Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [118]
With that in mind he opened his senses to the clamour. The most common thread among the conversations he sampled as he skimmed was devoted to travel and destination. They’d reached Araldis, he heard. Preparation was being made for some type of transformation. Quixite was the word on every cache’s metaphorical lips.
To be precise . . . transformation||quixite||
He dipped deep past these exchanges and sought out the low-end frequencies. But the roar of voices had intensified. If there was a subtle set of sounds that denoted the physical workings of the Medium, he would never hear it unless he could get them to all be quiet.
He found Rast and told her, ‘I’m going to try something.’
‘Make it good,’ she whispered. Her voice sounded hoarse with defeat, or maybe he just imagined it.
He flipped away and began to skim and dip again, the way he’d been practising. But instead of sampling conversations, seeking information, he began to spread a very simple rumour, phrased as closely as he could to an Extro manner.
Silence||transformation needs||silence
At first there was nothing. No change to the din. No response. But he continued to dive in and out of the voice-gondolas on the giant Ferris wheel that he imagined, repeating his rumour until the words became a meaningless kaleidoscope of sound in his own mind.
Then suddenly he found he’d stopped, whether from a bodiless kind of exhaustion or in response to something else; not silence, but a hush.
Yes. The clamour had lessened.
And underneath the listening quiet of the trillion Extro consciousnesses he heard the thrub of something different.
With all the concentration he’d ever had, and ever would have, Jo-Jo dived down to catch that slow thrub. He clutched at it. The long, slow sound wave dragged him along like a swimmer caught in the undertow of the surf. Unlike drowning though, this gave him a sense of solidity. He was near the bottom, or the top, or the end - a base line.
He smiled with satisfaction. Smiled? Yes, a smile. He was sure. He felt the tug of flesh and the stretch of lips. Sensation returning? He tried breathing. Sound of breath. Something rising and falling. A vague sense of physicality.
In his excitement, his concentration on the thrub wavered, and the physical sensations receded. Panicking, he refocused on the sound until he felt the wave pulling him along again.
When the sense of feeling began to return, he tried to isolate his fingers and hands. Wiggle them.
He touched something. Warm and moist. Skin. His heart pounded. Jubilation streaked though him. Bodily sensation was like a gift, an ecstasy. But also strange and disorientating.
He moved the fingers. Crept them along a skin carpet. Little increments, recognising surfaces, guessing: stomach, ribs - count them all - shoulder curve, throat, hair-coated jaw, teeth, eyelash.
Something was wrong. He retraced his fingers, pushing them over the ridge of his nose. No skin to touch, there, and a much duller sensation. He experimented a little, finding the border where the sensation sharpened again. At that point he pinched and prised until something soft and pliable peeled off.
He ripped it with force, flicking it away.
Full body consciousness came at him with the speed of air rushing into a vacuum. Suddenly his eyes were open and staring at unrecognisable surrounds, and his muscles were telling him he’d been inactive for too long. He blinked at the blurriness, but it refused to clear properly. He was prone, surrounded by a substance with no sense of pressure or buoyancy. He put his hand in front of his face. Intact, but blurred as if underwater.
Then he began to choke, his mouth and airways filling with whatever it was surrounding him.
He flailed and kicked, trying to swim through it - until his head broke a surface. His whole body popped out of the substance, like a child propelled from a slippery,