Blue Electron Moon
(Originally published in Labyrinth Inhabitant magazine.
Revised for this collection.)
I had nothing, and I was nothing--a scab that had been torn off from the bleeding stump of humanity and cast away. I was loneliness, grime, and stench bundled in beggar's cloth. My hands trembled as I caressed the door of my cell, my wrinkled skin as cold as the metal. Intruding into my tower prison through the bars of a solitary window, the blue moon shone down on my haggard face.
To the people of the city I'd once ruled over, I was already dead and forgotten. I slammed my fist against the cell door, an unexpected impulse that tore my knuckles open. The moon had me fired up. Though the decades had been slow and filled with torment, I was not yet ready to merge with the dust at my feet. Didn't they realize that I still hungered for human companionship, for the warmth of a woman and the sweet taste of wine? But I hungered most for vengeance against my captor.
Soft laughter reached my ears and I turned to the window. The monster had come to me again, as he always did in the dead of night in his endless quest to torture me. The moonlight was blotted out by a huge shadow, and the gaze of his great eye fell upon me through the bars. I cried out in agony. My bones were stretched by an invisible force, pulled toward the creature that stood outside the tower, as if he craved to draw them forth and gnaw on them.
"Antrollis," he said, his voice a rumble. "Are you ready for the game?"
The force that tugged at my skeleton weakened, and I stood. "I'm weary, too old now to provide sport for you. There will be no game."
The giant figure stood in silence, perhaps contemplating my words. "This is your last chance," he finally said. "When the blue moon rises to its peak, your cell door will open--granting you a path to freedom and wealth."
"A path to madness," I said. "And if I couldn't find my way out of Valca Tower in my youth, what hope do I have now?"
"The hope of wisdom," said the monster.
My fists knotted in anguish. The monster knew I couldn't refuse. As much I feared what lay beyond my dungeon--madness beyond reason--I so craved a taste of freedom that I was willing to face hades itself on the slim chance I might find the way out of the tower.
"You already knew I would play your game," I said. "So why did you come here?"
The creature didn't answer. The moments slipped past.
"You've come to torture me," I said, answering my own question, "to soften me up and make an escape that much harder on an old fool. Not that I believe you would let me escape, regardless. We both know I cannot win the game."
The great eye seemed to expand, until it filled the window. Things squirmed in its depths, blood vessels pulsating and veins crackling with energy. My head spun with dizziness and I collapsed to one knee, the room wheeling around me. The pain in my bones became unbearable and time lost meaning. I wanted it to end--for my body to be ripped apart by the pressure so I could find peace--but it wasn't allowed. I had to suffer.
I blacked out at some point, and when I awoke, the creature was gone. Once again the blue moon shone through the barred window. My body shaking, I stood up and leaned against the wall. Although I knew the monster was only toying with me, I couldn't bear to stay in that cell a moment longer. It was time to face insanity yet again.
My cell door stood open, and I walked out. The hallway I stepped into was made of stone blocks overlaid with luminous crystal tiles. I'd been in this hall before--on three other occasions in the past thirty years when the blue moon had risen and I'd had a chance to escape. I should have been prepared for the sights that awaited me, but I found my legs growing weak and my stomach churning with revulsion. Body parts, trapped in the clear wall tiles, randomly shifted about like puzzle pieces--the still-living sections of sundered men who'd been imprisoned here for time untold. Sometimes a hand would end up atop a leg, or an eye would peer out from a half-developed torso.
Somehow, most of a face had been assembled from the tiles--with one eye, a mouth, and an ear. I forced myself to approach it. It was a fat, bearded face with rosy cheeks, and the mouth hung open to reveal decayed teeth. He seemed to be trying to speak to me--some sort of warning perhaps. He kept mouthing two words, but I was no lip reader. It seemed like he was trying to say bush or brush followed by something I couldn't make out at all.
"Are you saying brush?" I asked. A slight shake of the head. "Bush? Crush?" An emphatic nod at the last one. Was this man trying to help me somehow? It seemed unlikely that he would know, or care, about my interest in escaping the tower.
"Crush what?" I asked. "Do you want me to try to crush the tile and free you? Or perhaps end your suffering?"
He shook his head.
I sighed. Time was wasting. "What should I crush?"
He seemed to gulp for air and then narrow his lips. I tried to mimic him, while muttering words. "Mute? Clue? Kill? Cube?"
The head nodded frantically.
"Cube?" I said. "Crush cube?" More nodding. "What cube should I crush?"
He faltered, his face looking stricken. Then the tiles shifted, carrying his mouth away and inserting it in a wiggling foot. I went to the mouth, but it had apparently lost its ability to form words and instead took to drooling.
I slumped against a wall, my will drained. Was there no limit to the cruelty of the gods? I didn't know what these men had done to earn a place in such a bizarre and hideous prison, but surely this was too harsh. I wanted to smash the tiles and free them, but I had no tool that would have allowed it. I'd already tried my fists, years ago when I was young and strong.
At the hall's end, the monster appeared in another window that was fortified with metal bars. I was forced to approach him, having no way to bypass the window. The sight of the great eye made my hatred smolder--a bulging, mocking orb that was a symbol of decades of seemingly pointless torment for me. How I longed to tear it out and stomp it into ruin.
"I've come to give you advice," the monster said. "To help you."
"Why would you want to help me?" I asked. "You took over my city and enslaved my people. You imprisoned me in this tower of madness, and you've tortured me for years. I don't even know your name, or what you are. I don't know why you hate me."
The creature laughed. "Soon you'll know it's not hatred that drives me. I have other motivations. The strength of youth is meaningless here. Use your wisdom, old king. Think your way through the tower. The time is right."
The eye seemed to expand once again, and I cringed, expecting the invisible force to tear at my skeleton. But nothing happened. An instant later, the creature vanished--replaced by blue moonlight. I stood still for a while, leaning against the wall and trying to gather my wits. The monster had visited me countless times over the years, yet I was still left drained and shaken from each encounter.
I rounded a corner and entered another hallway. This was where my quest had ended on three previous occasions. Pinpoints of light shone like torches throughout the passage--some white and deeply compelling, others crimson and repulsive. The walls were webbed in the charts of creation, etching upon etching detailing the history of the universe--much of it in mathematical formula far too complex for me to understand. These were the writings of the gods and no mortal was supposed to comprehend them.
Scattered about the hall were objects--a silver rod, a purple star, a hammer of light, and a golden sphere. These probably were tools that could prove helpful to me in getting through the tower, but as I'd learned before, they were nearly impossible to grab.
On my previous visits to this chamber, I'd tried to creep carefully through it with no success--so this time I ran for all I was worth, trying to dodge the torches. I made it halfway down the hall before I got too close to a torch and it sucked me to it. The white flame seeped into me, warming my stiff limbs, and the wonders of creation flooded my mind and threatened to consume me. I tore myself away and staggered into another torch--this one crimson and angry. The chaotic fires of destruction seared into me, filling my mind w
ith images of doom--stars and planets exploding and collapsing, black holes forming and devouring. My mind seemed threatened to be torn apart by the opposing forces.
Somehow, I staggered away from that flame and rushed blindly forward, praying to the gods to guide my feet--to let me make it through just this one time. I stumbled and fell hard to the stone floor. I lay winded for a moment, and when I opened my eyes, one of the objects lay close by--the golden sphere. I seized it and found it cold to the touch.
I pressed the sphere to my forehead and prayed it would help me. I rose, the torches pulling on me frantically from all sides. With a cry, I ran forward, for there was no going back ever again. I was bounced back and forth from beauty and peace to chaos and ruin, yet somehow I held onto my sanity and reached the hall's end--only to confront a solid stone wall.
I shoved at the bricks in vain, wondering if I should have tried to get the hammer in order to smash the stone. Perhaps I needed all of the tools to escape, but the thought of entering the maze of torches again was more than I could bear.
I pressed the golden sphere to the wall, but nothing happened. The monster had said I should use my wisdom, but I didn't feel any wiser than the last time I'd tried to escape the tower. My body trembled, and I fought to calm myself and clear my mind so I could think. As I brought myself to a relaxed state, the sphere warmed in my hand and emitted a pale light. In that glow, I could see a door handle where none had seemed to exist before.
I wandered through several rooms and hallways, using the sphere to guide me. I witnessed wonders and terrors that I dared not look upon directly or try to comprehend. Light had formed in web patterns that had trapped falling stars--or so it appeared to me. The form of man had been sown into a tree in a great chamber, like a mold, and from his flesh grew abominations only the gods might have considered beautiful or meaningful. Things shuffled and scurried past me, some so hideous I was afraid I might turn to stone at the sight of them. Yet some were beautiful gold-skinned women that made me succumb to my natural urges and turn my gaze toward them--only to realize upon closer examination that they were half merged with serpents.
I clung desperately to the sphere, as if it were my sanity, and the creatures seemed to shy away from it. Whenever it grew hot, I took that as a sign pointing the way. Eventually, I ended up in a round chamber with a device at the center that looked like an enormous heart--with arteries leading to machines. It stank of blood and meat and was covered in layers of blue veins, nerves, and blood vessels. My stomach heaved from the smell, and I was overwhelmed by the power emanating from the device. In front of the heart-like monstrosity was a half-moon shaped altar that shone with a silver hue. Moonlight from yet another window shone directly onto the altar.
The creature appeared at the window. "You have done well in getting this far. I knew the time was right for you to succeed. You will now activate the machine that will create the object I've long sought. Then you will trade that object for your freedom."
"The machines of the gods are beyond me," I said. "I don't understand them, and I wasn't meant to. I'm only a mortal man." The concept of bargaining with this monster, after all the misery it had inflicted upon me, made my body twitch with rage.
"You must find a way," said the creature, "or perish in the tower. This is my only chance for a hundred and thirty more years. The blue moon itself appears frequently, but only rarely is it fully manifested like on this night. I kept you a prisoner in this tower because only you--in all the world--can do what I need done. When you thought I was torturing you, I was actually strengthening and conditioning you for my task. I released you from your cell those other times just so you would get a taste of what awaited you and be better prepared for this night."
"If you released me, then you must somehow control the tower," I said. "Why don't you just do the task yourself? Or is there some great danger involved?"
"My control is quite limited," the monster said. "And yes, it would kill me. But your body is ready to withstand the energy. Now activate the heart, or die."
I held up the golden sphere. "Can this help me?"
My words were greeted with silence. I waved the sphere around, but I realized I was too wound up for it to respond. I relaxed myself and placed my trust in the tool, letting its heat guide me as I moved from one machine to the next, clicking switches and turning dials. The heart-like thing began to pulse and quiver. I shrank back as a new, more potent stench overcame me--like that of burning flesh. I doubled over and vomited.
At last the heart stopped beating, and a blue, glowing cube sat on the altar. I approached it, but hesitated, certain it would destroy me. I remembered the face in the tiles telling me, possibly, that I should crush a cube. Was this what the man had been speaking of?
"Take it in hand!" the monster commanded. "It won't kill you. You have the blood of the gods in you. Your father came from the stars."
I didn't know whether or not to believe the monster concerning the origin of my father. I'd never known him--as my mother, a widowed queen, had never revealed who impregnated her, much to the dismay of the kingdom.
"That cube is a musical instrument," the monster said. "Valca Tower is a device designed to draw in electricity from the blue moon and stack it, layer upon layer, into the cube you see before you. You cannot understand what an amazing device sits upon that altar! It is made of electricity that has been refined, electricity that can respond to the vibrations from the deepest places of the universe--the very well from which creation sprang. The music it emits is like heaven itself, and one could get lost in its embrace forever. But aside from that, the cube is a power source that can activate a ship that will return me to the stars where I belong."
Swallowing my terror, I seized the cube. A shock ripped through me, and for a moment I thought I was going to explode. But my body held together, and the force subsided. I held up the cube. "So you will accept this in exchange for my freedom?"
"Without question," said the monster, his eye fixed on the cube.
My hatred for my captor and tormentor still burned strong. It would never die. "I could crush this. What would happen?"
"You would destroy the city," said the monster. "And you would kill yourself as well as thousands of innocent people."
I considered it, and I realized I could never do it. I'd been an honorable king, and though my people had apparently forgotten me, I hadn't forgotten them. But the creature didn't know what was in my heart. "I will crush it!" I shouted. "I will end this now."
"Stay your hand," the monster said. "I'll make a bargain."
"Your eye," I said without hesitation. "Your wretched eye! Tear it out of your forehead and give it to me. Lay it at my feet. Once it's in my possession, I'll give you the cube and you can return to wherever you came from. Once I have your eye, you will be forced to keep the bargain, lest I destroy it. I'm an old man who has already lived too long. I live for vengeance now, and I will have it--one way or another. And I will be king again!"
The creature was silent for a long time before replying.