The Semaphore

Pontis frowned.

Mondagreen rubbed his face and ashed his cigarette.

Kamê Astrelon turned once again to look out the window, where the square had long since emptied into Malory's palace.

"At least that's what we think," Hobbes Nicole continued. "In the years before Malory appeared, the world was a crowded place. I was very young, of course, but I remember some and have read more. There were many, many people—upwards of fifty billion by some accounts. Humanity thrives, but in the process did a great deal of damage. It requires a staggering quantity of resources to support such a population, and we were devouring those resources at an unsustainable rate. We suffered from a type of blinding arrogance—we still do—in which we felt entitled to consume at such a rate. We believed we were the dominant—and most deserving—species on the planet.

"But we were not. We are not. There is another. Another species. Another civilization. We cannot see it, or rather we are not aware of it, the same way other animals are not aware of us. Animals interact with us, in fact they live within our civilization, but they do not possess the language or the cognition to acknowledge it, to name it, to untangle it from their own limited experiences. This is our relationship to Nonk'non. They are everywhere—they always have been—but they are more than us. Larger than us. They are beyond us in ways we can never understand. And we have been as influential to them as dogs or deer or sparrows are to us: almost not at all. Until we overpopulated. Until we became pests. Until we became an infestation. Then they had to do something, the same way we will do something about a colony of ants in our kitchens, or an invasive species of plant in our gardens. We will eradicate it."

"This is a lot," said Mondagreen from across the room. "And I'm not sure what any of it's got to do with Malory."

Hobbes Nicole nodded. "There is a type of rat poison that they used to use when I was a child. You would place it into a bit of food, which you would leave wherever you knew a rat would appear. Unlike other rat poisons, it did not kill the infected rat outright. Instead, the rat would eat the poison, and there would be no immediate effect, and it would willfully return to its home without knowing anything was wrong. From there it would infect the thousands of other rats it lived with. Then, only after enough of them were infected, would the poison activate, killing them in droves in their own home.

"We think that Nonk'non used Malory in a similar way. Different of course, but with a similar principle. See, Malory was a… damaged young man. He was angry, and he was violent, and he was misanthropic. Nonk'non likely selected him for this reason, knowing all they had to do was give him access to some fraction of their martial capacity, and he would exploit that power without requiring any further guidance. At least this is the theory; we cannot know their intentions any more than a rat can know ours. But whatever contact Malory had with them simply fed him the poison, so to speak. Then he brought it back home and activated it all on his own. And it had the desired outcome. Tens of billions died—and we have never recovered. To this day, while there are no official records, most estimates put the global population at just under one billion. Possibly half of that. So it worked. And it would have worked even further if we hadn't sent the Semaphore to close the transmission."

"Transmission?" Mondagreen asked, exasperated, his head concealed behind a pall of cigarette smoke.

"It turned out that Nonk'non delivered this power to Malory similar to how a radio tower broadcasts its signal. Or, for those of you from Lowood Den, where I don't believe radios are used, similar to how a fire casts heat. Nonk'non had erected one of these transmitters, far up in the Chavanuck Mountains. Malory was aware of it, and positioned his acolytes, the Hemmick Votaries, to protect it. This transmitter was, ultimately, the target of the Semaphore's offensive, and its destruction led to Malory's four hundred-year sleep. It is this transmission that the surviving Votary is attempting to reestablish, and what we must now stop."

Pontis nodded.

"Why did the man in the long mask refer to a Grandmother?" the coat asked. "Who was he talking about?"

"The Votaries may have access to powerful tools, but it does not mean they understand what is actually going on. You can give a child a match that he can use to burn down a house but it does not mean he understands the physics of combustion. I assume, though I am no expert on Hemmick lexicon, that this man in the long mask has deified—as many before him did and many still do—not only Malory but what little he understands of Nonk'non. Calling them Grandmother or something of the sort is likely merely his way of feeling connected to a thing that ultimately has nothing to do with him."

"Why is he killing people?" the coat asked. "Why is he leading them into a white tower and murdering them? And then taking their bodies underground? What does this have to do with reestablishing the transmission?"

Hobbes Nicole shook her head. "I'm not certain," she said. "Hemmick invocations are built out of a mythology constructed around Malory and a worship of him. It is a culture in and of itself. Because Malory was obsessed with violence and death, the Votaries adopted a lore and practice that reflects that obsession. They are a death cult, essentially. It is very possible that the methodology this Votary, the man in the long mask, is using to reestablish the transmission involves some good amount of ceremony, a ceremony that serves no practical purpose but fulfills a deep religious purpose for him. Perhaps the human sacrifice is part of that. Though perhaps it is something more."

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"Where does the name come from?" Mondagreen asked. "Nonk'non."

Hobbes Nicole shook her head. "More Hemmick lexicon. We first encountered it during the Depuration, after the end of the War."

Mondagreen and Pontis exchanged a look, and then frowned at Hobbes Nicole.

Hobbes Nicole lowered her eyes. "A grisly period, but a necessary one. After the War, the Hemmick Votaries went into hiding. We knew they had the ability to reestablish Malory's transmission to Nonk'non, and that such a thing had to be prevented. So we went after them. Mostly it was Woodrow and X Parke's job. But Kamê Astrelon and a few others were involved as well. The Votaries were in a weakened state, and it was possible to… depurate them with relative ease. We thought we got them all, but Richard wasn't so sure. He had kept careful track of the Votaries' activities, and he insisted that at least one of them had managed to evade us. We looked everywhere, with every method at our disposal, but never found them. We figured Richard was being paranoid—it would not have been the first time—but it turns out he was right."

"Well, it'd look like Woodrow and X Parke found this last Votary after all," said the coat. "Or the Votary found them. How else would the Semaphore have ended up on the back of a chair in his underground fortress?"

"Indeed," said Hobbes Nicole. "And I cannot explain the circumstances under which such a thing could have happened."

"You said Richard and the other Semaphore engineers were blasted by that… emanation… while you were building it." Mondagreen waved smoke from his face. "Just like you and Kamê Astrelon. So where are they now?"

Hobbes Nicole shrugged. "We've lost track of them," she said. "But presumably they are alive, in hiding, living some life they can abide."

A minute of silence unfurled. Pontis thought he heard footsteps elsewhere in the museum, though it had to be hours after closing.

The coat flared green. "Well the good news is Malory's not awake," it said. "Which means the transmission hasn't been reestablished yet. So there's still time."

Hobbes Nicole looked at Pontis through the thick frames of her glasses. "It would seem that way," she said.

"So we know what we have to do," said the coat. "We have to find the Votary and stop him. We have to kill him. And we have to destroy the transmitter."

"Yes," said Hobbes Nicole. "And you must be prepared to draw Petrichor."

The coat flittered, and Pontis's eyes narrowed.

"I see it here," said the coat after a moment. "But I can't access it. It's one of the only programs that won't open for me."

Hobbes Nicole nodded. "That is by design. Petrichor is only accessible to the somatic operator. X Parke had too much to deal with already, and would need to focus on defending Woodrow from assault by not only the Votaries but by Malory himself. Therefore it is not you, Varia, responsible for drawing Petrichor. It is Pontis."

"How do we do it?" asked the coat.

"You've already started," said Hobbes Nicole. "In the story you told, you mentioned green lightning assailing the white tower in Lowood Den, when the eyeless man cut your sister. You claimed that the lightning cracked the tower's exterior. This is unmistakably the work of Petrichor. But it was only the first stage. You will need to learn to channel that energy, and to wield it, if you wish to destroy the transmitter. And that will be up to you, Pontis, to figure out. Woodrow worked with Richard in private to determine his own methods of drawing it. Wherever you found Petrichor in Lowood Den, that is where you will find it again."

Pontis thought back to the moment when the eyeless man had cut open Harper's throat. It was only half a day ago, and the rage and the terror were not far away. The coat's green light flared, as if smoldering with green fire, and Pontis quickly returned his attention to the room.

"So what happens now?" asked the coat. "How do we find the transmitter?"

“Four hundred years ago," Hobbes Nicole said, "we found it in the Chavanuck Mountains, among the ruins of an old hotel. The Votaries drew our attention to it, since they were gathered there. But it will not be there anymore, though the same premise still applies: Find the Votary, find the transmitter."

Pontis looked off across the room, and then nodded.

"We know where it is," the coat said. "We are ready."

Mondagreen stood suddenly, his chair screeching on the floor. "I'm going too," he said. "I already let you two go down there by yourselves once, and I've regretted it since. This time I'm going to help." He looked at the floor and shrugged. "Plus, there are some folk that need me, and this sounds like the best way to keep them safe for now."

Hobbes Nicole frowned. "I fear that you are ill-equipped for this fight," she said. "Whatever combat prowess you may have will be useless where you're going. Pontis and Varia will not be able to protect you. They will have other things to worry about."

Mondagreen held up his katana. "I can take care of myself."

Hobbes Nicole sighed. "If you are insistent, then I suggest you focus your energies on distracting the Votary's helot, so that Pontis and Varia can attend to locating and dismantling the transmitter. Assuming they are in agreement."

"We could use the extra set of hands," said the coat.

Mondagreen nodded.

Hobbes Nicole rose from her seat. "Then go. We have wasted enough time here. Kamê Astrelon and I will await your return, and we will…"

There was movement outside the office door, the scuffling of feet and muffled voices. Everyone turned toward it.

"I demand to speak with her!" came a voice from the other side.

Hobbes Nicole nodded to Mondagreen, who went to the door and threw it open.

Kamê Astrelon's red-veiled guards held a woman by her arms. The woman struggled against their grips, her face concealed beneath a black hood.

"Let go of me!" she insisted. "I demand to speak to the Curator!"

Hobbes Nicole raised a small hand. "It's alright," she said. "Let her go."

The guards did not obey, holding the woman so firmly that her feet barely touched the marble floor.

"Release her," Kamê Astrelon said in their airy voice.

At once the guards released the woman, who fell forward into the room. Mondagreen caught her under the arm before she toppled forward, and helped her to her feet. As he did, the woman's hood fell back, exposing her face and her spiky hair.

"Please…" President Edia Logora said, her eyes creased with desperation, her voice thin. "Please. You need to protect me."