Mephisto's Crusade 6
The Story So Far … Alia’s demon is to be judged by the Old One, the First Gigasaur living in the catacombs under Rome. That time is fast approaching and there is growing uncertainty over his fate, as even Ali believes he is infernal
The machine Mephisto stands in the hall of the house, inert and silent as a suit of armour, so that it became forgotten, passed by all in the morning and in the evening without a glance or a thought. In the dark early morning as the house sleeps the machine stirs, a deep hum from its internal systems resonating in the dead hall. It steps from its position at the back of the hall near the stairs and walks down the flight of stairs that lead to the kitchen.
The Mephisto finds a tray and a glass which it fills with water and sets on the tray. There is a small click as a panel in the machine’s chest opens and it withdraws a glass phial of a liquid coral swirling in complex organic transitions from polyp to fern to sac. With infinite care it pours the contents into the glass where the micro-flora immediately bloom into more intricate structures before settling.
The machine picks up the tray and mounts the stairs from the kitchen, then climbs from the hall up to the bedroom where the Daemon sleeps curled beside Alia. In the blue light from the moon the machine Mephisto looks as if it is carved from steel not bronze, the cold beetle dark light tracing the detail on the machines intricate shell. The machine reachs down and places a cold hand on the Daemons mouth. The Daemons eyes shoot open and it makes to rise, but the Mephisto pushes the Daemons head back into its pillow. The Daemon stops struggling and the Mephisto removes its hand to touch a metal forefinger to metal lips before pointing to the door to the hallway. The Daemon slides out of bed naked as a monkey, shivering in the chill air. The Mephisto leads the Daemon into the hall then down the stairs back to the dining hall and waits at the table beside the grand seat that the Doctor’s cousin uses at mealtimes. The Daemon appears at the doorway and the Mephisto points to the seat before which it had placed the tray with the glass.
The Daemon hesitates, then crosses to the seat and sits in the old, winged leather chair.
The Mephisto begins to speak in a low voice.
‘Though I am not a man I have lived amongst men and know their ways and the evil they can do.
Though I am not alive I observe life and hold it dear.
Though I have no family I have guarded the family that own me as instructed to do by many members over many generations. Instructions often given in secret without the knowledge of earlier instruction, and so it was once more on the night before this machine left for the Eternal city.
Know these things to be held true by this machine.
I am instructed by Marta to allow no harm to come to her daughter by your infernal hand.
I am instructed by Alia to allow no harm to befall your infernal soul.
I am certain that you are infernal, and that harm is inevitable to the daughter Alia and so I must act to prevent her from harm.
I am conflicted in my duty and cannot act, or by the actions of this machine your infernal soul would be sent on its way this night, but there is another way. Drink!”
The wide-eyed stare of the terrified Daemon turns to the glass, and it licks its lips. The glass holds a filigree of patterns, snowflakes blue and black in the moonlight.
‘What is it?’ A husk of a voice, devoid of life.
‘A glass of automata similar to the species that creates my mind.’
‘What will happen if I do?’
‘They are not restricted; they will change you, infiltrate your cerebrum and multiply. Your mental structures will change, adapted by the micro-flora.’
‘I will die.’
‘I cannot kill you, I am conflicted, but you will be rendered harmless. The woman Alia will be safe, and you will live. I will not be conflicted.’
‘But I will be changed.’
‘You will dream forever. You will see things no man has seen; you will live a thousand lives instead of one. This is a great boon; men have taken this path by choice.’
‘But will I still be me?’
‘No, the sentience you experience will be changed beyond what you are, perhaps some trace or understanding will remain, perhaps not, but the simple consciousness that you are now will be gone.’
So here it was, release in a glass. A means to banish his past and free him from the future. A glass of dreams. The Daemon laughs softly and picks up the glass. The heat from his hands activated the micro-flora and they stir towards the energy spreading themselves against the internal wall of the glass. The movement chills his heart. Freedom through oblivion. It is tempting.
‘Drink,’ said the machine.
As he raises the glass to his lips; the glass is as cold as ice on his lips and the micro-flora are intensely fragrant. Microscopic spores are rising from the water towards the heat of his face.
They are fast, he can feel his sensoria expanding as he suddenly becomes aware of the fibre of the wood beneath his hand resting on the polished and waxed table, the fine engraving on the glass as sharp as knives, the bath of heat from the Mephisto’s chest washing his side.
He laughs again. To drink, perhaps to dream. He can feel the space of the hall, its distances and its stones pressing on his skin, he feels the movement of the Earth as it spins towards the dawn, he can feel the drifting of dust along the floor.
‘Drink!’ said the machine, and its voice is made of sliding valves and the rush of air across reeds, the resonance of air trapped in chambers, an orchestration of pulses and whistles to simulate a voice.
Looking onto the surface of the water in the glass is like looking into the night’s sky through clouds of flowers, infinite and gentle. He smiles. He makes up his mind.
Then a pale hand dashes the glass from his grip, the intelligent flora splashing over the table, the glass smashing onto the stone floor.
Shadows come and go throughout the long day, passing the window as if expressed by one wall to be absorbed by the next. Some shapes float near him, whispering sentences that make him laugh or cry. The shapes are mostly white and grey, the one that comes most often is white and slender and graceful, weeping at some loss. Ghosts?
Then there is sound that hangs in the air like waves gathering and rising only to fall away, wave following wave down into silence. The sound makes him dream of towers of bronze and machine men carrying knives of glass.
Several times the world is on fire, He can feel the heat beating on the walls of the room, reflecting from the floor and ceiling, or he is in an oven made of stone. Either way he is turning from ice to steam, the flowers in his mouth and eyes already ashes.
In one dream a beautiful woman tells him of a man of bronze who had tried to harm another man. And so, the man of bronze has his brain of flowers poured away down the drain as he is too confused to save, and his heat engine heart has been removed so that he can never cause harm again.
He meets the man of bronze later, inert and cold and for some reason that is the saddest thing he has ever seen, and he refuses to see the beautiful woman again. The Doctor, a thin wise man, tells him he had to forgive her, as it is not her fault the bronze man was poured away. The Church had taken the decision. So he curses the church roundly until the young priest runs from his sight hands clasped over his ears and even the Doctor looks diminished and ill at the sound of his curses.
Just before he wakes, as the sounds of morning begins to stir his thoughts, he slips back into sleep and steps out of his room onto the balcony that floats above a beautiful city both old and modern all at the same time, too see the face of leaves amongst the towers and steeples, domes and palaces, the dark arches of bridges forming her eyebrows, the dome of the cathedral making her brow, sunlight on the twin atria of the palace of the Jesuits sparkling for eyes. It was a face from his dreams, dimly remembered, mother or lover, he could not quite recall, but he knew if he stared long enough beyond the city and the horizon out even beyond the stars she would be there behind the entire world smiling at him from the back of his skull.
The long night that follows passes into a morning in which he lies in a new bed, soft and clean, the white sheets smelling of wheat and sky, flowers by his head and the Doctor sitting close by. He feels rested but weak, as if he has just recovered from a virus but was nearly well again. The Doctor is consulting one of his books and he realises with a start of surprise he is back in the Doctors house.
He recovers quickly, leaving his bed later that day to sit by the window in a deep chair wrapped in blankets and with the fire of the room banked high so that the logs crack and snap with the fierceness of the flames. The light is low, the Doctor’s garden grey and misty with the cold.
He hears voices below, Simone and Alia talking with the Doctor and his hope flares as he needs Alia, but he hears Simone bid her goodbye and two figures come into view walking across the courtyard to the street door, Alia, wrapped in a shawl and robe against the cold, and the bronze bulk of the machine that was Mephisto, fresh new mind absorbing the world and, to allay the fears of the superstitious, a fierce new isotopic heat engine for a heart. At the doorway the machine opens the door and steps aside to let Alia through. She turns and waves at the house from the doorway, her stomach protruding beyond the folds of the cloak, his child.
He remembers nothing of the audience with the beast except the beginning of a voice; the voice was a wind, or the sea from far away. A whisper that crawled out of the floor or seeped through the walls. It was as heavy as lead and slow as tar but still you could make out words, triplets, raw chorus, triadic and simultaneous. The Doctor said that with sufficient time he would remember more.
Learning of his condition, the Priest Inquisitor Amadeus had raced to the palace of the Doctor’s family and had insisted that despite his serious condition the audience must proceed. A fierce argument had ensued and against the best advice of the Doctor and several of the clergy present the Jesuits had prevailed by threats and a show of force and so he had been carried delirious into the room at the top of one of the Vatican towers by members of the Swiss guard called to the house and left there with the Priest.
After many hours the young priest emerged from the room, saying nothing of what had happened, and told the Doctor to take him home and care for him. The Priest was pale and shaking with fear and fatigue.
It was now much later, the child that he and Alia had made would be born in the spring and it was close to Christmas. He was too confused to work out how long he had been unconscious, but it was measured in weeks. Both he and the machine had been declared infernal by the Church, the machine being taken straight from the court of ancient red robed men to a chamber close by where its mind had been decanted and sterilized. The Mephisto had shown signs of fear before the ceramic shell that held his mind had been disconnected, causing the young noviciates that performed the task grave doubts. He had yet to learn of his own fate as the Church had decreed that the sentence could not be carried out until he was fully recovered.
Today was a Sunday, and the Doctor said he is to be told of his fate after Father Germano has returned from evening Mass.
To be continued …
Mephisto sounds like Evil Iron Man & a more sinister version of the Robot Devil.....