Colony
They arrived knowing they would have to wait. This was the way of things, lately—the provost was growing ever-more tightfisted, and the days when a senior cartographer-priest could request a team, as Iyna Trendynseyf had, and be provided a full five within hours, were, it would seem, over. Instead, Iyna was offered Wem Tanseyf, whose dissertation had only just been accepted; publication was still several months distant.
The seer Trendyn Altraenyseyf, Iyna’s dissertation advisor, and an old friend, had come to her some days prior with an opportunity. He’d stood on the streets of the Triptych locality, a flood of bicycles splitting to either side of him, and felt the movement of the Simulacrum within and around him. He had felt where the universe would shift within the impossible infinity of the Simulacra and known its trajectory. In consultation with other cartographer-priests on Cresque, and following many days of debate and divination and triangulation, it was determined that, according to the Standard, Reformed and Intuitional models alike, the Triptych locality would shift adjacent to the Ôpteramatum locality, which would soon after shift betwixt localities as of yet unmapped. Departmental budgets being what they were, though, and already-meager travel stipends being exhausted for the remainder of the semester, Iyna and Wem would have to ride Ôpteramatum to their destination, rather than travelling into it at a more convenient moment. Which was how they found themselves on a Coleomordax colony ship, sipping sketl tea and fluttering their wings in the late-afternoon light of the sun strip.
“I must confess,” Iyna said, “I find the inevitable obsession with sexuality and breeding rather tiresome. Every post-doc in a novel body seems to believe that this is untrod territory, but the College of Carapacology has been studying the subject since its founding. Put a newly-ordained cartographer-priest in an unfamiliar carapace, though, and their thoughts immediately turn to fucking.”
Wem’s antennae swiveled in embarrassment, for it was she who had raised the topic.
“I do have an egg curing, you know,” she said. “It’s not unreasonable.”
They sat on low chairs with slits in the back cut for their wings, only a short walk from the home they shared in a distant exurb of Local Community 2. The city lay above them, almost directly opposite the cylinder of the ship, the thin ribbon of the funicular stretching across the thousands of wingspans of the ship’s diameter like the string of some great instrument, anchored in their echo community’s center.
“I didn’t suggest it was unreasonable,” Iyna said, “simply tiresome.”
“That’s the body talking. I feel it too. It’s gauche, right? For Coleomordax to discuss this sort of thing?”
“That may play a role, it’s true.”
Fully three cycles had passed since their introduction into the universe, but neither Iyna nor Wem felt comfortable in their bodies. Flight, in particular, was a challenge, their wings easily used when they weren’t thinking about it but clumsy as soon as conscious control entered the equation. Iyna was vexed to be on equal, and awkward, footing with Wem, so many years her junior, but few cartographer-priests had passed time as a Coleomordax, which she felt was an acceptable excuse.
“It’s remarkable,” Wem said. “I can feel my own curiosity about the subject, about reproduction, but I can also feel the taboo of it, the pressure to not even think about it. And it is kind of gross, I think. Like, why do we even need to talk about it? Just let things take their course.”
Iyna’s antennae drooped in amusement.
“Shit,” Wem said, “that’s the meshing again.”
“I suspect it is.”
“There are a lot of these taboos for Coleomordax, aren’t there?”
“I believe there might be, yes.”
“How do you deal with it? Embrace your carapace but hold onto who you are outside of the universe? Separate the traveler’s ideas from the body’s, so that you can move seamlessly through the world but can still talk about things like, you know…” She widened her secondary eyes suggestively.
“I’m afraid you can’t. Particularly if you try to imagine some line between who you are and who this is.” Iyna tapped Wem’s shoulder with the back of her forelimb’s claw. “You are you. Here and elsewhere. You must be able to hold contradiction in your mind, to accept that two opposites are both simultaneously true. You’ll get there.” Iyna clacked her mandibles encouragingly, though Wem looked unconvinced.
Before them, halfway up the ship’s interior and squarely between LC2 and their præsepe, ran the long strip of the lake, ferries plying its distance, swarming like midges. From where they sat the water looked a pale, clouded purple, but then everything viewed across the ship’s diameter seemed cast in a dusky lavender.
“Well it’s hardly fucking, anyway,” Wem said. “It’s more—”
“Must we?”
“No. I suppose not.” Wem’s antennae swiveled, pressing together, and she said nothing more.
When the Simulacrum had edited this universe, inserting Iyna and Wem, creating pasts for them that were instantly incorporated into its history, and retroactively made real, it had seen fit to place them in a backwater village, with little in the way of social ties to bind them. Their præsepe was one of EC2’s smallest, little more than a six-fold hive on a dirt road, and two of its cubbies were unoccupied. This was a blessing, in that they had few entanglements to navigate, but a vexation, as well—for the same reason. Unpacking one’s newfound entanglements, and the sometimes-unexpected ways they manifested, was one of the pleasures of being a traveler. Perhaps luckily, though, there was little opportunity for idleness.
Even had the College of Cartography assigned them their own tasks to accomplish, ignoring the force of responsibility their Coleomordax bodies instilled would have been difficult. The sense of obligation Wem and Iyna felt, the pull to collective labor, was enormous, something close to compulsion, and they could no more have resisted it than they could have resisted gravity. It was far more potent than any social pressure Iyna had yet experienced, and, she felt, surely had a biological component. How Arcalumis’s Carapacologists hadn’t set up a permanent observatory she didn’t know; the weight of expectation would have overwhelmed even the most committed individualist.
Their days in Ôpteramatum were mainly spent in light agricultural work, farming or foraging. Vineyards and wheat fields stretched between EC2 and the lake, while woodlands ran aft-ward, home to mushrooms and shade-grown fruit. On occasion, they undertook custodial work in EC2, as well, cleaning, sweeping, scouring, washing, but this was an irregular occurrence.
There were, somewhere, committees devoted to larger concerns—the operation of the ship, its maintenance, logistics, and some Coleomordax were certainly tasked with these labors—but if they were in LC2, or even LC1, Iyna and Wem were unaware of them. Perhaps the ship simply maintained itself. Such things were distant from their lives, from the lives of all Coleomordax, it seemed—their lives were small, local, rich.
Each day, Iyna and Wem returned to EC2, having supper at a café or simply stopping for a drink, before heading back to their præsepe. Temperatures within the ship were always moderate, and as the sun strip dimmed for evening the air became refreshingly cool.
On a night midway through their time in Ôpteramatum, they were sitting in EC2’s central plaza, as they often did. The remnants of their meal sat on a large platter between them: crusty bread dredged in oil and a paste of nuts and herbs spread across the firm, dry fruit that was called man-hu. Their table was outdoors and they could look up and see the lights of LC2 directly above them, a densely-packed constellation, neighborhoods like nebulas. Every now and then the cable car that joined LC2 with its echo community arrived, descending into its station and bringing with it the sounds of revelers returning from the city, only to depart minutes later, rising straight up into the sky, blotting out a square of LC2 before dwindling until its darkness disappeared, subsumed by the city’s glow.
A clattering came from around the corner and Wem and Iyna exchanged a look as an older Coleomordax entered the plaza. Her gait was unsteady and her wings spasmed, knocking into those around her and tables set out on the street.
“The end is nigh!” the woman, Uhmera, said. This was a common refrain for her, and was, in the main, ignored. Wem and Iyna were two of the few Coleomordax who actually engaged with Uhmera’s pronouncements.
“The end of what?” Wem said.
“Which end?” Iyna said.
Uhmera cackled. “All of them! All the ends are upon us.”
“That’s awful vague, Uhmera,” Wem said.
“The old ways will return, and our ancient and terrible traditions shall be born anew. And with them, so shall we all!”
“We’ll be on the lookout, Uhmera,” Iyna said. “We appreciate the warning.”
“There is no warning…” Uhmera began to totter away. “There will be no warning!” She cackled again and crossed the plaza in search of new targets for her prophecies. Wem and Iyna left soon after, heading the opposite direction, back to the præsepe.
“Should we be concerned about that?” Wem asked, once they were out of the town. “Ancient and terrible traditions sound ominous.”
“They do,” Iyna agreed, “but if we’re ever in danger we’ll just travel away. Triptych is still the proximate locality until the shift completes. If we need to leave we’ll leave.”
Wem nodded, her antennae bobbing. “This is all new to me. My fieldwork was rather staid, so I’m not sure what an appropriate level of worry is in a locality like this.”
“You let me worry about how worried we should be.”
“I can manage that. Have you ever, though… Have you ever had to… escape from a locality? Emergency travel?”
Iyna laughed and Wem’s wings buzzed with embarrassment.
“No,” Iyna said, “no, I’m not laughing at you. There’s just this image of the swashbuckling cartographer-priest, charging heroically through treacherous localities, fending off violent fauna as we chart the unknown. In reality, most of us will experience a locality like that once. Maybe. There are just… a lot of boring universes out there. The Simulacra is vast, and most of the time danger doesn’t find you unless you seek it out. Our goal is to map, after all. Honestly, if you’re not provoking anything, nothing gets provoked.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Maybe. A little.”
“You’ve been reading too much Plemarch.”
“Temerasu, actually.”
“Same thing. The truth is, there’s far more comfort to be found in the Simulacra than danger. Truly, Wem, you don’t have to worry. I’ll keep you safe.”
At the præsepe, they sat outside, as they did every night, looking out across the ship as the light dimmed and waiting for the cool to drive them inside. A shallow valley spread below, fuzzy with grasses, and beyond it were fields, stretching all the way up to the lake. Cliffs rose behind them, dotted with præsepes as small as their own, lights twinkling in their cubbies or from torches, set out beside chairs the same as theirs. The smell of sketl flowers, blooming with the arrival of night, sweetened the air, and lent the moment the force of nostalgia.
“This is nice,” Wem said.
“It is,” Iyna agreed.
“Some of that comfort to be found in the Simulacra, huh?”
Iyna laughed. “I suppose so.”
“Have you ever wanted to… you know. Just stay in a locality? Because it was a better life than what you have with Arcalumis?” Wem looked away.
“Your dissertation hasn’t even been published and you’re already looking to get out?” Iyna said, struggling to keep the amusement from her voice.
“No! That’s not it. I just mean… theoretically. You’ve traveled. You’ve been in other worlds, lived other lives. Isn’t it a… a temptation?”
Iyna considered. She had traveled, she had lived other lives. And it was true, some of them were, by any metric, better than her own. But she’d never considered dwelling in one, never considered actually choosing one over her own. It simply wasn’t a choice an Arcalumist would make. It wouldn’t occur. Yet occur it had to Wem.
Would Iyna want a life of material luxury and intellectual ease? Would she want adventure, intrigue, of the type Plemarch and Temerasu had written of? Would she want the opportunity to find some kind of fulfilment outside of Arcalumical academic pursuits? An opportunity for a fresh start, for some other way of being, free from departmental politics, from Episcopal expectations, from the endless blur of student faces?
Iyna became aware that her consideration had gone on too long, that the length of her pause was itself an answer.
“No,” she said. “It’s no temptation at all.”
“I think this would be a good opportunity,” Trendyn had said. “Field work can be… revitalizing.”
This was a tactful acknowledgement of Iyna’s career trajectory: stagnant. After a well-received dissertation and a number of solid publications derived from it, things had slowed for her. She still published regularly, this was true, but each article received less attention than the last, and reached a smaller audience. The first time her tenure application had been rejected was disappointing, the second time frustrating, the third time expected. She had fallen, despite forewarning and preparation, into the mid-career malaise that every Arcalumist feared: the trough. A duodecade of visiting assistant professor appointments and conference presentations to empty rooms lay behind her, perhaps duodecades more lying in wait; whether she would be able to climb out the other side of the trough remained to be seen.
“I don’t need your pity opportunities, Trendyn,” she’d said, a lie whose falsity they were both well aware of.
“I can’t assign it to you anymore—you’re not my research assistant, after all—so it’s your choice. I just hope you’ll take it.” Trendyn was a small, gentle, distantly mournful man, and this was his most common tack in getting what he wanted: an implied disappointment. It had allowed him to get what he wanted a great deal, and to somehow do so without being widely reviled, which was a rather remarkable feat in the College of Cartography.
“I just have a lot going on right now, and I’m not sure a sabbatical is the best move.”
“Of course,” Trendyn said. “Of course.” He nodded slowly. “In Triptych, though, I thought of you. It was afternoon, the light was beautiful, a burnt, golden orange, and I saw the shift coming, saw Ôpteramatum in the leaves and the moss. You know how the Triptych buildings are all overgrown and shaggy, ivy everywhere. In the vines I saw the colony ship, a lattice all around me, each leaf a Coleomordax wing. They were everywhere, everywhere flying around me, more vivid than I’ve felt any other world. And in among them I saw you. Feeding a movement, nurturing the future. I couldn’t not tell you, you understand.”
“I’ll think about it, okay? No promises.” Pride demanded she protest, though in her mind she had already accepted.
“No promises,” Trendyn repeated, his gaze distant, melancholy about him like an atmosphere.
Wem felt the call in the morning. She hesitated for a moment, recognition slow. It was a light pressure within, like hunger, a distant tugging, and then she knew. Without thought or volition, she left the præsepe, wings humming as she flew down the road to the village’s outskirts. She found the entrance to the warren there and descended.
Immediately it was cooler, the air dry and dusty and dark. She knew she should wait, pause, if only for a moment, to allow her eyes to adjust, but she could not. Secondary eyes offering nothing but blackness, she strode on. The tunnel spiraled down around itself before widening, flattening, joining with a larger tunnel that opened up into something like a highway. A dim glow lit the space, and here Wem did pause, too disoriented to proceed.
From everywhere came a clicking, unceasing and rhythmless, and it produced a cathedral hush, sublimating all sounds to its whirr. Shapes moved in the dark, hulking shapes—she stepped forward into the main tunnel and they were all around her: males. Most twice her size, their heft borne on shockingly thin legs, underdeveloped wings flicking. They passed fluidly about her, carried by a current she could neither see nor sense, their destination, their purpose, obscure.
Slowly, sight returned. As it did, the pressure in her grew. She knew which way to go. She set off.
From side chambers came the luminescence of eggs, their glow dim and gauzy. It was the only light in the tunnels, and cast them in an austere monochromatism, all blues and grays. And everywhere was the clicking—the males’ mouth-arms tapping their mandibles reflexively, somehow sibilant and percussive both, a chorus without melody or harmony.
How long Wem walked she couldn’t have said. There was for her only the feel of the dirt beneath her feet and the passing of males, their monstrous size belied by the silent, graceful choreography of their movement.
At a forking she stopped. The tunnels bent down deeper into the stony shell of the ship. She could see them stretching off, tubes of impossible length, and Wem understood, for the first time, that there was no warren for EC2, no warren for LC3; there was only one warren, and it ran everywhere beneath their world.
A smaller male, not much larger than she was, approached from a side tunnel, somehow separate from the main flow of movement. Its mouth-arms clacked, their blades making a painful grinding sound. It stopped for a moment, its bulk shifting forward and back, then rushed at her, terrible limbs chittering, wings fluttering madly, impotently, its six-fold eyes dumb and bestial. She leapt into the air, her own wings working without thought, but the tunnel was small, short; he could reach her still, rearing up on his hind legs.
In a moment he would be upon her, would rip her from the air, but before he did he was swarmed by other males, larger ones. Their wings were still, and they were silent. He was torn apart, before she even understood what was happening, ichor striping the dimness of the walls. The other males’ cleaned the blades of their mouth-arms, wiping them quietly against each other. She hung in the air still, wings working, heart racing, unsure of what to do. They bowed before her, heads dipping, great masses tilting forward, and she descended into a clearing of them. They bobbed gently, the orientation clearly an exertion, and then their wings began to work. All around her they fluttered, the iridescence beneath glittering in the darkness. It clarified, a rhythm emerging, and the males stretched out along the tunnel, filling it entirely, a path left in the center. A path for her. The iridescence was a pattern, rippling along their numberless number, jumping from body to body as their wings tremored in perfect synchrony, guiding her to the egg.
She followed the path deeper into the warren, the males assembled along the sides of the tunnel and even, somehow, atop it, making of their bodies countless guideposts. Down side paths she saw other eggs, some surrounded by groups of males, six of them, she felt sure, tending each. Only these males did not participate in the procession, leading her to her egg.
She reached it just as her sister-daughter was born, the soft film of eggshell stretching and then punctured, and then a smell filled the chamber, something sweet and sharp and overwhelming. Six males ringed her egg, gently rubbing their back legs together, producing a droning, hypnotic hum. She picked her daughter up, the little body so like her own, wings trying to buzz but still wet, and felt the child’s hunger. She became aware of the males all around them, their great, bulky bodies. The males nearest to her jostled gently, trying to get closer, and slowly, tenderly, raised their wings.
Without understanding what she was doing, she lifted her sister-daughter to one male’s flank. His flesh was soft, the smell slightly sour. The child ate, chewing loudly, digging into the muscle, the male clicking his mouth arms together in what could have been pleasure or pain or both. After a moment, the smell overwhelmed Wem and she, too, ate, pressing her face into the wound and inhaling deeply, her mouth working of its own accord.
A gentle shiver told her the feeding was finished and the male withdrew, lowering a wing to cover his damaged flesh. Another replaced him and the process was repeated. She was sated before her sister-daughter was, and for what felt like hours a procession of males stepped forward to offer their bodies as nourishment, a gift the child happily accepted.
Iyna found Wem in her cubby of the præsepe, sleeping, a child crawling over the furniture and up the walls. At Iyna’s arrival, Wem stirred.
“We should go,” Iyna said, Wem still drowsing on the couch.
“Can it wait till this afternoon? I’m so tired…”
“It’s evening. How long have you been asleep?”
“I don’t know. I guess since—”
“The answer is no. It can’t wait. We’re not leaving the præsepe, we’re leaving this universe. For Triptych. Then, I imagine, Cresque.”
At this Wem sat up. “What? Why? What’s changed?” Her daughter crawled down the wall and over her shoulder, wings buzzing ineffectually. “No, we can’t.” She took the child in her arms and rubbed the space between her wings, her daughter chirruping quietly.
“Wem Tanseyf, this locality is no longer worth the danger. We must leave.”
“Iyna. Please. What’s happened?”
“There’s been a… a caused-death.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“A woman is dead. In LC2. And it was… It was caused. Her death was done to her. It was inflicted.” Her jaws clattered together at this.
Wem blinked rapidly several times. Her child wriggled free of her grasp and resumed crawling, winding between Iyna’s legs and up onto a table.
“A caused-death…” Wem said slowly. “There is a word we know for this.”
Iyna’s antennae bobbed in agreement. “There is and there isn’t. Versions of us in other universes understand the concept, can articulate it. Not here, though. Not with this culture, this throat, this tongue.” Iyna shook her head, laughing silently at herself; even in a moment like this, she couldn’t escape her academic impulses.
“Who would do this? Who would do such a thing?”
Iyna fluttered her wings helplessly.
“Why would she do this?” Wem said.
“There was an announcement this morning. There are… shortages.”
“Shortages? How did we not know before? Shortages of what?”
Iyna looked away. “Of everything.”
The only sound was Wem’s daughter, brushing against furniture and knocking over the rubbish bin. She clawed feebly at the cupboard, antennae flailing, then trundled back to Wem, curling in her lap.
“Uhmera was right,” Wem said quietly.
“Not yet. But soon, maybe.”
Once more they fell silent. Wem looked down, stroking her sister-daughter’s back and smoothing her wings. Iyna couldn’t see her face, but she could smell the contentment in the room, its fragrance piney and crisp.
“Congratulations, I suppose,” Iyna said.
Wem didn’t look up. “She hatched today and already she’s twice as big as she was.”
“Has she named herself yet?”
“Not yet. No words at all so far.”
“Soon, certainly. Soon.”
“Soon,” Wem agreed, her voice far off.
“I know this is a challenge, but this is what it means to be Arcalumis. The work must come first. Always. We need to—”
“I’m not leaving.”
“I could leave myself,” Iyna said. “Summon you back once I’m home. You’re marked.”
“I know. You could. You won’t, though.”
Iyna didn’t respond. Wem was right—she wouldn’t. She lacked the ruthlessness of some of her peers. It was why her career had stalled. Or it was why she told herself her career had stalled.
“This is unwise. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we can’t predict how our carapaces will react. The Coleomordax are mostly unstudied. Biology, instinct, social conditioning, these are dangerous things to gamble with.”
“Iyna—"
“We can’t stay here forever. We have two more cycles and then we’re leaving this locality.”
Wem nodded, her antennae bobbing, but looked down at her daughter, who burbled happily in her lap, mandibles working, nipping toothlessly at air.
It took less than a day for another death to be caused and less than a cycle for all food to be put under lock and key, even foraging radically restricted. Rationing was brutal and more than one brawl broke out in the food lines. The sun strip was dimmed and the nights lengthened, a measure to preserve resources, it was said, but this succeeded only in spreading fear and inciting theft. “Crime,” a word buried in Coleomordax dictionaries as “archaic” and “chiefly historical,” was rediscovered, its meaning excavated, “hoarding” likewise experiencing a resurgence in the vernacular as fruit trees were illegally picked bare. At public forums, local leaders decried this sudden deviation from the Coleomordax ethos and proclaimed this wasn’t who they were. A growing number of Coleomordax disagreed, jeering, and took up the cry of those like Uhmera: the revanche approached. None were able, or willing, to say just what this meant, but a great imminence loomed in the consciousness of all, foreboding, indistinct, but menacingly familiar.
Amidst all of it, Wem’s daughter named herself, Apiena, and moved to the hatchlings’ crèche. This was earlier than was typical, but a male had been seen aboveground, out of the warrens, near LC3, and such cautions were accepted as prudence, rather than hysteria. When it was later revealed that the aboveground male was a hoax, few mothers had an appetite for pulling their sister-daughters from the safety of the crèches, and Wem was no exception.
She went to visit Apiena a final time, Iyna accompanying her, at the nursery in LC2. The transit had been accomplished and the Simulacra had shifted, Ôpteramatum now abutting a locality unknown to Arcalumis. Their true work was soon to begin. And, with Apiena now more distant, Wem’s biology had shifted as well, her feelings of protectiveness, and attachment, fading. That a deep connection between her and Apiena existed was undeniable, but it was the connection that existed between all Coleomordax—more sororal than maternal.
The crèche was an airy, bright building in the heart of LC2. Zoning required clear sight lines to the sun strip and the windows stretched up to the ceiling, thick beams of light falling across the padded floors. Sleeping cubbies of various sizes hung on the walls, some occupied as little ones napped, some hosting summits of grave import, hatchlings discussing the shifting alliances and uncertain loyalties within their number. In the corner were desks and a chalkboard, but a number of the hatchlings, like Apiena, were still too young for education to properly begin.
And, everywhere, all around them, was food. So much of it, prepared and available for the children; Wem’s stomach ached to see it sitting in cubbies, uneaten. She knew she would never take any for herself, but the thought presented itself unbidden, a vision playing out in her head. She shook it away.
Apiena was thrilled to see Wem and Iyna—for the first few moments of their arrival. And then they were forgotten, the dramas of childhood returned to, colloquies on toy distribution and favoritism among the older kids to be had.
Wem couldn’t bring herself to interrupt the play. She watched, her scent wistful, her antennae pressed together, as her daughter tumbled over her friends, argued, cried, made up, all in the span of minutes. That Wem was a parent was the most natural thing imaginable—and yet utterly absurd. A child had always seemed an unlikely possibility, and she’d certainly never expected to have one with wings, or quite so many limbs. And yet, there her sister-daughter was, head still too large for her thorax, wings too small to do anything but be tugged by teasing girls.
And, just as quickly, she would have a daughter no more. Wem was struck by the surreal finality of the moment; though Apiena would see her again, in a sense, unless Wem were to return to the Ôpteramatum locality, she would never again see Apiena.
It was the first time she’d ever had to leave a child behind. Perhaps one day she would grow used to the succession of bodies, of lives, that she passed through, would become inured to the potency of those relationships the Simulacrum engineered for her. It was hard to imagine such a thing, though. It was hard to imagine ever growing used to the desolation of this feeling. Iyna rubbed the base of her wings, offering what silent comfort she could.
From somewhere far off came the whirring of a siren, small and quiet but persistent. At its sound, every adult in the room looked up and exchanged glances, the young ones continuing their play. The crèche-minders spoke quickly to each other then spread out through the room, steering adults toward the exit. The oldest of the minders, the crèche-matron, in fact, came to Wem and Iyna and touched each softly on the shoulder.
“It’s time to go,” she said.
“I’d like to say goodbye.” Wem couldn’t look away from Apiena, who was wrestling clumsily with another of the girls.
“I’m afraid you cannot. You must leave now.”
“Please, this is—”
“Now,” the matron said, not unkindly, but firmly, and held up an arm toward the door. Wem wanted to fight, to argue, knew that some version of her would, but she could not. She walked to the door, compelled, the older woman following close behind. Outside, the matron closed the door and locked it; they were the last to leave.
“You’re not staying with them?” Wem said. “What if… if something happens?”
“It is wrong for us to be with them now. Do you not feel it?”
And Wem did. She understood the inappropriateness of the question, of the impulse.
“Go to your home,” the crèche-minder said. “They’ll be waiting for you after, safe and sound.”
Iyna spoke then, her voice abrupt but steady. “After what?”
Wem became aware of a stillness in the city, a claustrophobic anticipation in the air, the cause of which she couldn’t identify. A hot wind blew around them, bearing the smells of fire and fertilizer and trash left too long in the sun. And something else, as well, something unrecognizable, unnamable, like the perfume of an alien flower, the smell of memory, or forgetting.
“Go to your home,” the matron said again, but her gaze grew distant, the words rote. Her wings flicked once, twice, and her antennae shivered, then stood on end. “Do you hunger?” she said.
Iyna took Wem’s hand and pulled her down the stairs of the crèche, away from the minder and out into the street. They ran, wings speeding them on in bursts, heading to the cable car out of LC2 and back to their præsepe. The city felt curiously empty and they passed no one, saw no one. The siren had not stopped but no others had joined it. It reached them in muted form, splintered by LC2’s buildings so that its source was impossible to divine. All around were signs of lives discarded, bags fallen to the sidewalk, their contents spilled and forgotten, newspapers fluttering in the wind, doors swinging slowly open then closed, cafes, offices, shops empty, their occupants all vanished. Pocking the street were broken flowerpots and decorative urns, knocked from entryway plazas several stories up. They lay scattered like headstones placed by an erratic gravedigger, the pavement a desolate, deathless cemetery.
As they approached the cable car station a low, droning hum became audible, its pitch steady and penetrating. They reached a park, the funicular’s platform visible across the way, but a clump of Coleomordax blocked their path. They swayed gently to a silent melody, wings vibrating in irregular rhythm, the source of the hum.
“Do we—” Wem began.
“No. We go around.” Once more Iyna pulled Wem away, and they continued along the street, skirting the edge of the park. Down each block they passed, though, more and more Coleomordax were visible, their wings thrumming, their bodies pressed in tight. Neither Iyna nor Wem spoke—they only ran.
At the far end of the park a bridge rose up over the street, leading to the cable car’s dais. It was ornate, its railing intricate filigree and abstract representations of flowers, the whole bridge more ceremonial than functional. They alit upon it, skipping the stairs, and crossed to the station proper, passing over first the park’s entrance then the park itself.
Wem grabbed Iyna. “It’s spreading,” she said. “Look.”
From their vantage they could see down the wide boulevards leading to the park. Clumps of Coleomordax were trickling in, their movement orderly and unhurried, if uncoordinated. They walked as though in a daze, each step uncertain, yet always forward.
The funicular back across the ship had already departed, but Wem and Iyna flew after it and were able to reach it, out of breath. They stood for a moment on its viewing deck, a shallow platform that ran around its exterior. No one else was on the cable car, its machinery automatic, carrying them up and across the park, its topography at last revealed.
Below them was a swarm of Coleomordax, bodies upon bodies, writhing, an indescribable mass of glistening exoskeletons and scrabbling limbs. Ripples spread across the mass, pulsing waves, sets of wings flicking in turn, as though the stripes of some great beast rode across a shivering flank.
“What is it?” Wem said. “What are they doing?”
Iyna raised her antennae hopelessly. “I have no idea. How do you feel? Anything that makes you want to… join that. Whatever it is.”
“No. I… No. I just want to leave.”
They fell silent and watched. The grinding of the car’s gears was loud as it bore them up, the other side of the ship, and their home, still above them. Below, growing smaller, was the park, its entirety covered with a blanket of Coleomordax bodies, no longer distinguishable as individual forms but only a glinting sheen of brown movement, like the surface of a rancid pond, roiled by invisible forces. Wem couldn’t look away. Every part of her shook, and she held the railing, its metal rattling slightly with the force of her grip.
The higher they rose, though, the more ordinary the scene became, buildings intruding on their view and then blocking it altogether, the park vanished, only the cityscape remaining, with its graceful curves and crenellated high rises. And then it was a funicular ride like any other, the car creaking as it swayed gently, the shushing of the wind inviting calm. Iyna and Wem stood beside each other, LC2 pulling itself together the higher they rose, so that, before long, the entirety of its sprawl lay below them, roads like capillaries winding out into the green of the fields around it.
Wem spoke first. “Could we have traveled earlier? Instead of running?”
“I don’t know. Yes. Probably. This is all… You’re right, we should’ve traveled earlier. I’m sorry. I was just afraid. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“No, Iyna. No. Don’t. I didn’t think of it either. Not until now.”
“You go ahead and travel. It’s safe, we’re away. You go ahead.” She sat, breathing heavily. “I’ll follow.”
“Why? Why would you wait? Let’s go now.”
“My mechanism needs dirt to travel. As soon as we’re on the other side I’ll join you.”
Wem sat beside Iyna. “I’m not leaving without you. We’ll go together. I can wait.”
Iyna said nothing in response and they sat, the sounds of the funicular all around them.
Wem’s thoughts bucked beneath her, refusing to be ordered, refusing to be still. No part of her understood what was happening, not the Coleomordax, not the Arcalumis cartographer-priest, not the terrified young woman who had once been so excited to experience something new. Whatever they had seen, it was unknown to every aspect of herself. Conjured from the darkest reaches of her subconscious, possibilities presented themselves, explanations and rationales, inadequate but haunting, of what was happening and what could yet still happen. And draped over all of them, as oppressive as impulse, was her hunger.
Some days prior it had passed the shadowy border of appetite and entered the realm of need. Without warning, pains stabbed her, disrupting the little concentration she was able to marshal. It had an obliterating force, her hunger, a rapacious, tyrannical gravity that subordinated all to its dictates.
Wem sat still, trying to smooth her mind, trying to flatten the panic that warped her every instinct. Trying and failing.
The air grew hotter the higher they went, the cable car passing close to the sun strip. This far up, the shape of the colony ship’s interior was clear, its cylinder all around them. LC1 was visible in the shadows, far to the back of the ship, and LC3 stretched distantly along the lake, but beyond that all was indistinct with lilac haze; a far-off smudge of darkness could be LC4, or could simply be the limits of her eyes.
Wem wondered if it was the same elsewhere, if swarms of Coleomordax overran LC5 and LC6, if the ship’s furthest flung præsepes suffered from the same hunger that theirs did. It must be the same throughout the ship. It must be. To imagine otherwise would be to imagine the Coleomordax as something other than what they were. And however big the ship was, it wasn’t so large that such a thing could be kept secret.
But some small, insistent, human part of her whispered: no, they live in plenty. They live in ease. Perhaps it even wanted those far-off communities to experience a luxury that she was now denied. Picturing it, there was, within her, a perverse bloom of pleasure; the thought of the imagined abundance they enjoyed provided something like comfort and stirred in Wem a thrilling resentment.
Had her thoughts always run thus, as a human?
They reached the halfway point, gravity dissipating, each grabbing a railing as they switched orientation, moving to the seats that had been on the car’s ceiling. Young daredevils floated in the null zone, having leapt from previous cable cars, flapping their wings occasionally to ensure they drifted in the weightless space. If they were aware of what was happening below they gave no indication—there were only the whoops and laughter of youth as they called out to each other, taunting, joking, entreating. At some point, surely, the funicular would stop, and they would begin to wonder at the happenings down below. It was possible they’d be able to land safely, but it would be an act of incredible strength. Wem thought to call out to them, but what would she say? Better that they remain up in the sky. Better that they remain safe, away from what awaited them below. Away from the future.
And then they were past, the sounds gone, the air cooling, the land beneath growing larger. They approached EC2, its ecosystem of præsepes spreading out from it along the roads, their own little more than a blemish amid the rocks and cliffs of the community’s outskirts. They had been in the Ôpteramatum locality for barely a month, yet Wem had lived her whole life here, knew every hollow, every wizened tree, every sun-warmed spot one could hide in to drowse away a lazy afternoon.
Both were true—this was the nature of traveling. The lie, the impossibility, was in believing one or the other was the truer reality.
With each passing moment they drew closer to the ground, the abstraction of the landscape dissipating, transmuted into the recognizable contours of their home. There was the performance hall of Echo Community 2, there was its communal cafeteria, there was its High Street, its shops and town homes, there was its fountain.
All were empty, the same abrupt abandonment that characterized LC2 on display. But, from their vantage, visible too were the town’s inhabitants. Below them, by the cable car’s station, arrayed in a spiral, were Coleomordax, a larger crowd ringing them. They stood without moving, only a gentle swaying passing through the group.
Now Wem tugged Iyna to the back of the funicular. “We can fly,” she said. “There, look.” She pointed to a field some distance behind them, well away from the park. “We can make it if we go now.”
For long moments Iyna gazed at the clearing. After the heat above, the air felt cold, and the wind carried familiar smells: dust and baking rocks and sketl scrub. Wem could see the paths they’d walked together so many times, sinuous ribbons of well-packed dirt, borders between fields of grain and ancient scree. The machinery of the cable car chuntered on, relentless and implacable.
Iyna shivered, the motion starting in her legs and rising up through her body, wings shaking, forelimbs trembling, until even her antennae quivered on end.
“No,” she said at last. Her eyes were blank and she exhaled slowly, a long, grateful sigh. “No, there is work to do still.”
“What work? Iyna, what—”
“Come.” Iyna stepped out off the platform and fell, circling down to the spiral of Coleomordax below, wings fluttering in bursts.
“Iyna!” Wem’s voice was anguished and without thought she followed, leaping from the cable car, her own wings straining to control her descent.
She landed beside Iyna, who walked slowly toward the group. The same droning hum of LC2 filled the space between them, each set of wings but theirs rubbing against each other in tremulous bursts. The spiral was small, six and six Coleomordax, Uhmera among them, but four times that number stood arrayed around them, saying nothing, only watching.
“Iyna, we need to go.” Wem’s voice sounded loud to her ears but the others ignored her. Her stomach ached, a low, gnawing pain, and the vertigo of fear made her unsteady.
“Do you hunger?” Iyna said, and took her place at the spiral’s edge, her wings beginning to buzz. She looked at Wem with such profound tenderness that Wem had to look away.
“Iyna, no.” Wem didn’t know if she spoke aloud.
“Do you hunger?” Iyna said again, and, as Wem looked up, Iyna drew a forelimb’s claw down the center of her body, splitting her shell and exposing her insides, their glistening contents hanging still for a moment then spilling out as she fell. Each other Coleomordax in the spiral did the same, falling in turn.
“Eat of me,” Iyna said where she lay. “Be sated. Prosper.”
“No,” Wem said, and knelt. “No no no no.” She leaned forward and buried her face in Iyna’s body, jostling with those others beside her who fed, as she did, and there was only the sound of mandibles working, the crunch and slurp of flesh, and then there was quiet.
It was Jiseppa Jiseppafaut’s first time in an unmapped locality, and she was pleasantly surprised to find how natural it all felt. Yes, her insectoid carapace was somewhat out of the ordinary, but after the first few moments of disorientation she felt as though she had lived her whole life as a Coleomordax. Which, of course, she had—or at least this body, who she was, had.
They had arrived on the moon, amid the glorious cacophony of the home-hive, the indescribable teeming of bodies, the ceaseless hum and buzz of wings, the towering interlock of so many mega-nests, and, beneath it all, the pedal tone of the warrens, the rumbling of numberless invisible males swarming through tunnels that webbed across the moon entire. All worked in wonderful synchronization, industry and agriculture, art and commerce, marred only by the occasional doomsday prophet, demanding repentance for never-explained crimes, warning of vague, unspecified collapse unless the old ways were honored.
They hadn’t planned to stay long, only needing to mark it for ease of future traveling, but Camtis Whinarulí, the team’s tracker, had informed them, in foreboding tones, that they were not alone. She’d maintained straight-faced gravity for only a moment before breaking down in giggles.
“I’ve always wanted to say that,” she said. “Yeah, there’s another traveler in this locality. I wouldn’t have noticed except this universe is so… empty. None of the other Coleomordax seem to have traveler abilities. None except us. And our mystery traveler.”
“Where are they?” Jiseppa asked. “Can you tell?”
“I cannot. Somewhere far away, but beyond that… Truthfully, I can barely feel it at all. But, it’s in there,” Camtis’s forelimb clicked as she tapped her thorax, “a little tickle, and that means someone’s out there.”
“Then we find this traveler,” Greveh Keinseyf said, “and we speak with them.”
They all nodded, antennae bobbing in agreement. All save Lyndin Pyrthareyla, whose wings clacked together twice.
“Our work here is cartographic,” she said, “and you are a cartographer-priest. The Episcopacy is uninterested in lost travelers or ethnography. We must finish our mission and press on.”
“While I, as ever, appreciate the input of our assigned episcopal monitor,” Greveh said, “I am the research lead, and as such the ultimate decision rests with me. And I have decided that we will remain in this locality and find this traveler.”
Lyndin didn’t bother to hide her frustration, mandibles worked silently and forelimbs worrying against each other.
After a week of criss-crossing the moon, following Camtis’s sense impressions and the abstract intuition of her tracking abilities, they were no closer to finding the traveler. Further complicating things was the speed with which the traveler moved about, seeming to call to Camtis from one side of the moon, only to present themself on the opposite side when the team reached where Camtis directed them.
Lyndin had grown more pointed in her complaints and more explicit in her threats regarding the content of the report she was going to file to the Episcopacy. If this had any effect on Greveh, Jiseppa didn’t notice; it only seemed to make the research lead more placid and unperturbed, so that, by the end of the week, Greveh was in a state of near-catatonic calm.
It was Vik Treyla who offered the first plausible explanation for their inability to lock down the traveler’s location.
“What about up there?” she said, gesturing up into the sky with her mandibles toward the dot of the colony ship that had brought the Coleomordax to the moon some eighty-three years prior. And, with a collective shivering of antennae and rolling of eyes, they’d together said, “Of course!” and booked a spot on the once-daily shuttle that still ferried passengers out and back.
The journey through the near-abandoned colony ship had begun in high spirits, the mystery, more or less, having been solved. Camtis confirmed that their traveler was indeed on the colony ship, the itch within her pointing the direction clearly. Their jubilation was short-lived. The ship was poorly maintained, only its most critical systems still fully functional. The lone operational shuttle bay was in Local Community 1, and neither tram nor ferry still ran to Local Community 2, where they evidently needed to go. So they had walked along the lake, its surface buzzing with tiny insects no one kept in check any longer, unused cables dark stripes high overhead.
Hours later and they passed no one, saw no one, the only company the droning of bugs—their own wings itching to join the chorus—and the heat of the sun strip. Whatever lushness the colony ship had once enjoyed had long-since vanished, the green fields of history books replaced with jagged yellow grasses and dusty scrub running up the length of the ship.
“I’ve never been female before,” Vik Treyla said, breaking a silence that had lasted quite some time. She observed the matte sheen of her shell, fluttering into the air briefly to spin about. “Well, such as female is.”
“And?” Jiseppa asked. “How is it?”
“Leggy,” Vik said, and waved all of her limbs for comic effect.
“Har har.”
“The Simulacrum finds such distinctions trifling,” Lyndin Pyrthareyla said. “In the worship and elevation of them, blasphemy dwells.”
“I’m not sure we need to be bringing our own notions to bear here,” Jiseppa said.
“Heresy is not bound by the multiverse’s borders.” Lyndin’s voice was quiet but intense. “It must be expected, and confronted, in every body on every world in every locality.”
They walked on in silence, wings bearing them up briefly over rough terrain before fluttering back down onto the rocky path. Far overhead, a great wire spanned the diameter of the ship, and, behind that, an unbroken blue backdrop, was the lake, for they had crossed diagonally along the ship’s interior, close, now, to their destination.
“Does it actually matter if there’s another traveler here?” Vik said.
“You should’ve asked that a week ago,” Lyndin said. “When I did.” Her antennae trembled.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference how many of you asked it,” Greveh said. “Cartography is not merely about mapping the Simulacrum, but understanding it, and a single traveler in an entire locality demands understanding.”
“But what if this traveler is an anomaly?” Vik said. “Or a traveler god? They could be dangerous.”
Greveh dismissed the thought with a sweep of antennae. “Leave such concerns to Burel Hirders. We have a higher calling, and cannot live in our fears.”
“If we all die,” Vik said, “no one is going to understand this place any better.”
“We’ll find out what happens soon enough,” Camtis said. “They’re just ahead.”
A minute later, and around a small, rocky hillock, they reached the spot Camtis had indicated. And there, amid the sprawling emptiness of the razor grass, was a garden being tended by an ancient Coleomordax, her shell mottled with age. She moved slowly, one wing pocked when it flicked open, stooping only occasionally to pluck fruit from the stalks. A six-fold hive rose behind her, all but one of its cubbies unused for many years. She was alone.
“I greet you,” Greveh said. “May the sun warm your wings and the air bring to you all good things.”
At first she did not respond, and Greveh began to offer the long form of the ritual greeting, but the traveler waved this away with a twitch of her antennae.
“I greet you,” she said to Greveh, “and may the dew dry clean on your wings.”
“Grandmother, we wish to speak with you about—”
“Oh, stop that. The words fit poorly in your mouth.” Saying no more, she walked into the ground-level cubby of the præsepe. They looked uncertainly at each other, but Greveh followed, Jiseppa close behind.
The interior was cool and dry and Jiseppa’s wings shivered abruptly as she folded them into herself more tightly.
“You live alone,” Greveh said, which may have been a question, though Jiseppa couldn’t tell.
“Against the wishes of some, yes,” the old Coleomordax said. She was pouring water from a kettle into a pot, steeping sketl tea.
“You had a daughter?”
“I still do. And granddaughters beyond her.”
“Where are they?”
“On the surface. Where else?”
“I see. You don’t wish to join them?”
“And sons, too. Many, I’m sure. I never stopped laying.”
“Are there…” Jiseppa began. “Are there males still? On the ship? We passed a warren.”
“Now? There may be. Perhaps. Who’s to know?”
“You don’t wish to join your daughter?” Greveh asked again. “You would be well-honored.”
“And leave my home behind?”
Jiseppa looked around. The præsepe was mostly empty, with little furniture and no decoration. It was tidy but smelled, distantly, of fermentation and the ripeness of time.
“Grandmother—” Greveh began.
“I told you. Don’t. However long you’ve been here, it’s not been long enough.” She strained the tea—discarding the bark in a bin on the counter—and poured it into a chipped mug. “Come. I need the sun now, more and more.”
They stepped outside, walking past the garden and along a narrow path, encroached upon by shrubs and thorny bushes, to an outcropping. Two chairs sat beside each other, red cliffs rising behind them, the scabs of abandoned six-fold hives marking the stone. Before them, tumbling down into the valley, were more of the dusty, red rocks, baked by the sun-strip and radiating heat. And beyond, yellow-green fields, running all the way around the ship’s interior, all the way to the city overhead, a maze of construction now dark, mostly abandoned.
Vik, Camtis and Lyndin came up behind them but didn’t speak. Something about the scene tugged at Jiseppa, the view, the chairs, their orientation, their number. Her antennae stood on end and her wings shot out with shock.
“You’re Iyna Trendynseyf,” she said. “You’re the lost cartographer here. But… no, that’s not possible. You’d be—”
“I’d be much older than I already am.”
“Yes,” Jiseppa said. “Yes, you would.”
“I am not…” the older woman hesitated, seeming to struggle. “I am not her. I am the other one.” She was making herself very small, antennae coiled around each other. “I doubt very much whether my name has been recorded.”
“It has.” Lyndin spoke. “You’re Wem Tanseyf.” They all turned to Lyndin, but she said nothing more.
“Well. Once, perhaps.”
“Once?” Vik said. “You cannot stop being yourself…” Jiseppa elbowed her but Wem only laughed.
“I assure you, you very much can. It’s the simplest thing imaginable; you need only time. And I have had a great deal of that.” She sat, allowing her wings to spread out through the back of the chair. The membrane of one panel was papery and broken, the sight of it making something in Jiseppa ache.
“But…” Jiseppa began. “Why have you remained here? Why were you not pulled back? Were there no controls when you traveled? Now, we’re twice marked. After a year, we are summoned home.”
“I wondered myself. I expected it. Dreaded it. I was marked, as well, and lived every day in fear that the summoner on Cresque would recall and pull me home.” She shook her wings gently and settled back in the chair, taking a long, slow sip of the sketl tea. “Here I remain, though. I cannot explain it to you.”
“Caughtlip,” Greveh said. “Your summoner must have…” She trailed off. “Why not return home? Travel yourself? Arcalumis would have found you. What you know of this world, these carapaces? No one could possibly match it. You are an invaluable resource, would be, for all of us. For all of Arcalumis.”
“I can’t. What I did is only bearable within this universe. Within this body. Here I can accept it. Can forget it.”
“What happened?” Jiseppa asked without thinking. A look from Greveh made her regret it.
“Please do not try to make me recollect. It is… difficult for me.”
“I understand.” Jiseppa’s antennae lay flat against her head. “I did not seek to uncover painful memories.”
“No.” Wem clicked her mandibles, brushing aside the idea. “That is not it. It is a challenge to remember. It does not stay in the mind easily. It slips away.”
“It…?”
Her wings fluttered in resignation, their buzz a sigh. “The massacre. The sacrifice. The revanche. For weeks, sometimes months at a time, it is forgotten. For me. For those few of us remaining. Who lived it. What happened is accepted, but we move on. Because that is our design. We do not linger. If I were to leave, though… If I no longer had this body, its genetics, its chemistry, to shield me? I would lose my mind. No. I cannot leave. Will not.” The mug shook slightly in her forelimbs.
“But why do…” Jiseppa began, uncertain how to finish. “Why do we not know of this massacre? Why are we not taught it as moltlings?”
Wem’s mandibles chuttered. “What is there to teach? Nothing that could be learned. Nothing that… The old ways will return, the ancient and terrible—” She stopped abruptly and said no more.
***
Released: June 15th, 2024
Ben Murphy lives in North Carolina with his wife and a small menagerie. Full Bio