The Empire of Gut and Bone

by M. T. Anderson

  He saw great walls with mighty turrets rising above the glistening saline desert. He saw wide, tree-lined avenues and brightly hung marketplaces. He saw, above it all, on a hilltop, rising from the steep roofs and spires and domes, the palace itself, shining like alabaster, its towers sparkling in the light from the veins of lux effluvium.

  He was programmed to see this. He was designed to be awed by his masters.

  And so he and his fellow soldiers did not see the rubble of shanties. They didn’t see the citizens in old, torn clothing faded with light and browned with dirt, running in confusion through tangles of faulty electrical wiring and sloppily painted billboards. He couldn’t recognize the palace as a slumped mound of dried flesh rinds and mud walls and stubby towers built of plywood and old two-by-fours, less like a fairy-tale castle than a thicket of tree houses.

  And because he could not see that the city could be his whenever he bothered to march into its streets — which lay open to all invasions — he decided grimly that it was going to be a long siege. He thought of all the bombs they’d have to lob, all the catapults they’d need, all the fiery weaponry they’d have to blast this impregnable fortress with.

  He did not realize that if he even deployed a tenth of his power on the city, he wouldn’t just conquer it — everyone alive within it would die in rubble and flames before he even noticed he’d won.

  Within the palace, everyone was scurrying to and fro, engaged in frenzied preparations. The Court of New Norumbega, in response to the gathering troops on the horizon, had decided to hold a special tea dance. It was important, in this time of trial, to admit no fear. They were not going to let rude mechanicals intrude on their fun. But in all the frenzy of invasion, it was difficult to get shirts ironed and to find stockings without runs.

  “We’ve got to report on the mannequins’ message,” said Gregory. “That’s why we were sent down there.”

  “The Imperial Council has to send a delegation down to hear their demands,” said Brian.

  “I don’t like the odds if the mannequins start firing those cannons,” said Gregory.

  “No?” said a voice behind him. It was Gugs. “Would you bet, say, thirty Imperial kroner that we don’t survive a siege? Forty? I know you’re nothing but raw kiddies — but surely your mamas give you pocket money, what?”

  Gwynyfer bowed to him, making a sign with her hands. “Gwynyfer Gwarnmore, daughter of the Duke of the Globular Colon, greets Count Galahad Ffines-Whelter of Nettleton and Garje, and expresses her wish that his lands be ever fertile and his …” at which point Brian and Gregory stopped listening because they were very tired of Imperial etiquette.

  Gwynyfer passed on the message that they had heard broadcast at the city limits by the mechanicals.

  “They said,” she concluded, “that the people of the city should evacuate through the west gate.”

  “West gate?” said Gugs. “What are the dazed manns on about? There is no west gate. No gate at all, that I can reckon.”

  “I imagine,” said Gwynyfer, “that they can’t see the city as it is. Because they’ve been built for humility and worship.”

  Gugs tapped his nose. “’Spect you’re right, old girl. Well, if that doesn’t raise the odds of us surviving the old heave-ho by their catapults and the boom-boom of cannons, I don’t know what does. Good news for us all.” He said to Gregory, “Sure I can’t interest you in that wager? ”

  “My mom cut off my allowance,” Gregory said. “I was mean to the cat.”

  “Unless,” said Brian loudly, “we made a bet for something else.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “If they flatten the palace,” Brian said, “you have to demand that the Council votes to find those old spells to activate the Rules Keepers and kick the Thusser out of Old Norumbega.”

  “And if the manns can’t knock the old place down?”

  “Then we’ll give you a … a hundred kroner.”

  “Hundred kroner? Not exactly equal, old chimp.”

  “And a foot massage,” said Gwynyfer.

  “That’s the ticket,” said Gugs. “’Specially after a dance, I cramp. It’s all that step-ball-change.”

  “You people really don’t have any sense of proportion whatsoever, do you?” Gregory asked Gwynyfer.

  “There’s nothing more important than trivia,” said Gwynyfer. “You only touch your change purse twice a day, but your feet you wear forever.”

  Brian and Gugs shook on the bet. Gugs went off to get the terms of the wager down in writing.

  As the three kids continued up to the chirurgeon’s office, Gregory said, “What do you think the odds are he’ll actually remember to pass on the message about the mannequins’ demands?”

  “He’s forgotten it already,” said Gwynyfer, shrugging. “But don’t put odds on it. You know he’ll take the bet.”

  They reached the door of the doctor’s office. Gwynyfer said, “You really do wish to break in and slither about his rooms without him? It’s not too skulk-making?”

  “He tried to kill me,” Brian pointed out.

  Gregory gestured to the chirurgeon’s door. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make me a skulk.”

  He had no idea what “skulk” meant, but she and Gregory laughed together. She put her back against the door and swung it open, still clinging to it, her head back, her eyes facing Gregory, her mouth tilted forward and lined up with his.

  Brian followed them into the chirurgeon’s quarters. He felt a little like a third wheel.

  He said, “If it could only have been someone on the Imperial Council who sent that note to Mr. Gwestin, we need to know everyone who’s on the Council. One of them must be the murderer.”

  “It was probably Chigger,” said Gregory. “Chigger Dainsplint. He always seems like he’s up to something.”

  “Everyone’s up to something,” said Gwynyfer. “Otherwise, the nights get long and there’s nothing to talk about next day at lunch.”

  “Later,” Brian asked, “can you point out all of the members of the Council and tell us about them?”

  “At the tea dance,” she said, already starting to shuffle through papers on a desk. “They’ll all be there.”

  Gregory looked around the room. “Wow,” he said. “Dr. Brundish clearly did not expect he’d be coming back.”

  The room was torn apart in a frenzy of packing and preparation. Drawers were still open. Grubby clothing was balled up all over the bunk, as if he’d pulled it out of his bureau, tore his way through it to find what he needed, and left the rest.

  The leeches, faintly glowing, still made their slow way around their jars, morosely hunting for blood.

  Brian rattled through the desk drawers. He scrabbled through quills and bottles of colored ink. “Hey,” he said. “Batteries.”

  Gregory fitted them into the radio device. He turned a knob.

  Nothing.

  He pressed some buttons.

  Now the thing started to receive. The three leaned close to it.

  “Can you turn it up?” Gwynyfer asked.

  Gregory fiddled with the knobs. A huge burst of static. Then voices.

  Many voices.

  They were all distant. They spoke as if giving orders, but all at once. They were too muted to be understood.

  Gregory put it down. He fiddled with some knobs. Static. Then voices again. The same ones. Still distant.

  Irritated, he shut it off. “I thought we had a real lead there,” he said. He kept fiddling with it. Gwynyfer patted him on the back.

  Brian and Gwynyfer kept on searching the room. They found all kinds of compounds in bottles. They found sprays and pills and salves. They didn’t know anything about any of them. There were lots of books of medicine and sorcery.

  “Do you think Dr. Brundish works for the automatons?” Brian asked. “Or if he even is an automaton?”

  Gwynyfer shrugged. “It’s possible,” she said. “Do you two never get bored with sleuthing? What say we go up to the belvedere and hit
golf balls into the trash heap?”

  Brian looked at her steadily. “You’re in the middle of a siege.”

  “No,” she said irritably, “we’re at the beginning of one. You aren’t our conscience.”

  “Well, maybe you need one,” said Brian, who was tired of being insulted.

  “Hey, hey,” said Gregory, holding up his hands.

  “I don’t see why,” said Gwynyfer, “I, a descendant of goddesses, need to listen to cheap advice about when I should or shouldn’t putt.”

  “Brian just means,” Gregory explained, “that —”

  “Hey!” said Brian, lifting something out of Dr. Brundish’s sock drawer. “Look at this!”

  It was a dirty plastic bag filled with cosmetics. Brian unzipped it and laid the products on the desk. “A tube of … ‘cover-up’ … and ‘eye definer.’ ”

  “Whoa,” said Gregory. “The dude was a lady.”

  “Dr. Brundish,” said Gwynyfer, slitting her eyes, “was no lady.” She picked up the tube of cover-up and read the brand name with a sneer.

  “No,” said Brian. “The dude wasn’t a lady.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Gregory. “Because he would have made the ugliest lady ever.”

  “And what’s wrong with ugly ladies?” Gwynyfer asked him. “Don’t you think men should take their turn dating back hair, nail fungus, and weak chins?”

  “Dr. Brundish,” Brian announced, “was a Thusser.”

  The other two looked at him, astounded.

  “What do you mean?” Gregory said, and Gwynyfer protested, “That’s rot.”

  “How can you tell the difference between the Thusser and Norumbegans?”

  “They both have pointy ears,” said Gregory.

  “Everyone has pointy ears,” said Gwynyfer, “except you. Your race wasn’t invited.”

  “What? To the ear-off?”

  “The Thusser,” said Brian, “have dark rings around their eyes. So if Dr. Brundish wanted to look like the Norumbegans, he would have to hide the dark rings with the cover-up makeup, and then redefine his eyes.”

  “Whoa,” said Gregory. He looked at the eye definer and asked, “So what’s most women’s excuse?”

  Gwynyfer answered sweetly, “Looking swell for idiots like you.” She batted her lashes.

  Brian could not believe they were flirting at a time like this. He said, “Dr. Brundish is a Thusser. He has probably been reporting everything back to the Horde for however long he’s been here. How long has he been here?”

  Gwynyfer shrugged. “Since I was a little girl. But that’s outrageous. Everyone knows him. He’s chirurgeon to the Ex-Empress and the Ex-Emperor.”

  Brian said, “I’ll bet that walkie-talkie is how he keeps in touch with the Magister of the Thusser Horde.”

  “This?” said Gregory, pointing at the thing.

  “Try it again,” Brian urged.

  They were almost afraid to listen in now, knowing that the radio might be broadcasting the sound of their breath to some alien world, some shuddering, webby home of evil, where Thusser, crouched in pods, whispered through mouths of thick teeth to their operatives in many worlds.

  Slowly, Gregory reached out for the on-off toggle. He switched it. The set came on.

  And a voice was singing a love song — a dapper little number clearly from the top of some otherworldly pop chart.

  “It’s a radio station,” said Gregory. “Just a radio station.”

  They listened, perplexed. It sounded like some kind of old-time jazz from a nightclub in one of the black-and-white detective movies Brian loved, but played on weird buzzing instruments and all broken up, so that the melody glinted and reflected through a fugitive spray of alien harmonies. The singer had glue in his voice as he sang of hands and a pretty face and a moth around the street-lamp flitting.

  The three kids listened in silence. Then they shut off the radio and sat thinking about the Thusser, about spies, about something far worse than a mannequin army that might soon surround the city.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Norumbega Vassal-Tribune

  SERVING THE INNARDS SINCE 1282

  IMPERIAL CAPITAL NOT UNDER SIEGE,

  SAYS CANDIDATE FOR REGENCY

  NEW NORUMBEGA — Following the explosion of a lobbed missile in the Imperial Square, rumors circulated throughout the city that New Norumbega was under siege.

  “Nonsense,” said Lord Rafe “Chigger” Dainsplint, Norumbegan Social Club candidate for the post of Imperial Regent, speaking with reporters over the sounds of screaming and flames. “The very idea of a Mannequin Resistance is entirely beneath our dignity. What we have here is nothing more than an under-stairs servants’ party that’s got a little out of hand. Anyone who even speaks of this is clearly no friend of New Norumbega. This is nothing.”

  Fourteen died today in the blast, including Sir Pleckory Dither, Cupbearer to the Stub, who was crossing the square with his chalice when the missile hit.

  When asked about the deaths, Dainsplint replied, “You know, we in the Imperial Council would hate to gag the Press. We rather prefer choking, with our thumbs pressed deep into your windpipes as your goggling eyes gape out at us. Any more questions, lads?”

  There were none.

  EARL OF MUNDERPLAST DISRESPECTIFUL, PERHAPS

  TREASONOUS, SAYS RIVAL FOR REGENCY

  NEW NORUMBEGA — Lord Rafe “Chigger” Dainsplint, Norumbegan Social Club candidate for Imperial Regent, accused his rival candidate late today of being “disrespectful of orumbega’s past and perhaps even treasonous.”

  Lord Dainsplint made the comments in a public discussion of possible policy in the wake of an alleged attack on the palace by the Mannequin Resistance (see page 26, “Imperial Capital May Be Under Siege, Says Man Under Rubble”).

  Following arguments made by human ambassador Brian Thatz, the Earl of Munderplast promised voters that if he were elected as Regent, he would invoke the Rules that would expel the Thusser from Old Norumbega and would restore “at least the memory of Norumbega’s ancient glory.”

  While Lord Dainsplint publicly praised the earl, referring to him as “a spry old article,” he immediately expressed discomfort for the earl’s plan of action. “Seems to me,” he said, “that Munderplast doesn’t think much of the people of New Norumbega. His lordship wants to abandon our Empire’s capital for some blasted old ruin. Apparently, the old boy doesn’t believe that we’re good enough for him anymore — or that New Norumbega is good enough for him. The dear old thing complains about the trash heaps and the stink of our clothes. He forgets that Norumbegans have always been the greatest nation among the sublime races and that we shall always be the greatest nation among the sublime races. He seems to care more about the human animal than his fellow sprites. That just makes me sad for him, chaps, because I hate to hear a man who’s disrespectful of Norumbega’s past and perhaps even treasonous. Quite angry-making, really.”

  The Earl of Munderplast replied, saying, “How can his lordship accuse me — me, of all people — of disrespecting our Empire’s past when my whole party is founded upon sadness that —”

  At this point, Lord Dainsplint interrupted to announce that he and the Norumbegan Social Club would hold public celebrations every afternoon and evening until the day of the election. His announcement was met with cheers and rejoicing by the assembled Court. Lord Dainsplint’s “knees-ups” will began this afternoon with a tea dance for the Court at three, and will be followed by a lavish funeral tomorrow for Sir Pleckory Dither, who died in an unfortunate accident while crossing the Imperial Square around noon today. The rites for the dead will include funeral dining and dancing.

  Early polls indicate that the Court of Norumbega is eighty-six percent in favor of Lord Dainsplint as the next Regent. Only seven percent favor becoming involved with the affairs of Old Norumbega and the Thussers.

  In a featureless plain of digestive jelly, blown by sour winds from distant bellows, in a ruin unbuilt, lay a portal to anoth
er world. It stood at the top of a grand staircase to nowhere.

  In previous ages, the citizens of Old Norumbega had marched through it, bringing their birdcages, their bicycles, the portraits of their ancestors standing in gloom.

  Now the plain was empty of motion. The veins above glowed a faint blue. Wind blew through columns and past foundations. Blocks of dead, pink tissue lay where they’d fallen when swept along centuries before by brunch in the Season of Meals.

  The stairs near the black portal to Earth were stained from a campfire. A piece of a chair lay charred among old coals. Most of the ashes had already blown away.

  There was nothing to mark day and night. No light but the somber blue.

  At some time, the portal wobbled in its frame. The cavity shuddered. Its surface rippled.

  A man came through. His ears were pointed. There were dark circles around his eyes.

  He stood, surveying the sticky plains. He held up lightbulbs in his hand. He turned gears. He wrote symbols on a clipboard.

  He disappeared back into the portal.

  Time passed. Far out in the muck, some toothed and haunched antibodies paddling on round fins closed in on a school of spotted, long-legged trout and there was, for a time, a distant plashing. A quick, spasmodic frenzy, and then the gut was silent once again.

  The wind blew. Hours passed.

  And then the portal rippled again, and this time, the Thusser came in numbers. They glowered as they stepped through, all wearing long, dark overcoats with wide lapels. They stood upon the stairs, twenty of them, thirty, forty, moving down to make way for more. They looked out at the world they would soon conquer.

  And more came through. And more. And more.

  TWENTY-TWO

  While the Thusser spread their dominion across the Earth and into the Great Body, and the Mannequin Resistance waited to firebomb the helpless population of the capital city, the Norumbegan Social Club held another tea dance for the Court.

  The Grand Hall was lit with candles that streaked the walls black. A gentle, warm breeze blew in through the smashed windows, stirring the wide leaves of several plastic palms that had been brought in specially for the occasion. The curtains had been pulled aside so the Stub, wild-eyed, could observe from his throne. And the Court, dressed in their grubby finery, danced.