Empire of Gut and Bone Read online

  And then the troll was shouting and Gregory was laughing and Dantsig was threatening to put out his own eyes with a screwdriver if they didn’t shut up.

  Finally, they just turned to the windows and all stared out at the passing duct. Gregory had a slight smile on his lips. Brian looked anxious.

  The sub hummed on toward New Norumbega.

  The boys were asleep when the submarine docked. It was many hours later, and thousands of leagues of dull green had smeared past the portholes.

  Clamps locked down the sub. The boys could feel the sound of screws and winches through their feet. The hide of the sub rattled.

  “New Norumbega,” said Dantsig, draped casually over some oxygen tanks. He rose. “Time for the exchange, kids. Put on your best smiles and your bow ties.”

  Sailors in finned helmets pulled down a ladder and released the hatch. They led Dantsig, Gregory, Brian, and Kalgrash up into a clammy circular stairwell. The stairs were rusted. The little party ascended.

  “Prepare yourselves,” said Dantsig. “Keep your cool. Sure, New Norumbega’s fancy. But they want to hear what you have to say. Hold your chins up high and keep your hands in the open.”

  At the top, there was another hatch. Dantsig unscrewed it and raised himself up into brilliant light. The others followed.

  It took some moments for their eyes to adjust. They were standing on a bright, salty plain. The overwhelming light came from seams in the sky shining whitely. Distantly, several figures labored toward them across the granules.

  There, beneath the harsh light of strange veins, was a shantytown made of planks, old iron, and what looked to be clippings of flesh. Rising up in the middle was a great lumpy tower the color of beef jerky, with wooden gantries hanging on the side of it and uneven turrets sprouting out of the top. It looked like a potbellied stove with five chimneys.

  “There it is,” Dantsig announced. “New Norumbega. Home of the Emperor. Capital of the Empire of the Innards.”

  SEVEN

  That’s the palace?” Gregory protested. “Looks more like a slum.”

  Dantsig snorted. “If that’s a slum, I’d like to see the cities back on Earth.”

  “Pflundt is nicer than that,” said Brian. “Your own fortress.”

  Dantsig looked at them, unbelieving. “You two are feeding me the biscuit, right? Because that place is stumendous.”

  Brian was about to say something further when trumpets began to play a fanfare. The Imperial delegation was approaching.

  Two ranks of armed elfin soldiers accompanied several royal carts pulled by several of the headless, seven-legged beasts that had drawn Dantsig’s sleigh. The beasts were marked with tribal paint in broad stripes of white or spots of earthen red. The carts they lugged were adorned with golden canopies and symbols of power jutting up on staves. Strings of beads hung from their rigging, glittering in the brilliant light.

  On the foremost cart rode the heralds, blowing their trumpets and ghoul-snouted trombones. In the next cart rode a crowd of sullen, imperious courtiers, jostled by the uneven terrain. The men wore navy blazers. The women wore suits with matching skirts and little jackets in coral pink or powder blue.

  Then came another cart with an oldish man on a throne. And behind him finally, a cart with racks of immobile heads — the dismantled prisoners, Brian guessed, who would be exchanged for him and Gregory. The mannequin heads stared sullenly in front of them. They were surrounded by guards.

  “There they are,” whispered Dantsig. “Everyone wins. You get to talk to the Emperor. We free the heads. The Court hears your spiel about the Thusser Horde.”

  Brian held his hand above his eyes to cut down on the glare. The carts were pulling up in front of them. He was excited, but anxious. He couldn’t believe that, after all this time, he was finally going to meet the Norumbegans. He examined them closely — these mysterious eldritch beings who had, in ancient days, created the Game and the City of Gargoyles.

  A herald climbed down from the cart and approached Dantsig. He asked a question in the language of the Norumbegans. Immediately, Brian, Gregory, and Kalgrash could feel images and traces of language sliding across their minds, the psychic residue of Norumbegan speech.

  Dantsig responded. The herald nodded. Dantsig pointed to the kids and explained something. He and the herald spoke briefly.

  Then the herald turned toward the throne cart and cried in English, “Dantsig, Explorer, calling himself Envoy of the Mannequin Resistance, requests permission to approach the cart of His Excellency the Imperial Regent, Duke Telliol-Bornwythe.”

  The man on the throne said something to a page boy in a parti-colored tunic who stood up and repeated in a high, girlish voice, “His Excellency, the Imperial Regent graciously grants Automaton Dantsig’s supplication for an audience and demands said Dantsig to approach the Glory Float accompanied by the two children of Earth.”

  “Showtime,” muttered Dantsig. He bowed and stepped forward.

  Kalgrash began to follow, but the Regent quickly whispered something to his page boy, who announced, in his piping tremble, “No such audience has been granted to the automaton troll champion, who shall remain motionless until such time as he is granted permission to stir.”

  “Oh, I’ll stir,” muttered Kalgrash. “A big cauldron of butt-kick.” Still, he remained behind.

  Gregory, Brian, and Dantsig approached the throne on its float. The noblemen and women watched this pageant silently, drinking mint juleps.

  Now that the carts were close, Brian could see that the glittering ornaments were not all of great expense. The poles were strung with rickrack. The beads that flapped along the canopies were cheap baubles for dress-up.

  He was surprised, too, by the figure on the Glory Float, Duke Telliol-Bornwythe. The old man wore a silver wig and a velvet frock coat, but the frock coat was worn, the gold braid rubbed almost white near the buttons. One knee of his silken breeches had been scraped on something long before, and was almost worn through.

  The page boy engaged Dantsig in a long conversation in Norumbegan, prodded by the Regent on the throne. At last, the Regent himself spoke.

  “Still in English, hmm?” he said. “Very well.” He clicked his tongue in his mouth, as if getting used to the language. He took out a pair of round sunglasses with scratched lenses and put them on. He asked, “You are Dantsig?”

  Dantsig bowed. “Your Excellency is gracious to admit me into your august presence. I come as an envoy from General Malark of the Mannequin Resistance.”

  “There is no Mannequin Resistance.”

  “I am myself a member of the Resistance, Your Excellency.”

  “I proclaim there is no such thing. There cannot be.”

  “There is.”

  “No. There could never be. Automatons cannot rebel. So we recognize no Mannequin Resistance. There is no General Malark. There is, I believe, a Mr. Malark, automaton. He has no rank.”

  “He is our general, sir.”

  “He has no rank. There is only one army — the Imperial Army of Norumbega. Mr. Malark is no longer part of it, having fled into disgrace.”

  “I come, sir,” Dantsig insisted, “from the Mannequin Resistance, and — ”

  “I have said there is no such body. You will not contravene my word, automaton.”

  Dantsig bowed his head and frowned.

  The Regent looked at the two boys. “My lads, you are Gregory Stoffle and Brian Thatz? You have the misfortune to be human?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Brian. “We’re human.”

  “Ah well,” said the Regent delicately. “Nothing we can do about that now.” He turned to Dantsig. “You did the right thing to bring them to us. Thank you. You are a good little servant.”

  Dantsig smiled suavely — though Brian could tell the man was livid with anger. “I didn’t bring them on your account,” Dantsig said. “I brought them for the exchange of prisoners.”

  “As I say, you are a perfect little servant. You’ve done exactly wh
at you should.”

  “We didn’t bring them so you could —”

  “You know your master’s will.”

  “With the respect due your title, sir, you aren’t my master. I just —”

  “Am I not? Well, you’ve done exactly what I wanted. And you are an automaton.”

  “But I didn’t … I’m here for them,” he pointed at the heads on the cart.

  “Them?” said the Regent. “They’re nothing. They’re heads. Shut off. They’re going nowhere.”

  “We’ll check them for damage when we get them on the sub,” said Dantsig with a hint of defiance in his voice. He no longer looked directly at the Regent. He looked at the dark shadow on the salt beneath the Regent’s cart, as if he couldn’t meet the Regent’s eyes.

  “You won’t be getting back on your submarine, Mr. Dantsig. Those machines are going nowhere. And neither are you.”

  Dantsig looked, shocked, at the Regent. “You wouldn’t break your word!” he protested. “A Norumbegan nobleman never breaks his word!”

  “You can’t make a promise to an automaton,” said the Regent. “Any more than you can pledge something to a toaster. Saying something to an automaton is like speaking in an empty room.”

  Dantsig roughly grabbed Brian and Gregory by their collars and was about to haul them backward toward the valve. Gregory and Brian exchanged a look: panic.

  They heard the whistle as Kalgrash started to swing his blade.

  The marines in their finned helmets raised wands.

  Dantsig pulled the boys back from the cart. They stumbled over the mounded ground toward the valve.

  “I’ve got your back, Dantsig,” called Kalgrash. “Just tell me when you want the smiting to begin.”

  “You won’t take the humans,” the Regent demanded. “You are my servant.”

  “I am not your —”

  “Perhaps I may say something that shall convince you.”

  “I cannot listen to you, sir.”

  “Hush, hush. Hush, my boy. In the base of these carts that surround you are electromagnets. If my page activates them, you, your cronies, and your quaint troll will collapse with all memory erased and your workings irrevocably garbled. So freeze. Release the children. Let them come to me.”

  Dantsig stood defiantly. “Breathers!” he swore. “You never keep your word. You never follow your own rules!”

  “Guards, get the children away from the rogue.”

  “If I could curse you …! If I could curse you …!” Dantsig kept yelling. He did not meet the Norumbegan Regent’s eyes.

  “But you can’t. You can’t say a word against me.”

  Guards stepped forward to guide Gregory and Brian away from the automaton. Dantsig yanked them back.

  Suddenly, Dantsig raised his head and looked right at the Regent. “If you’re a danger to the Norumbegan nation, I can. Then I can eliminate you.” He nodded. “And maybe you are. And if that’s the case, then it’s my duty to protect the other breathers, the other Norumbegans. I’m allowed to do that. I’m required to.”

  “Careful,” said the Regent. “He appears dangerous.”

  “It would be my duty to remove you,” said Dantsig.

  “Dangerous and boringly talkative.”

  “It would be my duty to destroy you, just like you shut us off. I could challenge you to a duel. I could fight you on the battlefield. I could kill you while you slept.”

  The Regent said something to his page boy, who rose with a dial in his hand. He turned the dial slightly. There was a hum.

  Dantsig swayed. He looked terrified.

  With a clank, Kalgrash fell to his knees.

  “No!” Brian screamed. “No! Don’t!”

  Gregory ran toward the Glory Float. “Stop it, please!” said Gregory. “We’ll come with you!”

  “Please!” said Brian, running to Dantsig’s side.

  The Regent didn’t smile. He didn’t alter his face in any way. He simply muttered a command, and the boy turned off the current.

  Dantsig sat on the hot granules beneath him. He was breathing heavily. His hands fluttered near his heart.

  “So, Mr. Dantsig,” said the Regent. “I am afraid you shall be detained at our pleasure, along with your troll champion and your guards. The children shall be presented to His Sublime Highness, the Emperor of Old Norumbega, New Norumbega, and the Whole Dominion of the Innards, Elector of the Bladders, Prince of the Gastric Wastes, Sovereign of Ducts Superior and Inferior, Lord of All. And he shall determine what shall be done with them.”

  Having said that, the Regent clapped, and his soldiers moved in to do his will.

  EIGHT

  An hour later, the boys were dragged to cocktail hour in the Grand Hall of the palace. Brian could not think, he was so worried about Kalgrash and Dantsig, who had been dragged off, bound. And now Gregory and he were surrounded by noblemen and duchesses, all of them eating cheese, drinking white wine, and talking at them.

  “Dear children, it is too, too lovely of you to come by.”

  “Must have been ghastly, being squeezed through the flux with those chitchatty appliances.”

  “Oh! One cannot bear them prancing around the blood, calling themselves a Resistance.”

  “Skidneys! Something must be done.”

  “Who’ll do it? Too dull, old fish. It’s just too weary-making.”

  “I agree, your lordship. One can’t dash off to war in a special hat every time a tin clothespress starts barking speeches about the rights of all to run through fields, hand in hand.”

  “Still, it must have been terrible for you boys. Being their prisoners and whatnot.”

  “Someday, we’ll bestir ourselves and give them a good, solid brass hiding.”

  “That’s what they need: taken across the knee. Walloped till their eyes juice up.”

  “Darling,” said a duchess, “I’m not sure a mannequin’s eyes juice.”

  “We’ll install ducts. They should ruddy well drop a tear with the rest of us.”

  It was almost impossible for Gregory and Brian to understand everything that was being said. One of the Court magicians had cast a spell of translation so they’d understand Norumbegan. Now it sounded like everyone was speaking English with an accent stranded halfway across the Atlantic between Britain and America, like someone who’d spent a year abroad and come back pretentious, or those actors from black-and-white 1930s films about rich New Yorkers dressed in tuxes and velvet who fall in love and end up tripping into bathtubs filled with champagne. With the help of the spell, the boys could tell what was being said, but they could also feel how much Norumbegan still slid past them in the ether, all the alien thoughts flowing across their brains like oil over a walnut.

  The Court was gathered to celebrate the boys and the news they brought from the Old Country. Nonspeaking robots with birdlike heads — much simpler automatons than any the boys had seen yet in all the catacombs and organs of the Empire — served little sandwiches on trays. They wandered stiffly through the crowd, their goggling glass eyes unseeing, offering party napkins and goodies on toothpicks. They wore long tabards of cheap felt in the colors of the Empire.

  The Grand Hall was built of huge curls of dried flesh, pink and strong as granite. The ceiling, however, was covered in acoustic tiles, most of which were webbed with brown water damage. A row of sliding glass doors jammed into bare plywood led out onto a veranda that looked down the slumping belly of the palace and over the city of New Norumbega.

  The boys had seen enough of the city as they’d rolled through to be depressed by its squalor. The Norumbegans were living in huts — brightly painted, but ramshackle. The streets were narrow and dirty. Broken chairs and chests of drawers leaned against walls. Men in swallowtailed coats and muddy spats ducked through doorways made out of old windows. Girls in torn ball gowns sat on roofs eating apples and hurling the cores over alleys. The whole city smelled like garbage.

  It had been hundreds of years since the Norumbegan refugee
s had arrived, but it seemed like they had never bothered to make themselves a true home.

  “You are wondering,” said an old, frowning man in a brocade frock coat, “why this city is so sunken in grime, when we were, in ancient days, such a noble race.” He was rather short, and his face hung sadly, and his voice sounded antique, slow, and gloomy, as if it echoed up from some old dungeon where he was sitting, slumped in despair. “You are wondering how we came to this sorry state.”

  “Um, yeah,” said Gregory. “This is nice and all, but the real Norumbega didn’t smell like compost.”

  “The real Norumbega. Yes. The Old Norumbega. Ah! Ancient days, now faded.” The old man shook his head, looking around the Court sadly. He explained, “Forgive me: I am a most gloomy wight. We are in this state, living in these decayed corridors, because we have been abandoned by our automatons.”

  “So we heard,” Gregory said.

  The old man shook his head. He said, “Came our sad and bedraggled horde through the portal, fleeing from the Thusser, and we assayed to build a new City of Gargoyles right in that place, in Three-Gut, and to live there in splendor and merry might. The automatons began to quarry walls and courtyards from the flesh, and had gone some way toward building another city of broad boulevards and fair turrets — when the Great Body swallowed. Alas.” He shook his head. “Alas. ‘Twas a fearsome epoch: the Season of Meals. The whole of what the machines had built was washed away. Many of our number were washed away, too, and we suspect that buried deep in the gut, there are still colonies of our people who have not, for untold ages, struggled up to find us.

  “When the flood was passed, we demanded our automatons begin once more. Again they built, and again the Great Body swallowed, and our city was washed away. We now spake sharply to our servants and bade them shape up. They suggested we build in another place. We would have none of it, and ordered them to follow the plans we had originally set forth.

  “They went back to the tissue quarries and carved out more bricks and paving stones. But we could not help noticing that their numbers seemed to have dwindled. Many of them left us. They did not wish to be washed away. And yet, the brunch came again, roaring down the gullet like a spring freshet, and many mannequins were destroyed. Most of the others fled, too frightened of our wrath to speak out against us.