Chapter 6 — Ziggurat

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~ 1 ~ Esther's car was a mangled wreck. Its appearance was particularly grotesque in the light of his flashlight, by which Het found a pair of Calipers hanging on the twisted driver's door. He had found no trace of Esther. He shouted her name a few more times, then carefully extracted the Calipers and placed them in the back of his old Malibu before nursing the car back along the muddy utility road.

It was after midnight when Het returned to the Turret, which was deserted. He was eerily alone; even Kane's security people were not to be seen. From the window he saw, by the scattered lights on the grounds, that a torrent of water was raging through the gully and threatening to overflow it. He recalled the Tuesday night, seemingly so long ago, when he and Victor and Esther had been discussing his new job in which he would be working for Dr. Kane. Victor had spoken with enthusiasm about the possibility of someday observing, from a window of Het’s new office in the Turret’s upper story, a surge of water overflowing the gully and threatening the building.

I have no time for your nature moments now, Victor. I'm going to see what this baby can do! Het had discerned that he was holding in his hands a pair of sophisticated, powerful, all-purpose Calipers. He thought that Esther must have stolen them, and had been evading him in order to keep them to herself. Was she wearing them in Earth’s Province? It was her ill storm and my good wind. But maybe she'll show up. Or maybe not. Feeling suddenly tired, Het decided to rest awhile on the sofa in Esther’s office. Maybe she’ll show up.

On the next morning, Het stuffed Esther’s Calipers into his gym bag and descended to Herbert's Workshop.

Gabrielle slipped in after him, finding him examining the Calipers.

“Het, dear…”

Thinking at first that the voice was Esther’s, he spun around. “…the Calipers in your hands are the woman’s part of an Agent Calipers fabricated by Herbert. The matching man’s pair is in this case on the rack here.”

Het opened the case with some wariness. He had seen Gabrielle becoming closer to Mortimer Kane in recent months, and she had come to symbolize for Het the things which he had tried not to notice and about which he wished not to think.

Gabrielle watched him lift out the new Calipers and set them on the bench next to those which he had found in the wreckage of Esther’s car. Seeing both pairs of Calipers with her own eyes, she recalled Herbert’s memory of their method of operation. She said, “Herbert explained to me how these work, Het,” and withdrew from the case a long cord-like object made of woven fibers. It was similar to the Soma segments which he and Esther had fabricated, but on a much smaller scale. “The two pairs of Calipers are, with this Joining Cord, the three Arms of one Device which Herbert calls Agent Calipers.”

“I know about Agent Calipers, Gabrielle. Herbert had me ask Scott to do some calculations of the scope of such a Device’s Niche. And Rhoda discussed them in our last lesson. She said Agent Calipers offer the promise of higher resolution, but they’re difficult to make and they’ve proven difficult to operate. Herbert made these?”

“That is what he told me, Het. He did not tell me the details. He said only that using them is like a man and a woman making love, having four arms and naturally working as one.” Smiling at Het, Gabrielle ran her fingers softly down his neck. Despite his wariness, Het felt her powerful sexual appeal.

He asked, “Where is Herbert, anyway?”

“Oh, he is tied up in an arms sale at Quinceañera Beach, doing some work for Marge Hemming. I suppose you know that she is an arms dealer.”

Het shrugged.

So, Dr. Kerrigan, you do not know that Herbert and Marge are dead. Esther would have told you. Esther did not use your help in preparing the Soma.

Gabrielle considered the fact of Het having found the woman’s Calipers somewhere. Well, whatever had happened, she must get Het and herself vested in the Agent Calipers immediately. She waited for Het to speak.

“Esther had these Calipers. I wonder why.”

“Did you not ask her, Het?”

“I found them in her car and helped myself. I was curious about them.”

“Herbert may have told her that they are especially good Calipers, without mentioning that they are part of an Agent Calipers. He keeps things very close, you know. So, you were curious about them?”

“Of course. I felt their virtue, so I came to the Workshop to try them out.”

“Let us try them out together, now that I am curious, too. I will use the woman’s Calipers, and you will use the man’s, so that each of us can do a resolution test. Then we can connect them with the Joining Cord to see if Herbert knows what he is doing.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Herbert told me that they work best next to one’s bare skin.” Gabrielle quickly removed her blouse and bra, and Het removed his shirt. The Calipers fastened in back, and Gabrielle helped Het to fasten his before donning hers.

Herbert had been ignorant of Rhoda’s full-body Agent Calipers; his Agent Calipers had neither their sophistication nor their high resolution. His Agent Calipers were the key part of the Soma in his recasting of its design; he had intended them to be the Soma’s head and fangs. They were framed on the master-slave model, whereas Rhoda’s Agent Calipers were framed on the complementary man-woman model.

Gabrielle had realized, while she had been showing the tubelike Joining Cord Device to Het, that the master controlled the Joining Cord. After fastening Het’s Calipers halter, she gripped his shoulders and turned him around to face her magnificent breasts, then quickly snapped the Joining Cord to his halter’s front cross-strap as he stared. In a rush of erotic fascination, he vanished from the Exscape of the Agent Calipers, to become its ballast.

After the vertigo of acclimating to the Calipers’ virtue had passed, Gabrielle felt the doubled keenness of the Calipers. Knowing fully now, the secrets of Herbert’s Design and fabrication of the Agent Calipers, she exited through the Back Gate of the Inner Sanctum. There in the Commons, she, as the Agent, would find the way to the Soma.

Het had lost the memory of his most recent experience. He walked into the Inner Sanctum, where a golden throne-like chair—a seat of power!—beckoned to him. After he had claimed it, he found that the many women’s hands of which it was made were caressingly but firmly holding him fast as it began to move. Powered by invisible carriers, his sedan chair passed swiftly out through the Back Gate. Uncomprehending, he felt himself speeding in the chair along a Footpath in the Commons. He was experiencing something similar to that of waking up in a hospital after a major surgical operation, hearing voices talking about him while being unable to follow their meaning. The motion suddenly ceased, and the hands pushed him out of the chair and onto his feet.

Before him lay the Grassy Steppes, about which he knew nothing. Gabrielle’s many invisible hands were gently but firmly pressing against his naked flesh, supporting him on all sides. He knew that he might stand there forever (Maybe he had been standing there always.) because the hands’ pleasant touch was his will, his support and his guidance. If they withdrew, he might collapse like jelly! The thought seemed so funny that he laughed—with the voice of a cackling raven.

~ 2 ~ Gabrielle’s many hands were turning his head for him so that he was looking all around, and he saw a giant ship poised on a ridge of land across a narrow grassy valley from him. I wonder if Victor would be interested in this place with all its tall grass. But there aren’t any trees, so probably not. And if I told him about it, I’d have to come clean about Esther, and that’s not his business. The hands held his head firmly with his eyes gazing at the ship, and he saw trees growing around the ship’s base in the place where waves would be if it were a real ship on the sea. Looking down to his feet, Het saw that he was naked; looking around, he saw that he was standing on a ridge approximately as high as the ridge upon which the ship was poised. He cackled again, thinking that he was thus at water level, and then his gaze followed the ridges down—to the Darkling Deeps. He found himself unable to determine the size of that body of water. Was it only a pond? Or was it vast? Struggling with his perception, he seemed to be living in an old movie—silent, except for the sound of his cackling laughter. He looked at the ship again and saw that it was now actually moving! Its stern had already slipped past the last tree when Het began walking along the ridge on which he had been standing and saw his surroundings becoming less dreamlike.

Keeping up with the ship, he looked ahead to see where his strides where taking him. I’m walking on that ship’s bow wave! This must be the goddamn Commons! The ship gathered speed, plunging down the slope, and he easily kept pace as the bow wave became higher.

The ship was being steered by a succession of the invisible hands of a queue of Denizens from the House of Women and the House of Men. Each Denizen briefly guided the ship through its essential dimensionality toward the moment in which he or she was anchored in Earth’s Province. And each such act was a step in the fabrication of Swinthila’s Spiral City, according to the Design and fabrication plan begun by Thiuderieks and completed by Rhoda. The Spiral City was taking the shape of a Ziggurat.

The wave lifted Het to the level of the top deck, where his cackling laugh at the absurdity of the “water” being grass-covered land broke again into his silent-film world. This time he heard faint answering cackles, so he looked ahead in the direction of the sound, and saw that the ship was sailing toward a real sea—not a pond.

When Het saw a single vast, low wave of dark water rising from that sea and flowing over the grassy land-water on which he and the ship were moving, a shock of fear told him that the ship would plunge under the surface of the sea! And the stench of those waters told him that they were the habitat of the horrible creature which he had seen coming at him from Esmeralda's mirror!

Fleeing back along the ridge of the bow wave lying smooth and straight before him, he saw that it became gradually smaller until it blended into the contours of the grassy steppes. The steppes ended at the wrought-iron fence surrounding Rhoda’s Workshop, but the land within the moat had lost its castle, and it stood empty like an old graveyard on a hill. The section of the fence through which the ship had passed remained open, and Het entered in through it. When the section closed itself behind him, he knew that he was then in a safe harbor, although he did not know where he was. He turned to watch the sinking ship, his hands holding the fence’s rail, and he saw that his hands were covered by the many caressing hands which had sustained him throughout his silent movie.

The wave rising from the sea crested over the ship, which plunged into it and was lost from sight as the wave fell back into the sea with its treasure. After he had watched the sea wave recede completely, Het was looking at the Darkling Deeps as Yohanna had first seen them. Unlike Yohanna, he was not guided by Rhoda giving him the names for the things which he was seeing in the Commons. And Het was a prisoner who did not yet know it.

Het held his freed hands before his face. Hadn’t he and Gabrielle put on the Agent Calipers? He was unable to hold the memory of her in his mind. Seeing nothing but a dull translucent light all around him, he began to rage, gripping the rail again to shake it in the vain protest of a prisoner—and at once he saw the Commons again. He released the rail, and the sight vanished. He gripped it again, and the same view appeared. Further experimentation revealed to him that only the section of fence which he had used as a gate was effective in this manner. He was turning his attention next to the Darkling Deeps, when a feeling of anticipation was brought to him by the Airs stirring around his prison window gate.

He heard a cacophony of innumerable angry voices—savage and derisive and full of accusations and counter-accusations—which was yet one voice. Its vague rhythm pleased him, reminding him in sound of Ernst Haeckel’s etchings of organisms, for which he envied Kane his collection. To this chorus, some vast thing began to stir. From the center of the Darkling Deeps it rose slowly and indistinctly, higher and higher, and Het discerned soon that it was completely covered in Death Eels, which he recognized by their similarity to the one which he had seen in Esmeralda's mirror. They clung to the huge object like remoras attached to a shark, and some were enormous. As the voices rose to a fevered, high-pitched screaming, the eels were cast back into the Darkling Deeps, their voices quelled by the cackling of the Biting Waves. Het laughed, his voice joining the frenzied chorus of Biting Waves.

At last the massive tower ceased its slow rising from the Darkling Deeps. It stood high above Het’s head, and he saw that the sea had become its moat. The tower with its reflection in the moat took on the pleasing indecent symmetry of Haeckel's engravings; it was glamorous and glorious. After Het had laughed again, gleefully, his cackle led the chorus declaring in chant the rising of the archetypical "Ziggurat, Ziggurat, Ziggurat,…" He knew that it was Makers’ work, and he felt that he had taken a hand in its making. The place for the Soma... The mining worm? Was he here to witness the triumph of his handiwork and his ideas?

~ 3 ~ Het turned toward the sound of human voices approaching from his right, and he saw, on the opposite side of a broad, deep gully, a troop of soldiers marching in loose formation. They were led by two large creatures, human in form, upon whom Het was unable to focus. For a moment they were hideous, with enormous claw-like hands and misshapen bodies patched together from body parts like Frankenstein’s monster. In the next moment, they appeared to be armored Greek gods. Their alternation of forms amused Het; he laughed and waved at them. The two creatures stopped marching and looked at him from across the gully. Then they waved and cackled back at him in unison.

Watching them resume their march toward the Ziggurat, which he knew now to be their destination, Het saw Gabrielle standing in their way, and her naked body riveted his attention. She looked across the separating ravine and smiled at him, looking more beautiful than ever with four arms! Lusting for her, he watched the Greek gods cast off their armor and strip down to their masculine nakedness before rushing as one into her four-armed embrace. While the three of them tumbled over and over, rolling down the grassy slope of the ravine in a cackling whirl of arms, legs, screams and groans of pleasure, Het shook his prison fence, desperate with desire to join in the orgy.

Liubagilds, Kinthila and Retimer peered down into the gully, and the armed temple guards crowded to the edge of the ridge to watch, too. Only to Het did the Left and Right Hands appear as Greek gods, and when one lifted his head for a moment, Het saw the face of Oscar, his father. Seeing that the other one was himself, Het fiercely rattled his gage in a cackling rage at being kept separate from himself.

The temple guards were expecting the Left and Right Hands to end the orgy by ripping apart the four-armed woman and eating the best parts. But Retimer and Liubagilds recognized Gabrielle; they knew that such would not be her fate.

While the orgy was being watched with great pleasure, a dark, gauzy halo was forming around the upper third of the Ziggurat, hovering at a distance from it. From the halo, a long cloud flowed slowly toward them, forming a canopy over the way to the Ziggurat. As its edge spread over Het’s graveyard prison and hovered over the orgy and its temple-guard audience, Het saw that the cloud was a mass of giant dragonflies with nearly one-foot wingspans, wheeling and darting as if the air were full of invisible insects upon which they were feeding. The dragonflies themselves were popping into sight out of the air surrounding Het, and vanishing back into it, the sound of their jaw-clicks commensurate with their size. He saw several flies pop out of thin air before one darting dragonfly, which snapped up one and vanished, along with the other flies. Some of the dragonflies suddenly darted at Het, snapping at his skin, and he swatted at them, but they were too quick. Then he saw that they were snapping at the fingers of the hands which sustained him! They tore out a hand by snapping at a finger. Then, suddenly, one backed off with the whole hand, as if it were a rubber glove, and both hand and dragonfly vanished into the air. Het vainly tried to snatch one dragonfly from the air, and he felt pricks of pain from the giant insect’s snaps at him. He saw, with relief, that other hands were quickly taking the places of plucked-away hands.

At last, as suddenly as they had come, Het’s assailants left him and joined a dense swarm which was diving down upon the orgy like water poured from a bucket. Cries of angry annoyance replaced the cackles of pleasure from the bottom of the ravine, and the Left and Right Hands loped up to the top of the ridge, batting off dragonflies. Liubagilds and Kinthila met the Hands at the ridge’s top as the dragonflies retreated up into the canopy which hovered about a dozen feet above their heads.

“I think this is the ditch into which Master Witteric told us to dispose of the Beacon,” said Liubagilds.

The Hands looked at each other; they shrugged and nodded.

“Kinthila, take it from your satchel and throw it down to the place that we have seen consecrated in the gully.”

Kinthila threw the Homing Beacon into the gully on the Footpath to the Netherworld. It was the Device which had been fabricated by Third Masen for Second Masen, according to Herbert Schooner’s plan for guiding the Commons Crawler. Witteric had given the Beacon Device to Liubagilds for disposal “in a gully in the Commons, because we have no need of Gesalec’s plan, now that he is dead". The Hands had said that a place near the Netherworld would be best for its disposal, because that would deter the Clan from making any use of the Commons Crawler.

After disposing of the Beacon, they watched the four-armed giantess Gabrielle climb up from the gully to Het’s cage. She leaned over the fence, and her upper arms picked him out of the cage. Her lower arms held him and slid him slowly down her body, while her upper arms rolled his head rhythmically between her enormous breasts. Her lower arms drew him close and he entered her, upon which his entire body was engulfed, all four arms pushing him in out of sight. The giantess bellowed a prolonged cackle of pleasure, then dropped down and sprang across the ravine like a jumping spider to join the others, trailing a swarm of dragonflies which dispersed as she landed. Gabrielle rose up on two feet, restored to her normal size and appearance, with only one pair of arms. She was naked, except for her arm-length, tightly-fitting red Calipers gloves.

“Retimer, escort us to the Ziggurat!” Gabrielle commanded, and stepped to one side. Retimer placed himself at the head of the two columns into which he had formed his guard, which marched slowly forward. Liubagilds fell in line among the last few guards, followed by the Left and Right Hands, and then Kinthila. Gabrielle brought up the rear of the procession between the last two guards, who eyed her nervously.

After a few paces, Gabrielle commanded, “Kinthila, fall back and walk abreast of us.” As Kinthila marched next to her, she said to him softly and confidentially, “Well, Froggy, I have put in a good word for you, and you have landed on your feet.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” Kinthila looked straight ahead, as a good Page should do under the circumstance of her nakedness.

“Look at me, Froggy. Otherwise you may suffer my embrace, like Dr. Kerrigan. Who can escape me now?”

The Left and Right Hands looked back at him and said in unison, “You are now our servant, in order that your dear brother can be promoted. So keep your skin away from Lady Gabrielle, but not your eyes.” While they cackled with laughter, Froggy was wishing that he were back in Quinceañera Beach tending crocodiles.

“Tell me now, Froggy: How did you get here? I was on my way to fetch you from your drudgery in Quinceañera Beach.”

Is my mind as naked to her as her body is to me? Kinthila shuddered, recalling the sight of her lovemaking with the Hands, and her threat to embrace him in the consuming manner in which she had embraced Dr. Kerrigan.

Gabrielle observed his shudder; she flashed her evil Bauda smile at him while he looked at her, preparing to answer. The smile grew cold, calculating and insect-like before transforming into the smile of the Gabrielle with whom he had conversed in the skiff.

Kinthila drew a deep breath. Froggy is dead. Thersa cannot protect him in this place! “Witteric gave directions to Liubagilds and the Hands for getting here, and he showed them where to begin our march. My brother and the Hands constantly debated over the way in which to go, and I understood little of what they said to one another, for the Commons is new (and terrible!) to me. One of the guards let go of the Commons Cord onto which we were all holding, and he vanished. We heard him for some time, however, crying out in torment. After a while we came to this rough road to that tower to which we are going now without need of the Cord.”

It was Gabrielle who was stunned now. “Witteric?”

“Liubagilds explained that Witteric used to assist Gesalec every century or so, with his ‘adjustments’ to Swinthila’s temple work. My brother thinks that Witteric was the Friend’s spy on Gesalec’s work, because Gesalec was directed not by the Friend, but by another god.”

Comrade, who, in truth, is Witteric?

“He is the Friend’s lackey, as your Page has told you.”

No more?

“What more could there be? Now, Gabrielle, you must go on to relieve our poor immobile Liege Lord surrounded by his loyal Circle. You will find the immobile Soma at the summit of the Ziggurat. You, who are its head and fangs, are awaited for your animation of the Soma according to Gesalec’s recasting of our Design.”

Hearing the Comrade’s odd expression, ‘our Design’, Gabrielle recalled a Strand of Herbert’s Living Memory of communicating with the Comrade, using the same finger ring Calling Beacon which she was using. The recalled communication was from the days when the Comrade and Thiuderieks were negotiating the plan for the Soma. Thiuderieks had agreed to fabricate it for the Friend, thinking that the Friend would use it for beneficial ends. Thiuderieks alone had drawn up the Design, without aid from the Comrade or from Gesalec, but Gesalec, as the Comrade’s Maker-advisor, had understood the Design well enough that the Friend was now vested in the Soma of Herbert’s recast Design.

As was necessary to the Design, the vestment occurred in Earth’s Province in the Chamber of Assembly. Gabrielle had learned, from the Strand of Herbert’s Living Memory, the ways in which she—vested in Herbert’s Agent Calipers—might complete his recast Design by becoming the Soma’s independent head. The Soma would be able, then, to enter Earth’s Province head-first. But to obtain free access to Earth’s Province, they must eliminate the Clan’s headship on their first encounter—which the recast Soma would be able to do because of Gesalec's cunning twist in the temporal order. If the headship were not eliminated at first, so that the Friend would fail to perform whatever work they might command, then the Soma would slide back into the Commons, not having the liberty of action in the world which the Friend desired. Obeying the Clan’s headship would give the Friend liberty only to obey again

Our design requires that the we fall upon the Clan’s headship at once upon entering Earth’s Province, Comrade.

“It is very well that you understand, Gabrielle, as it means that your senses will guide the Soma in concert with my Powers. You are our answer to the Clan’s ‘greenwood’ members, who often see their way better than do those of greater human experience.”

Do you admire the Clan, Comrade?

“I study my opponent closely. They are subtle, and not without allies among the gods.”

Did those allied gods offer you greenwood candidates for my place in the Soma? I have read Herbert to have slain Marge Hemming because he had decided that she was not to be his greenwood.

Hearing a buzz of voices, Gabrielle realized that many gods were pressing close to her.

The voices ceased, and the Comrade spoke: “That is a true insight! Indeed, to my Thanes it appears that Bauda could have served the purposes of the gods allied with the Clan, in the role which you now have. They appear to have allowed the Clan to kill Gesalec, not knowing that he had slain Bauda.”

Appear? Comrade, do gods not know?

“We know what we know, and what we do not know we must infer. That is the meaning of ‘appear’. Bauda was under the influence of Thersa, and if Bauda’s—Marge Hemming’s— rejuvenation were intended to make Bauda a candidate for the Soma’s head, then our first theory about Thersa and Thiuderieks is more likely the truth.”

Are you saying that Mortimer’s third god theory is correct, and Thersa is not the lover of Thiuderieks whom I have convinced him that she is?

“Not exactly. The third god theory is our second theory. Our first theory is that Thersa is the continuing personal presence of a god who is in league with the Powers of the Clan’s Workshops.”

Then, Thiuderieks would be…

“Yes. Thiuderieks may be, himself, the continuing personal presence of that Power who is, in this theory, the god who is the Liege of all of the Workshop Powers and gods.”

Comrade, during the continuing personal presence of a god to a human, is that god unknown to other gods?

“Yes. That is so now in the case of the Friend, who is unknown to other gods while he is completely occupied with the human quartet which you have delivered to us as the organic engine of the Soma. None of us gods can speak personally with him at this time, and he cannot speak with any other gods.”

I suppose that when I activate the Soma so that it can move under my guidance, he will be liberated—free to converse with his peers.

“Not immediately. He will speak to you, telling you what to do, but of course you are free to guide the Soma’s actions as you will, preventing any infraction of the Design by his willfulness when you enter Earth’s Province to decapitate the Clan.”

Gabrielle touched her Beacon Ring in order to conceal her mind from the Comrade while she was considering her situation: The Comrade had revealed to her that if she did not succeed in eliminating the Clan’s headship, the Circle could do nothing. Her mind stopped spinning as she grasped Herbert’s scheme: Herbert, after obtaining headship of the Clan by making use of a Masen rebellion, would have welcomed and taken command of the Soma’s operation. Keeping the Soma in Earth’s Province by his commands, he would have made the Friend his slave! Esther would have had her place in the Agent Calipers, with Het or Eugene as the ballast, and she herself would have been among the crowd gathered around the Soma, to be bound blindly to it by the Friend’s perfume. Instead, now Gabrielle herself had an indispensable place in the Circle of the Friend. But, who was the Head of the Clan, upon whom she must lead a lethal assault? How did the first theory of Thersa fit into the picture? What did the Liege Lord of the Workshop’s Powers want? How much more would she understand of the situation after she had assumed the role of head of the Soma?

Who heads the Clan?

“It appears that Rhoda Knox and her consort may be the Heads of the Clan. It was Rhoda who identified herself to the Friend when she, with the authority of the Clan, discourteously broke into a conversation which my Liege was opening up with Dr. Kerrigan. But we do not have certain knowledge of the identity of the Clan’s headship.”

Then how will I know who to kill?

“Once the Soma is activated, you will know the way to their door. It is in Herbert’s recast Design.”

What of your theories of Thersa’s place in this?

“Thersa is seeking reunion with Thiuderieks. The Circle has staked out the exact site of the reunion in Earth’s Province, and at the moment of their entering the time of Earth’s Province, we will destroy them both. The site is a small Clan outpost which we have recently captured by force. The deaths of Thersa and Thiuderieks will ‘liberate’ the Liege-god of the Workshops—the third god. I will negotiate with the liberated god.”

You will negotiate for the conditions in which the Clan’s Workshop system continues to exist?

“Yes. The things which the Makers can fabricate for us will adorn the throne of him who rules the world.”

Marching through the Grassy Steppes , Retimer’s band approached the Ziggurat, which was encircled by a ridge. Their way led through a smooth, narrow cut in the ridge, like a modern highway’s cut through a steep, rocky hillside. Because Retimer saw that the cut was a possible place for an ambush, he halted the march in order to consider the situation. Liubagilds and the Left and Right Hands marched up to him between the two stationary lines of soldiers, while Gabrielle remained in the rear. Page Kinthila, standing next to her and sensing death all around him, had begun to admire her body. He was thinking that the manner in which Dr. Kerrigan had been consumed by her might not be the worst way to die.

Beyond the cut, a long causeway ran straight across the Darkling Deeps toward the Ziggurat. It connected to a ramp spiraling around the square structure, all the way up to the summit toward which the structure gradually narrowed.

Rhoda and Yohanna had crossed on that causeway, sailing along in the Wheeled Dinghy while being tracked by Death Eels darting through the Biting Waves which assaulted both sides of the Dinghy. The Place from which the Ziggurat rose was the exact location of the Dinghy’s having been blown upward into the Netherworld by a geyser at the center of the Darkling Deeps.

In the compressed temporality of this lowest Province, the two women’s adventure was still partially present in its essential dimensions. The summit of the Ziggurat was anchored to the Place in the Plenum of the Netherworld in which Rhoda and Yohanna had plunged their heads into the waters from the Darkling Deeps, teeming with Death Eels, which were filling the dinghy. In that moment, Rhoda had inverted the battered Wheeled Dinghy into the Greased Lightning, the code for the inversion having been the catchy tune which Yohanna had heard Rhoda clicking with the oarlocks. Yohanna had recognized the tune as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and later understood that the code represented Mozart's whole work—known as "K. 265/300e"—not just the well-known lullaby. "Well, sister," Rhoda had said, "that dinghy was our baby cradle, in a manner of speaking, and I doubt that the Foe understands such things."

Retimer called two of his men forward and ordered them to scout out the passage through the cut and signal from the other side after determining that it was safe to proceed. The cut through which the two men were slowly advancing was anchored in the Pathway of the Great Maze made by Rhoda and Yohanna through the Horn Room and out through the Back Gate. Retimer watched his scouts, trying not to be distracted by the strange and foreboding feeling produced in him by the Commons.

The overhead cloud had grown denser as many swallows joined the darting dragonflies; they suddenly shot out of the cloud at the Left and Right Hands, who were now hovering close to Retimer. Swallows snapped off strands of the Hands’ dirty and disheveled orangey hair, while the Hands batted uselessly with their claws at the quick birds. Retimer, muttering curses, separated himself from the Hands by a few paces to avoid their flailing arms.

His two scouts, holding their weapons ready, stopped at the far side of the cut and looked around, their body language communicating no sense of danger to Retimer. Then a breeze blowing toward them ruffled the waters on both sides of the causeway. Retimer saw his distant scouts turn to face into it, then throw their arms up toward the Ziggurat, shouting incoherently. They dropped their weapons and raced side-by-side over the causeway toward the Ziggurat’s ramp.

Retimer was able to make no sense of their behavior until the breeze brought the Friend’s perfume upon them all, causing pandemonium. Every man was seized by lust for his lover—the Friend—and the soldiers thundered after the bellowing and panting Hands who were loping through the gap toward the causeway.

Gabrielle watched the last of the stragglers disappear behind the Ziggurat on the ramp rising in coils around it. She was insulated by the Agent Calipers from their mindless erotic frenzy, but she was enjoying the mood evoked in her by it, and the strength which she was drawing from it as she strode alone behind the others on the seemingly endless ramp circling toward the summit of the Ziggurat.

~ 4 ~ The worm-like Soma—composed of the many segments fabricated and joined together by Herbert, Het and Esther—had been lying coiled and motionless in the Chamber of Assembly, surrounded by all of the Shades sitting there silently in the dark. The unfortunate quartet of Oscar, Flavia, Alberto and Sylvia had touched the Soma then, and the Friend was at last vested in the Soma, becoming Personally Present to them as he drew them into it, making them the Soma’s organic engine.

Their wails of horror were quickly silenced as the four of them were absorbed into the Soma. In the dim light of the Chamber their clothing dissolved and their bodies separated into parts which mingled with the parts of each other, forming a chimera which was a wild beast lunging toward evading prey. The chimera then disassembled into parts which reassembled into a different chimera, fleeing from a predator which was unable to overtake it. This chimera then disassembled and reassembled into yet another new chimera, hungrily devouring carrion. This went on and on, and each of the quartet was aware of the series of anguished dark creatures which they became, and of each other’s dissolved nakedness. They felt, in each chimera, some aspects of the others’ bodies as their own, but they were unable to communicate with one other. Desperately trying to will himself or herself whole again, each felt able to make it happen, if only the others would clap their hands in unison, breaking the hideous, silent turmoil.

The Shades who were gathered around the Soma in the Chamber of Assembly saw the Soma remaining inert while the Chamber changed. In one wavering moment, the Chamber became a broad stone floor surrounded by chest-high crenelated walls and open above to a dull sky without sun or cloud. Far below them, a vast, dark sea surrounded the walls. In one corner of the enclosure was a gate, standing higher than the walls. In its essential dimensions the gate was the section of fence which had opened to the Netherworld at the prow of Rhoda’s ship-shaped Workshop. As the Friend had been vested, the Workshop had transformed into the Ziggurat, its foundation resting on the no-thing of the Cosmos.

Gabrielle had walked through the Back Gate with Het in his ballast state, in Herbert’s Agent Calipers, witnessing the transformation of the ship-shaped Workshop into the Ziggurat. She did not know that her sense of the commotion and of the perfume had been coming to her from the continuing transformation of the Chamber of Assembly into the summit of the Ziggurat. Behind her, as she entered the Commons, all of the tunnels and Chambers of the Keep which were used exclusively by the Circle, were changed again into solid rock in Earth’s Province.

Gabrielle found herself on the Grassy Steppes across from Het’s viewing prison. Het’s sight of the ship cruising through the Grassy Steppes into the Darkling Deeps had been—for the Shades in the Chamber—the wavering moment in which the Chamber had transformed into the summit of the Ziggurat. Now those Shades stood for a moment around the inert Soma in the Netherworld’s dull light, and the Friend’s perfume welled from between the Soma’s segments, producing an erotic frenzy of Shades flinging themselves at the flanks of the Soma, ripping off their clothes and tearing at each other to get closer to it.

Mortimer Kane was moved by a stronger impulse. He ran to the parapet next to the gate at the corner of the Ziggurat’s summit and peered over the edge, looking down on the encircling ramp rising up toward him from its broad base. He cried, “My Spiral City!” Then the gate next to him slammed open, and Kane was pinned against the wall by it as Retimer’s band of temple guards poured in. The Left and Right Hands, hearing their master’s cries of outrage, pulled the gate back for him to free himself and saw him dressed in his temple robe, clean and not splattered with blood. They lost interest in the Soma and began fondling Swinthila’s hands with their claws. Then they seized Retimer as he was about to pass through the gate’s opening, and hoisted him up to stand between them next to Swinthila while the other temple guards threw themselves into the melee of men and women tearing at each other to get at the inert, headless Soma, its long tail stretching nearly to the gate.

These four were standing in the gateway as Liubagilds came lumbering up the ramp, calling to them, “Make way, my Lords, for the Lady Gabrielle. She comes in great haste to give life to the Soma!”

When Gabrielle appeared, coming around the last turn of the ramp, they all quickly drew back to allow her—it—to pass. Gabrielle bounded like a giant spider upon her six arms, bellowing and screeching, and her lowest set of arms were Het’s. Her human legs were contorted under her body, holding Het’s arms in place while mucous poured over him, as she leaped onto the Soma’s tail and embraced it. Then she straddled the tail and began bouncing rhythmically along it, forcing off its frenzied devotees while basting the Soma’s segments with her liquid libation which transformed the Soma’s surface into a green skin of minute scales. Beneath the scaly skin, the green section began to undulate, and the cast-off Shades discovered its inviting, trembling surface. They leaped up and clung to it with passionate cries.

The Shades who were fighting each other on the metallic surface ahead of the spider-like creature, turned to see an increasingly hideous apparition: Fangs were growing on the spider’s face, and its clustered eyes were pulling to the sides of its head. From the center of each eye cluster emerged a thin, curving antenna which rapidly became a giant bullwhip lashing the revelers, who cast themselves away from the Soma and returned to the fray behind the relentlessly-approaching monster which was the six-armed Agent Calipers. The monster arrived at the inert terminating segment of the Soma, which appeared to be a tightly-closed mouth. The Agent Calipers reared up and its forearms pulled open the Soma’s mouth, into which it inserted itself rear-first.