by Andrew Post
“But he couldn’t do that before,” Nevele said, aghast. “He could just stun with it, and now you say you can . . . hear him?”
“Unless you got another explanation for why I hear him talking and talking and talking all the time in my Meech-damned head.” He crumpled, doubling over and taking his horns in his hands, wrenching his head side to side as if he were attempting to break his own neck. “He won’t shut up,” he roared.
Flam searched Clyde’s paper-white face. When he caught the frisk mouse’s gaze in the shadow of Clyde’s collar, Flam lost it. “The poor mice,” he screamed at the ceiling. “Those little shites didn’t do anything to anybody!”
He continued this way for what felt like several minutes, yelling and yelling as if trying to make himself into a volcano and expel the taint on his spirit, purge it from his body and soul. When he was through, he collapsed, balled up, and remained that way as if he’d been successful in screaming not only the blackness but everything good out of himself, a knotted crust on the ground Flam’s residuum now.
In a delayed reaction, the atmosphere mites responded by giving Flam a shroud of snow.
Clyde brushed the flakes from his friend’s fur and sat beside him. Nevele did the same on the other side, and together they became a heap of overlapping limbs with Flam in the center.
Clyde kept trying to think of something good to say, some bit of positivity, but he came up dry. Instead, he hugged Flam harder.
Nevele held the Mouflon just as tightly. The look on her face wasn’t that of obligation but genuine sympathy.
Lastly, the sole surviving member of Rohm scurried out from under Clyde’s collar, ran the length of his sleeve, hopped over to Flam’s horn, and trekked down until it was standing squarely upon his forehead. It stretched down over the outcropping of Flam’s heavy brow and said, peering into his left eye upside down, “I’m still here, Mr. Flam. I may not be able to speak as loudly as I used to, but I assure you, I’m still here and willing to help!” He saluted. “At your service.”
It was clear Flam wanted to give a smart remark, his lips working and his eyes narrowing, but then he just sighed. “Thank you . . . Would you mind getting off my head? You’re standing on my eyelash.”
The rodent obliged. It turned and saluted Clyde, bowed deeply. “And at your service, sir, Mr. Clyde! And you, Miss Mallen—”
“Nevele will suffice.” She patted its head with the tip of her index finger. “But thank you.”
Chapter 36
Going Separate Ways
Once Flam was grunting about Nevele having sharp elbows and how she needed to get off his hip with those things pronto, the travelers knew they’d gotten themselves together enough to press on. They gathered their things, reloaded, and collected in front of the next passageway.
Flam stumbled and swung about, looking for what had dared to trip him up. There in the pool of light from his torch was the glinting shard of blue rock.
Everyone stopped and watched Flam. He didn’t seem to pay any mind to the fact that he was now being very closely observed. He simply picked up the rock, glowered at it for a moment, and then hurled it into the abyss. It sailed soundlessly, struck the wall, and fell. After its noisy descent was over, Flam clapped the dirt off his hands, turned, and saw he was being scrutinized. “The hell are you all staring at? I’m fine.”
Clyde was unable to suppress his smile. He knew Flam wasn’t that daft, hadn’t forgotten about what he’d done or that the wendal stone had been the trigger, but it was now clear how selective his friend’s memory was.
They moved on. If he said he was fine, they could only take his word for it.
One open tunnel led into the next. Then a series of perilous meter-wide ledges flanked yet another fathomless fall into the planet, and then more tunnels, some true to their O markings, some not. They found a small pool of standing water in which Flam volunteered to be the appointed taster, claiming his palate was more refined and could detect contamination. When he gave it a slurp and a thumbs-up, they filled their canteens. A few hours later, they stopped midway through a tunnel for something to eat and more water, but then it was right back to it as soon as the canteens were capped.
“Those sparrows,” Nevele said as they went up through a tube wider than most, so wide in fact that they could walk abreast for the first time since leaving the plateau. “Vidurkis must’ve sent them in from above.”
“Does the Patrol have things like that?” Clyde asked.
“Looked like one of their winger grenades,” Nevele said. “If they came in from the opposite way, there’s a clear passage somewhere, even if it’s just big enough for those birds to fit through . . . He must be getting nervous.” Clyde picked up a bit of giddiness in her tone. “They open that armory cabinet for elite guardsmen only.”
“Well, if they came from that direction, it means that’s the way through, right?”
Flam sighed. “And it also means he’s down here with us, for certain now.”
“But those birds—they came from ahead, where we haven’t been yet,” Clyde put in, pointing where the hurricane of metal sparrows had come from. “He must’ve gone up to Geyser and back down through the sewers and sub works. I can’t imagine he drilled through the side of Geyser’s stem that fast, if that rock is strong enough to hold up an entire city.”
“Nor could I imagine Gorett would’ve allowed him to try that anyway,” Nevele said. “That is, unless my brother already did the job for us, killed Gorett, and crowned himself.”
A stony fist developed in Clyde’s stomach. “Do you think he’d really do something like that?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she said, reaching a section of the tunnel that was halfway blocked from a collapse. “Give me a hand here?”
Clyde and Flam gave her a boost. Once over the top of the pile of rubble, she pulled debris out of the way for the others.
The frisk mouse tugged on Clyde’s ear. “Mr. Clyde, do you see that down there?” He pointed.
The group stopped.
Flam followed the tip of the mouse’s pink finger. They trained their lights that way.
Along the tunnel wall were markings in some sort of paint, splashes in deep burgundy and brown: a crude estimation of a hunchbacked man, seen in stick figure form and lacking any detail besides jots for hair hanging from its circle head. It appeared to be either seated upon a beetle or to be legless and attached to its back. The figure gripped a spear in one hand, a lasso or an upheld noose in the other. Even though the artwork was unpolished, the insect was unmistakably a Blatta.
“Is that a man riding one of those things?” Nevele grimaced.
“You know, I can remember when they used to have rodeos in Mole Hole and they’d give twenty thousand spots to anyone who could stay on a Blatta’s back for more than eight seconds,” Flam said. “Nobody was ever able to do it. It’s probably where they got the idea to make walkers. A lot easier to saddle up a bug when it’s made of metal and full of computer parts, I bet. But this . . . this is something else altogether.” He tapped the picture of the man riding beetleback. “He’s running that thing hands free.”
They angled their flashlight beams down the tunnel. More pictographs were found, faded and old. They sidled down as a group, sifting out the story as one tableau faded into the next. Nevele discovered what they took to be the beginning: a stick figure man approaching what appeared to be a mountain but with a squiggle reaching out of its summit. Everything before this image had been eroded from a constant trickle of water.
Flam pointed at the smoking hill. “That’d be Geyser, I reckon.”
The next pictograph showed a stick figure man looking quite alarmed by one of the beetles, the figure’s head a frenzy of lines shooting out as if his hair stood on end.
Flam narrated for the bent-backed figure, “Yikes. What is that ugly thing?” He snorted.
They moved on, and soon the pictures evolved in detail and artistry. The subsequent figures were drawn with mo
re patience and care, now including a face with rudimentary features and clothing. The longhaired man bowed before the beetle, presenting something that could’ve been fruit or a severed head; it wasn’t clear which.
The beetle was depicted in even greater detail. It seemed to be taking the offering and bowing to the man.
“You give me thingamabob. I like thingamabob. Now me like you,” Flam narrated.
“Stop,” Nevele said. “This is interesting.”
Clyde said, “Looks to me like the man meets the bug, and at first it’s scary; then he brings it a present for whatever reason, befriends it, and then here, where we started before, they become partners.”
“What do you suppose happened to them?” the mouse on Clyde’s shoulder asked.
“They got hungry,” Flam said, “and decided to buck that twerp off and eat him instead of the bruised pineapples they had been getting.”
Nevele dragged her finger down one of the stick figures, but it didn’t smear. The paint seemed permanently stained upon the rock. “These have been here for some time.” She paused. “Kind of explains why people claim that sometimes you can hear them talk, I guess. What they thought was the Blatta copying human speech, anyway.”
“Are you suggesting there are still people down here, riding these things?” Flam said. “There’s no way. Someone would have seen them. Ain’t nothing on Gleese that hasn’t been netted and jammed under a microscope, documented, and given a name.”
Nevele steadied her flashlight’s beam on the image that had been mostly washed away. Jagged circles, colliding or being absorbed by the others. An engulfed one was chased by what looked like an arrow. “There’s a lot in the universe we don’t know yet,” she said, her tone distant. “Mom and Dad told all kinds of stories of stuff they saw while making deliveries to far-flung regions.”
Flam’s imagination ran wild. “Like what?”
“Weirder than people riding on the backs of bugs, that’s for certain,” she said. “Come on. We should keep moving. I think I feel a draft. Maybe we’re getting close. This way.”
Flam took a step back, troubled not only by the pictographs but the reminder that Vidurkis was just on the other side of every wall, under every rock, looming beyond every next turn. He ran a hand through his fur between his horns, trying to push the thoughts out of his skull.
It was getting worse. The images were flooding back again. The red stains on the wall that made up the drawings looked like blood. It made him think about Clyde’s bloody nose—the one he’d given him—and his wicked imagination ran amok.
“That’s enough,” he told his turbulent mind. “That’s good. You can stop there. No more, please. Thank you. Please stop.”
“Flam?” Clyde turned around. “Are you all right?”
Flam fought with himself. He backed away from the others, becoming panicked that he might hurt them again. He felt his back collide with the cave wall. Snap. He stopped, his heart lurching.
A crack.
“Do not move.” Nevele snatched Clyde’s arm.
“Where is it?” Clyde said, turning his flashlight beam all around the cave.
They remained stock-still and looked for the jagged black line in the stone where the crack may have started.
“Do you see it?” Flam stammered, hunched with arms out, afraid to move anything but his eyes.
“No,” Clyde said, searching.
“Maybe it was just a small one, something harmless. At least, that’s what I’m going to hope—”
The wall behind him gave out. Flam scrambled for something to hold as gravity sucked him farther down the opening. The others leaped to grab him by his hands but ended up with fistfuls of his matted fur. He kicked and bellowed—not just from fear but pain. As the ruddy fibers of his fur popped free, he skidded down the rock wall beneath the opening.
He had enough sense to pull out his collapsible pick, swing it around so it unfolded, and smash it down to catch the stone surface. The pick threw off a screech and rained sparks into his face. His fall was temporarily slowed until the pick’s tip snapped off with a ping. His hooves made a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
Then nothing.
Just cold air rushing up around him, whooshing past his ears. In the darkness, all he could hear was his yelp. He plummeted, turning end over end, uselessly kicking and fighting his horrible end.
Chasing him even past the thunderous wind was Clyde’s scream: “Flam!”
Poor Pasty. Bloke’s lost enough already and here I go, dying on him too.
He let the fall take him.
Chapter 37
Gas for the Magic Carpet
Now unsure of Ricky, Aksel avoided his friend the remainder of the night. In a camp only so big, this was difficult. He steered clear of his own shack, the agora at the camp’s center, and the creek banks. He circled the camp through the alleys, always moving. He adopted a disguise of sorts: he walked around bare chested, took up a limp, and wore a sweat-stained baseball cap he found wedged among some trash. He tied back his hair with some wire and kept the bill low to hide his eye patch.
The moon was directly above him, beaming down benevolently. Normally, it’d be a peaceful thing to gaze up at it, but tonight this signaled that he was to meet Neck Steve at the agreed-upon place. Phase one of their escape. Aksel trudged that way reluctantly. He wanted to complete Moira and Karl’s assignment, but he knew the escape wouldn’t be pleasant. Somehow, with the plan having been leaked, he knew something would go awry.
Circling to the back of the western guard tower, he got hit by a wall of stink in the hot wind. At night, the bodies of people who passed away in the camp were loaded up, sent through three sets of gates to the exterior fence, and dropped onto a heap to be shuttled to Adeshka for processing and burial. The pile was usually small, except on particularly hot days, when they lost the most elderly, but tonight it reeked as if a thousand bodies were heaped there. Aksel wondered if that particular corner of the camp would be permanently stained with the aroma, even after the surviving refugees had been allowed to return home.
On the pile, an old man, bent as a diseased tree, lay sprawled across another man, this one younger. The second man’s torso was polka-dotted with knife wounds; dried blood covered him as if he had been painted with the stuff. Another was a cocoon of stained burlap, the figure beneath it frightfully emaciated. Next to those two lay a fourth man on his stomach, covered in a wadmal cloak. The size of the body—as well as the slow, labored breathing—gave Neck Steve away.
Exhaling through his mouth, Aksel said nothing and dropped to his knees and then onto his stomach alongside Neck Steve. The two lay masked in their stillness, waiting for the guard to come with the three-wheeled tractor and wagon to collect them and the bodies that weren’t pretending to be inert.
They lay there for an hour, aware of each other but neither speaking. Geyser’s poorest lived in the shacks nearby. Any conversation might give their positions away or, worse, startle the superstitious into thinking the dead were springing to life. Aksel imagined every man, woman, and child of the camp fetching a torch to thrust into the faces of the presumed zombies to send them to their second deaths. Despite the night’s humidity and Neck Steve’s warm breath spraying him, Aksel shuddered as if he were encased in ice.
He recalled what Neck Steve had said about where they were going. The ice caps. How long did he have to remain a spy for Moira and Karl? Would he be playing pirate the rest of his life? And how would he escape from them? How was he to report what the Odium knew? Aksel began to doubt he’d ever have a life after this. Was he lying here now, pretending to be a corpse, when that’s what he really would be in a week’s time?
Finally, the guard and a partner pulled alongside the heap. They lifted Aksel by the wrists and ankles over the bulwark of the wagon, banging his head on its edge. It took him every ounce of control not to scream out.
“Sorry about that.” One of them chuckled, his voice muffled beneath a gas mask. The guard
s loaded Neck Steve, dropping him right on top of Aksel, and then a few others until Aksel—when he dared a peek—could barely breathe and could see nothing but bodies above him. The guards jumped into the tractor, spun it around, and headed toward the gates. Aksel kept his eye closed, just in case anyone decided to hop onto the bumper, peer in at the dead, and find two corpses breathing.
One gate rattled open, then closed, followed by another and another. Outside the camp, the tractor rattled for a few minutes, then came to a stop. The guards unloaded the bodies, once again slamming Aksel’s head against the side.
They waited until the wagon’s tailgate slammed. Bumping down the road, the sound of the engine petered out into silence. Soon, all Aksel could hear were insects and the rumble of an aircraft taking to the skies over Adeshka far away. He opened his eye. All he saw above were points of light—the moving ones and the comfortingly stationary ones.
He pushed a wadmal-wrapped body off, took a deep breath through his mouth, and sat up.
On the other side of the mound of corpses, Neck Steve did the same. He pulled his sweat-logged cloak away and looked at Aksel, a broad semi-toothless smile forming. He sprang to his feet, and Aksel did the same.
Again, they didn’t speak. The plan was to get out on the other side of the fence, wait until the tractor left, and bolt eastward. With no compass, they relied on the stars. The Odium was going to send one smaller starship, park three miles out into the Lakebed, and wait. They’d have a window of ten minutes. Anything longer, and they’d risk being detected by radar.
The two men charged, kicking up a small cloud of arid dirt. On the far side of the desert, the lights of a solar farm created a beacon, but the ground was hard to see. He prayed he wouldn’t step on a scorpion.
One of the stars was growing.
Neck Steve restrained a cheer and redirected their trajectory toward it.