The Pure Cold Light (11 page)

***

Glimet and Shikker wove their way quietly through the upper strata of underground. At the station stop she was surprised to find tiled walls and pillars that looked as though they had only recently fallen into disuse. Tiled walls led along the narrow corridor to which Glimet led her. He pointed to a side tunnel labeled with an old sign: “SEPTA Police Vehicles Only.”

“There’s a big somniferum camp down there,” he explained, “a whole bunch of room. Cleaner than most.”

“What’s a somnif—what you called it?”

“Somniferum. That’s a d-drug name. You know.”

“You mean
kif
?”

“Naw, opium. We’re not allowed, down there, most of us. The Somnis come up sometimes. Even up to your level, to give shows with their puppets in the tea houses. Very well connected there, very secretive about it, with ties to outside plantations where the poppies are grown.” He shook his head at the inexpressible possibilities, and turned away. “They won’t t-talk with us,” he added. “I just wanted to show it to you. We should go on.”

Numerous entrances to the underground concourse dimly lighted their way. They encountered few people on the trail, although the walls were lined with abandoned shop fronts, behind which Shikker guessed there must be some inhabitants. Glimet pointed out where there were, according to him, encampments far back in the limitless recesses of the concourse; she couldn’t see a thing. “Lots of camps in there,” he said.

Eventually, they descended a stairwell to a second level. Three high turnstile gates blocked their way, but he went directly to one that rotated freely. They entered a darker realm. She commented, “I smell smoke,” but Glimet made no reply.

At first they crossed a long platform. There were tiled walls again, orange ones this time. Each platform so far had been tiled in a different color. Shikker began to understand how Glimet took his bearings. A chrome fire-hose valve glinted where it jutted out of the tiles. It still had its little wheel, although there wouldn’t be any water pressure. In the distance the glow of a fire revealed a busy platform camp. Glimet suddenly dropped down off the platform and crept along in the shadowy rail pit. She had more trouble getting down, and had to run to catch up.
 

Once they had skirted the camp, he climbed back up. This time, he helped her up. “Not a friendly bunch back there,” he told her.

The walls soon changed to graffiti-covered concrete. She couldn’t read the strange symbols and weird scrawls, although Glimet nodded at it from time to time.

They chanced upon a few other nomads wandering through the murk; some greeted them and some ignored them. And once Glimet led her into a thriving camp that even had a pen for a couple of scrawny goats. He introduced Amerind to everyone, making it very clear that she had been living with him for some time. Nobody questioned anything he said. Some of them acted dopey, and she figured they were drunk or Orbiting. Many of them—even those she saw only from a distance—were missing body parts, although none was as comprehensively abstracted as Glimet; in fact most of the others seemed to hold him in great reverence. He had attained stature bordering on sainthood among the Orbiters, poised as he was upon the lip of that final transubstantiation. She’d never given much thought to what Orbiters believed in. Mostly, they seemed docile—like the bear-things in Australia that lived in trees and chewed some kind of drug—harmless to everyone but themselves. To that extent they were no different from anyone else she knew: everyone trying to die, just calling it by different names.

Breezes commingling through various tunnels brought her the smell of foods cooking. Not all of the odors appealed, but she started salivating. She said nothing of the tight hungry knot in her belly. Mad as he was, Glimet probably would have insisted they join some group for a meal, shot himself in the head with that lousy bulb of his, and been sucked right out, the last of him, into the stratosphere, leaving her lost and without her medicine.

Staked-out territories grew fewer and fewer. They came to a blue tile station stop, labeled “22nd Street” where they went around a narrow bend, then descended a stairwell into a smoky cavern.
 

The single point of illumination was a grated vent to the surface. Debris from numerous cave-ins blocked the walkway ahead. Elsewhere lay mounds of dirt and concrete, and bent iron rods sticking out of the walls like the broken feelers of giant insects. Farther back lay the yawning mouths of multiple lightless tunnels. A diesel smell hung in the air.

Glimet turned away from the debris, journeying across the cavern. She followed him to where the floor ended abruptly. Below lay a greasy pit, and in it, the rails. Despite the fact that subways hadn’t run for more than a decade, the railheads still shone in the gray light.
Maybe
, she thought,
all the oil kept them from rusting
. “All the oil” was something she had never seen, something which had existed a couple of generations ago. Old people still sometimes talked about “all the oil.”

Glimet eased his invisible body into the rail pit. “You gotta c-come down here, too,” he wheezed, once he’d gained his footing. “The platform is blocked off where the roof fell over there. You can’t use it anymore.” She glanced nervously back along the track and Glimet laughed. “There’s no Septas. They all stopped. Ya got to get down, sweetie. I’ll help you.”

Once in the pit, they strode down the center of the track. The rails were attached by large blocks to a relatively flat bed. Between the rails she found all sorts of things—the crooked handle from an old umbrella, plastic silverware, even a few old aluminum cans that she gathered up, knowing that she could trade them. Glimet seemed to take no notice, although it was difficult to see him now.

They bypassed the collapsed area and entered the tunnels. The track did not appear to curve, but soon the lighter point of entry vanished behind them and the rails became all but invisible. “We have to go this way,” Glimet insisted. His voice smothered her. The air had become still, oppressive. The odor of diesel enshrouded her. She splashed through a pool of water, cursing it. After the third or fourth one, she stopped worrying.

Blindly, she scuffled behind him.

Things moved about in the darkness, skittering away at their approach. Rats, probably. Rats didn’t scare her.

For what seemed like hours they pushed through the blackness, at first toward nothing. When a small spot of light appeared before her, Amerind thought it was an illusion, a false image in the retina. To her right, she discovered that she could see pale lines appearing as if in the air and she had time to be afraid before she realized that it was real, not magic at all—white-painted graffiti on the black tunnel walls.

Ahead, the light source grew, and she found that she saw it more clearly when she didn’t look directly at it. Shadows lay inside it, lines and planes that soon solidified into a concrete wall with a broad recessed niche above a rough dirt floor.
 

The light came from another street level vent. A faint buzz, as of insects, came to them as they neared the vent. Not surprisingly, the area stank violently of human waste; someone had been using the vent as a makeshift outhouse.

Shikker held her nose and cautiously squinted up through the rough circle of dripping metal gridwork through which the light spilled like milk. She could make out the edge of a building in the background, but it might have been any one in the Overcity. She guessed that they’d crossed to the far side of the river. What buildings might remain there, she had no idea. The west gate had a reputation for being the one where more people got waylaid, beaten, or went missing. Here, however, was a sneaky way in, if they could find a ladder, and the vent up there wasn’t welded. Given its other use, no one was likely to investigate it too closely.

She turned aside, intending to share this with Glimet, but found a monster standing before her. She cried out and jumped up into the putrid vent shaft. Glimet lay on the ground. The monster ignored her. It was closing on him.

It was squat, and broad around the middle. Wild hair stood out like oily weeds over its mushroom head. Layers of loose clothing covered up most of the body—just the hands and face showed in the gray light, but that was enough.

Huge, purplish knots jutted from its dark skin, protruding randomly across the surfaces of both face and hands. The entire body was probably covered with grotesque, seeping nodes. Shikker couldn’t even see any eyes because of the knots. The eyes were pits into which no light fell.

The monster paused and considered her briefly before addressing Glimet. When it spoke, the voice was so compassionate, so feminine, that Glimet looked around at Shikker. “You’re nearly lost,” it said.

***

The name suited her—Horrible Woman. Chemosh and Tecato had done justice to her ugliness in their stories, but they’d said nothing of the accompanying aura of unimaginable pain held in check by sheer force of will. The woman must have been in agony every moment. Shikker could sense it, smell it, like a ripe perfume coming off her, and she responded instinctively. She jumped down out of the vent.

Horrible Woman glanced toward her, sizing her up. After a moment, she asked, “What are you doing so deep in here?”

“Looking for you,” Shikker replied.

Glimet raised the canvas bag. “You have supplies we need. I have some for you, to trade.” His head bobbed, then rose, with considerable effort, into the air. All the while he babbled about Amerind, about her wounds, her need.

Horrible Woman considered what he said. Shikker noticed that each time they spoke to the woman she hesitated briefly before replying, as if each question and answer had to journey past her pain.

She said, “So much disharmony. And you, doomed even now. Even now.”

“Do-doomed?” He floated fearfully back.

“Irreversibly. How did you let so much of yourself go? How could you watch yourself be devoured? How could you choose it?”

Her questions were not dismissive; she seemed genuinely to want his explanation.

Glimet faltered. He looked to Shikker for guidance but she shook her head. Already she had begun to doubt that she knew anything true about Orbiters.

He tilted his head back. “‘How’ is because of the Other Place,” he said. “When I look at it, when I’m there, it’s the sweetest, the best thing. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’d—I’d put the bulb to my head and fire and fire and fire if it would get me there quicker, if that wouldn’t kill me. I
don’t
want to die, I want to go to the Other Place. It’s so good there.”

Horrible Woman considered him for a long moment before turning to Amerind.
 
“You’ll want your medicine. Come.” She swung heavily about and headed out of the light, into a different realm of darkness than the one they had just traversed.

“I brought potatoes and beans both,” said the Orbiter. The bag floated forward in his invisible grip.

“Reliable nutrients,” she said after a moment. Glimet floated like a buoy in her wake. Amerind tagged behind.

As Glimet had related of his first encounter, they followed Horrible Woman by listening. Shikker caught hold of his cloak and let herself be pulled blindly along. In places where another vent or a hole flooded an area with light, the woman burst into view like a nightmare.

They came upon another group of rails, two sets of tracks divided by a wall of vertical girders. Glimet stumbled in crossing them. Shikker helped him to his feet. In the pitch dark, he had substance, a spongy reality.

By the time they were ready to move, they had lost their guide. Shikker cried out, her voice echoing.

From off to the right, the gentle voice replied, “Here! This way.” Horrible Woman had sensed their mishap and had lingered.

Now Shikker led the way. Glimet held onto her shirttail. She reached out, patting at the darkness, then running her hand along the edge of the raised platform, using it as a guide, until her fingers closed around a cold metal handrail. She stubbed her toe against the first step up. She ascended. Something crunched underfoot.

Soft fingers brushed her arm.

“Jesus!” she shouted, and stumbled back against Glimet.
 

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she snapped. “I just wasn’t
ready
.” She closed her eyes, summoning her will against the phobic dark. Trembling, she made herself reach forward again. She felt the knobs, soft as marshmallows, covering the hand. Against her blind terror, she let herself be touched, pulled, guided along a narrow ledge, and through a door, which, when it opened, revealed a dim light the color of brass. The woman let go of her.

Beyond the door, the light defined a narrow landscape of broken concrete and sewer pipes. Where the walls had crumbled, the black bars of iron appeared as ribs. They followed the squat figure through all the debris, and finally around a high mound of sand, concrete, and brick.

On the other side was the small makeshift camp that Glimet had earlier described. Cables had been strung across the room and wide sheets hung across them to make the walls of a deep tent. The glow came from inside the tent. The sheets were alive with the silhouettes of other people propped up within.

The monster lingered at the edge of the tent, motioning for them to enter. Glimet lurched to a stop, and Amerind saw from his look that his nerves were frayed to the limit. He probably would have run if she hadn’t held onto him.

“The supplies that you want are here,” Horrible Woman said. “What is it you’re afraid of?”

He stared at the shifting shadows of the others behind the sheet. “Come on,” Amerind urged.

“I see,” said the other. “Then you don’t trust. I’ll take you back if you wish.”

“No,” he shouted, jumping at the loudness of his own voice. “I mean, I—we—need the medicine.” He closed his eye, shook his head. “What is this?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

Amerind pulled him along. His terror had made her forget her own. She told him when to duck beneath the cable, and, walking backward now, towed him inside the long, low tent.