“Anything broken?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. It just hurts.”
He went onto his hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Show me where.”
She pointed, and he laid his hand on. With his mind he could see the smooth glowing pattern of living flesh distorted and broken below his fingers, the fissures extending deep inside her. He willed the pattern to return to its unblemished state.
Tatiana hissed in relief. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s better than a medical nanonic.”
The lift stopped at the fiftieth floor.
Now what? Dariat asked.
Rubra showed him.
You are one evil bastard.
Why, thank you, boy.
* * *
Stanyon was leading the possessed down through the starscraper in pursuit of Dariat. He’d started off with thirty-five under his command, and that number was rapidly swelling as Bonney directed more and more from neighbouring starscrapers to assist him. She’d announced she was on her way herself. Stanyon was going balls-out to find Dariat before she arrived. He got hot just thinking about the praise (and other things) Kiera would direct at the champion who erased her bête noire from the habitat.
Eight different teams of possessed were searching, assigned a floor each. They were working their way steadily downwards, demolishing every mechanical and electrical device as they went.
He strode out of the stairwell onto the thirty-eighth-floor vestibule. For whatever reason, Rubra was no longer putting up any resistance. Muscle-membrane doors opened obediently, the lighting remained on, there wasn’t a servitor in sight. He looked around, happy with what he found. The floor’s mechanical utilities office had been broken open, and the machinery inside reduced to slag, preventing the sprinklers from being used. Doors into the apartments and bars and commercial offices were smashed apart, furniture and fittings inside were blazing with unnatural ferocity. Big circles of polyp flooring were cracking under the intense heat, grainy white marble surface blackening. Wisps of dirty steam fizzed up from the crannies.
“Die,” Stanyon snarled. “Die a little bit at a time. Die hurting big.”
He was walking towards the stairwell door when his walkie-talkie squawked: “We got him! He’s down here.”
Stanyon snatched the unit from his belt. “Where? Who is this? Which floor are you on?”
“This is Talthorn the Greenfoot; I’m on floor forty-nine. He’s just below us. We can all sense him.”
“Everybody hear that?” Stanyon yelled gleefully. “Fiftieth floor. Get your arses down there.” He sprinted for the stairwell.
* * *
“They’re coming,” Dariat said.
Tatiana flashed him a worried-but-brave grin, and finished tying the last cord around her pillow. They were in a long-disused residential apartment; its polyp furniture of horseshoe tables and oversized scoop armchairs dominating the living room. The chairs had been turned into cushion nests to add a dash of comfort. The foam used to fill the cushions was a lightweight plastic that was ninety-five per cent nitrogen bubbles.
They were, Rubra swore, perfect buoyancy aids.
Dariat tried on his harness one last time. The cords which he’d torn from the gaudy cushion fabric held a pillow to his chest and another against his back. Seldom had he felt so ridiculous.
His doubt must have leaked onto his face.
If it works, don’t try to fix it, Rubra said.
Ripe, from someone who’s devoted his existence to meddling.
Game set and match, I won’t even appeal. Would you like to get ready?
Dariat used the starscraper’s observation routines to check on the possessed. There were twelve of them on the floor above. A rock-skinned troll was leading the pack; followed by a pair of cyber-ninjas in black flak jackets; a xenoc humanoid that was all shiny amber exoskeleton and looked like it could rip metal apart with its talons; a faerie prince wearing his forest hunting tunic and carrying a longbow in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other; three or four excessively hairy Neanderthals; and regular soldiers in the uniforms of assorted eras.
“The loonies are on the warpath tonight,” Dariat muttered under his breath. “Finished?” he asked Tatiana.
She shifted her front pillow around and tightened the last strap to hold it in place. “I’m ready.”
The bathroom’s muscle-membrane door parted silently. Inside was an emerald-green suite: a circular bath, vaguely Egyptian in design, matched by the basin, bidet, and toilet. They were still all in perfect condition. It was the plumbing which had degraded. Water was dripping from the brass shower head above the bath; over the years it had produced a big orange stain on the bottom. Slimy blue-green algae was growing out of the plug. The sink was piled high with bars of soap; so old and dry now that they’d started to crumble, snowing flecks over the rim.
Dariat stood in the doorway, with Tatiana pressed against him, looking eagerly over his shoulder. “What’s supposed to be happening?” she asked.
“Watch.”
A bass crunching sound was coming from the toilet. Cracks appeared around its base, expanding rapidly outwards. Then the whole bowl lurched upwards, spinning around precariously before toppling over. A two-metre circle of floor around it was rising up like a miniature volcanic eruption. Polyp splintered with a continual brassy crackling. A fine jet of water sprayed out of the fractured flush pipe.
“Lord Tarrug, what are you doing?” Tatiana asked.
“That’s not Tarrug, that’s Rubra,” Dariat told her. “No dark arts involved.”
Affinity with the local sub-routines allowed him to feel the toilet’s sphincter muscle straining as it contorted in directions it was never intended, rupturing the thin shell of polyp floor. It halted, fully expended. The cone which it had produced quivered slightly, then stilled. Dariat hurried over. There was a crater at the centre, leading down to an impenetrable darkness. The muscle tissue which made up the sides was a tough dark red flesh, now badly lacerated. Pale yellow fluid was oozing out of the splits, running down to disappear in the unseen space below.
“Our escape route,” Dariat said, echoing Rubra’s pride.
“A toilet?” she asked incredulously.
“Sure. Don’t go squeamish on me now, please.” He sat on the edge of the sphincter and swung his legs over the crater. It was a three-metre slither down into the sewer tubule below. When his feet touched the bottom he knelt down and held a hand out. His skin began to glow with a strong pink light. It revealed the tubule stretching on ahead of him, a circular shaft just over a metre in diameter, and angled slightly downwards.
“Throw the pillows down,” he said.
Tatiana dropped them, peering over the edge of the crater with a highly dubious expression. Dariat shoved the two harnesses into the tubule, and started to worm his way in after them. “When I’m in, you follow me, okay?” He didn’t give her the chance to answer. It was awkward going, pushing the pillows ahead of him as he crawled along. The grey polyp was slippery with water and fecal sludge. Dariat could hear Tatiana grunting and muttering behind him as she discovered the residue smearing the sides.
There were ridges encircling the tubule every four metres, peristaltic muscle bands that assisted the usual water flow. Despite Rubra expanding them wide, they formed awkward constrictions which Dariat had to pull himself through. He had just squeezed past the third when Rubra said: They’ve reached the fiftieth floor. Can you sense them?
Not a chance. So in theory they won’t be able to find me.
They know the general direction, and they’re heading towards the apartment.
Dariat was too intent on inching himself along to review the images. What about the rest?
On their way down. The stairwells are absolutely packed. It’s like a freak-show stampede out there.
He elbowed his way through another muscle band. The light from his hand showed the tubule walls ending two metres ahead. A thick ring of muscle membrane surrounded th
e rim. Beyond that was a clear empty space. He could hear a steady patter of rain in the darkness.
“We made it,” he shouted.
His only answer was another outbreak of grunted curses.
Dariat pushed the filthy pillows and their tangled cords over the edge, hearing them splash into the water. Then he was sliding himself over.
The main ingestion tract into which the sewer tubule emptied ran vertically up the entire height of the starscraper. It collected the human waste, discarded organic matter, and dirty water from every floor and carried it down to the large purification organs at the base of the starscraper. They filtered out organic compounds which were pumped back to the principal nutrient organs inside the southern endcap via their own web of specialist tubules. Poisons and toxins were disposed of directly into space. Fresh water was recirculated up to the habitat’s storage reservoirs and parkland rivers.
Normally the main ingestion tract was a continual waterfall. Now, though, Rubra had closed the inlet channels and reversed the flow from the purification organs, allowing the water level to rise up the tract until it was level with the fiftieth floor.
The cold surface closed over Dariat’s head, and he felt his feet clear the tubule. A couple of swift kicks and he surfaced, puffing a spray of droplets from his mouth. Thankfully this water was clean—relatively.
He held an arm up in the air, a sharp blue flame flickering up from his fingertips. Its light showed the true extent of the tract: twenty metres in diameter, with walls of neutral grey polyp that had the same crinkly surface texture as granite. Sewer tubule outlets formed black portals all around, their muscle-membrane rims flexing like fish mouths. The pillows were bobbing about a few metres away.
Tatiana had pushed her shoulders past the tubule’s muscle membrane, and was craning her head back to look around. The tract’s height defeated the illumination thrown out by Dariat’s small flame, revealing barely fifteen metres of the walls above the water level. A heavy shower was falling out of the darkness which roofed them, chopping up the water’s surface with small ripples.
“Come on, out you come,” Dariat said. He swam back to her and helped ease her through the opening. She gasped at the water’s chilly grip, arms thrashing about for a moment.
Dariat retrieved the two sets of pillows and strapped himself into the harness. He had to tie Tatiana’s cords for her, the cold had numbed her fingers. When he was finished, the sewer tubules all started to close silently.
“Where are we going now?” Tatiana asked nervously.
“Straight up.” He grinned. “Rubra will pump fresh water back into the base of the tract. It should take about twenty minutes to reach the top. But expect an interruption.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
* * *
Stanyon arrived at the fiftieth floor to find it in turmoil. The vestibule was packed with excitable possessed. None of them seemed to know what was going on.
“Anybody seen him?” Stanyon shouted. Nobody had.
“Search around, there must be some trace. I want the teams that were searching floors thirty-eight and thirty-nine to go down to fifty-one and check it out.”
“What’s happening?” Bonney’s voice asked from the walkie-talkie; there was a lot of crackling interference.
Stanyon held the unit to his face, pulling out more aerial. “He’s dodged us again. But we know he’s here. We’ll have him any minute now.”
“Make sure you stick with procedure. Remember it’s not just Dariat we’re up against.”
“You’re not the only council member left. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m a minute away from the lobby. I’ll join you as fast as I can.”
He gave the walkie-talkie a disgusted look and switched it off. “Terrific.”
“Stanyon,” someone called from the other end of the vestibule. “Stanyon, we’ve found something.”
It was the troll, the faerie prince, and both of the cyber-ninjas who had broken into the apartment. They were hanging around the bathroom door when Stanyon arrived. He pushed his way past them impatiently.
The sides of the ruptured toilet sphincter had sagged, squeezing more of the yellow fluid out. It was running down the outside of the cone to smear the surrounding dune of polyp chippings. Water from the fractured pipe was sloshing over the floor.
Stanyon edged forwards, and peered cautiously over the crater’s lip. There was nothing to see, nothing to sense. He pointed at the smaller of the two cyber-ninjas. “You, go see where it leads to.”
The cyber-ninja looked at him. Red LEDs on his visor flashed slowly, an indolent blinking to mirror the thoughts they fronted.
“Go on,” Stanyon said impatiently.
After a brief rebellious moment, the cyber-ninja dematerialized his flak jacket and lowered himself down into the sewer tubule.
* * *
Dariat had been worried about the undercurrents. Needlessly, as it turned out. They were rising fast up the giant tract with only the occasional swirl of bubbles twisting around them. It was still raining heavily, but the whole process was eerily silent.
He maintained the small flame burning coldly from his fingers, mainly for Tatiana’s benefit. There was nothing to see above them, only the empty blackness. They slid smoothly past the intermittent circlets of closed tubules with monotonous regularity, their only real measure of progress.
Dariat was warm enough, circulating heat through his skin to hold the water’s numbing encroachment at bay. But he did worry about Tatiana. She’d stopped talking, and her chittering teeth were clearly audible. That left him alone with his own thoughts of what was to come. And the whispers of the damned, they were always there.
Rubra, have you ever heard of someone called Alkad Mzu? he asked.
No. Why?
Capone is very interested in finding her. I think she’s some kind of weapons expert.
How the hell do you know what Capone wants?
I can hear it. The souls in the beyond are calling for her. They’re quite desperate to find her for the Organization.
Affinity suddenly gave him a sense of space opening around him. Then an astonishingly resolute presence emerged from the new distance. Dariat was at once fearful and amazed by its belief in itself, a contentment which was almost the opposite of hubris; it knew and accepted itself too well for arrogance. There was a nobility about it which he had never experienced, certainly not during the life he had led. Yet he knew exactly what it was.
Hello, Dariat, it said.
The Kohistan Consensus. I’m flattered.
It is intriguing for us to communicate with you. It is a rare opportunity to talk to any non-Edenist, and you are a possessor as well.
Make the most of it, I won’t be around for much longer.
The action you and Rubra are undertaking is an honourable one, we applaud your courage. It cannot have been easy for either of you.
It was realistic.
His answer was accompanied by Rubra’s emission of irony.
We would like to ask a question, Consensus said. Several, in fact.
On the nature of possession, I assume. Fair enough.
Your current viewpoint is unique, and extremely valuable to us.
It’s going to have to wait a minute, Rubra said. They’ve found the toilet.
* * *
The cyber-ninja had squeezed down into the sewer tubule and was squirming along on his belly. His mind tone was one of complete disgust. Pale violet light illuminated the lenses on his low-light enhancement goggles, casting a faint glow across the polyp directly in front of him. “They were in here,” he yelled back over his shoulder. “This shit’s all been smeared around.”
“Yes!” Stanyon banged a fist against the muscle-membrane door. “Get down there,” he told the second cyber-ninja. “Help him.”
The cyber-ninja did as he was told, sitting on the edge of the crater and slinging his legs over.
“Anyone know where these pipes
lead?” Stanyon asked.
“I’ve never been in one myself,” the faerie prince said airily. “But it’ll empty into the lower floor eventually. You could try searching down there. Unless, of course, he’s simply popped up inside someone else’s john and walked out.”
Stanyon gave the slack cone an irritated look. The prospect of Dariat simply walking through the habitat’s pipes to escape in the throng was intolerable. But with everyone wearing their illusionary form it would be appallingly easy. Why can we never organize ourselves properly?
With extreme reluctance he switched the walkie-talkie back on. “Bonney, come in please.”
Rubra opened the sphincter muscle below every single toilet on the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floor. It was an action which nobody noticed. There were over a hundred and eighty possessed milling around on those three levels, with more still arriving. Some were obediently searching through the rooms; most were now there simply for a piece of the action. As there was no organized plan, none of them were suspicious when all the remaining apartment doors slid open. At the same time, emergency fire-control doors quietly closed off the lift shafts.
Dariat pulled Tatiana to his chest and held her tight, locking his fingers together behind her back. “Stay with it,” he said. The surface of the water was just rising over the sewer tubules of the twenty-first floor.
Bonney reached the twelfth floor well ahead of the five deputies accompanying her. She could hear them clumping down the stairwell above her. They competed against her heart hammering away inside her ribs. So far she didn’t feel any fatigue, but she knew she’d have to slow down soon. It was going to take a good twenty minutes to reach the fiftieth floor.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 227
