by P. G. Bell
“She’s already here!” she cried. “Secure the door!”
Too late. The door crashed open, and a huge figure burst into the room, pursued by a squad of guards.
Neoma had been expecting one of Crepuscula’s statues, but it was a man, twice her height and as wide as a tractor. He was clad in leather armor, his face was purple with tattoos, and he snarled as he thundered across the room toward her, revealing teeth that had been filed to jagged points. He upended desks and swatted aside every guard who tried to stop him.
Captain Neoma dropped into a fighting crouch and took aim with her rifle. “A Berserker!” she cried. “Take shelter in the office, sir! I’ll hold him as long as I can.” How did he get here? she thought. She was about to pull the trigger, when the old man stepped in front of her.
“Berserker Chief, so nice of you to accept my invitation. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Neoma stared in amazement as Lord Meridian spread his arms to greet the Berserker like an old friend. The Berserker thudded to a halt and glowered down at him. “You want to talk,” he said in a voice so low that Captain Neoma felt it in her bones. “So talk.”
“Certainly,” said Lord Meridian. “Shall we step into my office?” The Berserker Chief just growled in response, while the pursuing guards stumbled to a breathless halt behind him. Their armor was dented, their uniforms torn, and most of them sported fresh cuts and bruises. They all looked to Captain Neoma for guidance.
“He had the price of admission, Captain,” one of them said. “But he wouldn’t stop for the security check.”
“My lord!” Neoma’s heart was still, and her finger was still curled around the trigger of her rifle. “What’s going on?”
“Preparation for the future, Captain. As leader of his Impossible Place, the Berserker Chief learned about our project and is keen to be an active part of it.” He stepped aside and ushered the Berserker Chief toward the office with a sweep of his arm. The creature was so big that he had to get down on all fours to squeeze himself through the doorway.
“But, sir!” Captain Neoma caught the old man’s arm as he turned to follow his guest. “Berserkers bite people’s fingers off for sport. They eat raw dragon flesh.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “What could we possibly have that they’d want?”
The old man patted her hand and smiled. “I’ll be fine, Captain. Trust me.” He surveyed the path of overturned desks, scattered papers, and open-mouthed observers that the Berserker Chief had left behind. “You’d better get back to work. We have a lot to do.” With a parting smile, he shut the office door behind him and pulled down the blind.
“Understood,” Neoma grumbled, but it was a lie. Berserkers! Of all the hundreds of species that populated the Impossible Places, they were the last ones she would ever have expected to see here. They were warriors, not scholars. They could only count to ten on their fingers. Sometimes to twenty, if they used the fingers they’d bitten off other people.
She gave the office door one last dark look before turning back to the waiting guards. “Don’t just stand there,” she barked. “You heard His Lordship. Let’s get this place cleaned up.”
15
HOMECOMING
The Impossible Postal Express was only in the tunnel for a few minutes, but it was long enough for a change to come over Wilmot. His despondency gave way to a nervous energy, and he flitted restlessly around the H. E. C., checking his pocket watch every few seconds and peering out the portholes with an almost-hopeful expression.
“It’ll all be fine,” said Suzy, trying to reassure herself as much as him.
“Almost there,” he said, looking at his watch again.
A few moments later, the train burst from the tunnel with a whoosh of air and a corona of dissipating magic and immediately began to slow.
“We’re here!” he said, and leaped to the nearest porthole. He waved her over, and she hurried to join him.
Flat beige light washed into the cabin from a flat beige sky, punctuated here and there with columns of black smoke rising from formidable brick chimneys. A hodgepodge of industrial buildings rose beyond the tracks—warehouses, factories, mills—all built from the same dirty yellow bricks, with coal-black roof slates. Far beyond them, Suzy could just make out the peaks of distant mountains, brown and lumpy and half-hidden in the haze.
The Express was weaving through a broad ribbon of multiple rail lines, all of them intersecting and overlapping in a confusion of points and junctions.
A few other trains hurried this way and that. Some of them were big and regal, pulling lines of carriages that seemed to stretch on without end, while others looked almost handmade, like garden sheds on wheels.
She glanced at Wilmot, not sure whether he was expecting her to be impressed, but he was watching it all with a slight smile.
“Where are we?” she prompted.
“We’re home,” he said. “This is Trollville.”
* * *
The Belle de Loin slowed to a crawl as it cut across the other lines, finally drawing the Express into a clutch of sidings—lengths of dead-end track to one side of the main lines—on which a collection of freight trains were being serviced and unloaded. Wilmot had his hands on the release handle for the H. E. C. door before they had even come to a complete stop.
“We’ve got to hurry,” he said, leaping out. Suzy followed him down onto a narrow platform between the Express and a row of freight cars loaded with goods on the neighboring track, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other. It was choked with dozens of trolls in work overalls loading and unloading crates, all jostling and shouting for space. Suzy hugged herself and pressed in close to Wilmot to avoid being swept away.
“There you are!” Stonker came striding along the platform toward them, the yellow bulk of Ursel close behind him. Suzy sensed Wilmot go rigid beside her.
“I don’t know how it happened, Mr. Stonker,” he began, but the older troll silenced him with a look.
“It doesn’t matter how it happened. All that matters is how we deal with it. Can it be done quickly?”
“Yes,” said Wilmot. “I mean, I think so. I’ve never had to—”
“Then why are you both still standing here?” Stonker’s mustache bristled. “I want to be under way again in an hour.”
“Right!” said Wilmot, who spun on his heels and grasped Suzy by the elbow. “Let’s go!”
Before she could speak, he had struck out along the platform, dragging her with him.
“Where are we going?” she said, jogging beside Wilmot as they emerged from the siding into a small yard between warehouses. More trolls, most of them in hard hats and safety jackets, shuttled back and forth, stacking crates and pushing wheelbarrows loaded with equipment. They stopped to stare at Suzy as she passed, and she couldn’t help blushing, painfully self-conscious at the attention. There was no way to hide from it; she was at least a foot taller than every troll they passed.
“We’re going to HQ,” said Wilmot.
She dug her heels in, bringing him to a halt. “HQ?” she said, aghast. “They’re the ones who wanted to scramble my memory.”
He gave her a pained smile. “Technically, yes. But that was before I’d deputized you. You’re part of the staff now.”
“But they don’t know that.”
He see-sawed from one foot to the other, not wanting to linger. “It’s probably fine,” he said. “Besides, you’re with me. You can’t get into any trouble.”
She pressed her lips together. As far as she could tell, she had got into nothing but trouble with Wilmot, but she stayed silent and followed him as he set off at a run again.
“How is this helping us get to the Ivory Tower?” whispered Frederick from inside her pocket, but she pressed it shut until he took the hint and fell silent.
Wilmot led her out of the courtyard into a narrow street lined with more warehouses. Half of them seemed to be empty, and Suzy guessed that the area had seen better days, but the farther they
got from the freight yard, the cleaner and more orderly everything appeared and the wider the streets became.
Suzy also started to notice bundles of glowing cables strung back and forth like washing lines between the upper floors of many of the buildings they passed. They looked a bit like telephone wires, except they were a luminous white and pulsed with occasional flashes of light. She tried to ask Wilmot about them, but he was deaf to her questions, leading her from one street to the next until they finally stepped out onto a broad boulevard lined with big, regal buildings that looked like banks or department stores. Trolleys jostled for space with motorized tricycles, and there were even things that looked a bit like cars, albeit cars assembled from random bits of scrap. One hurried past that looked like two antique bicycles welded to an old sofa, with a washing machine for an engine.
Horns blared, drivers shouted, pedestrians shouted back. But despite the noise, Suzy could tell almost immediately that everything was under control. It sounded like chaos—it even looked like chaos—but every vehicle was traveling at the same steady speed, changing lanes in calm and fluid motions. No brakes squealed. And when she really listened, she noticed that none of the shouting was angry. It seemed almost …
“Excited?” She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Wilmot replied.
“Yes, it’s always like this at rush hour,” he said. “Everyone loves showing off what they’ve been working on.”
She looked at the throng of vehicles again with a new sense of respect. “You mean they made these themselves?”
“Mostly.”
She couldn’t suppress a grin. “They’re incredible!”
He led her along the crowded pavement toward a large, open square at the end. “We’re trolls. We build things. It’s what we do.”
She tried to ignore the heads that turned in her direction as she passed. “What about you? What do you build?”
He paused for just a second, then redoubled his speed, but he had given her enough time to see him blushing. “I’m, uh, not much of an engineer, I’m afraid. I’ve just never had the knack.” He pressed on, not looking back, although the tips of his ears were still bright red with embarrassment. “I mean, engineering’s very important, but it’s not the only thing in life, is it.”
“I never said it was.”
He looked back at her then, with something like surprise. “Good,” he said. “That’s not a view many trolls take.”
They had reached the square, one whole side of which was dominated by a building the size of a cathedral. Suzy stared at it in wonder as they approached—it was built from blocks of stone as big as cars, and a row of soaring columns ran along its front, supporting a huge triangular lintel. The lintel was alive with elaborate carvings of trumpets and trains, rockets and trolls in postal uniforms, all radiating out from a crescent moon in the center. Beneath this were carved the words TROLLVILLE CENTRAL POST OFFICE.
“This is it,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “The place where it all started. The nerve center. The hub.”
“It’s a post office,” she said.
“It’s the post office. The first and greatest. The heart of the Impossible Postal network.”
She was too wary to be impressed. “Are you absolutely sure they won’t mess with my brain?”
“Almost positive,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Far from reassured, Suzy followed him up a broad flight of stone steps between the columns, through the entrance, and into a vast and echoing foyer of pink marble and gold fittings. Despite the enormous space, they were the only people present, with the exception of a small gray troll with a perm, who sat alone behind a wooden reception desk against one wall. She peered at them over her spectacles as they approached.
“What do you want?”
Wilmot cleared his throat and straightened his lapels. “I am Postmaster Wilmot Grunt of the Impossible Postal Service, and this is Postal Operative Suzy Smith. We have a delivery to make to the Ivory Tower, and we’re here to collect one of the Facts of Entry.” He followed this with a big showman’s grin, which was met with a blank stare.
“Have you made an appointment?”
“No,” said Wilmot. “Was I supposed to?”
“Yes. You do it online.”
His smile tightened into a grimace. “Can’t I just make one here?”
The receptionist rolled her eyes and started tapping away at her keyboard. It was attached to a riveted steel box, which Suzy realized must be the troll equivalent of a computer. It connected to a bundle of the glowing wires she had seen out in the street.
“I didn’t know you had the internet here,” she whispered to Wilmot. “Is that what those wires are? Are they fiber optics?”
“The Ether Web,” he said with a disapproving hiss. “Instant communication. It’s changed everything.”
“Isn’t that good?” she said, suspecting she already knew the answer.
“Not if you work in the postal service.” He waved a hand at the empty hall. “When Grandpa Honks was a junior postie, there were almost two hundred Impossible Postal Express trains riding the rails. Just imagine! And that’s not counting the airships, the mail missiles, the deep-drill couriers, and the guaranteed-delivery eagles. Almost every message in the Union passed through this building—more than a million a day—and it was an army of ordinary people like you and me who took care of them. And now look at it.”
Suzy looked again at the grand marble hall and saw, for the first time, the hairline cracks running through the slabs, the dirty carpets, the tarnished and dented fittings.
“We’re lucky to get a thousand messages a day now, and there are barely a hundred staff left to manage them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea.”
“It’s the end of an era,” said Wilmot, his shoulders slumping. “Why send a letter when the Web is quicker? We’re just left handling the odd package that can’t go any other way.”
“How many Postal Express trains are left?” she asked.
His brow furrowed. “Why, one, of course. We’re the last.”
Suzy was too shocked by this news to think of anything helpful to say. All she could feel was sadness.
“I’m not just the youngest-ever Postmaster,” he said. “I’m probably the last as well. At least it guarantees my place in the history books.” He hoisted his face into a lopsided smile, but there was no real happiness in it. Suzy reached out and squeezed his hand.
The receptionist cleared her throat. “No,” she said.
“No, what?” said Wilmot.
“No, you can’t withdraw any of the Facts of Entry,” said the receptionist. “You’re not authorized.”
“But I’m a Postmaster!”
The receptionist’s stare didn’t waver. “The Facts of Entry are strictly confidential,” she said. “Only the trolls who deposited them are allowed to take them out again.”
“But no one’s deposited a Fact of Entry for years,” he said. “All the trolls who left them here must be dead or…”
“Or what?” said Suzy.
“I’ll be back,” he said to the receptionist, before seizing Suzy by the hand again. He was about to take off back across the hall when something made him stop. “Just one more question,” he said, sounding a bit sheepish all of a sudden. “I don’t suppose we’ve received any complaints today, have we? From a Lady Crepuscula, perhaps?”
The receptionist stabbed at her keyboard again before lifting her bored eyes to his. “Computer says no.”
Suzy could practically see the weight lifting from his shoulders. “Jolly good,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
He practically skipped across the hall and took the steps at a run. “Perhaps we’re in luck,” he said over his shoulder. “She must have decided not to complain after all.”
The image of Crepuscula’s shadow picking its way among the statues toward the train flashed back into Suzy’s memory. “Good,” she said, although the word felt false and bri
ttle in her mouth. We’re almost there, she told herself. If we can stay ahead of Crepuscula just a little farther, we’ll be at the Ivory Tower. We’ll be safe.
As they left the post office behind them, neither of them noticed the angular gray shape perched atop the lintel. Had either of them glanced back, they might have realized it hadn’t been there on their way in. And Suzy would certainly have recognized it—it was a gargoyle, with wings like a bat and a snout like a crocodile. And it watched them closely with its lifeless glass eyes as they hurried away across the square.
16
THE UNDERSIDE
“I’ve got an idea,” said Wilmot, leading Suzy away from the post office and back across the bustling square, dodging traffic as they went. They arrived at a narrow building clad in white and green tile, with a large red neon sign above the entrance that read UNDERSIDE. Beneath this were two doorways, one labeled DOWN, the other UP. Trolls streamed into the first and out the second, and Wilmot only slowed his pace as they joined the small throng pushing its way toward the DOWN door.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“To find one of the posties who deposited a Fact of Entry,” he said. “They’ll be able to withdraw it for us so we can get into the Ivory Tower.”
“What sort of facts are they?”
“They could be anything. Any piece of information known only to the person who deposited it. It’s the price required by the Ivory Tower in exchange for its own information. They won’t even let us in without one. They’re pretty rare, so whenever posties found themselves with one, they’d seal it in the post office vault.”
“So they could withdraw it again if they ever needed to make a delivery to the Ivory Tower,” she said. “Clever.”
“All we need is the right postie,” he said. “And I know just the place to look. Next stop, the Underside!”
