As we moved and hauled Milton scoured the pages inside, trying to catalogue and organize them in their new home, a large, recently cleared out building whose moisture ridden walls seemed likely to recreate the same conditions as the previous library in very short order.
Because the work was hard on the lungs, conversation was kept to a minimum, which only meant more time for my agonizing thoughts about Nova, Hajah, and every horrible thing an imaginative mind can conjure to torture itself. The thought that he might be—repeatedly—finishing what he had attempted when I’d attacked him made my stomach feel as though large animals were trying to chew their way out of it. I couldn’t eat, never slept, and before long the inner turmoil raging through me left me half the man I’d been when we’d arrived. The only positive thoughts that came to me in that time were that Nova had at least escaped captivity, avoided the Angara who had threatened to buy her, and was probably self-sufficient enough to defend herself against Hajah.
I hoped.
Sometimes I felt guilty that I would have preferred to have Nova here in Emibi, a slave of the Grigori, than somewhere out there at the mercy of savage Pangea, and that piece of shit Hajah. Bruk, Milton, and I often talked of escape, but our hairy friend was so convincedno one could escape the Grigori that he wasn’t much help—sadly content to wait for the miracle to come to him. Which made me all the more determined to conjure one.
“What are these?” I asked Milton, who was poring through one of the moldy books.
“What?” he asked, looking over at me, then down to where I pointed. “Oh. Scraps of metal. Some Angara threw them there. I don’t know why.”
“They didn’t say?”
“No. I think they were just looking for a place to dump them.”
“Weirder and weirder. This place is mostly stone age, but right there are scraps of metal—common enough, apparently, to be garbage. Aren’t they afraid we’ll take them and use them?”
“The Pangean humans are quite fatalistic,” Milton said, dismissively. “Bruk is not unique. They accept the fact that you cannot escape the Grigori.”
“Why would they accept that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“What?” I said, stunned.” Milton, what are you saying? Are you giving up, too?”
“No, I’ve just been reading. A side effect of the language implants appears to be an ability to comprehend the Grigori written language, as well.”
“Language implants?”
“Yes. When the Angara placed those metallic things to our heads, they were implanting a device inside our skulls. Rather efficiently, too. No blood, no visible wound. The salient point here is that the device is more than a language translator; it’s also a tracking device among other things. Once you have been ‘tagged’ by the Grigori as their property you truly cannot escape them.”
I sat, deflated.
“Damn,” was all I could manage to say.
“Yes. Indeed. So you needn’t worry about Nova any longer, as I know you have been. She will be found.”
“And she’ll be brought here?”
Milton stared a moment, then shrugged.
“There are other Grigori cities,” he said, sadly. “She might be taken to one of them.”
“So Bruk was right. No one escapes the Grigori.”
“It appears so. We put it off to superstition, but as is often the case with many superstitions, there is an underlying element of science. To Bruk, it is magic. To us, it’s simple technology.”
“Technology, metal, dinosaurs, reptilian masters, naked savages, slavery” I said, dejected. “This place is crazy.” After a moment of silence, I asked the obvious; “Can we remove the device?”
“Yes,” Milton said, also sounding a bit depressed. “But I have to assume it’s impossible given the primitive tools available, and our general lack of surgical skill.”
I dropped into a nearby chair and sulked. Milton seemed to be enjoying his stay here. He had Elia, and his research, and I was losing my mind.
“Brandon,” Milton asked, “have you seen a book in any of your wanderings? Larger than most of these. Bound with metal. Possibly in a room like a laboratory?”
“No,” I answered, reaching down into the discarded metal pile, I picked up a length of steel that seemed to be a remnant of an old sword. “Why?”
“It’s mentioned often in some of these texts. I think it might be useful to us.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for it. And a lab.”
“Not just an eye. Both eyes. In fact, I would appreciate it if you actively look for it, when you have time.”
“It’s that important?”
“I think it might be.”
“What is it?”
“A cookbook, of sorts,” he said.
“For cooking humans?”
“No. I’ll tell you more when you find it, and I can read it.”
“Okay.”
I turned the broken sword piece over in my hands and watched the light from a nearby lantern play over it.
“Milton,” I said, curious about the glittering flashes. “This metal looks like steel, which is harder to make than bronze, isn’t it? Or even just stone tools?”
“It is, indeed.”
“And the Grigori have implanted us with what would have to be a very sophisticated little piece of hardware. More sophisticated than anything we have up on the surface. How is all this weirdness possible?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing. It’s why I’m doing so much reading. I feel like I’m missing something about this place. Something which should be obvious.”
“The books aren’t helping?”
“They are, but like any book, they’re about specific subjects of interest, rather than general knowledge—like this one which is about Grigori reproduction…”
“Ew.”
“Actually it’s quite fascinating…”
“To you.”
Milton laughed.
“Okay,” he said, “ to me. But listen to this and tell me if it doesn’t captivate you.” he said it with a tone that told me he was about to lecture me at length about something boring. “This book explains how the Grigori are all female. That years and years ago they eliminated the need for males in the reproductive process.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, astounded.
I was wrong. It wasn’t boring.
“Not at all. Long ago, using a standard of time I don’t understand, the various tribes of Grigori went to war. Some began mass-producing males who were apparently larger and more vicious then was normal in order to use them as soldiers. Eventually all the books containing the secret of reproduction were destroyed except the one they keep here. To control the other, more ambitious Grigori tribes, apparently.”
“That’s the book you’re looking for? The one that tells how to make soldiers?”
“Or simply how to reproduce Grigori, in general. I’d love to get hold of that book.”
“I bet you would.”
“The unfortunate reality,” he continued, “is that these books are filling in a bit of the picture, but not the whole thing. Grigori are highly intelligent, and technologically sophisticated. They can control reproduction. But all the tools are old, and often in disrepair. The possibilities are—as this city itself has indicated—that they’re either a society in decline, or are borrowing technology from some other, long dead civilization. Or perhaps some third, or fourth possibility that I’m not yet seeing.”
“What does that mean to us, and our hopes for escaping?”
Milton shrugged.
“Give me something, Milton,” I said. “I can't stop worrying about Nova, and I need a little hope, here.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll find a more detailed book that gives me some ideas and options. Maybe a history of Pangea, or the Grigori, or…”
He shrugged again.
I considered all of what Milton had said, and what it might mean. Would Nova eventually be
found? Would she be brought back here? Or to some other Grigori city? Was escape truly impossible? Could the implanted devices ever be removed? Or at least deactivated? If they had such sophisticated technology for putting them into our heads, shouldn’t they also have something similar for taking them out?
With no answers readily available, I went back to studying the reflections of light in my piece of metal, analyzing the sharpness of the edge, and began to consider other, less intellectual possibilities for escape.
* * *
THE WILY ONE RETURNS
* * *
GIVEN THAT WHATEVER PLAN we might concoct would require weapons, Milton and I began to take the scraps of metal the Angara left behind and shape them back into swords and knives.
Due—I supposed—to the fatalistic attitudes of the Pangeans, we were given almost unrestrained freedom within the confines of the buildings to which we’d been assigned, and no one seemed concerned if they saw us with tools, or sharpened steel. There were so many slaves that no one had more work than he or she could handle, and this gave us ample free time to do things they really wouldn’t have wanted us doing had they been paying attention.
We hid our new weapons under the furs and skins that made up our beds, and then Milton came up with the idea of making bows and arrows—weapons apparently unheard of anywhere within Pangea. We decided we would also need shields; but these were easier to steal from the walls of the outer guardroom than they were to create ourselves.
To make a serious attempt at escape we needed a plan, and we needed to hide our getaway. Nothing seemed to click until I made a rather odd discovery in the basements beneath one of the buildings while searching for Milton’s book.
I had been exploring deep inside the city, down twisted streets filled with empty shops and apartments, far beyond the normal routes we slaves were supposed to go—when I suddenly came upon four Grigori curled up on beds of fur. At first I thought they were dead, but then I noticed a slow, infrequent, but regular breathing and realized they were simply out cold. I backed away slowly so as not to disturb them and create a potential nest of problems for myself, planning to get away and never give them another thought. But something about them kept obsessing me—though for some reason my conscious mind couldn’t seem to connect with whatever my subconscious was trying to tell me.
We had enough weapons ready to make a serious attempt at escape when word trickled in to us from along the slave gossip lines that a hunting party of Angara had returned with a cache of recaptured prisoners. This had happened a few times before, and each time I’d been disappointed that none of the returnees had been anyone we knew—a certain cave girl in particular.
This time was different.
I raced out into the main avenue between buildings and stood on a bench to see over the gathered crowd, shoving people aside to get a clear view. From the direction of the massive stone stairs that descended into the city a group of angry Angara were beating forward several bruised and bloody men and women. Again, they were all people I didn’t recognize, and certainly Nova wasn’t among them. But suddenly one of the captives in front stepped forward to reveal a man behind him, and I saw a face that filled me with instant fury.
Hajah.
I leapt down and shoved my way through the crowd, racing over to the chained prisoners. Hajah saw me, his eyes widening with fear, his head pinioning back and forth looking for—I don’t know—an escape? Assistance? It didn’t matter, because there was neither and I was on him. I slammed a fist into his jaw and he practically flipped backwards into another prisoner who shoved him off, and onto the ground.
Hajah’s head hit the stone floor hard, with me right on top of him.
“WHERE IS SHE?” I demanded. “WHERE’S NOVA?”
“GET OFF ME!”
I punched him hard in the nose, and he stopped struggling, his body going limp, but not unconscious. Blood began to seep from each nostril.
“I don’t know!” he shrieked. “I never saw her after I unchained her! I didn’t want her anyway, The ugly bitch!”
I slugged him again, and blood spurted from his tongue as he unintentionally bit it. Then I pounded him again, and again. He struggled weakly a while longer, maybe assuming I was going to continue beating him—which I wanted to—but instead I held myself back and asked him again.
“WHERE IS SHE?”
“She went a different way! I don’t know! I swear it! Maybe she got lost in the tunnels!”
The thought horrified me. Nova, trapped in those caves, no torch, no way to get free. I raised my hand to hit him again, but several Angara pulled me off, pelting me in the side of the head for causing a disturbance. Once he saw he was free of me, Hajah smiled, his arrogance quickly returning when he knew I couldn’t retaliate.
“I only freed her so you couldn’t have her,” he snarled. “I really don’t give a fuck what happens to her, as long as she dies alone someplace where you’ll never find her.”
I went for him again, but the Angara held me fast, and though it took all of them to stop me, they did manage to keep me from cracking Hajah’s skull open on the rock floor. The traitorous one got to his feet and shuffled off with the others in his chain, staring back and smiling at me the whole way.
“Oh,” he said, now almost out of speaking distance, “but as a goodbye, I finished what I started. I took her. Twice. And the whole time I rode her, she just cried like a baby.”
I nearly exploded, fighting like an insane animal, and had to be thrown to the ground and held down by—now—four Angara.
It took a while, but I eventually calmed down, and the Angara let me go.
“I don’t mind you beating on that piece of shit,” one of the panther-men said to me, his face gouged with a massive scar, “but the Grigori feel he has value as a slave, and so they would not be happy if I let you kill him.”
“Only because they don’t know him.”
The Angara laughed, nodding agreement, his scarred face becoming far less frightening, and suddenly I recognized him.
“I know you,” I said.
“And I know you,” he said, smiling. “You’re the fool who punched one of my men. Still making friends wherever you go, I see.”
He laughed, and waved his hands as if to tell me to go away, and so I did, turning and heading back toward Milton and the library.
I’d been worried before, terrified, actually, of exactly what Hajah had claimed to have done—or worse. I also knew he was crafty enough to lie about it just to goad me. But now I was somehow more terrified to think of her out there in that savage world alone. Even though she’d managed just fine in this death trap of a world for some twenty years or so before I came along, I still wanted to find her, to protect her—a thought that made me laugh. The girl was incredible, had saved my life repeatedly and could obviously take care of herself. But somehow her self-sufficiency made me want to shield her all the more.
While awake, she was the constant center of my thoughts, and as I slept her beautiful face haunted my every dream—or nightmare. I loved her. I knew I loved her, and I wanted to find her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I felt more for her than I’d ever thought it possible to feel for anyone. Jessica was a joke. Le… Any of them. All of them. They were nothing, compared to her.
I was terrified for Nova, and almost worse, I missed her. I missed laughing with her, talking to her, holding her, making love with her—missed everything I’d ever done with her, and it was killing me to think that our last moments together had been filled with anger and misunderstanding.
“There is no one more beautiful than you, Nova,” I said aloud, wishing she could hear, pretending to hold her hand high, and then to my heart. “You can’t imagine how sorry I am that I hurt you.”
My words sounded hollow and pointless, not adequately conveying my sense of stupidity and loss. I wanted to think of something better to say when I saw her again, but hoped I would find her so quickly that I wouldn’t have enough time to fi
gure it out.
“MILTON,” I SAID QUIETLY to the old man one evening as he read, “I have to get out of here. I have to find Nova. If it means searching every inch of this crazy, little, inside-out world I’m going to find that girl and spend the rest of my days making her know how much I love her.”
“Little inside-out world!” he scoffed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Brandon.”
He showed me a map of Pangea he had recently discovered among the latest, salvaged manuscript.
“Look,” he said, pointing to it, “this is evidently water, and all this here… land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are on the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean seem to follow the general lines of the continents of the outer world. A bit smaller, perhaps, and not exactly, but more or less. I estimate the ratio of land to water is about fifty-fifty.”
I sighed in frustration.
“So there’s less water than on the outer surface,” I snarled. “So what? You’re not hearing me. I’m in agony!”
“Brandon,” Milton said patiently, as if he were about to school a small boy, “given that the crust of the globe is about 500 miles in thickness; then the inside diameter of Pangea must be 7,000 miles, and the land mass area about a hundred and fifty million square miles! Nova could be anywhere! Granted this world is smaller than the outer surface, but it’s still immense! Think about it! You’re talking about finding her somewhere within an entire planet!”
He was right. I hadn’t thought about it. It was worse than a needle in a haystack. It was a needle dropped from an airplane over the equator. I fought down a growing sense of hopelessness.
“But it must be possible,” I said. “The Angara found Hajah—and some of the others. How?”
“I have no idea,” he said, exasperated. “You’d have to ask one of them.”
I thought about it a minute, and decided he was right. It was the obvious answer.
TAKING A BREAK from my book lugging, which never seemed to bother the guards, I wandered out onto the street to find the Angara with the scarred face. He had been more friendly to me than any of the others, even laughing at my joke. If I was going to get any information out of these irritable panther men, he was the most obvious candidate. But how to find him in this vast, overgrown city?
The Hollow World: (Pangea, Book 1) Page 13
