Authors: Elizabeth Hand
As we followed him, I knew why those other people had slowed their pace. Even an enormous bank of electrified lanterns couldn’t dispel the infernal darkness. Two van-sized solar generators stood to either side of the doorway, trembling from the effort of converting the light gathered outside, but it still wasn’t enough. Nothing would have been enough.
“Christ, Wendy, how can they
live
in here?” Jane’s fingers twined around mine. She craned her neck, her brown eyes so wide they gave her a slightly maddened expression. “This is like, like—well, shit. I’ve never seen
anything
like it.”
“It is a very great honor,” Suniata said in a hushed admonitory tone. “Tomorrow night we will have our first glimpse of Icarus and the exodus will begin. You are meeting the Doctor at a very precious time.”
“Oh, of
course,”
Jane said drily. “Please make sure the Doctor knows just how thrilled we are.” At Suniata’s disapproving glare she shrugged and added, “I mean it: a very great honor.”
The cacodemon turned away; he would waste no more talk with us. I pulled Jane to me and kissed her quickly on the cheek. Her hand tightened around mine as we followed our guide into the somber heart of Cassandra.
A faint damp breeze blew through the passage. From the ceiling naked bulbs hung between twisted spires of calcified stone. In places, the stalactites had started to grow around the lights, so that they glowed eerily from between flows of softly glowing white and yellow and dull orange, like molten wax. Softened knobs of stone welled up from the floor, some of them waist-high, others so small they looked like skulls, all that remained of bodies that had melted into the earth. The passage was wide enough to drive a van through, and one did pass us, the sound of its motor quieted to a wasp’s hum, the voices of its human and aardmen passengers muted within that echoing space.
Suniata led us through galleries filled with weapons stores; past lightless tunnels and black and silent lakes that reflected the crenulated ceiling and turned it into an endless plain, where mountains and tors needled upward to touch the very tips of the things they reflected. There were empty chambers covered with fine yellow shrouds of pollen blown in from unseen chimneys, so smooth and deep and soft that one could drown in it, and tiny cells that held nothing but corrugated pillars of amber-colored stone, bound about with coils of copper like sheaves to be brought to harvest. There were workrooms, bedrooms, dormitories, libraries, all couched within the rock and filled with silent uniformed figures, who were crouching or stooped or upright by turns, busily engaged in fitting weaponry or reading flickering monitors. Loveliest of all was an atrium where crystalline stars covered walls and ceiling, everything but the floor, glimmering coldly in the light of a single small lantern. Their fragile tines broke away at the faintest touch of my finger. The sound of them shattering upon the stones was the echo of my own dismay at having destroyed something so lovely.
“Nowhere else, our father says, nowhere else will you see these,” Suniata said, pausing to cup one of his white spade-fingered hands about a crystal but being careful not to touch it. “Anthodites, they called them. Because they are like flowers.”
We went on. I stumbled along beside Jane, my mouth filled with the lingering taste of the creosote trees we had seen hours earlier, my eyes always turning away from the steady, feeble gleam of the electric lights to seek something else in the midnight corridors, something like the sun.
I had always thought of darkness as something I knew: a half-wild creature that could be beaten back into corners and chained with light. Even the starless sky was not something to fear, because the sun was always there, a scythe upraised to fall upon the gloom.
But in Paradise Caverns I learned that darkness is not like that at all. Darkness cannot be put away, or cut back, or tamed. It is what
Is:
the last thing, the only thing. The rest of us, stars and suns and creatures squatting around the fire, are mere flaws in its fabric, rips and tears too small to mend, or bubbles floating on the surface of an infinite and tenebrious sea. Even on our Earth there are secret vales where there is no sun; but there is no place that does not know the night.
“I hear water.” Jane’s whisper was a ragged sound. “Listen—can you hear?”
I could. The sound grew until the cavern resonated with it. Above our heads, bulbs hanging from twisted wires swung slowly back and forth, back and forth. Suniata threaded his way past elephantine stalagmites, their sides wet and gleaming. We followed, slowly and with increasing reluctance. The limestone spires hanging from the ceiling trembled and emitted faint chimes, so that the chamber seemed to be filled with an invisible choir. Suddenly Jane clutched my arm and pointed.
“God, look at that!”
Before us roared a river, half as wide as that which circled the mountain outside. I do not know if it was sister to that stream or an extension of it. Certainly it was wilder, raging through a channel it had gouged from the slick rock and throwing up spume and a fine icy mist.
The roaring grew louder as we followed the river, walking down a narrow passage a fraction as wide as that roiling beast. Abruptly the black stream plunged around a corner into utter darkness, like a worm burrowing into its hole. The narrow path came to a dead end. Strung across the violent water was a bridge made of planks and rope. One end stood just a few feet from us. The other disappeared into the darkness. In the middle it sagged and swayed as though something huge trod across it just out of our sight.
“We’ll cross here,” Suniata said matter-of-factly. He had thrown back the hood of his cape and looked like a monkish analog of the Frog Footman. Jane whistled in disbelief, but before she could say anything, the cacodemon had clambered onto the bridge and lurched off into the darkness. Jane looked at me; we both looked around at the empty passage. We had seen no one in some time. I had long since given up trying to remember the way back.
“Well,” Jane said, and tugged dubiously at a frayed end of rope. “It’s either this or wait for something else to kill us.” She swung herself up and began to cross.
I waited until she reached the middle of the bridge, and when she seemed safely on her way toward the far shore, I climbed after her. It was easy enough, once I got used to the slick wooden planks twisting and snapping at each step. Halfway across I stopped and looked down. The water boiled perhaps ten feet below me, its black surface flecked with white and yellow vortices. I stared, trying to measure the distance. Suddenly a face appeared in the water.
“Come, sister,” it hissed. A human face, but with skin like oiled green leather and a round lipless mouth edged with tiny white teeth. “Jump—I will catch you.”
I yelled and stumbled forward, clutching frantically at the ropes and sending the entire bridge bouncing and twitching like a spider’s guyline. The hydrapithecene hissed again, but I was already gone. Where the bridge ended I jumped to the floor, wrenching my ankle. Jane caught me as I staggered against her.
“Siren!” I gasped. Behind her Suniata regarded me dispassionately.
“They live here, too,” he said, and turned away.
“Are you hurt?” Jane asked, pushing the hair from my face.
“Not really,” I said. I winced as I rubbed my ankle. “Just twisted it a little.”
“Good,” she murmured, and pulled me to her. She kissed me, her mouth brushing mine so lightly, I thought it was a drop of water running across my lips. My tongue darted out to flick it away, and she kissed me again, harder—no doubt of it this time—then slowly drew back, her fingers resting against my damp cheek and stroking the wet curls plastered at my neck.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “If they were going to kill us, they’d have done it by now. And I would never let them hurt you.”
I didn’t tell her I wasn’t afraid—not really, not any more than anyone would be who’d just seen a siren’s nightmare face gabbling up out of an underground river—but then Suniata’s voice came back to us again, low and urgent, begging us to follow.
We did. In a few minutes we found the true source of the thunderous sound we’d been hearing. We were in a wide gallery, dimly lit and less dramatic than others we’d passed, except where a glittering canopy seemed to cover the far side of the room. Behind it shadows moved with the jerky stride of puppets or primitive servers. It took me a moment to attach the nearly deafening roar with this delicate vision, and another moment to realize that what we were approaching was a waterfall, lit from behind by a blaze of electric lanterns.
“This is where Dr. Burdock works,” said Suniata.
“A nice spot to come back from the dead,” Jane said, her voice cracking.
“Take my hand, Wendy,” Suniata called softly. “And you, Jane, take hers—”
We followed him, one behind the other, across a narrow stone bridge that arched above the pool where the cascade fell. The stones were wet beneath our feet, and I was terrified of falling. Spray drenched us, and mingled with the sharp limey reek of the water was a burning chemical scent, formaldehyde and preserving alcohol and something so caustic, it made my throat sore. Abruptly Suniata let go of me, and one by one we jumped to the slippery ground, Jane and me shivering and cupping our hands beneath our arms from the cold.
“Dr. Burdock,” Suniata called. He peered into the darkness, then seemed to see whom he was looking for. “Dr. Burdock, we have two new recruits.”
Here the chemical smell was overwhelming, and mingled with a muskier animal odor. From the ceiling hung a makeshift chandelier, a warped metal wheel set with empty wine bottles. Each held a guttering candle that sent long strings of yellow wax tapering to the floor. Beneath this crouched six aardmen. They stared intently at a holofile scarcely brighter than the candles overhead. Nearby a single argala poked tentatively at another ’file disk, rather forlorn with her wispy yellow hair and enormous dormouse eyes. More monitors were set up beside a row of steel tables that recalled Trevor Mallory’s cellar garden. Three energumens sat before them with their great heads bowed, fingers tracing slowly across the dusty screens as they scryed some lost secret. As we passed, the energumens looked sideways at us with glowing black eyes.
“Dr. Burdock…,” Suniata called again. The cacodemon’s blue-robed figure slipped in and out of sight between steel tables and ramshackle shelves. On one of these a bloodstained robe had been tossed, and the red imprint of an enormous hand shone against the metal. A row of books lined the top shelf—very old books made of paper, with curling faded covers and pages that crumbled away when I touched them. The chemical smell gave way to the more prosaic stench of tobacco. When he saw the bloodstained robe, Suniata straightened, and though he could not smile, his voice sounded brighter. “Ah! Dr. Burdock! Here we are.”
Behind the sagging shelves a man sat at a small desk, staring earnestly at the pages of a small white book. A metal hubcap listed at his elbow, filled with fingerling stubs of cigarettes and a gray dune of ashes. He wore a plain white shirt, no longer clean, and gray trousers hiked up to show bony ankles and a pair of canvas shoes that had once been white but were now stained rusty brown and crusted with dirt. He was perhaps forty, with dark hair and a round earnest face. His cheeks were rosy, as though they had been lovingly pinched, and his eyes behind a pair of antique plastic spectacles were the devout guileless brown of a spaniel’s. When he saw Suniata, he looked up in surprise, then snapped the book closed, holding it prayerfully between his palms.
“Ah, y-yes, Suniata! And you have brought g-g-
guests
.”
He didn’t stand, instead leaned forward and let the glasses ride down his nose so he could peer above them. His voice was measured, cheerful; the kind of voice I imagined a much-loved teacher would have. He had a slight stammer that made his speech seem ingratiatingly hesitant, as though he valued the listener’s opinion much more than his own. “W-who are your friends?”
“This is the empath we told you about. The other—” Suniata shrugged. “Her lover?”
Jane blushed but said nothing. The man stared at us, his mouth slightly ajar and his front teeth pressing gently into his lower lip. Finally he started, as though waking from some half-sleep, and nodded briskly.
“Well, yes. Of course. Thank you very much, Suniata, thank you very
very
much.” He gestured expansively at several empty chairs. “Please. Take a s-seat. And Suniata—thank you.”
This time
thank you
obviously meant
good-bye.
The cacodemon bowed his head and left. The man fiddled with his glasses and dropped his book, made a temple of his hands and drummed his fingertips together. Finally he cleared his throat, tipping his head so that the glasses slid back onto the bridge of his nose.
“Well. Introductions, yes?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at us with great seriousness, as though awaiting another suggestion. When none was forthcoming, he went on. “I am Luther Burdock. Dr. Burdock, they call me here. And you are—?”
I took a deep breath. Across the room the geneslaves moved industriously in the shadows. The argala frowned at its ’file. The aardmen reclined in silence beneath their candles. The energumens worked by the studious green glow of their monitors. None of them were paying us the slightest attention.
“Wendy Wanders,” I finally said.
“Very n-nice. And you?”
Jane stuck her chin out belligerently. “Jane Alopex. And look,
Doctor
Burdock, we don’t have—”
The man rolled his eyes and nodded, flapping his hand. “Of course, of course! You’re not
p-prisoners
here, Jane—W-wendy? I hope they didn’t tell you
that?”
He peered at us worriedly.
Jane looked taken aback. “Well, no,” she admitted after a moment. Dr. Burdock looked relieved.
“Because that’s really not the point of any of this at
all,
is it? Really quite the opposite, really just the sort of th-thing we’re trying to do away with here. You understand?”
He leaned forward, looking up at us earnestly through his glasses and fumbling at his shirt pocket until he found a packet of cigarettes. He lit one and took several deep drags before continuing.