Head Full of Mountains Read Online Free Page A

strongest, the structure remained mostly right-angles, and metallic, with polymethyl beams cantilevered up from the floor grilles. The lighting was mostly ambient, but there were two rows of potlights, halogen, embedded overhead. Small objects and arcane devices that had fallen from the ceiling, or were pushed from the walls, littered the area by father’s feet, like offerings. The floor was strewn with artifacts—metals, and hard plastics—that father called
concrete ephemera
. Expelled, expectorated from the world. Father had claimed, when he was able to pontificate, that he, too, might once have emerged thus from within the structures of composites and agents of flux that surrounded them, immaculate.
    Mostly the story began with a fade-in, father running, looking for a home.
    Against the far wall of the pen was Crospinal’s daybed, and his prayer mat, but Crospinal did not want to look at them. Memories took away his energy and tormented him.
    But what else was there?
    He blinked.
    Father slumped in his throne, face mostly hidden by the conduits and wires that drooped from his skull to fan out across the floor behind him, to the banks of the gate, which dwarfed him. They were silent, black, yet emanated age and omniscient, corrupted knowledge. Crospinal stepped across the threshold. The pen, as it did of late, stunk of rot, and piss, of decay and impending collapse. And
disease
. Folds of composite were growing over a control panel. The throne itself seemed to be sinking. He could discern father’s shallow breathing: there remained life yet. Father’s breastbone—a prominent ridge against the Kevlar breastplate of his tricot—moved. Gurgling fluids, nutrients in and out, cocktails from the gate, and information, kept him going. Though they were no contest for the ravages of disease and time. Now father’s legs were mere bones, the fabric of his uniform collapsed against them, bulbous knees rivalling Crospinal’s. Through the translucent boots, father’s feet were bloated and bruised, the skin split, weeping pus his own processor had long ago given up on.
    Father slept.
    Still broody from his visit to the harrier and the declarations his girlfriend had made (though taken aback, somewhat, despite his affront, at the incredible and perverse decrepitude toward which a life could sink), Crospinal was suddenly not sure if he would have cared had father died, though he flushed with guilt at the sacrilege of this thought, and immediately fell to his knees.
    “By the order of all that is good, and organic, and by the benefits of reinstating the way things used to be,” said Crospinal, when the pain had driven away his terrible thoughts and he was able to speak: “I went beyond your range again, past the gangplanks—which are now almost entirely gone. I’ve been up the towers, and I’ve crossed over the rotating corridor. I looked out portholes at seventeen, and at ten, and I gazed a long time out the harrier. I told you about the harrier?” He closed his eyes, hearing his own voice:
And I tried to kick your stupid dogs and I was dumped by a beautiful manifestation whose existence you know nothing about and I doubted your words until the world trembled under me.
    There were some confessions Crospinal had never made, and never would.
    “I can tell the world is changing. Faster and faster. Out by the transfer tube, a big flake broke away, a
really
big piece. Taller than me. I don’t know if you can see that far anymore. There was toluene, and lights. Polymers made a panel. It’s nearly set.” He let his words fade, opening his eyes. Maybe father would take this news as another form of defeat, if it sank in, and get even sicker. Regulators that either fed him, or took essences away, sighed and hissed impatiently. Crospinal felt ghosts all around, spirits and such, fretting, expecting him to help.
Lift a finger,
they pleaded.
Do something. . . .
    Small wonder he stayed away.
    Dogs appeared, so to speak, either