Occasionally, gusts of warm, foul-smelling air rose from the lowest depths of the world to buffet the brothers; as Mereziah rotated slowly in the fibers he clung to, peering out through rheumy, slitted eyes, he had few expectations from this day.
Portions of the wall behind him flickered with pale light as phosphorescent microfauna fought or loved one another there. During these glimmers, Mereziah saw clearer glimpses of the inert form hanging next to him, like a reflection of himself: his stigmata, his brother Merezath.
Contrary to what most people assumed when meeting the siblings — those few that had encountered them here in the lift shaft, or at home in the grotto — the pair were not twins; Merezath was younger than Mereziah by over fourteen months. He would not turn one hundred for some time yet.
The light also caught highlights of the myriad cables and tubes lining the circumference of the shaft. Some, carrying liquids and pneumatics up, to stations far above, and down, to stations below, were as big around as Mereziah’s torso.
Tilting his head back, all he saw were fuligin depths. But he had never been interested in areas beneath him. He would be at the bottom of the shaft soon enough. Arching forward — pulling with one hand in the mesh, as if beginning to right himself — he looked up. There, he detected what were, he believed, signs from the topmost stations: a faint sound; a tremor in the fibers; the hazy, shimmering glow of active pod lights.
Merezath, of course, claimed that no indication of life from the upper levels would be possible to detect this far down — their station was too distant from activity for any trace to be seen or felt. Mereziah knew better. Yes. Looking up, he
could
distinguish evidence of that remote, more fortunate humanity, kindling for years of imagination, impetus for all his youthful yearnings.
But now, at this late point in life, he could no longer afford time for these idle thoughts. He’d already wasted a good chunk of his existence imagining the fabled population of the upper levels. So he had stopped practicing witty repartee, meant to prepare him for encounters that, he knew now, would never happen. He had stopped forming fantasies of glorious balls and social gatherings, of walking through bustling marketplaces and squares, teeming with people. He had ceased imagining sophisticated machinations and glittering cities, all built on the horizontal, and lit up by brilliant suns. The quiet serenity of healthy forests and glens, and maybe even one or two people to stroll and talk with, perhaps
touch
— these dreams he also relinquished. His upside-down guts no longer churned, as they once had, with feelings that events had passed him by, as he lived and worked down here, in the lower regions of the dark lift shaft, ignorant brother at his side. The abandoned station, inherited from his dead parents, was his lot.
This
was his place.
So what if his destiny was not as exciting as that of others? He was an integral cog in the functioning of the world. He was
staff
.
Could life have been worse? Sure it could: he had existed for a long, long time and had seldom gone hungry. He slept well, and ate well, and had regular bowel movements. So what if the dark days ran together, and the nights, too. In this last stretch of life, Mereziah was content —
But today was his damned birthday! Shouldn’t today be
different
?
No matter how hard he tried to convince himself he was at peace, he
did
feel disconcerted. He could not deny it. Dissatisfactions of his youth had gained ground again inside him, and traces bubbled downwards through his blood like a recurring illness.
Another sudden crackle of light, and Mereziah was surprised from his brooding to see a giant sloth, frozen in the glare, huge eyes staring at him. One furry knuckle, a foot or so from his face, shifted in the strands as a curved claw, big as an arm, retreated slowly. Vivid in that instant, little green symbiotes, living oblivious in the animal’s rough hair.
How, Mereziah wondered, shocked, had the huge beast approached so close without his knowing? Clearly, he had missed the vibrations. Was his hearing also going? And his sense of touch? Maybe they were gone already. Who knew? He was rusty with old age.
Rusty
. Far beyond the time to retire but there was no one to pass the station to. No heirs.
Nobody
.
Grunting to dismiss these dire thoughts — for he did not like to imagine the condition of the station after he and his brother had fallen to the bottom — he thought instead about how nice it would be to eat the sloth as a birthday treat, a feast like never before. One final celebration. A last, messy huzzah. He had not eaten meat for months. Maybe a full year or more. He could not remember the last time he had tasted flesh.
He probably would not have been able to chew the slothmeat had it been presented to him, sliced up and steaming, on a platter.
“Pah,” he said to no one, adjusting his old bones in the net.
A hundred years. A century of life. A monumental chunk of time. Unheard of. And the only person who had been with him through all those years had forgotten about the anniversary. No gift, no mention. Merezath hung there, lost in his own self-indulgent dreams. In fact, now that Mereziah thought about it, Merezath had not said a word since they’d started their shift, not even good morning —
Actually, once he had cleared his throat and spit phlegm into the void. Another time he had farted.
Happy birthday, brother
!
Happy birthday
!
Grumbling, Mereziah closed his eyes and took a short nap, during which he dreamed of a giant sloth, with damp eyes, reaching out one claw to caress his cheek and whisper benign encouragements into his failing ears.
He woke in a worse mood. Though he knew Merezath could barely see him, he glared over to where his younger brother hung. Merezath had started to hum — he always did around break time, and Mereziah decided, for the sake of his own health, that it would be prudent to speak up, to vent his feelings:
“Our dear mother, rest her bones,” he began, clearing his throat, for he liked his voice to be mellifluous when he related his parables and wisdoms, “after returning one day from this station, when we were knee-high sprats and your face ran with snot — like it probably would now, if you weren’t upside-down — imparted words of such august wisdom that I will never forget them.” Mereziah could even see his mother’s beautiful face before him now, though it had been decades since she’d fallen. His cheeks warmed. “There were many pods then, a steady flow up and down, each filled with migrants passing through, seeking fortunes and employment in the last years of the great — ”
Merezath began to snore.
“Son of a
bitch
,” Mereziah said. Resolved, of a sudden, to be alone, to get away from his brother, he turned angrily in the net, hooking his long fingers and bare feet in the meshing. Unfortunately, since he had hurt himself in many falls as a younger man, and with his advanced age, his exit was not as dramatic as he would have liked. Creaking and cracking, he moved slowly. These aches would never leave him. Not until the final fall.
He would eat lunch by himself, back at home, without even waking his ingrate brother. Maybe take the rest of the day off.
Upright at last, Mereziah wistfully glanced overhead once more, to spy those remote indications of a life missed —
And saw, instead, quite nearby, the green light of a descending pod.
He rubbed his eyes, looked again, squinted. Tried to focus . . . A slim single, moving closer with each second, was certainly approaching. About a sixteenth of a turn away, inside the curve. Putting his hands out, fingers splayed, he felt the vibrations, quavering the fine cords.
With one last glance at his sleeping brother, Mereziah made his way toward the track the pod travelled. Moving hand over hand, carefully placing his feet in the filaments that strung, like hammocks, between the unused pod tracks, not for one instant did he take his eyes off the green light. He saw a tangle of pale tubes and cables, everything strung with the mesh that he and his brother used to cavort in as kids but now wrapped themselves in like musty shrouds.
Possibly the nearing pod would pass right by their station — if its destination was farther below, and if the track it followed was long enough, and straight enough, and clean. The occupant might not need any form of outside assistance. Yet Mereziah also knew the failing conditions of the shaft wall, and of the pods themselves, and, because it was his birthday, he felt sure in his gut that his expertise and elbowgrease would, on this occasion, be required.
Checking his belt, his oilcan, his pipe wrench and transfer hooks, he understood how fortuitous it was for him to have brought these tools with him to work today. Beneath him, snoozing, Merezath was certainly ill-prepared. Even if his brother did awaken and see the active lift, and attempt to join in the encounter, he would be useless, without tools, in his pajamas.
Mereziah squared his shoulders and continued to approach the pod at an oblique angle, hoping to intercept it. Who might be inside? Lunatic? Saint? Someone with news from above? Or maybe . . . maybe even a
woman
? Merezath had often predicted women descending upon them. Could this be a soft and yielding female, arriving as his birthday gift?
No. That was absurd, an undignified line of thought.
Yet the pod was certainly slowing. He had been right. Did the track end, or was it not fully formed? Or was Mereziah’s station the intended destination?
Trying to contain his growing expectations, he found himself wondering what would happen to trapped passengers when he and his brother were no longer around to help out the pods that stalled down here. If neither Mereziah nor Merezath were available to approach a pod, to re-couple it, or to mend it, or otherwise send it on its way, how much time would pass before the occupants died? And if there were other stations up and down the length of the shaft already without attendants — as there surely were — how many stalled pods contained corpses? In all the many shafts? Would the entire traveling population of the world eventually come to its demise locked inside stationary pods, waiting at abandoned stations for assistance that would never come?
The pod stopped. The green light wavered.
As far as Mereziah knew, there was no horizontal area outside, not where the pod had come to rest. Which meant the occupant had not stepped out. But the shaft and its workings had surprised Mereziah many times in the past. No one could ever know the real whys and wherefores of the world, not even if they lived to be a hundred and ten. Sometimes openings did appear in the shaft wall, and shortly after vanish, of their own accord, leading out to nowhere, the nearest level a deadly drop far below.
Openings could be forced, too. Coerced, cut into the wall of the shaft itself.
Before long, he was adjacent to the stilled pod, out of breath and aching, but safe, intact, and filled now with terrible excitement. With one hand, he touched the warm, smooth skin of the device; the sensations were unsettling and heady.
Around him, the green light of downward motion was dimmed significantly; the area darkened. Letting himself conjure, for a second, a tantalizing lightshow of a thousand pods, of bustling stations he would never work at or even see in this life, Mereziah traced lines on the skin, formed by the rivets that bound the flesh of this device together, and felt the embossed remains of an undecipherable decal on the tarnished surface. He sighed.
The track, as he’d suspected, ended in an unopened bud near his feet. This probably meant that his station was not the intended destination. To send the mystery passenger farther down, Mereziah would need to uncouple the pod and swing it over to another track. Hooking his safety harness in the two lower rings so his hands might be freed, he glanced behind himself, as a formality, to see the position of other appropriate tracks; he knew this area by heart. Even though tracks changed, growing slowly of their own accord, he knew all their positions. Could Merezath say the same? How many attendants in the brotherhood could match his devotion?
One hand resting on the window ledge, he peered down, but could discern no detail below, only death, and death could hold no light. Thumbing the intercom button, he cleared his throat, slid the window panel aside, and said in his most professional tone, “Attendant here. Please state your purpose and — ”
Looking back through the tiny opening was the face of an insane man, a depraved man. Lost and destitute. Disappointment yawned inside Mereziah. This encounter was most likely his last ever, and he was about to direct a lunatic back to the level he had mindlessly wandered away from. This was not the first time Mereziah had opened a pod’s window to see a drooling idiot staring vacantly back at him, or a lost child, peering up in terror, but it was sure to be the last. Would have been nice, he thought, to go out of life on a note bearing somewhat more resonance than a dull thud.
He stared, unable to finish his opening line. The passenger was naked, filthy, his hair matted in clumps and hanging to his waist. Through these hanks of hair, tiny, dark eyes were visible, ready, it seemed, to pop out of their sockets.
Mereziah saw an image of his own reflection in the window. Could he blame the client for his fear? Once Mereziah had been proud of his skin tone, his blond hair, his full lips. None of these features were left to him now. He appeared, even to himself, a wrinkled parody of a man. A
ghoul
.
But duty was duty. He had sworn an oath to his father that he would always remain professional, in all cases. Never discriminate.
“You are in a single lift pod,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “Headed downward. The pod has reached an impasse. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A long pause, but finally the man inside nodded.
“Good. Are you travelling to a specific destination or have you entered this device inadvertently?”
The man started to urinate where he stood.