By Andrew Joron

Originally published in West Coast Review #1

The argument: A fleet of four neo-Soviet starships has crashed into a wrinkle in spacetime. The wrinkle, a semi-sentient entity, translates ships and crew into a “pocket universe” consisting of one planet and one sun. This planet, deemed Hurth, is a frozen world that keeps one face perpetually turned toward the dim blue sun. Forgetful of their origins, the crew survives for generations as tribal pastoralists herding meatshrubs across the snowy plains of Dayside. By mythic coincidence, the tribes meet at the gates of Lunagrad, an automated city. Three “earthships,” remnants of the original space fleet, stand on pedestals outside the city, ancient artifacts incomprehensible to the nomads. The tribes invade the empty city, battling each other at first but then coming to an uneasy cohabitation. They become industrial workers, starting up the dormant factories. Eventually, the citizens appoint a despotic mayor whose rule becomes dynastic. But Lunagrad’s automated system is the true ruler of the city, assigning factory work to the citizens, rewarding them with entertaining brain-broadcasts called buzzah. The city’s structures are mutable, erupting unpredictably in new Builds. Fresh Builds are temporarily covered in a white worm-like script from which all citizens, apart from yellow-eyed Readers, must avert their eyes to avoid mental derangement. The citizens’ own attempts at writing in Rush, their traditional language, are rendered illegible by the city through a process known as Erasure. An unmanned train from Nightside periodically visits the city, to be loaded with factory-made cargo, which the train then transports to an unknown location on Nightside. Just before the departure of the latest train, a citizens’ uprising overthrows the rule of Mayor Ob. The mayor’s crippled sister Verra seeks to take his place. A man named Blenk, the last Reader of Lunagrad, is dismayed to discover that the city no longer covers its Builds with script, but with number-patterns. These patterns are solvable by only one citizen, the young prodigy Vepp. Power-hungry Verra believes the numbers offer a key to the city’s sealed-off command center in Downtown.

*

Marta: “You know that hands are wings. Secret wings.” 

Yuri, taking her hands: “I knew that.” 

Marta, laughing: “Ears are wings.” 

Yuri, more seriously: “Eyes are wings.”

They were not prisoners. The door of their cell—really just a side room in the Aviary—stood open. The air was warm enough. They had been fed. Curled up on blankets, they seemed content to rest here for the moment. Ulla had been put in charge of these two urchins and, as instructed, sat in the main room, overhearing, watching them.

Roughly handled by the factory workers, Yuri and Marta both bore cuts and bruises. Ulla tended to them, as she had tended to Vepp in his delirium, using what few supplies were available. After their capture, the children had been delivered to the police or to militants of the underwork. Ulla no longer knew the difference. 

Once informed of the street children’s crime, Verra had ordered them to be brought to the Aviary. Little Verra acted like she was the new mayor. Ulla sighed, made a hex sign in the air. Had the uprising failed or succeeded? Ulla, agent of the underwork, had wanted to abolish the office of the mayor, to restore the harmony between the people and Lunagrad. She resented Verra’s authority, her manipulations. The more that Verra appeared to prize these children, the more Ulla felt protective toward them.

Marta: “The train took your face.” 

Yuri, doubtfully: “No, I still have my face.”

Ulla smiled and shook her head. They were so innocent, trying to surprise each other with words. Ulla remembered playing such word-games herself, by herself, or with her broken T-puppet who could only respond with absurdities.

The black wheel with its spiraling code still rested in the center of the main room. Its presence discomfited Ulla; it held secrets that she didn’t want to know. She knew that Blenk shared her aversion to it. Vepp and Verra, however, regarded it as the greatest thing ever to emerge from a Build. They believed it provided a key to the city’s center, which, up to now, had been a forbidden zone, closed to humanity. Upstart Verra wanted to enter that zone and seize the power residing there. A mad ambition, surely! The city, the being that was Lunagrad, would never allow such ultimate Trespass.

Ulla had seen how Vepp and Verra marveled over the wheel, while Blenk sat slouched at a table in the back of the room, vacant-eyed and drinking vod. The cause of his dejection was all too apparent: the role of the Reader had been rendered obsolete. The city spoke in numbers now. Ulla had gone to sit beside the last Reader, putting her arm around his shoulders. He’d yielded to her, glad of her embrace. Their old warmth could still be kindled.

“What is your wish?” Ulla had whispered into his ear. Misunderstanding her question, perhaps deliberately, he’d answered: “There is nothing more to read, now, than what I write. Writing is also Reading.” Drawing back from her, he’d pulled his beloved notebook from his pocket, sadly flipped through its pages, once heavily inscribed, now completely blank. The Notebook of Erasure. Unable to divine his meaning, Ulla had stroked his face, gathering his tears into her fingers.

After finishing his drink, Blenk had abandoned the Aviary, saying that he wanted to return to his tower. Ulla could visit him there. And she would, she would join him, as soon as she made sure that the children, whom Blenk had yet to meet, were safe from Verra. That cane-swinging cripple had gone out, accompanied by a new pair of bodyguards, to interrogate the factory foreman about the train.

The last train, it was rumored. Many people would be relieved if that was true. The blue-eyed beast’s visits were always unsettling. This one, exceptionally so. Beginning at Grand Central, where Ulla had felt an unusual pulse-pattern in the rails as the train approached. The signal had presaged the arrival of a train equipped with open cars, never seen before. And Fact Five had generated a new kind of cargo for the cars, warped commodities that resembled outsized stringed instruments, or the disarticulated bones of a god. Made to specification—but whose? Was there communication between Lunagrad and whatever agency had sent the train from Nightside? Ulla believed that to be the case, but there were other theories.

Ulla shifted in her chair, listening. Not a sound—the children must be napping. Blenk’s empty vod glass stood on the table. She picked it up, put it down, still counting the anomalies. First, the train’s arrival had coincided with the uprising. Then, the coffin of the defeated mayor had been loaded onto a boxcar. And after the train’s departure, the rails had remained in place, not dissolving as they usually did. So—every aspect of the train’s visit was out of the ordinary. How to add it all up? 

She thought of Vepp. He, better than anyone, knew how to add. Not human factors—inherently incalculable—but nonhuman ones, those giving rise to his number-stories. Ulla was convinced that nonhuman factors were responsible for the train’s anomalies. However, Vepp could not be consulted. He, too, had left the Aviary, hoping that the Red Engineers could repair his mother-box, which had fallen silent. “Go ahead,” Verra had told him—as if he needed her permission—“and ask them, in addition, to examine the instructional shrines at Facts Three and Four. They too have fallen silent.” More anomalies—the shrines had never before ceased to function.

“Babushka?” Marta’s small voice interrupted Ulla’s thoughts. “Yuri is not well. His face—”

“What?” Alarmed, Ulla gathered up her robes and hastened to the children’s room. The interior was dim; Ulla’s eyes needed to adjust. Marta was standing over the boy. Yuri lay sprawled on his blanket, moaning softly, unresponsive when Ulla called his name. His yellow eyes were half open. He has a Reader’s eyes. But Yuri hadn’t attempted to read the scroll-script, had he? “No, babushka.” Marta, overcome with worry, roved around the room. “We haven’t gone anywhere near the new Build.”

Ulla knelt beside him, feeling his forehead, checking his heartbeat. Nothing abnormal. She spoke his name again, sharply. “Yuri!” No response. “What’s wrong with him?” Marta whimpered. “I don’t know, child,” Ulla answered. “It doesn’t seem to be anything serious. He’s in a trance of some kind, I suspect.” Marta stuttered, “Let’s—let’s wake him up.” Ulla considered the idea. “No—better to let him come out of it by himself.” Something vibrant, fleeting, passed across Yuri’s face, a shiny pallor that looked out of phase with his actual features. “Oh!” Marta cried. “Again!” 

Ulla tried not to show her fright. She cradled Yuri’s face in her hands. His skin was moist, but he had no temperature. His breathing was slow, regular. What to do? His face had seemed, just for a moment, to be illuminated from within; now its swarthy color had returned. She covered the boy, placed a roll of bedding under his head, took Marta by the hand and led her out of the room.

“Come here, Marta. I want you to tell me what happened at the factory.” Ulla sat down in the big chair, padded with meatshrub hide; it was the most comfortable seat in the Aviary. She was not surprised when Marta crawled into her lap. Ulla let the child nestle there for a moment. It would be fortunate if Verra did not return just yet. Marta was weeping quietly; she needed this release. Ulla waited until it was over, dabbing at the girl’s face with her sleeve. “Tell me.”

“Some soldiers came. They fought—” Marta spoke haltingly. “No. They didn’t really fight. They yelled.” Ulla asked gently, “Whom were they yelling at?” Marta answered, “The men. The factory men.” Marta paused, then went on. “The soldiers had a box. I saw—a person—inside the box. The person was moving his arms.” Marta buried her face in Ulla’s robes, shuddered with another fit of weeping. Ulla waited, rocking the child. The Aviary is such a large room for such a little bird, she thought.

Marta raised her head. “Yuri is sick. When is Yuri going to get well?” Ulla soothed, “Soon, child, soon. What did the soldiers do with their box?” The child looked away from Ulla, at the points of candlelight scattered throughout the auditorium. “That’s pretty,” she said, adding “Let’s fly, can we?” 

Ulla urged the girl to continue her tale. Marta did so, more resolutely now: “They put the box onto the train. Yuri wanted to get closer but I didn’t. I wanted to leave. They were doing something that I didn’t want to see. But Yuri wanted to. When the men weren’t looking, he climbed up on the train. And then the train started rolling! It was rolling away, with Yuri inside! I said ‘Yuri, jump off!’ But he stayed there, where they put the box.”

Ulla wanted to be certain that she understood Marta. “Yuri went inside the train car?”

Marta nodded. “Yes, one side was open, I could see him in there. He was running all around, and then he found that thing on the wall.” Ulla knew that Marta was coming to the most upsetting part of her story. Her eyes grew round, and her voice lowered. “The train was going past me, it was going away, but I could still see Yuri. He was looking up at a—a black square on the wall.”

When Marta paused, Ulla prompted, “This square, describe it for me, please. Was it a picture, or a mirror? Or an instructional screen?” 

Marta shook her head fiercely. “No! No! It was black—and then it took his face!” Marta began sobbing, but Ulla didn’t indulge her this time. She gripped the girl’s shoulders. “This is important, Marta! I can’t help Yuri unless you tell me!”

Marta wailed, “It took his face! I saw his face inside the square!” She gulped, and quieted a little. “Yuri fell down. He was hiding his—his own face with his hands. But the other face—it was bright, with eyeholes, it made me think of a mask—stayed inside the square. That was Yuri’s face too. And it was beating, like a heart, or like a wing, inside the black square.”

Ulla wondered at this. Whatever Marta had witnessed, it was not a reflection of Yuri’s face. And the instructional shrines never showed a human face, only machine parts, and how they fit together. This black square hadn’t been a mirror or a shrine. What, then?

“I couldn’t see inside the car anymore. It was too far away, the train was leaving the factory. Yuri jumped out before it went through the doors. And then the men came and started hitting us.” Marta was not so upset by this part of her story. Perhaps she was used to being maltreated by adults. “You did well, child, you did well,” Ulla told her, hugging Marta to her bosom. Ulla, a rebel herself, realized she might be praising Marta, not only for telling her story, but also for sneaking into the factory with Yuri. These were brave children.

Outside the door of the Aviary, the bust of Kautsky began to cackle. Ulla had a sinking feeling as the standard recognition was issued: “Your name, your name!” The door clanked upward with difficulty—was it going to get stuck this time?—and Verra bustled in with her bodyguards. She brought with her an elusive odor, sickly sweet, like a factory acid. Ulla had never noticed it before.

“Here we are! How are my little criminals?” Verra piped. Ulla, grimacing, did not reply. She wanted to conceal Marta in the folds of her robe. 

With a gesture, Verra dismissed her guards. They exited the Aviary as the door clanked down. Verra took off her hood, brushed the snow from her garments. Her eyes burned darkly over her mask. “I didn’t learn much from the foreman. All he said was, ‘The rails are still here, and the instructional shrines are repeating themselves. There’s no new work.’ Well, he got a slap in the face for that from my new tough guy Ivan.”

“New boss, old boss,” Ulla murmured. As Verra limped forward, she noticed Marta in Ulla’s lap. “Nu i nu! Here’s the girl, no worse for wear. You saw everything, didn’t you? And the boy, where is he?”

“Sleeping in the next room,” Ulla said, pointing with her chin. “Yuri is sick!” Marta exclaimed, much to Ulla’s chagrin. “Hush, child,” she said. “He’s just a little shaken up.”

“Let’s have a look at him.” Verra plucked a candle from a nearby table and walked with uneven gait over to the side room, peering inside. “Get up, young man,” she called. “I’m not going to punish you.”

Ulla felt a fierce anger rising in her. Where did I put that gun? The one that Natalya had given her. But she knew that she wouldn’t use it. That would only lead to her doom at the hands of Verra’s minions, and the children would be further traumatized. She let Marta slide to the floor from her lap. They both went to stand beside Verra. 

“Is he in there?” Verra asked, raising the candle. “I don’t see him.”

“He’s there,” Ulla said wearily, “under the blankets. Best not to disturb him.”

“I’ll decide what’s best.” Verra advanced into the room, followed by Ulla and Marta. Yuri stirred and moaned. “Well, he’s—” Verra began to say when her candle flame winked out. At the same time, Yuri’s face flared up with unnatural light. Everyone, including Yuri, cried out. Just as quickly, the light fled from Yuri’s face. The three onlookers stood in darkness. Marta pulled toward Yuri, but Ulla held her back. “What was that?” Verra whispered; there was a note of keen interest, even eagerness, in her voice.

“Please don’t punish Yuri,” Marta begged. “The train did that to him.”

“Bring me another candle,” Verra ordered. When Ulla didn’t move, Marta ran out and fetched one. Ulla noted how Marta protected the flame by cupping her free hand in front of it as she returned. A smart, capable girl. Now she and Yuri were in Verra’s clutches.

Marta handed the candle to Verra, who raised it up, surveying the room, stepping closer to Yuri. “How long has he been like this?” Ulla mulled for a moment. “Less than an hour. Up until then, the children were behaving normally, talking and playing games.”

“Come outside,” Verra ordered. The three of them returned to the main room. After Verra poured herself a cup of tea from the samovar, they seated themselves, Marta taking her own chair this time. Verra said, “No use talking to the foreman; he saw nothing. You, little girl, are the witness I’ve been looking for.” At a nod from Ulla, Marta recited her tale again, more calmly than before. When she was done, Verra sat back, lifting her mask to sip her tea. She was careful to hide her mouth with the teacup. “Most unprecedented. It seems that Yuri has become a passenger on the Nightside train.”

“Not,” Ulla dared to say, “the only passenger.” Verra glanced at her sharply, then chuckled in a way that Ulla found disquieting. “Yes, my brother has met his fate. Now he is free to become mayor of Nightside.”

“The last mayor,” Ulla said pointedly, “on the last train.” It was clear to Ulla that Verra considered herself the new mayor. Verra might have replied angrily, but she was interrupted by a shaky voice, coming from the side room: “Marta! Marta!” Yuri had awakened from his trance.

Marta ran and the two women followed, each with a candle. Yuri was sitting up, looking dazed. Marta jumped onto the bedding, laughing with relief. “You’re back!” Yuri craned his neck oddly; his hair was tousled, his yellow eyes unfocused. “I’m not back, little bird, not all the way.” Ulla handed Yuri a cup of hot tea. He held it but didn’t drink from it. “I’m here and I’m not here.”

“Where are you, boy?” Verra asked, using her interrogator’s voice. Yuri looked at her blankly. Ulla felt she had to intervene. “Yuri, this is Verra, from the mayor’s office. She’s here to help.” Yuri shook his head. “The mayor is a bad man.”

Verra, with a warning glance at Ulla, tried a gentler tone of voice. “The bad mayor has been sent away. On the train. With you.”

Yuri leaned back against the wall, sipped his tea. He closed his eyes. “Yes, I—I’m on the train, aren’t I? I feel its motion.” He opened his eyes; they gleamed yellow in the candlelight. “I can see outside. They didn’t have time to close the doors.” Yuri rolled his shoulders, seeming to wrestle with himself. “I can see two things at once. I see you here, and I see what’s happening on the train.”

“Like buzzah?” Ulla asked, before realizing that Yuri was too young to receive buzzah. Verra, irritated, waved Ulla’s words away. “Yuri, what is happening on the train?” she asked, a little too intensely. Yuri gave her a frightened look. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I don’t want to be here.” Yuri slumped and Marta threw her arms around him. “I’ve got you. I caught you.” She was both laughing and crying.

Verra placed her candle on the floor and, with a gesture, indicated that Ulla should follow her out of the room. Ulla acquiesced, setting down her own candle. The children could look after themselves for a moment.

Back at the table in the main room, Verra pulled a hand-radio from the folds of her robe. Only the police were allowed to have radios. Under Ob’s rule, at least. Ulla stared at the rare device: it somewhat resembled Vepp’s mother-box. A similar crackling voice issued from it. But this voice was male—and alive, not dead. “Central.”

Verra spoke into the device. “Central, Vee. I’m at Location Three. Find Korolev and send him to me. I want him here in the next hour. Sooner. Vee out.”

“Understood. Central out.” The radio squealed and Verra put it back into her pocket. She regarded Ulla with the unseeing button-eyes of a T-puppet. The factory smell was a little stronger. Ulla shivered. She wanted to ask Verra, What are you? Instead she said “What are you going to do?” Hating the question, for it implied acceptance that Verra was in charge.

Verra, propped in her chair like a T-puppet, did not answer. Ulla put her cup down on the table, bent forward. “Verra—?” The clink of the cup seemed to reactivate Verra. Her eyes regained their sparkle. She rubbed her hands together and chuckled. “Oh, this is a rich development, Agent Ulla. We have acquired an informant on the train.”

“Yuri, an informant?” Ulla felt her anger returning. “This is a sick boy. He is suffering, he needs a healer. Use your radio—” Ulla spoke the word with contempt—“to summon a healer, one who can sing him a healing song.”

“Ever the traditionalist.” Verra’s eyes glittered like ice. “A healing song—” it was Verra’s turn to sound contemptuous—“will be ineffective against Nightside technology.”

“How do you know that?” Ulla realized she was endangering herself by crossing Verra, but she didn’t care. “The old ways have always sustained us.”

“When we entered Lunagrad, we gave up the old ways.” This was a perennial argument; Verra obviously had no patience for it. She slapped the table with the palm of her hand. “Enough! Korolev is coming. He is a Red Engineer who has studied the train. In fact, he has founded the discipline of trainology. He will know what to do.”

“Trainology.” Ulla held back a bitter laugh. “Wherein all of our ignorance about the train is documented and compiled, no doubt.” She lowered her chin to her chest and closed her eyes, murmuring a heart-rhyme to the god Roskosmos. She needed to find a source of hope. Maybe this trainologist can help Yuri, after all.

*

Blenk sat in his tower, toying with the fresh burnstick that Verra had given him. He had not used it yet. He twirled the stick slowly among the fingers of his writing hand, pondering. This stick was capable of making permanent inscriptions. That permanence disquieted him, even though it was what he’d always wanted—to fill the pages of his writing pad with words, with sentences and stories that would not vanish or become unreadable. 

He recalled the inscriptions he’d made on the tabletop in the café. They’d remained fixed on its surface, oozing a dark viscous liquid, like the victims of a street fight. Yet unlike them as well, for his words had not been absorbed into the city’s substance. Lunagrad, therefore, was both refusing and accepting the new inscriptions. 

Verra had insisted that Blenk write in Rush, a human script. Which any common person could do. Blenk, however, longed to write in scroll-script, the inhuman power-language of Lunagrad. Ever since Mek had taught him to Read, Blenk had wanted to claim that power of writing which the city reserved for itself.

The power lay in those hypnotic glyphs that, unscrolling from a heaval, could not be translated into human language. And the story that the glyphs told—the story of Lunagrad—had no human analogue. Yet the scroll-script also yielded schematics for odd and useless devices, or formulas for concoctions that tended to burst into flame. Mayor Ob had always hoped to discover a new weapon among the schematics, or a potion that would heal his suffering body. Blenk had been able to provide Ob with a few trinkets, a few mild elixirs, nothing more. 

Today, upon returning to his tower, he’d found a bottle of green wine sitting on his writing desk. He didn’t remember leaving it there. He’d shrugged and poured himself a glass, then lit a fire in the cooking-hearth, listening to himself think. He was quite alone in his mind. No touch of Tay—the monkeyspiders had left the city. Perhaps he should leave as well, join the big warm-hearted bugs living in the Thicket. He would miss Ulla. But there was no one else, nothing else keeping him here—for the city spoke in numbers now. He allowed himself a taste of self-pity. What number-combination ruled his fate?

A throatless groan, coming from outside, disturbed his thoughts. It was not a sound he’d ever heard before. Going to the window, he was stunned to see that a nearby section of the city-encircling wall had collapsed. The section was now slumped to half its former height. People came running out of nearby buildings, shouting and gesticulating. Subsidence. Verra, or someone in her entourage, had used this term, but Blenk had barely paid attention. Was it true, then? Was Lunagrad subsiding back into the ground of Hurth?

The revolution against Ob. The conversion of scroll-script to numbers. The anomalous Night-train. Subsidence. Too many changes all at once. Blenk had the feeling of something impending, of some worldwide heaval about to happen. With the burnstick—clutched in his fist like a dagger—Blenk could write a story whose words might outlast the city itself. 

He watched the citizens gather near the half-melted wall. Visible through the opening were the three earthships. They at least remained constant as the cold blue sun. Even if the city subsided into Hurth, the teardrop-shaped earthships would stay affixed to their pedestals, traveling at some infinite velocity equivalent to standstill. Metallic ciphers from a time beyond time. Blenk’s words, if he was lucky, would end up like those relics.

Oddly inspired by the scene of subsidence, Blenk hastened to his writing desk. His previous lassitude had left him. After several anxious attempts, he managed to activate the burnstick. But the stick wasn’t suited to writing on paper. And he couldn’t mark up his desktop—it was made of wood from the Thicket. He must write into the flesh of Lunagrad. The walls of his tower room, then, would become the pages of his story.

Choosing a place on the wall opposite the window, Blenk decided to begin with an atypical glyph that Mek sometimes called the Curve Collector or, less often, the Swerve Collector. Compared to the Glad Glyph, its construction was quite simple: a thousand small arcs, random in their orientation toward one another, all converging toward a center. The burnstick smoked and sputtered as he pressed its point into the wall’s muscle-mass. Blenk needed a rag to wipe away the bloodlike fluid that dribbled from the lacerations he was making. He worked diligently, oblivious to the commotion outside. He exulted: this writing would remain, it would not be reclaimed by the city.

In scroll-script, each glyph was a story in itself. Each glyph, a different version of the same story. Blenk had no sense of time passing as he worked. This moment, at a standstill, was endowed with a velocity immeasurable by time. At some point, breathing hard, he stepped back to examine the inscription. His hand was cramping, his knees were stiff from crouching. But he saw that the wall-script was finished, complete. He had damaged his wall with meaning. 

Blenk felt a familiar force take hold of him. The stick fell from his hand. Irresistibly, the glyph was pulling him into the standard position. He must now Read what he had written.

Reading, he was looking into a different form of space. The glyph receded into itself, into competing cross-sections of the story. Commanding first his vision, then his entire body. Was someone calling his name outside the window? He must ignore that. He, or his point of view, careened among the glyph’s swerving curves.

Was this Reading or Erasing? He saw a series of cities, exfoliating over and over again out of the ground of Hurth. The reversal of space. The crash landing. The breaking of the vessels.

“Halloo, Master Blenk!” came a voice at the foot of the tower.

Lunagrad lay broken on the frozen ground of Hurth. The vessel would have to be refitted with new components. Factories, great furnace-works, evolved spontaneously to manufacture the necessary parts. Yet the parts did not fit every version of the city. This Reading revealed how, by trial and error, the city blindly operated on itself. The vital parts would be arriving by train. Subsidence would be halted, and the motor of time repaired. 

“Blenk, I’m coming up, I’m coming up the ladder!”

As always, it took Blenk a few moments to recover from Reading. He sat down heavily in his chair, rubbing his hand over his face, trying to see instead of read. He saw the sad jumble of things in his room. He saw a man’s bald head appear in the window, a great-bearded man in good cheer, grinning at him. Ottor, the epic poet. Blenk, regaining his focus, made a half-hearted gesture of welcome. “Your name,” Ottor responded, climbing over the window sill, ungainly in his long cloak.

“How did you know I was here?” asked Blenk in a constricted voice. He groped for his wineglass and took a long drink.

“You’re always here,” Ottor boomed heartily. “Here, or in jail. I’ve brought provisions.” Ottor extracted a bottle of blue wine and a bag of breadstuff from his cloak, setting the items on the table. He was quick to notice the large glyph on the wall behind Blenk. “What’s this? What’s happened to your wall? It’s a bleeding mess!”

“You shouldn’t have come, Ottor. I have no time for a visit. As you can see, I’ve been writing.” Without bothering to give thanks, Blenk opened the bag Ottor had brought, tore off a piece of bread and began eating. He realized that he was ravenous.

“Why, this is—this is scroll-script,” Ottor exclaimed, approaching the wall.

“It is wall-script,” Blenk corrected. “But yes, I’ve inscribed a glyph here in the city’s own language. So be careful, don’t look too closely at it. You know the consequences.”

“You, Reader, have been writing?” Ottor shook his head, doffed his cloak, seated himself at the table. “Many things that were once forbidden are now permitted.”

As the glyph cooled, a faint odor of burnt shashlyk permeated the room. Blenk hadn’t noticed any such odor when carving the tabletop in the café. Ottor made no comment on it as he partook of the bread and wine. Blenk resigned himself to suffering Ottor’s presence for the next hour—but no more than that. The glyph had somehow shown Blenk that subsidence could be repaired. He needed to Read again, to make sure, then share this information with—whom? Verra? The Red Engineers? The underwork, as far as he knew, had been disbanded.

“Reading, writing, they both belong to the city.” Ottor tended to speak in a grand style that Blenk found wearisome. “We work with city-made marks, prone to Erasure. But when we lived on the plains, we lived in Story. We told ourselves stories, we sang long songs. And those songs held together, they didn’t fall apart after a few lines. Illiterate, we were, but we knew ourselves. Our voices preserved us.”

Ottor took out a writing pad and placed it on the table next to Blenk’s writing pad. The two pads, bound in thin meatshrub hide, appeared similar, almost identical. “They are identical,” Ottor proclaimed. “Both equally empty.” He was grinning rather maliciously, teeth flashing in his beard. 

Blenk brushed a few crumbs of breadstuff off his shirt. “What do you want of me, Ottor? As I said, I’m busy.”

“Why, just a bit of conversation with a fellow artist. In these difficult times, we must make common cause!” Ottor leaned forward, no longer grinning. “Reading is an art, is it not?”

When Blenk didn’t answer, Ottor picked up his writing pad and flipped it open, extending it toward Blenk. “I invite you to read these pages, Reader. Behold, the opening strophes of my epic poem, The Avian Revelations!”

Blenk peered at the pages. “I behold nothing but a scramble of ink.”

Ottor snorted contemptuously, made some other noise. Perhaps he was speaking. Blenk was still dazed, trying to follow the curve and swerve of a conversation that seemed to have taken up most of the day already.

Ottor’s eyes veered upward. “All this talk of a crash! It’s the origin of everything, according to our mythology. But I say the crash isn’t something from long ago. It’s happening now! I say we are still crashing! Here is the evidence!” He waved his pad in the air.

Blenk squinted at the illegible page. “You say that Erasure is a form of crashing?”

“What else is it?” Ottor slammed the pad down on the table. “If we still lived on the plains, I would be singing our epic. Here, my words cannot accumulate.” In a quieter voice: “I cannot even keep them in my head.”

“Go to the Red Engineers, Ottor,” Blenk advised. “Get yourself a burnstick like this one. Write your epic on the city walls. Your words will persist as long as the city does.” 

“I want to write them on the sun!” Ottor cried. “The city is subsiding—give me a ladder so I can climb to the sun!” He laughed giddily, more than a little drunk. The bottle of blue wine was nearly empty. How long had they been sitting here?

“Ottor, I really have to get back to work now,” Blenk said, though he really wanted to sleep.

“Work? What is your work?” Ottor, swaying to his feet, was turning nasty. “A Reader you are, and a Reader you will remain!” He gestured toward the wall-script. “You transcribe these pictures from memory, adding nothing original, nothing of your own! When you write in city-script, my friend, the city guides your hand. The city is the writer. Lunagrad is not going to allow you to revise its story!” 

Blenk hated Ottor for saying what Mek had always told him: that the city-script was for Reading only. Blenk could never accept that. Admittedly, when he wrote in city-script, his own intentions were not in play. Yet it put him in touch with a source, a sorcery. Carefully, trying not to slur his words, he asked, “Poet, do you know what inspiration feels like?”

No response. Blenk looked around. Another time slippage? Ottor had left the room. Blenk cursed, for the burnstick was also gone. So much for getting back to work. He slumped in his chair. It was quiet outside—the crowd around the ruined wall had dispersed. Best to sleep now. Blenk hugged himself. Tomorrow he would obtain another burnstick.

*

You, Yuri, feel your face is burning. 

Your face is burning. It flaps, a burning flag in a nonexistent wind, a rag with holes for eyes.

Your field of view is restricted. You see the interior of the train car and its cargo. The train is in motion, wheels pounding. 

Through the open door, you can see the landscape passing. White sky, cold blue sun.

You cry a wordless cry. You are alone, but now you feel a hand laid on your forehead. Marta’s hand. She is saying something soothing, but she’s not here. “Marta!” But you have no voice. You have no voice in this place. Marta heard you, responded to you, in the other place. In Lunagrad.

With a shock, you realize you can see, through the open cargo door, on the far horizon, the spires of Lunagrad. At this distance, it looks like a toy city. And to the left of the city, three earthships, also tiny.

Another shock: the sun, which never changes its position, is noticeably lower in the sky. How can it be?

In a moment, you come up with the answer: the sun is not moving. You, Yuri, are moving, riding on the train. Away from Dayside, toward Nightside. As you move, the sun will appear to sink, and finally disappear below the horizon. You will have entered Nightside.