Palimpsest

But it was not, in the end, necessary. Agostino seized his face and the kiss between them was rough and ungainly, slouching, mismatched, but Ludo found his hands knotted in his short hair, found his tongue sweet, found himself hard, after all, wrestling the bull into service. They struggled with clothes in the ma

PART IV:

CHARON

In Transit, Westbound: 9:23

IT BECAME APPARENT TO ENTHUSIASTSof locomotive travel that there was at least one unscheduled train on the tracks of Palimpsest. It did not stop at any of the stations, for one thing. Astrologers and geologists were consulted; they are much the same folk in this part of the world. The astrologer gazes upward and scries out shapes in the sky, and to do this he builds great towers so as to be closest to the element of his choice. The geologist is an astrologer who once, just once, happened to look down. From such great heights she glimpses the enormous shapes stamped on the earth, the long polygons made by the borders of farms and rivers and mill towns, littoral masses and city walls, a reflection of the celestial mosaic. In these loamy constellations Palimpsest is but a decorative flourish; they are so vast and complex that in her lifetime the geologist may chart but the tiniest part of the conterration which contains her tower. It is a long and lonely life to which few are called.

The great transportation system is of some mild interest to the geologist, as it comprises a small and only half-organic Constellation of Utility. However, a famed scholar of the fundament consented to turn her moss-clogged oikeioscopes onto the commune of the trains and discover the origins of this stubborn and unyielding train that escapes all their attempts to tame it.

The calculations involved for even such a small terrestrial chart are immense, and it took a full year for the geologist to return her findings, and another year’s delay in presenting them, for the oceanic currents were trined with the a

_______

Sei does not know quite what to do with herself. She feels as though she has been struck in the head with a branch wrapped up in flowers. She doesn’t think she ought to smile, as it is certainly not at all fu

There is a rabbit on the train. He has a silver mallet, and is standing in a very large barrel of rice looking quite determined.

He is not really a rabbit. But he is not a man in a suit either. He is more like a very sad-looking man who has had bits of rabbit attached to him by someone who was not particularly good at it. Wild black hair tumbles over long, limp ears, fuzzy and gray, the skin within white as crushed pearl. He has long, droopy whiskers like hoary old man’s hair, and she supposes he has a tail, though if she went looking for it she would be sure to burst into uncontainable giggles, and he seems like a very serious rabbit.

He wears a black farmer’s yukatawith white chrysanthemums on it and does not look well in it for it is extremely threadbare and dirty.

Plenitude yawns on her shoulder and stretches its strokes; the Third Rail smiles quietly to herself and watches Sei, waiting for her approval or disapproval. That is becoming a great trial, if Sei can be honest. She ca

But there is a rabbit on the train. And the long seats of this new carriage are quite pale, covered in crusted rock like barnacles. From a high ceiling, so high it has its own clouds—though at least she can see the ceiling this time, its silver bands hard and true behind the mist—hang silver lanterns. Terns circle them mournfully, crying out their dirges. The handholds are a green, rough rope of reeds. The rabbit does not look at her, but with a weary sigh heaves his mallet over his head and brings it down hard on the wet rice. Glops of the stuff splatter out onto Sei’s shoes.

“I know you!” Sei cries. “Usagi!” And not her mother, the real rabbit, the rabbit on the moon, speeding through the world in a locomotive that contains all the lunar landscape. Sei wants to laugh again.

“Everyone knows me. That is why I am going to visit relatives by the sea, who will make me very expensive tea and not bother me with silly questions about where I get rice on the moon, and why I do not take up a respectable profession such as television repair, and who would consent to eat sweets prepared by a rabbit, even if he does it with great care and by hand. So to speak.”

He holds up his right arm; it ends in a withered, oversized gray paw, a bumpy violet-blue scar ripping through his skin where the fur fades into a man’s arm.

“My mother was named Usagi,” Sei says shyly. “When I was little I thought she had a secret life, making mochiwhen I wasn’t looking and refusing to share them with me.”

“Oh, she did,” the rabbit says casually. He seems so young, too young to have been at the rabbit business for long. “All people named Usagi are members of my guild. The broom closet is a common hiding place for the hammers. I suspect if you were to return to your house in Tokyo and look in the storage bins beneath your kitchen floor, you would find several black-and-gold boxes full of sweets she did not deliver on schedule. Your mother was not a good worker, I’m sorry to say. Unreliable.”

“I’m sorry. She was . . . unhappy. It was part of her, you could not separate her from it. She was sad the way a horse is strong or a bird flies. I do not think mochiwould have helped.”

“Why should they? They do not help me, but everyone must have a vocation.”

Sei bites her lip and looks down at her toes, a strangely childlike pose, but she ca

The rabbit stares at her incredulously and looks to the Third Rail for help. The red-faced woman shrugs, and Plenitude shakes its strokes apologetically. “Wrong train, girl,” he finally says, laughing. “I think it’s my relations you want to talk to.”