Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  He’d need to use a little, though.

  He lurched into a hotel, which comprised a section of one of the twisted scrap-heap towers, like functional junk art—about five floors, from what he could tell, with windows and terraces jutting out irregularly from it and a blazing neon sign that proclaimed THE LAVISH. With high hopes based on the name, Tavlin entered only to find a rundown, seedy dive, albeit with colorful if tacky trimmings. Pink chairs, gold-leaf-framed mirrors, once-expensive carpets that should be burned for public health, a chandelier sporting more cracked crystals than whole ones. The man at the counter snored loudly, a big fat hairy fellow with bristling sideburns. A light spattering of wine-colored spots on his cheek was his only visible mutation. He jerked awake when Tavlin rang the bell.

  “Gods be cornholed!” he said, eyes popping open.

  Tavlin grinned what he hoped was an appropriately seedy grin. “Room for the night.”

  “Bit early, innit?”

  “You complaining?”

  The man eyed him up and down. “You can pay?”

  Tavlin always separated his cash into different pockets in case they got picked, and now he reached into one and flicked a few coins on the desk. They made satisfyingly loud noises as they rolled and plinked.

  The desk jockey watched them as if they were alien things. “Surface money.”

  “You won’t take it?”

  A slightly cagey look entered the man’s face. “Oh. Well. I suppose ... just this once ...” He scooped the coins off the counter and counted them, seeming to savor every chink and rasp. He glanced up with guarded interest. “Just the one night?”

  “We’ll see.”

  For the first time, the man smiled. He leapt to his feet, snatched a key off the wall behind him, and said, “Right this way, sir.” He showed Tavlin up a flight of stairs, which was tight and winding. The boards trembled underfoot, and the air stank of rot. The deskman showed him to a room on the third story. The door swung into a small, somewhat crooked chamber whose window frame actually crooked in the opposite direction from the rest of the room. Fleshy, peeling wallpaper adorned the walls, and the heart-shaped bed took up most of the room.

  “It vibrates,” the man leered.

  “I’m sure.” Tavlin tipped him, and the man grinned wider.

  “Let me know if there’s anything you need. A girlie, maybe. Or a boy. And we got things inbetween and others, too. There’s this bearded squid-thing, and I mean to say—”

  “Thank you.”

  The man frowned, shrugged and left. Tavlin closed the door after him. Then, with no further ado, he locked the door and flung the briefcase on the bed.

  “Now, let’s see about you.”

  A thief before a gambler, he tackled the lock with skill. It had been made sturdily but not sturdily enough to resist an experienced burglar. Tavlin unlocked it in minutes, and then, barely containing his excitement, pried it open. The briefcase yawned like a great mouth, shadow falling away only slowly to reveal what was inside.

  Within lay a canister of gunmetal gray, gleaming dully, strapped to the bottom to prevent it from shaking. In shape it resembled a thermos, but larger. It looked heavy. Industrial. Tavlin frowned at it. What had the factory men put in there? It was obviously something of great import to them. Curious, he reached a hand toward it ...

  At first all he felt was coldness, radiating out from the canister. Later, he was unsure of what happened next exactly, but he thought he remembered touching the canister’s surface, and the burning cold sensation that flowed up his fingers, through his hand. What happened after that was completely a blur, but through the blur he distinctly remembered an overwhelming sensation of fear and horror, and senseless images wheeled through his head. He left his right mind for some time. He came to himself gibbering and clutching at himself on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, in the corner. Spittle sprayed from his trembling lips. He stared rigidly at the canister, which he could just barely see over the lip of the briefcase. Gooseflesh prickled his arms, and his scrotum had contracted so far up into him that it was painful. His teeth chattered, and his stomach spasmed. If he’d had anything in it, he would have retched.

  Knocking from the door. He started, heart racing.

  More knocking. His eyes swiveled to the door. The banging on it grew indignant, and he could hear swearing from the other side, a jingle of keys.

  Collecting himself, he stood—shakily—and crossed to the door. He swept his hair back, took a deep breath, and opened it.

  The deskman, holding a set of keys, glared at him. “Neighbor a’ yours said you woke him screaming.”

  “Wh—? Oh. Uh ...”

  “Whatcha doin’?” The man’s eyes left Tavlin, and he scanned the room suspiciously, his gaze lingering on the briefcase and the canister, narrowing, then moving on, at last returning to Tavlin, irritated and mistrustful.

  By then Tavlin had collected himself, more or less. “B-burned myself on the coffee. In the thermos. Sorry I screamed.”

  The man stared. Tavlin imagined his haggard appearance, circles under his eyes, hair unwashed, fingers shaking, skin whiter than bone, pores clearly visible. He would look like a junkie.

  He said what a junkie would say: “It won’t happen again.”

  The man grunted, but he seemed relieved at the answer, as if he’d been able to pigeonhole Tavlin at last. “Better not.” Still he lingered for a moment.

  Tavlin sighed and handed him another few coins. The man nodded without a word and left. Shaking, Tavlin closed the door after him, then rested against the door.

  He turned and stared at the briefcase.

  What are you, now?

  He breathed deep, closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then, opening his eyes, he marched to the case, snapped it shut, removed it from the bed, and shoved pillows under the sheets to make a form resembling a sleeping man.

  Satisfied, he crossed to the tilted porthole-like window, which opened under his touch, and breathed in the heady reek of Taluush: spices and sewage, rust and oil, sex and musk. It seemed like a long way to the ground, even though it was only a few stories. Tavlin told himself to man up, then swung himself outside and scaled down the façade of the hotel, ignoring the stares of pedestrians below. He clutched the briefcase between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. The bullet wound ached when he moved his arm, but it was bearable. The effects of the vodka were beginning to make his head throb.

  He lit on the sidewalk, glanced around—several mutants stared openly at him, but the majority were oblivious; this was the underworld, after all—and made his way through the streets. It was important that the deskman not see him go. That way he could tell whoever came for Tavlin that he was in his room, where he should be. When he was some distance away, Tavlin bought himself a sandwich—his spasming stomach almost heaved it up—and popped a pollution pill just to be sure, even though the meat was supposed to be mutton, which should be safe.

  He searched for a whorehouse. He tried four before he found one that would take him in. It was located on a branching outgrowth of one of the junkheap towers, suspended by cables and chains from the cistern ceiling—so close to the ceiling that queer stalactites drooped past it, flails sucking on them, armies of bats just visible as dripping black fruit from the grime-encrusted surface. Scaffolding supported the sidewalks of the branch, which was known as the Singh-Hiss, he learned, and mutants kept up a steady traffic on both avenues that ran along either side, though the sidewalks were too uneven and fragile for motorcycles, and the branch was not strictly horizontal even though it joined the tower it sprouted from perpendicularly.

  Tavlin entered the whorehouse from the sidewalk entrance, under a sign which ran PLE SURE GA DEN!!! GI LS AND MOR !!! and into a lounge of trashy red hell—dusty red plastic chairs, couches and red-painted walls. Perhaps it was supposed to look opulent or kitschy, but instead it resembled an abattoir. At this hour, only two young women lounged on the couches, and they snored loudly. The madam was
actually a skinny, nervous-looking man with an equally skinny, nervous mustache that continually twitched back and forth like a rabbit’s whiskers. He wore an albino alligator-skin jacket (the alligator caught down here, surely) over a black shirt tucked into blood-red jeans which matched the walls. It was an ugly outfit that was supposed to be showy, and the poor man looked awkward in it. He looked just plain awkward, actually, and he jumped at every sound. His eyes flicked back and forth as Tavlin asked him for a room, but when he saw the color of Tavlin’s cash the eyes steadied, and he smiled widely, revealing jagged yellow teeth, and said, “Why, yes, actually we have the perfect room—if you don’t mind a little noise.”

  Tavlin, dead on his feet, just blinked slowly at him. “I wouldn’t mind a hurricane.”

  Five minutes later saw him in a small room with a view overlooking the towers and occasionally interlocked stalactites of the city. The sounds of the first john of the day enjoying a morning toff from a room directly above did not affect his sleep in the slightest, though he did have to deal with the briefcase first, and his dreams were anything but pleasant.

  *

  He woke with a screaming head and more screaming coming from overhead. The ceiling banged with the rhythms of a rocking bed frame, and moans and grunts and yells filtered down through the layers of junkyard construction—and it really did look as if the pieces had come from a junkyard. Numerous hubcaps glittered from the walls and ceiling by the light of the alchemical lantern, and Tavlin saw rods of steel and car doors sewn into the fabric of the walls, along with things that might have been rusted engine blocks, the mashed frame of a sofa, two-by-fours stolen from a construction site and a chipped gargoyle. Here there was a broken radio, there half a fan. All mashed together and bound by wire and luck, like most cities of the underworld. With the noises of what seemed like a rowdy three-or foursome overhead, Tavlin got himself together and made plans for the day.

  First he visited a pay washroom down the street—you had to pay for clean water down here, even if it was stolen through hijacked plumbing from the world above. Afterwards he ate an egg sandwich with another pollution pill and smoked a large bowl on a coffee shop terrace that looked out over the city. Activity of all sorts stirred below, and he saw by the clock tower—carved out of a down-dripping stalactite, with an ornate stained-glass façade, lit by alchemy within and inset with wrought-iron numbers and clock hands—that it was late afternoon. Good. He wondered if the people hunting him had found his pillow-self yet. Were they even now combing the streets for him? Safest to assume so.

  Traffic buzzed around him in the café, mutants going about their daily lives, and he found himself scanning the faces with suspicion. The smells of their foods, coffees and smokes helped mask their sometimes fishy odors and the musky fragrance of the alchemical lamps designed to drive back the worse reek of sewage, and he welcomed them.

  The briefcase by his leg seemed to throb, and with each pulse his headache flared anew. The container was wrong, its contents somehow abominable. He could feel its presence by the shrinking of his skin, by the bitterness on his tongue. Its nearness made him nervous, his palms clammy, his mouth dry. He had only been able to sleep at the whorehouse by moving the briefcase into the closet and barricading the door with a chair.

  He loathed it. He feared it. He knew he had to get rid of it.

  There was no way he could tolerate being in constant contact with it, or near-contact. Also, the risk of his enemies taking it off of him was too great. Part of him wanted to unscrew the container’s cap and pour its contents into the sewer, but somehow he sensed that would be a mistake. It might kill everything in the undercities, or worse. Gods knew what the container actually held. Octunggen technology and engineering was said to be absolutely otherworldly. If they had devised whatever was in the container with their skill, coupled with the stolen jewelry—and alchemy—from some lost pre-human civilization ...

  He found himself staring at the briefcase, fascinated, repulsed. He realized he had drawn his body as far away from it as he could get without leaving his chair.

  “Enough,” he said, not caring if anyone heard.

  He rose, paid the waitress, took the briefcase (with a shudder) and made his way through the city streets, hunting for the police station. He stopped and asked for directions, then continued on his way, pressing down through the levels toward the mid-point of the vertical city. He had yet to see any of the non-human G’zai, though in truth it was hard to tell, with everyone being so inhuman already.

  He stopped when he saw a group of people congregating around a certain café. It seemed as if all the traffic on the block had ceased, and everyone had gathered to the eatery, all pressed together. In fact, Tavlin couldn’t even hear any city noises any more, or at least very few of them. It was as if the entire town had shut down.

  Curious, alarmed, he made for the press of people. “What’s—?” he started, but a lobster-like individual hissed him to quietude, accentuating his request with a snap of a barnacled pincer. Others turned to glare at Tavlin.

  He realized he was hearing a crackling voice coming from ahead, from within the press of people. It was a voice from a radio, straining to receive signals from the world above. It was this voice that everyone was trying to hear. Frowning, he listened in.

  “ ... and now action. The Minister’s comments ... wait. I am just getting an update.” The clipped, crisp voice of the announcer paused, then: “Yes, we have confirmation from correspondents at the Nythril Star, backing up what the government of Sorvelle has just confirmed. The army of Octung has indeed invaded Vrusk, the critical Orzafan border city along the Rulehain. Reports claim that bombers first took out the military base in the Edrid region, accompanied by a strange bombing run on both military and civilian centers that appears, and this is according to numerous eyewitnesses who have only seen the event from afar—and yet appear to be factual—the bombs seem to have suspended time in the affected districts. That’s right, folks, those in the areas hit by the bombs are now in the grip of some sort of suspended animation, stuck in the middle of doing whatever they were about when the bombs dropped. They sit helpless and immobile as the tanks and soldiers and military apparatuses of Octung sweep down upon them. Octunggen technology has long been rumored to ...”

  Numb, Tavlin staggered back, feeling suddenly sick. He barely heard the announcer continue detailing the events of the attack until he finished and said, “Here is a clip from the press announcement by our own Prime Minister Denaris just fifteen minutes ago.” A woman’s cool, methodical voice crackled over the radio: “Octung has declared war on Orzaf, and with the eminent fall of Vrusk I anticipate hearing news of Orzaf’s surrender shortly. This is unlikely to be the end of hostilities, however. Brace yourselves, fellow citizens. Even now Octunggen forces are mobilizing along the Saenth and Murascan borders. This is the news we have long waited for—and dreaded. Octung has finally launched its war.”

  *

  Shaking, Tavlin lit another pipe and continued through the city, seeking the police station. He was still trembling when he came upon it. The cops were all huddled around their desk wrestling with a radio when he entered, and as he approached them the police officer with the screwdriver stepped back from the radio, and the same announcer’s voice rang out, crackly and hissing but audible: “ ... ‘epeat, confirmation has just arrived that the Premier of Orzaf has suspended all defensive measures against Octung, and an Orzafan envoy has been dispatched to treat with the Octunggen generals. The centuries-old and stalwart army of Orzaf, famed throughout Urslin for its cavalry, is, it seems, unable to stand against the overwhelming military might and sophisticated technology of the Lightning Crown. Meanwhile I have just received word, unconfirmed as yet, that hostilities have began in Saen.”

  The announcer continued, but the man fiddling with the radio turned down the volume in disgust. "Fuck this. Fuck it all."

  A large, round-bellied figure appeared through a doorway—Sgt. Wales. “Hey, I was lis
tening to that! Turn it back on.”

  The cop with the screwdriver grumbled but complied. The announcer’s grim voice filled the room once more. Before Wales could become absorbed in his litany of doom, however, Tavlin approached the sergeant and said, “Have you made contact with Boss Vassas?”

  Sgt. Wales blinked, as if trying to remember what the subject had been, then glanced Tavlin over, ran his eyes to the briefcase and nodded. “Aye, it’s all sorted out.”

  “Good.” That would save Tavlin some money, at least.

  Sgt. Wales frowned at him, then clapped him on the shoulder and drew him aside, conspiratorially. Tavlin feared the sergeant would try to extract more consideration from him and mentally tightened his purse-strings.

  “Yes?” He tried not to sound impatient.

  “That girl o’ yours. What’d you do to her?”

  “Girl?” For a wild moment he thought Wales referred to the ghostly figure last seen chasing him through the sewers. But he instantly realized that couldn’t be right. “You mean … Sophia? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah? Well, I tried to pay her fer fixin’ you up an’ all. Only she wouldn’t take it. When was the last time you heard of a dollie like that turnin’ down money?”

  “She’s a nurse, not a dollie.”

  “They’re all the same. Me, I like nurses. I like them short skirts. An’ I like a girl with access to drugs, if y’know what I mean. Medicinal, o’ course. But that ain’t the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I looked her in the eye, like I’m lookin’ at you now, and she’s starin’ back at me, just like you are, and you know what she says?”

  Tavlin waited, then said, “What did she say?”