| THE LORELEI SIGNAL |
.
| Written by Anna Sykora/ Artwork by Marge Simon |
| Servants of the Pyramid |
The girl in the pale kimono stepped through the dim racks
of the Third Archive, which hummed and rustled with
disembodied voices, as it always did. Dipping her head to
the gaunt woman seated at a tablet in the racks, she
handed her a broken pod without a word.
Black-robed Hana examined the pod, whose loose
connectors hung like intestines from its fractured shell.
The damage looked total.
“How could this happen, Sumi? You’ve practiced replication
a thousand times.”
The girl toyed with the ends of the belt encircling her
slender waist, her new belt. “My hand slipped,
Foremother.” Coiled in a braid, Sumi’s sleek black hair set
off her fine, symmetrical features. Her uniform looked
immaculate, but her almond eyes glittered insolently.
“I’ve warned you to concentrate,” the Foremother, whose
black hair showed stray threads of grey, said. “We cannot
afford another loss; the Pyramid depends upon us.”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut. “Foremother, it’s so stuffy
in here, and Byz says a storm is rising. Can’t we leave
early and take a walk by the sea?”
Hana scowled. “Child, you fail to grasp the consequences
of your sloppy work. This pod held our only copy of the
Crash of two thousand and eight. How shall the future
know what to do, if this precious history is missing?”
“Ancient stuff.” Sumi raised her chin. “Besides, there’s
probably nobody left on the Mainland.”
“Blasphemy!” As Hana reached to slap her, Byzantium
sang from among the shadowy pods:
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it--repeat it, repeat it.”
“That’s enough, Byz.” She dropped her hand, and the golden bird opened wide his beak, as if to let fall an
ironic comment. She glared up at him though, and he ruffled his feathers glinting with jewels and held his
peace. Stepping out from behind her tablet, Hana unknotted the girl’s belt with a few, quick jerks. Sumi tossed
her head but did not resist.
“I forbid you to replicate pods till you pass your brown belt test again.”
“Fine,” the girl said bitterly. “I’ll go tinker with the air-conditioners.”
“Go make dinner, Sumi.” Hana tossed the brown belt under her tablet. “And I want you to meditate on your
negligence.” She pulled straight the ends of her own, black belt, and adjusted her hand-harp on its silver
chain around her neck. “An entire chronicle, lost forever.” The girl spun on her heel and strode away through
the Archive, her steps a drumbeat to the rustling pods.
“Let’s light our beacon,” Hana said glumly. Byz gave a squawk and hopped on her shoulder, balancing as she
glided towards the stairs. These wound steeply up through the pod labyrinth, all the way to the Pyramid’s
Apex. As she climbed, Hana muttered the Servant’s Creed, over and over:
We save the past to serve the future;
This is our duty and our life.
As she passed the sealed portals of the Crux of Life, her heart clenched like a fist. How much longer could she
keep her secret? Lately Sumi, quick and curious, had grown rebellious, as if she already knew.
As if reading Hana’s thoughts, Byzantium warbled, “Sumi yearns for a life outside, in nature.”
“She’s still young,” Hana said primly, “with ample time to learn her duties.” She bunched her two middle
fingers and thumb, and tapped a panel, and slowly the Apex’s hatch creaked open.
“You should try a longer leash,” the bird sang. “Why do you need total control? Sumi’s not your pet, like me.”
“Be quiet.”
Byz flapped away and settled on a railing. Unlike the Pyamid’s eyeless walls below, the Apex offered views.
Hana joined him, peering out at the darkening shore, where long grey waves came rolling in the length of an
eroded jetty, spreading up the pale, wide, empty beach. Inland, across from the jetty, a ruined portico
gleamed in the grassy dunes.
The sea take those useless stones, she thought. Who needed hotels anymore?
But over the millennia the same sea was eating its way towards the Pyramid’s palm-fringed hill. She
shuddered, imagining its archives underwater--lost as legendary Tokyo. She’d not live to see that
catastrophe. Would any of her line?
Dutifully Hana turned to the beacon light’s worn wheels and gears. Tapping each with her bunched fingers,
she praised the generations of the patient Foremothers. Byz shook his head and yawned.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he chirped when she finished her invocation.
“I worry our beacon may break down, after ten thousand years of continuous service.” Its narrow beam
probed the purple waters. Even from the Mainland, eyes could see, if any eyes still sought the light--her light.
Abruptly rain came drumming down; the monsoon had burst at last. Hana gasped as a few, stray droplets
trickled across the smooth, black floor. The Apex had begun to leak...
As she examined the ancient panes, something bobbed on the dark hillside below. Sumi stood naked, raising
her pale arms to the streaming rain. While Hana stood appalled, the girl began to dance, leaping and twirling
and flinging herself around the palm trees like a creature running mad.
“I don’t believe it,” Hana murmured. “She’s flesh of my flesh, cell of my cell.”
“The past is prologue,” Byzantium chirped. “Not an inevitable chain.”
“Shut your beak.”
~*~
Scrubbed by the storm, the morning sky glowed like a blue enamel basin. The Pyramid had shed several
scales, so Hana called out the Helpers, strumming their codes on her hand-harp. Only nine of the once-mighty
legion reported; the others needed repair themselves.
As the open-frame bots crept like glittering insects over the Pyramid’s dull sides, the clones ate breakfast on
the balcony of Servant’s House, turning their chairs to face the sun as they always did in good weather.
“A fine day for natural D,” Hana observed, and Sumi nodded politely. “My child, you also need more vitamin C;
do take the rest of our red pineapple.” The girl helped herself to a morsel and chewed it without enthusiasm,
gazing over the stainless steel railing at the quivering sea. “Shall we take a walk before starting work?” Hana
suggested almost desperately.
“That’s not on our schedule,” Sumi retorted. “Do we really have time this morning?”
“I want to make peace,” gaunt Hana said. “We need to do our work without mistakes.”
Sumi toyed with the ends of her frayed, green belt and then raised her eyes to the glowing sky.
“You may choose our route this morning,” Hana said. “I think we can probably spare half an hour.”
“Let’s walk by the shore.” The girl’s face brightened. “Maybe the storm has brought new shells.”
“An excellent idea. We may even find some artifacts to classify.” Hana waved to a Helper, and the much-
repaired unit limped forward to clear the table.
~*~
Sumi led the way, skipping down to the beach, whose pale flats lay empty--but for a strange, new lump
festooned with seaweed. This lay about midway to the jetty, just out of reach of the waves.
“Maybe it’s a storage vessel,” said Hana, “or even an animal drowned by the storm.” As they hurried to
inspect it, she drew a sharp breath: the tawny thing had long, strong limbs.
“Don’t,” she warned, as Sumi poked it with her foot, but it sat up and grabbed the girl’s ankle.
“What is it?” Sumi wailed. White teeth flashed in the creature’s sun-bronzed face.
“This is a man,” Hana said as she drew her stunner. “You--let go of my daughter right now.” His shoulders
square, his woolly chest flat, a ragged cloth clinging to his narrow hips, the creature blinked his eyes--blue-
grey like slate stone--and gave the girl’s shin a little shake. As Hana pointed her stunner at his heart, he
gawked back and forth from her face to Sumi’s fresher, yet identical features.
“Don’t kill it, Mother,” she appealed.
“This is a dangerous animal.”
Rumbling in his throat, he shook Sumi’s knee, almost pulling her down. Hana fired and he howled, leaping
away, shedding his rag as he bounded up the beach towards the marble portico. Aghast, the clones both
gaped at his powerful strides and smoothly muscular body. Too soon, he vanished over a grassy rise.
“Why did you hurt it?” Sumi cried. “Such a rare animal--and so beautiful.”
“It’s not hurt; just frightened, dear. Let’s return to our Pyramid, where we’ll be quite safe. I must consult our
archives and consider exactly what to--do.”
“You mean, for once you don’t know?”
Gripping the girl’s arm, Hana and marched her back towards the Pyramid, which cast a huge, heavy shadow.
“My dear, we’ve experienced a random event no Foremother ever calculated. Way back in the Promiscuous
Ages--when hormone pollution feminized men, and natural reproduction collapsed--a few, unbred humans
must have survived. Alas, they’ve reverted to an animal state.”
“That man got birthed naturally?” Sumi asked incredulously. “Just like a monkey, or a goat?”
“Do you think our Crux of Life produced such a monster? Come along, let’s get back to work.” Hana pressed
her bunched fingers to the upended triangle next to the Pyramid’s entrance, and the huge door groaned
open, as if to swallow the clones.
Again they heard the ceaseless, rustling murmur of two million pods. Sumi cast a hungry look at the
shimmering beach as Hana pulled her inside.
~*~
The next morning, Hana almost dropped the teapot. Her maiden clone wore a garland of red roses. “Where
did you get that, Sumi?”
“The creature left it for me, on a bush. It waited till I waved, and then it ran away.”
“Sumi...”
“Foremother, it’s a good-natured beast. It could have killed me with a stone.” Hana snatched the wreath from
the girl’s loose hair and flung it over the balcony’s edge. “Why...” Sumi began; but something yelped, and she
hung over the railing: “There it is again. It’s watching us!”
The man, who’d scrubbed away his sand and seaweed, peered from behind a banana tree. He’d woven a new
loincloth from green fronds, and his yellow hair rippled like fire around his muscular shoulders. His hard body
glowed like burnished bronze. All of a sudden he waved.
Grabbing the collar of Sumi’s kimono, Hana tugged her backwards, out of sight. “Child, you don’t understand
the danger--this is a wild, unbred beast; no better than a pig rooting in the forest. Although it’s making
advances we cannot accept it as a friend.”
“What is a ‘friend,’ Foremother?”
Hana hesitated. “A familiar, calculating creature--one we can trust, to share our minds. A companion--like dear
Byz.”
On cue, the jewelled bird warbled from a chair back: “I’m the friend of the clones who never end.”
“Maybe we’ve ended already,” Sumi said with a moan.
“That’s not true,” Hana cried. “Soon I will open the Crux of Life, to culture you.”
“When? You said the same thing last year.”
“Very soon.” Hana blushed scarlet. “Isn’t that true, friend Byz?” Cocking his head, he winked a ruby eye.
~*~
A few days later, black-robed Hana stood on the roof of Servant’s House, eyeing the man through a telescope
normally used for the moon and stars. Lounging on the beach, he was paddling his big feet in the sliding
waves, his head shielded from the noonday glare by a hat of woven fronds.
“Still alive,” she complained.
“He catches fish,” Byzantium sang, “and fries them on a stone. He builds traps and snares for rabbits--even
birds, even birds.”
“I misread the monster’s cunning.”
“Hana, what are you going to do?”
“You’ll see.”
“But the First Directive says...”
“I need you to stay here, Byz. The maiden clone’s too young to manage the Pyramid alone. If I terminate
today, I want you to take over her education.”
“Why act alone?” he squawked. “You should discuss your decision with Sumi. Dear Hana, she’s your sole
successor.”
“I’ve waited too long, you silly bird. Two loaves of bread-of-life are missing from the kitchen. She has been
feeding that wild animal.”
“She has a kind heart.”
“She’s a disobedient aberration. What have I done to deserve this clone?”
“You are too harsh, too harsh,” he sang. “That’s why Sumi disobeys.”
“What do you know--you mechanical toy.” Brushing him aside, she strode towards the open hatch in the roof,
and he hopped behind her, twittering. As she vanished down her ladder, he beat the air with his wings,
screeching:
“Foremother, thou shalt not kill!”
~*~
Trailed by a slow-rolling, Soldier Helper, Hana crept through the high grass near the portico. The afternoon
sun dazzled her eyes, and the ground felt hot and yielding.
A rabbit hung upside down from a bush, hind feet snared in a braided liana. Its throat had been slashed, and
the dark, dripping blood made her stomach churn.
As she crept near the portico’s ring of broken columns, she heard thrilling cries. She motioned to her Helper to
stay back.
Grunting and whining like an animal, her sole successor lay entwined on a heap of fresh, green fronds with
the monster. At their feet lay the platter of papayas that had vanished from the kitchen overnight.
Stepping back, Hana seized the Helper’s head-ring, twisting it to freeze the bot. Nobody should know what
had happened; the clones would forfeit every scrap of authority.
The girl was sitting up; she was rubbing her delicate lips on the wild man’s bristly mouth. She ran her hands
through his golden mane and he caught them and covered them with small, soft bites.
Chuckling, Sumi dressed in a hurry, muttered something to him and slipped away. Loudly he sighed after her,
till she vanished among the dunes. Then he lay down again and slept, in the shade of a frond-woven, three-
cornered sail he’d fastened with braided lianas to three of the broken columns.
Softly Hana crept up on him, clutching her biggest kitchen blade. She was reaching it toward his throat when
his blue eyes flapped open. He seized her wrist and she whimpered, dropping the knife--which he grabbed
and struck into the ground.
He shook her like a soft toy then, making horrible, rumbling noises in his throat. His lips curled open to show
strong, white teeth; and as she struggled with his strength she felt a pulse of something akin to desire. Her
cheeks burned; yes, she yearned to submit; with a flash she understood with a twin’s intuition...
But he slapped her behind, and shoved her away, back the way she’d come. His raucous cries sounded like
laughter. She fled, leaving the blade behind, and her frozen Helper. She’d return with the last of her able-
bodied ones and destroy him--nest and all.
~*~
As she staggered towards the Pyramid, a deep-toned bell began to toll, a mournful sound like a rending pain,
like the voice of the final annihilation.
Converging around the entrance, her able-bodied Helpers signaled that they wanted instructions. Their
chiming, beeping and tinkling made a senseless din.
“Wait. Don’t go inside,” Hana commanded with her hand-harp’s chords. The Helpers formed a double row of
honor as she stepped through the entrance all alone.
Now she ran panting up the staircase’s steel coils, all the way to the Crux of Life. The dim chamber’s ebony
portals hung open. Inside, Sumi whirled to face her.
“You’ve no right...” Hana cried in a child’s thin, high voice.
“Foremother, you lied to me.” Sumi pointed at the clones in the central tank, shrivelled black on their stalk, like
frost-blasted grapes. “You told me the Pyramid could reproduce us. You made me work here, like a slave--and
for nothing: your Pyramid is dead.”
“The Crux hasn’t worked since I raised you,” she breathlessly confessed.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Hana?”
“I didn’t want to lose you, dear. I know how you’ve dreamed of escaping to the Mainland. For years I’ve read
your secret diary.” Sumi clenched her fists. “But how did you ever breach the portals?”
“I let her in,” Byz warbled from his perch on the dusty chandelier. “I sang the opening codes for Sumi, who’s
ready to know the truth, the truth.” Hana sank to her knees on the chill, stone floor, covering her head with
her hands. The warning bell had ceased toll, and the Pyramid stood silent for once, as if it had spoken its last
word. No murmuring, no whispering; only her own, dry sobs.
Sumi stood over her, breathing hard, as if she’d been running back and forth on the beach. She reached
down and helped Hana back on her feet:
“There, there, mother. At least we’re still alive.”
“But the entire past...”
A joyful cry rang out from below, and echoed through the dusty labyrinths of pods.
“That creature,” Hana shrieked. “Is nothing holy? You let that unbred beast inside.”
“Hana, he followed you,” Byzantium twittered. “You left the entrance open in your haste.” Now the three of
them hurried down the stairs together, the golden bird perched on Sumi’s head.
On the main floor, in the Ancient Mideast Exhibit, the man knelt in front of a dhow. Tears rolled down his
cheeks and hung in his shaggy beard like pearls. As the clones approached, he rose and placed his powerful
hands on the vessel’s prow. Bending his head, he kissed the wood.
“Urgu knows what it is,” said Sumi. “He rode in a boat to find himself a mate, and got wrecked with his men in
the storm.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“He has taught me his speech, with his hands. Enough to understand he swam to our beacon. This outcome
is intended, Foremother: I shall be his mate.”
“Nonsense, that ship has no sail,” she shrilled. “It’s useless, just the pattern of a ship. If we try to move it,
we’ll shatter it to bits.”
Standing tall, her dark eyes blazing, Sumi raised her right arm over her head and bunched her middle fingers.
“Foremother, you bring out my ship.”
“How can you think of leaving with that creature?”
“I’d not wish any better companion.”
Her heart shrivelling like the clones that had failed, Hana glared at her clone, and then at the man, waiting
and watching, his hands on the prow. Finally she met the bird’s ruby gaze, and Byz cocked his head and
winked.
Raising her hand-harp, she sounded the ancient chords to summon her Helpers. Silently they came trooping
in: her limping, silver Handmaidens; her heavy, iron-colored Soldiers of the Line, her stained and battered
Janitors.
The bird sang the counter-coded arpeggios to release the boat from its bonds. Then all of the Helpers,
working together, lifted it onto their rusty backs, and carried it out of the Pyramid, down to the billowing sea.
of the Third Archive, which hummed and rustled with
disembodied voices, as it always did. Dipping her head to
the gaunt woman seated at a tablet in the racks, she
handed her a broken pod without a word.
Black-robed Hana examined the pod, whose loose
connectors hung like intestines from its fractured shell.
The damage looked total.
“How could this happen, Sumi? You’ve practiced replication
a thousand times.”
The girl toyed with the ends of the belt encircling her
slender waist, her new belt. “My hand slipped,
Foremother.” Coiled in a braid, Sumi’s sleek black hair set
off her fine, symmetrical features. Her uniform looked
immaculate, but her almond eyes glittered insolently.
“I’ve warned you to concentrate,” the Foremother, whose
black hair showed stray threads of grey, said. “We cannot
afford another loss; the Pyramid depends upon us.”
The girl squeezed her eyes shut. “Foremother, it’s so stuffy
in here, and Byz says a storm is rising. Can’t we leave
early and take a walk by the sea?”
Hana scowled. “Child, you fail to grasp the consequences
of your sloppy work. This pod held our only copy of the
Crash of two thousand and eight. How shall the future
know what to do, if this precious history is missing?”
“Ancient stuff.” Sumi raised her chin. “Besides, there’s
probably nobody left on the Mainland.”
“Blasphemy!” As Hana reached to slap her, Byzantium
sang from among the shadowy pods:
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it--repeat it, repeat it.”
“That’s enough, Byz.” She dropped her hand, and the golden bird opened wide his beak, as if to let fall an
ironic comment. She glared up at him though, and he ruffled his feathers glinting with jewels and held his
peace. Stepping out from behind her tablet, Hana unknotted the girl’s belt with a few, quick jerks. Sumi tossed
her head but did not resist.
“I forbid you to replicate pods till you pass your brown belt test again.”
“Fine,” the girl said bitterly. “I’ll go tinker with the air-conditioners.”
“Go make dinner, Sumi.” Hana tossed the brown belt under her tablet. “And I want you to meditate on your
negligence.” She pulled straight the ends of her own, black belt, and adjusted her hand-harp on its silver
chain around her neck. “An entire chronicle, lost forever.” The girl spun on her heel and strode away through
the Archive, her steps a drumbeat to the rustling pods.
“Let’s light our beacon,” Hana said glumly. Byz gave a squawk and hopped on her shoulder, balancing as she
glided towards the stairs. These wound steeply up through the pod labyrinth, all the way to the Pyramid’s
Apex. As she climbed, Hana muttered the Servant’s Creed, over and over:
We save the past to serve the future;
This is our duty and our life.
As she passed the sealed portals of the Crux of Life, her heart clenched like a fist. How much longer could she
keep her secret? Lately Sumi, quick and curious, had grown rebellious, as if she already knew.
As if reading Hana’s thoughts, Byzantium warbled, “Sumi yearns for a life outside, in nature.”
“She’s still young,” Hana said primly, “with ample time to learn her duties.” She bunched her two middle
fingers and thumb, and tapped a panel, and slowly the Apex’s hatch creaked open.
“You should try a longer leash,” the bird sang. “Why do you need total control? Sumi’s not your pet, like me.”
“Be quiet.”
Byz flapped away and settled on a railing. Unlike the Pyamid’s eyeless walls below, the Apex offered views.
Hana joined him, peering out at the darkening shore, where long grey waves came rolling in the length of an
eroded jetty, spreading up the pale, wide, empty beach. Inland, across from the jetty, a ruined portico
gleamed in the grassy dunes.
The sea take those useless stones, she thought. Who needed hotels anymore?
But over the millennia the same sea was eating its way towards the Pyramid’s palm-fringed hill. She
shuddered, imagining its archives underwater--lost as legendary Tokyo. She’d not live to see that
catastrophe. Would any of her line?
Dutifully Hana turned to the beacon light’s worn wheels and gears. Tapping each with her bunched fingers,
she praised the generations of the patient Foremothers. Byz shook his head and yawned.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he chirped when she finished her invocation.
“I worry our beacon may break down, after ten thousand years of continuous service.” Its narrow beam
probed the purple waters. Even from the Mainland, eyes could see, if any eyes still sought the light--her light.
Abruptly rain came drumming down; the monsoon had burst at last. Hana gasped as a few, stray droplets
trickled across the smooth, black floor. The Apex had begun to leak...
As she examined the ancient panes, something bobbed on the dark hillside below. Sumi stood naked, raising
her pale arms to the streaming rain. While Hana stood appalled, the girl began to dance, leaping and twirling
and flinging herself around the palm trees like a creature running mad.
“I don’t believe it,” Hana murmured. “She’s flesh of my flesh, cell of my cell.”
“The past is prologue,” Byzantium chirped. “Not an inevitable chain.”
“Shut your beak.”
~*~
Scrubbed by the storm, the morning sky glowed like a blue enamel basin. The Pyramid had shed several
scales, so Hana called out the Helpers, strumming their codes on her hand-harp. Only nine of the once-mighty
legion reported; the others needed repair themselves.
As the open-frame bots crept like glittering insects over the Pyramid’s dull sides, the clones ate breakfast on
the balcony of Servant’s House, turning their chairs to face the sun as they always did in good weather.
“A fine day for natural D,” Hana observed, and Sumi nodded politely. “My child, you also need more vitamin C;
do take the rest of our red pineapple.” The girl helped herself to a morsel and chewed it without enthusiasm,
gazing over the stainless steel railing at the quivering sea. “Shall we take a walk before starting work?” Hana
suggested almost desperately.
“That’s not on our schedule,” Sumi retorted. “Do we really have time this morning?”
“I want to make peace,” gaunt Hana said. “We need to do our work without mistakes.”
Sumi toyed with the ends of her frayed, green belt and then raised her eyes to the glowing sky.
“You may choose our route this morning,” Hana said. “I think we can probably spare half an hour.”
“Let’s walk by the shore.” The girl’s face brightened. “Maybe the storm has brought new shells.”
“An excellent idea. We may even find some artifacts to classify.” Hana waved to a Helper, and the much-
repaired unit limped forward to clear the table.
~*~
Sumi led the way, skipping down to the beach, whose pale flats lay empty--but for a strange, new lump
festooned with seaweed. This lay about midway to the jetty, just out of reach of the waves.
“Maybe it’s a storage vessel,” said Hana, “or even an animal drowned by the storm.” As they hurried to
inspect it, she drew a sharp breath: the tawny thing had long, strong limbs.
“Don’t,” she warned, as Sumi poked it with her foot, but it sat up and grabbed the girl’s ankle.
“What is it?” Sumi wailed. White teeth flashed in the creature’s sun-bronzed face.
“This is a man,” Hana said as she drew her stunner. “You--let go of my daughter right now.” His shoulders
square, his woolly chest flat, a ragged cloth clinging to his narrow hips, the creature blinked his eyes--blue-
grey like slate stone--and gave the girl’s shin a little shake. As Hana pointed her stunner at his heart, he
gawked back and forth from her face to Sumi’s fresher, yet identical features.
“Don’t kill it, Mother,” she appealed.
“This is a dangerous animal.”
Rumbling in his throat, he shook Sumi’s knee, almost pulling her down. Hana fired and he howled, leaping
away, shedding his rag as he bounded up the beach towards the marble portico. Aghast, the clones both
gaped at his powerful strides and smoothly muscular body. Too soon, he vanished over a grassy rise.
“Why did you hurt it?” Sumi cried. “Such a rare animal--and so beautiful.”
“It’s not hurt; just frightened, dear. Let’s return to our Pyramid, where we’ll be quite safe. I must consult our
archives and consider exactly what to--do.”
“You mean, for once you don’t know?”
Gripping the girl’s arm, Hana and marched her back towards the Pyramid, which cast a huge, heavy shadow.
“My dear, we’ve experienced a random event no Foremother ever calculated. Way back in the Promiscuous
Ages--when hormone pollution feminized men, and natural reproduction collapsed--a few, unbred humans
must have survived. Alas, they’ve reverted to an animal state.”
“That man got birthed naturally?” Sumi asked incredulously. “Just like a monkey, or a goat?”
“Do you think our Crux of Life produced such a monster? Come along, let’s get back to work.” Hana pressed
her bunched fingers to the upended triangle next to the Pyramid’s entrance, and the huge door groaned
open, as if to swallow the clones.
Again they heard the ceaseless, rustling murmur of two million pods. Sumi cast a hungry look at the
shimmering beach as Hana pulled her inside.
~*~
The next morning, Hana almost dropped the teapot. Her maiden clone wore a garland of red roses. “Where
did you get that, Sumi?”
“The creature left it for me, on a bush. It waited till I waved, and then it ran away.”
“Sumi...”
“Foremother, it’s a good-natured beast. It could have killed me with a stone.” Hana snatched the wreath from
the girl’s loose hair and flung it over the balcony’s edge. “Why...” Sumi began; but something yelped, and she
hung over the railing: “There it is again. It’s watching us!”
The man, who’d scrubbed away his sand and seaweed, peered from behind a banana tree. He’d woven a new
loincloth from green fronds, and his yellow hair rippled like fire around his muscular shoulders. His hard body
glowed like burnished bronze. All of a sudden he waved.
Grabbing the collar of Sumi’s kimono, Hana tugged her backwards, out of sight. “Child, you don’t understand
the danger--this is a wild, unbred beast; no better than a pig rooting in the forest. Although it’s making
advances we cannot accept it as a friend.”
“What is a ‘friend,’ Foremother?”
Hana hesitated. “A familiar, calculating creature--one we can trust, to share our minds. A companion--like dear
Byz.”
On cue, the jewelled bird warbled from a chair back: “I’m the friend of the clones who never end.”
“Maybe we’ve ended already,” Sumi said with a moan.
“That’s not true,” Hana cried. “Soon I will open the Crux of Life, to culture you.”
“When? You said the same thing last year.”
“Very soon.” Hana blushed scarlet. “Isn’t that true, friend Byz?” Cocking his head, he winked a ruby eye.
~*~
A few days later, black-robed Hana stood on the roof of Servant’s House, eyeing the man through a telescope
normally used for the moon and stars. Lounging on the beach, he was paddling his big feet in the sliding
waves, his head shielded from the noonday glare by a hat of woven fronds.
“Still alive,” she complained.
“He catches fish,” Byzantium sang, “and fries them on a stone. He builds traps and snares for rabbits--even
birds, even birds.”
“I misread the monster’s cunning.”
“Hana, what are you going to do?”
“You’ll see.”
“But the First Directive says...”
“I need you to stay here, Byz. The maiden clone’s too young to manage the Pyramid alone. If I terminate
today, I want you to take over her education.”
“Why act alone?” he squawked. “You should discuss your decision with Sumi. Dear Hana, she’s your sole
successor.”
“I’ve waited too long, you silly bird. Two loaves of bread-of-life are missing from the kitchen. She has been
feeding that wild animal.”
“She has a kind heart.”
“She’s a disobedient aberration. What have I done to deserve this clone?”
“You are too harsh, too harsh,” he sang. “That’s why Sumi disobeys.”
“What do you know--you mechanical toy.” Brushing him aside, she strode towards the open hatch in the roof,
and he hopped behind her, twittering. As she vanished down her ladder, he beat the air with his wings,
screeching:
“Foremother, thou shalt not kill!”
~*~
Trailed by a slow-rolling, Soldier Helper, Hana crept through the high grass near the portico. The afternoon
sun dazzled her eyes, and the ground felt hot and yielding.
A rabbit hung upside down from a bush, hind feet snared in a braided liana. Its throat had been slashed, and
the dark, dripping blood made her stomach churn.
As she crept near the portico’s ring of broken columns, she heard thrilling cries. She motioned to her Helper to
stay back.
Grunting and whining like an animal, her sole successor lay entwined on a heap of fresh, green fronds with
the monster. At their feet lay the platter of papayas that had vanished from the kitchen overnight.
Stepping back, Hana seized the Helper’s head-ring, twisting it to freeze the bot. Nobody should know what
had happened; the clones would forfeit every scrap of authority.
The girl was sitting up; she was rubbing her delicate lips on the wild man’s bristly mouth. She ran her hands
through his golden mane and he caught them and covered them with small, soft bites.
Chuckling, Sumi dressed in a hurry, muttered something to him and slipped away. Loudly he sighed after her,
till she vanished among the dunes. Then he lay down again and slept, in the shade of a frond-woven, three-
cornered sail he’d fastened with braided lianas to three of the broken columns.
Softly Hana crept up on him, clutching her biggest kitchen blade. She was reaching it toward his throat when
his blue eyes flapped open. He seized her wrist and she whimpered, dropping the knife--which he grabbed
and struck into the ground.
He shook her like a soft toy then, making horrible, rumbling noises in his throat. His lips curled open to show
strong, white teeth; and as she struggled with his strength she felt a pulse of something akin to desire. Her
cheeks burned; yes, she yearned to submit; with a flash she understood with a twin’s intuition...
But he slapped her behind, and shoved her away, back the way she’d come. His raucous cries sounded like
laughter. She fled, leaving the blade behind, and her frozen Helper. She’d return with the last of her able-
bodied ones and destroy him--nest and all.
~*~
As she staggered towards the Pyramid, a deep-toned bell began to toll, a mournful sound like a rending pain,
like the voice of the final annihilation.
Converging around the entrance, her able-bodied Helpers signaled that they wanted instructions. Their
chiming, beeping and tinkling made a senseless din.
“Wait. Don’t go inside,” Hana commanded with her hand-harp’s chords. The Helpers formed a double row of
honor as she stepped through the entrance all alone.
Now she ran panting up the staircase’s steel coils, all the way to the Crux of Life. The dim chamber’s ebony
portals hung open. Inside, Sumi whirled to face her.
“You’ve no right...” Hana cried in a child’s thin, high voice.
“Foremother, you lied to me.” Sumi pointed at the clones in the central tank, shrivelled black on their stalk, like
frost-blasted grapes. “You told me the Pyramid could reproduce us. You made me work here, like a slave--and
for nothing: your Pyramid is dead.”
“The Crux hasn’t worked since I raised you,” she breathlessly confessed.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Hana?”
“I didn’t want to lose you, dear. I know how you’ve dreamed of escaping to the Mainland. For years I’ve read
your secret diary.” Sumi clenched her fists. “But how did you ever breach the portals?”
“I let her in,” Byz warbled from his perch on the dusty chandelier. “I sang the opening codes for Sumi, who’s
ready to know the truth, the truth.” Hana sank to her knees on the chill, stone floor, covering her head with
her hands. The warning bell had ceased toll, and the Pyramid stood silent for once, as if it had spoken its last
word. No murmuring, no whispering; only her own, dry sobs.
Sumi stood over her, breathing hard, as if she’d been running back and forth on the beach. She reached
down and helped Hana back on her feet:
“There, there, mother. At least we’re still alive.”
“But the entire past...”
A joyful cry rang out from below, and echoed through the dusty labyrinths of pods.
“That creature,” Hana shrieked. “Is nothing holy? You let that unbred beast inside.”
“Hana, he followed you,” Byzantium twittered. “You left the entrance open in your haste.” Now the three of
them hurried down the stairs together, the golden bird perched on Sumi’s head.
On the main floor, in the Ancient Mideast Exhibit, the man knelt in front of a dhow. Tears rolled down his
cheeks and hung in his shaggy beard like pearls. As the clones approached, he rose and placed his powerful
hands on the vessel’s prow. Bending his head, he kissed the wood.
“Urgu knows what it is,” said Sumi. “He rode in a boat to find himself a mate, and got wrecked with his men in
the storm.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“He has taught me his speech, with his hands. Enough to understand he swam to our beacon. This outcome
is intended, Foremother: I shall be his mate.”
“Nonsense, that ship has no sail,” she shrilled. “It’s useless, just the pattern of a ship. If we try to move it,
we’ll shatter it to bits.”
Standing tall, her dark eyes blazing, Sumi raised her right arm over her head and bunched her middle fingers.
“Foremother, you bring out my ship.”
“How can you think of leaving with that creature?”
“I’d not wish any better companion.”
Her heart shrivelling like the clones that had failed, Hana glared at her clone, and then at the man, waiting
and watching, his hands on the prow. Finally she met the bird’s ruby gaze, and Byz cocked his head and
winked.
Raising her hand-harp, she sounded the ancient chords to summon her Helpers. Silently they came trooping
in: her limping, silver Handmaidens; her heavy, iron-colored Soldiers of the Line, her stained and battered
Janitors.
The bird sang the counter-coded arpeggios to release the boat from its bonds. Then all of the Helpers,
working together, lifted it onto their rusty backs, and carried it out of the Pyramid, down to the billowing sea.
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Anna Sykora has been an attorney in New York and teacher of English in Germany, where she resides
with her patient husband and three enormous Forest Cats. To date she has placed 59 tales in the small
press or on the web, most recently with *A Fly in Amber,* *Death Head Grin,* *Everyday Fiction,*
*The Vagabond Heart,* *Ethereal Tales,* the *Cynic,* *Strange, Weird and Wonderful* (where she
is Featured Writer for Winter 2010), *Rosebud* (excerpt of her first novel), the *Barbaric Yawp,*
and *The Iconoclast.* She has also placed 117 poems, and was *Green Rock's* Featured Lyric Poet
for June.
with her patient husband and three enormous Forest Cats. To date she has placed 59 tales in the small
press or on the web, most recently with *A Fly in Amber,* *Death Head Grin,* *Everyday Fiction,*
*The Vagabond Heart,* *Ethereal Tales,* the *Cynic,* *Strange, Weird and Wonderful* (where she
is Featured Writer for Winter 2010), *Rosebud* (excerpt of her first novel), the *Barbaric Yawp,*
and *The Iconoclast.* She has also placed 117 poems, and was *Green Rock's* Featured Lyric Poet
for June.