The Humanarium

by CW Tickner

  ‘Too much activity out there,’ Sonora said, nodding at the archway. ‘Grandpa did say to head along the side if we didn’t want to risk being spotted, and after seeing those poor people...’

  ‘Along the base then,’ he said.

  He turned his right shoulder to the worlds above and, staying beneath their overhang, they trudged along the line of worlds as they headed for the wall at the end of the hallway of the gods.

  There was a sense of weight bearing down on Harl from the worlds above. He knew it wouldn’t collapse, but every now and then he considered leading Sonora more out into the open just to lessen the feeling. And yet each time he was about to step out he’d catch a glimpse of the god through the archway and it would force him to bear the weight a little longer. It wasn’t even the weight of glass, metal, and earth that stood above him that was the problem, it was the knowledge of all those lives, all those people. So many men, women, and children trapped in their cages, oblivious and innocent of the true nature of their slavery.

  When they were most of the way to the wall, Sonora stopped.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked and stepped out from under the ledge.

  Harl took a moment to adjust the pack on his shoulders. Something inside was poking a sharp edge into the small of his back.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ he said, rubbing at the sore spot.

  Sonora looked up into the world directly above them and burst out laughing.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, wondering what could be so funny at such a time. A lowing noise reached his ears as he moved out to join her.

  ‘Cows,’ she said, pointing to dozens of cows squashed up against the glass front of the world.

  ‘It makes sense, I suppose,’ he said. ‘The gifted animals must have come from somewhere.’

  ‘It looks like there are hundreds of them, possibly thousands if their world is as big as ours was,’ she said and then laughed again.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Can you imagine the smell in a world full of cows?’ she said. ‘I wonder if they have a hierarchy.’

  ‘Probably,’ he jested, ‘with stubborn elders who demand the finest grass from the land.’

  She laughed and kissed him.

  The end of the hallway was a dull wall, a featureless vertical expanse, but from their position Harl could tell there was a space beyond the worlds that hinted at a turn at the end. He didn’t know what to expect when they reached it. His entire life had been spent inside the walls of his own world and now he was walking past world after world. How did you even picture what might exist beyond them?

  ‘Do you think Gorman knew?’ Sonora asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  Harl said nothing for a while, remembering all that the old man had told them. ‘I think that he knew we were imprisoned. I don’t know if he knew why, but I’m sure he had his suspicions.’

  They walked in silence until Sonora asked the question that had been burning in his own mind since their descent.

  ‘Are we just going to leave all those people behind?’

  ‘What can we do?’ he said. ‘We can’t cut our way into each tank to rescue everyone. For starters, there’s no way back up. But even if we did manage to get back inside, I doubt anyone would believe us. Too many cycles behind barriers has left us without the ability to comprehend what lies outside.’

  Sonora stayed quiet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘All those people trapped inside. There must be thousands...’

  ‘Maybe tens of thousands,’ he said. He looked around at the grey walls and featureless floor.

  ‘Not much out here, though. I’m beginning to think that things have changed since Gorman was a child.’

  She took it all in silently as if weighing his words.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing into the distance.

  A brilliant glare of illumination broadened across the smooth floor ahead of them. It shone out from near the end of the towering stack of tanks as if a fire lay around the bend ahead. He might have been afraid, but he lengthened his stride instead and reached out for Sonora’s hand. She was with him and that was all that mattered.

  The wall of worlds stopped ahead of them like the corner of a towering cliff. The edge was a perfect square angle and, when he looked up at the worlds stacked one on top of another, Harl was reminded of a kitchen cabinet stacked full of boxes, only this one was massive beyond his wildest imaginings and each box was a self-contained world. Harl looked around the corner and instead of another corridor he found himself staring at a line of dazzling light spreading from underneath a giant door. It was a gap about shin high and was too small for them to crawl under.

  He drew a deep, slow breath as he craned his head back to take in the immensity of the door. Gorman had warned him not to judge anything based on his own life, but the titanic scale of what faced him was overwhelming. The metal door climbed five hundred paces into the air. The glass worlds were tiny compared to it. A god could have stacked three on top of each other and still had space to push them through the doorway. A handle jutted from the smooth metal halfway up, but it was the length of a row of houses, and almost as wide.

  Sonora touched his arm and he just shook his head.

  ‘How are we supposed to open it?’ he said.

  She took a step back and studied the door, then turned to him.

  ‘We’ll find a way,’ she said, smiling as she laced her fingers through his. But then all colour drained from her face as she noticed something over his shoulder.

  He spun round fearing that the giant was glaring down at them. Instead, the huge creature was striding through the archway, holding a pair of giant buckets and its tool tray. It turned away from them and headed further down the hallway, then peered into one of the tanks. It lined the buckets up along the floor at its feet and then put the tray down next to them and drew out the trowel. Reaching up, it popped a large section of the lid off a tank and reached inside, scraping soil, buildings, and trees away with the trowel, only to dump the mixture into a bucket and reach in for more.

  ‘That’s…’ Harl didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Sonora was quivering at his side. He didn’t need to say anything else.

  The god was emptying Sonora’s home.

  ‘I’m sorry-’ Harl said, thinking of Gorman as buildings and great mounds of soil tumbled down into the buckets at the god’s feet.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ she said, tears rolling down her face as she turned away.

  The god stooped down to retrieve the buckets, whirled in place, and then stomped towards them. Harl’s legs felt wobbly. He tried to get them to move, but nothing seemed to be working. The god just kept getting larger and larger, closer and closer, a horror so immense that he just waited for the footfalls to crush him. And then he blinked and whatever hypnotic hold the giant had cast over him crumbled.

  ‘Run!’ he yelled, and dragged Sonora after him as he raced for the door.

  He glanced back and found that the god was almost on them. Its terrifying stride devoured the distance between them and Harl had to force his gaze away from it to concentrate on where they were going. The door was still a hundred paces away. They’d never make it. He searched for somewhere to hide, but they were out in the open and the overhang was too far away.

  He stumbled as the god’s foot slammed down close behind. Sonora fell over, crying out as her hands scuffed the floor, but Harl dragged her back up and they ran on.

  A shadow enveloped them. Harl looked up. The god was on them, its great foot plunging down. He grabbed Sonora around the waist and skidded to a halt. With one last look up at the foot he braced for the impact. It would be the end of them. They would be squashed into a puddle of blood and brittle bone on the floor. He closed his eyes, but then roared in anger and threw them both backwards.

  They crashed to the ground and his head smacked against the floor. Stars burst across his vision. He held tight to Sonora and fough
t against the pain as he opened his eyes. The god’s heel was a hand span above them, swinging past like a pendulum. The ground shook with the impact as the foot landed ahead of them.

  Harl only had moments to think, but a cord jutting from the back of the god’s shoe swept past and he wrapped an arm around it and held tight. Somewhere in his mind he was shocked by the fact that the god wore shoes. It just felt so insane. Why would the god need them? But then the thought was gone, lurched out of his mind as the god moved forward and they were swept away with him.

  The movement almost tore Harl’s arm from the socket, but he held on, aware that Sonora was still clinging to him. They crashed to the ground again and the pain was too much for him. The world blacked out for a moment and then he found himself being dragged along again, but this time it was Sonora.

  ‘Quick!’ she whispered. ‘The door! He’s opening the door.’

  Harl watched as the giant figure swung the door open in front of them. Dazzling light flooded the hallway. It blinded him to everything.

  ‘Get up,’ Sonora pleaded. She half-dragged, half-lifted him to his feet, and they staggered forward.

  The god stepped into the open doorway, a towering darkness against the alien glare. Harl raised his hand to shade his eyes, but it didn’t help. It was like walking into a wall of blazing white fire. They just limped after the god, hoping that they had enough time to get out.

  The god headed out into the brightness and there was a loud crash, then it turned back and strode towards them. Harl pushed Sonora to the right as the god’s foot appeared overhead again, but it just swept over them. They staggered another few steps, but Harl slipped on the floor and knocked Sonora down with him.

  He twisted round and watched as the god reached out for the door and swung it shut towards them. In the moment before it closed Harl caught a glimpse of sadness in the yellow eyes. The purity of the light beyond let him see the detail on its face where he’d never seen it before. Sadness? It was the first tender emotion he’d ever seen on one of the gods. He blinked his eyes several times and then the thought washed away from him.

  ‘We’re out!’ he cried.

  ‘No, the frame, Harl. The frame! We aren’t clear of it.’

  He saw it at once. They were still inside the hallway by a good ten paces. The door was going to swat them like flies. He wrapped his arms around Sonora and looked into her eyes. He hoped she knew that he was sorry he’d failed her, but it didn’t matter in the end.

  The door slammed into them and the world tumbled away into blackness.

  Chapter 25

  They are subsisting on our foodstuffs, but as with any creature taken from its natural environment, its nutritional needs will be at an imbalance. There have been loses.

  Harl opened his eyes, but was blinded by a blaze of white, forcing him to squeeze them shut again. He scrabbled in a circle on his knees as he waved his arms around in panic trying to find Sonora.

  ‘Harl?’ Sonora cried, ‘I can’t see! Harl?’

  ‘Me neither,’ Harl replied as calmly as he could.

  He shuffled forward, groping air until he touched her, then wrapped his arms around her and they clutched each other tightly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere, but I think we need time to allow our eyes to adapt to the change in light. Just sit still and don’t move for now.’

  He found her hand, squeezed gently and the pressure was returned. They sat on the dusty ground, holding one another as their other senses expanded to fill the void left by their sight.

  Harl noticed a warm heat being cast all over his body. It did not feel like flames but like standing far off from the gifting bonfire. He raised one hand and could feel the heat against his skin. It was a pleasant feeling, even if it was strange. He smiled at the feel of it touching his face and drew a deep breath.

  It was so peaceful.

  A gentle breeze brought strange sounds and smells, as though they were sitting in the middle of a forest enjoying a picnic. The rustling of leaves combined with the heady smell of grass and a hint of flowers to give him a sense of home. He could picture Troy at his side as they laughed at some shared joke. The feeling of home was so strong that he could feel tears welling at the corners of his eyes. He scrubbed a hand across them. It was just ridiculous and yet he breathed in the sense of peace as though it was part of the air.

  He gathered his courage. ‘I’m going to open my eyes now,’ he said. He didn’t know why he said it, maybe just to reassure himself. He thought of Gorman and how the blind man had coped so well with the world and some hope returned to him. Even if he couldn’t see again he would make it work.

  As he opened his eyes, the whiteness faded until his sight returned to normal. He gasped and brought his hand up to shield his eyes. A ball of yellow and white light blazed in the air, far ahead in the distance. The span to it was unimaginable and everything else around it was a startling blue, like Sonora’s eyes. The fiery ball hurt his eyes when he looked at it and he kept blocking it with his hand and then daring another glance in fascination. He’d never seen anything so enchanting. It felt like he was looking on into the distance forever, no walls or barriers, no sign of a limit to the world. There was just the endless blue and the burning orb.

  He lowered his gaze, blinking as the after image of the yellow-white ball stayed imprinted on his vision. They were sitting in the centre of a huge clearing. Orange, dust-covered ground stretched ahead of them to a wall of thick grass blades that were as wide as a man at their base and peaked to a point five strides above. Each one flopped over at the top and weaved in with the others to form a canopy over the grass forest.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. A gigantic tree stood above it all in the distance. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Its impossibly high limbs stretched out over the forest of grass stalks, splitting into hundreds of branches, peppered with leaves that shifted in the breeze. It dwarfed the gods and, even at this distance, he could see the deep grooves and crevasses in its bark. It had to be at least half a cycle’s journey to it, perhaps more. There was no way of telling. Distance was something he just couldn’t understand out here. There was so much of everything. It was overwhelming.

  He looked back up overhead and the blue climbed up and up and up. There was no sign of a roof or light directly above them; there was only the endless blue and the ball of light. He shivered. He didn’t know whether it was from excitement or fear.

  Sonora gasped as she opened her eyes. After a moment she looked around then up at the ball and chuckled to herself.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The sun,’ she said, pointing up at it. ‘Grandpa used to tell me tales of his home when I was a child. I thought they were just stories, but now I see they were true.’

  Harl stared around, trying to take it all in.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It feels so warm. Do you think that’s what Gorman meant when he said he wanted to feel the sun on his face?’

  She shrugged.

  The openness of so much space dwarfed them to insignificance. He turned to take it all in and found himself facing the structure they had come from.

  An immense silver wall stretched away left and right and shot off so high into the air that he couldn’t tell where it stopped. Could it really be a building? He could see the huge door that they had just come out of, but even that knowledge seemed an impossibility. The place was just too big. The sun reflected off the building so brightly that Harl was forced to look away.

  ‘Which way should we go?’ Sonora asked.

  He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really considered their next move beyond getting away from the dimly lit interior of the god’s realm. And now his mind was reeling from everything he’d seen.

  ‘I don’t know, Sonora. I hadn’t-’

  A terrifying croaking shriek cut his words off. The giant grasses on the left side of the clearing thrashed around as if something was carving a path towards them
. The stalks rustled and crumpled over as a second cry split the air. The horrid sound rolled over and over, like a tortured animal squealing its last few breaths, but it was deeper, harsher, and sent a shudder of fear through him.

  The grass stalks buckled apart and a creature scuttled out into the open. Its bright yellow body was segmented into two parts that were striped with black lines and supported by six, clawed legs. Large arm-sized pincers protruded from its jaw, making the creature a full three strides in length.

  It froze, its bulbous eyes staring at them, then snapped its pincers, twitched its abdomen and charged. Dust rose in a cloud behind it as it scurried towards them.

  Dropping the bow from his shoulder, Harl had an arrow ready as the beast raced in for the kill. He tracked its path and released, but the creature flicked its jagged pincers and the arrow bounced off the hard bone. Harl cursed and loosed another. This time it struck its mark, embedding itself in a front leg joint. The creature stumbled and let out a hideous screech, but it didn’t even slow.

  ‘The sword!’ he shouted to Sonora, but it was too late.

  The monster barrelled into him, pushing him backwards so that his feet scraped lines in the dry soil. He shifted his grip and held the bow like a horizontal staff to fend off the pincers as they snapped and clawed at him, trying to tear his belly open. The creature spread its legs and shoved hard, knocking Harl over. They rolled backwards in a heap and the bow flew from his grip. He grabbed the monster’s bug-like head and dug his fingernails into its bulbous eyes to keep the razor-like pincers from slicing into his face. The creature clacked and lunged at him until his arms shook with the effort. Possibly sensing the weakness it pressed its advantage, jutting its head forward to tear at his jerkin.

  The beast shrieked in pain and jolted forward. Its legs splayed out into the dust as it sagged on top of him, convulsing, before falling still.