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

by Conner, Jack

  Gaescruhd, fat and hairy, stopped humming and only slowly opened his heavy-lidded eyes, whereas the boy leapt up in fright.

  “Go,” Avery told him, and he ran, disappearing instantly through a far door.

  Gaescruhd, his member standing stiffly up, didn’t even bother to hide himself or shift position.

  “I hope you’re going to finish me off, one of you,” he said, “because I have to say I was nearly there.”

  Janx grinned nastily and drew his knife. “Oh, I can finish you off, all right. Gaescruhd, of all people. Huh. How many would give their fortunes to be where I am now?”

  “But I’ve made many fortunes as well. For my friends,” the mobster added significantly.

  “I’ll just bet you have.” Janx stepped forward. “How many folk have you sold into slavery? How many have you killed?”

  The fat man chuckled. “Don’t pretend at such moral posturing, Janx ol’ boy. Yes, I know who you are, all right. You’re not a non-entity like this fellow.” He indicated Avery. “Anyway, you’re hardly better than I am, or at least you were. I don’t know anymore. But if you’ve reformed then I pity you, and laugh at you.” Gaescruhd sighed and finally changed position, scooting his butt back to push against the bench. He reached for some clothes nearby—Janx tensed—but pulled out only a cigar and a lighter. Sparking up, he said, “I had been saving this for after. Oh well.”

  “I suppose you’re to thank for the slaves the priesthood abuses,” Avery said.

  Gaescruhd rolled hairy, shapeless shoulders. “I’m to thank for many things.” He studied them, his gaze lingering on Janx’s knife. “And me without my muscle. Figures. Just when I need them most. But they wouldn’t accept the Sacrament, and only believers are allowed here.”

  Avery noticed what he hadn’t before, that the fingers of the mobster’s left hand had fused together, and his nose had shrunk. From the redness, it appeared to be a fairly recent mutation.

  “You a believer now?” Janx said. “Bullshit.”

  “I believe in power,” Gaescruhd said. “The Collossum has it. By spreading his will, I have it too. Didn’t figure on getting fished, but times do change, and I know where the wind blows. Or the sea spray, perhaps.”

  “You were once the go-between between Jessryl Sheridan and the Collossum,” Avery said. “Are you still?”

  The fat man inhaled a plume of smoke, swirled it around his mouth, and blew it in Avery’s general direction. “Information is a commodity.”

  “What do you have to trade?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. Chances are I can help you get it. But in return ...”

  “You want your freedom.”

  Gaescruhd nodded. To Avery’s relief, the man’s tumescence was finally fading. Avery and Janx shared a look.

  “This scum deserves to die,” Janx said. “You don’t know. You don’t live in his world, Doc. You don’t know what he’s done. I do. He needs to die.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Avery said, “but we need information. Agreed?”

  Janx spat again. “I’m just here to back you up.”

  Regarding Gaescruhd, Avery said, “Tells us what we want to know and your life is spared.”

  “Very well,” Gaescruhd said. With some amusement, he added, “Shall we shake?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. What we want to know is where the relic taken from Atosh is. If you are still Sheridan’s go-between, you might be the one she passed it to. You might have been the one to deliver it to the Collossum.”

  “So I did.”

  “Wait a minute,” Janx said. “If Sheridan’s here, does that mean she accepted the Sacrament, too? She a fisher now?” To Avery, he said, “No offense.”

  “She is not,” Gaescruhd said. “Visitors are encouraged to accept it, but it is optional. Only we who live here must be complete converts.”

  “The relic,” Avery said. “Where is it?”

  Gaescruhd gestured with his cigar. “That way. In his laboratory.”

  “Whose?”

  “Who else, you fool?”

  “Why in a lab?”

  “Ask him. Now, I have fulfilled my end of the agreement.” The mobster stood to go, gathering his clothes, and began moving to the door the boy had taken. “It has been a pleas—”

  The last word ended on a wet note, as Janx tackled him to the floor, burying the fat man under his immense weight, and began plunging his knife into Gaescruhd’s broad, hairy back, again and again. Red dripped from his blade, and Gaescruhd thrashed like a stuck pig. Janx stabbed, even as Avery blanched and nearly vomited. He wanted to call out for Janx to stop, but it was too late. When at last Janx stopped stabbing, the big man rose shakily and ripped his robes off; they’d been spattered with blood. He wiped his knife on them and replaced it in its sheath.

  Blood spread out from Gaescruhd’s corpse, and Janx stepped away from it, not hurriedly. He showed no disgust, only weariness.

  “Why?” Avery asked him. “We had a deal.”

  Grimly, Janx said, “I lied.”

  Avery held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. Fighting down the impulse to rebuke Janx, and fighting another urge to retch, Avery stepped around Gaescruhd’s corpse and pushed through the door the mobster had been traveling toward, as it was in the same direction Gaescruhd had indicated the laboratory was. Janx followed.

  “We’ll have to hurry,” Avery said. “His body could be found at any time.”

  “If he’d lived, he woulda just raised the alarm.”

  “We could have bound him. Gagged him.”

  Janx didn’t reply, but Avery could almost feel his rage, not quite spent yet, even with the man’s death. He had truly hated Gaescruhd.

  Avery led on, taking one room and then another. Some rooms had multiple doors, and always he took the direction Gaescruhd had indicated, judging his relationship to the room of worship by the fading-then-swelling sounds of singing. This place was a maze, a warren of arbitrarily enlarged, truncated and divided rooms, with doorways installed brutally into walls that hadn’t originally been meant for them and bare pipes snaking along the ceiling. Searching for the lab, Avery followed the pipes and, when he saw them, wires. Soon the rough wood walls around him became metal, and somewhat cleaner. He and Janx stepped through into what was obviously a laboratory, with benches and tables laden with equipment, much of it esoteric.

  A man stood over a microscope, but he snapped up at Avery and Janx’s arrival.

  “Who—?”

  Janx grabbed him by the shirtfront and hauled him up off the ground. His legs kicked spastically. Avery feared at first that the man might be the Collossum, but, since he didn’t immediately kill Janx, Avery decided not.

  “Where’s the relic?” Janx demanded.

  “There—over—” the man said, pointing to some strange, alien-looking artifact Avery hadn’t noticed before. Shaped like an urn, it was surrounded by unfamiliar equipment, some of it plugged into or attached to the urn.

  “Is that the artifact from the Ysstral monastery?” Avery asked.

  The scientist seemed too petrified to answer. Irritated, Janx released him.

  “That’s it,” the man gasped.

  Now that he saw it, Avery felt unnerved by the relic. “Is it safe? In Mago, it had been shielded by a box.”

  “The Master funneled off its energies for his project,” the technician said. “It’s safe now.”

  “What project?”

  “Sending out his broadcast. He activated it about two weeks ago.”

  Avery felt cold. “What ... what did it do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m only a technician, sir.”

  Avery rubbed his chin, troubled.

  “What’re you thinkin’, Doc?” Janx said.

  “Nothing,” Avery said. “It can’t mean anything, surely.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that ... around two weeks ago, before we left for Ezzez. That’s about when the ghos
t flower nectar began working. It didn’t do anything before then, but suddenly, as if some trigger had been thrown—” his gaze darted to the relic “—the nectar proved effective against the Starfish tissue, or at least allowed Layanna to be effective against it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Janx said.

  “Neither do I.” To the technician, Avery said, “Tell us more.”

  “I don’t know any more. Honest!”

  Avery moved to the urn. At first he had thought to destroy it, to rob Sheridan and the Collossum of whatever it was, but it seemed to be inert now, and ...

  “Could it be?” he mused aloud. “Could the relic help to fight the Collossum?” He shook his head. It was all beyond him. To the technician, he said, “What did—ah, the god—say about it?”

  “He said—he said unbelievers should die!”

  The technician grabbed a scalpel off a nearby tray and slashed it at Janx, cutting him along the forearm. Enraged, Janx grabbed him again and dashed him against the wall, where he slumped and did not move again.

  “I think you killed him,” Avery said, inspecting first the technician, then Janx’s arm. The cut was vicious but not as deep as it could have been. Avery tore at his own robe and wrapped a piece of it above the cut, slowing Janx’s blood flow. “That should help.”

  Janx nudged the body. “Just what are they doin’ with the relic?”

  “I don’t—”

  Noise sprang from the direction they had come from—shouts and, in the distance, running feet.

  “Gaescruhd’s been found,” Avery said.

  “Yeah.” Janx showed no guilt.

  Avery started to move toward the opposite door, but his attention fixed on two large vertical coffin-like containers against the far wall, each propped in its own corner.

  “What’s this?”

  Each brass container, connected to hoses and pipes and fronted in a curved glass panel, held a human body, naked and bobbing in some sort of bubbling orange fluid. Both bodies were fit males in their early twenties, skulls shaven—the mark of a military psychic across various cultures—and there was something wrong with their heads ... Avery peered closer, then drew away quickly.

  “Gods!”

  “What is it?”

  “Their brains have been removed,” Avery said, feeling sick. “At least, I think so. See the stitching around their skulls? They’ve been opened and, I’m sure, emptied. Otherwise why store them like this? They’re being held for the owners’ return.”

  Janx’s eyes flashed. “The squid.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shit. There are two of them. One was blocking off the main route to this place, but the other ...”

  The noises in the direction of the sauna increased. Avery strode to the door, closed it, and with Janx’s help shoved a heavy cabinet in front of it. They left through the other door and picked their way down a narrow hall reeking of mold. They passed an equally narrow stairwell, then opened a random door and made their way through several rooms, making for what Avery believed to be the outer wall, though he was no longer completely sure. The singing from the room of worship had stopped.

  They were passing through neater rooms now, cleaner and more orderly, with hammocks swaying from bowed ceilings; this was where the priests lived, or some of them. Probably the junior priests. The higher ones would have rooms of their own, perhaps with sex slaves chained to walls provided by the late Gaescruhd.

  After this section the rooms grew larger. They contained tables and books, maps and lockboxes. This was where the business of the order was carried out.

  “I don’t know if we’re goin’ the right way, Doc,” Janx said. “Seems like we’re deeper in this place than ever—”

  He stopped. He had just opened a door that seemed to be a dressing room of sorts, with a mirror over a counter littered with razors and cream, even tubes of make-up, and several hanging bulbs. Sitting at the counter—and whipping her head toward the intruders—was Prime Minister Gwendolyn Denaris.

  Chapter 8

  Two guards flanked her, wearing robes and carrying heavy iron tridents on long poles. One had been bending over her, applying make-up, but he straightened and barked, “Who the hell are you?”

  Avery’s gaze went to Denaris, wondering what in the world she could be doing here, half expecting that she would give the order to seize them. Had she been working with the Collossum the whole time? It seemed inconceivable, but then again little would surprise him at this point. Then he saw the bruise on her cheek (part of the reason for the make-up) and the haunted look in her eyes. These guards weren’t at her command; they were keeping her prisoner. And there could only be one reason for that.

  “We’ve come to take her,” Avery said.

  “Take her?” a guard echoed, furrowing his brow. Both had their weapons trained on the visitors, ready to jab.

  “She’s to go to the ceremony, isn’t she?” Avery said. “To be given the Sacrament?”

  “But only when the bell rings. And we’re to bring her.”

  “Orders have changed. Didn’t you hear the bell? That’s why the singing stopped.”

  The guard frowned. “We were wondering—”

  “Well, then, hand her over, that’s a lad.”

  The man traded a look with his fellow, then lowered his trident, as did the other. “Alright, then, but where’s your token?” he said.

  “Token?”

  “If you are about his business you’ll have—”

  Denaris grabbed one guard’s trident, encumbering him. Janx leapt forward and smashed a fist across the other’s jaw, and while he flew backward, unconscious, Janx grabbed the first one by the neck and squeezed. There came a terrible crunch of bone and cartilage and the man thrashed horribly, then went limp, urine running down his leg. Janx liberated his trident and tossed him aside.

  Avery helped Denaris up. “What—how—?”

  “Later,” she said, shakily. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  They reversed directions, then debated about which route led to the outer wall. Denaris guided, saying, “I had a sack over my head part of the time—I don’t know why; my end would’ve been the same anyway—but they took it off once I got inside and they’ve moved me around a bit since. I’ve got a feel for the place.”

  “Why are they giving you the Sacrament?” Avery asked as they ran. “You haven’t ... ?”

  “Converted? No! But they can’t sacrifice me without making me infected first, and why waste a chance for the bastard to show off his power? The Collossum, I mean. The Prime Minister taking the Sacrament, willingly or not—”

  “Sacrifice you?” Janx said.

  They took a door, heard noise down it, backtracked and took another.

  “They’re planning to bring me to Haled’s Square tonight, give me to Admiral Haggarty. They’ll be a crowd, television crews, everyone in the country will see it. Haggarty will sacrifice me to the Collossum in front of everyone, publicly swearing allegiance to the Collossumist faith and turning the country over to them. Very symbolic, the end of democracy, the beginning of the rule of the gods. Of course, Haggarty plans to rule it under them, and with their power behind him he’ll be unstoppable. He’ll have to accept the Sacrament, of course, but they have ways of easing the passage of people they really want to survive.”

  “I can hardly believe it,” Avery said.

  “So that’s what the ceremony is,” Janx said. “But why haven’t we heard about this? It should be all over.”

  “Only the faithful know,” Denaris said. “The general populace only know it’s some big event that will stop the coming of the—”

  The half-rotted floor erupted before them, and a mass of tentacles struggled to drag them under. Avery reeled back, a yelp on his lips. A pink limb curled around his leg. Filthy water boiled right before him. Beside him the Prime Minister screamed, but no louder than Avery.

  The tentacle pulled him toward the water ... pulled ...

  The great squ
irming mass of the giant squid grew larger in his vision, glistening and foul, and as its bulk rotated Avery saw its terrible beak snapping, snapping ...

  It looked like it could crush a man’s skull in one chomp.

  Janx thrust with his trident, pinning the limb against the wall, ichor leaking from the holes. The tendril released Avery. The doctor stumbled back. More tentacles shot out. He grabbed Denaris out of one’s path, while Janx stabbed with the trident again, skewering the head portion of the beast—once, then again. Ichor stained the triple blades, but the cross-piece of the weapon prevented any of them from stabbing deep, and Janx ripped it free with a curse.

  “Run!” Avery said, and they needed no encouragement. All three bolted the other way.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Avery saw the squid submerge. Could it track them? Hear them? Sense their vibrations through the water? Perhaps through the posts that held the city up?

  They reached an intersection of halls, and Janx said, “I think this way—”

  The floor exploded in the middle of the intersection, blocking off the far route, and more limbs surged toward them, curling and grasping. Avery swatted one away, and Denaris stomped on one that snaked against the floor, going for her ankle. Janx launched himself on the head and stabbed repeatedly. The squid screamed and submerged. Janx threw himself off just in time.

  Sweating and bleeding anew from the cut on his arm, the big man said, “Don’t think ... I can ... kill it ... Doc. Not with ... this thing.” He indicated his weapon.

  “Maybe that won’t be necessary,” Avery said. “This way.”

  He led them down a hall, turned right at the next intersection—just as the boards buckled in its center—and plunged through a doorway, then another, making his way through a series of rooms in what he hoped was the right direction. At one point he passed a man asleep in a hammock, then heard screaming moments later and knew that the squid still pursued them.

  At last they burst out into the laboratory chamber. Avery had feared that the people who had found Gaescruhd’s body would have pushed through by now, but they’d gone another way, or perhaps they were still making their way in this direction. Avery could still hear them, shouting and swearing in the distance—and getting nearer. They were combing the halls, then, room by room ... and, yes, he could hear it, coming nearer.