The Empire of Gut and Bone

by M. T. Anderson

  A secretary appeared in a black coat and bid them follow him. He took them to a long table, where they were served food. Though no one in the city ate, many had cooked for centuries before they’d left the service of the Norumbegans. They knew how to whip up a dinner. The food — steaks of some three-legged animal — was delicious, seasoned to perfection. The boys took a long time eating, cramming their mouths with salad and squash.

  “At least,” said Gregory, stopping his gorging long enough to be repelled, “I hope it’s squash. And not something carved right out of the living phlegm.”

  They lay down to sleep on the benches. An hour and a half later, they were called into the presence of someone named General Malark.

  The general was upstairs, in a cold, whitewashed chamber high above a courtyard. He waited with Dantsig. The general was a thin, glowering automaton, once built to look like a lined old man — now disfigured by thick slices hacked out of his head in ancient battles. His workings were visible through the cuts. As he spoke, the boys could see the gears within him spin, the spindles reset and retract to pucker his brow or give him dimples.

  Those dimples were friendly as he shook the boys’ hands and bowed to the troll.

  Behind him, on the wall, was a banner with a message in the Norumbegans’ runic language. Beside it, another, smaller, which read: NON SERVIAM — I SHALL NOT SERVE.

  “You came through the portal in the Ruins of Entry,” he said to the boys.

  Neither of the boys knew what to say to that.

  “You came from Old Norumbega. From the City of Gargoyles.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Brian.

  “You wish to see the Emperor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Regarding the Game.”

  Brian and Gregory nodded.

  “The Emperor has abdicated. He has been replaced by his child.” The general sat behind his desk. “You are strangers.”

  Brian said, “Yes, sir,” as politely as he could.

  “Breathers,” the general said.

  Gregory pinched the skin on the back of his hand and showed it to General Malark. “Look. It’s real.”

  The general said, “You might simply be convincingly designed. We can eat, if designed to eat. We may be pinched. We can even feel pain at pinching.”

  Kalgrash nodded fervently.

  The general asked the troll, “You, sir, are an automaton?”

  “Yes indeedy.”

  “Welcome. I am General Malark of the Mannequin Resistance. I was constructed several hundred years ago during the Third War of Thusserian Aggression. I defended Old Norumbega from the invader. Until,” he said sourly, “my masters decided to give up and flee.”

  Brian asked eagerly, “Was that when they started the Game?”

  Malark grimaced. “The Game. Yes. The Game. We forfeited the kingdom for a Game.” He picked up the stapler from his desk. “You know that we here are now in a state of revolt against our former masters.”

  “The Norumbegans, right?” Gregory clarified. “You’re fighting against the Norumbegans?”

  “The Norumbegans of flesh.” The general smiled tightly. “For we are all Norumbegans. Whether organic or mechanical.” He looked down at the stapler in his hands. He rubbed his thumb against the two fangs of the staple that projected from the carriage, as if caressing a cobra to charm it. When he pulled his thumb away, the skin was white where the tines had pressed.

  “There are only rarely open hostilities with our masters,” he said. “Over the last century, we have all abandoned their capital and spread throughout the Great Body. We will not go back to serve them. They are angry that we have deserted them, but they cannot do anything about it. Occasionally, they send out a force to try to reclaim us, but we resist them. They stew in their palaces alone.

  “But. As you have seen …” He idly opened the stapler and closed it, the spring twanging as he shut the cover. When he continued, he said, “Delge Crossing. They shut off and kidnapped everyone in Delge. This is new. Descending on a larger town like that. Openly. It calls for a new strategy. This,” he said, smiling, “is where you come in.”

  He sat forward.

  “We are considering whether we might trade you in exchange for some of the heads of the citizens of Delge. We do not know yet whether you and your message will be considered important enough by the Emperor to merit a trade.” He sighed and put down the stapler. “For one thing, the Imperial Court will not pick up the phone.”

  Brian asked, “Did you say that the Emperor isn’t the Emperor anymore? The blond man? With the beautiful queen?”

  “He abdicated. Gave the crown to his son.”

  “Why did he do that?” Brian asked.

  The general frowned. “Emperor Fendritch wished to be at leisure. Emperor Fendritch likes his leisure — his golf, his tennis, the foxtrot, downhill skiing. Emperor Fendritch … one cannot say anything against Emperor Fendritch — no — one cannot say a word against one’s former master — one cannot — one cannot say a thing against Emperor Fendritch because we all have been designed never to —” (Here the general’s mouth flapped shut, and he grimaced.) “We cannot … so let me say instead that the Emperor was so variously gifted with talents and enthusiasms — quite splendid, really — that he did not find it convenient to reign. So he abdicated in favor of his child.” He quivered, then added, “Long may he live.”

  “So his kid’s Emperor now,” said Gregory. “So it’s his kid we need to talk to.”

  General Malark and Dantsig exchanged glances. “Not precisely,” said General Malark. “The boy is too young to reign. He has an elected regent who rules in his place. But this is immaterial. We need to hear your story so that we can convey to the Emperor’s Court who you are and try to arrange an exchange.”

  So Brian, Kalgrash, and Gregory told their story. They explained how they had, the year before, played the Game, not knowing what they were part of, traipsing through the woods and encountering puzzles and elves and trolls. They told the general that it had turned out that Brian was playing for the Norumbegans (though he didn’t know it) and Gregory for the Thusser Horde, which waited to spill out across the landscape. They explained that Brian had won, scoring a victory for the Norumbegans.

  Brian said, “I realized at the last minute that we weren’t both playing for the same team. Without knowing it, we were rivals.”

  “So I let Brian win,” said Gregory. “He was being held down by a Thusser assassin at the time. So I could have just won, but we made an agreement that I would let him win.”

  “I see,” said the general. “To confirm: The Norumbegan side did win?”

  “Sure,” said Gregory. “Because I let him win. Really, either one of us could have won. I mean, either one of us, except that I was the one who wasn’t being strangled by the assassin. So I could have won more easily, technically. If we’d been playing fair.” He shifted on his seat and stuck his hands between his knees. “But Brian won. As it happened.”

  “He won for the Norumbegans,” said the general.

  The boys nodded.

  They told how they’d gone home, back to Boston, and how Brian, as the winner, had been designated to make up the next round of the Game. They explained that Brian had started to work out a whole story about gangsters and detectives that some players would stumble into, in a few years’ time.

  And then everything had gone wrong. Gregory’s cousin Prudence, the last winner, had disappeared. The Thusser had tried to kill Brian. Brian and Gregory had traveled up to Gerenford, Vermont, where they’d played the Game the year before, only to discover that the forest where they’d had their magical adventure was now an interdimensional suburb waiting for Thusser invasion.

  Kalgrash said, “The Thusser might even be there by now. They’re bad, bad, bad. I don’t like them at all.”

  “But if the Norumbegan side were to win, the Emperor and his Court would be able to return to Earth,” said the general.

  Brian shrugged and
nodded. Gregory said, “Sure.”

  “That might be an unexpected boon,” said the general. He smiled. Gears turned behind his eyes. He and Captain Dantsig spoke in Norumbegan.

  “Now,” said the General. “We must call the Emperor’s Court again.”

  He went to a worn wooden cabinet and lifted out an old Edwardian phone with a speaking piece and a whole complicated tree of dangling mouths on wires. He brought the contraption over to his desk and set it down. Pulling the speaking piece to his lips, he made a demand for a call to be put through and waited while the mouths all whispered, “Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.”

  After a long time, one of the mouths perked up and drawled some alien greeting.

  General Malark and the mouth spoke for some time. His eyes were guarded, careful, waiting to see whether the mouth would barter.

  He turned to the boys. “It is the Regent. He wishes to speak to you directly.”

  “Where are the little cubs?” said the mouth in English. “Tell them to talk.”

  “We’re here, sir,” said Brian. “We’ve come —”

  “From the old kingdom, is it? Grand. Just grand. We miss the old place. I suppose it’s all Thussery now.”

  “They’re breaking the Rules of the Game,” said Brian. “You’ve got to stop them. They’re settling in your —”

  “Yes, plenty of time for that, little chap. Malark, might you adjust the loupe so I could get a gander at the squirts? Be a good fellow.”

  General Malark pulled out a small lens on a retractable cord and pointed it at the boys. There was a brief interchange where the mouth made demands and Malark responded, occasionally translating orders to the boys: “Put up your arms. Turn around. Pull down your lips and show your gums.

  “The fat one in the armor isn’t human, though, is it? Rum thing, but I recall humans being less spiky and green.”

  “I’m not fat,” said the troll. “I’m big-boned.”

  General Malark confirmed, “He’s an automaton. Built as a troll.”

  “I see.”

  “I come with the other guys,” said Kalgrash. “We’re a package. Three for the price of two.”

  “Bully for you,” said the mouth lazily. “Now, Malark, why don’t you send them up here? You’ve no use for them.”

  General Malark pulled himself to his full height. “We have a list of noncombatants recently captured at Delge. We demand their release in return.”

  “You have the names?”

  “I do.”

  “Blast. I don’t have a pencil handy. Well, you just tell me and I’ll try my level best to remember.”

  Malark delivered a list of thirty names, all of them unpronounceable.

  He and the mouth continued to haggle.

  Eventually, he hung up.

  He turned to Dantsig, the boys, and the troll with a tight smile.

  “It is agreed,” he said. “A trade. Ten of the automatons for each one of you. The Court is anxious to hear your story.” He lifted the phone and mouth-tree from his desk and replaced it in the cabinet. “You are on your way to New Norumbega and the palace of the Emperor!”

  Six

  The capital city was far, far away, in a clutch of hearts that hung in the distant reaches of the Great Body. The sled was too slow, and in any case, the ducts that led to the capital never connected directly to the gut that cradled Pflundt. The boys were told they would have to travel through the flux. They were given a picnic hamper for the ride.

  Surrounded by a set of guards in metal helmets, Dantsig led them deep into a cavern. Lanterns lit the walls of a great shaft that dropped straight down beneath the city. A platform was suspended by ropes. When they stepped on, Dantsig pulled a lever, and they all descended.

  “There’s a valve,” he explained, “so we can get into the flux.”

  “Flux?” said Kalgrash. “What’s flux?”

  “There are seven major fluids in the Great Body,” said Dantsig. “Ichor, yellow bile, the hard aliment, the sublime aliment, flux, lux effluvium, and brunch.

  “No one knows what any of them are or what any of them do. Some of them might be food. Some of them might be blood or saliva. I don’t know. Who cares? The flux doesn’t move anymore. People say it used to. Maybe because the Great Body is dead. Or we might just be between heartbeats. Or flux might not be blood at all.” Dantsig shrugged and spat over the edge of the descending platform.

  “Adding your own fluids to the mix?” Gregory said.

  Dantsig smiled lazily. “I generate liquid,” he said. “It condenses in my mouthbox. Design flaw.”

  Brian asked politely, “What were you made for?”

  Dantsig shrugged. “Exploration. What about you?” Dantsig grinned wolfishly at the boy.

  Kalgrash offered, “I was made to ask riddles and smite.”

  “Crazy.”

  The platform had reached the bottom of the pit.

  They’d come to rest next to a huge brass dome — the valve into the flux. They entered the dome through reinforced doors.

  They were in an air lock, a docking bay for submarines. The walls were riveted together. Small capsules with propellers and rudders hung from brackets. Men and women in old diving suits clanked around by hatches. Portholes looked out into some green mess in which the beams from electric lights slowly bumbled.

  The guards accompanied them to a gangway. It led down through a tube and into a sub: a cramped space filled with tanks and pipes and spigots and dials and nozzles. Marines, frowning, took up positions around the cabin. Dantsig offered the boys benches upholstered in torn red plastic. A few of the crew, dressed in blue bodysuits and finned helmets, ran past calling unintelligibly to one another.

  In a few minutes, there was a jolt, and the submarine moved out into the flux. The deck hummed.

  “Whoa,” said Gregory, pressing his palms against the metal wall. “It tickles. The vibration.” He put his hand to his mouth. “It makes my teeth itch.”

  Kalgrash offered, “I could remove them for you.”

  “Naw,” said Gregory. “What would you do without my winning grin? It would be like the sun had gone out in your heart.”

  Dantsig asked Brian over the din of the engine, “What’s with them?”

  “They fight a lot.” Brian was too embarrassed to explain that Gregory made fun of Kalgrash for being an automaton. He didn’t want Dantsig to know and to hate Gregory.

  The sub nosed through the darkness of the vein, its lights picking out growths and shy, slithering things.

  Brian pointed at something finny doing backflips to escape the illumination. “Are they part of the body? Or are they like parasites?”

  “Uh, yeah, kid, we’re all like parasites. Hey, will you let me spit in here?”

  Gregory said, “Let’s keep the liquid outside.”

  “You’re the one who’s seventy-eight percent water, squirt.”

  “But the other twenty-two percent is charm.”

  “He can add,” muttered Kalgrash in surprise.

  Brian was worried that his two friends no longer even pretended to like each other. It made him miserable. He wanted everyone to work together. Everyone should be a unit. Like superheroes. Each with his own power. One can turn things into ice, another can melt them with his thermal fist. As a gang, they’re unstoppable. That was how it was supposed to be.

  Instead, he thought of the detective novels he loved, in which everyone was always double-crossing each other. They were always telling each other lies out of the corner of their mouths and hiding things from each other in train lockers. They were telling women they’d love them forever and then turning them right in to the police for fraud. That wasn’t how he wanted his friends to be.

  Even worse: He knew that Gregory was really the problem. Kalgrash was incredibly nice — well, when he wasn’t smiting. It was Gregory who persisted in baiting the troll.

  Brian wondered why.

  He had a long time to wonder. The submarine whirred through miles of
duct. It followed hidden routes up veins or down arteries. Once, it passed a huge domed city in the flux, lit with a thousand little brass lanterns.

  “When we get to the capital,” said Dantsig, “and you’re in the presence of the Emperor and the Regent, try to class yourselves up a little, got it?”

  “What do you mean?” said Gregory. “Brian is already stunningly debonair. Look at those track shoes, that bowl cut….”

  “The track shoes are kind of dirty,” said Brian, kind of miffed, “because I wore them while I was crawling through the dungeons of Norumbega, trying to free you.”

  “Hey — hey! None of that, for instance,” Dantsig demanded. “This is the Emperor you’re seeing. There are rules. You can’t turn your back to him. Even if he’s … surprising.”

  “What’s surprising about him?” asked Brian.

  Gregory said, “He’s a kid, right?”

  “Never speak until you’re spoken to,” Dantsig said. “Wait to be presented to people. You’re lower in rank, so you’ll be presented to the nobility. Not the other way around.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Gregory said. “I thought you hated the Emperor’s Court. Why are you suddenly getting all Emily Post on us?”

  Dantsig looked strained. “The Emperor,” he said, blinking rapidly, “is due some respect.”

  “Who’s Emily Post?” asked Kalgrash.

  “She wrote about manners,” said Brian. He asked Dantsig, “Can’t you say anything bad about the Emperor? Is it because you’re programmed?”

  Dantsig leaned forward. “I can say whatever I want! You got that?” he answered angrily. “I’m just telling you, the palace is a tony kind of rig, and you can’t act like you’ve just stumbled in from the snot-fields of Cheln.”

  “Kalgrash did,” said Gregory. “He’s a banjo-plucking hick from the dark side of the gallbladder.”

  “I like the banjo,” said Kalgrash. “In reality.”

  “Gregory,” said Brian, “we should probably … you know … stop making jokes … with …”

  “What? Does Emily Post have rules about this, too? In her chapter describing what you can talk about with a troll in a submarine in someone’s artery? ‘Bluegrass music is never a suitable topic for trolls, in or out of submarines.’ ”