woman, her face illuminated from within like a lantern. Skin white as ice, eyes silver and gray and green, her body lost in something that wrapped her like a map of golden rivers and green fields—limbs long, graceful, fingers tipped with gripping flowers, and between these flowers, letters, symbols, numbers, written in flame, always changing, casting glows on Tiadba’s face, writing with warm but not consuming fire.
The woman still seemed familiar, though they had never met.
Tiadba had already called her Mother . Mothers were a kind of parental—females who come before you and directly pass along their stories, which have recombined to make your own. Great chains of past experience—mistakes made in terror and joy, loss and triumph—all conveyed to the next experiments in the line of time: children.
Writing on and within the female, other partners—in some cases males, in others teams of male and female—sometimes just other females, sometimes sexual designations outside Tiadba’s experience—Shapers, adjuvescents, conscribers, genesens—created many delicate flavors of offspring. Once, even entire cities had submitted their stories to quicken a female, then gathered to celebrate the birth of a single child, raised up and cherished, then doubled, tripled, and sent out to other cities as magnificent gifts…
A city like the Kalpa: woman, mother.
Ashurs and Devas—different varieties of human—all had their own ways of becoming partners and mothers, more than could easily be counted. In all the possible ways found over a hundred trillion years, stories combined and were sent forth to be read by others, to shape new stories. Compared to Tiadba, the woman was tall—taller than anyone she had ever met in the Tiers, much taller even than Pahtun. And her shape was lovely, though challenging. But Tiadba was not frightened. Only I am allowed to remember. It is my punishment for trying to destroy the Typhon. Once, I was so much more.
This, then, was what remained of Ishanaxade—born of all stories. A dreaming vastness flowed out of her, into Tiadba, more than any book could carry—and yet still made of words. Child. You are my last. My father made it so—the circling bands that pass around and through. The end is here. Our lives echo, and I am lost.
Once, Nataraja had been beautiful—more graceful in its antiquities than any of Earth’s other cities, rich and lovely with its acceptance of the human past. Nataraja sat out the Mass Wars until the very end, welcoming all, trying to stay neutral, until the City Princes of the remaining cities—and most of all, the Kalpa—forced her to choose sides.
The Chaos was swallowing galaxies, worlds and stars—and still, humans fought humans. Nataraja, seeing the folly, had cut loose of the last alliances, accepting all who fled the noötics and the Eidolons—until the Kalpa drew in and concentrated its defenses, leaving the other six cities stranded. Five cities fell.
Nataraja—as if saved for last—faced the advancing front of the Chaos alone. Ishanaxade had been sent there just before the city was overcome. Those had been dreadful days, when all seemed lost, yet the citizens went about their lives—Devas, Menders, Shapers, Ashurs, and even a
few noötics of conscience.
The Librarian’s daughter had watched Nataraja and its people do what they could to defy the Typhon, that unknown quality—powerful, simple, perverse—which had transformed the rest of the cosmos. They had set up their own barricades and shields—had surrounded the city with all of its ancient texts, hastily engraved on stone, written in light and stored in the metric that underlay all energy and matter—scribed onto molecules and atoms and all other known varieties of matter—projected into the skies against the advancing membrane of misrule—all that remained of the libraries of a hundred trillion years of history. Not enough.
Memories changed. That was the first symptom of the
The woman still seemed familiar, though they had never met.
Tiadba had already called her Mother . Mothers were a kind of parental—females who come before you and directly pass along their stories, which have recombined to make your own. Great chains of past experience—mistakes made in terror and joy, loss and triumph—all conveyed to the next experiments in the line of time: children.
Writing on and within the female, other partners—in some cases males, in others teams of male and female—sometimes just other females, sometimes sexual designations outside Tiadba’s experience—Shapers, adjuvescents, conscribers, genesens—created many delicate flavors of offspring. Once, even entire cities had submitted their stories to quicken a female, then gathered to celebrate the birth of a single child, raised up and cherished, then doubled, tripled, and sent out to other cities as magnificent gifts…
A city like the Kalpa: woman, mother.
Ashurs and Devas—different varieties of human—all had their own ways of becoming partners and mothers, more than could easily be counted. In all the possible ways found over a hundred trillion years, stories combined and were sent forth to be read by others, to shape new stories. Compared to Tiadba, the woman was tall—taller than anyone she had ever met in the Tiers, much taller even than Pahtun. And her shape was lovely, though challenging. But Tiadba was not frightened. Only I am allowed to remember. It is my punishment for trying to destroy the Typhon. Once, I was so much more.
This, then, was what remained of Ishanaxade—born of all stories. A dreaming vastness flowed out of her, into Tiadba, more than any book could carry—and yet still made of words. Child. You are my last. My father made it so—the circling bands that pass around and through. The end is here. Our lives echo, and I am lost.
Once, Nataraja had been beautiful—more graceful in its antiquities than any of Earth’s other cities, rich and lovely with its acceptance of the human past. Nataraja sat out the Mass Wars until the very end, welcoming all, trying to stay neutral, until the City Princes of the remaining cities—and most of all, the Kalpa—forced her to choose sides.
The Chaos was swallowing galaxies, worlds and stars—and still, humans fought humans. Nataraja, seeing the folly, had cut loose of the last alliances, accepting all who fled the noötics and the Eidolons—until the Kalpa drew in and concentrated its defenses, leaving the other six cities stranded. Five cities fell.
Nataraja—as if saved for last—faced the advancing front of the Chaos alone. Ishanaxade had been sent there just before the city was overcome. Those had been dreadful days, when all seemed lost, yet the citizens went about their lives—Devas, Menders, Shapers, Ashurs, and even a
few noötics of conscience.
The Librarian’s daughter had watched Nataraja and its people do what they could to defy the Typhon, that unknown quality—powerful, simple, perverse—which had transformed the rest of the cosmos. They had set up their own barricades and shields—had surrounded the city with all of its ancient texts, hastily engraved on stone, written in light and stored in the metric that underlay all energy and matter—scribed onto molecules and atoms and all other known varieties of matter—projected into the skies against the advancing membrane of misrule—all that remained of the libraries of a hundred trillion years of history. Not enough.
Memories changed. That was the first symptom of the
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