by Edward Lee
Hudson frowned. “Deaconess Wilson told me I won a contest of some sort, and told me to meet her here. Where is she?”
“Right here,” answered a silhouette in the doorway.
Hudson grimaced from the shock. “God damn! Don’t sneak up on people like that!”
The female minister stepped forward into the candlelight. Her face appeared either blank or simply content and her blue eyes, which struck Hudson as dull yesterday, seemed narrow and keen now. She wore the same black surplice and white collar.
“How irregular for you to take God’s name in vain,” she said. “You of all people—one who yearns to be a priest.”
He had, hadn’t he? He never did that. “You scared the shit out of me,” he objected. “Now what’s all this about? And furthermore, what are you all about?”
She glanced at the prostitute, who was relighting her pipe.
“What I’m all about, Mr. Hudson,” the deaconess began, “is failure. You, on the other hand, are about success. I envy you—” Her voice hushed. “And I honor you.”
“That makes no sense. I should leave.”
“That is your prerogative, it has been all along. Didn’t I make it clear that you are under no obligation?”
“Yes, but—”
“And now you want answers. First, answers about me.”
“You got that right. A homeless guy living in your church had the same dream as me. I read an article in the paper about a baby’s grave dug up, and it turns out this girl over here is the one who did the digging. And a half hour ago I see the coffin stuck beneath the pews at your church.”
“It’s all part of the science—”
Hudson’s anger roiled. “The science?”
“You’ll understand more should you choose to proceed far enough to speak to the Trustee.”
Hudson opened his mouth to object further, paused, then decided not to.
Her eyes appeared as cool blue embers. “Do you choose to proceed?”
“Yes,” Hudson said.
“Then follow me.” The deaconess touched the prostitute’s shoulder. “Come along. You bring the candles.” Then she raised a plastic bag from which depended an object inside about the size of a softball. “I’ll bring the head.”
CHAPTER THREE
(I)
A hundred Pipe Fitters—mostly half-Demon, half-Human Hybrids—clustered down below about the Main Sub-Inlet. What are they doing? Favius wondered, looking down from his precipitous sentry post on the ramparts. This was the end of the stupendous Pipeway that, Favius knew now, started all the way across the Quarter in the harbor of Rot Port. The Conscript studied the end of the Pipeway’s Inlet, a great circular maw sixty-six feet wide. He marveled at the sheer volume of fluid that the Pipeway would be able to transfer. But still he thought, Why? Why? And what were the Technologists doing down there now? Teams of the Hybrids began scaling the Inlet’s outer rim via ladders made of cured intestines, while others remained in the basin as if in wait . . .
But in only minutes more prison wagons hauled by strange, mutant beasts crossed the basin itself and stopped.
Immediately, Favius thought, Corpulites . . .
From the bared wagons, dozens of unfortunate victims were extracted: naked Hybrids bred especially by the Hexegenic Factories. Naked, yes, and bald, blinded, and bulbously obese. The Corpulites were a particular Organic Materials invention—living beings whose deliberately corrupted gene mechanisms caused grievous obesity. Satchels of fat hung from the arms, legs, bellies, and backs of captives. Horned Scythers were quickly dispatched, wielding great flensing blades, which expertly carved slabs of fat from the shrieking contingent. The blades glimmered, each downward flashing arc dividing still more fat from the living bodies of the Corpulites.
Now Favius’s question had been answered. The fat was then passed up to the Pipe Fitters scaling the Inlet and promptly used to grease the fitting seams.
An immense shadow crawled past the perimeter; Favius was not surprised to see Levitators moving in a huge Y-connector. Magnificent, he thought. The screams of the butchered Corpulites soared like a thick breeze as Scythers continued to slough off the necessary fat, and when the great seam had been sufficiently greased . . .
Incantations boomed from megaphones, retarding the Levitation Spell and hence lowering the Y-joint perfectly into place, after which the Pipe Fitters amassed to lock down the bolts with their spanners.
Favius understood now—the Y-joint split the direction of catastrophic inflow into dual directions, making dispersion more even and efficient.
When the Fitters were done, they disembarked from the site on Balloon Skiffs, onto their next assignment. The Corpulites, however, were not so lucky. Now bereft of all body fat, they were left to bellow and squirm on the Reservoir’s gritty black floor, knowing that eventually they would become one with whatever manner of filth soon filled this place to the brim.
Another great wonder on another day in Hell, the Conscript thought. And I am honored to be a tiny part of it, a tiny part in Lucifer’s plan.
What greater gift could anyone ask?
(II)
So this is it, Krilid thought, half-queasy as he gazed down. It was in the mouth of an illegally duplicated Nectoport that he stood, leaning slightly out. The technology amazed him, and it verified rumors he’d heard for years that certain anti-Luciferic sects had engaged their own White Sorcerers to psychically steal the secrets from Lucifer’s own Bio-Wizards and copy them for their own use. A Nectoport could be thought of as an invisible tunnel that, snakelike, covered great distances in seconds because it existed in a different phase-shift and therefore inverted true space—the ultimate achievement in occult science. The “tunnel” was reportedly capable of extending indefinitely, and all that was ever visible of it was the forward Egress and Observation Port.
But even with the security tether, Krilid found little piece of mind; the tether itself could break (causing a fatal fall), while this very assignment, for all he knew, could be bogus. In Hell, information was like character. One never knew what to trust—indeed, if trust even existed in this infernal sprawl.
Approximately a mile above the very spot in which Conscript Favius stood on his rampart, Krilid hovered. The spotty black clouds hid him fairly well, yet he could take no chances of detection. The clouds were patrolled now by demonic troops in balloons, and there were always the heinous Gremlins who lived and hunted in these clouds, semi-weightless monsters with saw-teeth and mouths that opened vertically beneath globose, black-veined eyes; not to mention untold flying things and Levatopuses, which were like bedbugs only they lived off the sooty waste in the clouds rather than a sleeper’s blood. Krilid’s direct field commander—the Fallen Angel Ezoriel—had provided not only the Nectoport but also a Hand of Glory, whose flame-tipped fingertips imparted a skirt of invisibility, which prevented unwelcome observers from seeing the Port’s floating green rim of light.
Down there, he thought, staring at the Reservoir’s nearly endless basin. Empty now, true, but soon it would be filled with six billion gallons of . . . something . . .
Something, yes. But what?
Krilid was a Hellborn Troll, squat, heavily muscled, but with a smushed head that looked lengthened and lopsided. This anomaly was caused through punishment a long time ago: Krilid had been captured by Municipal Golems, while stealing a box of Ghoul Steaks from a delivery vehicle in Boniface Square. He’d spent the night in a Constabulary jail, and the next day a Torture Detachment had slowly yanked his genitals off with pulleys, and then he’d been treated to the “Head-Bender,” a later-model torture device in which the convict’s head was placed in a specially constricted pipe-vise. Krilid’s skull was pulverized to bits and then remolded, whereupon a Re-Ossification Spell caused the crushed bone to adhere after the fact. The pain was incalculable, such that he prayed they’d kill him and be done with it—Trolls, unlike the Human Damned, were mortal—but the officers of the Constabulary would have none of that. It serve
d Satan far better for the deformed to live, protracting their misery.
And miserable Krilid had been, but he’d also been mad. Being born a Troll is bad enough, he knew, but having to walk the streets with a bent head is even worse.
Krilid wanted revenge. He could kill himself, sure, and then this horrific existence would be behind him, but somehow, now, that wasn’t good enough. And going back to a life of petty crime seemed boring and scary. Those bastards bent my head, damn it, so I’m going to get them back.
That’s when Krilid had joined an anti-Luciferic terrorist cell.
Ezoriel himself had recruited him, and through some manner of clairvoyance had already known of the dismal Troll’s angst, pain, and yearning for revenge. “Serve God, in this place abandoned by God,” the Fallen Angel had told him in a voice that shimmered. His face shimmered, too, like sunlight on a rippling lake, such that its details could not be perceived. “Join the Contumacy and be a part of God’s glory when we overthrow Lucifer and take over. After that, rest assured—we shall convert this canyon of sin, hatred, and blasphemy into a place of hope, a place full of the love of God.”
Krilid didn’t know from God, but Ezoriel’s recruitment speech was just what he’d needed to hear. These people were terrorists who raided, bombed, harassed, and/or destroyed anything or anyone serving the Morning Star. The Troll’s biggest beef was with the Torture Detachment; hence, Ezoriel had granted his first request: to drop Sulphur Bombs on the place from the Nectoport. He’d scored multiple direct hits.
Since then, he’d bombed several targets in the Industrial Zone, had kidnapped a Grand Duke, had taken out several demonic police chiefs with a matchlock muzzle-loader, and had helped blow up the Central Research Grotto at the Klaus Barbie District’s Hexegenic Virus Labyrinth. They used a separate Nectoport to pipe in millions of cubic yards of methane pilfered from the Waste Pits at the city’s largest Pulping Station, then set it off with limelight bombs. Most of the Labyrinth’s service passages had collapsed, while the Central Research Grotto had exploded with such force it had cause a Hellquake that split the District in half. Krilid had partied hard that night at Ezoriel’s fortress, and had even been rewarded with a liter of distilled water.
Now, though?
The Troll wondered as he hovered. His sextant showed him the area that Ezoriel had called the “Target Extraction Point,” and on this mission, the “target” wasn’t a building, nor was it a living target to be assassinated. Instead it was a living target to be “extracted.”
Alive.
If the intel was correct.
Krilid identified a landmark after adjusting the sextant’s gauges to accommodate the coordinates: “Sixty-six cubits out from the Reservoir’s southernmost corner, where you’ll see the Main Sub-Inlet,” Ezoriel had told him.
The landmark—hard as it was to see against the Wandermast Reservoir’s unrelenting black—was a particular pile of bodies from an Emaciation Squad. They’d died on their feet digging out this immense quarry and, via protocol, their twitching, unnourished bodies would be left to shudder there until the Reservoir was filled. When this happened, the landmark would be submerged, he knew, but at least he now had a general idea where to look for the “target” to be “extracted.”
I’m not liking this, Krilid thought.
Was he being set up? The thought occurred to him, but any logical reason didn’t. Ezoriel is said to have never told a lie.
But bad information isn’t a lie, is it?
Perhaps Ezoriel didn’t know for sure. “Unimpeachable authority,” the Fallen Angel had said of his information source. “It cannot be doubted.”
Yeah? Krilid questioned.
Then why had he been sent on this mission totally alone, and in an expensive Nectoport? To attempt an “extraction” in what was certainly one of Hell’s most guarded secret projects?
It almost sounded to Krilid that he’d been sent on a suicide mission but no one had seen fit to tell him that.
(III)
The echoes of the deaconess’s words trailed behind her like a banner as they mounted the dark stairs. “The attic is the best place, for the power of its ambience. The cliché—do you understand? The sheer weight of the idea?”
“No, I don’t understand,” Hudson said, the whore just behind him.
“The same as the house itself, and what happened in the house. The house has become what’s known as a Bleed-Point, while certain things from the history of the house serve as functional Totems. They’re Power Relics.”
Certain things, Hudson wondered. She means the head . . . “What did you mean when you called yourself a failure but I’m a success?”
He could see the woman nod ahead of him. “You’re on one end of the Fulcrum, I’m on the other—the bad end, I’m afraid.”
“The Fulcrum, huh?” Hudson said.
“I was solicited because I was solicitable. My ebbing faith made me ripe for the Machinators. But you? You’re actually the opposite. It’s the desire of the powers I now serve that you make the choice. My rewards are minuscule compared to the rewards you will receive should you accept this incalculable prize.”
Great, Hudson thought.
The stairs raised them into a long, dusty attic. Even after dusk, it was stiflingly hot. The prostitute began lighting candles from a bag she’d carried up, and in the growing light, Hudson saw that the attic was essentially empty, save for a couple of lawn chairs and a couple of boxes. The deaconess went to the back wall, then paced off six steps toward the room’s center. There, she placed one of the chairs.
“This is where you will sit.”
From a darker corner, then, she pulled out—
Whoa! Hudson thought.
—a brand-new pickax.
“And this is how we will access the Trustee.”
“What are you talking about?” Hudson whined.
The deaconess smiled. She removed her Roman collar and started to unbutton her surplice. “Remove your clothes, dear,” she said to the prostitute. “We must show our God-given bodies unclothed, to curry favor from our lord.”
The prostitute smirked. “I want my fuckin’ money first. You said you’d give me another six hundred.”
The bills were produced like a finger-snap, and handed over.
“Curry favor from your lord?” Hudson questioned. “Somehow I don’t think you mean the Lord God.”
“Our Lord Lucifer,” the deaconess said. “Certainly, you’ve already guessed that.”
“Yeah, sure. But the thing I want to know is how did those skinny demons manage to get a hold of your Lord Lucifer’s poop to write sixes on your body?”
The deaconess popped out more buttons. “It’s a process known as Object Transposition, a very new occult science. It’s subdimensional. The Demons—and the excrement itself, by the way—were only corporeal for the duration of the rite. Six minutes. But six minutes were enough.” Then she dropped the surplice to the floor, to stand splendidly nude in the candlelight.
Hudson tried not to gawp at the robust physique. “You seem different today. Yesterday you were all fidgety.”
She went behind the prostitute to untie her faded bikini top. When the garment dropped, buoyant breasts came unloosed, with large, irregular nipples that looked like plops of chewed beef.
“That’s because I’ve acclimated to the entails of the Machination Link. And I’m not resisting it anymore. I’ve accepted it, the beginning of my glorious demise. I’m being machinated, you see—by a trained Channeler and a high-echelon Archlock who operate out of a Telethesy Unit at the De Rais Academy.” She smiled. “Think of it as puppeteering—from Hell. Only now my own soul has amalgamated with the process.”
Hudson stared.
“Oh, and Mr. Hudson? You’ll need to remove your clothes as well.”
Hudson winced. “I’m not taking off my clothes, for God’s sake.”
“For Lucifer’s, not God’s. It’s all part of the protocol, I’m afraid. You must be as naked as Ad
am when he stalked out of the garden.”
What am I doing? came the thought as he began to strip. At least being nude would make the heat more tolerable. The deaconess and the whore were already shining with sweat.
Now the deaconess was inspecting the prostitute’s heavy breasts, twilling the meaty nipples with her fingers. “Let’s see here now,” she murmured. Milk sprayed out at once. “Yes, good, so full” Then the deaconess tasted a wet fingertip. “Ah. Soiled. Perfect.” Next her hand stroked up and down the recently deflated belly, whose stretch marks now looked like the gouges of a garden claw. An abundant sprawl of black pubic hair jutted nestlike from between the prostitute’s pasty legs. The deaconess ran her fingers through it, fascinated. “So how many babies have come out of here, hmm?”
“Six, seven—fuck, I don’t know,” the prostitute said, disconcerted.
“And you left them all to die?”
“Yeah. Fuck it. The world’s a bunch’a shit anyway. Who wants to bring kids up with all this shit goin’ on? Besides, I make more money when I’m pregnant.”
“Really? How interesting.”
“Sure. Kink tricks, you know? Lotta guys out there go nuts for knocked-up streetwalkers. They pay more. So I pocket the cash, and when it’s time, I pop the kid out in an alley somewhere and walk away.”
“Perfect,” whispered the deaconess.
Hudson felt sick.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Hudson and the prostitute jumped at the start. The sound of impact shook the house. When Hudson cleared his confusion, he noticed the deaconess–
WHAM!
—driving the pickax point with gusto into the wall. After a dozenish strikes, she’d managed to tear out a hole about the diameter of a dinner plate, roughly four feet from the floor.
Hudson peered out the hole, which showed the moonlit backyard. Then he refaced the deaconess.
“I ask you once more, Mr. Hudson. Do you wish to proceed?”
Hudson could feel the sweat pouring out of him. He wanted to say no, and he wanted to leave, but instead?
