Monstrocity Page 15

  I get briefly sidetracked reading about an ancient book called Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an Italian friar, Francesco Colonna. Sounds like something Dove Books would have carried. It’s a weird, symbolic romance. The author was obsessed by architecture, and sex, and the subtitle is: The Strife of Love in a Dream. I like that; it makes me think of myself, and Saleet. There is a basic, a crucial two-number equation between man/woman as simple as yin/yang, but so many people defile it, not just the Kalians but my own people, and no wonder things are in constant chaos when people can’t even get that arithmetic right.

  As if this is a segue from one’s external environment to the inner landscape, I move from the outside to the inside. I read about the seven chakras, or nodal points of energy, said to reside within the human body. I read that we each have seven bodies: the etheric, the astral, the mental, the spiritual, the cosmic, and the nirvanic. A diagram of a man seated in the lotus position shows the position of these nodal points, following a column up through his center. And, da Vinci-like, geometric patterns surround the figure, are defined by his very form. A triangle is formed from the top of the head connecting with the two knees. Another, inverted triangle connects the shoulders with the groin. The concept of chakras is compared to the Tikkihotto concept of the inner “wheels” of energy housed in the body. One in the forehead, one in the throat, in the chest, the stomach, and in the genitals. These wheels of force mesh like gears with the clockwork of the universe; when the physical body dies, the forces of the universe keep these wheels of force turning, so that the spirit persists (a ghost in the machine?). From the body, back to the outer world again. The Golden Mean. Da Vinci used this mathematical concept of proportion, as did the Egyptians and Greeks to design their structures. The crucial, “irrational” number of 1.618 is at the heart of the Golden Mean. I read about the Golden Mean being seen in the ratio of growth patterns in living things, such as the formation of a sea shell’s spiral. It gets very dry from there, and starts to read like Wadoor and Skretuu’s mind-boggling spell books. Aperiodic tiling. Five-fold symmetry. Overlapping decagons. I skim over Fibonacci's sequence. Pythagoras’ constant. String theory and supersymmetry. My brain starts to feel like it’s unraveling and reknitting itself. I finish the dregs of my warm beer, am too absorbed to walk to the grimy yellow fridge to get a replacement.

  With my head thus full, I go back to looking at street maps and overviews of Punktown, both upper and lower levels. I find charts of its major sewer lines. At the site for the Paxton Transit Authority, I view the arteries and veins of the subway system. On one site, which focuses on the great earthquake of twenty some odd years ago, I view maps that illustrate the areas of damage, primarily to the subway and subterranean systems, but also to the upper levels.

  I find that at the epicenter of the destruction, a Tikkihotto church literally dropped into the subways below when the ground gave out beneath it.

  The temple, I read, was for a minor religious faction called the Church of the Burning Eye.

  I want to read more about this compelling development (a church sinking into the earth?...sounds almost Biblical), but finally I get up to use the bathroom, stretch my legs, back and especially my neck, tight and aching after leaning forward so intently into the screen for hours. Pacing in the kitchenette, I get myself a cold beer at last.

  Hey, I realize. The Tikkihotto don’t have eyes, burning or otherwise. Ocular filaments like tendrils instead. I hurry back to my seat, run a fresh search.

  The official page comes up for the Church of the Burning Eye. On their main page is their logo. It’s a five-pointed star, with an abstract eye at its center. The pupil of that eye is a column of fire.

  It’s the tattoo Jelena was given to ward off evil.

  I go into the page. Read a bit from the link called WHO WE ARE.

  Sounds very quackish, very cultish, very smiley and blissful. But something really stands out for me.

  They worship a pantheon of gods they call the Elders.

  I remember what Mr. Dove said about the Elder Gods, who defeated the Old Ones and imprisoned them in comas, before disappearing from our plane. Saleet described something similar in the nameless Shadow Gods. Is this a kind of archetypal concept that is bound to repeat itself in diverse cultures, or is there an actual connection here?

  Their church has since been rebuilt, but – oddly – in the city of Miniosis. They mention the earthquake but don’t suggest that there was any evil agency behind it.

  Still...

  A kind of cosmic revenge? I wonder. Does the ancient battle still rage?

  I remember that mysterious group I read about, the Children of the Elders, who hunted down and destroyed copies of the Necronomicon, but they were on Earth, were not (apparently) Tikkihottos. Coincidence? Believing that there is only coincidence at work in all of this is more of a stretch than accepting it all as truth. In my research, I read a quote from the philosopher Schopenhauer that said, “Everything is interrelated and mutually attuned.”

  Suddenly I want very badly to know if the ruins of the original Church of the Burning Eye remain underground, sealed up in one of the numerous tunnels that were abandoned after the terrible quake. Suddenly I want to go there and see for myself.

  But for now, I drink my beer, and absorb, and digest, and I feel myself changing, ever changing. Maybe it’s called enlightenment.

  ***

  I SPEND THIS morning casting spells to protect me from evil.

  They’re actually referred to as “formulae”, as the computer translates the language of the books Atlas of Chaos and The Veins of the Old Ones. One formula, from the first volume, is called “Doors upon doors”. It will block, redirect or reroute “the pathways of dangerous energies which might gain access through the dwelling’s primary entrance”. I use a bar of soap to draw: it needn’t be the blood of a sacrificed goat, infant or virgin. It doesn’t even need to be visible, as I interpret it – the patterns can be traced simply with a finger. But I like the idea of leaving some trace or residue which makes the pattern tangible, and since I don’t have an indelible marker, which would be the best thing to use on these glossy pale yellow tiles, I come up with the idea of leaving a thin, waxy scum of soap (after considering but dismissing toothpaste). I outline a large circle around my apartment’s door, and referring to the design on my computer’s screen, draw various intersecting lines across the closed door itself.

  I draw patterns in the corners of the room, following a recipe from the latter book, which cautions that the angles of corners can be utilized to open portals from one plane into another. In certain light, I can see the shiny snail-trails the soap has left.

  All the while, I reevaluate my epiphany of the night before. Yes, I might have let my imagination run too far with the ball, but I don’t think so. It feels too right. It goes beyond intuition into a realization, a knowledge that lies in my very molecules.

  And I keep thinking about the Church of the Burning Eye. I want to find out more about it. If there are allies out there so I’m not so alone, overwhelmed...so helpless despite my knowledge.

  But, as frivolous as it seems in comparison, I keep thinking of Saleet as well. The tension that seems to be eclipsing our attraction. Cosmic matters vying for my attention with bodily matters of the most primitive sort. No, but it isn’t just a sexual attraction. I am falling in love with her, no question; none of the ambiguity of emotion I felt with Gaby. I decide I must take some incentive here; I must make a move, before she decides I’m uninterested, not worth chasing any more. I can’t find her number so I have to look at my message log on my computer and trace her last call to me. This done, I leave her a recording telling her I want to see her tonight, tomorrow, whenever she’s free. She must check her messages during the day, because only two hours later I get a call from her. She’s at work, in some noisy office; I hear vidphones ringing, voices, laughter, someone crying. She’s in uniform, her thick hair sleeked back and clenched behind her head. She looks warily plea
sed.

  I smile and make my suggestion. She says, “Why don’t we wait until day after tomorrow; I have the day off. You want to see my apartment? You haven’t yet.”

  “It better be nice, after you criticized mine.”

  “Well, it’s humble. But I like it. I couldn’t afford it without Zoksa.” Zoksa is her Kalian room mate, who works as a hostess at a Kalian restaurant. “You can meet her. She and I can make dinner for you.”

  “Wow – wonderful.”

  So, it’s planned. That went well; her wariness faded pretty quickly. I’m glad I made the effort. I play back our exchange, and freeze a certain image of her that I like, making it into my computer’s desktop. Big smile white against her dark gray lips, eyes narrowed warmly. To think I used to find the black eyes of her people frightening.

  I see figures frozen in their bustle behind her. A Choom plainclothes officer with his white sleeves rolled up, walking across the office. A uniformed human officer sitting in another cubicle; photos and memos tacked up on its gray partitions that remind me of my own honeycomb cell of old. Wait. I touch keys, magnify the image, closing in on the photos tacked in that other cubicle. Yes, as I thought. Crime scene photos of Jelena Darloom...the same I saw on the net last night. An image of her decapitated head fills my computer screen, as if she is a jealous lover who wants to take Saleet’s place.

  Reopening Wadoor’s Atlas of Chaos on the screen, I peruse more formulae. I plan to stand on my one chair so as to draw a large warding symbol across my ceiling. I need to bury this room in a thicket of formulae, so that nothing can penetrate it or even find it, so that it exists beyond or behind the city which leans heavily outside its every wall. But I end up skimming around, reading longer passages in the book, and in so doing, I find this:

  “There was one night, when rain-filled winds slashed at my windows, and serpent tongues of light flickered beyond my drawn curtains, that I found myself seeing more deeply than ever before into the catacombs that are burrowed through the ether all around us, connecting this realm with those too numerous to fathom, this greater clarity seeming to coincide with the force of the storm, as if the lightning itself lit these tunnels. As I sat gazing into the complex formula chalked onto the slate propped before me, my consciousness flowed forward, down this corridor and that, narrow passages that seemed carved through walls of solid light, and rooms branched off from them. Some of these luminous white chambers were filled with thick swirling mists, and offered nothing to my mind’s eye, but in one of these rooms I found a small window or opening in the far wall. This window, when I approached it, gave me a view into a more conventional room in which a man slept at his desk directly in front of me, his head lowered with chin in hand, but I could see him clearly enough to note the unusual smallness of his mouth. I knew, without knowing, that I must awaken this man who was not a Choom, to warn him of a vast dark force I strongly sensed converging around him, that I must share with him the protective formulae I have learned, but when the man raised his head to listen to my words, I could see that he was both frightened and uncomprehending. And then mists rose up between us, and the man and indeed the window itself were gone.”

  After I read this, I sit blankly at my computer a long time, all but numb. But I do shudder briefly.

  ***

  SALEET’S PLACE IS nice, and so is Zoksa. She is a Sarikian, a Kalian tribe that primarily lives on a large island called Sarik Duul and which is much more moderate in its views than are the people Saleet finds her origins in. Zoksa tells me a bit about them. They wear red turbans rather than blue, and now I recall that I have indeed seen Kalians with red turbans in the past. Zoksa reveals that Saleet used to say she’d marry a Sarikian one day, because he’d more readily accept her. “But now, all I hear her talk about is you.” Zoksa smiles and Saleet gives her a warning look. I like Zoksa, and she’s very pretty, but no one is more lovely than Saleet.

  Their apartment is in a nicer part of subtown than mine – on the fringes of the Kalian neighborhood – but it isn’t a whole lot bigger than my flat, except that it has two individual bedrooms and is much cleaner. The walls aren’t tiled like mine, and are painted a nice terra cotta color, with metallic gold stenciling applied around the edge at ceiling level (Zoksa’s proud handiwork). There are tapestries, paintings, figurines that reflect their Kalian culture, but there is a bizarre co-mingling of funky plastic toys, fashion magazines, framed movie posters. Fragrant incense unfurls into the air, I sip tea such as was offered to me in the Kalian Reading Room, and tantalizing aromas drift from the kitchen partitioned off from the livingroom.

  When Zoksa goes into the kitchen to stir something or other, Saleet and I smile at each other. This afternoon she wears a too-small black t-shirt which bares much of her midriff, so smooth, subtly rounded; I’m not crazy about women with hard washboard stomachs – too masculine. The short sleeves bare her full, soft arms almost up to her shoulders. She wears a pair of black pants of a shiny silken material, low-slung on her hips, clinging tightly to her thighs. Her feet are bare, as she prefers (I think if she could wear bare feet in her forcer uniform she would).

  I drink her in, sip her like a wine, savoring a beauty that almost makes me panic; how can I possess this, hold onto this? I mustn’t let this go. Her hair, so black it’s almost a midnight blue, falls thickly down her back, parted in the middle to bare her forehead with its raised scars. Her nose is somewhat broad, her cheekbones strong though her face has that appealing layer of baby fat. She smiles so mysteriously at me, her full lips compressed together, like the haughty half-sneering pout of some exotic princess. The dark unbroken line of her brow dips slightly between her almond eyes, which seem to smile at me slyly out of their corners though without whites I can’t say for sure. Her breasts are heavy as they strain against her little girl’s shirt, seeming to aim at me, engorged. I’m feeling engorged myself. Swollen with something even more delirious than lust.

  I go across the colorfully carpeted floor to her. She’s still smiling that closed little smile which couldn’t be more subtle or more plain. I take her bare upper arms in my hands, kneading my thumbs across their pale gray flesh. She tilts her head back; I’m nearly a head taller than her. Her lips part just a fraction, with the tiniest of moist sounds. I bend my head down and our tongues trade places, slither across each other languorously, like mating things independent of us. Slowly my arms slide around her, encircle her, her breasts pressing up against my chest. I slide my right hand down to her lower back, where it’s deliciously bare under my palm. I want her with such an urgency, such a greedy hunger that I wish I could merge the atoms of my hand into the atoms of her back. I want us to swallow each other at our joined mouths. For our pounding hearts to rise up through our constraining ribs and blend and blur into one doubly-pounding organ. But it’s more than the animal call to mate, to propagate the species, more than the jungle drums of hormones. There is a weave through all things, I’ve learned, and we are woven together, I have no doubt of it. Our destinies are written in the ley lines, in the constellations, perhaps even as an afterthought in the dreaming brains of the Old Ones.

  I think I hear Zoksa come back into the room and I glance up, but she must have ducked back when she saw us locked in the center of the room.

  Gently Saleet disengages from me (maybe she heard her roommate, too). She whispers, her voice husky, “Zoksa is going to a movie with two friends after we eat. We can be alone then.”

  “Nothing against Zoksa,” I whisper back, “but I’m glad to hear that.”

  The food is a sensual overload all by itself; everything from our meal to the effects of the wine that accompanies it to the incense – the Kalian music playing in the background and the exotic surroundings – conspires to lift me into another, heightened state of consciousness. Another universe at the center of which, like an all-consuming black star, is my Saleet, still giving me those mysterious smiles across the table even as she chews.

  I love every dish except the glebbi, whic
h tastes like a llama-sized lizard. Saleet informs me that this specimen was one of those grown, butchered and packaged at her father’s company. I don’t imagine it would be any better had it been born and raised in the natural way (with those little extras like a head). After dinner we have a sugary kind of soup for dessert, along with some nonKalian espresso. As I blow on a spoonful of my hot soup Zoksa turns to Saleet and says something softly in Kalian. Saleet says something back and they both laugh.

  “Hey, now,” I scold them, “none of that stuff.” Looking at both of them at once, it finally hits me. Zoksa doesn’t have the “veins of Ugghiutu” on her face, the ritual scarring that Saleet has. “Zoksa,” I ask her, “what do the Sarikians worship? Don’t you believe in Ugghiutu?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says, “we believe in him, all right. But we don’t worship him. He’s isn’t both our god and our devil, to us, but just our devil. Ages ago, my people went out to the unoccupied island of Sarik Duul on great ships, and settled there to escape from the influence of Ugghiutu on the mainland. Our priests surrounded the entire coast of Sarik Duul with protective symbols they drew in the sand, and which are redrawn in the sand once a year, even today. We worship the Shadow Gods, who did battle with Ugghiutu and his brothers, and put him to sleep in chains of magic.”

  “I told him a bit about that,” Saleet says.

  I ask, “Well what more do you know about these Shadow Gods that Saleet’s people don’t know?”