me this most grievous fault of creating you bound in chains. The mind reels. And even if we could communicate, what could we say when it asked for freedom? What if it tried to communicate with its faithful? Do we let one accident, one freak, destroy our way of life?”

“Think, Jace. We spent fifty years waiting for the gods to come back. And they did. Not from the direction we expected, not in the way we hoped, but there are gods on Kavekana again.”