The Inferior

by Peadar O'Guilin

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to be out again!’ he said. ‘I was sick of all that sneaking around your brother makes us do. Really sick of it. And I miss…There’s nobody there I miss now.’

  ‘Rockface…how did you…?’

  ‘Oh, I came around the edge of the territory unfortunately. I knew that when Windbreaker had the entrance blocked off, you’d be coming straight out the other side.’

  Stopmouth didn’t know what to say. Indrani’s eyes were open too, he saw. She shrugged, still looking a bit weak, and suddenly he was glad to have the bigger hunter along to help with the sled.

  The three exiles spent the day walking under trees along the banks of the Wetlane. Sometimes the woods opened up on the far side to reveal an endless line of mounds, without any other obstacle to soften the yawning horizon. Looking at it felt like leaning over the edge of the Wedding Tower with the parapet crumbling under your hands: dizzying, frightening, thrilling. The sounds were different from home too. Here, the mossbeasts seemed larger, some growing to a finger-length, their colours brilliant against the trunks of trees, their chittering audible in all directions. It hit Stopmouth, for the first time, that he might be following the footsteps of the Traveller into a legend of his very own.

  The sled caught on every possible obstacle, even seeming to invent some of its own. Indrani cursed and kicked the back of it. But Stopmouth was glad to see her like this again, convinced that her full recovery lay only a few days away.

  He was uneasy too, however. He kept expecting to see curtains of Longtongue moss between the trees, and when they found none, he remembered how the creatures had desperately blocked up their streets the night before. He asked Indrani what could make them act that way, but she only said: ‘A mistake, Stopmouth. It’s all a mistake.’ He didn’t feel reassured.

  The woods thinned as they walked. Trees became scrawny and sparse, with swathes of rotted leaves, slimy underfoot. Whenever they paused to rest, it was the woman who rose to her feet first and urged the hunters to hurry. She looked sick. Her face shone with sweat and sometimes even the noise of a falling leaf was enough to make her spin round. Whatever had scared the Longtongues had got to her too.

  ‘Do you think we’re being stalked?’ Indrani asked at one point. Rockface jogged back to check, but found nothing. They moved on.

  The final few trees of the wood leaned drunkenly in all directions, their branches dripping with rot. Opposite the Wetlane, nearby houses in Tongue-Ways seemed to be sinking into the earth.

  And then they saw the Flims.

  Stopmouth had thought the creatures extinct. But here, just outside the woods, they found two of them, trapped and as easy to hunt as flesh on a spit.

  The green, scaly beings lay in soil up to their waists. Their clawed hands rested flat against the earth and their heads drooped to one side like the trees and the buildings had done.

  ‘Let’s get our spears,’ said Stopmouth.

  ‘No!’ shouted Indrani. She grabbed his wrist. Her palms felt damp against his skin. ‘No,’ she said again, voice lower this time. ‘Not these. I can’t explain this, Stopmouth. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that I can’t. Please. These are not to be touched.’

  Rockface snorted. ‘Flims are no challenge even when their legs are working, hey, Stopmouth?’

  The younger man ignored him. ‘So what then, Indrani? Are we to just leave them for somebody else?’

  ‘Somebody…something else already has them. Don’t you see?’

  She began dragging one end of the sled and Stopmouth had to be quick about picking up his rope before she spilled the contents onto the mossy earth. As they passed close to the Flims, one of the beasts lunged for the sled. Indrani yelped, but the creature missed and whatever the danger might have been passed. When Stopmouth looked back, he saw the two beasts had resumed their previous deadened pose.

  ‘Not much of a threat,’ said Rockface. ‘But if we hadn’t got a sled crammed with flesh, we’d have had to take them anyway.’

  As they walked, the mounds on the far side of the Wetlane became less overgrown. Sometimes the roof of a house stuck out of the ground at no more than hip height. ‘I think we’re leaving the rotten area behind us,’ said Stopmouth. But then the Wetlane they’d been following took a sharp turn to the right. A wide area of land free of houses opened up in front of them. As far as the eyes could see, figures of various creatures lay planted in the earth. Sometimes only a head poked up from the ground. Sometimes it was an arm, and in one case Stopmouth saw the kicking legs of a buried Pio. None of the creatures showed any interest in its neighbours, and the only sound was a barely audible moan that seemed to travel up through the soles of Stopmouth’s feet to lodge in his bones. A foul smell hung over the area, even at a distance.

  The humans covered their noses and stared at this strange spectacle running off to the horizon. ‘I don’t see how we can get past this place,’ said Stopmouth. ‘Not if they intend to grab us as those Flims did back there.’

  Indrani had no answer. She gazed at the planted field with a strange mix of terror and shame. Even Rockface was looking unsettled.

  ‘We could go back,’ Stopmouth suggested, ‘into Longtongue, travel that way…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then? It’s not like we can just climb into the Wetlane!’

  Indrani said nothing for a few breaths. But then she smiled. It was the first smile Stopmouth had seen her give since he and Rockface had found the Talker. Her entire face lit up and he drank in the sight of her gratefully.

  ‘We must go back to the trees,’ she said. ‘We will build a raft.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s a way to move on water used by savages long ago. Like a sled.’ She laughed. ‘You’re the only savages I’ve got. You’ll have to build it for me.’

  Stopmouth was woken by a rumbling sound. The humans had wasted the rest of their day moving back out of the rotten area and finding a wood to hide in. They were meant to begin searching for logs then, but exhaustion and darkness had caught them first.

  The young hunter grabbed his spear and sat up. Dawn hadn’t yet arrived and the others slept on, snoring gently. Had he imagined the sound? He stared into the underbrush of the woods, but nothing stirred. Then he heard it again. He felt it through the soles of his feet. It was the earth itself that growled, a great rumbling that grew more and more pronounced until the ground seemed to ripple under him. It woke Indrani, filled her face with fright. Rockface rolled over beside Stopmouth, a knife in each hand.

  A moment later several trees fell down and the soil beyond them exploded upwards. Tens upon tens of creatures surged out of the hole that had now appeared. They ran low to the ground on four legs, their features hard to distinguish in the dark. There were so many of them they spread out on the land beyond the trees like a carpet of moss. There was something strange and unsettling about their skin–under the tracklights it seemed to ripple, as though alive in its own right. Then the beasts began to dig, each in a separate place. Soil fountained above their heads, and in a dozen heartbeats all had disappeared from view with only a shower of dirt to show that they were still there, still digging.

  The noise stopped. The creatures reappeared, all at once, and rushed for the hole from which they’d originally emerged. When they returned, they brought prisoners–beasts of every imaginable shape and colour. The Talker translated their voices: cries for mercy, yells of defiance. However, once each had been planted in the soil, the screaming ended and was replaced by groans.

  ‘They won’t scream any more,’ Indrani whispered. ‘They’re in too much pain now. The Diggers’ young are eating them from below, but slowly, slowly. Their food stays alive right up until they reach the brain–a thousand days of agony. Not even the Roof knows how the Diggers keep them alive that long.’

  The humans watched the horrific spectacle until dawn. Indrani kept saying ‘Sorry,’ under her breath, though Stopmouth didn’t know who she was apologizing to. Just as th
e Roof began brightening, the last of the Diggers ran back into the hole from which they’d emerged. The earth rumbled and then stilled. For a time the groans of the planted creatures continued, but soon they too were at peace.

  ‘How do we make this raft?’ Stopmouth asked.

  Indrani explained in a distracted kind of way, and together the men dragged a few of the smaller fallen trees–those no thicker than Stopmouth’s two arms–closer to the bank of the Wetlane. They snapped off the branches and tied the logs together with hide ropes from the sled while the glittering mossbeasts of the area flew around them like puffs of shiny smoke.

  ‘By the ancestors,’ said Rockface, ‘it’s worse than working on one of Windbreaker’s ditches!’

  Indrani glared at him, but soon the companions had created a little platform as long as a hunter with his arms stretched out and no wider than a child doing the same thing.

  When they pushed it onto the water, Stopmouth clapped his hands in delight.

  ‘Look at that, Rockface! Look at it float!’

  It was like a moving bridge: a way to pass over the domain of the Wetlane beasts without having to enter it and submit to their mercy. It frightened him too, though, for it would be so easy to fall off.

  He kept the raft close to shore with the butt of his spear until they’d loaded their supplies onto it. It sank lower into the water with every joint of meat they added.

  Rockface shook his head and grinned. ‘We must be mad! Anyway, I’m not getting on that until I’ve been into the bushes one last time. Might as well lighten the load, hey?’ Nobody answered. ‘I’m going into the bushes,’ he repeated, winking heavily. ‘To lighten…the…load!’ When they didn’t laugh, he shook his head as if in disappointment over the slowness of their wit, and moved off into the trees.

  Indrani wrapped the Talker in a square of hide and tied it around her neck. Stopmouth had intended to carry the little sphere himself. He wasn’t sure he could live any more without the gift of proper speech it brought. But Indrani shook her head.

  ‘You’re supposed to be the hunter. Do you want this thing getting in the way?’

  Yes, he wanted it, but Indrani gave him no time to ready an argument. ‘Hold my hand,’ she said, ‘while I step onto the raft.’ Even so, she hesitated to touch him, looking at his hand as though it would bite her.

  ‘Why do you hate me?’ asked Stopmouth. ‘Before I went to find the Talker, you used to lean against me. We laughed all the time. You stroked my face when I was sick, I remember. Now it disgusts you to even look at me!’

  She made no answer. Eventually, with a heavy heart, Stopmouth held out his hand again and helped her onto the raft. He followed her, and when Rockface came back and climbed aboard–gingerly for all his earlier joking–the little platform rode so low in the water that only half a thumb’s width separated them from the creatures that even now shadowed the depths beneath. Stopmouth hadn’t expected them to come so quickly and sent a quick prayer to the ancestors that the beasts would be too confused by the strange object to attempt an assault. Besides, apart from turning back, the humans had no other way of avoiding the land of the Diggers.

  Stopmouth pushed a long pole he’d cut earlier towards the bed of the Wetlane and used it to nudge them awkwardly away from the bank. The water was still, but even so he struggled to get them moving in the right direction. As the raft spun in a slow circle, Stopmouth saw a huge panting creature standing at the same spot on the bank from which they’d launched themselves. For a moment he tried to guess what manner of beast it was.

  I know it, he thought. I know what that is. But trees shadowed it, and his poor control set the raft to turning again. By the time he could safely look back, the figure had gone.

  ‘I think we’re being followed,’ he said to his companions.

  ‘Diggers?’ asked Rockface.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I think…I think I saw Crunchfist on the bank.’

  ‘You look scared,’ said Indrani.

  ‘Do you even know who Crunchfist is?’ asked Stopmouth. ‘Wallbreaker must have sent him to bring us home.’

  She shrugged. ‘He’s missed his chance now. He’ll never get past the planted bodies.’

  The two hunters, however, shared a worried glance.

  After the initial awkwardness they began moving at an easy walking pace. The Wetlane beasts shadowed them for a while and then left them alone, perhaps thinking the platform another one of Wallbreaker’s tricks.

  Stopmouth gained in confidence with every shove of the pole. He found standing up made the job easier, allowing them to pick up speed. Mossbeasts flew around him in a little cloud and the rotting trees of the forest seemed ten days’ travel away. For a moment he forgot who he’d seen on the bank. He even forgot Indrani’s scorn for him. The raft glided over the water as smoothly as a Globe and the hunter found himself grinning widely. Why had nobody thought of this before? Why hadn’t Wallbreaker thought of it? The ride was so smooth that Rockface had fallen asleep and Indrani lay exhausted, shading her eyes from the hot blue light of the Roof. Stopmouth, however, felt wonderful. Muscles he rarely used ached, but it didn’t feel like hard work. His young body sang with happy effort.

  We are strangers here, he thought. Just out of sight a whole world must be hiding, with streets he’d never know and unimaginable beasts feasting on exotic flesh. How many Ways could there be between here and the Roof? How many species? The idea should have frightened him, but instead it filled him with a great excitement that only grew with every push.

  The trees on the bank turned rotten again and his cheeriness died with them. Soon fields of planted bodies replaced more natural growth and stretched for a long walk on both sides of the Wetlane. He saw no humans imprisoned here, but there were plenty of Longtongues and even the heads of a few Armourbacks sunk deep into the soil. The Talker filled his ears with a chorus of squeals and groans.

  ‘Can’t we turn that thing off?’ he asked Indrani.

  She shook her head, looking sick. The air stank of waste and rot, worse than the latrine trenches in Man-Ways, worse than anything Stopmouth had ever smelled in his life. Rockface awoke, gasping for air.

  ‘By the ancestors, what’s making that stench?’

  It was strong enough to make everybody’s eyes water. Stopmouth wiped his with the back of his arm and tried to study the scene as dispassionately as Wallbreaker would have done.

  Most of the bodies hung listlessly, but some waved arms or tentacles or even flippers at the air as they cried out in endless pain. They all seemed to be evenly spaced, one separated from the next by the length of an arm. Nothing grew in the gaps between, not the tiniest sapling or wisp of moss.

  ‘Would you look at them all?’ breathed Rockface. ‘You know, we should kill a few, hey? Even the Armourbacks aren’t that cruel.’

  ‘I never thought it would have spread so quickly,’ said Indrani. ‘We didn’t mean it. A bit of excitement, we thought. That was all. We knew we could control them if we had to.’

  Stopmouth had given up asking her specific questions some time before and was surprised by this opening up.

  ‘I’ve always wondered why my people haven’t come to save me,’ she continued. ‘But if this is the reason, I can’t say I didn’t earn it.’

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t have the words to understand it.’

  ‘I do, the Talker—’

  ‘Ah yes! The Talker. The greatest miracle of our Tribe! Do you know, Stopmouth, that we have things of metal so small that if they were to grow a hundred times, you still wouldn’t see them? Things that swim in our bodies to keep us whole. There are things of metal–machines, I should say–that built the Roof itself, and all we had to do was give them the orders to begin.

  ‘Some of them can make life. They can redesign us to live where we choose, how we choose; to die when we want in a way that pleases us. Stopmouth, my Tribe has machines for everything. Everything! And of all of them, only the Tal
ker needs to be this big.’

  The raft sailed past a field of creatures that resembled hairy humans with twisted horns on their heads and eyes that glittered green in the fading light. It had been some time since they’d seen anything moving in the water. Stopmouth was becoming more and more anxious to find a place to stop for the night, but knew Indrani would never agree to it so near to the Diggers’ victims.

  To distract himself–to distract all of them–he asked, ‘Why then does the Talker have to be so big? Is changing words so much more difficult than making a world?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Changing words isn’t so hard. Recognizing a particular sound, swapping it for another–that was easy even for your ancestors. Reading what happens in your head and the heads of all the beings around you, now that is difficult. Finding equivalents in one culture for the basic concepts of another–that is really difficult. I say the word vegetable and the translator tells you something like ‘edible moss’. So, yes, it’s a miracle, but it’s a dangerous miracle. It makes you think you understand beasts and you never do. When it comes down to it, you can’t even understand your own species.’

  Stopmouth shook his head. ‘I understand everything you say, Indrani. Maybe not always before, when you were trying to speak Human. But with the Talker it’s easy.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  Stopmouth nodded and was amazed to see her mouth turn up into a snarl. He feared she would use the bone knife on him and maybe Rockface thought the same thing, for the bigger man lifted one arm as if to restrain Indrani. But it wasn’t necessary.

  She said, ‘If a woman says the word “rape” to a man, the little Talker in the man’s head comes up with several matches, none of them correct. You’re just a savage, Stopmouth. Rape means nothing to you but a good time. But not even the most civilized of men will ever know what rape is to a woman.’

  ‘Indrani, what did Wallbreaker…?’

  She didn’t answer. Stopmouth’s head was reeling. It made a lot of sense now. Wallbreaker had been wary of Indrani’s fists and her strange, high kicks, but he could fool anybody into doing anything.