Kings of Infinite Space: A Novel

by James Hynes

  “What the hell?” said Colonel, loosening his grip on Paul’s wrist for an instant. Paul tightened his grasp on the knife and, still clutching Callie, yanked his hand free, slashing Colonel deep across his forearm.

  “Son of a bitch!” cried Colonel, jerking his arm into the air. He nearly toppled backwards down the slope. The gash in his sleeve flapped, blood soaking into the fabric.

  “Ezekiel!” panted Bob Wier, “twenty-one . . . thirty-one,” and with a final, mighty effort, he heaved the smoker, jouncing and rattling and flaming, into the crowd. It rocketed down the incline towards the pool like a runaway little locomotive, the blunt snout of its firebox breathing flame and streaming black smoke. The pale, homeless men tumbled away from the blazing firebox in every direction, squealing as the sparks shot among them. Bob Wier charged right behind the smoker, swinging the poker with both hands like a club, sending some pale men flying while others scrabbled away spiderwise on their hands and knees. J.J. scrambled backwards on his ass, like a crab.

  “Run, Paul!” cried Bob Wier breathlessly over the tremendous clatter of the runaway smoker. “Take her and run!”

  The smoker thundered to the edge of the pool and tumbled in, roaring firebox first. A great wave of cave water heaved over the lip of the pool and washed squealing pale men across the floor, and an immense eruption of steam boiled out of the water, a roiling, hissing cloud that shot to the ceiling and gusted to either side, obscuring the flailing Bob Wier and the sliding homeless men. The wave of cave water sloshed high up the slope out of the cloud, and Colonel, still cursing, pedaled wildly on the slick rock, then toppled backwards, sliding on his back through the water into the steam. Callie broke away from Paul, only to be confronted by a wild-eyed Stanley Tulendij, who hunkered down on his long legs and spread his hands wide like a knife fighter. Callie hollered something through her gag and planted her foot in the old man’s groin, and he gasped long and loud and crumpled in his tux like a bag of bones. Steely-eyed Olivia tried to do the same to Paul, but he staggered backwards, waving the knife, and Olivia lost her balance in her long skirt, landing hard on her hip and sliding down the slick rock into the water, vanishing into the steam.

  “Callie,” gasped Paul. Gusts of hot steam wafted past him, and he lost her. But before he could call out again, she shouldered past him like a running back, leaping in long strides down the slope towards the cubescape, losing her footing at last and sliding on her backside into the water.

  “I’m coming!” cried Paul, and he dropped to his ass with spine-crushing force and tobogganed after her down the rock. Because of its clarity, the water had looked only a few inches deep, but it turned out to be waist high and, despite the steam, piercingly cold. The shock of it made Paul gasp, and he stumbled, dunking himself, and came up sputtering and waving the knife.

  “I’m coming!” he gasped again, but Callie was charging through water up to her waist, swinging her shoulders. She reached the edge and without looking back gripped a stalagmite with her bound hands and hoisted herself, streaming with water, out of the pool. Paul struggled after her through the freezing water, and he glanced back and saw that the steam was slowly dissipating. The spot where the smoker had gone into the pool was still bubbling like a hot spring, and one end of the drum was heeling over like a sinking oil tanker. Somewhere in the mist both Olivia and Colonel were shouting, and through the fading cloud of steam Paul saw the dim silhouette of Bob Wier still laying about him like Beowulf with the poker. “Praise .. . Jesus . . . ,” he gasped, connecting with a solid thud, but he was slowly being pulled down by the swarming heap of pale men.

  At the edge of the pool Paul hauled himself out, his clothes clinging and heavy with water. Kneeling on the cold, gritty stone, panting for breath, he saw a few of the nearer figures in the cloud of steam glancing back at him, and he heaved himself to his feet and started after Callie, towards the cubes. He’d lost his sandals in the water, and his feet slapped painfully against the hard surface of the floor, leaving muddy prints in the grit. He still had the knife, though, and he held it before him as he entered the main aisle of the cubicles, the threadbare carpet feeling grainy and rough under his feet. At the junction of the two main aisles, he found Callie crouched with her back to the cube wall, out of sight of the far end of the cave. She had lifted her bound hands to her face and was trying to pry off the gag with her thumbs. Her shirt was plastered to her skin, and she was trembling.

  “Wait,” said Paul, and he crouched before her and tried to take her wrist. She jerked her hands away at first, her eyes angry and wild, but Paul showed her the trembling knife, and she nodded curtly, offering her bound wrists. Paul steadied the knife with both hands and sawed through the cords, and Callie flung the scraps away and reached behind her head and tore off the gag. Rubbing her wrists, she opened her mouth wide and drew a long, wheezing breath.

  “Callie,” Paul said, glancing round the corner down the aisle into the far end of the cave. The steam had mushroomed to a haze up under the roof, and Paul saw a wriggling heap of men. Bob Wier was nowhere to be seen. Some of the men in the heap were raising their fists and hammering something out of sight, but others were reaching into the heap and coming out again with ragged scraps of something in their fists. One pale face lifted above the scrum, its teeth smeared with blood. Paul looked away.

  “We have to . . . ,” he began, but Callie braced her back against the cube wall and kicked him in the chest. She had lost her sandals, too, but the solid blow of her bare heel knocked Paul on his ass and sent the knife skittering across the carpet.

  “Motherfucker!” she said, careful to keep her voice low. “What have you done?”

  “Callie!” Paul gasped. “It’s okay! This is a dream. This isn’t happening.”

  “Then wake up!” she snapped, crouching forward, getting her feet under her. “It may not be happening to you, but it’s sure as hell happening to me!” She glanced around the corner, and Paul followed her gaze. The heap of wriggling men had collapsed in on itself. J.J. was off to one side, stomping angrily in a circle. Colonel was standing, but bent nearly double, gasping and clutching his arm. Olivia Haddock had pulled her gown up to her knees and stripped off her gloves and her homecoming sash, and she was crawling up the slope towards Stanley Tulendij, who lay in the fetal position at the base of the big phallic rock.

  “Listen,” said Paul, but Callie whirled on him and said, “The only thing I want to hear from you is how I get out of here.”

  Paul met her eyes and nearly burst into hysterical laughter. But he mastered himself and glanced up the aisle, towards the passage where he and Bob Wier and the procession of pale men had entered. Callie started convulsively in that direction, but Paul grabbed her arm. “Not that way,” Paul hissed. “It’s too far, and we’ll get lost.” He glanced up the other aisle, towards the ravenous heap of pale men ripping Bob Wier to shreds. “They’ll know a way to get ahead of us.”

  The light in Callie’s eyes nearly flared into panic, but then she looked past him and her eyes focused on the pole ladder at the junction of the aisles. She pulled free of Paul and dashed, crouching, to the ladder. She lifted her head warily over the cube horizon and then started to climb, lifting her knees and placing her feet without looking, her gaze fixed on the pole above her.

  “I don’t know where this goes,” Paul hissed, but he had already scrambled after her to the foot of the ladder. Above him Callie’s backside disappeared into the glare of the lights. “Oh boy,” breathed Paul, and he grasped one rung and stepped up onto another and started to climb.

  Before he knew it, Paul had risen past the fluorescent fixtures, up into the coils and loops of black wiring. Above him he saw Callie climbing as energetically as a monkey, while below he saw the dusty metal cowls of the lights and, below that, the cubescape laid out like a map, each cubicle fitted with a battered little computer, each desktop covered with neat stacks of paperwork and littered with pens and highlighters and coffee cups. Paul struggled upward, his arm
s and legs beginning to tremble, and he glanced down the length of the cave and saw the pale men still swarming over the livid scraps of Bob on the floor. Colonel was sitting at one of the folding tables while J.J. bound his arm with a dishtowel; Olivia had propped Stanley Tulendij up into a sitting position and was stroking his large, white forehead with one of her limp, sodden gloves. The pool was still sloshing from side to side; tendrils of steam still wafted from the surface of the water; and in the rippling refractions Paul saw the wreck of the smoker with its legs up like a drowned black dragon.

  He looked away, suddenly afraid that his mere gaze would draw other gazes in return. Above him the pole ladder rose into a perfectly round hole drilled into the ceiling, wide enough for a person, the edge of the hole rimmed already with the stumpy beginnings of dripping stalactites. Callie was already ascending into the hole, and Paul’s heart lifted. We’re almost there, he thought, a few more seconds and we’re out of sight. He pulled harder; above him only the dirty soles of Callie’s feet were visible in the hole.

  “Callie!” Paul whispered eagerly. “Wait for me!”

  Some trick of the cave, some subterranean acoustical freak, caught his whisper and magnified it, and it echoed round the walls of the cavern like a pinball, bounding off the ceiling, ricocheting off the stalactites, reverberating against the walls. All the faces of the homeless men turned as one, like sea anemones, away from the shredded form that had held their attention, and looked up towards the source of the echo. Colonel and J.J. glanced up angrily through the glare of the fluorescent lights. At the base of the pillar, Olivia Haddock leaped to her feet, letting Stanley Tulendij fall over like a sack of meal.

  “There they go!” she shrieked. “Bite them! Kill them! Off with their heads!”

  With an awful, yearning groan, the pale men leaped up and swarmed down the cave towards the cubicles and the ladder. Colonel jumped up, shoved J.J. aside, and started after them. Paul looked away and climbed frantically towards the hole. Suddenly, Callie’s face loomed out of the darkness. She reached down and grabbed Paul’s arm and hauled him up into the gloom.

  “Nice work, jackass,” she said. “Come on.”

  FORTY

  PAUL TRIED NOT TO LOOK BACK, and soon they were climbing in near darkness. He glanced down once and saw the distant, dwindling circle of light obscured by wriggling shapes and pale faces looking up at him, so he lifted his gaze to the blackness above and hauled harder. Above him he heard Callie grunting with exertion, and the slap of her feet on the rungs, and the slight ping each rung made when she let go of it. Paul felt warm droplets against his face, and he wasn’t sure if they were the condensation of the tunnel or drops of Callie’s sweat.

  “You still there?” she asked once, panting, and Paul could only grunt in return. He had no way of telling how much time had passed or how far they’d climbed; for all he knew they could have been climbing for hours or for five minutes. His cerebellum told him, we can’t be that deep, but his lizard brain told him he would be climbing in the dark for the rest of his life. The thought that the ladder might not go anywhere was too much to bear, so he concentrated on his hands and feet.

  “I feel a breeze,” said Callie, and a moment later, his arms and legs shaking with exhaustion, Paul felt it too, first from one direction, then from the other. They were passing side passages in the tunnel, but they both kept climbing. Under his palms and the soles of his feet, Paul thought the ladder vibrated to a more complicated rhythm than that of his and Callie’s ascent, and he thought, too, that he heard sounds from below—the faint ringing of the ladder’s rungs and a steady, bubbling murmur. He didn’t stop to listen.

  A moment later the tunnel ended, but the ladder continued. They still climbed in pitch darkness, but the sweating rock walls fell away, and they found themselves climbing through a narrow space that extended into the distance on either side. The reverberation of their efforts—their harsh breathing, the ring of the ladder—made a duller and flatter sound. The air was drier and dustier. Paul felt cobwebs brush his face, and his back scraped against a metal beam and a bristling wad of insulation.

  “We’re in a building,” panted Callie. “I think we’re in the wall.”

  The soft clang of her feet on the rungs stopped, and Paul stopped when he touched her foot with his trembling, sweaty hand. She caught her breath in the darkness above him. “That better be you,” she said.

  “Why are you stopping?” He tightened his hand on her foot.

  “We’re at the top.” She fumbled at something in the dark. “There’s a latch, I think.”

  Paul looked down; the light at the bottom of the tunnel was a twinkling pinprick now, and the ringing and murmuring he wasn’t certain he’d heard before was perfectly clear now. “For chrissake, just yank it,” he said.

  She grunted above him; something rattled violently. “Got it!” she cried, and at the same instant an avalanche of crushed and empty soda cans cascaded down the ladder, rattling off Paul’s head and fingers, and clanging against the ladder. Sticky little droplets of warm soda pattered against his forehead. Paul hunched his shoulders and ducked his head until the cans clattered down the ladder, then he looked up into a dim light to see Callie hoisting herself through a little square hole. He glanced down one last time to see the fading flash of crumpled aluminum as the cans tumbled into darkness, then he raced up the last few rungs. There was a hollow thud as Callie knocked away the cardboard box over the trapdoor, and Paul put his palms on the cold tile on either side of the trapdoor and levered himself out. Callie reached into the hole and tried to pull the door shut, but there was no handle on the upward side.

  Paul sat panting on the floor. They were in the second-floor elevator lobby of TxDoGS. The only light came from a street-lamp in the empty parking lot, through the tall windows of the stairwell. “Oh, God,” Paul said. “We’re at work.”

  Callie jumped to her feet. Her clothes were still wet, her shirt still plastered to her skin. Sweat and condensation from the tunnel dripped off her face, and her palms and feet were coated with grime. She lunged suddenly, startling Paul, crossing the lobby to an office chair tilted to one side against the window. One of its wheels was broken, and someone had left it with a note taped to the back that read TRASH. Callie swung it into the air by its arms and jammed its broken undercarriage into the open trapdoor. It was too big to go down, but Callie stamped on the seat with her bare foot until the chair was tightly wedged in the hole.

  Paul pushed himself to his feet against the wall, trying to catch his breath. “Callie, let’s just get out of here,” he said, but she continued to stomp on the chair, gritting her teeth and grunting with each blow. Finally he caught her by the arm and dragged her around the corner into the hall.

  “Paul!” someone called from the far end, and Paul and Callie stopped short and clutched each other. The hall was full of shadow, and a tall silhouette was running heavily towards them in the dim light from the main lobby. Paul and Callie yelped simultaneously and ran back the other way. They hit the crash bar of the door to the outside landing, but it wouldn’t open, and Callie, howling wordlessly, began to pound on the glass with her fists. Up the hallway behind them the footfalls came closer, so Paul grabbed Callie by the wrist and pulled her away from the door and through the doorway into cubeland. He whirled her in front of him, then reached back and tugged at the door, which was usually propped open against the wall. It wouldn’t budge, so Paul kicked at the little hinged doorstop, painfully stubbing his bare toes, until it popped up and he was able to slam the door shut. He fumbled over the surface of the door until he found the deadbolt and locked it. Instantly a huge silhouette filled the narrow window down the center of the door, and the door shook violently under a series of blows.

  “Paul!” cried a muffled voice, and Paul blundered backwards into Callie.

  “C’mon.” She pointed across the dim cubescape. “We can use the exit by Rick’s office.”

  Paul let himself be dragged for a few steps,
but then he dug his heels into the carpet. “Wait wait wait,” he said, in an urgent whisper. “Listen.”

  The hammering on the door had stopped; the figure in the window had gone away.

  “Paul, goddammit, let’s go” Callie said, but Paul clutched her tightly and said, “Shh!”

  It was sometime in the middle of Friday night, possibly even early Saturday morning, and the office was lit only by two or three widely spaced fluorescent fixtures. A little more light leaked through the outside windows from the building’s bright security lights, but for the most part the empty cubescape before them was in twilight, obscured as if by a mist. All around them, filling the midnight silence of the cubicles, Paul and Callie heard a steady creaking and the muffled murmur of voices. Both of them lifted their eyes to the suspended ceiling. The panels seemed to be bulging and shifting the entire length and breadth of the room.

  “They’re up there,” breathed Paul. “They’re in the ceiling.”

  Simultaneously they broke into a run, down the aisle past Paul’s cube, then right into the main aisle toward the copy machine, booking as hard as they could go for the exit at the other end. Callie ran in long strides, knees up, fists clenched, pumping her arms like a sprinter. Paul hammered after her, each impact of his bare heels jarring him all the way up his spine. Callie disappeared round the next turn, and Paul raced around the corner and blundered straight into her, nearly bringing them both to the floor. Callie had braced her heels, her hands pressed against the cube walls on either side of the aisle. Ahead of them, just outside the door of Rick’s office, the lower half of a pale man swung from a square gap where a ceiling panel had been shifted aside. His legs wriggled and he slipped lower, dangling by his fingertips, the ceiling creaking painfully above him. Then he dropped silently to the floor, crouching nearly on all fours, his fingertips brushing the carpet. It was Boy G. He lifted his pale moon face to Paul and Callie; his eyes gleamed through the lenses of his glasses. He smiled, baring his serrated teeth.