“Enough, M’sieu Whatever-your-name-is!” the major rapped. “You sicken me. In light of the debacle you and your friends allowed to happen, not to say caused, this evening, is it appropriate for you now to play the savant? We have their leaders wrapped around our fingers, you said! Events have proved you conclusively wrong. If I were you, I would be praying for my life at this juncture, not attempting to lecture my betters!”
“But it wasn’t our fault! It was their leaders—they call them Decadents! They’re mad, every last one of them! And by the time they were through with the commoners, they’d turned them into a howling mob! How were we supposed to know it would get out of hand? It had been agreed that they would keep the crowd under control until we reached the first of the mansions! They broke their word! It wasn’t our fault!”
“Major, you can’t let him speak to you like that!”
“It is true that we are the real losers,” pointed out the man who had averred that his people were never out of work. Evidently he was not above contradicting himself to win a point. His voice, though lacking the major’s educated accents, reverberated with authority. “Even leaving out everything else we have lost tonight, in which hardship Significance knows we are not alone, we had built up our interests in the organization known as the Decadents of the East over a period of some years. We were making sizable profits in the specialized trade that had developed. Although you, my friends, persist in believing us your enemies and inferiors, we are as dedicated to Kirekune and the interests of Significance as any of you, and so we gladly agreed to put our influence at your service.”
“Because that motherfucker over there put on the thumbscrews!” the thin voice squealed.
Crispin heard a quick scuffle, the ring of metal, and then a babble of voices. At last the major cleared his throat and crossed the room with resolute steps. “I think it wise at least to see exactly what we have here before we kill each other over it. My lords, may I?”
He sounded confident and relaxed. Crispin could practically see him straightening his jacket. He had known many of that sort in the QAF, not least among them the traitor Burns. But how insignificant, comparatively, Burns’s treacheries had been. If the conspirators behind the door had discovered what he thought they had.
More flipping of papers. “ ‘Received from Francis Count Saint-Jerome, 13 Devambar 2539,’ ” the major read. He pronounced the names and Ferupian-calendar dates with a flawless accent. “ ‘Received from Cyril Lord Rutland, 7 Avril 2544.’ ”
Lord Rutland was still alive, enjoying a spotless reputation. Anyone who knew anything about Kingsburg society had heard of his charitable works.
“None of the amounts is for less than a hundred thousand sigils, Honorable One.”
“I am capable of converting the currency,” the lord said. “ ‘Received from Christina Lady Gregisson, 23 Jevanary 2547.’ ” A frequent contributor to the cause, this worthy dame! Her receipts are among the most recent. I can’t wait to start on the personal correspondence. This looks... Banranki! Your Ferupian is better than mine! Come here.”
“Her penmanship is terrible. The racketeer must have had a good command of the language. Let me see... ‘To Prince Zezuki, 18 Avril 2553 Anno Ferupi / 1212 Year of the Lizard: I write to you regarding a matter of the utmost urgency.’ ” Jinshe was reading in the original Ferupian. Crispin shuddered. It had been so long since he’d heard his own language, and to hear it now on the lips of this unscrupulous lizard aristo... “ ‘My contacts in the Aesculapyry state, contrary to their official diagnoses, that the Queen cannot last more than a year. It is imperative that the peace negotiations commence before her death. The latter event will inevitably throw the court here into chaos. If the war is still ongoing, it will no longer be possible to negotiate with Significance due to an inevitable lack of consensus. However, if the negotiations commence within the next few months, we are in a position to be able to take credit, and thus achieve our goal of wresting power from the entrenched faction whose puppet, as you are aware, the Queen has become.
“ ‘I do not have to explain to an experienced politician like yourself that Lithrea’s death will leave Count Charthreron and his cronies with the upper hand. If we have not previously disenfranchised them, they will continue their inept warmaking to the end, and Ferupe will be ruined by defeat, while Kirekune is racked by the agonies attendant on gluttony.’ ”
“Fascinating!”
Banranki laughed. “She has a way with words.” He read on: “ ‘You, Zezuki, despite your sentiments as a Kirekuni national, will particularly wish to avoid the entrenched faction’s retaining power after the Queen’s death, on the basis of the intelligence I shall now communicate. It is rumored, and not disproved, that they intend as soon as the Queen dies to do away with the remaining Royals. I do not know whether they plan to pass it off as mass suicide or as some sort of supernatural ripple effect along the lines of the event that some within your organization believe will occur without human help. But it is certain that they desire to reveal themselves, in the void left by the passing of the dynasty, as the leaders of the land. They sincerely believe the Royals have outlived their usefulness. Now, you do not agree with this, do you, Zezuki? I confess I have never been entirely sure of the extent to which you, personally, accept the precepts of your organization; but I am sure that without any Royals, you would no longer have an organization. On the other hand, under the rule of my allies, Ferupe would retain the remaining Royals, treating them with the greatest care and respect.’ I’m sure. Did he see through her, I wonder?”
“A hundred thousand sigils would blind men more perspicacious by far, Jinshe.”
“ ‘It is highly advantageous for us to work together to oust the manipulators. I stress again that this can only be done before the Queen’s death. Time is of the utmost. Therefore, I implore you to use all the influence you have gained over the Significant to—’ ” He broke off at the sound of an alarm gong clanging directly overhead, perhaps even in the tunnels, frightening Crispin half out of his skin.
“My lords,” the major said. “I fear you may have forgotten that the building is burning over our heads.”
“My ancestral birthplace.” Shusuxo sighed.
“I have assigned as many firemen as possible to the struggle, but I fear that was their warning to us that defeat is imminent. Perhaps it would be best if you perused these elsewhere.”
“Oh—oh, absolutely, Officer. Here, you, take these... yes, all of them... you look like a strong young fellow... all right, you help him then... I’d almost forgotten!” Lord Shusuxo said gaily. “How are we to get out?”
“A lower stair leads to the Central Takai Vein.” The major sounded as though he were barely containing his impatience. “Tanks are waiting.”
“Shall we be able to get to the palace? That’s where everyone is.”
“Assuredly.”
“I wonder what happened to Fanimoto and the others,” Banranki said. “They were going to check up on the Second and Third Mansions. Remember? I doubt they found much. This is the plum, no doubt about it.”
“I fear that if Lord Fanimoto’s party is still abroad, they are lost,” the major said. “As will we be, if we do not make haste.”
Crispin had been so caught up in his delight at hearing that there was an escape route to the Veins that he’d forgotten where he was. He didn’t realize the implications of the footsteps coming toward the door until he actually heard the knob rattle. Then he took off at a run. But of course it was too late. The passage continued straight for thirty feet. Behind him, he heard the conspirators emerge, the Disciples pacing in precise rhythm, the others chattering and shoving, heard them fall momentarily silent, stunned at the sight of a fleeing eavesdropper; then, “Get him!” Shusuxo screamed, and Crispin heard the rattle of safety catches going off. A bullet or screamer in the back would be the worst death possible. He flung himself around. “Don’t shoot!” He threw his hands in the air.
Two Disciples wre
nched his arms behind his back and dragged him up to a small, tightly wound man who must have been the major. Crispin was surprised—he’d pictured a brawny warrior as the owner of that voice. He returned the officer’s stare contemptuously. Nothing that happened here had anything to do with foreknowledge. The Dynasty’s conspiracy with the Ferupian aristocracy was the evil that had lurked at the heart of the web, and it was a disembodied, shabby-spirited evil of money and politics. The men who had uncovered the conspiracy were themselves conspirators. It was all about self-interest. It was as dry as kindling.
“What shall we do with you?” the little major said heavily. “I suppose you’d like to die, now all your friends have. If so, you’re in luck.”
“I got lost, monsieur! That’s all! I got lost!”
“Lost, my ass,” said the thin voice distinctly. Crispin’s head snapped around. It was the Dealer from Rainbow Road, who, unlike the major, was as thin, slippery-looking, and ingratiating as his voice. “I’ve seen this scallywag before, lordships! He’s been to meetings at the Decadents’ low-town safe houses at least half a dozen times! A real blackguard!”
“I see. It’s a shame how foreigners inevitably end up in such places. No one’s fault but their own, of course; still—” the major addressed himself to Crispin. “Thought you’d come and snoop around for yourself after your mates did their bit? Good pickings?”
“But I’m not anything to do with any of it,” Crispin protested. A voice inside him was crying: This isn’t how it goes! This isn’t how it ends! “I was only there once. I only went because a friend invited me.”
“And isn’t that what they all say!” the Dealer squealed.
Crispin looked at him. He longed to wring the scrawny neck and grind his thumbs into the watery eyes. But behind the little drug runner stood a man at least seven feet tall, not fat but huge, completely shrouded in black. His hood pulled low over his face shadowed all his features except a stubbled chin and lips like two wet slugs, shining, slightly open. The head turned toward the major. The lips moved. “It was boys like this who started the riots in the City of the Dead this evening. I recognize the type.”
Crispin lost his self-possession. “They weren’t my type, they were yours!” With the words, he felt himself being dragged into the web of fear and name-calling and stone-casting that had come into being when the conspiracy’s machinations ran afoul of reality in the City of the Dead. “I wasn’t even there! You were! You’d bleed the world dry if you could, then set it on fire, to hide the evidence!” Agonizingly, he knew he was being illogical: it wasn’t the conspiracy that had started the city burning, it was the Decadents they’d tried to use as pawns (and reckoned without the spontaneity of fanaticism), and it wasn’t the conspiracy but Crispin himself who’d been convinced the fires represented some kind of cosmic resolution. Spitting, swearing, he wrestled against the soldiers who held him in a vain effort to reach his enemy. The Dealer from Rainbow Road flung himself aside, needlessly. The man in black didn’t budge. The major laughed mirthlessly.
“Wait.” Shusuxo, who’d been whispering with his friend Lord Banranki, put his hand out. He was a youngish Kirekuni man in soiled pink. Crispin stared mutely at him. The hallucinatory flames were pressing all around him, roaring. “Banranki and I want to try a little experiment.”
“My lords, we’ve wasted too much time as it is on this miserable religioso—”
“It won’t take a minute. We’ll be on our way in a sneeze. Bring him along, there!”
The Disciples hustled Crispin into the study. The room was uncomfortably warm. He had a blurred impression of paintings depicting green landscapes. The two lords twittered instructions, and the Disciples pushed him roughly toward what he’d taken for a darker panel in the wall, which he now saw to be a hole where a panel had been slid aside. The lower lip was three feet off the carpet. Before he knew what was happening, the Disciples pushed his head into the space. He roared; his voice bounced off the walls of a shaft. As they bent to grab his legs he fought, knowing it was a losing battle.
“I want to see how long it will take before he hits the bottom,” Shusuxo said, his pedantic voice faint and far away. “Get ready to count, Banranki. And be very precise. I want to know how many more floors below this one there are; I expect the elevator services all of them; if this complex isn’t damaged too badly tonight, it would make a rather sweet hideaway, don’t you think?”
It wasn’t an elevator shaft. It reeked of garbage. Crispin kicked wildly, but the Disciples bundled him over the lip, and he fell headfirst.
Desperately, he fought to fend himself off the stone sides of the shaft. The air whistled. He’d managed to twist only a little in the air when his shoulder thudded into something soft and many-cornered and squashy. Now he was no longer falling but sliding, tumbling head over heels down a shallow slope of rock. The shaft had turned into a tunnel, and it was elbowed, he realized confusedly as the mucky slope dropped away from under him and he landed on another slope, sliding a little more rapidly in the opposite direction. Impacts came at each hairpin bend. It was all he could do to protect his head with one arm and fend off the walls with the other. He had small insects and vegetable matter and human waste and cinders in his mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, his hair, and his fingers slipped wherever he tried to grip the sides of the shaft. How high had he been? Some two-thirds of a mile—
Bump! Crash!
He fell faster as the slopes got steeper. Garbage dislodged from the walls of the chute by his flailing fell with him: he was the center of a hailstorm of rotted fish, pigs’ heads and slops, cabbage leaves, old clothes, cracked pottery, dead cats, live rodents, picked bones, broken bottles, and preponderantly, feces. He lost consciousness and regained it several times a minute, each time to the ringing, incomprehensible tune of pain. And then he fell into thin air again. The chute had turned back into a vertical shaft. Beyond terror, he just clung to consciousness. And some miraculously detached part of his brain still analyzed what was happening in terms of all that had gone before, and as he hurtled toward maximum velocity, his limbs whanging into the sides of the shaft with vicious force, he thought he finally understood the nature of foreknowledge.
Impact!!!
Still falling!
Slower!!!
PANIC water filling GASP no air, nowhere
(One hundred percent wet immersion in the reality that runs under all willfully self-inflicted and otherwise fabricated illusions in whose grasp a man can live all his life and never know it; privileged, when you think about it, to have subconsciously struggled against that imposition to the point where the imposition was made manifest to your questioning eyes in the form of a personal drama, at which point, you lucky bastard, you were privileged to make a choice; and since the choice was by no means clear, a matter of two clenched fists, we congratulate you on having made the choice most rational people would—or like to think they would, because that’s what matters—in a similar situation; and we apologize from the bottom of our hearts for the result—how long can I hold my)
DOOM DOOM BLOOD in body
Darkness
Wait, what’s happening?!?
There’s a grille—a portcullis!
The current pinned him against it.
He hadn’t realized the river was flowing so fast.
His fingers closed around slimy metal bars: half-eaten away by time and pollution but still unbreakable.
Floating debris, mostly bodies, bumped and nuzzled against him. Some of the corpses were human, some animal. He strained to breathe the putrid air as he was crowded by hooves, fur, cold slippery flesh, still-living faces that muttered and hands that sought to grab. Garments floated out from limbs, as dangerous as dragnets underwater. From bank to bank the Orange was a solid raft of Okimako’s dead,
He gulped oxygen and dived.
4 Aout 1986 A.D. 5:00 A.M. Okimako: The End, Part Four
And now the orange sky over the Orange river. Crispin floated in the center of the c
urrent, moving at a fair clip between flotsam and jetsam, sprawled on his back on top of the balloon body of a pakamel that must have been in the river for some days. It floated like a boat, which made up for the terrible smell, which in any case his nose had stopped registering. He was too tired to paddle or kick. Certainly too tired to try to swim ashore. Let the river take him where it would—so far it had done right by him.
The vacillating glow of the fires on the mountain appeared no more obtrusive to his blurry, inattentive vision than the city lights usually were. The sky gaped overhead, brutally clear. Stars spattered the blackness. Wind blew across the river, stinging Crispin’s grazes and scrapes and cuts.
When he turned his head he could see the City of the Dead sliding past on both banks. At first the southern jetties and promenades, burning; the Kirili Fairgrounds, a Hades of metal skeletons rearing in flame; later, the silt beaches and shacks on stilts crowding down to the water. Some of these were also on fire. The Fugue folk had claimed the vengeance of centuries. The river eased out of the city. A few areas seemed to have escaped untouched, but some had been burned to the ground. As the Orange rolled between these blackened stretches, Crispin heard people wailing, and felt the grief of the bereaved settling over him like webs flung from bank to bank.
Just before dawn, the dead pakamel was jostled out of the main current and collided with the end of a jetty in an outer suburb. It floated underneath the jetty and stayed there, bumping gently against the piers in the semidarkness. Its rider, who’d somehow managed not to slip off all night, hid his face in his arms and slept.
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