The hall opened into a massive, vaulted area. The ceiling, which had been just above the dark god’s head, rose dramatically. Directly ahead stood several gods, all in their blue suits, all armed, talking amongst themselves. Two turned to watch Tran so being carried closer; one motioned with its weapon toward an open door to their left. Behind this group of giants curved a wall, extending out of sight, in both directions, and within this wall was a series of archways. Above each archway, a sign. The lettering of the signs was too small to read from this distance. Arcs of lights blinked dully.
Tran so Phengh was carried into the room that the dark god had been instructed to enter. Here were several seats and broad desks, and on each desk sat a small, black device slightly larger than Tran so’s fist. Some of these devices were silent, others emitted a low hum. In the corner of the room, something unseen, perhaps a lesser god, clattered and scampered about like a frightened rodent.
The god placed Tran so Phengh down on his feet. “Would you be so kind as to sit in one of these chairs? We’re going to administer to you the first of a series of tests.”
Tran so did as he was told. The seat was hard and uncomfortable. He realized, at this point, absurdly, that he wanted to sleep. Surely it was approaching nightfall. Did they ever turn the lights out here? He wondered if Minnie sue had gotten out of bed today, or if she had eaten anything.
The device before him had burnished corners and tiny holes for jacks. One face had an outline of a hand etched on it, fingers splayed. Thin cables ran out of this side. Squinting, Tran so saw tiny words engraved above the image, and formulas, and arcane symbols. His vision, though improving, was not yet acute enough to distinguish meaning from these.
The dark god walked back to the door, shut it, and returned to Tran so’s side. “My brethren are getting agitated,” it explained. “Not all of us have patience. I have selected you as one of my charges. I
believe
in you. You might consider yourself fortunate. Others have been hurt. Still more incarcerated, without any hope of trial. Place your hand on the sensor, please.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
Tran so Phengh’s skin tingled when he touched the device; the dark god took hold of two loose cable ends and fumbled with them inside the collar of its shirt. Regarding Tran so for a moment, it reached out a huge hand to press one thumb against Tran so’s left eye. Tran so did not turn away, though for a second he thought that the god might plunge its digit deep into his brain, as if into a ripe fruit.
“You have a guest, sir, in your head. A filarial worm. It resides under the conjunctiva, in the anterior chamber of your eye. Do you wish me to remove it?”
“If you could. I would be grateful.”
Immediately the dark god said, “The worm will no longer be bothering you. Your retinas are clear. Please remain looking at me as I ask you the questions.” Adjusting the cables inside its shirt, it began: “Name?”
As Tran so was about to respond, an idea occurred to him: the curved wall he had seen on the way here — the one with the archways — was the exterior of
the tube
. Access to up and down.
To other levels
. Access to what he was looking for. He knew this suddenly, with certainty, though how he might use this knowledge was not so certain —
His hand was heating up. He said, “My name is Tran so Phengh.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-two.”
Inside
the tube
lived the god of all gods. So they said. What Ensign Conway had called
the network
. This network, god of all gods, could answer his questions about Minnie sue, about his poor boy.
“Status?”
“Married.”
“No. I mean status. Staff or guest.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did you arrive here?”
“You brought me.”
The pursuit to uncover truths about life had not been thwarted by this capture and interrogation, as he had first thought: all that took place to arrive at this juncture in life had been part of the process, an integral step on his path to truth.
“Let me rephrase the question. How did you get into this establishment? Did you pay, as a guest? Or were you hired to work here? Or, perhaps, did you come in illegally?”
“I don’t understand. I was born here. In Hoffmann City. My mother was a fellatrix and my father was a fisherman. I was raised here.”
The dark god said nothing for a long time. Lights from the room and from within its odd, smooth head played across its face. It did not move. Tran so discerned hints of textures inside the god, depths he could not imagine.
“Detainees have been liberated from a holding cell,” the god said quietly. “There’s been a break out. Prior to their questioning. I’m afraid the situation we talked of is escalating. I must go.”
“Am I free to leave?”
“No. Like the others we have interviewed, I cannot locate your retina pattern on my database. You lied to me. Every answer you gave me was a lie.”
“What?” Tran so Phengh had been working the cables of the device around his fist while they talked. Now, as he yanked on them, they tore free from the god’s chest with a loud popping sound and fluid erupted, spattering Tran so’s face as he was already getting up from the chair. Bellowing, the god clutched at itself. A stain spread down the front of its shirt. It reached out to grab Tran so but Tran so backed up, pulling furniture down as he went.
“Escapee, escapee!” The god spoke into its collar, shedding chairs and desks like water as it rose to its full height. “Brothers, assistance required. Assistance required!”
Tran so was already at the door. He pulled it open, feet sliding on the tiles. To his relief, the dark gods he had seen out in the hall earlier were gone. He looked at the curved wall of the tube and then away, along the bank of closed doors next to him.
From the room behind him came the sounds of furniture being splintered. Had the dark god tripped, buying him a few seconds? He bolted, and the god, roaring in frustration, quickly pursued.
Red lips, parting slowly, revealed white. Breath, expressed into his face, sweet and intoxicating, like the aroma of rotting moss. The girl leaned in close to whisper, “Would you like to see a trick? A
special
trick?”
Young Phister, who had seen more than his fair share of tricks lately, nonetheless muttered, “Sure,” and showed his own nervous, toothless grin. “But, but you’ll still give us breakfast, right?”
Not only hunger drove Young Phister to the verge of desperation: his ever-simmering consternation had been aggravated to a boil by recent events, not the least of which was the sudden appearance — after turning the initial corner — of this mysterious girl and her ragtag associates. Sure as shit, they had stopped the car. Followed by brief introductions, the extension of hospitality, an offer of breakfast.
That’s when love uncoiled in Phister. She was gorgeous, after all, and Phister’s heart, like the hearts of most young men, was an eager muscle, collapsing into great depths of despair but soaring just as fast at the first hint of beauty.
Memories of Crystal Max, popping up against his will, were immature, spotty, pale by comparison. Besides, he was coming to understand, in a sort of slow-blooming epiphany, that finding Crystal Max was an issue very separate from visceral, face-to-face interaction like this: locating his old friend was an act of
civic duty
. Granted, it was propelled by these memories . . . A lost romance, but not active love. All Crystal and he had really ever shared was a vague history of getting high and one awkward kiss. He saw that clearly now, in the green eyes of this stranger’s alluring face.
What had brought him to this point of sophistication? Affection for a girl such as Crystal would no longer be easy, maybe not even possible; Young Phister was worldly, getting worldlier all the time. Here he was on his
third
level. And this exotic girl — with her dangerous gang in the background, her heady scent, her evident aura of threat — with her
hair
, for goodness sake, and her
teeth
! — was his
new type
. Perverse to admit it, titillating even, but the foreignness alone of her looks, anathema to all he had known over the course of his life, stirred his insides.
And they carried knives, these people. Knives, and other weapons. The girl had a long blade, dangling at her hip. He had spotted it right away, from a distance, before she had even spoken. No effort was made to conceal the weapons, then or now, as she held out a baton, withdrawn from one of the inside pockets of her colourful patchwork vest. The girl stepped back. Arms and shoulders and lower neck tattooed with wreaths of leaves, coiling up her biceps and across her back.
Most of the others in her group were similarly adorned, to varying degrees of intricacy and colour. No inked markings Phister had ever seen before on a person’s skin had been as clear or as detailed as these.
The proffered item, in contrast with the gang’s apparel, and in contrast to the girl’s own presence, was nondescript: a brown rod, subtly notched and ridged, as long as Phister’s index finger.
After a moment’s hesitation, during which he glanced over to try to meet McCreedy’s hooded, cloudy, and increasingly unreadable eyes, Phister let go of the dash to take the baton —
Which vanished with an audible pop before his fingers could touch it.
Someone tittered.
Too smitten, too perturbed by hormones and hunger and lack of sleep, too preoccupied with calculations of his chances to score with this girl to show the appropriate level of impression, worldly Young Phister continued to grin affably and was about to attempt a comment when the air all around him began to shimmer. His skin crawled with green sparks. As his vision darkened — suddenly terrified — he did manage to say something — more of a yelp than the witty aside he was hoping for — and promptly fell forward in the passenger seat to strike his head soundly on the rollbar. His tongue seemed to swell to four times its normal size. Lolling, it filled his mouth. Spit drooled down to the grimy car floor. He could do nothing but watch it drip.
From the driver’s seat, McCreedy hissed impatiently at this latest in a long chain of inconveniences. “Now fuckin what? You killed him, you crazy bitch?”
Young Phister, as he slumped, dying, understood his final betrayal. This turn of events had been the expected result all along: he was the butt of a joke, victim of a prank. Here lays a sucker, he thought, killed while his fool heart had begun another of its short and futile flights.
Vision continued to fade until a small point of focus: hyperdetailed snarls of damp blue lint by the worn toe of his right boot. There were instants of agony, each one greater than the last, erupting from every pore of Phister’s skin. He managed to claw through and lift one clenched hand to his own throat, rigid fingers shaking, before pain and everything else around him suddenly vanished —
He stood, entirely placid, in an equally serene and well-lit room.
No longer in the car.
No longer with the girl.
Her group of tough friends had vanished.
As had that vine-wreathed place he and McCreedy had found upon emerging, cautiously, from the lift pod. Thick foliage had crawled over the floors and the walls and the ceilings. When they’d driven, the car crunched it undertire.
But there were no leaves in this place.
He took a deep, cool breath.
Unnaturally clean, here. Music played from an unseen source: a light, tinkling tune on an instrument he could not identify nor, perhaps, had even heard before, yet these sounds were deeply soothing, as if they supplied some long-lost, fundamental element missing from his chemistry.
Tiny braziers, burning on the polished floor around the perimeter of the room, gave off equally unfamiliar scents. There was no furniture to speak of. He felt good. Well-fed and content. These feelings were as foreign as the sounds and smells.
Before him stood a
second
woman. Had she materialized while he was looking about, appearing as he turned his attentions toward her? Or was she there when he first came to this strange room? Odd that he wasn’t sure.
Older than the beautiful girl, this woman was dressed in a pale green suit. She also had lots of hair — red hair, if he had to give it a colour — piled up on her head. Plenty of teeth, too, when she smiled. Which she was doing, her face sort of frozen that way.
He was sure getting used to the sight of these wet white bones inside peoples’ mouths, and stringy hair sprouting from their heads. Memories of his own dismal chompers were faint. Teeth fell out of gums as soon as they broke through, clattering to the floor, first when he was three or four and again, blackened, rotten, when he was ten. Memories of hair were non-existent. Once he must have possessed it; infants grew hair and lost hair, within their first year. So he was bald now, save for a few resilient strands, and all he had left of his teeth was one stinky peg, which he often licked, recoiling at the horrid taste as if it were the face of an unpleasant friend. Licking the peg now, not only lost in the hallways of his world, but apparently getting lost in the recesses of his memory and in the gaps between moments of time, while ghosts of vanished teeth haunted his dark gums, he wondered if he would ever see Crystal’s mouth again, or her liver-spotted scalp. He felt, in many ways, that he had betrayed her.
Glancing up at the rust-colored tresses of this new woman — who just stood there — Young Phister wondered what his recent preference for hair and teeth meant. What did the fetish make him? And were these superficialities the real reason he thought he could not go back to loving a girl such as Crystal Max? Was he as shallow as that? As fickle?
Now, visions of his ex with a bizarre, full set of cuspids in her cakehole and long stringy hair poking up out of the top of her head struck him, and arousal stirred. He chastised himself for thinking about Crystal again.
If he were not, he told himself, at this particular point in time, a humiliated corpse, cooling in the passenger seat of an ancient car, then, after emerging from this dream, he would commit, move on with his life.