The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  He tried to focus on that idea, now, on being above ground again, even if it was just there, in those crumbling buildings. To go up, to go out, to escape this place and breathe dry air that didn’t stink quite so badly of decay, that was heaven to the Subjects of the Underground Kingdom. But these tubes, with their starvation and wet coughs and always, always the smell of mildew and rot, even these weren’t hell. Hell was what Dok had been sentenced to if he was ever caught back down here again: the Deep Chamber.

  Dok had never been down here with so much light. Fiends didn’t scurry around in the dark like Subjects. It should have helped him better imagine himself above ground, but instead it made him feel even more trapped. Coiner had some slick system on his rifle that turned on a flashlight below the barrel when he squeezed a little pad attached to the grip. The beam bobbed up and down as he moved, accenting the curve of the tube. The other two Fiends carried old telephones that had little lights built in. They kept turning around and shining them backward to ensure the group wasn’t being followed.

  “You know, the Subjects consider me a criminal. I violated a key tenet of their religion, and to them, that is a capital offense. I get the Deep Chamber if I’m caught here,” Dok said. “That was my sentence. The Deep Chamber is a tube slightly bigger around than your shoulders, slanting down at a forty-five-degree angle. It’s so deep that they don’t even know how deep it is, but I’m told that if you toss in a rock, you hear a splash—eventually. They’ll tie my hands behind my back and slide me down it headfirst.”

  Coiner froze. His light went out, and the other two Fiends doused theirs, following his lead. Coiner leaned backward until he was only centimeters from Dok’s face. His voice was an icy whisper. “This is a military reconnaissance mission. All I want to hear from you are the directions on how to get there. If you start whining again, you’ll be leaving a trail of blood the rest of the way.”

  The lights came back on and the group started down the tunnel again.

  Dok laughed inaudibly. How perfect that the fungus capable of wiping out humanity had become a religious symbol to people who lived, breathed, and eventually reverted back into fungi.

  All kinds of different molds and mildews were filling his lungs with spores right now. He let out a shaky breath.

  Dok’s breathing was becoming more rapid and shallow as they progressed. He stopped, closing his eyes and pressing his palms against the curved sides of the tube, trying to center himself. When he opened them again, the tunnel looked even smaller than before, and it appeared to narrow dramatically as it stretched ahead.

  No. It’s an illusion. It’s darker because the lights fade there. The tube is the same diameter as always.

  Dok could do this. He had lived down here for a long time, and without light, even—

  No! I can’t do this! I can’t be here I have to get above ground again but if I try the Fiends will kill me!

  Dok stopped, his head spinning.

  He couldn’t take much more of this torture, this helpless feeling of entrapment and suffocation. He had to get out of here. He needed—

  Anesthesia!

  Suddenly he understood how to help himself. The hypnosis techniques he’d used in his practice to distract patients from the pain of surgery or stitches could also free his mind from the encroaching darkness. His patients had escaped to fantasies of deluxe upper class accommodations, warm baths, scenes from old movies… But they hadn’t needed to function while they had escaped. How could he stay focused and still have the sensation that he wasn’t actually here?

  He took a deep breath and then focused on relaxing his torso, shoulders and neck as he exhaled. With another breath he relaxed them more, and also the back of his head. Subsequent breaths released his limbs, face, eyes, and jaw. Then it came to him:

  Be the Prophet.

  It was better to see this place through someone else’s experience rather than his own. The Prophet had always seemed perfectly content slithering around in the fungi.

  Be the Prophet.

  Dok’s anxiety began to drain away. It was replaced by a numbing sense of indifference as his mind settled into the Prophet’s persona. Dok was elsewhere; now it was the Prophet showing the Fiends around. The Prophet was exceedingly calm.

  “This way,” he said, his voice sounding to his own ears like the Prophet’s voice.

  He felt thirsty for sodje.

  “Here it is,” he said. Speaking as the Prophet, Dok put much less energy behind his words than he usually did. He rolled a slab of concrete away from the tunnel wall, revealing a hole just wide enough to squeeze through. He pointed to the hole, speaking to the Fiends. “On the other side, debris has been arranged to appear as if it blocks your way, but there is a pattern to it, with only one way to get through. When you enter, roll your shoulders to the left, and reach up to find a bar you can use to pull yourselves into the room. I’ll go first. Watch me and do what I do.”

  Dok dropped to his knees and worked his shoulders through the opening, then rolled his shoulder and grabbed the bar. He pulled himself up, keeping his body stiff, and then dropped into a crouching position. He shuffled out of the rubble, emerging from total darkness into gray gloom. With room enough to stand, he straightened his back—

  Someone huge pinned his arms behind him and slammed him to the ground, hard. Someone else hit the ground next to him: the first Fiend to have followed him through the hole.

  Wake up!

  Dok had no chance of responding effectively to this situation while convinced he was the helplessly passive Prophet. He felt himself, and his claustrophobia, return. He thrashed, but found himself immobilized by shockingly strong hands.

  “Enough!” It was Coiner’s voice. “I’ve got a bead on all four of you and I’m full-auto, hidden in all this shit.”

  “You don’t have a bead on all four of us,” a voice said, “or you would’ve taken the shot.”

  That voice. It couldn’t be. Dok said the name without realizing.

  “Lawrence?”

  Silence. Nobody moved. Finally, that same voice spoke again.

  “Dok?”

  “Don’t drink!” Dok said, as loudly as he thought he could without startling one of the seven people here who carried a machine gun. “Don’t drink the Juice. We can de-escalate and work something out, okay? Coiner, Lawrence, please, please help so we can all walk away from here.”

  Dok risked lifting his head and looking around. Lawrence helped him to his feet. Once almost as scrawny as any Subject, Lawrence was now huge and dressed identically to every other Unnamed, in a black stretchy suit with lapels and bulletproof computer-aided sunglasses.

  Coiner approached slowly. The Fiend next to Dok was allowed to rise to his feet. He went over to stand by the pile of rubble, where the last one to emerge from the tunnel was undoubtedly hidden by now.

  “You’re the last person I ever expected to see here, Lawrence,” Dok said.

  “It’s just Sett, now, Dok. There’s no Lawrence anymore.”

  “The Zone’s sealed off. How did you even get here?” He gestured at the giant black-suited body. “I know you didn’t enter this building through the tunnels.”

  “Don’t need to. My firm has just acquired the exclusive license to this district, SLiD 8, in the newly sealed Zone. I selected this particular section for old times’ sake, believe it or not. We’ll have a bar, a nightclub, and a casino. I might even put my picture on the chips. Only thirty other districts got a special license, in the whole city.”

  “You’re gonna be in charge of this whole district?” Coiner asked. “I think maybe we should talk business.”

  Offices of the Esteemed Medical Doctor Darius Williams

  The Unnamed known as Two drove through the last of the three checkpoints leading to the clinic. Her Esteemed Uncle Darius lived in the largest house here on this vast estate, but she would never be visiting him there again. Now that Ani Williams had given up her name to become Two, the second in command at the mercenary
firm that had formerly been Williams Gypsum, all family connections were null and void. She was only Unnamed, now.

  Her brother—or former brother, since they were both Unnamed now—had made this meeting necessary. Months ago he had used company funds to open a bar in the Special Licensed Entertainment Districts. Since then, he had completely abandoned all his other duties within the family business. Unfortunately, her father, or former father, was also implicated in Sett’s disaster. He’d approved the funding for this speculative bar project and had appeared to condone Sett’s irresponsible behavior from the outset.

  The black truck rolled quietly along the winding drive, away from the cluster of mansions and toward the clinic where she would meet her Esteemed former uncle. She believed the other two opulent houses might be used for important visitors from time to time. Servants, she knew, lived in three rows of long, low quarters that were hidden behind a dusty hill.

  The clinic loomed ahead, three stories of gray concrete harshly backlit by the blazing sun. Her Unnamed glasses recalibrated, adjusting their tint and filters to optimize her vision. Giving up the glasses for even a little while would be the worst part of having to be examined naked; she would temporarily lose the superpowers they provided.

  She approached a garage door at one side of the building and a signal came through her EI. “This facility is owned and operated by the Guild of Consolidated Physicians, in accordance with medical protocol,” it said. “The Guild of Consolidated Physicians warns that any misconduct or contraventions of etiquette will be dealt with strictly and immediately. The following tutorial will assist you if you are unfamiliar with proper decorum in medical settings. The—”

  “Skip tutorial,” Two said. She knew medical protocol well enough. Owning a corporation did have advantages. Defined by her family as “key personnel” at birth, she had always been entitled to visit her Esteemed Uncle personally once a year to receive direct monitoring and guidance. Though technically his patient had been Williams Gypsum, these regular encounters taught her precisely how to behave in the presence of ordained Esteemed Medical Doctors. She had touted her mastery of this etiquette on her college applications, in fact, to distinguish herself from the vast majority of Golds who had never seen an Esteemed Medical Doctor in the flesh.

  The garage door opened and Two guided the truck into a parking place. She had gotten used to her gigantic new body, but being back here where she’d once been small made her particularly conscious of her increased size as she made her way up into the building, to the proper floor, and through the preparation area. Finally, she found herself settling naked into the examination apparatus.

  Her Esteemed Uncle Doctor Darius—now Esteemed Medical Doctor Williams—was always late for appointments, but this time he made her wait for what was probably more than two hours. Her EI didn’t work in the exam room so it was difficult to tell time. Finally he entered and approached. She kept her eyes averted as he had taught her, cringing slightly as she remembered the painful lesson he’d given her on the topic when she was five. Failure to follow protocol in an exam room was tantamount to deceiving the corporation because it was here she presented herself to be evaluated for corporate fitness. He’d told her at the time that the mist was harmless but she’d had blisters on her eyelids the next day at school.

  Two held perfectly still as her Esteemed Uncle Doctor Darius ran his hands over her smooth, bare skin. “Hello, Two,” he said. “Why, specifically, are you asking for a no-confidence decision regarding your organizational structure and your Chairman, One, today?

  Chairman One. That was as much name as her father would ever have again, now that he, like she and Sett, had become Unnamed. She wasn’t supposed to think of them by family relationship anymore, just like with her Esteemed Uncle, but remnants of old habits sometimes hung on even after reconditioning.

  “I’m concerned, Esteemed,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady as his hands moved across more sensitive areas. It was odd to say “Esteemed” without adding “Uncle.” She had never spoken to any other Medical Doctor, and Darius had always been “Esteemed Uncle” before. “Our Chairman often appears to let personal feelings interfere with his professional judgment, Esteemed.”

  “You mentioned in your application for an appointment with me that you feel he is especially biased in favor of Sett.”

  “Yes, Esteemed. The rest of us are out serving many needs of multiple clients, but Sett has been allowed to run a bar in the Zone. The Organization gets little benefit from his time there, and now he’s associating with others from outside our corporate umbrella. I don’t mean customers, Esteemed. My own intelligence confirms he regularly meets with the Negro man known as the Zone Poisoner, and lately his inner circle seems to include several Fiends, Esteemed.”

  His manual examination of her body ceased abruptly. “He carouses with Fiends? At a public establishment owned by our organization?”

  “Yes, Esteemed. Not only socializes, but actually works with them, sometimes including them in operations. Apparently he knew them during the months he lived in the sewers, Esteemed. Chairman One allows him complete freedom in this.”

  “Well, I suppose we have to admit that it is often dirty and dangerous work the company does lately, and the Fiends might be quite useful for some of it,” The Esteemed Doctor said.

  “Yes, Esteemed,” Two said. “Of course, Sett and the Chairman got us into this line of work in the first place; one by behaving idiotically in a restaurant and the other by going to war with one of the most powerful private organizations in the world. It is clearly not my place to question business decisions made above my station, Esteemed, but it is worth noting that the situation in which we find ourselves, the necessity for dirty and dangerous work, results from those initial decisions. I do not believe Dr. Muun will find such reckless behavior to be of value in the merger, Esteemed. The health of this organization at the time of transfer will determine our ownership interest when the deal is finalized, and so I have come to you, Esteemed.”

  “But isn’t Sett’s bar producing valuable intelligence for us, Two?”

  “I was not given information about that, Esteemed. I would never presume to know more than the Organization’s Esteemed Medical Doctor.”

  “I see. And do you have a suggestion as to who might replace the current Chairman if I should deem him a threat to my patient?”

  “Oh, no, Esteemed. I would never presume to make judgments about the condition of our business or suitability of its personnel, unqualified as I am. Only an Esteemed Medical Doctor can make such a determination, as you know, Esteemed. Though if asked I would suggest finding one who has spent many years observing administration firsthand within the Organization, but also one who is not too old, so that there is room to grow into the job and develop as a true leader.”

  “Mm. Well, that sounds like Sett, doesn’t it?”

  Two paused, dumbfounded. Could her Esteemed Uncle really be suggesting giving the entire company to Sett, after what he’d done? “If…the Esteemed Medical Doctor is of the medical opinion that his patient corporation would be stronger with Sett making decisions, based upon his credentials and history, then it would not be for me to question that medical opinion, Esteemed.”

  “Very good, Two!” The Medical Doctor said, coming around in front of her. “But obviously you don’t mean Sett. Neither do I. I’ll consider what you’ve asked and get back to you.”

  “Thank you, Esteemed.”

  15

  Border Between Special Entertainment Districts 8 and 9, the Zone

  IAi547 surveyed the flat black three-story building on the other side of the electric fence. He could make out the meter-tall, grainy white letters at the top reading “CHALK BAR,” but little else. He zoomed in with his UE glasses to a telephoto view. The windows through which he might have observed what was going on inside had been smashed out decades ago, and the holes had been boarded up in the recent remodeling. His IR and UV scans showed bodies moving aro
und but supplied no useful information as to their identities or purpose. The only people outside were a few of its customers: CBD salarymen and salarywomen drunkenly milling around in the gravel street. Somewhere inside that place, running it, was 547’s objective: the Williams Unnamed team leader still called Sett, who had once been 547’s college friend known as Lawrence Williams the Seventh.

  A text message floated suddenly in front of 547’s face.

  IAh015: White test results back yet, 547?

  It was his teammate, whom they privately called “Ho-is” because his number seemed to spell it. He replied in text without taking his eyes from the target.

  IAi547: Won’t be announced until the merger.

  Another merger.

  The recent attack on Amelix, as well as rumors that the company was rebuilding in a new and aggressive direction, had fueled a new trend among corporations. It had suddenly become common knowledge that any company wishing to survive must have a world-class biotechnology component. While 547’s own beloved Organization was a huge enterprise that encompassed all kinds of tech, its biotech division was weak when compared to the specialty firms. Now it had announced a merger with the second largest biotech firm in the world: Andro-Heathcliffe. No company on Earth could compete directly with Amelix in biotech, but by combining A-H technology with the Organization’s strength in other sectors they might at least stand a chance.