Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  The Pseran halted at last. “Wait,” she said, staring only at Rufus.

  “Tell Nadielle—”

  “I’ll return to inform you whether she will welcome you in,” the Pseran said.

  “You’ll …” Gorham shook his head, sighed, and nodded. “Tell her it’s important.”

  “Isn’t it always?” the Pseran said with a wry smile, and Gorham glanced back at Peer as the chopped woman drifted quickly into the darkness.

  “So now we just wait?” Malia said.

  “Yes.” Gorham sat on a raised bank of dried soil, taking a drink from his water skin and splashing his face. He rubbed with his hand and wiped it dry with his sleeves, leaving a smear of dirt across one cheek.

  “I’m tired,” Rufus said. He sat in the center of the rutted road. “Why won’t the Baker see us?”

  “She will!” Gorham snapped.

  “Are you sure she’s really on our side?” Peer asked.

  Malia laughed, without humor. “She’s on her side.”

  “She has her own rules,” Gorham said. “She works on her own time frame, and living down here … she’s strange.”

  “Strange,” Rufus said. Peer moved closer and sat beside him, noticing that he’d already closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. That Pseran called you chopped, she wanted to say. What does that mean? Where are you really from? But she said nothing, because now did not feel like the time.

  Instead, she got up and went to sit next to Gorham. Malia had wandered off, still keeping within the circle of torchlight and kicking at the dusty ground. Peer thought she was a woman who would never look right sitting still.

  “Still talking to me?” he asked.

  “No.” They sat in silence for a while, and when Peer breathed in she caught a whiff of Gorham’s familiar smell. She had inhaled that scent so many times—lain with it, loved it—that she would know it anywhere. It gave her a deep pang of regret for what had passed, but the anger was still stronger. She tensed to stand, and the air shards scraped against her elbow.

  “Peer,” he began, but she could not let him continue. However much he had changed—become the leader of whatever was left of the Watchers, a true rebel as opposed to the safe protester he had been before—the parts of him she had loved would always stay the same. Their past was a wide foundation, and betrayal and separation had been built upon that. Right now she did not feel capable of finding her way back to the solid base of their relationship. And letting him talk about it would only confuse her more.

  “I can’t,” she said. “There’s too much happening here.” She looked at Rufus where he seemed to sleep, thought of his piercing green eyes and that Pseran’s single word: chopped.

  “I need to tell you—” Gorham began.

  And then Rufus was gagging, coughing, choking, scratching at his throat with long nails, and even though his eyes were squeezed shut, Peer was certain that all he wanted was to open them.

  It’s dark, and very cold, and a wind whips in from the desert, bringing only a stale, slightly burned smell. There was a lightning storm out there the previous evening when he and his mother had arrived, and Rufus—

  (that’s not my name, but that is me)

  —had watched from the flat roof of the empty dwelling they’d found close to a tumbled section of the south wall. She had called him down after a while, hugging him close when he came to her and bestowing affection that he was not used to. She’d been sad since that strange visitor, though there was still something about her that at times made her seem very far away. He’d walk into a room to see her staring at something he couldn’t see, her fingers slowly stroking her chin, mouth working ever so slightly as if she was saying something much too quiet to hear. And after those times, she’d be quiet and distracted even when she did start talking to him again.

  It was because of the thing that came to visit several days before. She’d been different ever since then. It was a man, though unlike any man he’d ever seen before—incredibly thin, long-limbed, with those indigo eyes that seemed to burn right through him. And when it reached for him, then lowered its head and started mumbling …

  He shivers, and his mother hugs him tight.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she says, kneeling and pulling him to her. He can feel her tears on his face, and he wonders why.

  “I’m hungry,” he says. “I’m thirsty.”

  “I know,” she says, because she has not fed him or given him water for a whole day. “There’ll be something soon, don’t worry.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “What are we doing here?” They were in Skulk Canton. He’d watched his mother speaking with people and breathing stuff in their faces, like she sometimes did. The people—he thought they were soldiers, but scruffy and dirty, not like most of the Scarlet Blades he saw around Course—slowed down, drooping to the ground while he and his mother passed. It was all part of the strangeness that began two days before, when she left for the day. Stay in, she said, making him promise. He did what he was told and spent the day wondering why the womb vats were all silent and empty.

  Now here they are, and Rufus knows that something is about to change. There is an air of moving on about the way she speaks to him, touches him, looks at him. It is as if she’s trying to remember every part of her boy.

  “I’m sorry,” his mother says, and when he asks what for, she only shakes her head and cries some more. He has never seen his mother crying before now. She is strong. It makes him cry too, and then he sees something out in the desert.

  “There’s …” he begins, because he has read all his mother’s books about the Markoshi Desert, how everything is dead out there and nothing can live upon its sands.

  “Yes,” his mother says, and she has already seen it. Far out, a dark-gray smudge on the light gray of the starlit desert, a shape is moving toward them. “It left Course before we did, and now it’s coming back to Skulk. As I instructed it.” She sounds vaguely angry, as if she wishes her mysterious instructions had not been obeyed.

  “What is it?”

  “Something I had to make. Because I’m not sure what you are, but if you are what they say, then this needs to be done. And one day you’ll return to me.”

  “What needs to be done?” he asks. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be,” she whispers. His mother looks around furtively, then pulls her hood up over her head. He doesn’t like it when she does that; he can no longer see her beautiful green eyes. There were precious stones called emeralds, she once told him, buried deep in the ground that is now buried beneath the domes of Dragar’s Canton. People used to go there many hundreds of years ago and dig them up.

  Why? he asked.

  Because they were beautiful.

  So are your eyes, but people don’t dig them up.

  She nodded for a while, staring at him, until finally she said, It’s all about having something for yourself.

  “I have something for you,” she says, producing a silvered metal flask from her pocket.

  “One of your magic drinks?” he asks.

  “It’s not magic!” she says, almost spitting. Her sudden anger could have frightened him—but he knows she will never do anything to harm her son. She loves him. “It’s only magic because people don’t understand it, that’s all, and people are scared of what they don’t understand. They have to give it names to protect themselves from it.” She holds him hard, staring into his eyes, and he thinks, She really wants me to listen. This is how she speaks when she has a lesson to teach. “People try, but they never get it right. I know how to do it, because of … knowledge passed down to me. If you’d known my mother, and hers, you’d understand. But this is not magic.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “If anything, it’s a curse.” She looks past him at the thing approaching across the desert. “A curse on me, and a curse on …”

  “Mother?”

  “You,” she whispers. Then she uncorks the flask, ho
lds the back of his head, and tips it to his lips. He drinks, because she wants him to and she’d never do anything to hurt him. And as he sits on the cold wet stone, watches the huge lumbering thing walking in from the desert, and sees his mother going out to greet it, something starts to happen.

  First he forgets his name.

  “Grab his hands!” Peer shouted, and when Gorham did so she felt that she was taking control. She held Rufus’s head still, whispering and soothing, and when he opened his eyes at last he looked lost. There was nothing there—no knowledge of where or even who he was. Then he focused on Peer, and she felt the fear slowly draining from him.

  “I forgot my name,” he said.

  “I called you Rufus.”

  “Rufus. That’s not my name.”

  “I know,” she said sadly. “Maybe the Baker can help you remember.”

  “The Baker … she’s …” He squeezed his eyes closed again, but the thrashing and scratching did not return.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Gorham asked, speaking as if Rufus wasn’t even there. Peer glared at him without answering.

  “Someone’s coming,” Malia said. She was standing several steps away from them, staring into the darkness in the direction in which the Pseran had disappeared.

  “Her?” Peer asked.

  “I doubt it,” Gorham said. “She rarely leaves her laboratories.”

  “How many times have you been down here?” Peer asked.

  Gorham glanced at her and away again, off into the darkness. “A few,” he said.

  A shape emerged from the shadows—the naked Pseran walking smoothly toward them. She was both beautiful and monstrous, and Peer wondered what else she would see that day.

  “The Baker will see you,” she said, and Peer noticed that she was looking only at Rufus. There was a slight smile on her face but also a creasing of the brow, which could indicate confusion—or fear.

  “Which way—” Peer began.

  “Gorham knows.” The Pseran drifted in closer to Rufus, circled him once, and then, without another word spoken or a glance at any of them, she disappeared into the Echo once again.

  “Come on,” Gorham said, and he led them from the track and across ancient fields.

  Peer walked behind Rufus, trying to keep her eye on his back but finding herself distracted by what they were walking across. She had never been able to envision whole landscapes of dead fields and gentle hills cut off from the sun and sky like this. It seemed unnatural, and walking across ruts tooled into the ground generations ago made her sad.

  “Here,” Gorham said. He stood before a door cast into a steep hillside, the stark gray stumps of old trees stubbling the ground all around.

  Rufus took a deep breath.

  “Are you all right?” Peer asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Hungry.”

  “Good,” Gorham said, and his smile seemed genuine. “The Baker always has a feast to hand.” He pushed the door open and entered, and Peer followed the others into a new world.

  She had never imagined anything like this. She’d heard tales of the old Baker and her incredible warehouse laboratory and how the Scarlet Blades had destroyed it all twenty years ago. The Watchers had always held the Baker as one of their own, though even before her banishment, Peer had known the lie in that. The Baker was unique, last in a long line of freak geniuses among Echo City’s scientists, experimenters, and charlatans. At least, most of Echo City believed she was the last.

  And now here Peer was, about to meet the Baker’s daughter.

  Really? she thought. Daughter? This woman had been chopped, not born. Grown in one of the womb vats she saw in the huge room before her, or one very much like them. Created, somehow, by her mother’s strange art.

  The vats were huge and bulbous. They seemed to cast shadows where the many oil lamps should shine. Moisture trickled down their sides and splashed on the stone ground, and when it hit it took on a sickly viscosity, spreading red as blood before slipping into floor drains. Pipes and tubes hung overhead, converging and spreading again from several points where cogs turned, gears scraped, and steam escaped from vents and flues. The steam fell instead of rising, dispersing to the air and giving the whole room a heavy, humid atmosphere.

  The closest vat was a dozen steps away. Peer could hear noises from inside—mewling, scratching, and a grumbling so low that, rather than hear it, she felt it low in her guts.

  “Gorham …” she began, but her old lover had already walked on ahead. There was a woman standing beside one of the vats, tending to an array of tools laid out on a wide table before her. She glanced up at Gorham’s approach, offered him a half smile, looked beyond him, caught Peer’s eye … and then she saw Rufus and dropped the curved metallic tool she’d been holding. The noise as it struck the table and clattered to the ground brought home the relative silence of that place. This was not a noisy factory but a quiet laboratory, its processes proceeding with a calm confidence.

  “Who are you?” Rufus asked, and Peer noticed a change in him. It was as if he were a held breath, and with every glance around that amazing chamber he was about to scream.

  “My name is Nadielle,” the woman said. She was quite short and unassuming, but as Peer walked close to meet Nadielle, she sensed the power in her. Nadielle’s eyes were fixed on their tall visitor, her mouth working slowly as if chewing words she could not utter.

  “This is Rufus Kyuss,” Peer said.

  “Named after a god,” Nadielle said.

  Rufus remained tense, glancing from the Baker to those vats and back again.

  “You’re the new Baker?” Peer asked.

  “New?” Nadielle glanced at Peer, her eyes instantly harsh and threatening.

  “Yes,” Peer said. She did her best to hold the woman’s gaze and silently thanked Gorham when he spoke.

  “This is Peer Nadawa,” he said.

  “Oh,” Nadielle said. And she smiled. A smile? Peer thought. As if she knows my name. And then she saw the way Gorham was looking at the Baker, and she understood all at once. Oh, Gorham, after all this time you could have warned me.

  “This man says he’s from beyond Echo City,” Malia said. “He says he walked in across the Bonelands. Peer was at the city wall in Skulk, and she found him. Brought him to us.”

  “From out of Skulk?” Nadielle asked. The surprise had gone from her face now, and she was hiding her excitement from the others well. Peer could see that.

  “A friend helped me,” Peer said. “It’s not as difficult as you’d think.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Nadielle said. She glanced at Rufus again, then turned her back on all of them. “You’ll be hungry,” she said quietly, before heading past the vats toward a door in the far corner. “If I’d known you were coming—”

  “Nadielle!” Gorham said. “This is important!”

  “Yes,” she said, looking back over her shoulder as she walked. “It is. So what better way to discuss the end of Echo City than over a feast?”

  Nadielle passed through the door without saying anything else, and Gorham looked nervously at Peer. But she could not find it in her heart to hate him anymore.

  They entered a chaotic room where tables and benches were strewn with all manner of equipment and containers. A strange smell hung in the air, but Peer could not identify it. She saw Rufus sniffing, his nostrils flaring, his eyes half closed as he took in the scent. He saw her watching and smiled.

  “That’s not her,” he said softly, and as Peer started to ask what he meant, Nadielle spoke again.

  “Nowhere to sit,” she said. “Perhaps if I’d known you were coming, but even then …” She waved her hand around the room. “I’m very busy.”

  “What are you working on?” Gorham asked.

  “Many things.”

  “You don’t seem surprised by Rufus’s claim,” Peer said.

  Nadielle reached a table in the corner of the room, spread a pile of plates, and then went to a cupboard. Cool air misted out when s
he opened it, followed by the enrapturing smells of cheeses and fruits.

  “You found him?” she asked.

  “I saw him coming across the desert, yes.”

  “And you named him?”

  How does she know that’s not his real name? Peer thought, but she nodded.

  “Why those names?”

  Peer told her. Nadielle smiled.

  “What does this mean?” Malia said. “After what we discussed last time we were here and—”

  “Malia,” Nadielle said, “calm. I’ve sent out my eyes and ears. I’ve seen and heard. And that’s why I’m busy, because what you brought me last time is all true. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m able to help at last.”

  “What’s in the womb vats right now?” Gorham asked.

  “More eyes,” she said. “More ears. Better ones, and they’ll be ready soon.”

  “So quickly?”

  She shrugged, putting a slice of cheese into her mouth. “Some processes have been accelerated, yes, but they’ll work fine.” She looked at Rufus again, watching him take tentative bites from a chunk of bread, a slice of cheese. He was looking around cautiously, and every few beats his eyes would flicker back to the Baker.

  “What’s wrong, Rufus?” Peer asked.

  “That’s not her,” he said again. The small group fell silent, but Peer saw no sign of confusion on Nadielle’s face. She knew exactly what Rufus meant.

  “He’s been having dreams,” Peer said. “Waking from them upset, disconnected. It’s as if he’s been here before.”

  “Of course,” Nadielle said.

  “And your Pseran called him chopped.”

  Nadielle smiled and nodded, waving a chunk of cheese at the air while she chewed. “I made them perfectly, for sure.”