The Chamber in the Sky Page 5

  “I have no idea what any of those things are.”

  “Of course you don’t, troll. You’re a machine of peace. I am a machine of war.”

  “I’m not just a machine of peace. I mean, you know, I smite. Well, I’ve smitten.”

  General Malark clapped him on the armor. “Good man,” he said. “Good man.” He put the clanksiege into gear and began stalking down the mound. The iron feet clomped down spills of concrete and broken glass. Over the grinding of the engine, Malark said, “Look, we’re going to need you, troll. We need someone who can see. The Norumbegans will never draw the damn lace curtain from our eyes. You’re the only one of us who knows what’s lying in heaps around us. We see ruin, too, but of fair palaces and goodly temples.”

  “Packing crates and aluminum ladders,” Kalgrash corrected.

  “Stay by me,” said General Malark. “We’re going to have to abandon some parts of the city and fortify other parts. You’ll have to tell us what’s really there.”

  The clanksiege strode across broken towers toward the Empress Elspeth and her Court.

  The Empress of the Innards was sitting in a folding metal chair under a tarpaulin held up by planks. Her maids-in-waiting were painting coats of arms on the tarp with poster paints. The Imperial Council and members of the Court sat around her on blankets and towels. There was Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, a captain of industry with a top hat and a ferocious mustache, sitting cross-legged on a traveling rug. There was the Earl of Munderplast, the Prime Minister, a gloomy old man dressed in medieval robes and a velvet cap, crouched uncomfortably on a beach towel. The Duke and Duchess Gwarnmore, Gwynyfer’s parents, lay back on a fine cotton sheet smudged with ash. The two of them were dressed for a picnic: she in a white summer dress, he in striped white trousers. A page boy stepped between the blankets, offering cucumber sandwiches.

  General Malark, the troll, and the two engineers climbed down from the clanksiege on rungs riveted onto the left leg. They approached the Imperial Presence.

  The General bowed. “General Malark of the Mannequin Army greets Her Sublime Highness, 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, Ruler of All. I come with a report.”

  The Empress Elspeth did not reply. She was a sly-looking woman with long, gray curls bound up in complications on her head. She wore regal robes and held a scepter. She stared at them all. The girls in their garlands painted sloppy shields on the tent behind her.

  General Malark said, “We’ve been reconnoitering, Your Highness.”

  She didn’t respond. She simply watched him.

  He said, “We’ve been looking at the city, ma’am. We’re coming up with a strategy to hold off the Thusser. Big question: how long it will take the Thusser to put together a submarine naval force that can navigate the flux.”

  The Empress of the Innards did not say anything.

  The General continued, “Ma’am, it’s clear: The best thing to do is to concentrate the city’s population. Gather them all on this hill, probably, and then fortify the jenkins out of the place. We don’t have time to surround the whole city with a wall.”

  The Empress said nothing. The girls behind her whispered softly while they painted.

  One of the councilors on the ground asked suspiciously, “General, who told you there isn’t a wall already? A large, beautiful wall of gold and chalcedony? How do you know that?”

  General Malark explained to the Empress, “If I am going to defend the city, ma’am, I will need to know whether there is a wall or not.”

  Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, frowning under his top hat, said, “Look here, Malark. Those railroads out there are my piece of earth. I can tell you they’re important. I want them protected.”

  Gwynyfer’s father, Duke Gwarnmore, complained, “Quite true, Malark. What we really want is for you to defend the whole city. Not just part of it.”

  General Malark winced. “There’s no time, sir.”

  “Well, that seems awfully moldy for the people who’ll lose their homes.”

  “We cannot fortify the entirety of New Norumbega before the Thusser arrive.”

  “But, I say, Malark,” Duke Gwarnmore protested, “you can’t just chuck half the city!”

  “It’ll be more like three-fourths,” said General Malark. And to the Empress, he said, “I am sorry, ma’am.”

  One of the maids-in-waiting stopped painting and said, “Your Highness, my colors are getting muddy. I think the awful Clarice is dabbing her green in the red pot.”

  “Am not,” muttered Clarice. “Stinko to you, Brendolyn.”

  The Empress did not respond. Her face was taut and furious.

  Duke Gwarnmore drew himself up and put his arm around his knees. “Your Highness, we cannot have this mannequin talking of chopping up the ruddy city. We can’t ask our citizens to abandon their homes.”

  Lord Attleborough-Stoughton said, “See here, I want to talk about this question of the railroads. Those are my tracks, and only a damn fool would try to tell me whether they should be defended or not.”

  Suddenly, the Empress Elspeth rapped out, “Will all of you keep clacking on when your Empress sits still? I have not yet admitted this … personage … into my Imperial presence.” She gestured at Malark. She said, “He calls himself the general of the Mannequin Army.”

  “Your Highness,” said Malark, “I am General of the Mannequin Army.”

  “There is no Mannequin Army. Not yet, General. There is no separate mannequin kingdom. There is no mannequin republic. There is only one empire, and it is mine”

  Kalgrash stepped forward. He said, “Your Highness, does it really matter? I mean, what you call the army? We’re defending you, and after we’ve defended you, you’re going to give us our own republic in the guts. The name — who cares about the name? We have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks.”

  “It matters a terrible lot, actually. Because if that thing is called the general of the Mannequin Army, then there is a Mannequin Army. But you are not another army. You are not my allies. You are my own army. You are my subjects. You are my servants. You, sir, are General Malark of the Norumbegan Army, or you are nothing — and until you bow before me, and call yourself General Malark of the Norumbegan Army —”

  General Malark said, “Ma’am, we fought to a truce. You agreed to recognize the claims of mannequin independence —”

  “Once you won your territory back from the Thusser.”

  General Malark took two steps away from the pavilion. Then he took three steps back toward the Empress. He said, “Ma’am, I am prepared to defend your city with my life. But until I am recognized as the general of a free Mannequin Army, we will not put one spade or shovel into the dirt — we will not put one stone on top of another stone —”

  “No!” said the Empress. “You will not! You are forbidden! Until then, you are an enemy army! An occupying force! Submit to me, mannequin. Bow. Say your true rank: General of the Norumbegan Army.”

  “This is treachery,” complained General Malark.

  “It is entirely according to the terms of our truce. You do not become your own separate nation until the Thusser are defeated. Until then, turn a nice leg, bow, and declare yourself mine.”

  General Malark turned and marched off. His engineers and Kalgrash, startled, looked around at the snickering Council, then followed.

  As the chugging of the clanksiege started up and the machine began to stomp away through the ruins, the Empress settled back on her seat and reached for a glass of iced tea.

  “Your Sublime Highness,” said the Earl of Munderplast, her old, grouchy Prime Minister, “was it really wise to bicker over names with the one man who may defend this city against the Thusser invader?”

  “He’ll be back, Munderplast,” said the Empress Elspeth. “He can’t help himself. He’s built to love me.”

  “And who isn’
t, Your Sublime Highness?” said a doting bishop.

  “Exacters. On the button.” She squinted at the silhouette of the retreating clanksiege. “I don’t like that troll overly much. We can’t have anyone telling the manns what’s what. Nothing like a spot of blindness to keep them marching in single file.” She considered. “One of you kill the troll. Deactivate him. Magnetize him. I don’t care. Things will be easier when he’s unspooled.”

  She turned to the side. “Oh, Clarice,” she said, “you are an awful girl. Your lions look like wombats. And what are they doing, dear? There’s a difference between rampant and hitchhiking.”

  She sighed. In heraldry, as in everything else, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

  The children rode the currents of the blood.

  At first, their plan was to wait for the fire to burn out, then return to the magnetic dock.

  They waited a long time. They knew that Dr. Brundish would be waiting, too. Brian pictured the ghastly man standing in his grubby robes and top hat, pistol drawn.

  An hour passed, or two. They argued about whether they should go back or not.

  Gregory and Gwynyfer won the argument, and they all sat tight. Gregory had put himself in charge of the control levers.

  Brian sat with his knees up against his chest.

  A fan clunked as it circulated the air, trying to filter out the smoke. The kids kept coughing. They’d shut the engine off to conserve gas.

  When more time had passed, Gregory and Gwynyfer agreed to go back to the hermit’s hut.

  But by that time, they discovered they’d drifted. They turned on the electric lights fastened to the hull of the little sub and discovered they were passing through a forest of bloodweed, pushed along by some mysterious tide. They had no idea how far they were from the Dry Heart, let alone the airlock at the boathouse.

  Gregory swore. He kept swearing for some time.

  Gwynyfer clearly didn’t like it. She turned away and stared out another window.

  “We’ve got to go back,” Brian said.

  “Where’s back?” Gwynyfer said. “We don’t know how to navigate in the flux.”

  “Against the current,” said Brian.

  Gregory turned on the motor. The sub chugged along for a while, but the current seemed to have slackened. They couldn’t tell which direction they were headed in. They got angry at one another.

  Brian pictured the ex-archbishop lying on his kitchen floor, bleeding.

  The submarine dinghy chugged through some unnamed vein, moving in some direction, and they hoped they’d run into something that would let them disembark before their air ran out.

  After a while, they turned off the motor, turned out the lights, and went to sleep.

  When they woke up, they didn’t know how long they’d slept. Nothing much was different outside the windows. A school of something yellow scissored past.

  “There’s the wall of the artery,” said Brian.

  “Vein,” Gregory corrected.

  Brian clammed up. Gregory didn’t know whether it was a vein or artery any better than he did. Gregory just wanted to correct him. In fact, Brian suspected that Gregory didn’t even know the difference between a vein and an artery.

  Just when Brian was about to say that out loud, he realized that he also couldn’t remember the difference between a vein and an artery. He knew one took blood away from the heart, and the other took blood toward the heart, but he couldn’t remember which did which. And he didn’t know which direction this particular blood vessel led — toward or away from which heart?

  “Do you think we’ll die in this dinghy?” Gwynyfer asked, as if she were about to take bets. “I’d be awfully glad of a deviled egg right about nowish.”

  The two boys didn’t answer.

  The dinghy puttered on toward nothing. They followed the curve of the wall, seeking other airlocks, other docks, other subs.

  Brian was starting to panic. The space was too enclosed. There were only a few cubic feet of cushion, hull, and rivets. The air was getting too hot. The seats smelled of salt and iron. He could tell that there was gasoline in the air. The fan blew raggedly and unevenly. Brian swallowed and coughed.

  Suddenly, he wanted to unscrew the door.

  Yes, he knew they’d be flooded. But just to be able to move freely … to move his arms easily again, even for a few seconds …

  He knew it was just panic. He knew he had to control himself. But he didn’t know how he was going to.

  “Do you think there are other Great Bodies?” Gregory asked. “I mean, outside of this one?”

  Brian felt like he was about to scream.

  Gwynyfer shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a theologian. There are people who say that if we could just get outside the Great Body, we’d find ourselves in a herd of them, all these massive thingies progressing toward some burning light. And that there would be whole other civilizations inside the other bodies, and we could travel and meet them, which would be jolly.” She played with her hair, twisting it around her fingers. “But I don’t —”

  “I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT!” Brian shouted suddenly. “I CAN’T! I CAN’T! I CAN’T!”

  He started pounding on the hull. The whole thing wobbled with his blows. He scrabbled around on the cushions. Gregory reached out to grab him.

  “Brian! Bri! Bri!”

  Brian was having trouble breathing. Felt like he was choking. No air. His breath came hard. He gagged. Grabbing at his throat. Nothing left in his chest.

  Gregory was saying something to him — he had to get out — he had to —

  Gregory put his hand over Brian’s eyes. “Stop it, Brian!” he said firmly. “Stop it. Picture us on a … a wide plain. With lots of grass.”

  “We’re not! I can’t breathe!”

  “Picture yourself. As much space as you need. Sure, it’s a little hot. That’s cause we’re in Iowa in the middle of the summer. Big sky. Big, big sky, Bri.”

  “There’s a gas station by the side of the road,” Gwynyfer sang out seductively, and not entirely kindly, “where you can get a double-pack of snack chips …”

  Gregory insisted, “Picture the big sky. Picture the field.”

  “Picture the snack chips. Picture the mini-donut gems. Picture the beef jerky.”

  “All right,” said Brian, not entirely gratefully.

  They could hear his breathing slow down. They all just sat there. No one moved.

  The dinghy dropped deeper and deeper into unknown territory.

  And then Gwynyfer called out softly, “As it happens, chappies, we’re saved.” Her voice was drunk with excitement. “Looky, looky. An extraction station.”

  They looked out the portholes and saw some vast factory floating in the ooze, a huge assemblage of metal cylinders turning slowly in the currents. Each arm of the thing was capped with a sieve or a funnel. The arms swung past them — or they puttered between them. Huge black shapes wheeled in the green darkness.

  “They’re run by mannequins, usually,” said Gwynyfer. “They get various minerals and things out of the blood. Then they sell them to us. They’ll let us dock there. They’ll tell us how to get back to the Dry Heart — or down to Two-Gut where the Umpire is. And most important, they’ll arrange a lavatory.” She beat for joy on the port-hole glass.

  Then a light flashed on them. It shot through the portholes. Gwynyfer waved. She blew a kiss. The spotlight moved on past, cutting through the gloom. It disappeared.

  “Hey!” said Gregory, as if someone out in the bloodstream could hear him. “Where do we go to land?” He steered his way around the facility, looking for someplace they could dock. The whole metal surface of the extraction station was slick with algae, or something like it.

  They found a row of hatches of different sizes. There was a small lamp lighting them.

  “There are no other subs here,” said Gregory. “Shouldn’t there be other people? Where’s the spotlight that caught us a minute ago?”

/>   No one knew.

  With a magnetic clank, the dinghy attached to the skin of the factory and hung there.

  The doors were right up against one another. The dinghy slid on grooves until it was locked in place. Gregory shut off the engine.

  “Am I amazing at steering or what?” said Gregory. “I could be the star of a submarine cop show.”

  Gwynyfer and Brian were already stooping by the dinghy’s hatch. Gwynyfer said, “Bri-Bri wants space to scream in, and I have to find a little room where an up-and-coming duchess can do the necessary.”

  They fumbled excitedly with cranks. They figured out how to work a small hand-pump that forced out the watery flux from between the two hulls.

  They threw open the dinghy’s hatch. With some difficulty, they reached around it and swung wide the hatch into the factory.

  They stumbled out into a docking bay, ready for welcome.

  But something was very, very wrong.

  The docking bay was lit with a dim, bare bulb. The iron walls were scarred and discolored. Someone had spray-painted a Norumbegan rune again and again on all the doors. The rune read: Closed.

  “No,” said Gwynyfer. “A girl doesn’t take closed for an answer. My bladder is going to burst like a Christmas cracker.”

  Gregory asked playfully, “Do future duchesses talk about their bladders?”

  Gwynyfer went over and tugged the door handles. “If they don’t, they explode into shreds, and then they never get to be duchesses at all.”

  The kids were unhappy to find two of the doors locked.

  But they were even more unhappy, somehow, when the third door was ajar.

  It seemed like the place might have been abandoned in a hurry.

  The hallway beyond was dark. A faint, clammy breeze blew out of the shadows. Gwynyfer flicked a toggle switch.