Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

“Let me give you a ride.”

  *

  Wind tore through Tavlin’s hair, and his eyes misted under the air pressure. His heart beat like an out of control engine. To each side roared the motorcycles of Vassas’s men. Tavlin himself sat in the sidecar of Vassas’s motorcycle, and the Boss hunched big as life on his mount, leading the armada through the streets. He would have taken Tavlin alone, Tavlin knew, but what with the war it wasn’t safe for Vassas to be out without protection.

  People scattered out of the way of the motorcycle fleet, but they didn’t run once they hit the sidewalks. Many waved or saluted. Vassas would occasionally indulge in a nod back to them. At least in this one quarter of the city, he was a beloved figure. He had brought peace and stability in an age of warring bosses. Of course, now there was war all over again, and the Octunggen were helping the other side. Tavlin couldn’t quite get his mind around it.

  At the moment, he didn’t try. All his thought was bent on Sophia. You’d better be all right, you’d better be all right, you’d better be all right.

  The armada pulled up to a stop in front of the Twirling Skirt, and Tavlin coughed at the sudden swirl of diesel exhaust and gravel. The Skirt loomed above him, light blazing out from beneath its peaked gables. A large hunter-snail slithered across its peeling facade and vanished around a crenellation, leaving a trail of slime in its wake. People gathered on the veranda, talking and socializing like always. Music flooded out through the open doors.

  Part of Tavlin sighed in relief to see the Skirt still standing. He had half-expected it to be razed or in flames, like the hotel in Taluush, or to see its halls running with blood, like the whorehouse there.

  But he didn’t see Sophia. She was not on the veranda, nor hanging out a window waving to him. He would not relax until he saw her, until he held her in his arm—however reluctantly on her part.

  He climbed out of the sidecar as the men around him cut their engines. The people on the veranda were staring at them expectantly, perhaps a touch nervously. Tavlin started to step away from Vassas’s motorcycle, toward the Skirt, when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Want us to go in with you?” Vassas said.

  “No. I’ll do it alone.”

  He marched up the stairs. People made way for him, their expressions curious or worried. He didn’t explain but pushed the doors open and moved into the parlor. Here the music had drowned out some of the sounds of the motorcycle fleet, but only some, and the people closest to the windows had gathered around the glass panes to watch, and others had noticed and were gravitating in that direction, too. Several raised eyebrows at Tavlin.

  Madam Abigail approached him. “What is it? Is there something wrong?”

  “Sophia. Where is she?”

  “Why, in her room, I suppose.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Only a little while ago. What’s all the fuss?”

  Tavlin found a narrow staircase and climbed upstairs. His breaths came short and shallow. He vaguely heard someone calling to him, but the sound seemed distant. Everything seemed distant, lost. Everything but his goal.

  He reached the room he shared with Sophia and wrenched the door open. He paused outside, breathing hard, trying to get his mind straight, then stepped inside.

  It was a small room, and the cracked window shone strange pale light across the narrow bed and aged boards.

  The room was empty.

  A note lay on the pillow. Tavlin snatched it up. Written in a firm, masculine hand, it read: AN EXCHANGE. YOU FOR HER. COME TO THE FACTORY BY NOON TOMORROW OR SHE DIES. SLOWLY.

  Tavlin was hardly aware of Boss Vassas and Frankie helping him down through the halls, out to the waiting motorcycles. He was even less aware as Vassas shoved him in the sidecar and the fleet roared off again. He clutched the note tightly, and it was only around the time they returned to the Wide-Mouth that his fist began to unclench.

  Vassas forced him up to the study again, and there they sat drinking some more while Vassas, Frankie and Galesh read the note.

  Tavlin smoked a pipe with trembling hands. When he wasn’t smoking, he drank. The drink seemed to steady him, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

  “The bastards,” he said, over and over again. “The fucking bastards!”

  At last, either because of the alcohol or because enough time had passed, he felt the shock drain away, replaced by clear, cold sobriety. Despite the whiskey, he felt as sober as he ever had.

  “I have to do something,” he said.

  Vassas and the others watched him.

  “You back?” Vassas said. They had been talking amongst themselves, Tavlin realized.

  He nodded. “I’m back. And I have to do something.”

  “What can you do? You can’t give the fucks what they want. Whatever weapon they’re trying to build, you can’t just hand it over to ‘em.”

  “Fuckin’ aye,” said Frankie.

  Tavlin eyed Frankie and Galesh. “How much did you tell them, Boss?”

  “Enough,” Vassas said.

  Tavlin sighed and nodded. Some of the tension was draining away, but strangely it wasn’t replaced by relaxation, only more tension. A different sort. The kind that endured and existed under everything, until the source of the tension was gone.

  “They want you to show ‘em where the briefcase is,” Frankie said. “That’s why they want you. Well, whatever the fuck is in it, you can’t let ‘em have it. You can’t go.”

  “He’s right,” Galesh said, leaning back against a wall and smoking a foul-smelling cigarette. “The Octunggen can’t be allowed to complete their mission. It’s obviously part of the war effort, something designed to cripple and destroy Ghenisa, maybe beyond. Somehow the people of Magoth have been helping. Maybe they have ancient knowledge, passed on to them by religious writings or even the old races who once bowed to Magoth.”

  Tavlin thought about it. “That makes sense, I suppose. But the worshippers of Magoth wouldn’t be helping the Octs out of good will—at least, I don't think so. They must be getting something in return.”

  “What?” Vassas snorted. “Listen, we can figure all that shit out later. Right now we need to come up with a plan.”

  “Maybe we can break Sophia out,” said Frankie.

  Vassas glared at him. “Did you see what the Octs did in the next room? And that was just one of the bastards, with one weapon. No way are we attacking their stronghold.”

  “Boss is right,” Galesh said, predictably. “We can’t attack them at their factory. But maybe we can attack them outside of it. Wait them out.”

  “If we wait, Sophia dies,” Tavlin said. He drew down a long pull on his pipe, and thoughts started to take shape in his head. “But maybe we can coax them out.”

  “Coax?” Frankie said skeptically.

  “You don’t coax Octunggen,” Vassas agreed.

  Tavlin looked him in the eye. “I have a plan.”

  Chapter 11

  Mist swirled around Tavlin as he approached the factory, and he spat at the acrid taste. This is not a good idea. Of course, he had no one else to blame for it. The idea was his. Gritting his teeth, he stepped nearer the factory. It had no windows, only a solid bank wall of stone and mortar, poorly laid, with a thick metal door set within it. The setting was rough, and Tavlin could see rugged stone glistening in the mist around the door. The door itself was thick and heavy, coated with brilliant verdigris.

  He rapped on it experimentally.

  There came a pause, then pops as locks were thrown, and at last the great metal door ground open, and amber light spilled out from the interior. Shapes stood silhouetted against the light. The lead one was bald and square-shouldered.

  “You made it,” issued the deep voice. “I was beginning to worry. For her sake, of course.”

  “Of course,” Tavlin said.

  He removed a gun from his pocket. The bald man—Havictus—did not move. In one motion, Tavlin pointed the gun at his own head and pressed it to h
is temple.

  “Release her or I spatter the coordinates of the canister all over the ground.”

  “I don’t think any of us want that,” Havictus said, his voice without inflection. He drew back, and the other shadows pulled back with him. “Please, come in.”

  Gathering his resolve, Tavlin stepped through the entrance and into a sort of receiving room. The walls were irregularly-spaced stone overgrown by lichen. Slugs sucked and slithered all around. One glowed with a pink-red light. Lamps hung down, illuminating the cold stone halls. Tavlin received the impression of large rooms adjacent to this one, huge dark spaces filled with strange machinery just barely hinted at by the faint light coming from this room. A dozen men occupied the chamber with him, and they gave him plenty of space.

  They did not look particularly Octunggen. A few boasted the black hair and gray eyes of the Octunggen ideal, but many had brown hair, or blond, and there was even a man with bushy red hair and beard. They were a hard-looking lot, anyway, and Tavlin wouldn’t want to cross any of them.

  They all seemed to defer to Havictus. “Welcome to our humble home,” the bald man said.

  Tavlin stepped into the center of the room, gun still pressed to his head. He was all too conscious of the cold metal digging into the flesh of his temple.

  “Where’s Sophia?” he said.

  “You will see her only when you have shown us where the canister is.”

  “I can draw you a map right now.”

  Havictus shook his large head, once. His full lips pursed and he said, “No, that will not do. We must have the canister in our hands before your woman is released.”

  “What assurance do I have that you’ll do as you say?”

  “Well, there is that gun.”

  “You want me to actually take you to the canister?”

  “But of course.” Havictus spread his hands. “When that is done, your woman and you will be released.”

  “To feed the fish-things, I suppose.”

  “You will have to trust us. It is the best I can do.”

  Tavlin nodded. He had expected as much, but he didn’t want to let on. “Then let’s get this over with. And don’t anyone try to get too close.”

  “You’re not afraid your arm will tire?”

  Tavlin smiled grimly. “Not at all.” The truth was that his gun arm was already beginning to grow weary. Oh well. Sophia had better appreciate this.

  Havictus and the other Octunggen showed Tavlin down a hall to a large room whose lights were off. The beam of light from the hallway illuminated the trapdoor. One of the men opened it, and others descended the ladder to ready the boats below. Soon Tavlin heard motors chugging, and then he was motioned toward the trapdoor. He made the Octunggen back off several yards—he would have to use both hands on the ladder—then climbed down to the docks. A boat waited for him, and he stepped into it, feeling the rocking movement below his feet, smelling the brine and stink of the lake. It was warmer down here. Sultry.

  He placed the muzzle back to his temple.

  Havictus and the others scaled the ladder and stepped into their own boats. At last a hooded and bound figure was forced down the ladder and into a boat—far from Tavlin.

  “Sophia!”

  She cried something back at him, but her voice was muffled by some gag. Nevertheless, he recognized her voice. Some part of him relaxed, but only barely. She’s alive. He held onto this thought with fixed determination.

  Havictus took up position at the bow of Tavlin’s boat. The engine idled, and smoke curled out.

  “Where to?” Havictus said.

  Tavlin pointed. “That way.”

  Havictus nodded at the boatman, who manned the motor, and the boat sped off in the indicated direction. The others trailed along behind, Sophia’s boat at the rear. The stink of the sewers enveloped Tavlin as the alchemical lanterns that subdued the stench faded behind. Some of the men broke out nosegays, but none offered him one and he wished had had thought to bring one along. The old ways of the sewers had really left him, it seemed.

  He pointed down a certain hallway, and the boatman took it. He pointed down another and another. Soon he felt disoriented. He only knew certain routes down here, and in his haste he had left them. He asked the boatman to travel down a particular channel, and from there it was easier. The motors roared loudly off the tight stone walls, and when they moved through the larger spaces flails would whip around them, dripping mucus and slime. Occasionally some white thing breached the dark waters, expelling vapor or tainted fluid.

  Tavlin’s gun arm grew even heavier, and he had to alternate hands. Sometimes he would sit down on the boat’s bench, propping his elbow on his knee and shoving the gun up under his chin. Havictus sometimes glanced at him worriedly when the boat took an especially sharp corner, and he would give the boatman stern looks. After that the boat would move more smoothly for a time.

  Frequently a man in the second boat called the others to a halt. He would stand up, cradling a device with several complicated-looking antennae sticking up from it. It beeped and buzzed, and he would shake his head or nod.

  “He can tell when we’re getting closer,” Havictus explained. “We’ve been combing the sewers for days without finding it, but we’ll know if you’re leading us wrong.”

  “It never crossed my mind,” Tavlin said. Actually, it had, but he had been afraid—rightly, apparently—that they would know if he lied.

  The convoy resumed moving, and Tavlin continued giving directions. At one point, he shouted over the roar of the engines, “What is it? What is in the damned canister?”

  Havictus turned from facing front to look back at him. The bald man’s bushy eyebrows rose, but there was no humor in his icy blue eyes. “Death,” he said. “Only death.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Havictus hesitated, then sort of shrugged, and Tavlin could guess his thoughts; Havictus was already planning to kill Tavlin anyway, so why not pass the time by talking?

  “It’s a formula,” Havictus said.

  Tavlin screwed up his face. “A … formula? Like in math or science?"

  "I guess."

  "But it’s a container for a liquid!”

  “It’s like no formula you’ve ever heard of, Tavlin Two-Bit, or could conceive of. But it will destroy all you know.”

  Tavlin smacked his lips. His mouth had gone dry. “And the worshippers of Magoth are helping you, what, develop it?”

  “Oh, no. The people of Magoth have lost the technology, the resources, to develop the formula, but we have them. But only Magoth itself can activate it.”

  “Magoth …” Tavlin shook his head. Havictus spoke as if the god were real. “Why are you giving cultists some formula?”

  “Their gods and ours are allies. No more talking.”

  “Don’t want to waste any more words on a dead man?”

  Havictus gave him a look, and it was so cold that Tavlin shuddered. In that moment he knew he was right, that the Octunggen had no plans to release him and Sophia. Not alive, at any rate. This came as no surprise.

  “Just point the way,” Havictus said, and his voice could have withered a rose.

  Tavlin pointed. The beeping of the machine grew louder, but it often hissed and fizzed, and sometimes the beeps would become warbles, and sometimes they would fade altogether. The machine clearly was encountering interference from something, or perhaps it simply didn’t work very well. Nonetheless, if one listened closely, one could hear it steadily marking the proximity of the canister. Tavlin supposed it could sense the canister’s extradimensional signature or some such thing.

  Tavlin guided the fleet forward until at last he reached the intersection he’d been looking for.

  “This is it,” he called to Havictus over the roar of the engines.

  Havictus made cutting motions to the other boats. The Octunggen stopped their engines, and the boats idled forward into the intersection. Mist rolled slowly away from the boats, the whitish swirls illumin
ated only by feeble lamps. The whole place stank of ammonia and waste, and something unnatural breached the surface of the water fifty feet away, hooted, then went under again. Tavlin received the impression of many stalks and fins, and eyes where there should be no eyes.

  “We’re here,” he said. “It should be right below us.”

  Havictus raised a bushy eyebrow at the man with the divining machine, who analyzed his gadget and said, “I think he’s telling the truth.”

  Havictus ordered the others to begin the search. Several lifted long metal poles with hooks on the end of them and dredged the water, hoping to snare the handle of the briefcase, while others swept the area with nets. Tavlin tensed in the stern of the boat, shooting frequent looks at Sophia. She was still and quiet, and too far away for his liking.

  At last an Octunggen hauled up a dripping, reeking briefcase, and the rest let out cheers. A broad smile spread across Havictus’s pocked face, and he turned shining eyes on Tavlin.

  “Now,” Tavlin said. “Release Sophia.”

  Havictus raised a pistol and pointed it at Tavlin’s face. He started to squeeze the trigger.

  Tavlin, who had expected this, knocked the gun wide and in the same motion brought his own gun up. Havictus chopped the wrist of Tavlin’s gun hand with a stiff-fingered motion, and Tavlin’s gun whirled away. Tavlin sprang forward and tackled the other man to the deck of the boat.

  Around him, battle broke out.

  Boss Vassas and his men had waited, lurking in the darkness beyond the intersection just as Tavlin had instructed, and now they burst out of the shadows, their boats shoved by oars, men and women standing in the bows firing long bursts into the Octunggen with rattling machine guns. Arcing shells ejected into the water. Several Octunggen pitched over the sides, blood spurting from their wounds. One of these was the man holding the dredged-up briefcase. When he fell into the channel, he dropped the briefcase and it vanished back into the water.

  The Octunggen leapt toward their weapons and fired back. Gunfire echoed off the tight stone walls, and the intersection quickly filled with gun smoke to mix with the exhaust of the engines.