Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (20 page)

38 Oceans

The sound that rolled in my ears was something I’d never heard. And yet I seemed to have been thinking of it all my life, like the gigantic rhythm of my mother’s womb. It was a dreadful groaning and roaring, with distant booms like giants beating on giant drums, and weary hisses and sighs.

My open eyes met with a dawn-pale sky divided by a black strip into two equal halves. The line seemed a solid ribbon at first, but the light streaming through gaps and chinks showed it woven of black iron. A string of cars galloped along it, their noise drowned out by the everlasting rumor.

My armor had been removed. Crude bandages, now stiff with blood, had been tied around my more serious wounds. Gingerly, I felt the side of my face. My skin was hot and blistered. My head hurt and all my limbs ached.

I sat up slowly, wincing at the pain in my chest. Giddiness overtook me; the whole world seemed to rock. I shut my eyes and clutched at the low metal wall, afraid I would be sick. When I opened my eyes again I saw what had happened. I was on a bench in a kind of box, suspended from a metal scaffold. It swung back and forth with my movements.

I cast my gaze wider. There at last was the boundless sea, piled wave upon wave to the sky. The viaduct waded through water and cloud on feet of iron, marching toward the vague horizon. Tracing it up over my head, my eyes met the scaffold again, a gigantic wheel with cars evenly spaced along its circumference. I followed it up, around, and down, toward the landward side behind me. It was at right angles to the cliff edge, and my car was beyond the brink, suspended over the water. The cliffs plunged to a gray, shingly beach bedight with tidal pools like living gems.

I was at the seaward limit of a small island forested with decrepit machinery. The contraptions reminded me of the gauntlet in the dungeons. Most were badly corroded, but a few retained wrappings of white leather.

The city faced me across it all. The wall of compacted masonry that was the foundation’s edge formed a continuous face with the sea cliffs below, and the buildings were crowded right up to the brink at every point, peering over one another’s shoulders as though watching an emperor pass by. In the south I descried an artificial harbor around the mouth of a steep-walled bay, where several barges were moving out to sea. The anchorage was enclosed by moles, and beyond these on either side were jetties sheltering a counterpane of marine stockyards and gardens.

The viaduct emerged at right angles to the cliffs and strode across the middle of the island. Another train rattled by overhead. I watched it pursue its course over the waves, bearing happy pilgrims to Bel, which, magnet-like, drew all Enoch to itself. For a moment I felt unbearably exposed and lonely there in my box, suspended between the crumbling edge of the world-city and the limitless ocean eating away at it.

The light increased. The sun came up over the towers, dispelling the sea vapors. Its rays sped across the waves, turning them green and gold and foam-white. I began to cast about for a way to descend from my perch without dropping to my death in the sea.

It was then that I saw the cyclops. How long he had been there I don’t know. He was standing at the base of the machine, watching me.

“Help me,” I said.

The creature laid hold of the wheel and spun it until my car was at the bottom. I climbed out onto the pavement.

“Thank you,” I said. “You saved my life last night.”

He sat cross-legged before me, keeping his double eye averted. He had grown more hale than when I’d last seen him. The white hairs of his face were stained pink. I guessed what meat he had found to eat in the city.

“Where is my armor?” I asked.

The creature rose and strode away. A few minutes later he returned with my things. Piece by piece I put it all on, then slung my sword at my side. I bowed deeply. “Farewell,” I said, turning to go.

The cyclops laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let go of me,” I said, shuddering. “You paid your debt. What was between us is at an end now.” Still the creature kept hold of me. “I’ll be forced to draw against you again,” I warned. At that the cyclops withdrew.

I turned to face him. His huge round eye was still cast to the ground. “Look at me,” I said. The cyclops obeyed. It was like looking into the sun, which blinds by its excess of light. Panic threatened to overwhelm me once again. But I withstood it, and mastered myself, and saw into the giant’s open heart.

I saw a wayfaring prince, the issue of an incarnate god, trapped in the city and forced to fight, then tarrying though he had gained his freedom, waiting to serve the one who had saved him.

When I looked away again my head ached and my face was streaked with tears. “My name is Keftu,” I said, taking his hand. “You I’ll call Arges.” His gray flesh was warm and dry and slightly rough, like a schyroth’s paw.

“You came here for a reason,” I said. “Perhaps you sought the sons of Eldena, a race of architects who had dealings with anakim of old. I’m no Eldene, but a son of a kindred race. I’ve met one magus, a man named Gaspar, but he’s dead now. So I may be the closest you’ll get.

“I first came here to find the food of immortality in the land of the sun’s setting. I’m from beyond the mountains where your people live; I’d never head of the sons of Ocean, or else I would never have fought you.

“My intentions have changed now. I am the Phylarch of Arras, which is to say, a hunter of fell beasts. A man—the one I fled from last night—seeks to release chimeras into the city. The Enochites treated me much as they did you, but they’re prisoners of the Cheiropt just as much as we were. More so, for they don’t know that they’re prisoners. The Cheiropt won’t protect them from these monsters, so I’m going to do it, if I can. That’s the task I’ve set myself. If you would help me, I’d be glad of it.”

The cyclops bowed before me, touching his forehead to the pavement.

“Come with me, then,” I said. “First I mean to track down the source. I don’t know the way yet, but I hope to discover it soon. Meet me tonight at the place where I’m staying, on an island in the methane marshes, at the top of the tallest tower.”

Arges squatted on the ground as though indicating that he would remain in that spot until the moment he went to find me. “Farewell, then,” I said. I sped off into the thicket of machinery.

39 Dragonfly Rising

I crossed from the island—which was, I discovered, actually a peninsula—to the cliffs, and climbed the carved stairs to the esplanade that ran along the buildings’ feet. From there I went south toward the bay. The alleys and streets were all empty; I might have been the last man in the world.

But the pit surrounding the bay itself was crawling with phylites. It was like a huge amphitheater, with concentric terraces climbing from iron quays, crowded with sellers’ stalls and air-conditioned shops, a mart for sea-spoils and imports. I began working my way down to the tunnel-mouth of the river, moving through the crowds with ease. Clad as I was in my armor, I had no place in the phylites’ minds.

I perused the wares as I went. Laid out on trays of ice I saw pelycopods and brachiopods, bellerophonts and prosobranchs, ammonites and belemnites. In jewelers’ shops were coiled shells ornamented with delicate fractal designs. Bolts of byssum were also there sold, dyed with dyes unfading obtained from the soft-bodied things of the sea. Glass tanks held living eurypterids like gigantic scorpions, and abyssal isopods, and thick-bodied trilobites.

The phylites avoided the tunnel, and when I reached it I discovered why. The foetor of the city’s bowels struck me like a solid thing. But the river itself was no mere excretion. I had a vision of a silver ribbon running down from the mountains, snaking across a green plain planted before man was a dream. It drew me on into darkness.

The handrail was crumbling to pieces from corrosion. Reflected sunbeams danced on the ceiling of the first reach; trilobites and belemnites sported in the channel. Then I rounded a bend, and sunlight gave way to the feeble glow of gas lamps, and the smell of the sea was overpowered by the humid breath of the under-city.

The river narrowed by stages as I crossed the thundering outflow of the sewers. The low ceiling dripped with condensation. Stalactites of lime hung down over the scummy water. There were old fountains shaped like shells and decorated with broken images, and echoing foyers, too. But most had been walled off, and the walks were empty. The thought of the city piled over my head oppressed me.

After many stades the passage became more spacious. The chaotic ceiling gave way in places to open sky, with titanic towers peering down into it like mountains overlooking a canyon. When I emerged from the tunnel at last I was at the foot of the cruciform rift where the procession had taken place.

It was empty apart from a single helot picking up trash. The ziggurat where I’d almost been devoured faced me from the valley’s head. The sun shone down upon it, for it was midday.

I made my way to the base of the pile, went up the motionless steps, and climbed the wall beside the mechanical orifice. After wriggling through the crack I’d entered before I once again pursued my course to Sabhenna. The byways were nearly empty now. Those helots I did pass fled at the sight of me, being more sensitive to things out of place than phylites.

When I reached the antique mart I found it closed for the day. The discount tables had been moved into the foyer, which lay behind a locked gate.

I laid hold of the bars and with a single wrench tore them out of the wall. Two guards emerged from the shadows. I upset a table against them, pinning one to the floor. The other—the one I’d talked to before—came at me around the side. I struck him down with one blow.

From there I continued into the mart itself, where I began throwing down shelves and cases. Three guards came in, saw what was happening, and ran for their lives. The storekeeper, a tall and sinewy helot, emerged from his office. “Who are you?” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing? Do you know who I work for?”

“Tell him I’m shutting down your business,” I said. “I’m the Phylarch of Arras.”

“Never heard of it,” he snarled.

“You can call me the Dragonfly.” I punctuated the sentence with a blow to his chin. He crashed into a table of kraters and rolled onto the floor.

Next I went down the passageway to the delvers’ ward and broke into the hall. It reeked: one of the inmates had died in his cell, and the body hadn’t been taken away. The delvers were waiting for me, having heard the commotion in the mart. They all gathered around me.

“I’m looking for Jubah and Bulna,” I said. “Where are they?”

A man I recognized from my time there stepped forward in a kind of daze. “They got out when the old lady got hers,” he said. “Seems they’d been plotting to escape for a long time. That was their ticket.”

“How’d they do it?”

“Tunneled through the wall. Worked on it a little bit each day while their cellmate was delving. It’s blocked now.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s all I wanted. The front gates are open. It’s every man for himself.” I stood aside while they streamed through the doorway. The sounds of looting began in the mart.

Now I threaded the maze of brick passages to the slayers’ ward. I felled the turnkey and went down the line, unlocking the cells. The inmates poured out with wild whoops and shouts. The keys admitted me through the opposite door. I headed toward the gymnasium, knocking down guards when I met them.

I let myself through the locked doors. The gaslights flared into life with the twist of a valve, their golden beams drifting down through the thicket of bars and pulleys and weights. I became a cyclone of destruction, picking up machines and hurling them across the room, shattering them against walls and battering them with my bare fists. I broke a pipe in my fury, and turbid water began to spread across the floor.

Next I turned to the gauntlet. I went through it, bending bars and breaking blades. A party of helots had gathered at the door by the time I emerged. They were watching me with a kind of awe or embarrassment. “Tell your friends what you saw here today,” I said. “I am the Dragonfly.” With that I leaned on the lever. The machinery came to life as I walked toward the guards. It began to gallop and screech and fling itself to pieces.

The helots fled, tripping over one another and getting stuck in the door in their haste. I stepped calmly after them. An explosion rocked the room, and part of the ceiling collapsed. Dust and smoke billowed in a great cloud through the door.

From there I went back toward the delvers’ ward. The corridors had all cleared out; even the looters were gone. The mart itself was a shambles. I proceeded to the elevator room and broke through the gate. The empty car was waiting for me. I drove it up through the layers of Hela, not braking until I saw daylight through the metal slats.

I was in the lobby of an abandoned tower. Footprints in the dust showed it not unfrequented by phylites. I went out into the street. It was early afternoon.

40 Collections

On my way out of the city I descended once more below the streets to a gallery filled with booths. There I purchased a folding map and had the helot vendor mark it for me.

Wet weather was moving in from the sea when I regained my refuge. The rest of the day was spent repairing my melted wing. It seemed little the worse for wear.

As dusk fell I went back into the city, leaving my armor and sword behind in the salon. I made for an inhabited district with my map as my guide. The streets there were crowded and steamy. There was an incessant commotion of mechanical hisses and screeches and groans, pattering rain, tramping feet, and recorded noises blaring from a score of sources all vying for attention, but no one spoke.

The avenue stretched before and behind, a canyon of carved limestone with the sense of something forlorn, towers like palaces raised by hands long-vanished and filled with fewer, lesser men. Silence and darkness, loneliness and ruin flowed like a river just over the heads of the scurrying phylites, for all their noise and activity did but faintly trouble the settling murk of a world already long dead.

The local branch of the civic library towered at the tip of the wedge between a parting of ways. It was an octagonal high-rise crowned with a ring of spires surrounding a green metal pyramid. The windows were lit dimly but uniformly, for the place was open at all hours.

I pushed my way inside. The lobby ran around the building, illuminated by gas lamps in copper cylinders suspended from the ceiling. The air was chilly and I was wet; I began to shiver. At the center was a complex of rooms and elevator shafts. It seemed best to start at the basement and work my way up, so I boarded a car to begin.

After a plunge through darkness I found myself looking out into a palatial atrium of white marble. Dim light fell through hemispheres of frosted glass hanging from iron chains.

Choosing a door at random, I crossed into a long, dark hall. The path down the middle was flanked by two rows of glass cylinders like columns of blue-green light. Suspended within each was a preserved human body. The nearest held a girl like a frozen mermaid, with eyes showing darkly through closed lids, and parted, colorless lips, and flesh like alabaster.

I paced down the hall, gazing at each cylinder in turn. The men and women were taller and more wraithlike than the phylites I’d seen in the streets. A thrill of fear shot through me when I reached the last few, for there the bipeds weren’t even human.

They were lean and muscular, resembling upright frogs, their huge heads emerging directly from their torsos and shoulders, their mouths stretched in wide smiles like frogs’ mouths. Their lipless jaws drew to a point in front, and their eyes were laterally placed orbs of unfathomable black, large and liquid and heavily lashed. The arrangement of their organs could be made out through their thin white skin.

Despite their appearance, I felt sure of the creatures’ intelligence. Their gaping faces, though smiling, were masks of unutterable sadness turned up to an unhearing heaven.

The door at the end of the hall gave upon a small, domed chamber, which led in its turn to several other galleries. Cold light fell through panes of glass running along their walls, windows into huge tanks holding monstrous mollusks, coiled polychaetes, and many-finned fishes. The faraway opposite doors gave upon yet more galleries, branching one from another at impossible angles, seeming to recede to infinity in every direction. The trammels of mundane geometry had been sidestepped.

We men of Arras are geometers, and, though I trembled, I knew what sort of space I was standing in. It occurred to me that if I wasn’t careful I might never find my way out again.

Dread overcame me, and I turned and ran. The echoes set up by my sandaled feet were thunder in my ears. When I reached the car I drove it up past the lobby and all the way to the top of the building.

The room there took up the entire floor. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw how thoroughly Enochite it was, divided into sectors of aisles lined with metal catalogues. There were consoles around the central shaft, and the lights were turned down low for reading. Urban canyons flowing with rivers of restlessness were visible through the big tinted windows.

I searched every corner. There were no other patrons. It was eerily lonely, as only a large, empty library can be. I found the stairs and proceeded to the next floor, a exact copy of the one I’d just left, and searched it as well. It, too, was empty. For a score or more floors I went on like this. And then, at last, I found what I sought.

*          *          *          *          *

Bulna’s drooping face glowed with the golden light of the screen before him. Shadows formed black letters against the translucent scales. He jotted something on a wax tablet, then touched a dial. The letters formed a new combination.

I sat down beside him. Reluctant to turn from his work, Bulna shifted, first his face, then his large, liquid eyes. As recognition dawned on him they slowly filled with amazement. “Keftu! My friend!” he stammered.

“Hello, Bulna.”

“Then you did escape! We thought for certain that the Cheiropt had gotten you. Or the Misfit.”

“Neither did, as you see. And you escaped too, it seems. I visited the dungeons and found out from a delver.”

Bulna shifted his eyes. “It’s true,” he said. “We’d been working at it a long time. You have to understand. It isn’t that we meant to leave you. We would have taken you with us. But we hardly knew you. And you were so eager to talk about escape. It wouldn’t have been the first time Granny had used someone to provoke a delver. It was one of her ways of cutting costs.”

“To be honest,” I said, “I had my own plan, which I in my turn would have revealed to you at the last moment.”

Bulna smiled. “How did you find me here?”

“You told me your theory, remember? I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist taking up your research again. Is Jubah with you?”

“We’re sharing a room not far from here.”

“How are you living?”

“Oh, well,” stammered Bulna, “we get along, you know.”

I ran an incurious finger along the edge of the table. “I visited the tomb,” I said. Bulna’s face turned red. “Listen,” I went on. “I came looking for you because I have a proposition to make.”

“A proposition? Involving…money?”

“Incidentally, yes,” I said. I saw the look on his face and added: “I’m prepared to put up my own share, of course. I’m not altogether without resources.”

“It isn’t that,” said Bulna. “When we revealed the hoard to you, we made you a partner. As far as I’m concerned, that still stands, and I’m sure Jubah would say the same. But we keep a low profile. We don’t want to be thrown into the pits again.”

“Nor do I,” I said. “That’s what worries me. I’ve been reading the signs of the times, Bulna. Soon the possibility of this kind of existence will be a thing of the past. We have to look ahead if we’re to survive.”

Bulna regarded me for a moment. “Well,” he said, “the least we can do is hear you out. We can go now, if you like. Let me shut this down, and we’ll go find Jubah.”

“Nothing would please me more,” I said.

Bulna twisted a valve and the machine went dark. He withdrew a metal cylinder and placed it in a refiling bin. After making a few last notes on his tablet he pushed his chair back and stood. I rose with him.

“Have you had any luck?” I asked.

“Luck? With my research, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No. Every day I get a little closer, though. I can feel it. I spend most of my time here, as I can’t check out cylinders anymore. Sometimes I sleep in the lavatory. You’re not supposed to, but they hardly ever check.”

We stepped into the elevator car and drove it down to the lobby. “I started by looking for you in the lower levels,” I said, and shivered.

Bulna gave me a strange look. “What lower levels?”

I didn’t answer. We reached the ground floor and went out into the lurid light of the city. It was still raining.