“The Rift is the source of life.”

  “And the well to which life returns.”

  “From it emanates all energy and all heat.”

  “Energy and heat nourish it.”

  The ritual phrases of the monks were well known to Seluma and everyone else, heard a thousand times, recited as sober chants during parades and public prayers. She had never realized that individual verses could be pitted against each other in a grotesque parody of debate. The beginning and the end, birth and death, that was Faspath for religion. But one and the same, always, at all times. One aspect never took precedence over the other. Something to remember when you are suspended in the void.

  Now the two sides faced each other in doctrinal blows.

  Taking advantage of the long silence of the monks' spokesman, the leader of the schism —or at least the one who had stepped forward from the crowd, the top of the long, disgusting hat swinging very high on his head— added more psalmodic words, his head tilted back, his big, fleshy nose vibrating. He didn't even seem to see his opponents.

  The wind had picked up, gusts that shook the tarpaulins spread out to protect the crates, making somber sounds between the metal pylons of the cranes, bringing down echoes of the squeaking of the wagons traveling to the upper levels. Workers on the site shouted warnings to each other, each keeping a tighter grip on the ropes and slings.

  The increased noise robbed Seluma of most of the madman's statements.

  “The circle has come to an end.” She thought she understood.

  How can a circle end? A circle is something that goes on forever, with no end and no beginning, right? By definition!

  Her skin itched from the effort to stay still, not to speak. But any unfamiliar movement threatened to upset the fragile balance in the small square.

  A downpour of moisture rained down from who knew where, drawing dark dots on the pavement.

  “But this is not the end of everything,” the processional herald continued.

  Ah, thank goodness. Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope.

  “We will live again. Faspath moves with the breath of the world. It closes now, but one day it will open again, and we will live again. Nelatte will rise again, but only if we prove ourselves worthy!”

  Never mind, he was mad. The crowd pressed behind him, faces contorted, people beyond any possibility of reason. In a temporary opening between the bodies, Seluma caught a flash of green, like sequins on a fancy jacket, that sent a pang through her heart, an omen of terrible doom. What could be worse?

  “You disdain the very gifts Faspath has bestowed upon us,” the monk objected. Two companions had approached him and touched the sides of his robe. A gesture for giving or receiving support?

  The other shook his head vehemently, sending a swarm of flies buzzing and scattering over the heads of his neighbors before coalescing into a black ball on the spherical top of his obscene headdress.

  “It is not disdain! What was given to us was not our property, but a loan, and we must be ready to return it when Mother asks us to! Brother, the Rift has not spoken to you much lately.”

  The blow hit Seluma like a punch in the jelly-like flesh. It was true. Surely none of the Palvi monks, who always talked about their spiritual communion with the Rift, had foreseen the coming cataclysm.

  The prelate absorbed the blow and continued his sermon, barely saddened.

  “If Nelatte is fated to disappear, so be it. Faspath creates and destroys at will, we agree on that. Great is the arrogance of those who think they can influence the matter...”

  Yeah, why rush things?

  The man allowed himself a lukewarm smile. Then the figure in the green jacket stepped forward, jostling an insect-like woman, a walking stick in his hand, grasped like a weapon. And Seluma's heart sank into the layers of stone, leaving her as a hollow, fragile form, waiting to shatter at the first vibration. The absence of the tall, tuba-like hat that covered his incipient baldness had deceived her, preventing her from immediately recognizing her friend in this crowd of madmen.

  Luoth! No! What are you doing here?

  The rebel leader still mocked his opponent, his black lips forming barely muttered words that echoed far away.

  “Brother, it is a very sad thing when humility becomes an excuse to never make a decision. Please move aside and do not stand in our way toward Mother's embrace.”

  Luoth!

  And the monk stepped aside.

  °°°

  Seluma!

  He was sure it was her! Who else could have emerged from behind a crate with soft, telescoping gray antennae bearing little black eyes at the ends? Had she also followed the procession, endured the madhouse music, the unpleasant crowd, the stench of those hideous rotting hats?

  He started to run towards her. He could hear nothing of the discussion among the monks, who were all equally mad and dangerous to him... It did not matter what idea they had started with: Anyone who went around screaming and scaring people was crazy and should be avoided. Maybe even sedated, with those soporific darts you could throw with a blowgun.

  His stupid secretary, if he thought he was going to get his job back just like that... He should have had an explanation for his actions, and a very convincing one at that!

  Already he was smiling, running towards his friend with an outstretched hand. Yes, it was really time to explain, to clarify without any more stupid childish shyness. It took the end of the world to make him understand.

  At his sixtieth birthday dinner, Seluma had scolded him for still chasing after women; the initially good-natured criticism had become harsher and harsher with each justification Luoth brought up, until his last sentence, which he immediately regretted.

  “You do not understand anything about love, Seluma.”

  Words that had burrowed into him. Not because they were capable of hurting Seluma. On the contrary, because they had hurt him.

  Wasn't he ashamed to talk like that? And in this statement, Luoth had finally recognized his own wish, the place he would like to land at the end of his senseless wandering.

  All this would come with an enormous price, as he had been told at that time.

  And his gelatinous friend suspected nothing, had no idea who the person she trusted so much really was.

  So he was about to call her and cling to her as the only island of sanity in all this madness. But suddenly, as if they had opened the floodgates, the procession began again, and not like before. It became a tidal wave that almost knocked him to the ground. The howling idiots had taken on an unbridled run, rushing toward...

  Toward nowhere!

  He had not noticed where they had taken him!

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  There was no ship waiting, no vehicle. Just the loading platform jutting out onto Faspath. A springboard from which he saw the first rows of priests leap and disappear, followed by the worshippers still chanting, if chanting could be called the hoarse screams and shrieks that came from their throats.

  Luoth shouted something inarticulate, only because it was not possible to witness such a thing in silence. The cane fell to the ground, tripping an old man who immediately got up and started running again, howling like a dog at the moon. The thrusts were making him twist and turn, a spinning top, an inert marionette that would soon collapse, stretched out to be trampled by those monsters.

  He could no longer see Seluma, nor recognize what box she was hiding behind. The intense dizziness had caused him to lose his bearings completely. He, too, would soon find himself on the finish line...

  There, too, I would fall, pirouetting like a fool.

  He caught a glimpse of someone not moving in the out-of-control stream of people, a few dark shapes off to the side. Statues? Mannequins? No, monks, heads bowed, clasped hands almost hidden in the long sleeves of their robes.

  With the fire of rage driving him, giving him new energy, he crossed the stream, a few steps at a time. He realized he was growling, his limbs moving autonomously to distribute elbows and kicks to defend his personal space.

  He reached one of those damned onlookers and grabbed him by the front of his robe. He was a tall man, towering over him with his entire head and shoulders. But he ducked from the pull, bending sharply, and Luoth had the satisfaction of seeing a shadow of fear in the green eyes that widened into his own.

  “Do something!” he shouted, spraying the other man’s face with saliva.

  The monk blinked.

  He spread his arms wide, but the banker cut the stupid gesture short with another shake. He felt the cloth tear between his fingers.

  “How can you let them do this?”

  “They've made up their minds,” came the reply.

  “Stop them!”

  It was no longer an order, but a plea.

  “Impose our will? That would be wrong, as if they forced us to jump,” the monk explained with truly otherworldly calm.

  Was he mad?

  This makes no sense and you all serve no purpose, he wanted to shout at the monk and his worthy companions, impassive spectators of the massacre in the name of free will. But no voice came out of him, and no breath came out of him. He found himself overwhelmed and breathless as he abruptly turned his back on the group and tried to find the vision that had guided him, that of his friend.

  Gusts of cold air planted needles on his weeping, wet face, his vision flickering, blurred, and fogged like a landscape behind a pane of glass being washed. His feet did not respond either; Luoth staggered and limped, struggling to stay upright, arms outstretched and hands searching the air for a grip. Was the place moving? Had the collapse of the city already begun?

  He could not speak for Nelatte, but his ruin was almost complete. He could no longer feel his heart in his chest or the blood in his veins. His viewpoint now seemed elevated, as if he were floating two palms above the ground. He recognized the scattered pile of crates and tarpaulins behind which he had thought to see Seluma, but she had disappeared. Had he really seen her?

  Had she escaped? Had the fanatics swept her away and thrown her into the abyss with them?

  And he had never told her how he felt, had never tried to open his soul to her. Maybe Seluma was lost forever, and all he had left was this memory, a grayish, lumpy form crouching in a makeshift hiding place, two beady eyes on antennae that had not even met his own one last time.

  °°°

  She could not have run. Running was a meaningless word to someone like her.

  Yet, until a few moments ago, she had been behind those damned crates that smelled of rot and rope, mesmerized by the exchange between the two ringleaders, so nervous that her nether regions secreted a more liquid humor than usual, on which she would soon find herself floating like on an oily puddle...

  And now she was elsewhere. Just the time to retract her antennae and stalks, a forward thrust.

  Where was she? A great concert of hammering, of moving machines, of turbines and rotors shook her, made her belly vibrate. It was still Nelatte's underbelly. It was where the operations took place that could not be tolerated in the higher floors because of emissions or noise.

  Luckily, there were no factories, she thought, her gaze fixed on a smokestack that spewed blue smoke in compact, almost spherical clouds. The city's laws were strict: No large amounts of chemicals that could pollute the soil and air for centuries. Nelatte was a place of pilgrimage for this very reason, a city made up almost entirely of residential areas, private or communal, gardens, shops and buildings with imaginative architecture that combined technology and nature. All the ugliness —the workshops, the manufacturing and refining plants, the heavy, smashing machines— lay elsewhere, on the surface, north and south, on the two banks of Faspath.

  Two lips coming together, soon to close the mouth forever.

  A brief shadow darkened the sun for a moment, a black flicker, and Seluma stiffened in a spasm that made her hurt; she realized that if her throat had not also tightened, she would have screamed. In fear, she refused to look up to see what it had been. Maybe a bird, reason told her, a Piper, or even just an object, something carried away by the wind.

  Or perhaps another colorful blur like the one that had grazed her on the descent? It was better to believe it was a blur, an abstract thing, certainly not someone who had deliberately jumped from who knew how high in desperation.

  She had to get back to her place; that was the only thing that mattered. There would be customers there. Sgolot was still waiting for her at his little table, she could bet on that. He had taken back his cap, drank some herbal tea and calmed down.

  He would ask her...

  And she would say...

  Don't think about Luoth, she told herself. No, you didn't, you didn't see him.

  She climbed up the gommite cords like a little snail on a tree trunk. Not straight up, but in a slow spiral, because it seemed easier, more fun.

  It wasn't him.

  At the top were the tender, juicier leaves, to be chewed and bitten. The atavistic illusion was so strong that it brought to her a scent of grass, a sugary whiff of sap she had not smelled in decades, since she was half this size, since her last visit to the surface and the countryside.

  But it wasn't an illusion, not entirely.

  Following her instincts, she had stumbled into a hexagonal courtyard whose walls were in full bloom.

  Climbing plants of a species she had never seen before, with brass-colored, goblet-shaped leaves and flowers that resembled clusters of vermilion bells, covered two-thirds of the whitewashed walls, forming arches and garlands that intertwined with ivy and dangled like moving tentacles in the void beneath the buildings.

  Seluma paused, refreshed by the scent, by the peacefulness of this hidden corner, by the cool caress of the plaster she had begun to crawl on.

  We got nowhere, dear. We wandered aimlessly for hours and fell asleep with that very bad dream.

  A balcony, divided into sections by metal railings, ran along the entire hexagon. Open doors and round arches from which light came spoke of houses that were inhabited, or at least had been until recently.

  It was such a beautiful and comforting view from afar. Seluma did not want to come closer and discover the desolation of empty rooms, cherished objects and abandoned household goods, the bitterness of defeat. She would have done better to go back down, find another way, and keep the vision of that courtyard intact in her heart.

  She would have done so had not a movement caught her attention. Between the leaves of the bronze creeper, almost invisible because of its color, a small man with a straw hat on his head walked slowly along the balcony. Seluma sharpened her eyes and stayed in the shadows. She did not want to intrude, but her curiosity was aroused. Would the man not leave? Like her, would he stay true to his home and what he had built all his life?

  The little man turned and showed her his face, and Seluma lit up, a wave of joy and warmth spreading through her. She was about to call him, a friend found at last!

  Then he passed through the curtain of vines, his whole body showing through the railing, and Seluma's voice suddenly came out as a scream of horror.

  For his face, his head was Fuig's. But the rest was a three-wheeled cart.