Cloud Country Read online

  “That’s the ‘place’ you’re talking about.”

  “Indeed. There is a being in particular who comes to mind, a member of the Gaespora. Her name is Tess. She is fond of humans, but shy. She lives in a dimensional estuary, a place on the margin of our world and another. It can be found only by those who can hear her song.”

  “Magic shit, eh?”

  “If you insist. As a Gaesporan, Tess would reveal herself to me, but with my connection severed I must find her song on my own. I need not explain the advantage.”

  “No, I get it. You can find this place with your psychic antenna, and if we ever make it there the Hathaways won’t be able to find us. It’s as good a plan as any.”

  “Correct. Any who could find Tess could only be allies. Then we are decided?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Saru swung her hand over for John to shake, and he did so, gripping tight.

  “I guess this makes us partners,” John said, grinning. The idea seemed to thrill him.

  “Partners,” Saru said, trying her best to keep the cynicism out of her voice. Whatever you want, buddy.

  Saru dove into the minibar, and, after a quick rummage, emerged with a bottle of forty-thousand-dollar Sin champagne. Her hands worked the cork, and it let out the slightest, softest, most refined, aristocratic pop she’d ever heard.

  “To options!” she declared, and guzzled. She handed the bottle to John.

  “Options!” he proclaimed. He took his own guzzle, which ended in a grimace, and handed the bottle back.

  Saru drank and then unleashed a tremendous burp. Then she drank some more. Through the blur of her vision, she studied John. His hair had grown tousled. His cheeks were flushed. There was sweat on his brow. He was smiling like an idiot and blowing through pursed lips in a futile attempt at whistling. A random note sprang free, and his eyes flashed wide and then quizzical; it looked like he was trying to stare down the runway of his own nose. Then he was at it again, laughing and smiling as if they actually had a prayer.

  4. Ben?

  They flew, Saru drank. There were nuts in the minibar, and not just peanuts—honeyed cashews and things that looked like little brains. There was fruit too, dried apples and bananas, and pineapples and “figs” that looked like candy testicles. There was plenty of booze and then bottles to pee in, so all in all the flight was pleasant. From time to time Saru changed the bandage on her thigh, sucking breaths and spitting fucks as she doused the wound in vodka and staunched the yolky pus with silk cocktail napkins. John’s feet had healed, not even a scar. The black smog below remained unbroken, and the sun strolled across the sky.

  John kept his eyes closed, but his fingers played deftly across the controls, and the plane flew levelly—if anything, better than it had when he was awake and manic. Saru explored the plane’s entertainment options and found the expected luxury—hallucinogenic music players, virtual-kingdom libraries, adaptive gonad stimulators, and AI pornography—but they felt too indulgent for her current status as fugitive. She fiddled with the radio dial, looking for some distracting garbage, but all of the radio stations played the Hathaway warning message, and even when she switched the radio off, the message was engraved in her memory. Her mind wandered back to the scenes of her city aflame, the bodies running from the conflagration, dropping to the pavement and twitching still. The Hathaway message played over the scene like a narration, shedding words until terrorist, terrorist, terrorist repeated like a mantra. Saru grit her teeth, and tried to think of anything else.

  John’s eyes opened and he grinned.

  “I hear something,” he said.

  He tipped the controls forward and they plunged below the smog. They were over an ocean, or maybe it was the ocean—but at least the water went in every direction without land. John craned his neck in search of who knew what. The water was still and dead, an oily rainbow of gasoline and clown-puke algae, reds and blues and greens all hideous. An archipelago of trash piled up amidst the puke, mounds of tires and bottles and oil drums and shoes and diapers and condoms—all the shed skin of a city cast off and moved out of sight and mind.

  John flew lower still, and swung around an oil platform that poked between the islands of trash. Saru gasped. What she had taken for castaway pipeline resolved itself with the nearness into a nest of gigantic tentacles. Now that she knew what to look for, she spied other alien body parts spread throughout the trash—rings of hooked teeth, processions of helical fins, throbbing bulbs, gnashing suckers and sphincters, and whirlpools that frothed with mysterious life.

  “What the fuck is that?” Saru asked.

  “That,” John said, “is Ben.”

  “Ben?”

  “Benthalias in Glish. Ben for short.”

  “Christ,” Saru breathed. “What’s it doing here?”

  Saru could feel the tingle of her sixth sense, that magical feeling of the aliens and Gods. She sensed the creature was aware of them in the plane, calm, yet wary, and she felt the subtle stirring of the tentacles beneath the surface, like a pigeon protecting its nest.

  “Ben is a part of the Gaespora,” John said.

  “That?” Saru said, with disgust. “You’re connected to that?”

  “I was,” John said. “Ben is a part of the shared consciousness. He is no longer a part of my awareness, but I can hear his voice if I try.”

  “He?”

  “The sex is an analog.” John shrugged. “There are others like Ben with different sexual organs. Though not a dichotomous relationship, ‘he’ is most appropriate.”

  “If you say so. Please tell me this isn’t the place you’re thinking of.”

  “No,” John said, distractedly. “But Ben may know where Tess can be found.”

  They flew lower—too low, Saru thought—and she saw more and greater tentacles, thick as subway lines, a network of monstrous ocean roots. Pale eyes as large as stadiums stared up at her from just below the puky ocean surface.

  “Is that…is that one of your Gods?”

  “In a way,” John said. “Ben is the memory of a God.”

  “Looks real to me.”

  “Ben is real. The universe that spawned him is long dead, destroyed and eaten by the UausuaU.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “The word ‘Gaespora’ is a portmanteau. A composition of the words ‘Gaea’ and ‘diaspora.’ The worshippers of the Slow God—the hips—call our Gods the Sad Gods, but it would be more accurate to call them the Dead Gods.”

  “Lovely.”

  “It is,” John said, missing her sarcasm. His tone was reverent, almost loving. “The Gaespora are an alliance of refugees, the survivors of the UausuaU. They share their experiences and what sanctuary their worlds can offer. It is the greatest act of cooperation that ever was and will be.”

  “How did that thing get here?” Saru asked. The creature—“Ben”—was making her uncomfortable. She sensed a familiarity, like there was a vague acquaintanceship between a scrap of her being and a snag of the sea creature. It was drunken, daydream wander-thought, but the idea that the alien below could somehow sense her presence and know her filled Saru with dread.

  “How did no one notice a thing like that coming here? I think it would’ve popped up on a feed or two.”

  “Ben didn’t come here,” John said. “A universe is not a place.”

  “What do you mean it’s not a ‘place’? Of course it is. We’re here. We take up space. So we’re in a place.”

  “Our universe has space. Our universe has place. That may not be so for others.”

  “Then how does anything live there if they don’t have any space? How is Ben even here if he came from a place without space?”

  It felt like they were talking in children’s-book rhymes.

  “Ben is a chimera,” John explained. “He is a child of our universe and another. He is made of the components of our universe, but his growth is guided by foreign intent. A universe is at its core a rule set. Universes cannot exchange
physical objects; the physics of each universe are different. The margin of similarity is the overlap between the rules of one universe and another. The only way a universe can interact with another is by sharing information—its thoughts, if you will. Each universe broadcasts its thoughts, which ripple out across the universal plane. When the thoughts strike a similar rule set, they can exert influence. If the margin of similarity is large enough, a chimera like Ben can grow and live in the host universe. Chimeras are how universes interact, how they war, how they trade, how they have sex, and how new universes are born. Ben is here by invitation, two universes willingly commingling.”

  “Sex? Our universe is having sex?”

  “Sex is an exchange of information. It is common between universes, and essential to the survival of the Gaespora. Universes beset by the UausuaU open themselves to one another, allowing chimera to grow within each other. When a mother universe is devoured, the information survives in the children. The Earth is full of chimera such as Ben, as are all other suitable environments in our universe. This free exchange of information forms a counterbalance to the forced assimilation of the UausuaU. It makes our resistance possible.”

  “But…does that mean there are humans in other universes?”

  “Not humans. Chimeras. The information from our planet may exist in other places within the Gaesporan collective, but the form of life it will take will be different from what we know.”

  John closed his eyes. He kept his hand lightly on the control column, and snuggled into a pose of relaxation. He brought the plane lower, so low they practically skimmed the surface of the ocean.

  Saru studied the creature below. Hi, you big bastard, how’s it going? Happy, living rent-free in my ocean? I guess this means we’re related somehow? Ben didn’t seem to share her amusement. He just stared at her with his huge eyes. She felt that this was no illusion, that the eyes below did in fact look upon her, and her specifically. She looked away, but the sense that Ben was watching her remained.

  John was still meditating or whatever. Saru watched the rise and fall of his chest, wondering what he was trying to accomplish. After a few moments of observation, she began to notice the regular pacing of his blood through his veins, the whole of his system orchestrated into a pattern beyond the maintenance of the self. His calm spread out from his body and engulfed her. Her thoughts settled, one by one, and all in an instant. Her body noises quieted—the need of breath, the tickle of skin, the urge of her sex, and the obnoxious demands of her bowels. The neural labyrinth of her gray matter straightened and smoothed so that each thought made sense and was not at all confusing or frightening or entangled with another thought. Within the silence of the self she heard Ben’s voice speaking to her. It was hate. Pure hate. And fear. The creature as large as a city was afraid of her, the puny human. It was terrified.

  Saru’s thoughts tumbled back into the apeshit clutter of humanity. She found herself inside a bag of skin and bones and crunchy inputs and dribbling leakage, and the roar of her own body at work drowned out Ben’s hateful voice.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  John opened his eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I just…never mind. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Soon,” John said.

  “Could you at least fly a little higher?” she asked.

  John assented with a nod, and they leapt above the touch of the waves. Saru realized she’d been holding her breath, and let it out in a sigh of relief.

  “How do you hide a thing like Ben?” she asked.

  “There have been incidents,” John said. “But they are rare. Humans are penned within their cities. Their minds are slaved to the feeds. The few who have the means to stumble across a creature like Ben are the scions. They seldom stray from the playgrounds of luxury they have built for themselves.”

  “No doubt that’s your doing.”

  “It is a charge of the Gaespora,” John said. “A better question is why we must hide Ben and beings like him.”

  “I can think of a few reasons,” Saru said.

  “Ben is harmless,” John said. “It is mutually beneficial for him to be here. Our oceans are dead. The heat and acidity and radiation that killed them forms a perfect habitat for Ben. Ben lives in our oceans, and in turn he helps protect us from the UausuaU.”

  “Ben fights the Uau?” Saru said. She squirmed, feeling the hatred of the creature again, the memory of the hate still enough to make her skin crawl.

  “In a way. Ben adds biodiversity to Earth’s depleted ecosystem. A robust ecosystem is a natural defense against the UausuaU.”

  “You’re talking biology now? You said the margin had to do with physics.”

  “Chemistry and biology are outgrowths of physics. The physical similarity in the rule set creates similarity in the biology between two universes. It is the biology of a universe that broadcasts the information, and the biology that receives that information. The Gaespora accept the information of their allies, and allow it to seed and grow. They fight the information projected by the UausuaU. This information is malicious; it repurposes the biology of the target universe.

  “In our universe, some planets develop with no life tainted by the UausuaU, the malicious information finding nothing to exploit. Other planets have many species that are corrupted. A healthy ecosystem has countermeasures. A virus becomes an exploit of the UausuaU, but it is contained by the virophages of the ecosystem. A neuron becomes an exploit and is contained by the immune system of the host; or, the host is killed before it reproduces and spreads the corruption. An entire species becomes an exploit and spreads throughout the ecosystem, but is contained by diseases and predators that naturally reduce overpopulation. Across our universe is waged this constant battle. The UausuaU seeks biology to exploit, and the biology of our universe fights back. From amoebas to empires, swords to starships, puddles to galaxies.”

  “‘No fight is too small’ could be your motto.”

  “You jest but speak truth. A human lifetime is short, and thus our temporal myopia. A small corruption on the scale of a thousand human lives can evolve into catastrophe. Once a corrupted ecosystem develops to a technological level beyond that of the host life, it is nearly impossible to arrest the corruption.”

  “And the other Gods? The living ones? The Blue God and the Slow God? Where do they come in?”

  “The Gaespora neither welcome them nor fight their presence. The Gaespora allow their chimeras to grow and claim what biology they must. The Gaespora spare them molestation whenever possible.”

  “Of course you do. You want them to do your fighting for you.”

  “The Blue God and the Slow God are ancient and powerful beings. They share a common enemy. Gains they make against the UausuaU benefit the Gaespora.”

  “But they don’t want to join your club?”

  John fell quiet, distracted again, only now Saru guessed this was the distraction of introspection. She welcomed it. Her own head was spinning with his words, memories of her recent actions flashing by, arranging themselves in a narrative based on what she now knew. She read between the lines of what John had said, matching his generalities with her own experiences in Philadelphia, with the feasters who seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, with the elzi somehow connected to the Uau, with Friar who had transformed from friend to foe, and the monsters built of human flesh. It was clear John’s candidness had hit a roadblock. He was keeping something from her, intimating something he didn’t dare to say aloud.

  “The margin of similarity isn’t one set thing,” Saru said, half to herself. “There’s not one margin. It’s in everything—everything has a margin. It’s a question of scale. In a cell the margin is chemicals and molecules and shit. And in a person it’s their cells and their DNA. And if you scale it up further, to the whole planet, then it’s the animals on the planet that make up the planet’s margin. And there aren’t any animals on Earth except for rats and cockroaches and us.”


  The revelation struck Saru like a blow.

  “It’s us,” she said, softly. “We are a margin. Our bodies. Our cities. We’re the fucking margin. The Uau is using humans to take over the fucking Earth. That bastard, that bastard ElilE—he knew there was a goddamn monster living under the city, he had to know!”

  Saru thought of the pit of writhing bodies under Philadelphia, the cathedral of living flesh, and the centipedes with human torsos for heads. It was a chimera, a bastard hybrid of her universe and the UausuaU. Okay, she could buy that, the damn thing was bizarre enough—but what was the chimera doing there? Right under Philadelphia. Why wasn’t it five hundred miles away, somewhere secret? Why have your chimera in the most likely place you could ever be discovered? She had been going about it the wrong way, thinking the Uau needed to hide from humans. But no. Humans were their nectar, the petri dish in which they grew. Of course ElilE had known the Uau chimera was there. Saru had given him the benefit of the doubt—maybe he really was stupid enough to not have a clue. But again she had been approaching the whole problem backwards. She had assumed ElilE was trying to protect humans from the aliens, but it was just the opposite!

  “Your job,” Saru said. “The Gaespora. Your job isn’t to protect humans. It’s to protect the Earth from humans. To protect your friend Ben here from us.”

  And she understood the hate of the chimera beaming up at her from below, and the fear, not of her, but of what she could become if she succumbed to the lure of the Uau.

  “The creature of human flesh you described could only have been a holodomor,” John said. “A chimera of the UausuaU. Your reasoning strikes truth. Human civilization is shifting Earth’s margin towards the UausuaU. Humans are a biological exploit. The Gaespora fight to arrest this corruption.”

  “Holy shit!” Saru said. Her heart was racing. Her fists clenched and unclenched. The veins on her wrists popped taut. And on the heels of that first revelation came another:

  “The thing that looked like a giant chandelier, the thing that shot a laser at the holla, hollow—”