Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes

by Raphael Ordoñez

  40 Collections

  On my way out of the city I descended once more below the streets to a gallery filled with booths. There I purchased a folding map and had the helot vendor mark it for me.

  Wet weather was moving in from the sea when I regained my refuge. The rest of the day was spent repairing my melted wing. It seemed little the worse for wear.

  As dusk fell I went back into the city, leaving my armor and sword behind in the salon. I made for an inhabited district with my map as my guide. The streets there were crowded and steamy. There was an incessant commotion of mechanical hisses and screeches and groans, pattering rain, tramping feet, and recorded noises blaring from a score of sources all vying for attention, but no one spoke.

  The avenue stretched before and behind, a canyon of carved limestone with the sense of something forlorn, towers like palaces raised by hands long-vanished and filled with fewer, lesser men. Silence and darkness, loneliness and ruin flowed like a river just over the heads of the scurrying phylites, for all their noise and activity did but faintly trouble the settling murk of a world already long dead.

  The local branch of the civic library towered at the tip of the wedge between a parting of ways. It was an octagonal high-rise crowned with a ring of spires surrounding a green metal pyramid. The windows were lit dimly but uniformly, for the place was open at all hours.

  I pushed my way inside. The lobby ran around the building, illuminated by gas lamps in copper cylinders suspended from the ceiling. The air was chilly and I was wet; I began to shiver. At the center was a complex of rooms and elevator shafts. It seemed best to start at the basement and work my way up, so I boarded a car to begin.

  After a plunge through darkness I found myself looking out into a palatial atrium of white marble. Dim light fell through hemispheres of frosted glass hanging from iron chains.

  Choosing a door at random, I crossed into a long, dark hall. The path down the middle was flanked by two rows of glass cylinders like columns of blue-green light. Suspended within each was a preserved human body. The nearest held a girl like a frozen mermaid, with eyes showing darkly through closed lids, and parted, colorless lips, and flesh like alabaster.

  I paced down the hall, gazing at each cylinder in turn. The men and women were taller and more wraithlike than the phylites I’d seen in the streets. A thrill of fear shot through me when I reached the last few, for there the bipeds weren’t even human.

  They were lean and muscular, resembling upright frogs, their huge heads emerging directly from their torsos and shoulders, their mouths stretched in wide smiles like frogs’ mouths. Their lipless jaws drew to a point in front, and their eyes were laterally placed orbs of unfathomable black, large and liquid and heavily lashed. The arrangement of their organs could be made out through their thin white skin.

  Despite their appearance, I felt sure of the creatures’ intelligence. Their gaping faces, though smiling, were masks of unutterable sadness turned up to an unhearing heaven.

  The door at the end of the hall gave upon a small, domed chamber, which led in its turn to several other galleries. Cold light fell through panes of glass running along their walls, windows into huge tanks holding monstrous mollusks, coiled polychaetes, and many-finned fishes. The faraway opposite doors gave upon yet more galleries, branching one from another at impossible angles, seeming to recede to infinity in every direction. The trammels of mundane geometry had been sidestepped.

  We men of Arras are geometers, and, though I trembled, I knew what sort of space I was standing in. It occurred to me that if I wasn’t careful I might never find my way out again.

  Dread overcame me, and I turned and ran. The echoes set up by my sandaled feet were thunder in my ears. When I reached the car I drove it up past the lobby and all the way to the top of the building.

  The room there took up the entire floor. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw how thoroughly Enochite it was, divided into sectors of aisles lined with metal catalogues. There were consoles around the central shaft, and the lights were turned down low for reading. Urban canyons flowing with rivers of restlessness were visible through the big tinted windows.

  I searched every corner. There were no other patrons. It was eerily lonely, as only a large, empty library can be. I found the stairs and proceeded to the next floor, a exact copy of the one I’d just left, and searched it as well. It, too, was empty. For a score or more floors I went on like this. And then, at last, I found what I sought.

  * * * * *

  Bulna’s drooping face glowed with the golden light of the screen before him. Shadows formed black letters against the translucent scales. He jotted something on a wax tablet, then touched a dial. The letters formed a new combination.

  I sat down beside him. Reluctant to turn from his work, Bulna shifted, first his face, then his large, liquid eyes. As recognition dawned on him they slowly filled with amazement. “Keftu! My friend!” he stammered.

  “Hello, Bulna.”

  “Then you did escape! We thought for certain that the Cheiropt had gotten you. Or the Misfit.”

  “Neither did, as you see. And you escaped too, it seems. I visited the dungeons and found out from a delver.”

  Bulna shifted his eyes. “It’s true,” he said. “We’d been working at it a long time. You have to understand. It isn’t that we meant to leave you. We would have taken you with us. But we hardly knew you. And you were so eager to talk about escape. It wouldn’t have been the first time Granny had used someone to provoke a delver. It was one of her ways of cutting costs.”

  “To be honest,” I said, “I had my own plan, which I in my turn would have revealed to you at the last moment.”

  Bulna smiled. “How did you find me here?”

  “You told me your theory, remember? I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist taking up your research again. Is Jubah with you?”

  “We’re sharing a room not far from here.”

  “How are you living?”

  “Oh, well,” stammered Bulna, “we get along, you know.”

  I ran an incurious finger along the edge of the table. “I visited the tomb,” I said. Bulna’s face turned red. “Listen,” I went on. “I came looking for you because I have a proposition to make.”

  “A proposition? Involving…money?”

  “Incidentally, yes,” I said. I saw the look on his face and added: “I’m prepared to put up my own share, of course. I’m not altogether without resources.”

  “It isn’t that,” said Bulna. “When we revealed the hoard to you, we made you a partner. As far as I’m concerned, that still stands, and I’m sure Jubah would say the same. But we keep a low profile. We don’t want to be thrown into the pits again.”

  “Nor do I,” I said. “That’s what worries me. I’ve been reading the signs of the times, Bulna. Soon the possibility of this kind of existence will be a thing of the past. We have to look ahead if we’re to survive.”

  Bulna regarded me for a moment. “Well,” he said, “the least we can do is hear you out. We can go now, if you like. Let me shut this down, and we’ll go find Jubah.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” I said.

  Bulna twisted a valve and the machine went dark. He withdrew a metal cylinder and placed it in a refiling bin. After making a few last notes on his tablet he pushed his chair back and stood. I rose with him.

  “Have you had any luck?” I asked.

  “Luck? With my research, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Every day I get a little closer, though. I can feel it. I spend most of my time here, as I can’t check out cylinders anymore. Sometimes I sleep in the lavatory. You’re not supposed to, but they hardly ever check.”

  We stepped into the elevator car and drove it down to the lobby. “I started by looking for you in the lower levels,” I said, and shivered.

  Bulna gave me a strange look. “What lower levels?”

  I didn’t answer. We reached the ground floor and went out into the lurid li
ght of the city. It was still raining.

  41 The Proposition

  The apartment was a squalid one-room affair high over the ghostly river of light, several blocks south of the library. Jubah wasn’t there when we entered. Bulna told me to make myself at home, then went into the kitchenette and began preparing something to eat.

  I sat on a divan and looked about. The only light fell from the tube lamp over the sink where Bulna was working. The room was a combination of luxury and squalor. The cheap, dusty furniture was heaped with treasures from the tomb and stacks of clay tablets. The latter were Bulna’s records, paper being a regulated commodity. There was a mattress in one corner. A thin blanket full of holes was rolled into a ball on the divan. Every so often a change in the street bulletin outside would fill the room with lurid light.

  Jubah opened the door and came in. “Hello, Keftu,” he said, going across the room to say something to Bulna. He froze, then took two steps backward. “By all the—”

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m back.”

  A teapot began to whistle. “Go have a seat,” said Bulna. “Catch up with Keftu. He came to make us a proposition. We’ve been waiting for you. I’ll be there as soon as I finish up.”

  “Well, well,” said Jubah, drawing up a chair. “So the man has a proposition.” He blinked his little eyes. “Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I? But suit yourself. I was just curious.”

  “Well,” I said, “the first thing I did after my escape was make the Misfit’s acquaintance. We got on well at first, but then I wrecked his ally’s rail-car and destroyed some valuable property. The next day I was mistaken for a lottery winner and narrowly avoided being flayed by the Cheiropt. Later on I encountered a nephel-infested ghul, which I beheaded in a fair fight. I was infested myself then, or nearly so, and ran into the moss-forest at the foot of the Pelus. An Eldene magus came up and drove out the devil. I stayed with him for weeks, learning all he had to tell me. Then he died, and I returned here.”

  Jubah’s jaw hung slack. He blinked his small eyes. Then he smiled. “Shit,” he said. We both laughed.

  Bulna came in with three cups of black tea and a pyramid of pickled eggs on a platter. After setting it down on an end table he sat beside Jubah, crossed one leg over the other, and clasped his long fingers around one knee. “So,” he said. “In the library you mentioned something about our situation being untenable, and your having a plan for dealing with it. Am I right?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Dah,” scoffed Jubah. “Of course our situation is untenable. When have we ever thought otherwise? You have something better? Eh?”

  “Well, to begin with—”

  “Who are you to come here and tell us what we should be doing? You couldn’t even hold your own in the pit. And you wouldn’t have made it as a delver without us, either.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “That’s why—”

  “Then maybe it’s you who needs to listen to us. It’s no simple matter get along in the in-betweens.”

  “Jubah,” said Bulna, “our friend came here in good faith. I told him we would listen to what he had to say. Let’s at least hear his proposition.”

  “I’m all ears, once he gets around to telling us what it is.”

  I cleared my throat. “You say you get along in the interstices. Well, I’m here to tell you that that time is at an end.”

  “Says who? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right, maybe I don’t. How do you get along then? What are these in-betweens? Explain it to me.”

  “Surely you know that by now,” said Bulna. “The phyles of Enoch don’t interact with each other, except in the Cheiropt. They’re practically invisible to each other. People like us, who don’t fall into any category, can survive in the gaps by escaping notice and taking advantage of loopholes.”

  “Right,” I said. “And what if there were no phyles? What then?”

  “Well, that would be perfect,” said Jubah. “Then we’d all be equal. No one would be left out.”

  “But is that in fact how it would be? Are there misfits and recusants in the Tower of Bel?” Neither of them answered. “That’s my point. It’s my belief that someone—who, I don’t know for certain—someone, I say, is trying to dissolve the phyles here in Enoch.

  “The Cheiropt is at a point of semi-stability. Someone has his hand on the lever to tip it into perfect disorder. When that happens, all Enoch will be one phyle, or rather, each Enochite will be his own phyle. There’ll be no place for people like us. It isn’t just a matter of not having a phyle. You know that as well as I do. The machinery works for most, but it catches on any eccentric piece and mangles it. It’ll be the Palace of Collections for the well-placed, and the choppers for the rest.”

  “What lever are you talking about?” said Bulna.

  “There are two levers, actually,” I said. “Cajolery and chaos. The cajolery of the Cheiropt, and the chaos of men like the Misfit. He’s just the first of a breed. You’ll see.”

  “And who has his hand to them? Are you claiming that there’s someone behind the Misfit?”

  “I’m not just claiming it. I know it. I’m not sure who for certain. There’s a man called Vaustus, the Sun Mage, who leads an army of fanatics—the Sons of Taïs—in the desert. He has ties to Jairus. He’s my first candidate.”

  “What proof do you have?”

  “None, yet. I hope to have some soon.”

  “What do you propose to do about it?” asked Jubah.

  “My first course,” I said, “would be to keep the levers from being pulled. That failing—as it must eventually, I think—we’ll have to think of a new way to survive. What I propose is a mobile existence.”

  My friends were all ears now. “What do you mean?” asked Bulna.

  “When I escaped with Granny—”

  Jubah guffawed. “Escaped with her! Don’t you mean, escaped from her?”

  “No. The Misfit sent a ghularch to dispose of her. I rescued her.”

  Jubah sneered. “You’re a better man than I am.”

  I went on with my story. “We stumbled upon a great corridor twisting through the bowels of the city. The Footsteps of the Eldenes, she called it. It was a black, horrible place, all right, but I think there might have been truth in what she said. The Recusants are the Eldenes, more or less, you know.”

  “Who are the Eldenes?” asked Jubah.

  “The race of architects who supposedly helped lay the foundations of the city,” said Bulna.

  “I think,” I said, “that it would be possible to get from one place to another using these corridors as highways. The Cheiropt isn’t cognizant of them. Somehow, I don’t believe it could be.”

  “And what does this have to do with us?” asked Bulna. “This is where your proposition comes in, I suppose.”

  “Yes. There are plenty of people in our position. The Misfit attracts them like flies to a carcass. They have nowhere else to go, other than the pits or the Palace. He lords it over them: they practically worship him, and he has a harem of wives. Well, we’ll provide an alternative. We’ll go a progress through the guts of the city.”

  “And do what?”

  “That I don’t know. Surely there’s some way to support ourselves, with so many. We can be a city within a city, wanderers in the wilderness of Enoch. We’ll own everything in common. Bulna, with your background, you could act as steward. You, Jubah, could be the boss of the outfit. You’d be in charge of keeping everything in order as we go along.”

  “And what would you be? Eh? The demarch?”

  “Well, why not?” I insisted. “As a figurehead, if nothing else. People need something to follow. They’d follow me.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Have you heard of Amroth?”

  “The beast-slayer? The one who strangles behemothim and eats demon-fish filets for
breakfast? Sure, who hasn’t?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m Amroth.”

  Jubah grinned. “Shit,” he said.

  Bulna wasn’t smiling. “You almost have me convinced,” he said. “But it’s all so wild. This story about a desert prophet exerting influence over the Cheiropt. I just don’t know, my friend.”

  “I’ll put my money where my mouth is,” I said. “I’m about to go to the Deserits myself to see what’s happening out there. If I come back with evidence—real evidence—then will you two at least consider my proposal?”

  They glanced at each other. “What do you think?” asked Bulna.

  Jubah shrugged. “Sure, why not? We’ll consider it. How do you expect to get there? Fly?”

  “Actually, no,” I said. “It’s much too far. I’d hoped you could advise me.”

  Jubah leaned back. “Well,” he said, “you could take the train. Stow away on the freight line here by the marshes and head north. That won’t get you all the way there, though. You’d have to get off at the mouth of the Ilissus. There’s a big switchyard just before you get to it. After that you could catch a train bound for the Afram terminus.”

  “Last night I overheard someone saying that there are ghulim amassed on the Deged. And that there might be a checkpoint at the Tartassus Gate.”

  “That’s odd,” said Bulna.

  “If you’re right,” said Jubah, “then you might have to think of something else.”

  “What are these places?”

  “The Deged,” said Bulna, “is a shelf of land beyond the Tartassus Mountains. It overlooks the northwestern reaches of Eblis. The Ilissus River arises high in the Tartassus, flowing south for many miles, then turns southwest and meanders toward the Bay of Ia, at the northeastern corner of Tethys. The tracks follow the river, keeping to the northern bank before crossing just beyond the bend. There’s a tunnel, and a bridge, and then you get to the Deged.”