He had copied as much of the automaton's memory as he could, with the technicians' permission, with the idea of reviewing the footage and enjoying it himself. Now, finally, after an exhausting day of meeting stubborn people, filling out paperwork, and balancing accounts, Attan Ze Kosh could retire to his home and be alone with his thoughts and silent images.

  He closed the door behind him without the slightest sound, and only then did he allow himself a sigh as he greeted the one large room that made up his apartment with a smile. He glanced at the furniture, with its clean and essential lines, no frills, the only luxury being the fine material from which it was made: light blond wood with greenish tones, from the ash trees of the lake area south of Boirughi. A slightly rustic finish, even rough in some details, so rough that you could scratch the palm of your hand to crawl against it without paying attention.

  Rows of books greeted him each evening from the neat shelves that lined four of the six walls of the prism-shaped room. Almost nothing, really: Attan Ze did not succumb to the urge to possess, and of all the volumes he had read in his life, he had taken the trouble to keep very few, with a criterion that mostly eluded even himself.

  There were volumes he had inherited that he had barely skimmed, cherished novels that waited forever to be reread, books of little value both in workmanship and content that he kept only out of respect for the people who had given them to him or for the memory of the circumstances under which he had come into possession of them.

  Why was there a volume on the floor?

  It seemed to have fallen from the lopsided pile of books on the small round table next to the armchair.

  The mayor picked it up slowly, turning the dark, unmarked cover over in his hands. He knew it well, had read it many times in the past, but could not remember taking it off the shelf recently.

  And it had fallen hard, remained open, some of the pages folded. Attan Ze smoothed them with his fingers, a loving caress, when his eyes stumbled upon a passage in a different typeface and could not help but read it.

  ...and He will descend from the Sphere of the Nine Gates in the form of a man, with the golden mask and robe concealing...

  Attan Ze Kosh closed the volume and clutched it to his chest. With one foot, he settled the book's mark on the teal velvet of the carpet.

  The colorful carpets, overlapping in discordant combinations, covered the entire floor and allowed him to move in silence, not disturbing the vibrations of the air and the whisper of the wind that Attan Ze so loved to listen to.

  For the best part of his quarters was outside, the wide semicircular terrace where he spent most of his time when he was at home.

  The mayor walked to the balcony window, threw it wide open, and walked out with the book still in his hand.

  The balcony was originally a hydrotherapy pool. On the walls, in this area of Nelatte, these basins, filled almost to the brim with milky water, were protected from the wind and too much sun by a canopy of boxwood, under whose dark leaves spotted salamanders found shelter. Shady, fragrant, and comfortable nests where the elderly, the sick, and the weary could find solace and relief from the pains of the body and the troubles of the soul.

  Often, Attan Ze Kosh would sit alone, surrounded by this peaceful landscape. Bathers would silently enjoy the benefits of the water, and white cats would stroll along the edges of the pools, leaning into the void as casually as possible.

  He pushed the cart with the portable viewer he had just purchased for this purpose onto the terrace. He inserted the storage cylinder. He sighed wistfully and looked up at the clear sky, which was taking on pink hues.

  Sometimes a Swallow would pass by, never too close, because those creatures could sense the presence of people, no matter how camouflaged, silent and still, and they were afraid of them.

  That was why he had asked to take a fragment of the visual record of the trolley's journey with him, he thought as he sat down on the wooden deck chair, the book still on his lap, after switching on the viewer and adjusting the playback controls.

  As the scientists had predicted, the video gave no information about the events that had caused the machine to escape the mine and travel over four hundred miles at breakneck speed.

  But that was not why he wanted to watch it.

  Attan Ze Kosh smiled ecstatically. The silent images in the video, though affected by the jolts and jumps of the struggling machine, gave a fascinating and unexpectedly relaxing picture of the city. And he had introduced another variation, following an obscure desire of the moment: he was watching the video in reverse, and now it was a truly original journey that was offered for his examination.

  The trolley had taken the shortest route to Seluma's place, not the practicable streets and tubes, the tunnels, the inner staircases, the bridges over which people moved. It had climbed over the surface of Nelatte, outside the houses, spider-like, even venturing over thin strands of gommite that seemed unfit to bear his weight. He had made a journey that was impossible for a person, giving the observers of his memory an unprecedented, breathtaking view.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Glimpses of unsuspected, terrible beauty were revealed as one crossed a curtain of creepers from the vantage point of the trolley to look out into a narrow passage between two houses that no one had ever seen, for the buildings had no windows in this bottomless corridor; an evergreen gallery where ashy corollas bloomed with petals that moved like tentacles. Or one plunged down, and the wall of gommite seemed a strange, dull-blue, rustic floor into which one could sink.

  More importantly, the trolley had not intimidated the Swallows, who had continued their slow flights undisturbed under the spans of grassy bridges that connected buildings completely covered in pink foliage, buildings that even Attan Ze could not remember ever seeing and in which he could not imagine who might live, houses with tall, dark, slit-like windows.

  The tapering, brown creatures with two pairs of rigid wings, like those of a glider, joined vertically by pierced sinews, moved through the air like fish splitting the water, lazily, with an undulating movement of the body and a few strokes of the double tail, the very long beak like a rostrum provided with horizontal spikes, the huge black insect-like eyes protruding on either side of the flat head.

  There were not many opportunities to observe a Swallow at close range for more than a few moments without it fleeing with a shriek, leaving only a vague impression of its unique form.

  These wonderful images deserved to end up in a museum, to be enjoyed by all citizens and all scholars of the future.

  Attan Ze smiled smugly at the thought that he would be the one to unveil them, thus making an important contribution to science, or simply an opportunity to admire the beauty of the world that often went unnoticed.

  But there was another feature of the video that fascinated perhaps only him.

  In reality, Swallows had always been seen flying backwards. The reason for this was unknown. But now, in the inverted memory, the bizarre creatures finally flew forward like all birds, and like the Pipers themselves —with whom they seemed to share a pact of symbiosis, or at least cooperative coexistence— and the lack of other landmarks in those scenes made it seem quite normal.

  But what was reality, he suddenly asked himself, breathing deeply of the evening air and the scent of the healing waters in the pools; was it the one he experienced or the one shown on the footage? Who could tell? Maybe they were walking unsuspectingly on the ceiling, looking at the world upside down, and if someone had passed underneath, they would have looked like a monster, something unnatural and disturbing.

  Daylight was fading. Attan Ze's apartment overlooked the surface of Nelatte to the west, toward the interior of Faspath, toward the depths from which the trolley had come, and in the evening one could enjoy the last ray of sunlight dipping into the crevasse.

  It was said that it had an end, the Rift. That it would get narrower and narrower, while remaining very deep and unfathomable, until it disappeared into nothing, thousands of miles to the west.

  The rough cover of the volume tingled warmly beneath his fingertips.

  Darkness was falling fast now, a thin, damp mist rising from the Rift. His body rested forlornly on the wooden couch, his mind working, quick and free, all his senses on alert now that the dominance of sight was obscured by night.

  He heard the first tentative, distant notes, barely audible over the din of the city still in full swing. They were followed by a closer call, and another, grave and croaking, seemed to come from a terrace just above his own.

  The Pipers emerged from their burrows and reclaimed their truly great nest, Nelatte itself, lovingly shaped and molded by the ugly flying homunculi. From their exudates, from the layers of skin that shed daily from their blackish bodies, from the secretions of their abdominal glands, from all of this they drew threads and condensed cords, winding them back into coils and coating them with their blue mucus, which, like a waterproof glue, made the whole thing elastic and sturdy, able to bear infinite weight if the structure was woven according to the correct geometries.

  This was the gommite that the Pipers were constantly renovating and repairing, adding supports and connections, shifting forces where necessary, supporting buildings that would otherwise have collapsed, and all this without having studied architecture or engineering, without really caring about those who squatted with them in the immense web they had created, about those who, despite owing them so much, looked at them with horror and suspicion.

  Attan Ze found himself composing a kind of thank-you poem to them, his heart swelling with gratitude.

  The singing was coordinated into a litany, punctuated by the whistles of the Swallows. The Pipers responded from all parts of the neighborhood: the reeds echoed nasally with a closed sound that was lost in the brown air.

  A hint of concern pierced the mayor’s seraphic calm. This was not the usual evening meeting song; there was a vein of new sadness and unrest in it. Attan Ze had much sympathy for the Pipers, feeling himself a stranger in his own home, but never had he found them so disconsolate, so intent on psalm-singing to the moon, an unusual uneasiness.

  And the unease gripped him, too, like a twisted thread of thorns that rose and enveloped him from his feet to his head, piercing and tearing at his skin.