‘Yeah, why indeed? I’ll tell you one thing though, you can bet the font on every toilet sign is identical and every letter is within a few microns of the next.’
‘I bet that took a few meetings to agree,’ he said.
‘You have no idea.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The whole of central Aya was designed by committee and became control freakery gone mad. Those tunnels I just mentioned, they are linked to other tunnels, a whole network of them underground. They are supposed to be there to help prevent skin cancer, but if I were cynical, which I’m becoming, I’d say they were there because people like Victor Urasa don’t want to have to mingle with the great unwashed of the general population.’
‘That annoys you? It does me.’
‘It frustrates me,’ replied Katherine bitterly. ‘The intention, when ROOT and I began to get involved more than a decade ago, was that Aya should accommodate all of society equally. I understand the need for culture and a little grandeur in the Central District but, as time’s gone by, it’s degenerated into petty arguments over personal taste. Whose office floor area is bigger than whose, and more you just wouldn’t believe.’
‘You sure? I can imagine quite a lot of idiocy.’ Jacobs regarded her closely and she took the hint. No doubt it wasn’t just her world that could be so petty.
The rain had stopped, and activity going on in the distance had ceased, giving way to an eerie quiet. As he watched her, Jacobs realised Katherine was deeply troubled, and by more than arguments over font size. She kept biting her lower lip, and folding then refolding her arms. Eventually she took a step forward to put a token distance between them.
‘What is it?’ he asked, trying to catch her eye.
She stayed quiet and looked into the distance as if trying to make her mind up about something. As she stood, a breeze picked up and she drew herself in. Wisps of blonde, rain-strewn hair blew across her face. She absently brushed them away with cold fingers.
‘The suburbs aren’t big enough,’ she said without further explanation.
‘I’m not sure I understand?’
‘The suburbs aren’t big enough,’ she repeated harshly and turned to look him straight in the eye. She looked more betrayed than angry. ‘When we drove in, I thought the Central District looked too close so I started counting streets. There are way too few.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Jacobs, recognising the faint traces of distress in her voice, but asking in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘It means something’s wrong. It means there isn’t enough housing for the people of Skala and the slums.’ She looked at him, but his reaction was unreadable. ‘It means all the conspiracy theories I’ve heard, the pressure groups, all the craziness I’ve been arguing against, is right. It’s a shock to have to accept, that’s all.’
‘But you knew it was the case,’ he said evenly and hoping he read her right.
She turned her face away in shame and looked back out towards the partly completed Central Council building.
‘Deep down, yes, I knew.’ She bit her bottom lip again and drew in a reluctant breath. ‘I’ve been living a lie. Another lie.’ She gave a short, ironic laugh and turned back to him. ‘Sometimes it feels like my whole life has centred around other people’s lies.’ She looked down and stubbed a toe into the rainbow mix of tarmac oil and water swirling slowly at her feet.
‘It’s not just you,’ he said, with some assurance. Uncomfortable with the way the conversation was heading, he tried to change tack. ‘I get it. You can deal with whatever it is that’s going on once we get back with your sister. For now though, we need to stay focused. GVX has exceeded expectations so far, but it won’t take much for it to bite us if we don’t keep our eyes wide open.’
‘You’re right,’ she said and seemed grateful for the reprieve. She turned back to look at GVX and JJ, who was meticulously inspecting the gaps between tread sections with a flashlight. ‘We should get back. I want to check a couple of things with Myra and ROOT before we get moving again.’
She began to walk back and Jacobs fell in beside her. ‘Sterile is the right word for this place,’ she said, taking a last look around her.
‘That’s a first,’ Jacobs laughed. ‘Engineering grunts aren’t known for their eloquence.’
‘Eloquence,’ she retorted, mirroring his humour. ‘Another big word for an engineering grunt.’
When they got to the ladder, Jacobs ascended first. Katherine took another fleeting look around, despite herself, then forced her mind back to the present. As Roy had said, Aya would have to wait for the time being. She felt an irresistible need to get moving, to get away from Skala and Aya, out into the tundra and the ice beyond. Within a couple of rotations that was exactly where she was heading, and it calmed her soul, if only a little.
034: Kul
The Ruined City of Kul, 756km West of Skala
Megan and Tyler approached the city of Kul through a deep crevasse littered with the debris of old railroad. Twisted tracks and splintered sleepers lay strewn across the ground between near-vertical rock walls. Only the higher faces caught the sunlight, giving the place an eerie foreboding, magnified by the miasma of dust particles that hung motionless in the air. A solitary tree, growing out from low on the left-hand face, stood in defiant reminder that life had once thrived in this place.
Olson steered Pegasus 3 diagonally over the larger pieces of debris, turning occasionally to avoid the sharper, torn edges of the tracks. Megan, seated to his left, looked in wonder towards what, judging by the light flooding from it, must be an open space beyond. She had said little for the past 200 kilometres, in part to allow Olson to concentrate, but also because she felt restrained by an innate sense of trepidation.
Strange shadows played across the inside of the cab as they passed under the lone remnant of vegetation above. A single, dry leaf drifted down and lodged itself between the glass of the windshield and its surrounding support. Absently, Megan wondered what species it was that had survived out here with so little water. If it was still there by the time they reached Kul, perhaps she would retrieve it and take it back to Skala to identify in the horticultural section of the Central Library.
As they made their way forward in fits and jolts, Megan began to see a faint impression of dark columns forming in the bright middle distance. Olson must have noticed them too for he leaned forward, squinting. As they neared the mouth of the canyon they began to make out a wall, topped with evenly spaced structures which filtered the sun in diffused rays.
‘What do you think?’ asked Megan, not taking her eyes off the shapes in front of them.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Olson, still squinting but being careful not to lose track of the debris they had yet to negotiate.
They exited the canyon, its steep sides quickly giving way to a flat plain of grit-laden earth. Now, free of the dust that hung in the air behind them, the wall and its towers became much clearer. It took a moment for Megan to get to grips with the overall picture before her. The wall, which stood around twenty metres high, was festooned with windows and slits. It had towers, each of which featured a prominent opening and a series of poles protruding both in line with and across its axis. But what took her time to grasp was the total lack of definition of the shape. It was as if the yellowish-grey stone had been melted like the wax of a candle.
Olson had noticed her stare from the corner of his eye. Approaching a gap in the foot of the wall where two distinct railroad tracks entered in parallel, he brought Pegasus 3 to a halt at the edge of the shadow cast down by the wall. He throttled back the turbine and, after a moment’s pause to take in the sight, he turned to her with a smile.
‘Sixty decades of abrasive erosion sure leaves a weathered look on a place, don’t you think?’
‘It certainly does,’ said Megan in wonder. ‘There can’t be a defined edge anywhere. What do you think those towers are?’
‘Wind traps is my guess,’ he said without hesitation. He peered up at the once-rectangular str
uctures. ‘They catch the wind through those vertical slots and channel it down to circulate around the inside of the building. The air exits out of the back or sides of the tower, depending on the wind direction.’
He looked over and smiled at her. ‘It’s an older and more elegant form of air conditioning.’
Megan squinted but said nothing more. For a moment her mind flitted back to the Central Library and its undiscovered natural cooling system. She discarded the thought, as knowledge of such an extensively used principle couldn’t have been lost in a mere thirty decades.
Olson, who was thinking along the same lines, but drawing a rather different conclusion, reached above him and flicked the switch that lowered the tailgate. He looked back to Megan.
‘I think we should go on foot from here,’ he said, levering himself out of the seat.
Grabbing a rucksack of provisions, Megan followed him back through the vehicle, down the ramp and onto the dirt. She was immediately struck by the silent desolation of the place. The sound of hot, moving air seemed remote and ghostly as it rushed into and exited the towers high above them. Straining, she heard the faint hiss of sand displaced by a young pit viper as it moved away from them, head tilted back in arrogant defiance. But there was little else; even the cawing of carrion birds was absent. This place, she thought, must truly be dead.
They walked up the remnants of the railroad towards a rounded, gaping hole that looked more like a pockmarked wound than the grand gateway it must once have been. Beyond it, they discovered a shadowy atrium illuminated by occasional rays of light that filtered through jagged tears in the roof structure.
As they crossed the threshold of the arch, one part of Megan suddenly broke out in revolt against the other. The nausea of fear clashed with a deep desire to be something more than she was, to emulate or better her older siblings. While Olson considered the Shaman’s story of a monstrous creature within Kul as pure myth, she couldn’t dismiss the look on Jean-Louis’ face as the huge man had delivered his warning. Did she really need to take this sort of risk?
She fought to calm her mind: there was a choice to be made and she had to make it quickly. She called out after Olson. He paused, one foot atop a huge wooden beam that obstructed their path, and half turned to look at her. She saw that hardness in his eyes, just as she had during the descent into Buni Sound. She could tell he knew her mind and, as he turned back and stepped up and over the debris, she realised he also knew her inevitable decision. Shouldering the rucksack, she set off to follow him.
*
The atrium was a huge space, the twin parallel tracks dividing to six between raised platforms. Under the remains of crumbling wooden beams sat the hulking and morose shape of an ancient steam locomotive. Olson made his way over to it and ran a hand over one of the giant piston housings.
‘You know, my great-grandfather was old enough to remember the last train to arrive in Skala. I’m sixty-eight and he must have been near enough a hundred before he died, so we’re talking fifteen decades ago. They were rare back then, one in ten cycles or maybe less. I remember he said it belched steam out of it from all over and smelled like hot wet metal mixed with castor oil.’
He looked back and smiled at Megan, who stood motionless, admiring the immensity of the iron behemoth. ‘I never thought I’d see one myself,’ he said reverentially.
‘What happened to the one he saw arrive in Skala?’ she asked thoughtfully.
‘That’s a good question,’ he agreed. ‘Broken up for parts I guess. You remember that huge beam engine we saw buried in the floor of the Siphon?’
‘Vaguely,’ said Megan, recalling what she could in spite of the unreality of their first encounter with the Hadje.
‘Same technology.’ He smiled and patted the solid flank of the engine before turning to ascend onto the platform.
They climbed, moving to the rear of the space then through a high doorway that led back out into the sunlight. Kul, or what was left of it, lay below them. Unlike Skala, which was festooned with high-rise buildings, most of the rooftops were around the same height, two storeys at most. They were typically flat, punctuated by the occasional reed-covered, conical structure. The exception was a single dome that lay among worn, partially collapsed buildings at the city’s centre.
‘How could anyone still live here?’ asked Megan. Olson grunted his agreement.
They stood slightly apart for a few moments longer, taking in the view. Only the faint whistle of the wind could be heard, giving the vast city an aura of desolation. Together they descended worn steps to a straight thoroughfare heading west. The going was slow, as they were forced to clamber over fallen stonework and the splintered remains of wooden beams.
Eventually they reached the dome, which bore a striking resemblance to the Council Chambers of Central Skala. One of the doors stood slightly ajar, cocked over on bent hinges, the gap just enough for them to squeeze through sideways, one at a time.
Followed by Olson, Megan stepped into the dim interior and took in the view before her. A few sections of the hemispherical ceiling had fallen in, leaving ragged tears of ethereal sunlight that caught a myriad particles of suspended dust. As her eyes adjusted, she began to recognise the eerily familiar layout. Ringed by a debris-strewn standing space was an exact, if slightly smaller, replica of the belvedere that was central to the chamber in Skala. The two semicircles and the divide between them were identical.
‘I see it,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’
‘Believe it,’ said Olson, equally awestruck.
They descended creaking, wooden steps leading down through the divide and into the belvedere. At the centre lay a pile of lumpy, charred material approximately three metres in diameter. Megan moved to its edge and gingerly nudged at it with her boot. It was lighter than she had expected and spread with ease, throwing up a small cloud of ash.
‘It’s the great table. The last one, I mean. After they burned it.’
Olson nodded his agreement but kept a respectful distance.
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything different, but I have to confess it’s a real sight to see,’ he said.
‘Thirty decades ago a privy council sat here,’ she said with a sweeping look. ‘Do you think that’s what they were called back then?’
‘I expect so,’ said Olson, looking up and around. ‘Everything is so similar I can’t imagine they would have called themselves anything different. Look up, you see the remains of the drapes?’
Megan looked and saw the drooping, somewhat ghostly shreds of loose fabric hanging from the ribs of the dome’s framework.
‘It’s the same. It’s all the same.’ She shook her head in wonder.
For over a rotation they wandered the building, finding part-collapsed anterooms and annexes that evoked further echoes of the chambers in Skala. Undeniably there were differences, scale being the most obvious, but to both, it felt the same in grandeur and purpose. Each time they returned to the central chamber Megan got stronger impressions of the place being filled with people, debate and argument.
Trying not to break the spell, Olson quietly suggested they return to Pegasus 3 to sleep. Megan readily agreed, and they made their way back towards the heat of the sun-bleached streets.
Emerging sideways through the door, Megan thought she saw a flash in her peripheral vision from a rooftop to her right. She felt a sudden rush of adrenaline.
‘Tyler,’ she said urgently, under her breath.
‘What is it?’ he asked, turning back to face her.
She freed herself from the gap in the door and pointed in the direction of the movement. ‘Something up there. I saw it from the corner of my eye.’
Olson squinted, but saw nothing.
‘We’re both tired and dehydrated. I’m seeing ghosts too.’
He offered her a bottle of water, and she took a long draw. Maybe it was her imagination but she still remained on guard as they picked their way back to the railroad. They climbed the steps up to t
he atrium entrance, but Megan held back a moment and scanned the city below her. She wanted to take in the sight again, but if she was honest she also felt a little paranoid, exhausted or not. Seeing nothing, she turned to follow Olson, who had already disappeared into the dim light of the atrium.
She called out, but heard no response. Then she saw him, stood stock-still on one of the platforms, silhouetted from the entrance on the other side of the space. He had one arm raised, the unmistakable gesture of his index finger held to his lips. She froze, listening. Again that burst of adrenaline surged through her and blood rushed in her ears. Blocking the sound out, she could just make out a soft creak from directly above her. Then she saw one of the beams of light darken momentarily as something flitted past. As she searched for the source, a huge figure dropped down from impossibly high in the roof to land in a crouch between herself and Olson.
Unable to move, Megan fixed her eyes on the form, which, with unnatural grace, raised itself up as if uncoiling. Its attention was focused upon her as, without realising, she let out an involuntary scream.
035: Benjamin Kittala
The Ruined City of Kul
Pure, unadulterated terror gave way to a concentrated panic that Megan could not begin to describe. Time seemed to stretch as the dark figure extended to its full height, well over two metres. Its first step toward her was languid but, with a second and third, it accelerated at a barely imaginable rate. With the fourth step it passed through a beam of sunlight and for a moment its features became distinct. Its skin appeared to be plated, a sort of armour or exoskeleton. The plates were flowing curves that moved across each other in soundless, rippling harmony.
The head was beautiful and terrible in equal measure. A malevolent, featureless mask of driven intent. Its proportions were humanoid, but formed in a serpentine curve that extended and reversed, flicking subtly upward from behind the crown. Strands of braided hair fanned out from a single point somewhere high above the neck. Each braid was adorned with multicoloured rings spaced at even intervals down its length, finishing in a series of extended white sleeves.
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