Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

hip. She was dragged, flipped
over on her back. The sky above was dazzling bright.
    A face loomed, silhouetted. She saw a hairless scalp, no eyebrows
or lashes. The face itself was rounded, smoothed over, as if
unformed. But she had a strong impression of great age.
    ’This won’t hurt,’ she whispered, terrified. ’Close your
eyes.’
    The face loomed closer. ’Nothing here is real.’ The voice was
harsh, without inflection. A man? ’Not even the dust.’
    ’Reality dust,’ she murmured.
    ’Yes. Yes! It is reality dust. If you live, remember that.’
    The face receded, turning away.
    She tried to sit up. She pressed her hands into the loose dust,
crushing low, crumbling structures, like the tunnels of worms. She
glimpsed a flat horizon, a black, oily sea, forest-covered hills. She
was on a beach of silvery, dusty sand. The sky was a glowing dome.
The air was full of mist; she couldn’t see far in any direction, as
if she were trapped in a glowing bubble.
    Her companion was mid-sized, his body shapeless and sexless. He
was dressed in a coverall of a nondescript colour. He cast no shadow
in the bright diffuse light.
    She glanced down at herself. She was wearing a similar coverall.
She fingered its smooth fabric, baffled.
    The man was walking slowly, limping, as though exhausted. Walking
away, leaving her alone.
    ’Please,’ she said.
    Without stopping, he called back, ’If you stay there you’ll
die.’
    ’What’s your name?’
    ’Pharaoh. That is all the name I have left, at any rate.’
    She thought hard. Those sharp birth memories had fled, but
still… ’Callisto, My name is Callisto.’
    Pharaoh laughed. ’Of course it is.’
    Without warning, pain swamped her right hand. She snatched it to
her chest. The skin felt as if it had been drenched in acid.
    The sea had risen, she saw, and the black, lapping fluid had
covered her hand. Where the fluid had touched, the flesh was flaking
away, turning to chaotic dust, exposing sketchy bones that crumbled
and fell in thin slivers.
    She screamed. She had only been here a moment, and already such a
terrible thing had happened.
    Pharaoh limped back to her. ’Think beyond the pain.’
    ’I can’t - ’
    ’Think. There is no pain.’
    And, as he said it, she realised it was true. Her hand was gone,
her arm terminating in a smooth, rounded stump. But it didn’t hurt.
How could that be?
    ’What do you feel?’
    ’Diminished,’ she said.
    ’Good,’ he said. ’You’re learning. There is no pain here. Only
forgetting.’
    The black, sticky fluid was lapping near her legs. She scrambled
away. But when she tried to use her missing right hand she stumbled,
falling flat.
    Pharaoh locked his hand under her arm and hauled her to her feet.
The brief exertion seemed to exhaust him; his face smoothed further,
as if blurring. ’Go,’ he said.
    ’Where?’
    ’Away from the sea.’ And he pushed her, feebly, away from the
ocean.
    She looked that way doubtfully. The beach sloped upward sharply;
it would be a difficult climb. Above the beach there was what looked
like a forest, tall shapes like trees, a carpet of something like
grass. She saw people moving in the darkness between the trees. But
the forest was dense, a place of colourless, flat shadows, made grey
by the mist.
    She looked back. Pharaoh was standing where she had left him, a
pale, smoothed-over figure just a few paces from the lapping,
encroaching sea, already dimmed by the thick white mist.
    She called, ’Aren’t you coming?’
    ’Go.’
    ’I’m afraid.’
    ’Asgard. Help her.’
    Callisto turned.
    There was a woman, not far away, crawling over the beach. She
seemed to be plucking stray grass blades from the dust, cramming them
into her mouth. Her face was a mask of wrinkles, complex, textured -
a stark contrast to Pharaoh’s smoothed-over countenance. Querulous,
the woman snapped, ’Why should I?’
    ’Because I once helped you.’
    The woman got to her feet, growling.
    Callisto quailed from her. But Asgard took her good hand and began
to haul her up the beach.
    Callisto looked back once more. The oil-black sea lapped thickly
over a flat, empty beach. Pharaoh had gone.
     
    As they made their way to Hama’s assigned office, Nomi drew closer
to Hama’s side, keeping her weapons obvious.
    The narrow corridors of Conurbation 11729 were grievously damaged
by fire and weaponry - scars inflicted not by Qax, but by humans. In
some places there was even a smell of burning.
    And the corridors