“You just pause along the way,” she says. “Let your eyes adjust. Plus, I bring snacks.”
“Snacks?”
“For the meaties.”
“The meaties? Recycler monsters?”
“Recycler?” Casamir repeats the word a few times, as if trying to get a taste for it. “Yes,” she says.
I yell back down at Das Muni, “Are you secure? I can’t see you.” I tug on the rope and feel resistance. “Das Muni?”
I hear a squeal. I jerk on the rope again. “Help me,” I tell Casamir.
She takes the rope behind me, and together we pull. “Das Muni!” I yell.
More squealing. I hear “Meatmoth!”
I pull faster. She isn’t heavy, but my muscles are already spent. I hear a roar: the fearful cry of those terrible recycler monsters. My skin prickles.
The pulling takes an age. Das Muni’s squealing continues, high and warbling. I can see the top of her head.
I release the rope with my good hand and reach for Das Muni’s arm.
She turns her head up to me, and in the light of the moths, I can see her clearly for the first time.
Das Muni’s face is flat and angular, and though it is smeared in heavy grit, I can see that her eyes are enormous, twice as large as anyone’s I’ve seen. Her cowl has fallen off her head, and I can see her hair is stringy white, but she is not old. Her skin, though paler than mine and Casamir’s, is unmarked. Her ears stick out from her narrow little head like great leaves, nearly as large as her small hands. She is skinny and pallid and clearly unlike anyone else I’ve seen in this world, even Casamir, who is squat and round and broad in the face, freckled though it is.
I jerk my hand away. It’s an unconscious movement, but it happens, and she sees it. Her expression is so sorrowful, my heart clenches. I grab her wrist. I turn my face away from her as she heaves herself up. Casamir helps, and between the two of us, we get her into the corridor.
Another roar sounds from below us. Das Muni grabs me and holds tight. She is a hot, bony mess of a thing and I find myself thinking of insects.
“You’re all right,” I say, but I can see in her face that she knows I don’t believe that.
“I NEVER THOUGHT I’D NEED ANYONE’S HELP TO COMPLETE THE CONVERSION OF THE MOKSHI TO A FREE WORLD. BUT INDEPENDENCE IS ONE OF THE GREATEST DELUSIONS OF YOUTH.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
19
ZAN
Casamir picks up a lantern from the floor and shakes it. The moths inside flutter, emitting soft light. I see that the lantern is made of bone and organic green mesh.
“This way,” Casamir says.
Das Muni and I follow Casamir through the low tunnel.
“It opens up here,” Casamir says. “Stay close to me. Stay in the light.”
“Why?” I say.
“It’s dangerous outside the light,” Casamir says.
I move toward her. Das Muni’s fingers dig into my flesh. Her nails are long and ragged.
“Creatures?” I say. “Like the monsters down there?”
“Huh?” Casamir says. “No, it’s just that the walls aren’t as solid in the dark.”
“What?” I say, because I think I’ve misheard her.
“Just stay close,” Casamir says.
“Where are you going?” I say. “We need to go up to the next level. I fell a long way. There could be dozens of levels between me and the surface.”
“Yes, yes,” Casamir says. “Let me take you to the conclave first. They can help.”
“I say I need—”
“What you need is the help of the conclave of engineers,” Casamir says. “They’ll know more about the . . . levels. You put your case to them. They’ll listen.”
“You won’t?”
“Oh, I’m happy to listen,” Casamir says. “I love stories.”
“You don’t believe a word of what I’m saying.”
Casamir sighs. She turns, holding the flickering lamp aloft. She is cleaner than Das Muni and me, and now, outside of the recycling pit, I’m becoming aware of my own stink. I see that my hands are filthy, the grime worked into the seams of my skin.
“A lot of people get thrown away,” she says, “for whatever reason. Whatever story you need to tell yourself about what happened—”
“There was an attack,” I say, “the Bhavajas have taken over the whole world. The Katazyrnas are—”
“I haven’t heard of either of those families,” Casamir says.
“But the Katazyrnas rule the whole world,” I say.
“Not my piece of it,” Casamir says, “and not any piece of it I know. We’ll get this worked out in the conclave. Are you hungry? I have apples.”
“Apples?”
She pulls a spongy tuber from her pocket. It’s covered in green cilia. “Delicious,” she says. “Try it.”
I shake my head, but Das Muni grabs it with both hands. Sniffs. She takes a big bite and chews thoughtfully.
“You know what that is?” I ask.
“No,” Das Muni says as she takes a second bite. “But it tastes all right.”
Casamir leads us farther down the corridor until it opens up into a vast chamber. I gasp as I look up, not caring what Casamir thinks of that, because the ceiling is webbed in what looks like porous bone carved into intricate triangles. Moisture drips from the ceiling, and the ground below us is covered in a shimmering green carpet. It takes me a moment to realize the carpet is moving. They are shiny insects. Their bodies make a soft shushing sound as they skitter around our feet.
Das Muni hisses and draws away, but Casamir waves her forward. “They’re harmless,” she says. “Beetles are a good sign. It means the floor is still stable here. That can change. Come on.”
We hurry after her. Moths alight on my body. I try to brush them away, but after a while, I give up. There are too many of them.
“What do they eat?” I ask.
“Each other, sometimes,” Casamir says. “But mostly the parasites in the walls. And the beetles eat the moths. It’s all connected, just like us and the world.”
As we continue, I see signs of human habitation. Bony protrusions stick up from the floor, and a long braided hair rope connects them. Little wooden clackers are attached to the ropes. When a warm, subtle wind rises in the room, the clackers plunk together, sounding an alarm or music or signal, I don’t know which.
There are discarded bits of cloth and rotten, ragged mops of woven items, toys or baskets, collecting in long fissures in the walls as we pass.
“What are these?” I ask.
“Memorials,” Casamir says.
“Shouldn’t it all be recycled?” I say.
“It is,” she says. “The walls eat it eventually. You only throw something down the pit that you never want to see again. This way, we have some time, you know?” She glances back at me. “Maybe you don’t know. Huh.”
“It’s just different where I’m from,” I say.
“Sure,” Casamir says. “We have a ways to go. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
“No,” I say.
“No?”
“No.”
Das Muni says, “I will tell you where I’m from. I’m not from this world.”
“You’re just a mutant,” Casamir says matter-of-factly. “I think saying you’re from another world is a stretch. There are plenty of mutants, you know, people not born right, people the world messed up.”
“I am from another world.”
Casamir shakes her head. “You two are so very interesting. The conclave will love you.”
I’m liking the idea of the conclave less and less. “Why don’t you just point us in the right direction?” I say. I gaze up again, but the ceiling is higher now, still lined in the same bony pattern. Getting up there on our own is going to be difficult. And then what? Hack our way through? Burn our way up?
Casamir chuckles and shakes her head. “I am offering a hand in friendship,” she says. “You should
take it.”
“No one offers a hand without wanting it filled with something,” I say.
Casamir does not reply. We arrive at a wall of debris blocking our way. It looks like the ceiling above collapsed; I’m staring at long planes of the bony ceiling, twisted and broken and gooey. The pieces have fused together like a healing wound, leaving behind great puckered scars along the surfaces where the pieces meet.
Casamir pulls a bone knife from her hip and pricks her finger. She draws three curved lines on the surface of the scar.
I wonder if it’s an offering or a ritual as the face of the debris begins to bubble and slough away. A thick wedge of the skin pops open, and there’s a woman with a tangle of dark, braided hair who holds it open for us. She squints at Casamir, then sizes up me and Das Muni.
“More filth,” she says, and ducks away, leaving the door open.
“Lovely to see you again too, Andamis!” Casamir says, and waves us inside.
A wave of heat and sound rolls over me as I cross the threshold. I come up short, so quickly Das Muni bumps into me. I hear her sharp intake of breath.
Sweeping up and out for as far and high as I can see is a vast, bustling city. It’s a riotous mass of humanity; women clustered together over trading tables and walking across a complicated network of bone and sinew bridges that crisscross the space above us. Lining the walls are living spaces and workshops, their residents clustered on the walkways outside their domiciles, hanging laundry and whistling after little clusters of creatures. There are at least a dozen types of animals here, some knee-high and hairy with one big eye at the center of their heads. Another is hairless, mostly mouth and teeth, and a school of them waddles awkwardly ahead of a woman herding them with a long reed. The ground should be smeared in filth from all these creatures inhabiting one space, but when I look down, the floor isn’t slick; it’s lined in little fleshy nubs, like a tongue, and its absorbing everything the city feeds it.
“Welcome to Amaris, City of Light,” Casamir says.
A light drizzle is falling. I hold up my hand and rub a bit of it between my fingers. It’s viscous, like mucus or saliva. “What is that?” I say.
Casamir laughs. “Rain,” she says. “Have you never seen rain? Goodness, you are far gone. You must have been down there even longer than I thought. Your sanity probably isn’t salvageable.”
I gaze into the darkness above us. “Water?”
“Mostly,” she says. “It’s good for you. Good bacteria for your gut. Only way to make it here.” She pushes ahead.
But it is the light that is most extraordinary. The light and the heat. The moths line the bridges, the byways, the tables. They flutter onto the intricately styled hair of the women here, all of it braided and stacked so it looks like they’re wearing great hats. Above us float great balloons. They are attached to long ropes, and they ferry passengers across the upper levels of the city in baskets. Yet most of the light and heat come from great round bulbs, large as heads, mounted along the walkways and in front of every dwelling. They are filled with clear liquid, and inside swim tiny orange beasts with delicate tentacles. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, inside each sphere, and they emit both heat and a brilliant orange light.
I stare long at one as we pass, leaning in for a better look, and Das Muni tugs at my sleeve.
“Don’t look too close,” she whispers. “The light will steal your soul.”
We get a few curious looks. Das Muni raises her cowl again, and I don’t blame her. I wish I had one. The crowd babbles as we pass, speaking a language I don’t recognize. I glance ahead at Casamir. She is a solid woman but nimble on her feet, and she clearly knows this place well. The crowds don’t part for her so much as they resign themselves to her momentum.
Casamir takes us up a series of bone steps, then across one of the swaying bridges. Das Muni refuses to cross it unless I hold her hand, and being hungry and yearning for a bath, I sigh and take her greasy palm in mine. She is trembling. I glance over at her but cannot see her expression inside the deep hood.
“See what I’ve got!” Casamir says, calling into the doorway of one of the houses. I call it a doorway, but there’s no actual door, just the opening. I wonder how anyone has privacy here, but as we enter, I realize the first room is just a sitting area. There’s another opening on the opposite side of the room that leads deeper into the dwelling.
“Wait here,” Casamir says, and she takes this door while Das Muni and I wait in the outer room.
“This is a bad idea,” Das Muni whispers. “Too many people.”
“Better than Meatmoth,” I say.
“No,” she says. “I understand Meatmoth. How she breathes. How she walks. Her hungers. Here . . . people are complicated. People don’t act in normal ways.”
I look for a place to sit. My leg is bothering me again. There are benches carved into the wall, made of the same spongy stuff as the rest of the world. I sit and stretch my leg out. “We’ll see how it goes,” I say. “We can always leave.”
“Not always,” Das Muni says.
I hear raised voices in the rooms behind us. Casamir’s optimism about our reception may have been premature.
“All I want is a bath,” I mutter.
“I can lick you clean,” Das Muni says.
I stare hard at her, trying to figure out if she’s serious. Talking to her is like listening to broken pieces of my own memory tangling together. If Casamir weren’t here to confirm that Das Muni is real, I might think I’d made her up entirely.
Casamir hustles out of the back room, arms wide. “We can’t stay here,” she says quickly. “I’ll take you to the holding rooms until the conclave can see you.”
“If they don’t want us here,” I say, “I’m happy to go. Das Muni and I can find our own way up.”
“No, no,” Casamir says. “This is very important. I promise, just have some patience. You’re hungry, aren’t you? How about we get you cleaned up? We can get you some new clothes.”
We walk back down to the main floor, past trading shops and clusters of women boiling and steaming and weaving and sewing various bits of the world and its castoffs. Most people share Casamir’s squat build, but there are some taller, thinner people with different clothing and hairstyles, and it occurs to me this must be some kind of trading hub.
“You sell what you find below?” I say. “You’re scavengers?”
“Explorers,” Casamir says. “I’m among the best.”
Two women stand outside what I finally recognize as a door. It’s not a fleshy door, though, but metal. I peer at it, as it’s the first metal I’ve seen here. It surprises me that I know the word for something I have yet to see, but there it is in my memory. Cold, hard stuff, inert, nonsentient.
Casamir grins at the women and rattles something off in another language, the same one I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of as we walk. The women argue with her. Their expressions are grim. But Casamir continues, spreading her hands wide, grinning all the while, shifting from foot to foot. Something she says convinces them, and they grudgingly grip the large handles on the door and pull it open. There is a terrible shriek, and then it slides into the wall.
I can’t decide if behind every door is a new wonder or a new horror in this place. Perhaps both. The skin of the walls inside here is scorched and peeled back to reveal more metal walls and tables and compartments. There are dozens of women in here wearing long aprons who tend tables chock-full of artifacts. The material here is more clearly nonorganic. Not all of it is metal, though. It’s hard, slick material, like bone, only less porous. They are constructing strange things with all of these things, stringing bits together with tendons and grafts of human skin. Whatever they are making in here, it makes my own skin crawl.
“What is this?” I ask Casamir.
She waves to some of the women, calling greetings in that other language. “We’re engineers,” she says. “I told you I was an engineer. Well, training to be one, anyway.”
&nb
sp; “What language is everyone speaking?”
“Oh, it’s the human language.”
“But . . . we’re speaking human right now. All languages are human.”
Casamir laughs. “Some languages are more human than others,” she says. “We trade a lot with other people, so I know, I don’t know, a couple dozen languages.”
“A couple . . . dozen? How many people are here?”
“Lots,” Casamir says.
As we move to the back of the room, I see great bone cages full of people. I recoil. They are heavily disfigured, naked. One is completely blind, both her eyes gouged out.
Das Muni shrieks when she sees them.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Casamir says. “Those are enemies of the conclave. It’s all right.”
One of the women in the cage snatches my sleeve. I try to jerk away, but her grip is strong. Her face is a map of wrinkles. Her thinning hair has been shorn short. She has only one arm, and one of her feet is missing.
“I remember you,” she says. “You destroyed everything I love.”
I get my sleeve free. “Who are you?” I say.
Casamir pulls me away. “Oh, that’s nothing. They’re nothing. They just speak nonsense. They’re mad. Don’t worry about them.”
“Where did they come from?” I ask.
“Here and there,” Casamir says. “Here’s your holding room.”
She pushes a bony protrusion, and a door blooms open. I find myself relieved to see something that reminds me of the world above.
Inside are two raised platforms, some folded woven blankets, and what’s likely a waste receptacle. I step inside and turn to ask if I can have a bath, but the door is already closing.
“No!” Das Muni says, and hurls herself at the door as it huffs closed.
I think of the workshops and skin and tendons outside and my stomach sinks. It may not be a cage of bone, but it is still a cage. This is what happens when you trust people. More the fool, me. I should have learned better from the Bhavajas and their sick cunning. This is a place where you eat or you are eaten.
The Stars Are Legion Page 14
