Chapter #14The Chameleon by: Seuzz   "Alright, Will, drop your shorts, spread your cheeks, and say 'Ah'!"
You blink hard at Nash. It's not that you didn't understand his words. After taking that six-month course on sigilistic engineering with him, you hardly notice his accent anymore. "Are you serious?"
He holds up a dipstick. "If I'm gonna check your oil--" But he can't maintain any joke for long, and guffaws as he lays it aside. "So what's got you worried? It can't be health issues, not with your chassis."
"Well, I don't know if it's health or not. I'm actually kind of nervous about bringing it up, because I don't want you getting the wrong idea about why I'm asking."
"I don't got any idea what you're asking, Will," he says cheerfully.
You lick your lips and look around. Nash's workshop is a jumbled mess, as he's got at least four automobiles and a motorcycle in various states of disassembly. The garage door is up, and warm summer sunshine pours in. You're slightly irked that he wanted to carry out the examination here, instead of inside his house, for it suggests he regards you as a bit of machinery.
But the Kenandandrae tend to regard everything as a kind of machinery. It means Nash is a lot blunter and clearer than Kali and Joe, who talk in elaborate metaphors when discussing the mechanics of the stars and of sigils. But it's a little unnerving as well, for Nash always stares at you like he's ... Well, he isn't even undressing you with his eyes. It's like he's taking you apart down to the last screw, the last nut and the last washer.
"It's my sigils, Nash," you say in a low voice. And you drop it even further because you don't like the word. "The Libra sigils."
"I thought we got those all sorted out, humming nice and smooth," he honks in normal tones.
"It's the next one," you say, and wipe your mouth in a nervous gesture. "You know how every time I wind up unlocking one--" You notice his eyebrows arch at the way you've used the "wind up" excuse to distance yourself from your evolutions. "When I use one, it gives me access to the sigil after it. I have to concentrate to find it, though I try not to, because, you know, I don't want to--"
"You're talking to me, Will," he says. "Not Father Ed. You don't have to pussyfoot around it. I can't help you if you're not clear."
"The problem is that I can't find the next one. Which wouldn't bother me, because like I say, I don't go looking. But I can sense them, and I can't help, you know, worrying at them a little, when they're there. You know, like when you've got a canker sore and you keep touching it with your tongue? But I can't find the next one."
"So you're worried something's gone wrong with your machinery?"
"I don't know. It's just odd. It's not what I'd expect."
"Well, let's check under your hood, see if some mice have been nibbling at your nuts."
"You know what to look for," you ask as he opens a toolbox. From it he draws a pair of glasses with a couple of hinged lenses, some special eye loupes, tweezers, and a stick of gum. Most of these he slides onto his face or into little pockets in his vest; the gum he slips into his mouth.
"Oh, I've been all through your schematics," he says with a terrifying cheerfulness. "It's real nice. You're the only one of us I don't have to put on a lift."
"Jiminy Crickets, Nash!" Well, you've suspected that he's made a thorough study of the Libra Personae, now that it's safely tucked away in the Stellae archives. But to hear him admit as much--
"It's that or you get naked for me," he retorts. "Now give me your hands." You extend them, and he bends nearly double, his nose practically touching your palms. "Show me the basic imago sigil." You bring it up, and for a few moments he's silent as he peers at it. He flicks through a few lenses. "Now do me a shift." He's been teasing you, so you change into one of your girls. He lifts his head to stare at your breasts. "Nice headlamps," he grunts, and bends back over your palms.
He asks you to flash through a few more sigils, and then he raises up to stare deep into your eyes. He shines a pencil flashlight in and has you go through a few more shifts. He has you raise your palm up next to your face so he can watch the sigils and your eyes simultaneously as you shift.
After a quarter hour of this, he steps back with a satisfied grunt. "You're in perfect working order, Will," he says. "Better than you think. You already got those sigils in action. Had 'em for years."
"What do you mean?"
"What are they supposed to do?" he asks, then answers his own question. "Those are the ones that let you shift between imago, right? The Libra sets it up so you gotta do something special to those masks if you're gonna put two or more inside one. But you can already make those shifts. Been doin' them for years."
"But Kali's been saying that I recapitulate the book," you argue. "I shouldn't have been able to do that until--"
"Oh, Kali," he snorts dismissively. "I coulda told you what was going on, if you'd thought to ask me."
You don't bother to ask why he didn't think to tell you: Nash's mind doesn't grapple with a problem unless you set it before him, and then he won't look up until he's solved it. Instead, you ask the obvious question: "So what about the sigil after that? The one that makes a nail? Why haven't I been noticing it, if it's really the next one?"
"Gimme your hand again." He sniffs and snorks, and hocks a loogie into your palm. You flinch, but let him rub it in. "Okay, look for it now."
You turn your eye inward and feel. You sense a shadow somewhere, and chase it, and-- "Okay, yeah. There it is." You don't do anything more than spot it, though. There's really scary stuff on the other side of it. "What did you do?"
"Slipped you a little of my own essentia, help you trace the wiring until you could find it." He points a dirty finger at you. "We should give you a good scrub down. You've probably got all kinds of junk in your filters. You been manifesting double or anything? You were with Joe for a couple of months."
You shrug. Yes. You were able to double yourself for a bit, which was useful on that last mission in a few spots.
"Well, you should think real good about what you're gonna do about that. Charles say anything to you about who your second ousiarch's gonna be?"
The question makes no sense, and you cock your head. "Going to be?" you echo. "They can't figure out which one it is."
"Yeah, because you haven't got one," he says, looking puzzled in his turn. You stare at each other. "What have they told you about that, exactly?"
"That they can't figure it out," you repeat. "They've done all kinds of charts on me, meditated with me, I've filled enough dream journals for a small library--" Nash's expression grows more and more astonished. "They say it's indeterminate. They can't get a fix on it."
"There's nothing to get a fix on, Will," he says. "You haven't got one. It got lopped off. Yeah," he continues as your eyes go wide. "That's how come you're always picking up these bits off others, can sometimes do what they can do. Which is useful sometimes, but it'd be better if--"
"I thought that had to do with me being a Sulva," you blurt out. "You know, mirroring people."
He snorts. "Nah, that's your essentia trying to compensate for only having one ousiarch. I saw it the first time I clapped eyes on you. I thought the others did too."
"Saw what? Kali and Joe, they just made up my charts--"
Nash rolls his eyes. "Charts? Stars, why don't people ask me for an opinion? Yeah, you lost your second one, and it was the Libra that did it to you, when it changed your substantia. Left the Sulva, but sliced off the rest. As sweet an amputation as I've ever seen. You've been walking around with only one leg and one arm." He fixes you with a keen glance. "Not good for the balance, Will. You've been compensating by sticking little bits of others onto yourself, but you need to get yourself a second ousiarch. That's a job for Charles. He doesn't know?"
"I think he only knows what Kali's told him."
Nash mutters under his breath. "I'll write up a memo on it, you take it to him."
You're staggered by this information, and wobble a little on your feet. "But you're saying I had a second ousiarch? You have any idea which one it was?"
He shrugs. "It didn't leave anything behind."
Your next question is more guarded. "Do you have any idea why the Libra removed it from me?"
He sucks on a cheek and looks away before shaking his head. "You'd have to ask the asshole who wrote the goddamned thing. I really thought they knew what was wrong with you," he adds quietly to himself.
You glance around. The garage is a little darker; a cloud must have passed over the sun. "Well, as long as we know," you say. "Email me that report when you're done?"
He nods. "What are you going to do now?"
"Go home and have myself a good look in the mirror."
Nash claps your arm encouragingly. Of course he knows which mirror you'll be consulting.
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   | Members who added to this interactive
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