by Cam Baity
Murmurs clenched the room.
“A secret arrangement was put forth,” the President announced, his voice rising with passion. “An attempt to purchase the allegiance of a bully, to buy Meridian an ally. It was a bribe, plain and simple, offered by our very own Foundry.”
An uproar. Voices shouted, papers were thrown. The press descended with reporters and Omnicams. Only the members of the Quorum sat deathly still. Saltern savored the outrage he knew must be erupting within the mirrored Foundry lounge.
“Only there was a catch,” he said with a devilish grin. “It was a setup. I instructed the Foundry to make a phony deal, a trap bursting with cheese. And guess what?” He let the Assembly Hall go silent. “We caught a rat. Premier Lavaraud, I’m afraid your so-called payday delivery has been rerouted. Tough luck.”
Heated words sputtered among the Quorum as they all directed their shock and fury at Lavaraud.
“Yes, Trelaine,” boomed President Saltern. “Once a proud nation, now nothing but a cartel of crooks looking to cash in. And they’re not the only ones. Why is the Quorum really here today? To listen? To collaborate? No, friends. They hold world peace hostage, and expect us to pay them a ransom.”
Bedlam was taking over the assembly hall, but Saltern’s speech gained power and momentum.
“Now I ask you…are these the kinds of allies that Meridian needs? Are these the kinds of allies anyone would ever want?”
Together, the members of the Quorum tore off their Council of Nations badges, while the rest of the ambassadors booed. The press was in a frenzy, FotoSnaps flashing and Vocafones shoved into faces. The nations of the Quorum gathered up their attendants and shoved their way indignantly toward the exits.
“I say NO,” President Saltern trumpeted, his voice silencing the crowd. “Too long we’ve put up with your bluster and your vows of retaliation. Meridian does not yield to threats. We do not fear you. This is the line I’m drawing, right here, right now. Stand with us, and you will stand tall.”
Lavaraud was the last to depart the Assembly Hall. He tossed his CN badge to the ground with disgust, and with one last look of malice at Saltern, he took his leave.
“Oppose us”—Saltern grabbed the podium and leaned in—“and you will fall.”
The applause was deafening. This was his finest hour.
The President breathed in the adulation. Meridian was the most powerful nation in history, and Saltern was its leader.
He was not about to let the Foundry or the world forget it.
Mr. Pynch was ready to collapse. He had spent two grueling cycles navigating these confounding land bridges with barely a wink of recharge. Fog clotted the sky, leaving the morning so dark he could barely see a spit’s distance in front of him. He missed the Marquis’s luminous opticle more than ever.
The only good news was that he was near the coast and at the end of the Arcs. The train tracks below halted at a massive Foundry port on the other side of the cliff. If the Marquis had survived his fall, the derelict settlement of Ghalteiga was the last place he could have gotten off before the bleeder outpost.
It was a wreck of weathered squalor built into the precipices above the choppy Mirroring Sea. Battered shacks were scattered across the top, clinging to cliff faces like the stubborn little knurlers that stuck on barges in the wharf below.
If the Marquis was here, he’d be in the Rathskellar. It was a notorious drinking hole where the grizzled volmerids and gohr who worked the docks drowned their cares with viscollia. Mr. Pynch’s nozzle could have sniffed it out a dozen quadrits away.
He trotted down a scabby landing plastered to the cliff face. When a drunken roar rose above the howling wind, he knew he had found the place. He shoved the rusted hatch open.
Despite the fact that it was morning, the Rathskellar was packed. Someone was pounding an out-of-tune baritone instrument, but it could barely be heard above the revelry.
Mr. Pynch wedged his way through the crowd and sidled up to the reinforced cage-bar. By the look of the scarred vol bodyguards that flanked this freylani bartender, the Rathskellar had seen more than its fair share of trouble.
“What’re youz drinking?” the bartender shouted.
“Greetings!” Mr. Pynch called back with as much gusto as he could muster. “Could you perchance help me with a quandary?”
A jumpy jaislid emerged from a flap behind the cage-bar, his pelvis wheel of legs spinning wildly. He extended his thresher proboscis to harvest the spiny augurweed growing on the bartender’s hunchback. The worker stuffed his clippings into a dangling fermentation cask to brew into viscollia.
“What’re youz drinking?” the bartender grunted again. Mr. Pynch sighed and dug out a few tinklets of gauge.
“A coil of yer finest, me good mehkie.”
Another jaislid slung a spiral shell over to Mr. Pynch. The viscollia within was a chunky, green syrup with a caustic stink.
“Now for me inquiry,” Mr. Pynch said. “Have you peeped a discombobulated lumie in your establishment as of late?”
“Don’t zerve lumiez here,” the freylani snapped.
“Me apologies, but it be of the utmost—”
“Next!” the freylani yelled, and a forceful arm from behind shoved Mr. Pynch out of the way. He took his coil of viscollia and hunkered down at a table slab in the corner.
The Marquis was gone. They had sojourned across Mehk and back during their many phases together. They had done it all and stuck together like ryzooze. He and the Marquis had saved each other’s lives too many times to count. Actually, at their last tally, the Marquis had saved him forty-five times, and Mr. Pynch had returned the favor a mere twenty-eight.
“If only,” he moaned, oily tears swelling up his eye sacs, “if only them stories about the Shroud was true, we’d meet again someday, and maybe I could reimburse yer generosity.”
“Well, rattle my shanks!” shouted a drunken voice. A gargantuan gohr stumbled up to Mr. Pynch with a ragtag circle of mates. “Don’t believe I ever did spy a balvoor cry.”
“Neither have I,” Mr. Pynch replied somberly.
“Must be a mighty big tragedy, friend.”
“Words do not express.”
The gohr studied Mr. Pynch, then crashed into the seat next to him. The brute clinked his viscollia coil against Mr. Pynch’s.
“To forgetting, then,” the gohr belted out.
“To forgetting!” repeated his friends.
Mr. Pynch raised the flask and took a swig. His distended eye sacs went catawampus, and he sputtered to the delighted cheers of his companions. It felt like chugging a CHAR bomb, like molten screwgrubs burrowing into his defenseless dome.
It was just the kind of obliteration he needed.
Soon Mr. Pynch’s coil was empty, and someone got him another. He drank. The coil was empty again. Then full.
Maybe the Marquis’s corpse had been found shattered atop the train when it arrived at that nearby Foundry port. Would he have to break in and reclaim it? It was the least he could do.
Empty. Full. Empty.
That was it. He would go tonight. He would get the Marquis’s remains if it was the last thing he—
Full.
The Rathskellar was somehow getting more crowded, and his drinking buddies had multiplied. Or was he seeing doublish?
How much time had passed?
It was like Mr. Pynch was watching someone elshe operate his body from a hundred quadrits back inside his addleded mind. Whoever was controlling him now was dooing a loushy job.
He watched his own hands spill a coil all over himself.
Empteee.
Fulll.
A face appeared…well, Mr. Pynch was pretty shure it was a face. Harda tell with everything so blurrededy. Looked more like an uglee bundla tubes. Stank too, like rot.
“Well, well, well,” the bundle said.
Mr. Pynch tried to consetrate. Someone helded him up.
“Long time no see, Pynch,” the bundle gurrrgled.
> He knew that voice. If he wasn’t so viscollia-ized he might manage ta recollect. Mr. Pynch scoooped up his thoughts and lolled his head enough to get his eyesss to stabilize. The Rathskellar shwirled. The face came into focusss. A hiveling.
Instantly, he knew. It was—
Ow.
Somethin’ hit him hard on da…back of the…
Phoebe had zero interest in being around Micah, so she stayed below deck, talking to Gabby. The rocking of the Sea Bullet had been steadily increasing over the hours, and she was forced to take more Panzamine to calm her stomach. She felt at ease, like maybe she was finally getting used to the boat.
“What about Tony’s?” asked Phoebe. “Have you eaten there?”
“Which one?” Gabby laughed. “Every place is called Tony’s.”
“It’s in the Financial District, on Central, I think.”
Gabby shook her head.
“Seriously? You have to go. Best chocolate twist in the—”
The boat pitched violently. They were hurled to the ground.
Phoebe got to her feet. She clawed her way up the ladder and tried to open the hatch, but the wind forced it shut. With some effort, she shouldered through and scrambled on deck.
What she saw made her want to give in.
The hell-black sky boiled. The sea was at war, waves of silver soldiers swelling and crashing. Flux spewed over the rails. Glistening blobs sloshed on the deck. Phoebe grabbed her hood and affixed her facemask as silver spray burst around her. She raced for the helm, fighting the wind and avoiding the toxic goo.
The control panel flashed with warning lights.
Behind his visor, Micah’s face was white as death. “Get below!” he screamed over the squall.
A hail of flux came down. It ricocheted off the roof of the helm. Bullets rained onto the deck. In moments, the floor was blanketed in ball bearings, spilling into the open engine room.
The engine room. Phoebe made a break for it.
She slipped on the flux hail and hit the deck hard. The bullet rain punched down on her. She clambered for the ladder and climbed down, falling the last few rungs.
“Here!” cried Gabby.
Phoebe rushed to the lavatory and drew her Multi-Edge. In a couple of cuts, the woman was free. Gabby winced from the cramping in her muscles, but it didn’t slow her down. She drew the hood from her coveralls and sealed it with the facemask.
“We need you!” Phoebe screamed.
They raced for the ladder.
A gush of falling bullets hammered down through the hatch, beating them back. Gabby forced her way on deck, hauling Phoebe along behind her. They sealed the engine room door and clung to the rails to avoid getting blown away by the tempest.
Micah went for his rifle.
“No!” Phoebe screamed at him. “It’s her turn now!”
He looked at Gabby who stood, grasping a handle bolted to the wall. Her face was stony but calm.
Micah stood aside.
Gabby rushed to the driver’s seat. “Strap in!” she hollered.
Phoebe and Micah threw themselves into a pair of bucket seats. They fumbled for the straps, almost got the belts on.
Their stomachs dropped to their feet.
The Sea Bullet was sucked into the air, lifted by the fearsome gale. They rose and rose, hanging for a deadly moment.
Gabby dove for the control panel and threw a lever.
Panels emerged from the roof, slid toward the rear, and locked into place. An armored dome enclosed the Sea Bullet.
Then they fell, plunging in prow first.
Phoebe and Micah slammed against the far wall.
The boat was tossed about like a toy. Flux rain pounded on the roof, a dull, persistent resonance in the sealed cabin.
The kids rolled to a stop. Hurt all over.
“In those seats. NOW!” Gabby screamed.
Phoebe could feel the warm trickle of blood under her facemask, but her body was numb. She and Micah limped to the helm, avoiding the globs of flux. They collapsed into the seats and belted themselves in.
Gabby worked furiously at a Computator. A row of lights around the base of the ship glowed purple. The flux bullets and blobs stopped dancing around the cabin, paused, then gathered around magnetic panels in the floor. Drains slid open and expelled the flux.
Then Gabby stared through the windshield in disbelief.
“No,” she moaned. “No!”
In the swirling turmoil, gnarled black claws reached out at them. They must have been sixty feet high. So many of them, twisted and broken—a veritable mountain range of jagged spears of ore stabbing up through the flesh of the sea.
“The Talons,” Gabby said, defeated.
“Look out!” Phoebe cried, pointing up at the clouds.
A cyclone drilled down from above. Gabby spun the wheel. The funnel detonated on the ocean’s surface, and the boat was launched aside. Another sea spout snaked down, then another. Whipping columns of flux and wind writhed around them.
Gabby typed frantically at the Computator, and a purple light flared outside the windows. The Sea Bullet slowed abruptly.
But the waves were shoving them right into the Talons.
Gabby threw open a compartment and mashed a button. They felt a clunking under their feet. A wave smashed into the side of the boat. The Sea Bullet yawed sharply, and they lurched with a jarring whiplash. But the anchor held them fast.
Phoebe blinked away blood. She felt a stabbing pain above her right eye. Bullet rain screamed down.
The Sea Bullet convulsed. The kids looked at Gabby.
She was afraid.
CRACK.
They were spinning. Unmoored.
The anchor chain had broken.
“Down!” Gabby screamed.
The kids put their heads between their legs.
They felt the swell building below them, raising the boat higher, higher. Cyclones raked past. They could see only flux through the windshield, ripping past in glittering sheets.
The view cleared. They were at the crest of a wave.
The Talons were dead ahead—a jagged black wall of death.
The Sea Bullet was powerless in the ocean’s grip. They tipped over the top of the wave.
And down they went, gaining speed.
Flying toward the Talons.
So fast they felt weightless.
They braced for impact.
But none came.
Phoebe looked up.
Just beyond the windshield sat the cruel end of a Talon, pointing at them like a finger of doom. The massive barbed spur of ore was only a few feet away. Yet, miraculously, they had not struck it. The Sea Bullet hovered as if frozen in time. Phoebe would have thought they were dead if it weren’t for the continual beating of hail on the roof.
Gently, the boat descended. The three of them struggled to look out into the raging storm in an attempt to understand.
Bubbling up from the depths they saw a glint of something dark. Many somethings. Long, serpentine coils like a fleet of tongues, lapping at their boat. Encircling them.
The kids didn’t have to ask.
They knew what had caught them.
Rhom.
Dollop lay on the ground of the sleeping chamber, alone. He could hear echoes of the amalgami frolicking nearby.
He roused and made his way to the cathedral-like cavern where he had been with Amalgam the previous day. Standing silently in the mineral-flecked shadows, he watched them play. They stretched their interconnected bodies across the lagoon, creating hypnotic amber ripples as they undulated in beautiful patterns, like musical harmony made visible.
Amalgam sensed his presence. A tethered individual emerged from the mass and skipped over to greet him at the shore. As the figure approached, Dollop saw that it was his twin again.
“Did we wake you?” the amalgami asked.
Dollop shook his head.
“Then come play!”
Beaming, the twin took his hand to lead him to the
lagoon, but Dollop didn’t budge.
“I…” he began, trying to force out the words.
“What is it, little one?”
“I…I ca-can’t.” He steeled himself.
“Are you hungry? We have fresh jelyps to—”
“That’s no-not it.”
“You are not well?” The amalgami was concerned.
“I’m leaving,” Dollop blurted. It hurt even more than he had expected. His twin just stared at him, confused.
“We will play later?” the amalgami asked with a grin.
Dollop shook his head. “You don’t understand. I—I can’t stay here. I ha-have to go away. I…I wish it co-could be different.”
Realization withered his twin’s smile.
“Go…away?” said another amalgami voice.
“Why?” asked others.
“Be-because I’m needed,” Dollop said.
“We need you.”
“You are us.”
“We are one.”
Their voices overlapped, first ringing with confusion, then yearning, growing heavy. Dollop wanted to run to Amalgam, to plunge into their paradise and make this pain vanish. Maybe if he just merged with them once more, he could explain…
No. His mind was made up.
“I—I want to be with you,” he murmured, unable to look his twin in the eye. “Mo-more than anything. B-but I have someth-thing very important to do.”
More amalgami sprouted from the mass and approached.
“My fr-friends are out there,” Dollop continued. “Th-they are in tr-trouble, and they need me. I—I have a function.”
“Function?” the amalgami asked, pressing in around him. “But what can you do, little one?” asked a voice.
“Dollop is nothing alone,” said another.
“You are incomplete.”
“Broken.”
Dollop winced. Their words struck home. Amalgami hands traced the gaps on his body where he was missing pieces. He longed to feel whole again—to have his memories and his mind intact once more.
“A single drop of flux…” they soothed.
“…is insignificant.”