Vandermeer, Jeff - Veniss Underground

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  “This may be true, but maybe you'd help me just this once. Tell me how to find Quin.”

  “No. But perhaps you should head for that glowing green light.”

  Sure enough, directly ahead, through the darkness, an emerald point of light moved along the shoreline.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It's a light. I thought you liked the light.”

  The meerkat looked almost victorious.

  “I was headed that way anyhow,” Shadrach said.

  IT GLOWED phosphorescent green. It moved like a worm. It looked like a caterpillar with no head. It was the size of a small but muscular snake. It ignored Shadrach utterly. It inched its way along the shore of the vast sea with a sense of great purpose. As if contributing to this thought, its markings were so precise, its segmentations so rigidly correct, that the level of perfection it had attained fascinated Shadrach. He had not expected to see anything so whimsical here. An awkward smile spread across his face.

  “What is it?” he asked John.

  “Look more carefully.”

  When he did as the meerkat suggested, Shadrach discovered that, on each segment of the creature, a number had been emblazoned in living tissue, made part of its markings, and that the segments themselves were segmented by tiny green fault lines.

  “It's a machine!” he said.

  “Almost correct,” the meerkat said. “Touch it.”

  “Touch it?”

  “It won't bite.”

  “How can I trust you?”

  The meerkat bared its gums. “You can't. Who can tell what a dying mind like mine might or might not do? I would advise you not to touch it after all, considering my treacherous history.”

  Shadrach looked out across the sea, where at times a length of sharp, blue-green fin would break the surface of the water. In a world so strange, he wondered if it mattered what he did, as long as he did something.

  He squatted beside the glowing caterpillar. He reached out with one hand and touched it with his index finger. It felt smooth yet furry. It stopped inching along. It fell over onto its side.

  “You've killed it,” John the Baptist said. “I told you not to touch it.”

  Then, with slow, meticulous grace, the caterpillar unraveled itself, section by section. Each section, as soon as it had unfolded, re-formed, stitching itself back together again, until it lay completely flat: a square of green, glowing flesh spread out on the seashore. The tiny fissures and fault lines filled with intense light. A humming sound. The light shot out from the lines, formed a grid. The lines of light faded . . . leaving behind a three-dimensional map of the sea and its surrounding shore, rendered in a darkly glittering green. The numbers corresponded to the sections the map had split itself up into, and they now lay at the edges as cross-hatching grid references.

  It struck Shadrach that this was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, or ever would see, and that he was fated to experience it when he could not fully appreciate it.

  “Do you have a sense of beauty?” he asked John the Baptist. “Because this is beautiful.”

  The meerkat said, somewhat wearily, “My sense of beauty is more refined than you can ever know, each of my senses so heightened that I might as well live in a different world than you. But where you see form, I see function. You can be forgiven, I suppose, for favoring style over substance. It's the nature of your species. This is one of Quin's maps. That's all.”

  “Quin made this?”

  “Quin made everything, even the sea. This is his laboratory. This is his world. Not yours.”

  Shadrach sat down beside the map. “But how, John? Tell me how he can make monsters and yet creatures as beautiful as this?”

  The meerkat laughed. “There's something touching about your innocence. But this monster has no perspective on that question. May the contradiction torment you forever.”

  Shadrach stared at the map. Its shimmering display featured several place names, in a language he did not know, and a blinking red light he assumed must be their present location. Almost directly opposite, across the sea, he saw a symbol of a human and animal merging.

  “Is that where Quin is?” he asked John the Baptist.

  “Ask the map. Talk to the map. I'm too busy shutting down.” The meerkat closed its eyes.

  “Where is Quin?” Shadrach asked the map, but the map just burbled at him.

  What now? Before, the meerkat had told him to touch the map.

  He touched the human/animal symbol. The three-dimensional display shut off with a snap. The lights dimmed on the map. The fissures and cracks between segments healed, sealed up.

  The meerkat let out a huffing laugh, but said nothing.

  Shadrach stood, backed away from the map, afraid the meerkat might have goaded him into some sort of trap. He aimed his gun at the map . . .

  . . . which began to flap around on the ground like a bat, its edges burning an intense green. As it flapped, the color spread from the edges toward the interior. When the color reached the center, the map became all sharp edges, and Shadrach heard a sound like the shriek of a cicada. Suddenly, the edges resolved themselves into wings—sharp and bladelike. With a flapping like knives crossing, the map rose into the air reborn as a headless, featherless bird. It soared twice over Shadrach, then began to shadow the shoreline, before circling back to him.

  “Follow the map. It's waiting for you,” the meerkat mumbled, its eyes still tightly shut.

  SHADRACH FOLLOWED the flying map as it soared along the shoreline. More creatures came at him from the dark—creatures with grotesque goat heads and eyes peering from their feet. Creatures that scuttled on eight legs and had the features of delicately proportioned apes pinned to the scorpion's carapace. Such refuse, as bad as if Nicholas had experimented for a thousand years. How to reconcile the beauty of the map with such creatures? Some were just exhausted networks of veins, red and panting and in an agony that, for lack of a mouth, screamed from their every jerking movement. Eyeballs in clustered bunches cast their liquid gaze at Shadrach. Others rolled, bounced, slithered, ran but were little more than scores of feet. Some lay in the moist sand still caught in the tangle of afterbirth but already smelling of decay and the grave. Here and there, Shadrach came upon the broken-open husks of the vats: green crysali made of a substance like emerald glass. These birthing places gave off a sense of desolate abandonment. Around the vats, liquids had gathered, simulating those found in the womb, and had dried into an inchoate mess at their collapsed mouths. Things on the ground crawled and things in the sky flew with broken-backed ineptitude, while the things in the water slurped and belloped and sang to themselves in burbling saditude.

  But it was only when the dogs ran by that Shadrach felt fear. They came in a pack of ten, close by one another, turning with remarkable precision in pursuit of some unfortunate creature. Flaps of wrinkled flesh dominated their foreheads, and their hide was blacker than the perpetual night. Tiny dead violets, their eyes pierced the darkness like laser beams.

  Right in front of him, they pivoted, wheeled, spared him not a glance, and fell upon a stumbling, gasping creature farther up the shore. It was composed of two stilts of flesh atop which sat a slug of a torso, a larval head. They tore into the legs. It toppled, and then, as it squealed and shrieked, they ripped into it with fangs larger than fingers. Shadrach stood frozen, unable to look away. If they had turned upon him next, he would have been a dead man, but when they had finished, they sniffed the air, regained their precise military formation, and trotted off. As the last one joined the line, it turned to Shadrach. His blood became ice within him. He saw that beneath the violet eyes, before the muzzle ran down into nose and mouth, another face had been embedded in the flesh: a woman's face, with dark eyes, high eyebrows, a small nose, and, caught against the edge of her face and the dog's skin, two strands of golden blond hair. The full mouth was raw with smeared blood and flesh. The eyes held a mixed horror and triumph that made Shadrach's hand shake as he aimed h
is gun at the creature. But the creature wheeled around once more and was gone—racing alongside its fellows down the shore so that the water splashed out beneath their paws.

  When they were shadows on the horizon, a voice spoke from the shattered remains of the stilt-flesh creature. It said, “The Gollux thinks they've gone, haven't they?”

  Shadrach started. He walked over to the bloody carcass. Its eyes had been plucked from their sockets. Torn and tattered, the skull had been picked clean of flesh. It dangled from the raw and savaged spinal column, which lay fully exposed—a white, winking travesty. Shadrach aimed his gun at the carcass.

  The voice came again: “The Gollux knows they've gone, haven't they?”

  “Where is that voice coming from, John?” Shadrach asked the meerkat.

  The meerkat looked as agitated as Shadrach had ever seen him. “I don't know.”

  The voice, reedy but confident: “Help the Gollux. The Gollux is alive, alive is the Gollux. Kick open the skull.”

  “What are you?” Shadrach asked.

  “Kick open the skull, and you will find out that I am the Gollux, I am.”

  At his shoulder, John the Baptist attempted an unconvincing snicker. Overhead, the map circled patiently.

  “What should I do, John?”

  “What do you have to lose?”

  “More than you.”

  But he drew back his foot and kicked open the skull anyway.

  The inside of the skull seemed composed of a clay-colored brain, but this “brain” quickly uncoiled itself and pushed out of the skull, then extended to its full length.

  The creature, about the size of a baby, had a horizontal torso that tapered off at the front into an oddly human pair of legs and at the back into a pair of legs and muscular buttocks. Positioned three-quarters of the way back along the torso rose a clay-colored neck crowned with an oval head framed by stringy hair that writhed out behind it as though caught by a stiff wind. In the center of the head, a single black round hole served as, Shadrach supposed, an eye. It had no mouth, unless it spoke out of what presumably was its anus. It paced back and forth in front of Shadrach, as if trying to work feeling back into its limbs after long constriction.

  “What are you?”

  “The Gollux thanks you,” it said.

  Shadrach aimed his gun at it. “What are you?”

  The creature, still stepping from side to side, said something that sounded suspiciously like “Gollux,” then, “You're not from here.”

  “And you're talking out of your asshole!” Shadrach said. He laughed until the tears ran down his face.

  “Where are you from? What is that attached to your arm?” the Gollux asked.

  “It is the head of a meerkat,” Shadrach said, recovering. “I'm from the surface, where the sun is.”

  “The Gollux has never seen the sun.”

  “I've never seen anything like you before.”

  “I am the only Gollux.”

  “Are you one of Quin's?”

  “Yes. Based on an ancient design from a fairy tale. What is your flaw?”

  “My flaw?”

  “Every creature here has a flaw. The Gollux wishes to know yours.”

  “I suppose that I'm mad—completely crazy—and that I have a meerkat strapped to my arm.”

  The Gollux nodded solemnly. “That is indeed a flaw.”

  “And what is your flaw?”

  “I am the Gollux. I am not a flawed Gollux. I am a flawed location. The Gollux was not meant to be contained in the skull of a swannerbee. It was the swannerbee's flaw to have a Gollux for a brain.”

  Shadrach looked up at the flying map. He pointed to it. “What, then, is the map's flaw?”

  The Gollux said, “Its flaw is its mortality. A map should live a long time. But this map already dies—it is flying lower and lower—and its memory fails it. Wherever you are following it, it will not take you.”

  The meerkat said, “Don't listen to the Gollux. It likes to hear itself talk. It just doesn't know what it's talking about. The map is fine. It will lead you to Quin.”

  Before Shadrach could reply, the Gollux said, “I am the Gollux. The Gollux knows many things. The Gollux knows that the map dies. The Gollux knows that the meerkat has a flaw: It is only a head. Its body knows only half the truth, and its head knows only half the truth. The map is flying lower and lower. In circles.”

  The map's green had begun to fade and it indeed was flying lower, just barely over their heads.

  “Something tells me, John, that you're lying to me,” Shadrach said.

  “But we've grown so close,” the meerkat echoed, mockingly. “Surely you won't believe this gobbet of flesh over me?”

  The Gollux said, “The Gollux is a flawed location, not a flawed Gollux.”

  “The Gollux is annoying,” the meerkat said. “The Gollux talks too much.”

  “But I believe the creature,” Shadrach said. “Do you know the way to Quin?” he asked it.

  “The Gollux knows.”

  “Is it this way?” Shadrach pointed in the direction they had been traveling.

  “No.”

  Shadrach gave John the Baptist a knowing look. “Okay, then—is it this way?” and he pointed back the way they had come.

  “No.”

  Shadrach pointed toward the mountains, away from the sea.

  “No.”

  “I told you it didn't know what it was talking about!” the meerkat hissed.

  “All that's left is the sea, Gollux.”

  “The Gollux knows that there is no sea.”

  “The creature is crazy,” the meerkat said. “You should kill it! Kill it now!” John tried to nip at Shadrach's hand.

  Shadrach ignored the meerkat, said to the Gollux, “What do you mean?”

  “It is not a sea. It is the mouth of the creature that holds Quin. At the center of the mouth, you will find Quin. I am the Gollux. The Gollux is a flawed location, not a flawed Gollux.”

  “Stop listening to it,” the meerkat hissed. “Ignore it.”

  “Shut up, John,” Shadrach said. “Do you know how to get there?” he asked the Gollux.

  “Walk. Walk across the water. If you know the way.”

  “Do you know the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you take me there?”

  “I am the Gollux. The Gollux does as it pleases. But it pleases the Gollux to help him who rescued the Gollux from its flawed location.”

  The exhausted map chose that moment to come to rest at their feet after an extended death glide. It was crinkled and old-looking. It no longer shone with light. But it was still the most beautiful thing Shadrach had ever seen.

  CHAPTER 8

  Shadrach looked out at the shimmering sea. He did not like the idea of putting his fate in the hands of this creature. But what else could he do? The map was dead. John the Baptist was dying. He could wander the shore for months and never find Quin. He could be ripped to shreds by Quin's creations at any moment. Twenty-four levels above his head, Nicola waited for him.

  “Gollux,” he said, with a confidence he did not feel, “lead the way. I'll follow, but you have to go first.”

  The Gollux turned and walked out into the water. Soon, it was only a stalk of flesh, its body hidden by the waves. Then, just as it must surely drown or grow gills, the Gollux began to rise, until it appeared to stand atop the waves.

  “Holy shit,” Shadrach said.

  John the Baptist snorted. “It's not a miracle, you idiot. Can't you see anything?”

  “I don't care if it's a miracle or not—it's more than you or I are capable of.”

  The Gollux scuttled back and forth across the water, determining the limits on where it could and could not walk. Now Shadrach saw that the Gollux stood upon a dark, smooth surface that had roughly the shape of a wing. Over the water came the Gollux's shrill voice: “The Gollux says to come quickly! The saylber will not wait for long.”

  “I'm coming,” he called ou
t. He splashed water left and right as he ran toward the Gollux. The water was warm, almost alive in its cloying closeness. The meerkat gnashed at him with its gums. It spat. It said, “He'll kill you! He's lying!” Until Shadrach, in midstride, his legs in water to his calves, stopped his running plunge long enough to stick the meerkat head back into his pocket.

  THE SAYLBER was not, strictly speaking, a boat. But Shadrach had grown so accustomed to the miraculous that a real boat would have surprised him more. The saylber was a kind of flat fish—a long, thin, muscular manta ray with tremendous fin span and phosphorescent headlights for eyes. The tips of its “wings” curled in the water and created tiny swirls. Its thick back felt sandpapery even through Shadrach's boots. As the saylber sped without apparent friction or sound—the very opposite of the underground train—Shadrach struggled to balance himself. But soon he realized that the creature made continual, minute adjustments to correct for the turbulence, and he relaxed, his muscles untensing, his senses no longer focused on keeping his feet.

  Now he could take in his surroundings, and the whole world that was the thirtieth level opened up around him. The air was dark, but had a lightness to it that indicated no clouds could ever form here. The darkness itself was different depending on the shadows it described: the gray foreground of hilly terrain, the shimmering lip of the shore, the blue bruise of the sky, and, finally, the green tint of what seemed a truly limitless sea. The smell of brine came up off the sea, but also the thick funk of living organisms, the sweetness of the recently dead and, from far off—almost an echo of a smell—a rustiness as of burning machinery. What would such a world do should the light ever hit it? Would it shrivel and decay, or would it rise up to blot out the sun?

  The Gollux stood balanced on the saylber's head as the water flumed out to either side. The Gollux's stringy hair blew behind it in the slight breeze. The water made gurgling sounds. The saylber made rippling sounds. The Gollux made no sound at all.

  When the shore behind them had faded back into anonymous shadow, Shadrach asked the Gollux, “What if our ‘boat' decides to submerge itself?”