Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (69 page)

Ione blinked, surveyed the situation with new
clarity and took charge.

“
Over to the laundry chute!”
she ordered, leading the way to the far corner. She whipped the
blanket wide that curtained its opening, one of many decorating the
walls.

“
Go!” she screamed, pushing
Emma into it, gesturing the others to follow. She jumped inside
just as the first marauders emerged on the third floor.

Limbs slamming the side of the chute, she
fell to the basement, landing heavily on Mark.

“
Oof!” he moaned, tried to
crawl from under her.

This was problematic. In an attempt to create
as much space as possible on the main floors they had packed all
the extraneous laundry into the far end of the basement where the
chute emerged. Ione had decided at the last possible moment that
this vast pile offered their only salvation.

“
Burrow into the laundry,”
she whispered. “But stay together and keep quiet!”

They began a difficult and energy-consuming
journey inward, arresting when the clothes grew sodden, then wet.
They had reached the water table in the big sink inset into the
basement floor. Ione submerged herself to the neck.

The water was heavier than the fabric mass
above them, taking some of the weight off her aching neck. The
others gathered next to her. It was silent in their improvised
bunker but for Emma’s quiet sobbing.

Ione was reeling from the revelations of the
evening, a tangle of facts that could be somehow woven into truth.
For the first time she felt the whole structure of the metropolitan
society, a shape almost within apprehension.

“
What can we do?” Dean
whispered in despair.

“
We could try to dress
ourselves,” Manassa considered. “There’s plenty of
laundry.”

“
They saw everyone naked and
they’ll be looking for us specifically now,” Mark objected. “When
we don’t turn up they’ll think of this place.”

“
There’s a gnome in here
with us,” Manassa noticed, yanking at its nearest limb.

Ione desperately reached for the point of
view that would explain what had happened, but it would not come.
She blinked away tears, heard one fall to the water with a delicate
sound.

“
It must be storming, but I
can’t hear it,” she whispered. There was a long silence.

“
No,” Emma absently
muttered.

Ione almost didn’t bother to question her.
“What?” she morosely inquired.

“
The skylight was totally
clear just a moment ago. It never rained.”

And with that pronouncement the last detail
fit ever so delicately into place.

Ione gasped at the sweeping revelation of the
various lacunae that finally wove together as visible truth. The
problem of the third judge, the missing women of the Lap, the
impossibly large theater Manassa visited, the strange tower in the
forest, the secret entrance to the party the mannermen had used…
They all had a common root; plant vascularity.

She dove under the waterline, flailing
laundry aside, kicked deeper till she touched a sloping stone
contour and followed it down. Her fingers encountered the
peripheral ridges of a spiraling wooden tunnel.

“
They’re in the clothes with
us!” Mark hissed when she surfaced again. Ione could feel the
laundry shifting about from the muscular excavations of the huge
men.

“
There’s a passage down
there. Like Manassa described in the other warehouse.”

“
Won’t it just take us to
the top of the building or something?” Emma demanded in
confusion.

“
No. It goes to the Merkin’s
real Tent. High in the clouds, cloaked by the permanent vapor
rising from the park. It was no tower we saw deep in the trees, but
the stem of a great plant.”

The others were silent for a moment, awed by
the illusion that had been worked on the denizens of the
metropolis.

The mannermen could be faintly heard now,
lurching about the laundry overhead. “They know we’re in here,”
Dean whispered. Ione wondered how many of them had come through the
tunnel below her, massing silently in the clothing till they were
ready to charge the ramp. As many as possible before the channel
reversed direction, she realized. It would be flowing skyward
now.

The laundry shifted precipitously.

“
They’re here!” Emma
cowered.

Manassa pushed the left nipple on the gnome
trapped with them. Its arms and legs began to gyre. “Get back,” she
warned, and slapped its other nipple rapidly. Its limbs accelerated
to flail about with berserk speed.

“
Dive!” Ione commanded and
led the way.

The water swallowed her up and she kicked
down to the tunnel entrance, hesitated for an instant at the
realization she would arrive naked at the very nexus of style. So
be it. She heard the dull thud of the gyro gnome as it flailed
someone, hoped it would guard the sink long enough for them to
escape.

Emma swam into her arms and Ione held her
love. They lingered to kiss one last time at the boundary of their
crazy tenure in the City.

Kicking together, they permeated the tension
membrane at the head of the phloem channel. Ione gulped carefully,
swallowed a tiny quantity of sweet, airy water that nourished the
vast plant on which the Merkin’s Tent rested high above. It was
breathable, as Manassa had promised. She felt others entering the
tunnel behind them, could only hope it was her friends.

She clutched Emma close as the nutrient flow
took hold of their bodies, slowly translocating them along a wide
arc down under the forest.

Then a great force gathered to send them
hurtling into the sky.