Filaria (24 page)

Yet bending, nonplussed, to consult an open logbook, the big clerk said, “Then I take it you will not be needing two beds?”

“Listen to me, you piece of — ”

The nearest crawling god jabbed at Tran so’s hand with one sharp foreleg; the pain was tremendous and Tran so’s knees buckled. Elbows out, splayed on the counter, he tried to support his sagging weight. He could not see clearly and his lungs laboured to fill.

“I told you this is no time to be insubordinate,” the crawling god said, as if from a distance, while the clerk bobbled its head and remained quiet. “We’ve let you walk about of your own free will. We’ve given you chances. It’s clear you don’t take this situation seriously. I know you don’t take us seriously. I know your type. Let me tell you, things are changing around here. Trust me, you don’t want to lose the privilege of mobility. I’m so fucking tired of you yahoos coming down here, on a lark, big fucking joke, take a job just so you can fuck guests or party. Mocking us who believe in the glorious vision of this place!”

Tingling with pain, and taken aback by the tiny god’s uncharacteristic rant, Tran so let himself be directed shakily around the counter to the green door of the supervisor’s office. He could hardly walk.

The door opened inwards before he had a chance to knock. Within the dimly lit chamber there appeared to be a human male, seated behind a desk, with his feet up. The man was looking at Tran so Phengh, a small smile on his face. His round eyes were glazed and unfocussed. He was older — greying and overweight — dressed in a hound’s-tooth suit just like the suit a dancer friend of Minnie sue’s had used to wear during her act.

Tran so was about to introduce himself when he saw that the grey skin on the paunchy face and on the large, veined hands was oddly smooth and worn, and that an introduction was probably ridiculous. In some places — such as both cheeks and part of the high forehead — an underlying, woven structure showed through the dermis that was clearly non-organic. Tran so was in the company of another god. Another malfunctioning god.

“Are you the leader of these crawling deities?” Tran so said. “The
supervisor
?”

The man-god twitched and the smile widened, just an increment. “Gods?” Its voice was rough and deep.

“Yes. Like yourself.”

“Me? A god? That’s rich.”

The eyes appeared humanlike, more human than any other god’s eyes. To stare at them and know this was no man was unsettling.

“Sorry, all of us here, we’re in the service industry. We’re here to serve. There’s no need to suck up. Please,” — this, with an uneven movement of the head, addressed to the tiny subordinates that crowded the doorway — “leave us be.”

The door shut quietly.

“They are creepy little spiders,” said the man-god, rumbling what must have been laughter. “That’s what they are!”

Now that the room was sealed, Tran so smelled the damp and mildew. Dim light came from a gooseneck lamp on the desk, which cast its greenish glow over the cream-coloured walls, the huge desktop, the crammed bookshelves. Over the god’s ample paunch. The features of its face were underlit dramatically.

“Take a seat.” Gesturing, with one of those plump, grey hands.

Tran so sat in a chair opposite. He was still reeling a little from whatever it was the crawling god had done to him. The chair creaked with his weight. There were pictures in golden frames on the desktop, turned so he could see them. The face of a homely woman; two homely children — boy and a girl. Tran so licked his lips. He would not say anything about the children or the ugly woman, though he was tempted; he would be cautious here.

“Call me Simon,” the god said.

All this time, those eyes, though intense, had not really seemed to focus on Tran so, who even waved a hand between the two of them in a vain attempt to illicit reaction. “My name is Tran so Phengh,” he said.

“And you’re looking for a transfer?”

“Excuse me? A transfer?” Settling into the chair, stretching his legs. “Uh, that’s right. I’m looking for a transfer.”

“Good, good,” Simon said. “What do you know about our particular contribution to this grand facility?”

“Facility? I don’t know what that word means, so I must say I know very little . . . Let me ask
you
a question. What do
you
know about dark gods — the giants who took me prisoner? What do you know about them? They attacked me at the bottom of Lake Seven as I talked to another supervisor, who was actually nothing like you, and then they apologized, and tried to attack me again. But I escaped.”

“Ah ha! Giants? A sports fan? Me too, but the little lady isn’t fond of me watching games. You know, chores to be done.” Now one eye closed and opened slowly in a grotesque wink. “Sit back, young man, sit back and let me explain a little history of the nostalgia suites, and why they’re such a popular destination with the guests.”

“All right. Fine. But tell me what you know about the women who work here. Namely Sandra. I want to meet her again.”

“Interesting.” Simon chuckled. “I like applicants who ask me questions. As I said earlier, don’t be shy, young man. My door is always open.”

“Presently,” Tran so said, “it is shut.” He leaned forward. Simon’s expression never changed. Was the strange deity blind? “I am married,” Tran so said, “but my wife is very ill. Meeting Sandra has rekindled me. I am on a quest. Now I’ve met her, for the first time in ages, I feel alive. Do you know what that’s like? I sincerely doubt it. And I’m not being unfaithful to my wife because the woman I loved died a long time ago . . . I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe it makes no sense to you . . . What do you think? Can I meet her? Do you understand what I’m saying?” He swivelled in his chair to get more comfortable. Most of the pain had faded to a dull, almost pleasant ache.

Simon, meanwhile, had apparently suffered some kind of lapse. Smiling, staring at nothing with its striking, blind eyes, a great deal of time passed before the body twitched and responded: “An interesting feature — ” rumbling chuckles rose up and shook the ample belly “ — are the windows. Have you heard about them? The first time I saw them I was blown away, I’ll tell you.”

“I know windows of time,” said Tran so Phengh. “Windows of opportunity. Windows to the soul.”

“Well, specifically,” continued Simon, as a shiver ran down its length like maybe it was coming awake from a bad dream, if gods dreamt, or urinating, if gods pissed. “Specifically, we at the nostalgia suites are seven hundred metres beneath the crust. Yet each room has a window, we call them — that’s patent pending — which can be activated, at will, to show dynamic, lifelike scenes, exactly as if the view were pumped in directly! There’s a wide range of landscapes to choose from. We have the usual, of course: windswept beach; quiet glade with the occasional deer; water — ”

Simon’s feet suddenly slid sideways off the desk and he crashed loudly to the floor. Standing, lurching upright, like a drunk, the man-god resumed talking in the same tones — perhaps a little louder — as if nothing unusual had occurred:

“We have Fenton and Bellona! Sau Trenton in winter! Dozens to choose from! Truly astounding, truly! Surveys have told us that windows are the thing people love best about nostalgia suites. Our guests spend more time watching them than they do interacting with grams or sitting in front of plasma. Maybe they hope to see their grandfather crossing a street, or themselves, maybe, in younger days. But I
know
what they’re really doing. They want to see if the images are on a loop! They can watch the windows for hours and never see the seam. The seam, my friend, doesn’t exist! It does not exist!”

Tran so, who had initially been a little alarmed by Simon’s movement and speech — wondering if he might be in danger of being assaulted — had relaxed once more. He said, “When I came in here and realized you were a broken god, my first thought was to rest for a while, and then, when I had a chance, smash you with something hard, maybe from behind, in the head. Now I’m not too sure why I wanted to do that. Vigor, I suppose. Hormones. But I think I can just walk out of here. You won’t even raise an alarm, will you? I am not a man of violence. I seem to be slipping these past days.”

Behind Tran so Phengh were bookshelves. He stood, took down a volume at random, opened it. Blank pages. He turned to Simon. “You can’t help me. I do appreciate being able to hide out here for a while, and reflect, though I suppose it would have been better in the first place if you’d left me to my own devices. The dark gods that I mentioned were no longer on my trail.” He dropped the book —
thud
— onto the desktop. “I think I’m in love!”

“Gods? Loves!” Simon turned, laughter wheezing now, almost obscenely. “Young man, are you aware of our health and safety policies? Are you aware of our
harassment
policies? They are paramount if you wish to work for us. Listen; take a temporary staff card from that box behind you. We can get your training started. I’ll give you some brochures also. They’re backordered. All the info you’ll ever need to know about working for our little resort.”

Simon faced the wall. There was an awkward silence.

“You know,” Simon said at last, almost wistfully, “I had asked for someone to be sent up from management, to welcome new employees, but they have not responded. Budgets, I suspect. Board meetings and such.”

From a box on the floor, Tran so took a badge. He placed the cord around his neck.

“So long,” Simon said.

“So long,” said Tran so. Carefully he pulled the door open, peeked out, and left. There were no crawling gods, only the broken clerk, waiting at the counter with its back to him.

“How do I get down?” Tran so asked.

“Down?” The clerk, who had been studying its logbook, looked around.

“Yes. To the boardrooms. To upper management.”

“Simon told you to see someone? Down there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s
very
unusual.”

“Simon says.”

“Well, if you leave here, turn right, go down the hall outside — all the way to the end. Then turn left. You’ll see an elevator. Past the washrooms. You can’t miss it. Take it all the way to the bottom.”

“An elevator?”

“That’s what we like to call lift pods around here. Nostalgia suites, you see. Part of the whole package. The jargon. You’ll get used to it.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Tran so started walking.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Welcome to the team.”

“Thanks . . . And sorry about the bell.”

“Sir, you’re going the wrong way! Elevators are to your right!”

Tran so, out in the hall, had started to trot. “I know,” he shouted, over his shoulder, “but there’s something I have to do first.”

A steady trickle of people emerged from the smoke and slow-moving dust billows that rolled forward over the tiling. Dazed, they advanced, trancelike, towards the car. With his filthy shirt pulled up over his nose, Phister drove slowly around these refugees, in wide curves, drifting from one side of the hall to the other to avoid hitting them. Some limped, some left a trail of blood, some were so grievously wounded they should not even have been able to walk. Several sat with their backs to the wall, sleeping perhaps, too exhausted to continue. Maybe dead. Regardless of their state, all ignored him.

The air held a hint of acridity, even inhaled through the soiled fabric of his shirt. Smoke, naturally, but there was also a reek of underlying chemicals, a tangy bite at the back of his sinuses. This noxious brew was further compounded by the growing odour emanating from McCreedy’s corpse, stiffening in the passenger’s seat, where Phister had finally been able to wedge it. The old man’s body turned greyer, curling further in on itself with each passing minute. McCreedy’s cheeks were hollowed, his eyes yellow, glazed.

There was grit under the tires, grit on the walls, grit thick, hanging in the air. Unseen filtering machines hummed laboriously, sucking and blowing with little effect.

Under their patina of dust, the oncoming people were darker skinned than he, and generally taller. With black, almond-shaped eyes. And hair, of course: dark and straight. Teeth, too. Streaked and bloody and dusty, but teeth nonetheless. It was starting to seem that everyone had teeth and hair except for him and McCreedy.

Who were these people? Shades? They had continued to coalesce long after he was sure there could not possibly be more, materializing by the hundreds: families, pairs, stragglers. A father carried his child, draped limply in his arms. The child’s eyes were open but unseeing. For that matter, so were the dad’s. An elderly man, naked — as most were — had been splashed with blood or paint across his chest, streaked with white powder over his face.

Like all the others, he drifted quietly by.

Ghosts, Phister thought. These people are ghosts.

On this one, a horrid abdominal gash let slip a grey loop of intestine. Phister stared at the exposed innards in dismay as, stoic, the wounded man lifted red-rimmed eyes to peer beyond, down the hallway.

Phister almost attempted, for maybe the tenth time, a stab at communication, but that dusty dangling gizzard made useless words fail in his dry throat.

There were bizarre animals, too — the likes of which he could never have imagined (except in the recesses of his moss-fever dreams) that scurried, crawled, slithered, or swooped overhead, emerging, like their human counterparts, from the roiling smoke and dust. The beasts, however, met his eyes warily, and gave the car clearance.

They too were going in the opposite direction.

In the first desperate encounter with this unnerving parade — breathing fast, adrenaline coursing — Phister had shouted at the people to stop, to help him, help his friend. That was before he realized these hordes needed more help than he did, and that McCreedy was beyond all help.

But did these people not understand him? Could they not even
see
him?

Only when he heard one finally cough did he cease entertaining the uneasy idea that they all might be dead, himself included, and that he was in a new world, a necropolis, propelled there by his passenger or maybe by what the hunter had done to him.