“I see,” I said, although I didn’t. I wondered where this was all going, but I was happy enough to forget my misery for a moment.
“Now, your average phylite doesn’t read at all. He’s more interested in music boxes, tone sticks, stereographs, and street bulletins. Certain phyles are known for their erudition, however. Cylinders can’t be privately owned, but they can be borrowed from the library system for a limited time. I think you must see now where this is headed.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
Bulna flared his nostrils. “Why, think about it! Every piece of writing passes through the Cheiropt’s hands on a regular basis. Do you know how easy it would be to alter a cylinder—to change a word here, shade a nuance there—without anyone noticing? Especially if it was done slowly over a great period of time. Which is just how the Cheiropt has done it.”
“Oh,” I said.
“As soon as I realized what was happening, I began checking out cylinders based on a scheme of my own devising. I was an actuarial apprentice, and I used my skills to build an engine to predict when a cylinder was slated for modification. I kept a cross-referenced database of the anomalies I discovered.”
“And?”
“My findings were inconclusive.”
“It was then,” said Jubah eagerly, “that Bulna’s backsliding was noted by the Cheiropt. His mother was a lapsed Recusant, you see, a born member of an antisocial sect. She had accepted certain incentives to bear a child to a donor of the Cheiropt’s choosing. Bulna’s mark depended on his keeping to that course. When his habits started affecting his work, his office ‘lost’ his writs of indenture, and he—”
“He doesn’t want to hear all that, Jubah.”
“He didn’t say he wanted to hear your theory, either.”
“You were the one who brought that up. I didn’t want to tell him. You forced my hand. But I’m under no such necessity with my personal history. Really, I’ve never known someone so interested in other people’s business.”
“Is that so?” cried Jubah.
“You only mentioned my theory because you hoped Keftu here would ask about my past.”
While they were arguing my attention wandered about the room. It was dim: the only light fell from a lamp over the sink in the corner. On the walls were hung garish landscape prints filled with wide-eyed creeping things. There were three mattresses in metal bed frames. The floor and walls were tiled; the grout around where the sink pipe disappeared into the wall looked to have been hastily applied, as though the plumbing had to be worked on frequently.
I became aware that Bulna had asked me something. “What was it?”
“How did you end up here?”
Briefly I told him my story. “How about you?” I asked.
“I told you. My enemies.”
“In addition to that,” put in Jubah, “he spent some time in the Palace of Collections, which is where the Cheiropt puts phylites who happen to slip into the misfit category.”
“I eventually escaped,” said Bulna. “I ended up at the local branch library near here. Granny has people out everywhere looking for misfits. They found me.”
“What do you know about the Misfit?”
“The Misfit? He’s the terror of Enoch around here. The Cheiropt has him walled off and surrounded by watchers, like a splinter in Enoch’s finger. All his gain goes toward a new phyle he’s forming. He started under Granny like us, but escaped or was released somehow. Now she’s his tenant.”
“She seems not very difficult to get the better of.”
“You noticed that, did you?” said Jubah. We all laughed.
“And what does the Misfit do?”
Bulna shrugged his shoulders. “He’s tied to all the prohibited markets around here. Some say that that’s only a front. I tend to agree, but I have no idea what it could be a front for. He’s an enigmatic man. It’s because of him that the Cheiropt is fast-breeding ghulim again. That hasn’t happened in more than a myriad. After all, this is the Age of Peace.”
“Listen,” I said, lowering my voice. “Have you two ever thought of trying to escape?”
“There’s nothing to escape to,” said Jubah bitterly. “I would only end up someplace like this again, only probably worse.”
“What about you, Bulna?”
Bulna smiled. “Come, Keftu. How would you get past so many guards and locked gates? You couldn’t even hold your own in the pit.”
I licked my lips. “Granny’s guards aren’t invincible, you know. But my idea involves strategy, not force. You see, there’s a small…person…who comes to me when everyone’s asleep. It occurred to me that—”
“That imp!” Jubah hissed. “Your plan revolves around her? Look what she did to me?” He exhibited his finger. There were two semicircular rows of puncture wounds stretched between his knuckles.
“So she’s visited you,” said Bulna. “I wouldn’t get too friendly with her.”
“Why not?”
“Those she visits find themselves in the old lady’s bad graces. Perhaps it’s only coincidence. But they say she’s planted items stolen from the store in the cells of inmates she didn’t like. More than one has been torn to pieces in the pit on her account.”
“What is she?”
“Everyone just calls her Granny’s familiar. What she really is I don’t know.”
“She did me a good turn,” I said, “although I did get in trouble for it. Perhaps she doesn’t understand what she’s doing.”
“No,” said Bulna. “No, I think she does. And she has some sort of connection with Granny. You know how the old lady gets ill at times? It’s always when her familiar’s most active.”
“Vicious little imp!” swore Jubah, nursing his finger sullenly.
I shrugged my shoulders and let the matter drop. It didn’t seem worth arguing about.
15 Delving
We three—Bulna, Jubah, and I—were to go delving in seven-hour shifts, staggered, with an hour overlap in the cell at each end. It was Jubah’s shift now; my first delve would follow.
Bulna woke up from a nap—we were always napping in there, it seemed—and looked long and searchingly at me. “Listen,” he said. “About my past. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to be secretive. But Jubah is a bit of a scandal-monger. I don’t like to encourage him. You understand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“He’s had a hard time of it here. Granny threw him into the pit as a clown, a foil for a real slayer. It didn’t turn out well.”
“He got hurt?”
“No, the slayer got eaten.”
“How did you fare in the pit?”
“Me? I never fought. I refused to. What am I, a savage?”
“How did Granny like that?”
“Well, you said it yourself. You just have to know how to handle her. If you scrape and bow, as Jubah sometimes does, then she’ll abuse you. If you bully her a bit then she’ll complain about it but do what you want. Within certain limits, of course. It actually pleases her, I think. Here in Hela, abuse is a common substitute for love.”
“You seem to know her quite well.”
Bulna shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t pretend to understand her, but I can generally predict her actions.” He was silent for a moment with pursed lips. “Are you really from Arras?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How many of you are there?”
“I’m the only one. The rest all died. That’s why I left.”
“What was it? A plague?”
“Poison in the wells. There was a storm, and then death seeped into the water.”
“Let me ask you something, Keftu. Did your people speak like we do? I mean, did they put words together in the same way?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “How else would they speak?”
Bulna shrugged. “It’s a theory I have. While I was an apprentice, I sometimes amused myself by constructing new ways of speaking.”
“You mean, making up
different words for things?”
“Words, yes, but sentence structures, too. And different types of words. As far as I could tell my inventions were perfectly consistent. I began to wonder if perhaps there might be men somewhere who speak…differently.”
“That’s a curious idea,” I said. “Our wisdom held that men were first taught to speak by the seraphim.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Days or weeks, perhaps, or maybe a lifetime. It’s hard to remember.”
“You came straight to Hela when you arrived in Enoch?” he asked.
“Yes. I hardly glimpsed the streets. I found myself in the dungeons before I knew it.”
“That’s the Cheiropt for you. It routed you down here, straight into the old lady’s clutches. A curious thing, the Cheiropt. It seems almost unreal, and yet there’s no resisting it. It’s a living prison of black iron, bristling with traps to swallow the unwary. All you do is set foot in the city and you’re in its toils.”
“I don’t understand how people can live here,” I said.
“It’s very simple, my friend. They don’t know they’re in prison. That’s the most secure kind of prison there is! But even those who try to escape only succeed in extending its boundaries. There’s no way to fight but along the established channels. Take the Misfit, now. The fractious and the rootless hail him a hero. The misbegotten worship his sandals. But they’re just organs of the Cheiropt. If the prison really broke open, they’d hide in the shadows and wait for someone to repair it. The same goes for the Misfit. He’ll be reabsorbed sooner or later.”
“But there’s you,” I said. “What about your theory?”
“Don’t forget, I’m part of the Cheiropt, too. Don’t trust a word I say. Perhaps I’ve seen the prison for what it is, or perhaps my conception of the problem misses the point entirely.”
“I came here because I wanted the key to eternal life,” I said. “I thought I would find it in Narva. But now it seems I may never get there.”
Bulna nodded. “The Tower of Bel stands at the center of a labyrinth. Enoch is the labyrinth. Getting across it isn’t a matter of time or space. It’s only two miles from swamps to sea at the widest, but it’s the human distance that counts. The Tower itself rises from the abyssal plain to the stratosphere, but in terms of human distance it reaches from the netherworld to the stars.”
“Has no one succeeded in reaching the Gardens?”
“To my knowledge, only one man has gotten around the generational ascent.”
“Who?”
Bulna leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Few people know what really goes on in the Palace of Collections. Experiments take place there; some of the guardians have curious connections. You hear things if you keep quiet and do as you’re told. I heard of an alien who gained access to Narva, who labors in secret for the happy Narvenes.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. They call him the Adept.” He leaned back. “Of course, it may just be a wild rumor. My information may be bad. I was a bit of a misfit even in the Palace.”
“Jubah called you a Recusant.”
“He was only guessing. Recusants follow the old seven-day week, so the Cheiropt keeps them in the interstices. I think I come of an old Recusant family; I don’t know for certain, of course. What he said about my mother was his own invention, but it might very well be true.”
“Who raised you, then?” I asked.
Bulna seemed surprised. “Here, Keftu, it’s considered shameful even to know one’s blood relatives. The Cheiropt imparts the Agoge. The phylites are like a gas: members of different phyles don’t interact, and members of the same phyle are interchangeable. The helot class is more like a liquid, composed all of one type. Helots live in households but there are no hard divisions. Their offspring are reared by the Cheiropt.”
“The helots—they are a separate race?”
“Not exactly. They arose from the same stock as the phylites during the Age of Glory. They’re descended from the serfs of the old industrialist-princes. The great factories are no more, but the helots remain.”
“I thought they must be a conquered people.”
“That goes against the popular conception. When the phylites think of them at all—which is seldom—they do so in carefully circumscribed ways. To them the helots are peers who have sunk to Hela through their own social incompetence.”
Another inmate appeared in the doorway. “I think it’s wonderful that you two find so much to talk about,” he said, “but I’m trying to sleep. Would you mind shutting your traps?”
That ended our conversation.
* * * * *
Jubah returned from his delve. He and Bulna conferred in a corner just before it was time for me to go. They seemed to come to an agreement.
“Listen, Keftu,” said Bulna. “We’re going to tell you a secret.”
“Yes?”
“Some time ago I discovered an old treasure house down below. Jubah and I share it now. We’ve never brought anything from it that Granny didn’t like. But we hold it in reserve. See what I mean? We come up with an item or two at a time, and don’t say a word about where we found it. Otherwise she’d get greedy, and there’d be no pleasing her. Can we trust you with it?”
“Of course,” I said.
Bulna explained where it was. “A thoughtful person like you should find it interesting. It antedates the city, I think, and this is a very old part of the city. But remember not to bring back more than one or two items. Hold off on the costlier stuff for now.”
The guard came for me a few minutes later. We went through the store into a cavernous cellar filled with more junk. I followed him down a path to an iron-bound door at the back. Granny was waiting beside a mechanical winch. She and the guard locked a metal harness around my shoulders and breast, then attached a chain to a ring at the back. The chain was as fine and supple as silk thread, but extremely strong, too. Most of it was wound around the spool of the winch.
“This is so you don’t get lost,” said Granny. “When it’s time to head back we’ll give it a tug. Mind that you heed it. We’ll reel in the slack as you come. One or two delvers have tried to get clever. We always get the harness back. The delver, sometimes not.” The guard laughed.
Next she picked up a glass phial. It was bound with tarnished silver and filled with a milky fluid. She twisted the end cap, and white light with a slightly greenish cast poured through her fingers. She clipped it to the front of my harness. “This is one of the only nephridium lamps in Hela,” she said. “They don’t make them anymore. It’s worth ten of you. Take care of it.” She fitted a metal muzzle over my mouth and locked it behind my head. “There,” she said. “Now, off you go. Bring back something worth selling.”
Beyond the door a spiral stairwell led steeply down. In places the stone had crumbled or fallen through to a lower turning, but there were chains fixed to the wall so that I could lower myself without slipping.
I reached the bottom after ten rounds. The tube at my breast lighted my way through the maze of gaps and crannies that honeycombed Hela’s foundations. At last I stepped through a crumbling brick wall into an alley, and paused to get my bearings.
The track was paved with big, round stones. Two ruts ran across them, worn by chariot wheels in long-ago days when the way was still open to the sky. In one direction was unmitigated blackness, in the other a rectangle of shuddering umber. I went toward the light.
The doorway gave upon an overarched chasm lit by the eternal sunset of the methane lamps. The walls were mostly mud-brick, pocked with doorways blackened from the smoke of a million holocausts. Here and there helot thaumaturges peered out like melmothim from their nests. Yawning tunnel mouths on the level of the floor were guarded by carved sphinxes of elder days.
Before anyone saw me I turned and retraced my steps in search of the hole Bulna had told me to look for. I found it in the darkness beyond where I’d emerged upon the lane. From there I w
ormed my way through the leftover spaces, going deeper with each step. The primative earth bore up my tread as I chased a paved path running along the hill’s contour. The treasure house was close by now, I knew. I climbed over heaps of rubble, and wriggled under fallen blocks, and rounded a bend. And there it was.
The door was triangular: two huge blocks were angled toward one another with a wedge in the gap at the top. Next to it was the stone that Bulna had levered out of the way. I crept through the triangle and down a passage hewn out of the hill, emerging at its end into a small, domed sepulcher.
In the center of the paved floor was a circular hole, an upright grave with a stone lid. Treasure-laden shelves ran around the perimeter, with empty spaces showing where Jubah and Bulna had carried things off. The sloping walls and ceiling were tiled with malachite and gold and lapis lazuli. A circular recess at the top mirrored the lid of the grave.
I looked up at the recess. The memory of a dream tugged at my mind. After gathering some slack in my chain and dropping it to the floor, I went back to the entrance, sprinted down the passage, and leaped up to the circle. I caught at the lip with my fingertips and hung there. With one arm I pushed at the disk. It gave, sliding into a recess at the side. A dark shaft rose straight up above it.
This was something my friends had never found. I dropped to the pavement, took off my sandals, and ran and jumped to the hole again. Using the edge of the disk to pull myself up into the shaft, I somehow got my back against the wall, with my feet pressed against the opposite side. I began to inch my way up.
The shaft was about twenty feet high. At the top I emerged into a long vault with walls of orange-streaked white onyx. The tables were laid with wares for the occupant’s afterlife. Everything was rich but practical, in contrast to the luxury items below.
In an alcove at one end stood a panoply on a stand, curiously wrought of bronze, green with eld. The cuirass had jointed shoulder guards, breast plates, and skirt plates. Detached arm guards and greaves hung beside and below. A dragonfly stood out on the cuirass; moss-forests were wrought on the greaves. The helmet had down-sweeping cheek guards with a sloping nose guard between them.
Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Page 8