Into the Second World

by Ellis Knox

  “I’d give real money to get my hands on that damn gun.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a gun,” Henrik said. He and Cosmas joined us.

  “Of course it was a gun. You heard it fire,” Nik said.

  “We heard a sound, but if it is a gun, where is the projectile?” Henrik said.

  Nik had no reply for that, so he ignored it.

  “What do you think it was, professor?” I asked. I remained kneeling beside Beso while the others stood. I kept one hand on the dwarf’s chest, to feel his breathing. Had I just walked in I could suppose he was sleeping, for his face was composed and his breath regular.

  “Phlogiston,” Henrik declared, some of his former vigor returning. He swept one arm in a wide gesture. “Look around you. Everything here uses phlogiston—a most profligate usage, I must say. It is no wonder their world is dying—they built it with phlogiston and now they consume the stuff like an addict.”

  He rubbed at his beard, and his voice took on a timbre and volume better suited to a lecture hall.

  “We shall have to rewrite half our books, and throw out the other half. Not only history, but geology, ethnography, all of natural philosophy!”

  “You needn’t sound so happy,” I said. “Beso nearly died, and you’re speculating on your next publication.”

  “Yes, well. Just so. A matter for a later time, I suppose.” The professor managed to look abashed. I didn’t feel sorry for him at all.

  “And for the present?” I said.

  “We go to this Arrayal,” Nik said, “whatever it is. It’s unavoidable in any case, and I for one want to see some of the other drow. Maybe this one’s a lunatic, though I doubt it. There’s another possibility.”

  “What are you thinking?” Henrik said.

  “Those other names. Agedat. Marde. He spoke of them like they’re his rivals. It might be a chance to find a rift among our enemies.”

  “By the present,” I said, “I meant right now. We can’t just leave poor Beso lying on the floor like a rug.”

  Gnomes appeared, silent as shadows. Six of them picked up Beso, carrying him on their shoulders like a fallen king.

  They led us back to our room, from which the bathing tubs had vanished, but there were still five couches. Food was there again. The gnomes left us alone.

  Beso awoke soon after. He complained of a headache, but otherwise he seemed unhurt. He was angry; the anger of one who felt he ought to have put up a better fight.

  “It was a gun, Beso,” Nik said. “You didn’t have a chance.”

  We got him sitting up and gave him a plate of food. Without discussing it, we all agreed that it was wisest to eat whenever chance offered.

  “What do you make of this event we’re to attend, this Arrayal?” I asked of Nik.

  “Hard to know, but it can’t mean much good for us,” Nik said.

  “A show,” Beso said. He stabbed at his food. “We’re put on a stage for their entertainment.”

  “Yes and no,” Henrik said. “Did you mark the mention of preeminence?”

  “I did. What of it?”

  “Unless I miss my guess, which I rarely do, we’ll be on exhibit right enough, but not as an end in itself. This Arrayal is not an entertainment as we would understand it. It’s more like a processional parade in a city, with everyone trying outshine everyone else. Or, if you prefer, we are more like prizes, like captured rare animals brought to court to win reputation for the captor.”

  I said I did not prefer that version. “I don’t much care to be shown about like livestock at the fair.”

  “Nor do I,” Henrik said. “Damn these sleeves, I’ve dragged it through the soup.” The sleeves of the robes were indeed voluminous, with room for a couple extra arms. I had rolled mine up; Professor Queller now did the same.

  “There may be one benefit to the event,” Nik said. He pushed a blob of brown substance around on his plate as if working at a puzzle.

  “How so, nephew?”

  “So far, we’ve seen precious little of Urstadt, if that’s to be its name.”

  “It is,” the professor said, “for I have named it.”

  Nik changed the path of the brown blob. “We’ll see more tomorrow.”

  “I’ve seen all the shining towers I want,” Beso grumbled.

  Cosmas humphed in agreement.

  “We’ll see more than towers, though. We’ll see people.”

  “The drow,” Henrik said.

  “Yes,” Nik said. “Maybe others too. I’m beyond thinking I’ve seen my last surprise in this place, but I’m thinking of particular people.”

  Henrik cocked his head. “Agedat?”

  “An enemy,” Nik said, “or at least a rival. I’m sure of it. If there are divisions among our captors, we may be able to make use of it. The Arrayal is a chance to gain information.”

  I saw the sense of this, but I spoke up almost afraid to accept even a glimmer of hope.

  “And if we do find an opening to exploit,” I said, “then what?”

  “Then we see what we can see, use what we have, and do what we can do,” Nik said with a nod to his uncle. “It’s still the same project, and it was never going to be easy.”

  “I don’t expect easy,” I said, “but I wouldn’t object to slightly less difficult. I mean to say, if we did es … essay an advantage,” I had nearly said escape, “we are still far from home. That seems the bigger problem, doesn’t it?”

  “Bigger,” Nik said, “but not more immediate.”

  “I have a few thoughts on that,” Henrik said.

  Nik’s head jerked up so violently, we all looked at him. He tapped an ear with one finger.

  “Ah,” Henrik said. “Which thoughts are preliminary, not to say hypothetical. I must develop them further before we discuss them.”

  I wondered what the professor had in mind, but now clearly was not the time.

  “In any case, tomorrow will be interesting,” Henrik said.

  “Especially,” Nik added, “if we keep our eyes and ears open.” He speared the last morsel and ate it. “Gods but this food makes porridge taste spicy.”

  The Tower Crystal

  We all slept, but I for one slept badly. More than once I woke in a start, as if I’d heard a sound or been shaken, only to find it was not so. The light did not help—the room remained a midday yellow; all I could do was cover my eyes with an arm.

  After awakening for the fourth or fifth time, I was shaken awake by Nik.

  “They’ve come for us again,” he said. “Show time, I think.”

  A dread clutched at my heart. Whatever was about to happen could not possibly mean anything good for us.

  We were taken by a small posse of gnomes who led us through new passages to an old destination, the landing pad, where Kalut waited next to one of his flying devices. This one was more like a real carriage. It had no wheels, naturally, nor traces, but the cab itself was squarish, with raised seats, and had a separate cabinette for the driver. The interior was quite tall; Cosmas was able to sit without hunching down. The rest of us could have stood, even Niklot. The exterior was a rich golden color, while a green hide of some sort covered the interior. The fabric showed no seams anywhere. Perhaps the green was the interior.

  Kalut operated the machine. A small opening communicated between the two cabins, through which was visible no sort of mechanism at all, save a single stick that appeared to be set into the floor. Maybe these machines were more like the flying carpets of legend, only with better appointments. In a moment, with scarcely any sense of motion, we were in the air. Flying, or gliding or floating might describe the carriage’s movements better. Staring and gawking described mine, for we flew through a city of spires.

  We passed a tower of blue that ascended in a series of curving shelves, like a slender version of an Aztec temple. Each level was a shade darker—pale blue at the top, nearly indigo black at the bottom.

  Elsewhere, a tower of coral shells in iridescent colors of salmon and pink and
metallic green. Even the smallest of these shells were as large as a room. They rose one atop the other with no visible supporting structure within—a column of shells poured from a giant’s bucket and frozen in mid fall.

  Many of the towers of Urstadt were on a scale at least comprehensible—fifty or sixty feet, with some rising to twice that height. Here and there, single towers ascended hundreds of feet in fantastical shapes, one twisting while another seemed to be all webbing, a third hardly more than a slim, vertical cloud. One tower, though, put them all to shame. If I thought I’d be believed, I’d say it stood a thousand feet tall. But it was taller than that.

  Impossibly slender, pierced by hundreds of doorways, alleys, and arcades, extended outward by balconies and porches immense and dainty, lit here and dark there, it looked like nothing so much as a great boulevard had been torn up from Paris or New York City and turned on one end.

  Kalut called it the Tower Crystal, and the origin of its name was evident, for every inch seemed to be made of the stuff, cut and shaped seemingly to reflect the glory of the towers clustered beneath it while at the same time trumpeting its own magnificence, a shout of arrogance against the darkness. As crystal, it possessed no color of its own but reflected all the colors thrown up against it. The tower had to have been created, sprung up wholly formed, for nothing so delicately complex could have been constructed. Viewed from the windows of our flying coach, Urstadt seemed to hang like a chandelier from this central support.

  The apex of the tower reinforced this impression, for the tower ended in an upraised arm, perfectly detailed and marble white, unblemished by doors or windows. Though massive, it was as smooth and graceful as a ballerina’s arm. The hand at the top was cupped, fingers curved upward as if to catch some falling star.

  “They must be using nearly pure phlogiston to pull this off,” Professor Queller remarked. “These structures defy all laws of nature.”

  I had to agree. Nowhere in the Second World had we seen materials like these, and no ordinary stone or metal could reach so high or take on such varied forms. Were these towers on the Surface, they would have touched the clouds. And then collapsed.

  Other carriages were also in the sky that day, all converging on the titanic hand. How they avoided collision, I cannot say. We had a few near crashes, or so they seemed to me. The nearer we got, the more flying cars there were, like bees to a hive. Like bees, too, the cars entered the hive. Never did I see a door. The cars flew up to the forearm or the wrist, even to the fingers (each of which was large enough to hold multiple cars), and then went within as if absorbed by the tower, as if it were truly flesh.

  One car only landed in the upturned palm—our own. Kalut guided it through the throng and placed us in the very center of an area between the base of the thumb to the base of the index finger—an area easily a hundred yards across. The landing felt solid enough, yet almost at once we sank into the hand. Several disorienting seconds later, we came to rest in a landing bay not unlike the one back in the golden tower.

  “The magical forces here dwarf anything on the Surface,” I said, to no one in particular.

  “Not at all,” Professor Queller said quickly, but the scornful tone was absent. “Our engineers have accomplished much more, and in multiple projects.”

  I looked at him and realized my mistake. Kalut was visibly leaning back toward us.

  “Oh, I was only being courteous,” I said. I hoped Kalut would not ask me to name any of those multiple projects.

  The door slid open, and we got out onto the palm of the hand. On its surface were paths marked out in vibrant colors—one in jet, another cobalt blue, another in rose pink. The widest of these was a mossy green, and down this strode three drow, each wonderfully dressed in robes that might have been spun by spiders, they were so delicately intricate. The tallest, a woman, looked down on us without lowering her head. Kalut stepped next to us.

  “These are your novelties, Kalut? They appear quite ordinary.” Her voice was as rich as an oboe.

  I understood her, but I wasn’t sure I heard her. The words didn’t match the movements of her mouth, and the sound came from no particular direction. What was I hearing?

  “And courteous regard to you, Marde,” Kalut replied. Those words came from his mouth. I suppressed a smile; he was showing off that he could speak our language while the woman Marde could not.

  “Is that one safe?” asked the man on Marde’s left. His eyes glanced upward.

  “The ogre?” The word came out as “awgreh.”

  “They have been instructed,” Kalut said. “You need not be afraid.”

  “I did not express fear,” the man shot back, giving Kalut a three-eyed glare.

  “You have given assurances,” Marde said.

  Cosmas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. All three drow flinched.

  “You should give guarantees!” the woman’s voice squeaked.

  “Have you been sent to delay us for some reason?” Kalut asked.

  Without replying, Marde and the two men stepped aside. As we passed, she made a sour face and waved her hand in front of her nose. I wanted to punch her. Against my better judgment, I was starting to like Kalut. At the least, he was less unpleasant than these three. They were looking for a fight, but Kalut was outmaneuvering them. Now, if Professor Queller would only keep quiet, we might get through this little show and maybe learn something to our benefit.

  “How did they understand us?” Nik asked.

  “You do not have a word for it,” Kalut replied. “Translator?” His mouth worked as if chewing on the word. “Perhaps. You hear her words in your own tongues; she hears in hers. It will be thus here in Tower Crystal.”

  “The Tower Golden belongs to you, correct?” Nik said.

  “Belongs is the wrong word, but you have no better.”

  “Who has the Tower Crystal?”

  “We all do.”

  Nik glanced at Henrik. “Public building, then. For public events. At least we’re not on enemy turf.”

  “You understand nothing,” Kalut said.

  No one bothered with a reply to that.

  The hall curved onward, featureless, until it ended. As we approached, an opening appeared. I had expected to enter some grand hall, but saw only a small room, perhaps ten feet by ten, but no more than six feet high, with a second door opposite.

  An antechamber, then.

  Kalut gestured for us to enter. This we did by crowding together. Nik’s head nearly touched the ceiling, but poor Cosmas had to crouch low. With all of us in the same room, this forced him to curl almost into a ball on the floor. I wondered why Kalut didn’t simply open the second door.

  The door slid closed. The other door did not open.

  I was about to speak up when the floor gave way beneath us.

  I cried out, just a brief, “Oh!” At once I realized the floor was still solidly in place. For several long moments I felt we were falling. Then, a pressure upon my feet, which soon vanished, and the door opened. The hallway was gone. A wide room stretched away before us.

  Kalut stepped out and gestured for us to follow.

  “That was an experience,” Nik observed dryly.

  “Did we fall?” I said.

  Cosmas uncurled himself and was the last to exit.

  “I believe we did,” Henrik said. “I think they use it to move up and down the tower.”

  “Like a flying car,” Nik said.

  “A flying room!”

  I was glad to get out—I prefer my rooms to stay in one place, thank you—but we entered another almost at once.

  As the chamber began to move, Kalut encouraged us.

  “You did well back there. Marde was a provocation sent by Agedat, a man who wishes me embarrassment.”

  “Why is he your enemy?” Nik asked. “Something personal?”

  Kalut looked puzzled. “What sort of enemy would be impersonal?”

  “Never mind,” Nik said. “What else can you tell us about Agedat?�
��

  “I see no reason to tell you anything.” Darker colors formed into circles around his middle, then faded. “He is Tower Green, the War Tower. He hopes you will be belligerent, crude, dangerous, and not at all interesting. It is how his circle portrays you to the world and council.”

  “Then we shall be civilized and courteous,” I said.

  “And interesting,” Professor Queller added.

  “Uncle, be good,” Nik warned in a friendly way. The professor was about to reply when the door slid open and we emerged onto a platform in the air. The sight brought us to a standstill.

  We were still inside the cream-white of the arm, but the walls here had gone transparent; we were moving into the crystal part of the Tower Crystal. The floor was clear as well, but mottled with irregular white shapes that gave the impression we walked on clouds. To fight away an onrush of vertigo, I looked up.

  The ceiling was visible. No other tower approached this one in height, so above was only the softly deepening shadow of the Urland “sky” along with one singular object: the great, white hand, palm cupped upward. It hung as if conjured there, a hundred feet or so above us.

  There was no help for vertigo in that direction either. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I planted my feet farther apart.

  “I hate walking on this stuff,” Beso muttered.

  “Best not to look down,” Cosmas said.

  Looking at eye level seemed the best bet. I began to comprehend what was before me.

  We stood in a banquet hall, if a banquet hall could be as vast as the Colosseum of Rome. Tables and chairs occupied the entire cloudy oval, some standing on clear spots so they appeared suspended in air. Some drow stood in small groups, conversing; others were already seated, dining on morsels, one to a plate. Rivers of gnomes moved silently, bringing in new plates, taking away the old ones. Several times, gnomes performed small miracles of agility to avoid being stepped on, being tripped over, or having a tray go flying. The drow paid no attention. Businessmen in the park paid more mind to pigeons on the ground than the drow did to the gnomes who served them.

  “Come,” Kalut said, and set off across the floor.