"Dangerous Offspring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swainston Steph)CHAPTER 8I was standing on the cold Osseous steppe, where the horse people come from. It was twilight and silent; the sky darkening blue with few stars. Around me stretched a flat jadeite plain of featureless grass. A marsh with dwarf willow trees surrounded a shallow river; deep clumps of moss soaking with murky water and haunted by midges. Far on the other side of the river a silhouette line of hazy, scarcely visible hills marked the end of the plain. In the distance I saw a village of the Equinnes’ black and red corrugated metal barns, looking like plain blocks. Between them was one of their large communal barbecues, a stand on a blackened patch of earth where they roast vegetables. A freezing mist oozed out between the barns to lie low over the grassy tundra. I couldn’t see any Equinnes, ominously because they spend most of their time outdoors and only sleep in their barns. They’re so friendly they normally race to greet strangers. The Vermiform had reassembled-she stood a head taller than me. She said, ‘We told Membury and the Equinnes that even when the Gabbleratchet vanishes they must not come out for a few hours.’ ‘Where is it now?’ I asked. The Vermiform pointed up to the sky above the hills. I strained to make out a faint grey fleck, moving under the stars at great speed. It turned and seemed to lengthen into a column. I gasped, seeing creatures chasing wildly through the air, weaving around each other. ‘It has already seen us,’ the Vermiform chorused. Worms began to slough off her randomly and burrow into the grass. ‘When I say run, run. It won’t be able to stop. Don’t run too soon or it will change course. Be swift. Nothing survives it. If it catches you we won’t find one drop of blood left. Beware, it also draws people in.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Don’t look at it for too long. It will mesmerise you.’ It was an indistinguishable, broiling crowd, a long train of specks racing along, weaving stitches in and out of the sky. Their movement was absolutely chaotic. They vanished, reappeared a few kilometres on, for the length of three hundred or so metres, and vanished again. I blinked, thinking my eyes were tricking me. ‘It is Shifting between here and some other world,’ said the Vermiform, whose lower worms were increasingly questing about in the grass. The hunt turned towards us in a curve; its trail receded into the distance. Closer, at its fore, individual dots resolved as jet-black horses and hounds. The horses were larger than the greatest destriers and between, around, in front of their flying hooves ran hounds bigger than wolves. Black manes and tails streamed and tattered, unnaturally long. The dogs’ eyes burned, reflecting starlight, the horses’ coats shone. There were countless animals-or what looked like animals-acting as one being, possessed of only one sense: to kill. Hooves scraped the air, claws raked as they flew. They reared like the froth on a wave, and behind them the arc of identical horses and hounds stretched in their wake. They were shrieking like a myriad newborn babies. Dulled by distance it sounded almost plaintive. Closer, their size grew, their screaming swelled. As I stared at them, they changed. Yellow-white flickers showed here and there in the tight pack. All at different rates but quickly, their hides were rotting and peeling away. Some were already skeletons, empty ribs and bone legs. The hounds’ slobbering mouths decayed to black void maws and sharp teeth curving back to the ears. Above them, the horses transformed between articulated skeletons and full-fleshed beasts. Their skulls nodded on vertebral columns as they ran. Closer, their high, empty eyesockets drew me in. As I watched, the skeleton rebuilt to a stallion-rotten white eyes; glazed recently dead eyes; aware and living eyes rolled to focus on us. The horse’s flanks dulled and festered; strips dropped off its forelegs and vanished. Bones galloped, then sinews appeared binding them, muscle plumped, veins sprang forth, branching over them. Skin regrew; it was whole again, red-stained hooves gleaming. The hounds’ tongues lolled, their ears flapped as they rushed through hissing displaced air. All cycled randomly from flesh to bone. Tails lashed like whips, the wind whistled through their rib cages, claws flexed on paw bones like dice. Then fur patched them over and the loose skin under their bellies again rippled in the slipstream. Horses’ tails billowed. Their skulls’ empty gaps between front and back teeth turned blindly in the air. The Gabbleratchet charged headlong. I shouted, ‘They’re rotting into skeletons and back!’ ‘We ‘Fucking-what are they? What are they doing?’ ‘We wish we knew.’ The Vermiform sank down into the ground until just her head was visible, like a toadstool, and then only the top half of her head, her eyes turned up to the sky. Her worms were grubbing between the icy soil grains and leaving me. They kept talking, but their voices were fewer, so faint I could scarcely hear. ‘The Gabbleratchet was old before the first brick was laid in Epsilon, or Vista or even Hacilith; aeons ago when Rhydanne were human and Awian precursors could fly-’ ‘Stop! Please! I don’t understand! You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?’ ‘Our first glimpse of the Gabbleratchet was as long before the dawn of life on your world as the dawn of life on your world is before the present moment.’ Never dying, never tiring, gorged with bloodlust, chasing day and night. The Gabbleratchet surged on, faster than anything I had ever seen. ‘How do you think I can outrun ‘You can’t. But you are more nimble; you must outmanoeuvre it.’ I saw Cyan on one of the leading horses! She rode its broad back, decaying ribs. Her blonde hair tussled. Her fingers clutched the prongs of its vertebrae, her arms stiff. She looked sick and worn with terror and exhilaration. I tried to focus on her horse; its withers were straps of dark pink muscle and its globe eyes set tight in pitted flesh. The hounds jumped and jostled each other running around its plunging hooves. On the backs of many other horses rode skeletons human and non-human, and corpses of various ages. They were long dead of fear or hunger but still riding, held astride by their wind-dried hands. Some horses had many sets of finger-bones entwined in their manes; some carried arms bumping from tangled hands, but the rest of the body had fallen away. They had abducted hundreds over the millennia. The Gabbleratchet arced straight above me and plunged down vertically. White flashes in the seething storm were the teeth of those in the lead. The moonlight caught eyes and hooves in tiny pulses of reflection. I had never seen anything fly vertically downward. It shouldn’t be able to. It wasn’t obeying any physical rules. Cyan clung on. I wondered if she was still sane. ‘Run!’ shouted the Vermiform. The Gabbleratchet’s wild joy seized me. I wanted to chase and catch. I wanted the bursting pride of success, the thrill of killing! Their power transfixed me. I loved them! I hated them! I wanted to be one! I tasted blood in my mouth and I accepted it eagerly. My open smile became a snarl. The dogs’ muzzles salivated and their baying tongues curled. They were just above my head. I saw the undersides of the hooves striking down. ‘Run!’ screamed the Vermiform. I jumped forward, sprinting at full pelt. The hunt’s howling burst the air. Its gale blew my hair over my eyes and I glanced back, into the wind to clear it. The lead beasts plunged into the ground behind me, and The Vermiform emerged beside me but its voices were awed. ‘It’ll take a minute to turn around. Quick!’ I ran to the area the Gabbleratchet had passed through, expecting to see a dent in the frozen soil but not one of the grass blades had been bent; the only marks were my own footprints. The hairs on my arms stood up and the air smelt chemical, the same as when I once visited a peel tower that had been struck by lightning. There was no reek of corruption or animals, just the tang of spark-split air. I turned Cyan over carefully. She had been flung against the ground at high speed-faster than I could fly-and I thought she was dead, but she was breathing. ‘I can’t see any broken bones. Not that it matters if that thing’s driven her mad.’ ‘Pick her up,’ said the Vermiform. I did so and she jolted awake, gasped, open-mouthed. ‘Jant? What are you doing here?’ ‘Just keep still.’ The Vermiform sprang up from under my feet and wrapped around us. More worms appeared, adding to the thread, beginning at my ankles then up to my waist, binding us tightly together. Cyan waggled her head at the deserted tundra. She screamed, ‘Do you have to follow me everywhere? Even into my nightmares?’ The worms nearest her face grouped together into a hand and slapped her. Cyan spluttered, ‘How dare-!’ The hand slapped her again, harder. ‘Thanks,’ I said. A horse burst from the ground, bent forelegs first. It pawed the grass without touching it. Its enormous rear hooves paced apart. Long hair feathered over them; its fetlock bones swayed as it put its weight on them and reared. Cyan wailed, ‘What does it want?’ Its fore hooves gouged the air, its long head turned from side to side. It couldn’t understand what we were. It sensed us, with whatever senses it had, and it shrieked at us. It could not know its own power nor regulate its voice to our level. It gave us its full unearthly scream, right into my face. The Vermiform tightened around my legs. Its tongue curled, its jaw widened, it was bone; no tongue but the jaw dotted with holes for blood vessels and peaks for ligament connections. Its incisors clamped together, the veins appeared running into the bone, the muscles flowered and rotting horseflesh became a whole beast again. It turned its mad, rolling eye on me. Sparks crackled over us, tingling. Hounds and horses began springing up around us. No soil stuck to them; they had treated the earth as if it was another form of air. The horse arched its neck. I looked up into the convoluted rolled cartilage in its nasal passages. Its jutting nose bones thrust towards me, its jaw wide to bite my face. Slab teeth in living gums came down- – The Vermiform snatched us away- Its coils withdrew and dropped me on a hard surface. I sat up and crowed like a cock, ‘Hoo-hoo! That was a neat move, Worm-fest!’ Beside me Cyan crawled and spat. I helped her up: ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Jant, what are you ‘I’ve come to rescue you.’ ‘ ‘Allow me to introduce you to the Vermiform,’ I said. It was writhing around my feet in a shapeless mass. If it had been human, it would have been panting. ‘We must keep going,’ it chorused. Cyan said, ‘A horse was lying down and it seemed friendly. I climbed on its back. I didn’t know A water drop landed on my head. Good question. I looked around and realised we were in a gigantic cavern, so vast I could not clearly see the other side. The sound of a bustling market broke all around us. The stone walls rucked and soared up a hundred metres in the gloom, latticed with ledges from which bats dangled like plums. I gazed up to the roof, into vaults and rifts and wedding-cake tumbles of flowstone arching into darkness. The ceiling dazzled with circular gold and purple jewels, so lambent I was tempted to climb up and collect them until I realised they weren’t gems embedded in the stone but water droplets hanging from it. They reflected the cool, blue light from the bulbous tails of Neon Bugs clinging to great trunks of suspended stalactites, bathing the whole chamber in their glow. Market stalls were laid out in disorderly lines on the uneven floor, filling the cave, and up into a circular tunnel climbing slowly to the surface. Slake Cross town in all its entirety would fit into that passage. Stalls tangled along both sides of it like a thread of commerce linking the cave to Epsilon city’s immense market a kilometre or more above us. ‘It’s Epsilon bazaar!’ I said. I’d known it extended underground but I had always turned down invitations to visit. I envisaged a dirty crawl with my head caught and pressed between two planes of rock, my feathers wet and muddied, and my knees popped from kneeling on stony nubs in a stinking stream passage all the way. But this was wonderful! At the distant end of the tunnel its entrance shone with white sunlight like a disc. Shafts of light angled in, picking out a faint haze in the air. Reflections arced the tunnel walls, showing their smooth and even bore. I began, ‘Well, Cyan, this-’ The Vermiform seethed urgently. ‘Explain when we have more time! The Gabbleratchet could be here any second!’ ‘What?’ ‘It could be chasing us. If it can still sense us, it will pursue us.’ Cyan said, ‘This is weird. In dreams you’re not normally able to choose what you say.’ She crawled to her feet and wandered off between the stalls. The Vermiform heaved limply. ‘Come back!’ Cyan was looking at the gley men browsing in the aisles. Gley men are completely blind, just a plate of smooth bone where their eyes should be. They feel their way with very long, thin fingers like antennae, touching, touching, searching. They are naked and hairless with milky, translucent, waterproof skin; but underneath it is another skin covered with thick fur, to keep them warm in the deep abyss. You can see through their upper skin to the fur layer pressing and wiping against it. Cyan didn’t seem as repelled by them as I was. She seemed entranced. One of them, by a refreshment stand, was picking cave ferns off the wall and putting them in sandwiches. He had beer bottles, brown and frothy, labelled ‘sump water’. He sold white mousse made from the twiggy foam that clings to the roofs of flooded passages. He had boxes of immature stalagmite bumps that looked like fried eggs, breccia cake, talus cones, and crunchy tufa toffee. Cyan paused at a jewellery stall and examined the cave pearls for sale. She put on a necklace made from broken straw stalactites and looked at her reflection in the mirror-polished shell of a moleusk-one of the metre-long shellfish that burrow far underground. She didn’t know that, as a visitor to the Shift, she could project herself as any image she wanted, so she appeared the way she imagined herself. Like most female Shift tourists Cyan’s self-image was nothing like her real body. She was a bit taller, more muscular and plumper, and she wore casual clothes. She looked like a young, unattached fyrd recruit spending her day off in any Hacilith bar. She was slightly less pretty here than in the Fourlands; I suppose that meant she lacked confidence in her looks. For once, I couldn’t alter my appearance. I was here in the body and I planned to take it home intact. Some stalls sold stencils and crayons for cave paintings. Some displayed everyday objects that ‘petrifying water’ had turned into stone. Mice with three legs (called trice) ran under the rows and cats very good at catching trice (called trousers) ran after them. Neon Bugs illuminated beautiful constructions of silk. Replete Spiders hung from the ceiling on spindly, hairless legs, their huge, round abdomens full of treacly slime. It dripped, now and then, on the awnings of the stalls and the tops of our heads. The noisome things lived suspended all the time, and other bugs and centipedes as long as my arm swarmed over the cave walls to bring them morsels and feed them in return for the taste of the sweet gunge they exuded. The smell of wet pebbles rose from the cavern floor, which descended in a series of dented ripplestone steps to a pool so neatly circular it looked like a hand basin. A waterfall cascaded down a slippery chute, gushing into it. Its roar echoed to us across the immense chamber as a quiet susurration. Naked gley children were sliding down the chute and splashing into the water where Living Fossil fish swam; the play of their luminous eyes lit up the pool. It was screened by thick, lumpy tallow-yellow stalactites so long they reached the ground and were creeping out over it like wax over a candleholder. Between them chambers and passages led off, descending in different directions into the depths. Most were natural but some were like mine shafts, with timber props and iron rails. Tortuoise with huge shells crawled frustratingly slowly up and down between the stalls, towing baskets on wheels. There were Silvans, child-shaped shadows who live only in the shade of cave mouths and tree-throws in the forest. At the furthest end of the cavern, where the subterranean denizens who prefer to stay away from the light shop and sell their wares, hibernating Cave Elephants had worn hollows in the velvet sediment. ‘Call her back!’ the Vermiform chorused. ‘The Gabbleratchet could be here any second!’ I glanced at the cave mouth. The Vermiform said, ‘It doesn’t need an entrance. It can go anywhere! It can go places you can’t, where the atmosphere is poisonous: hydrogen, phosphorus, baked beans. You saw that solid rock is nothing to it. It can run straight through a planet without noticing.’ A big, lumpen Vadose was standing by a stall. Cyan realised that the man was made of clay. She sank her fingers into his thigh, pulled out a handful and started moulding it into a ball. The Vadose turned round. ‘Excuse me, would you return that, please?’ ‘It’s my dream and I can do what I want!’ ‘Dream?’ articulated the Vadose. ‘I assure you, poppet, this is no oneiric episode.’ The ball of clay in Cyan’s hands puffed up into a tiny version of the Vadose-it tittered and waved at her. She yelped and dropped it. It ran on little feet to one of the Vadose’s thick legs and merged smoothly with it. Cyan slapped his round belly, leaving a palm imprint. He cried out bashfully and caught the attention of a Doggerel guard stalking past. It was a big bloodhound, bipedal on its hock-kneed back legs, wearing a constable’s coat and the helmet of a market guard, black with a gold spike on top. The chin strap was lost in its drooping jowls. It rhymed: ‘Shall I remove this silly lass Who seems to be doing no sort of good? In fact, you seem in some impasse.’ The Vadose said, ‘Yes, if you would.’ It placed its paw on Cyan’s shoulder but she wasn’t perturbed. She gave it a kick. Its hackles raised; it picked her up, tucked her under one arm and carried her to us. It set Cyan down in front of me: ‘Here is your rowdy friend, Please keep her close. Otherwise she may offend One more dangerous than Vadose.’ ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Talk in rhyme All the time,’ insisted the Doggerel. ‘First we are chased, then we are irritated,’ the Vermiform complained. ‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘I can do it…Thanks for being so lenient For my friend is no deviant She’s a tourist here for the first time From now on she’ll behave just fine.’ The Doggerel sniggered. ‘Only a tourist and she looks so boring? I’ll leave in case she has me snoring.’ It strode away with dignity, sturdy tail waving. Cyan said, ‘If this is a jook dream I’m going to do it all the time.’ She set off towards the pool but the Vermiform snared her round the waist. She beat her fists at the worms reeling her in. ‘Hey! Get off me!’ A small black puppy was trailing her. When she stopped, it sat down on its haunches and looked at her intently. It had pointed ears and alert, intelligent eyes. ‘It’s following me,’ she said. ‘It’s cute. Makes a change from everything else in here.’ ‘It’s just a Yirn Hound,’ the Vermiform said dismissively and pushed it out of the way. It took a couple of steps to the side, resumed staring at Cyan. ‘Can I pick it up?’ she asked, and as she was speaking another dog padded towards her from under the nearest stall. It sat down and regarded her. She looked puzzled. Another two followed it, clustered close and stared up plaintively. Three more materialised from behind the corner of the next row and joined them. The Vermiform’s surface rippled in a sigh. ‘They’re desire made manifest. For every want or desire that a young woman has, a Yirn Hound pops into existence. If you stay in this world you won’t be able to get rid of them. They will follow you around forever, watching you. Most girls grow accustomed to them, but otherwise Yirn Hounds drive them mad, because until you grow old they’ll do nothing but stare at you. You could kill them, but more will appear to fill the space.’ At least twenty little terriers had arrived while the Vermiform was talking. They sat in a rough circle around Cyan’s feet and continued to regard her. ‘Well, I like them,’ she said, bent down to the nearest one and caressed its ears. It allowed itself to be stroked and waggled its head with pleasure. Their crowd thickened, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from-just trotting in from nowhere and taking their places at the edge of the pack. Their inevitable steady increase repulsed me. I said, ‘God, girl, you have a lot of wants.’ ‘Compared to you? I bet you’d be buried in a pile by now!’ Sparks began to crackle in the tunnels at the far end. I caught a glimpse of the Gabbleratchet thundering in their depths. It more than filled every passage and morphing beasts charged half-in, half-out of the bedrock. Their backs and the tips of their ears projected from the floors: for them, the rock didn’t exist. Skeleton horses, rotting horses, horses glowing with rude health reached the tunnel mouths. Paws and pasterns projected from the wall-they burst out! The front of the screeching column came down the cavern in a red and black wave. ‘The ‘Ratchet!’ I couldn’t look away. Their screaming was so deafening Cyan and I clamped our hands to our ears. They tore everybody in their path to shreds-obliterated the Neon Bugs on the walls as they passed, and the lights went out. The Vermiform wrenched us backwards- – Bright sunlight burst upon us. I squeezed my eyes shut, blinked, and tasted clean, fresh air. A warm breeze buffed my skin…We were on a beach. Cyan yelled, disorientated. ‘Precambria!’ said the Vermiform. We tumbled out of its grasp onto the yielding sand. ‘Good Shift,’ I said. ‘The Gabbleratchet A barren spit curved away into the distance. The aquamarine sea washed on the outside edge, moulding the compact sand into corrugations. Low, green stromatolite mounds made a marsh all along its inside. Behind us, on an expanse of featureless dunes, nothing grew at all. I looked down the spit, out to sea. A splashing started within its curve. The water began to froth as if it was boiling. Creatures like lobsters were jumping out and falling back, lobes along their sides flapping. They had huge black eyes like doorknobs. One flipped up, and in an instant I saw ranked gills and an iris-diaphragm mouth whisk open and gnash shut. Hundreds of crab-things scuttled out of the waters’ edge; their pointed feet stepping from under blue-grey shells with arthropod finesse. There were long, spiny worms too, undulating on seven pairs of tentacle-legs. ‘Something’s chasing them,’ said the Vermiform. ‘Oh no. No! The patch of frothing water surged closer. Cyan and I stared but the Vermiform started knitting itself around us frantically. Different parts of it were gabbling different things at once: ‘Eat the damn trilobites-hallucigenia-eat the anomalocaris-but LEAVE US ALONE!’ Straight out of the froth the Gabbleratchet rode, without disturbing the water’s surface by so much as a ripple. Dry hooves flying, the stream of hunters arced up against the sun. Red eyes and empty sockets turned to us- – Endless salt flats. The vast ruins of a city stood on the horizon, its precarious tower blocks and sand-choked streets little more than rearing rock formations in the crusted desert that was once the ocean bed. ‘I’ve been here before,’ I said. ‘It’s Vista.’ ‘What’s that in the distance?’ Cyan said, pointing at a bright flash. ‘Probably a Bacchante tribe.’ ‘They’re coming closer.’ ‘They doubtless want to know what the fuck we are.’ After Vista Marchan fell to the Insects, its society transformed again and again and eventually collapsed completely. At first the people inhabited the city’s ruins, but little by little they left in search of food, surviving as nomads in the desert. Bacchante tribes are either all male or all female and they meet together only once a year in a great festivity. The desert can’t sustain them and their numbers are dwindling, but they roam in and out of Epsilon over the great Insect bridge to survive. I remembered the only Bacchante I had met. ‘Is Mimosa still fighting the Insects?’ ‘Yes, with Dunlin,’ The Vermiform concurred. ‘ The Vermiform produced its woman’s head, and shook it. ‘No. Just Dunlin. He has renounced being king. He now presents himself as simply a travelling wise man. He advises many worlds in their struggle against the Insects.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘It seems to be a phase he’s going through. He is growing very sagacious, but he hasn’t yet realised the true extent of his power.’ ‘Their horses are The Bacchantes galloped closer. The four polished legs of each mount flickered, moving much faster than destriers with a chillingly smooth movement and no noise but a distant hum. ‘They’re horse-shaped machines,’ I said. ‘They don’t have real heads, and no tails at all. They’re made of metal.’ ‘They’re made of solar panels,’ the Vermiform said. High over the ruined city, the Gabbleratchet burst through. The Bacchantes halted in confusion. The black hunters were so much worse against the bright sky. They cast no shadow. Dull, cream-yellow jaws gaped, sewn with white molars. The Bacchantes stared, hypnotised. The Vermiform screamed at the riders, ‘Run!’ The Gabbleratchet plunged down and- – Splash! Splash! Freezing muddy water swirled up around me. I sank in a chaos of bubbles. Something tugged me and I broke the surface, spluttering. Up came Cyan, and the Vermiform held us above the algae of a stinking, misty swamp. The sky was monochrome grey, filled with cloud and a hazy halo where the sun was trying to break through. ‘Infusoria Swamp.’ Cyan wiped slime off her face and hair. ‘Hey! This is my dream and I want to go somewhere nice!’ ‘Shut up!’ The Vermiform seethed in fury. ‘All for you, little girl! We don’t see why we have to do this and now we’re being chased! We don’t know how to get rid of it. We don’t know where to go next that won’t kill you!’ She shrieked in frustration, grabbed handfuls of worms and tried to squash them but they forced her fists open and crawled out. ‘Shifting is sapping our strength,’ said the worms. ‘Come on!’ I shouted at it. ‘Let’s go.’ ‘It’s my dream so get off me!’ ‘Stop squeezing us.’ ‘Piss off and keep pissing off, piss-worms!’ A colossal blob of gel flowed towards us on the water’s surface. Flecks and granules churned inside it as if it was a denser portion of the swamp; it extended pseudopodia and started to wrap around the outlying worms. ‘What’s that?’ said Cyan. ‘Amoeba.’ The Vermiform pulled its worms out and hoisted us up higher with a sucking noise. ‘Isn’t it rather large?’ ‘We’re very small here.’ ‘Look at the sky!’ said Cyan. The bright patch was growing in size. Violet forks of lightning cracked the sky in two, leapt to the swamp, hissed and jumped between the reeds. The Gabbleratchet arced out. The Vermiform gave one completely inhuman scream with all its strength and jerked us out- – A hot plain with cycads and a volcano on the horizon. Giant lizards were stalking, two-legged, across it towards a huge empty sea urchin shell with a sign saying ‘The Echinodome-Sauria’s Best Bars’. A flash of green on the scorched sands before us. The Gabbleratchet burst towards- – Cyan screamed and we both fell onto a cold floor, knocking the breath out of us. We were in an enclosed space; we Shifted so fast my eyes didn’t have time to focus. The Vermiform parted from us in one great curtain. Its exhausted worms crawled around with Sauria sand and Infusoria gel trickling from between them. I stamped my feet, feeling water squeeze out of my boot lacings. ‘We must have thrown it by now,’ the worms moaned. ‘We must have…We think…’ Cyan and I looked up and down the corridor. It was unpainted metal and very dull. ‘That’s more steel than a whole fyrd of lancers.’ The Vermiform started sending thin runners around the curve of the corridor. ‘We’re above Plennish,’ it said. ‘Wow,’ said Cyan. ‘What an imagination I have.’ I found a tiny, steel-framed window. I stood on tiptoe and tried to peer through the thick glass. ‘It must be night time. Look at all the stars.’ There certainly were an awful lot of stars out there, filling the whole sky and-the ground! ‘Cyan, look at this-there’s no ground! There’s nothing under us but stars!’ I looked up. ‘Oh…wow…’ ‘Let me see,’ she said. I refused to let her take my place at the little window. I pressed my face to the glass, gazing intently. ‘The grey moon fills the whole sky!’ ‘It isn’t a moon,’ said the Vermiform. ‘It’s Plennish. It’s grey because it’s completely covered in Insect paper.’ ‘Ah…shit…All that is Paperlands?’ ‘Yes.’ It sighed. ‘The Freezers once tried to bomb it. Now radioactive Insects come from there to infest many other worlds.’ ‘I’d like to fly around outside. There’s so much space.’ I looked down again-or up-to the stars. A little one was racing along in relation to the rest, travelling smoothly towards us. It was so faint it was difficult to see. I said, ‘A star is moving. It’s coming closer fast. Shift us out of here.’ A shiver of apprehension flowed over the Vermiform. ‘We can’t keep going. We’re exhausted.’ ‘You have to!’ ‘We can’t…We can’t! Anyway, this is a refuelling dock. If any ship tries to land without the protocol the Triskele Corporation will blow it to cinders.’ I glanced out the window, and saw them from above. Horse skulls like beaks, pinched withers falling to bone. Their long backs carried no corpses now. Sparks crawled around them, flicked up to the window glass; they ploughed straight into and through the metal wall. ‘It’s the Gabbleratchet!’ Human screams broke out directly underneath us. The Vermiform threw a net of worms around Cyan and myself. Sparks crackled out of the floor beside us. The muzzle of a hound appeared- Rushing air. I was falling. I turned over, once, and the black bulk of the ground swung up into the sky. The air was very thin, hard to breathe. I fell faster, faster every second. I forced open my wings, brought them up and buffered as hard as possible against the rushing air. I slowed down instantly, swung out in a curve and suddenly I was flying forwards. I rocketed over the dark landscape. Where was I? And why the fuck had the Vermiform dropped me in the air? And where was Cyan? Had it separated us? I looked down and searched for her-saw a tiny speck plummeting far below me, shrinking with distance. I folded my wings back, beat hard and dived. She was falling as fast as I could fly. She was spinning head over arse, so all I could see was a tangle of arms and legs, with a flash of white panties every two seconds and nowhere to grab hold of her. ‘Stretch out!’ I yelled. ‘Stretch your arms out!’ No answer-she was semi-conscious. She wouldn’t be able to breathe at this altitude. I reached out and grabbed her arm. The speed she was falling dragged it away from me. She rotated again and I seized a handful of her jumper. I started flapping twice the speed, panting and cursing, the strain in my back and my wings too much. Too much! We were still falling, but slower. My wings shuddered with every great desperate sweep down-and when I raised them for the next beat, we started falling at full speed again. ‘Can’t you lift her?’ said a surprised voice, faint in the slipstream. A wide scarf wafted in front of my face, its ends streaming up above me. It was the Vermiform: it had knitted some worms around my neck! ‘Of course I can’t!’ I yelled. ‘I can barely hold my own weight!’ ‘Oh.’ The scarf began spinning around us, binding us together. More worms appeared and its bulk thickened, sheltering Cyan but her head bobbled against my chest. We fell for so long we reached a steady speed. I half-closed my eyes, trying to see what sort of land was below us. I could barely distinguish between the ground and the scarcely fainter sky. There were miniscule stars and, low against the far horizon, two sallow moons glossed the tilting flat mountaintops of a mesa landscape with a pallid light. The ends of the scarf swept in front of my face as they searched the ground. ‘I’ll lower you.’ It shot out a thick tentacle towards the table-topped mountain. The tentacle dived faster than we were falling, worms unspooling from us and adding to it. It reached the crunchy rubble and anchored there. We slowed; the wind ceased. It began lowering us smoothly, millions of individual worms drawing over each other and taking the strain. They coiled in a pile on the ground. We came down gently on top of them and toppled over in a heap. The Vermiform uncoiled and stood us on the very edge of an escarpment that fell away sheer to a level lake. Other plateaux cut the clear night sky. In places, their edges had eroded and slipped down into stepped, crumbling cliffs. Deep gorges carved dry and lifeless valleys between them. They gave onto a vast plain cracked across with sheer-sided canyons. The bottom of each, if they had floors at all, were as far below the surface as we were above it. A series of lakes were so still, without any ripples, they looked heavy and ominous, somehow fake. It was difficult to believe they were water at all, but the stars reflected in their murky depths. The landscape looked as if it was nothing but a thin black sheet punched out with hollow-sided mountains, with great rents torn in it, through which I was looking to starry space beneath. There were no plants, no buildings; the grit lay evenly untouched by any wind. The Vermiform threw out expansive tendrils. ‘How do you like our own world?’ ‘Is this the Somatopolis?’ I said. ‘It’s empty.’ ‘It is long dead. We were the Somatopolis, when we lived here. Once our flesh city was the whole world. We covered it up to twice the height of these mountains. We filled those chasms. Now it’s bare. We are all that is left of the Somatopolis.’ The pinkish-white moonlight shone on the desolate escarpments. I imagined the whole landscape covered in nothing but worms, kilometres deep. Their surface constantly writhed, filled and reformed. I imagined them sending up meshed towers topped with high parapets loosely tangled together. Their bulk would pull out from continents into isthmuses, into islands; then contract back together, throwing up entire annelid mountain ranges. Caverns would yawn deep in the mass as worms separated, dripping worm stalactites, then would close up again with the horribly meaty pressure of their weight. ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘The Gabbleratchet will appear any second.’ ‘Wait until it does,’ said the Vermiform. ‘We are bringing it here deliberately. We have an idea.’ ‘The air’s so stale,’ said Cyan. ‘It is used up. The Insects took our world.’ I said, ‘Look, Cyan; this is what happens to a world that loses against the Insects.’ The Vermiform raised a tentacle that transformed into a hand, pointing to a plain of familiar grey roofs-the beginning of the Insects’ Paperlands. Their raised front arced towards us like a stationary tidal wave and their full extent was lost to view over the unnervingly distant horizon. The cells were cracked and weathered-they were extremely old. They were darker in colour than the Paperlands in our world, but patched with pale regions where Insects had reworked them hundreds of times. ‘They bring in material from other places to build with,’ said the Vermiform. ‘There is nothing left for them to use on my entire planet.’ As we grew accustomed to the distance, we began to distinguish them: tiny specks scurrying over the plain, around the lakes and along the summits. It was like looking down into an enormous ant’s nest. I stared, forgetting this was a whole world, and imagined the mountains as tiny undulations in the soil and the Insects the size of ants, busy among them. There were single Insects, groups of a few or crowds of several thousands, questing over the grit from which everything organic had been leached. They swarmed in and out of their hooded tunnels. The Paperlands bulged up in one or two places and paper bridges emerged, rose up and vanished at their apex. In other places the continuous surface of the roofs sank into deep pits with enormous tunnel openings; places where Insects had found ways through to other worlds. They were carrying food through-a bizarre variety of pieces of plants and animals: legosaurs, Brick Bats, humans, marzipalms. Countless millions bustled down there, pausing to stroke antennae together or layering spit onto the edges of the Paperlands with an endless industry and a contented mien. Their sheer numbers dumbfounded and depressed me. I said, ‘We’ll never be able to beat them.’ ‘We could have defeated them,’ the Vermiform choired. ‘We were winning our war. We fought them for hundreds of years. We forced inside their shells, we wrapped around their legs and pulled them apart. We even brought parasites and diseases in from other worlds and infected them, but the Insects chewed the mites off each other and evolved immunity to the diseases, as they eventually do in all the worlds of their range.’ ‘They’re tough,’ I said. ‘They become so, over many worlds, yes. We turned the battle when lack of air started to slow them down. We gained ground. We forced them back to their original tunnel and they built a final wall. One more strike and we could have driven them through and sealed their route. But then Vista’s world collapsed and its colossal ocean drained through. See those lakes? It was their larvae that did for us.’ ‘Their young?’ I asked. ‘Once the Insects started to breed in their millions. Their growing larvae are far more ravenous than adults. They scooped up mandiblesfull of worms and ate the city.’ Cyan shrieked, ‘Look out! There’s one coming!’ Twirling antennae appeared over the escarpment edge and an Insect charged towards us. Cyan and I turned to run but the Vermiform shot out two tentacles and grabbed the Insect around its thorax, jerking it to a halt. The tentacles snaked around the Insect, forced its mandibles wide-then its serrated mouthparts. The Insect ducked its head and tried to back off, but a third stream of worms began to pour into its mouth, keeping the mandibles open all the time. Worms streamed up from the ground and vanished down its throat. The rest of the Vermiform still pooled at our feet waited. For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. Then the Insect exploded. Its carapace burst open and flew apart. Its innards splattered against us. Its plates fell in a metre radius leaving six legs and a head lying with a huge knot of worms in the middle where its body had been. They moved like a monstrous ball of string, covered in haemolymph, and reformed into the beautiful woman. The worms of her face moved into a smile. ‘We love doing that. Wish they would line up so we can burst them one by one.’ ‘Ugh,’ said Cyan. I said to her, ‘Keep watching for more Insects.’ Cyan said, ‘I hate this place. I want to go. I want to see the cave.’ ‘The market was destroyed.’ ‘No. This is my dream and I say it wasn’t. Take me back; there are too many bugs here.’ ‘Why do you think I dropped you in the air?’ the Vermiform said bitterly. It was easier to speak to the worm-woman than the amorphous bunch of annelids. I asked her, ‘What has the collapse of Vista got to do with you losing the war? Did Vista’s sea drown you, or something?’ ‘It drowned billions of us.’ She pointed down to the lake. ‘The Somatopolis was dry before that, very hot and arid. That is how we like it; in fact we brought you here during the night because otherwise the sun would roast you. The waterspout surged from an Insect tunnel beneath us and forced up between us. It erupted a kilometre high and Vista’s whole ocean thundered out. We fled-how could we cope with running water? Still, it was salt water and we might have survived…But the ocean began to evaporate, clouds began to form and, for the first time ever in the Somatopolis, we had rain.’ The worm-woman indicated the pools. ‘Freshwater lakes formed deep among us. We recoiled from the water and erroneously left it open to the air. And the Insects began to breed. We tried to stop them. We kept fighting but, as our numbers diminished, we found it harder to cover the ground. Generations after generations of larvae decimated us, so we sought shelter under the surface. From there we Shifted to find a new world to colonise…as many worlds as possible from the construction of the Insect’s nest.’ The Vermiform woman dissolved into a snake and slithered to rejoin the main mass. ‘We hope the Gabbleratchet might destroy some Insects,’ it added. ‘Brace yourselves. We will try to shake it once and for all by retracing our steps.’ We looked around for the Gabbleratchet, in the cloudless sky, against the rounds of the moons, among the peaks of the Paperlands and directly down to the lake. I thought I saw something moving in it! I blinked and stared. Something was swimming in its murky abyss. It became darker and clearer as it rose close to the surface. It moved with a quick straight jet, then turned head over tail along its length and disappeared into the depths. ‘What the fuck? What was that?’ A flash of green on the sheer rock face below us. The Gabbleratchet hurtled straight out of it. Empty white pelvic girdles and scooping paws reflected in the lake. Cyan screamed. The Gabbleratchet turned; it knew where we were. ‘Now!’ The Vermiform lifted us off our feet, through- – Plennish- – Infusoria Swamp- – Sauria- – Precambria- – Epsilon Market- – Somewhere dark…? Somewhere dark! Cyan cried, ‘Are you there?’ ‘I’m here, I’m here!’ I felt for her hand. I opened my eyes wide, just to be sure, but there was not one shred of light. Then, seemingly in a vast remoteness I saw a faint glow, a thin vertical white beam seemed to… ‘Where are we?’ I demanded. ‘You said we were going back to the Fourlands!’ ‘Stupid creature! This ‘But…’ The Vermiform said, ‘This is Rayne’s room. That is Rayne.’ I think the Vermiform was pointing but I couldn’t see anything. ‘She is pacing back and forth. She’s anxious; in fact, she’s panicking. Can’t you feel it?’ Curiously enough, I could. The intense emotions were radiating from the white ray and putting me on edge. ‘But what’s happened to her? That’s just a thin line!’ ‘Hush. If we see the Gabbleratchet’s sparks, we will have to leave fast. This is the Fourlands, the fifth to the eighth dimensions. You occupy those as well as the ones you’re familiar with, seeing as you’ve evolved in a world with ten. You can’t see them with your usual senses, but you do operate in them. We are amazed that you never consciously realise it.’ Close by, Cyan shouted, ‘It’s talking crap! Tell it so, Jant.’ ‘Hey, it’s interesting.’ The Vermiform harped on: ‘Emotions impress on the fifth dimension, which is why you can sometimes sense a strong emotion or see an image of the person who suffered it, in the same place years later. What other examples can we give? Acupuncture works on the part of you that operates in the sixth dimension, so you’ll never be able to understand how it works with the senses you have. And the seventh, if only you knew of that one-’ Cyan screamed, ‘Take me home! Take me home now! Now! Now! Now!’ I could hear her thrashing and kicking at the flaccid worms. ‘Think of it as a shadow world,’ I told her. ‘You goatfucking son of a bastard’s bastard’s bastard!’ We waited for a long time. The Vermiform eventually said, ‘I think we’ve thrown off the Gabbleratchet. Let’s go.’ It gave us a small jolt and our worm-bonds dropped to the floor. Off balance I stumbled forward-into Rayne’s bedroom. |
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