by Andrew Post
He looked back up the street. When the street lamps pulsed, the strange little man was nowhere to be seen. Probably already back at the house. Tiny people could move so fast. Flam removed the auto key from his satchel and rested his hand on the latch of the glass bubble of the cockpit. He opened it, raised one foot to get in. He considered leaving, going against his Mouflon promise and ditching the poor fool. He set his foot back down, slammed the cockpit shut, and loaded the rest of the loot.
To busy his hands and keep himself from thinking about leaving Clyde with nothing to return to but a dust cloud in his auto’s absence, Flam smoked a pipe’s worth of mold and idled about until the man in the butler uniform charged back down the street with the citizen dagger in his grip. He ran with such abandon, like a little kid, arms and legs flapping about as if he had no bones at all. Like this was for fun. But his face . . . it showed resolve. His strange little hairdo, that floppy pompadour that bounced down in front of his face with each stride, those mousy eyes, all black. Where in the world had this goof come from?
This will be my end. This will be what taps out my last bit of luck: toting this pale little turd around. It’s like kismet, fate, preordination—whatever you’d want to call it. I made the promise, and then he reveals he’s a jinxing fabrick weaver. Lovely. It’s like Meech himself is on high, sending down the telegraph: “Flam, you are hereby and forever screwed.”
Clyde slowed his pace with slapping footsteps, then plodded back. He doubled over to catch his breath. With his face cast downward, his words punched from his mouth between ragged gasps: “His name was Albert Wilkshire.”
“Wilkshire,” Flam echoed, turning and checking the street sign of the lane they stood upon. The same. “You think he owned this whole area, where all these mansions are? What did your master do for a living?”
Clyde stood tall, hands on hips, still breathing hard. “He was a great man, wise and kind. He worked in money in some capacity. That’s all I know.”
“Must’ve been great sums of it, given that he either owned this street or had it named after him. Either way, you know who you’re avenging now, and you have a weapon of your own.” Flam pointed at the dagger. “Keep it close, but don’t have it showing. Do like I do, yeah?” Flam demonstrated moving a panel of his leather armor over the blunderbuss hanging at his side. “The Patrol will often shoot first and ask questions afterward if they see you’re carrying anything more than a spoon. I once saw a poor fool gunned down while he was just holding a banana like a pistol.”
“Like this?” Clyde asked, clipping the dagger’s scabbard to the belt loop of his trousers and then covering it with his baggy suit coat.
Flam nodded, hopped into the cockpit of his auto, but left the glass bubble up so they could talk as he drove down the street. Flam occasionally tapped the accelerator to get the big wheel at the auto’s rear a boost of momentum. Sometimes his foot suggested he should just floor it—the little fella would never catch up—but he didn’t.
When they reached the next intersection and started turning left to head north to the city proper, Clyde looked over his shoulder toward the chateau. He regretted not burying Mr. Wilkshire, not committing him to the ground so he could rest in peace, but if Flam was to be believed, there was no time. Clyde didn’t know whether to wave to the house or salute it and decided to give it the same grateful gesture he would give Albert Wilkshire himself: a simple bow, eyes closed, chin to chest.
When they turned the next corner, the chateau dropped from sight, but Clyde would always be able to see it in one way or another.
“I’ll find whoever did it, Mr. Wilkshire. I promise.”
Chapter 6
The Opposite of Up
The geyser from which the city got its name was within easy sight of South Main Street. Clyde thought it looked like a giant finger pushing up out of the middle of the city. When the electricity flickered on, the glowing spheres upon its rocky shell illustrated its striking height and cautioned potential night flyers of its presence.
Flam said, “Yep, there it is. Quite the sight back when it was still pushing a flow out. The whole city used to be under a cover of never-ending mist from it. Now look at it, as dead and dry as bone.”
They moved closer down South Main Street, approaching the geyser a few blocks off. They were still in the seemingly endless thick of a residential ward, but by this point the houses and yards were shrinking. The closer to the town square they came, the more everything seemed to condense, as if the houses themselves were crowding toward the geyser for warmth. But whatever warmth it had been throwing off was gone. Just like the darkened houses encircling it, the geyser looked arid and spiritless.
“What stopped it?”
Flam tapped his hoofed toe to the auto’s accelerator. “No one knows for sure. Sediment may have blocked it up; perhaps the well it was based upon finally dried up. No one really cared, it seemed. Once it stopped flowing, people moved on regardless of whether it could be fixed. Or so I assume; I haven’t been in these parts for a while. That’s just the wine of the grapevine.”
The lights studding the geyser flickered once, a temporary flash. The effect moved in a ringing wave. The geyser would light up and darken first, followed by all the streetlights around them. Light, then all was dark once more.
“That keeps happening,” Clyde murmured.
“We shouldn’t get any closer.” Flam braked, then made a wide U-turn in the street, passing in front of Clyde, apparently in hopes of peeling his focus away from the geyser.
“Why not? I want to see it.”
Flam came to a full stop directly in Clyde’s path. “The Patrol. They keep to the town square looking for stragglers or anyone thick enough to come to Geyser for assistance. We get spotted, and that’s it. Whether we like it or not, we’ll be headed straight to the refugee camp. Me, it’ll probably be a prison autobus with a one-way ticket to Adeshka.”
“What did you do there, anyway?”
The auto gave a malfunctioning chortle. The dashboard within the cockpit went into a frenzy of flashing lights.
Flam gave it a thump with a balled fist, and the vehicle’s instrument panel returned to normal. He chuckled. “I won’t tell you nothing about that, Pasty. Unless you want my auto to die out completely.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I was just curious.”
“Do you have control over it?”
Clyde’s brow furrowed.
“Like,” Flam continued, “can someone tell you something bad they did and you just be a good listener and not jinx them, or is it just . . . automatic?”
“Once it’s in my ears, it’s out of control.” He ran a hand through his raven hair. “I wish it weren’t so. It’d make swapping stories a lot more fun.”
“Well, in that case, the story about what I did in Adeshka will have to wait. Maybe when we have a few days off, after our business venture is up and running, when there are no stairs to trip down or we don’t have to rely on an auto to get anywhere.”
Clyde wasn’t certain, but it seemed as if Flam was trying to be . . . reassuring?
“In any case, let’s get going. I don’t like the look of this street.”
Clyde agreed.
They moved along, avoiding going north any farther, and turned left.
Clyde wanted to see the geyser up close, to stand at its base and look straight up, as one would watch starships. But, like Flam’s story about Adeshka, it would have to wait.
An hour later, they arrived at the elevator station in the south ward of Geyser. All around were shops and buildings, darkness inside their windows. Several autos were parked along the paved drives, all in worse condition than Flam’s. The street was strewn with trash, a couple of forsaken pieces of luggage. A crumpled newspaper danced down the street, propelled by a cold and salty wind. The street lamps gave a plaintive splash of light, then died again. Every single time, Clyde hoped they’d stay lit just this once, but they never did.
Flam parked his au
to before the chain-link gate of the elevator. It was a massive space within, big enough to house dozens of people. Flam stepped out of his auto. He grunted as he lifted the gate and, with surprising ease, pushed the auto into the elevator car. He went over to the elevator station’s control booth. Just like the streetlights and the glass spheres dotting the town’s geyser, the panel for the elevator flickered on and off. Flam kept his hand on the power button, ready to push it when the time was right.
“We’re not going down with your auto?” Clyde inquired.
“No,” Flam said, distracted, missing a chance to mash the button when a surge came and went. “We’ll lower the car first, just in case there are any bandits waiting for us below. The auto has a security feature in it that will alert me if anyone tries to open its cockpit once it’s down there,” he said and referred to a small device clipped to the bandolier crossing his breastplate. “Okay, here we go. I can feel it. Got some juice coming our way . . . right . . . about . . . now!” He hit the button, timing it precisely, and the elevator car burst with fierce fluorescent light, throwing the haggard automobile into illumination. The elevator made a deep groan of metal on metal, and the car lowered at a glacial rate.
Flam came out from the control box and watched through the chain-link gate as his auto made its slow stop-and-go descent.
“Is it really a mile down?” Clyde asked, looping his fingers through the links of the gate.
The unraveling rusty cables groaned loudly.
Flam looked around the surrounding neighborhood. “Yes, indeed. Had a few close calls nearly falling off the side. And let me tell you, both required me to go trouser shopping afterward.”
“What keeps the bandits from coming up?”
“Nothing, but they’re not as stupid as I am.” Flam smiled. “See, I had family here once, so I’m in the citizen registry, even if just by proxy. If I get caught, I’ll be treated with reasonable respect until they look up my record. The bandits with no registered family wouldn’t be so fortunate. One has to either have kin in Geyser or be an employee to be welcomed.” He shrugged. “Well, that was the way it worked before, anyhow.”
The elevator’s inner workings made a terrible howl. The gears were turning in infrequent shudders, spinning along smoothly and then frantically. A smell of burning oil came from the machine, and a thin smoke rose from its vents.
“Meech damn!” Flam said, pushing his face into the grate to see his auto in the elevator car below. There was a snap as loud as a gunshot, and the elevator car dropped. From above, one of the massive metal spools on which the elevator cable was suspended whizzed by. Flam roared, beat the fencing, watching the elevator car, with his auto, drop down, down, down. After nearly a full minute, there was a smash below. Flam lowered his head.
Beneath Geyser, the world was too dark to see anything but a brown smoke with a bright spot smoldering in the middle, the funeral pyre of Flam’s auto.
“How many pieces of chark did you say you stole?” Clyde said.
“Shut it.” Flam sighed and pushed away from the elevator to walk to Clyde. “How long does it usually last, anyway? This jinxing you’ve laid on me.”
Clyde shrugged.
The tiny sparkle of fire burning far down grew.
“The longer ago it was, the worse the bad luck. The worse you felt about it and the longer you carried it with you, even worse the jinxing still.”
“I should hope that my auto being destroyed was the end of my tab. I don’t think I can take much more of this.” He ran a paw down his face. “You know how long I had that auto? I still owe Ricky ten spots for that thing, too.” Flam leaned against the wall of the elevator control booth and slid down until he was sitting on the sidewalk. He took out his pipe and sighed.
“Is there another elevator we can take down?”
“Sure.” Flam laughed morosely. “It’s on the north end of town, smack-dab in the middle of the Patrol fortification. Go ahead and waltz down there, give their gate a knock, ask if you can take a quick trip down if they’re not too busy with it.”
“Is there another way down without using an elevator?”
“Got a parachute? Yeah, me neither.”
“And there’s only the two elevators?”
“Yep.”
Looking toward the central part of Geyser, Clyde could see the rocky tower through the trees lining the street. The lights came on upon its surface, then dimmed. “What about the geyser itself? It’s not flowing as much anymore. Perhaps we could climb to the top, shimmy down inside, and maybe find a way to—”
“Now you’re just being thick.” Flam puffed smoke. “You go inside that thing, it’s a straight shot to the underground lake. Water so hot down there you’d be turned to powder before you even made a splash. Sediment and toxic gas, completely unbreathable. It’s the doorway to the plummets if I ever saw it.”
“You’ve been in there?”
Against the night sky, the geyser momentarily materialized out of the murk, as if happy it was being mentioned in conversation and wanted to say hello.
Flam made a smoke ring, his eyelids at half-mast. He stared across the street toward the darkened storefronts, the gray circles of smoke drifting from his mouth. “Like I said, I had relatives who lived here. My uncle was an engineer for the Geyser sub works. Sometimes when Mum got good and tired of my shenanigans, she’d send me out here to stay with him. I’d work with him sometimes, repair the turbines or go down the sewer lines to breach a clog. Trust me, it wasn’t as much fun as it sounds.”
“So you’ve been inside.”
“That I have.”
“There has to be a way down besides the elevators, then.”
Flam tore his gaze from the abandoned storefronts, his furry mug dented with impatience. He plucked the pipe from his mouth, the metal tip clicking on his teeth. “Look, Pasty, I don’t think you’re listening. The platter, the cake stand this city is built upon, isn’t connected to the geyser itself. It’s built around it. Sure, some of the turbines reach inside the geyser’s floodway, but no man, no Mouflon, not even a Meech-damned Cynoscion could survive that heat.”
“But if we timed it, like we did with the electricity to the elevator—”
“Because that turned out so swimmingly.”
“—then we could, possibly, dodge the water when the geyser activates.”
“Did you see how hard it was to get the elevator to work? How I had to time it just right? The geyser isn’t on a set schedule. It’s not clockwork; it’s not automated or set by any watch. It bursts when it wants to. Besides, getting to the top and going down inside—that’s half a mile below just to where the platter is. And another half mile to the island, and then . . . This is daft. I don’t even know why we’re considering this. Scratch that; I don’t even know why you’re considering this. Once you get in there, it’s a straight fall to the plummets.”
“Perhaps in the plummets there’s a way back to the surface,” Clyde pondered aloud. “Go down and then up?”
Flam snorted. “The plummets is a figure of speech, Pasty. It’s not a real place. Well, some believe it’s a real place. It’s myth. It’s where Meech sends all the bad folk when they die. I’m sure you’ve heard of it: swimming in boiling tar and banging your head on razor rock every single time you dare surface, for all eternity?”
Clyde stared. How horrid.
“No big surprise there. Can’t imagine your master was much of a religious sort. Money pads the mind, after all.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Forget I said anything.” Flam stood up, grunting. “Come on. We’ll figure all this bosh tomorrow morning.” He began making his way across the street to a shuttered haberdashery.
“No, tell me what you meant by that,” Clyde spat, matching Flam’s stride. “My master was an honorable man. He said that every bad thing he did was a hard decision, that he was looking out for his company’s best interest. That by hurting a few, he could save plent
y more.”
“Plenty more money, maybe. Everyone knows the rich folk don’t do anything unless it increases the number of spots in their wallets. It’s not your fault. You probably had no choice who you worked for.”
“What are you implying? You believe that when my master died, he went to the plummets?”
“I don’t imply anything. I know it. It’s the best place for all the rich folk to go. Even if they didn’t get a wake-up call in life, they sure as plummets got one when they died. Deservedly, too. Never saw a single pampered rich individual do anything he wouldn’t benefit from. And don’t tell me your master was different, that he gave to the poor and volunteered to ladle stew at the orphanages. He had you around to clear his conscience. From where I’m standing, that’s evidence enough he wasn’t a good bloke.”
The speed of Clyde’s stride died halfway across the boulevard from the haberdashery. He was stunned by the accusation. He could scarcely believe he was actually giving it thought now. Ahead, Flam stopped as well, about-faced, and caught the look of hate written in the pale man’s onyx eyes.
“Listen, Pasty—”
“You take that back this instant.” It was barely more than a whisper.
“Or what? You’ll use your fabrick and make me say something else I did that was naughty in my time, so that when I go to use the pot, the thing will clog and overflow on me? Save your threats, Weaver. I didn’t mean anything by it. You should know that all of us Mouflons are like this—blatantly honest—unlike humans, who spin secrets and gossip and stab one another in the back. Just look at this place, and you’ll see what I mean. You don’t suppose the Odium is made up of anything but humans, do you?”
“I’m not talking about the Odium. I’m talking about Mr. Wilkshire.”