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THE SPACE OUTSIDE TIME
This above all – I wish I had never heard the hideous metaphysical theories of Tybalt Mandrake.
I write this in the acute and present knowledge that soon the Inquisition will come for me. Throne save me, I now know a truth that ought never be known, for which execution must be the inevitable consequence. God-Emperor forgive me that I should ever have engaged with such morbid researches! From the day I fled Mandrake’s workshop I knew henceforth I would never sleep soundly again, unless it were in the grave’s chill embrace.
My name is Evanid Callidon il Gemina. At another time, in another life, I was an Ordinate serving the Office of Imperial Pursary on Maius Valorum. It was my duty, insofar as one not of the Administratum could comprehend it, to audit and dis/approve payments from the Imperial exchequer. For the greater part of my career I served in the lesser hive cities of Tucara and Pisces-by-the-Sea. In the perihelion of the year 843 I was transferred to the satellite city of La Vincenza, a suburb in the incorporation of Hive Corrinto, queen of cities.
I know that when the Inquisition reads this manuscript, the gallows will follow. This is as it should be. I have run too far, for too long. I beg only that the reader does not dismiss these revelations as the ravings of a madman. It is not in my nature to invent fantastic, delirious visions of things that never were, as does the sentimental and dissolute aesthete. My demesne is the empirical, the factual, the consequential. I believe I understand, better than any other man, the significance of the strange, deadly events that occurred in La Vincenza on 6.833860.M41 (All Hallows Eve). Precisely what instigating event precipitated that cursed night, others will elucidate. But by my account the result may be seen, a truth unguessed at by all other authorities, save perhaps only Him-on-Earth.
Gloria in omnipotens Imperator.
6.819860
I pulled up the hood of my robe against the sullen patter of cold rain, and braced my hand against the parapet to catch my breath. Byway 39/μ would under ordinary circumstances be my dispreferred route from the Basilica Administratum. It necessitates, among numerous other vexing diversions, climbing a flight of more than thirty steps and crossing the pedestrian overpass between the Notary Chambers and the Archives. Emperor knows I’m not as fit as I was as a young menial. But today I had an atypical journey to take.
A current of black-robed archivists traipsed across the overpass. They all parted at a respectful three-pace distance from me, jostling for room, heads bowed. Graffiti, like invasive weeds, flourished in this liminal district alongside downtown Vincenza, seeming to appear of its own accord on any flat surface: ‘VINCENZA FOR VINCENZANS’, ‘PISCES = FREEMEN’, etc. Beneath, General Tecender Square was calm, citizens scurrying through the rain under the glares of the Arbitrators standing guard at the corners. At the middle of the square the Imperial Aquila flies, gold on white, from a twelve-metre flagpole, hanging limp in a manner unbefitting the Emperor’s own banner. In the warm season the square is not so drear, when vendors sell aromatic meats from little carts and musical quartets play charming sonatas in the twilit evenings.
Gangs of guilders had taken to skirmishing in the square and surrounding streets of late. It wasn’t uncommon to hear gunfire in the night. There was another Arbitrator posted at the end of the overpass, impassive in his matte-black armour, a monstrous shotgun clutched in his gauntleted paws. The deep vision-slits on their helmets have the disconcerting effect of hiding precisely where the Arbitrator is looking. It is better not to guess.
I departed the Administratum Quarter at Throughway 4/δ (Riverside). 4/δ is a finer, more orderly district of tall, gambrel-roofed townhouses standing sombrely in the rain. Wealthy guilders of the more dignified, mature sort, were commuting from downtown. Liveried hansom cabs drawn by cybernetic horses carried them home, each with an armed bodyguard riding alongside. The street runs parallel to the brackish, acidic Miskatonic running sluggishly in its rockcrete channel. All down the riverside the fractal trees were folding down in response to the fading light. I took meagre shelter beneath the nearest tree, trying to rest my aching knees. It folded its secondary branches with a clack. Actuators gently whirred as the leaves rotated and flattened themselves together. You will not find their like elsewhere on Maius Valorum. Each leaf is a photo-voltaic module piping captured solar energy down the metal branches to the municipal power grid at its roots. Something caught my eye as a street lamp flickered on. In the bole of the tree someone had taken sufficient pains to carve ‘komus’.
The purpose of my journey was in response to a letter received from an associate of mine, one tech-priest by the name of Tybalt Mandrake. I first made Mandrake’s acquaintance upon his emigration to La Vincenza in 849. It was he who designed the fractal trees, to the general commendation of the guilds. It is my understanding that this succeeded his abnormal retirement from hieratic duties in Hive Corrinto. My involvement was instrumental in the disbursal of an Imperial pension for his services to the city. Mandrake had, at times, alluded in guarded hints that that the high tech-priests did not approve of the fractal trees. I could not wholly accede to the notion of the trees, marvellous creations of form and function, as unhallowed. I believed, then, I knew better than to press the matter, but in hindsight it augured a dangerous heterodoxy.
Upon arrival at Mandrake’s residence the weather had deteriorated. My robes had become uncomfortably cold and heavy; indeed, I was glad of the shelter the austere portico afforded. Photo-voltaic ivy had been set to clamber up the townhouse walls, for what practical purpose I cannot guess.
The front door was answered by a skull.
“Adept Callidon. Pray enter,” it said in a flat tone. “I have been awaiting your visit with significant anticipation.”
In life Serial Q2X3 had been a tech-acolyte, who served as Mandrake’s assistant in Hive Corrinto. I don’t believe Mandrake ever knew his birth name. In death his skull now served as a servo-skull, his empty cranium housing a cogitator, floating about its business on an anti-grav motor.
There were fresh robes awaiting in the anteroom, in precisely the correct shade of grey appropriate to my rank. Presently, I was received in the drawing room. A good fire was burning, anachronistic but comforting, and a cheering supper brought in by the kitchen servitors.
“Good evening,” Mandrake said. Or rather, Q2X3 said it for him via its voice synthesiser. I had never heard his ‘fleshvoice’, as he termed it.
It would be sensible at this juncture to reflect upon what manner of man Mandrake was. In spite of his de facto retirement he still wore the red robes of a tech-priest. Indeed, his very retirement was rumoured to be odd. Among the Imperial cognoscenti it was at times gossiped that Mandrake had the potential to ascend to Magos rank and yet never petitioned for elevation. Whatever his original features were, I do know know. His face had been sculpted into a soft-cheeked, boyishly handsome visage. The effect could be considered to be undermined by the plasticky sheen of synthskin. Conversations with Mandrake were unusual in that he never opened his mouth to speak. I had grown accustomed to these oddities – there are many who would say, incorrectly, that we of the Administratum are equally incorrigibly odd. But it was his eyes I could never become accustomed to. A pair of high-grade bionics gleaming silver from corner-to-corner with a marked tendency to stare. Mandrake seldom blinked unless he remembered to.
We spoke for a while of matters of import, of the overdue tithe-fleet, the falling production of Hive Pisces, the Lord Governor’s imminent dismissal of the Patrician. We were discussing the war on Lyanthus when we laid our utensils aside in favour of a glass of sensibly-priced amasec.
“I have been enlightened, Callidon,” Mandrake declaimed, staring at me. “Praise the Omnissiah, I have come to an understanding. One that may very well change the fate of Mankind as we know it!”
“Oh, come on, old boy -” I began. Such grandiosity is unseemly.
Mandrake held up a hand. “Do not think I exaggerate! Have I ever?”
“You were saying?” I said. I confess, I was taken somewhat aback by his sharpness.
He appeared to subside. “You are aware that this reality is governed by certain laws?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, effect must follow cause and so forth.”
“Indeed. Would you also agree, therefore, that certain feats of the imagination must be impossible in reality, should they contravene these laws?”
“Why, I suppose I must.”
“We have established, then, that reality is ultimately finite. But what is this reality?” Mandrake paused, as if recalling a speech long rehearsed. “It has been revealed to the Mechanicus for millennia that it is so composed of four dimensions – those three of Space, and the fourth, Time. At first it will seem that Time must be separate and distinct from Space, but it is not so. Space and Time, space-time, are one.”
I had a distinct impression these were mysteries an ordained tech-priest ought not be telling a layman.
“Imagine, if you will, a Space outside Time. A Space that touches on all Times simultaneously. In a Space without Time, all motion becomes instantaneous. When all motion is instantaneous, what meaning does Space have? What could the possibilities be if one could travel to and from that Space at will?”
“I don’t understand,” I confessed.
Mandrake sighed, the exhalation rendered as a static burst by Q2X3. “You are uninitiated. You need a demonstration. Come.”
The study had formerly occupied a corner of the first floor. When I last beheld it, the study was much like the rest of his residence, antique in its furnishings, almost shabby where Mandrake had not troubled to alter anything that was not an active hindrance. In the interim the room had been significantly enlarged; aluminium workstations added; the carpet had been removed; a smooth, almost featureless floor laid. Halogen lamps lit it brilliantly. Against one wall, rows of plastic tanks had been installed, each containing a tantan, a rotund, gene-modified rodent of the sort bred by the thousand in the middle-hive to serve as inexpensive pets.
In the midst of the floor, three geometric designs had been drawn – two large, approximately one metre in diameter, one less than half that size. After a moment’s study I realised they were octagrams, but the lines were formed of row upon row of complex mathematical formulae.
“Perhaps you might lend me your weapon,” Mandrake said.
I handed him my laspistol from its holster. I frequently forget I wear it – mere office attire, it is expected of we who superintend the Imperium. Indeed, I have never discharged it. Mandrake placed it in the centre of a large octagram. He himself stepped into the smallest, and spoke a single word. Nothing will induce me to willingly repeat those accursed phonemes in speech or in text. In that moment I did not suspect how arcane its providence might be, still less the demented implications of what I was about to witness.
My weapon appeared in the further octagram. I had not observed any force of motion act upon it in any explicable manner. It was simply there, Deus Imperator, the phenomenon effectuated in the blink of an eye!
“Why, it has travelled!”
“Now you see!” Mandrake cried, with a gloatingly triumphant expression. “This effect, this translocation via the Space outside Time, may be instantaneous. I have inscribed a delay within the formulae merely to facilitate observation.”
I did not immediately reply. How could I? As has been remarked upon, I am uninitiated.
“For millennia, perhaps since the first void mariners took the first steps from the surface of ancient Terra, Mankind has grappled with the problem of Space! How to render as nothing the scarcely fathomable vastness of the interstellar gulf? Space-time bridges, better known as wormholes, were always the key. But to no-one, not even in the Dark Age of Technology, was the secret of opening them revealed. The secret, Callidon, is not gravity. It is not dark matter. It is linguistics. It is mathematics, pure and plain.”
I seized upon the obvious question: “Could one transport humans using this formula?”
The triumph in Mandrake’s expression faded somewhat. He removed a tantan from its tank. It meeped half-heartedly in protest, but in common with the docility of its kind, it made no attempt to escape the octagram within which it was then placed.
“Observe.”
The instant Mandrake spoke the incantation the tantan stilled. It was quite dead.
It remained within the same octagram. I could not but consider it unseemly that the little chap should have given its life for the sake of a simple demonstration.
“I say, old boy, could you not have explained that phenomenon?”
“The cause of this effect upon living subjects remains elusive,” Mandrake said blandly.
6.822860
“The pace of my discoveries is limited by the rate at which the octagrams may be drawn. The lines must be exceedingly precise.”
Perhaps if he had not made that negligent comment, I might not have determined to return to Mandrake’s residence.
The following day required me to travel to the east side of the Administratum Quarter to inspect certain documents relating to claims actioned by my predecessor in post. The office’s position on the brow of a hill afforded a view of La Vincenza from a vantage point. Lights glowed yellow from the rows of arched clerestory windows on the Basilica Administratum, an excellent example of the Imperial Homogenised style that you may see mirrored on a hundred or more worlds across this sector. The Basilica is the contribution of Comptroller Phineas Barcalus il Saggita, built exactingly to the approved Administratum colonia plan; the educated eye will notice the smooth-faced walls of unblemished concrete, the lead-capped pinnacles atop flying buttresses, the tasteful restraint of the aquila bas-relief overlooking the grand sweep of the steps before the portico. A triumph, amen, of humanitas, the Imperial way.
The Basilica stands, not in the geographical centre, but irrationally at the far side of the Administratum Quarter, on a twenty-five hectare forum, the faces of the municipal broadcast screens only blearily visible on account of the weather. Around the forum, neither so excellent nor so grand, are the lesser exemplars of humanitas. To the left of the Basilica, the crenellated, iron-gated office of the Prefect Advocate, alongside the Divisio Demographicus building, replete with the usual lines of petitioners vying for citizenship. Opposite, the floridly adorned Guildhall, dating to La Vincenza’s founding, now a recruitment office for the Planetary Defence Force. There, adjoining the original Common Colonial Bank, the non-standard but elegant Church of the Inevitable Triumph. Behind the vastness of the Basilica, the montane bulk of Hive Corrinto rose dark against the iron-grey sky. I sucked in a breath that had little to do with physical exertions. I remain unaccustomed to seeing a hive city from the outside, beneath an illimitable sky as opposed to an honest roof.
My work during this shift had been repeatedly inefficient. The memory of what I had witnessed in that study could not be wholly dispelled from my thoughts. I thought of the fractal trees, elegant and functional creations of Mandrake’s craft. I imagined their continued installation across all La Vincenza. Perhaps Mandrake was indifferent as to the usage of his experimental subjects, but what of it? I could perceive a purpose and a nobility in his design, as one above the tawdry desires of the everyday. Furthermore, I felt certain I could lend my skills in aid of Mandrake’s endeavour. As a young scribe I had been trained to reproduce graphics swiftly and precisely. Mandrake had been attempting to utilise a servitor to complete each octagram. Mind-scrubbed brains, though reliable, are notoriously slow. I would be capable of reproducing the work much more quickly with no appreciable loss of accuracy.
Night had completely fallen by the time I crossed the overpass on Byway 39/μ. A cold fog had risen from the Miskatonic. Vague shadows of people moved furtively in General Tecender Square, though never alone, and never, one suspected, unarmed. The weather is common in the vicinity of All Hallow’s Eve, when the fogs co-mingle with the fumes from the Hive, and cover the city in a grey mirk.
Throughway 4/δ was deathly quiet. The fog, dense as coal smoke. The shadow of a fresh graffito, presumably daubed under cover of weather: one vincenza our vincenza.
“In the future I envision,” Mandrake had averred, “we will inscribe octagrams into adamantium a kilometre wide. We will translocate armies from world to world in an instant, as the heathen Eldar are purported to do. The void between stars will vanish. One could step to the surface of Terra as easily as walking through a door! Or Mars! Or Epsilon Eridani! A thousand parsecs in the blink of an eye! Just imagine, Callidon. And you shall be instrumental in bringing it about.”
I was gratified, of course, for my assistance to be so valued. It was quite unlike any scribal task I had ever undertaken, meticulously reproducing and enlarging to scale the formulae Mandrake had devised, transcribing it onto the study floor with indelible marker. I quickly realised that the use of Administratum Standard Chirography was necessary. The smallest error would be fatal to the operation of the octagrams. Any misspelling or ambiguity in the formation of a character would cause the formulae to fail entirely. The offending error would then need to be located and corrected. Should the formulae nevertheless fail to operate as we hoped, the entire octagram would have to be thoroughly erased with isopropyl alcohol and subsequently rewritten.
With every permutation of the formulae the outcome remained the same. Mandrake would repeat the incantation. Our hapless test subject would instantly expire. We would examine the octagram for errors. Mandrake would repeat the incantation. The pile of discarded tantans in the corner grew higher as the night wore on. The repeated incantations set my teeth on edge. My knees and elbows began to ache from so much time kneeling over my work. Steadily I found myself affected by a building headache that had no proximate cause.
“The underlying hypothesis is sound in principle,” Mandrake repeatedly insisted. “It is sound in principle.”
6.823.860
I had largely recovered by the morning of 823. A few hour’s sleep, though meagre by conventional measure, was sufficient to dispel the worst of my corporeal ills. Indeed, I was still tired and somewhat weary of seeing the shudderingly wide sky above the rooftops. Certainly I could not help but be wistful for the Hives. The day’s work had seen me inspect and audit the accounts of Mr Cyman and Sons, guildsmen of the Vesterers, engaged to produce menial’s robes for the Administratum. I was attempting to reach VIth ward via Throughway 4/λ, detouring via Byway 24 (Mercantile), a significant pedestrian artery that intersects a number of plazas and lesser streets. Down these alleys one could see competing graffitos on almost every wall. With strange persistence someone had repeatedly graffiti’d ‘komus’ in a bewildering array of fonts and styles. I had not intended to take this route. The Adeptus Arbites had issued a travel order closing 4/λ on account of counter-insurgency action. Citizens were clustering together in small groups, the guilders among them watching one another with clear hostility. The Administratum stands above Vincenza politics. We are not guildsmen; we do not vote in Guildhall elections; we are not affected by their outcomes. And yet disconcertingly I myself was subject to dark glares with increasing frequency.
The hostility in the air was indeed palpable. Arbitrators were conspicuously on guard with shotguns and cyber-mastiffs. I found myself fearing what might happen if someone drew a weapon.
The grinding, dysphonic roar of a powerful engine presaged the arrival of an armoured personnel carrier, black-liveried, with the clenched gauntlet-and-scales of the Adeptus Arbites stencilled on its flanks. It crushed a pair of bollards beneath its tracks as it turned onto the plaza. Citizens scattered before it like a flock of birds. A squad of Arbitrators disembarked, two of them seizing a guilder while their colleagues racked their guns.
Once again I had an atypical journey to take. The non-function of the formulae and their deleterious effect upon living subjects, was considered by Mandrake to be a mathematical problem. It seemed to me this was partially true. I could not help but consider how the test subjects themselves might further contribute to our prospective success. We might learn more, I thought, if we knew the mechanism by which they had expired. My errand, therefore, was to the practice of Dr Verjis il Taurae, emigrée from the incorporation of Hive Pisces, engaged on occasion to provide veterinary services to the Adeptus Terra. With me I had the body of one of the tantans for examination.
A particularly large and fearsome cyber-mastiff guarded the front door. I passed it with some care. I was not wholly komus it would not rend one of my station. Both Dr Verjis and his assistant were armed – the boy conspicuously so with a brace of pistols.
“There’s not much I can do about that,” the doctor remarked upon seeing my cargo.
“I am acutely aware,” I replied to this flippant remark. “I want you to discover the case of its demise.”
He indicated that he might perform this service. “But why spend the money? These things die all the time.”
“The Adeptus Terra will fulfil the invoice. I see no other relevant concerns,” I said, now determined that this creature should not have died in vain. In this ambition I was to be disappointed. Despite an extensive investigation Dr Verjis could find no injury nor aliments of any kind. Indeed the inarguable fact that it was dead seemed to be the only observable affliction whatsoever.
6.827860
The inclement weather persisted into the following day. The afternoon raised the Hive smog, obliging the use of filter masks for those of us with access to them – for those who did not, scarves tied around the face had to suffice. The street lamps illuminated long before sunset, with limited practical effect.
On that evening, I particularly wished to be within the bounds of the Administratum Quarter. The completion of the Cyman audit required twice the expected time due to procedural errors caused by indifferent laziness. I was tired of the constant reminders of the forthcoming Guildhall elections, the ridiculous provincial infighting between the Vincenza freemen and the incomers from Pisces, the imminent threat of violence by gunfire.
The fractional shift change had passed by the time I had returned to the Basilica in order to submit my documents for intermediate filing pending subsequent continuance. This done, I signed out and departed. I paused in the forum near the statue of the Sigilite. Adeptes, chiefly Administratum staff, populated the area, some watching the interminable partisan lies and invective on the broadcast screens.
A Subordinate, recognisable by his dark grey robes, stared directly at me. This struck me as strangely – bizarrely – impudent.
“Komus,” he said.
“What?”
“Forgive me, I said ‘Corrinto’, honourable sir,” - his diction was impeded by his scarf. “Perhaps you recall our work on the Great Baronage Adjustment?”
General Tecender Square was deserted but for another Arbites Rhino armoured carrier, passing beneath the overpass and crawling off into the fog. Perhaps it was the threat of further counter-insurgency action that had discouraged its usual guilder denizens from their skirmishing. Perhaps the cold and smog had prevailed to drive them indoors. The Emperor’s colours, softly lit by the street lighting, stood proud of the grey mirk, the shimmering cloth-of-gold Aquila lent a strange yet apposite dignity.
The usual traffic of liveried cabs was all but absent along the Miskatonic. The fractal trees, folded and motionless. Shadowy figures of guards half-seen in townhouse porticos, watching every passer-by carefully. Tybalt Mandrake had no guards. He responded to my reportage of the unrest with indifference, citing both its irrelevance to the Administratum and the severe legal consequences of assaulting its clerks. This was on both points accurate and redundant, or rather, an accurate assessment from a rational perspective.
During the preceding hours Mandrake had endeavoured to refine aspects of the equations with certain non-mathematical clauses intended to augment the spoken incantation. Mandrake attempted to explain these principles as I completed the next iteration of the octagrams (In contravention, I am quite sure, of his order’s strictures). The error of his predecessors, he maintained, was in their sole usage of Hellenic graphemes for their calculus. The addition of certain other symbols are required for metaphysical equations: 8Πg / c∞ = נ, to give one such exemplar, or the extra-universal constant, as Mandrake termed it. The preceding fragment is no misquotation. Calculations pertaining to the Space outside Time must necessarily produce labyrinthine and chaotic solutions that are, nevertheless, true. This is a function of the non-intuitive nature of that which one studies.
“You stand upon the very cusp of destiny, Callidon! A thousand parsecs in the blink of an eye! By our labour will the ancient terrors of Old Night be banished forever, and we will be the undisputed masters of this galaxy.”
The refined octagram was nevertheless, an uncomfortably recurrent failure.
Mandrake’s response was to insist upon immediate repetitions of the experiment – a course of action I met with strenuous objections. The work, though within my capabilities, was distinctly taxing, as the exertions of 822 made clear.
I did not foresee the reaction that followed. My refusal excited such a fury in Mandrake as I had never seen. In between tirades of abuse and epithets he accused me of faithlessness, of cowardice, of wanton sabotage of Humanity’s glorious failure. Such was the force of his rage I feared he might drive me from his home at the very least. His eyes glared, the two lenses in the midst of the silver fixed upon me and somehow glinting with a vengeful animus. Q2X3 could not match the pace nor the vehemence of his speech, interpolating his words with hissing binaric bursts. I could only meekly and inanely point out that he might still utilise servitors. This simple point of logic strangely prevailed to calm his fury as quickly as it had arisen. He apologised with good grace, admitting that my labour was not well-spent in such a manner. I for my part owned that I might at least redraw the octagram in order to rule out the possibility of minor error. Thus our work continued for a final attempt.
The subject flickered to the further octagram.
“You see!” Mandrake declared. “In principle it is sound!”
It was, perhaps, more fundamentally a failure. The tantan, in spite of its successful translocation, nevertheless met the same fate as its compeers.
“But this is the same formula as used in the previous attempt!” I objected.
Upon closer examination of the octagram we discovered a smudge of blood in the margins of the outer circle. At some point during the night I had suffered a minor injury to my hand. Unheeded, the blood had subsequently tainted the experiment. We could not detect any other variable of between the two. Nothing would suffice but that we repeat the aberration. In a fit of absurdity I acceded to undertake a re-drawing of the octagram, carefully re-painting the original smear with no more than 10cc of my own blood.
The subject flickered to the further octagram. We had proved, unwittingly and my case, unwillingly, that the inclusion of blood facilitates live translocation.
6.82komus60
That night, violence reigned.
All routes into the centre of La Vincenza were sealed. The municipal broadcast screens switched to a bland repeat broadcast, offering no updates or information concerning the disorder. In the absence of sober reportage rumour contrived to exacerbate our anxieties. The violence began with the spontaneous lynchings of Vincenza freemen in the Numismatic Quarter. Rival electoral candidates barricaded themselves within their townhouses against siege. Guilder fought guilder according to their absurd partisan and ethnic loyalties. In every district vandalism, pillage, and barbarity. Throne save us, there was fighting in the Administratum Quarter when the mob made an attempt to storm the Guildhall. Mass arrests followed when the Adeptus Arbites deployed in strength to break the mob. Had they not done so, I feel chillingly certain, the Basilica Administratum would have been attacked in turn. It was as if the pent-up tensions of the preceding months could no longer be restrained by rule of law – and so men allowed themselves to be ruled by unreasoning fury, as beasts.
6.830.860
The first tantan simply vanished.
I hurried down Throughway 4/δ in spite of my persistently aching knees. Dawn had not brought an end to the rioting. The Administratum Quarter was by then surrounded by a wall of Arbites demanding identification from all citizens whether uniformed in Administratum robes or not. Great billows of smoke could be seen rising from the direction of IIIrd ward (I later learned the Vesterer’s Hall had been set alight). Within the Basilica rumours were circulating that the Arbites had lost control of La Vincenza, and that the Planetary Defence Force would be called in from the Hive. Ordinates in every Officio were strictly instructed not to allow any junior staff to repeat any such rumour, on pain of censure. Such measures were invariably futile. The municipal broadcast screens, both within the forum and the work halls of the Basilica, appealed insistently for calm and order. No specific information, calming or otherwise, was offered concerning the riot. And yet in every Officio, Ordinates were filing notices of absence pending confirmation of incapacitation or death.
Mandrake remained both indifferent and unconcerned in regard to the violence. I do not think he would have even considered any necessity for guards had I not told him of the invasion of the Administratum Quarter.
Our continued work now assumed a ghastlier aspect. The revelation that blood improved the efficacy of the incantation necessitated utilising a measure of our own vitae as ink. The expressions we initially selected to write in blood pertained to the metaphysical aspects of the equations. It was thus with a certain degree of trepidation and indeed wilful disbelief that I opened my wrist to provide my own contribution.
We were blindly experimenting, groping in the dark as it were, our compositions mere guesswork. My knees and elbows ached from continuous nights of effort, my head ached from a sourceless cause, my wrist ached unpleasantly where I had incised it. I almost dreaded the recitation of the incantation. Were it not for Mandrake’s fathomless confidence I feel certain I would have abandoned the project. It may not be apparent to the reader, but the use of blood as an ink is not a straightforward affair, requiring fixatives and anti-coagulants in order to be effective. The determination of the correct ratios thereof necessarily wasted materials. And so we bled again.
The altered octagram had a significant effect. The subject tantan vanished: instantly, soundlessly, irrevocably lost to the Space outside Time.
There was a pause, before the stocks of live tantans, usually quiescent, set up a chorus of anxious squeaking, perhaps as if they too understood the unnatural implications of what had occurred.
It was as Mandrake attempted to analyse this that I noticed my self-inflicted wound had spontaneously reopened in defiance of its dressing, releasing a rivulet of blood over my fingers. I am embarrassed to admit that this precipitated a rising tide of hysterical panic. Why did my wound reopen in such dramatic fashion? Why must the octagram have such a deleterious effect upon living subjects? Why must human blood achieve this effect? Why, in defiance of all that is rational, must these things be?
What prevailed to restrain my state of utter panic was a notion at once wholly logical and wholly in error. As has been noted, I am uninitiated in the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus. I did not understand the equations that formed Mandrake’s octagrams, except at a basic, childish level. The logical conclusion, therefore, must be that phenomena apparently contrary to natural law are merely indicative of secrets of which I am ignorant. I thought, too, of Mandrake’s relentless confidence. Perhaps I dared not deny him. Furthermore, I reasoned, my faculties were distinctly impaired. The knowledge of the violent insurrection spreading from General Komus Square; the unrelenting repetition of the abominable incantation; the deliberate effusion of my own blood – all had contrived to induce a mental strain whereby good sense and logic might be overcome. God-Emperor! I should never have trusted to such fallacious reasoning! It is only with the dreadful clarity of hindsight that I understand the terrible nature of the metaphysics with which we so foolishly experimented. I do not believe that had I turned aside, the coming doom would have been averted, but it might assuage my conscience if I had no further part in what would befall.
As a scholar and a servant of the Imperium, I have an obligation. My duty is clear. For the solace of my hoped-for absolution, for the sake of the sanity of Mankind, I must complete this account.
6.833.860 (All Hallow’s Eve)
That night, madness reigned.
The fog of the previous days remained as dense and stifling as I had ever seen it, persisting into All Hallow’s Eve, and indistinguishable from the Hive smog. Street lamps shone through the dark afternoon. The Hive itself could no longer be seen. It was as if all La Vincenza lay beneath an oppressive mirk: an isolation of human endeavour. In deference to the sanctity of the occasion the citizens gathered into solemn processions through the principle streets, each carrying an illuminated lantern as is proper, accompanied by priests chanting appropriate hymnals. Guildhall campaigning was suspended, barring the distasteful refusal of an impious minority. Only the Adeptes continued to work (We of the Administratum not least), the paradox of service being that our duty to the Emperor does not lessen with any holy day.
By 832 I was able to leave the Basilica in order to make my own devotions, intending to cross Byway 39/μ to attend the Church of the Willing Martyr on Byway 39/β. It will be known to the general historian that the ceasefire abruptly broke with the assassination of a leading Guildhall candidate which provoked retaliatory murders of Pisces-men by the freemen of La Vincenza. Murder and counter-murder swiftly followed. Initially guilder fought guilder, but when the Arbites arrived to restore order, gang fighting erupted into open battle, guilds versus the law. There were a multitude of rumours concerning that night, but be cognisant of the fact that I was there on the overpass on Byway 39/μ. I saw the mob baying in the night, the burning prison Rhino, the choke gas staining the fog a poisonous yellow. I saw petroleum bombs bursting on the asphalt like rotten fruit. I saw the Arbitrators fighting a losing rearguard action, saw them trying without success to drag their stricken comrades from the fray. I heard the hammer of shotguns as the Arbitrators fired almost wildly into the mob. Slogans and curses devolved into animal howls of fury. Nothing seemed to give them the least pause whatsoever, meeting shotgun, gas, and bludgeon with the most immoderate violence. I saw one Arbitrator wrestled to the ground by four guilders and stabbed through the armpit. I saw one shot in the head as he struggled to suppress the flames engulfing his arm. I saw one surrounded and beaten into a bloody ruin.
It was in sum a hideous sight to behold. I do not know how long I remained in that state of shock. Presently I realised that at any moment I might be struck by a bullet or worse, a bottle of petroleum. I fled back through the Notary Chambers, thinking only of reaching the sanctuary of the Basilica. There was still a strong Arbites presence defending the Administratum Quarter when I had departed. They would still be there.
But the situation had changed. A protesting, clamouring crowd packed the street. I could dimly perceive a line of Arbitrators beyond the crowd. So many of them were Adeptes! I saw Administratum staff of every rank. I saw Ministorum priests, high guilders, people of dignity. I asked an Ordinate what on Terra was happening.
The Adeptus Arbites had seized control of the Basilica Administratum. All routes into the forum were sealed. No-one was permitted within their cordon, not even Adeptes.
Such was the intensity of the rioting that none were prepared to accept this state of affairs. A sense of injury rose up through my anxiety. To be denied entry at the point of a gun was an affront to our rights and dignity as Adeptus Terra. We knew of course that the Arbites are impartial – no less so than the Administratum. That, I believe, was why we refused every order to disperse. We expected their protection, demanded it as Adeptus Terra!
We did not expect them to open fire. Panic instantly broke out. People shoved each other aside in their haste to escape. I was thrown to the ground, ears ringing from the blast of Emperor knows how many shotguns fired as one. For a moment, I foolishly thought this were a terrible error that might soon be resolved but then I heard shooting back!
I ran before the firefight became a slaughter. I ran back through the Notary Chambers, back across the overpass on Byway 39/μ where the fog was stained with choke gas and the battle raged. I ran past walls covered with graffiti, KOMUS KOMUS KOMUS KOMUS over and over again. I ran until my breaths came harsh and ragged and my muscles screamed.
I stopped to recover on Throughway 4/δ. I had to. The fog hemmed me in, cold and damp. I could not see for more than ten metres in any direction. The street lighting made no practical difference whatsoever.
There was a humanoid shape standing in the portico of Mandrake’s townhouse. I had no choice but to approach. It was not an armed guilder, God-Emperor be praised, but a gun-servitor. Tech-priests utilised gun-servitors. Guilders did not. He turned his pallid, grey face to stare at me. He did not fire. His lobotomised brain did not register me as a threat.
To my astonishment Mandrake immediately began to appraise me of improvements to the formulae as if we might begin work then and there! I impressed upon him as best I might the singular extremity of the night’s violence, how I myself was very nearly gunned down. I could not believe that the mob would be stymied by one gun-servitor, however heavily armed. But Mandrake was immoveable.
“Do you suppose KD45 is my only guard? We are entirely secure. I will not pause my work, this great endeavour because of the idiocy of the herd! Omnissiah vult! I have it, Callidon! The formulae are now correct in every aspect. Don’t be a fool! Who, even on Maius Valorum, will remember La Vincenza rioting in a year’s time? Which side of history will you be on, Adept Callidon?”
I dared not refuse him, no matter how manifestly hubristic the endeavour. It seemed to me that he teetered on the brink of ungovernable rage, and I had nowhere to run.
With considerable anxiety I drew what Mandrake insisted would be the final octagram. There could be no other other. We had no more test subjects to use. We had no more blood to give.
It was not a task I undertook with alacrity. I emphatically did not wish to hear another repeat of that abominable incantation. But with dreadful inevitability, all delaying proved ultimately fruitless. By 833 they were complete, exact and perfect, the glistening red characters of the principal expressions fading to a rusty brown, a ghastly testament to the scribal craft.
Mandrake stepped into a large octagram. His back was to me, but I perceived a distinct boldness and determination in his bearing.
“I say, you cannot mean to personally test the formulae!” I cried.
Q2X3 stared at me with its mechanical eyes. “Why, Callidon? Why should I not? Is it not right and proper that I should have the honour of the first voyage?”
I wish that so much of what had occurred and would occur were not so. But of all the regrets generated by that night, more than anything I wish I had shaken my friend’s hand.
Tybalt Mandrake recited the syllables of the incantation, and nothing happened. He remained with his back to me, hunched as if in bitter disappointment.
“Mandrake, old boy?”
Staggering, Mandrake turned to face me.
“Help me!”
There was a philosophical principle he related to me once, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We had intended to build a bridge through the space beyond. We had not understood that we might also open a gate. With that final incantation the fabric of reality had broken down and the gate had opened: directly through Mandrake’s head. I saw his eyes, no longer silver bionics, were now wide and terrible, transmuted into twin pools of uttermost Abyss, portals into a dimension utterly hostile and alien to this world. I saw with hideous clarity that which Mandrake had attempted to confine in forbidden mathematics. I saw the terrible stars that whirl and burn in the Space outside Time. I saw reason convulse and reality buckle under insane radiation. I saw the pale, staring, mindless hunger of soulless things.
I saw Komus.
Amid the endless seconds of paralysing horror I did the one courageous deed I have ever done. I drew my laspistol and shot my friend through the face – the only help that was in my power to give.
6.865.862.M41
My duty is done, and it shall be my last service to Him-on-Earth. This manuscript will remain locked securely with my papers in anticipation of Inquisitorial examination.
It is a matter of public record that the Planetary Defence Force were deployed from the Hive to restore order. Amid the fire and murder and madness of that accursed night, the death of one tech-priest must seem a trivial matter. I do not know if the dragoons found Mandrake in his townhouse on Throughway 4/δ, or found his dread apparatus. My only comfort is that the activating incantation died with him, and nor will I reveal it. I should have burned that house before I fled. Forgive me, the horror was too great.
In truth, I am tired. I have seen what lies a shadow’s thickness away, where the light of the Emperor signifies nothing at all. I know that mere writing may tear down the façade of what we call reality. But it is not that knowledge which haunts my dreams. No, the memory I cannot erase is Mandrake’s last entreaty to me – because it was in his fleshvoice!
I write this in the acute and present knowledge that soon the Inquisition will come for me. Throne save me, I now know a truth that ought never be known, for which execution must be the inevitable consequence. God-Emperor forgive me that I should ever have engaged with such morbid researches! From the day I fled Mandrake’s workshop I knew henceforth I would never sleep soundly again, unless it were in the grave’s chill embrace.
My name is Evanid Callidon il Gemina. At another time, in another life, I was an Ordinate serving the Office of Imperial Pursary on Maius Valorum. It was my duty, insofar as one not of the Administratum could comprehend it, to audit and dis/approve payments from the Imperial exchequer. For the greater part of my career I served in the lesser hive cities of Tucara and Pisces-by-the-Sea. In the perihelion of the year 843 I was transferred to the satellite city of La Vincenza, a suburb in the incorporation of Hive Corrinto, queen of cities.
I know that when the Inquisition reads this manuscript, the gallows will follow. This is as it should be. I have run too far, for too long. I beg only that the reader does not dismiss these revelations as the ravings of a madman. It is not in my nature to invent fantastic, delirious visions of things that never were, as does the sentimental and dissolute aesthete. My demesne is the empirical, the factual, the consequential. I believe I understand, better than any other man, the significance of the strange, deadly events that occurred in La Vincenza on 6.833860.M41 (All Hallows Eve). Precisely what instigating event precipitated that cursed night, others will elucidate. But by my account the result may be seen, a truth unguessed at by all other authorities, save perhaps only Him-on-Earth.
Gloria in omnipotens Imperator.
6.819860
I pulled up the hood of my robe against the sullen patter of cold rain, and braced my hand against the parapet to catch my breath. Byway 39/μ would under ordinary circumstances be my dispreferred route from the Basilica Administratum. It necessitates, among numerous other vexing diversions, climbing a flight of more than thirty steps and crossing the pedestrian overpass between the Notary Chambers and the Archives. Emperor knows I’m not as fit as I was as a young menial. But today I had an atypical journey to take.
A current of black-robed archivists traipsed across the overpass. They all parted at a respectful three-pace distance from me, jostling for room, heads bowed. Graffiti, like invasive weeds, flourished in this liminal district alongside downtown Vincenza, seeming to appear of its own accord on any flat surface: ‘VINCENZA FOR VINCENZANS’, ‘PISCES = FREEMEN’, etc. Beneath, General Tecender Square was calm, citizens scurrying through the rain under the glares of the Arbitrators standing guard at the corners. At the middle of the square the Imperial Aquila flies, gold on white, from a twelve-metre flagpole, hanging limp in a manner unbefitting the Emperor’s own banner. In the warm season the square is not so drear, when vendors sell aromatic meats from little carts and musical quartets play charming sonatas in the twilit evenings.
Gangs of guilders had taken to skirmishing in the square and surrounding streets of late. It wasn’t uncommon to hear gunfire in the night. There was another Arbitrator posted at the end of the overpass, impassive in his matte-black armour, a monstrous shotgun clutched in his gauntleted paws. The deep vision-slits on their helmets have the disconcerting effect of hiding precisely where the Arbitrator is looking. It is better not to guess.
I departed the Administratum Quarter at Throughway 4/δ (Riverside). 4/δ is a finer, more orderly district of tall, gambrel-roofed townhouses standing sombrely in the rain. Wealthy guilders of the more dignified, mature sort, were commuting from downtown. Liveried hansom cabs drawn by cybernetic horses carried them home, each with an armed bodyguard riding alongside. The street runs parallel to the brackish, acidic Miskatonic running sluggishly in its rockcrete channel. All down the riverside the fractal trees were folding down in response to the fading light. I took meagre shelter beneath the nearest tree, trying to rest my aching knees. It folded its secondary branches with a clack. Actuators gently whirred as the leaves rotated and flattened themselves together. You will not find their like elsewhere on Maius Valorum. Each leaf is a photo-voltaic module piping captured solar energy down the metal branches to the municipal power grid at its roots. Something caught my eye as a street lamp flickered on. In the bole of the tree someone had taken sufficient pains to carve ‘komus’.
The purpose of my journey was in response to a letter received from an associate of mine, one tech-priest by the name of Tybalt Mandrake. I first made Mandrake’s acquaintance upon his emigration to La Vincenza in 849. It was he who designed the fractal trees, to the general commendation of the guilds. It is my understanding that this succeeded his abnormal retirement from hieratic duties in Hive Corrinto. My involvement was instrumental in the disbursal of an Imperial pension for his services to the city. Mandrake had, at times, alluded in guarded hints that that the high tech-priests did not approve of the fractal trees. I could not wholly accede to the notion of the trees, marvellous creations of form and function, as unhallowed. I believed, then, I knew better than to press the matter, but in hindsight it augured a dangerous heterodoxy.
Upon arrival at Mandrake’s residence the weather had deteriorated. My robes had become uncomfortably cold and heavy; indeed, I was glad of the shelter the austere portico afforded. Photo-voltaic ivy had been set to clamber up the townhouse walls, for what practical purpose I cannot guess.
The front door was answered by a skull.
“Adept Callidon. Pray enter,” it said in a flat tone. “I have been awaiting your visit with significant anticipation.”
In life Serial Q2X3 had been a tech-acolyte, who served as Mandrake’s assistant in Hive Corrinto. I don’t believe Mandrake ever knew his birth name. In death his skull now served as a servo-skull, his empty cranium housing a cogitator, floating about its business on an anti-grav motor.
There were fresh robes awaiting in the anteroom, in precisely the correct shade of grey appropriate to my rank. Presently, I was received in the drawing room. A good fire was burning, anachronistic but comforting, and a cheering supper brought in by the kitchen servitors.
“Good evening,” Mandrake said. Or rather, Q2X3 said it for him via its voice synthesiser. I had never heard his ‘fleshvoice’, as he termed it.
It would be sensible at this juncture to reflect upon what manner of man Mandrake was. In spite of his de facto retirement he still wore the red robes of a tech-priest. Indeed, his very retirement was rumoured to be odd. Among the Imperial cognoscenti it was at times gossiped that Mandrake had the potential to ascend to Magos rank and yet never petitioned for elevation. Whatever his original features were, I do know know. His face had been sculpted into a soft-cheeked, boyishly handsome visage. The effect could be considered to be undermined by the plasticky sheen of synthskin. Conversations with Mandrake were unusual in that he never opened his mouth to speak. I had grown accustomed to these oddities – there are many who would say, incorrectly, that we of the Administratum are equally incorrigibly odd. But it was his eyes I could never become accustomed to. A pair of high-grade bionics gleaming silver from corner-to-corner with a marked tendency to stare. Mandrake seldom blinked unless he remembered to.
We spoke for a while of matters of import, of the overdue tithe-fleet, the falling production of Hive Pisces, the Lord Governor’s imminent dismissal of the Patrician. We were discussing the war on Lyanthus when we laid our utensils aside in favour of a glass of sensibly-priced amasec.
“I have been enlightened, Callidon,” Mandrake declaimed, staring at me. “Praise the Omnissiah, I have come to an understanding. One that may very well change the fate of Mankind as we know it!”
“Oh, come on, old boy -” I began. Such grandiosity is unseemly.
Mandrake held up a hand. “Do not think I exaggerate! Have I ever?”
“You were saying?” I said. I confess, I was taken somewhat aback by his sharpness.
He appeared to subside. “You are aware that this reality is governed by certain laws?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, effect must follow cause and so forth.”
“Indeed. Would you also agree, therefore, that certain feats of the imagination must be impossible in reality, should they contravene these laws?”
“Why, I suppose I must.”
“We have established, then, that reality is ultimately finite. But what is this reality?” Mandrake paused, as if recalling a speech long rehearsed. “It has been revealed to the Mechanicus for millennia that it is so composed of four dimensions – those three of Space, and the fourth, Time. At first it will seem that Time must be separate and distinct from Space, but it is not so. Space and Time, space-time, are one.”
I had a distinct impression these were mysteries an ordained tech-priest ought not be telling a layman.
“Imagine, if you will, a Space outside Time. A Space that touches on all Times simultaneously. In a Space without Time, all motion becomes instantaneous. When all motion is instantaneous, what meaning does Space have? What could the possibilities be if one could travel to and from that Space at will?”
“I don’t understand,” I confessed.
Mandrake sighed, the exhalation rendered as a static burst by Q2X3. “You are uninitiated. You need a demonstration. Come.”
The study had formerly occupied a corner of the first floor. When I last beheld it, the study was much like the rest of his residence, antique in its furnishings, almost shabby where Mandrake had not troubled to alter anything that was not an active hindrance. In the interim the room had been significantly enlarged; aluminium workstations added; the carpet had been removed; a smooth, almost featureless floor laid. Halogen lamps lit it brilliantly. Against one wall, rows of plastic tanks had been installed, each containing a tantan, a rotund, gene-modified rodent of the sort bred by the thousand in the middle-hive to serve as inexpensive pets.
In the midst of the floor, three geometric designs had been drawn – two large, approximately one metre in diameter, one less than half that size. After a moment’s study I realised they were octagrams, but the lines were formed of row upon row of complex mathematical formulae.
“Perhaps you might lend me your weapon,” Mandrake said.
I handed him my laspistol from its holster. I frequently forget I wear it – mere office attire, it is expected of we who superintend the Imperium. Indeed, I have never discharged it. Mandrake placed it in the centre of a large octagram. He himself stepped into the smallest, and spoke a single word. Nothing will induce me to willingly repeat those accursed phonemes in speech or in text. In that moment I did not suspect how arcane its providence might be, still less the demented implications of what I was about to witness.
My weapon appeared in the further octagram. I had not observed any force of motion act upon it in any explicable manner. It was simply there, Deus Imperator, the phenomenon effectuated in the blink of an eye!
“Why, it has travelled!”
“Now you see!” Mandrake cried, with a gloatingly triumphant expression. “This effect, this translocation via the Space outside Time, may be instantaneous. I have inscribed a delay within the formulae merely to facilitate observation.”
I did not immediately reply. How could I? As has been remarked upon, I am uninitiated.
“For millennia, perhaps since the first void mariners took the first steps from the surface of ancient Terra, Mankind has grappled with the problem of Space! How to render as nothing the scarcely fathomable vastness of the interstellar gulf? Space-time bridges, better known as wormholes, were always the key. But to no-one, not even in the Dark Age of Technology, was the secret of opening them revealed. The secret, Callidon, is not gravity. It is not dark matter. It is linguistics. It is mathematics, pure and plain.”
I seized upon the obvious question: “Could one transport humans using this formula?”
The triumph in Mandrake’s expression faded somewhat. He removed a tantan from its tank. It meeped half-heartedly in protest, but in common with the docility of its kind, it made no attempt to escape the octagram within which it was then placed.
“Observe.”
The instant Mandrake spoke the incantation the tantan stilled. It was quite dead.
It remained within the same octagram. I could not but consider it unseemly that the little chap should have given its life for the sake of a simple demonstration.
“I say, old boy, could you not have explained that phenomenon?”
“The cause of this effect upon living subjects remains elusive,” Mandrake said blandly.
6.822860
“The pace of my discoveries is limited by the rate at which the octagrams may be drawn. The lines must be exceedingly precise.”
Perhaps if he had not made that negligent comment, I might not have determined to return to Mandrake’s residence.
The following day required me to travel to the east side of the Administratum Quarter to inspect certain documents relating to claims actioned by my predecessor in post. The office’s position on the brow of a hill afforded a view of La Vincenza from a vantage point. Lights glowed yellow from the rows of arched clerestory windows on the Basilica Administratum, an excellent example of the Imperial Homogenised style that you may see mirrored on a hundred or more worlds across this sector. The Basilica is the contribution of Comptroller Phineas Barcalus il Saggita, built exactingly to the approved Administratum colonia plan; the educated eye will notice the smooth-faced walls of unblemished concrete, the lead-capped pinnacles atop flying buttresses, the tasteful restraint of the aquila bas-relief overlooking the grand sweep of the steps before the portico. A triumph, amen, of humanitas, the Imperial way.
The Basilica stands, not in the geographical centre, but irrationally at the far side of the Administratum Quarter, on a twenty-five hectare forum, the faces of the municipal broadcast screens only blearily visible on account of the weather. Around the forum, neither so excellent nor so grand, are the lesser exemplars of humanitas. To the left of the Basilica, the crenellated, iron-gated office of the Prefect Advocate, alongside the Divisio Demographicus building, replete with the usual lines of petitioners vying for citizenship. Opposite, the floridly adorned Guildhall, dating to La Vincenza’s founding, now a recruitment office for the Planetary Defence Force. There, adjoining the original Common Colonial Bank, the non-standard but elegant Church of the Inevitable Triumph. Behind the vastness of the Basilica, the montane bulk of Hive Corrinto rose dark against the iron-grey sky. I sucked in a breath that had little to do with physical exertions. I remain unaccustomed to seeing a hive city from the outside, beneath an illimitable sky as opposed to an honest roof.
My work during this shift had been repeatedly inefficient. The memory of what I had witnessed in that study could not be wholly dispelled from my thoughts. I thought of the fractal trees, elegant and functional creations of Mandrake’s craft. I imagined their continued installation across all La Vincenza. Perhaps Mandrake was indifferent as to the usage of his experimental subjects, but what of it? I could perceive a purpose and a nobility in his design, as one above the tawdry desires of the everyday. Furthermore, I felt certain I could lend my skills in aid of Mandrake’s endeavour. As a young scribe I had been trained to reproduce graphics swiftly and precisely. Mandrake had been attempting to utilise a servitor to complete each octagram. Mind-scrubbed brains, though reliable, are notoriously slow. I would be capable of reproducing the work much more quickly with no appreciable loss of accuracy.
Night had completely fallen by the time I crossed the overpass on Byway 39/μ. A cold fog had risen from the Miskatonic. Vague shadows of people moved furtively in General Tecender Square, though never alone, and never, one suspected, unarmed. The weather is common in the vicinity of All Hallow’s Eve, when the fogs co-mingle with the fumes from the Hive, and cover the city in a grey mirk.
Throughway 4/δ was deathly quiet. The fog, dense as coal smoke. The shadow of a fresh graffito, presumably daubed under cover of weather: one vincenza our vincenza.
“In the future I envision,” Mandrake had averred, “we will inscribe octagrams into adamantium a kilometre wide. We will translocate armies from world to world in an instant, as the heathen Eldar are purported to do. The void between stars will vanish. One could step to the surface of Terra as easily as walking through a door! Or Mars! Or Epsilon Eridani! A thousand parsecs in the blink of an eye! Just imagine, Callidon. And you shall be instrumental in bringing it about.”
I was gratified, of course, for my assistance to be so valued. It was quite unlike any scribal task I had ever undertaken, meticulously reproducing and enlarging to scale the formulae Mandrake had devised, transcribing it onto the study floor with indelible marker. I quickly realised that the use of Administratum Standard Chirography was necessary. The smallest error would be fatal to the operation of the octagrams. Any misspelling or ambiguity in the formation of a character would cause the formulae to fail entirely. The offending error would then need to be located and corrected. Should the formulae nevertheless fail to operate as we hoped, the entire octagram would have to be thoroughly erased with isopropyl alcohol and subsequently rewritten.
With every permutation of the formulae the outcome remained the same. Mandrake would repeat the incantation. Our hapless test subject would instantly expire. We would examine the octagram for errors. Mandrake would repeat the incantation. The pile of discarded tantans in the corner grew higher as the night wore on. The repeated incantations set my teeth on edge. My knees and elbows began to ache from so much time kneeling over my work. Steadily I found myself affected by a building headache that had no proximate cause.
“The underlying hypothesis is sound in principle,” Mandrake repeatedly insisted. “It is sound in principle.”
6.823.860
I had largely recovered by the morning of 823. A few hour’s sleep, though meagre by conventional measure, was sufficient to dispel the worst of my corporeal ills. Indeed, I was still tired and somewhat weary of seeing the shudderingly wide sky above the rooftops. Certainly I could not help but be wistful for the Hives. The day’s work had seen me inspect and audit the accounts of Mr Cyman and Sons, guildsmen of the Vesterers, engaged to produce menial’s robes for the Administratum. I was attempting to reach VIth ward via Throughway 4/λ, detouring via Byway 24 (Mercantile), a significant pedestrian artery that intersects a number of plazas and lesser streets. Down these alleys one could see competing graffitos on almost every wall. With strange persistence someone had repeatedly graffiti’d ‘komus’ in a bewildering array of fonts and styles. I had not intended to take this route. The Adeptus Arbites had issued a travel order closing 4/λ on account of counter-insurgency action. Citizens were clustering together in small groups, the guilders among them watching one another with clear hostility. The Administratum stands above Vincenza politics. We are not guildsmen; we do not vote in Guildhall elections; we are not affected by their outcomes. And yet disconcertingly I myself was subject to dark glares with increasing frequency.
The hostility in the air was indeed palpable. Arbitrators were conspicuously on guard with shotguns and cyber-mastiffs. I found myself fearing what might happen if someone drew a weapon.
The grinding, dysphonic roar of a powerful engine presaged the arrival of an armoured personnel carrier, black-liveried, with the clenched gauntlet-and-scales of the Adeptus Arbites stencilled on its flanks. It crushed a pair of bollards beneath its tracks as it turned onto the plaza. Citizens scattered before it like a flock of birds. A squad of Arbitrators disembarked, two of them seizing a guilder while their colleagues racked their guns.
Once again I had an atypical journey to take. The non-function of the formulae and their deleterious effect upon living subjects, was considered by Mandrake to be a mathematical problem. It seemed to me this was partially true. I could not help but consider how the test subjects themselves might further contribute to our prospective success. We might learn more, I thought, if we knew the mechanism by which they had expired. My errand, therefore, was to the practice of Dr Verjis il Taurae, emigrée from the incorporation of Hive Pisces, engaged on occasion to provide veterinary services to the Adeptus Terra. With me I had the body of one of the tantans for examination.
A particularly large and fearsome cyber-mastiff guarded the front door. I passed it with some care. I was not wholly komus it would not rend one of my station. Both Dr Verjis and his assistant were armed – the boy conspicuously so with a brace of pistols.
“There’s not much I can do about that,” the doctor remarked upon seeing my cargo.
“I am acutely aware,” I replied to this flippant remark. “I want you to discover the case of its demise.”
He indicated that he might perform this service. “But why spend the money? These things die all the time.”
“The Adeptus Terra will fulfil the invoice. I see no other relevant concerns,” I said, now determined that this creature should not have died in vain. In this ambition I was to be disappointed. Despite an extensive investigation Dr Verjis could find no injury nor aliments of any kind. Indeed the inarguable fact that it was dead seemed to be the only observable affliction whatsoever.
6.827860
The inclement weather persisted into the following day. The afternoon raised the Hive smog, obliging the use of filter masks for those of us with access to them – for those who did not, scarves tied around the face had to suffice. The street lamps illuminated long before sunset, with limited practical effect.
On that evening, I particularly wished to be within the bounds of the Administratum Quarter. The completion of the Cyman audit required twice the expected time due to procedural errors caused by indifferent laziness. I was tired of the constant reminders of the forthcoming Guildhall elections, the ridiculous provincial infighting between the Vincenza freemen and the incomers from Pisces, the imminent threat of violence by gunfire.
The fractional shift change had passed by the time I had returned to the Basilica in order to submit my documents for intermediate filing pending subsequent continuance. This done, I signed out and departed. I paused in the forum near the statue of the Sigilite. Adeptes, chiefly Administratum staff, populated the area, some watching the interminable partisan lies and invective on the broadcast screens.
A Subordinate, recognisable by his dark grey robes, stared directly at me. This struck me as strangely – bizarrely – impudent.
“Komus,” he said.
“What?”
“Forgive me, I said ‘Corrinto’, honourable sir,” - his diction was impeded by his scarf. “Perhaps you recall our work on the Great Baronage Adjustment?”
General Tecender Square was deserted but for another Arbites Rhino armoured carrier, passing beneath the overpass and crawling off into the fog. Perhaps it was the threat of further counter-insurgency action that had discouraged its usual guilder denizens from their skirmishing. Perhaps the cold and smog had prevailed to drive them indoors. The Emperor’s colours, softly lit by the street lighting, stood proud of the grey mirk, the shimmering cloth-of-gold Aquila lent a strange yet apposite dignity.
The usual traffic of liveried cabs was all but absent along the Miskatonic. The fractal trees, folded and motionless. Shadowy figures of guards half-seen in townhouse porticos, watching every passer-by carefully. Tybalt Mandrake had no guards. He responded to my reportage of the unrest with indifference, citing both its irrelevance to the Administratum and the severe legal consequences of assaulting its clerks. This was on both points accurate and redundant, or rather, an accurate assessment from a rational perspective.
During the preceding hours Mandrake had endeavoured to refine aspects of the equations with certain non-mathematical clauses intended to augment the spoken incantation. Mandrake attempted to explain these principles as I completed the next iteration of the octagrams (In contravention, I am quite sure, of his order’s strictures). The error of his predecessors, he maintained, was in their sole usage of Hellenic graphemes for their calculus. The addition of certain other symbols are required for metaphysical equations: 8Πg / c∞ = נ, to give one such exemplar, or the extra-universal constant, as Mandrake termed it. The preceding fragment is no misquotation. Calculations pertaining to the Space outside Time must necessarily produce labyrinthine and chaotic solutions that are, nevertheless, true. This is a function of the non-intuitive nature of that which one studies.
“You stand upon the very cusp of destiny, Callidon! A thousand parsecs in the blink of an eye! By our labour will the ancient terrors of Old Night be banished forever, and we will be the undisputed masters of this galaxy.”
The refined octagram was nevertheless, an uncomfortably recurrent failure.
Mandrake’s response was to insist upon immediate repetitions of the experiment – a course of action I met with strenuous objections. The work, though within my capabilities, was distinctly taxing, as the exertions of 822 made clear.
I did not foresee the reaction that followed. My refusal excited such a fury in Mandrake as I had never seen. In between tirades of abuse and epithets he accused me of faithlessness, of cowardice, of wanton sabotage of Humanity’s glorious failure. Such was the force of his rage I feared he might drive me from his home at the very least. His eyes glared, the two lenses in the midst of the silver fixed upon me and somehow glinting with a vengeful animus. Q2X3 could not match the pace nor the vehemence of his speech, interpolating his words with hissing binaric bursts. I could only meekly and inanely point out that he might still utilise servitors. This simple point of logic strangely prevailed to calm his fury as quickly as it had arisen. He apologised with good grace, admitting that my labour was not well-spent in such a manner. I for my part owned that I might at least redraw the octagram in order to rule out the possibility of minor error. Thus our work continued for a final attempt.
The subject flickered to the further octagram.
“You see!” Mandrake declared. “In principle it is sound!”
It was, perhaps, more fundamentally a failure. The tantan, in spite of its successful translocation, nevertheless met the same fate as its compeers.
“But this is the same formula as used in the previous attempt!” I objected.
Upon closer examination of the octagram we discovered a smudge of blood in the margins of the outer circle. At some point during the night I had suffered a minor injury to my hand. Unheeded, the blood had subsequently tainted the experiment. We could not detect any other variable of between the two. Nothing would suffice but that we repeat the aberration. In a fit of absurdity I acceded to undertake a re-drawing of the octagram, carefully re-painting the original smear with no more than 10cc of my own blood.
The subject flickered to the further octagram. We had proved, unwittingly and my case, unwillingly, that the inclusion of blood facilitates live translocation.
6.82komus60
That night, violence reigned.
All routes into the centre of La Vincenza were sealed. The municipal broadcast screens switched to a bland repeat broadcast, offering no updates or information concerning the disorder. In the absence of sober reportage rumour contrived to exacerbate our anxieties. The violence began with the spontaneous lynchings of Vincenza freemen in the Numismatic Quarter. Rival electoral candidates barricaded themselves within their townhouses against siege. Guilder fought guilder according to their absurd partisan and ethnic loyalties. In every district vandalism, pillage, and barbarity. Throne save us, there was fighting in the Administratum Quarter when the mob made an attempt to storm the Guildhall. Mass arrests followed when the Adeptus Arbites deployed in strength to break the mob. Had they not done so, I feel chillingly certain, the Basilica Administratum would have been attacked in turn. It was as if the pent-up tensions of the preceding months could no longer be restrained by rule of law – and so men allowed themselves to be ruled by unreasoning fury, as beasts.
6.830.860
The first tantan simply vanished.
I hurried down Throughway 4/δ in spite of my persistently aching knees. Dawn had not brought an end to the rioting. The Administratum Quarter was by then surrounded by a wall of Arbites demanding identification from all citizens whether uniformed in Administratum robes or not. Great billows of smoke could be seen rising from the direction of IIIrd ward (I later learned the Vesterer’s Hall had been set alight). Within the Basilica rumours were circulating that the Arbites had lost control of La Vincenza, and that the Planetary Defence Force would be called in from the Hive. Ordinates in every Officio were strictly instructed not to allow any junior staff to repeat any such rumour, on pain of censure. Such measures were invariably futile. The municipal broadcast screens, both within the forum and the work halls of the Basilica, appealed insistently for calm and order. No specific information, calming or otherwise, was offered concerning the riot. And yet in every Officio, Ordinates were filing notices of absence pending confirmation of incapacitation or death.
Mandrake remained both indifferent and unconcerned in regard to the violence. I do not think he would have even considered any necessity for guards had I not told him of the invasion of the Administratum Quarter.
Our continued work now assumed a ghastlier aspect. The revelation that blood improved the efficacy of the incantation necessitated utilising a measure of our own vitae as ink. The expressions we initially selected to write in blood pertained to the metaphysical aspects of the equations. It was thus with a certain degree of trepidation and indeed wilful disbelief that I opened my wrist to provide my own contribution.
We were blindly experimenting, groping in the dark as it were, our compositions mere guesswork. My knees and elbows ached from continuous nights of effort, my head ached from a sourceless cause, my wrist ached unpleasantly where I had incised it. I almost dreaded the recitation of the incantation. Were it not for Mandrake’s fathomless confidence I feel certain I would have abandoned the project. It may not be apparent to the reader, but the use of blood as an ink is not a straightforward affair, requiring fixatives and anti-coagulants in order to be effective. The determination of the correct ratios thereof necessarily wasted materials. And so we bled again.
The altered octagram had a significant effect. The subject tantan vanished: instantly, soundlessly, irrevocably lost to the Space outside Time.
There was a pause, before the stocks of live tantans, usually quiescent, set up a chorus of anxious squeaking, perhaps as if they too understood the unnatural implications of what had occurred.
It was as Mandrake attempted to analyse this that I noticed my self-inflicted wound had spontaneously reopened in defiance of its dressing, releasing a rivulet of blood over my fingers. I am embarrassed to admit that this precipitated a rising tide of hysterical panic. Why did my wound reopen in such dramatic fashion? Why must the octagram have such a deleterious effect upon living subjects? Why must human blood achieve this effect? Why, in defiance of all that is rational, must these things be?
What prevailed to restrain my state of utter panic was a notion at once wholly logical and wholly in error. As has been noted, I am uninitiated in the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus. I did not understand the equations that formed Mandrake’s octagrams, except at a basic, childish level. The logical conclusion, therefore, must be that phenomena apparently contrary to natural law are merely indicative of secrets of which I am ignorant. I thought, too, of Mandrake’s relentless confidence. Perhaps I dared not deny him. Furthermore, I reasoned, my faculties were distinctly impaired. The knowledge of the violent insurrection spreading from General Komus Square; the unrelenting repetition of the abominable incantation; the deliberate effusion of my own blood – all had contrived to induce a mental strain whereby good sense and logic might be overcome. God-Emperor! I should never have trusted to such fallacious reasoning! It is only with the dreadful clarity of hindsight that I understand the terrible nature of the metaphysics with which we so foolishly experimented. I do not believe that had I turned aside, the coming doom would have been averted, but it might assuage my conscience if I had no further part in what would befall.
As a scholar and a servant of the Imperium, I have an obligation. My duty is clear. For the solace of my hoped-for absolution, for the sake of the sanity of Mankind, I must complete this account.
6.833.860 (All Hallow’s Eve)
That night, madness reigned.
The fog of the previous days remained as dense and stifling as I had ever seen it, persisting into All Hallow’s Eve, and indistinguishable from the Hive smog. Street lamps shone through the dark afternoon. The Hive itself could no longer be seen. It was as if all La Vincenza lay beneath an oppressive mirk: an isolation of human endeavour. In deference to the sanctity of the occasion the citizens gathered into solemn processions through the principle streets, each carrying an illuminated lantern as is proper, accompanied by priests chanting appropriate hymnals. Guildhall campaigning was suspended, barring the distasteful refusal of an impious minority. Only the Adeptes continued to work (We of the Administratum not least), the paradox of service being that our duty to the Emperor does not lessen with any holy day.
By 832 I was able to leave the Basilica in order to make my own devotions, intending to cross Byway 39/μ to attend the Church of the Willing Martyr on Byway 39/β. It will be known to the general historian that the ceasefire abruptly broke with the assassination of a leading Guildhall candidate which provoked retaliatory murders of Pisces-men by the freemen of La Vincenza. Murder and counter-murder swiftly followed. Initially guilder fought guilder, but when the Arbites arrived to restore order, gang fighting erupted into open battle, guilds versus the law. There were a multitude of rumours concerning that night, but be cognisant of the fact that I was there on the overpass on Byway 39/μ. I saw the mob baying in the night, the burning prison Rhino, the choke gas staining the fog a poisonous yellow. I saw petroleum bombs bursting on the asphalt like rotten fruit. I saw the Arbitrators fighting a losing rearguard action, saw them trying without success to drag their stricken comrades from the fray. I heard the hammer of shotguns as the Arbitrators fired almost wildly into the mob. Slogans and curses devolved into animal howls of fury. Nothing seemed to give them the least pause whatsoever, meeting shotgun, gas, and bludgeon with the most immoderate violence. I saw one Arbitrator wrestled to the ground by four guilders and stabbed through the armpit. I saw one shot in the head as he struggled to suppress the flames engulfing his arm. I saw one surrounded and beaten into a bloody ruin.
It was in sum a hideous sight to behold. I do not know how long I remained in that state of shock. Presently I realised that at any moment I might be struck by a bullet or worse, a bottle of petroleum. I fled back through the Notary Chambers, thinking only of reaching the sanctuary of the Basilica. There was still a strong Arbites presence defending the Administratum Quarter when I had departed. They would still be there.
But the situation had changed. A protesting, clamouring crowd packed the street. I could dimly perceive a line of Arbitrators beyond the crowd. So many of them were Adeptes! I saw Administratum staff of every rank. I saw Ministorum priests, high guilders, people of dignity. I asked an Ordinate what on Terra was happening.
The Adeptus Arbites had seized control of the Basilica Administratum. All routes into the forum were sealed. No-one was permitted within their cordon, not even Adeptes.
Such was the intensity of the rioting that none were prepared to accept this state of affairs. A sense of injury rose up through my anxiety. To be denied entry at the point of a gun was an affront to our rights and dignity as Adeptus Terra. We knew of course that the Arbites are impartial – no less so than the Administratum. That, I believe, was why we refused every order to disperse. We expected their protection, demanded it as Adeptus Terra!
We did not expect them to open fire. Panic instantly broke out. People shoved each other aside in their haste to escape. I was thrown to the ground, ears ringing from the blast of Emperor knows how many shotguns fired as one. For a moment, I foolishly thought this were a terrible error that might soon be resolved but then I heard shooting back!
I ran before the firefight became a slaughter. I ran back through the Notary Chambers, back across the overpass on Byway 39/μ where the fog was stained with choke gas and the battle raged. I ran past walls covered with graffiti, KOMUS KOMUS KOMUS KOMUS over and over again. I ran until my breaths came harsh and ragged and my muscles screamed.
I stopped to recover on Throughway 4/δ. I had to. The fog hemmed me in, cold and damp. I could not see for more than ten metres in any direction. The street lighting made no practical difference whatsoever.
There was a humanoid shape standing in the portico of Mandrake’s townhouse. I had no choice but to approach. It was not an armed guilder, God-Emperor be praised, but a gun-servitor. Tech-priests utilised gun-servitors. Guilders did not. He turned his pallid, grey face to stare at me. He did not fire. His lobotomised brain did not register me as a threat.
To my astonishment Mandrake immediately began to appraise me of improvements to the formulae as if we might begin work then and there! I impressed upon him as best I might the singular extremity of the night’s violence, how I myself was very nearly gunned down. I could not believe that the mob would be stymied by one gun-servitor, however heavily armed. But Mandrake was immoveable.
“Do you suppose KD45 is my only guard? We are entirely secure. I will not pause my work, this great endeavour because of the idiocy of the herd! Omnissiah vult! I have it, Callidon! The formulae are now correct in every aspect. Don’t be a fool! Who, even on Maius Valorum, will remember La Vincenza rioting in a year’s time? Which side of history will you be on, Adept Callidon?”
I dared not refuse him, no matter how manifestly hubristic the endeavour. It seemed to me that he teetered on the brink of ungovernable rage, and I had nowhere to run.
With considerable anxiety I drew what Mandrake insisted would be the final octagram. There could be no other other. We had no more test subjects to use. We had no more blood to give.
It was not a task I undertook with alacrity. I emphatically did not wish to hear another repeat of that abominable incantation. But with dreadful inevitability, all delaying proved ultimately fruitless. By 833 they were complete, exact and perfect, the glistening red characters of the principal expressions fading to a rusty brown, a ghastly testament to the scribal craft.
Mandrake stepped into a large octagram. His back was to me, but I perceived a distinct boldness and determination in his bearing.
“I say, you cannot mean to personally test the formulae!” I cried.
Q2X3 stared at me with its mechanical eyes. “Why, Callidon? Why should I not? Is it not right and proper that I should have the honour of the first voyage?”
I wish that so much of what had occurred and would occur were not so. But of all the regrets generated by that night, more than anything I wish I had shaken my friend’s hand.
Tybalt Mandrake recited the syllables of the incantation, and nothing happened. He remained with his back to me, hunched as if in bitter disappointment.
“Mandrake, old boy?”
Staggering, Mandrake turned to face me.
“Help me!”
There was a philosophical principle he related to me once, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. We had intended to build a bridge through the space beyond. We had not understood that we might also open a gate. With that final incantation the fabric of reality had broken down and the gate had opened: directly through Mandrake’s head. I saw his eyes, no longer silver bionics, were now wide and terrible, transmuted into twin pools of uttermost Abyss, portals into a dimension utterly hostile and alien to this world. I saw with hideous clarity that which Mandrake had attempted to confine in forbidden mathematics. I saw the terrible stars that whirl and burn in the Space outside Time. I saw reason convulse and reality buckle under insane radiation. I saw the pale, staring, mindless hunger of soulless things.
I saw Komus.
Amid the endless seconds of paralysing horror I did the one courageous deed I have ever done. I drew my laspistol and shot my friend through the face – the only help that was in my power to give.
6.865.862.M41
My duty is done, and it shall be my last service to Him-on-Earth. This manuscript will remain locked securely with my papers in anticipation of Inquisitorial examination.
It is a matter of public record that the Planetary Defence Force were deployed from the Hive to restore order. Amid the fire and murder and madness of that accursed night, the death of one tech-priest must seem a trivial matter. I do not know if the dragoons found Mandrake in his townhouse on Throughway 4/δ, or found his dread apparatus. My only comfort is that the activating incantation died with him, and nor will I reveal it. I should have burned that house before I fled. Forgive me, the horror was too great.
In truth, I am tired. I have seen what lies a shadow’s thickness away, where the light of the Emperor signifies nothing at all. I know that mere writing may tear down the façade of what we call reality. But it is not that knowledge which haunts my dreams. No, the memory I cannot erase is Mandrake’s last entreaty to me – because it was in his fleshvoice!