Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes (4 page)

6 Caged

I opened my eyes. They met with bars of gold-brown and black. A sense of betrayal was in the back of my mind. Someone had buried me deep in the earth.

I sat up. I was on a narrow cot. Dim light fell through the bars that formed one side of my cell, striping the floor and the wall. A showerhead hung with stalactites of lime stuck out of one corner. A washstand, a chamber pot, and a pitcher stood in the other.

“Hello?” I called. “Hello?” My voice echoed into the darkness. Dimly a voice cursed me. The pipes murmured. All else was silent.

I stood up. They hadn’t taken my harness or breechclout, and my father’s pendant had gone unnoticed, but my scrip was missing. I searched the cell. Deinothax was gone, too. I thought obscurely of grubby hands pawing it, drawing it, using it basely. A wave of rage washed over me. But the horror of the city piled layer upon layer above my head overbore my anger. I was a mite buried deep in a vast, teeming mattress, alone in a maze of men who knew me not, a mere nothing. What a fool I had been! I had never known there were such liars in the world.

The showerhead caught my eye. I’d never seen anything like it before. Pipes I knew from the fossil cities of Arras, but my people hadn’t used them. I went over and twisted the valve experimentally. There was a rattling gurgle. Then a jet of rust-red water exploded from the head. I shouted in surprise and fumbled with the spigot. It was tight and slippery. I was drenched by the time I got it off.

A raucous laugh grated on my ears. I turned. There was a face at the bars of the cell across from mine. It was a round face with small eyes, a bulbous nose, and big ears that stuck straight out. The toothy grin was yellow in the gaslight.

“What are you laughing about?” I said. The man just kept giggling. I decided to ignore him. I turned to my own cell and sat down on my cot. It was wet through. I sighed with misery and stretched myself out. The moisture had unleashed a hundred mysterious odors from the old blanket. I pushed it off and lay on the bare sacking.

My bones told me it was daytime in the world outside. But I knew I needed rest, that I might escape when a chance offered itself. I was still in a torpor from the sleeping gas, too. But for a long time sleep refused to come.

I was drifting off at last when a noise jarred me awake. A terrible clangor yanked me to my feet. Someone was running a baton across the bars of my cell.

She was an old crone, large and hunch-backed and flabby, with pallid skin scored by a fascinating network of hairline cracks. She was like a grub that had never gotten around to pupating. Her mouth was set and unsmiling, her upper lip barred with deep vertical lines. Her pink eyes glittered with malice.

A man stood a step behind her, a sly man, smiling a sly, mean smile. The hair hanging over his eyes did little to lessen his look of wild inanity. He also was a helot.

“You talk?” the woman grunted.

“What?”

“Do you
talk?
” she shouted. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes. I can talk. Where am I? What is this place?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Arras.”

“Never heard of it. You know people around here?”

“No. My people are all dead. I came here because I saw a palace set among the stars. I seek the medicine of immortality. That man Maruch, he promised to lead me to a place called Bel. From Bel I was to ascend to Narva…” I trailed off.

The old woman was grinning nastily, revealing vast tracts of pale, rutted gums. “You’ll fit in with the rest of Granny’s pets. It’s not a bad life. Two good meals a day, exercise, and a little fun on the side, if you put out. You’re lucky to have wound up here. We looked you over. You aren’t marked. The Cheiropt doesn’t know you. No one knows you. Do you know what happens to markless misfits in Enoch? Eh? Do you?”

“You can’t just keep me here!”

“Who’s going to raise a stink about a nobody? You think the Cheiropt cares?”

“I don’t know what the Cheiropt is. I don’t—”

“You want to listen to what I have to say?” she shouted. “Or you want to run your mouth?” She went on: “We get up at the end of the third watch here. That means everyone. You don’t get up, Talan here gets you up, and you won’t like that. You eat, then you exercise. Rest of the day is free time in your cell. Dawn is when we see what you’re made of. Once a day splash that”—she pointed at the pitcher—“around on the floor. Make sure to get it in all the cracks. One other thing. Use the chamber pot and the chamber pot alone. Understand? We don’t want your filth going down the drain.

“I don’t think you’ll find it a bad life, if you put out. Sometimes we get a fellow who wants to escape. You try it. Talan’s just waiting to run you through the mangle. Aren’t you, Talan?”

“I—I had a sword. A sword that—it was—”

“You can’t have that now.”

“But I—”

Talan smiled. “What you goin’ to do with it?” he breathed in a voice like velvet. “You goin’ to tickle old Talan’s ribs? Nix, little man, nix. Don’t think thoughts like that. Think happy thoughts. You want to be friends with old Talan. He wants to be friends with you.” The old woman patted Talan’s cheek and brushed the hair from his eyes. He was smiling like a jolly little boy. “He wants to escape. I can see it in his eyes. You just try it, little man. You just try it. I’m waiting for you. Old Talan’ll be waiting.”

“Nonsense, Talan,” the old woman crooned. “Look at him. He’s too sensible. He sees how good he’s got it here.”

I said nothing. Talan’s speech had steadied me. I went and sat on my cot.

“There now,” she said. “You see? Come on, my boy. It’s time I was in bed myself.” They went down the passageway. I heard a gate screech open, then clang to. Everything was quiet again.

I sat there with my back against the wall and my feet sticking off the side of the cot, thinking. The sacking was almost dry.

I was already adapting to life in Enoch. Is this surprising? There are tribes of autochthons dwelling in isolated pockets of the world, unknown to the great peoples of Tethys, and it may be that they wouldn’t have fared so well. But my people, though dwindling, had come long ago to full maturity, retaining self-awareness through the imperishable fastness of Sephaura that grows ineluctably from generation to generation, whereas autochthons live in either assumed infantility or premature senility, which are (in truth) but two ends of the same rod.

*          *          *          *          *

I jerked awake, not certain how long I had dozed. A strip of shadow was stretched along the passageway. It looked too small to be a man’s shadow. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up. I waited silently, watching it grow.

A tiny figure stepped past the partition. It was a girl-child. She was the size of a baby and had a baby’s proportions, yet was standing upright. Tentatively she came closer, peering into my cell. She stepped through the bars. I pretended to be asleep, eyeing her through my lashes.

Her skin was white and smooth. There was a topknot of gossamer hair on her otherwise bare skull. Her eyes were big and dark, like wells in a midnight moss-forest. Her lips were pale and sensitive, more expressive than the lips of an infant. She grimaced, showing a mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth.

I shifted, wanting to see what she would do. She was gone in a flash. I got up and peered down the passageway. She was nowhere in sight.

My cot was more or less dry now. I threw myself down and fell into a deep sleep.

7 Talan

I rose before it was time and crouched in the corner of my cell, waiting. Someone rang a tocsin. Talan came down the aisle, tossing an iron baton in his hand. The inmates began to stir. It was dusk in the world outside.

A helot wheeled a cart up, slid a metal tray under the bars of my cell, and moved on. It held a slab of moist gray cake made from fragments of fungous fruiting bodies. I ate it hungrily.

A line of linked prisoners came shuffling past, a few steps at a time. They were all misshapen in one way or another. There were dwarfs and giants, piebalds and skewbalds, misfits and mixtures of alien races. They halted as the end of the line reached my cell. The helot guards pushed a leg-iron under the gate and waited. Seeing what was wanted, I locked it around my own ankle, and they let me out.

I was side by side with my big-eared neighbor. The line moved a few steps forward and another pair was added to the chain. This went on until we were all joined together.

We went jingling along a narrow passage lined with crumbling brick. There was just enough space to walk two abreast. A pipe ran down the arched ceiling, hung with gold-brown gaslights that flickered.

The noise of dragged feet and chains echoed along the tunnel. It seemed a safe place to talk, so I leaned over and whispered, “My name is Keftu.”

Recognition dawned slowly on my neighbor’s face. A broad grin emerged like the sun coming from behind hazy clouds. “Jubah,” he said, ducking his head in a friendly way. “Pleased to meet you. You dry off last night?”

“Yes.”

“You’re new here. How’d you get picked up?”

“I was looking for something. A man said he could help me. I trusted him. Now I’m here.”

“I hear you, brother. You must be pretty green, though. Where you from?”

“Arras.”

“Oh, that’s near Ursalia. Used to know a guy from there. No. That was Ars Arem. Dah. What does it matter? They got me the same way. Told me about some nice girls. Haven’t got ’em yet, ha ha! What’d they promise you?”

“The path to eternal life.”

Jubah’s eyes shifted. “That so.”

“From the Pillar of Arras I saw an empyrean palace high over the land of the sun’s setting. My people had all died, so I came into the west, seeking the medicine of immortality. Surely they of the celestial sphere must have it, if anyone does. The man I mentioned spoke of the Hanging Gardens of Narva. He promised to take me to a place called Bel.”

We fell silent while the line passed through a wide space where guards were standing on either side. The way narrowed again.

“Have you heard anything of it?” I went on. “Have they found the key to eternal life?”

“Uh, I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t talk about Narva and all that. They might not like it.”

“Who might not?”

“Well, you know. Granny.”

“Granny? Is that what you call the old woman?”

“She’s pretty possessive.”

“She doesn’t own me.”

“Tell her that.”

“And what does she plan to do with me?”

“Live to slay, slay to live,” said Jubah. “That’s our motto.” He puffed out his chest. “Strictly speaking, of course,” he went on, deflating, “I haven’t fought yet, myself.”

“You mean we fight for gain,” I said.

“Yes. Well, for
her
gain. They say she has boxes of dramachs walled up in her rooms.”

“What are dramachs?”

“Rods. Money. What are you, new-hatched or something?” Jubah gave me a long stare. “The fights are just a side business for her. She runs a junk store frequented by phylites mad for antiques. She has a brothel, too, and sells used girls as concubines in her store. The Cheiropt doesn’t bother her. Know who her landlord is? The Misfit.”

“Who’s the Misfit?”

“A local celebrity, an urban warlord and black-market dealer who lives near here. He’s the only one who ever made it out of this hell. Once he was a slayer, like us. Now he runs things. They say he’s half giant. The Cheiropt has him walled into his district, but he has ways of making his influence felt.”

The line was moving into a wider hall with walls of solid masonry now, and guards began pacing up and down along it. We passed a turning that looked to lead to another part of Hela. It was barred with a great gate and guarded.

*          *          *          *          *

The gymnasium was a big room with cracked walls and a trussed ceiling. Rings and hooks and other implements of exercise or torture fell out of the darkness above. The floor was cluttered with beams and bars and things with weights and pulleys. In the shadows at the far end, a vast, intricate machine hulked like a patient spider.

The doors were locked and the inmates unshackled. The others went to work immediately, rotating between the stations. Iron bars clanked and pulleys squealed. I stood in a corner, watching, uncertain what to do.

Something touched my clavicle sharply. My shoulder exploded with pain. I whirled. Talan was standing there, smiling, swinging his iron baton. He just shook his head when he saw my eyes glint, and smiled even more broadly. “Don’t just stand there, little man.”

I continued to look him in the eyes. He held my gaze for a moment, then shifted uncomfortably. “What do you need, instructions?” he snarled. “Pick a station. Move when it’s time. Do what they do. We don’t like layabouts here.”

I went and chose a vacant machine. I did something wrong and got it jammed. The next station was little better. I had to make the entire round before I began to grasp the machines’ purpose. Even then I felt foolish using them. Following the spoor of desert beasts seemed better exercise.

Once we had all made the circuit several times, Talan rang a bell and activated the steam-driven skill gauntlet at the end of the room. Its system of bars and blades and bludgeons screeched into life. The inmates lined up at its mouth and went through it one at a time. When my turn came I traversed the machine calmly, dodging its bloodstained blades and teeth with none of the cunning and agility that marked the others’ moves. They hated me for that also.

Next it was time for recreation, which took place in an adjoining hall. We divided into teams and began to play a game with a hard, heavy ball. I had participated in the sacred games of Arras, which are more dance than competition, but the rules of this new sport were too technical for me to comprehend, and enforced with a cunning legalism that I found jarring. My teammates cursed me for making them lose, my opponents for making the game too easy. My face seemed a magnet for the ball. It struck me more than once, bloodying my nose.

At last it was over. We were shackled in reverse order and led back down the corridors. I noticed that Jubah avoided looking my way, as though I were unclean.

The line halted just as I reached the wide space. Talan was there waiting. “Hello, little man,” he purred. Then, to the inmates on either hand: “Hold him.” I found myself pinned against the brick wall. Talan made a fist. He was wearing a big signet ring with an intricate design, like metal thorns woven together. He pressed it into my forehead, crushing the back of my head against the bricks. His arm shook with exertion. Tears sprang into my eyes.

He eased up, leaving a deep impression in my skin, and leaned forward. His breath was sour. “Talan doesn’t like you, little man,” he said. “Talan thinks you’re too good for this place.”

Very quietly, so that no one else could hear, I replied, “I am.”

He stepped back. For a moment disbelief swept the anger from his face. His little eyes flitted about my body as though deciding which part to mutilate first. Then he slowly pulled back his fist and drove it into my stomach. The inmates let me go, and I collapsed to the floor, retching. It hurt so much I thought at first that he’d burst my spleen.

“Get up, baby,” said Talan. “Get up, little man. Time to go.”

I struggled to my feet, still doubled over. Talan patted my back, then gave my ear a sharp twist.

I responded to that with a smart blow to his chin. He staggered back a pace or two, then lunged. He struck me on the eye and then on the mouth. I sat hard on the ground, spitting blood.

Talan stood over me. “Next time you cross Talan, you die,” he said. Then, to Jubah: “Help him. Don’t get too friendly with him.”

The line lurched back into motion. Supported by Jubah, I made it to my cell and staggered inside. I sat on my cot with a groan.

A while later Jubah hissed at me through the bars. I rolled my head to look. “What do you think you’re doing?” he whispered. “The last one who tried that had his brains smeared all over the wall. I saw it.”

I smiled wryly. The effort hurt. “Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all. A word from the wise.”

I laughed. The pain in my stomach made me gasp.

*          *          *          *          *

That morning—the helot evening—some inmates were taken to the fights. Jubah went with them. He looked nervous and excited.

The group’s return awakened me at midday. I watched them strut past the bars of my cage. Licence was granted the victorious, it seemed. Girls began to flit past as well.

Jubah did not return. I whispered my question to a loser, a sport who went sulking past after the others. “The buffoon, eh?” he said, pinching the air with his four fingers. “He served his purpose, all right. But he’s alive. It’s the delvers for him now.”

“What delvers?” I asked. “What do you mean?” But the man had already moved on. No one else came by.

A few hours later, I started awake to find the little person standing beside my cot. She saw my eyes open but didn’t run. I glanced at the corner where I’d left a morsel for her, hidden from the guards by my ewer. It was gone.

She chattered something in a strange baby language and touched her foot. My eyes followed her hand. One of her toes was swollen and greenish. “You want me to look at it?” I asked softly. Her eyes answered yes.

Aine my godmother had worked as healer and midwife, and I’d often gone with her to make calls at other domes. The children loved to play with me, and babies would always climb into my lap as soon as I sat down. It embarrassed me, so I’d taken to keeping my distance.

I was reminded of those days as I got out of my cot and sat cross-legged on the floor, and the little person came and sat with her back to my stomach. Now I used what I’d learned from Aine. I could tell it hurt the girl-creature, but she trusted me, I didn’t know why. She had put herself in my hands.

She scampered off as soon as I was done, and I went to bed with a full heart. My thinking was like dreaming, and my dreaming like thinking.