The Inferior (14 page)

He was reaching out a hand towards the strange substance when a noise from the street stopped him cold. He turned towards the doorway, trying to bring his spear to bear. It took several heartbeats to work loose. By that time he could already see the Hopper charging in through the main door at him, a knife in its hands. The spear came free, but he dropped it when the Hopper cannoned into him. Its knife cut a red line up his left arm. Its body knocked him flying back into a wall, winded, helpless.

Stopmouth couldn’t see the creature’s face clearly in the dark. He wondered if its eyes were filled with triumph and hatred for the humans that had brought doom to its race. It raised its knife for the killing blow.

And paused.

The creature seemed to be straining against something, its breath coming in quick little wheezes. It lifted its second hand to the first, which held the knife over its head as if waiting for one of its fellows to take blood from its armpit. Now its whole body shook. When it raised powerful legs from the ground so that its full weight hung in the air, Stopmouth thought he was dreaming. The Hopper jerked and spasmed before the young hunter realized that the creature was caught in something so thin it couldn’t be seen in this poor light.

Stopmouth decided to make a run for it. Whatever beasts lived here, he no longer felt the urge to hunt them. He tried to sit up, but he sprang back against the wall, held by some kind of stretchy moss that stuck to his skin.

Meanwhile, in spite of its struggles, both the Hopper’s legs were now entangled too. It stopped all movement for several heartbeats until its breathing had slowed slightly. Then it renewed the assault, more determined than ever. In the end, even its head became entangled.

Stopmouth decided not to struggle as the Hopper had done, yet he had no idea how to free himself. So far, the sticky substance had only caught the skin of his back, and perhaps part of his loincloth. He stretched a little, testing the bounds of his trap. The floor didn’t stick to the soles of his feet. That was a start. He stretched a little more. His left foot brushed against something on the floor, something that rolled away from him. His spear! To reach it he had to lean back further into the sticky moss that held him. It welcomed a whole shoulder into its embrace and didn’t let go again. His ear became stuck, as did strands of his hair. Panic rose within him. He wanted so badly to pull away. His breath came quicker and quicker until he and the piteous Hopper kept perfect time.

Stopmouth tried to will himself to calm down. His left foot touched the spear-shaft again. He dragged it towards his free hand, leaning more and more into the moss. It covered his eyes now, gluing them shut. It was all he could do to keep his mouth free of the stuff.

In another part of the house, something began to stir, something that scratched and skittered. The Hopper heard it too and renewed its useless thrashing.

Stopmouth shifted the spear round until he had the Armourback-shell point in his hand. He was frightened to cut into the moss in case the blade got stuck too. Instead, ever so slowly, sticky strands parted under the edge until he’d freed the lower half of his face and most of his right arm.

The skittery-scratchy noise came closer. Whatever kind of creature it was, it had left the front room of the house and seemed to be climbing the walls.

The Hopper screamed once. Then again. Warm liquid splashed across Stopmouth’s back. Every instinct told him to tear himself free. Instead, he kept on sawing. His hand shook under the spear-shaft while something squelched and slurped behind him. More skittering, closer now. Stopmouth cut the last of the strands from his eyes and face. He jerked himself violently away, ripping hair from his head, leaving the loincloth behind him with its weapons belt.

A shadow clung to the roof where the Hopper had been. Dark skin glistened in the poor light of the hallway, but the beast’s shape remained vague. Stopmouth held the spear up in front of his face. A powerful blow hit the centre of the shaft, almost knocking him back into the moss. Another strike and the wood snapped in his hands.

The young hunter was breathing heavily, trying to choke back his fear. He was about to die and the only question was how brave a fight he could make of it. He threw the bottom half of his broken weapon to one side in case he slipped on it. The moment the shaft struck the floor, a long part of the creature lunged after it, striking repeatedly. Stopmouth prayed he wasn’t misreading the situation and took a gamble. He flung the rest of his spear up at the roof behind his head. It stuck to the moss, bouncing up and down. The beast scrambled towards it and Stopmouth ran for his life.

The creature came charging after him. It must have struck at him because he felt a light, burning touch on his shoulder. Then he dived through the door and rolled onto his feet. He turned to look behind him, but the monster had drawn back into the shadows of the doorway.

Heaving and sweating, Stopmouth wanted only to run home and throw himself on his hides to sleep. A squeal stopped him. Looking down the street, he saw a Bloodskin leaning halfway out of the window of a nearby house. It had got itself caught in something and Stopmouth had a good idea what that might be. His skin crawled and he felt sorry for the beast. Creatures must be coming from all over now in search of easy prey, but they were becoming prey themselves.

Flesh, thought Stopmouth. Indrani would need flesh and he’d be in no condition to get it for her over the next few days.

So he turned back to the Bloodskin trapped in the window. It was probably pleading for help, its snarl of teeth clacking together rapidly. But Stopmouth heard other Bloodskin cries from within the building and guessed that no aid would be coming any time soon. He snapped the creature’s neck quickly. From the room beyond, he heard thrashing and guessed there was at least one more beast in there that would have been glad to have its neck broken round about now. But Stopmouth didn’t have time to worry about that. He stole a bone knife from his victim’s belt and began carving strips of red flesh from its arm. Then, he heard the skittering-scratch of the new beasts as one of them entered the room beyond. The last Bloodskin renewed its struggles until an impact like the smack of a drum brought them to an end.

Stopmouth’s time was running out. He was halfway through an elbow joint when the knife, and the rest of his kill, were jerked into the darkness of the house. A spray of warm liquid drove him back from the window. Then a black, shiny-skinned head pushed outside. It had eyes, but they stayed closed and Stopmouth wondered if they could open at all. A round, toothless hole made up the rest of the head while the body remained invisible. Stopmouth kept himself out of what he thought of as arm’s reach. The head swayed from side to side on the end of a rigid-looking tubular neck. Oh, how he wished for a sling!

‘There’s no m-more flesh for you here tonight,’ he said.

The mouth opened even wider. Instinct drove Stopmouth to the ground. The air whistled above him as a black line, like a spear, shot out of the creature’s face and impaled the air above his head. The tongue shot back as fast as it had emerged. Stopmouth lay transfixed for many hundreds of heartbeats before the new beast pulled back into the building.

He grabbed the two poor handfuls of Bloodskin flesh he’d been able to cut and staggered back to the gate of Flim-Ways just as the Roof was beginning to brighten with morning.

He walked across the moss to the trees and from there went to the fallen trunk across the Wetlane. He heard human voices coming the other way and hid himself. He was surprised it had taken his people so long to send a hunting party to the new beasts, and wondered if this was perhaps the second or third. He hoped not: the Tribe couldn’t afford many losses.

They passed him in single file, six hunters, from veterans down to boys. All wore tattoos from the recent fighting. Stopmouth felt wretched. His muscles tensed–not for running away, but for leaping out to join those who should have been his comrades. Only with great effort did he hold himself in check.

Most of the men wore a tool-belt and a loincloth of supple grey Flim hide, marvellous material, cool against the skin and gone from the world now for ever. The hunters chatted almost gaily, excited and unafraid of the still innocent flesh that awaited them in old Flim-Ways.

When they’d wandered a good thirty strides up the track, Stopmouth shouted after them.

‘Wait!’

They turned towards him and almost jumped out of their skins when they saw who it was.

‘N-n-no c-c-closer!’ said Stopmouth. He hoped they’d remember his fame for speed and wouldn’t see any point in pursuit.

An older man named Trapsetter, who was surely the hunt leader, dropped his spear and stepped forward a pace.

Stopmouth was relieved to see how little interest they had in him. If anything, they shuffled their feet and kept glancing towards Flim. Trapsetter calmed them until they’d heard Stopmouth out. The fugitive’s nerves and stumbling tongue tried their patience and even his own. Every moment he spent with them increased his chances of being captured. Yet he couldn’t bear to see these men he’d known all his life stolen from the Tribe that needed them.

At last his message seemed to get through. Trapsetter sighed and scratched his balding head.

‘I cannot believe these…these
Longtongues
are as dangerous as you would have us believe, young man. They are blind, you say?’

Stopmouth agreed.

Trapsetter scratched some more and finally nodded. ‘We will be careful, Stopmouth. More careful than you have been at any rate.’

Some of the group sniggered until Trapsetter glared at them. ‘If I thought we could catch you, we would. We’d take you straight back to your brother. The Tribe is in sore need of volunteers. But we will hunt for you another day, I think. For now, I’m grateful for your advice and if it proves useful, I will speak out for you when you are captured. But you are wrong to make us waste good hunters chasing you. Nobody can survive on his own, Stopmouth.’

The hunters turned for Flim without quite so much bounce in their step as before. Even as they passed out of sight, Stopmouth heard Trapsetter ordering silence.

The man had told him the truth. No one could survive without the Tribe. His experiences that night had proved it. With a heavy heart he sneaked back into the hideout he shared with Indrani.

12.

IN THE RUINS

S
topmouth was climbing the stairs with two skins of water when Indrani screamed. He dropped his burden and burst up through the hatch. He looked around for beasts, but saw none. He scanned the sky for Flyers. Nothing. Indrani was wide awake. He’d dreamed of this moment, waited days for it. She looked over at him and screamed again.

‘What’s wrong! Are you h-hurt?’

She backed away, obviously still weak, and huddled in the farthest part of the shelter. Her hand found the hilt of a bone knife and she held it up between them, the point shaking as though the knife weighed more than she did.

‘What’s wrong, Indrani?’

She shouted at him in her baby words. Then she dropped the knife and fell over sideways with foam at the edges of her mouth. Stopmouth placed her back on the hides and sat over her for some time afterwards. A generation previously a man of the Tribe had been volunteered by his family because he couldn’t recognize them any more. Is this what it had come to? Had he stolen her for nothing? Trapsetter had said Stopmouth would never survive by himself, and he never felt more alone than he did at that moment.

As he was making Indrani comfortable again, he couldn’t help thinking about all the flesh the pair of them represented. It was selfish to keep it from those in need; those with a chance at life.

He cast about for something to distract himself from these thoughts. All he found was a couple of Globes up high near the Roof–there always seemed to be one above him these days, so he ignored them. Instead, he relaxed into a daydream where the Tribe was in such need of hunters that, far from wanting to trade him, they welcomed him back with open arms. Everybody was cheering, as they’d done when he’d returned from Hairbeast-Ways in time for the wedding. Mossheart and Rockface laughed and Wallbreaker embraced him. A smile crept across Stopmouth’s face, but he lost it when he realized there was no room for Indrani in this picture. Nor was he sure he’d be able to stop himself assaulting his brother if Wallbreaker tried to embrace him.

Indrani’s eyes fluttered under their lids. Delicate eyelashes, longer than those of normal women. His smile returned. Who needed normal women?

‘I will keep you safe,’ he told her.

Around midday Indrani woke again and winced when she saw him.

‘Where we are?’ she asked in Human language.

‘You were s-sick,’ said Stopmouth. ‘P-poisoned.’ He was always amazed at how little he stuttered in her presence.

‘Ah. Can I have drink?’

He handed her a skin. She had difficulty with the weight, but when he leaned over to support it for her, she dropped it and jerked away from him.

He stepped back, as frightened himself as Indrani looked. Was she about to start babbling again? She picked up the skin as though nothing had happened. She had less difficulty with it now, having spilled half its contents.

‘You didn’t say where are we.’

‘We are in the old p-p-part of the Ways. I…I am sorry, Indrani. I have done something v-v-very stupid. I stole you out of Wallbreaker’s house and now we will b-both d-d-d-die.’

Indrani shocked him by throwing back her head and laughing until she was too weak to laugh any more. Later, when Stopmouth cut up some of the remaining Bloodskin flesh, she looked at it in disgust.

‘If you knew what I w-w-went through to bring you that f-f-food, you wouldn’t t-t-turn your nose up so easily!’

‘Keep it, then!’ she said. ‘It is good I die.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No,’ she said. She closed her eyes and spoke wearily. ‘I sorry you die, Stopmouth. I sorry you and me cannot go home to our Tribes.’

‘Tell me about your Tribe,’ he asked, more to make peace than anything else.

‘Your brother always ask. Always, always. But even if I tell, there are not the words in his head to see.’ She pointed at the Roof and the Globes which hung directly overhead. ‘My Tribe is there. My Tribe watches me and it laughs. Many there are glad I hurt. Many are not, but quiet now. Very quiet. Afraid to ask for me.’

She seemed terribly sad.

‘Your T-Tribe live in the Globes?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Globes are…No, we live in Roof. I tell only you this who save me. Not Wallbreaker.’

Stopmouth hid his delight at these words by studying the Roof. Sometimes from the tallest towers he’d seen how it curved down towards the horizon. Tribal legend spoke of how the Traveller and his band of hunters had almost reached it before disaster had struck. He told Indrani the story, but she just smiled and shook her head.

‘The Roof never, never comes to here!’ she said.

Her smugness angered him and he was on the point of storming off to hunt when she opened her eyes wide and sat up.

‘Wait, Stopmouth. I’m sorry. You are right. The Roof not come to here, but there is one place where here reaches to Roof. You must walk many, many territories to find this one place.’

So it was true after all! The Traveller had found the end of the Roof! Stopmouth imagined going there himself, climbing inside and looking down on Wallbreaker from above. What strange creatures must live there, and what hunts could be had! No wonder Indrani turned up her nose at the flesh here below. A pity, he thought, that no human could ever survive such a journey. Even the Traveller had only seen the place from a distance. And he alone of a band of ten fierce hunters had returned to tell the tale.

‘Stopmouth,’ said Indrani, answering his grin, ‘I see you think as I do. You must to take me there!’ She put one hand halfway to his, and then, with a shiver, withdrew it. ‘You cannot go to your Tribe, but my Tribe, if I go there, must to take me. And you too if you are with me.’

‘Sure,’ he said, delighted to see her smile. He knew she’d change her mind when she recovered her strength. For now, it was enough to share impossible dreams as he and Wallbreaker had done so often. But Indrani hadn’t finished yet.

‘The Roof is many distant from here,’ she said, ‘with many eaters of flesh.’ She made a disgusted face. ‘We cannot to go without the Talker. We must to get the Talker back from…from him.’

Stopmouth gaped at her. Did she really think he’d sacrifice the Tribe’s one chance at survival to save himself? Obviously it was the fever talking and not her. And yet Stopmouth was young. He was stronger than he’d ever been in his life and in love with an extraordinary woman. He watched her as she collapsed back into exhaustion and at that moment knew he would do anything to keep her safe, even if it meant crossing half the world.

‘I know where I m-might find another T-T-Talker,’ he said. ‘T-tell me if I’m r-r-right.’

Stopmouth couldn’t look at the walls around Bloodskin without a tremor of horror. The last time he’d stood here, Rockface had led him through this very window. A tenth of a night later he was lying with blocks of stone embedded in his legs. He swallowed back his terror and poked his spear through the gap. It was still unblocked, so he heaved himself up and crawled inside. There, he waited for his eyes to adjust before moving forward. The house hadn’t changed since his last visit. No creature made its home there, except perhaps the tiny ones who lived in the moss and who, according to Wallbreaker, ate only plants and not each other.

He came to the door onto the street and listened hard for sounds of Bloodskins.

When Indrani heard that he meant to come here, she had shouted at him and called him a fool. Then she’d wanted to come with him.

‘It is my fault,’ she’d said. ‘And I fight good!’

‘You’re still too w-w-weak, Indrani,’ he’d replied, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Really, he thought, she’d slow him down. He couldn’t hunt with somebody too afraid to come within touching distance of him.

As he looked out onto the terrible streets of Blood-Ways, he wished he’d given in and let her come. What harm, he thought, if they both died here instead of at some other point on the mad journey she’d proposed? And if he didn’t make it back, what chance of survival would she have anyway, surrounded by enemies and unable to hunt?

He heard nothing–the Bloodskins in this area must have all been asleep. He retraced his footsteps from the night of his injury: up one long street of mostly empty houses; round the corner to where the wreckage of a Globe had reduced the buildings to dangerous rubble.

When he stood in front of the house where his legs had been smashed, his memories so terrified him that he lingered in the dangerous open for many heartbeats before slipping inside. A great quantity of rubble cluttered the doorway, more than he remembered. Holes gaped in walls and sometimes he could see twisted bars of metal underneath. They flaked under his hands. Stopmouth found his way back into the room where he’d had his accident. No fire lay in wait for him this time; only darkness. He tried to slow his breathing and listened intently to the sounds of the house. All was still.

He unpacked the equipment he’d brought. First he removed the hides, which he stretched across the ruined doorway to the room. Rubble had already blocked most of it and for that he thanked the spirits. Next he used a bit of tinder and some scraps of wood he found in the hallway to light a small fire of his own.

Shadows danced about the walls, but now Stopmouth could see the wreckage above him. A curtain of metal hairs still hung from the hole in the ceiling, while the rest of the Globe had slipped deeper into the room. He could reach it just by raising his hands and standing on his toes. The metal was sharp in places, sharp enough to cut his thumb when he touched it. The whole thing looked unstable, as if it still had farther to fall. This worried him, especially when he thought about what had happened the last time he was here. But if he and Indrani were to have any chance of survival, there could be no turning back. So he licked the blood from his thumb and set about the task of building a pile of rubble tall enough to stand on. It looked very shaky when he’d finished. Tiny fragments, like the ones he used to chip off walls as a boy, lay everywhere. At that moment he had a memory of Wallbreaker scolding him for damaging masonry before either of them had ever dipped a spear: ‘You shouldn’t, Stopmouth,’ Wallbreaker had said. ‘I know you can’t see it, but someday there’ll be no more buildings. Nobody knows how to make them–certainly no human. Well, maybe I will.’ He’d grinned then, his dimples already prominent. ‘See all those straight lines on the forest floor, brother? Houses once upon a time. Definitely houses.’

Stopmouth’s pile of rubble now reached almost to the black maw of the torn Globe. He lit a torch from the fire and climbed to the top, wary of standing straight until he’d passed under the jags of metal.

Here, bright colours danced in the light of the flames. He saw designs that would have bamboozled the Hairbeasts: curls and glinting lines. Strange, strange shapes packed the insides of the Globe. When he reached up, his hand found most of the surface to be soft, like skin over layers of fat. Tiny black designs ran across some areas and seemed to move from the corners of his eyes. He pulled at several items. Nothing came loose, although once the entire Globe creaked as if it were about to fall down on top of him.

Stopmouth wanted to spend more time investigating these wonders. Here, at last, he’d seen something that Wallbreaker never would. But he’d come for a reason, so he stopped fumbling about and whispered the phrase Indrani had taught him.

‘Acteevate!’ he said.

Nothing happened. He cursed himself as Indrani had cursed him with words he’d never taught her. ‘Easy!’ she had said. ‘So easy it is! Activate! Activate! Activate! Just say it!’

Three little sounds and it had taken him the best part of a day before he could approximate Indrani’s pronunciation.

‘Perhaps I n-n-need one of your ancestors to p-p-possess me,’ he’d said. She cursed him even more, and although she was still weak, she looked as if she wanted to hit him.

He tried again, making a special effort with the ‘i’ in the middle of the word.

This time a pale yellow glow appeared at the far end of the Globe. Indrani had taught him what to expect, but he still dropped the torch in surprise. Luckily the light from above remained steady. But how to reach it? If he had a spear in his hand, and if he stretched and held the spear at the base of its shaft, still he’d fall short of the target. Also, from what Indrani had told him, the object couldn’t be detached from its hiding place unless he touched it with the warmth of his hands.

He would have to climb.

He knew from his earlier investigations that plenty of handholds awaited him should he really need them: shafts of metal, ridges of various other materials. They all seemed strong enough to support his weight, but every time he tested one, the entire Globe complained with a screech.

He decided he’d have to risk it. He and Indrani would die without a Talker and he certainly couldn’t take the one owned by the Tribe.

Stopmouth found two sturdy handholds and pulled himself up. The body of the Globe creaked and he heard a rain of dust and other fragments falling just out of view. It all reminded him too much of his accident. He forced himself into perfect stillness until his breathing calmed. ‘It’s not going to happen again,’ he told himself. Then he pushed up further towards the glow, never putting too much weight on one side or the other. Halfway up he stretched out a hand for the sphere and couldn’t quite touch it. One foot was balanced on a padded, slick surface, the other on a series of tiny protrusions that dug painfully into his sole. Then the Talker stopped glowing.

Stopmouth cursed. ‘Actovite!’ Nothing happened. ‘Acteevate! Acteebate!’ He cursed again and decided to climb up further to retrieve the thing by feel. He raised his left leg in search of another foothold, forcing the protrusions under his right to dig even deeper into his skin. He shifted slightly to ease the pressure and something went
click!

The whole Globe came alive and started shaking. The grip under his left hand became hot. Then he heard metal shrieking and stone collapsing. The wreckage, with Stopmouth inside, fell the last body-length to the ground. The young hunter survived the initial impact, but above him a metal object came free and smacked him into unconsciousness.