Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (23 page)

 
          
"Oh Dino," breathes Pod,
"
for
sure, you're the Wizz of Wizzes."

 
          
And of course this vision of
Verrino—and of the river bending away in the background—comes complete with a
worm, thin as a thread upon the shrunken water, yet blackly visible.

 
          
"One more
boon, husband-to-be!
You bring me this vision through your skill—but
also through the power of Lordevil, isn't that so? Shall you summon Lordevil
himself? Shall you make our black lord manifest in some guise or other? If only
as a voice in our midst! Let Lordevil bless our union personally."

 
          
"Humph. Is that all? Perhaps you
should also like Blindspot as a brooch?"

 
          
"Oh Dino, do you mean you can't
contact Lordevil?"

 
          
"Course you can," chips in
Master Airshoe.
"Big Wizz like you."

 
          
"I shall tire myself. This is a
conspiracy!"

 
          
"Nonsense, old
friend.
Shall I help? Shall we join forces? Do permit. Let this be my wedding
gift to yourself and your beautiful bride."

 
          
"Ach, you already have your eyes
on her too! One of my wives isn't sufficient to seduce!"

 
          
Verrino flickers and wavers; then
holds firm again.

 
          
"No such thing, old friend! Curb
your wild suspicions."

 
          
"Hrumph."

 
          
"If that's what you suspect,
shouldn't you prefer me to exhaust some of my—ha, ha—over-abundant
energy?"

 
          
"That," remarks
Polloo,
"might be a good idea." She eyes Lotja,
who looks somewhat crestfallen and strums a discord.

 
          
"Oh very well.
The two of us in concert.
You take the lead, Airshoe.
I shall sustain my vision. Though mayhap I should let it pop? Dear Podwy has
already admired one marvel. Now she cries for stronger music and for madder
wine."

 
          
"No, no!" protests Pod.
"Sustain it. Please! It contains. . . ."

 
          
"Contains what?"

 
          
"It contains an alien Lordevil,
in that river there."

 
          
"Does it indeed? Whatever makes
you think so?"

 
          
"I, er. . .

 
          
"Tell me, wife-to-be!"

 
          
"I'm, er, I'm carrying a
passenger within me."

 
          
"You're
pregnant?
Already?
This wretched Airshoe
only met you a moment ago!" Aldino's eyes widen. Again Verrino ripples.
"Was it your escort? That grasping talent-trader whom I paid so
handsomely? Did he enjoy you on shipboard?"

 
          
"No, no, Dino, you
misunderstand. I'm an honest virgin. My passenger is in my mind, not in my
womb. She's from that city there below."

 
          
I'm
from Pecawar, Pod. But let's not split hairs.

 
          
"Podwy!
Do you mean to tell me—
now,
five
minutes into our nuptials—that you've been farseeing these alien worlds of
yours not by virtue of your own talent, but courtesy of some infestatious
visitor? One who might fly away again? Leaving you bereft of your
farsi
? Ach, I've been cheated!"

 
          
Pod is on the verge of weeping; you
buoy her up. Pride flares; honour bums bright. "Master Aldino,
sir,
I am the Infanta
Farsi-
podwy
-fey,
of Bark Isle! See within me what I am, and who is within me!
See how great her mission is!"

 
          
"Farsi . . .
courtesy of another!
That's what I see. Oh what a blind old fool I've
been. I'm gulled and flummoxed. What price your feyness? Is that a cheat too?
Go on: fey something! I'll tell you what to fey.
Fey yourself
falling from these battlements, right soon!"

 
          
"That,
I shan't permit," declares Airshoe. "I should hold her up."

 
          
Lotja sniggers. Other guests
studiously scrutinize the sky.

 
          
"Podwy!
You shall fey
Airshoe
colliding with
cliffs—when my illusions warp his knowing where he is!" Oh, Aldino is
working himself up into a right old petulant lather. Verrino looks sadly tatty
and wispy.

 
          
"Fey! Fey away! I'll bet you
can't fey the death of a fly."

 
          
Furious, Pod cries, "I shall fey
in truth! I feel the talent rising. I shall fey your own fate, sir,
contemptuous husband."

 
          
No,
Pod.
Were diving into deep manure.
This is awful. I
absolutely must contact Lordevil—while Verrino's still here, with my Worm. Cool
it, will you?

 
          
However, Pod rises on tiptoe.
"I fey—!"

 
          
She screams.

 
          
Horror twists her face.

 
          
"I fey death!
Death everywhere! The death of everyone! All the vicars of whitewater and all
their Godmind flock, across the world—burnt up! Lordevil destroyed and changed
a moment later! Every soul I've known on Bark.
Everyone who's
harboured in Lordevil’s Dark.
All the Wizzes and all the
commons
of
Omphalos
— brainburnt!
And me, me too.
A faggot to fuel a
blaze."

 
          
She sinks down, devastated.
"Oh I fey, I fey indeed.
Never did I fey like this. I
farsee-fey: death everywhere in all the stars.
The finish of
life.
Lordevil’s end.
The
stop of the whole world, and all worlds.
All at
once."

 
          
How
soon, Pod? How soon?

 
          
"As soon as
Blindspot leaves Redfog.
When Blindspot bums bright, we bum!"

 
          
"What's this?" a shocked
Aldino asks.

 
          
Beg
him to raise Lordevil, Pod. Quickly, do it quickly.

 
          
"Dino—husband—if you don't
summon Lordevil, we're doomed. Even if you do, we're doomed—since I fey it so.
1'm
so scared. But do it,
do
it!"

 
          
Already the orange hue is lessening.
Day is whitening again.

 
          
"What do you make of
this.
Airshoe?"

 
          
"I think, old friend, mayhap we
should err on the side of credulity."

 
          
"Believe her?"

 
          
"Exactly."

 
          
Hurry,
hurry!

 
          
Aldino and Airshoe link hands. They
begin to leap up and down, jumping as they do so from one flagstone emblem to
the next, panting rapidly, deliberately.

 
          
Day whitens.

 
          
An inner light dawns, such as no
other light that ever was. The light blazes up in Pod's mind. The whole
universe bums with it. The light is a vortex of brilliance, tearing her loose
from herself, sucking her up towards. . . .

 
          
...
a
pattern, a bright web which spans the shadows of the stars, the ghosts of all
the worlds.

 
          
Recognize the pattern? How could you
not? You've been well trained in the appreciation of it! It is a pattern of a
hundred petals, unfolding across the galaxy, blooming fiercely. It is a cosmic
rose. Each world is a petal. Each cell in each petal is a
Ka.
And all of those petals focus /T«-light
through the heart of the rose.

 
          
Yaleen has blasted the garden in the
Moon. The Godmind has struck out. This is Mindbumer.

 
          
But you're
already
dead.

 
          
Cognizers
                                 
The world's as flat as a pancake.

 
          
Brood
                                        
Shabby yellow.
Colour of clay. Some

           
Where you
            
                    
 
times energies discharge across the

 
          
Intrude
                                      
streaky sapphire sky. That's about it,

 
          
                                                  
by
way of action. Otherwise night fol

                                                              
lows
day follows night.

 
          
In fact it's hardly a world at all.
It's just a flat surface, with length in one direction and breadth in the
other. Life's hardly turbulent. Your hostess Hovarzu has stood in this same
spot for the last five years. No doubt she could stand here for the next five.

 
          
Yet within her there is such richness
and such depth. Abstract tapestries—models of the cosmos—beckon and glisten
inside her. Many of these are strange and fanciful; others are rigorous and
austere. It's these models that she strolls around in. She's good practice for
if you ever break your back and have to spend the next ten years in bed.

 
          
Hovarzu used to be a friend of
Ambroz, whom you met in Eeden. When he was alive they often talked by
"radio". From her point of view he hasn't been dead and withered long
at all. Ambroz was a disciple of old Harvaz the Cognizer; so too is plantlady
Hovarzu. During your stay in her mind (which seems
interminable)
you've enriched her quite a lot. She has made new
cosmic models and beamed these to other kindred cognoscenti amongst Cognizers.

 
          
Not all plant-people are Cognizers.
Some make music in their minds. Some chant epic poems full of Earthmyth and
anticipations of an afterlife when they will all stride freely forth, alien
Aeneas and Achilles in the
Champs Elysees
. Others ponder
the varieties of infinity from the aspect of beauty. They classify the orders
of magnitude aesthetically: the infinitesimal, the purely infinite, the set of
sets, the alephs and omegas, the satori series. Still other plant-people tell
the beads of the genes.

 
          
Not all Cognizers concern themselves
with the methods and motives of the Godmind. But Ambroz did; and so does
Hovarzu. That's why you vectored in on her; on account of the echoes you both
share. So she tells you.

 
          
Hovarzu doesn't find it a weird
experience to host you. She's used to radio-voices in her brain; to whole
tapestries of thought being transmitted into her from a distance.

 
          
Lodger-within,
let us consider Kas!

 
          
Yes,
let's.

 
          
And dimensions; and electons.

 
          
Right!

 
          
After all this time you have a pretty
good idea what Hovarzu looks like to an outsider; though it wasn't too easy to
find out.

 
          
True, she keeps her three eyes open
during the day. But
that isn't so that she can admire the
view—or keep
tabs on her personal appearance. Her eyes, in common with
her leaf-plates, are designed to drink fight and turn it into energy. (If they
weren't so designed, maybe she would shut her eyes and never bother to open
them again, given the monotonous poverty of the view. Might this be the real
reason why her eyes sup fight? To keep her at least somewhat connected with the
world around?)