String City

by Graham Edwards

  Bony fingers latched under my armpits and yanked me loose.

  “Come on, gumshoe,” said Deliciosa. “We’re nearly there.”

  We climbed the last ten yards in silence. At the top of the pipe was a round grate. The beetle butted it aside and we emerged into a stark tiled room. The tiles were the color of blood. Shower heads poked from the ceiling. Hooks too, sharp ones. The floor sloped inward toward the grate from every side. It was very cold.

  “It’s a bit creepy for a washroom,” said Deliciosa.

  “I don’t think folk come here to wash,” I replied.

  All the same, I was tempted to try out one of those showers. After the sewage tunnels and the climb through the pipe, my coat was set to crawl off my back of its own accord. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  I unzipped the front of my coat and shook it into a matador’s cape. Unthinkable stuff splattered the tiled floor. I turned the cape inside-out eleven times until it was clean, then twice more until it was a coat again, this time made of goose-skin. I sharpened the lapels and dusted the lining with quicksilver. I felt in the pockets, making sure everything was there.

  It was then I discovered I’d left the Dimension Die in the desk tidy back at the office.

  I couldn’t believe it. Given the stakes, leaving it behind was madness. I’d come to rely on that die, just like I’d once relied on the strings.

  Now I had neither.

  Then again... maybe it was better this way. Just me, on my own two feet. An angel on one shoulder, a beetle on the other. A nifty coat. What more does a guy need?

  A single door led from the wet room. I eased it open. There was a dull bang and my ears popped. Beyond the door was a small chamber. On the wall, a pressure gauge.

  “Is this what they call an ‘airlock’?” said the beetle.

  “Give the bug a cigar,” I said.

  “Thank you, but I do not smoke. This is very exciting.”

  “Trust me, we haven’t peaked yet.”

  The three of us crammed inside the airlock. I thumbed buttons at random until the pumps started. Wind gusted in and my ears popped again. The pumps stopped and the outer door opened. Frigid air hit us hard.

  “What is this place?” said Deliciosa. Her teeth were chattering. So were most of her bones.

  We stepped out into a freezer resembling an aircraft hangar—one big enough to hold all the planes that ever crashed in Jigsaw Canyon, and then some. The air was cold and blue; the floor was slick with ice. Hooks studded the ceiling, just like the hooks in the wet room, tens of thousands of them hanging in rows. Most of the hooks were bare, but a few held the impaled carcasses of butchered animals.

  Before we had a chance to explore, another door opened on the far side of the freezer. Voices came through it and we ducked behind a cabinet. A second later, two golems lurched in. Their feet of clay made them sure-footed on the icy floor. The clay was bright green—I guessed it had come from the Mountain Talus Quarry, which meant it was at least as rare as dragon giblets.

  “Less meat,” said the first golem.

  “Getting lesser,” said the second.

  “Was more.”

  “Less now.”

  “Not so much.”

  “Less much for sure.”

  Golems struggle with small talk.

  The golems crossed the freezer to where the meat was hanging. The carcasses were all different shapes, mostly huge. They pushed past something with legs like redwoods and a single horn as long as a soccer pitch. A gargantunicorn, very rare. They squeezed between two sacks of dragon giblets. Even rarer. They stopped at something resembling a side of beef as big as a railcar.

  The golems lifted the giant carcass off the hook. The ice on the hook broke off with a bang like a howitzer. Hefting the carcass on their slab-like shoulders, they trooped straight toward where we were hiding. As they passed the cabinet, we could clearly see the name stenciled on the side of the meat:

  AUDHUMLA—K.S. SPECIAL RESERVE

  “What does that mean?” whispered Deliciosa.

  “Audhumla’s an old cow god,” I said. “She licked the cosmos into being, or somesuch. I didn’t know her milking days were over.”

  “I know who Audhumla is. What does ‘K.S.’ mean?”

  The golems paused. We shrank back, afraid they’d heard us. But the lead golem was just cleaning out its ears.

  “Wax froze,” it said.

  “Gets bunged,” said its buddy.

  “Can’t hear.”

  “What you say?”

  They lumbered on.

  “‘K.S.’ means we’re inside the biggest freezer in String City,” I said. “Operated by a character called Kweku Sunyana. I’ve met him before.”

  “Sunyana? I’ve heard of him. He’s a real big shot. How did you get involved with him?”

  “His wife hired me to stitch him up. Later he tried to rip out my throat. It’s a long story.”

  “With you, they always are.”

  Something scratched my arm. It was the beetle.

  “This is such an adventure,” it said. “I am wondering—what happens next?”

  I pulled my coat tight, wishing I’d picked something warmer than goose-skin. But despite the cold, I could smell a hot trail—this was no time to change clothes.

  “We follow the golems,” I replied.

  “But I thought we were searching for Arachne’s missing ambrosia,” said the beetle. “Should we not mark out a radiating grid using the sewer outlet as a central datum, then search each sector in turn?”

  “I think he’s worried the golems might be dangerous,” said Deliciosa.

  “Trust me,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch.”

  By now the golems were out of sight, but their tracks were easy to follow. We followed them back the way we’d come, past the wet room to a separate chamber full of free-standing vats. With all the ice hanging off the rafters, it looked like a crystal brewery. The golems were standing beside one of the vats, catching their breath. Or whatever golems use instead of breath.

  “The wet room must be where they hose down the meat,” I whispered. “The waste goes down the pipe. That’s why it smelt so bad.”

  “So what’s this place?” said Deliciosa.

  “Food processing. Sunyana’s more than just a butcher. This is where they marinate the speciality cuts.”

  Recovered now, the golems lifted Audhumla’s massive carcass over their heads and dropped it into the nearest vat. Liquid splashed up from inside the container, faintly glowing. A sticky-sweet smell crashed over us.

  “Ambrosia!” exclaimed Deliciosa. “I’d know it anywhere!”

  She clapped her hand to her mouth. Too late. The golems looked up, spotted us, came running. The first tripped over the second. They fell together. Their clay cracked, it was so cold. It didn’t stop them getting up, molding themselves back into shape and coming for us again.

  “Leave this to me,” said Deliciosa, revving up her wings.

  I stepped backward, right into a pair of waiting arms. The arms clamped around my chest. Steel cutlery closed on the back of my neck.

  “Kill the wings,” said a muffled voice, “or the gumshoe gets it!”

  99

  "LET HIM GO!” said Deliciosa. Her wings were a blur. She couldn’t have sounded less angelic than she did at that moment.

  “I think I shan’t,” said the voice, still muffled. When it spoke, the blades vibrated painfully against my neck.

  Slowly, the arms rotated me. As I turned, the cutlery scraped my skin. When I was facing my captor I saw it wasn’t cutlery at all—it was teeth.

  “Hello, Kweku,” I said. “You want to relax that jaw? Then we can talk properly.”

  “Why should I?” His iron teeth did the quickstep against the skin of my throat. The rest of his face was mostly snarl. “After what you did!”

  “I didn’t do anything, pal.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, my wife would still be alive!”

  “It
was the spider queen who ate her, not me.”

  “You slept with her!”

  The teeth had fallen still. Kweku Sunyana was talking round them. I remembered how the teeth of the asansa have minds of their own. It wasn’t a calming thought.

  “She thought you were having an affair,” I said. “Maybe it was payback.”

  “Payback? Now there’s a concept I can comprehend.”

  “Just tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Are these the teeth you keep for really special occasions?”

  Sunyana grinned. It felt like a shark was giving me a shave.

  Then, incredibly, he relaxed his jaws and tossed me aside. I rubbed my throat. Just one drop of blood would mean I’d become like him. My hand came away clean.

  “Don’t worry,” Sunyana said, watching me. “Unlike you, I have self-control.”

  As soon as he released me, Deliciosa lunged. She didn’t see the golem looming behind her. It grabbed her round the waist, a double-wide chunk of living clay. Deliciosa screamed and struggled, but the golem’s bear-hug kept her wings firmly clamped to her back. Without them, she was helpless. Meanwhile, the second golem applied its gargantuan hand to my throat.

  “Seems to me you’ve got expensive tastes,” I gasped. “Fancy green golems, fancy cuts of meat marinated in ambrosia. I thought business was supposed to be bad.”

  Sunyana straightened his suit and slicked back his hair. It looked like he was dressed for a night at the opera. On the floor beside him was a cylindrical object the size of a hat box, draped in red velvet.

  Something black and shiny reared up over the velvet: the tax beetle. Chittering, it sank its mandibles into Sunyana’s calf. The meat mogul cried out in pain and kicked the bug away. The tax beetle landed on its back, waggling its legs frantically in an effort to turn itself over.

  The golem that was holding Deliciosa lifted one giant foot and brought it down on the bug. There was a hideous cracking sound. The golem lifted its foot away to reveal the bug’s carapace split in two. Goo leaked from its belly. Its legs thrashed.

  My guts filled up with fury. “Is that what you’re going to do to us? Crush us like bugs?”

  “Oh no,” said Sunyana. “I have something much worse planned for you.”

  “Just spill it, Sunyana. Tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

  “Why don’t you tell me? Aren’t private investigators supposed to be big on the truth?” Sunyana tapped his toe against the velvet-covered box. “Go ahead—tell me what I’m up to.”

  Deliciosa had stopped struggling. Now she hung limp, an angel skeleton dressed in scant rags of flesh and threads of police blue. She looked utterly spent.

  “All right,” I said. My brain buzzed, searching for a way to get out of this mess, desperate to work out how we’d got into it in the first place. “You sell meat. After a while, your supplies dry up, so you start buying Arachne’s surplus. Suddenly hot dogs aren’t made from pig any more. Hell, they’re not even made from dog. Without anyone knowing it, you start feeding the whole city spider meat.”

  “Go on,” said Sunyana.

  “Arachne pulls the plug. Suddenly, no more spiders. Which leaves you with nothing to sell. So you fall back on—what, the special reserve? Cow-god cutlets steeped in ambrosia? You dig deep into the good stuff you previously kept back for your best customers. That’s what this freezer is: it’s your own private collection. Your nest egg. Once upon a time, this was where you stored the meat nobody could afford. Now it’s the only thing you’ve got left to sell. How am I doing?”

  “Remarkably well,” said Sunyana. He was still smiling, but he didn’t look happy.

  “The thing that puzzles me is this: who’s buying it? String City’s wasted. The economy’s gone through the floor. Where’s your market?”

  Sunyana brushed dust off his shoe. “You’d be surprised. There are survivors. Oh, not those hapless refugees limping down the tracks toward the Gates of Gehenna. I’m talking about the very people who would have bought my special reserve in the first place. The great and the good. Those wealthy enough to own their own apocalypse shelters. Believe me, they’re out there. When the end of the world is over, and the cream of String City emerge from the bunkers and basements to start things all over again, they’ll remember who kept them fed during the crisis. And we’re not just talking subsistence here—we’re talking about cuisine of the highest quality. Have you any idea how much I can charge for an Audhumla T-bone steeped in the lifeblood of a goddess?”

  “I can guess,” I growled. “I figure it’s more or less the price of your soul.”

  Sunyana’s teeth had started moving about again. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Just this: those refugees you talked about—they’re starving. And here’s you, the only guy in town with enough food for all, doling out choice cuts to cats who don’t need to get any fatter.”

  “I’m just trying to stay in business. Aren’t you?”

  I strained against the golem’s grip. Its fingers moved about as much as a concrete bridge support. “That’s different.”

  Sunyana stroked his hand over the velvet-covered box. “Is it? What are you doing to help those poor people?”

  “I’m seeking the truth, pal. That helps everyone in the long run.”

  “Does it? Isn’t it the truth that the world is a cruel and ugly place? When you tell people the truth, don’t they usually break down in tears, or strike out at you? Perhaps even throw themselves under a train, because they can’t bear to face what they’ve resisted all their lives?”

  I didn’t answer. I’d seen all those things happen, and more.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” said Sunyana. “I can see it in your face.”

  “Just tell me how you stole the ambrosia. I’ve got the pieces but I can’t make them fit.” I was stalling for time and he knew it.

  “Not quite the great detective you thought you were, eh? Well, before you die, let me put you out of your misery.”

  Standing, he pulled the velvet away from the box, revealing it to be not a box at all but a cage. The same cage I’d glimpsed in the corner of his office, back when I’d been staking him out. It seemed such a long time ago.

  Inside the cage was a small blue bird.

  The bird was a kingfisher.

  The kingfisher was hovering, its wings barely visible. Like a hummingbird, it darted from one corner of the cage to the other, but there was no perch for it to rest on, so it had no choice but to stay airborne. The kingfisher’s beak was gold. Its feathers were blue like lightning. They fizzed like lightning too. If the gods had built a bird from electricity, this was what it would look like.

  “I still don’t get it,” I said.

  “You will.” Kweku Sunyana opened the cage door and the kingfisher flew out, straight toward me. As it flew, it split in two. Then in two again. With each nanosecond beat of its tiny wings, it fissioned—four, eight, sixteen... Before I could blink it wasn’t a bird—it was a cloud of birds. All with beaks like gold flashing razors.

  All headed my way.

  100

  I STILL DON’T know why the cloud of kingfishers didn’t like my coat. Something to do with the goose-skin, maybe—some kind of ancient bird feud. Whatever the reason, instead of attacking me, the kingfishers went for the golem instead.

  They moved like a swarm of bees, or a plasma cloud. Gold beaks jabbed like needles. They sliced the golem like a ham, paring off strips of clay as thin as onion-skin. Slice by slice they whittled it to nothing. It took maybe five seconds.

  I didn’t get off unscathed. The kingfishers slashed my hands, my face. I pulled down my coat cuffs, pulled up the collar. Fluffed out the goose feathers. It helped. What helped more was that the birds seemed to have developed a real taste for clay. As they bore down on it, the second golem threw up its arms and ran. Suddenly freed, Deliciosa dropped to the floor with her wings cowled over her head. The cloud of kingfishers chased the golem up the
corridor and out of sight.

  I marched up to Sunyana, grabbed him round the throat and shoved him hard against the wall.

  “So what is it with the kingfishers?” I growled.

  “They’re metabirds,” he replied. “I thought you’d have known.”

  I snatched the Apocrypha of Multidimensional Zoology from my pocket. “I only bought the pocket edition. Care to explain?”

  “Metabirds are single entities that exist in all dimensions simultaneously. Normally you see only one, but really there’s more.”

  “There’s only eleven dimensions,” I said. “Looked like about a billion birds to me.”

  “That’s because they spin. Like quarks. There’s six flavors: up, down, charmed...”

  “I know how quarks work. So that’s six times eleven. It still comes up short.” Sunyana’s teeth were gnashing, trying to slice my wrist. I tightened my grip until they stopped. I’m no strongman, but I was mad, and getting madder. “So I’ll say it again—what gives?”

  “I don’t fully understand the technicalities. I only remember what the man at the pet shop told me. The kingfishers lay quantum eggs, or something. For each egg they lay, a thousand hatch out, or perhaps it was an infinite number. I don’t know. All I know is, if you own one kingfisher, you own them all. That’s how I was able to steal the ambrosia.”

  “Go on.” I could feel a breeze on the back of my neck.

  “I trained my kingfisher to fly through the sewers. Kingfishers are easy to train—they read their master’s thoughts. Everyone knew about Arachne’s stash of ambrosia—this seemed the best way of getting at it.”

  “Hurry up,” I said. The breeze was getting stronger.

  “Once the bird reached the pyramid, it multiplexed.”

  “Went from one to lots?”

  “Yes. Every bird jabbed a hole in Pallas Athene’s finger with its beak, sucked out as much ambrosia as it could and flew back here. Then they regurgitated the ambrosia into this vat and returned to singularity mode. It was simple, really.”