Mare Cognitum

TIMELINE: AUGUST 17, 2017. FOUR DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

The alarm is going off again.

Kelpie doesn't look up from the reagent she's trying to mix. Several of the compounds she's using are dangerous ones, and on some level, she's incredibly proud that Margaret is willing to trust her with volatile chemicals, given the proof of past lab accidents that she sees every time she looks in a mirror. It wouldn't be unreasonable for management to restrict her to harmless tasks, like feeding the frogs in the bio lab or gathering the laundry. The alarm is a distraction, but it's not going to break her focus, oh, no. It's not going to make her mess up again.

Maybe if she'd been this focused before the accident, she wouldn't be in her current condition. But as Margaret likes to say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and the only person who can bottle the past is a reality traitor who refuses to support the people who created her.

Kelpie doesn't understand that. Life is a gift. Constructs receive it as a burden, a task to complete to the best of their abilities, and cuckoos receive it as a treasure, a great and glorious miracle to be reveled in and revealed. For a cuckoo to reject the gift of their creation and go rogue is unthinkable. Yet two of them have, Reed's "perfect creations" choosing not only to flee the nest but to leave it burning behind them. It doesn't make sense. They should have been the most loyal of their kind, and instead they killed the man who made them and fled into the wider world, where they had yet to be recovered.

She wishes the damn alarm would stop. It's starting to make her head ache, and when she gets a bad enough headache, she sometimes has to lie down for days. Margaret says it's leftover trauma from the accident, buried memories of the explosion purging themselves from her psyche. Kelpie wants to believe her. She wants to believe this is something that might eventually get better. And to be fair, a lot of things have improved over the last year. She had to relearn how to walk, how to dress herself, all sorts of everyday tasks she's sure were easy once, before she forgot everything she knew and was forcibly demoted back to lab assistant for her own safety.

The alarm finally stops. She relaxes, reaching for the next flask on her list. Alarms are virtually an hourly occurrence when the lab is active, and this is a big season for them; there's a total solar eclipse approaching, and many of their projects will be able to mature or even come to full fruition while the sun is blocked by the moon. It's all about the sympathies, the greater universe singing to their work until a harmony can be established.

She doesn't remember the specifics anymore. She supposes that's one of the things Margaret has yet to teach her, but she's eager to relearn. The more she can recover of who she used to be, the better she'll be able to cope with who she currently is, and the easier it will be to see a path back to her true nature. Understanding is the key to evolution, after all.

Footsteps approach her station. She glances up, just for an instant, and then looks quickly back down, cheeks burning. Margaret is walking over. She's not alone.

The man beside her—because it's always a man when the Congress sends someone to inspect the lab; all these years, all these decades since the Asphodel incident, and they still continue to insist that only men can truly grasp the complexities of the alchemical world, as if rejecting Asphodel Baker wasn't the greatest mistake the American Alchemical Congress ever made—is thin enough that "bony" might be a better descriptor. His skin is pulled tight over his skeleton, until it looks as if it might rip in several spots, his cheekbones on the verge of wearing their way through, his collarbones a pair of commas visible even through the perfectly tailored fit of his suit. He's not as pale as many of the elder alchemists; this is someone who still leaves his lab on occasion, which is just shy of a miracle in the more powerful ones. His hair is the color of melted iron, dull silver and strangely unsettling, like it's something not meant to be looked at directly.

Margaret walks by his side, clearly anxious, a clipboard under one arm and her free hand fluttering beside her, nerves keeping it from stilling. Her hair is perfect, as always, a long, inky fall of black brushed to a mirror sheen—the one scrap of vanity the lab allows. Kelpie's seen her preparing to go out after work is finished, seen her dressed in lace and leather, kohl around her eyes and carmine on her lips, darling of the goth scene, perfect club princess. That's not the Margaret they have here. This Margaret wears sensible shoes and button-down blouses, perfectly pressed khaki pants and pristine lab coats. This Margaret is as much a creature of the lab environment as the white mice in their cages or the frogs in their purified water, as the constructs who work two levels down, or as Kelpie herself. And this Margaret is afraid.

Kelpie isn't at a particularly delicate point in the process, so she sets her flask aside, puts down her pipette, and straightens, trying to look eager to be helpful without looking like she expects the honor of an address from a visiting member of the Congress. It's a fine line to walk, and her balance isn't the best, but she tries, and sometimes trying is enough.

"And this is one of our assistants, Kelpie," says Margaret to the visiting alchemist. She shoots Kelpie a quick, quelling look, silently cautioning her not to speak unless spoken to. Kelpie's right ear flicks involuntarily back, but she gives no other acknowledgment that she's noticed, only stands in sentinel silence, watching the pair.

The man looks at her, frowns, and looks back to Margaret. "I was told this level of your operation was all naturals," he says. "No constructs or cuckoos."

"Kelpie's not a cuckoo," says Margaret, promptly. "She was in a lab accident last year, and there have been some… lasting effects."

Kelpie says nothing, doesn't acknowledge the fact that she's being talked about like she's not here. It's safer to be treated like a piece of lab equipment, especially when they have visitors. She's an interesting case, and there are plenty of people associated with the Congress who would be happy to take her apart and see how her organs are able to function, how the seemingly disparate aspects of her physical body can coexist without causing some sort of massive medical crisis. Better to seem serene and expensive than charismatic and expendable.

"Fascinating," says the alchemist. He looks more closely at Kelpie, who tries to hold as still as she can. "You're sure she's natural?"

"Absolutely," says Margaret, with just a flicker of discomfort in her eyes. That makes Kelpie blink, which seems to startle the man; even as close to her as he is, he had apparently done what so many do when confronted with her biological reality, and shunted it into a back corner of his mind where he could treat her like some sort of doll or sculpture, interesting, not alive.

"All right." The man turns to face Margaret, and Kelpie blinks again. He looks like he's about to start giving instructions, but they're in the middle of the lab, not in one of the closed offices. Instructions aren't given in the open, unless they're drastic ones.

"Master Davis is very impressed with the progress you've managed to make toward forcing the sub-incarnations into physical form, but disappointed that you haven't been able to intercept any of the more powerful Lunes. Your assignment was clear: the priority is the City."

"Many of the Lunars were historically known to travel in the company of their sub-incarnations," says Margaret. "You rarely saw Chang'e without the Rabbit, or Artemis without her Hind, or the Old Man without his Dog. If we can create their companions in a controlled setting, we can use those companions to attract them. They'll want to recover what they see as their property. We're close to a breakthrough—I think several of our prepared vessels have begun to accumulate the sympathy we're looking for."

"Master Davis received a report last year that implied you were close to the successful manifestation of Artemis's hind," says the stranger, not commenting on Margaret's use of the outdated term for the lunar incarnates. "Lunars" is seen as romanticizing a natural function of the universe, an inconveniently common and uncontrollable tendency of the moon to manifest human avatars who refuse to listen to the alchemists making perfectly reasonable requests.

Like requests for access to the Impossible City. It's not fair that a group of seemingly random nobodies should be empowered to enter that hallowed municipality nightly, while men of knowledge and education are barred. "Lune" is accurate, descriptive, and blunt. These people don't deserve to be romanticized. And they certainly don't deserve to have their pets returned.

"We were," says Margaret, voice carefully modulated, not looking at Kelpie. "But there were complications with the formulas we were using, and the project had to be restarted from scratch. We're currently much closer on the Rabbit and the Dog. I can take you to see them, if you'd like?"

"That won't be necessary." The man smiles. Given the tightness of his skin, he resembles nothing so much as a grinning cadaver, something that's been dead long enough to begin to dry and desiccate. "As I said before, Master Davis is very impressed by your progress. Your proposal was ambitious to begin with, and success was never a guarantee. He is, however, even more disappointed by your failure to produce concrete results, and by your refusal to disclose all projects to the Congress. Or did you think we wouldn't know about your little locked room?"

Margaret stiffens but otherwise gives no indication that his words have managed to strike home. Kelpie is less equipped to be subtle. She wraps her tail around her leg, squeezing tightly, and hopes he won't notice. Margaret has been working on a personal project for as long as Kelpie can remember, a human body growing in a vat, perfectly shaped, perfectly functional, and perfectly empty. It's a tailored suit made of meat, and on the days when she despairs of ever looking like a real person again, Kelpie dreams of slipping it on and doing up the buttons, of hiding her abnormalities under a veil of perfection.

She's always known Margaret was using Congressional resources for her work, but assumed she had received approval before starting. From the way the man is looking at her now, she guesses that was wrong.

She guesses Margaret's in real trouble.

The man nods as if Margaret's silence has confirmed everything he suspected. "Under the circumstances, you can't be surprised that Master Davis has elected to focus on a group with a more… practical approach to the situation."

Margaret stares at him. "You can't do that! We have Congressional approval through to the end of the year! It's four days to the eclipse!"

"As you say, but another research team has produced dramatic results in the past week, and may have achieved what you've been failing to do." The stranger stops smiling, now looking gravely at Margaret. The resemblance to something already dead doesn't fade. "Have faith in those who seek the City, and the light will guide you home."

"You sound like one of Reed's acolytes," says Margaret, tone sour. She doesn't seem to see the flicker of disappointment cross the man's face, or the way he turns to look at the equipment around him. He seems to be assessing it, charting its value, as if it were something he had the authority to liquidate.

"And you sound like an untrained amateur," he says, returning his attention to her. "One of those scruffy hedge witches who picked up a book in her school library and decided it made her powerful. They're like you, you know. Eager, ambitious, foolhardy. Unaccustomed to listening to authority. Master Davis made you and your little project. He has the authority to unmake you."

He gives Kelpie one last, dismissive look, says, "Lab accident," and walks away, shaking his head.

Margaret stays where she is, shoulders drooping as she clutches her clipboard to her chest and watches him go. Kelpie waits until he reaches the stairs, until he's well and truly gone, before she moves around her desk and puts a hand on Margaret's shoulder, offering what comfort she can.

"It'll be all right," she says.

"No, it won't," says Margaret. She reaches into the pocket of her lab coat, pulling out something small, which she slips into her mouth and beneath her tongue. "We're being shut down, Kelpie. That means they close the lab, liquidate its assets, and reassign our researchers. I worked for years to get this project approved, and it's working—it's working. We've been calling the incarnates more and more concretely into their vessels since last year's breakthrough, and we were going to have a usable one soon, I know we were."

"Why do we want a Lunar, anyway?"

The question is earnestly asked, and Margaret only sighs a little as she looks back at her. "I've told you this half a dozen times."

"My memory isn't what it used to be," says Kelpie. "That's why I'm not allowed to mix anything potentially explosive."

"Right. Right. Okay, do you remember the Impossible City?"

"I'd have to be a lot more scrambled than I am to forget that," says Kelpie. The Impossible City is Olympus, Avalon, Atlantis—the goal at the end of the long, winding, improbable alchemical road. Everything they do is in service of the City, of finding the way to get there before someone else can beat them to the gates. Before Reed's escaped, feral cuckoos can seize it as their own and refuse it to the decent, hard-working, real people who deserve to hold it.

"Just making sure," says Margaret. "Most people can't enter the City under normal circumstances. The Seasonals can, during a coronation, and we have reason to believe they become permanent residents after they finish serving their seasons. Some Elements can pass the borders, depending on their situations, and of course, Reed's cuckoos have the authority to claim the Tower if they so choose."

"They can't do that," protests Kelpie. "The Tower belongs to the Queen of Wands!"

"And the Queen of Wands has been dead since before the turn of the century," says Margaret. "She made Reed, she set him to publishing her manuscripts and establishing her dogma, and she died. If she's going to come back, she needs to do it sooner than later, because those cuckoos could get tired of waiting any day now."

Kelpie looks at her sullenly. "I don't like that."

"None of us do. The Lunars are a special case. They go to the City nightly, to shine on the streets from above. They have some sort of system, one that lets them keep being ordinary people while they're also serving as the Moon over the Impossible City; when we've managed to get one under surveillance, we've never seen them go twice in a row. We don't know how they set their schedule. Just capturing one isn't going to be good enough, because what if this is something they do collectively, something they agree on and organize? Put a Lunar in a cage and maybe they never manifest again, or maybe they turn into moonlight and fade away. Either way, we don't get into the City, and they know we're hunting them, which puts us at a disadvantage."

"Which is why we're trying to force sub-incarnations to become manifest," says Kelpie, proud that she remembers this part. "If we can fully manifest a sub-incarnation, it should attract its primary, like a baby bird crying for its mother. And then we can use the sub-incarnation to convince the Lunar to do what we want."

"Which is let us into the Impossible City," says Margaret. She looks at Kelpie with uncharacteristic solemnity. "We need to access the City. Humans are so important that half the universe has rewritten itself to have the chance to experience humanity firsthand. Doesn't that mean we should be the ones in charge?"

"Sure," says Kelpie.

"Because, see, one thing we didn't consider when we started trying to do this is that even a sub-incarnation was likely to be a person in their own right. We thought since we were calling animals, at least according to the stories, we'd get animals. And maybe we would have, if we'd had any recipes that weren't based on Baker and Reed's work." Margaret refuses to refer to Asphodel by her first name, says it's not right that Reed always gets his surname when his creator was unquestionably the greater alchemist. She calls it a demonstration of casual misogyny, the way powerful men become surnames and powerful women never do.

Kelpie thinks she probably agrees with her, but she also thinks of the woman who crafted the first cuckoo as Asphodel, like she's a beloved family member or mentor. The name suits her better than either "Baker" or "Deborah," those being the other names she went by. Sometimes the shape of a name matters as much as the intent behind it.

She's sure she had a different name before the accident. It would be too on the nose for someone named after a shapeshifting water horse to have her shapeshifted against her will, much less wind up with hooves of her own. She's sure. She just can't imagine what it might have been, and none of the other names she's tried to wear have fit her.

"You mixed human into the vessels?" asks Kelpie, trying to make sure she understands what Margaret is trying to say. She's never been this forthcoming about the project before; every time Kelpie's tried to ask, Margaret has waved her off, saying she has better things to worry about than a bunch of silly science that she's never going to be asked to replicate.

Margaret nods. "Human, and material Reed harvested from a Lunar that somehow wound up in his keeping."

Kelpie has no idea what that means, but she doesn't want to interrupt again and ask, not when Margaret feels like talking. So she only nods, and listens.

"I think that's where we went wrong with our first batch. We wound up with people when we manifested the sub-incarnate aspects of the Moon. Yes, we made a Rabbit, and he had long ears and strong legs and looked like something out of a cartoon, but he was also a person who liked to read and argue about sustainable farming techniques, and one of the other research teams snagged him to work in their agricultural development lab, and we didn't have the heart to tell them no, not when other approaches might still be successful. If we handed him over to the people who funded us, he'd be used as bait to lure in Chang'e, assuming she's got an incarnation on this continent, and then he'd be slaughtered like an animal. As if that were all he was."

Margaret looks at Kelpie, very seriously, her face drawn.

"Essentially, we succeeded, and then we had to start over from the beginning if we didn't want to become monsters in the process," she says. "The City is essential. No sacrifice is too great to achieve it. But there's a difference between a sacrifice you make and a sacrifice that's made. If the sub-incarnations are people, they need to understand what they're dying for, or the sympathies will be all wrong. They need time to be people, and to live as people, and to not think of themselves as anything but people. Do you understand?"

Kelpie is terribly afraid that she does. So she shakes her head and says, "No. I don't."

That's not what Margaret was expecting. She blinks, mouth forming a round O of surprise for just a moment before she says, "You're not that na?ve, Kelp. You must have figured it out by now."

"There's nothing to figure out," says Kelpie. "I'm a researcher in this lab. I came here after my alchemical studies reached a point where I needed a group environment to progress any farther, and I was in a bad accident a year ago that left me changed and missing large pieces of my memory."

"Kelpie…"

"That's all I am," says Kelpie firmly. "For me to be anything else would mean you'd been lying, and more, that you'd been lying for my entire life, because I would never have known anything outside this lab. And you wouldn't do that, because you're my friend. You told me you were my friend. Friends don't tell lies like that, so I'm a researcher who had an accident."

"All right," says Margaret, in a soothing tone. "That's what you are. But if the people who come to shut us down tell you you're something else, you need to be ready to run. You need to realize they're not going to see you the same way I do. Are you ready to die to reach the City?"

Kelpie recoils. She can't help it.

Margaret nods. "That's what I thought. You're going to have to run. I'm sorry we didn't have more time."

The alarm is going off again. Kelpie's really starting to hate that thing. She can't imagine what could have set it off this time, not when she and Margaret are alone in the lab. But the alarm is blaring, loud enough to make her head ring in sympathy. She claps her hands over her ears, looking around for some indication of what's wrong.

Something is coming out of the overhead vents. Something thick and gaseous and silvery gray. It sparkles in a way smoke should never sparkle, moves as thickly and viscously as a gel, but the way it hangs suspended in the air tells her it's not. Kelpie makes a wordless sound of displeasure and points.

Margaret follows her shaking finger and sighs. "That's about what I expected," she says.

"What is it?"

"Do you remember the way the inspector reacted when he saw you? How unhappy he was at the thought that there might be someone on this level who wasn't purely natural? This is the Alchemical Congress. Anyone who proposes a project to them understands that failure comes with consequences. You don't get the chance to fail twice, but there are always other ways someone can contribute to the pursuit of knowledge. You're not ready to die for the City, and that's fair and good and right. I knew when I was put in charge of this lab that I had to be ready, and I've been ready for a long, long time." Margaret sighs again, shrugs, and begins removing her lab coat, folding it neatly over her arm. "You might not want to stay for this next part, unless you need to see what happens in order to believe it."

"I don't… I don't understand."

"Lead really does block virtually everything," says Margaret, sounding oddly serene. Whatever it was she took before she decided to get unusually candid with Kelpie is working, taking the edges off what should have been a terrifying situation. "As long as we kept you down here, no one noticed your presence. Once you make it aboveground, she'll notice you soon enough."

"Who?"

"Artemis. She's probably been looking for you since you came manifest, even if she doesn't know what she's looking for. Oh, she's going to be happy to see you. I promise, she's going to love you."

The smoke has almost reached them. Kelpie grabs Margaret's arm, trying to pull her out of its path.

"You said they'd reassign the researchers," she says, frantically. "You're a researcher."

"I'm not," corrects Margaret. "I'm the project lead. I don't get reassigned. I get recycled. I get to be part of someone else's project, as raw materials, not as a contributor. Run, Kelpie. You don't want to watch."

Kelpie pulls on her arm one more time, but Margaret is heavier than she is, Margaret doesn't budge. Finally, Kelpie lets go and dances back, out of the path of the smoke. It continues to drop, finally reaching Margaret, who turns her face upward and closes her eyes, smiling like a child greeting the sun.

That pill must have been an incredibly potent painkiller, because the first thick tears that run out from beneath Margaret's eyelids are tinted the color of her eyes, and the ones that follow are red with blood. Margaret sighs, a shuddering sound that turns thick toward the end, burbling, like she's exhaling through mud. She's still smiling; she hasn't fallen. She tries to sigh again, and the sound turns into a cough, leaving her lips stained with a thin layer of blood. She raises her hand to catch the cough. Her skin is already beginning to bubble and drip, fizzing like it's been carbonated.

Kelpie can't watch any more of this. She turns and sprints away, scrambling for balance on the slick floor, and she doesn't stop running until she hits the stairwell. The stairs extend in two directions: down to the safe familiarity of the lower labs, the hydroponics and the bio storage rooms, the kitchens and the residential quarters. There will be people down there, people who know her, who treat her like a junior alchemist who survived a terrible lab accident and had to relearn everything from scratch—people who have, if Margaret was telling the truth, been lying to her every single day, telling her one thing when they really mean another.

She believes Margaret. Margaret has always been good to her. Margaret has apparently been lying to her like everyone else, but there's no reason for her to have kept lying when she knew she was about to die. People tend to tell the truth when they can see death coming toward them. She doesn't want to believe Margaret. Believing Margaret means accepting everything she's ever known was a lie, and that comes with implications she won't be able to wrap her head around for quite a while, if ever. But she does believe Margaret. She can't go down.

Up leads to the higher levels of the lab, places she's never been, the personnel offices and classrooms, and eventually, at the very top of the stairs, the outside world. She's always wondered why she doesn't miss it more, the blue sky and fresh air and other things she's seen in pictures and always assumed were in the missing parts of her mind. Now she has her answer: she hasn't been grieving for the world beyond the lab because she's never been there. She doesn't know how she's going to survive out there, all things considered, but that's where she has to go, or the man with the skeleton smile is going to come back and find her, and what he does to her won't be nearly as merciful as what he did to Margaret.

Alkahest, when used in a gaseous mixture, is not a painless way to die, but it's a fast one, and Margaret had warning enough to take a painkiller before the alkahest began eating away at her nerves. As methods of execution go, this one came surprisingly close to kindness.

Kelpie's not very experienced. She's na?ve but not unintelligent: she knows there's no possible way she was that close to Margaret when the alkahest reached her without also being exposed. The fact that she's not melting yet means Margaret was telling the truth. She's not natural. She's constructed. And if she was constructed using Baker and Reed's recipes, she's part of the subclass of constructs they call "cuckoos," and that means the man with the skeleton smile isn't going to be kind when he catches her. He's going to kill her, too, but he's going to take his time about it.

Cuckoos are dangerous. Cuckoos go feral and turn on their creators. Cuckoos seize the forces they were intended to embody and hoard them away from the alchemists who really deserve them. If she's a cuckoo, as long as she's alive, she's going to muddy the question of who owns her manifestation, whatever it's supposed to be.

Artemis's Hind, she supposes. It would explain the hooves, and the tail, and the other parts of her anatomy that never made much sense as the consequences of a simple lab accident. She's seen stranger—it wasn't outside the realm of possibility—but it was odd enough to make her wonder.

The Congress wants the Lunars. Margaret swore the companion aspects were the key to catching them, and Artemis is one of the ones whose name is still spoken with reasonable frequency; she's one of the more powerful Lunars walking the world, and that makes her desirable. Kelpie doesn't want to spend the rest of her probably short life as bait.

Up is the only possible direction.

So she climbs the steps, wincing every time her hoof hits the metal and sends the sound ringing through the stairwell, and she doesn't stop until she reaches the door at the top. She pushes it open and light floods in, so much light, light like she's never seen before. It's blinding. It's beautiful.

Kelpie steps out into the sun.