Painting the Sky [5]

Vaska added to her painting one wedge of pale green sky, laced with brambles and that emerald moon which was somehow enclosed within those brambles. The jade spike was there and the rolling jungle and the varicolored clouds and the spreading corruption of invasive life. Somehow she had managed to capture all of these impressions in that wedge of color, and while the canvas was quite large it was starting to fill out. Ingrid could see the impression of herself in the absence of color in the middle.

They had both given up any pretense that Ingrid would ever actually model for the painting. Vaska didn't even ask her to pose nude. Ingrid walked around the room and inspected Vaska's engineering diagrams but they were mostly just long pages of arcane equations.

"You have been working so hard," Ingrid said.

"I'm trying to solve two problems at the same time."

"What are they?"

"First, I'm trying to figure out how the Ayaruans are trapping human souls in devices which can be ejected from a fighter jet. Second, I'm trying to design a new fighter jet that maximizes the number of missiles while still being nimble enough to defend."

She began rifling through a stack of papers until she found a particular diagram. It showed a square glass tank, not unlike an aquarium tank, connected by a series of tubes to a glass cylinder. There appeared to be some type of steam engine with more tubes connecting the whole affair together. Within the glass tanks there were strange shapes which Ingrid had never seen before, and the tanks and the tubes were lightly shaded with a red colored pencil.

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"What is it?" Ingrid asked.

"Erika!" Vaska said. "Show yourself!"

Ingrid was less frightened of the elemental when it appeared. A girl-child with a tattered dress and a crown-mask covering her eyes, long raven hair drooping down past her bare feet, a dagger bleeding pure darkness. She looked at Ingrid and gave her a knowing smile.

"Erika. How are human souls tethered to the body?"

"I have explained it before."

"Yes. I want you to explain it so that Ingrid can hear."

"As you wish. Souls reside in Mother's Domain. All blood is borrowed from Mother, and when the soul leaves the body the blood returns to Mother. The brain holds memories and the soul is chained to the brain with elemental power from the dark half, thus Mother once had power over memories, before she was lost. The heart is the seat of the blood and so long as the heart beats the blood cannot return to Mother's domain."

"Thank you," Vaska said. "You may go now."

Erika dissolved into shadows which spread out into the dark places in the room and vanished.

Vaska pointed to one of the tanks. "This tank contains the brain. Mechanical devices attach artificial blood vessels to the brain to keep it alive. The heart is held in this other tank, where electrical impulses force it to keep beating. The blood flows through these tubes and steam power flows through these other tubes. The whole device could be shrunk down to fit into a small box which could be ejected from a fighter jet."

"Vaska, that's horrible!"

"I need to send this diagram to my father to see if it can be recreated."

"Absolutely not."

"He can test it on a condemned criminal."

"Vaska, I said no. I speak only truth and this thing is an abomination. You will burn this diagram and you will tell your father that I have forbidden it."

Vaska sighed. "Fine. I'll destroy it."