String City

by Graham Edwards

  By now I could barely stand up for the wind. I thought about the Scrutator, working the turbines over at the Aeolus Corporation. But this wasn’t weather. It was wings.

  The kingfishers were coming back.

  I threw Sunyana against the side of the vat. Ambrosia slopped at the rim.

  “Quickest way out of here?” I snapped.

  He bared his teeth. “As if I’d tell you!”

  I grabbed Deliciosa’s bony wrist. “Come on, doll,” I said. “We’re leaving!”

  “What about the beetle?” she said.

  We both stared at the broken beetle. It had stopped twitching.

  “The bug’s toast,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  No sooner were we in the corridor than the kingfishers appeared at the far end. The swarm filled the corridor like a leg fills a stocking, in front of us, coming our way. The walls bulged. The air pounded my eardrums. Deliciosa shoved me sideways into the wet room airlock, then followed. I tried to dog the hatch, but the frame had warped; it wouldn’t even shut. The inner hatch was jammed too. We were trapped.

  The corridor turned dazzling blue. Cold air slashed our faces and the airlock filled with a chattering louder than a locust plague. A split-second later the corridor was empty again.

  The swarm had gone right past.

  I peered out, saw the birds explode into the vat room. I wondered where Sunyana was, and if he could control them when they were like this.

  We sprinted the opposite way down the corridor, back to the freezer. Slices of golem clay lay scattered on the icy floor like thin green stepping stones. I looked for an exit, but the freezer was so big I couldn’t even see the walls.

  Again I felt the wind, heard the buzz of tiny wings.

  The kingfishers had doubled back again.

  “Here!” I hauled Deliciosa behind the gargantunicorn carcass. It shocked me how light she’d become.

  The carcass was big enough to hide a symphony orchestra. But the kingfishers weren’t stupid. They just worked down the line of carcasses one at a time. Frozen meat flew in ribbons. When they reached the sacks of dragon giblets, they just tore them open and let the contents roll out. The giblets rolled away like bowling balls.

  They reached the gargantunicorn and started dicing their way along its horn. We ran again, only to find our way blocked by a rack of giant pork chops stamped CALYDONIAN BOAR. The cloud of birds followed us, cutting through the meat like chainsaws through a lumber yard. We were running out of places to go.

  “Only one way out,” I said. I pulled off my coat, turned it inside out four times until it was made of transuranic lycra. “Let me fold you up. I can get us both out through a dimensional snag, into the strings. The coat’s friction-free—we’ll move fast. Maybe we’ll outrun the wolves.”

  “No,” she said. Deliciosa grinned down at me. It’s all a person with a bare skull can do. Her empty eye sockets were full of golden light.

  “Say what?”

  “If the dimensions are as dangerous as you say, it’s suicide.”

  “Angel, these birds mean business.”

  “I know. That’s why you have to run.”

  “I don’t...”

  A skeletal hand closed my lips. Somehow its touch was soft. “You’ve done your job,” she said. “Now let me do mine.”

  “What are you...?”

  “Run back to the wet room, as fast as you can. Go back the way we came, back to Arachne. Deliver your report. I’ll catch you up. I can’t give you long. But it should be enough.”

  The fire in her eye sockets was bright enough to hurt. I could hear a buzzing sound even louder than the kingfishers: Deliciosa’s wings, powering up.

  “Before I go,” I said, “There’s something I want to say.”

  “Save it for later. Run!”

  I knew she wasn’t going to catch me up. And she knew I wasn’t going to run. It sucks, that we deceived each other like that, so near the end.

  She did her best to get rid of me though. Before I knew it, her bony hands were locked on my wrist. She swung me like a pro wrestler, hurled me right over the rack of chops. I’d forgotten how strong she was. I landed hard, lost all my wind, slid for what felt like ten miles across slick icy floor. I fetched up against a chicken leg as big as a house. It was marked BABA YAGA—ONE OF TWO.

  I shook my head clear, looked for Deliciosa. She was far in the distance, tiny like a doll. The kingfisher swarm was a blue boiling geyser. As I watched, the birds vaporised the last few yards of the gargantunicorn. They were a blur. So were Deliciosa’s wings.

  The kingfishers fell on her.

  101

  I CLAMBERED TO my feet, tried to run back across the ice. But I had no grip and fell flat on my belly. I couldn’t get up, the floor was so slippery, so I bunched my legs against the chicken leg and pushed as hard as I could. The combination of transuranic lycra and six inch-thick ice gave me the smoothest ride I’d ever had. I felt like a sled. As I slithered, I stuck out my hands and started to force open a rift in the sub-dimensional cortex.

  Ahead of me, the battle was raging. It looked like a blue tornado. From inside the tornado came the odd flash of gold light—Deliciosa making a hit, I guessed. But I couldn’t see her, so I couldn’t be sure. The tornado was roaming the floor, ripping up chunks of ice and firing them out like cannon shells. Several chunks hit close to me as I slid past. I pulled my fedora from my pocket and jammed it on my head. The hat is armor plated.

  Suddenly the tornado broke in half, revealing Deliciosa inside: a tall angel skeleton with wings like damnation, chopping birds from the air in their thousands. Tiny blue bodies flew like confetti before winking out of existence. Trouble was, there were millions more waiting in the wings.

  Changing tactics, the kingfishers closed into a ball and zeroed on Deliciosa’s legs. A sound like a million pneumatic drills echoed through the freezer. But, when the birds pulled away, Deliciosa’s legs were still intact. A bubble of hope filled my chest. Angel bone—one of the toughest substances in the cosmos!

  The hope was false. The bones had survived, but the birds had made mincemeat of the last few tendons and ligaments and straps of flesh holding them together. Deliciosa teetered for a second or two. Then the joints in her legs came apart and she dropped to the ice.

  Lying prone, she couldn’t work her wings properly. The kingfishers pressed the advantage. They shredded first one wing, then the other. I saw the gold light flare in Deliciosa’s eyes one more time before a blue storm covered her up.

  The sound of drilling started again.

  I was screaming, I think. I’d already opened a snag roughly six inches wide to expose the nearest alternative dimension. Currently, roughly forty boundary wolves were trying to bite their way out.

  I snapped the snag shut. Deliciosa was right: that way was suicide.

  In the meantime, I was still sliding friction-free toward an ever-expanding cloud of seemingly invincible carnivorous birds. I figured I had roughly ten seconds to come up with a plan.

  Eight seconds elapsed.

  That was when I heard the scarabs.

  They burst from the wet room: a swarm of beetles almost exactly as big as the swarm of kingfishers. They came in a kind of rolling wave, each beetle climbing over the next, miraculously cheating the slippery ice. They came fast.

  The kingfishers sensed what was happening. The blue cloud lifted up, became an arrow, loosed itself toward the oncoming swarm. The birds shot straight over my head, missing me by a hairsbreadth. I carried on sliding until I hit the pork chops. I got up, staggered over to where Deliciosa lay. What was left of her.

  I cradled her skull in my hands. It was twenty feet from the rest of her scattered bones. The light in her eyes was fading. Her jaw moved. Words came from far away.

  “Don’t... worry,” she whispered, “I died... before. It’s not so bad...”

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said.

  “Heaven’s... waiting...” she said. “I can’t wait to
see... what they’ve done with the place.”

  “Hush,” I said.

  “Before I go...” she said, “Tell me... one thing.”

  “Anything.”

  “Tell me... I’m beautiful.”

  “I thought you didn’t go for that.”

  “Everyone needs to hear it,” she gasped, “once... in... a... while …”

  The skull twitched. Her eyes were two dying embers.

  “You were always beautiful,” I said, meaning every word. “All the way through.”

  “Even... now?”

  “Never more so.”

  I kissed her, and it was bitter and sweet. The lights went out.

  In my hands, for the second time, my angel died.

  I put her skull on the ice, gently. I touched my hand to her eye sockets. There were no eyelids to close, but it felt like the right thing to do.

  I straightened my coat, tugged the brim of my hat. Wiped my cheeks. Stood up. My hackles were prickling. Had been all the way through Deliciosa’s last words.

  Something crept up on me from behind.

  I turned to face it.

  102

  I’D EXPECTED THE kingfishers. Maybe even Kweku Sunyana, ready to chomp me to death. What I didn’t expect was a living bulldozer built from scarab beetles. Each beetle had a bright blue kingfisher clamped between its mandibles. The dozer slid toward me, ploughing the ice. I tried to move, realised I was out of gas and just flopped down on the ice, waiting for the beetles to grind me under.

  One by one, the beetles started winking out of existence. Slowly at first, then faster. As each beetle vanished, it took its captive kingfisher with it. The bulldozer collapsed in on itself. There was a sound like popping corn. The air smelt singed. Soon barely a hundred scarabs remained, then fifty, twenty, ten...

  The popping sounds slowed, stopped. All the beetles were gone except one. It labored through the shattered ice toward me. It moved slowly, painfully. It was cracked all over, leaking goo. It came on all the same. In its jaws was a single kingfisher.

  Behind one of its antennae was a broken pencil.

  When the tax beetle reached me, it slumped down, legs splayed. Air wheezed through its spiracles. It was hard to tell, but I thought it was smiling.

  “I apologise for leaving things so late,” it said, its voice muffled by the feathers, “but it took me some time to rouse my brethren.”

  “You did good,” I said, “whatever it was you did. I thought you were dead.”

  “Have you ever tried to kill a cockroach?”

  I stared at the broken ice. It was littered with tiny blue feathers. “So what happened?” I said. “How did you make them go away?”

  “It was simple, really,” said the beetle. “As soon as I realised the kingfishers were metadimensional, I notified my lord and mind. My message spread instantaneously through the entire beetle swarm. We are a hive-mind, you understand—the knowledge of one is the knowledge of all.”

  “I get that,” I said. “What I don’t get is where the kingfishers went.”

  “I am getting to that part. As a hive-mind, we understand instinctively the true nature of these birds—we beetles are metacreatures ourselves, in a way. All we did was assign one of our population to each kingfisher and isolate it from the rest. Isolation forces each bird to revert to its individual state, resulting in the immediate transfer back to its original sub-dimensional realm. Each scarab will deposit its cargo beyond the call of its kin, before returning intact to the sewer.”

  “I’m going to have to work on that one,” I said. “They teach you this in tax school?”

  “Being good with numbers helped,” said the beetle proudly. “However, I am afraid there is still one loose end to tie up.”

  “The bird in your mouth?”

  “Precisely. This is the original kingfisher—Kweku Sunyana’s pet. It is already in its native environment—this world. In other words, it is not going anywhere.”

  “Then let’s put it back in its cage.”

  The beetle shook its head. In its jaws, the kingfisher buzzed angrily. “Alas, the kingfisher swarm has damaged the cage beyond repair.”

  “Then we need an alternative,” I said. I looked around. “There must be something here we can use.”

  103

  THE JOURNEY BACK to Arachne’s pyramid was somber. The scarabs—and the sewer uber-mind—sensed how cut up I was about Deliciosa and stayed silent the whole journey. That suited me just fine. I just sat on the beetle raft, watching the sewer walls race by. Occasionally the bow wave splashed foul-smelling sludge on my legs. I didn’t care, any more that I cared about the stink in my nostrils.

  Didn’t care about anything much, truth be told.

  My right hand was resting on the barrel we’d salvaged from Sunyana’s vat room. Sunyana himself we’d found face down in his marinating tank, drowned in ambrosia, his body pierced by a million tiny beaks. What a way to go.

  The tax beetle found a stack of empty barrels behind the tank. We filled one with ambrosia, then wrangled it through the wet room and down the pipe. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t want to go back to Arachne empty-handed.

  In my left hand I was holding the thing we’d found to keep the kingfisher in. When I’d suggested it, the tax beetle had asked me if I was sure. I said I was. Anyway, it was the only thing I could think of. The beetle said it was creepy.

  I agreed. But it felt right.

  I held it up, peered inside. Immediately the kingfisher buzzed toward me, jabbing its beak through the makeshift bars. It was still angry—maybe that was its natural state. I didn’t care. All that mattered was the bird was mine.

  The raft carried me on. The sewage surged hypnotically. I felt hollowed out, or peaceful, or both. For the indeterminate time the journey took, I felt I was part of a mighty stillness. So there I sat, one hand on the barrel of ambrosia, the other fast on the kingfisher’s new prison.

  An angel’s ribcage.

  104

  THE UBER-MIND dropped me off at a big storm drain on the wharf.

  “The entrance to the spider-queen’s abode lies yonder,” it said, extending a sticky brown pseudopod. “This will save thee having to climb up the floor shaft.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I said. “For everything.”

  I stepped out of the drain. A small scarab raft—just big enough to carry the ambrosia barrel—followed me like an obedient pooch. The sky was wet with pre-dawn light. The rain hammered my fedora.

  “Tell me—wouldst thou consider me as a candidate when thou next has a permanent employment opportunity?”

  “Sure. Though, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got through a lot of assistants lately.”

  “Then I thank thee for the experience.”

  “I reckon we’re quits.” I turned to the tax beetle. “As for this guy—you should promote him or something.”

  “There is no promotion,” said the uber-mind. “We all are equal.”

  “I don’t care. The bug deserves a medal. At least get him a new pencil.”

  The beetle stuck out a feeler. I shook it. “You did good, buddy,” I said.

  “I hope to see you again next year,” said the beetle. “At the next tax audit.”

  “If there is a next year.”

  For a minute the rain eased and the sky behind the pyramid turned pink. Somewhere behind the storm, the sun was rising.

  “Sometimes the columns balance,” said the tax beetle. “Most of the time, actually. You would be surprised.”

  “I hope I am,” I replied.

  The clouds crunched together, wiping out the dawn. I tightened my grip on Deliciosa’s ribcage and set off toward where Arachne was waiting. The barrel of ambrosia followed on its raft of bugs.

  The rain fell harder than ever.

  105

  I KNEW IMMEDIATELY that something was wrong. The fancy security keypad was dead and the door swung loose on its hinges. Halfway open, the hinges jammed. I squeezed through. Beyond the door, the corridor
was wall-to-wall spider’s web.

  “Okay,” I said to the dozen or so scarabs making up the raft, “which of you guys has the sharpest pincers?”

  They took turns. The web was densely woven, the individual strands tougher than steel. It made for worn mandibles and tired beetles. I followed, puzzling. What was Arachne up to now?

  Eventually we reached the main chamber. It was filled with silk, even more than when I’d first seen it. Some of the strands were thicker than my arm. The thickest of all radiated down from a central point, near the pyramid’s apex. There was something up there: a dark blot.

  “You boys stay here,” I said to the beetles. They didn’t argue.

  I kept to the thicker strands—the thin stuff was like cheese wire. Still, climbing the web was hard work. Five minutes and I was puffing like a train.

  Five minutes after that I reached the top.

  I stood balanced on a tightly woven platform of silk, gasping for breath. I stared at what had become of Arachne.

  My first impression was that she’d been swapping body parts. Most of the womanly pieces looked more spidery than I remembered; the spidery parts were disturbingly like a woman. She’d grown a bunch of new legs, human and shapely, even woven sleek silk fishnets for them. But none of the legs looked much good for anything—they just hung from her belly, twitching. Her abdomen was bloated; I was afraid it might be egg-bound, then I saw it was just corruption. Pus oozed from cracks in its shell; the stink was worse than the sewers.

  The human torso sprouting from her spider’s back had melted to a random tower of flesh. Her arms were shrunk to twigs. On top of her head was a cluster of eyes, too many even for an arachnid. Beneath those eyes, however, Arachne’s face was wholly human. It was wrinkled, impossibly old, strangely beautiful.

  I was beginning to think you wouldn’t make it in time, she croaked.

  “There were setbacks,” I said. Though I knew the answer, I asked, “What do you mean, ‘in time’?”

  I am dying. Can you not see?

  “I guess so. What’s with the web?”

  A reflex action. An instinct. I am a queen—am I not entitled to a royal burial?