“A little,” said Largo. “I used to as a boy.”
“Don’t worry about it. Odds are we’ll be blown to hell if things go shit-shaped.”
“Does that mean we’ll be going through the minefield?”
Pallenberg said, “We’re already in it, so keep your mouth shut and don’t bother anyone. You might as well come forward. It’s closer to the hatch if we get a chance to swim for it.”
It was quiet in the control room. Steinmetz was bent over a table covered in charts. He shouted changes in the U-boat’s movement and depth to the crew. Largo looked over the Kapitän’s shoulder.
“You’ve mapped the whole field,” he said.
For a moment Steinmetz looked angry at Largo for breaking his concentration. A few seconds later he calmed down. He said, “This is from the war. We have to hope it’s still correct and that none of the mines have come loose and drifted into a new position.”
The boat shook violently and a metallic shriek scraped all the way down the side to the aft section.
“Don’t worry,” said Steinmetz. “We just kissed a dead ship. If that had been a mine we’d be talking with the devil by now.”
How funny it would be to die here and now, Largo thought. All my troubles would be over. Of course, Remy would still be in danger. And people would never guess where I’d bought it. They’d all think I’d run away. Still, there’s something entertaining about the idea.
Steinmetz barked another course correction and checked his watch, quietly counting down the seconds. After a minute he said, “Check your arses, gentlemen. I think you’ll find them still firmly in place.”
Largo expected a cheer or even laughter, but all he heard were sighs and men who’d been holding their breath finally exhaling. “We’re through?” he said.
Steinmetz changed charts. “We’re through.”
“How long until we dock?”
“Another hour, maybe. We have to go upriver and hope no other bastard has sunk and blocked the way. Why don’t you go back to your cabin and let us do our jobs? I’ll call you when we’ve reached port.”
Largo went to his cabin and locked himself inside. He checked over everything he’d brought with him. Money. His knife. Rainer’s gun. Morphia. He wished he’d thought to bring a flashlight. High Proszawa was probably going to be on the dim side and he didn’t want to stumble around blind. He hoped the storm had passed. That would give the moon a chance to come out. But moon or not, flashlight or not, he was almost there. Almost to Remy. Despite the pain in his leg and the fear that was always at the back of his thoughts, he hadn’t felt so excited in days.
After a little more than an hour, someone knocked on his door. Steinmetz came in and tapped the clock bolted on the wall of the cabin. “We’re here. You have eighteen hours to do whatever the hell you want. If you’re not back on time, friend of Rainer’s or not, we’ll leave you. Understand?”
“I understand,” said Largo. “The thing is, I don’t have a watch.”
Steinmetz said, “Rainer said you might not.” He pulled a fistful of watches from his pocket and dropped them on the bunk. “Take your pick.”
Largo went through the pile, not sure what he was looking for. He said, “Are all these from dead men?”
Steinmetz leaned against the cabin door. “They’re not all men’s, and yes.”
Largo selected a watch and put it on. He followed Steinmetz forward and climbed out of the U-boat after him.
Every bit of his hope died.
Largo had known in the abstract that High Proszawa would be a ruin, but seeing it with his own eyes, one word came to mind: wasteland. The U-boat was docked at a ramshackle pier in a river cove, hidden from the patrols in the bay. The fresh air was a shock to his system after the stink of the submarine. It was also cold, with a chill wind blowing in from the bay. Even in his heavy coat, Largo shivered. He could hear voices and the sound of machinery, but he could see very little in the pitch dark—just vague hints of human and mechanical outlines. Then the moon emerged from behind a cloud and High Proszawa briefly came into focus. Beyond the wharf area lay a barren expanse of mud and incinerated buildings that jutted from a frozen earth at mad angles. When the wind changed and blew from inland, it brought the scent of wet earth, but also that of a vast rot, like the offal bins in the butchers’ quarter.
Below them on the wharf, Steinmetz’s men fanned out in all directions, each of them wearing a rubber protective suit. Steinmetz waited on the deck. “A pretty sight, isn’t it?” he said.
Largo pulled his coat tighter around him. “It isn’t at all how I imagined it.”
“What did you think it would be?”
“I don’t know. Bombs hit some buildings near where I live. I thought it might be like that.”
“Windows broken? Doors blown out, but still a city?”
“Yes,” Largo said.
“Welcome to the war, my friend. The boot that grinds everything to dust.”
Largo tried to imagine Rainer marching through the freezing filth with most of his face blown off. The image made Largo feel nauseated.
A cloud bank slid back in front of the moon. “Now I can’t see anything. I should have brought a flashlight.”
“They’re not allowed,” said Steinmetz. “Offshore patrols can spot them.”
“Then how do you get around?”
He put on goggles and handed Largo a pair. “Try these.”
Largo was blinded for a few seconds by a strange yellow light. When his vision adjusted, he could see the bustling wharf and the waste beyond lit like evening in an eerie amber glow. “What are these?” he said.
“There’s wee tiny chimeras inside,” said Steinmetz. “They transform darkness into light, just as long as their food lasts.”
“How long is that?”
“Guess.”
“Eighteen hours?”
Steinmetz said, “If you miss the pickup, you won’t just be stuck here. You’ll be blind too.”
Largo shivered in the cold, imagining what it would be like to hunker down in the ruins of High Proszawa until he could buy his way onto another boat. “I won’t be late.”
“Good. Take this,” Steinmetz said. He handed Largo a collapsible telescope and a sheet of paper. “The spyglass might help. It used to belong to Rainer. You can take it back to him.”
“I will,” said Largo. Then, “Where do they dig up things to sell in Lower Proszawa? Things like you’d find in the Midden.”
Steinmetz said, “There are different crews looking for different things. That paper is a rough map of the crews I know about. Mind you, I’ve never been out into deep plague country, but I’m told the map is generally accurate.”
“Just generally accurate?”
“It’s what I have. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take anything right now.”
Steinmetz unfolded the map and pointed northeast of the wharf. “You want to start with the curio hunters? Follow the road on the right. They’re two or three hills beyond. Maybe four.”
Largo looked at the map. He could read it easily in the light from the strange goggles. He started to thank Steinmetz, but the smuggler had already pulled on his hood and joined his men below. Largo folded the map carefully and put it in an inside pocket of his coat. Then he started up the road on the right.
Chapter Eighteen
IT WASN’T THREE HILLS TO THE CURIO HUNTERS. AND IT WASN’T FOUR. After six hills and more than an hour of walking he wondered if he was already lost. After the seventh hill, he was sure of it. From time to time, the mud gave way to the cracked surface of a ruined boulevard. Hollow, broken buildings and skeletal trees loomed like screaming faces on either side of the road. Most of the time, though, he was surrounded by indefinable shapes sunk in the dirty ooze or blasted into so many pieces they were unrecognizable.
The endless wet and muck was a surprise. Largo was still wearing his city shoes. They quickly filled with freezing mud, weighing him down and making each
step a chore. His right leg began to ache again.
It was over the eighth hill that he finally saw movement in the distance. Excited, Largo ran to a low cut beside a collapsed cathedral and knelt down behind what looked like the top of a juggernaut. He watched the distant scene for several minutes using Rainer’s telescope.
Approximately twenty people in protective suits dug in the mud at the base of what looked like the ruins of an elegant high-rise, similar to the ones in Empyrean. Nearby were immense piles of furniture. Heaps of sofas, jumbles of bed frames, chairs, and ebony tables. On the sides were smaller masses of clocks, vases, clothing, and jewelry. Paintings were stacked next to a museum’s worth of marble statues.
A thought came to Largo abruptly: Remy wasn’t the only one missing. Lucie had disappeared too. What if he found both of them? What would Steinmetz say? He hoped he had enough money left.
The curio crew worked steadily, and it looked to him as if they were doing it with nothing more than shovels. He thought there was something strangely admirable about that. The sheer force of will it must take to work by hand in these conditions. It’s amazing.
Several large doglike chimeras—as big as Baron Hellswarth’s Kara—sniffed around the edges of the camp, stopping only to dig in the ground or at the side of the building. When one of them did, workers would go over to see what they’d found.
None of the chimeras had any protective covering. Largo noticed that a few of the workers had taken off their masks and were digging bare-headed. He wondered if they took the most morphia or if they were simply resigned to their fate as plague victims. Again, he was struck by the peculiar courage of the crew. With all the goods they’d accumulated, if Remy or Lucie was there, would they be willing to give them up? What if he bought their freedom but didn’t have any money left for Steinmetz? He put the thought out of his mind for the moment.
This isn’t the time to worry about that. One step at a time. Find them and then worry about paying their fare.
Largo watched the curio hunters for half an hour, scanning first the workers who’d removed their masks, then the ones who were still fully in their suits. He didn’t spot any obvious slaves. The crew seemed to work together fairly well, he thought. No one was brutalized or punished. In fact, he saw easy conversation and even some laughter between the workers.
Maybe the slaves are inside the building. That must be the most dangerous area.
That possibility presented a whole new set of problems. He couldn’t see into the building with the telescope, so how could he find any slaves without going in himself? There’s no choice, Largo thought. I’ll have to see if there’s a back entrance.
He went around to the rear of the building in a low crouch. Once he was there, he scanned the scene with the telescope. It was similar to what he’d seen out front. Fifteen to twenty workers digging through the ruins. No one was beaten or treated badly.
No way to get in back here. Maybe I’ll get lucky on the far side of the building.
Largo moved quickly, still crouching, stopping every few yards to scan the work area. It took longer than he’d hoped to get around to the side of the high-rise. The landscape was full of deep bomb craters and heaps of debris, all of which he had to circle around or risk being seen. As he went, he wondered about what to do if he found Remy or Lucie. It would be best if he could sneak them out, but with so many workers, that seemed like an unlikely solution. In that case, he’d have to bribe the scavengers.
He was moving around the rim of a crater that had blasted away most of a paved road when his back erupted in pain and he went facedown on the pavement. Warm blood trickled down his cheek where he cut it on a paving stone. He lay there stunned for a moment before someone flipped him over onto his back.
The man holding a knife to his throat wasn’t wearing a protective mask. However, he was wearing a dented Pickelhaube smeared with dried mud. Officers had worn the ridiculous spiked helmets during the war. Largo wondered if the man had found it in the ruins or stolen it off a corpse. The man’s face was so creased and dirty that it was impossible to guess his age. He was missing most of his front teeth, which gave him a slight lisp when he spoke.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“I’m Largo. I’m not looking for trouble.”
“What crew you with?”
“I’m not with a crew. I’m just looking for someone.”
The curio hunter pressed the knife harder against Largo’s throat. “Looking for someone? Who?”
“A woman. Maybe two women. They’re both young and pretty.”
“Got plenty of women in the crew, though none I’d call pretty.”
“Not in your crew. I’m looking for slaves.”
That seemed to puzzle the curio hunter and for a moment, he lessened the pressure of the knife. “What fucking slaves you talking about?”
“The slaves. The ones you bring in from Lower Proszawa to dig up treasure.”
The hunter smiled and a drop of saliva fell from the gap in his teeth. “You’re from the city?”
“Yes,” said Largo. “I’m just looking for a couple of friends.”
The hunter repositioned the knife so the side wasn’t in Largo’s throat, but the tip. “I’ll tell you something, city man. We’re professionals here. We ain’t got time for slaves or bluenoses. Now, answer my next question truthful ’cause it’s life or death. You got any money?”
“Yes.”
The hunter made a grasping gesture with his free hand. “Give it to me.”
“It’s inside my coat.”
“Then give it slow.”
Largo took the remaining bills from the inside pocket of his coat and gave them to the hunter, who looked them over and put them in a pocket of his protective suit.
“It’s your lucky day, city man. This is just enough to let you off. Now, you want slaves? You go by the metal works. Those fucks’ll do anything to anyone.”
“Where are they?”
The hunter pointed to the west with his knife. Largo looked to where he was pointing and saw only a flat, endless mire. “I’m lost,” he said. “Is there a road around to the metal works?”
“’Course. But I ain’t telling you where. You so anxious? There’s your way.”
Largo didn’t speak.
The hunter let Largo up and jammed the knife against his ribs. “Get walking. You got a long way to go.”
Largo walked backward for a few yards, breaking every rule he’d grown up with. Yes, he thought, walking this way made him look weak and a bit ridiculous, but he had the sense that the old rules might not apply out here. Who cared if you looked brave or foolish here at the end of the world? All that mattered was survival, however you could manage it.
He retraced his steps around the building. It went a lot faster this time since he wasn’t trying to hide. He had no idea whether to take the hunter’s word for it that they didn’t have any slaves, but he wasn’t in a position to argue the point. The best part about heading to the metal works, he thought, was that it would put more distance between him the curio hunters.
Largo checked his map as he started across a mile-wide field of mud. The hunter hadn’t been lying. The metal works were marked as due west from their camp. He put the map back in his pocket, wondering what he was going to do now with nothing but a few Valdas hidden in the back pocket of his pants. Wiping the mud from the watch Steinmetz had given him, he checked the time. More than four hours had passed and he had nothing to show for it. He wanted to run across the mud field but knew he had to be careful. There might be more bomb craters and the last thing he wanted to do was fall and hurt his knee again, or drown before he found Remy.
He walked in what he hoped was a straight line west. A compass would have helped, Largo knew, but only if he knew how to use one. At places, sections of road rose from the swamp-like filth, making walking easy. But for the most part, he slogged through ankle-deep slop. Occasionally, he ended up having to push himself up when one of his legs hi
t a low spot and he sank up to his knee. His right leg burned with pain and the only warm part of his body was the wound in his cheek, from which blood still trickled onto his coat. Largo stopped and put two more drops of morphia under his tongue. He wanted more, but he also wanted a clear head as he made his way through the putrid marsh.
He went past armed Maras. A few were alone, but many others were in groups. Most were sinking in the mud, but some of the ones on top looked functional enough that he walked in a wide circle around them in case any of them sprang to life. He tripped and fell when he stepped on the broken rails of a tram line. At one point, he passed the lobby of a shattered hotel with a café next door. To his shock, a bottle lay face-up in the filth. Largo grabbed it and tore out the cork. He sniffed it and realized that it was wine, and a light and lovely one. He tossed the cork away and drank as he walked. After a couple of big swallows, Largo warmed up a little. He kept moving, hoping he was still headed west. He used a withered tree set between a hill and a bombed-out school building as a guide.
On his way, he saw unexploded bombs sunk nose-down in the mud. He wondered if they were ordinary ones or plague bombs. He decided that it didn’t matter since if either went off it would almost certainly kill him, so he drank more wine, walked, and tried to ignore the pain in his leg.
When he reached a ruined theater, he stopped. The layout wasn’t all that different from the Grand Dark. There was a wide lobby that led to a tattered, moldy curtain, which opened onto a seating area with the stage at the far end. A bomb had torn away part of the roof and the middle rows of seats were missing. He dropped into a seat at the back of the room for a few minutes, taking the pressure off his leg and trying to catch his breath. He closed his eyes, telling himself that it would be for just a minute.
Largo felt light-headed. The walls of the Grand Dark stretched for what seemed like miles so that the distant stage was barely more than a pinpoint of illumination. He tried to stand but failed on his first attempt and realized that he was feeling the effects of morphia. It must have been a very large dose to make him this disoriented, he thought. On his second try, he managed to get to his feet but kept a hand against the wall in case he lost his balance again. As he started the long walk to the stage he noticed something odd. The theater seats were all occupied by galvanic puppets, each staring straight ahead, dressed as any ordinary theatergoers who had come to see a show. He could hear faint sounds from the distant stage, but the audience was utterly silent. It was startling, then, when a head casually turned in his direction. It was a man whose face was little more than a mass of twisted meat. His cheeks were missing and his mouth was a knife slash at a severe angle up his face, leading to an empty right eye socket. Though Largo knew that it was bad luck to stare at a Dandy, he couldn’t turn from the awful sight. Eventually, the scarred doll-man turned his gaze back to the stage and Largo quickened his pace along the wall, though he felt even more off-balance than before.
The Grand Dark Page 33