See this previous post for a communication to any who would join me in writing.  For a thought on David Lynch, see this article.  And see this article to read the story from the beginning.  Meanwhile…

THE BEGINNING OF ACT TWO.  Satan, let me at least finish this act as well, before Monday at midnight.

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The fachasistema of Borland 1 had never borne pleasing fruit.  The world was too cold for unsupported life to take root, outside of certain algaes and bacteria.  In the millennium since people had come to the world, whatever ancestral spacefaring civilization they had once shared with the Stars of Weal had been lost to memory.  Now pitiful algae farmers skirmished with company brutes that controlled trade routes within Borland, as well as the spaceports that let one travel and trade without.

The farmers didn’t hear much about the worlds beyond, just a very loose sketch of it.  There was a wall of ice in spirit space patrolled by forces from the Stars of Weal, who occasionally made their disdain known by sending beasts to torment the heathen planets.  For their part, the company brutes knew that even other heathen planets were largely hostile, only trading with each other out of sheer desperation.

So why was a spacecraft landing in farmer territory?  Didn’t they know they were supposed to use the spaceports?  The farmers didn’t care as long as it didn’t stay overlong, or attract company attention.  The little white thing looked like an airhopper, with larger legs and much more elaborate decoration – each leg carved like the head of a horse.  Those carvings might as well be abstract gibberish; nobody on Borland 1 knew what a horse was, nor had they the resources to support one if by chance it had been available through trade.

Boxy two ton robots gathered around the craft, awaiting orders, should anybody have an opinion on how it should be best dealt with.  People began to drop out of a hatch on the bottom, and quickly encountered the local toughs.

A dozen men and women stood around the new arrivals in a semi-circle, staring and waiting to see what would happen.  They had light eyes, rosy faces, and pale brown hair in somewhat foreign styles.  The “fur” lining their cold weather garments had rubbery looking fibers in densely packed ribbon-like strips, and the scuffing and patching on their clothing spoke of limited resources.

The new arrivals were two dark-haired women and a fuzzy black monster that may have been a man of its kind, with eclectic styles and attitudes.  One of the women held an infant child tightly to her, bundled invisible.  The one thing they seemed to have in common was a lack of preparedness for the weather of Borland 1.

The creature tried to do the speaking for them, coming forth to meet the village’s bravest man, Carr.  It tried speaking aloud, encouraging Carr to speak aloud, and using a mobile computer to see if some linguistic common ground could be reached.  It turned out they must have been some kind of refugees from the Stars of Weal, because their language was closest to Lenko – the secret trade speech of the Companies.  That wasn’t of much use to the people present, so they resorted to pantomime.

Clearly they all needed better clothing, and presumably food and water.  They also somehow nonverbally negotiated an assurance their spacecraft would not be attacked by the robots.  The robots communicated their part by simply walking back to their appointed chores.  The villagers had labors to return to as well, though several had no pressing engagements, and were curious enough to follow the visitors.  In the streets, every man, woman, child, and robot stopped to stare.

Carr gestured, did they want clothing or food first?  They chose clothing, and he brought them to Fank the Clothier.  The little entourage made efforts at helping the visitors, or having something like pleasant exchanges with them, but it was challenging.  The women were exotically beautiful, but a little wild and strange – like they’d been through a war.

It happened when the weirder woman took off her coat, to start trying things on.  She rested the baby on the counter – revealing it to be no baby at all, but a strange little monster.  The women Dolia, Jolia, and Kabel were the most intrigued.  The strange woman saw their reactions and put a defensive hand over her pet, but the curious ones were quick to make soothing gestures of their own.  As soon as the strange woman had cautiously accepted that and resumed shopping, the locals resumed chattering among themselves.

Jolia went to Carr and asked for confirmation of a rumor – had the village’s new boy once been a Company child?  Might he know Lenko?  He believed it true, and she rushed away to see if they could get a translator, and start to find out just what the hell these weirdos were about.

Jolia found the new boy wiping vents on the southern tanks, and talked his boss into letting him go.  His name was Darter, and he was the unhealthiest looking creature she had ever seen.  He must be alive because he was still walking around, but his skin lacked all color – seemed almost grey.  He was a natural-born Borlander, with hair the same color as anyone else, so it wasn’t a racial difference.  And seemingly he was not a spirit creature, fallen from the sky.  Aside from the ashen complexion, he seemed young and hale enough to work, so he earned his keep.

And now he could earn favors in another way.  Jolia brought Darter into the clothier’s shop.  They had already chosen overcoats for snow, and Fank had moved onto selling them more garments for wear about town.  He was willing to give them quality fare for free, just for the privilege of meeting such unusual people.  The old man was as fascinated as any, watching their every move, smiling awkwardly whenever their eyes met his own.  Darter and Jolia interrupted, soon joined by Carr and the whole crowd.

Darter cautiously tried to speak with the strange woman in Lenko.  She waved him away and the one-eyed alien took over.  It couldn’t understand him, but again used its mobile computer to try some kind of trick.  It coaxed Darter into rattling off a small litany of miscellaneous speech, and the device tried to make sense of it.  Darter used his own mobile in the same way, or his best approximation of it, and after a several tense minutes, they could communicate through translation.

Each would speak, and then the person spoken to would read a translation off of their mobile.  It was only possible because of the similarity of Lenko to the language of the Church, which the computers could sort out much more quickly than the living creatures could.

Darter said, “They just got too curious about you folks, and had to scratch that itch as quickly as possible.  I’m the only one who speaks anything sort of like your language here.”

“My name is Umbrifer.  Those are Blasfemia, Josefina, and Ombunculita.  My starship is called the Leveret.  What else does anybody need to know?”

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, what the hell are you?”

“A spirit in the flesh.  You aren’t exactly a human either, are you?”

“How can you tell?”

“Big eye.  Do they know?”

“I was human, so close enough to true.  They can remain ignorant of me, but I don’t think they’ll accept a non-answer from all of you.”

“Alright.  I told you what I am.  My starship is also a spirit in the flesh, so don’t think you can use it for parts.  She’ll just die and rot if she gets pulled apart, right?  Ombunculita is a kind of imperfect clone of Josefina’s grandmother.  Like a living doll that she keeps for sentimental reasons.  The women, well, they’re as human as any of this village.  Except you?”

The young grey man stared at the words rolling over his screen, back up to the big pink eye, and down again.  It was all so absurd.  But who was he to judge?  “You couldn’t tell my secrets to them if you wanted to, and I’m tired of keeping them.  I was just another psychic for most of my life, until I made a terrible mistake and got killed.  I concentrated my intelligence and all my powers in one part of my body as I lay dying, and have been able to use those powers to drive around this awful corpse.”

“Amazing.  I feel truly privileged that you have told me.  Thank you.  But how are you are not rotting?”

Darter cocked his head, considering how much he should say.  “You may find out another time.  But for now, I will answer that question the same way you answered me.  Big eye.”

Umbrifer smiled for the first time in ages.  That was equal parts amusing and intriguing to him.  “Very well.  I sense your translations are in demand.  I’ll let you get to that while we start shopping again, although… one more question before we do.  Did we understand Fank right, that these products are given without a demand for recompense?”

“I’ll find out…”  He asked and confirmed it, and the tension was relieved for a time.

The best clothing in the shop which were close enough in size to the small visitors were leathers from Sus 7 and cloth from Tanis 4.  Everyone wanted to see them dressed up, but the women didn’t want to ruin the clothes by wearing them before they’d had a hot bath.  They used Darter and the mobiles to sort out arrangements for the other goods and services they’d require, before they even managed to escape from Fank’s now crowded establishment.

Meanwhile, Ombonculita proved a good distraction herself, drawing attention from the villagers, the bravest of whom would have inscrutable gestural exchanges with her.  The little creature liked to mimic gestures, and convince other people to mimic her own gestures.  She never seemed to attach meaning to the symbolic language, however.  It was all some kind of game to her.  And she was shy too, so no small amount of that diversion was from helping her feel safe enough to play again, whenever she grew upset.  Josefina threatened to hide her away whenever the villagers seemed too rowdy around her.

In the end, it was determined that the visitors could have all the food, drink, and time in lodging they required, for a time of one hundred days.  But the other thing they needed would cost some appropriate barter, and this was a problem.  Umbrifer needed food for the Leveret, which could be contrived by condensing and fortifying algae crops over a few weeks.  But none of the visitors had anything valuable enough to Borlanders that it they could afford to trade away that much of their harvest.  Still, they had a hundred days to work something out, and the subject was soon dropped – for the night.

At Bugaster Mallor’s grand house, the visitors were offered guest rooms, in exchange for entertaining Mallor’s family that night.  When the freshly groomed and attired visitors came down the stairs, Mallor’s children took pictures on mobile and sent them all throughout the town.  Everyone would see them.

Blasfemia and Josefina wore matching black leather dresses with uniquely fashioned sleeves and skirts, incorporating sparkling sheer fabric layered deep enough to protect their private places.  Fank had enough of the same materials to craft Ombunculita a little dress in similar motif.  The women had done up each other’s hair, Blasfemia’s with four tails atop her crown, closed at the base with short thick braids; Josefina’s with a single high pony tail cinched with decoratively embossed black leather.  They wore makeup to smooth their complexions, and decorate about their eyes, and completed accessorizing with cheap silver jewelry.

Umbrifer wore a dashing man’s ensemble from Tanis 4, with crisp grey-blue slacks and flowing ivory shirt.  With its weirdly narrow shoulders, the tailoring at that area was more like very precise butchery.  It wore high and shiny black boots from Sus 7, and a black leather vest with separate leather sleeves pinned in place by large silver epaulets.

Darter had no choice but to attend as well, leaving behind his miserable shack for the night.  Fank had let him take a cheaper new outfit, all close-fitting and thick black cloth from Sus 7, vertically ribbed and velvety.  He had cleaned himself up at the last minute, and his hair was still damp and stringy in the pictures.  He wondered that he shouldn’t also start using makeup for his complexion, but the thought was idle and soon departed.

After the fashion show, they were granted the best food one could get in farmlands, for the small cost of tooth-grinding, faux-genial, and endless interrogation.

The visitors together made for such an unusual ensemble that it was easy to miss more subtle things about them.  But for Darter, it was becoming impossible to avoid familiarity.  By her eyes, by her body language, by her reactions and reflexes, he could tell that Blasfemia was a woman of violence – as hardened at least as the company warrior that had ended his own young life.

Umbrifer was harder to peg, so incredibly banal compared to the rest.  When questioned it would not commit to a gender, and its personal history was quite exotic, but all it seemed to want to do was work for a living, travel, meet people, and solve the basic problems of life – food, shelter, and rest.  It could talk about anything, and its stories of spirit space were unbelievable.  But what was it all about?  Nothing but practicalities – perhaps the most unbelievable thing of all.

Ombunculita was a clever performing animal at best, and easily ignored.  But her granddaughter Josefina, that was a more compelling mystery by far.  She was Blasfemia’s older sister, and having heard this, one could easily see it to be true.  Blasfemia has a smaller forehead, thicker eyebrows, and larger, darker eyes.  With her tall forehead and prematurely tired, light brown eyes, with the softness of her face and hands, one could imagine Josefina to be an infant that had grown to a woman’s size with less development than it should have.  But still, the fundamental shapes of their faces were the same.  But why was Ombunculita always Josefina’s grandmother, and not Blasfemia’s?

Josefina was as shy and animalistic as Ombunculita, but it was expressed differently.  She could pretend to be human for a time, but avoided eye contact, and was worn down by social situations even worse than Blasfemia.  She was always seeking something, running her fingers over every new surface, watching people’s bodies, or just looking into another world.  And what for?  Maybe just escape from the tedious present, from the nowhere town.  Darter could relate to that.

She claimed they were just fleeing from oppressive religion in the Stars of Weal, but when asked what was so oppressive about it, she was vague – just that they had to imagine so-called Heathen Worlds must be a better place.

Watching her hands move and feel and fold like paper art, watching her slim mouth kiss a glass when she sipped her drink, watching the delicate change in the hairline at the side of her head, from long lovely darkness to downy sideburn to the pale fuzz at her jaw.  Admiring the sculpture of her narrow little ears, the rise of her thin eyelids as the lens passed behind it.  He wished he still had a sense of smell.  He could imagine her scent.  He could imagine her touch.

Darter wished he could not remember the lure of physical love, but it was creeping through his cadaver like a new form of rot, blossoming cruelly from the source of his only remaining life and power – the terrible third red eye that hid behind his lank brown hair.

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