Veniss Underground

by Jeff VanderMeer

  HE KNOCKED on Rafter's door.

  A hesitation, and then the door opened, and Rafter stood there. She stared at him with a mixture of horror and awe.

  “Is she—is she still here?” he asked.

  Rafter frowned. “You're just in time to ruin her life again. She's conscious and walking.”

  “Walking?”

  “Yes,” Rafter said. “Come in.”

  Rafter led him into her waiting room. Nicola sat on a couch. Her face was haggard; she stared at the floor. Her legs were a ghoulish white, but intact. Her hair fell in straggles across her face. Rafter had dressed her in black pants and a plain white shirt. She looked like a person newly born.

  Shadrach tottered, almost fell, but managed to sit down beside her. For him, that moment would define the rest of his life. He let his gaze linger. He drank her in. He stared at that which he had never thought to see again.

  Rafter left them alone together, the look on her face unreadable.

  “You look terrible,” Nicola said in a raw voice. “Are you okay?”

  He fumbled for her hand, took it in his. She felt warm to his touch, and her warmth invaded him. He didn't feel capable of speech, his sentences all unraveled and incomplete.

  “Rafter says,” Nicola rasped, then coughed, started again. “Rafter says you've seen into me. You've read my mind—you've been me.”

  Didn't you feel me there? he thought. Was I no comfort to you? But all he said was, “I thought it was necessary to protect you.”

  “What did you see there?” She stared into his eyes.

  “Beauty. Courage. Intelligence.”

  She looked away. “And ugly things, too, I'm sure.”

  Shadrach shrugged. “No. Not really.”

  “But you saw, Shadrach. You saw? You know?”

  Shadrach nodded. “I know.” Pain, yet that bittersweet relief in acknowledging it.

  “I'm sorry, Shadrach. I'm sorry if I've hurt you. Rafter says you've saved my life. Rafter says I would have died without you.”

  “She exaggerates,” Shadrach said. He had a sudden flash of seeing her again, buried within a mountain of limbs, and shuddered. “How do you feel?”

  Nicola blinked twice, closed her eyes. “I feel very tired. I ache all over. I'm thirsty all the time.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we should walk. We need to get to the surface. We need to get you into a hospital.”

  “I can try,” she said. They stood up. Nicola almost fell. Shadrach grabbed her shoulders with both hands. They swayed there together.

  “Careful,” he said.

  She hugged him. Her hair still smelled of the organ bank.

  “Don't leave me,” she said.

  Shadrach laughed bitterly. “I won't. Don't worry, I won't.”

  Rafter had returned, stood by the door. She glared at Shadrach, said, “You must be careful. She'll be disoriented for a while. She may not make sense. She'll be weak. She'll need care. Afterward, she'll be close to herself again.”

  Nicola said, “Nothing will ever be the same.”

  “It will be completely different,” Shadrach said. “That's not a bad thing.”

  AFTER SHADRACH had paid for Rafter's work and Nicola had said her good-byes, they began to walk toward the terminus for the next level. Rafter had given them a map. Nothing so beautiful as a Quin map—just scribbled lines and words on a scrap of paper.

  Only a few minutes into their journey, Nicola said, “I'm tired, so tired,” and staggered against the wall.

  “Sleep then, Nicola,” Shadrach said. He lifted her off her feet and began to carry her.

  When they were safely in an elevator that would take them to a higher level, her breath on his shoulder soft and even, he allowed himself to relax a little. It began to seem that they would make it.

  Later, as they continued their slow progress upward, she woke, her breath shallow, her grip on his shoulder sharper.

  “Thank you,” she said dreamily as she got to her feet.

  The second level beckoned from beyond the elevator. Here, people didn't flinch away from them. Stores were open. Women walked with their children. The pale light did not hide monstrosities. It seemed that the real city, the city of sun and horizon, must be close by.

  “Thank you for what?” he said.

  “For saving my life.”

  “I didn't have a choice.”

  “I don't believe that, Shadrach.”

  “But it's true. I love you,” he said hopelessly, the back of his throat sore.

  “I know you do,” she said. And then: “Nicholas is dead.”

  “Yes. And Salvador. And Quin. They're all dead.”

  “I knew my brother was dead,” she said. “I couldn't sense him anymore.”

  She shuddered while Shadrach held her close, still amazed by her presence, there, in his arms.

  EVEN AFTER she had woken up, Shadrach supported her weight at first, held her up, let her lean on him. From the second level, they still had to walk to the disembarkation point, which was really above the city, rising out of the city's wall so that those who came through would get a full view of Veniss. They would have to hope the guards along the way would honor Shadrach's badge.

  As she grew stronger, he grew weaker. After they had successfully passed the next checkpoint and neared the ramp leading to the surface, he began to feel faint. He leaned on her, and she held him up. She stroked his hair. “It's okay,” she said, “it's okay.”

  The final checkpoint before the ramp consisted of a dull gray wall of some hard metal. Embedded in the wall was a guard protected by three layers of glass. The guard, they could see even from far away, was a meerkat. Shadrach stiffened, reached into his pocket for his gun, even as he readied his badge and identification card. His alarm proved unfounded. What had looked menacing from a distance was less so in the flesh—fur mangy, a lost look on its face, its voice low and dull. It waved them through with just the slightest of glances at the badge. The stiff metal doors released, a space opened in front of them. Shadrach could smell fresh air coming from the darkness ahead. They walked through and stood on the ramp. Behind them, the wall became solid again.

  AS THEY struggled up through the shadows of the ramp, some part of Shadrach still doubted they would reach the outside world. He thought he heard the sound of something at his back, stalking them. “Don't look back,” he whispered to Nicola as she now leaned on him again. “Don't look back.” Their steps were so slow, weighted down with a terrible anticipation. The steep ramp seemed to have no end. Shadrach imagined he could see bits of glowing graffiti on the walls to either side: A child in the dark, a kiss in the dark; remakes the world in his own image; the weave and warp of flesh. But when he blinked, rubbed his eyes, the walls were bare.

  Shadrach's thoughts became wide and deep. Walking upward, even if only, it seemed, from one darkness to another, reminded him of when he had first come above level—the first time he had seen Nicola. The look on her face in that moment—had it been happy, sad, reserved? He tried to remember, even as he seemed to hear more footsteps behind them. Perhaps it was wistful or melancholy, or a bland smile that indicated a blank attention to duty.

  As Shadrach had emerged from below level, from the darkness of which a lack of love was only part, he had wanted only the light, not love. Nor did he allow people to stand for symbols—how could he, living in a darkness where people were often just a touch, a scent, a voice? Abstract symbols could never comfort him in his despair, in the aching of his body for something better. His loves before Nicola had sometimes just been a voice and a gray-tinged body in the dusk of before-death that comprised the hovels and split-levels of the poor. And everyone below had been poor.

  Perhaps, he thought, as tiny lights broke the darkness of the ramp ahead of them, it had been the sadness on her face. How much in common would he have had with a woman whose life also appeared to be a tragedy? No, it was not sadness that drew him to her. He'd k
nown more sad and ruined people in the mines than he cared to remember. He had known love as a voice and touch, surely, but also a desperate coupling in the dark for a moment of release, of freedom from below level. A rare thing. A precious thing. It could transport you out of time, so that the world had no hold on you.

  A hint of fresh air. Nicola's body leaning against his.

  So perhaps he had believed in symbols after all—perhaps the frame of light as he ascended that first time drew him to her as it touched her body: blind moth to blinding flame. And maybe it was just this: When he came up into the light, the light shone upon her and she was not perfect. She had a face a trifle too narrow, a dull red birthmark between her thumb and forefinger, hair framing her face in tangled black strands. Such perfect imperfection, and he fell into her eyes because now, and only now, could he believe in this new world into which he had been reborn. It was populated with imperfect, beautifully imperfect, strangers, and how it had broken his heart that first time—to know that after so much darkness, the light could be so real, so alive. Not perfect, but real—all of it, the world, the woman, his life.

  He felt the wind on his face and heard Nicola say, “It's the stars . . .” and realized that she too had not known until that moment that they were looking out at the night sky, slowly working its way toward dawn. He had not seen the sky for so long that the stars were each and every one a revelation to him, a new way of seeing the world, like the first time.

  They stood at the top of the ramp, which overlooked the city. It glistened with lights.

  “It's beautiful,” she said.

  And deadly, he thought. The city was a strange, hidden place with a white bridge and a gravel path. The city was a place of intermingled species, of minds. Was this evolution? He recalled the intricate beauty of the caterpillar map. He recalled John the Baptist's stoicism.

  Down below, he could see the thick, cool aqueducts of the Canal District, the sides of the canals lined with lights. The world was silent. It seemed to him that the silence hid, and would forever hide, a living, breathing mystery. No matter that the city would eventually build a protective skin over this riddle, so that it would be but the dim red of a beating heart seen through milky tissue. No matter that, if Nicholas was right, the city was filled with a thousand unturned keys, ready in the lock, always just a gesture, a color, a sound away from clicking into place. The particular hue of a chemical sunset. The guttural command of a private policeman. The farewell kiss of lovers on a canalside beach. Of all the signs and symbols in such a chaotic city, which would be the one to unleash Quin's circus upon the world? Or would they stand forever at the ready, awaiting a command from a ghostly hand?

  Ahead of them, stairs led down into the Veniss. Behind them, Shadrach heard the footsteps, the rustling, getting louder. What had come up with them from below level?

  He pulled Nicola behind him, whirled around, hand on his gun, and saw . . . nothing. No one was standing in the mouth of the ramp. Just shadows. A kiss in the dark. He had imagined it. The man living in the belly of a giant fish. The real and the unreal had finally traded places.

  Then and only then did he allow himself to cry: silent tears that ran down his face, dripped off his chin, fell to the pavement. He wept for the pain of his ordeal and for what he had had to do to rescue Nicola. He wept for his parents, who surely must be dead, and for Nicholas, stupid, a fool, led astray and discarded. He wept for his former self now that he had changed in so many ways and could not yet comprehend the half of them. But most of all, he wept with relief—that Nicola was alive and that he was alive with her.

  But even though he hurt, and even though it was such sorrow to look upon Nicola's bruised face, and even though most things would not, as Nicola had said, ever again be the same, it was joy, not pain, that finally buckled his knees and brought him to the end of his endurance. He lay down against the rough stone of the ramp, staring up at the stars, wordless. Nicola sat beside him, together but alone, her hand in his as she looked out over Veniss.

  At dawn, he knew that they would walk down into the city, not sure what they would find there, but knowing it must be better than what they had left behind. He knew that memory would make the past easy, by blurring the details and distorting time. He would grow old to this. He would become sentimental. He would forget he had become a murderer. He would forget many things. But he would never forget that he loved her, despite that niggling thought, which he would never be free of: Had he done enough? Could he have done better?

  Still fighting it, still not sure, Shadrach closed his eyes and slept for the first time in seven days.

  VENISS STORIES

  THE SEA, MENDEHO, AND

  MOONLIGHT

  Above Mendeho Obregon an incandescent moon shone, eclipsed from time to time by the lumbering shadows of interstellar freighters as they took the I-wire up and down from Veniss. Always, they headed for the city, whose lights curved away from him down the almost silent beach.

  Mendeho listened only to the call of gull and lurcher, the strangled choke of meerkat at its kill. Saw only the vermilion sea, studded with tiny glints, glares, ripples, and the strobes of squid. He blinked away a tear as he watched, the moisture collecting in the wrinkles of his face. It was forty years since he had last seen the ocean at night.

  Mendeho had his eccentricities—the cane he used to conquer his rheumatism, for example, when a simple y-scan could have nipped it without so much as an operation. When pressed, he told his cousin, “I want to remember pain, to know I am alive.” His cousin, an I-wire tech named Onry, had stared blankly at him, keeping his own opinions to himself and his link.

  A rustle caught Mendeho's ear: the sound of tiny scuttling feet. He squinted against the moonlight, finally saw that thousands of fiddlers were scouring the beach in a living wave of carapace and claw. Whatever dead tissue had washed up during the day would be devoured.

  Mendeho smiled. The bioneers had not yet reconstructed the fiddlers. He was glad. Once, long ago, his great-great ancestors had stood offshore and cast nets to catch such creatures. For the raw protein. At least, the family records told him so.

  A rare in-system shuttle rumbled into view, a clot of lights soon swallowed by the city's intense glow. It would land in one of the cool-down canals that had given Dayton Central the nickname “Veniss.”

  The thunder scattered fiddlers, sent night waders up in a flurry of leathery wings. Waves died at the shoreline and a weak bluster of wind whipped Mendeho's unfashionably high collar against his neck. Already, he had defied the curfew for service citizens; the double placed in his bed would not fool the solimind forever.

  And for what? He laughed, kicked at the sand with his good leg, leaning on his cane. A midnight skinny-dip? He squared his shoulders, assumed the straight-backed posture that had aided his swimming stroke and, later, helped him survive two sections at the academy years and years ago.

  Mendeho's grip on his cane tightened, fingers clenched. The sea—the color of the sea—was so dark tonight, despite the occasional flash and sparkle. The fiddlers had returned and, beyond them, bathed in moonglow and wave, dolsynths slid through the water as smoothly as a solimind shuttle. The wind felt good, having picked up (probably at the solimind's request), and he took halting steps down from the dunes, silhouetted against the city's continual splendor. The fiddlers froze, not knowing what to make of him.

  Perhaps poor Julia had been right, he thought, breathing faster than he would have liked. Perhaps defying the solimind would have been too dangerous, but he had been willing to try . . . Later, he saw Julia for what she was—a component in the system, chip-simple. Meanwhile, his approved wife bore and bored him with four children, as requisitioned. All four were linked before their first birthdays. What use for a father then? Onry told him he was lucky. Since the Diaspora Plague, some had had to bear the burden of five or six children.

  And all the while Mendeho diligently oversaw the production of shuttle emulsifiers and clogshop units, choking on
the taste of dust-dull work.

  The fiddlers compromised, clearing a space around him, perhaps hoping he would die and leave plenty of protein for their eager mouths. He shooed them back. Then, staring at the sea, Mendeho let his cane fall to the sand with a soft scrunch. The buttons of his gray shirt and pants popped free as he undressed himself. His shoes with their sticky adhesive had already been discarded and soon he wore only a pair of jet-black briefs. He took a deep breath through his nose, swiveling his shoulders. For a man of sixty-seven, he had a firm body, with white hair that crawled across his chest like stringy seaweed. Mendeho smelled the salt spray and smiled, content with his decision.

  Often he had swum when he was younger, in the old days when the restriction of a triplehand badge was unnecessary. The rule took all the fun out of it—exactly the solimind's intent. “Safety first,” it proclaimed on vidolos where it paraded and pouted, taking on the disguise of mother, father. The worst irony? Life was ordered, everyone richer, more comfortable than before. The freighters docked graceful as ballerinas under I-wire control and the clockwork universe humankind had created for itself out of chaos ticked on oblivious to strife.

  But Mendeho Caranza Obregon, son of Juan Carlos VII, son of Juan Carlos VI, could not marry whom he wanted, could not set his own job requirements, and—most important at that moment—could not even swim in the ocean. And this thing he was determined to do before his death. If they would not let him swim at Dayton Central, then he would swim here, where Earth regained some guise of the natural, where the meerkat could play amongst the dunes, and out at sea dolsynths romped through deep water.

  Mendeho Obregon told himself he was stubborn, and found that he was stubborn. A light shone from his eyes, in the set of his mouth, the outward thrust of his chin. He limped toward the surf, fiddlers skittering from his path. The city lights shrank and the sound of airborne traffic became muffled. There was only the sea in front of him, the living carpet of arthropods, and the rising wind. And, above all, the gutted and pockmarked moon, still transcendent on a night like this one.