by Chris Braak
“What was that?” Alan whispered.
“Something bad, I’ll wager,” Harry muttered under his breath. “Come on. Into the coach.”
Twenty-Nine: The Translated Man
“What do you mean, it’s here? How do you know?” Valentine asked.
“I can feel it.” The Brass Towers loomed in his imagination, and the ringing, buzzing sound in his ear intensified. Over the last few minutes, he had become more and more certain that this was not an effect of the drug; or, rather, that what the drug did was not so much cause a hallucination as it made him sensitive to certain other things—things that his mind was forced to interpret as hallucinations.
“Well,” said Valentine. “Well, we should leave. Right? Let’s go.”
“No,” Beckett told him. “Not yet.” Patient, he told himself. Be patient. The thing had come back to the castle, he knew, and he was sure it would return to the ship. Where else did it have to go? “We can’t let it loose. We’ve got to stop it here.” It’ll come to the ship. Be patient.
“All right,” Valentine muttered. “Hope you’ve got a plan, is all…”
Beckett snorted. He did not mention that he could see a black shape, creeping down the wall on the far side of the chamber. Head first, it slowly slithered down the icy walls, somehow folding under or around or through the wooden platforms in the way. Wait, wait, wait. Wait until it gets to the bottom. The shape moved out of sight.
“Now,” Beckett said, softly. “Start up. Slowly, quietly. Right?”
“What?” Valentine practically shouted. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “What? You mean…it’s here? I mean, here, here? Like, in this room?”
Beckett nodded, and gestured to the stairs. The young coroner started to back up the wooden steps, his hands hovering near the grips of his revolvers, though he knew bullets wouldn’t stop this adversary. Beckett waited for a few seconds, then he, too, began the ascent.
The two men could now hear a strange noise from behind the maze of wooden partitions on the floor of the chamber. It was a wet, sticky noise, like someone was pulping fruit.
“Go!” Beckett shouted, suddenly. “Run!”
Valentine didn’t hesitate. He tore up the stairs, Beckett close on his heels. They’d made it less than a hundred yards before Beckett turned. He could see the thing now, crawling up the stairs after them.
If the corpses of the translated men had been awful, this living specimen was a thousand times worse. It was a mess of shifting limbs, some fading grotesquely from sight, others appearing and disappearing at random; it’s flesh not only blossomed and turned itself inside out again and again, but it slithered across the bones, sometimes leaving the skeleton behind, rearing up like a clutch of snakes, only to return to that hideously shifting body. Coils of blood and gristle darted out from its body and dropped back in, or they waved like an insect’s antenna, lightly touching the wood and ice around it. It’s face was the only thing that never changed, and it was even more awful for its stillness. The thing’s face was just like the faces of the dead men: locked in a rigid, unchanging, terrible scream, its jaws stretched and mouth open, its eyes rolled back in its head. The head rolled lifelessly on its neck, in movements seemingly unrelated to those of its bizarre agglomerations of real and phantom limbs.
Beckett drew his weapon as the thing approached. It was moving slowly, perhaps because it didn’t feel threatened, but the coroner suspected that would change once it heard gunfire. Have to make this count. He aimed carefully, not at the monster before him, but behind it…
“Beckett!” Valentine whispered desperately. “What are you doing? Bullets don’t hurt it!”
At the sound of the gunshot, the thing froze, or it froze as much as it could. Its millions of arms and legs still blinked in and out of existence, its weird, lifeless head still rolled about on its shoulders, but it had stopped its approach.
Missed, Beckett thought. Try again.
The thing began to move towards him, this time more quickly. After the second gunshot, it began to charge up the wooden stairs.
“Shit!” Shouted Valentine. He drew his revolvers and opened up on the translated man, which paused beneath the hail of bullets. Flesh exploded out of its back, then splashed right back into its skin; each bullet left a tiny whirlpool in the rapidly mutating body of the creature.
“Done,” Beckett said. “Go, go, go!”
The two men turned and ran up the stairs, all thought of care and safety abandoned, despite the rickety wooden construction and the lack of guardrails. That weird, pulping-fruit sound followed them, keeping distance easily.
Beckett was almost breathless when they reached the top platform. He made straight for the control-room. “Get out,” he told Valentine.
“What are you doing?” The younger man screamed at him.
“Go! Get out of here!” Beckett stood before the brass switches in the little room. “Go!” He screamed at Valentine. “That’s a fucking order.” Reluctantly, with a glance back at the monstrosity that was still methodically make its way up the stairs, Valentine disappeared down the icy tunnel.
Which one? Beckett thought. Then: There is no way this is going to work. He looked at the biggest switch he could find, a great knife switch set into the wall, and threw it. The coroner was rewarded almost immediately with a low hum, deep enough that it seemed to emanate from the very walls. Now what? There was a dial, something that looked like a timer. He set it to the smallest increment that he could, something that looked like a little less than a minute. It began to tick. Blue lights on the panel began to flash.
Judging by the wet squishing sound, the creature had reached the top platform. Beckett stepped out of the control room, praying that there was nothing else to do. He began to back away towards the tunnel. The creature’s head rolled in a wide circle before hanging towards him. It began to follow.
No. Beckett thought. It’ll follow me out. Shit. He’d reached the opening of the tunnel, and the creature was still following. Beckett sighed. I’ve got to stay. He drew his gun and fired the remaining four bullets, right at the thing’s head.
Blood and meat exploded into a beautiful, strangely-symmetric flower before reconstituting themselves exactly into that awful, screaming, dead-eyed face. The thing had not even slowed it’s pace. Can’t let it leave. Beckett steeled himself, and prepared to charge.
Something began to scream at the bottom of the cave, an unearthly wail at the highest pitches the human ear could perceive. The thing paused for a second, then resumed that steady, terrible approach.
Suddenly, Beckett felt a hand on his shoulder; Valentine shoved him out of the way and, roaring, hurled one of the phlogiston lanterns directly at the feet of the monster. Ordinarily, this would have simply sprayed burning phlogiston everywhere, but for some reason, some effect of the kinetic engine that held the ice together, or an effect of that terrible machine at the glacier’s core, the lantern exploded.
The blast was thunderous. It threw the two coroners back against the wall. It threw the translated creature clear across the cave like a flaming comet, tearing wooden scaffolding apart with it. The thing wailed, its limbs consumed with blue and red flames that burned in strangely symmetrical patterns.
Beckett found himself tangled up with Valentine on the floor, head resting against the icy wall. His ears were ringing now, and he could barely hear anything except that horrific scream from down below. He pulled himself to his feet and took quick stock; once he’d ascertained that his limbs were all intact, he tried to wake Valentine.
“Oh, you fucking idiot.” The man was bleeding from the head. He was breathing, but unconscious. “Stupid, stupid. Wake up! Get up, now!” The younger man didn’t move. No time, there’s no time. The wail had grown louder, and now the creature clutched the wall on the far side of the room. It still burned, but seemed unconcerned by that fact.
Crap. Beckett bent down and, grunting, managed to pull the younger man onto his shoulders. No fucking TIME! He half
-staggered, half-ran as the wail rose to an ear-splitting pitch, following the dim lights down the hall towards the remaining blue lantern. That creature began to follow them into the tunnel. Beckett had just reached the staircase when the wailing sound abruptly ceased.
The translated monster paused. Then, without warning, it turned and leapt back into the icy cave. No time, Beckett thought to himself. His heart and lungs were pounding, screaming for air as he dragged Valentine up the stone stairs. His thighs felt like they were about to explode.
No time.
The Pilot changed its perspective again, so that it stood on the wall and could run straight forward towards the ground. Wood and ice spiraled out of the way, as it revolved itself through material space. Its beacon had vanished, the beautiful brighter-than-light heat was gone, the ship was gone, it wanted its ship.
Space adjusted itself again as the Pilot climbed onto the floor, staring at the gap where the Montgomery had been. It’s translation out of space had removed it from all the creature’s eyes, the thousand honeycombs of vision that opened up the world to it all saw that it was gone, gone. A feeling that was like fear, and like rage, but also the product of an alien heart to which such feelings were meaningless, rent its chest in two, and then smoothed itself back together.
The ship would return. The ship always returned. It never left for long. The creature looked down at the ground, where heat swirled up in curling spirals of squares. There was brass on the floor, and the creature folded itself in half so that its arms were low enough to touch it.
It was a piece of brass, the length of a human hand. A part of the Pilot’s mind, untouched by the hideous transformation that had translated its body, spoke. That was one of the harmonic stabilizers, it said. The Pilot was unconcerned.
The man had shot it off. The voice insisted.
The pilot didn’t care. The ship would be back soon.
Shit.
The Montgomery lurched back into normal space.
Thirty: Down the Mountain
They were only halfway up the stairs when the explosion came, and this time Beckett really was deafened. It crashed against his ears, reverberated against the walls, and brought with it a flood of images. He was choking in the sea, now looking at the City of Brass, now he saw the moon, looming strangely in the sky…
“No!” Beckett gripped his mind with an iron fist. “No,” he said, though he couldn’t hear himself. The floor of the castle had begun to tilt. Slightly at first, but the angle was becoming alarming. “Out.”
Beckett counted his steps with gasps. One-two-three breathe. One-two-three breathe. Keep moving. Keep moving. The floor of the great hall was at a forty-five degree angle by the time Beckett reached it, and he could feel knives stabbing at his heart.
“Wake up, Valentine!” He threw the younger man to the ground and began slapping his face. “Fucking wake up!” It was no use. The man was completely unconscious.
Grimacing, Beckett found their coats, still piled by the main doors. He dressed himself and then Valentine, as quickly as he could without slipping; his senseless, stupid fingers betrayed him again and again as he fumbled with the clasps. Then, he took out the travel case for his veneine. There were two ounces of the drug left. Beckett drained it all into the syringe, then thrust the needle into his carotid artery and mashed down on the plunger.
The world was covered with a blanket almost instantly. The pain in his legs and back and arms wandered away, his heart pounded from the end of a very, very long hall. The ringing in his ears receded, and there was nothing but pleasant warmth engulfing all his senses.
You’re not done, yet, a voice told him, but Beckett ignored it. The sound of rushing water was coming to him, the great sea that would lead him to the city, and he didn’t mind at all; light and warmth suffused his being.
The voice spoke again, now with a strong and furious tone. It was his father’s voice, the voice of the overseer on the factory floor, the voice of his sergeant from the Royal Marines. I said that you are not. Fucking. Finished. Get up. Beckett didn’t move. Get up! His body refused to respond. GET UP!
He lurched to his feet. All sense of his body was muted by the drug. It made him unsteady as he pulled Valentine onto his shoulders. The floor had canted to a frighteningly steep angle as he ran down the hall, legs now insensitive to the pain and exhaustion he had to work through.
Likewise, the cold touched him with only the barest hint of an edge. The veneine kept it all at bay, as Beckett gripped the hemp rope down the glacier in his iron fist. He could tell that his glove was being worn away as he dragged himself faster and faster down the hillside. He suspected that it eventually eroded the grip on the glove and started to burn the skin from his hands, but he couldn’t feel it.
He could feel the regular shivers that were beginning in the ice. Tremors, emanating from massive and still-growing sinkhole about Gotheray Castle, were beginning to shake the glacier loose.
Beckett’s frustration screamed at him from beneath the haze, ordering him to go faster. He ignored it. It swore at him to forget the curves of the switchback and cut straight down the side of the mountain. He ignored it.
A huge, shivering wave passed through the ice beneath his feet, rocking him as he walked, and for a moment everything vanished, and he was rolling in the black waves of a stormy sea, beneath a black sky. Saltwater filled his mouth and nose, cleansed the filth from his eyes and lungs tossed him up and down so that he lost all sense of direction…
Stay here! The voice in his head shouted, and he was back on the glacier. He began to focus on the ragged cold breaths that scraped his lungs, and the broken glass that was slicing the inside of his knees to ribbons. He tried to find a balance between the drug and the pain, using his agony to keep his mind from drifting off.
Time was distended. He had no idea how long he’d walked, if it was faster or slower than the time it had taken them to climb. All he could think of was the pain of his body and the warmth of the drug, and the weight of Valentine on his shoulders, crushing the breath out of him.
And then, there was the promontory where they’d left the coach. There was the wooden bridge that led from the glacier. There was another terrifying shudder in the ice, and thousands of tiny granules began to shower past his feet. Almost there! He told himself. Almost!
The bridge. He’d made it to the bridge. Halfway across. And then his legs gave out. Pushed to the brink of exhaustion and beyond, his legs simply stopped working. He collapsed beneath the weight of his friend, halfway to safety. The ringing in his ears began to fade, replaced now with a great, rumbling sound, the huge, earth-shivering thunder of an earthquake.
Too late, he thought to himself, even as his inner-sergeant bellowed and tried to bully him to his feet. It was no use. His will was strong, but there was simply no strength left in his body. He heard the thunder bearing down on him, and felt the cold creep in past the drugs. His arms and legs were numb, well beyond feeling. The cold was a terrible fist, slowly closing around his heart. Beckett snatched what ragged breaths he could; his lungs felt too tired to breathe. The thunder rolled closer and closer, and Beckett closed his eyes. Well, Valentine, he thought in the dark. Guess we didn’t make it, this time.
Beckett was so tired that the cold was beginning to miraculously transmute itself into warmth. Real warmth, not the fiction of the veneine. Real warmth, and the thunder had become the rolling waves of the sea, and Beckett let himself go to Cross the Water…
“Grab his feet, there, boy!” A rough voice spoke, and rough hands gripped Beckett’s arms. “Hurry, we haven’t got time to dawdle. That’s it!”
Hands, voices, all vanished into the sound of the sea. There was a cough, and Beckett imagined he heard Valentine. “Owww. Did . . . what happened?”
“No time for that, Mr. Valentine. Get on your feet if you want to live.” Was that Harry’s voice?
It didn’t matter. Sleep claimed him, and an enormous sea of ice and snow swept the wooden bridge away i
nto the darkness.
Thirty-One: A Conclusion
The coroners returned to Trowth in the wake of the sharpsie riots. Beckett remained unconscious for the entire trip, pushed beyond the limits of human endurance by his heroic trip down the mountain. Valentine, who had regained just enough of his wits to climb onto the stone promontory from the bridge before it was swept away by the avalanche, remained addled for a little while, but soon was back to normal.
The city, on the other hand, had been completely transformed. Almost all of Old Bank had been destroyed; Raithower House was one of the few buildings untouched by the second disastrous launch of the Excelsior, but dozens of government offices, including the headquarters for the Ministry of War and the Committee for Public Safety, had been utterly destroyed. Records were lost, chains of command disrupted, and the organizations were thrown into disarray.
Strangely enough, the people of Trowth seemed to feel a renewed sense of unity and cooperation in the face of such a terrible disaster. Since the last of the sharpsies had disappeared from the city after the explosion, there was no need to form armed mobs. Instead, groups were formed to look for survivors of the disaster of Vlytze Square, gendarmes committed themselves to rebuilding as much of the destroyed city as possible, and the wealthiest families, but especially the Comstock Vie-Gorgons whose home in Old Bank had also managed to weather the disaster, opened their doors and their coffers to support the survivors in any way.
For a short time, the quiet, melancholic city was not held in the grip of raging passions or roaming pressgangs. They were not consumed with hate for their enemies, they did not feel the desperate horror of their own loss, the loss of their young men to the war, that had found outlet in so much violence. For a short time, there was nothing to do but rebuild.
