by Peter David
The problem was that she had no idea where others of his kind might be. The only thing she knew for sure was that they weren’t behind her, or above her, or right there alongside her. So instead they must be below her.
Norda crouched and picked up Hooman Bean. She was astonished how light he was. Perhaps, she reasoned, his bones were hollow. She wondered if he was so light that he could fly, and briefly considered taking him above and throwing him off a roof to determine if that was so, but quickly decided against it. Instead Norda started down.
She had no idea where she was going, but hoped that wherever it might be, she would arrive there soon, because she was starting to feel woozy and lightheaded.
The longer she went down the stairs, the hotter the atmosphere became around her and the heavier that Hooman Bean seemed to get. She wondered why it was that he was picking up weight with each passing minute. It never occurred to her that she was becoming weaker because, aside from the occasional dull throb from the area of her shoulder, she was having trouble remembering that she had been injured. At one point she stopped, shifted his weight, and drew an arm across her head to wipe away moisture dripping in her eyes. When she did she discovered that there was blood running down her arm, and further realized that it was her own. “That’s unfortunate,” she said.
Soon her left arm went completely numb. Norda compensated by moving Hooman Bean over to her right shoulder and slinging him over it like a sack. His leg continued to dangle at a strange angle and he was muttering something in his unconscious state, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
From below her, she heard what sounded like rushing water. She looked around for the source and eventually found yet another door. Clearly whoever had built this wherever-she-was had certainly been obsessed with doors. She found herself wishing that Arren were there. He knew how much she liked tunnels and secret passages and would no doubt have been pleased to see the way she was enjoying herself.
This door pulled open far more easily than the others. She stepped through and found herself standing on the edge of a long platform. Below her was some sort of huge metal pipe. The sound of the rushing water was coming from within there. She licked her lips because she had grown very thirsty and the sound of the water reminded her of that.
With that realization came even more dizziness, and suddenly Norda could no longer stand. She didn’t know why this was, nor did she realize that she was in trouble. All she knew was that one moment, she was on her feet, and the next, she wasn’t. She sat there, pondering the oddity of being in a seated position when she should, by all rights, be standing.
That was when she heard something moving in the shadows.
“Hello?” she called softly. “Hello? Are you friends of Hooman Bean’s?”
“What did you do to him?” It was a female voice speaking with great urgency. She emerged from the shadows as someone else, a male, yanked at her arm, trying to stop her.
“Wait! Lenore! Don’t get near it!”
“Shut up!” She pulled free and ran toward Norda. Norda looked up at her, her eyes bleary. “What did you do to him? What did you do?”
“He fell down stairs,” said Norda. “His leg looks funny. Oh,” she added as she remembered, and her voice became stern, “and he killed the dug. He should not have done that. Are you his mother?” When the woman nodded, Norda told her firmly, “Well then, it’s your responsibility. You should punish him. Perhaps a sound thrashing. Or you could kill him and eat him. But you might consider that a little extreme. Where are you going?”
“Going—?” the woman said helplessly.
“Yes. You’re fading away. That’s amazing. How are you doing…
that…?”
Norda’s suddenly discovered that she had forgotten how to speak. She couldn’t put words together. They were floating around in her head but she could not for the life of her recall what the proper order for them was. Every word she knew was drifting behind her eyes, and she picked one at random.
“Home,” she said and then Norda slumped over and hit the floor next to Hooman Bean. The world around her was blacking out, and she heard a rough voice say, “Let’s kill it while we can,” and she thought,Well, that is certainly rude, and then the world went dark around her and she heard nothing further.
the streets of porto
Eutok and Karsen had journeyed all the way from Venets to Porto and, as absolutely nothing of consequence occurred, Eutok kept saying the same type of thing over and over: “It cannot keep being this easy.”
When they would make camp, Eutok would lie there staring in the darkness and mutter, just before falling asleep, “We will likely wake up dead; something is going to go wrong.”
When they would awaken and recommence their travels, Eutok would say, “Just watch; today is when it goes awry.” Karsen would roll his eyes and try to ignore the Trull’s eternal pessimism. It wasn’t as if Karsen was relentlessly upbeat—truthfully, his thoughts were running along the same lines as Eutok’s—but if nothing else he had the good grace to keep it to himself.
So they rode, mile after mile, knowing that at any moment they could find themselves in the middle of some insurmountable danger, perfectly aware that their quest could come to an abrupt and terminal end. Every turn, when the worst failed to materialize, it seemed nothing but a cruel precursor to the inevitable.
At first Karsen’s pronouncements were enough to fill Eutok with a growing sense of dread. By this point, it was just annoying the hell out of him.
They had ridden through or past any number of cities on their way, and it was much the same as most cities in the Damned World. They were deserted, all signs of the species that had constructed them wiped away courtesy of the incursion of the Twelve Races.
When they had initially begun their sojourn, Eutok had been taken aback by what he had witnessed. Having spent his entire life underground, his knowledge of the Morts and the destruction inflicted upon them by the Third Wave had been entirely in the abstract. He had learned about it, heard about it. Seeing it, though, was a very different matter.
They passed shattered city after shattered city. Buildings had tumbled down upon themselves or been destroyed through the incursions of the Twelve Races. It wasn’t as if the Twelve Races had needed all these cities in which to live. The Races were spread out through the Damned World and since they were far fewer in number than the Morts had been, they did not need remotely as much space within which to live.
Why did this happen? He kept coming back to the question, but no reason suggested itself.
Karsen, for his part, kept glancing back at Eutok as they made their way toward Porto. He seemed to realize that something was on Eutok’s mind, but since the Trull chose not to say anything about it, Karsen didn’t pursue it.
Day after day they rode, the paths and the devastated cities flying past them. Karsen kept thinking that this might well be a waste of time, but there was no reason not to pursue it. There only remained two questions: Had that strange creature, Ruark, been correct about Jepp’s destination, and was the Crossing functioning? Only time would answer the former, and as to the latter, it would then come down to whether Eutok was capable of repairing it. He claimed that he was, but there would be no way to know for sure until they were faced with the situation.
Upon their arrival in Porto, they slowed their mounts and made their way through the city. The whores seemed to be moving more reluctantly than before. Karsen was wondering if there was something in the city that was bothering them. He brought his mount to a halt, and that caused Eutok to rein up and look at him questioningly.
“I think it’s time to part company,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“Not the two of us,” said Karsen impatiently as he dismounted. “Unless you’re going to tell me there’s some way to get these creatures into the Truller cars.”
“No. No way whatsoever.” Eutok got off the whores as well, and he patted the creature affectionately on the s
ide of the neck. “Believe it or not, I’m going to miss the thing. It has served us well. They both have.”
“I agree. And they deserve their freedom.” Karsen removed the ropes that he had used to devise the guidance system around his whores’ head. Eutok did likewise. “All right, creature,” said Karsen. “You are free to go.”
The whores stood there, staring at him. It made a snuffling sound.
“Go, I said!”
“You, too!” Eutok told his whores. He clapped his hands. “You’re done! On your way!”
The whores looked at each other as if trying to determine mutually what it was that the Trull and Laocoon were demanding of them.
Eutok yanked the stone sword from his belt and bellowed as loudly as he could. The whores reared up, crying out in fright, and together they turned and ran. Karsen and Eutok watched them go until they passed from sight. “That,” said Karsen, “was more trouble than expected.”
“Mayhap they believed we were making a mistake in sending them on their way.”
“Who knows? They might have been right. But there’s nothing to be done for it now. So…” He turned to Eutok. “Do you know which way to the Crossing?”
Eutok frowned, considering, and then he got to one knee and spread his thick fingers upon the ground. The road was badly broken. “I wonder what the hell came through here.”
“Minosaurs.”
Eutok glanced toward him, eyebrow raised. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yes. I know the marks all too well.”
“You traveled with a Minosaur, as I recall.”
“Yes. And we cleaned up after any number of skirmishes in which the Minosaurs were participants. They tended not to leave much in their wake. Not surprising, really, considering their preferred method of combat was the stampede.”
“We’ve heard them from time to time,” said Eutok. “Every so often they would charge above us in great waves, and the ground would shake, and debris would fall from overhead. My mother would unleash the most formidable string of curses you would ever hear pass from the lips of any living creature. It was the only time that I found her remotely entertaining.” He paused and smiled. “Amazing how it is possible to find pleasant memories in even the most unlikely of circumstances.”
“Yes, tremendously amazing,” said Karsen, who was far less amazed than he was impatient. He was looking around at the city. As was the case with many other cities that they had passed through, a number of them had already collapsed. The city had been built along a fairly mountainous region, and large sections of the rises were exposed when the buildings had come down. Up in the distance there was some sort of wall with large chunks of it gone. Karsen could not determine whether it was a section of castle, or else some sort of defensive wall that had been constructed to keep enemies at bay. If the latter had been the case, it hadn’t done much of a job.
“Why did they do it?”
Eutok had spoken, and his voice sounded softer, more bewildered than it ever had before. Karsen looked at him in confusion. “What they? The Minosaurs, you mean?”
“Not just them. All of them. The Twelve Races.”
“Is that what has been on your mind?” When he saw Eutok’s look, he added, “You seem to have been preoccupied during much of our ride. Particularly when we are passing through cities. I had not wanted to say anything…”
“You noticed.”
“I tend to notice...well, everything, truth to tell.”
“It just makes increasingly less sense to me. This world was so vast, and the Twelve Races only need a relatively small portion to survive. I had always been told of the great battles that the other races fought—”
“Not your race, of course.”
“Of course. It is not the Trull way to take sides.”
“Just provide weapons and aid to all concerned and benefit from all sides.”
“That’s correct. Anyway, I am beginning to wonder if there was any point to it. Were the Morts truly that worthless, that they deserved to have their entire world taken from them?”
“That’s rather advanced thinking for a Trull.”
“Lying on your back for an extended period of time while you’re convinced you’re dying from internal injuries sends your thoughts to unexpected places. I am just starting to wonder if the Morts could not have been more use to the Twelve Races alive than dead.”
“It may well be,” said Karsen, “that our peoples’ collective inability to consider that may be one of the many reasons that we were banished to this godsforsaken world to begin with.”
“Aye.”
“So…anyway…the Crossing…?”
“Yes, of course.” He went from one knee to both and then laid the side of his head against the ground. He rapped on the ground several times with his knuckles. He did this for a time, and then moved to another section of road and once more rapped on it. He kept that up for a while, and then moved to another section, and then another. Karsen stood behind him patiently, his arms folded, until he could no longer take it and said in exasperation, “What are you doing?”
Eutok raised his head and said, “Do you want me to find it or not?”
“This is going to lead us to it?”
“The few times I’ve been to it, it was from below, not above. And it was many years ago. But if you don’t like the way I’m going about it…”
Karsen impatiently indicated that Eutok should continue as he was doing. Eutok nodded once and went back to the painstaking and frankly irritating method of checking the street for…well, Karsen really didn’t know what the hell he was checking for, and that was irritating him most of all.
“So where are they?” Eutok said after two hours of tapping around on the ground. His patience seemed astonishing considering the Trull reputation for being short tempered.
“Where are who?”
“The Minosaurs. Presumably they went to the trouble of killing all the humans. Why leave the city after that?”
“They left because the entire purpose of coming into the city was to kill the humans. Once they were dead, why stay?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does not have to make sense. We are talking about the actions of races that make war for no other purpose than to make war. You’re hardly new to this world, Eutok. I don’t see why this should come as a tremendous surprise to you.”
“You,” Eutok said, “have had a lifetime to become accustomed to seeing the stupidity and pointlessness of these actions first hand. So if is taking me more time to adjust to the mindset that you so easily grasp, then—”
His voice trailed off.
“What?” said Karsen, who had frankly gotten sick of following Eutok around aimlessly. When Eutok did not immediately reply, Karsen said again, “What? What is it? For the love of—”
“For the love of the one you love, shut up,” said Eutok brusquely. He had gone from rapping on the ground to banging on it with a clenched fist. “Yes. Here. It’s here.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“All right. So…how do we get down there? Where is the entrance?”
“There is no entrance that I know of. Not directly from here to there.”
“Well, then,” said Karsen, unable to contain his frustration, “what are we supposed to do?”
“We are not going to do anything. Stand back.”
“What?”
Without waiting for Karsen to obey him, Eutok started pounding on the ground. It took him only seconds to break through the shattered remains of the street. He tossed huge chunks of thick black rock to either side and then started to paw away at the ground. He started slowly but then picked up speed. Dirt was flying toward Karsen, who shielded his face and backed up in order to give the Trull some room.
Trulls excavated using various tools, but that did not mean that they were incapable of doing so using nothing more than their huge hands, their formidable strength, and their determination. Eutok employed all
three of those now as he tore at the ground with what Karsen could only think of as pure glee. If Karsen had not been certain earlier that Eutok was fully recovered from the injuries he had sustained, he was definitely sure now.
In less than ten minutes, Eutok had already excavated a hole of sufficient depth that he was no longer visible from the surface of the street. Karsen circled the area, watching in amazement as Eutok continued to dig without the slightest hint of slowing up. There was no doubt that Eutok was in his element. He was a two-handed, two-armed excavating machine that was being employed for precisely the purpose of its creation. Several times Karsen called out tentatively, suggesting that he would be perfectly happy to pitch in. Eutok either ignored him or simply grunted something that sounded vaguely negative, never slowing in his endeavors.
Karsen took up a seat and ate carefully from their food stocks. He was judicious with his consumption. Presuming that the Truller car was up and running for the Crossing, there was still no telling just how long the journey was going to take. They couldn’t exactly go hunting while riding on a high-speed vehicle; they would have to subsist on whatever they happened to have with them.
As Eutok continued to work, and as Karsen kept feeling increasingly lazy in the presence of Eutok’s energy, he found this thoughts wandering to Eutok’s question. What had happened to the invading Minosaurs? It wasn’t so much that they had destroyed the inhabitants of the city and then abandoned it. Despite Eutok’s bewilderment, it really was not atypical for the Twelve Races to behave in a wasteful manner. It was their nature to care less for the spoils of war than the action of war. The Bottom Feeders were held in such universal contempt because their interests lay with what was left behind after battles. This ran counter to the typical mindset of the more belligerent races which dictated that one fought, killed or was killed and, presuming one was still able to do so, then moved on to look for the next battle. That was why the Banished had done such a superb job reducing their own number, a feat that the humans had been less than successful in accomplishing.