The Atomic Sea: Part Four: The Twilight City

by Jack Conner

  Dog statues, ten feet high and fashioned of gleaming onyx, lined the streets at regular intervals, two or three standing before each building as if to guard it—or perhaps they had some other significance. General Carum explained that in the government district death was supposed to hover over everything, thus the locals reared Lagu’s effigy throughout the area.

  In the jaws of each one, impaled on the long sharp teeth, dangled a naked human corpse, male or female, almost as if Lagu had just snatched a meal off the street and fastidiously unclothed it before chewing. Candles and flowers had been laid on the ground beneath the corpses, as had jars that seemed to collect drops of blood. Flies buzzed about the smeared jars, though surely the various bloods had long-since coagulated. The candles lit the undersides of the corpses, making them seem to dance with eerie life, and they also illuminated signs that hung from the dogs’ jaws. As they were written in Lai hieroglyphics, Avery couldn’t read them.

  “That one says ‘Traitor’,” General Carum translated. “That one says ‘Saboteur’. That one says ‘Dung-spitter’, which means one who tells lies. They have many colorful names and titles here. This is the Lane of Honey-Scented Tulips, for example. That building, it’s the finance building, is the Hall of Echoes. I guess they mean the clinking of coins.”

  Avery’s gaze remained fixed on the corpses. One after the other ... after the other ... after the other ...

  “They were part of the resistance, I take it,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” General Carum said. “They’ve been quite the nuisance. Bombings, assassinations, treachery. It’s made worse by the fact that our small numbers force us to rely on Lai underlings for every need, and so many agents of the resistance are able to worm their way in.”

  “But why ... why put them in the dogs’ mouths?”

  “Sacrifices to Lagu. We revived the custom to make a point, to show what happens when Octung is defied. Also—” mischief played across her face “—to show how we embrace their culture.”

  Avery indicated the jars of blood. “What are those for?”

  “The families of the dead collect the blood, let it dry and make a powder out of it, then combine it with a certain toxin gathered from the local frogs, also made into a powder, and smoke it.”

  “They smoke their dead?”

  Carum made an airy gesture, one of dismissal. “So that they may live on. Given new life or somesuch in the veins of their relatives.”

  “Quaint,” Sheridan said.

  “I’ve told you, they are a backward people.” The general sounded weary of the subject. She brightened. “Ah! Here we are.”

  They had entered the Lotus Quarter, the area where the gentry lived. General Carum explained that though Laisha was technically a democracy and that there were no true nobles anymore, it was only the descendents of the nobles who could vote; the Lai embraced a caste system, and the nobles’ heirs occupied the highest caste, the Gi-ashin-aa, which literally meant Those That Ride, as years ago only nobles could afford a riding lizard or other mount. As well, only a direct descendent of the last true emperor—his family made a mini-caste all to themselves known as the Shining Flowers—could be president.

  “A tidy little system,” Carum concluded, “but now in complete disarray. Now I am the acting president, and the nobles that haven’t bent their knees to me are in hiding. The former president fed Lagu, of course. We fed him to the god alive, careful not to puncture any vital organs when he was impaled. He lasted for two days. I lost a good deal of money on that one. I didn’t think he would last the morning.”

  “But he surrendered,” Avery said. “Why punish him for it?”

  “He should have surrendered sooner.” Darkly, she added, “Vulat was unnecessary.”

  Avery saw, as the buildings gave way, that the vast majority of the nobles, or rather their descendents, lived on the shores of a great inland lake—fed, Carum said, by the springs the city had been built around. The lake was man-made, over the centuries turning the springs into a respectable body of water, smooth as glass, that brilliantly caught the last red hint of sunlight reflected off the clouds. The mansions of the wealthy lined the calm shores, stretching into infinity in either direction, save for the area on the farthest side, where the water plant perched out over the lake. It was uncommonly beautiful for a government building, with domes and minarets to rival the mansions.

  But not the Palace. Looming ahead, it was, appropriately, the grandest and tallest of all the manses, with blue minarets blocking out the first stars of the evening. Grand marble steps led up to the red-lacquered door inset into a gorgeous, intricately-worked stone façade, stained midnight blue, with innumerable curlicues and abstract designs, bas-reliefs of strange beings cavorting upon it, a creature that was half lion and half centipede, another that was a winged nymph with the face of a fish. The whole was a masterpiece that may have consumed entire generations of stonemasons’ lives. Avery was suitably impressed.

  Statues of Lagu (unoccupied, thankfully) and other gods lined the long driveway before the palace, and there were two vans already parked before the steps. The convoy slowed as the troopers in the vans unloaded a group of fearful-looking young women and boys. All were Lai, and they huddled together, staring around them at the grounds, the palace, and most often at the troopers. Some shook in fear. Some wept. A few looked to be barely adolescent, the boys even younger. One woman especially caught Avery’s attention; tall and slender, with a proud face and long black hair, she was shouting at the soldiers in Lai, but they just laughed. Likely they didn’t understand what she was saying. With the others, they shoved her toward a side-door that probably led to barracks. The vans departed, and the convoy moved forward.

  “Toys,” the general said in response to Avery’s questioning look, as the limousine braked to a halt before the marble steps. “The troops like to entertain themselves. They bring in new girls and boys every day.”

  “What happens to the old ones?”

  “They return to where the came from. Hopefully some of the girls are seeded and we can begin true change in this damned place, at least in the next generation, if it lasts that long.”

  “Don’t you object to your soldiers using people like this?”

  Strangely, the general didn’t seem offended. In fact, one corner of her mouth twisted up, and her eyes grew smoky.

  “Not at all,” she said. “As long as they give me first pick.”

  She exited the limousine, and Avery and Sheridan followed. Avery was immediately struck by the change in temperature, from cool to hot. He felt prickles all over his body as his pores opened up.

  General Carum, flanked by an escort of troops, mounted the marble stairs and passed through the grand, red-lacquered doors, and Avery and Sheridan made sure to stay close in her wake. Inside, mighty fans circulated the air, and Avery was impressed by the high rooms and ornate fixtures. It was all very exotic, with jade table-tops and smoke spiraling up from stalks of crimson incense, and a coterie of palace staff, all Lai, dressed in the eerie yet colorful salamander-hide robes, which had been worked to be nearly as light and loose as silk, waited in the main hall. Their heads were all shaven, even the women, and a tattoo of a great, amphibious eye marked the tops of their skulls. Avery could see this clearly, as they were all shorter and slighter than he was, though he was by no means tall.

  The Lai bowed to the general, and she tolerated them, then nodded to her Octunggen soldiers, who saluted sharply. She gestured for a dozen to come forward, then presented them with the Device and ordered them to place it in her suite under heavy guard. They stared at it in obvious awe but did not lose a step.

  One wizened Lai stepped forward and said, “Your Grace, there is a problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s the experiment—there was a mishap today—Doctor Lis said to inform you as soon as you arrived.”

  “Damn it!” General Carum started to bark something else, and the wizened Lai looked as though he expected to be str
uck, but instead she wheeled to Avery and Sheridan and said, “Come. I’ll show you something interesting.”

  After a quick word with her soldiers and staff, she set off at a brisk pace through the corridors, now flanked by two troopers, who must be her senior bodyguards. They were very alert, and Avery realized she did not even feel secure within the walls of her own palace.

  General Carum led the way down a flight of steps into an underground level and down a series of halls, then thick metal doors, into a large laboratory gleaming of metal and cluttered with instruments Avery didn’t recognize. He saw cultures behind containment areas and scientists working in environment suits. Sickly lab mice wheezed in cages.

  One scientist detached herself from the hive and, sweaty-faced, approached General Carum, who stood glowering and wrathful.

  “What is this mishap?” Carum snapped. “There had better not be another delay, Doctor Lis, or—”

  “No delay, ma’am,” the scientist said. She was Lai, Avery saw with some surprise, with dark eyes and hair, smooth skin and a darker complexion than his own. “Only a component ruptured today and ... I’m sorry. Doctor Xund was killed.”

  “Damn you, you Lai whore. You’ve killed another of my men!” In a snarling aside to Sheridan, Carum said, “Most of these so-called scientists are Lai. My Octunggen comprise only a third of those developing the gas, and—“ with a glare at the Lai woman, she added—“less all the time.”

  The woman, Doctor Lis, swallowed. “It was an accident, ma’am.”

  “So was the last one, and he was also one of mine.”

  Beads of sweat stood out on Lis’s scalp. “The work is dangerous, ma’am. This is an unknown contagion, only newly designed. We’re not even finished testing it on the mice! You can’t expect this to go—”

  “What I expect is for you to finish work as quickly as possible.” General Carum stared at her, as if considering, then said, a bit too quietly, “It’s almost time. Two more weeks are almost up.”

  Lis’s face paled. With a slight tremor, she said, “No. Please, ma’am. We’re ... making great progress!” In anguish, she said, “If we had more time ...”

  General Carum’s tongue clicked in her mouth. “Excuses won’t save your ... what is it this time? ... ah, eldest son. Olu, I believe his name is.”

  “We will finish, I swear it!”

  General Carum sniffed. “Promises won’t help him. Only progress. Now if there’s nothing else, get back to it.”

  Submissive, almost shaking, Lis resumed her work.

  Carum shook her head. “We have a deal, she and I. I execute one member of her family every two weeks until she finishes the gas. Fortunately she has a large family. They all do. Breed like rats, these swamp folk, which suits me fine. Makes it easier to control them; she’s not the only one I have on such a leash.” Then, as if remembering that her guests were ignorant, she said, “You heard me talk about wiping out the population. Well, I’ve actually put a great deal of thought into it. Thought and time and resources. I wanted a plague or device that could cleanse the country but leave the buildings intact—not dead flesh like the planar bomb, not scarred by acid like the acid plague, or baking with extradimensional radiation like the Deathlight.” She smiled smugly. “We’ve hit upon it at last. We’re only testing the final stage before mass production.”

  “How soon?” Sheridan said.

  “Days.”

  Avery swallowed. “But ... you don’t really plan to use it, do you?”

  General Carum’s smile set in her face like a shape cooked into cement. “Time will tell.”

  “I thought the Lai were a backward people. Incapable of such scientific prowess.”

  “Oh, they are backward, no doubt about it,” Carum said. “But they are, at the same time, quite ingenious, which makes their extreme backwardness all the more frustrating. Take, for example, their work here. What other people, save our own, could achieve so much so quickly?”

  “If Octunggen could develop this gas, then why haven’t they?” Avery dared asked.

  “We’re overseeing the project. The Lai do most of the ... grunt work. They’re well suited to it. Thousands of years spent in the Atomic Swamp have forced them to learn how to manipulate extradimensional phenomena like no other culture on the planet—even, I daresay, our own, and they have tools and systems of thought that no one else can rival. We might be more innately superior, but they have the expertise, and so we rely on them.” She paused. “Of course, their close association with the swamp has given us a tool to use against them. It’s a painful tool to implement, as it goes against much of what I’ve been taught, but—well, let’s just say we’ve found ways to use their mutations against them. It only affects the infected.”

  Avery fingered his striated face warily.

  “What about security?” Sheridan said.

  “Yes, it’s a constant problem. As you saw, I even doubt the scientists. It could well have been a deliberate act, the death of Doctor Xund. I keep as tight a rein on the project as I can, even going so far as to situate it here at the palace, right under my nose, and forcing all scientists to quarter here. Just the same, I worry continually that we’re vulnerable to sabotage.” She sighed and shook her head, putting it behind her. “Come, let’s get you two installed in a suite, the best we have—unless you would prefer separate chambers?” When Sheridan indicated no, Carum nodded. “I will have it seen to right away. While you wash and settle in, I’ll go and pick my, ah date for the evening—” her lips twisted “—then send for you, Colonel.”

  “I’m at your disposal, General.”

  “Good. I’m sorry to ask for your full report so soon, but those are my orders. Once it’s been dispatched to Lusterqal, we’ll have to wait for their reply, which may take hours or days. Till we hear what HQ’s new orders are, you have the run of the palace and the city. Just stay in Ayu. We might need you handy when the orders come in.”

  “Understood.”

  “Excellent.” General Carum clapped her hands. “Then let’s be about it. After you give your report, it should be about dinner time, and I have quite a feast in store for you.”

  * * *

  The General didn’t lie. It was a grand, sumptuous table her stewards had laid out in the royal dining hall, and fully a hundred Octunggen officers sat around it, all in their best uniforms, medals gleaming by the light of the countless candles dripping stalactites toward the ancient wood. Eyes glittered as their owners stabbed silver forks into the hot meat before them, teeth gnashed as they chewed at flesh, and throat muscles flexed vigorously as they swallowed. Avery stared around him with more nervousness and discomfort than he could ever remember experiencing, feeling like a deer surrounded by lions. No, worse—one of them.

  At his left, Sheridan ate with enthusiasm, carving at the grilled irritz that heaped upon her plate. Its raw white flesh jutted out of the broken shell as she snapped an armored, segmented limb, revealing the soft interior. The irritzi were the vaguely monkey-like crustaceans that lived in the trees of the swamp, the ones who reproduced with spores. These had been well processed, and Sheridan devoured hers with copious amounts of butter.

  Avery’s irritz remained largely untouched. It didn’t help that the Octunggen served it with their ever-present uthrang, the sour-smelling cabbage paste. Its stink clouded the table and checked his appetite whenever it presented itself, which wasn’t often. The Octunggen around him slathered their irritzi with it or dunked the meat outright, licking their lips with relish.

  “Better than lobster,” Sheridan commented, giving Avery a wink.

  The smell of cigar smoke was everywhere, as the officers of Octung enjoyed a good smoke with their meal instead of after, as was the custom in Ghenisa, and the cigars were excellent. Thanks to the General’s generosity, Avery lit one up and smoked as the meal progressed. He couldn’t abide cigarettes, not more than one every now and then, but he did love a good cigar. The tobacco was rich and heady, and its spices filled his mouth a
nd nose with a hint of cloves. Janx had warned him against Octunggen tobacco, but he found himself enjoying it.

  At one point General Carum stood up, a bit unsteadily, holding a bejeweled goblet carved of jadewood, a rare and valuable tree that only grew in areas of the swamp heavily infused with extradimensional energies, and said, “Gentlemen, ladies, I just realized a glaring omission I made.” She had given quite the long speech about the Device some glasses of wine ago. “I mentioned her, of course, but I did not give her the proper introduction she deserves. Let me correct that now. I am here to confirm that the rumors are true. Please welcome our honored guest, Colonel Jessryl Sheridan.” Whistles and clapping greeted this, and Sheridan bowed her head in acknowledgement. The General continued, “Perhaps I should say Admiral Sheridan, for though we give her the honorary rank of colonel she’s an admiral of the Ghenisan Navy. Yes, she is the very same Jessryl Sheridan that hounded the Black Bitch out of Ghenisa and into the arms of Lord Uthua, my own Patron. She’s one of our finest agents. This has always been a war decided by spies, and their feats have become legendary throughout Greater Octung, but it will be her triumphs that will be longest remembered.” She lifted her glass. “To Sheridan!”

  “To Sheridan!” they echoed, and all drank, except for Sheridan, who basked in the attention, smiling at everyone that tried to catch her gaze, and there were quite a few—and Avery. Oh, he drank, but he made no toast. The wine was not one he was accustomed to; made by Lai, it was not distilled from grapes but flowers, and the taste was thick, harsh and over-sweet. Nevertheless, it worked the same, and he didn’t shy from it.

  A round of congratulations and questions peppered Sheridan, and as she began interacting with her audience, Avery drank more and more. The lights around him began to swim. He wondered where Layanna and the others were. Did they still live? And what of Ani?

  “Is it true you were captain of the whaling vessel that found the Bitch?” someone asked Sheridan.