The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (21 page)

                            If he climbed that shaft at night, which was only hours away, the place would probably be deserted and secured to the rest of the city and, at the very worst, occupied by one usually sleepy technician. It certainly wouldn't be guarded. The well-shaft would be capped with a large steel door, as all the other wells were, but now his light orb would have recharged itself enough to produce a laser cutting beam to burn silently through bolts and hinges.

                            He planned to move quickly to remove the spent energy reservoir he required and disappear back into the darkness he now walked. He doubted the technicians would immediately miss it, let alone pursue him into this hazardous  environment.  By  the  time   they   noticed the forced well cap and the theft, the  world  of  Dubh would be literally be collapsing around their ears. He was close now.

                            The roof of this world lowered dramatically and dripping water which ran into small rivulets to feed the wide black and stinking pools and small lakes, which in turn, fed the Tallmens’ well here. Rislo skirted the pools, his reflection staring back at him as he looked into their impenetrable darkness. He watched as schools of large, blind, white whiskered catfish gently broke the surface, their large, mouths gaping in the air. He dangled a finger in the water and immediately the fish changed direction and swam towards him, their mouths agape and lips pulled back to reveal row after row of carnivorous teeth intent on making a meal of whatever had broken the surface of their lake.

                            The Tallman jumped backwards as snapping fish launched themselves into the air, searching not only for his finger but the rest of the body that was attached to it. After a moment, the thrashing of pale bodies subsided and once again the fish cruised leisurely in search of wayward rats or any other creature which floundered into their domain.

                            Rislo continued on his way, skirting the pools and lakes wherever possible. Where he was forced to enter the water he thrashed through quickly and noisily, but the fish now seemed reluctant to attack. Instead they merely gathered in bobbing groups, blindly tracing his progress from lake to lake and gulping in the debris from the sticky black mud his wild progress caused to rise from the pool beds. Perhaps they realised he was too big to  attack Rislo thought, or maybe the light from his orb had the same effect on them as it had on the rats. Either way they kept their distance. And that was all he wanted.

                            Rislo's explanations as to why they kept their distance were right. Yes, they disliked the light, but it did them no harm. Yes, he was to big for most of them to handle while he remained alive. So they had placed themselves strategically in the ponds and lakes.  Their prey as still their prey, they sensed his movements in the water and on the thin bars of soft mud in between. He instinctively moved way from them through waters which looked empty. So, gently they guided him to the last and deepest of the pool which was black and cold and deep.

                            Rislo did not look behind as see the blind fish skipping on large powerful flippers from pool to pool across the mud bars which separated them. Rislo reached the last expanse of water and stood knee deep in oozing, oily mud at its edge. Beyond it the cavern ended and somewhere in the rock wall across the lake was the shaft upwards to his goal.

                            He looked at the lake before him. It was not wide, but there seemed to be no way around it, stretching into the darkness right and left. But it looked empty, not a single ripple broke its oily black surface, not solitary white fish broke its calmness.

                            Rislo sensed something odd, something sinister, about this lake. He was reluctant to enter it, but it was the only way to the rock wall. He could see no way around. He cast a glance over his shoulder and was amazed to see a great mass of white bodies, either floating silently in the pool immediately behind him or drawn up at the edge of the mud bar on  which  he stood. They did not move. At either side the scheming catfish had taken up positions at an equal distance from Rislo, he seemed to be at the bottom of a giant, glistening crescent which pointed its horns into the black pool.

                            Rislo shouted at the gathered fish and threw globs of heavy mud in their direction, but they stood firm. He turned the orb light to its highest intensity, but they did not move and their skin did not boil and shrivel. He looked back at the pool.

                            They wanted him to enter it. There was something there; just waiting. The Tallman sent his mind probing the lake bed. His powers were not in the same league as Jonathon's, but they were enough to tell him that something lurked at the bottom of this pool. Something very large, but it was sleeping. Perhaps he decided, if he slid silently into the pool, it would not detect him. It was his only hope. A voice spoke inside his head again, but this time he knew its name, it was Fear.

"What are you doing here Rislo when you could have been away from this place hours ago?”

                            But Rislo knew that he had no option now. If he went back the mutated catfish might attack him in numbers. He would risk going forward. The giant slipped off his pack, boots and the heavy clothing which might have dragged him down. He bundled it all together and, with a truly gigantic effort, hurled it across the lake to the other side where it landed with a dull plop in the soft mud.

A yellow eye on the lake bed flipped open. Rislo slid his naked body into a silky coldness which quickly numbed all sensation rapidly. He moved his arms and legs slowly, attempting not to break the surface of water and bring whatever lurked below him, to the surface. He clenched his teeth around the orb light's shaft which held in his mouth.

                            Below him, another eye opened and pivoted upwards toward the surface of the narrow pond it had, for many years, inhabited. It was not blind, it could see clearly that something had been driven to its lair; and it was amused.

The giant breast-stroked slowly and carefully. He was almost half way across now and, so far, all was well. Then a foot broke the water and Rislo sought out the mind at the bottom of the lake. It was awake and alert! Its consciousness directed towards the splash!

                            Rislo decided that now was the time to really swim, splashing no longer mattered. He launched himself into a furious front crawl and began to devour the yards to the other side. He sensed was moving now, cutting smoothly through the water like a knife. Rislo dragged himself harder through the water, his muscles protesting at the brutal demands of his mind.

Now the yellow eyed creature underneath the giant, its lower jaw slowly opening, it twisted its long slender body towards the shadow at the centre of the bewitching pattern of lights it had watched gliding gently at first, now

sparking brightly across  the surface  of  the pool  it had never seen before, only felt.

                            It was not blind and it had been treated to a once in a lifetime sensory experience which now had it in an ecstatic rapture. It had no intention of eating this beautiful thing in its pond, it liked it and followed it, twisting and turning, gyrating – dancing, with a fluid grace only such a huge eel could, to the rhythms of the ripples of light it now could see. It was mesmerised by Rislo's light orb.

                            Rislo reached the far bank breathless and almost crying with relief. He had felt its terrible presence, felt its movement in the turbulence of the water beneath him. He looked back at the pool. A head the size of Rislo broke the surface. Two yellow eyes peered at him for a moment and at the leg that Rislo still had in the water. Then, with a slight flick of its head, it slid gently into to the water and back to its lightless isolation.

                            The Tallman dressed quickly and made his way to the cavern wall, searching for the well shaft that led to his goal. His heart still pounded his breath shallow and irregular. He had survived and now he tried to forget the terror he had felt by focussing on the task ahead of him.

                            Soon he found the dark crevice which marked the spot where the Tallmens’ well-shaft descended  deep into the bowels of Dubh from their city. Rislo looked up. It was considerably narrower than the one he had ascended earlier, its sides roughly hewn in the hard bed-rock, rather than being made of brick and mortar. But his ascent would be easier today up the rusty, steel maintenance ladder which was bolted firmly to the rock walls.

                            Even though Rislo had intended to enter the city during the hours of darkness the Tallman night, his curiosity got the better of him. It would be early evening up there and the Tallmen would be largely engaged in recreational activities, rather than being conveniently asleep in their beds.

But the chamber above him would still be deserted, he hoped. Panting, despite his relatively easy ascent, the giant reached the well-head. Cautiously he pushed the well-cap door. It was not secured!

                            He lifted the door a fraction and manoeuvred himself so  that  he  could  examine  the  entire  chamber. It was empty, it was deserted. Tools and equipment lay around the work tops, technician's robes were thrown untidily  about  the  floor.  Not  the   usual   fastidiously tidy state the chamber would have been left in at the end of a  shift.  At  the  far  end  of  the  chamber, opposite the entrance, a Field expander pulsed brightly as it dispersed its stored energy into the Field Walls. Along side it, the reserve machine stood ready.

                            To the right of these machines, a huge mass of gigantic cables entered the chamber from the generator halls of the Halls of Machines and disappeared into the charging room, where the electrical energy from the Halls was stored in the Power Reservoirs. The door was wide open and Rislo could see a discharged globe mounted and awaiting charge. In a few seconds he could be in and out of the chamber and away with his prize!

                            He took a deep breath and threw open the well cap door and leapt into the deserted chamber. The door's hinges squeaked noisily and flew open with a loud clang which made Rislo's heart stop momentarily. As he climbed out, his feet encountered something soft and he staggered forward and fell, twisting around to discover the body of a woman, a human woman, naked and severely beaten, lying in a crumpled heap against the well-cap, which protruded above the chamber floor.

                            Rislo slowly raised himself to his feet. There had been no Tallmen females in their societies, let alone human females, for centuries. They had disposed of the weaker, irrational sex once their science had allowed them to clone themselves. Freed of their burdensome sex, the Tallmen race had claimed to have escaped their biological strait-jacket  and  gone   forward   beyond   nature. Science was then seen as the partner of the Tallmen, their counsellor and comforter.

                            Thus Rislo was stunned that the woman had been allowed to enter the city and had obviously been brutally violated in the attempt to satisfy some sexual craving here in the City of the Tallmen. He had observed that  this place, its general standards, its own moral standards, had been slipping, but he did not believe that it could have already slid so far. It was a sanctuary from the perversity and corruption of the human world they shared here, things had slid yes - but this far, so quickly?

He had miscalculated; things had to be bad for him to find this woman here. The dark primal energies which had a possessed the bodies and souls of the human population were here. The Tallmen had  succumbed.  It was even worse than what he had seen himself.

                            His conclusions were confirmed when a naked Tallman lurched, staggering from behind the raised well head where he had been lying. He laughed at something unseen and then his un-focussed eyes came to rest on Rislo. His face and neck were scratched and bleeding and he slobbered uncontrollably and giggled in delight as his eyes moved to the woman.

                            He seemed to have forgotten the other Rislo's presence now his attentions now focussed upon the moaning human woman who he now picked up in his arms. He laughed at the look of fear as she opened her eyes, then threw her down the open well shaft. He stared blankly down the dark hole for a moment then, wiping the saliva from his chin with a forearm, attempted to secure  the door. He failed miserably, his hands no longer under the control of his drug impaired brain and collapsed on the chamber floor.

                            Rislo walked over to him and lifted the chin of his kinsman, his eyes were glazed and his pupils dilated. His arms where covered in sores and puncture marks, some old and some new. Rislo gritted his teeth, he knew such signs, but who had introduced such evils into the city.

                            A  shout  from  the  doorway  caused  him  to  whirl around. A small dark human looked him up and down and Rislo  deduced  from  Jonathon's  descriptions  that  the human was a High Hat. The caller smiled broadly. "Brother!" he laughed “can I ‘elp you! This is your lucky day, late, but still bargains to be 'ad. Dope and women still available, as you can see."

Rislo's eyes narrowed, he felt an anger boiling up inside of him. They were here! High Hat's in the Towers, the city. Plying their trade openly amongst his kind - corrupting them. What had happened over the past few days, had he been so blind in all his years here that he had never seen the disaster which was so close? He knew that the morals and integrity of his race had been failing, but to this extent, so suddenly? He had grown to hate his own people, but had never thought to see them fall so fast. The High Hat swaggered toward him, trailing  a young woman close behind him. "What'll it be brother.