Beneath Ceaseless Skies #150

by Richard Parks

  Spec smiled. “Don’t worry, Inky. Your money ain’t worth the time or effort.”

  Inky felt his ears burn. Granted, most of his money had been taken in fees and penalties, but what remained was hard-earned. “If you were wealthy enough not to need my money, you wouldn’t be working here.”

  “Oh I don’t need to work,” Spec said, sitting on his own cot. “I don’t need to work.”

  “You going to blab where I’m keeping my stash?”

  “Nah,” Spec said, “Your secret’s safe with me. Just make sure you remember Spec next time you get a couple forma rolls.”

  Smiling, Inky nodded. He opened his mouth to thank Spec when someone burst through the flap, panting. “Fire. Fire in the mines,” he said. Inky didn’t recognize the boy, but that didn’t matter. You didn’t call ‘fire’ unless your boots were smoking.

  Inky and Spec ran into the coming dawn, and at once started coughing. The air was thick with smoke. Flames twisted out of the mine’s entrance.

  “How bad is it?” Spec asked, but the boy was gone.

  He cursed and ran toward the fire. Inky followed. A bucket brigade was passing pail after pail of sand from one to another, and cartloads more were dumped into a growing pile at the beginning of the line.

  Spec grabbed one of the miners and spun her around. “Where did it start? Anyone left in the mine?”

  She set a full bucket down and grabbed another. “Idiot from the boom crew dropped his vial of reagent a hundred yards in,” she said. Her hands moved almost too quickly for Inky to follow as they filled a bucket every breath. “Still a couple overnighters behind the flames.”

  Spec cursed again and took off for the mine. Inky had a hard time keeping up with the old man. The bucket brigade didn’t even give them a second glance.

  At the mine entrance, a large stone cabin held fire-fighting gear: buckets for the sand that trapped fire in glass, hoses for the pump carriages that never came, axes to break down the doors that weren’t there, and thick leathers for the fools who would try to rescue the well-done.

  Spec half-jumped into a pair of leather trousers hanging from the wall. Cracked, more black than brown, and covered in ash, these leathers had seen many fires. By the mottled scars on Spec’s back, Inky knew the old man had seen more than one fire as well.

  “You gonna shrug into some leathers or stare at my handsome ass?” Spec asked, tossing the heavy garments to Inky.

  Up until this point, he hadn’t thought of going into the fire. In fact, he hadn’t thought of much, following Spec by instinct. Now the possibility of going into a fire—a fire fed by crushed coal and the chill breeze as it wove its way underground towards the Fiend’s throne—was overwhelming.

  Sitting down, Inky began tugging on the leathers. When he was overwhelmed, he ran on instincts alone, and his instincts told him to follow Spec even if that meant diving into that flaming maw himself.

  “Here,” Spec said, handing Inky a glass mask. “It’s alchemical and won’t melt to your face.” He threw a satchel over Inky’s shoulder. A ragged, insulated hose snaked from the bottom of the mask to the satchel.

  “The satchel does burn,” Spec said, “so tuck it into your overcoat. The alchemists tell me we have three hundred breaths of oxygen in the sack. I’ve never tested it, and don’t let me catch you either.” Spec put on his own rounded glass mask. “Stay close.”

  They exited the stone shack and plunged into the smoking heart of the blaze.

  * * *

  The Inked Man burned. Even though he saw no flame nor smelled no smoke, he burned. He had to be burning. What else could cause him to fall to his knees? Throughout his own history only one element could weaken him, could destroy him if only he wasn’t eternal: fire.

  Inching along the corridors on his stomach, he looked through the stone floor with his Unsight, seeing the countless miles of snaking pathways underneath him. They were there in case Lacuna ever rose again and he needed more space for his caches, his library of ages.

  At first, the pain had been a welcome respite to the decades of numbness and non-feeling. It wasn’t that he was incapable of being hurt—every time he tore his thumb open to cast spells in blood, it stung just as much as if his skin was flesh and not paper—but this was a novelty of pain. Having been a tome in the book fires of the Modernist Revolution, fuel for the funeral pyre of Komi Lanedon, and ash in the ruins of his own church, the Inked Man was used to the cleansing pain of flame. This, though, was a pain of a different sort. It was the burning of extreme cold and the heat of the pit of fear in his stomach. Something was wrong, and he didn’t know what, and his body was reacting to it; reacting to a profound sense of wrongness. The Inked Man had lived so long and so fully that he was as near omniscient as a being could be, but he was frightened for no other reason than his Unsight told him to be.

  Maybe he had cast the spell wrong? Maybe this was some sort of Unsight double-vision that was eating as his mind?

  The spell wasn’t wrong. He had created the spell himself, and it was flawless. The feeling—the cold, unburning, burning feeling—was the knowledge that he shouldn’t be here; that the books around him—many that he had written himself—were from a time before himself.

  “But I did exist. I remember orchestrating the Bugspit Rebellions and digging the Run and mating with Queen Woodheart and working in the deli.” His voice gave out but his mind still raged. I helped lay the first bricks in the wall ringing Lacuna. I remember putting up the first animal-hide tents on this land. I remember teaching the proto-Lacunans how to chisel memories into stone.

  The pain increased and it focused his thoughts to a sharp point.

  But that doesn’t explain how I remember them.

  * * *

  Inky tried counting his breaths at first, but after five, he decided focusing on the flames was a better use of his time.

  Chunks of coal threatened to trip him. Support timbers, flaming and fallen, should have caused him to pause, but Spec vaulted over them like a show horse, so Inky did as well. Hot embers floated up the legs of his trousers when he leapt flame; singed the hair on his leg. He was thankful for the clean air in his satchel.

  Even though he was in a mine, Inky’s tunnel-vision extended only to the edges of Spec’s leathers. The deeper they went into the mine, the hotter it became. Inky felt like a side of haggis: just a bunch of organ meat boiling in a sack.

  Spec turned and motioned for Inky to crouch down. He tore off his mask and leaned in real close.

  “I’m going to be doing some stupid things. You will not do them. Nod now.”

  Inky nodded.

  “Good.” Spec put his mask back on and stood up, dragging Inky with him. They stayed low and crouch-walked through the smoke.

  Even the flames didn’t shed enough light to penetrate the smoke and natural darkness of being entombed in stone. They tripped and stumbled. Inky was sure he had used at least half of his breaths. Like a black drop of ink, panic spread across his heart.

  Spec tore off his mask. “Day!” he yelled into the mine. The flames roared, but Spec roared louder, and Inky listened as the echo faded into smoke.

  “Day!” he yelled again. They walked deeper into the inferno. “Day.” His voice continued to echo, until, as if from a great distance, a thin reply came.

  “Night.”

  They stopped. Spec put his mask to his face and took a deep breath. Once more, he called, “Day!”

  And once more the reply came, “Night.”

  Spec ran forward, the weight of his leathers forgotten. Inky was spurned on by a blood-cocktail of fear and thrill and the knowledge that if he lost sight of Spec, he would be lost as well.

  “Day!”

  “Night.”

  “Day!”

  “Night.”

  Every time Spec would scream into the smoke, the reply would come louder and louder. How he knew where he was going, how he avoided every fallen support, dropped mine tool, every flaming hunk of coal, bordered on pre
ternatural. Inky stumbled more than once but never left his feet. Falling would mean death as sure as a bullet in this environment.

  Spec fell to his knees and Inky nearly tripped over him. Instead, he used his momentum to slide to a stop on his own knees.

  In Spec’s arms, Tomai—the quiet old man who collected scraps of paper—wheezed, stained black by soot.

  “Help me lift him,” Spec said, putting Tomai’s arm over his shoulder. Inky took the other side, and they hoisted him up. Spec put his mask over Tomai’s face. “If we go steady, we’ll all get out.”

  A tunnel support gave way behind them. The massive beam wedged itself into the tunnel between them and the mine entrance, throwing flames from floor to ceiling.

  “Of course this’d happen,” Spec said. Shaking his head, he slipped out of his coat and draped it over Tomai.

  Inky must have been staring, because Spec grabbed him by the ears. “Remember what I said about me being able to do stupid things and you not.” It was a statement not a question. Inky nodded anyway. He wasn’t going to do anything stupid, but he also wasn’t about to let Spec die in the mine.

  Finding a pick on the floor near the fire, Inky shrugged out from under Tomai. In one motion, he grabbed it and swung it as hard as he could into the beam. It shattered into charcoal and ash.

  Spec shuffled past him with Tomai limping along. “May not’ve been stupid, but it wasn’t smart.”

  * * *

  The Inked Man had been crawling since the moment the universe came into being; since the moment the Fiend blew his nose into a tissue and tossed it onto a lifeless rock. He couldn’t remember a time before crawling, before pain. He was crawling toward something, but he didn’t know what. He was beginning to suspect that the snake that bound the world had swallowed him and he was crawling forever through its circular digestive system.

  But no. With his Unsight, he would have seen the ribs and vessels and lymph of the snake. All he saw were endless corners, countless books, and a hopeless path.

  He crawled on. The books were becoming ever more primitive; his handwritten volumes almost non-existent after a certain point. He was getting close, but the pain was growing worse; the sense of unreality, the sense of loss, of having never been.

  Something in his Unsight kept him going. It shined like a beacon of white fire. He had followed it through the eons, and now he was finally at the doorstep. He dragged himself through the doorway and screamed as the pain tore his body apart. Down every ink-filled vein, jagged ice sliced him to ribbons. Worse yet, his mind cramped, pulling in on itself, making itself into as small a target as possible for the Unreality to hit.

  But the light was so bright! The beacon so pure! This must be the place of Unpain, of Uncrawl. All he needed to do was reach the books within and learn their secrets. His Unsight told him all he needed to do was lay his hand on a book and he would be saved.

  The Inked Man grabbed the nearest stone shelf and hauled himself to his feet. The pain pounded through him like a thousand thousand termites mating in his body. All he had to do—

  But there were no books. Instead, tablets of clay—of dark, red, Lacunan clay—lined the walls. With black tears forming in his eyes, he let his head tilt forward. It struck a clay tablet.

  In a blinding flash of Unlight and Pain, the End of Time came to shutter the world, but the Inked Man was nowhere to greet it.

  * * *

  “Just a little further,” Inky whispered under his breath. His mouth was dry and sick with ash. Air from the satchel came weak and stale. His lungs were scorched and drew weak breath. Every bone was about to snap, every muscle about to dissolve, but he kept moving.

  On his left arm, the old man Tomai struggled with each step but never stumbled once. On his right, Spec stumbled with each step but never fell. Inky half-carried them toward the small aperture of dawn light.

  “Inky,” Spec wheezed, “Let me fall and you take Tomai. Get out. Don’t be stupid.”

  Inky pretended not to hear him. This was stupid and that’s why he was doing it. His whole life to that point had been in the pursuit of avoiding stupidity; avoiding risks and doing something great. His entire life, he had never made an impact on anyone. Even Trinia—Trinia who he loved so much and would marry someday—seemed to tolerate him only for discounts on sliced beef.

  Now, though, now he had a chance to do something really stupid. He had a chance to save the lives of two men. If he could just make it another dozen yards or so, he could feel stupid for the first time.

  Inky grunted and increased his speed. Now he was carrying both men and he was sure his shoulders were going to tear but there was the light, the sweet beautiful dawn light, and dozens of miners and bucket brigaders and families and reporters stood in that dawn light, and if he could just make it a few... more... steps....

  Inky, Spec, and Tomai collapsed in the ash, in the dawn light.

  * * *

  Out of the mine, the Inked Man lay on his stomach in the center of a circle of stones. The River Ars—if it could be called that—was nothing more than a thin artery wearing at the parched earth in the distance. Dozens of bowstrings drew back with the creak of supple bone. The arrows carried tips of flint and flame.

  “No more flame,” he whispered. A tall woman holding a massive femur walked toward him. She bent down and looked right into his eyes. He stared back but was distracted by the filigree tattoos tracing around her eyes.

  “You have the Unsight,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  * * *

  Chernyl—no one called him Inky anymore—sat on his cot with his head in his hands. Tomai’s shallow breaths spoke like a metronome. Chernyl wanted to stuff Tomai’s mouth with burlap to stop the noise.

  Spec’s cot was empty save for an old tintype of the miner. It had been decided that the cot would serve as his memorial; no one would ever sleep on that pile of books again. Even Decker agreed to keep the vacancy after Chernyl sunk a fist into the foreman’s gut.

  The physiker said Spec died from smoke suffocation. She had no idea how he had made it so far. Spec’s tongue was a cigar stump. His esophagus had became a hardened chimney. The lining of his lungs had turned to ash.

  “Save a little on cremation costs, eh?” she said. Spec didn’t have any family so she gave the death certificate to Chernyl. It was stuffed into Spec’s favorite romance novel under the cot.

  Chernyl clenched the leather purse in his hands, empty as his growling stomach. It had been like that when he returned from the fire. He suspected the greenhorn who had come into the dorm yelling “Fire,” but he couldn’t be sure. When he went to Decker about it, the wheezing foreman held up his hands. “That’s why we offer the services of our company bank at a reasonable rate.”

  “Don’t you think I should get a bonus or reward for saving the lives of two miners?” Chernyl asked. He was trying to keep the boiling frustration inside of him. Decker had made it clear that another outburst would land him in the mines permanently: as an indentured servant. That’s how justice worked in Lacuna.

  “What about Spec’s will? Did he leave me anything?” It was a shot in the dark, but Chernyl had felt a connection with Spec, and he hoped it was a two-way street.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Chernyl,” Decker said, “but because Spec never filed his will with the company office, his savings became property of the bank.”

  Chernyl was out of the office before the fat man could finish his sentence. Like hell Spec didn’t file a will, but who could find it in that bird’s nest of old newspapers and pin-ups.

  By the time he got back to the billets, the sun was setting. Tomai sat on the edge of his cot, pulling on his boots.

  “You’re going to kill yourself if you go back to the mines this quick,” Chernyl said, falling back onto his cot.

  Tomai answered with a dry cough as he pulled the boot lace through each eyelet.

  “Piss poor thanks if you die so soon.”

  “Did I ask for ya to save me?” To
mai asked. He didn’t even glance at Chernyl as he got up and walked out of the billets.

  * * *

  For the first time in his afterlife, the Inked Man felt uncomfortable on a throne. The people here had built him a massive seat of smooth stone, hewn from the low mountains to the east.

  In the years since he had arrived, the Inked Man had taught the proto-Lacunans how to turn their spoken language into characters, how to press those characters into slabs of river clay, and how to preserve those slabs in the mountain caves.

  Before the Inked Man, the people were nomads, following herds of camels around the dry, cracked land. Now, the few dozen nomads were comfortable in stone cabins at the base of the mountains. They farmed the fertile mountainside and were even beginning to domesticate livestock.

  Morinae ruled the village as a sort of governor or chief. She had aged well since that first night in the middle of the stone circle. Long gray braids were piled on top of her head. The filigree tattoos had faded but were still visible, shining in the firelight. From her first husband, she had borne five children. After he made the foolish decision to raise a hand against her and found that though her back may have bent she was still fast as a scorpion and twice as poisonous, she had taken a new husband and borne five more children. They, in turn, had given her dozens of grandchildren. And, only a few days prior, her first great-grandchild: a girl named Tes-Morinae.

  But, there had been others. The little figures, looking so much like swaddled paper dolls, were concealed within the Inked Man’s throne.

  “Why are they so soft?” Morinae asked. She cradled one in her arms. It had her high forehead and upturned nose; his paper skin and blood of ink.

  “They’re paper people. Most don’t survive.”

  Morinae ran a hand over the Inked Man’s forearm. “And you are also paper?”

  “More and less.”

  She sat on the arm of his throne. “I like this paper,” she said. “What animal do you kill to get it?”

  The Inked Man laughed, walking his fingers up her arm. “No, no animal. Parchment and vellum come from animals. Paper comes from trees.”