these channels. This was good, good yeah, but their first and finest
function was to extend tall rods from flat acranial heads like those
insect fishes of the lightless depths to hang out lamps that lit the
chamber like day. And lit the rout of poison fogs at the onset
throughout my being of a great nebula of wonder over . . . well,
everything — even the shirtbuttons were exotic, subtly anciently
different, and the buckles, a wrist m irror of silver polished like
liquid, a tiny filigreed eyebrow comb of gold, the pine-forest-on-a-
mountainside theory of interior architecture (Syrian Gothic)
realised in fairytale marble manufactured beneath the protostar
pressure of Bubutap’s thousand-kilometre-deep ammonia storms,
a dodecahedral chest of Bast ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl
from the seventeenth stomach of a Lagorni cow, a panel cut with
relief scenes of the progress through a world of monsters of a heroic
winged mesomorphic child of kings that was only the sliding door
to a wardrobe that a whole gang of servants — hum an servants —
could walk inside, the weird archaic tessellations of the floor we
stood upon, the strange slender non-Cartesian furniture, the silken
cushions embroidered with unclad women stylised as I had never
seen, their skin calling to my mind the interiors of seashells . . .
The minds of these people, yes, called to me across lost and silent
years, minds that had encompassed pine forests, star-pressure
technology, multidimensional chair design, minds that had loved
eagle-winged men and pearlshell women (as well as bat-winged
men and bearded women), minds that had produced dainty silver
mirrors, vain golden combs, and produced too the philosophies,
laws, dogmas, the superstitions, fairytales, nursery rhymes — all
the uncounted ideas and objects that furnished the grand mansion
of empire — The minds of men, think! there is no end to it — the
minds of workers on the dawn mono across Dourisburg chained to
time but with their dreams of hot sour coffee, the place between a
woman’s thighs, and monsters; the mind of — say — O rry swimming in wine and nailed out on the white sand by the white stars but accented with knowledges of all the places he’s been, the talking
he’s done, and the pressure of karinga on lip; the mind of a jum p-
beacon keeper exiled for years in the black between stars by the
220
Anthony Peacey
anger of his childhood and the religion of his race that says
automatics are the devil’s work — all these minds living in the
weird landscapes of themselves composed of that greatest article of
faith of all time, the outside world, to which belong those creatures
magnificent in their caprice, other people, and then the more certain regions of scheme and intent, and then the indisputable savage brilliant continents of dream surrounded by the endocrine oceans
of emotion.
So here I was, but I forgotten, mind in mind like foot in boot
with Sesemene (or the creators of that chamber) — marble forests,
the weight of Bubutap’s methane streams, skewed insect chairs,
winged heroes and seashell women supplying the harmonics to the
thrum of the now-jewel that pierced and pierces and was and
is . . .
Sesemene Sesemene Sesemene — conqueror, builder, warrior,
commander, butcher, appointer, condemner, lover, rapist, con-
ceiver, slayer, artist, posturer, dancer, priest, king . . .
Hushed, white-eyed, we moved from room to room, chamber to
chamber, workshop to laboratory to stable to wardrobe of many
rooms and took in wonder upon wonder in this rockbound city-
palace-tomb. ‘Ooooo’ and ‘Aaaaa’ and ‘Eeeee’ whooped Limini and
Pixr. They ran from toy to toy looking, touching, turning, rapt in
what could be seen, touched, turned in their invisibly gloved
hands. We adults maybe lost, because we were lost in vision but
there was no way else to take in all this —
