Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  Lying in bed the previous night, Cathal had studied the whistle he had stolen from Gerald’s study. It appeared to be made of a hard, creamy white material, which could possibly be whalebone or one of the many types of ceramic which formed parts of the engimals’ bodies. He had been afraid to blow into it in case it should alert Gerald or the guards. There was no telling if it was the right type of whistle, or if it worked or not, or if it would have the desired effect even if it did work. That was a lot of ‘ifs.’ But there was nothing for it—they might not get another chance at this. And Gerald seemed to be getting very close to achieving his jail of gaining control over the intelligent particles.

  If he could do even half of what he claimed, he would be virtually unstoppable.

  Cathal wished they could have made their move last night, but there had been no time to organize the children. And besides, they didn’t know where all the guards were at night. At night, the children were penned up in some small chambers off the main cave, and none of them knew where the guards slept or how many stood watch. None of them had fully explored all the tunnels in this part of the mine. Besides, there were other advantages in waiting until the morning.

  The noise of the machinery in the slaughterhouse made communication between the children difficult, but also made it hard for the guards to overhear them talking. Cathal looked up from his worktable to see Pip mouthing words to him. He moved around his table so that he could hear his friend.

  “Queg’s given us deh wave,” the boy said. “We’re on.”

  Cathal nodded, and went to raise his hand. Pip reached over and stopped him.

  “Are yeh sure yeh can do dis, Cathal? I mean, we believe in yeh an’ dat—we’d follow the Highwayboy to the gates of Hell, but we don’t want to see yeh gettin’ killed fer us. Dis is gonna work, innit?”

  Cathal was about to answer, but instead just held up his hand.

  “Only one way to find out,” he replied. “We’ve got the whistle—and Gerald’s gone out somewhere, so at least we don’t have to deal with him. And I don’t see Red either. We need to use this thing before Gerald discovers it’s missing.”

  Cowen, the nearest of the guards, came over. He was the brute with the face like a bag of potatoes, all swollen-looking and knobbly. He had a stubbled scalp and fists which were each the size of a child’s head. Cathal guessed the thug must have been nearly twice his weight, and Cathal’s head only just reached his shoulder.

  “I need to relieve meself,” he told the man.

  Cowen lifted his chin to his mate, who stood nearby. They were under orders not to let Cathal leave the main cave without being escorted by at least two of them. Cowen held a wooden club in his hand, and used it to nudge Cathal towards the tunnel leading to the cesspit.

  “I know the way,” Cathal reminded him. “You don’t have to push.”

  With his feet shackled, he could only move with small steps—the chain between the shackles was little more than a foot long. The other man—a burly, wheezy oaf named McCoughlan—followed them as they made their way towards the tunnel. The stench from the mouth of the tunnel was eye-watering, but it got worse the further in you went. McCoughlan stopped at the entrance, gesturing to Cowen to go ahead.

  “You’re in charge on this trip,” he said in his short-of-breath manner. “You can take it the rest of the way.”

  Cowen scowled and swore quietly, but then prodded Cathal with the baton again. Cathal hobbled forward into the stink.

  Since the children could not be allowed outside, and Gerald would not allow buckets for their doings in the main cave, a crude but effective toilet had been constructed. A wide board had been laid over a borehole in the floor of the chamber at the end of the tunnel. The children did their business into the borehole by squatting over a smaller, circular hole in the board. The borehole dropped down into an underground stream which, in theory, would carry away the waste matter. This system did not work perfectly, however—partly due to the low light and the wobbly board, and partly because of the hazardous protrusions sticking out of the walls of the borehole itself.

  The hole was large enough for a child to climb down, but not a grown man. This obvious avenue of escape had been blocked off by embedding steel spikes into the walls of the borehole about five feet down. Unfortunately, the spikes impeded a bit of everything that was dropped into the hole.

  Cathal coughed into the crook of his elbow, trying not to breathe through his nose. His sinuses were already burning and he had to blink his eyes to clear the tears. The chamber had a high ceiling and was roughly twenty feet across, but the only ventilation came from the tunnel.

  “Get on with it,” Cowen grumbled.

  With a quick glance behind him, Cathal jumped right over the plank of wood, turned, got his toe under the plank and flipped it up into Cowen’s shins. The guard snarled, more annoyed than hurt by the move. Cathal staggered back as the man bounded across the borehole, baton raised to put this whippersnapper in his place.

  He had been warned about the young Wildenstern, but he had not paid enough attention to the warnings. Cathal easily dodged the blow, darting to the man’s right. With his feet together, he leaped towards the wall of the chamber, got his feet up onto the stone surface and launched himself back off the wall, diving right over Cowen’s head. The chain stretched taut between his ankles and caught across the big man’s throat, hooking under his jaw. Cathal’s momentum wrenched the thug off his feet and Cathal absorbed the force of the fall by rolling forwards as he hit the ground, hurling Cowen past him. The bigger man somersaulted over and landed hard on his front, gagging on an injured throat. He made a noise like a strangled bear and shook his head as he started to get to his feet. The club had dropped from his grasp, but he went instead for the pistol in his waistband.

  “McCacchlish!” he croaked, his call for help reduced to a cough. “McCacch … McCoughlan!”

  As he got up on his knees, he raised his head to keep his eyes on Cathal. But Cathal was gone. A clink of chain behind him caused him to turn his head … and then Cathal, still lying on his back, shoved Cowen’s arse as hard as he could with both feet. Cowen went head-first into the borehole, his shoulders jamming in the narrow well. His head was well clear of the spikes below, but he was caught with his arms down by his sides. The gun fell from his waistband, hit his chin on the way down, bounced off a couple of the spikes, and then tumbled into the stream twenty-five feet below. Cathal swore as he watched it fall, but managed to catch the man’s bunch of keys as they fell from his pocket.

  He unlocked his shackles, tossed them aside and stood up.

  “You all right there, Cowen?” he asked. “How’s the air down there?”

  “I’m gonna cut yer liver out for this, yeh little guttie!”

  “You’ll have to catch me first,” Cathal snapped back. “And after a spell in there, I’d say I’ll smell yeh comin’!”

  Lifting his foot, he stamped down on Cowen’s ample backside, wedging him in even further. Cowen screamed blue murder. Cathal heard footsteps hurrying down the tunnel.

  “Cowen?” McCoughlan called. “What’s goin’ on down dere?”

  Cathal picked up Cowen’s wooden club and ducked down to the side, tucking himself in against the wall by the entrance, out of sight of the tunnel. McCoughlan trotted down the tunnel and saw Cowen’s legs sticking up out of the borehole.

  “Jaysus!” he exclaimed. “Here, boyo, is that you?”

  Despite the stupidity of the question, McCoughlan kept his head and hung back from the chamber. His own club, the stout handle of a hatchet, was held at the ready. It was a habit of his to whack the backs of the young workers’ legs with it when they weren’t meeting his high standards of productivity, but he was equally enthusiastic about cracking skulls, given the chance. Cathal swung out, his hand whipping forward, and Cowen’s heavy bunch of keys struck McCoughlan squarely in the face. The man crie
d out and clutched his face, swiping wildly with his club. Cathal rolled in under the swinging club to slam the heel of his shoe into McCoughlan’s groin. McCoughlan squealed and folded in half, putting his head in easy reach of his opponent. Cathal whacked his own club into the side of the man’s head with stunning force. McCoughlan collapsed to the floor, moaning dizzily.

  Cathal grabbed his discarded shackles. They had been a tight fit on his ankles. He rolled the burly guard over onto his front and pinned his arms behind him. The shackles fit the man’s wrists nicely. Cathal pulled the pistol from the holster on his belt, stood up and ran quietly up the tunnel.

  Stopping at the mouth of the tunnel, looking out at the main cave, he saw Queg standing at a worktable nearby. A dark-skinned, tattooed, sturdy little gurrier with a shaved head, Queg was watching for the signal. Cathal slapped the wall twice, and Queg nodded. It was time for Gerald’s flock of sheep to turn on its dogs.

  A guard with a grizzly mop of hair and beard was standing nearby, shouting at one of the girls who had dropped her box of engimal parts on the floor. Another guard was staring over, distracted by the commotion. That one did not see the attack coming until it was too late—four boys jumped him, one hitting him over the head with a wooden bucket. The blow was enough to stun him so they could drag him to the ground. His wrists and ankles were swiftly bound with rope and engimal-gut.

  A third guard saw what happened and pulled his revolver, shouting in alarm. His shouts were not heard over the noise of the machinery. Queg ran in front of him, yelling something and pointing off towards where Cathal was standing. A girl crawled up against the backs of the man’s legs. The guard looked over at Cathal, and then Queg shoved the man as hard as he could. The guard toppled backwards over the girl and was set upon by five children. A shot went off and Queg lurched back and staggered to the side. He struggled to stay on his feet as a red stain spread through his shirt from the hole in his chest.

  Everyone heard the gunshot. The bearded guard who had been about to beat the girl for dropping the engimal parts looked up, searching for the source of the sound. But the one who had fired the shot was out of sight on the ground. Letting go of the girl’s arm, the grizzly guard stepped out between the worktables, his hand going to his belt to draw his own firearm. A mallet hit him across the shin, swung by a boy hiding under one of the tables. The man cried out and fell back against the table, lifting his leg to clutch it to him. More hands grabbed his other foot and pulled it out from under him. His gun was snatched from his belt and a gang of child workers quickly subdued him.

  Keys were found. Shackles were unlocked. A shiver of fear and excitement spread through the wide space.

  There were six guards—five had been taken care of. The sixth was coming out of the smaller cave where the slaughtering was carried out. A ferret-faced man with a bushy moustache, he froze as he found Cathal pressing the barrel of a revolver against the side of his head. Cathal put a finger to his lips and six children piled on top of the guard, flattening him against the floor. Cathal strode down the tunnel, pistol raised. The stout door was standing open. There were only two slaughterers here, and he found them on the verge of killing a bright-eye. There were two other tables and the room was filled with racks of various weapons, tools and means of slaughter. Another tunnel led to the pens where other engimals waited. The floor was littered with shards of engimal carapace, shreds of skin and lengths of engimal gut. The bright-eye, with its long, multi-hinged neck, turned its large illuminated eye towards Cathal with a pleading look. It was strapped to the heavy table. One man was holding a cleaver over its neck while the other struggled to hold its head still. They stopped what they were doing as they noticed the young man with the gun standing in the doorway, mild surprise written on their faces.

  Cathal hesitated for a moment. He had forgotten about Siren. Tatty’s singing engimal was up in Gerald’s study, a long way down a tunnel in the wrong direction. There wasn’t time now to go and get it before they made their break. Pip appeared behind him.

  “Queg’s dead,” the boy said quietly, his voice choked with a suppressed sob. “Shot through the heart.”

  Cathal nodded, but did not take his eyes or his aim from the two men. He had known there might be casualties. It could not weaken their resolve now.

  “Tell the others to release the bright-eye and strap these two to the tables instead,” he told the younger boy. “But there’s no time to waste. Bring the bright-eye with us. Then unlock the pens and let the other engimals out. I doubt they kill with the same pleasure or merciless efficiency as humans, but these gentlemen can help us find out.”

  Three minutes later, Cathal and the children hurried out of the slaughter-room with the sounds of engimals bounding to freedom behind them. They knew closing the door would only slow them down—there were plenty of engimals that could open doors, or knock them down. But it would herd them together for a few moments and give the slaughterers time for some much-needed reflection.

  “Right,” Cathal muttered, pulling the whistle out through the tear in the lining of his waistband, where he had hidden it. He clutched it in his fist. “Let’s get the flock out o’ here.”

  Soon, they were running up the sloping tunnel towards the entrance to the mine, with Cathal urging them on as fast as they could go. The tunnel was low, and about seven feet across. Rails ran along the floor—the carts that ran along them were still sometimes used to bring in some of the larger engimals, or the heavier parts of those too large to fit through the entrance. Wooden beams supported the stone walls and ceiling, spaced regularly along the tunnel’s length. The only light came from the lanterns a few of the children carried, and the bright-eye that skittered along on spindly legs by Cathal’s feet like a faithful dog. Its eye shone a circle of light on the ground in front of them, and Cathal stumbled to a halt as its glow picked out something ahead—a shape in the darkness that he could not make out at first. The bright-eye backed up and tucked itself behind his legs, cowering there with its head peering around to keep its light on the strange sight.

  “That’s it,” Pip whispered. “That’s Moby.”

  The other children had stopped further back in the tunnel. Cathal could feel their fear, blending with his own, the atmosphere in the tunnel raising goosebumps on his skin. Moving forward one careful step at a time, he examined this bizarre, grotesque door.

  Cathal stared in wonder at the mouth of the tunnel … for that was exactly what it was—a mouth. It was a concave shape: a deep dome, or cone, that formed into a square to seal off the tunnel entirely with flesh that had somehow been welded to the walls—flesh that appeared to be some kind of graphite-colored, rubbery metal. Cathal reached out to touch it where it joined the wall and it felt as rough as sandpaper, but warm. The cone, which must have protruded further up the end of the tunnel, was divided equally by three lines which met in the center. This creature had three jaws that closed together to seal the cone-shaped snout. He had the unshakeable feeling that they were somehow trapped inside the belly of this leviathan.

  How had Gerald caught this beast? How could he have kept it alive as he brought it up here and taken it apart? How could he have hidden such a feat from the outside world?

  “Why didn’t he save himself all the bother and use a normal bloody door?” Cathal sighed.

  He could hear the sound of shifting feet behind him. The children were growing increasingly disturbed by the sight. And they knew the guards would be recovering back in the cave. Or Gerald or Red might show up at any moment. With the tension in his chest stifling the breath in his lungs, Cathal put the whistle to his lips and blew a long note.

  The mouth opened immediately, with a low groaning noise and a slight creaking, and a three-pointed star of daylight blinded them, the creature’s maw stretching into an imperfect circle, revealing the square entrance of the tunnel about twenty yards further up.

  “Come on!” Cathal called to the ot
hers. “We’re getting out of here!”

  The rails stopped where the creature’s flesh joined the floor, and he felt the strange substance give like soft earth under his feet. Each one of its three V-shaped lips was as thick as a rolled-up rug and as hard as bone. Cathal had to step across the bottom one to go through. Pip went to follow him, but caught Cathal’s arm as he came alongside.

  “Mister Dempsey, wait! Sometin’s wrong. Dere was another set of doors—normal ones, at deh top dere. Why would dey be open?”

  Even as he said it, Cathal heard the violin music and knew they were lost. He grabbed Pip’s wrist as the boy started to back away. Gerald stepped into the square of light at the end of the tunnel, silhouetted by the glow as he played that engimal violin of his. Gerald didn’t come in towards them, but Cathal could feel the music take him in its grip. Behind him, the children’s minds surrendered without a whimper, their bodies turning obediently and setting off back down the tunnel. Pip moved to go with them, but Cathal held on to him, teeth clenched as he struggled to control himself.

  “No,” he growled, an involuntary animal noise rising from his throat. “No. I’m not givin’ in to you again.”

  It felt as if there were iron filings in his blood, and some massive magnet was acting upon them, dragging his body backwards into the mouth of the leviathan. Turning his head, he saw Red stride through the retreating ranks of the children. He had a white whistle in his hand. He had been back there the whole time. But why hadn’t he tried to stop them? Had Gerald been waiting for this all along? Cathal let out another snarl as he was forced to let go of Pip and cover his ears. But that did not make any difference. Gerald was not playing to him, but to the things inside him. Cathal watched Pip back away and step slowly into the creature’s jaws. Cathal seized the boy’s wrist again with his right hand, even as his own body fought to betray him.