Veniss Underground (12 page)

When they were shadows on the horizon, a voice spoke from the shattered remains of the stilt-flesh creature. It said, “The Gollux thinks they've gone, haven't they?”

Shadrach started. He walked over to the bloody carcass. Its eyes had been plucked from their sockets. Torn and tattered, the skull had been picked clean of flesh. It dangled from the raw and savaged spinal column, which lay fully exposed—a white, winking travesty. Shadrach aimed his gun at the carcass.

The voice came again: “The Gollux knows they've gone, haven't they?”

“Where is that voice coming from, John?” Shadrach asked the meerkat.

The meerkat looked as agitated as Shadrach had ever seen him. “I don't know.”

The voice, reedy but confident: “Help the Gollux. The Gollux is alive, alive is the Gollux. Kick open the skull.”

“What are you?” Shadrach asked.

“Kick open the skull, and you will find out that I am the Gollux, I am.”

At his shoulder, John the Baptist attempted an unconvincing snicker. Overhead, the map circled patiently.

“What should I do, John?”

“What do you have to lose?”

“More than you.”

But he drew back his foot and kicked open the skull anyway.

The inside of the skull seemed composed of a clay-colored brain, but this “brain” quickly uncoiled itself and pushed out of the skull, then extended to its full length.

The creature, about the size of a baby, had a horizontal torso that tapered off at the front into an oddly human pair of legs and at the back into a pair of legs and muscular buttocks. Positioned three-quarters of the way back along the torso rose a clay-colored neck crowned with an oval head framed by stringy hair that writhed out behind it as though caught by a stiff wind. In the center of the head, a single black round hole served as, Shadrach supposed, an eye. It had no mouth, unless it spoke out of what presumably was its anus. It paced back and forth in front of Shadrach, as if trying to work feeling back into its limbs after long constriction.

“What are you?”

“The Gollux thanks you,” it said.

Shadrach aimed his gun at it. “What are you?”

The creature, still stepping from side to side, said something that sounded suspiciously like “Gollux,” then, “You're not from here.”

“And you're talking out of your asshole!” Shadrach said. He laughed until the tears ran down his face.

“Where are you from? What is that attached to your arm?” the Gollux asked.

“It is the head of a meerkat,” Shadrach said, recovering. “I'm from the surface, where the sun is.”

“The Gollux has never seen the sun.”

“I've never seen anything like you before.”

“I am the only Gollux.”

“Are you one of Quin's?”

“Yes. Based on an ancient design from a fairy tale. What is your flaw?”

“My flaw?”

“Every creature here has a flaw. The Gollux wishes to know yours.”

“I suppose that I'm mad—completely crazy—and that I have a meerkat strapped to my arm.”

The Gollux nodded solemnly. “That is indeed a flaw.”

“And what is your flaw?”

“I am the Gollux. I am not a flawed Gollux. I am a flawed location. The Gollux was not meant to be contained in the skull of a swannerbee. It was the swannerbee's flaw to have a Gollux for a brain.”

Shadrach looked up at the flying map. He pointed to it. “What, then, is the map's flaw?”

The Gollux said, “Its flaw is its mortality. A map should live a long time. But this map already dies—it is flying lower and lower—and its memory fails it. Wherever you are following it, it will not take you.”

The meerkat said, “Don't listen to the Gollux. It likes to hear itself talk. It just doesn't know what it's talking about. The map is fine. It will lead you to Quin.”

Before Shadrach could reply, the Gollux said, “I am the Gollux. The Gollux knows many things. The Gollux knows that the map dies. The Gollux knows that the meerkat has a flaw: It is only a head. Its body knows only half the truth, and its head knows only half the truth. The map is flying lower and lower. In circles.”

The map's green had begun to fade and it indeed was flying lower, just barely over their heads.

“Something tells me, John, that you're lying to me,” Shadrach said.

“But we've grown so close,” the meerkat echoed, mockingly. “Surely you won't believe this gobbet of flesh over me?”

The Gollux said, “The Gollux is a flawed location, not a flawed Gollux.”

“The Gollux is annoying,” the meerkat said. “The Gollux talks too much.”

“But I believe the creature,” Shadrach said. “Do you know the way to Quin?” he asked it.

“The Gollux knows.”

“Is it this way?” Shadrach pointed in the direction they had been traveling.

“No.”

Shadrach gave John the Baptist a knowing look. “Okay, then—is it this way?” and he pointed back the way they had come.

“No.”

Shadrach pointed toward the mountains, away from the sea.

“No.”

“I told you it didn't know what it was talking about!” the meerkat hissed.

“All that's left is the sea, Gollux.”

“The Gollux knows that there is no sea.”

“The creature is crazy,” the meerkat said. “You should kill it! Kill it now!” John tried to nip at Shadrach's hand.

Shadrach ignored the meerkat, said to the Gollux, “What do you mean?”

“It is not a sea. It is the mouth of the creature that holds Quin. At the center of the mouth, you will find Quin. I am the Gollux. The Gollux is a flawed location, not a flawed Gollux.”

“Stop listening to it,” the meerkat hissed. “Ignore it.”

“Shut up, John,” Shadrach said. “Do you know how to get there?” he asked the Gollux.

“Walk. Walk across the water. If you know the way.”

“Do you know the way?”

“Yes.”

“Will you take me there?”

“I am the Gollux. The Gollux does as it pleases. But it pleases the Gollux to help him who rescued the Gollux from its flawed location.”

The exhausted map chose that moment to come to rest at their feet after an extended death glide. It was crinkled and old-looking. It no longer shone with light. But it was still the most beautiful thing Shadrach had ever seen.

CHAPTER 8

Shadrach looked out at the shimmering sea. He did not like the idea of putting his fate in the hands of this creature. But what else could he do? The map was dead. John the Baptist was dying. He could wander the shore for months and never find Quin. He could be ripped to shreds by Quin's creations at any moment. Twenty-four levels above his head, Nicola waited for him.

“Gollux,” he said, with a confidence he did not feel, “lead the way. I'll follow, but you have to go first.”

The Gollux turned and walked out into the water. Soon, it was only a stalk of flesh, its body hidden by the waves. Then, just as it must surely drown or grow gills, the Gollux began to
rise
, until it appeared to stand atop the waves.

“Holy shit,” Shadrach said.

John the Baptist snorted. “It's not a miracle, you idiot. Can't you see
anything
?”

“I don't care if it's a miracle or not—it's more than you or I are capable of.”

The Gollux scuttled back and forth across the water, determining the limits on where it could and could not walk. Now Shadrach saw that the Gollux stood upon a dark, smooth surface that had roughly the shape of a wing. Over the water came the Gollux's shrill voice: “The Gollux says to come quickly! The saylber will not wait for long.”

“I'm coming,” he called out. He splashed water left and right as he ran toward the Gollux. The water was warm, almost alive in its cloying closeness. The meerkat gnashed at him with its gums. It spat. It said, “He'll kill you! He's lying!” Until Shadrach, in midstride, his legs in water to his calves, stopped his running plunge long enough to stick the meerkat head back into his pocket.

         

THE SAYLBER
was not, strictly speaking, a boat. But Shadrach had grown so accustomed to the miraculous that a real boat would have surprised him more. The saylber was a kind of flat
fish
—a long, thin, muscular manta ray with tremendous fin span and phosphorescent headlights for eyes. The tips of its “wings” curled in the water and created tiny swirls. Its thick back felt sandpapery even through Shadrach's boots. As the saylber sped without apparent friction or sound—the very opposite of the underground train—Shadrach struggled to balance himself. But soon he realized that the creature made continual, minute adjustments to correct for the turbulence, and he relaxed, his muscles untensing, his senses no longer focused on keeping his feet.

Now he could take in his surroundings, and the whole world that was the thirtieth level opened up around him. The air was dark, but had a lightness to it that indicated no clouds could ever form here. The darkness itself was different depending on the shadows it described: the gray foreground of hilly terrain, the shimmering lip of the shore, the blue bruise of the sky, and, finally, the green tint of what seemed a truly limitless sea. The smell of brine came up off the sea, but also the thick funk of living organisms, the sweetness of the recently dead and, from far off—almost an echo of a smell—a rustiness as of burning machinery. What would such a world do should the light ever hit it? Would it shrivel and decay, or would it rise up to blot out the sun?

The Gollux stood balanced on the saylber's head as the water flumed out to either side. The Gollux's stringy hair blew behind it in the slight breeze. The water made gurgling sounds. The saylber made rippling sounds. The Gollux made no sound at all.

When the shore behind them had faded back into anonymous shadow, Shadrach asked the Gollux, “What if our ‘boat' decides to submerge itself?”

“Then the Gollux believes we will drown.”

Shadrach eased himself down until he was sitting on the saylber's back. “Is that likely?”

“Only if the saylber decides to submerge itself.”

Shadrach decided the Gollux was laughing at him.

         

AFTER A
while, Shadrach heard drums beating over the water ahead of them.

“Gollux? What's that sound?”

“The Gollux is pained to say he does not know. But the Gollux thinks we will find out soon enough . . .”

“How profound, Gollux.”

“The Gollux is not profound. The Gollux is a Gollux. Nothing more. Nothing less . . .”

Eventually, the open sea before them became cluttered with vast floating rafts, from which rose structures Shadrach could think of only as cathedrals. The drums had become so loud they hurt his ears. As the first spires loomed over them, he could see that the rafts were manned entirely by meerkats. He pulled out his badge, sat down on the saylber as the wake of the rafts began to rock the creature.

“Where did they come from? And are they dangerous?” he asked the Gollux.

“The Gollux says that usually they let the winds take them wherever they lead. But now they are speeding for shore. Are they dangerous? the Gollux asks himself. The Gollux does not feel any threat toward itself, but the Gollux cannot speak for what you feel . . .”

“Thank you, Gollux. Once again, you have managed to put all my fears to rest.”

Despite himself, Shadrach felt a sense of awe, of appreciation, as the black obsidian temples and their scaffolding floated past. Thousands of meerkats in every shape and size, and every color from rust red to white, some with dense, thick fur, others with bristly hair, some with upturned ears and others with floppy ears—yet not a one turned to look down at him from their lofty perches. They all stared toward the shore with an intensity of purpose that confused Shadrach. It was almost as if they meant to make their rafts reach shore sooner simply by wishing it so. The musk of them made him sneeze, and though now his heart was weak, and he almost wavered and wanted to turn back, the image of Nicola's face came to him, and he continued to hold up his badge like a shield.

The meerkats said nothing—to him, or to each other—and nowhere that he looked, at the spires, at the planks between rafts, at the scaffolding, did he see a single meerkat in motion. No, they all stood and watched the shore. The fires that dominated the burning hearts of their gently rocking cities guttered or spun out of control, unattended. The smell of white-hot metal, the sound of the great engines that helped keep them afloat . . .

As they glided through the channels formed between the rafts, Shadrach noticed something that the meerkats' stillness had at first disguised: From the spires and the scaffolding, which combined looked like blackened skeletons of some enormous beast, makeshift gallows had been set up—and from the nooses swung ropes, wires, and elastic cords, from which hung hundreds of Ganeshas and other nonmeerkat Quin creations. The bodies hung straight down, limp and lifeless, the heads resting upon the stretched necks as if in sleep.

The meerkats' silence had nothing to do with him. Suddenly he understood that the silence represented an intense and watchful fear.

“They are fleeing the center,” the Gollux said, without its customary pomposity. “They are fleeing Quin.”

“What is the difference,” Shadrach whispered to the Gollux, “between the creatures of the shore and the creatures of the sea?”

“The Gollux knows of only one difference: The creatures of the shore know they are flawed, but the creatures of the sea do not know they are flawed.”

After a time, they left the silent floating cities of the meerkats behind. The open sea once more lay ahead of them. The saylber picked up speed. The water was flecked with specks of green phosphorescence that swirled in tiny whirlpools. The water smelled, incredibly enough, of mint. Shadrach stood up again. He restrapped John the Baptist to his arm.

“How are you?” he asked the head.

“I can't feel my legs,” the meerkat said. “I can't feel my feet. I must be dying.”

“We have almost reached Quin.”

“So? I'm dying. Shutting down. Turning off. I'm half-convinced I should leave you prematurely so I don't have to see your ugly face.”

“We just passed through a floating meerkat city. Did you grow up on a floating city?”

“What does it matter to you?”

“It doesn't. But I would rather talk to you than not—no matter how difficult you are.”

“Let me tell you what happens when you burn a person's body, pull out all of his teeth, glue his head to a plate, and shove a bomb in his ear. You become that person's object of undying hatred.”

“You're not a person,” Shadrach said, but then trailed off.

Ahead of them, something huge blotted out the lesser darkness of sea and sky. At first glance, Shadrach could tell only that it resembled a vast set of jaws, with jagged shards of light placed up and down its surface to illuminate it. It floated in the water, rising and falling with the waves.

“What is
that,
Gollux?”

“That is our objective—that is where Quin lives . . .”

Soon, Shadrach could see that it didn't just
look
like a huge pair of spread jaws, it
was
a huge pair of spread jaws. Dripping seaweed and teeth, they rose some six hundred feet above the surface. The flesh of those jaws was pitted and gnarled with age or ill use, either contrived by Quin or the result of the natural accumulation of years.

“Did Quin make this, Gollux?”

“He raised It from a Minnow.”

The eye—the eye was most disquieting. It shone out at them like a searchlight, and as its attention drifted from there to there, over the wine-dark sea, so too did the light move across the depths. The deep green-blue of the pupil, and the golden veins that slithered across the cornea . . . why, the eye itself was larger than a small spacecraft! And mad, mad, mad in its roving: nervous and without purpose, the light so thick it pierced many hundreds of feet into the water, grazing the edges of other sea creatures: fins and tentacles and the impression of sinuous bodies swimming from the path of its assault.

As they approached the beast, the reason for the increasing waves, which actually splashed over the top of the saylber, became clear. Somewhere far, far below, the fish's tail swished back and forth to maintain this one position, as if ever hungry, ever in wait for the world so as to devour it whole. And somewhere halfway up the leviathan: the side fins, frilled and delicate despite weighing twenty or thirty tons, also working hard to maintain this one position. While Quin, within, worked his magic from the fish's belly.

The fish wasn't just old. It was scarred. Fires, like tiny blossoms, dotted its skin, some extinguished when the leviathan rose or fell a few dozen meters. Creatures patrolled the leviathan's skin—they were like tiny parasites, except that they were larger than Shadrach. They scuttled and clung to the vertical surface, performing alien functions. Maintenance of the beast. That it should not fall apart. That it should not die. These creatures—scaly, insectile, arthropodic—all lacked heads, consisting only of mouths and arms and legs without end. Chitonous. Viscous. Blind. Stupid. Birthed to perform one task, one function. Confronted by such creatures, it was hard for Shadrach not to think of Quin as a god.

Among them, meerkats could be seen to move, and other animals, of all types, locked in combat. The combatants centered around the fires, some of them falling off from the extreme angle of the leviathan's upper half and into the water, where without a scream or shriek, they were devoured by unseen animals in the sea. While the survivors labored on at the killing game, which seemed to consist solely of extinguishing other subspecies.

The smell of putrescent fish flesh came from the leviathan itself. It was rotting. It was alive, and it was rotting.

“Gollux, what is happening here?” Shadrach asked.

“All systems atrophy. All systems die. The fish is a system. Quin is a system. The meerkats are a system. There are too many systems. Too much confusion. Something has gone wrong. The systems are at war.”

At the point where the jaws curved down to meet in ugly splendor, docks had been built, along with staircases leading into the mouth. The saylber headed for these as Shadrach reloaded his gun and checked for extra ammunition.

“Why,” he asked as he removed the safety, “is the fish so calm? Why isn't it thrashing about?”

The Gollux turned toward Shadrach, eyeless as it appeared to be, and gave the unmistakable impression that it thought this was a stupid question. “Quin made the fish without nerve endings, so it could not feel the daily pains that might make it flinch or dive or splash. It is the calmest fish in all the world because of Quin's genius.”

Would that Quin had had the genius—or was it compassion?—to pull the nerve ends out of Nicholas before altering him. This fish could be ripped to shreds, could be torn apart by connoisseurs of seafood back in the Canal District and would not raise the slightest complaint. What an advancement! A creature that could not feel its own pain. A creature lacking survival instincts of any kind.

The metal of the ever-approaching docks burned red with the reflection of the fires. The fires spilled over the corners of the leviathan's mouth. The inside of its mouth was aflame, and still it patiently treaded water. Only the lunatic movements of its eye revealed its numbed panic.

The flesh towered above them, the eye so close it was no longer an eye, or even a circle, but just a green-blue surface that encompassed the horizon. The reason for the eye's panic became apparent, for even the eye was not a neutral ground. Creatures fought and died there, leaving gaping wounds. The smell made Shadrach cough and cover his mouth. Canyons, cliffs, cathedrals of flesh. The sounds of skirmishes fought with teeth and claws: the yowl or yelp of meerkats, the galumphing death rattle of even stranger beasts. And the sound of efficiency: the scuttling of the creatures built to maintain the leviathan. They didn't care that the beast was dying. They didn't care that a war was being waged on the flesh of their fish. They simply kept on doing what they had done for years: cleaning the scales, tending to the wounds, dousing the fires with the voluminous sputum of their breath.