The Chamber in the Sky Read online

  Parents lost hold of children. Buildings shifted and collapsed. Huge sparks flared where the electrical generators of the city died. Hands reached out. Mouths gasped for breath.

  Soon, there would be no place left to stand.

  New Norumbaga sank beneath the waves.

  Three mechanical giants stood, holding a gothic capsule on top of a mountain. It was a sunny day late in the summer. There was a sky, which was blue, and far to the east lay the Presidential Range of New Hampshire: Washington, Jefferson, Adams. Though the sun was warm, a brisk breeze blew.

  The arched door of the capsule popped open. Three kids and a slithering little six-legged dragon stepped out. The blond boy dropped and kissed the ground. “Earth, I love you! I love you, Earth!” Gregory exclaimed.

  Brian looked down at the foot of Mount Norumbega. On the lawns below, where once woods had stood, now billowed the nests of the Thusser. In the distance he could see the white steeples of Gerenford overgrown with Thusser warts. The Horde had spread far into the countryside.

  He turned to look at Gwynyfer. She was crouched, looking upward anxiously. “What is it?” she said. “It’s so empty.”

  Gregory and Brian looked up. Gregory explained, “The sky. It’s a sky. We have one here.”

  They didn’t have time to explain. The giants began to speak, one word from each of them at a time. “The.” — “Rules.” — “Keepers.” — “Have.” — “Adjudicated.” — “They.” — “Have.” — “Determined.” — “A.” — “Foul.” — “On.” — “The.” — “Thusser.” — “Side.” — “The.” — “Thusser.” — “Horde.” — “Have.” — “Illegally.” — “Occupied.” — “Disputed.” — “Territory.” — “They.” — “Shall.” — “Be.” — “Flushed.” — “Out.”

  Gregory cheered and slapped Brian on the back. Brian, catching on, cheered, too.

  “The.” — “Thusser.” — “Horde.” — “Have.” — “Forfeited.” — “The.” — “Game.”

  It was won. The Thusser were out.

  “The.” — “Rules.” — “Keepers.” — “Arrive.”

  There was a hiss, and on three sides of the gothic capsule, circular windows opened, and a great gale blew out, as if something massive had swept into the world and hovered above them.

  The kids could see nothing, but they could feel the three great motions of wind. Stone bugles on the capsule blew siren-blasts of warning.

  Far down in the Thusser suburbs and the deadened streets of town, other capsules appeared. Other round hatches opened. There was a noise of great winds.

  Now the three invisible beings, the Rules Keepers, swept down over the slopes of Mount Norumbega. Brian and Gregory and Gwynyfer could see the treetops boil as the great presences passed — and for brief instants, they got a glimpse of unearthly beings, of too many dimensions to see at once, just a quick vision of hide, a few angled limbs, many eyes. And then unseen creatures reached the Thusser subdivision and started to pull the place apart.

  They blew at the great, billowing sheets of Thusser nests. They scrambled lawn furniture. They tore at houses. They dragged apart walls. And there were many of them now, all seen only through their deeds: roofs pulled asunder and fantastical walls blown apart.

  Down in that suburb, Thusser fathers ran out of their houses, screaming at the Rules Keepers, preparing spells; mothers chanted magic words of ill intent; Horde children longed for something to scratch at and kill. As fast as they poured out of their houses, they were whipped away into exile, sent back to their world, draining into nothing like people made of sand.

  The Thusser army, slipping though the valleys of Vermont, heard the distant blast of stone trumpets. They heard the rumble of something like a steam train rolling straight toward them through the sky. They looked up, and the few who’d trained to see other dimensions caught a glimpse of limbs and mouths and all the eyes.

  The Rules Keepers fell on the Thusser army and tore it apart. Infantry in their long, black coats were hurled back into their world. Commanders struggled to keep ranks neat, but they were pulled out of their machines and spun until gone. Tanks were wrenched into pieces.

  Deep below the mountain, in the City of Gargoyles, where old stone houses were cankered with blobby condos, fierce gusts slammed along the streets, pulling up Thusser construction by its roots. The winds roared through the caverns. Thusser struggled against it. They cast up quick enchantments, but nothing could protect them. The Rules Keepers seized them, and their earthly bodies crumbled. Their bladder homes melted.

  Slumbering bodies were left in the alleys — humans, hypnotized, who had hung in the web of Thusser settlement. They were coated with strands of insulation. They did not move. They stared, unaware, into the darkness.

  Struggling over boulders and between spruce, Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer watched the landscape tear itself apart. They saw houses heaving. They winced as Thusser were tossed up into the air and atomized.

  There was a never-ending sound of wind in their ears.

  In the Great Body, capsules appeared in Pflundt, and the Horde soldiers remaining there were helpless against the blasts of wind that shot down from the cliffs. They were all guilty of fouls. They had all passed illegally through the contested territory on Earth. They were all doomed to exile back in their own world.

  Far out in the marshes, a capsule appeared and blew notes of warning from its stone bugles. Hatches opened. The surface of slime rippled as invisible beings shot out across it.

  In small villages seized by the Horde, lean-tos and huts collapsed as the wind hit and frenzied soldiers were snatched and blinked out of being.

  In the flux stream, Thusser on subs looked out into the green darkness and saw frothing, bubbling forms shoot toward them. They felt their vessels shudder. Then the things had passed through the walls and were on board with them.

  Panicked soldiers clambered through hatches, pushing their mates out of the way, shoving other Thusser with knees and with hands in the face. Captains called for regimental wizards to do something — do something — but no one knew what they were up against. They watched their sailors disappear like monuments of sand blown by a fierce desert wind.

  Subs drifted, empty, in the tide.

  Green waters washed through the rubble that was once New Norumbega. Hundreds of people — live and mechanical — sat on islands, watching plastic garbage drift past. Occasionally, another shudder would run through the Great Body, and everything would jump up and down. The army was drenched.

  The Empress of the Innards, her gloomy Prime Minister, and Kalgrash the troll sat on a pile of fallen pillars with their elbows on their knees.

  They saw a woman sloshing toward them in Wellington boots. “Your Highness!” the woman called. “Message from General Malark.”

  “Is he officially a general?” the Empress wondered. “I can’t now recall.”

  The troll growled, “He’s a general.”

  “Must you be so sour?”

  The messenger started climbing the pillars. “The Thusser have stopped drilling, ma’am!” she said. “Their subs are just sitting there. Admiral Brunt is going to move in and see what the situation is.”

  Kalgrash perked up. “They’re gone!” he said. “Gregory and Bri did it! The Thusser are gone!”

  The messenger said, “General Malark says that if the navy can seize the drill ships, he’ll order them to be backed slowly out of the holes they’ve dug. He says that the pressure of the flesh will close up the holes, as long as they’re slow about it and careful with the drills.”

  Kalgrash stood up. He threw his arms wide. “We’re saved, saved, saved!”

  The Empress Elspeth inspected the messenger. “That’s ripping news. We’ve got to send out scouts to see what’s still standing. Pray where did you find those ducky Wellies?”

  Hopping down the side of Mount Norumbega, Gregory, Gwynyfer, and Brian felt time itself righted. The Thusser had built a bubble where seconds flowed faster — and n
ow that bubble was tapped, and burst, and a shock wave of missing hours and crunched days slammed into the forest, the mountain, and Rumbling Elk Haven itself.

  It hit the kids. Their hair flew, mussed by passing minutes.

  They stumbled and fell. Their stomachs churned. Gregory retched. They saw streaks of light flash against the sky. Again, they caught quick, jolting visions of the Rules Keepers sweeping incomprehensibly through the air.

  Deep in the caverns beneath the mountain, one last Norumbegan, Wee Sniggleping, stirred in the darkness. He had been captured by Thusser and hung up in some settler’s basement near a two-in-one washer/dryer. He looked around dully and found himself freed. He coughed and inspected his hands. Slowly, he awakened from his Thusser dreams.

  He crawled along the cobbled street. Streamers of Horde nest trailed behind him. His head was pounding.

  “Prudence?” he croaked. “Prudence, my dear, if you’re lying on a side street near here, do give a holler. Truly: If you’ll only say you’re alive, my dear, I’ll whip you up an omelet.”

  The air was still. The sky was serene and blue.

  At the foot of Mount Norumbega, nothing moved. The landscape was one gigantic jumble. There were vast red scrapes of wet earth where nothing grew. The suburban houses of humans lay in crumpled piles: wallboard, clapboard, sheets of shingles; struts and frames and marble countertops. Plaster dust and two-by-fours. Sleeping owners were curled among the ruins. Streets were cracked. Cars were overturned.

  For miles, nothing was whole.

  A thin blond boy, a stocky boy with dark hair and glasses, and an elfin girl from another world stood and surveyed the wreckage.

  They did not speak in their astonishment.

  The next day, the Imperial Council of New Norumbega, rulers of all the Empire of the Innards, gathered on a hilltop to greet the Umpire officially. Their clothes were torn and muddy. Their faces were proud and weary. Their city was huge mound of garbage surrounded by a vast lake of green.

  The lux effluvium burned pitilessly in the sky above them. The lake steamed in the heat.

  The Empress sat upon her throne. Someone had found a swivel chair and covered it with a blue sheet. Girls stood holding a canopy over her. To either side of her stood Kalgrash and General Malark, holding huge ceremonial axes. The Court stood on rubble, all in a large circle.

  The Umpire Capsule appeared in the midst of them all, the chapel carried by its three mechanical giants. It blinked into being. The door opened, and three kids stepped out, accompanied by a small, lively, and curious bacterium.

  Gwynyfer Gwarnmore saw her father, the duke, and hobbled toward him.

  “Why, hullo, old thing,” said the duke, putting his arms around her. “Living and breathing?”

  “Only just.”

  “We’ve had a frightful time of it since you’ve been gone.”

  The Empress roared, “Is there no decorum?”

  Gwynyfer Gwarnmore bowed painfully before her ruler. She spoke the formal greeting. She introduced Brian and Gregory as if they’d never been at court before. She said nothing about Tars the friendly germ.

  Then there was a whoosh, and one of the Rules Keepers was among them. It could not be seen, except perhaps by the Court’s wizards. Everyone could feel it towering over them however.

  The Earl of Munderplast stepped forward in his muddy robes and bowed to the empty air. He declared, “The Court of Her Sublime Highness Elspeth, the Empress of Old Norumbega, New Norumbega, and the Whole Dominion of the Innards, Electoress of the Bladders, Queen of the Gastric Wastes, Sovereign of Ducts Superior and Inferior WELCOMES the Rules Keepers established by ancient custom in the Treaty of Pellerine, and we delight that they enter our Empress’s divine and fearsome presence.”

  The three mechanical guardians of the capsule turned their heads toward the Empress Elspeth.

  “The.” — “Rules.” — “Keepers.” — “Greet.” — “The.” — “Empress.” — “Of.” — “Norumbega.”

  She nodded.

  “The.” — “Rules.” — “Keepers.” — “Have.” — “Determined.” — “That.” — “The.” — “Thusser.” — “Horde.” — “Were.” — “In.” — “Violation.” — “Of.” — “The.” — “Agreed.” — “Terms.” — “Of.” — “The.” — “Contest.” There was a pause. “Accordingly.” — “The.” — “Thusser.” — “Are.” — “Banished.”

  There was a ragged cheer. The Council was relieved.

  The Empress said, “Old Norumbega is ours again? The whole kingdom under the mountain?”

  “Old.” — “Norumbega.” — “Is.” — “Yours.” — “In.” — “Title.” — “Full.” — “And.” — “Clear.”

  “Well, that is just delightful. Things had gotten a little grimmers around here.”

  General Malark stepped forward and bowed first at the Empress, then at the unseen Rules Keeper. “Your Highness,” he said, “the Mannequin Army shall make immediate preparations for the evacuation of the Great Body. With the submarines we have seized, we will start to shuttle civilians down to Three-Gut and to the portal between the worlds. We should be able to empty the Great Body of both breathing and mechanical Norumbegans within two weeks.”

  Brian’s heart swelled with joy. The mannequins were going to make it out of the Great Body. And their onetime masters, too. The City of Gargoyles, empty for centuries, would be full of people. Everyone was going to be safe. They wouldn’t have to trust this strange, mammoth creature in which blood-tides were changing. The landscape was rumbling and at any moment, thousands of miles could be swamped in goo.

  He and the others had done a good job, he realized. They had stuck with their mission, in spite of everything — all of them working together. It was over. Things could get back to how they were before the Thusser invaded the old country, four hundred long years earlier.

  Brian smiled at Gregory and Gwynyfer. Victory was sweet.

  Lord Attleborough-Stoughton was the first to step forward in protest. “Your Highness,” said his lordship, sweeping his dusty top hat off his head. “We cannot possibly leave the Great Body. We have built an empire here. It would be” — he paused briefly to think — “It would be unpatriotic.”

  Duke Gwarnmore was the next to speak up. “Attleborough-Stoughton is right, ma’am. We can’t possibly leave. Anyone who suggests crawling back to that hole under the mountain is a defeatist.”

  “Probably a traitor,” said Attleborough-Stoughton. “A thin-blooded traitor and a fool. No true Norumbegan.”

  Duke Gwarnmore said, “If the bally manns are suggesting we do a thing, why the deuce should we do it? They’re nothing but windup upstarts. Rebels.”

  Brian goggled. They were saying these things, he could tell, just because they didn’t want to lose their position and their land. He burbled, “Don’t listen to them!” And to the men themselves: “You’re just — both of you — you just don’t want to give up your railroads! And your estates! But no one can stay here! You can’t!”

  “The baboon’s right,” said the Empress Elspeth. “We can’t stay here. Who knows when this awful body will get up on its haunches and suddenly up will be down and we’ll all be washed to kingdom come.”

  “We don’t know it has haunches,” said Duke Gwarnmore. “We don’t know that it has any limbs at all. We could be perfectly safe.”

  There was a murmur of “Mm, yes,” among the courtiers. They all had property they wanted to protect. And it was beneath them to evacuate, like a bunch of superstitious peasants in head scarves. None of them wanted to abandon their domains and their plantations and their fortresses in the kinks of ducts.

  “No one can make us do a thing,” said the Duchess Gwarnmore. “We are Norumbegans.”

  Brian said, “You can’t — you can’t just endanger everyone in the empire, all your subjects, just so you can keep ahold of some stupid spleen or something! And the railroads! All of you? This is crazy!”

  He wouldn’t have been ab
le to speak that way to adults, just a few weeks earlier. But he could tell that in this case, it wasn’t a bad thing to shout.

  The Empress seemed to agree with him. “It does seem a little shabby to squat here, chaps, when there’s a whole castle and some first-rate boulevards waiting for us back in the old home.” She squinted into the distance. “Attleborough-Stoughton,” she said, “your railroads are under this noisome swamp. That’s a thing that requires a thorough thinking-over.”

  This didn’t worry his lordship. “Subaquatic railroad cars!” Attleborough-Stoughton exclaimed. “If we can’t drain the lake.”

  “Lakefront property,” said Duke Gwarnmore. “We all of us own a great deal of it, now.”

  “Lakefront property!” agreed his wife. “He’s not wrong about that! I see resorts! Grand hotels! Waterskiing! Paddle boats! Women in white with parasols estivating in the ventricles!”

  “Yes,” cried Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, “on the shores of Lake Elspeth.”

  Now the Empress looked interested. “What was that?” she said. “It could be called Lake Elspeth?”

  “Of course, Your Sublime Highness,” said Duke Gwarnmore, bowing.

  Brian was hysterical with anger. “What are you talking about?” he cried. “You’re all going to die! You’re going to be digested or … or … or smooshed…. or …”

  “Tell the little mite to clamp his mouth shut,” said the Empress, “or we’re dunking him in Lake Elspeth.”

  The courtiers clapped at their sovereign’s wit.

  “Why,” she said, smiling out over her dominion, “it seems, lads and ladies, that the old Dry Heart ain’t quite so dry no more!”

  It was time for the capsule to go. It was going back to Earth, where it would be forever deactivated.

  Brian and Gregory were going back with it. Tars the joyous germ could tell something was happening, so he stuck by Brian’s side. He wanted to go wherever Brian was going.