Atomic Underworld: Part One (13 page)

A
great squeal and a terrible roar sounded behind him. He craned his head to see
the tower the Ale-Maru was connected to collapse, slowly, in stages, sagging
away while flames gushed up from it. Bits of metal and debris plumed out in
gunmetal clouds that glittered where chunks caught the light. The tower struck
a platform, then another, and kept listing, falling away, taking out more and
more of the city with it, until finally the dust of its passage obscured it
from sight. Surprisingly, it didn’t drag the Ale-Maru with it as Tavlin had
feared, but it tried; the Ale-Maru extended wide out to the side, pulled by the
tower, and then the links broke in loud pops, hardly distinguishable over the
other noises, and after that the tower fell, and the Ale-Maru, flexing and
bending, swayed back the other way, its endpoint, anchoring the structure into
the great stalactite, crumpling hideously.

Stomach
lurching, Tavlin grabbed on tight. Beside him, Sophia did likewise.

As
the Ale-Maru mashed against the clock stalactite, the wires holding it up
broke, one by one, unable to support its weight without the tower. Now only the
cluster of wires at the far end, near the clock, held any part of it up.

As
if swung on a pivot, the Ale-Maru fell, and Tavlin and Sophia flattened
themselves and hung on as the horizontal branch now became a vertical one.
Metal screamed, as did hundreds of people still trapped within the structure.
Tavlin glanced back to see that several of the G’zai had been thrown off and
were even then falling away into the madness of the city, their pale-white
forms writhing against the green glow.

Nauseous
with vertigo, Tavlin climbed upward, toward the stalactite. Only one strand of
wires held the Ale-Maru up.

“Hurry!”
he said. They had to reach the clockwork passages before the wires snapped.

Movement
in the stalactite. A shadow appeared, and he realized it was some sort of
opening, just below one of the great clock faces. A figure in it beckoned to
him. The boy! It must be the boy. Clicking gears arced behind him, ticking down
to the end, etched in the red glow of an alchemical lamp. Tavlin climbed toward
him. Sophia followed. The figure gestured them on.

A
pall of smoke shifted. Tavlin saw who it was in the cave mouth, what must be
the entrance to the maintenance shafts of the town clock. It was not the boy.
It was a man, a tall man in a dark overcoat, framed against the clicking
doomsday gears. He had a face carved of granite, square of head and jaw,
completely bald. He had had some sort of pox as a youth, and scars pitted his
face. The coldest, clearest blue eyes that Tavlin had ever seen shone out of
that ravaged visage. Above them hunched shaggy white eyebrows, almost
grandfatherly. Betraying no emotion, he said, “Hurry! You can still make it!”

Bodies
lay at his feet. Tavlin could not see if the boy’s was among them, but surely
it must be. The bald man had murdered them all, all the survivors of the boy's
little smuggler clan, or whatever it was. Other figures stood behind the bald
man, impossible to see in the dimness.

“Come!”
he shouted. “If you don’t, you’ll die!”

Tavlin
hesitated. The structure swayed like an out of control pendulum beneath him.
People screamed in terror inside it. Green fires licked up from its lower end,
and, silhouetted against them, the nightmare shapes of the G’zai crawled
closer. They were so close now Tavlin could smell them, all ammonia and brine.

Tavlin
aimed. The bald man showed no fear. Tavlin fired. He only had one shot left in
his gun, but it fired true. He struck the last strand of cable holding the
Ale-Maru up, and the structure fell away. His stomach dropped, and he nearly
went spinning out into the abyss. He just barely managed to grab on in time.
The Ale-Maru dropped, and dropped, metal squealing, wind shrieking. Sophia
cursed him so loudly he could hear it. The Ale-Maru smashed into one platform,
then another, and another. With each jolt Tavlin thought he would be flung off
into space, but each time he just barely managed to cling to the structure’s
surface. His hands bled from the grip.

At
last the Ale-Maru smashed onto a tangle of debris that had already fallen,
including the former tower, and rolled down the rough incline created by this
mound to plough into the cistern lake with a loud hiss. Steam rose from the
impact. It bobbed once, then again, and with each bob Tavlin nearly vomited.

Still
gripping the structure, he glanced up to see that Sophia was already standing
and surveying the scene about them. There was no sign of the G’zai. Carried by
the force of its impact, the Ale-Maru, buoyed up by the large air pockets of
its many shops and dwellings, drifted farther out into the lake, away from the
city. If it sank, it would sink very slowly.

The
city burned. Tears stung Tavlin’s eyes as he watched it go, as he saw the green
flames dancing on the cistern water. Around him the occupants of the Ale-Maru
began to crawl out, dazed and sore, from their burrows. Some clutched broken
arms or bleeding heads. Doubtless some had worse injuries, or had not made it
at all. But most of them lived. If they had not fallen, they would have all
died.

“We’re
stuck,” Tavlin said.

Indeed,
they were marooned on the Ale-Maru.

“Speak
for yourself,” Sophia said. “
I
can
survive the water.”

“You
wouldn’t ... The water, it’s …”

She
smiled at him. Without another word, she dove off the side and into the
so-called water, vanishing into its murky depths. He stared after her for
several minutes, not quite believing it. After all that, and she had left him
without a word goodbye. Well, he should have figured as much. She could bear
him no love. Not after everything he’d said. He deserved to be marooned.

He
was surprised when he heard the sound of a small motor a few minutes later and
looked up to see Sophia approaching the drifting Ale-Maru on a boat presumably
liberated from the Taluushan docks.

“Climb
on,” she said.

He
did, saying nothing about her smell. The other survivors watched them, but none
asked to leave with them. They were too busy watching the city burn.

“Where
to?” Sophia asked.

“Away,”
Tavlin said.

As
they motored off, he turned back one last time and stared as green fire
engulfed the towers of Taluush. Even as he watched, another tower collapsed,
and strange green sparks flashed high into the air, frying the flail nests
plastered against the distant cistern ceiling.

For a
long time, Tavlin didn’t know how long, they drifted, aimless, through the
high, dark halls of the sewers, guided only by the steadily fading lamp that
had been in the boat. Tavlin shone the lamp while Sophia steered. They didn’t
speak, just put physical and mental distance between themselves and the ruins
of Taluush. The boat’s motor sounded very loud in the stillness, but Tavlin
barely heard it over the beating of his heart and the preoccupation of his
brain. He could still hear the roar and grind of the town collapsing. The
sounds seemed to chase him.

At
last she said, “It’s hard to believe all those people died just because the
G’zai wanted the location of the briefcase.”

He
nodded guardedly. “They wanted me. The Octunggen couldn’t find me and they
didn’t want to waste any more time trying, so they contacted the G’zai.”

“That’s
what I don’t understand. Why would the G’zai have anything to do with them?
They don’t like uninfected humans. They only deal with us because we’ve been
touched by the Atomic Sea. They think we’ve transcended humanity.”

Tavlin
shrugged. “The Octunggen seem able to befriend the old races. I remember in
Muscud, at the factory, they had Suulm working with them.”

“Suulm!
Here?”

“One
tried to kill me.”

“It’s
going around.” She cast him a glance as if to say she might have caught it.

“So,”
he said, “the way it must have gone down, they contacted the G’zai and asked
them to find the uninfected humans of my general description—that’s if we’re
not all the same to them—and not to worry about any collateral damage. Maybe
the Octunggen promised to give them a hundred-year supply of the chemicals the
Taluushians
were feeding them, or maybe it was a religious
decision—the Octunggen are supposed to worship strange gods; maybe it’s the
same as the G’zai—who knows? Anyway, the G'zai agreed to serve Octung, or at
least work with them.”

She
studied him, and there was a long silence broken only by the chug of the motor.
Tavlin wondered how much gasoline was left. Finally she said, “They tore the
whole town apart, killed countless people, to find you. Whatever you know, it
might be more dangerous—for the
enemies
of Octung—for you to be alive than dead.”

“You
still saying it would’ve been better if I’d died?”

In
a small voice, she said, “Prove me wrong.”

Again
they lapsed into silence for a time, until finally she asked, “Who was that ...
woman, if that’s what she was? Girl, really. That
thing
?”

He
whistled. “Hell if I know, darlin’. I’m kind of glad you saw her.”

“You’re
alone there.”

“I’d
begun to think I was imagining her. I don’t know who she is, or where she comes
from. She just appears, generally at an inconvenient moment, and takes ten
years off my life every time. Thank the gods for alcohol, or I wouldn’t have
slept a wink the last couple days. Which reminds me, I’m about due for a nap.”
His blood was still racing too fast though, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to
sleep. Perhaps some booze ...

“What’s
that?” Sophia had cocked her head.

“What’s
what?” He didn’t hear anything.

“Listen.”

He
strained his ears. Still nothing. He picked out some of the bits and pieces
that had stuck in his ear canal and flicked them over the side. Either because
of that or the closing of the distance, he began to hear noises. At first he
wasn’t sure what they were exactly. They sounded ominous, yet sweet, harmonious
… grand ...

“Singing,”
he whispered. “Music.”

She
nodded, said nothing, and he realized he had the desire to be silent, too, as
if the only thing he wanted to do in this world was to listen to that
wonderful, unearthly singing. Perhaps unconsciously, Sophia steered the boat
toward the sounds, and they grew louder, magnified by the tight, slime-grown
corridors all around them. Some of the mutated lichen, which could absorb and
emit sounds, provided a chilling counter-note.

Sophia
shut off the motor and grabbed an oar. Tavlin rowed from the other side, wood
rasping into his torn hands, but he barely felt it. The music consumed him.
Together he and Sophia rowed toward it in silence, down one hall and then
another.

Soon
they entered a corridor filled with slugmines. Tavlin came to himself enough to
recognize the place where he had stolen the briefcase, where he had killed
those men. And yes, there was the boat, still resting against the stone wall where
he had left it. Little was left of the mutants he had killed except bones, he
saw, and there weren’t many of those. The creatures of the sewer, their
situation notwithstanding, wasted nothing. A few blood-red crab-things,
overgrown with green, luminescent barnacles, scrambled amongst a ribcage. A
black, oily eel slithered out of one eye socket and into the other. That was
it.

“They
said someone was coming to meet them,” Tavlin said, as he and Sophia carefully
rowed around the bone-filled boat and even more carefully avoided contact with
the dark, slimy mounds of the slugmines.

“Who?”
Sophia asked, also in a whisper. She spoke as if in a dream. In the distance,
the singing continued.

“The
thugs the Octunggen had hired. The briefcase, the container, they were taking
it somewhere, I don’t know where. One of the Octunggen went with them. He’s who
I took the briefcase from.” Something occurred to him. “I think I know the way
back from here. Back to Muscud ...”

She
nodded, sleepily. “Yes, we’ll go to Muscud ... but first ...”

He
nodded, feeling a pleasant numbness. “The singing ...”

They
rowed forward, through the tunnel of the slugmines, then into a wider
thoroughfare. All the while the singing increased in volume, bouncing around
the thick walls of the underworld with mighty echoes that seemed staggered
somehow, complimented by the slapping of the waves against the boat’s hull. At
last Tavlin and Sophia rowed past a high archway and into a massive chamber,
and Tavlin’s entire world changed.

The
chamber was grand, as grand or grander than the one Taluush occupied, but it
was not filled with the junkheap bulks of an undercity but something far more
lovely, far more unexpected. It was, and there could be no mistake, a
temple
. A great, soaring temple, all of
white, with graceful, bone-thin columns that soared up and up, through the high
spaces of the cavern chamber, to a great dome overhead. It was construction on
a scale that beggared belief, something that almost looked as if it had come
from the ancient L’ohen Empire, noted for its awesome buildings, many of which
still stood today. But the architecture here had a different quality. It was
more subtle. More unearthly. Ghostly, even. And the angles and facets of wall
and column seemed somehow
wrong
. They
made Tavlin’s eyes itch to look at. And yet he couldn’t tear his gaze away.

At
the sight, he gasped, and beside him he heard Sophia suck in a breath as well.
Unthinking, they clutched hands. Tavlin felt something rise inside him,
something sweet and pure—something
longing
.
He rowed toward the temple with an almost painful urgency.

Ahead
of him, the structure glowed.

Luminous,
shining, its columns emitted a pale white light, as if carved from mutated
fungi, but they were clearly not fungi. They were strong as granite, maybe
steel. And the dome they supported glowed as well. But it was what lay
within
the temple that threw radiant
white light across the water and drove back the hovering blackness. Something
huge and white and splendid loomed beyond the pillars, within the temple's
walls, and its light shone from the many great doorways, windows and balconies,
seeming even to glow from the walls themselves. It looked as if there were
pools, areas where worshippers could come and go from the water, and of course
there was a boat dock, but even this was beautiful, if rudimentary—but
eclipsing all of it, every bit, was the huge glowing brightness that emanated
from the center of the temple, not visible, exactly, but still felt.

The
light sort of glimmered, shifted. One moment it shone as bright as day, the
next barely dusk. When it faded, Tavlin felt the breath suck from his lungs,
and the sweet pureness welling up inside him dwindled. Then, gloriously, it
would return.

And
all the while, the singing. It crashed from wall to wall, throbbing in Tavlin’s
ears like a second heartbeat—like a first. He glanced to the side to see the
sheen of the glorious light hitting Sophia’s face, making her eyes sparkle,
making all the years and all the stress fall away from her. She looked in that
moment as she had when he’d first met her, turning men’s heads at the Twirling
Skirt all those years ago, the light of the night, the fire in his brain. She
was lovely. He squeezed her hand, and she turned to look at him. Their gazes
caught, and they allowed their eyes to linger on each other. Her smile grew
smaller, but somehow deeper. She said something, he couldn’t hear it, but he
knew it was
Tavlin
. He said her name
back.

They
renewed rowing, toward the light, toward the life. The singing continued,
pulsing in waves from up ahead. From the temple. Tavlin began to see shapes,
small but many: the temple’s worshippers. They congregated in organized groups
on the platforms and balconies, all gazing toward the inner workings of the
temple, at the splendor of the shining light. Tavlin thought he recognized one
of them from the docks of Muscud. Others worked on the temple itself, some sort
of construction. They clambered about on the pillars up high, making their way
along scaffolding that Tavlin was just beginning to see. They appeared to be
installing windows of unusual design between the pillars in neat rows. Where
the light shone through it, it turned slightly greenish, but still beautiful,
an amazing green-white flood of holy illumination.

Tavlin
and Sophia rowed closer. Singing filled Tavlin’s mind. He found himself wanting
to run across the water toward it. Wanted to bask in the light.
Soon
, he thought.
Soon
. Then he and Sophia would be one with the light. One with the
light ... one with ... one ... they would be one ... one ...

He
shook his head. Something was wrong.

The
singing electrified him. It filled him, pulsed through him, inside him. He
was
the music.

The
light inside the temple faded, as it had been doing, sort of flickered—although
softer than a flicker, more a pulse—and he was able to shake himself loose of
the dream, just for an instant. Frantically, he began rowing again, this time
paddling the water in reverse. Combined with the forward motion of Sophia’s
oar, this movement swung the boat around to face the opposite way.

Sophia
looked at him as if he were mad. She was facing the other way now, and the
light only picked out a highlight here and there, the gleam off one eye, off
her high, full cheek, off one perfect set of gills. But he could tell from her
tone what she felt.

“What
... are you
doing
?”

He
gunned the motor. His motions were fear-fueled. At any moment the brightness
would return, and the singing would fill him once more. He didn’t think he
would have the strength to resist a second time.

The
motor roared, and he shot off toward the halls that led away from the temple
chamber.

“No!”
Sophia said. “You’re ... you’re ... leaving it!” She lifted her oar out of the
water, rose and turned toward him, where he crouched over the motor. She raised
her oar as if to strike him with it.

He
tensed, trying to decide whether he should duck or busy his attention with
aiming the boat away from the wall it was currently barreling toward. He and
Sophia locked eyes. Water dripped from her oar.

The
light filled her face again now that she was turned, and he saw the anguish
there, the pain, the confusion. Then something rippled, and the old Sophia
returned: tough, stubborn, obstinate. She staggered back. The oar dropped to
the floor. She glared—
glared
; it was
rage she felt now, he could tell, and felt a swell of pride—over Tavlin’s
shoulder, toward the temple. He heard her gasp as she sank down beside him.

The
light pulsed strong again.

Tavlin
guided the boat into a tunnel, and darkness, wonderful, beautiful darkness,
swallowed them once more.

Clutching
his arm, Sophia whispered in a small, horrified voice, “What would have
happened if we had gone
into
the
light?”

*

They set
off toward Muscud. For a long time, they said little that was sensible, just
fear-filled mutterings of awe and fear. Both trembled. Tavlin retched over the
side, but Sophia, staring blankly, didn’t seem to notice. From time to time
they clutched at each other for comfort, but they were hardly aware of this
either.

At
last, as the sound of boats ahead, the sign of civilization, came to his ears,
Tavlin was able to master his own mind enough to think straight. He wished he
had his pipe, but it had fallen out of his pockets during the collapse of the
Ale-Maru, along with his gun. He could really use a puff now, damn it.