The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam

by Tom Fletcher

  But he had been born out here. He was not a Pyramidder. He kept going.

  He almost forgot that Snapper was a musical instrument until one night he heard somebody else singing. The man was drunken and not very good, but he followed the sound of it. The air was warm. He crawled, exhausted and emaciated, to an ancient-looking archway wreathed in soft, shaggy moss. Beyond it, occupying one corner of some kind of ruined plaza, there was a large wooden shack. Golden light spilled from its windows. A gigantic hairy bull of a man stood in front of it, arms folded. A sign hung above its door, and the sign read ‘THE WAXY NUT’. The song ended, and there was a moment’s silence before a cacophony of voices suddenly erupted – loud shouting, laughing and cheering.

  Then somebody else sang a different song.

  Alan approached the shack. The bouncer glanced over him. He did not look impressed, but his eyes were not cruel.

  ‘I was hoping to sing,’ Alan said. He spoke slowly, because he was out of practice, and he did not want to fuck this up. ‘Do you think that is a possibility?’

  ‘You any good?’

  ‘I’m usually very good. But I’m hungry and thirsty, so my voice will likely be a little rough.’

  ‘As rough as them dog’s arses inside?’ The bouncer laughed. ‘They’d take some beating as far as rough voices go.’

  ‘So I can enter?’

  ‘’course you can,’ the bouncer said. ‘This is a friendly pub. But they likely won’t give you nothing to eat until after you sing. It’s a contest, see. Nice big juicy snake steak for the best singer.’

  Alan bowed his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  The bouncer stepped aside, and gestured to the door.

  *

  So Alan fell into a different kind of Discard life. He met other Pyramid exiles – The Waxy Nut catered primarily to men and women kicked out of the Pyramid for loving members of their own sex – and began drinking heavily. He drank with sad, stubbly apes in ragged dresses, old prostitutes with rosy cheeks painted onto cracked white greasepaint, disgraced holy men, and orphans whose parents had been killed by cut-throats, fever or venom. The Nut boasted a staggeringly poor selection of whiskies, one home-brewed beer that tasted like old dishwater, and a bewildering variety of mushroom teas, with which Alan experimented liberally, despite the ugly consequences of addiction being painfully evident all around him. Intoxication provided a respite from the remorse. He and Snapper regaled the regulars almost every night – sometimes with folk songs, sometimes with his own compositions, and sometimes with long, experimental pieces brought on by the mushrooms. And almost every night he drank himself to sleep in the bar. He found that if he did not drink, he could not sleep. When he did sleep, his sleep was full of nightmares. The nightmares were many, and he would awake with the sense that his rest had been distorted and broken by their volume and their jagged shapes. If he was not drunk, or performing, he was chewing his lip to pulp and remembering the marks on Marion’s face in almost perfect detail. Sometimes he woke to find himself naked and entangled within the limbs of others; sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes groups. On these occasions he’d find a quiet place outside, alone, and whisper words of love, shame and contrition to Marion, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. It was like praying. It was praying. But then he’d start drinking again, straight away, in an attempt to shut his brain down. The Nut’s cheapest whisky was called Dog Moon, and drinking it was like standing over a bucket fire and inhaling the hot smoke, and Alan had discovered a taste for it.

  He found out where Eyes lived from a transient who stopped by one night. He’d made a habit of asking about his old friend. There was no other way of contacting people; in the Pyramid, they’d had a network of message chutes, but there was no such thing out in the Discard. So he left The Nut behind, promising that he’d not be long, and set out on another journey.

  He played Snapper and sang songs at campfires for bugs. He bought Dog Moon, food – roasted pigeon, frog’s legs, dried apple, cured goat meat – and a couple of long knives from itinerant traders. He saw strange and terrifying things from great distances: beetles the size of dogs; a woman pushing a cart full of writhing snakes along the top of a huge metal pipe; green glowing eyes staring at him across the canyon between two rusting complexes at night; bandits stabbing a man in the stomach, and leaving him twitching beneath a ruined archway. For a long time Alan couldn’t work out how to get to that archway in order to help; by the time he did get to the man, who’d been wearing a gigantic and magnificent snail shell on his back, he was dead.

  By the time he found Eyes, he had grown harder and leaner, and built something of a reputation as a singer. Eyes knew a place – a safe place – where Alan might be able to entertain the residents in return for a roof over his head and daily hot meals.

  Alan was glad of that; the nights were full of eerie voices and the days were full of colourful spiders. But even in a safe place, even with good food in his belly, even in a room with a lockable door, he found sleeping difficult, and his dreams were haunted by Marion and Billy, their bloodied bodies bearing wounds that he himself had inflicted; his waking hours, too, were twisted up by love for them, love that had nowhere to go, it seemed, somehow, and deep inside him there was a rage, the flames of which were fanned by the memories of his family’s faces, and the whisky did not dampen it at all, however much he drank. It only grew.

  3

  In the Halls of the Mushroom Queen

  There was no legal power in the Discard, but there was the Mushroom Queen. Of all the Discard lords and ladies, she had the greatest power and reach, and her halls were the grandest, and her whims were the cruellest. If there was one person in the whole of Gleam that it was absolutely imperative not to piss off, it was the Mushroom Queen: Daunt the Undaunted, Lady Redcapper, the Pale Sadist. But here he was. Here he was.

  Four years after his exit from the Pyramid, Alan stood beside Daunt’s throne, trying not to let his nerves betray him. More than anything else he just wanted to be back in the House of a Thousand Hollows; it was the closest thing he had to a home these days, and the only really safe place available to him.

  Daunt had had her throne made of bone, for Green’s sake. Its arms were large crocodile skulls, jaws wide open, human skulls nestled within. The throne shone by the light of the roaring fires, both of which occupied fireplaces that stretched the entire length of the hall. Two hunched little men carrying huge baskets of wood on their backs hurried up and down the room keeping the fires alive. Their bodies had been twisted over time by the weight of their burdens, and due to the constant heat their skin was red and dry. They wore nothing but loose pantaloons, into which they tucked their greying beards. Onto their foreheads, Daunt’s sigil had been tattooed: a black triangle pointing upwards, crowned by a half-circle. A symbolic representation of the mushroom, the squat fruit on which she had built her empire. Many of the people gathered in the halls for the evening’s entertainment wore this sigil on their foreheads, as did Daunt herself. Those who did not wear the symbol were paying customers, or entertainers, or clients. Or a mix of all three, like Alan. But Daunt’s feasts were as much for her people as for anybody else; she had many ways of keeping them fiercely loyal, and these lavish events were one of them.

  Like much of the Discard, Daunt’s halls were not readily visible from the outside. They were reached through a labyrinth of empty rooms and overshadowed rooftops. Through tunnels carved out of heaps of waste, and between the rusting metal hulks of dead machines. There was perhaps some vantage point from which to view the halls, but if it did exist, Alan hadn’t found it. Whenever he was here, he felt as if he were at some deep level; deeper than he’d normally venture. He suspected that the halls were themselves all located inside a different, larger structure, itself perhaps buried beneath the piles of broken things from which the Discard took its name. Whatever their origins, though, whatever their first purpose, the halls now were a series of large open spaces interconnected via high archways, the l
argest chamber presided over by Daunt’s throne, which was raised on a semicircular dais. The floors were paved with black stone and the walls were of some kind of smooth grey brick, covered with the mounted skulls of prey that Daunt’s mushroom gatherers had hunted and killed in the depths of the Discard. Gigantic reptilian jaws grinned down, alongside others that were disconcertingly difficult to identify.

  The queen herself sat on the throne, legs crossed, arms resting on the crocodile skulls. She wore a wooden circlet decorated with tiny wooden mushrooms. Her long blonde hair was loose tonight, her green eyes bright, the pupils small. She wore a flowing green skirt, but her arms, torso and feet were bare. Two naked, musclebound skinheads massaged her hands, their thumbs circling her palms, the scents of mint and lemon rising from the oil. Her lips were slightly parted in a half-smile. She caught Alan looking and he averted his eyes, cursing himself. If Daunt wanted him, she could have him. He would go willingly. He was as much her slave as those beardy shufflers down by the fires. But better she didn’t know that.

  There was no way she didn’t know.

  ‘Are you going to play for us, my sweet?’ she called.

  Alan spun back to face her again, hoping that his cheeks were not too red still, and bowed low. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I mean, I am. I am going to play for you. Now?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Would you like me to start now?’

  Daunt’s smile widened. ‘Is there anybody else playing?’

  Alan looked around. ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re on, Hollowboy. Silence isn’t … good for me.’

  Alan nodded. The halls were hardly silent, and he didn’t really like being called ‘Hollowboy’, but he didn’t say anything. He fumbled taking Snapper from his back and the guitar slipped through his sweaty fingers. He caught it again before it hit the ground and stared for a moment. ‘Sorry, Snapper,’ he whispered.

  He was usually more together than this. In the past he’d only met Daunt out in the wilds, and their encounters had been purely business: she sold him mushrooms. Her power and allure were diluted away from her own halls, and he’d always had an escape route planned if things went south. And more recently he’d only dealt with various knuckleheaded subordinates, who – though large and lumpen – were hardly threatening. Here, things were different. Here, he was in her claws.

  ‘A slow one,’ he said. ‘A slow one, to start with.’

  ‘If you insist.’ Daunt withdrew her hands from the masseurs and clapped once, twice, three times. Though the halls were full of voices and laughter, and the clapping sounded small, it had the desired effect. Everybody fell silent and turned to look up at the dais. Daunt stood up and, wordlessly, presented Alan.

  Alan looked down at the crowd. The crowd looked up at him. There were bikers in their leather waistcoats and extravagant headdresses, transients dangling assorted junk from their many belts, white-robed Glasstowners, warty green-skinned Toadies, hermits bearing highly polished shells proudly on their backs and, of course, fungus fiends, already slightly foamy around the mouth. No Mapmakers, which was something of a relief. Alan had heard that Daunt had a relationship with the Mapmakers, and he believed it – it was surely the only way she could have established a supply chain from the lower levels, which was where the mushrooms were strong and plentiful. Where the effects of the ascending Swamp could be felt. Alan had been apprehensive at the thought of potentially meeting one of their number, but it had always been unlikely – the Mapmakers generally did not attend social gatherings outside of their own tribes.

  All these people, with their whiskies and beers and berry wines, and their salted garlic snails and their stuffed vine leaves and their roasted sunbladder-heads and their trays of sausages, splitting and blackened almost to perfection – sausages! A true delicacy in the Discard, and vastly expensive – and their pipes and, of course, their fried mushrooms, mushroom soup, and pots of mushroom tea – all these people, they’d all been having a perfectly nice time, and he, Alan, Wild Alan, Hollowboy, was about to ruin it.

  He licked his lips. He took off his long coat – torture up in the hot Gleam sun, but a necessity down here – and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He deliberately slowed his movements so as not to appear nervous, and in doing so regained a modicum of control over his shaking hands. He looped Snapper’s strap over his neck and adjusted it. The hall was still silent and all eyes were on him. He hadn’t expected this, in truth. He’d expected to be stashed away in some dingy corner, playing to and being ignored by a roomful of determinedly intoxicated libertines. And right now, that was what he wanted. This was a hard crowd to read. He’d better steer clear of anything too factional, too partisan to this settlement or that community. Which was tough, because so many of the classics had their roots in turf.

  Of course, there was one song whose sentiment would raise no Discard hackles. ‘The Black Pyramid’ always went down well. Some Discarders were indifferent to the Pyramid, but most feared or hated it, and the song was a song of defiance against it. And it was slow and simple – at least to begin with – and he should just about be able to pull it off, even in this state.

  There was no generator down here – it was all open fires and flickering candles wedged inside skulls and guttering paraffin torches – so he didn’t have a microphone. The rooms looked good, acoustically, so he was all set to do without, but then from nowhere some skinny, symbolled lackey wheeled out a contraption consisting of a frame bearing a large, twisted brass megaphone decorated with small, horned figures dancing around – inevitably – mushrooms. The lackey made a respectable attempt at nodding and bowing and pointing and backing away all at the same time, and slipped on the lip of the dais, cracking his knee. Alan nodded his thanks as the emaciated man hobbled into the shadows, and started to play. The amplifying device actually had two megaphones, he saw, twisted around each other. One for his mouth, and one with a lower, wider aperture for – he guessed – whatever instrument the singer happened to be using. He found a pedal at the bottom of the frame that swung a beater at a skin, and kicked it. The sound was pleasingly solid. When he started to sing the volume surprised him, and he sounded different – slightly distant, slightly warped – but he liked it. He relaxed. He loosened his fingers and raised his voice, and started stamping on the pedal, and a couple of hermits started to dance, their glossy shells bobbing up and down as if they were floating on top of the crowd. Others were smiling, nodding. A few started murmuring to each other again, but not too loudly, so that was okay. It was all okay. As long as they were happy, it was okay.

  He could ignore them now.

  Alan closed his eyes, and threw himself into it. His mind and body dissolved into the air and he lost himself.

  *

  When he found himself again, later, he was painfully thirsty, drenched in sweat and almost slipping from the edge of the stage. No, he corrected himself: not stage; dais. He was on a dais. He giggled. What had he drunk? He glanced backwards at the empty glass bottles littered about where he’d been standing. Some beer, some whisky. Some other stuff. And still so thirsty. He laughed again. Already there was other music playing, and he wanted to dance, but it was not easy to dance to. It was just drumming; one loud, rhythmic beat. He felt a cool hand on his wrist, and turned to see that it belonged to the Mushroom Queen. She handed him a tall clay cup, but was studying his arm.

  ‘New tattoo?’ she enquired, pointing at an ornate black beetle with a human skull visible in its carapace markings. ‘Very nice, Hollowboy.’

  Alan stopped gulping down the water she’d given him in order to answer her question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, new. How did you know? How did you notice?’

  Daunt smirked. ‘I see a lot, Hollowboy. I see an awful lot. I open my third eye, my fourth, my fifth, and I observe. I am observant. Some use my fruits to dull their vision, or confuse it; I use them to sharpen it.’ She grinned. ‘Come. It is time for the next entertainment.’

  Daunt swept past him. She had her naked attendants on fine chain leads,
Alan saw now. They followed her, their hard, lean bodies glistening, and Alan rushed after, then past them so he was walking at Daunt’s side.

  ‘Your first audience in my halls,’ she said. ‘They enjoyed you. I enjoyed you. You did well. I will have you back.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your reputation is not entirely undeserved.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘Your reputation as a singer, that is.’

  Alan took a deep breath. ‘What other reputation do I have?’

  Daunt smirked again. ‘You know fine well. Do not play the fool with me. I intend for you to be one of my men tonight. There is no need to fence.’ She pressed herself against him and kissed him full on the lips. He could feel her breasts through his cold damp shirt. She broke free and undid his uppermost done button. ‘You may as well just take that off,’ she said. ‘It is foul. Your body is much more pleasing without.’ And around them, people were indeed removing their clothes, some as they danced, some as they kissed. The beating of the drum was louder and faster now. Alan’s skin felt hypersensitive; every brief contact sent waves tingling across his whole body. Something he’d drunk, perhaps. Some fungal liquor he’d downed unknowingly in the mindless space between songs. Or spores in the air. Daunt’s parties were legendarily debauched, and the provenance of her power probably had something to do with it.

  What was the next entertainment?

  Alan followed Daunt through one of the archways into a long rectangular space. People were squeezed onto the little floor space that bounded a pit in the middle of the room. In the pit were two small silver bowls, their surfaces pitted, each full of fragments of something that looked like dried orange peel. The bowls rested on a surface of some fine grey dust, possibly ash.

  The crowd parted for Daunt. Alan remained at her side, and she did not motion for him to be removed. He had expected greater security than this. Though presumably the masseurs were also bodyguards. He certainly didn’t want to provoke them. He had no doubt that the chains were decorative, and as insubstantial as cobwebs against the slabbed muscle beneath.