“I take them as I find them.”
“Where does he get these little lovelies?”
“They come out of the Deserits, apparently. My contacts have never told me how.”
“And what are they?”
“Ova. Germs of living war engines left over from the tumults of the gods.”
“Ah, yes, your demiurgic vicars of earth.”
Jairus had recovered his composure. He smiled as he sat on his throne. “Don’t underestimate the Old Ones, Derrin. They have more influence over Enoch that just a pythoness here and there.”
“I’ll leave the lords of the air to you. But tell me, now that I’ve helped you get your ‘princess’ established. What’s the Sun Mage’s interest in her? You mentioned that she’s bait in a trap, or so you think. Bait for what?”
Jairus flashed his sharp teeth. “Don’t trouble yourself with the secrets of my ‘splendid allies.’ Suffice it to say that there’s someone Vaustus wishes to contact. Someone who’s sent feelers throughout all Enoch, searching for that particular prize.”
“I knew it,” said Derrin. “The Adept. Now, what does your Sun Mage have to do with the Adept?”
Jairus leaned back unconcernedly in his iron chair. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the religious question. He’s mad on religion, the Sun Mage. He’s setting himself up as a reformer. He’s going to restore the true worship of Taïs in Enoch.”
“How do you feel about that? As a votary of the Dancer, I mean.”
“The Cheiropt will devour him as it does everything else. I’ll be gone by then. These eggs are what I’ve been waiting for. The exodus begins in one moon.”
20 Fire and Wind
I raced through the night. I missed my poniard, but I knew that its presence in my bedchamber might slow down the alarum my watcher would raise.
A string of lights like pearls showed where Derrin’s car waited. Beneath was a sea of darkness and, at the bottom of that, on a level with my eyes, a single tube lamp suspended over the foot of the service stairs. Two of the Misfit’s men stood guard there.
I crept as close as I dared and peered around the side of a tomb. One guard wore a helmet; the other did not. The tube’s glare made his head an excellent target. I stooped and selected two stones and tumbled them in my hand, getting the feel of them. I threw the first. The bare-headed guard went down without a cry. His partner leaped to his side. An instant later the lamp exploded in a flare of white light.
The guard began to cry a challenge, but I was already upon him. I rushed off his helmet and drove his head against an iron girder. His blade, an anlace, clattered to the ground. I took it and shot up the steps.
I slowed as I neared the head. Two ghulim stood guard on the last landing, restive, having heard the disturbance below. I killed one with a slash across his throat. The other I flung over the side. He plummeted toward the earth without a cry.
Now I was on the platform. The car lay alongside it, a cargo bay with a steering compartment at each end. Three ghulim shambled out of the sliding bay door and came at me at once. They wore metal gauntlets with needle-sharp claws at the fingertips. I threw myself among them, doing my best to evade their rending swipes. One I dispatched with a thrust through the middle. I spun between the other two, using their mate as a shield. The second one tripped and fouled the third’s lunge. I killed them both.
I leaped up to the cargo bay. Fifty cases like the one I had seen in the pyramid stood in rows on the floor. I jumped down, ran to the engine compartment that faced the direction from which Derrin had come—the east—and swung myself inside.
It was dimly lit. I felt the heat of the furnace, heard the simmering boiler. My eyes ran over the pipes and valves and levers. No longer a stranger to such complicated machinery, I quickly grasped its purpose.
Cries came from the stairs below. There was no time to unravel the engine’s intricacies. I began turning and pulling things at random. Mysterious noises came from the belly of the beast. The car convulsed, jerked backward, and set up a terrifying din. I threw myself against a lever that stood up from the floor. The car lurched in the direction opposite the one I wanted to go. It began to pick up speed. I yanked the lever again, and was flung off my feet as the car screeched to a halt.
I got up and looked out. The Misfit’s men were massing on the platform ahead in the darkness. Silhouetted against the flare of torches I saw Jairus himself, towering over the other fighters.
I began pulling levers again. The engine bucked and reared. I released the brake. The car started moving in the right direction. It accelerated and roared past the platform. The men all shouted and pointed, and crossbow bolts pattered against the metal hull. Then the locomotive was soaring over the abyss, cutting through the damp night like a bullet.
The basin fell behind. The tracks ran along a street, straddling it on pairs of iron legs. Up ahead I saw where the defile came to an end against a tall building. The railway dropped below street level, and the car shot into a tunnel’s mouth.
It was then that the sixth ghul burst in upon me, yowling and rolling its vacant eyes. I led it on a mad chase around the compartment, dodging its outstretched claws. The shadows raced from darkness to darkness as the yellow gaslights flew by. A valve damaged by the ghul’s blows was shooting a plume of steam now. The metal floor became slippery. I lost my footing and went back against the pipes. The ghul pinned me there, wrapping its claws around my neck.
I looked out the front window. A metal barricade was flying up out of the darkness. With a final burst of strength I set both feet on the ghul’s breast and thrust hard. Its claws raked the back of my neck as it tumbled out through the door. The car collided with the gate an instant later.
The world seemed to end in the clash and scream of rending metal. I was thrown about the compartment like a ball. For a second everything was heat and fury. Then the locomotive lurched to a stop, having driven itself halfway through the barricade.
Gingerly I picked myself up. I was battered and bruised but no bones were broken. Clouds of hot steam filled the tunnel outside, yellow in the gaslight. The engine was galloping madly. The car trembled. I leaped out and ran down the tracks on the far side of the gate.
A hot, invisible hand pushed me flat between the rails. The scream in my ears drowned out my own thoughts. Pieces of metal and glass rained down all around me. And then there was silence.
I stood up unsteadily. The engine was an unrecognizable mass of scrap metal now. I thought I could hear a thin, wailing scream. Another, smaller explosion rocked it. Sullen orange filtered through the lattice of twisted metal.
I turned my back on the sight and continued down the tunnel. Soon I could feel fresh air on my face. I rounded a bend. The tunnel mouth yawned before me. I went out and surveyed the view.
I had regained the inner edge of the city. The tracks went out to join a viaduct running parallel to the foundation-wall. The marsh was a grid of feathery black. Pale lights went back and forth along the earthen causeways. A ladder of metal rungs fixed to the foundation climbed from beside the tracks up to the streets and down to the margin of the moat.
I began to descend.
21 City Streets
I was wandering the streets of Enoch, wrapped in the shift I’d bought off a helot that morning. I’d spent the night in the swamp.
Now I was tramping along the grated promenade where I had tried to enter the first time, past revolving doors of apartment foyers, markets, dealers of jewelry and machines, theaters, perfumeries, accounting houses, glittering shrines and fanes, all scenes of silent, bustling activity.
The current of phylites no longer parted for me. My invisibility was more pointed than it had been, for I was a helot in their eyes. I had to slip along the gaps as best I could.
They seemed hardly to notice each other, though, gliding past one another, or through one another, almost. Occasionally two would stop and quietly exchange news, like termites meeting on a trail, but even then they talked past each
other. Most had tiny music boxes trapped to their ears. When a rail-car passed by I observed that the passengers were all wearing mechanical masks and had vacant, silly grins on their faces.
The irregular foundation rose up to meet the promenade, after which I went forward on solid pavement, still following the tracks. Soon, though, I found myself forced gradually off the popular corridor into side streets. Eventually I decided to leave both railway and crowds behind, and began to make better progress.
Now the city seemed nearly deserted. The buildings, though of high workmanship, were mostly vacant, their windows like the blank eyes of gutted souls, their fixtures and doors thickened with verdigris, their clocks unwound, their furniture crumbling with dry rot. The streets were filthy, narrow, and laid without plan.
All morning I climbed up and down these winding defiles. I crossed cobbled quadrangles whose fountains lifted dry stone spires to the sky, slipped down steam-filled alleys where machines hummed behind carved lattices, tramped over metal trapdoors that echoed down into the throbbing bowels of the city. In forgotten corners I pushed through terraced moss-gardens, all long-forgotten and overgrown, with pools that were stagnant and choked.
Morning became afternoon. A strange sound met my ears as I went down an alley. It was a scraping, jangling noise. I drew my anlace and ran to the corner.
Sliding along the street was a giant slug.
* * * * *
It was beautiful in its way, all flame-colored and scarlet, with rows of bulbous sacs down its back, and huge, soft devil-horns. The edge of its foot was coated with scraps picked up in the streets. That was what made the noise.
Two girls with pale pink hair were coming down the street, hand in hand, making for the nudibranch. I watched without understanding. They walked right up to it until they were hidden from my sight. The nudibranch’s horns waved, and then it continued on its way. The girls were gone.
Now it began to feel its way up a tower with a fossil-flecked limestone veneer. One of the square windows in its path was lit. There was a man inside, bent over something that threw a yellow glow over his face. The nudibranch halted when its head covered the window. There was a muffled tinkling and then a yell cut short. Its lip undulated and its horns waved. And then it moved on.
It was making for one of a line of balconies set into the wall. A young woman clutched at the wrought-iron railing, swaying listlessly, oblivious to the creature’s approach. She had long, green-gold hair like a naiad’s, bound in a golden net. There was no one else in sight.
“Look out!” I called.
The girl stirred. “What?” she moaned, as though in a trance, or drugged. “What is it?”
“Look out! Look down!”
Her head rolled on her shoulders, and she looked down. Her eyes widened. She shook herself, staggered to the door, and pulled at it. It didn’t budge. She looked back down, shook her head, then looked to me. “Help!” she cried.
“Can you break down the door or smash a window?”
“No!”
I thought about having her drop directly onto the nudibranch’s head. From there she could lower herself down the sacs to the tail, and then drop into my arms. But the thing was slippery, and I suspected that the sacs were filled with poison.
I recalled having seen something in the alley. “Wait!” I shouted.
A moment later I returned with a metal rod. I took aim and cast it like a javelin. It vanished without a trace. The nudibranch appeared unaffected.
Desperate now, I looked up to the crown of the tower. Carved grotesques lined the parapet that surrounded the square colonnade of the turret. “Can I get to the roof?” I shouted.
“Take the lift! What are you doing?”
“The lift? I—”
“Please just hurry!”
The gastropod had almost reached her. I sprang into action. The iron doors of the building were huge and heavy but hung ajar. I slipped between them, crossed a square foyer shrouded in cobwebs and greenish gloom, and passed through a wrought-iron gate into an unlit, opulent lobby. A trail in the dust led me to a dark hallway beyond the desk.
A vertical shaft with a sliding gate was open to the corridor. The air that wafted out of it was musty and unpleasant. Suddenly a box dropped down out of the darkness. A handsome young man opened the gate, stepped out, and went past without seeing me.
I entered the box. There was no light. My roving hands touched a crank. I swung it, and the car lurched into motion. I drove it as high as it would go.
A tiled hallway ran the length of the top story. I dashed along it, found a service stair, and climbed to the deck.
I ran to the edge, afraid that I was too late.
The slug was directly beneath me. The girl was screaming. I threw myself against the nearest statue, rocking it on its rotten base, and toppled it over. It plummeted toward the gastropod, vanished just as my spear had. But the creature found it less easy to absorb. It peeled away from the wall and dropped to the street, writhing and curling in agony.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Hello! Are you there?” There was no answer. “Hello!” I called again.
“Yes,” came the faint response. “Yes, I’m here.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt.”
“Will you meet me down below?”
“I’m locked out. Remember? Just come find me. One one four three.”
I had no idea what she meant. I hoped she was patient.
22 Phylites
It took a long time to find the apartment. The corridors were dark and I didn’t understand Enochite numerals; the building was apparently empty apart from the girl, so there was no one to ask for directions. But at last my shout was echoed by a voice coming faintly through a locked door. I threw myself against it and burst the latch.
It swung slowly inward, revealing a cluttered room with a coffered ceiling and carved stone walls. It was dim and full of the scent of stale incense. The tiled floor was heaped with rugs. There was a big four-poster bed, dark hardwood furniture, a brazier on a tripod, and, in a corner, a mechanical console with a scale screen.
An unwound clock sat on a dresser. Painted silk adorned the walls. A small altar with a glowing plastic god occupied a curtained alcove. Dark doorways opened on either side of it.
The door to the balcony was opposite the threshold between two windows. I went across and unbolted and opened it.
“Hello,” the woman said. She stood against the railing and took a good long look at me before she came in.
She had large, dark brown eyes, and thick green-gold hair that tumbled onto her shoulders; the golden net hung now from her delicate fingers. She wore a diaphanous gown of green byssum with a golden girdle and straps sweeping over her shoulders. Her skin was white and almost translucent. She had on long gold earrings.
She stepped past me and went over to a vanity. “Thank you. I don’t know how that happened. I’m afraid I’ve been some trouble to you.” Her reflection watched me from the mirror.
“Not in the least,” I said.
“I—I’ve never spoken to a helot before.”
“And I’ve never spoken to a phylite,” I said. “But, to be honest”—and I tore off my hat and gauze.
The girl spun to face me, looking me up and down. “To what phyle do you belong?” she demanded. “Why do you dress like that?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I said. “I have no phyle. I’m an alien.”
Disgust, fear, and interest vied on the girl’s face. “I thought misfits were coarse and violent.”
“Violent I may be, but I hope I’ll never be called coarse.” I gestured toward the balcony. “When I saw you out there, it looked like you didn’t know you were in danger.”
“Well, perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps there was a reason for that.” She picked up a tumbler, sniffed at it, and wrinkled her nose. She took it over to one of the dark doorways. A tube lamp on the wall flared into life, shedding its harsh, greenish glow over the lavatory. Sh
e poured the cup down the sink and examined herself in the mirror. Her gown was flecked with dried mucus. She slipped the straps over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, then laved her hands and arms in the basin.
“But you know,” she said, watching me in the mirror, “those things live on ennui. They rove these empty neighborhoods looking for lonely souls, and when they find one they tranquilize it and come at their leisure to devour it.”
“Are you lonely?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?” She came out. A lace-lined silk slip hung from her shoulders to her hips. She manipulated a box on her dresser. A cylinder began to rotate, producing a moody melody.
“I am,” I said. “But I wouldn’t just wait to be eaten.”
The girl shrugged. “It’s almost time for me to sleep the sweet sleep. A year more or less wouldn’t have mattered much.”
“You mean you think you’ll die soon?”
She colored as though I had uttered some obscenity. “You see?” she said. “You are coarse.” She looked as though she had swallowed a toad.
“I don’t mean to be,” I said. “What did I say?”
Her expression softened a little. “Sweet sleep is not…what you said. What you said is…what animals do.” She caught sight then of the rusty spots that stained the gauze on my neck and shoulders. “Oh! What is that?”
“What?” I said, craning my neck. “Oh. Just some scratches. I’ve had a hard time of it here in Enoch.”
“You mean your skin is broken? How awful!”
“It could be worse,” I said.
“But you’re not just going to leave it like that, are you? What are you going to do?”
“Well, what can I do?” I thought about it. “Do you have spirits of any kind?”
“I have a bottle of mescat.”
Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Page 11