by Tom Toner
“Atoktoktoktokoueeoow did you get here?”
Furto had been half-convinced he’d dreamed the whole thing. He looked at the blurry blobs of the crew, knowing even though he couldn’t see it yet that amazement would be dawning on their puzzled faces right about . . . now.
“Hey, I can understand . . .” Slupe muttered, trailing off.
They stared at the being, heads pounding with the brightness and the noise. Furto wished they’d been allowed to stand in its shadow.
“Wheeeere in the Sovereignty have you come from? Which Ornament?”
None of them knew what to say. Before anyone could think of a reply, the great shape bellowed, deafening them, and Osseresis hands were holding them down, stripping them of their Voidsuits.
“Why aren’t you speaking for us?” Drazlo cried to Gramps, but the Bie had moved over to one side, to join the crowd.
The Invigilator pointed a blurred protrusion that might have been a finger at Veril, first in line. “More of them! Disguised as old Mempeople, this time.”
Furto saw that Veril’s ears had begun to leak blood. The volume really was unbearable. The oven-hot ground, baking through the soles of his feet, was becoming excruciating.
“If I may, Invigilator—” Gramps said in Reflective, amplified over the crowd, before being cut crisply off.
“I have had enough of spies this season!” the Invigilator roared. “They will go to the Domain, leaving today for Piris-Perzumin.”
“Please, Invigilator,” Gramps replied, “my wish is that I would like to go with them, to ensure they are tried fairly.”
The Invigilator sat motionless for a moment, Furto guessing that she was sorting through some great memory palace, looking to see if the wish had ever been asked before. After a moment longer, she bellowed her answer. “Granted!”
“She thinks we’re spies?” cried Drazlo as they were herded, naked and sweating, past the throng, towards the trees at the edge of the Radiant.
“Shut up,” the Bie hissed, pushing ahead. Drazlo and Furto exchanged glances, breaking away from the others and catching up with him.
“Couldn’t you have wished for our release?” Furto asked.
“You’re getting us out, aren’t you?” Slupe asked, joining them, his voice quivering. “We’re going home now, yes?”
Across the central basin, at the edge of the hazy trees, a party of small, dark mammals were waiting for them. They held between them a long sheet of material, and as the Vulgar walked forward, it was draped across their faces. Furto recoiled, stepping back to see a perfect imprint of his face had been left in the material, like a death mask. The whole thing had clearly been too much for Slupe, already at the end of his tether, who swore and screamed and ran full pelt for the edge of the woods.
Drazlo called after him, Veril and Furto giving chase. But Furto had eaten almost nothing since the day before last, supping instead from his supply of booze, and hadn’t the energy to run more than a few steps. He stumbled on the blazing white porcelain, a dribble of watery vomit hanging from his chin. Veril stopped further ahead, breathing hard.
They watched Slupe’s blurry little shape making its way across the white expanse, arms flailing, until Furto noticed a shadow descending from the treetops and gliding out over the basin.
“Slupe!” he shrieked.
The Vulgar hesitated, perhaps glancing up, before the great winged Osseresis came diving down and snatched him in its claws. It landed heavily, wings bent, and looked around, the glint of its eyes reaching them through the baking heat shimmer. The little figure in its claws wriggled uselessly. Furto felt his breath catch in his throat. The Osseresis bent and tore into Slupe, ripping a ribbon of flesh from the Vulgar’s back and chewing.
“Slupe!” he yelled, pushing past Gramps.
“Let Sussh eat.” Gramps smirked. “She’s been patient enough.”
Furto turned to Gramps, tears running down his cheeks, the rage bubbling up inside him at the sight of that smug, lizard-like face, and threw a punch. The Bie hissed and snapped Furto’s fist in his mouth, black lips peeled back, teeth clamping down. Drazlo and Jospor rushed over and disentangled them, blood running along Furto’s knuckles.
Gramps spat, his teeth still flecked with blood. “You want to find Maril? Then shut up and do as you’re told.” He pushed past them towards the trees. Furto nursed his bleeding hand, eyes straying to Sussh’s blurred form, watching as she continued to chew.
Drazlo looked at Furto’s hand, getting him to flex his fingers, and shot a glance in Gramps’ direction. “Bide your time, Furto,” he warned. “Let them think we’ll do as we’re told, for now.”
Across the concourse, the trees had been built upon, their bark and flesh scooped out into hollows and used for fine, spindly dwellings, perhaps belonging to the more privileged sector of Osseresis society. A huge black and white creature lurched out of the woods nearby, dragging a case of some sort along the ground behind it.
“Mail ship?” asked Gramps in Reflective, waving cheerily at it.
The beast, some kind of intergalactic postman, Furto guessed, still cradling his hand, nodded gruffly, quickened its step and dumped the metal case in front of them, indicating that Jospor and Veril should pick it up. They gaped at it until it aimed a slap at Jospor’s face, knocking him to the ground.
“Take the blasted mail!” cried Gramps, sashaying past. Veril hauled Jospor to his feet, ducking away from another of the postman’s blows, and together they heaved the case along the ground, the metallic squeal adding to Furto’s splitting headache.
Arriving among the trees, they saw that the surface of the porcelain had been cut away and a multitude of steps led down into its crust. Furto observed the individual, brittle layers of porcelain that made up the awesome structure, and looking down into the well of darkness he could just make out a blurry light.
They descended, calves aching after such a long-winded climb, the steps clearly built to the Invigilator’s scale. Down beneath the surface layer of the basin it was suddenly much colder, and Furto began to shiver violently as the sweat cooled on his skin. The mammals ahead were still carrying their bundle of imprinted paper, and the impression of poor, dead Slupe’s face, so perfectly moulded it was almost three-dimensional in the shadows, screamed silently at Furto. He couldn’t look away, and stumbled as they reached the final step.
“No more steps, please, no more,” Veril begged Gramps, who ignored him, his claws clacking unpleasantly on the ceramic.
Beneath them lay a web of interlocking bridges that stretched off into the gloom. Connected to each by a dozen or so buttresses was a long, spined growth, like a monstrous white seashell, its surface splattered with a crust of droppings. About half a dozen of the things hung there, one cut neatly in half, as if for maintenance. The cross section was a spiral hive of tightly packed chambers, each filled with beautiful white equipment. If they were ships, they didn’t appear to possess an engine, let alone the space for one. Already a gaggle of wingless Osseresis, roused by the approaching group, were swinging hammers and breaking the supports, freeing one of the ships. Furto looked past them, head swimming, the pain in his hand dulling. Beneath the shell-shapes there was nothing but blackness, a drop he’d assumed on the climb was a cave of some kind. But it wasn’t. He could see stars. It was space.
They had descended right through the material of the Radiant.
“If you all don’t get moving I’ll shove one of you off, eh?” Gramps said, startling them into life. The work team engaged in breaking the ship loose moved to the final buttress upon which the crew were standing and mimed a swing of their hammers, startling Furto and the rest of the Vulgar into a jog to reach the ship. A soft glow had begun to emanate from inside, and they set foot on a shit-caked spiral ramp that twisted around the ship’s surface to the open hole at its top.
Furto was handed the length of imprinted material to take inside, and folded the screaming faces away from sight, revolted.
“He
re, give me that,” said Drazlo beside him. He grasped Furto’s shoulder as he collected the sheet, indicating Gramps ahead. “I’ll bet it’s this ship he wants. He wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near it without us.”
“He framed us as spies?” Furto asked, his nausea building again.
“Looks like it,” Drazlo whispered as they drew closer. “And I reckon he’ll dump us first chance he gets, too.”
They had entered at the top, climbing gingerly in, and now suddenly they were walking on the horizontal. Furto looked behind him, seeing past the web of bridges and up through the well to the pinkish disc of light that was the Radiant’s sky. He placed a hand against the wall, steadying himself, as the pink light began to recede. Three seconds later and he could see the whole Radiant, followed soon after by the Snowflake itself. It was only when he could see all fifteen of the worlds surrounding a vast, spiked structure that he understood they were falling away with more power than anything the Amaranthine could have dreamed of. The Snowflakes and their accompanying world dwindled to specks of light, then bright stars, and a moment later, Furto’s eye could no longer make them out against the algal glow of the heavens.
When he looked around, Drazlo, Jospor and Veril were standing speechless beside him.
“No . . .”
“This can’t . . .”
“An illusion?” asked Furto, peering out into the star-lit darkness. “It’s all gone,” whispered Drazlo.
“I’ve had enough of strange things,” said Jospor, cringing against the wall, naked but for his boots, which had, for some reason, not been taken. He coughed and a glittering gust of flotsam drifted away into the cool air of the ship.
They moved cautiously through a spiral warren of clean white chambers, their ceilings crowded with unguessably elegant machinery that looked as if it had grown out of the ship’s material. The vessel’s pale, ethereal light shone all around them without any discernible source, and a sharp, pickled smell, like vinegar, pervaded the place. Furto expected Gramps to be lying in wait at every junction, but when they came to the tenth empty chamber, he realised the Bie must have gone on ahead, perhaps to wherever they flew the ship from. He wondered idly what mischief they might be able to do left to themselves, assuming hopelessly that the ship was in no danger from their tinkering.
Drazlo and Veril had already begun searching the chambers for anything they could use to defend themselves, but there wasn’t a loose object anywhere, and every piece of the inexplicable machinery appeared fused to its neighbour. At some point they found themselves walking upside down, following the curve of the chambers, as if whatever gravity existed here did so only beneath one’s feet.
A noise, like someone whispering, came from up ahead, and Jospor took off one of his rotten hobnail boots, holding it like a hammer in his fist. Drazlo motioned for them to stop, creeping on ahead. Furto didn’t know what they’d have done without the half-Lacaille, knowing that had he not been with them, they’d all have lost any frail semblance of composure long ago.
An even sharper smell was emanating from somewhere up ahead, a corridor of gloomy instruments designed for something much taller than a Vulgar, or even an Amaranthine. They watched Drazlo creeping, child-sized, between the huge banks of machinery, his ears pricked, moving far enough along the curve of the spiral interior that he was, to their eyes, standing upside down. He stopped, frozen, then turned a corner and moved slowly out of sight.
They followed, Jospor’s single boot rat-tat-tatting on the smooth, segmented floors. Furto came to the end of the corridor first. There was no sign of Drazlo; he hadn’t waited for them at the next intersection.
That vinegar smell was even stronger now, and Furto, Veril and Jospor glanced at one another, wrinkling their noses. The Prism as a species were perfectly used to bad smells, but this was something else entirely. It repelled them on a new level, as if whatever produced it ought to be avoided at all costs. A black, sickle-shaped object on the floor caught Furto’s attention. He bent to pick it up. It was a claw, fleshy at one end, as if freshly ripped out. He held it tentatively to his nose, withdrawing it quickly. The thing whiffed of vinegar.
Furto handed it to Jospor, too spooked to say a thing. As they passed it among themselves, then back to Furto. Veril cocked his head, listening.
“Shh,” he said, “what’s that?”
The ship itself was silent as a grave. Nothing gave the impression that they were travelling faster than any Vulgar had before. Between their breaths, however, Furto thought he could make out the sound of something dripping. It was a strange staccato sound, a splat-splat, splat-splat, like something viscous dribbling from a height.
They headed in the sound’s direction, Furto at the front and wielding the claw. The sour stench grew stronger still, and then abruptly weaker as the sound diminished. Soon they could barely smell it at all. Furto gestured for them to stop, ears twitching. The sound of footsteps, coming from behind.
Jospor and Veril turned, the former with his boot at the ready, to see Drazlo careening down the corridor after them.
“Run!” he cried.
They sprinted as fast as their tired little legs could carry them, reaching the shadows of a single unlit chamber. The air smelled quite strongly of vinegar again here, and Furto paused at the entrance. “What is it?” he said to Drazlo, coming up behind him. “What did you see?”
“No time,” he gasped, “get in.”
Furto smelled the sour whiff on Drazlo’s body as he came closer, noticing that he had dropped the stack of imprinted paper.
“Get in!” Drazlo hissed, and the hair on Furto’s arms bristled. Looking back into the chamber, he thought he could see the glint of eyes.
“What’s in there?”
Drazlo made to push him but Furto was ready. Summoning all of his lanky strength, he gripped Drazlo by the wrists and shoved the Lacaille half-breed ahead of him, a transparent bubble of film popping closed between them in the doorway as he fell forward. Lights blazed suddenly in the sealed chamber, instantly illuminating a gruesome pile of Osserine bodies, their faces frozen in the terror of a ghastly death. Drazlo stood, and Furto realised that the half-Lacaille was shaking with rage. “Open it,” he mouthed, his voice muffled by the material of the bubble.
Furto noticed, when he’d managed to drag his gaze away from the shocking sight of all those bodies, that under the chamber’s caustic lights, Drazlo’s face appeared swollen. Looking closer, he could see that the shape of the half-Lacaille’s nose and mouth were all wrong. It was as if Drazlo’s brother, or perhaps his father, were standing there instead. The person came very close to the transparent door material, cupping his hands around his eyes against the light, and peered at Furto. Furto backed away, having no idea what the bubble was made of.
Jospor and Veril appeared behind him, staring in at Drazlo. “What’s he doing in there?” Jospor asked, going to the door. “Drazlo?” They were staring, horrified, at the remains all over the floor.
“Don’t touch anything!” Furto cried, pushing Jospor’s hand away from the bubble’s glossy surface. “I don’t know how it opens.”
Jospor looked at him, mystified. “What?”
“That’s not Drazlo.”
The person was still peering at them all, his eyes in shadow.
Furto caught the other two glancing at each other, aware that they must think him mad. “Whatever you do, don’t open it.”
“Furt,” Veril said, “that’s Drazlo in there—”
“Look at him,” Furto pleaded. “Just look at him.”
Jospor gazed into Furto’s eyes, seeing the terror there, and glanced back in at the Drazlo-shaped person.
Jospor cleared his throat. “If that’s you in there, Draz—”
“Of course it’s me!” the figure cried, banging his fists against the transparent material. Veril flinched away from the bubble, the claw gripped in his fist.
“Answer some questions, then,” Furto said, “and we’ll let you out.�
��
The person glowered at him. “I’m not answering anything. Let me out.”
“Where were you born?” Jospor asked, peering through the glass.
The person stopped, staring back at him. “Stole-Havish.”
Furto felt his heart drumming in his chest. That was correct.
“Right, then,” Jospor said, reaching for the bubble’s surface. “It’s him.”
“Wait!” cried Veril and Furto in tandem. “One more question.”
Jospor glared at them. “That’s him in there, he got the answer right.”
The Drazlo-like person seemed suddenly drained, sinking to the floor.
“What did Gramps say to me about the flotsam that night?” Furto asked. “When they spoke to me?”
The person shot him a look. “Not to trust them.”
Jospor glanced to Furto, who nodded. “He did.”
“Well,” Jospor said, breathing a large sigh of relief, “let’s get this door open.”
Furto moved to the bubble, looking in. “Except Drazlo wasn’t there, was he? It was just you and me.”
Jospor, who had been working at the seal, stood back, mystified.
The person cocked his head, mouth working as he thought back to that night. A look of indignation began to spread on his strange, oddly formed face.
“Who—?” Jospor began.
“It’s Gramps,” Furto said, his fascination tempered by the horrific thought of what might have befallen the real Drazlo.
“What did you do to him?” he asked the figure, who had begun to bang his fists rhythmically against the floor. “The same thing you did to those creatures in there?”
“Let me out,” he muttered with each thump. “Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.”
“He can change himself? To look like other people?” Jospor was still a little behind.
“He’s the spy,” Furto said, cradling his bitten hand again.
The poor impersonation of Drazlo glared up at them suddenly, then reached for one of the Osserine bodies, dragging it over. He picked it up by the scruff of its narrow neck, gazing into its dead eyes.
