David agreed.
“Nice countryside this,” Cadell said. “It has adapted well to the rain, but even it cannot adapt much further. I remember it from another time, a happier time for me.”
The ground was boggy, plants grown yellow and rotten. Everything had a sort of washed out appearance like a really bad watercolour painting.
“It’s starting to die, drowning in all this rain. The Roil,” Cadell said. “Let me tell you about it. There is much I know of that foul stuff. More than I would wish. It has rained and rained, but you have seen nothing yet. Mcmahon was different as would have been Tate, neither straddled rivers and sat beneath catchments for one. It will rain, without surcease around Mirrlees, for a month, two months, perhaps three. And not like it has before, but heavy rains, flooding rains. Fields will first sink beneath the water then rot. Outlying villages built on the hinterland will slide into mud. There will be death, and the rain will preside over it all, seemingly ceaseless.
“But it will stop, at last. It always stops. Can you see it now? The celebration in the streets, at that cessation, should any streets remain? But then, a drought will descend, heat and dry like nothing the folk of Mirrlees have ever encountered, though those refugees, if Stade opens his gates to them this time, from Chapman will know it and fear it. The black clouds will roll in, but these will not be rain clouds, no for they will extend from the ground a mile high, maybe more. A rolling cliff face of darkness and not a drop of rain in any of it, just chaos, and so the Roil arrives. A single Quarg Hound saunters down Main Street, then another and another. Hideous Garment Flutes turn the sky black with their wings and the deafening whistles of their fistulous bodies and to that music the already broken city dies.”
He paused and shook his head.
“Well that was how it was before the Witmoths. Humans have a way of magnifying disasters, speeding processes up. I wonder what madness lurks now deep within the Roil and its dreaming cities. And what its plans are.”
David shivered despite the warmth of the day.
The Obsidian Curtain contained secrets, certainly. No one from the various expeditions mounted to explore it had ever returned. But what came out was well catalogued. Quarg Hounds. Endyms. Beast Wings. Blood Crabs and Hideous Garment Flutes.
As a child, his uncle who perhaps should have known better, gave David a rather morbid picture book called “Roil: A Cautionary Tale for Boys and Girls.”
The book had been written before the Roil had become something of a taboo subject, and was about a naughty boy sent to the Roil as punishment and his encounters with the creatures there. Each and every beast that had ever come out of the Roil and some that the author had obviously decided to make up – so David hoped – had been drawn in painstaking and garish detail. The Quarg Hounds gnashing their bloody teeth, the Garment Flutes whistling deadly threnody.
David had loved that book – particularly the bit where the boy, and he really was a nasty child, was barbequed by a Vermatisaur – and had always been excited and terrified by the prospect of ever encountering such monsters.
Well, now he had and he was no longer excited, just terrified. Terrified and sore.
Surely legs that ached as much as his should be unable to take anything but shuffling steps. Until this day, David had no idea how much his body could ache and keep functioning. He catalogued those pains one by one and in time with the squelch of his steps, paying such little attention to the world around him that when Cadell stopped David almost collided with his back.
“Cadell?”
The Engineer turned towards him, frowning, having plucked a map from one of his many pockets. “The Dolorous Grey goes through Robert, Hillson and Grayville before veering east across the Lakelands. I don’t think there will be much left of those townships.” He wiped his face wearily, then took a deep breath, and reached a hand towards the north. “Yes,” he said. “I can feel a cold change coming on. Short lived, no doubt, but definitely something that will work in our favour.” He frowned. “You had a question?”
“Why did its creatures come up here in the first place?” David asked.
“Chance, as much as anything. Or perhaps not, perhaps they were looking for me. The Roil thrives on heat, and humans are warm and mobile. But not quite warm enough. Didn’t you notice that the passengers seemed almost feverish? Those were the Witmoths pushing their body temperatures up. In the days ahead it is best to not trust anyone with a fever.”
“So has the Roil killed these people?”
“No, no, just changed them. Though it’s not a particularly nice change. In fact it’s a rather nasty one. David, I dread what we will find in Chapman.”
David dreaded it, too.
Chapter 27
The Interface existed, that much we can be certain of. But its secrets remain just that… secrets.
• Coldits – Reports from the Undisclosed.
THE INTERFACE WITHIN THE ROIL
Anderson had never expected to end up here. When he had been a boy there had not been a name for a place like this. When he had been a boy, the Roil had been but a rumour, and industry ascendant. He’d been destined for big business, running his father’s company in Mcmahon. How things change. The landscape of Shale, political and environmental, had drowned in the Roil’s madness, and so had he. Was he mad? Once he would have thought himself so, to even imagine such a place. Now he worked here.
Anderson’s footsteps echoed along the tunnel that made up the spine of the Interface, his movements a little stiff, the price of a uniform that was hopefully Roil-retardant. His guards stole around him like shadows. Only their weaponry made a noise, endothermic magazine pressurisation an odd counterpoint to his heavy steps.
Every day that Anderson walked to the Interface – which were most days now – he counted the number of steps required before he was under it. And every day that number decreased, sometimes by as many as seven, but never less than four. The title Interface was a misnomer. It had not been a true interface for nearly two months. The Roil had swept past it, with absolute disregard for such human boundaries, on the fourth day of spring, and it hadn’t stopped.
He walked under yet another emergency door, five-foot thick steel that would seal the tunnels should something breach the compound and, hopefully, gain him and his crew a little time to make their escape. He shook his head. Should something breach the compound.
Strictly speaking something had breached the compound an hour ago, and he and his guard walked straight towards it.
Part of him kept thinking, we’re going the wrong way. But he suppressed that tiny terrified voice and kept to the task at hand. This was his job and though he had spent every minute of it afraid, he had never turned away from his duty.
Nor would he now.
The tunnel ended at a pair of steel doors, their frames set solidly into the stone. Winslow waited there, his nervous face shining.
One of Anderson’s guards sprayed him with ice water from an atomiser at his belt. Winslow blinked, but that was all, no moans or smoky exhalations. Everybody relaxed, but only a little. What had happened with the Dolorous Grey was fresh in all their minds, things were not as they seemed.
“Are they here?” Anderson asked.
“Yes. They haven’t been waiting long.”
“Conference Room One?”
“Of course.”
“Good, we’ll let them wait a little longer.” Anderson turned to the guard nearest him. “At the first sign of trouble I want you to ice that room, regardless of my or Winslow’s discomfort. I’m tempted to get you to do it now, but I am in no mood for running today, or explaining why we gave up this installation so easily.”
The guard nodded, her eyes impassive through the thick glass of her faceplate. She left them, walking down a side chamber to the observation area.
Anderson fitted his own mask, Winslow following suit. The masks were claustrophobically tight, not at all conducive to such things as ease of breathing, and their effectiveness a sub
ject of dispute, but Anderson believed himself marginally safer with it on and that was all he had.
He coughed once, took a deep breath through the stifling mask and opened the door. Go in strong. See if you can unsettle them for a change.
Four of them waited in the room, standing by the huge glass window that looked out on to the Roil. And he remembered immediately what he remembered every time he dealt with these creatures; that he could not unsettle them. They were too alien, too distant. Nonetheless he tried.
“That stunt you pulled with the Dolorous Grey. What was that all about? We have an agreement.”
One of the Roilings turned its pitch-dark eyes upon him and Anderson had to dig deep to control a shudder – how could any agreement be made with something that possessed those eyes? They had been human once, but now they could not be mistaken as such. The decrepitation of the flesh that the Witmoths engendered was well advanced. The Roil transformed all it had contact with, if it could touch it intimately enough, and these humans had been touched deeply.
There was a smell about them, sweet and foul all at once, like meat that had only been half-cooked and left out in the sun. Huge eyes, all pupils, gazed upon him and hands with fingers far too long flexed. Fragments of flesh had worn from their faces, revealing not bone but a substance like ash or coal mixed with dark honey, as though they had been torrefied from the inside out. No blood moved through their veins any more, just dust. Clothed in robes made of the moths that moved and shivered in waves from head to toe and back again, a restless nest of shadows, they were something out of a nightmare.
But nightmares were what Anderson was paid to deal with. How did that happen? Just how did that happen?
“Unfortunately, Mr Anderson, we are not all of a single mind,” The Roiling said, in a voice clipped and far too normal. “Though the Roil sits in agreement on most issues there are shifts, swift passings of anarchy. It was a passing of this nature that the Dolorous Grey experienced. It will not happen again, even these last twenty-four hours have seen a deepening of control. Which is why we are here, in part. To apologise, of course, but also to make a request and offer a deal.”
“And what might that be?”
“There is something we require of you.”
Anderson and Winslow exchanged glances.
“We’re listening,” he said. “What exactly do you mean?”
Tap.
Tap.
“You better answer that,” Alice Penn said, and ran on legs far too long and too fast up the hill, away from her. “You better answer that.”
Tap.
Tap
“I know,” Margaret whispered and shivered in the cold. She couldn’t keep up. “I know. But I’ve been chasing you all day.”
Her mother paused, eyes bright with a manic intensity. “You were a good daughter,” she shouted. “Just never fast enough. All you’ve done is run and you still can’t catch me.”
She sprinted away, up and over the rise. Out of sight.
Margaret tried to run, but could not move. Out of frustration, she reached for the rifle in her lap. A Quarg Hound pup lay there instead, its jaws closing on her fingers.
It bit down, but the sound it made was odd, a soft sort of scrapping: over and over.
Margaret started awake. She blinked.
A pale face stared in through the window next to her.
The Roiling gave her a clownish grin, idiotic and terrifying, its long white fingers working on the lock of the door, their nails scratching, scratching.
“Mother!” it shrieked so loud that even Margaret could hear. “Mother!”
Margaret engaged the engine, her fingers fumbling over the controls so that she nearly stalled the carriage. “Mother!”
If only she had a sentient carriage, like an Aerokin, then none of this would be happening. The Melody’s engine turned, but didn’t catch.
The Roiling’s movements grew desperate; moths swirled around its head. A flap of bone white skin slid from its cheek, revealing a dark resinous substance beneath.
Margaret stared into the Roiling’s face, into its dead black eyes and wondered if it had ever been human. Of course it had, it wore an old morning suit, tattered and dusty, but still recognisable.
“Mother!”
The engine came to life, the carriage shot forward, accelerated.
“Mother!” The Roiling tumbled off the carriage and ran back down the bridge towards Mcmahon.
A dozen Roilings circled the Melody Amiss watching. She sprayed a short burst of ice and opened up a gap that closed even as she passed through it. The Melody ’s endothermic weaponry ammunition was almost gone, its efficacy reduced. One of the Roilings struck the carriage and its arm tore from its shoulder with a spray of smoky blood. Margaret picked up speed, and soon they were out of sight. And all she had again was the deserted highway.
She did not want to think about what would have happened if she had slept for even a few moments longer.
Chapter 28
Buchan and Whig. Two men of one mind. Stade had banished them from Chapman early September, almost two months before the Festival of Float. Two men, one swift mind. Slaughter not exile would surely have been the result, had not the pair been so quick in their flight. Not a single sitting member of their party was assassinated.
Mirrlees’ Confluent party would have done well to learn from them. But they did not, and blood stained the streets red.
• Deighton – Assassinations Personal, Political and Humorous.
Three columns of black smoke drifted on the edge of the eastern horizon, there was no wind and so they had grown much larger than they might otherwise have. The sight disturbed David, more than he would care to admit, there was something ominous about the smoke as though the Roil had detached itself and flowered where it did not yet belong.
He pointed them out to Cadell. The Old Man’s face greyed.
“Yes, I see them. In truth, I’ve been ignoring them. They are the mute ruin of peoples’ lives, rising up like a cruel ghost. I hope some people managed to escape.” He shook his head, as though he thought it unlikely, and turned his gaze once more in the direction they were headed and mumbled, half to himself. “The world just keeps getting worse. But then that has been the case for a long time now. The question is, did Chapman hold out?”
After seeing those silent columns of smoke, a taciturn gloom settled on them that nothing was able to break. David was almost happy when darkness descended obliterating the sight. Until a hot storm came with it and their clothes were again soaked to the bone.
However, as the rain came in and the night, Cadell’s mood changed. He became nervy, not exactly afraid, but close to it.
The thought of something that could rattle Cadell was enough to worry David. Quarg Hounds and Roilings had been dealt with almost without blinking and yet their approach to Uhlton was being met with such trepidation.
“We’re getting close,” Cadell said, his first words in hours, and fell into a kind of disturbed silence broken by interludes of nervy mumbling that kept David on edge.
Which was, perhaps, why David saw Uhlton first – well, the few specks of light that betrayed its existence in the rainy murk of evening. He thought of the sleepy village he had seen in maps (and with the powder), built above the river. A place far from politics and Vergers, somewhere he might manage to score some Carnival – if he could just slip away.
“I can see it,” he shouted, hoping to lift Cadell’s spirits, and because he was genuinely excited. “There, to the south west, the town of Uhlton.”
“Good,” Cadell said. “How very clever of you. We’ll be there soon”
“And where in Uhlton is there?” David asked.
“Never you mind,” Cadell mumbled. “Got to keep some mystery in your life.”
Uhlton was not as David imagined. Built on a ridge above the swollen lake, it was a cramped and crowded village, and anything but sleepy. Steamers docked and undocked at a long quay, men shouted and swung thick
ropes around bollards as they guided their pilots with hand signals and curses, working busily even at this late hour. The river seemed almost as busy as Mirrlees itself.
The roads leading to the town were in poor repair. The River Weep sustained this township as it did Mirrlees and Chapman. Around Uhlton, besides a few tilled fields, the land was bare or forested, without the river the town would die.
As they approached, someone released a flare into the sky; blue flame illumined the sky like a third moon. Cadell slumped down on a large pale stone, marking the edge of the town. Dim double shadows stretched behind him. He let out a long, resigned breath and rested his chin on his hands.
“They’ve seen us now,” he said. “There’s little reason to go on. They will come and get us, and I am too weary. We will wait here.”
A second flare rocketed skywards. From the township rolled a horse-drawn carriage, its driver tall, lamps dangled from its corners.
Back the way they had come lightning scarred a black and starless sky and the northern horizon rumbled and boomed. Though they were scarcely more than a hundred miles from Mirrlees it was as though they stood in another land entirely.
The carriage came to a halt beside them and the driver cracked his whip in the air – the horses didn’t blink, he obviously did this a lot. “State your business in Uhlton,” he said curtly, swinging the whip in lazy circles around his head.
“I have an appointment with the Mayor and his second in command,” Cadell said.
The driver laughed, and there was threat implicit in that sound as much as any cracking whip. “Mayor? None go by that name here, kind sir.”
Cadell grinned, an equally threatening grin. “Don’t be so disingenuous; you know who I need to speak to. And you’d best hurry, I am hungry.” Cadell flashed his teeth. “I must talk to Buchan and Whig. Unless of course, they have passed away or been driven out.” Cadell sounded almost hopeful.
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