Maul limped within range and Ligish had to halt his swing an inch away from his head. “See!” he said. “The golem cannot harm us with his current homunculus.”
Ligish dropped the pew and backed away from the oncoming soldiers. He couldn’t break free of them without risking murder. But if he didn’t fight, then Maul would kill his homunculus and replace it with his own.
He ran as they fired their grappling hooks en masse. His engine churned and his body glowed cherry-red with heat as he leaped over a series of pews to reach the cathedral’s far end. The grappling hooks clattered on the marble floor behind him.
He tried to outflank the soldiers on the right and run to the doors, but the soldiers moved fast enough to block his path. Same on the left. He could barrel through them, but his weight would kill them. He moved farther and farther back, away from the range of the hooks. His engines cooled.
It would be easy to lie down and let them kill his demented homunculus. No more love. It wasn’t as if he held any responsibility for his actions once Maul inserted a new one. He should surrender. He withdrew his blades and started to kneel. But he imagined Anna trembling and naked in the bedchamber, waiting for Maul. No.
There was a mezzanine level behind him which housed the cathedral organ, right where the voice box on a man would be. Behind the organ was a small staircase that probably led to the cathedral’s skull and the zeppelin. The mezzanine could be reached by an iron spiral staircase leading to a walkway, but the soldiers blocked it. Leaping high enough to reach the mezzanine would completely drain his engine.
The soldiers moved forward, cranking their grappling hook guns. Ligish gathered himself and his engine burned white hot, so hot the closest pews caught fire. The soldiers hesitated and he took the opportunity to leap, twisting in the air, and grabbing the mezzanine’s edge.
The soldiers fired their ghost-fist guns. His movements were statue-slow and he could not evade the ghostly fists. At full power, they would have bounced off, but his drained engine left him vulnerable. As each ghostly fist pierced his skin and solidified, he grunted in pain. He reached down and ripped them out, filigree silver wires and cogs spilling from his wounds.
“Stop firing,” Maul yelled. “I need him undamaged.”
Ligish lumbered to the stairwell. At the entrance, he glanced back. Soldiers were pouring up the spiral staircase, tripping in their hurry to reach him. Maul yelled commands to catch Ligish and then limped out of the cathedral. Calvaria lay red-faced on the floor.
Ligish used both hands to lift his right leg onto the first step. After a few steps, he could climb without lifting his legs onto the steps. Not fast enough though, because the soldiers were upon him. A soldier scrabbled for the locking pin at the back of his skull. Ligish swung him into the wall hard enough to wind and then dislodge him. The soldier’s slumped body prevented the soldier behind him from reaching Ligish.
Ligish grabbed the first soldier by the shirtfront and lifted him into the air, the blades unsheathing from his free hand. The soldier screamed. Ligish used his blades to separate the man’s grappling hook from his gun and then he looped and knotted the hook’s rope around his arms. He threw the soldier into his fellows so they stacked upon each other. With the staircase blocked, Ligish restarted his slow climb. A gun sounded behind him and a fist buried deep into his back. He gritted his teeth and continued the climb, each movement stabbing into his back. There wasn’t time to pull it out.
The steel door at the top was locked, but Ligish tore the door off its hinges and then jammed the broken door in the stairwell. At the roof’s edge was a single wide gangplank leading to the Holy Zeppelin’s cabin.
Ligish forced one foot after another. The gangplank creaked under his weight, but he reached the zeppelin’s cabin safely. He slashed the tethering rope and cast the gangplank to the cobblestones.
His back throbbed, each movement billowing pain through his body. A self-diagnostic program indicated the ghost-fist had squirmed further into his engine, but not in a location he could reach from his front repair portal.
He gritted his teeth and pulled. Black ink splattered the white leather interior of the Holy Zeppelin. Once it was out, though, movement became easier. He ripped open a leather passenger seat and used the stuffing to block the hole and staunch the flow.
He limped toward the front control panel and perched on the captain’s seat. He’d escaped Maul’s men, but what now? The best he could hope for was to hide on God’s underside and that solved nothing. Maul would still marry Anna.
What had he said when Calvaria had refuted his ability to think? Then I’ll ask God to change the law. He’d not thought the words before speaking. His homunculus was insane, crazy, dying of dementia. Few talked to God, and it was always a one-way conversation. Yet he turned the zeppelin toward God’s head. If talking to God was required to save Anna, then that’s what he’d do.
Mirrors provided Ligish with a panoramic view around the zeppelin. Behind him, a mammoth war zeppelin revealed itself in the moonlight. Maul must have given the command to launch. Ligish had a head start, but the Holy Zeppelin was built for comfort, not speed.
He checked the instrumentation panel and revised the geography before looking at the moon. Its position meant he was behind the world’s arm. If he could overtake the arm, then he could catch the wind generated by its motion and reach God’s bottom lip within hours instead of days. But the war zeppelin would catch him before he could catch the wind.
Ink-blood had soaked through the stuffing and leaked down his side. The wound was worse than he’d thought. As the homunculus ran out of ink, it would write commands less frequently, and only use symbols that didn’t require many quill strokes. Before long, his homunculus would force him to think like a child and then eventually it would stop issuing commands altogether. He ripped more stuffing out of the leather seats and filled all the wounds he could reach. The flow of blood-ink slowed. Maybe his interior bilges were working again.
He increased the magnification of the rearview mirror. They were flying over the snow-capped Submaxillary Mountains. The war zeppelin would overtake him at least an hour before he could catch the wind from God’s arm.
He slumped in his chair. It was hopeless. No. He’d die before giving up on saving Anna. He set the autopilot towards God’s mouth and lurched to the cabin’s center where a ladder led to the engine room. He squeezed through the hatch and examined the engine. It used an expression cylinder and a compression cylinder operating at different temperatures to fire a piston, but it wasn’t as powerful as his engine. If he connected the piston to his own engine, the power drain would be unpredictable. The zeppelin could float out into unknowable space, far from God’s grace and body.
It was worth the risk. He opened a door in his belly and he examined his insides. They were a mess, great chunks of wiring and gears missing, but the core engine was still functioning well enough to link to the zeppelin. How much power did he need? Using his internal abacus, he calculated the maximum amount of power he could use without burning out either engine, and then tried to factor in the damage to his cooling system. Without an automicroscope, he couldn’t see the damage’s true extent, nor start repairs. The worst-case scenario left him well short of God’s arm and overtaken by the war zeppelin. Reaching God’s arm depended on good weather. Even then, the war zeppelin would hit the wind from God’s arm only a few hundred meters behind him. With the wind, the speed differential was reduced, but they’d still catch him soon after he’d passed God’s bottom lip. But would they dare to cross God’s mouth? Whatever happened after that was fate.
He pumped as much power as he dared into the engine and the piston started to blur with motion. The wind rushed by outside and the zeppelin’s frame vibrated. His skin glowed red-hot and then white. Water spilled from somewhere inside his compression cylinder and leaked from his open chest, vaporizing as it touched his skin.
Something changed in the zeppelin’s shuddering. He sent more power to his ears. The wind had picked up and the ropes guiding the rudders were singing with strain. The zeppelin required more power. If he shut down everything except his thoughts, then it might be enough. The world darkened around the edges. No sight, no sound, no pain. Nothing except a lonely voice questioning why he didn’t give up.
Without senses, he couldn’t measure time’s passage. He could emerge too early or too late. He might never wake. He imagined Anna counting the seconds. The seconds accumulated into the thousands. Maybe she’d woken and tried to sneak out the window, slipping and smashing her skull on the cobblestones. Maybe Maul had returned to the house and decided to fulfill his marital duties early. Dream Anna faltered in her count. He started counting again. Thoughts of Maul with Anna kept interrupting his count and he restarted a number of times. He gave up and simply imagined Anna and all the moments of her life he’d been privileged to watch.
He supposed four hours had passed, though he had no basis for his guess. He reduced power to the zeppelin and routed it to his sense modules. Steam from his leaking cooling system filled the room. Ligish glowed with white-hot heat. No water dripped from his cooling system. Once the compression cylinder was the same temperature as his exchange cylinder, he’d grind to a halt.
He unhooked his engine from the zeppelin’s and closed his front hatch. No plans formed in his head. Was his homunculus rationing ink as he bled? He mightn’t be able to conceptualize a plan of action that might save him. Soon, he mightn’t even understand the word plan.
If he sat here, either his engine would stop or his ink would run out. The zeppelin bucked. They must have been close to the wind from God’s arm. The zeppelin engine had water to cool its compression cylinder, enough to keep him going. To access the water though, he’d need to rip apart the zeppelin engine, rendering it inert. With no way of steering, the zeppelin would be at the wind’s mercy.
Ligish plunged into the zeppelin’s engine, ripping the metal apart with his hands until he’d reached the water tank. The steel tank burst and doused him with water. Gusts of steam billowed, but enough water soaked him to cool his compression cylinder.
The zeppelin, rudderless, spun in circles and then they were surfing on a tremendous wave of wind. He slid down to the cabin as the entire zeppelin spun. Each time the zeppelin spun, he caught a glimpse of the war zeppelin. It was fighting the wind to fly away from God’s mouth. Too frightened to cross, no doubt. Suddenly weak, Ligish sat. The zeppelin water had cooled his compression cylinder, but without more coolant, the heat imbalance would lock his engines if he kept moving.
The moon chased the zeppelin across the sky and he imagined he was sailing a small boat on a vast ocean. One day he’d take Anna on a zeppelin ride through the night, point out the city lights below and tell her about the people who had lived there before she was born. There was so much of the world that he wanted to share with her.
After many hours, light stained the sky. Ligish frowned. The moon was still behind him and God’s other hand was hours from rising. Despite the strain upon his engine, he rose and peered over the edge. A vast sea of burning fire stretched to the horizon. God’s mouth. If the zeppelin crashed and burned, he’d sink through God’s mouth and into hell, which was located in His stomach.
He sat again before he toppled over the edge. The cooler air hitting the heat of God’s mouth formed dark clouds below Ligish, the terrible storms afflicting the few brave souls living on the Mentum plains.
The zeppelin rose over the storms on hot currents of air and kept rising. After a while, Ligish started to worry. He didn’t need air, but his homunculus did. Homunculi were tough, but not immortal. Ligish tapped his fingers against the railing. It took what little power he had left, but it kept his homunculus scribbling commands. Or maybe it was the other way around. It didn’t matter as long as he kept functioning.
The zeppelin floated upwards. Would they rise until his homunculus suffocated? Would it live long enough for Ligish to see what was on the other side of God’s mouth? Ligish closed his eyes. A thud next to him made him open them. A golden golem had landed on the deck. It was perfectly sculpted into the shape of a muscled man. A thin layer of ice covered its golden plating.
Flying to the zeppelin was a host of golden golems, moonlight glinting off their icy skins. Growing from the back of each golem was a dragon’s head. The dragon’s mouth issued a stream of flaming white gas, pushing the golems through the air. Ligish’s jaw dropped. To generate such heat, their compression cylinders must have been cooled by forces beyond his comprehension.
Golden golems landed all around the zeppelin’s deck and it started to sink underneath their weight. Others grabbed the rails and stabilized the zeppelin’s flight. Two stood on either side of Ligish. They lifted him between their arms.
A final golem landed on the zeppelin’s bow. This golem was a figure made entirely of diamond and steel. It had transparent skin and bones and a black steel heart pumping like the clench of a train’s piston. Its hands were coated in black steel and gloved in ice.
“Gabriel?” Ligish said. “The king of all golems?”
The diamond golem reached inside Ligish’s chest and laid its icy hands upon his compression cylinder. “You know your bible,” he said. “Yes, I’m Gabriel.”
“Welcome home,” said the golden golem to Ligish’s right. “Whatever the command driving you here, know that you’re free.”
“Home?” said Ligish.
“Hush, Uriah,” Gabriel said to the golden golem next to Ligish. Gabriel laid a cold hand on Ligish’s shoulder. “Welcome back to Labio Superiore, where you were made.”
“I don’t remember being made,” Ligish said. “You’re the first golem I’ve met who’s ever claimed otherwise. I want to see God.”
“You wish to see God? Don’t you want freedom?”
“Freedom?” The supporting golden golems fired their dragons in unison and the zeppelin slid through the night air, slicing across the wind from God’s arm, toward the unknown regions above God’s mouth. They traveled faster than Ligish thought possible, the wind stripping flakes of paint from the zeppelin’s outsides.
“Let me show you,” Gabriel said. He stood still. Uriah removed his locking pin and opened the back of Gabriel’s head. Uriah reached inside. He withdrew an object inside his cupped hands, holding it like a baby bird.
Ligish leaned forward and Uriah opened his hands to reveal a tiny diamond golem, identical in every way to its host. Uriah replaced the miniature golem and Gabriel snapped awake. “We have free will,” Gabriel said. “No homunculus forces us to obey the commands of cruel masters.”
“Who made it?”
“God,” Gabriel said, but there was no certainty in his voice.
“It has a locking pin,” Ligish said. “Is there another homunculus inside?”
“What does it matter?” Gabriel said.
“I’m wondering how much free will you have when what you think gives you self-control is controlled by something else. And is there another homunculus inside that one? And more beyond that?” They did not answer. “If you know so little, how can you claim free will? You’re God’s slaves as much as I’m my master’s slave.”
“We offer you a new body to replace your damaged one,” Uriah said. “You’re running out of ink and coolant. We offer you free will. If you wish to see God, we cannot guarantee you anything. God is God. He is as mysterious to us as he is to mankind.”
On the horizon was a gleaming city made of gold perched over the chasm of God’s mouth. It stretched as far as he could see. Looming over the city were two vast dark ovals stretching from earth to sky, the tops and sides blurring and curving at the horizon.
Gabriel pointed to the ovals. “God’s airways. If you enter inside, some say you can talk to God as an equal. We don’t know, for none have ever gone.” The zeppelin
started to dip toward the city. Gabriel touched Ligish’s blades. “You can choose a new body without these. There will be no blood on your hands.”
The closer they flew, the more beautiful the city appeared. There were buildings like spider webs, fashioned of gold leaf so thin that light passed through with a greenish tinge. There were towers and cathedrals and homes and hovels and every single one appeared handcrafted by a master artisan.
“Do you still wish to see God?” Gabriel said.
“If I live in Labio Superiore, can I ever return?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Why do you want to leave? You’d be free here.”
“I want to ask God to save a girl.”
“It is your homunculus driving you to save her. You can be free of that here.”
For a long time, Ligish gripped the zeppelin’s railing and contemplated Gabriel’s words. He’d not wanted to fall in love with Anna, but she had not created his homunculus. She wanted to help people, not be the passive and unloved wife of a general.
“It doesn’t matter whether it is my homunculus making me save her,” Ligish said. “Saving her is the right thing to do. That does not change, no matter who my master is or what you offer me.”
“His homunculus makes him give fine speeches—” Uriah started, before Gabriel cut him off.
“God is mysterious,” he said. “Perhaps our brother is right.” He motioned to the supporting golems and they tilted the zeppelin upward to fly over Labio Superiore. “We’ll help him reach God. What happens after that is His will.”
They flew to the entrance to God’s left nostril and then the supporting golems halted the zeppelin. “What happens now?” Ligish said.
Gabriel placed a hand on Ligish’s shoulder. “You’ve sustained too much damage to walk to God.” He turned to Uriah. “Take out my homunculus and soul and give my body to him.”
Uriah opened the back of Gabriel’s skull and removed the homunculus. With a crack, he wrenched out Gabriel’s soul. Ligish had never seen the front of a soul before, but it appeared identical to the back except that the foremost slot was much smaller, too small for parchment. Uriah handed the soul and homunculus to another golem and gestured for Ligish to turn around.