Jonathon remained in mental contact. He thought he could help. A vanguard echo hit them, a mere breeze of emotion which Jonathon knew was a prelude to the hurricane which would hit them soon and for the Turkanschoner, hit unaware, unprepared.
Then the newly recollected storm of terror and grief struck surged into both their minds, the deep vaults of the shackled past exploded through the fractures Jonathon had made with his probing - the past emerged, intact and terrifying.
The Turkanschoner had lost all in one night of violence and atrocity. His family his wife, his people. His sanity. His faith. His freedom ... Himself. Jonathon heard a silent scream beginning deep inside the battered soul of the Turkanschoner, long before it was to manifest itself physically.
Then it tore vengefully into the heart of the city. A howl of enlightened anguish that hammered the un- hearing walls of the Towers of the Tallmen and reverberated around the domes of the Halls of Machines. Yet no one in the city, apart from Jonathon paid it any attention.
In the city it was just the sound of another collapsing, despairing soul that had been heard a million times before. Jonathon's catalytic gift had cracked the great dyke which subdued a great reservoir of emotion in the beast's soul. Now that dyke had heaved and collapsed. The Turkanschoner had the past he feared he would lose with the loss of Jonathon back now, but Jonathon feared he had destroyed him. Guilt lanced into Jonathon's heart like a hot iron. He could not stay to see what he had done him. He fled, hurling himself across the roof tops with a wild, reckless abandon, a man possessed by the guilt of what he had inflicted on the unsuspecting, trusting Turkanschoner, one ofthe few beings still unaffected by the foul soul of the city and he, Jonathon Postlethwaite had destroyed him.
Jonathon raced without rest deep into the Lower City.
Eventually he stopped, physically and mentally exhausted and as he finally finished weeping himself, he listened and the wails of the still distressed Turkanschoner drifted across the city like a siren, cutting into his heart. He looked down to the street below. Unconsciously he had found his way to Chain Street.
An Inn sign hung like a beacon. The only thing left between himself and self destruction was down there somewhere and he had come here unconscious of his own desperate attempt to save himself from his pain. His flying feet had found the way, carried him to the place where he might restore balance in his own grief stricken mind. Down there was his hope, his love, his handhold on reality and his sanity. Down there was Milly. Jonathon began to weep again. Far across the Lower city, the howls of the Turkanschoner abruptly ceased.
Chapter Fifteen
Rislo's trembling had almost ceased by the time he reached the passageways which led to the Tower's of the Tallmen. When he thought that the beast, the Turkanschoner, had passed inches from him without tearing him to pieces he gasped in relief. Yet the memories of what it could have done caused him to weaken at the knees again.
He stood, alone in his bubble reassuring light for a while to collect his thoughts, then took a deep breath before continuing into the tombs of the Tallmen. His orb light, set a deliberately low level, picked out the sparkling dust and ash particles left in the air after the Turkanschoner's savage desecration of the Tombs. He tip-toed quietly amongst his resting kinsmen, even though his respect for them and their society was, like these Tallmen here, long dead. He felt like the only survivor of a long lost culture of pride, honour and dignity, yet was still shocked when he saw the damage wreaked in the tomb by the Turkanschoner.
The gently shifting layers of smoke from the now dead fire still lingered in slowly shifting layers over the wrecked possessions and smashed bones of the Tallman who had been laid to rest here. Rislo stared in disbelief, noting the clawed footprints in the decades of dust on the floor and wondered how such sacrilege could have occurred.
The Turkanschoner was as much part of the society of the Tallmen as the Tallmen themselves, even more so since he was under a strict mental discipline. Something was sadly wrong, but Rislo realised that that 'wrongness' was that which had saved him from a grisly death at the hands of the beast. The creature should never have been let loose in the tombs on its own and its training should have returned it directly to its cage in the Towers and it should never have accepted orders from anyone else but its handler.
Rislo looked around the desecrated tomb and shook his head in dismay then turned and continued his journey back towards the Towers and his mission there. He became extra cautious now. Soon he would be back within the grasp of his failing brothers. He was a fugitive from their justice which demanded normally that he be captured and, if possible and returned to face a deserter's death in the time honoured tradition of the Tallmen - the garrotte.
The rebel giant avoided a direct route back and after he had passed through the Tombs, for he feared that he might run into maintenance crews beneath the Halls of Machines and so turned right until he entered a small forgotten shaft that led steeply downwards to the lowest levels of the Dubhian underworld far below the Halls.
He squeezed down the passage and, after an hour or so, emerged into a maze of cobbled streets, illuminated by his orb light and revealing part of the original city annexed by the Tallmen hundreds of years ago, which spread out beneath the Halls and their city. Once it had been inhabited, but as space in Dubh had become scarce, the great Machine Halls had been built over this place, almost sealing it off forever. The roof of this world was a network of hastily placed gigantic steel and concrete beams supported by the rows of deserted, terraced houses below. In places the houses and beams had collapsed and had been hastily jacked up with iron pylons and pillars, creating a forest of steel and concrete that
supported the levels above.
The people of this place had lived here for a while until they could no longer stand the lack of air and light. Some had chosen to die here but nothing remained being devoured by the voracious rats who had made this realm their own. Rislo could see them now hissing, squealing, scrabbling and dancing on their hind legs in the shadows outside of the puddle of light created by his orb. The Tallman rebel had explored here before and found little to trouble or interest him. Yet, as he now stumbled amongst the fallen debris from the unstable ceiling, he felt the pressure of surveying eyes. A cold chill rah through him causing him to shiver, as if he had been stroked by many icy hands. Yet no physical breeze lifted the dust of antiquity here.
He moved quietly, his desire to escape this subterranean ghost town's streets increasing with every step he took. He stopped and looked around him. Countless pairs of dull red eyes surveyed him, blind watchers, their useless retinas reflecting back the light of his orb.
The blind observers no longer scuttled around him. From every vantage point on bare window and door frames, piles of debris, even from perches high in the roof their sightless eyes watched, their pale and almost hair-less bodies, jostling for position to experience a rare spectacle.
Rislo heard a hissing noise which was steadily growing louder and causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. He realised what it was. It was the sound of air being sucked into millions of moist nostrils and through wagging whiskers pointed in his direction. On the stagnant air of this underworld street, every single rat examined Rislo, they saw the intruder with their noses as clearly as he saw them with his eyes.
As Rislo moved on, the rats escorted him, leaping from their ledges to form one great rolling, rustling mass of hairless, scabby flesh that swirled around him just out of his circle of light until he paused again.
The giant stopped and studied them as they studied him. He was surrounded. Many of the rats were as huge as dogs. There had not been this number when he had last ventured here. They watched and, Rislo now realised, were waiting.
They seemed reluctant to enter the sphere of light he stood in. He was sure that if the light was not here they would simply attack him. He chuckled confidently and twisted the orb's staff to reduce the diameter of the light circle, his sanctuary. The rats shrieked in
delight and raced inwards toward him, following the receding edge of light inwards towards their prey until Rislo reversed the beam and the light spread outwards, snaring a few within the sphere of light.
Their shrieks of expectancy turned to squeals of pain and terror. They leapt high into the air and fell squirming in agony to the floor when the light touched their sensitive skins and caused it to erupt rapidly into blisters and ulcers. There was a dull fizzing sound around him as the rodent's eyes exploded, and soon the ground within the light was littered with the dead and dying creatures, mist-like legions of fleas departing their bodies for a new living host.
When the pool of light reached its maximum extent Rislo sensed the sightless creatures’ attention shift from him to the new source of potential food he had created
around him. The rats waited patiently for Rislo to move on.
As he advanced and the darkness closed in behind him, Rislo heard the rush of advancing paws and the screech of the disabled rats as they were despatched by their brothers and sisters, whose ability to adhere as a social unit evaporated with the smell of burned flesh and the rising of the most basic instincts that told them that to eat was to live.
Rislo left the rats to feast upon one another and advanced directly beneath the Halls of Machines. Here the roof was supported by a great thick forest of huge vertical pillars of stone, concrete, iron and steel, a hastily erected, engineering Mirkwood. Here shadows slipped sideways and unseen things slid and crawled behind the cover of these artificial tree trunks, through which drifted a continual dust sent down by the vibrations of the multitude of engines which throbbed almost continuously above.The Tallman continued, confident in the maps and plans he had himself drawn up or stolen over the years, and soon found himself in a long, narrow alley that led underneath the Tallmens’ killing zone. The girders and beams thinned rapidly, since no great weight or important structures lay above. Ahead of him Rislo would find his entrance to the city of the Tallmen.
The buildings on either side of him were terraced houses, windows gone and door frames empty, the wood that had been there gnawed away and eaten by rats and the other unseen inhabitants of this realm years ago. A flicker of silver, grey light caught Rislo's eye and, his curiosity overwhelming him, he moved in search of its source. He crept to a house and peered through the doorway and gazed in surprise.
A circle of whirling light was lodged in the rear of the building. Rislo knew that this rainbow whirlpool of colour was a dimension door, one which had not appeared on the maps the Tallmen made when they detected Field Wall anomalies from their control centre. And that was another thing Rislo realised. It was not in the Field Wall at all where such things were usually located. It was here in the middle of Dubh! He simply had to investigate, it might prove to be the very door he was looking for, to a world he dreamed of, a world he could live happily in.
The Tallman advanced carefully into the dimension door. He felt the tingling of his cells being realigned with the vibratory rate of the passage. Rislo moved slowly, adjusting his pace, well aware, as a Tallman of the consequences of a hurried transit. A few minutes later he emerged into a cave, which was the door's exit in another world, and pushed aside the undergrowth to reveal the nature of this place.
A thousand new or long yearned for sensations hit him at once. The ground sloped away from the small cave to a bubbling brook at the foot of small, steep-sided valley. On the opposite bank thick scrub and undergrowth grew down to the edge of the narrow waterway, following it up and down stream as far as Rislo could see in the dim, silvery light of a new moon and the myriad stars above. At the top of the overgrown bank, opposite a narrow copse of tall thin trees was silhouetted by the neon night glow of a town - the top of a high, straight church spire confirmed its existence.
Rislo sat down on the dewy grass to take in all he heard, saw and smelt, touched and tasted. He laughed quietly to himself, watching his frosted breath drift moon wards as he listened to the background hum of night traffic far off and the sound of the occasional voice from the town beyond the trees. If he had found this gate before, thought Rislo, he would have left the Towers and Dubh long, long, ago.
There had been other doors which he had investigated, but they were to either desolate or hostile environments. The place he looked at now was different, something appealed to him. Yes, it was inhabited, but this was not Dubh, but perhaps these people here could accept him. His talents and skills might be useful here if their technology was inferior to that of the Tallmen. He would be useful and accepted, he assumed rationally and rather naively. This would be the place he ran to when the destruction of Dubh was set in motion, the others could come with him if they wished, and he doubted they would refuse.
Studiously, Rislo marked the position of this new door on his maps, although there was no need, and turned reluctantly to return to his tasks in the city of the Tallmen. He re-entered the Dubhian underworld and the cold blast of reality and fear of the coming hours hit him hard. His visit to the city of his kin would be dangerous to say the least. To fail was to die. But there was no need to fail or die or even try he thought. All he had to do was to strap on his back-pack turn around and disappear out of this world forever.
But there was Jonathon and Cornelius to consider now; he had vowed to help them, his conscience called to him. Jonathon had saved his life, Cornelius had saved him from a life of seemingly interminable loneliness that he might not have survived - both the Postlethwaites had given Rislo hope. He looked longingly at the whirling tunnel of the dimension door behind him. The shadows around him deepened and he shivered.
"Go, save yourself. You are all that matters, friend, both the beast and the garrotte await you here, go while you still can.” a voice whispered in the darkness of his mind so clearly he thought it in the labyrinths with him. "Go! The only friend and ally you have is yourself , you owe no-one anything."
Rislo stood perfectly still, now he was convinced.
The City's soul had become more powerful than he imagined, it had spoken to him. He owed it to himself to fight it. All his theories had been correct, it was systematically destroying and corrupting the souls of the Tallmen, his people! The city as a whole. He had to fight it.
A cold laughter echoed around the Underworld streets. "But Rislo, perhaps what you hear is your own voice, the voice of pure reason, rejecting the sentimentality of oath and allegiance. After all how can ‘nothing‘, that which has no body, no earthly vessel speak?"
Rislo screamed at the voice which was now inside his head.
"Be gone from me! I know you and you are not part of me!"
With this Rislo increased the power of his orb light which did little to sweep back the shadows around him and strode out purposefully into the dark street, then stood and faced the darkness in which seemed to flow in deeper, darker veins far back in the thick forest of jacks and beam below the Halls. He pointed a finger accusingly at It. "You may not be whole, but I can finish you forever! There is a great nowhere which can swallow you up and I can open the door!" he threatened the swirling blackness. Mocking laughter reverberated around Rislo.
“Die then fool, you will never escape this place and when you die you will be mine, coward. I have other business now, but I will attend to you soon. Till we meet again.......!"
Rislo was buffeted by a freezing wind which left frost crystals upon him and the area around him as they were swept by Its icy wake. For a moment Rislo shivered and then glanced back at the door again. He thought he heard Its laughter in the far distance. Its words began to repeat themselves in his mind.
Rislo screamed again and then began his journey towards the Towers. The rats did not reappear again as the Tallman walked slowly towards his goal. He knew that at the edge of this lost underground town there was a well shaft that was still in use by the Tallmen. In fact there were many which, unlike the poisoned and dry wells of the Upper and Lower city, still produced drinkable water. But, at the edge of the Dubhian Underworld there was a shaft
which led almost directly up to the chambers where the Field Expanding equipment was housed and operated.
If he climbed that shaft at night, which was only hours away, the place would probably be deserted and secured to the rest of the city and, at the very worst, occupied by one usually sleepy technician. It certainly wouldn't be guarded. The well-shaft would be capped with a large steel door, as all the other wells were, but now his light orb would have recharged itself enough to produce a laser cutting beam to burn silently through bolts and hinges.
He planned to move quickly to remove the spent energy reservoir he required and disappear back into the darkness he now walked. He doubted the technicians would immediately miss it, let alone pursue him into this hazardous environment. By the time they noticed the forced well cap and the theft, the world of Dubh would be literally be collapsing around their ears. He was close now.
The roof of this world lowered dramatically and dripping water which ran into small rivulets to feed the wide black and stinking pools and small lakes, which in turn, fed the Tallmens’ well here. Rislo skirted the pools, his reflection staring back at him as he looked into their impenetrable darkness. He watched as schools of large, blind, white whiskered catfish gently broke the surface, their large, mouths gaping in the air. He dangled a finger in the water and immediately the fish changed direction and swam towards him, their mouths agape and lips pulled back to reveal row after row of carnivorous teeth intent on making a meal of whatever had broken the surface of their lake.
The Tallman jumped backwards as snapping fish launched themselves into the air, searching not only for his finger but the rest of the body that was attached to it. After a moment, the thrashing of pale bodies subsided and once again the fish cruised leisurely in search of wayward rats or any other creature which floundered into their domain.
Rislo continued on his way, skirting the pools and lakes wherever possible. Where he was forced to enter the water he thrashed through quickly and noisily, but the fish now seemed reluctant to attack. Instead they merely gathered in bobbing groups, blindly tracing his progress from lake to lake and gulping in the debris from the sticky black mud his wild progress caused to rise from the pool beds. Perhaps they realised he was too big to attack Rislo thought, or maybe the light from his orb had the same effect on them as it had on the rats. Either way they kept their distance. And that was all he wanted.
The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption Page 14