The Drowned Cities sb-2

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “It let me go,” he said. “I dunno why.”

  “Maybe it died too soon,” Mahlia suggested.

  “No. It let me go. And then it crawled over there and curled up. Could’ve done me, easy. Had plenty left to sink me and make sure I never came up.” He shrugged. “Didn’t do it.”

  The doctor was wading around the beast, staring. Even dead, the monster was imposing. Mahlia had known it before, but seeing the doctor standing next to the creature drove it home. The half-man had been huge. She thought of the three dead soldier boys and the wounded sergeant back at Doctor Mahfouz’s squat, and couldn’t help wondering what a monster like that could have done if it were healed and healthy.

  The doctor waded back to them, moving clumsily through the muck.

  “It’s not dead,” he said grimly.

  “What?”

  Mahlia found herself backing away, even though she was meters distant from the huge body.

  “The half-man is still breathing. These creatures are very difficult to kill entirely.”

  Mouse’s eyes had gone wide. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yes, I think that’s best.” The doctor climbed out of the swamp and wrung brackish water from his dripping trousers. “The soldiers will be searching for us. I’d like to be deeper in the swamps before they find this place.”

  Mouse didn’t wait for the doctor to finish. Already he was headed into the jungle, hopping over roots and wading across spongy mosses, moving deeper into the bogs. Soon he would be nothing but a shadow amongst the moss-draped trees and crumbled vine-covered walls of fallen buildings. And then he’d disappear entirely. He was good at that.

  The doctor clapped Mahlia on the shoulder. “Come. We should be on our way.”

  “Where to?”

  Doctor Mahfouz shrugged as they walked. “We’ll go deeper into the jungle. There are buildings everywhere. We’ll find a new place we can use until the soldiers leave. Eventually they’ll give up and we should be able to return.”

  Return? Mahlia stopped short. She looked back toward Banyan Town. Return? All she wanted to do was get away. “And then what do we do?” she asked.

  “We’ll rebuild.”

  Something on Mahlia’s face must have given her away because Doctor Mahfouz smiled. “It’s not so awful as that.”

  “But you know those soldiers will just come back. If it isn’t UPF, it’ll be Army of God, and if it isn’t them, it’ll be someone else. And then we’ll just have to run again.”

  “This war won’t last forever.”

  Mahlia couldn’t help staring at Mahfouz. “You serious?” But from his expression, she could tell that he was. He really thought things were going to get better, like he was living in some kind of dream. Like he couldn’t see what was going on all around.

  Mahfouz was like her mother had been, insisting that the soldier boys could be reasoned with, that they could be bribed with the art and antiques that she’d collected, and that they could be safe, even if the peacekeepers had left and the warlords were taking control again.

  As troops had swamped the city, she’d clutched Mahlia close and insisted that Mahlia’s father was coming back for them. And then when he didn’t, she’d insisted that they could always bribe passage on a scavenge ship, even though there wasn’t a single one left in the harbor.

  Reality was all around her, but she couldn’t see it. She just kept pretending.

  “Come on, maggot!”

  Mouse was perched on a low tree branch, looking back, a small shadow amongst the looming trees and tangling vines.

  “We should go, Mahlia.”

  The doctor stood waiting, expectant in that way adults acted when they thought they were in control. Mouse waved for her to get her ass moving, but Mahlia didn’t budge.

  Running.

  She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.

  She looked back at the dying half-man. Amongst the shadows of the banyan roots, the creature was nothing but a black hump blended with thicker shadows. Coywolv bait. Just another skeleton that someone would someday find and wonder what its story was.

  Mouse jogged back to them. Gave her arm a tug. “Come on, Mahlia. Them soldiers ain’t going to sleep after how you did them.”

  She didn’t move. “The half-man let you go?”

  “Yeah, so? Come on, will you? We don’t got much time.” He looked back at the inert monster. “I ain’t taking its teeth, if that’s what you’re thinking. No way, no how. Even if it was a hundred percent dead, I wouldn’t touch it.”

  “You couldn’t sell them, anyway,” she said. “It was a stupid idea.”

  Doctor Mahfouz also touched her shoulder. “If we move deep enough into the waters, the soldiers won’t follow. Their dogs won’t track, and we’ll be safe. We’ll wait them out, just as we always do. But we must go.”

  Safe?

  The word made Mahlia want to laugh. Running didn’t make her safe. It never had, and now she was realizing it never would. She’d been as stupid as her father, who had thought the peacekeepers could never be beaten, and her mother, who had thought that a soldier from a foreign country really loved her instead of all her valuable antiques, and Doctor Mahfouz, who thought that there was good in the world.

  “I promised I’d give the half-man medicine,” she said.

  “That’s only ’cause it was going to kill my ass,” Mouse said. “Now it ain’t. Let’s go, already.”

  But Mahlia was working through a new idea in her mind, feeling a different pulse of hope. A scheme that might serve her better than this constant running and hiding. “I said I’d help it. We made a bargain.”

  “That wasn’t a real bargain!”

  “It didn’t drown you, did it?”

  “So?”

  “Can we fix it?” she asked the doctor. “Is there a way to heal it up?”

  “The half-man?” Doctor Mahfouz looked surprised. “Don’t be rash, Mahlia. That thing is dangerous. You might as well bring a coywolv into your house.”

  “I already did,” she said. “Whole pack of them.” She turned and waded back into the swamp waters, heading for the monster.

  The spidery roots of the great banyan tree dangled down all around, brushing her face with feather kisses as she parted them and eased into the sheltered lair the half-man had chosen for its dying place.

  “This isn’t just stitching up some stray dog!” the doctor called. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Like you do?

  If it hadn’t been for her, they would have been trapped back in the doctor’s squat, waiting for Soa to cut their throats. Mahfouz was smart about doctor stuff, but he was stupid about the Drowned Cities. He couldn’t see the truth right in front of him.

  Mahlia didn’t need someone who talked peace; she needed something that made war.

  She scrambled up beside the mountainous creature. Hesitantly, she reached out and pressed her palm to its flesh. Flies rose, buzzing, then settled back. The monster’s hide burned under her hand. Sparse coarse hairs, boulder muscles, and blazing blood.

  The heat coming from the creature’s body was astounding, fevers raging through it, burning it up. Her hand rose and fell with the bellows of the monster’s lungs, a shallow rhythm. Faint movement, but it was there, even as the furnace of death raged within.

  Mahlia took out the pills that she’d stolen from the doctor’s squat and studied them, frowning.

  Which ones?

  CiroMax? ZhiGan? Eyurithrosan? Chinese characters she didn’t know, brand names she hadn’t used, for a patient she didn’t understand.

  She looked over at the doctor, seeking guidance, but he was shaking his head. “Those are the last medicines we have. Now that the house has burned, we don’t have anything el
se. Come away, Mahlia. The soldiers can’t miss this place forever. And when they find us, they will make us pay for everything you did to them. We cannot bargain with them now. They won’t care anymore that we know something of medicine.”

  “If you want to go, you can,” Mahlia said. “Just show me how to do the meds.”

  “It isn’t just a few pills! It needs surgery,” the doctor said. “It has almost no chance of surviving.”

  “But they’re tough, right? These half-men, they build them tough.”

  “They build them for killing.”

  Exactly.

  Mahfouz seemed to read her mind. “This isn’t some fairy tale where beauty tames the beast, Mahlia. Even if you save it, it will not do your bidding. Half-men have one master only. You might as well try to tame a wild panther. It is nothing but a killer.”

  “It didn’t kill Mouse.”

  Doctor Mahfouz threw up his hands. “And tomorrow perhaps it will rip him limb from limb! You can’t know its mind, and you can’t control it. This creature is nothing but war incarnate. If you traffic with it, you bring war into your house, and violence down upon yourself.”

  “Violence?” Mahlia held up the stump of her hand. “Like this, you mean?” She glared at the doctor. “You ever think maybe if we had guns and a monster like this, those soldier boys would think twice about coming after us? You ever think that if we had this thing on our side, we could get away from here for good?”

  Mahfouz was shaking his head. “That creature brought the soldiers down on us in the first place. If you seek its company, you will shower all of us in blood. Please, Mahlia, we’ve already lost our home because of it. Is this how you want to lose your life?”

  Was that what she was doing?

  Mahfouz pressed on her uncertainty. “Violence begets violence, Mahlia.”

  Mahlia stared at the wounded monster—the teeth marks, the blood, the stinking rot of its wounds. The carrion scent of its breath. Was she crazy? Maybe the half-man was just like coywolv. Always vicious, even if you raised it from a pup.

  But what if it was something else? It hadn’t killed Mouse, even when it could have. A soldier boy would have done him in a second, but the half-man had let him go. That had to count for something.

  Mahlia set her ear to the creature, listening for the slow thud of its heart. It took almost a minute before she heard it. Huge and thick. Heavy. The heart must have been as big as her head. Crazy big. Crazy dangerous.

  She thought of Soa, looming over her: coywolv eyes in the body of a young man. Thought of the lieutenant and his casual way of cutting off her air when Mahfouz didn’t jump fast enough. All kinds of deadly there, and she hadn’t been able to do anything.

  The half-man’s heart thudded again under her ear.

  Crazy big.

  She began inspecting the wounds. What are you like when you’re healthy? How much fight you got in you?

  The doctor seemed to finally understand that she wasn’t listening. He waded toward her, pushing through the dangling banyan roots.

  “Reconsider, Mahlia. This is not the path you want to follow. You’re distraught from everything that’s happened.” He scrambled up onto the bank. “You need to think clearly.”

  Something about the doctor’s approach warned her. Mahfouz was coming too fast, or maybe there was something of the predator about him. Mahlia couldn’t say afterward what warned her, but she yanked her knife out just as the doctor made a lunge for the meds.

  She slashed the air between them. He sprang away with a gasp. Mahlia crabbed backward, putting herself up against the dying half-man. She cradled the meds to her chest with the stump of her right hand, keeping her knife raised between her and the doctor.

  “Step back, or I swear I’ll cut you.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened at the gleaming blade. Horror twisted his expression.

  “Mahlia…”

  She felt sick in her guts, like dirt, like a worm. She could hear her father sneering at her—Drowned Cities, through and through—but she didn’t back down. “Don’t,” she warned.

  Mouse was staring. “Damn, Mahlia. And I always thought I was the crazy one.”

  Mahlia wanted to say she was sorry, to apologize, to make it right, but the knife was already between them, and the doctor was looking at her like she was some kind of soldier boy, a monster without morals.

  With a sick feeling, she realized that even if she put the knife down and apologized, there wasn’t any going back. She and Doctor Mahfouz stood on two sides now. Pulling the knife had changed everything.

  The doctor eased off. “All right,” he said soothingly. “All right. Let’s not be hasty.”

  He slowly sat, hands held open and defensive. He looked old suddenly. Old and tired and broken and worn out. Mahlia felt ill. This was how she repaid the man who saved her. No one else had lifted a finger for the peacekeeper castoff, but Mahfouz had stood tall for her. She wanted to cry, but her voice didn’t crack.

  “You might as well tell me how to do it right. I’m giving it the meds no matter what.”

  “Those medicines aren’t yours to give, Mahlia. There are people who will need those. Good, innocent people. You can still do right by them,” the doctor pleaded. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Mahlia rattled the pills in their fancy blister packs. “How many I got to give?”

  Mahfouz’s voice hardened. “If you do this, you are no longer my charge. I cared for you as best I could, but this is too much.”

  Mahlia felt as if she’d stepped out the window of a Drowned Cities tower, and was plummeting toward the canals. Freefall. Nothing to catch her. Just a hard hit, rushing up.

  Part of her wanted to take everything back, to apologize for the knife, for the meds, for everything, as the bond of trust that she’d relied on for so long unraveled.

  You in or you out?

  Mahlia looked from the dying half-man to the doctor. Was she wrong? Was she stupid? Fates, it was impossible to tell.

  But then she looked again at the doctor’s disappointed expression and she realized it didn’t matter. She’d already chosen, as soon as she’d raised the knife. Old Mahfouz had never hurt anything, and she’d put a knife between them. It was already done. There was no going back. It was like her father said, she was Drowned Cities, through and through. Whatever trust she’d had between her and the doctor was cut now. Cut wide and deep.

  “How many pills?”

  Doctor Mahfouz looked away. “Four. To start. You’ll need four. For that thing’s body weight, you’ll need four of the blue-and-white ones.”

  Mahlia fumbled for the meds and started prying pills out. She’d have to grind them, feed them in water to make the thing swallow in its unconscious state. She wondered if she was in time. Wondered if it would all be a waste.

  “Four, you say?”

  The doctor nodded, disappointment dragging on his expression. “And then more daily, until they are all gone. Every one of them.”

  You in? she wondered. You really in?

  Yeah. She was in, all right. All in, whether she liked it or not.

  15

  OCHO LEANED AGAINST a sooty wall below the doctor’s squat, gingerly probing the wounds that he’d resewn himself. The half-man had ripped his ribs up good, but he was coming back together. The new stitches were messy and brutal, but they’d hold. No way these ones would rip out. They hurt, but they were nothing in comparison to the burn of his back.

  Twenty lashes from the cane, for screwing up. Sayle stalking up and down in front of the silent soldier boys, saying, “No one fails, ever! No excuses! I don’t care if you’re stoned or drunk or you got your legs blown off or you think you’re the Colonel himself; you keep on soldiering!” And then he’d laid into Ocho.

  Van came over and squatted down. “How’s your stitches, Sergeant?”

  “Better than my back.”

  Van smiled slightly at that. He was a skinny little war maggot, missing his ears and his two front teeth
. From what Ocho could remember of the firefight with the coywolv, Van had been steady. Steady enough that maybe he deserved his full bars. Ocho decided he was going to make the boy a private. Give him a chance to really prove himself.

  “You took it good,” Van said.

  “I been hit worse.”

  “Everyone knows it wasn’t your fault. When we found you, you couldn’t even talk.”

  Ocho snorted. “Don’t sweat it, war maggot. LT was right. We got to keep discipline. We don’t got discipline, we got nothing. Don’t matter who you are. No one gets a free pass.”

  “Yeah, well, you were so stoned you were drooling.” Van hesitated, then said, “LT wants you up top.”

  “He say why?”

  Van avoided his gaze. “No.”

  Ocho gazed up at the torched building. On its top floor, Sayle had ordered an observation platform built. The concrete and iron was all sooty and scorched and the old doctor’s squat was completely burned away, but Sayle still wanted to stand on top of it.

  Ocho’s instinct had been to pull out of the whole damn building after what the coywolv had done to them, but Sayle had given him a cold look and said if they showed they were afraid, then all these civvies in town would start playing them like that castoff girl had done.

  Just because Ocho had coddled himself up with a castoff didn’t mean they were going to start sending that kind of message.

  So they’d rounded up a bunch of townspeople and put them to work. The maggots had worked damn fast with a gun on their kids.

  Now Sayle spent all his time sitting cross-legged on top of the tower, looking out at the jungle, and taking reports from their recon teams as they quartered the jungle, bit by bit, trying to turn up evidence of the dog-face, the doctor, and the castoff who’d done them.

  “You need help getting up?” Van asked.

  “No.” It was a test. LT liked to test. Make sure troops were loyal. Make sure they had semper fi. No way was Ocho going to cry about climbing a ladder, no matter how much it hurt. He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt. “I’ll do it myself.”

  He slowly climbed up the series of ladders to the building’s pinnacle, feeling his stitches tugging, feeling the burn of his back. He hoped he wasn’t doing some kind of new damage, but it didn’t really matter. The only way to survive was to show the LT that he was still loyal, and that he’d do anything for the man. Especially after the caning.