Mereziah lay for a long while, watching this light, waiting to hear the voice again, trying to calm himself and surveying his limbs to see if he were hurt. That voice had certainly sounded like a girl’s. A normal, if somewhat brazen, girl. When he heard the question repeated one more time he frowned, began to untangle himself, and replied, as loudly and as confidently as he could, “Hello there? I’m a lift attendant. This is not my station but may I, may I be of, of
assistance
? Of service to you? Are you in . . . in
distress
?”
“Distress?” Laughter now, drifting down from above. “May you be of
fuckin assistance
?” The girl’s tone, verging on shrill, held elements of fear or maybe even desperation. She was clearly in trouble. Mereziah was sure of it, despite her bravado.
“I wanna see your face. Where are you? I wanna see that you’re not one of those fuckin soldiers.”
“I assure you,” Mereziah responded, climbing back up slowly toward the giant pod, “I am no threat. I am not a soldier. Why in the world would there be soldiers about? I am an attendant. Shine the light away from the window; it’s too bright; I can’t see.”
Rubbing at his watering eyes, he peered over the windowsill and into the pod. There she was. A girl, standing, scrawny in the beam of her own torch, hardly more than a child. Sickly? No. Merely dirty, skinny, and tired. (A striking face, however, under those smears and tear streaks.) One fist clenched tight on the haft of the torch, the other shielding large, wide-spaced eyes. Not as big as the eyes of a lift attendant, of course, but not as small as the eyes of a person who always lives in light. No hair on that blotched pate. No teeth, hiding in that grimace? Hard to tell, but it looked that way.
She was dressed in grubby pants, grubby shirt. Defiance personified. Wiry muscles down her limbs. A sight, he decided — as they sized each other up — of surprising beauty.
“Wow,” the girl finally whispered, breaking the spell, stepping back. “You’re so fuckin old.” The light beam wavered. “How old
are
you?”
“One hundred years,” Mereziah answered, unable to think of anything else to add. The question had stung him like a slap in his face. He said, “One hundred years old. Today.”
She was memorizing him, seeing his flaws, his very thoughts. He squirmed but her gaze lingered on him, exposed, out here, in harsh shadow and highlight. He felt her intelligence and insight burning into him.
“Your eyes are so
huge
,” she said.
“I live in darkness,” Mereziah said. “But I can see in the dark. What appears black to you looks dark grey to me.” An attendant’s joke, but the girl did not laugh. Neither did he.
“Can you help me, old man? Can you rescue me?”
“You
do
need rescuing?”
“Of course I need rescuing. Maybe I should be helping you?”
The smile, when it came, confirmed two things: one, that there were no teeth in that pretty mouth — only dark gums — and two, the girl had the capacity to radiate an intense allure he had never before experienced. Mereziah felt a rush of giddiness. My goodness, he thought, have I ever even
seen
a teenaged girl?
Movement from behind the captive. He squinted, said, “How many are in there? How many people with you?”
To his surprise, the girl laughed out loud at his question, but the laugh ended abruptly as she looked over her shoulder. At first he thought she was counting. Then he realized she was
listening
. He strained to listen as well but heard nothing.
“Is there one of those soldiers in there with you?” he asked quietly.
An image of the girl’s body, trapped by captors, entered Mereziah’s mind like a spectre of evil, of all the grievous injustices in the world, and crept slowly away, over the lobes of his brain, leaving unpleasantly lingering emotions.
I am going mad, he thought.
When the girl spoke again, it was also in softer tones: “I honestly can’t tell how many people are here with me, old man. Two dozen, maybe?” She shrugged. “They brought some others here, not long ago, and dropped them in. Once, they took a woman out. Then they brought her back. They asked her some questions, she said. Looked into her eyes with a machine . . . They didn’t hurt her. I don’t really know what they want with us. Some people in here are hurt.”
As if on queue, a moan of pain rose from the dark reaches of the pod, crackling out from the tiny speaker on the windowsill. And what looked like a man’s face emerged, furrowed and scared, grimacing, but this image receded before Mereziah was certain of what he had seen.
“And,” he said, swallowing hard, “are you all in there . . . against your will?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Aren’t you listening? Three giant soldiers, maybe twice my size, with smooth black faces. Really big, intense guys. They abducted us all and brung us up here. They’re the ones asking questions.”
“
Giant
soldiers?”
“Holy smoke. Are you fucking senile?”
She lowered the torchlight in exasperation and might not have seen the rage that suddenly tightened Mereziah’s face, making his hands clench. “I am not senile,” he hissed, wondering if he should rescue this girl at all or promptly leave her now, as he’d found her, trapped inside the big pod while he continued on his way toward the top of the world. After all, he had already deserted his post, his job, his responsibilities. Why did he insist on acting like an attendant? He sure didn’t need to be insulted. “I assure you, young lady, I have
all
my wits about me.”
“Can you get us out of this thing or not? I’d
really
appreciate it.”
“Yes, I can get you out.” Who was he trying to fool? He couldn’t leave this girl or this pod until he had tried everything he knew to get her out. And get the others out too, of course. Merezath might have left these people here but not he. The reasons I want to help, he assured himself, are strictly ethical and professional.
So he introduced himself.
And the girl said, “What kind of name is that?”
Again he was flustered. “It’s a fine name. My mother chose it. It means — ”
“That you’re a stuffy old fart?” But her entrancing smile returned. “Can I call you M, old fart? My friends call me Crystal, but you can call me Crystal Max. I’ve been on quite a fucking ride!”
Mereziah did not approve of foul language but neither did he want to chastise or lecture. Despite his intentions, he was unable to cease imagining what Crystal Max’s young body might look like under those dirty clothes. He slunk away from the pod, muttering he would return shortly, creeping down into the webbing and out of sight.
He was raging inside with conflicting sensations. He took a few breaths, closing his eyes for a second. Had this massive pod been intentionally left between levels? The girl, Crystal, had mentioned that the people trapped inside had been ‘dropped’ in. That implied to Mereziah that the captors had positioned the pod — which they were clearly using as a jail — between levels. Away from access to the horizontal world.
He climbed even lower, slowly, feeling the wall as he went with his sensitive fingertips, massaging the rough, curved surface of the shaft, searching and kneading. In some areas, he plunged up to his elbow in the coarse webbing, forced to grope blindly.
The plan was to find access to the level beneath the pod and ferry the passengers out, one by one, via that exit. After that, who knew? His upward journey was certainly curtailed.
Maybe this rescue was the culmination of his life, his final purpose?
Nerve endings in his palms and fingertips responded, recognizing the subtle contours he had been seeking. Manipulating the slick, hidden hinge, pressing at it, rubbing at it, a slit finally opened before him with a sucking sound, letting light and air and a dull roar flood the area about; Mereziah’s eyes nictitated.
He leaned forward to glance through, saw clutters of pumps and tubes of all sizes out there, heading in all directions. Tiny wheels spun busily in housings. Pistons chuffed. Steam hissed. No traditional horizontal area, to be sure — some form of machinations — but deserted, at least, as far as he could tell.
A thin, suspended path began not far from where he peeked out, leading out over bevel gears and pipes and pulleys to be swallowed in the haze. Where could it lead? Would it be folly to take the captives out of the pod and head them onto this perilous path?
Across the abyss, a faint backdrop of hazy panels. Dim lights, consoles, controls, all vanishing through the vapour. These distant façades appeared as if from a dream.
Out there stunk of heat and oil.
Mereziah let the slit close slowly. He was perspiring. He went back up to the pod.
The first person he rescued, naturally, was the girl. Accessing pods from the outside was routine. He merely opened the escape panel and helped Crystal Max crawl out. Soldiers did not attack them. Clinging to his back, Crystal Max clamped firm thighs around Mereziah’s waist and locked her arms over his throat. Her smell was like nothing that had ever filled his sinuses before: tangy and sharp and delirious. Though Crystal whispered to him the whole while they clumsily travelled down towards the slit — her breath hot in his ear, saliva moistening his neck — he was so tense and lost in her scent that he could think of nothing to say in response to her encouragements except to stutter, “Don’t worry, just hang on, hang on . . .”
Not far below them, the big slit in the wall seemed to pulse expectantly.
In an adjacent chamber, another prisoner cried, caterwauling sobs that rose and fell, carried on the stale wind blowing lightly through grilles set high in the wall.
The dark gods were no longer in this room.
Forearms heavy with manacles, manacles heavy with chains, all resting on his trembling knees. Tran so’s ankles had been shackled uncomfortably to the leg of the bench he sat on. Sickened by the lake water, he rocked gently forward and back and listened to the wavering cries from next door.
Behind his left eyeball, parasites that had made their home there rolled and resettled around his tear duct, squeezing a tear free to roll down the angular planes of his cheek.
Tran so Phengh still feared for his own life but the past few hours had actually abated the initial rush of terror. The menace of his abductors — those he referred to, internally, as ‘the dark gods’ — had greatly diminished; in fact, their aura — perceived, at first, to be one of purest evil — was now diluted, misplaced, almost like one of bewilderment rather than threat; he now looked upon the giants in blue as similar to the misguided deities one saw knocking on doors in the slums of Hoffmann City, trying to enlist listless citizens into some program or other, distributing dogmatic pamphlets, or scolding teenagers for gathering in too large a group.
His heart was still beating, and his lungs drew air. He had not been hurt. One of the giants who had pounced on him in the underwater lair, and then carried him all the way to this holding room, over its shoulder — in and out of nightmarish devices and bizarre settings while Tran so swooned and rolled his eyes up into his head and retched up bile that ran in dark stains down the giant’s shirt — was even kind enough to ask Tran so several times over the course of the journey if the bindings on his wrists were too tight, and if he had ingested some form of toxin. That particular god had even apologized for the brusque takedown, and for having to confiscate Tran so’s knife.
“We thought you had damaged the filtration unit,” it explained. “You see, we have been activated without any guidance. Our instructions are not clear. As we looked around, and tried to assess possible reasons for being called upon, we became maddened by the evidence of senseless vandalism that we saw in the world around us. What had happened? We assumed our reason for existence was to correct matters. Now we know a little better. So, despite our continuing search for the truth, friend, you have at least been cleared of that initial offense.”
After tying him to a bench, Tran so had been left alone. Dark gods still passed by the room, paired or in small groups. Occasionally, one of them entered, stooping, to remove or add someone to the captives there, whose ranks rose and fell over the course of the day. All these gods looked the same, and Tran so Phengh could not tell which one it had been that had showed him signs of kindness after his arrest. Yet as a whole, in their actions, the giants seemed to lack coherent leadership. This aspect, too, familiarized them, reduced their threat. They were certainly like the gods he knew back home. They were unsure, imperfect. They were like people.
Other prisoners in the room now were also bound to benches, though earlier some had lain, prone on the floor, apparently free to go. If they would only stir. Had they been somehow stunned? Was the benevolence Tran so had experienced an act?
Men and women had been detained here. For a time, there had been a small child — when Tran so had first arrived — but only four prisoners remained, including him, and all four were men.
Marked on the wall opposite, above a sleeping figure of one of the men, painted in deep vermilion, were the words HUMAN RESOURCES. These glyphs appeared to be the last legible elements of what had once been an entire paragraph of writing covering most of the wall; only these two words had been restored.
Not many residents of Hoffmann City could read. Encouragements of Minnie sue, shortly after they’d met, had spurred Tran so Phengh to become literate. Courses were given at the nearby Community Centre. The teacher had been a lesser god. When afternoon classes had ended, Tran so and his wife had often gone home to make love. Tran so would cover Minnie sue’s soft mouth with one palm when she came — for there were other people sharing the house with them, living beyond the partitions — and Minnie sue’s shrieked orgasms could shake the walls of any building.
Recalling the sound, Tran so smiled grimly. He did not know what these two red words HUMAN RESOURCES could mean, but their presence, and the fact that he could read them, made him think fondly of Minnie sue. The image of her naked body, the sounds of her guttural, almost dirty comments, her sharp nipples pressed into his palms while she ground her hips back into his own, did not, this time, depress him. These memories were integral to what made him Tran so Phengh. Never could they be stolen from him. Not by time, not by illness, not by uncertain gods.