Attan Ze Kosh held the door open as the scientist with the sprawling limbs and bulging eyes entered the apartment with his head bowed, all stiffened in an attitude of exaggerated reverence, as if he were entering a temple during a solemn ceremony.

  Dr. Iliqualoti had a reputation as a reclusive individual, leading a secluded life devoted entirely to his studies, but his dedication was unaccompanied by shyness or other social awkwardness. Yet the mayor saw him hesitate on the threshold, cross it with his arm against the frame, and almost cling to it as duty, good manners, and the amused gaze of his host urged him inside. The emotional pressure crushing him at that moment was almost visible in the transparent sheen of his thin skin. What was he afraid of?

  He had not expected to be invited to the mayor's house; that had been obvious from the moment Attan Ze had summoned the porter to lead them away from city hall, and far from considering it an honor, or even an eventuality that was not so surprising given his position in society, he had reacted with a poorly disguised muscle spasm.

  Besides, he knew as well as anyone that Attan Ze Kosh had never shown a living soul into his home. Or at least there was no one who could claim to have ever visited the apartment since the mayor had occupied it. Not even servants, messengers, or workers.

  Which fueled bizarre rumors and even some malicious suspicions.

  But Attan Ze Kosh had acted on impulse that night. He needed air, space, his own private dimension. It was the right thing to do, to get away from the workplace, away from the clamor of people pressing on him from all sides.

  He led Iliqualoti directly to the terrace, where he lit the candles that waited in the small bowls on the parapet. The boxwood canopy above their heads sheltered them from the wind, and the air in this comfortable niche was just cool enough to be pleasant, especially after the heat they had suffered in the council chamber.

  The scientist silently accepted the comfortable chair offered to him, but made no gesture to put down the briefcase of papers he still clutched tightly to his chest, not even when Attan Ze returned with a tray of fresh shells and the drinks.

  “Please, I know it is little considering how many hours we have been fasting, but at the moment I have nothing ready. I can order food if you prefer,” he urged him.

  The other gasped, torn by thoughts that were not exactly happy, judging by how wet and rubbery his face was becoming. He mumbled an unintelligible apology in his watery, choked voice.

  He left the clipboard on the third chair, empty. His legs relaxed, softening like rubber tubing, and he leaned toward the serving tray.

  They each took their portion of shellfish and poured themselves a glass of water.

  Iliqualoti ate his shellfish whole. Attan Ze lingered with the first one, fumbling with his stick to extract the unfortunate animal that was still alive.

  He could not remember when he had last eaten. Why had he bought this expensive and perishable food? It almost seemed as if he already knew that he would have guests with peculiar tastes...

  “The painting is a metaphor,” he said when he had finally skewered the mollusk, a pink tongue coming out of the shell with ease.

  He heard the other suck in, a liquid sound and then a hiss that drew the attention of the white cat sleeping on the edge of the pool near the patio.

  “It would be difficult to illustrate the concept,” he replied. A half-hearted admission, a phrase he hoped to use to test how much the mayor knew about the matter.

  But the mayor had fell silent again, time to savor his shell and choose a second one. The salty taste of the food distracted him for a moment.

  Now he remembered something more about the painting. The hands that had offered it to him. Hands that had nothing human about them except for an opposable thumb. Covered in thick gray fur, their nails curved and black.

  The faint candlelight that outlined the semicircle of the terrace, the brighter yellow glow from the apartment door, blurred the view. Nothing could be seen of the night outside, of the pools of white water, of the Swallows flying in the distance, of the wild and free growing flowers dangling over the abyss.

  All these things, the reality he had always known, in which he had basked, disappeared like illusory plays of light when the projector went out.

  But this was his life, he thought. Whether it was real or just a dream he had to recreate every day, this existence was what he longed for, what he loved, he insisted, fighting a new restlessness and impatience that rose from the deep swamp at the core of his being. There was a whole world inside him that he had never explored, behind a closed door. And there was a reason for it...

  Memories. Of other things he did not know he had experienced. Not this time, not here.

  The drawings had knocked on this door, vehemently, screaming like guests left out in the cold, like old friends expecting to be recognized and welcomed.

  “I know who painted this picture,” he whispered, and the statement stunned him at first.

  He looked up at the black sky.

  “There may be a chance to revive Nelatte,” he continued under his breath, the shell forgotten between his fingers. “One day.”

  The doctor did not look him in the face.

  “A hope. But not based on facts. There is nothing to suggest such a situation.”

  “But I know.”

  What a speech to give to a scientist! But Iliqualoti was just the man to understand, much better than Master Maff and his fatuous assistant. Was he not the same one who, as a young man, had written an exciting biography —an attempted biography— of the eldest of the Corleroys, in which, with all the caution and rigor of a scholar, he had conveyed admiration for the ability to imagine, to go beyond? For the audacity that others had called madness? And the intelligence to admit that he did not know, that he could not know everything.

  His amorphous, serious appearance should not be misleading.

  Even now, Attan Ze could see a spark of curiosity in his bulbous eyes, illuminating the shadow of concern, of pity, of horror at what he had surely guessed. As an individual, he would have followed the instincts of empathy and reason, trying to convince himself, against all logic, that there was an alternative. But as a scientist, he would have been excited, willing to risk his own safety to witness something that had never been attempted.

  “The residents must flee, that is certain,” Attan Ze Kosh declared dryly. “It is necessary to get the people and as many goods and treasures as possible to safety. Including the Zerafian chest. Tell me, will there be a way to help those creatures rebuild their mushroom city?”

  Iliqualoti hastened to answer, his mouth still full, glad that the conversation had turned in another direction.

  “It could be. A very damp place, sheltered from the light. The bottom of a ravine, the narrow gorge of a river. But,” he pointed out, “nothing that would suit us. We will have to resign ourselves to building a normal city on the plains. It will be strange to get used to having our feet on the ground and our view downward blocked.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Attan Ze was shaken by a tremor in his entire body. His hoofed feet in convulsions pounded on the tiles with a dry sound of beaten earthenware and became clearly visible beyond the hem of his robe. As soon as he could control himself, he curled his legs under the chair, crossed his ankles, and hid his lower extremities again. Iliqualoti ignored it or pretended not to notice.

  These feet are not meant to walk the earth.

  There had been more than a few evenings when Attan Ze had felt himself fading, prey to a longing for a place beyond the stars, drawn by a force that wanted to call him back to the other side of that dark sky, to his ancestral home from which he had been missing for too long.

  Was his materiality real, was this his true appearance, or did it, like the robes he wore to hide the unique features of his body, serve the function of a mask, a temporary container inhabited for so long that it had erased the memory of another way of being?

  “That is, of course, if we are lucky enough to escape and if the telluric movement is not too rapid,” the doctor added again, crushing the last of the shells in his capable jaws.

  “We must also try to leave a legacy,” the mayor said.

  The thin air that penetrated the thick hedge brought him the sweetest scent, a mixture of the essences used for hydrotherapy, the aroma of boxwood blossoms, a distant whiff of fresh water and lush meadows.

  A distant trill could have been the call of a Swallow, signaling its location to its companions in the dark.

  Had he ever been to the surface? Was the image that came to his mind's eye when he thought of the center, the crater where the cracks started, the floating bubble of the Metz O Bar, an authentic memory or a photograph he had seen who knew where?

  “I'm ready for anything.”

  Dr. Iliqualoti was drinking when he heard these words and did not flinch. He finished his sparkling water; the glass slipped from the tentacle but was caught before it hit the table, a single drop of liquid staining the placemat.

  He had taken it well.

  He stared at Attan Ze, the muscles of the lower part of his shape-shifting face barely moving.

  “It is not necessary,” he finally replied, as expected. “There are other systems through which—”

  “No, there are not.”

  The scientist fell silent and lowered his eyes. Rationality had regained the upper hand, and he clung to it, not wanting to lose his nerve, just as his grasping extremities clung to the edge of the table.

  “The Eggs Sower is not a machine,” he announced, his tone impersonal. “It's a ritual.”

  “Exactly.”

  “A dreadful ceremony in which... in which...”

  Someone dies, Attan Ze concluded quietly. Someone always dies.

  But that was not what the doctor wanted to add.

  “In which the essence of an event, understood as a place endowed with spatial dimensions and temporal extension, including the memory of all the events that occurred within it and all the creatures and objects that passed through it, is compressed, destroyed, so to speak, to then be—”

  “Distilled is the right word,” was the mayor's stern clarification. “Or dried, freeze-dried, if you prefer. Reduced to the bare minimum, a stone from which the whole edifice can be rebuilt.”

  “But the sacrifice demanded is terrible!”

  He had finally said it. He remained slumped in his chair, eyes closed, trembling like jelly.

  “Then why did you propose it to the council?” teased Attan Ze.

  He got the expected reaction: a shrug.

  “Duty? For the record? How do you describe a very dangerous and inadvisable operation to a sick person, just because it's only fair for him to know that there is such a way?” he pressed.

  The other touched the glass again, gave it a half turn.

  Yes, that was what it was for. For fairness. The real reason why Iliqualoti was with him now, why he had chosen him. There was no one else he could trust. A pure and steadfast heart.

  “The pain...” the cephalopod moaned, little more than a gurgle, his soft eyes still seeking support in the mayor’s unflinching gaze.

  Attan Ze Kosh sighed, leaning against the back of the wicker chair.

  “What is the difference between an ascent and a descent, my friend?”

  A light trample among the boxwood branches signaled the presence of salamanders that came down to drink in the pools during these hours of silence and peace.

  “Pain and pleasure, creation and destruction —these are relative terms. They describe the same object, the same event, but from two different directions. For those who can observe reality in its entirety, it makes no difference.”

  The meeting had left him exhausted, more tired than he had ever felt. Even his own voice sounded different to him, rougher and at the same time echoing with special overtones.

  As happens with vision after a certain age, his ability to remember had receded, encompassing things that had been distant and vague, and becoming blurred and uncertain about what was most immediate to him. His daily life, the centuries spent serving Nelatte in a thousand roles, including the humblest, without wavering or doubt or remorse, was a blurred block.

  Instead, the truths of the void that beckoned him beyond the parapet of the terrace, beyond the clouds that passed to obscure the shape of the moon, were ever clearer and brighter in their ghastly darkness.

  “For those who can,” the scientist admitted. “For those who exist outside. But I... I, however, cannot.”

  Did the sound of the pull of the breath and the moisture that covered Iliqualoti's face indicate suffering? Was it crying, fear, or emotion?

  “I know, Doctor,” he said encouragingly. “If I could do without you... but I can't. I need help. From a pure and steadfast heart that will do what must be done for Nelatte. Surely you know that the Sower is not satisfied with a common sacrifice.”

  The scientist watched him open-mouthed, spellbound, suddenly aware of the implications of the conversation that had come to this point.

  “You understand who I am, don't you?” he teased.

  Iliqualoti's prehensile limbs twitched and curled at once, but the scholar immediately overcame the fear by shaking his limbs violently until they returned to obey him.

  “You already know what I am going to do,” he protested, his voice little more than a squeak. “You have already seen it. It has happened already, countless times!”

  “And countless times I will have to convince you, for the choice is yours alone,” he conceded.

  Iliqualoti slid down from the chair with such a sudden movement that he seemed to have deflated, like a punctured balloon.

  He had prostrated himself on the floor to pay his respects.

  “I am a humble instrument in your hands, my Lord.”

  Attan Ze let the sentence slowly penetrate his skin, spread through his lymphatic system, fill the nerve receptors, saturate the blood that might or might not be circulating inside him.

  And suddenly, as he remained on the terrace, he also flew above it, touching every tendon of the gommite that made up Nelatte, feeling the breath of every inhabitant on him, drinking in the cold rays of the moon, resting in a cradle of quivering leaves, breathing in the same very slow rhythm as the beats of the Plant's heart.

  He saw himself, his body, his temporary receptacle, sitting with his hands in his lap, entwined over the heavy cloth of his dress; he saw himself nodding serenely and smiling at the scientist still lying on the ground, a smile that lit him up completely and made his skin glow like glowing gold.

  “Then fear not for me, my good counselor,” he murmured to him, the velvety voice in which the chords of the golden music of the celestial spheres mingled with the screeching coming from the abyss.