by Tim Lebbon
“Gorham. We need to go.” Malia plucked at his sleeve and walked toward the border post, glancing back to make sure he was following. He smiled at her but did not receive a smile in return. Stern face, short severe hair, Malia was a widow who had never finished grieving, and though she was reliable in a fight, Gorham had never found her to be the most scintillating company.
“One more moment,” he said, and leaned on the metal railing to look across the beach one last time. The picnickers were arranging themselves into three small teams now for a game of searchball, and the woman who had smiled at him skipped in the sand, hair floating, breasts moving heavily beneath her light shirt. Her joyous expression was absolute. She did not look his way again.
“For fuck’s sake,” Malia muttered.
Gorham turned and rested his back against the railing, looking east at the imposing hills of Marcellan Canton. Echo City’s rulers’ huge home district had been built upon so frequently that it was much higher than the rest of the city, its Echoes below—those old places, forgotten streets, emptied buildings, and past times—deeper and more complex than elsewhere. Each successive generation of Marcellans seemed to want to stamp their own mark on the city, and they did that by building and naming a series of structures after themselves. Why they could not simply rename older places, Gorham did not know. He supposed it was all to do with ego.
But he heard Malia’s impatience, so he nodded and started walking.
The lakefront was bustling. A waterfood restaurant was doing brisk business, the smell of cooking emanating from its open doors and windows and enticing people in. Gorham felt a rumble of hunger. Several taverns had opened their front shutters so that patrons could spill onto the street, and some raucous songs were already under way. The songs changed as Gorham and Malia passed each successive tavern, past tunes fading, newer ones increasing in volume, and it seemed they were fighting for dominance. Later there might be real fighting, but for now the revelers seemed good-natured.
If only they knew, Gorham thought, glancing across the road at a group of men and women seated outside a brothel. They were drinking cheap Mino Mont wine from huge clay carafes, and the air around them was hazed with slash smoke from the long pipes snaking down the side of the building. People took turns on the pipes, their eyes blank and soft with the effects of the burning drug. One of the women was chopped, her three legs spread to reveal two barely covered muffs. Twice the income. He saw the blankness in her eyes, which had nothing to do with slash and everything to do with amateur chopping. She was so not there that she did not even appear sad.
Malia had reached the border checkpoint, and she glanced back as she handed over her papers. The two Scarlet Blade border guards seemed tired and bored, and they opened and closed her lifecard without even looking at it. The taller of the two waved her on, and Gorham handed his card to the other soldier. The soldier yawned, looked at the card, glanced at Gorham.
“What’s your business in Crescent?” he asked.
“We’re sourcing a new supplier for plums,” he said. “Our old one let us down.”
The soldier nodded, scratching stubble that a Scarlet Blade should never wear. “Can’t beat a good plum. Have fun.”
Gorham nodded and passed through the border. Have fun. If they knew where he was going and whom he was going to see, they’d have pinned him down and slit his throat, then called reinforcements to interrogate everyone in sight. The people on the beach would be washing sand from their wounds for days. The drinkers would be thrown in jail until they were sober enough to be interrogated, and the whores and patrons would be exposed to their families, shame being a useful tool in gaining the truth. Only the three-legged whore would be left alone. Badly chopped people like her saw little and thought even less.
In Crescent Canton, the landscape changed abruptly. The buildings lining the road became more intermittent—homes and farm buildings now, rather than taverns and shops—and though they could still hear the revelry across the border behind them, Crescent was so obviously a different place. The reservoir marked part of the border, and the landscape beyond was a network of irrigation channels and pumping stations, with several great tusked swine pushing in circles at each pump to keep it working. A short fat man with bright red hair was waddling from one pump to the next, feeding the swine and singing songs of encouragement to keep them moving. He raised a lazy hand in greeting, and Gorham waved back.
“He’ll remember us now,” Malia said.
“Malia, thousands of people pass through the border every day. He probably waves to all of them.”
“Still. Can’t hurt to be cautious.”
“There’s caution and there’s paranoia.”
“Gorham, everyone is out to get us.” Malia smiled, but it was a cool expression. He couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh.
There were many people on the road winding through the fields. Those coming from the opposite direction guided tusked swine pulling carts laden with fruits, vegetables, and plants with their root bundles bound with silk. Some hauled trolleys loaded with well-packed wine bottles, a few of these employing armed guards who eyed anyone approaching too close. Certain Crescent wines were worth more per bottle than the average Course inhabitant made in a week, and Gorham knew that most of it was destined for Marcellan Canton. Others walked alone, but their faces often displayed the contentment of a deal well done. Crescent Canton was the heart, lungs, and pantry of Echo City, the most fertile ground and the lowest part of the city, and the air here felt different. Gorham loved coming here, even when fruit and vegetables and other foods were the last things on his mind.
They walked for four miles. The landscape was given entirely to crops: fruit bushes, grapevines, vegetable fields, tobacco trees, and, here and there, the towering spires of mepple orchards, the red fruits as large as a person and jealously guarded against bird attack by vicious wisps. Farms dotted the gently rolling hills—some small, others spread over a wide area. Occasionally there were larger settlements where the farm workers lived, and the most expansive of these were raised slightly above the surrounding area. Below them lay their Echoes—old homes and streets and temples—but for as long as anyone could remember, Crescent had been farmland. Most of its subterranean Echoes consisted of long-dead fields, dried canals, and deserted farm buildings. On those rare occasions when its phantoms came to the surface, they haunted crops, not people.
“Almost there,” Malia said. She’d hardly spoken for the entire walk, and though Gorham was used to this, it still irritated him. She was so focused on their purpose that she rarely let anything else in. He remembered her husband, Bren, well and could still picture the shocking sight of his body crucified high on the walls of Marcellan Canton. That had been almost three years ago. He’d long since rotted and fallen, but in Malia’s mind his death was still on display.
If she’d had her way, they would have started a revolution long before now.
They stopped at the entrance to an old farm complex, sitting on the low stone wall. It seemed quiet. Gorham could just see a couple of figures on the road a way back, maybe a mile distant, and several miles beyond that was the imposing mass of Marcellan.
Malia was looking up, but the sky was clear of all but clouds.
“Time to go down,” she said. It sounded as if she almost relished the idea of their descent. For Gorham, saying goodbye to the daylight was like ceasing breathing.
They walked along the overgrown lane to the farm. The main house was a ruin, its roof tumbled in a fire many years before, and the outbuildings had fallen into disrepair. It was said the place was haunted by more than phantoms, and though it was the Baker who propagated those stories, Gorham knew that he should believe every one of them.
After all, she had many more things at her disposal than ghosts.
Inside one of the farm’s ruined barns, beneath a pile of fallen tools that had apparently rusted together into a single tangled heap, was one of the entrances to the Echo where the Baker m
aintained her laboratory. There were many ways in, Gorham knew, and perhaps fewer ways out, but this was the only one he and the Watchers had been told about, and he was quite certain it was theirs alone. As far as he was aware, the Baker—her name was Nadielle, but she had breathed that to him only on their third meeting—had not yet lied to him. The time might come, he knew, when events would start to prove more difficult, but he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone. Almost as much as he had trusted Peer.
He closed his eyes and thought briefly of his old love. When these moments came, he tried to imagine her as dead as Malia’s husband—rotted away, gone. And he mourned.
“What is it?” Malia asked.
“Nothing. Here, help me.” They grabbed a handle or blade each, and as they lifted, the tumbled tools rose in one solid mass. Beneath, when they kicked away the scattered straw, dust, and powdered chickpig shit, lay the trapdoor that led down into Crescent’s Echoes.
“I hate this,” Malia said. “It’s the future we’re looking to, isn’t it?”
“And the Baker’s going to help us get there,” Gorham said. “So what better place to hide than the past?”
He lifted the trapdoor himself and started down the narrow wooden staircase. There were several metal torches fixed to the wall, and he took one and lit its wick with the flints supplied. He shook it and listened to the thick slosh of oil. It sounded full. As ever, Nadielle seemed prepared.
Malia descended behind him, picking up her own torch, and their journey down to the Baker’s laboratory began. The wooden staircase ended in a short, narrow corridor, at the end of which was a metal door, bolted shut. Gorham twisted four bolts in a specific sequence and heard tumblers turning. He pulled, and the door squealed as it came away from the frame. A breath of air sighed out from beyond, carrying with it strange smells and the hint of faraway voices. They might have been phantoms or the whispered communication of the Baker’s guards. Whichever, he and Malia would meet them soon.
Beyond the corridor was a slightly sloping cave. It had once been a field of grapevines, and some of the thicker stems were still visible protruding above the dust. Perhaps the old fields had been ruined by overuse or poisoned by some long-ago cataclysm. In places there were huge, thick columns supporting the roof, gnarled and knotted with the twisted metal and cemented stone used to build up from the land below. There were footprints here and there, and, with no breeze to shift dust, they could have been recent or ancient. Some of them were his own from previous visits. It disturbed Gorham that he could not tell which were which.
He and Malia walked across the underground plain, their torches setting shadows dancing in the distance.
With a hiss, the first of the Baker’s chopped came in. It drifted low, trailing several long tendrils in the dust as though drawing energy from the ground. Gorham had seen this one before and thought it might once have been a woman, but now it was something else. Six arms, four thick legs, and two sets of light membranous wings made it unique, just as all of the Baker’s creations were unique. It dribbled something from its wide mouth as it hovered, and its obsidian eyes flickered this way and that—perhaps blind, or maybe possessed of a sight Gorham did not understand.
“Gorham and Malia,” Gorham said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, echoing into the dark distance.
The thing circled them, wings beating so fast that they were almost invisible. They were virtually silent, though their downdraft whisked up a cloud of fine dust that soon dimmed the effect of the torches. One set of arms reached forward—the hands were horribly human, fingernails blackened and sharp—and it came in quickly to touch their faces. Gorham was prepared, but he heard Malia gasp in shock behind him.
“It’s fine,” he said quietly. Her hand reached gently for his shoulder, seeking contact.
The thing flew away, and within heartbeats it was lost to view.
“I can never get used to this,” Malia said.
“She’s got a lot to guard against. A lot to be afraid of.”
“With what she can do, I can’t imagine her being afraid of anything.”
“You’d be surprised.” Gorham walked on, aiming for the far end of the field.
They passed through another door and started their descent through a maze of caverns and tunnels that confused him every time. They waited in the third cavern for what they knew would come, and the chopped man emerged from a crack in the wall within moments of their arrival. He was short and exceedingly thin, his head half the size of a normal man’s, and his naked skin was constantly slick from some strange secretion. He moved with a disconcerting grace—almost dancing, like the troupes that performed on the streets of Mino Mont—and Gorham wondered how flexible his bones would be.
“My name’s Gorham,” he said. The small man glanced back, blinked softly, then continued on his way.
“I don’t think he likes you, Gorham,” Malia said.
“I doubt he even knows what we’re saying.”
The man led them from cavern to tunnel, cave to crevasse, and a while later they crossed a shifting rope bridge that spanned a dry canal. The bed was speckled with white shapes, and Gorham thought perhaps they were skeletons. He did not pause to make out whether they were human. He had never been this way before.
“How many routes are there to this damned place?” Malia said when she caught sight of the bones. Gorham did not answer, because he had been wondering the same thing.
They passed through an old village. Most of the buildings were in ruins, but there were a couple that still bore their roofs, almost fully tiled and with chimneys intact. Behind one of the glassless windows, in a building that might have been a temple to forgotten gods, shone a pale light. Gorham thought for a moment that torches had been lit to mark their way, but then he realized that was a foolish idea. This man had been sent to guide them in. And Nadielle would do nothing so obvious.
“Gorham,” Malia whispered.
“I know.” At the sound of their voices the light flared slightly, then blinked out. The phantom went to hide.
Beyond the ruined village they hit an ancient road, where wheel ruts cast thousands of years before were still visible. The man led them along the center of the road, and then without warning he turned right and ran into the dark.
“Wait!” Malia called. Her voice did not echo at all, as if the pressing darkness dampened it.
“Hey!” Gorham went to follow, but the man was already out of sight. Slipped away into a crack in the ground, he thought. He wondered how many of the Baker’s chopped were watching them.
“So what the crap are we supposed to do now?” Malia said.
Gorham looked around, turning slowly and following the light from his torch. “Nothing,” he said at last. “We’re almost there.”
“I’ve never come this way before.”
“Nor I. Like I said, she’s being very careful.”
“Well, when she hears—”
“Hush.”
Malia fell silent, and Gorham closed his eyes briefly. Yes, when she hears what we have to say. But right now he was trying not to look that far ahead. In the dark, in the coolness of forgotten times, he was simply looking forward to seeing Nadielle again.
“You must be hungry,” a voice said. “Thirsty. This way. The Baker has a feast for you.”
Gorham smiled, and five steps from them a chopped woman lit her torch. There were three of them in all, standing within striking distance of Gorham and Malia. Until that moment, none of them had been visible. They were naked, and their skin seemed to shift in and out of focus as the oil torches flickered. They each had a third arm protruding from between their breasts that ended in a wicked-looking serrated blade, and spines along their sides were raised and ready to spit. The Pseran triplets. Nadielle had told him about them—Three of my best, she had said, three of my most perfect—but this was the first time he had laid eyes on them. He knew now why the Baker was so proud. Beautiful, shapely, exquisite, intoxicating—and given cause, any one of t
hem could kill him before he blinked.
“What in the name of Hanharan …?” Malia whispered.
“No,” Gorham said, “nothing to do with him at all.”
The Pserans started walking, keeping far enough apart to avoid presenting a combined target, and Gorham and Malia followed.
He had been to the Baker’s laboratory many times before this visit. Each time it had seemed slightly different—dimensions altered, design subtly shifted, the space it occupied flexed or folded—though the one constant was that it was filled with equipment that meant nothing to him. He knew some of what Nadielle did but never how she did it. That had always been the way of the Bakers, and the mystery was part of her allure.
The final door closed behind them and the Pserans slipped away. As Gorham glanced around to see where they had gone, he heard a low chuckle, and when he turned forward again the Baker was there.
“Gorham,” she said. She seemed amused. “You look hungry. You like my Pserans?”
Nadielle was the only woman who knew how to make him blush.
“And Malia. It’s nice to see you again.” She sounded so sincere.
“And you, Baker,” Malia said. “Your Pserans said you have a feast for us.”
“They don’t lie,” Nadielle said. “Not unless I tell them to.” She was staring at Gorham, enjoying his embarrassment, and she was more beautiful than ever. Last time down here, as they were rolling on Nadielle’s bed, her legs wrapped around his back to hold him deep within her, she’d whispered into his ear: They watch. He’d known who she meant, because she was so proud of her chopped. They were like her children. It had given him a strange thrill then, and now that sensation returned. He glanced around again, feeling their eyes on him still, realizing that was what they were made to do.
Nadielle laughed out loud and turned, leading them deep into her laboratory.
Her seven womb vats were all full, condensation bejeweling their surfaces and dripping in a steady stream to the stone floor. The vats were made from metal or heavy gray stone—Gorham had never been entirely sure which, and he dared not touch one—and they stood propped with thick wooden buttresses wedged against the floor, giving the impression of a temporary placement. There were drainage holes around the vats to take any spillages, and bubbles of strange gas popped thickly from several of them. I wonder what she’s chopping now, Gorham thought. The awe he felt each time he visited her down here was rightly placed, because she could do something that no one else in Echo City was able to do. Many attempted to copy, and the results were the twin-twatted whore, soldiers with clubs instead of fists, men with cocks like a third leg … and, sometimes, monsters. But no one could match Nadielle’s talent or finesse, passed down to her from Bakers long past. No one ever had.