by Jack Conner
“What then?”
“Go upstream.”
She agreed and guided them upriver. When she had gone far enough to avoid a welcoming party, she angled them toward shore and the lights of the coast drew closer.
Avery found the one bullet that hadn’t passed cleanly through Janx, the one in his side, threw it overboard and began sewing up the internal damage. His body rocked as the boat skipped across the choppy water, but he kept his hands steady.
“Lusterqal,” Hildra breathed.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Avery saw skyscrapers and other great structures, all shimmering with an early-morning glow, turning them red as blood, marching off to the horizon. The towers loomed, vague and monstrous in the thick, humid air.
Avery concentrated on finishing work on Janx. Only when that was done did he allow himself to study the approaching city. They all did, even Janx, though he had to blink his eyes to keep them open. A great forest of tall dark spires mounted toward the sky like mountains, their upper reaches engulfed in clouds, clearly separate from the lower urban sprawl that surrounded them. As he drew closer, Avery saw that the towers were square-hewn and massive, monolithic, as if to make those who lived within feel insignificant, mere servants to the greater machine that was Octung. He and the others had avoided the populated areas of Octung for the most part, sticking to the country and the waterways (and staying on the boat as much as possible when it passed through a city), so the sheer scale and busyness of it all was doubly shocking. What was more, many of the buildings themselves seemed strange, almost organic, eerily shaped, or glistening, or just wrong somehow. Almost monstrous.
As Layanna piloted them toward a dock, Avery injected Janx with a mild stimulant to get him ambulatory.
“Don’t move,” Avery told him. “Till you have to.”
Janx grinned. “This is nothin’.” But Avery saw him clench his fists so tightly his nails drew blood from his palms.
“Here,” Avery said, readying another injection, “this should help.”
Janx shoved the needle away. “No. No godsdamned drugs.”
“But the pain—”
“Is better’n bein’ dead.” Janx glared at him, then sank back. In a lower voice, he said, “I need my wits about me, Doc. Few as they are.”
Avery nodded and replaced the syringe in the medical kit.
Hildra squeezed Janx’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. There was genuine pain in her eyes as she looked at him with his pale face and clenched jaws. He had lost a good deal of blood.
“It’ll be all right, hon,” she whispered. “It’ll be all right.”
Hon. Avery had never heard her call him that before. Maybe she had, but not in public. She and Janx had shared a cabin aboard the Surugal, just as Avery and Layanna had, and neither of the couples was platonic. In fact, Avery and Layanna had several times vacated their own cabin because of the noises coming from next door. And yet it was more than just sex. Nancy. Hildra wore Janx’s old harpoon head Nancy around her neck. It was not exactly a band on her finger, but there was obviously something deep between them.
Janx merely grunted. “These papercuts don’t worry me. That worries me.” He nodded at Lusterqal.
Layanna piloted them into an empty slot amid the docks, and she and Avery tied the boat to the posts while Hildra helped Janx sit up, slowly. When Avery had finished, he helped her get the wounded whaler onto the docks. It ended up taking all three of them, and by the end of it, panting, Avery saw fresh blood seeping from the stitched-up wound on Janx’s side. He swore under his breath. Janx needed rest and healing, not this.
Janx caught his scrutiny. “I’ll be fine, Doc.”
“This way,” Avery said. He led them up the docks. Janx hobbled forward, Layanna supporting him under one massive arm, Hildra the other. Hand clutched around the gun in his pocket, Avery took point.
Fog rolled along the shore, churning and red by the light of the dawn. The clouds were breaking up above. To either side reared two great factories that spilled out over the water. The docks occupied the space between. Huge metal scaffolding and machinery jutted out from the factories and things like massive needles plunged downward into the river; Avery heard the chugging noises they made and saw the strange lights and fluids filling the clear tubes. The needles sucked up the fluids and hoses carried them into the factories. Teams of workers manned the needles and hoses outside, all wearing gas-masks and plastic suits. Above, jutting from the factory roofs, chimneys oozed yellow gas into the atmosphere. The gas rose high and fanned out, forming an unnatural cloud, and from it strange deposits like small globs of fat rained down, occasionally bursting into flame on the way. It all stank of battery acid and fermenting vegetation.
Staring about him as he went, trying to step between the drifting fat-rain and occasionally brushing greasy soot off his clothes as a globule erupted near him, Avery led the others down the concourse between the factories.
Behind him, Layanna said, “This is Octung’s true source of power, you know. The ability to siphon energy directly from the sea—or river, in this case.”
“They don’t need hot lard?” Janx said. Avery heard the surprise in his voice and didn’t wonder why. Janx had devoted the past four years of his life to securing hot lard for Ghenisa, giving the relatively small country a fighting chance against Octung—at least, when he wasn’t stealing, cheating and whoring.
“My people gave the Octunggen the technology to harness the Atomic’s energies more directly,” Layanna said.
“Thanks,” Hildra said.
Ahead, workers poured out of one of the factories, some sort of shift change by the looks of it. They migrated toward the docks, and Avery realized many of them must come and go by water; the docks serviced the factories. Perhaps some of these people even lived on the islands the Surugal had passed on the way upriver.
The appearance of the workers shocked Avery. Their skin rippled, flowed and sagged like half-melted candle wax. He saw their drooping cheeks, cracked and furrowed hands, every inch of exposed skin shiny and smooth. Waxy.
They were human, he saw, not infected. There was no sign of mutation—no aquatic element: fins or scales or striations. It was something else. Likely some byproduct of working at the factory. Only their eyes looked normal; they stared out, red and despairing, from their strange, ruined, waxen faces.
“What the hell?” said Hildra, whispering so the wax men wouldn’t hear.
Layanna sighed. “Working at certain of the extradimensional processors and mining plants has ... side-effects.”
“Then why do these poor bastards work here?”
“My people have let it be known that all who give their lives or bodies in such service pass into the Joyful Sphere after death. We reward the ultimate sacrifice well in the afterlife.”
“Is there an afterlife?” Avery asked.
“There is no Joyful Sphere,” Layanna said, somewhat evasively. “It is a fiction designed to control the masses. We needed the Octunggen to build the processors and plants, so we devised ways of manipulating them into doing so.”
“One more reason to hate the fucking Collossum,” Hildra muttered, casting a glance at Layanna.
Sounding apologetic, Layanna added, “I had no part in it. My focus was on the weapons and processors themselves.”
Several of the workers turned their attention to Avery’s party, but most were talking with their fellows, lighting cigarettes and moving toward the docks. It was quitting time for the night shift. Avery imagined that some of the workers had beer stored in their boats and that a social hour was about to start. The wax men would toast the ending of work and watch the sun rise over the river as they sipped their beer.
Beyond the factories stretched wide parking lots and roads. Great warehouses and factories sprawled in every direction, and poking above them gleamed skyscrapers. Many dirigibles and zeppelins—a surprising number—swung through the skies, the Lightning Crest emblazoned on many of their envelopes. Searchl
ights lanced down from these, the military airships, sweeping the streets. They would be looking for Layanna, Avery knew. Hunting her. Some would have psychics aboard them, able to track Layanna’s extradimensional signature.
Janx made it as far as a bus bench, then collapsed. Hildra and Layanna tended to him while Avery flagged down a cab, and they all climbed inside. The vehicle’s interior smelled like a mixture of cloves and a cat in heat, but at least it took them quickly from the river.
Avery sat in the front while Hildra and Layanna huddled to either side of Janx in the rear, all three squeezed together snugly. Layanna tried to conceal Janx’s bleeding by pulling his jacket over the wound in his side, but the blood started to seep through the jacket almost immediately.
“Where to?” asked the driver, not seeming to notice. He was a thin man with a rural Octunggen accent. Iconography of the Collossum stuck up from his dashboard and a jade trident hung from his rearview mirror.
“Gytherung Park,” Layanna said.
Avery swiveled and raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded. They had been her guides in Ghenisa, but she was their guide now.
The cabbie swung the vehicle into traffic. They left the factory district, passed over a wide iron bridge that spanned a glittering river, a tributary of the Haag and likewise tainted, and entered downtown. Huge buildings raised up all around them like canyon walls. Dirigibles moved through the skies overhead. The towers were so tall that not even the dirigibles could soar far above them; most drifted between the spires like tiny ghosts lost in a great maze. Though the towers were enormous, they were often of baroque design, hewn of stone, encrusted with ornamentation, dripping from the moisture of the clouds which drifted among them.
BOOM! came a distant explosion, and Avery felt his eyes go wide.
Great spikes jutted from the upper reaches of the skyscrapers. Electricity or something like it burst from them in furious blue detonations. One had erupted almost directly overhead—far, far away, and yet they had still heard it. Avery imagined the hiss and spit of the crackling spikes.
“What now?” Hildra said.
Layanna merely pointed.
Avery realized the road was passing across another bridge over another river, wider than the last. A system of waterways seemed to wind through the city below the level of the roads. Slithering and thick, the water glistened.
“The river gives off its energy,” Layanna said, “which passes up modified lightning rods embedded in the buildings. It helps power the buildings as it courses upward, some of it stored, and the remainder discharged into the sky.”
“Ever fry an airship?” Hildra asked.
“Only the unwary.”
An octopus crawled along the crenellated façade of one building, its fur gleaming in the moisture. Its huge eye watched the cab as it passed, the great orb actually turning to follow them as they went. Avery shivered.
“I didn’t know they had drypuss in Octung,” he said.
“Those aren’t drypuss,” Layanna said. “At least, that’s not all they are. They’re eye-spies. The military installs the brains of psychics in them, then sets them loose in the city to keep watch on the population.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Hildra said. “That sounds like one of Janx’s stories.”
“Which are only reports of the unvarnished truth,” Janx slurred, a wounded look on his pale face.
“The eye-spies are very real,” Layanna said. “Fanatics and zealots every one, completely loyal to the Collossum. Of course, they receive a substantial monetary reward when their tour of duty in the octo-body is done. And dispensation to enter the Joyful Spheres after death.”
“I’ve seen everything now,” Hildra said.
“Not everything,” Janx said, hiking his chin at something.
Avery craned his head to look, and he had to stop himself from laughing in delight. What looked something like a school of white-glowing jellyfish poured through the air between nearby skyscrapers in a graceful, jouncing column. It was hard to tell from this distance, but the beings seemed to be the size of humans, or not much larger. Bell-like sacs extended from what he thought of as their shoulders, pointing down and rippling and bunching like jellyfish sacs. The creatures were angelic, white and graceful, almost like phantoms or maybe some sort of exotic flower as they drifted between the towers, making their way toward a certain skyscraper with what looked like a temple on its summit—a fantastic, high-pillared temple.
“What in the world ... ?” Avery said.
“The Anagii,” Layanna said. “One of the old races. Pre-human.”
Avery nodded. There were various intelligent races that had occupied the planet before the rise of man. Some had spread vast civilizations across multiple continents only to encounter a calamity at some point that had wiped them out or otherwise broken their power. A few still remained, either in the shadow of modern human civilization or in their own, largely insular countries. But these creatures seemed ... otherworldly.
“Because of their relationship with the Collossum, the Octunggen have befriended some of the old races,” Layanna said. “The Anagii, for example, worship a wide pantheon of gods, and we—the R’loth—are part of it.”
“Bullshit,” said Hildra.
“It’s true,” Layanna said. “They communed with and worshipped us, as did many races, while we dwelled in our set of other-dimensions. But it is our gods that take up the higher echelons of their pantheon.”
“You worship the same gods?” Janx said.
Layanna nodded toward the temple in the sky. “There will be some of my kind there, from time to time. But we have our own temples and shrines to the Outer Lords and their Heralds.”
“Temples within temples,” Avery mused. He tried not to dwell on the gods of the R’loth, who, for all he knew, were just as real as they were. It did not bear thinking on.
Mutants of all shapes and sizes lurched and strolled and squirted and hopped and swaggered down the streets, drove in shining vehicles, or ascended in glass elevators up the sides of buildings. They seemed well-dressed and healthy, a sharp contrast to the mutants in Ghenisa, who were treated as pariahs, existing mainly on the fringes of society, some even driven into the sewers (according to urban lore, which Avery did not really believe) or the mountains to join the ngvandi. Here they appeared to be respected. Prosperous. Influential. Indeed, there seemed to be more mutants in the affluent downtown area, which he and the others were passing through, than non-mutants. Avery saw with mounting dismay that there were actually very few non-infected in the area, and those present occupied lower-status positions. Messengers and assistants. Drivers and secretaries. He didn’t know why, but it bothered him. Prejudice, he told himself. It was a complete inversion of the social order he was used to.
The cabbie must have noted Avery’s surprise. “Not from around here, are you? Yeah, it’s amazing how many’ve accepted the Sacrament, isn’t it?”
“Sacrament?” Avery asked.
“The blessing of the gods, of course. I’ve been meaning to accept it myself, only ...” He shifted uncomfortably. “You know. It’s dangerous. Not all who do it survive.”
“What’s this Sacrament?” Hildra said.
“It’s a custom for those in the Temple,” Layanna explained. “For those of a certain inner circle that wish to be closer to the gods. It’s ... well, it’s the partaking of unprocessed food from the Atomic Sea.”
“Hells,” muttered Janx.
“It’s not just for the inner circle anymore,” the cabbie said.
“What do you mean?” Layanna said.
“You have to accept the Sacrament to vote now, to have certain privileges. Like having more than two children, or serving in government. It’s very important.”
“That’s insane,” Avery said. “Unprocessed seafood can kill you.”
The cabbie scowled. “It’s a test of faith that only the strong survive.”
Avery realized he could not win this argument.
; “It’s transforming the country,” the cabbie continued. “The blessing of the Revered, sweeping the land, purifying all who partake of it. And those who don’t have the faith to accept the Sacrament are rightly punished.”
“So why haven’t you?” Hildra said.
The cabbie cleared his throat. “I’m saving up for it. You have to be prepared, you know. The medical costs. It makes you sick ...” He straightened. “But I will. I will do it.” He lapsed into silence.
“I did not know,” Layanna told them. “I knew that some similar program was talked about, but it had not been implemented when I left.”
Outside, long flags depicting the Lightning Crest—a flashing, stylized bolt of lightning set in a circle—hung from the buildings, fluttered from the lampposts. Pictures of the Archchancellor adorned walls, as well as pictures of a grandiose building that must be the main Collossum Temple.
It wasn’t long before Avery saw the Temple itself. It wasn’t what he’d expected. He saw a great island in the midst of the widest part of the Haag, some miles away, an island dense with huge, graceful buildings. Purple towers, alive with cracking sparks, strained toward the sky. The cabbie made a religious gesture as they passed a road that led to the island and said, “May their Grace shine upon us.”
“Is that ... ?” Avery said, turning to face Layanna, who nodded.
“It’s so huge,” Hildra said.
Layanna eyed the island apprehensively. That was where the Collossum were, Avery knew—the seat of their power, as well as her former home, from which she had been exiled forever.
A building they passed arrested Avery’s attention. The skyscraper seemed to have skin. Its outside had been completely encrusted by a starfish-like growth that seeped out of the river at its root.
“Wartstar,” Janx grunted, seeing it too.
Though the building was skinned with wartstar, the occupants had only cleared away those parts of it that covered the windows and doors. Small creatures like anemone grew out of the starfish-like flesh, and other, floating creatures like floating shrimp fed off of them, and others off of them—an entire ecosystem all to itself.
