The Atomic Sea: Part Four: The Twilight City

by Jack Conner

  * * *

  The crowd gasped. Avery did, too, despite himself. Only Sheridan beside him looked stoic. Yet it truly was amazing, if disgusting and frightening at the same time. He and Sheridan were attending the Lai circus and tens of thousands of Lai packed the arena seating while the sun beat down. The stink of sweat mixed with the smells of exotic spices, spilled flower-wine, roasting peanuts and animal dung. The troupe of acrobats and various performers had been at it for over an hour, and Avery thought he’d become jaded toward their attempts at shaking him out of his gloom and doom. It had been five days since the feast, five days in which the resistance had not made contact with him. He had tried going himself to the laboratory and the quarters where the scientists resided at the palace, but guards kept him out, and he had not been able to make contact with Dr. Lis in any other way. He was going out of his mind with worry. He barely slept. Even worse, when he did sleep it was beside Sheridan. He still could neither forgive himself nor make himself stop doing it.

  What he saw below him in the arena didn’t change this, but it certainly made him forget it for a moment.

  The largest of the performers, both muscular and fat, the Lai had scaled to impressive heights on one of the two tallest towers that bookended the arena. He was a mutant, as were a majority here, and he was quite colorful, almost completely scaled, each section of his body boasting distinctive hues, one orange, one red, one yellow, one blue, so that he was a rippling mass of shifting, scintillating color and movement. He was beautiful.

  But that wasn’t all. For, as he reached the tip of the tallest tower, he did something that was not beautiful at all. He doubled over and vomited up his guts into a bucket. He extruded his insides, one shiny, slick rope after another. The crowd gasped and twitched in discomfort. Avery had to assume this was the result of mutation, as it could be no normal ability. Perhaps there was some fish in the Atomic Sea or Swamp that exhibited the trait in order to confuse attackers or even bait prey, and this poor fellow had acquired it with his infection or Sacrament. It had surprised Avery over the last few days how many of the Lai had converted to the Collossum faith, Lagu notwithstanding.

  In any case, the man carefully looped one coil around the tower he stood on, then suspended the bucket on a wire overhead. A fellow performer cranked a lever, and the bucket swung to the twin tower, where this fellow then tied off the shiny strand, in effect creating a rope from one tower to another formed of the colorful acrobat’s own intestine. The intestine was nearly as colorful as the rest of him, and it was thick and shiny. Gobs of fluid slimed its sides and fell below. There was no net.

  And then, as the drummers beat a frantic beat, the large acrobat, smaller now, still trailing a strand of intestine from his mouth and holding a coil in his hands, playing out the slack as he went, stepped out onto his own intestine, arms to his sides, and wobbled. He caught himself and the crowd applauded. Avery couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Then, very carefully, the man stepped out over the void. If he fell, he would plummet fifty feet to his death, and that only after he ripped his intestine apart.

  “This is disgusting,” Avery told Sheridan. “Why does he do this?”

  Sheridan half smiled. “Because we’ll pay to watch.”

  Avery wanted to argue the point, but the fact was he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He gasped again as the man risked another step, then another. Soon the man was halfway out over the drop. The intestine had been securely tied off, but it was so flexible still that it bowed under his weight. Arms to his sides, face pale, obviously in pain, the performer walked on. He slipped once, a foot going out to the side, and the whole crowd silenced. Avery couldn’t hear a breath. As if drawing strength from their goodwill, the man recovered, placed a foot in front of the other, and kept going.

  At last he was across. There was a collective intake of breath, then the crowd stood and gave the acrobat a standing ovation. Even as his guts were unwound and returned to him via bucket, he bowed and accepted their applause.

  The show went on. One amazing act followed another. Avery was particularly impressed with the salamander tamer. The man had trained five of the giant, man-eating swamp salamanders to balance balls, stand on their front claws, and splash about in their half-sunken cage, all while constantly snapping at him and occasionally threatening him with their sharp, flicking tongues. This became part of the act, though, as he would dodge and weave their strikes even as they evaded the lashes from his whip.

  Avery and Sheridan split a bucket of spiced, hot-buttered peanuts. They were flavored with Lai peppers and were quite hotter than Avery was used to, but he had often enjoyed hot-buttered peanuts back home, and it was a welcome treat, however altered. His mouth burned, but he ate on. Part of him could not believe he was sharing peanuts with Sheridan. He tried to imagine what his late wife Mari would say about it all, but even that failed to properly rebuke him. Or at least stop him.

  “Marvelous show, isn’t it?” Sheridan said. It was unlike her to say something just for something to say, without having some dark or ironic meaning attached to it. This, Avery knew, was as close as she had ever come to really opening up, and he appreciated it for what it was.

  “Yes,” Avery had to agree. “It is. Nothing like the circuses in Ghenisa.” He had to pitch his voice over the noise of the crowd. It was a festive, exuberant bunch. They were an oppressed people, and this was one of their few chances to indulge in something celebratory. Avery could almost feel the tension dissolving in the air. It didn’t hurt that flower-wine in bamboo cups circulated liberally. He held one in the hand not scooping peanuts.

  “Dear gods,” Sheridan said suddenly.

  She hadn’t stood during the ovation for the gut-walker, but she climbed to her feet now. Avery thought she might have seen something wrong with the show and focused on the performance—one performer with a gaping, toad-like mouth was trying to stuff a dwarf in his maw—but then he realized she wasn’t looking down. She was looking up.

  Into the sky.

  And there, to Avery’s horror, was the Over-City.

  Everyone seemed to see it at once. Many stood. Some bolted for the exits. Others fell to their knees and prayed. Screams rose around him.

  The Over-City rolled in like a thunderhead, all steel and wires, brick and mortar, canvas and madness. Hundreds of zeppelins, all lashed together, supporting various platforms on their backs, platforms on which buildings large and small sat proudly. The platforms created the levels of the Over-City, so that there were various tiers all rising gradually toward a central peak, like a mountain, and though it was far too distant for Avery to tell he felt certain that at that peak would be a temple, and in that temple would be Uthua.

  Countless chimneys belched smoke from the Over-City, the waste of its factories and plants, the things that kept such a monstrosity aloft, so that hundreds of black trails arced over it and backward, creating a long dark smear in its wake. The air seemed to shiver around the front of the city, and Avery supposed this must be a result of the Over-City’s extradimensional engines. It was a nightmare of engineering, both natural and unnatural, and it was getting bigger by the moment.

  Avery had risen to peer above the crowd, but now all the strength seemed to drain from him and he collapsed into his seat. Independent of thought, his hand brought the wine to his lips.

  It’s done, he thought. It’s all done. It’s all over. Octung has won.

  Surprisingly, Sheridan bent over and patted his cheek, and it was not a hard pat, but one of fondness, even affection.

  “It’s done,” she said, echoing his own dismal musings but in a completely opposite tone. Her face had somehow taken on a serenity he had never seen there before. “It’s done.” She almost sounded like the people praying all around, though whether they prayed to the Over-City or to their gods to protect them from the Over-City Avery couldn’t tell.

  “How can you be happy about it?” he said. “If they fire the Device, they’ll turn us all into food
.”

  She spoke softly: “Remember, I belong to a certain faction.”

  He matched her volume, not wanting to be overheard, not that that was really a worry here. “Yes, you said. The Red Hand. But ... pardon me for saying so, but aren’t their efforts futile? You can’t hope to deceive the Collossum. They’ll find out, it’s just a matter of time, and I would not want to be you when they do.”

  “Your point being?”

  He made his voice firm. “Why don’t you join with us? With me?”

  She smiled slyly. “I already have.”

  “You know what I mean. We could steal the Device back and run, find some way of activating it, maybe even find Layanna and—”

  “And what? Defeat Octung?” She snorted, some of her enthusiasm draining away. “I don’t think so, Doctor. Now come. We’d better check in with the General.”

  General Carum was predictably joyous.

  “They’re here!” she cried. “I can’t wait to see the looks on these Lai bastards’ faces when they realize what’s going on.” She threw back her head and laughed. Avery suspected she had already started drinking. He looked for the bottle.

  “When will the handoff take place?” he said. He needed to know so that he could tell Dr. Lis, if he could ever find her.

  “Tomorrow morning,” General Carum said. “At the airfield. Colonel Sheridan, you are of course invited.”

  Sheridan indicated Avery. “We would love to.”

  General Carum’s smile hardened. “Of course.”

  That night Avery waited and waited for Dr. Lis or some other rebel to approach him. He had already tried again to access her apartments or reach her at the laboratory, but soldiers turned him away every time. He barely slept, waiting. Finally, long after he and Sheridan had made love and fallen asleep, he heard a tapping. Gingerly, making sure she was truly asleep, he left the bed and navigated his way through the suite to the source of the noise. It came from the glass door of the balcony. Even more gingerly, he opened it.

  Wind fluttered around him, chilling him. He closed his robe tighter. There was no one there.

  Confused, he stepped onto the balcony, and squawking erupted at his feet. Suppressing a yelp, he glanced down to see a bat, red-furred by the light of a lamppost. It gripped a tiny scroll in one of its claws.

  It let him remove the scroll. Tucked inside was a tiny stub of pencil. The message ran: When?

  Tomorrow morning, he wrote. A convoy to the airfield. Be ready.

  He returned the scroll and pencil to the bat, which hissed at him, then flapped its wings and disappeared into the night.

  Shaking, Avery returned inside and poured himself a drink.

  The next day, at breakfast, General Carum was dressed in what must be her finest officer’s uniform. Her buttons gleamed. Her jackboots shone. On her face was stamped the most victorious expression Avery could ever recall seeing on a human being.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  After they ate, Carum ushered Sheridan and Avery into the waiting limousine, which was just one of a line of mostly military vehicles with several other limousines mixed in to confuse potential attackers. As if bearing royal treasure, Carum personally bore the backpack containing the Device and rested it on the seat next to her. Avery’s gaze returned to it again and again as the convoy motored away from the palace and through the crowded, colorful city. The fate of the world ...

  “So grim!” General Carum said, chuckling at his expense. “You look as though you really believe it will be the end of everything.”

  “It will be,” he said.

  “Ha! It will only be the beginning. A new, glorious age. An age of gods. The world will be transformed. I may not be religious, but that much is true. The gods of Octung are very real.”

  He glanced sideways at Sheridan to see if she was buying this only to find her watching him strangely. He couldn’t quite understand her expression. She was eyeing him like a scientist would eye a lab rat.

  “What?” he said.

  She paused, then said, “Your daughter will be there.”

  Time seemed to stop.

  Blinking, his heart suddenly pounding, he said, “Excuse me?”

  Quietly, assuredly, Sheridan said, “I had her transferred to the Over-City. In reward for your service to Octung, she is to be returned to you at the airfield. You cannot leave Laisha, not until the war is over, but you can live free, and together, and on a generous government stipend. I might even stay on here, as an adjunct to the general, if you desire.”

  “Ani’s on the plane?”

  She smiled, and it was surprisingly gentle. “We’re going to her right now.”

  He stared from her to the Device sitting beside General Carum. He was going to trade the Device for Ani.

  Dear gods. It was really happening. Suddenly he felt hot. So hot he began to sweat. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and rolled down the window.

  Carum eyed him cattily. “Something wrong, Doctor?”

  “What? No.”

  “I would have thought you’d be delighted.”

  “I ... am.”

  “You can have your daughter back, Francis,” Sheridan said, and her voice sounded sad, which made no sense.

  He didn’t understand. Was she offering him Ani? It was as though she was giving him a choice, as if she knew. The air grew hotter.

  Ani! He was about to see Ani again. It may have taken the death of the world for it to happen, but it was going to happen. He was overjoyed. He was going to see his daughter.

  If the convoy reached the airfield.

  All he would have to do was tell Sheridan and Carum that the resistance had laid a trap for them, have them go an alternate way to the airfield, perhaps postpone it or simply send for reinforcements.

  He could have Ani. She could be free. He could give her a chance at life.

  He clenched his fists so tightly blood wept from his palms.

  In the end he sagged back, exhausted. Forgive me, Ani.

  He barely noticed the activity brewing outside. The convoy seemed to be passing through some sort of local festival. Lai, utterly naked and painted in mesmerizing colors, danced and paraded through the streets, thousands of them, young and old. Many wore what looked like insect wings on their backs, though whether made of silk, plastic or some other material he couldn’t tell. Musicians played oddly shaped guitars and pipes on street corners, and vendors sold what looked like huge dragonflies dipped in grease or caramel.

  “What’s this?” Sheridan said.

  “Some celebration of Kaya, the lord of the firefly gods,” General Carum said. “The fireflies in these parts have strange properties—hypnotizing light displays, among others. Well, the idiot Lai have incorporated them into their religion. Don’t ask me the details.” Leaning forward she said, “Driver, push forward, I don’t care if you have to flatten them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The activity was so dense, so full of people, that the motorcade’s escorts had been unable to scatter them. They clogged the streets, dancing and singing. Some were so close they pressed up against the limousine itself. Blue-painted buttocks left a smear on Avery’s window. A face with red painted around the eyes pushed close and attempted to see in through the tinted windows.

  “I don’t have time for—” General Carum started.

  BOOM!

  The explosion stopped her in mid-sentence. Fire blossomed from a troop transport a few car-lengths ahead. Then another. The explosions were so loud, so close, that Avery felt them in his bones.

  BOOM! The resistance was targeting the transports first.

  General Carum and Sheridan both had their pistols out. Both looked alert and fierce. Neither looked surprised.

  Gunshots outside. The soldiers were firing back. Unable to tell who had set the bombs, they fired indiscriminately into the crowd, killing mothers and children, fathers and brothers. Bodies hurled up against buildings, blood and brains spattering. Others dropped dead to the st
reet like marionettes with their strings cut. Whole families fell.

  At first the crowd was too shocked to do anything. But there were obviously agitators among them—perhaps they had planned it this way—and these elements surged forward and dragged troops off running board and transport, impaled them through the eyes with sharp sticks that had been skewering insects moments before or smashed them over the heads with musical instruments. Others had guns, and they fired into the Octunggen.

  The troopers fired back, and it was a massacre.

  “Drive! Drive! Drive!” General Carum shouted. They may have expected something, but not this. Not the rage of the crowd. The resistance was willing to sacrifice their own people to ensure victory.

  The driver shouted into the radio, and the convoy rolled forward, bodies dropping around it, or from it. Like a beehive struck, the crowd followed, beating at the windows with fists and rocks. A severed head pounded Avery’s window, caking it with blood. The sound of it all was deafening. The people shook the limousine from side to side, the soldiers that had lined the running boards dragged to their deaths. People that had been revelers moments before now picked up the dead troopers’ submachine guns and turned them on the limousine.

  Bullets punched through the glass. Glass peppered the interior.

  Avery and the others flung themselves to the ground. The driver, hit in the shoulder, mashed the gas pedal, and the vehicle swung around a burning wreck of a troop transport and down an alley. They skidded, smacked a wall and emerged onto another street. The celebration had been going on here, too, and the riot had already spread. As soon as the limousine shoved its way out, trying to run the Lai over but impeded by their numbers, the Lai set about it, beating and smashing at it.

  Now, Avery thought.

  The driver plunged the limousine down the street, then into another alley. As Sheridan and the general fired out the rear window, Avery opened the door. Is scraped against a passing wall, slammed closed again, nearly crushing his nose.

  They reached a cross-alley, giving him room. Holding his breath, he pushed it open again. Air whipped his hair.