Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  Shoving through the door, the first thing he saw was the small woman still sitting on her chair, staring into the distance as if all were quiet. She blinked her heavy eyelids and licked her lips.

  The sound was fading, and the room was filling with a haze that carried the rancid stench of innards. Gasping, swallowing hard to try to pop his ears, Gorham hurried to the side wall and looked along at the womb vats.

  “Nadielle!”

  “Here, Gorham,” she replied, and he saw movement on top of the third vat. She raised one hand in a slow greeting, then waved at him. “You might want to stand back.”

  A hundred questions could find no release, because time would not allow them. There was no time; Gorham realized that now. He felt the urgency of the Baker’s every action and movement, which had surely been translated to him much earlier but only now made itself known. Something was rising, and Rufus had arrived, and of course the two were connected.

  The vat upon which the Baker sat began to change. Though Gorham had never dared touch one, he’d always assumed them to be cast from some metal—thick and heavy and strong. The rough wooden buttresses holding them upright supported that supposition. Now the vat began to flex and crack.

  Nadielle looked down into the womb vat, and Gorham wondered what she saw.

  He blinked, convinced at first that his eyes were blurring from the stinking mist in the air. But then the vat deformed, something inside pushing out, extending the shell, and finally bursting through in a spray of foul fluid. An arm first, longer than a normal human’s arm and tipped with an array of spiked bone protuberances. Its skin was milky and translucent and streaked with globs of thick red matter. The second arm slipped through the gap and worked at widening it, slicing with those bony blades. And then that terrible screeching came again, bursting up from the vat in another pressurized spray. Nadielle held her hands in front of her eyes, but she did not change position. As the cry died away, she looked down, and in her eyes Gorham saw the love of a mother for her child.

  He pressed back against the wall, and when he looked at the small woman sitting farther along the room, she was looking at him at last. Her wide eyes were still blank, her hair framing her long narrow face, and a streak of spurted fluid had plastered her dress to her hip. But she seemed not to notice.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Nadielle said, her voice carrying over the wet sounds from the tearing vat.

  “If you say so,” Gorham muttered, and he watched one of the Baker’s creations being birthed. The vat opened, thick rips in its side spreading and allowing the thing inside to emerge. Both of its arms were in the open now, grasping at the air as if trying to gain purchase. Its head followed, then its body, hips, and legs. It fell to the solid ground with a wet thump, screaming again as it tried to stand. Fluid spilled out around it. The air steamed and stank. The vat spewed a thick flow of afterbirth, spattering down around the emerged shape.

  It was the size of a big man, its hair dark, long, and matted across its shoulders and back. When it lifted its head and mewled, Gorham saw its face for the first time. It was a very human face, he thought, with an expression of startled delight at being free. He saw the fully formed teeth in its mouth, some of them longer and sharper than normal, and he concentrated on its eyes, because the rest of its body was far from human. Very far. It looked at him and smiled, dribbling slightly, and Gorham looked away.

  “Gorham, don’t be afraid,” Nadielle said again. She slid down the side of the vat and landed with a splash. The vat hung open and steaming, but already the gap the thing had emerged through seemed to be shrinking. The huge container was repairing itself, as walls lifted and wooden buttresses shoved upward.

  When Gorham looked at the newborn again, it was already on its feet. It was using its bladed hands to scrape the wet stuff from its hairless skin. Its legs were long and thin, ending in feet that sprouted thick spines. There were also spines projecting an arm’s length along its backbone, flexing and spiking at the air as they stretched. Even as he watched, Gorham saw its skin darkening and hardening. The sound its blades made as they slicked moisture from skin turned from a clean, soft hiss to a harder scraping. In contact with the air at last, it was developing armor before his eyes.

  Nadielle stood before her newly chopped creation. It was more than a head taller than she was. Gorham watched, fascinated and appalled, as the thing knelt on bony knees and rested its head on Nadielle’s shoulder. She stroked its hair and kissed its head, glancing over its shoulder at Gorham and waving him closer.

  He shook his head, but she persisted. “Come here, Gorham,” she said. “Meet my new child. It’s strong and hard, and it knows how to fight and kill. But more than that, it knows how to protect. I want to teach it who to protect, so come here.”

  As he went, fear was slowly merging with wonder. He’d just witnessed something incredible. “You’ve chopped a warrior?”

  “I’ve been working on him for some time. Will you name him?”

  The thing was looking at Gorham now, its eyes wide and dark. Does it see me as a human? he wondered. Is there real intelligence in there?

  “He thinks,” Nadielle said, perhaps seeing the questions and doubt in his eyes, “but it’s a different kind of intelligence. You’ll not discuss the finest points of philosophy and religion with him, but he could take a dozen Scarlet Blades and wear their scalps for hats.”

  “And you want me to name it?”

  “Unless it is a suitable name.”

  “No,” Gorham said. He paused a few steps away, and Nadielle leaned in and started whispering in its ear, all the while looking at Gorham. The thing never took its eyes from him. Even when it blinked, it did so with one eye at a time, so that he was always in its view.

  “He knows you now,” she said. “He’ll never turn against you, and his life is dedicated to your protection.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m his mother. Now, a name.” She smiled sweetly, and Gorham thought she was enjoying this display of her strange, wonderful, terrible talent.

  “How about Neph?”

  “God of sharp things,” Nadielle said. “Appropriate.” She whispered to the thing again, and Gorham heard the name Neph mentioned several times. It closed its eyes, Nadielle pulled back, and it was named.

  “So when we go down,” he said, “what are you expecting?”

  Nadielle’s smile slipped a little. She touched Neph’s face as it pressed against her like a hound twisting against an owner’s hand. “Not knowing the answer to that is why we need him.”

  Neph keened softly, and as it stretched, its blades scored lines in the floor.

  “So now we go?” Gorham asked.

  “Yes, now we go. You leave first with Neph and the woman, and I’ll catch up. I have to make sure no one can enter my rooms while I’m away. It’s time to open another vat.”

  Later, with Neph stalking ahead as silent as night, Gorham asked what the second vat had contained. Nadielle would not tell him. She averted her eyes and smiled at the woman, and when he asked once more, Nadielle walked quickly ahead.

  Gorham followed, brooding. He and Nadielle carried food, climbing equipment, and other supplies, leaving Neph free to protect them, and already his shoulders were chafing from the straps. The thought that he would not see the sky again for days was harsh. The idea that Peer and Malia were up there now, searching for perhaps the most important person the city had ever seen, inspired a heavy sense of dread.

  And Nadielle’s strange woman watched him with her wide blank eyes.

  Rufus is not his name—he has no name, because as far as he remembers she did not give him one—but in memory, this is now how he thinks of himself. So Rufus, his younger self, is lying in the sand, and all there is for him to see is the low baking desert and the pale-blue sky, as if even that is scorched by the sun. And though only just born, Rufus feels that death is very close. There is no food, and the heat is burning the fluid from his body. She’ll be sad, he thinks, not quite c
ertain who she is. He swallows a mouthful of saliva, and the vague thought of her passes away entirely, replaced by a taste that brings a brief but intense recollection of a dark, cold stone wall. Then even that is gone, and Rufus thinks only of himself.

  A long time passes, and then the shadow comes. Its touch seems to soothe his burning skin. He sighs, and his throat hurts. His tongue is swollen. I’m almost dead, he thinks, and those words feel strange in his mind. He knows how they are used and what they mean, but he is lost.

  Rufus looks up into the shadow that blocks the sun, and the shape is unfamiliar to him. It comes closer, kneeling before him. It makes a guttural, deep rumble interspersed with clicks and hisses, and he realizes that it is talking.

  “I’m lost,” he says past his swollen tongue, and it’s like talking through a mouthful of food. The corners of his mouth are split, and he winces, feeling blood flowing across his face.

  The shape inclines its head, and now his eyes are becoming used to the shadow. He blinks a few times to moisten them some more. The shape smiles. It’s a whole new experience for Rufus, and he wonders whether he can ever look like this.

  It removes part of its face as it reaches for him, and his shock is tempered by the feel of something cool and wet pressed against his lips. He half-closes his eyes and sucks, and water flows into his mouth. He sighs and swallows, closing one hand around the hand of his helper.

  Drinking, enjoying the contact of his skin on someone else’s, Rufus searches his thoughts and shallow memories for something to relate this to. But though he feels something deep down begging to be released and revealed, his recollection is blank. This is all new.

  His helper’s face is dark and smooth, eyes deep and protected behind a transparent film stretched across a network of fine wire filaments. It’s a woman—he can see the swell of breasts against the thin white gown she wears—and her full lips are moist and shiny. Her hair is long and glinting with bulbs of water. He’s entranced by these droplets, because they seem to slip and flow as the woman moves, catching and casting tiny rainbows and shedding them again just as quickly. He lifts his hand from his helper’s wrist and reaches up. She smiles—her eyes behind the film crease at the corners—and leans forward some more. Rufus takes in a deep breath and smells the woman for the first time. His child’s brain is almost overwhelmed by the barrage of scents, and though his memory is not rich, he can still identify a sweetness and the heat of spices and warmth. He touches her hair, thick yet smooth, and one bulb of water makes contact with his forefinger. It breaks and flows across Rufus’s skin. He sighs with pleasure as another burn is soothed.

  The woman speaks again, but Rufus shakes his head. He cannot understand her. And then he sees that, though smiling, her eyes are also flickering this way and that as she examines his body. He’s naked, and the relentless sun has scorched him terribly, stretching and reddening the skin all across his shoulders, back, and stomach. His legs and groin have escaped the worst of it, hidden as they have been by his stooped shadow for much of the time, but his ankles and feet are blistered and weeping. He sees sympathy in his helper’s eyes, but also confusion.

  He releases the wet thing in his mouth and lies back, careful to keep his face within her shadow. As he examines her some more, the rush of sensory input is exhilarating. Instinct gives him the ability to acknowledge and understand certain aspects, though there is little beyond that understanding—no reference points, no historical benchmarks. He recognizes much about his helper without recalling ever having seen anything like her before.

  (my mother wiped my mind, she made me a blank, and was it for me or …?)

  The woman’s robe is light and thin but looks strong. It is tied around her waist, wrists, and ankles with fine silver wire, similar to that which frames the clear film covering her eyes and face. Her skin is dark against the white robe, speckled here and there with pearls of perspiration, and the fine hairs on the back of her hands shine with the remains of some cream or salve. She wears boots with heavy bottoms, and around her waist hangs a loose belt. There are knives here and other things that Rufus does not recognize.

  (I know now, but I didn’t know then, because even my mother could never have guessed at the wonders of the Heartlands.)

  While he examines his helper, Rufus is aware that she is drawing in the sand before him. He looks past her and sees the thing she brought with her. It is large and wide, steaming and breathing, and he cannot conceive of what it might be.

  She taps her finger on the back of his hand until he meets her gaze again. Then she points down at what she has drawn. There are two marks in the sand; she points at them, then at him and her alternately. Rufus nods. The woman shuffles back, smoothing the sand she has disturbed until it is blank. She quickly makes marks and slashes, mounds and dips, creating a landscape before his eyes and marking it here and there with landmarks only she can know.

  She draws something from her belt and whips it at the air—a long thin stick, appearing as if from nowhere. It’s hollow and pierced at regular intervals with oval holes, and though Rufus cannot guess at its true use, his savior uses it now as a pointer. Again she indicates two small shapes, and then she moves back a little, thrusting the stick into the ground between a range of low sand humps she has made. A series of grumbled sounds comes from her mouth, which Rufus assumes to be a name.

  A stab of pain slashes at his stomach. Thirst scorches his throat just as the sun burns his skin. He yearns to touch those water bulbs in her long hair again and for the wet thing she held to his mouth while he sucked the moisture from it. But her face has grown stern now, and he can sense a rising disquiet in her manner.

  (she took away my memories but left all my senses, all my human knowledge. She wanted me to survive … but turned me into nothing.)

  She holds the long pointer across the impromptu map, and Rufus knows what he has to do.

  Taking the end of the proffered pointer, he climbs slowly to his feet. He knows he can be healed; he knows this strange woman will take him and do that. But first she wants to know where he has come from.

  She is looking down at the rough landscape around her feet as he takes the first few steps. She glances up and freezes. Even her loose robe seems to catch the sunlight and pause, motionless in the still desert heat.

  Rufus takes more steps back, eye on the map she has made, and he’s aware of the drag marks his feet are making in that desert landscape. Soon he is walking across the marks he left coming here moments or days before, and the woman—his rescuer, his savior—has taken one of the several metal and bone things from her belt. She’s holding it in both hands before her, raised as if to gather the heat of the sun, and something glints in the object’s concave well.

  She starts talking, and though he does not know the words, he recognizes the raised inflection of questions.

  Back some more, back, way beyond what he can judge to be distance in the out-of-scale map she has made. But he knows that there’s something staggeringly important about where he is, who he is, and what he has done, and suddenly he needs to make an impression. He’s not just a young, naked boy dying in a desert. He is something far more.

  (if she’d told me I would still have come. If she’d trusted me …)

  He stops and plants the pointer in the sand between his feet.

  His savior is shouting now, her strange guttural words stumbling over one another as she steps forward, stamping out her map as she moves closer.

  (she made me what I am … she sent me out to this …)

  Rufus turns and points his skinny arm out into the desert, back the way he has come.

  (whatever happens now is all her fault.)

  The shouting ceases, and now his savior is muttering again. He feels a sudden charge to the air. Every hair on his head stands on end. A thrill passes through him, aggravating every nerve and setting his whole body spasming, kicking up sand. As he turns fully to face her, there’s an intense flash that is, for the blink of an eye, brighter and
hotter than the sun.

  And then a darkness and silence he has never known before.

  Nophel soothed the Scopes, lifting their leather shrouds, rubbing ointment into their unnatural joints and creases, and his condition did not seem to bother them at all. Perhaps they did not even know that he could not be seen; their giant eyes, after all, were aimed out at the city. Or maybe this strange curse left in one of his mother’s sample gourds did not affect their chopped, inhuman minds. Dogs and rathawks did not see him, but they were natural things whose minds worked in very defined ways. These Scopes were not conceived in the eyes or minds of gods known or unknown.

  Just like me, Nophel thought. Though born a very natural birth, he considered himself offspring of a monster.

  He had been watching for half a day, and Dane had not returned. He’d said that he needed to speak to the Council and, ever since he’d left, Nophel had sat in fear of what might come. His life had changed so much: the Blue Water, meeting the Unseen, and then the revelation that the Dragarians—not the Marcellans and their Scarlet Blades, as he’d always assumed—had killed his mother more than twenty years before. That disclosure had stolen some of the comforting satisfaction that playing a part in his bitch mother’s death had always afforded him. Absorbing such changes was hard enough, but awaiting the inevitability of more change now was almost unbearable. If he sends them to kill me, they won’t be able to see me, he thought. But Dane was not foolish. If he sought Nophel’s death, he would lull him first. Unseen he might be, but he was as far from safe as ever before.

  And then the Dragarian shouting, Baker! What did that mean?