The New Weird (41 page)

The worm-woman indicated the pools. "Freshwater lakes formed deep among us. We recoiled from the water and erroneously left it open to the air. And the Insects began to breed. We tried to stop them. We kept fighting but, as our numbers diminished, we found it harder to cover the ground. Generations after generations of larvae decimated us, so we sought shelter under the surface. From there we Shifted to find a new world to colonise. as many worlds as possible from the construction of the Insect's nest."

The Vermiform woman dissolved into a snake and slithered to rejoin the main mass. "We hope the Gabbleratchet might destroy some Insects," it added. "Brace yourselves. We will try to shake it once and for all by retracing our steps."

We looked around for the Gabbleratchet, in the cloudless sky, against the rounds of the moons, among the peaks of the Paperlands and directly down to the lake beneath us.

I thought I saw something moving in it! I blinked and stared. Something was swimming in its murky abyss. It became darker and clearer as it rose close to the surface. It moved with a quick straight jet, then turned head over tail along its length and disappeared into the depths.

"What the fuck? What was that?"

A flash of green on the sheer rock face below us. The Gabbleratchet hurtled straight out of it. Empty white pelvic girdles and scooping paws reflected in the lake.

Cyan screamed. The Gabbleratchet turned; it knew where we were.

"Now!" The Vermiform lifted us off our feet, through ―

― Plennish ―

― Infusoria Swamp ―

― Sauria ―

― Precambria ―

― Epsilon Market ―

― Somewhere dark.?

Somewhere dark! Cyan cried, "Are you there?"

"I'm here, I'm here!" I felt for her hand. I opened my eyes wide, just to be sure, but there was not one shred of light. Then, seemingly in a vast remoteness I saw a faint glow, a thin vertical white beam seemed to.
walk
past us. It stopped, turned around and began to hurry back again with the motion of a human being, though it was nothing but a single line.

"Where are we?" I demanded. "You said we were going back to the Fourlands!"

"Stupid creature! This
is
your world. We want to hide for a while in case the Gabbleratchet comes."

"But."

The Vermiform said, "This is Rayne's room. That is Rayne."

I think the Vermiform was pointing but I couldn't see anything.

"She is pacing back and forth. She's anxious; in fact, she's panicking. Can't you feel it?"

Curiously enough, I could. The intense emotions were radiating from the white ray and putting me on edge. "But what's happened to her? That's just a thin line!"

"Hush. If we see the Gabbleratchet's sparks, we will have to leave fast. This is the Fourlands, the fifth to the eighth dimensions. You occupy those as well as the ones you're familiar with, seeing as you've evolved in a world with ten. You can't see them with your usual senses, but you do operate in them. We are amazed that you never consciously realise it."

Close by, Cyan shouted, "It's talking crap! Tell it so, Jant."

"Hey, it's interesting."

The Vermiform harped on, "Emotions impress on the fifth dimension, which is why you can sometimes sense a strong emotion or see an image of the person who suffered it, in the same place years later. What other examples can we give? Acupuncture works on the part of you that operates in the sixth dimension, which is why you'll never be able to understand how it works with the senses you have. And the seventh, if only you knew of that one ― "

Cyan screamed, "Take me home! Take me home
now!
Now! Now! Now!" I could hear her thrashing and kicking at the flaccid worms.

"Think of it as a shadow world," I told her.

"You goatfucking son of a bastard's bastard's bastard!"

We waited for a long time. The Vermiform eventually said. "I think we've thrown off the Gabbleratchet. Let's go."

It gave us a small jolt and our worm-bonds dropped to the floor. Off-balance I stumbled forward ― into Rayne's bedroom.

The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines

THE GUTTER MOVES AMONG MEN like the waft of a deadly chemical that has assembled itself in human form. He stinks primarily of brine. But there are other smells that fortify his breath; and his body, too, reeks powerfully of dreadful odours.

There is no telling the liquids with which he has soiled himself, but the oddity of their collective hue on the front of his smock is as ominous as it is filthy. Yet it is more than repulsion that causes people to maintain their distance. His face is a living image of nastiness, with a perpetual scowl that could easily be mistaken for a deformity. And there is a hunger in his eyes ― more feral than human ― that betrays an insatiable need for satisfactions that lie far beyond the tastes of ordinary men.

The Gutter walks the streets of the City of Thrills, the second city of the Republic of Noth. On his back he wears some kind of apparatus: a leathern harness holding what looks like a milk churn. A thick, heavy slosh accompanies his steps, the sound of something fleshy and fetid. On more than one occasion a City Arbiter, tapping a studded cosh on the side of his leg, has thought about stopping the Gutter and investigating the contents of the churn. But the stench of the Gutter has convinced him otherwise.

The Gutter is aware of this, which is one of the reasons why he allows himself to smell so badly. The violence of his aroma is an excellent deterrent against the curiosities of linear men.

The City of Thrills is an aborted geometry of narrow streets, decaying arcades and dim-lit porticos. A shambles of buildings lean simultaneously in all directions. The mangled brickwork and shoddy masonry interact as if by accident rather than design. Depictions of naked revellers, cosmic symbols and chimerical beasts adorn the lower portions of each edifice, adding an unexpected life and colour to the amplitude of disrepair. It is the custom of artists that inhabit the city to embellish its walls with expressions of beauty over uttermost states of dereliction.

The walkways under the porticos are abuzz with wineries and debating chambers, artists' missions and fetish clubs, drinking studios and pleasure galleries. There are few establishments equipped for catering for practical needs. Artisans and ironmongers are outnumbered by craftsmen working with soft metals and precious stones. Butchers and bakers are diminished by gastronomic deviants capable of producing absurdly delicate pastries and marinated meats. An illustrious drapery of precious cloths hangs ragged over the entrances of the numerous guilds.

And the Gutter fucking despises the place.

He passes through one district to another, of which there are three: the Carnal District, the Cymbeline District, and the Cerebral District. The Gutter is on the edge of the Carnal District. He passes several girls attired in reptilian sex-suits whose hair is braided with live snakes. When he passes them, even the snakes recoil at the sudden blast of the stench he bears.

It makes him smile: and, when he smiles, you can see how he has removed his teeth with a set of tongs for the purposes of sucking up his foodstuffs with greater efficiency.

But now the Gutter is growing restless, his glances darting like sparks from his eyes, and his gums chaffing with slavers on his lips. He is looking for a particular door with a particular sign carved upon its lintel, but not so visibly as anyone might see.

Within two or three hours of conducting his search, he discovers the sign ― a cleft circle ― over a heavy door made of parched oak. It is the sign of the Information Syndicate. The Information Syndicate have offices throughout the entire continent, but finding them isn't so easy. It is often said that the whereabouts of the Information Syndicate is their most precious commodity. But, if and when you find them, they will sell you information at a price that is equal to the value of whatever it is you wish to know.

But the Gutter doesn't think he'll have to pay, because the Gutter doesn't have any money. He does, however, have a currency that serves him better.

The Gutting Knife.

The Sisters of No Mercy were up against a dangerous adversary.

Whorefrost.

Whorefrost was utterly reviled by female Meta-Warriors because of the extreme nature of his preferred method of killing them.

He had a pale, bloodless physique that looked like gelatine rather than flesh. His skin was smooth and greasy and largely hairless. His arms and belly seemed to consist more of muscle than fat only by the slightest of margins. He was big but not ungainly, with a huge mouth, thick-set lips and heavy jowls that swung pendulously as he walked.

Whorefrost's movements were deliberate and glacial. His preferred method of killing was exactly the same. First, he would try to disable his enemies by shattering their kneecaps, breaking their arms or stunning them with a carefully measured blow to the head. His Weapon of Choice was suitably designed for this approach: a heavy metallic baton forged in the shape of a gigantic penis. His aim was to keep his enemies alive for as long as it took to satisfy the requirements of his bodily ritual.

And this was the part that female Meta-Warriors reviled the most.

Death comes in many guises, some of which are more desirable than others. Death by Whorefrost is perhaps the most undesirable of all.

Should all things go according to plan, Whorefrost's enemy will be lying in a stupor of helplessness before him. It may be necessary to make them even more helpless than they already are, but this is a formality. As long as they're not
too
helpless, Whorefrost is happy.

And happier, still, when he begins to remove their clothing, which he does with a ponderous delicacy that ensures the maximum arousal of his vital parts, which are by no means a source of arousal for his victims.

Whorefrost's cock is long and thin with a remarkably bulbous head that makes it look like a bauble on the end of a stick. His testicles are disproportionately huge and, like the rest of his body, hairless. More to the point, his egg-sac is teeming with semen that has an unusual potency: it is deadly cold and, to this extent, is biologically devastating.

Whorefrost's sperm is as thick as pus. It is also capable of causing the spread of frostbite within seconds which, when it spreads, causes a slow and insidious destruction of the body, from inside out, that lasts a matter of minutes or even hours.

Extreme cold burns like fire.

When he has dumped his seed in his enemy's nook, she feels a sudden numbness that, by gradual stages, begins to burn. The numbness is like a chill of ice which rapidly diffuses with the forcefulness and feel of acid. The acid sensation quickly grips the womb and begins to spread throughout the internal organs ― the bowels, the guts, the spleen, the stomach, the kidneys and so on. The insides begin to boil, then become gangrenous and begin to rot. A further stage of numbness may occur, but only after a lengthy period of emphatic suffering that no other pain in the world can equal.

Which is why Whorefrost is especially reviled by female Meta-Warriors. But which is also why he is
more
reviled by their male counterparts.

An anal ravaging is bad enough at the best of times. But when Whorefrost is doing the buggering, the degeneration of the anal cavity, followed by the deterioration of everything else, is not a thing to be taken lightly.

It is apparent, then, that the Sisters of No Mercy were up against a dangerous adversary.

And the only comforting thought about it was.

So was he.

The stairwell was in darkness. It smelt of damp plaster, mildew and dry rot. The stairs curled upwards in a crooked spiral. Sometimes they sagged. Sometimes they stiffened. Sometimes they increased their steepness. Sometimes they almost flattened out. Sometimes they seemed so brittle that they would break. But they didn't. There were no landings, no doors, except at the top.

The room at the top of the stairs was a room of shadows. Two men lay on either side of the doorposts, their limbs twisted, their bodies soaked in blood around the chest, midriff and thighs.

They had died quickly. Too quickly. Their cries had been silenced before they could summon the breath to make them. Two broad cuts across their throats had silenced them forever.

These men had been assistants to the Information Master. Their true purpose in life, however, was to act as his protectors.

Clearly, they had failed.

The Gutter had the Information Master by the throat, the Gutting Knife poised against his belly.

"Rest assured," he said, "that you
will
speak." He cocked his head. "Unless, of course, you prefer to be gutted."

The Information Master wheezed because the Gutter was gripping his throat too tight. The Gutter slackened his grip.

"Speak," he said. "Or." He applied a miniscule amount of pressure on the Gutting Knife.

It was enough.

This time, the Information Master didn't refuse to tell the Gutter everything he needed to know ― about the Psychomatics, about where he must go to find them, and about where he might go to finish them off.

"So this is the fucker who likes to fuck all the other fuckers," said Little Sister.

"Looks like he's fucked himself with a fucking claw hammer." Big Sister scowled like her mouth was full of sour milk. "His face shows years of experience of being ugly."

Whorefrost smiled, and it was, as Big Sister had said, a truly awful sight.

"I will take great pleasure in dipping my oar in your waters," he said, rubbing his baton against his groin to emphasise the point.

"The only thing that'll be getting dipped is our blades in your blood."

Little Sister drew her long sword. Big Sister drew her short sword.

Whorefrost unstrung his greatcoat made of wild heifer and threw it behind him. He was bare-chested, his torso glistening like a chunk of lard. His tight pantaloons showed the full measure of his excitement. It was big.

"Pretty soon," snarled Little Sister, "we'll be ramming that cock of yours down your own fucking throat."