Veniss Underground

by Jeff VanderMeer

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It will when it happens. You'll understand it when it happens.”

  “But why? Surely you must know.”

  “He doesn't tell me everything. All I know is, the city's in danger. We've got to get out of the city.”

  “Fuck the city. Have you seen Quin? The real him?”

  “Yes.” The voice of pride, despite the desecrated body. What must Quin be to warrant such twisted devotion? “He lives on the thirtieth level and . . .” He stopped, realizing his mistake.

  Shadrach smiled. “Take me there.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Nicholas led Shadrach down into the darkness—a hobbling, difficult descent because of Nicholas's condition. A dozen escalators, a half dozen elevators. Stairs. Ladders. They hugged the sides of tunnels, their faces stained green by maintenance lights. They ran through corridors deemed unsafe, this fact illuminated by the red glow suffusing such places. In the crimson haze, Nicholas looked as if he were bleeding to death. Such a light revealed the function and truth of things. They slunk always by the path that would least expose them to true light, so that when true light approached them, when it reproached them, it came as a shock. Throughout the journey—which Shadrach always remembered later as without sound and smell—they said not a single word to each other. For Shadrach, this was a blessing. He had nothing to say to Nicholas, and anything Nicholas said to him would only have angered him . . .

  Finally, they entered the ancient subway station that Nicholas had indicated was their destination. The station filled a huge hall. Its fluted archways rose like wings into the darkness of an upper level that smothered their delicacy. Sounds drifting up into that darkness were deflected, transformed into echoes. The weight of the upper darkness was held back only by fluttering globes of light that teased always with the notion of snapping into true illumination or snapping out of existence altogether.

  The station itself was old and grimy, the ticket office a rotted husk within which huddled the bent shapes of old machines that might once have been intelligent. The platform had rusted in the parts made of metal and eroded in the parts made of stone; travelers must, in the fickle light, be wary of turning an ankle or worse. The smell—one part leakage from the garbage zone, one part escaping oil—was always at a remove, as if a painting's true colors had been blurred, hidden beneath the patina of years of dust.

  Caught in this twilight world, each waiting traveler struggled through a fog of shadow, faces careening out of the dimness like pale and failing satellites. Each could have been waiting in an island of solitude and self-absorption for a hundred years; indeed, at first glance, he had thought the platform held a field of forgotten statuary.

  They held briefcases and canes. Heavy luggage lay sprawled at their feet. None of those who waited met Shadrach's stare as Nicholas led him through their ranks toward the tracks. But neither did they step aside, until he began to think of them as ghosts, lost souls, lunatics. In the gloom, his vision played tricks so that the farthest figures took on unreal shapes: icytheous heads, lizardous bodies, ornithologic limbs.

  It was, Shadrach decided, a hateful place. He wished only to be gone from there. Now that they had approached the tracks, the thick smell of gasoline met the station's musty stink. The tracks were situated in a huge trough that Shadrach assumed must conform itself to the shape of the train. Below, in between the tracks, creatures scuttled, at once like and unlike mice. He did not want to see their faces, for fear they might resemble the faces of the orangutan people in Quin's above-level lair. The creatures spun in and out of sight below Shadrach. They made little coughing sounds at one another, fought each other, and mated, oblivious to his stare.

  Dull red warning lights flooded their world. They ran into their holes; a train was fast approaching. The intense vibration and wind of it filled the station. Those who wore hats held onto them, while the travelers as one broke their statuary silence to murmur and mumble as they moved toward the tracks, until they were passed up behind Shadrach and Nicholas.

  “They don't fear you,” Shadrach said to Nicholas. He looked at the ground, still afraid to examine the faces of his fellow travelers.

  “We're so deep now that they've seen things much stranger, trust me.”

  The train, when it came, was a massive brute—its bulk filled even the dark upper level, more a space craft than a train. Its makers had instilled in its form no grace, no subtlety. It had been built for heavy work under rough conditions, and the only sign of beauty bequeathed to it was the reckless speed with which its blind bullet head barreled down the tracks. Shadrach thought it would rush on past the station, but then, casually, as if all one muscle, it stopped in a blink, put shutters on its speed, and idled there, eclipsing the tunnel. As it idled, every clattering, shrieking sound possible emanated from its multitude of orifices. It sat there shuddering, its body a ruin, great holes punched in its sides, like some monster from before the beginning of Time.

  The pitted steel doors of its multi-levels ground open. A smattering of very strange people disembarked—although not from the doors, but from the holes between the doors. The holes, it seemed, were larger than the doors, and therefore more convenient. Shadrach looked away as the last of the passengers stepped onto the platform. He wondered if his impression of lizardness, of fishness, might not be accurate. What would he see if he turned his head? Surely nothing as odd as Nicholas.

  “Watch your step,” Nicholas said as they entered the train. “There are holes in the floor as well.”

  The train contained nothing so comfortable as seats. They stood, each passenger staking out territory. The embarkees spread out between compartments until only three other people stood near them: a woman dressed in red, wearing a large red hat from which descended a veil that covered her face; a man with ratlike features who hugged the farthest corners, darting quick, nervous glances at Nicholas; and a puffy four-foot-tall shadow dressed in rags.

  The doors slid shut and the train began to tremble and shake. It groaned and snorted and complained in all of its metal parts. Then it seemed physically to rear back, before hurling itself into a darkness lit only by the red emergency lights. The sound—a thousand nails drawn across a stone surface, a million pieces of fatigued steel giving way at once—deafened Shadrach and he almost fell from the recoil, managed to cling to a pole of dubious strength, his fellow passengers' faces subsumed in blood, their eyes locked on the gun he had drawn and now held at his side. The train bellowed and leapt on its tracks, a beast eager for the hunt, and through a hole in the floor he could see the ground below passing by in a blur. He began to think that he must in fact have been captured at the organ bank and must be lying beside Nicola beneath the mountain of legs, and all the rest was only a dream.

  “You'll have to jump,” Nicholas shouted in his ear. The wind was fierce, the train still loud with the fury of its own passage. Enemy of entropy, might it not win free of the tracks, forge its own path through the wall of the tunnel?

  Shadrach twisted around to look at Nicholas. “Jump?”

  Nicholas nodded, compound eyes crimson. “It's the only way—you jump in about fifteen minutes. The train runs past an opening that provides a clear view of the thirtieth level. You jump right down into it. Otherwise, you have to climb down through fifteen levels. Much harder. You'd probably be killed even with your badge.”

  “I don't have wings!” Shadrach shouted back.

  “You'll use a parachute, of course.”

  “Where the hell do I get a parachute?”

  “There will be one coming along soon.” Nicholas grinned, showing his teeth.

  “What does that mean, Nick?”

  “You'll see soon enough. Be patient.”

  Shadrach glowered at him. His stomach was lurching from the rough ride. His nerves were shot. How far could he trust Nicholas?

  But three minutes later a burly man with parachutes hooked over his shoulder walked through, silent as the rest. Shadrach boug
ht two parachutes from him, offered one to Nicholas.

  Nicholas shook his head. “No—I don't need one. I'm not going.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I'm not going back!”

  Shadrach held up the gun. “You're going. Put it on. Now, where do we jump from?”

  Nicholas sighed, as if tired of resisting. He slowly began to put on his parachute. “Not from here.” He pointed to a man-sized hole in the right side of the compartment, behind which sheer rock and metal moved by at an alarming rate. “That hole is too small. There should be a bigger one three compartments down.”

  They walked three compartments down, Shadrach's gun digging into Nicholas' side. There was indeed a larger hole—and ten other people congregated around it. A ragged, sickly-looking band, some were hunched over, some weeping, some silent in evident despair.

  “What's wrong with them?” Shadrach asked.

  “Nothing. Never mind. It's not important,” Nicholas said.

  Shadrach took Nicholas's hand. “Tell me when and where to jump.”

  The speed was horrible—the ground beneath their feet moved so swiftly it made him ill.

  “You'll know it when you see it. Put on your parachute.”

  It took forever to attach his parachute properly; the straps and buckles mystified him. Meanwhile, the train began to descend sharply. The walls outside the train fell away and fresh air flooded in, smelling of impossible things: of flowers, of perfume, of nectar. Through the darkness, Shadrach thought he saw sparkles and reflections. The train banked right and caught three of his fellow jumpers unawares. They fell screaming.

  “Nicholas! They don't have parachutes!”

  “Of course they don't,” came the hiss in his ear. “This is a favorite spot for suicides. Now jump!”

  Shadrach heard something odd in that voice. He turned in time to catch the point of one of Nicholas's claws in his left side, where it scraped against John the Baptist, then dug into his flesh. He yelled in surprise. Nicholas slashed at one of his parachute straps, but Shadrach reflexively put his arm in the way, grunted as the claw entered his arm. Ignoring the sharp pain, he pulled out his gun.

  But before he could catch his balance, Nicholas shoved him—and he fell into the darkness, losing hold of Nicholas. He fired at the rough box of light that framed Nicholas. He saw Nicholas spin and fall out of the light.

  He stuck the gun in his belt as he spun, twisting through the darkness, surrounded by seven screaming suicides without parachutes. Above, he saw the red gaping holes in the bottom of the train. The train was bleeding light. The tiny faces of passengers peered down at him. Quizzical. Removed. The train vanished, eclipsed by one of the suicides. Darkness. The suicides stopped screaming. He didn't know where they were. He didn't know where Nicholas was. He tumbled end over end like a piece of wood. A foot hit him in the face, sent him reeling faster. The wails of the soon-to-be-dead resumed both above and below him. In his pocket, John the Baptist snarled furiously. He should apologize to the meerkat. They were going to die. Even before John's twenty-four hours were up. Then he remembered the parachute: it was the bulky thing clinging to his back in fear. He pulled at the ring. It didn't give. He pulled again. Nothing. He was at least halfway down. He could see shimmering particles of light below him. The hard wind that cut his face seemed like a premonition of a harder death. He yanked at the ring a third time.

  The chute opened and the straps pulled at him with vicious buoyancy. He bobbed right side up. John the Baptist's snarling subsided. He blinked, looked up at the enormous white mushroom cap that had saved him.

  And then the first suicide came tearing down through the parachute, smacked hard into his left shoulder. The muscles exploded with agony. The next suicide also split the parachute, but didn't hit him. Then they were all through and past, below him, still shrieking their lungs out. The parachute began to collapse and Shadrach still couldn't tell the distance to the ground. His speed began to increase. The chute was failing him. He began to hyperventilate. He wasn't going to make it after all . . .

  And then he hit.

  CHAPTER 7

  Shadrach regained consciousness to the soft caress of the parachute silk, which had settled across his face like a shroud. The smell of dirt and plastic. A coldness to the air. A stillness. He opened his eyes to complete darkness. He was already prepared for death, ready for the afterworld. Somewhere nearby, water lapped gently. He wondered if he should move. It was peaceful under the shroud. The shroud allowed him to relinquish all responsibility. He had not known such peace since he had left the sunlight.

  But then John the Baptist began to squirm in his pocket, and he remembered what he had come here to do. He sat up, still covered by the parachute. His throat was sore and his limbs creaky, stiff, but he had sustained no serious injuries. His shoulder throbbed and he had a terrible, piercing headache. Nothing like the loss of a hand, or an eye.

  He fumbled his way out of the parachute, released the straps, and stood up. He pulled his gun out of his belt, thankful it hadn't discharged on impact. Carefully, he reached into the other pocket, brought out John the Baptist, held him up to eye level.

  “Now that there's only darkness, you can come out. Are you okay?”

  The meerkat made a derisive sound, astonishingly human. “I'm not okay. I'm dying. And it's not dark—your eyes are just pathetically bad at retaining light. It's midafternoon under a blue sky in here. For me. You—you'll adjust eventually. By then I'll be dead.”

  “I hope you're right, John. But not out of any malice. If I could save you now, I think I would.”

  The meerkat sneered. “Because we have grown so close. Because we've learned to live together, despite our differences.”

  “No. Because I'm beginning to understand you. We'll talk again later.”

  He stuck John the Baptist back in his pocket.

  He still heard water behind him, but rather than fumble toward it blind, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The darkness was ignorant of time; it ate time as indiscriminately as it ate the light. Eventually, the darkness gave way to something that was not exactly light, but through which he could see, tinged a pale purple, the outline of rocks—a greater darkness—ahead of him. A faint suggestion of craggy ground.

  He swiveled around—to face the flickers and flashes of a vast inland sea. The shoreline lay a scant twenty meters from him. He sniffed the air: a tangy scent that spoke of summer gales and worm-riddled ships. A smell not unlike the briny scent of the canals. Slowly, the glints and ripples were revealed as the tips of luminous fins as slippery, bejeweled sea creatures slid through the water, followed at times by a length of luminous tentacle, suckers edged in gold. Beyond them, the water stretched to a horizon of black on black. There appeared to be no far shore.

  Sitting there, in the dark, he could almost fool himself into believing that he was above level, at dusk, with the canals all around him.

  But the illusion faded when, his sight still improving, he saw Nicholas. He sat to Shadrach's left and stared with his compound eyes at the water that undulated against the shore. His robes had fallen away, unmasking the ever–more complex and horrible things Quin had done to him. His hands were out at his sides, palms up. His lower half had been shattered by the impact with the ground. He was quite dead. In sodden little piles of blood and bone, various parts of the seven suicides lay all around him.

  “Nick, Nick, Nick,” Shadrach said softly. What a price to pay for weakness. Many men much weaker than Nicholas had gone through their entire lives without ever paying such a price. All of Shadrach's anger toward Nicholas drained away, leaving behind only sadness and a profound sense of guilt. If not for him, if not for him . . .

  After a few minutes, Shadrach put aside his feelings and stood up. It was time to find Quin.

  SHADRACH DID not know which way would lead to Quin, but he felt a certain affinity for the water, and so he followed the shore in a direction he thought should be north. He was prepared, now
that his objective was so close, to walk a thousand miles. He walked with his gun in his right hand, his badge in the left. He walked not like a fugitive or a thief, but like a man who belonged there and knew where he was going.

  The image of Nicholas's shattered body lodged in his mind like a ghost, while around him the perpetual night disgorged its mysteries as a magician might, and just as suddenly returned those mysteries to the unknowable realm beyond the limits of his sight.

  Slowly, he came to realize that if there were a Hell on Earth, it wasn't in the wastelands between cities, but here, on the city's thirtieth underground level. A thousand lost souls populated the land along the shore, condemned to wander until death. The first he encountered were like Nicholas, or close enough, that, used to compound eyes, flayed skin, the sight of internal organs bobbing like water canteens on the outside of the body, he simply ignored them where they sobbed and flapped in the shadows, seeking some release from their pain. Nicholas must have escaped from this limbo, happy to exchange it for the uncertainties of a garbage zone.

  When the rasping cries and fetid, sickly-sweet stench were well behind him, he pulled John the Baptist from his pocket and lashed him to his left forearm with parachute string.

  “You shall be my affliction, for all the world to see,” Shadrach said, and he looked at the meerkat with something close to affection. “How much longer do you have to live, Affliction?”

  The meerkat sniffed the air. “Nine hours, perhaps. But you have brought me back to the place of my birth. I used to play along the shore. It gives me strength. That, and knowing your day is almost done.”

  “This may be true, but maybe you'd help me just this once. Tell me how to find Quin.”