The Chamber in the Sky Read online

  There was a long, brown metal corridor. It was lit by one single bulb, halfway down. The other bulbs had been removed.

  They no longer joked or talked. They carefully stepped through the portal and made their way down the hallway. Their footfalls made the metal ring dully. It was the only sound they heard.

  “Should we keep going?” asked Brian in a voice that suggested he did not think that they should.

  The huge edifice was silent, save for the occasional creak.

  They walked down hallways and through abandoned offices.

  “You know what I just thought of?” whispered Brian. “This place was run by mannequins. I bet they left it behind when they all banded together to attack New Norumbega.”

  “You know what I just thought of?” whispered Gwynyfer. “Mannequins don’t have toilets.”

  And with that, she disappeared.

  Gregory gasped and turned.

  She was gone.

  She’d swerved into a side room. Or had been pulled.

  They were worried until they heard her voice. She continued, echoing, “So any little place will do.”

  She slammed the door shut.

  They waited for her to come out.

  They stared at each other, leaning against opposite walls of the metal corridor. They could faintly feel the station turning in the murk.

  The sounds from within the side room were very faint. They could hear Gwynyfer walk a few steps.

  Then everything fell silent.

  Gregory crossed his legs. He and Brian looked nervously up and down the corridor.

  Brian was suddenly worried about Gwynyfer. He watched the door. He wondered how long it took girls to pee.

  And then, far away, there were footsteps.

  They were lonely, slow footsteps, heard through stairwells and control rooms and cold furnaces. Walking slowly, deliberately, toward the kids. The kind of footsteps that might be made by a corpse forced to wander through an endless underworld of empty metal rooms.

  Gregory and Brian looked wildly at each other.

  “Of course there’s someone,” hissed Brian. “We knew that. Whoever shined the spotlight on us.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Gregory.

  Brian shook his head. “I don’t, either.”

  The footsteps had picked up their pace. Now they were jogging down circular metal stairs.

  Gregory tapped on the door. “Gwynyfer! Someone’s coming!”

  She knew enough not to make a joke. She opened the door and peered out. “Oh no,” she said.

  “Back to the dinghy,” said Brian. His face was white.

  They quickly — but quietly — padded back the way they had come.

  But the clamor was getting closer. They weren’t going to make it.

  No way they could get back to the sub.

  The metal floors around them rang with thuds.

  They hid under desks. The three of them were lined up, crouching with chairs pulled in close to their faces.

  They did not lift their heads to look when the footfalls slowed. Someone was in the room with them. Someone’s breath was fast and thrilled.

  They heard the slight clack of metal. Iron things scraping across other iron things.

  Out of the dark stepped a man — a Thusser man — with high, pointed ears and the black-rimmed eyes of the Thusser. The orbs of the eyes themselves were wet and dark, all pupil, no white. His face was as round as a baby’s. He wore a long Thusser coat but also a harness with many straps, and off those straps hung knives and sickles and jagged tools for cutting and torture. They jingled gently as he walked.

  He could not stop licking his lips. His tongue came out of his mouth and squirmed, and went back in and once again lolloped out. His head jerked as he sought his prey.

  Crunched up beneath a desk, behind a chair, clutching his own knees, Brian realized: Before they’d left New Norumbega, the kids had heard that the Thusser were trying to seize on subs so they could assault the Dry Heart. This base might not have been abandoned by the mannequins when the mechanical servants went up to the capital to conduct their rebellion. It might have been abandoned when the mannequins realized that the Thusser were coming, that the Horde was searching out all the arteries and veins for submarines of all shapes and sizes to carry their armies.

  This lone Thusser, Brian realized, had probably been left to guard this site and trap anyone who landed here.

  Brian hid his face. He felt like if he didn’t see the Thusser, there was somehow less chance the Thusser would see him.

  He saw that Gregory, next to him, was actually shaking with fear.

  Two knives rasped together. The Thusser walked slowly through the room. Brian could hear thick breathing as the man licked his own lips.

  Brian lifted his head a little. He regretted it: His shirt rustled.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The legs were right near him. Under the long Thusser coat, the man wore blue polyester tracksuit bottoms. They were too long for him, and their dragging cuffs were wet, smeared black, and torn where he walked on them. His feet were bare, coated in cracked mud like alligator skin.

  The Thusser stood near Brian and sighed — a weird, high sound like a little girl who wanted friends.

  He shuffled his feet.

  And then he dove and yanked the chairs out.

  Two hundred miles away, mannequins were stacking muscle to build a wall. They had manufactured cranes out of wood. They were gouging out the fabric of the Dry Heart to raise up some kind of fort that might withstand attack.

  Kalgrash the troll was surprised.

  He walked past the quarries, carrying a shovel. He had put aside his battle-ax for a few days until it was needed for smiting.

  He found General Malark in a hut, talking with the military engineers.

  “Reporting for duty,” said Kalgrash.

  “Good man,” said Malark. He made a couple of final marks in grease pencil on the plans, then rose.

  He and Kalgrash went walking along the wall. “Tell me what you see,” said Malark.

  “What I’m surprised to see,” the troll said, “is that you’re building a wall for the Court at all. I thought you told the Empress yesterday that you weren’t going to lift a finger till they agreed to call you the Mannequin Army. And here you are, sir — building a wall.”

  Malark stopped short, and looked out over the construction. On the other side of the wall rose the ruins of the palace and the Imperial Plaza. Giant chunks of heart jerky were being lowered into place, blocking the view.

  “True,” he agreed. “I am building a wall.” He nodded his head toward it. The wall was not yet very tall. It was pink and striped. “But the Court will have to decide which side of it they want to be on. Tomorrow, it’s going to take a sharp turn — there. They’ll notice that it isn’t a wall around the palace. It runs next to the palace. But unless they change their tune, it’s going to enclose what used to be called the Easybones Quarter.” He smacked his shins together sharply and kept walking. “Our duty is to protect the Norumbegan people. Not the Empress Herself. (May the sun always shine on her radiant face.) So yes, Mr. Kalgrash, we’re building a wall. We’re raising up a fort to repel the Thusser menace. And we will protect anyone who requests our aid and asylum. But unless the Court sends a petition to General Malark of the Mannequin Army, they will discover themselves to be sitting outside that wall when the Horde arrives.” He swiveled his head and said, “Incidentally, you’re being followed by two young gentlemen. You’ve noticed?”

  Kalgrash nodded. “They seem really friendly. I mean, they haven’t talked to me yet, but they showed up this morning and they’ve been walking around with me everywhere. They’re kind of bashful. They keep on hiding behind stuff. But they must have heard about my exploits.”

  “Smiting, Mr. Kalgrash?”

  “Exactly. All the smiting.”

  “Good. But you might want to —”

  At that moment, there was a rumble, and
everything rippled. The ground shook. People shrieked in surprise.

  Malark ducked down, grabbed the troll’s arm.

  Both of them squatted behind rubble.

  “Earthquake,” said Malark.

  They looked up.

  The shaking had dislodged one of the huge blocks from the wall. It was toppling over. Mannequins were running from the collapse.

  The block hit the ground with a dull thud.

  “What was that?” asked Kalgrash.

  “Don’t know,” muttered Malark. “Let’s get back to HQ and find out.”

  An hour later, they knew. Everyone in New Norumbega knew. Word had come through the radio. All over the city, people were panicked. They didn’t know what to do.

  For the first time in a century, one of the other hearts had beat.

  The Great Body was alive.

  Blades swung all around Brian — he ducked — the instruments of dismemberment and torture dangled from their harness straps, slapping together as the Thusser guard pulled him and Gregory out into the open.

  Brian scampered back against the desk.

  The baby-faced guard inspected them both with his black eyes, and inspected Gwynyfer, who he saw crouching still.

  He looked back at the boys. His tongue paddled at his lips.

  “I am nobly born,” said Gwynyfer. “You will want to ransom me.”

  The Thusser looked at them all again, this time with a terrible, wounded sadness, because he would have to kill ones so young.

  He gazed down at his array of cutting and sawing and gouging instruments. He touched a few, as if to remind himself to use them later — where the joints were particularly soft, perhaps, or the bone particularly sturdy.

  He yanked Gwynyfer out from under the desk. Wincing, she rose to her feet. She chanted out, “The Honorable Gwynyfer Gwarnmore, daughter of the Duke of the Globular Colon, who is himself of the Imperial Council of New Norumbega, submits to — your grip is rather clampish — listen, I am only submitting to you insofar as you are a representative of the Magister of the Thusser Horde. Is that understood? I don’t submit to you as a private person. Please state your rank and greet me with joy in your good fortune at so fine a capture.”

  The Thusser dragged Brian and Gwynyfer beside him and kicked Gregory along in front — the blond boy weaving and toppling, hardly able to catch breath.

  Gwynyfer, jerked along by her arm, was still trying to brightly convince the torturer that she was worth saving. “Oh yes, my friend, you’ll have a fine tale of honor and chivalry to tell your fellows, as you sit around in your barracks, eating rationed chocolate, playing sentimental tunes on the old upright piano, drinking toasts to the finest — must you drag so? What is your rank? Do you have a coat of arms? Who is your commanding officer? Take us to him at once! Announce me!”

  The Thusser kicked Gregory again, shoved Brian, grabbed Gregory briefly by the collar to get the kid sliding along in the right direction, and pushed them all into a workroom.

  Brian seized at one of the Thusser’s harness straps — hung for a second — and then, shoved again, he collapsed into the room, snapping the strap.

  The chamber’s walls were rounded — the inside of a metal drum. There were tables and vats and unlit furnaces.

  Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer were sprawled on the floor.

  The man dragged a huge cauldron and pushed it against the door. It must have weighed several hundred pounds. He’d blocked the way out. He went over to a table and took a machine out of a grubby plastic case. He started to set it up.

  Gwynyfer, with a hint of desperation in her voice, asked, “Oh, are you a hobbyist?”

  The guard plugged the machine in.

  Gwynyfer continued hopefully, “I think it’s a fine thing for a person to have a hobby. I may tell you that so famous a man as the Marquis of Holocrine Downsley chisels things into the likeness of bears.”

  It was at that moment that Brian looked up and saw several Norumbegans dangling from the ceiling.

  They were no longer humanoid in their shape. They had begun to spread out into the curved wall, their bodies casting out roots and fronds. The arms of one wound like a growth, no longer straightened by bone.

  Brian suspected they’d been captured in a submarine somewhere and dropped off here while the Thusser were performing a sweep of the vein. Now they were part of the place. He’d seen this happen to humans back on Earth: He’d seen how the Thusser Horde anchored themselves using the decomposing thoughts of others to plant their own lush dreams.

  Brian looked in horror at those brittle, half-human faces. The mouths were open. The ears were webbed to the metal around them. The bodies slumped into the iron as if they were drowning in bathwater.

  And this, he knew, was what the Thusser guard had in store for him and for Gregory and finally for Gwynyfer. They were about to be hypnotized and colonized.

  The machine was some kind of projector. It shot out beams and blips of light.

  The Thusser strolled over and shut off the overhead lamps in the room. He leaned against the smelting cauldron that blocked the door. The room was dark except for the light that escaped the machine.

  It sent out a bead of light. Then nothing. Then another bead of light, in a different direction.

  Then a spray of little lights. They darted around like guppies before they faded.

  The kids watched the lights warily. They tried to figure out what was going on. They tried to work out a rhythm.

  “Don’t look at it,” Gregory said, looking right at it. “It’s … This is like what I saw … when they captured me before … in the dungeon … when I had the … colors.” He kept staring. He did not shut his eyes.

  Gwynyfer turned away, her mouth locked shut in fear. She looked up, following a large, flashing orb, and saw the bodies of her fellow Norumbegans fading into the wall. Brian heard her sob under her breath.

  Brian was trying to keep thinking. He just wanted to watch lights, not think. He just wanted to count them. He wondered if patterns were repeated, or if all the lights were new.

  He saw that Gregory had lain back on the floor, and was completely lost. The blond boy no longer even seemed to notice the Thusser in the corner. He stared at the ceiling and held one arm straight up with the fingers twitching, as if he could play with the bobbling sparks ten feet above him.

  Brian knew exactly what was happening. And so he shut his eyes.

  He clamped his arm over them. He rocked forward.

  Then he heard the Thusser walking over.

  He did not open his eyes. Carefully, he hid one of his hands behind his back.

  The Thusser put gentle fingers on Brian’s arm, and began to pull it away from the boy’s face.

  For a moment, Brian opened his eyes. The hideous, childlike face with its pudgy tongue stared down at him.

  He shut his eyes and then there were fingers on his face.

  He pulled his one hand from behind him. In it, he had the strap he’d grabbed and snapped off as he was thrown into the room — and the little dagger that hung on it.

  The Thusser pinched Brian’s eyelids and tried to drag them open.

  The boy stabbed upward.

  He hit the torturer’s stomach. The guard bellowed — let out a wheeze — and stumbled back. Brian opened his eyes.

  The lights were still whirling all over the room. They scraped across the gasping Thusser’s wide face.

  The Thusser grabbed a curved sword and whipped it out of its strap. His eyes wide in pain, he swung it, lurching toward Brian.

  There was a crash, and the room went dark. Gwynyfer had knocked the projector off the table. Brian scuttled into something metal and staggered. He ducked.

  The Thusser would be able to see in the dark as soon as his eyes adjusted. Gwynyfer would, too, to some extent. But Brian and Gregory were blind.

  Brian heard the Thusser running for him. He darted to the side — trying to make his way to the door, where the light switch was.

&nbs
p; The Thusser followed him.

  Brian found the wall. He began feeling along, scraping his hands over the rust. There was a crash and Gwynyfer exclaimed, “Take that!”

  She must have thrown the projector at the Thusser. Brian could hear the man kicking aside the refuse.

  Brian turned on the light.

  Gwynyfer was standing on a table, about to throw a length of metal pipe like a javelin. Gregory was on the floor, wincing at the brightness. The Thusser, bleeding heavily, was right by Brian.

  He swung his scimitar.

  Brian fell back. That was lucky: If he’d stayed on his feet, he would have been sliced in two.

  The torturer swung again.

  And this time, he might have killed Brian if, three hundred miles away, a heart hadn’t beaten, and a pulse hadn’t hit.

  The heart that had beat was called #4 (McRiddle’s Plum). It was a muscle as large as Iceland. It twitched and collapsed and expanded again, blasting out a tsunami of gore into the arteries, sucking up a rich tide of flux through the veins. The wave of blood coursed through the Great Body, tearing up forests of weeds, hurling dim monstrosities through valves and corridors, slamming submarine boats — and sending the abandoned extraction facility spinning like a jack tossed hard in a game.

  Everything was thrown into the air. The Thusser and Brian were hurled onto the floor — then onto the curved wall, where they stuck while the whole base swirled down the artery. Gregory and Gwynyfer were plastered right near them. The metal walls vibrated with the rush of flux.

  Gregory had fallen to the wall right next to the half-absorbed Norumbegans. They gaped at him. As the factory tumbled, Gregory found himself rolling toward their vanishing bodies. He scraped with his hands to try to keep himself away.

  The Thusser was breathing heavily, losing a lot of blood through the wound to his stomach. Brian thought there was a chance of escaping if they could only make a run for it.

  He watched as the heavy cauldron that blocked the door on the other side of the room slowly slid across the floor. If it moved another foot, they’d have a way out. “Come on!” he shouted to his friends.