“Where to?” Belle asked, and was immediately aware of how loud her voice sounded among these teeming mutes.
“The centre,” Jed jerked his thumb in one direction. “Good a place as any. We can work our way from it in a spiral.”
“Methodical,” said Willoughby. “Cain’t we just ask somebody?”
“Ask them whut?”
“If they’ve seen Loulou-May.”
“Lilimae!” Belle corrected him. “Go ahead; try it.”
She and Jed folded their arms and watched Willoughby try to flag down the attention of a passerby. Eventually he caught a woman’s eye. She seemed to come out of a fug and he had to repeat his question several times before his words made any kind of sense to her.
The woman’s expression darkened and she began to wail on Willoughby with her rolled-up parasol. Willoughby cringed from her blows and ran behind Jed for protection. The woman sent one last scowl and went on her way, her expression gradually fading back to neutral.
Laughing, Belle asked what in Hell’s name he had asked her.
“I just asked her if she knew where I could find a woman,” Willoughby complained, rubbing his injured parts. Belle laughed all the louder. It had the same effect of a buzzard’s squawk slicing through the air over a sleeping desert. The people began to look around and fix the trio with baleful stares.
“Come on,” said Jed. “I reckon if we keep moving, they won’t trouble us. Somehow. Maybe.”
They hurried away. Willoughby looked around nervously, keeping a special eye out for women with parasols.
“What’s the matter with them?” He sidestepped a huge barrel of a man and consequently trod on a little girl’s foot. The child didn’t seem to notice.
“This is Plisp’s doing,” Jed muttered. “I don’t know what he’s up to but I’m against it.”
Belle shivered. She linked her arm through Willoughby’s - an unexpected thrill for the young man; Belle would have felt a good deal better if she had been able to hold onto Jed, but the gunslinger, she knew, would need both arms free in case he needed a quick draw at any second.
The further along the street they went, the stranger the buildings became. The familiar wooden frontages gave way to pod-like structures interlocked to create edifices of different sizes. Their surfaces were smooth and seamless, gleaming like polished eggshell. The silence seemed thicker in the air, more oppressive, like a storm that was threatening but never arrived.
“Look!”
Belle’s hushed cry drew the men’s attention to a queue of folk waiting in line at a row of water pumps. They were waiting to fill large containers, which they wheeled around on dollies.
“Beats going to a well,” Belle mused.
“They’re so much more advanced here,” Willoughby added.
“Yeah, but look at them!” Belle’s voice rose involuntarily. “They ain’t right! What do you think, Jed?”
“I think there ain’t nothing wrong with collecting rain in a barrel. And if it ain’t raining, find a spring. And if there ain’t a spring, why then I guess, some sort of contraption like those over yonder might come in handy.”
“Hmm,” said Willoughby, mulling this over. Belle got there first:
“Why build a city where it don’t rain and there ain’t no spring? It don’t make a speck of sense.”
Jed was amused in spite of himself.
“I don’t reckon the Pioneers chose this spot on purpose, Miss Belle.” They had reached the dead centre of the city, the hub of the wheel. “I reckon them folks came here by accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s right!” Willoughby declared, hurrying on ahead. “Look.”
The middle of the city was comprised of an enormous, semi-spherical structure. Its smooth white walls rose from the dirt like an unearthed skull. There was evidence of scarring and damage, dents and patched holes, all over it.
“This place is a marble,” Willoughby laughed, “a marble dropped in the dirt by a giant.”
They craned their necks but the top of the building curved away out of sight. Belle placed a tentative palm on the battered surface. It was cool against her skin but also a little clammy.
“The Pioneers arrived in this...thing?” she marvelled.
“Reckon so,” said Jed. He was struggling with a vague sensation of familiarity. He had seen this - or something very like it - before. He couldn’t remember when or where. He cursed again the loss of his connection to Horse; Horse would know how to prompt Jed’s memory.
“Looks pretty beat up,” Willoughby observed. “They must have realised there was no way this thing would get off the ground again.”
They thought in silence what that might have been like. A crash, an accident, a stranding.
“Those poor folk,” Belle repeated her sympathy for the long lost Pioneers. “Must have been terrible.”
“Just look at what they did, Miss Belle. Look around at what they built. They made the best of it.”
Jed’s words gave Belle no cheer. Willoughby considered touching her arm or perhaps linking his with hers again, but he withdrew his hand before it made contact.
“These folks weren’t always like this,” Willoughby offered her a smile instead. “This is Plisp’s work. Jed says so.”
Jed’s eyebrows rose at Willoughby’s statement.
“Enough of the history lesson.” He moved towards a broad open doorway. “Let’s go inside.”
***
Belle and Willoughby followed Jed indoors and were awestruck by the size of the atrium before them. The walls had a stripped-down appearance; there were gaps and odd struts and brackets dotted around where fixtures had been removed. Plants had been brought in for decoration, uniting the interior of the hub with the outside world - the colours and organic shapes softened the hard, man-made edges. Above them, the great dome of the hemisphere, a vast, smooth expanse, reflective as the still water of a secret lake. Willoughby pointed out their own reflections, distant and distorted, foreshortened from above; heads and shoulders, hats and hands.
If the outside city was quiet, inside the hub it was silent. Apart from an underlying humming that was barely audible, there was not a sound. People were bustling around in here too, with a more purposeful attitude. Unlike the pedestrians in the streets, these people seemed to be at work, although what the nature and purpose of their employment was, none of the three travellers could determine.
“It ain’t like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Willoughby gasped.
“Me neither,” echoed Belle.
Jed said nothing. Vague recognition continued to plague the edges of his consciousness - along with something else: an indefinable misgiving or sense of dread.
Without saying a word he moved away suddenly to his left. The others had to hurry to keep up. It would be too easy to lose sight of one another in this busy throng. Jed picked up the pace, moving with more certainty - he had been there before many years ago. He was sure of it. Images flashed in his mind prompted by the things he passed. He recalled what a particular alcove had been like before it was colonised by planters. He remembered what used to be in place before it was torn out and recycled.
There used to be more gantries. Overhead walkways linking different levels. There used to be banks of equipment, but they were long gone, put to use elsewhere.
He reached the very heart of the structure: a tall column of translucent material. It used to be alight, Jed remembered. It used to pulsate with energy. And around it, there used to be stations - Jed had never been allowed in this part of the, the, ship when he was a boy. It was an important place. It was the core, the command centre.
Belle and Willoughby found him staring up at the head of the column, impossibly high, reaching the apex of the dome.
“Jed...?” Belle approached.
&nbs
p; Jed collected himself, mastering the maelstrom of emotions that were duking it out for dominance inside him.
“Your sister ain’t far,” he said flatly. “If my memory serves me right.”
Belle’s hand flew to her mouth. She was excited and confused by the gunslinger’s remark.
Jed was on the move again but this time his gaze was fixed firmly on the floor. Willoughby pulled Belle along with him.
“What are we looking for, Jed?”
It looked as though Jed ignored the boy’s question but a few steps further along, he cast over his shoulder, “Some kind of hatch - a trapdoor kind of doodad. A way down.”
“Down?”
“Half of this place is underground,” Willoughby said helpfully.
Bella was visibly astonished.
“I cain’t imagine it,” she marvelled.
Jed dropped to his knees and began scraping away at the floor covering. He tore up a sizeable square and discarded it. His excavation revealed a flat panel. Jed stood up and stamped on the panel with the heel of his boot.
“Jed...”
“Stay back!” the gunslinger snapped, startling them. He continued to stamp. The panel whirred as motors ground into activity. Jed stepped off it. The panel slid away, revealing a deep shaft with rungs leading down into darkness.
“You can come with or you can stay here,” Jed looked from one companion to the other. “Miss Belle, you need to prepare yourself - but for whut exactly, I cain’t say.”
Belle whimpered. Willoughby reached for her arm but she stepped towards the hatch.
“I’m coming with,” she said with a determined expression. “If’n my sister’s down there, I want to see for myself.”
Jed was already at the lip of the hole and was climbing down. When he was clear of the first rungs, Belle stepped gingerly over the edge. Willoughby rushed over to assist her. Their eyes met.
“I - I - think I’ll stay up here and keep watch,” Willoughby decided. Belle arched an eyebrow. “Oh, Hell!” Willoughby glanced around nervously. He followed Belle into the shaft.
***
The light from the open hatch soon became ineffectual as they climbed further and further. Belle wondered if the shaft was as deep as that central column was high - Was Jed leading them right to the very core of Vultures’ Moon?
Willoughby was anxious about stepping on Miss Belle’s fingers so he slowed his pace accordingly.
Suddenly, the shaft was flooded with light from below. Jed helped Belle from the ladder and they waited on a metal gangway for Willoughby to join them.
“There ain’t no candles!” he gasped. “No oil lamps, no nothing!”
He was referring to huge squares that emanated a soft, white glow from all angles.
“Magical,” he breathed.
“No,” Jed grunted. “The Pioneers came from a place where things were different is all.”
“And this is what they came in? Is that right, Jed?” Belle too was gazing all around at the miraculous, apparently sourceless light.
Jed grunted in the affirmative.
“This way,” he said.
Belle and Willoughby exchanged glances. Their taciturn companion knew more about this place than he was letting on.
They followed him along the gangway, past several closed doors marked with arcane symbols. At the end of the path they came to a wider doorway. Jed patted the surface with the flat of his hand.
Something clicked within the door. It slid open with a low rumble.
“It...remembers me!” Jed said quietly. This confused his companions even more. They watched him step through the doorway. The lights along the way they had come were going out. Belle and Willoughby followed Jed, rather than be plunged into darkness.
The walkway continued into this room, sloping downwards to a floor of those same glowing tiles. The room was cavernous and its walls were lined with balconies. On these balconies and on the floor itself were row upon row of caskets, translucent bed-shaped boxes. They were attached to tubing Jed recognised from feeding Horse. All were dark, open and empty, save for one, at the far end of the room. It gave off a glow like fog from a swamp and pulsated with the rhythm of a heartbeat.
Jed led the others towards this occupied casket.
Belle clung to Willoughby’s arm, a little too tightly for comfort but Willoughby wasn’t going to complain in case she released him.
The casket was hooked up to tubes. A window at its head revealed the face of the occupant. Jed saw it first. He nodded in confirmation to Belle who rushed towards it, and placed her hands and face on that smooth surface as though it was the actual face of her sister.
“Lilimae!” she sobbed, at once overjoyed and afraid. “We have to get her out of this thing.” She began to pull at the lid but Jed pulled her away.
“You cain’t just rip her out,” he told her calmly. “Those tubes are, uh, feeding her, kind of.”
Belle buried her face in the gunslinger’s chest, weeping. Willoughby felt a stab of jealousy.
“There must be a switch,” he said, moving around the casket. “Or something you place your hand on...”
“Don’t touch!” Jed snapped. The boy flinched and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. Jed softened his tone. “I was lucky this place remembered me,” he explained - but not really. “A stranger’s hand could cause problems.”
“I don’t understand...” Belle sniffed. “Why’s he put my sister in a box? What do you mean, this place remembers you?”
Jed let out a long, slow breath.
“The longer I stay here, the more comes back to me,” he said. “But we ain’t got time for storytelling. Not now. We need to get Miss Lilimae away from here and quick. I reckon Plisp ain’t far and he’s only just started on his plans for your sister.”
Belle frowned. More riddles! But much as she wanted to, she decided not to question Jed at that time. Perhaps he’d fill in all the gaps on their way back to Fort Knightly.
If they got out of there, that is...
“Can you do it, Jed? Can you get her out?”
“I’m going to try.” He moved Belle away from the casket and sent Willoughby a look that urged him to join her. Jed walked around the casket, inspecting it and rubbing his chin stubble.
“One thing to consider, Miss Belle,” Willoughby whispered, “Plisp wants your sister alive. He could have - well, he could have...” He decided against saying any more, as much as he would have liked Belle to bury her face in his chest.
Jed seemed to come to a decision. He placed his palms on either side of the casket as though covering Lilimae’s ears. There was a clunk. Jed lifted off the lid of the casket. Belle gasped to see her sister looking so pale, so inert, and so lifeless. She tried to get closer but Willoughby held her back.
Jed moved around the casket, disconnecting the support tubes. They hissed and fell limp like dying snakes.
“Quick!” he urged. “Take her out!”
He stood back while Willoughby and Belle darted to Lilimae and lifted the motionless figure into a sitting position and then up and away from the platform. Still unconscious, the girl of course could not stand. Willoughby and Belle put her arms across their shoulders.
“What’s the matter with her?” Belle panicked. “She will wake up, won’t she? Jed?”
“We need to get her away from these contraptions,” was Jed’s reply. “And - one more thing...”
Willoughby baulked when he heard what that thing was.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! I ain’t doing it. No, sir!” He folded his arms like a defiant child, causing Belle to stumble under the weight of her sister.
“Willoughby, please!” Belle strained to keep upright. “For me!”
One look at those imploring eyes dissolved Willoughby’s reluctance
in an instant.
He began to undress.
***
It took them quite a while and considerable effort to get the unconscious Lilimae up the ladder to ground level. Willoughby grunted and cussed under his breath. He kept stepping on the hem of his long skirt and couldn’t help feeling like a damned fool. He questioned the gunslinger’s wisdom: swapping clothes with Belle’s sister as a precaution against discovery was quite the most ridiculous notion - but when they were back in the hub, among those sleepy folk just milling around, no one paid them the slightest bit of attention.
It wouldn’t be long, Jed had said, afore Lilimae’s absence was noticed. Folk would be on the lookout for her. Dressing her as a young man in suit and bowler hat could buy them enough time to make their escape.
Belle had smirked to see the young man in his borrowed attire but a glare from Willoughby forced her to contain her mirth. She didn’t want him changing his mind and changing his clothes again.
They headed back to the lockup and the wagon, marching Lilimae between them like a young man with two suitors - one considerably less pretty than the other.
Jed kept a vigilant eye on all they passed. It had all been easy so far. Too easy. Perhaps some silent alarm had already been triggered. Perhaps Plisp was watching them now - or at least his agents were.
“What was that place anyway?” Belle asked.
“Dormitory,” said Jed. “The Pioneers came a long, long way. They slept in those things for years and never aged a day.”
“Oh...” Belle considered this. She was about to ask Jed how he knew that to be a fact when a gun blast whizzed past her head and obliterated a storefront window.
“This way!” Jed yanked Belle’s arm, pulling the others along with her like a kite’s tail. They stumbled their way into a bank - unlike the other, wooden, buildings, the bank was made of stone. Blasts followed their path, sending up clouds of scorched dirt and splinters.
The customers in the bank expressed mild surprise and fled the building like sheep lolloping from one field to the next. Behind the counter, the tellers raised their hands high, blinking incredulously from under their visors.
Jed yelled at them that he wasn’t there for the cash. Instantly, one of them began stuffing banknotes into a bag.
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