The Cydonian Pyramid (9 page)

“They gobble our crops, yet I love them still,” Artur said. “They were once extinct, you know.”

“Those were Pigeons of the Prophet?”

“So say the Lambs. I call them by their old name: passenger pigeons.”

“They were returned to life by Father September.”

“So say the Lambs. But the Lambs did not build the diskos.” He grasped the reins and shook them. The cart moved forward. “And now, Harmony,” he said.

“Is that where the other Pure Girls are?”

“Yes.” They proceeded past the pigeon-gleaned millet fields and up over a long, low rise. “Do you see him?”

Lia looked where Artur was pointing and saw a dark shape standing out against a bright green slope.

A horse.

Artur put a pair of fingers to his lips and whistled. The horse raised its head, then trotted toward them. As it drew closer, Lia saw that it was a twin to the not-horse in front of the cart. The horse slowed as it approached, walking the last few steps slowly and nervously, all its attention on its illusory twin. As they were about to touch noses, Artur did something with the reins and the not-horse vanished. The real horse danced back and snorted.

Artur climbed down off the cart, reached into his coat pocket, and came out with a crab apple. The horse eyed the apple, sneezed, and took a few tentative steps toward him.

“Come, child. Gort says he would like to meet you.”

Lia climbed down. She had never seen a real horse close-up before, but she could tell even from several paces that
this
horse was no illusion. She felt the heat coming off his body. She smelled his horsey smell.

Gort stretched his neck toward Artur and took the crab apple delicately between his enormous teeth.

“I think he is more interested in meeting the apple,” Lia said as Gort crunched and swallowed the walnut-size fruit.

Artur winked at her, pulled another apple from his pocket, and tossed it to her. Gort swung his head in her direction. Lia offered him the apple.

“Let it rest in the flat of your palm, child. Unless you wish to feed Gort a finger as well.”

Lia did as Artur said, holding her arm out rigidly. Gort stepped toward her and lowered his huge head to her hand. His soft, bristly lips brushed her palm. The apple was gone.

Gort sneezed again, causing Lia to jump back. Artur laughed. “Best count your fingers, little one.”

“I do not
count,
” said Lia.

“Then how will you know if you are missing a finger?”

Lia examined her hand. She showed him her hand, spreading her fingers wide. “I am missing no fingers.”

Artur laughed again, even harder. Lia made a fist and scowled. Still chuckling, Artur set about coaxing Gort into a harness he had unpacked from a concealed compartment at the front of the cart. Lia marveled at the way Artur used softly spoken yet confident words and gentle but firm hands to control the beast. Within minutes, Gort and the cart were one. Artur climbed back into the driver’s seat and helped Lia up. Taking the reins in his hands, he made a loud kissing sound with his lips. Gort started forward; the cart jerked into motion.

The experience of being
pulled
by a horse was completely different from riding a cart propelled by digital magic. The horse slowed on the rises, sped up on the downgrades, and sometimes changed speed for no apparent reason. The slightly jerky motion of the cart was letting her know that she had already been sitting on that hard seat for a very long time. She could see how using the real Gort to travel all the way from the hospital would have been impractical.

The dirt road became a single lane with rutted tracks for the wheels and a grassy strip down the middle. On either side were cultivated fields. She recognized corn and wheat, but most of the crops were a mystery to her. The road dipped. They passed through a shallow swale, then climbed a gradual rise. A collection of buildings came into view as they crested the rise: a few hands of houses with peaked roofs, a row of long, low wooden barns with rounded metal roofs, and several silos.

“Harmony,” said Artur.

A man dressed in the same somber black and white as Artur was driving a team of horses from a barn toward a field to their right. A pair of women dressed in similar colors were hanging white sheets from a line. A man on a ladder was painting one of the houses. An older woman, bent over a row of bushes, filled a small basket with red berries. A young boy wearing shorts and a straw hat guided a small flock of sheep along the edge of the field to their left. Lia tried to catch the boy’s eye as they passed him, but he would not look at her.

“It is good to be home,” Artur said.

None of the Boggsians looked at them as they made their way through the settlement. They might as well have been invisible. Lia had the sudden thought that she was no more substantial than a not-horse. Had the not-horse known it was an illusion?

“Why doesn’t anybody look at us?” she asked.

“They think I am
meshugeh,
” said Artur.

“What is that?”

“Crazy.” He laughed, crazily.

T
HE LAST BUILDING IN
H
ARMONY WAS ANOTHER
metal-roofed barn, somewhat longer and wider than the others. Its roof was mottled and streaked with rust, its wooden sides were long overdue for a coat of paint, and it was surrounded by a fringe of ragged-looking weeds. It looked like the sort of barn that might belong to a madman.

Artur stopped the cart in a shady area along the side of the barn.

“We are here,” he said.

Lia regarded the barn suspiciously. “What is in there?”

“My life’s work.” Artur clambered down from the cart and held out his hand. “Your future, perhaps,
nu
?”

Lia looked from his broad, thick-fingered hand to the neglected barn, then back toward the rest of the settlement, feeling increasingly uneasy.

“You said there were Pure Girls here,” she said.

“I tell you only what is true.”

With a sense of foreboding tinged with hope, Lia took his hand and stepped down. She stood by as Artur unhitched Gort. The horse moved off, sniffing the weeds by the barn, then tossed his head and trotted off toward a nearby field.

“Always looking for food, that one,” Artur said, patting his own belly. “And you? Are you hungry?”

Lia shook her head. She was hungry, but she was more interested in meeting the other Pure Girls.

“
Goot.
We eat later.” He led her to the front of the building and pushed through the wide double doors. Lia followed him inside.

The cavernous interior of the building felt larger than it had looked from the outside. The first things she saw were several long tables and desks loaded with equipment. There was a video display, its screen crowded with unfamiliar symbols, along with several complicated-looking machines in various stages of assembly or disassembly. Cables and wires in a variety of garish colors were coiled and piled on tables and benches, snaking across the floor, hanging from the high ceiling, connecting everything to everything else. The floor looked as if it had never been swept — every square foot was littered with bits of wire, dust balls, metal shavings, and unidentifiable debris.

As her eyes adjusted, she noticed several clouds, or patches of mist, drifting in midair. They moved as if they were alive, but faded when she tried to look directly at them.

She saw no Pure Girls.

At various points during the day, Lia had been frightened, confused, dumbfounded, and despairing. Now she felt simply numb. How had she come to this strange, incomprehensible place with this strange, incomprehensible man? Artur gazed proudly over his cluttered, filthy domain, a little smile peeking through his beard.

“Where are the girls?” Lia asked.

“They are waiting,” he said.

She thought about Yar Song — what would
she
do? Probably kick Artur in the face and run. Lia did not think she could kick that high, but she could run. Artur seemed to sense the direction of her thoughts. He dropped a hand to her shoulder.

“Come, let us greet them.” He guided her toward the far end of the barn. It was darker — more tables and benches and machinery, more filth. The floating, misty things followed. He stopped in front of a large table with a glassy top.

“Look about and tell me what you see in the air,” he said.

Lia shook her head helplessly. One of the floating things settled directly before her. She could see it better when she looked slightly to the side and blurred her eyes. It was person-shaped, and it seemed to be looking at her.

“Ghosts,” she said.

Artur laughed and touched the edge of the table. Its top flashed and glowed. Several small icons appeared, hovering above its surface. It was a larger version of the entertainment table in the Palace of the Pure Girls. One of the clouds drifted across the table and coalesced into the image of a girl, wearing a simple silvery-gray shift.

“Hello, Lah Lia,” said the girl.

Lia felt her heart in her throat. She could not breathe.

“Lah Kim?” The girl looked exactly like Kim, the Pure Girl whose blood moon had preceded Lia’s, but the scarlet birthmark on her forehead was missing.

The girl laughed delightedly. “You remember me!”

Lia stepped forward and reached out to touch her. Her hand passed through Lah Kim’s arm, leaving behind a storm of pixels.

“That tickles,” said Lah Kim as her image reformed itself.

“You’re not real,” Lia said.

“I certainly
am
real!”

“You have no birthmark,” Lia said.

“I did not like it. I made it go away.”

Another misty form drifted over the table and swam into focus. A Pure Girl, but one Lia did not know.

“Hello, Lah Lia,” said the new girl. “I am Lah Glah.”

Lia looked at Artur. “They are like your horse,” she said.

“No,” Artur said. “Gort — the Gort you met in the city — was a recorded projection. These girls are as real as you or I.”

“They have no substance,” Lia said.

“They have transcended.”

“What are they?” she asked.

He was smiling as proudly as a father displaying his newborn child.

“I call them Klaatu.”

L
AH
K
IM AND
L
AH
G
LAH WERE JOINED OVER THE TABLE
by a grinning dark-haired boy in Boggsian garb. He introduced himself as Aaron.

“We’re going feather skipping,” he said to Lia. “Do you want to come?”

“What is feather skipping?” Lia asked.

“She’s still corporeal, Aaron!” said Lah Kim. “She can’t skip.”

“She could watch.”

“What fun is that?”

Another figure drifted into focus above the table — a woman with long reddish hair, wearing a polka-dot dress. She peered intently at Lia, then said something in a strange language.

Lia shook her head. The woman repeated what she had said. It sounded like
inglés,
but with a peculiar accent that made it impossible to understand.

“She wants to know if you are from Hope Well,” said Lah Kim.

“What is Hope Well?”

“We don’t know. She asks everybody the same question.”

The woman in the polka-dot dress floated off.

More Klaatu — all of them young — crowded into the space above the table, sometimes jostling the others aside to make room, sometimes overlapping so that they appeared to occupy the same space. Lia recognized a few more Pure Girls. There was also a Boggsian, and a young man in Medicant-style coveralls. They were all talking and laughing and saying things that made no sense.

“Corpus corpus!”

“Bubbee! Who is your bubbee?”

“Skip-skip? You want to skip?”

Lia looked at Artur. “Can you make them go away?”

Artur touched the edge of the table. The clear images faded, leaving only blobby patches of mist behind.

“They are being a little silly,” he said. “The Klaatu are yet quite young. They are excited that you will be joining them.”

“Join them? They aren’t even real.” The space above the table was crowded with ghosts. She could see their shapes more clearly now.

“The Klaatu are discorporeal, but they are quite real. As I told you, they have transcended the flesh.”