by Jack Conner
Avery smiled despite himself when the boats entered a wide harbor filled with boats and activity. It had been too long since he’d seen people, or at least a robust population. The Lai originally hailed from vast deserts to the south, with great cities grouped around far-flung oases, with hundreds of miles of desolation between each one, little islands of civilization in the wastes. They had settled Laisha similarly, with far-flung cities grouped around fresh-water springs, separated by enormous swaths of the thick and tangled (and Atomicly tainted) swamps. After Avery and Sheridan had arrived at Huykun, the captain there had commanded his most distinguished (and only) major to escort Sheridan and Avery to the capital city of Ayu, taking all available boats and men with them.
“Behold, Ayu,” said the Major now, as the fans died and the boats drifted toward the teeming docks. The soldiers shoved the vessels along with poles, passing numerous other craft on the water as they went. Some of the natives, whether fishing or checking traps, stared daggers at the Octunggen, some showed fear and distanced themselves from the troopers or made superstitious gestures of protection, but none showed happiness.
Many airships bobbed through the skies over the city, brightly colored dirigibles of red and purple and blue, trailing long pennants that fluttered in the wind. There are so many. Avery had never seen such a large number of airships before, not that appeared civilian.
It’s almost time, he realized. The Device would be handed over momentarily to Octunggen bureaucracy. No, he thought. Something will happen. Something—
As soon as the boats pulled in to dock, he realized that a reception party had gathered, and quite a large party it was. Hundreds of Octunggen soldiers in their best uniforms, which must be stifling in this heat and humidity, lined up on the shore, and somewhere a band played something victorious and martial. Ropes were thrown and the boats tied off, and soldiers helped Sheridan and Avery out. The boards of the docks creaked dangerously underfoot, and he realized they were half rotten. Not surprising, given this heat and moisture. They must have to be replaced often.
Now that the wind of the boats’ movement had died, the heat of the day fell completely on him once again, and he broke out in a fierce sweat.
Soldiers escorted them forward, and the ranks of troops unfolded like flower petals to reveal a uniformed woman with the insignia of general. She was of an age with Sheridan and similar in her stiff-backed discipline, but the general was robust and big-boned, with prominent cheekbones and chin, a big square forehead, and her red hair had been shorn to a buzz, which showed, under her peaked cap, the many scars that criss-crossed her scalp.
“Colonel Jessryl Sheridan?” she said.
“At your service, General,” Sheridan said.
“Colonel?” Avery muttered, but was ignored.
The general stomped her boot heel, and at the signal so did all the other soldiers present, a resounding thunder on the half-rotten wood that Avery feared might send them all into the water. Sweat stuck his shirt and pants to him all along his body. He would have given anything for a glass of iced water. The monkey Hildebrand hooted mournfully from his shoulder.
“I’m General Sarja Carum,” the woman said, “and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“We didn’t expect such a fine welcome, General,” Sheridan said graciously, waving a mosquito away from her face.
“You provided your identification code to Huykun, and they sent it ahead. We ran it through Central Authority and the results came in immediately.”
“Oh?” Sheridan said. Avery knew her well enough to sense her hesitation. Doubtless she feared being placed under house arrest again or in some form of custody.
“All restrictions have been lifted from you,” the general said, as if to get this out of the way, “and your old authority has been temporarily reinstated. As such, you are now the second-highest ranking person here—under myself, of course—with full authority to requisition personnel or equipment as you deem fit.”
“Excellent,” Sheridan said, and Avery could hear her relief.
The general’s gaze moved to the Device strapped to Sheridan’s back. In a lower voice, she said, “I was told what you carry, or what it was hoped you carry. Is that it?”
“It is.”
“May I ... may I see it?”
Here it comes, Avery thought, cringing as if to avoid a blow.
“You can do more than see it,” Sheridan said. “I will hand it over to you, on the condition that you hand it over to the Collossum immediately.”
“Consider it done.”
“Then let us do this right.”
Sheridan unslung the Device from her back, dropped to her knees and with a quick flourish unfastened the buckles. Avery felt like he was about to throw up. She was really going to do it. Somehow he had allowed himself to believe this moment would never happen. But here it was, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Sheridan popped open the lid of the trunk and in the same motion held the trunk aloft, like some ancient knight presenting her sword to her king. Immediately the silver radiance of the sphere bathed General Carum’s face, and her eyes gleamed greedily as she stared into it. Her face became a rigid mask of triumph.
In a whisper, she said, “You have done well.”
“I, Jessryl Sheridan, present you, General Sarjum Carum of the Army of Octung, with the so-called Device,” Sheridan said in her most formal voice. Her arms had not yet begun to shake from holding the trunk up, but it could not be far off, as the trunk was quite heavy; still, Avery wouldn’t have been able to tell this from her voice, which was calm and confident.
“And I accept,” General Carum said.
Almost delicately, she reached up, closed and buckled the lid, then removed the trunk from Sheridan’s grip. She stared down at the sealed trunk for a moment, took a deep breath, and turned to hand it to two waiting subordinates. They did not strap it to one of their backs but held it like a sacred object between them.
“You may rise,” General Carum told Sheridan.
Sheridan rose. A sort of peace had settled over her face. Avery wanted to hurl himself into the water.
* * *
As if seeming to remember something, the general hiked her head in Avery’s direction. “And him?” she said. “The preliminary report you sent ahead indicated that he was some sort of informant.” The general gave Avery a once-over. It evidently didn’t encourage a second-over. “Is he?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Sheridan said. “But yes. He is to be considered ...” She turned her head to regard Avery, and he felt a chill despite the heat that withered everything else around him. She took a deep breath and finished, “... friendly. For now.”
The general raised her eyebrows, but she nodded once sharply and the music, which had halted during their exchange, started up again.
“Come with me,” General Carum said. “I will take you both to the Palace.”
She spun about, her troops immediately doing likewise, as if this were some well-choreographed dance move, and began marching up the docks toward a line of waiting cars, exhaust pipes purring. Avery and Sheridan had little choice but to fall into step with them.
“About what you said—what exactly is my status?” Avery asked Sheridan out of the side of his mouth.
She smiled, but there was more grimace than humor about it. “I don’t know, Doctor. What is it? Are you friendly?”
“You know good and well what I am.”
“Do I?”
“You should.”
“All I know, Francis, is that you would do just about anything to get your daughter back.”
“Not anything.”
“Your problem is that you’ve been trying to have it both ways. You wanted to leave the door open to bargain with me for Ani, but you wouldn’t say yes to my conditions, so you’re stuck in the worst of both worlds. It cost everyone of the Black Sect their lives and delivered the Device into Octunggen hands, and you still don’t have your dau
ghter.”
As awful as it was, she was right. It was nothing he hadn’t been telling himself for days, though.
“What will you say to the others?”
“Leave that to me,” she said.
He said nothing, only looked down at his feet.
“Gratitude!” she exclaimed. “At last.” She smiled again, and it was a real smile this time, or seemed to be. It was hard to be sure with her.
“I don’t understand you,” he muttered.
The city waited ahead, and what a beautiful city it was. Even by the light of the sunset, which painted everything in red gold, Avery was still able to make out the brilliantly colored minarets rising like blossoms from the stately tangle of domes and palaces, some tinted ruby, some magenta, some the color of beaten brass, or many hues at once. Long rippling flags like ribbons streamed from the highest reaches, fluttering with the grace of bird wings in the light breeze that must waft through the upper parts of the city. Blue-tiled terracotta roofs gleamed in endless array, perched in the pagoda style of the Lai over stucco or brick buildings. The color blue ensconced the city, a deep twilight shade, and it shone from doorways and rooftops, from arches and bridges.
“The Twilight City,” General Carum said, making an elaborate gesture with her arms, as if bequeathing the city to Sheridan. “And here it is just entering twilight, the perfect time to appreciate it. Come! Let’s go to the Palace.”
She ushered them to her limousine in the line of waiting automobiles, all of which must have been painfully flown in from Octung, as they were the long, wide and elaborately-crafted autos of the Lightning Crown, not the smaller, less ornate but more nimble autos of the locals; Avery could see them in the distance darting through the avenues of the city in great numbers, so thick they almost choked the avenues. By the city’s sprawl and density, he judged that many millions must live here.
He and Sheridan climbed in the back of the general’s handsome limousine and the driver started it up as soldiers leapt onto the running boards, the vehicle rocking subtly from side to side under their weight. The interior smelled of cigar smoke and polished leather. Mercifully, it was air-conditioned. Avery had rarely been in a vehicle with functioning air-conditioning.
“Go,” General Carum barked at the driver. She sat across from Avery and Sheridan, facing forward, a confident look on her bold-featured face, which, Avery now saw, was so tanned and leathery it could be used for the seats they sat in. She projected no trace of the feminine, and Avery could not help but wonder if she preferred women to men. He had often found the idea alluring, but somehow not with her.
The Device rested on the seat next to her, and her left hand constantly caressed the trunk it resided in.
Escorted by motorcycle-mounted troops which cleared the way before it, the convoy departed the docks and rumbled through the city, leaving the processing plants and warehouses of the port and entering a bustling business district, alive with teems of Lai still about their daily activities despite the late hour. About half were infected, which made sense with all the Atomic pollution that filled the swamps; somehow, though, in this exotic setting the mutations looked natural. Many wore loosely-fitting clothes of cotton or silk, brightly colored, but some wore garments of beautifully-worked leather of a type Avery had never seen. When he asked about it, the general told him the clothes were made of salamander hide, which explained their fantastic colors and mottling patterns. Strange gargoyles stared out at them from the sides of buildings, usually jutting from the second story, but they were much different than the gargoyles Avery was accustomed to in Ghenisa and he had to assume their likenesses had been imported from Lai mythology—a snake with a woman’s head, a demon-faced monkey, a grinning crocodile with ten arms on each side. There were gargoyles inspired by more recent myths, too: fish-faced monsters with gaping mouths, three-eyed toads, a long, serpentine dragon more salamander than reptile.
Above, the many colorful airships bobbed through the air, and as the light began to bleach from the sky lights sprang from their gondolas. The lights may have been alchemical, as they were of many different colors, red and green and purple and more.
When Avery inquired about the airships, General Carum said, “Yes, the Lai upper-class loves the skies, and each fashionable family owns a dirigible or three, some dozens. The best restaurants, taverns and even gardens are located in the air.”
“Gardens?”
“Oh, yes, they love their gardens. See that shape in the sky, the big square? That’s a garden supported by three zeppelins. Only the wealthy may stroll through it, of course, and only then those that are friends of the owners.”
“Amazing.”
When the mounted troops entered an area ahead of the convoy, the locals withdrew from the main road or moved to the sidewalks, falling to their knees in deference to General Carum, the new acting head of the empire. Avery did not miss the glares many shot at the limousine as it passed them.
“Do they customarily work so late?” Avery asked, deciding not to comment on the obvious dissatisfaction.
General Carum waved a hand dismissively. “They take a long break after lunch. They nap and wallow in idleness before finally clearing their heads and starting up again. Don’t let their apparent industriousness fool you.”
“I won’t,” Avery assured her.
“They’re idle, indolent bastards,” she went on, warming to the subject, “softened by generations of living in this godsdamned heat and damp.” She sneered. “It’s a cauldron of disease, sloth and superstition. I can’t tell you how much I hate this place, how much I detest these backward, wayward people.”
She pointed to a certain building, which glowed from windows that took on spiraling shapes; the windows themselves were impressive. Two large statues of a canine-like creature—they were both alike—flanked the marble steps leading up toward the huge doors. Avery at first took the statues to be more gargoyles, but General Carum corrected him:
“Dogs! They worship dogs! Well, one dog, a great dog-god called Lagu. They have more gods than I have scars, but that’s one of the chief ones. He’s supposed to devour your soul after you die if you were wicked.”
“Then why worship him?” Avery asked.
“Oh, they don’t worship him,” the general said, half smiling, but not in humor. “That would be too easy. They bribe him.” She laughed, a harsh short sound. “Like everything else in this backward country, even their gods run on bribery. They used to sacrifice people, but now they sacrifice goats and chickens and crustaceans, then stuff the corpses down the throat of the huge dog statue inside the temple—by the Revered, it stinks!—hoping the gift will make Lagu close his mouth to them when they die, and they can pass on into the afterlife. Some bring money. As if Lagu, Collossum forgive me for even saying his name, would need money!” She let out a long, frustrated breath. “The whole country’s so corrupt it’s worked its way into the very religion.
“We’ve executed so many bureaucrats for accepting bribes we’re running out of people to take their place. To be honest, we’ve about given up. Let them be corrupt! What do we care? As long as they give us our tribute, it shouldn’t matter. But wringing money out of them is next to impossible, and many refuse even to worship the Collossum.”
“But ... I thought ... Isn’t that why you conquered them in the first place? Don’t you make them worship the Collossum?”
The general regarded him coolly. “To spread the glory of the Great Ones and Their will is, of course, the central purpose of the war.” She raised her right hand, and Avery saw that the fingers there had fused together, creating a rudimentary flipper. “I’ve accepted the Sacrament and am a good little follower of the Path. But don’t mistake me for a fool. Some might fight for gods. I fight for Octung. To spread her glory. I’ve tried to bring her civilization to these backward idiots, but they’re proving a challenge. And because of the nature of this godsforsaken place, bringing in more troops is cost-prohibitive. They can’t plow through the s
wamps, not without vast expenditures of cash and lives, and flying them in would be even more expensive, so we can’t force the Lai to do certain things, like accept the Collossum—though we’re trying. Our greatest threat to use against them is the specter of another Vulat. But how many cities can we destroy?” She shook her head. “What it all boils down to is our rule here is tenuous ... and quite possibly transitory.”
“What do you mean?” Sheridan said.
General Carum glared out over the city. “I mean that if we can’t rule this place effectively, we might have to be the ones to abandon it. But failure is not something I take lightly, Colonel, and I’ll make sure it’s the Lai that bear the cost of that, not I.”
Avery swallowed. “How so?”
She smiled grimly, and he sensed an awful fascination in her voice as she said, “I’ll destroy them.”
* * *
The convoy entered the government district. Stately buildings stood mounted on pyramidal foundations, and each grand door blazed with a red lacquer that nicely offset the twilight blue of the rest of the façade, façades which basked in the twilight, almost seeming to glow, revealing various subtle shades of blue that the eye drank in like spiced wine; Avery saw why they called it the Twilight City. With the downing of the sun, the gaslights sprang to life and illuminated the walls of the buildings, which seemed to ripple so cunningly were the various hues blended together. Moths beat against the lamps in droves. This being the Atomic Swamp, many had too many legs, too many antennae.