The Grand Dark

by Richard Kadrey

  Largo left the bicycle behind a line of dying shrubs and crawled under the police tape. He crept up the stairs as quietly as he could.

  Rainer’s flat had been ransacked. Much of the furniture was overturned. The drawers in all the cabinets and cases had been pulled out. Rainer’s telescopes and star charts were gone.

  If the bullocks want to convince people Rainer died from the Drops, they’ll have to do better than this.

  The spiritualist posters were still on the wall, but Rainer’s medium boards were in pieces on the floor. Largo went to the wall, tore off the photo of Vera Baal, and crumpled it in his hand. Above it was a colorful poster for someone called the Astonishing Szamanka. He ripped it in half. To his surprise, there was another poster underneath. He pulled down the rest of the Astonishing Szamanka and found a parody of a government recruitment placard. The image was the same brave soldier in uniform as on the official posters, but where it should have read To War! To War! Destroy the Enemy or Be Destroyed! the word Enemy had been replaced with Politicians. There was a small target symbol in the bottom right corner of the poster. Largo remembered it from the leaflet Pietr had given him. Rainer had joined the radicals, he thought. Right to the end, he was braver than me. An older brother I could have looked up to. Now he’s surely dead. Where was I when he needed me? Chasing my own tail through the mud.

  Largo took off the mask and pea coat and went into Rainer’s bathroom. He didn’t dare turn on the lights, but illumination from the nearby harbor lit the room with a faint glow. The bullet had only grazed his shoulder and hadn’t gone in. Still, a piece of his flesh the size of his little finger was missing. He found gauze and used it to pack the wound. With one hand, he clumsily wrapped his shoulder in a bandage. He was sweating by the time he was finished and beginning to feel nauseated again. The adrenaline that had moved him across the city was fading quickly. He vomited and went back to the living room.

  Whoever had searched the flat had sliced open Rainer’s mattress with a knife, but his blankets were undamaged. With his good arm, Largo dragged them into the living room, lay down on the single intact sofa, and pulled the blankets on top of him. However, his shoulder hurt too much for him to sleep. He went back into the bathroom, but the only painkiller he could find was morphia. So that he wouldn’t be tempted, he poured it into the toilet. There was a half-full bottle of whiskey in one of the cupboards. He took it back to the sofa and sipped it until the pain faded.

  Largo awoke to the sound of rain on the windows. His head pounded and his shoulder ached.

  Maybe the whiskey wasn’t the best idea. When he stumbled into the bathroom this time he could finally see the contents of Rainer’s medicine cabinet clearly. There was a nearly full bottle of aspirin, which he took to the kitchen. When he couldn’t find any water, he washed down a handful of the pills with another sip of whiskey.

  It could have been the withdrawal symptoms or the frigid bay air, but the room felt icy. While he’d been afraid to light a fire at night when it might be seen, now that it was daylight he piled kindling and wood in the fireplace and lit them. Even when the wood caught, it took a few minutes for the heat to penetrate his body. He dragged one of the blankets from the sofa and sat by the fire until he was warm enough to think clearly.

  The bandage on his shoulder was soaked through with blood. Once he was warm enough, he got the gauze and bandages and rewrapped it. The wound hurt more now than it had last night and the simple act of wrapping it made him unsteady.

  When Largo was warm and the dizziness had passed he realized he was desperately hungry. When was the last time I ate? he wondered. In the kitchen, he found a tin of crackers and some cheese in an ice chest. After wolfing half of it, he put the rest away for later and sat by the fire.

  With food in his stomach and the aspirin dulling the pain in his shoulder, he thought over his options and came up with one that didn’t require him making the journey all the way to Machtviertel.

  As Largo waited for nightfall, he tried to think of anything but Remy, but images of their time together—and their final fight—always came back and pushed all other thoughts out of his head. His memories of High Proszawa weren’t any better. For all that had happened to him, all that truly mattered to him at this point were the piles of corpses and the fact that he was now a murderer. Four times a murderer, in fact. I can never take that back. The only thing that can possibly make up for it is finding Remy and saving Parvulesco and Roland. He checked his watch. It was still several hours until dark. He lay back down on the sofa and found a spiritualist magazine. When he couldn’t stand any more of the talk of ghosts and visitations he threw it into the fire.

  He slept for much of the afternoon. When the sun set he took more aspirin and changed his bandage. There were several clean shirts in Rainer’s closet. He chose a black one that would hide blood if he started bleeding again. A heavy coat hung from a hook inside the closet door. He transferred everything into the new coat and threw the pea coat in the fire so that it couldn’t be traced back to Steinmetz.

  At least I can keep one person out of this mess.

  Largo felt much better after the long nap. He even could use his left arm if he was careful. After dousing the fireplace embers, he put on the mask and left the flat, careful to duck under the police tape on his way out. Parvulesco’s bicycle was still behind the withered bushes. A car drove past him as he rode out of Lysergsäurehof, but he kept riding, even when someone shouted at him.

  “You there,” a man called. “Stop where you are.”

  He didn’t need to see their uniforms or their guns. Largo recognized the tone of the man’s voice.

  Bullocks. Shit.

  Swerving left, he went down a walkway too narrow for the car to follow. He could hear it backing up as he rounded another corner that took him along a line of loading areas for trucks going to and from the shipping companies that used to dot the district. He was running parallel to the main road so that if the police were following him or trying to cut him off, he’d be able to see them.

  Largo hit his brakes when he came to the end of the loading area. There were no side streets here, just an open lane that led to a roundabout. He waited for the police car to pass him on the main road, then sped through the long turn behind it, heading for the center of the city, with its side streets and dark alleys. However, someone in the police car must have seen him go by because it turned off the roundabout and sped toward him. Largo slowed just enough for them to get within a few yards of his back wheel. Then he veered quickly to the right and right again, retracing his steps back toward Lysergsäurehof. The police car tried to follow him, but fishtailed on the wet pavement.

  By the time he headed back out of the district, he’d lost the car. He still wanted to head deeper into the city but knew he couldn’t do it in a straight line. They might have sent out my description on the wireless. He had no choice but to take a circuitous route around the city, similar to the way he’d gone when he thought Andrzej and Weimer were going to ambush him.

  After he passed a second police car, Largo grew nervous. Neither of them had followed him, but he wanted to get off the road as quickly as possible. A Dandy on a bicycle was a rare enough sight that he knew he’d stand out anywhere he went. He turned north, and when he saw lights ahead he pedaled straight for them.

  The Shape of the World

  From Noble Aspirations and Hard Realities: Life in Lower Proszawa by Ralf Moessinger, author of High Proszawa: A Dream in Stone

  Seagulls wheel over Heldenblut Bay. They squawk and call to each other, soaring higher than the flying Maras. But there is a commonality in their actions. They are all looking down at the things moving over and just under the surface of the water.

  Subtle changes in wind patterns nudge the birds and the flying eyes first in one direction, then another. From the ground, passersby who look up often note this and feel sympathy for both the gulls and the winged contraptions. “They’re trapped,” the observers say.

 
But if the observers continue to watch, they notice something quite different. What at first appear to be random turns and pivots are anything but. The gulls and Maras aren’t battling the wind—they are allied with it. For long periods, they ride on the gusts like ships on the sea, hardly flapping their wings except when using them to turn and dive. And when either group, the feathered or the mechanistic, is done with their time in the sky, they glide off for their home perches, whether out at sea or on a government ship in the south bay. The observers shake their heads and feel sorry for them while at the same time sure of their own superiority. On the ground, they are free to go wherever they want, whenever they want. They aren’t slaves to the whims of the air, they declare. Which is true enough. But if they were to look further, the observers will see how they are also trapped, and by something more prosaic and sinister.

  When I first spoke to Sabine Galeen, she planned to leave Lower Proszawa and raise her infant son with family in the western colony of Veidtland, away from the debauchery of the city. She had a small family inheritance and since her husband had been killed in the war, she had his pension. However, it wasn’t enough to afford airship tickets, so after submitting the forms for their travel papers, she began looking for a boat on which to book passage.

  Before the Great War, luxury liners, fishing trawlers, sailboats, and freighters plied the waters around both High and Lower Proszawa. Goods moved in and out of the cities continuously, ferried in from the colonies and carrying goods out to allies around the world. However, the situation changed on the day the first shots of war were heard, and nothing on the water had been quite right since.

  Heldenblut Bay, with its rivers and tributaries, became a battlefield during the war, and even the armistice hasn’t healed all of its wounds. Just below the surface of the waters surrounding High and Lower Proszawa lie the broken hulks of military and merchant ships. Along with them in the deep water, rolling this way and that like sluggish seaweed, are underwater mines weighted to the bay floor.

  This treacherous array of war machines makes travel by all but the smallest boats precarious at best. Lower Proszawa’s own merchant ships chance the waters on a regular basis because the city needs constant replenishment, but sea travel as the city once knew it has virtually disappeared. And because it’s surrounded on three sides by unfriendly neighbors, Lower Proszawa resembles nothing less than an island prison.

  In subsequent interviews, Frau Galeen revealed that her first attempt to obtain travel papers was refused because of a clerical error. Assured that it would take months to correct and resubmit the papers, she bribed the forms solicitor, who delivered them in a few weeks. After that, she managed to find passage on a freighter carrying a dangerous load of coal oil to one of the colonies. However, when she and her child arrived at the ship on the day of their departure, they were refused admittance because her cabin had been given to a city official and his family. According to Frau Galeen, it took her two weeks of searching to find the correct office where she could be reimbursed for the ticket.

  By then, winter was approaching and the seas were becoming more treacherous. Frau Galeen said that she finally booked passage on an old steamer that would take weeks to reach Veidtland. However, as the ship made its way into port in Lower Proszawa, it struck a mine and sank. The freight company declared bankruptcy and this time she wasn’t able to recoup the price of her ticket. With her options—and money—running low, she and her son returned to the little house she shared with her late husband’s family in Granate. There she remains to this day, like so many others, a hostage in her home country—and out a considerable amount of her inheritance.

  Each day, the yellowsheets carry stories trumpeting government solutions to the travel and supplies situation, each more fantastic than the next. Undersea railways and ocean-spanning pneumatic tubes. Long-distance airships and freighters that can travel vast distances without a single human aboard, controlled only by Maras with what they term “mechanistic intelligence.”

  Frau Galeen devours the stories with a mix of envy and excitement. She wants the future to happen immediately so that she and her son can be on their way and out of the crowded little house. The yellowsheets assure her that these and other wonders are just around the corner and that there is nothing stopping this glorious new world now that Lower Proszawa is finally and forever at peace.

  Yet she and so many others remain waiting for a miracle to save them. According to Frau Galeen, the most maddening part of her story is that there are a handful of ships that still carry citizens in and out of Lower Proszawa every day. But, as she puts it, “Like so many of the best things in life, they’re reserved for our betters.”

  To a degree, she’s right. By and large, the few passenger ships still operating carry the same wealthy High Proszawan refugees who came south at the beginning of the Great War. Some of the elegant neighborhoods they’ve built in Lower Proszawa are turning into ghost towns as whispers of war begin anew. Where will they go? Some, ironically, to Veidtland, the very place Frau Galeen has dreamed of for so long. The good news is that the government has begun a lottery whereby a limited number of free ship tickets will be available to the general public. Frau Galeen has already registered and, as of this writing, is waiting to hear if she’ll be one of the fortunate ones. We can only wish her good luck. Perhaps the glorious future that she’s dreamed of for so long is just around the corner.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT WAS THE CARNIVAL. THERE WERE TENTS, A FERRIS WHEEL, AND A MIDWAY where couples and families played games of chance. Largo remembered the pretty dancer who gave him free tickets. He’d left them in his flat. I wonder if a bullock or Nachtvogel pocketed them to come here with a lover. He left Parvulesco’s bicycle at a nearby stand. At a small kiosk, Largo took out some money to buy a ticket, but the man inside waved him through.

  Largo nodded in thanks. As he walked into the crowd he felt a sudden relief. People looked away and let him pass, even through the most crowded parts of the midway. He was completely exposed but utterly anonymous.

  On the far side of the midway was a pen full of chimeras and he went there as quickly as he could without attracting attention. Some of the small catlike animals rubbed against the wire around the enclosure and changed colors. There were larger chimeras too. He recognized the doglike horse creatures that had knocked him down in the street—how long ago had it been? Time seemed so elastic now. Along the fence were thin deerlike creatures with antlers that sprouted flowers. When anyone petted them, the deer giggled like little girls and playfully bounded away. Largo was happy for the first time in days, but at the same time he felt his heart breaking. He’d never get to study animals like this. Never learn the chimeras’ secrets.

  I came so close. I might have worked with Hanna in her lab. The Baron said to call him Rudolf. I was going to be somebody.

  Two of the giggling deer came to him and he rubbed their soft ears. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two police officers standing by the fence, laughing at the creatures. One took a swat at a passing dog-horse but missed. Largo left the deer and went quietly the other way out of the enclosure.

  He hoped to lose himself in the crowd but on his way, Largo spotted a fortune-teller’s tent. There were spirits and strange runes painted on the sides, and lanterns around the entrance. A painted placard read MADAME TAJEMSTVÍ. He thought of Rainer. Would he be amused or angry to see his beloved spiritualism turned into something so tawdry? Largo peered inside the entrance, but it was too dim to see much from the outside. He was about to leave when the two police officers from the chimera pen started in his direction. Instead of trying to make it to the midway, Largo went into the tent and sat down at a small table with a crystal ball in the middle. A moment later, an old woman in a peasant dress came out from behind a curtain and sat across from him.

  “Good evening, kind sir,” she said. “How may I help you tonight?”

  Largo looked back at the entrance. “I . . . I don’t know. Is it all rig
ht if I just sit here for a minute and think about it?”

  In a soothing tone she said, “Of course. Take your time. But remember that Madam Tajemství doesn’t judge and has had many requests over the years, from the everyday to the astoundingly exotic.”

  Something about the woman’s voice made him look at her harder. She did look old, but he began to suspect it was at least partly makeup, and her hair was wrong. It hung around her shoulders. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew her. He leaned across the table for a better look and she moved back a few inches.

  “Is there anything wrong?” she said in a wary tone.

  Largo sat back and said, “I know you. You’re Vera Baal.”

  The fortune-teller slapped the table once and said, “Fuck.” She got up, closed the tent flaps over the entrance, and sat back down. From a deep pocket in her dress she pulled a cigarette case and lit one from a nearby candle. “You don’t look like a bullock. How much do you want to keep your mouth shut? I’m not a rich woman.”

  He waved a hand at her. “I don’t want anything.”

  Vera smoked and stared. She pointed to his mask. “I just tell fortunes, you know. I’m not a witch. I can’t help you with your face.”

  Largo took off the mask and set it on the table.

  A wry smile creased her face. “Interesting. It looks like we’re all hiding from someone.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” he said, smiling back at her. “You don’t know me, but I saw you perform with Anita Mourlet.”

  Vera crossed her arms. “The fire wasn’t my fault,” she said tightly.

  “I know. I saw the drunk throw his cigar into the . . . what’s the word?”

  “Trans zamlžení,” she said, still wary. “It’s a tricky substance. Very volatile. The fool could have killed everyone in the theater.”