The Atomic Sea: Omnibus of Volumes Six, Seven and Eight

by Conner, Jack

  Some of the trees moved. Some grasped. Some swayed in winds that weren’t there. Some had become translucent and glistened eerily; Avery could see the vegetation on the other side of them through their glassy substances.

  Many animals hid from the party of men, but others showed no fear, idly watching the humans from tree limbs and holes in the ground. Avery saw a massive, poisonous lion-fish creature jutting from a tree, saw a mutated, scale-covered batkin hanging upside down from another knotty limb that was almost invisible. Once he heard a great crashing, rending noise off to his left, and all the soldiers jerked to a halt and stared in that direction. They’d taken turns carrying Xarris, but now the ones who bore him set him down and took hold of their weapons, aiming toward the noise. For a long time they all just stood there, staring, but at last the crashing and thrashing moved off, and they took deep breaths and resumed their march.

  The vegetation constantly dripped, and Avery heard plinking on his armor all the time, and the accompanying steam of acid or venom, so much so that it seemed to him as if a constant steady rain fell. Plink plink plink. Plink plink plink. It almost grew to be reassuring ... until it wasn’t.

  Two hours into the march, one of the men screamed. He’d been walking under a certain branch, and a fluid that had dripped on him was more potent than the others. Smoke rose from the contact of the droplets. As Avery rushed over, the man was ripping at his armor, trying to get it off. Avery helped, then gasped when he saw the damage the droplets had done. Not only had the acid eaten through the metal of his armor, it had also taken a good chunk out of the man’s shoulder. Thankfully the armor had taken most of the damage and the substance had only blackened his skin and eaten out a small circle. After the application of a salve from Avery’s medical kit, the soldier was able to press on, though he would be scarred for the rest of his life, assuming he survived the jungle to live it.

  The band kept a very close watch on what trees they walked under from that point on. They reached the village before night fell, and Avery felt a great sense of relief that they wouldn’t have to travel through the jungle after dark. Gods knew what terrors night would unleash. A wide swath of burned ground created a perimeter around the village, and a cry went up from the wall as soon as the party entered the clearing. Avery felt his back hunch to be so exposed and wondered what he and the rest looked like to the natives: black-armored, strangely-weaponed, almost alien figures appearing out of the jungle.

  “Are we safe?” he asked, as the shouts of villagers echoed in his ears.

  Mailos started to answer, then seemed to realize he didn’t know. Before anyone else could speak, the village gate swung open and a group of natives spilled out. Two carried rifles and covered the rest, armed with spears and knives, as they approached Avery’s party. The leader—short and broad, with a circle of red feathers (almost certainly trophies taken from slain Nisaar) on a string around his neck—jabbered at them in some language Avery didn’t know, and Lt. Mailos responded in kind, having to pause here and there, obviously not fluent. The conversation continued haltingly, and there was much animation among the gathered villagers at something Mailos said.

  Avery marveled at the appearance of the villagers. All were infected, of course, as they lived deep in this alien hell, but what was most striking about them was that they had acquired mutations derived from the flora and fauna of the area. Instead of the usual fish-men and the like, Avery saw a man with spotted leopard-fur, another hunched over and using his knuckles to propel himself, and another with the bristly hair of a boar. Others did show more traditional mutations—fish scales along one arm, a partial carapace, protruding eyes, the vanishing of a nose—but Avery suspected this was more because the local fauna was just as strange as the environment would indicate.

  The leader, who had dark fur on his chest and one arm that might have been derived from a sloth, and short tusks sticking up from his lower jaw that were probably boar-ish, called out toward the village, and a woman who must be a shaman of sorts materialized. Tall, bone-thin and covered in intricate tattoos (all of them glowing in the shadow of the wall, hinting at the presence of the ghost flower), the ancient crone emerged shaking a rattle and mumbling some benediction or curse. One of her legs was bent backward and cloven-hoofed, causing her to walk with a springy limp.

  She approached Xarris, who had been stretched out on the ground, and poked and prodded him, leaping back every time one of the maggots popped from his skin but not seeming surprised at their appearance. Indeed, a strange smile lit her face and she chattered excitedly with the man who led them. Not so excited, but suitably awed, he said something back to her, then spoke to another man, who ran into the village. Moments later a group of women emerged with a stretcher made of reeds and fronds; each covered in glowing tattoos, but none as much as the head woman, the women wore thick gloves made of some local fabric. They carefully, even expertly, moved Xarris onto the stretcher, then picked him up and started to carry him inside the walls of the village.

  “Wait,” Avery said. “Where are you taking him? I’m his doctor.”

  Mailos shot him a sour look but translated, and when the crone responded, he told Avery, “She says they’re taking the Chosen Man—put capital letters there; they’re serious about this—to a healing place.”

  “I don’t understand,” Avery said. “Are there others like this?”

  Mailos spoke with the crone, who answered impatiently, then led her women and their patient inside.

  “She’s says there’s more,” Mailos told Avery.

  “How many?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “So it is some local ailment,” Layanna said. “Good. Then they’ll know how to deal with it, and perhaps they can show us how to treat it in case any of the rest of us become infested.”

  “Chosen,” Janx repeated. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Avery didn’t either, but he was distracted by Mailos talking with the leader of the village men, then turning to them. “The headman says this is indeed Sevu and that we can stay here for the night. He asked if we are the ones who helped his people earlier, and when I said yes, he grew very grateful. They’re giving us their nicest accommodations, and will feast and entertain us accordingly.”

  “What about the ghost flower?” Avery said. “Do they know how to harvest its nectar?”

  Mailos turned again to the headman and asked him a question. The headman spoke, this time to Avery, although of course Avery couldn’t understand a word.

  “He says his people have harvested the ghost flower nectar for centuries. It’s their principal source of trade with the outside world,” Mailos said. “They only deal with a certain merchant, however.”

  “Tell them we have a contract with his seal.” Avery provided the paperwork, and the lieutenant scanned it, then passed it over. The villagers examined it, then spoke again.

  “They say they’ll help us harvest the nectar,” Mailos said.

  Avery smiled, feeling another wave of relief.

  “It’s almost over,” he told Layanna, Hildra and Janx. “We’re almost there.”

  They stared at him, and it was a moment before Avery realized what he’d said.

  It was too late to take back.

  Chapter 7

  “So this is the best accommodations, huh?” Hildra said, glancing around at the dilapidated, earthen-floored shack. “Gods help me, but I’ve become soft, cause I wouldn’t want to see their worst accommodations.”

  “It ain’t so bad,” Janx said.

  Avery didn’t want to say so, but he agreed with Hildra. A turquoise spider scuttled up into the shadows of a corner and vanished into a hole, leaving a fishy-smelling web behind. The whole place leaned to one side and stank of mildew, and in the flickering light of the lantern stains showed on every lichen-covered wall.

  “It’ll do for the night,” he said.

  Layanna said nothing, but she seemed tired. Avery wondered if he was supposed to sleep next to
her or not. He supposed not.

  “One thing, Doc,” Janx said, and Avery glanced up to see the big man looking pensive. “What Mailos said back there, it wasn’t quite right.”

  “No?”

  Janx shook his head. “Remember, I spent some time in the area, and I picked up some of the language. That witchy woman, she didn’t say she was takin’ Xarris to a healing place—she said to the Hall of the Chosen.” In a grave voice, he added, “There’s enough like Xarris for a whole hall.”

  “Fuck that,” said Hildra.

  “Maybe the lieutenant didn’t want to alarm us,” Avery said, but he felt a thrill of fear lift the hairs on the back of his neck just the same.

  They finished arranging their things, such as they were, then joined the others outside. The night had grown cool, and hootings and insectile chirrups rose from the jungle all around. Avery saw a group of children playing a game, and he was struck by how similar it was to one he had played as a boy, and yet how strikingly different. The kids would take turns putting on something that Avery at first took to be a helmet or mask, then realized it was the very real head (or at least shell) of some local, possibly insect-like creature, armored and mandibled and freakish; the boy or girl who wore the head, with its clutch of black eyes, would chase the others until he caught one, and then that child would have to wear the head and chase the others.

  The villagers provided their guests with simple food, chicken from livestock they’d raised themselves, and which the soldiers insisted on inspecting (finding the poultry non-diseased) before eating. As he tucked into his meal, Avery noticed a large structure in the middle of the village on a sort of rise. He assumed it to belong to the chief, but, when he mentioned it, a native replied, by way of Janx, “No, that’s the Hall of the Chosen.”

  “Then that’s where Xarris was taken?” Avery said. “The Chosen Man we brought with us?”

  Again, through Janx: “Yes, of course. It’s where they all go.”

  “Just how many of them are there?”

  The man wrinkled his face as he spoke, and Janx translated with, “I don’t know. Thirty, forty ...”

  “That many—from a town so small?” Avery said. “Just what is this illness?”

  “It is no illness,” the man said, by way of Janx. “They are chosen.”

  “For what? And by whom?”

  The man muttered something under his breath and walked off.

  “Perhaps I’d better see this Hall for myself,” Avery said.

  With Lt. Mailos, he approached the headman and asked permission to inspect the building. “It is impossible,” the headman said, having to enunciate around his tusks.

  “I’m a doctor. Perhaps I could help the sick.”

  Mailos translated, and the headman replied, “Only priestesses are allowed in there.” Around him villagers voiced confirmation, shooting Avery suspicious, even outright hostile looks. The children that had been playing earlier had stopped.

  “Leave it be, Doc,” Janx said. “Don’t piss off your host. Rule to live by.”

  “A human life is at stake,” Avery reminded him. “Maybe more. Apparently there are scores of theses sickened men and women inside that hall. With proper time and equipment, I might be able to help them.”

  Mailos translated this before Avery could stop him, and the villagers, as a body, rose to their feet, speaking angrily.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” Hildra said.

  With shocking speed, villagers cordoned off the lane leading to the so-called Hall of the Chosen. Several took aggressive steps toward Avery, and he backed away.

  “Hold tight,” Janx said, coming to Avery’s defense, along with Hildra and the soldiers, putting themselves between Avery and the tribesmen.

  The villagers came on. Shouting and gesturing angrily, they pushed up against the line of soldiers, forcing them to give up ground. Other villagers joined the aggressors, shouting furiously. The children that had been playing fled. Off to the side, the air shimmered around Layanna. Dear gods. Avery realized they were moments away from a massacre. She would destroy the entire town.

  “Tell them I was wrong!” he said, hearing the yelp in his voice. “Tell them I’ll leave it alone! I’ll leave the Hall of the Chosen alone!”

  Mailos spoke quickly, loudly, and the headman barked something to the mob, which began to settle down, bit by bit. Avery, heart pounding, stomach churning, could barely keep down what he’d eaten.

  “I would respect the local customs from now on,” Mailos said, his dark face gray, and Avery nodded wordlessly.

  To his immense relief, Layanna relaxed, and the air around her returned to normal. Avery looked closely at her, trying to read the expression on her face as she gazed back at him, but could not. That night, while Janx and Hildra were snoring in their corner, Avery went to her. She allowed him to curl up behind her and wrap one of his arms around her.

  “That was a close one earlier,” she said, and he knew her well enough to know she said it for lack of anything better to say. She would only do that if she were nervous. For some reason, that encouraged him. If she were nervous, that meant this—well, him, or them possibly—mattered to her.

  “I’d like to make things right between us,” he said.

  She wriggled around to face him. Her eyes, suddenly very close to him, were, as always, startlingly blue, even in the dim light.

  “I would like that, too.”

  “Well—what can I do?”

  Looking almost pained, she said, “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

  “But …”

  “You resumed your relationship with Sheridan the moment you two were together again in Laisha. Then, even after all she had done, you saved her life.”

  “I saved her for—”

  “For Ani. I know. But was there not another reason, too?”

  “Yes. There was.”

  “Which was?”

  He put on what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Because I’m a doctor. It’s what I trained to do. What I’ve sworn an oath to do. To save lives if I can, no matter my own personal feelings.”

  “It’s those feelings I’m worried about.”

  “Don’t be.”

  She let out a breath; he felt its warmth on his cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Francis,” she said.

  “We could die anytime. I don’t want to go with regrets.”

  “We all go with regrets.” She shook her head, just slightly, her blond hair spilling over a sculpted cheekbone.

  “But you think there’s still hope for us?” he said.

  “Maybe. I just need more time. After losing Frederick, the last thing I need is to lose you, too. This way, if I don’t have you, I can’t lose you. When I’m sure, though ... maybe.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. On the cheek. It would have to do. Retreating into his own corner, Avery’s mind turned over his relationship with Layanna for a time, then moved on, not to the task ahead, the harvesting of the ghost flower nectar, but to Ani. He wondered if she was settling in all right with the Voryses and smiled to imagine her drinking tea out of finely-cut porcelain while Hildebrand hooted and jumped about on a silken tablecloth and Idris—Lord Idris, if he had his way—gaped. Ani, Avery thought. Be well. Be safe, and be well.

  That night he dreamed of her again, being carried away from him by a dark wave. He ran toward her down the beach, but suddenly the wave she was being carried on was eclipsed by massive shapes bursting from the water, a whole line of them, stretching from horizon to horizon. Lightning crackled off them, gas oozed from their orifices, and the earth quaked when they moved. Huge forms, blotting out the stars, blotting out reason, they drove toward him. Toward him, closer and closer, so slow and yet so fast, and he threw back his head and screamed, and screamed.

  * * *

  The next evening the villagers showed Avery and the others how they collected the ghost flower nectar. They could only do so at night, as that was the only time the flower could
be seen, so they had encouraged Avery’s party to rest as much as they could during the day. Then, using armor made from the exoskeletons of various fauna, the villagers, with Avery and the others in tow in the armor they’d brought with them, ventured into the jungle in a small group to locations where the flower was known to grow, visiting them one after the other. The locals claimed the flower sprouted from a vine—a single, solitary vine with a thousand branches, each shifting and changeable. It made no sense to Avery and conformed to no law Atomic Sea phenomena he was aware of.

  “Where does the vine originate from?” Avery asked the leader of the expedition, a squat village woman with patches of vibrant green fish scales on her face and torso.

  “No one knows,” she said, by way of Mailos, and a look of dread crossed her face. “Only that the vine’s shoots come from ... that way.” She gestured in what Avery thought of as the north.

  “What’s that way?” he asked.

  “The Gomingdon.”

  Mailos frowned and said something to her, then turned to Avery when she had replied. “I’m not exactly sure what the word means, only that it means something like ... ‘the Corruption’. When I asked her about it, she said it was the Holy Place.”

  “Coleel mentioned the name of the region,” Avery said, “but I don’t understand. How can it be both holy and a place of corruption?”

  “I don’t know, only that that’s what she said. She won’t speak about it further.”

  It took them half the night, but eventually they located one of the shoots of the mysterious vine, which, like bamboo, grew underground, only the flowers emerging. At first Avery could see nothing, but then one of the moons came out from behind a cloud and the flowers shone like polished glass, graceful and translucent, with a milky fluid running through their veins. The flowers resembled orchids, with the same sort of eerie, fleshy petals, but with a central tube containing the nectar. Puncturing the tube in the wrong way caused the plant to release deadly spores, thus the villagers had developed special tools, and a special technique, to drain the nectar from the tube. In ancient times the nectar had been heavily diluted and used as a hallucinogen, but this had proved toxic over time, rendering repeated users paralyzed. By then the locals had found other uses for the plants.