Atomic Underworld: Part One (17 page)

Madam
Abigail approached him. “What is it? Is there something wrong?”

“Sophia.
Where is she?”

“Why,
in her room, I suppose.”

“You’ve
seen her?”

“Only
a little while ago. What’s all the fuss?”

Tavlin
found a narrow staircase and climbed upstairs. His breaths came short and
shallow. He vaguely heard someone calling to him, but the sound seemed distant.
Everything seemed distant, lost. Everything but his goal.

He
reached the room he shared with Sophia and wrenched the door open. He paused
outside, breathing hard, trying to get his mind straight, then stepped inside.

It
was a small room, and the cracked window shone strange pale light across the
narrow bed and aged boards.

The
room was empty.

A
note lay on the pillow. Tavlin snatched it up. Written in a firm, masculine
hand, it read:
AN
EXCHANGE. YOU FOR HER. COME TO THE FACTORY BY NOON TOMORROW OR SHE DIES.
SLOWLY.

Tavlin
was hardly aware of Boss Vassas and Frankie helping him down through the halls,
out to the waiting motorcycles. He was even less aware as Vassas shoved him in
the sidecar and the fleet roared off again. He clutched the note tightly, and
it was only around the time they returned to the Wide-Mouth that his fist began
to unclench.

Vassas
forced him up to the study again, and there they sat drinking some more while
Vassas, Frankie and Galesh read the note.

Tavlin
smoked a pipe with trembling hands. When he wasn’t smoking, he drank. The drink
seemed to steady him, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

“The
bastards,” he said, over and over again. “The fucking bastards!”

At
last, either because of the alcohol or because enough time had passed, he felt
the shock drain away, replaced by clear, cold sobriety. Despite the whiskey, he
felt as sober as he ever had.

“I
have to do something,” he said.

Vassas
and the others watched him.

“You
back?” Vassas said. They had been talking amongst themselves, Tavlin realized.

He
nodded. “I’m back. And I have to do something.”

“What
can you do? You can’t give the fucks what they want. Whatever weapon they’re
trying to build, you can’t just hand it over to ‘em.”

“Fuckin’
aye,” said Frankie.

Tavlin
eyed Frankie and Galesh. “How much did you tell them, Boss?”

“Enough,”
Vassas said.

Tavlin
sighed and nodded. Some of the tension was draining away, but strangely it
wasn’t replaced by relaxation, only more tension. A different sort. The kind
that endured and existed under everything, until the source of the tension was
gone.

“They
want you to show ‘em where the briefcase is,” Frankie said. “That’s why they
want you. Well, whatever the fuck is in it, you can’t let ‘em have it. You
can’t go.”

“He’s
right,” Galesh said, leaning back against a wall and smoking a foul-smelling
cigarette. “The Octunggen can’t be allowed to complete their mission. It’s
obviously part of the war effort, something designed to cripple and destroy
Ghenisa, maybe beyond. Somehow the people of Magoth have been helping. Maybe
they have ancient knowledge, passed on to them by religious writings or even
the old races who once bowed to Magoth.”

Tavlin
thought about it. “That makes sense, I suppose. But the worshippers of Magoth
wouldn’t be helping the Octs out of good will—at least, I don't think so. They
must be getting something in return.”

“What?”
Vassas snorted. “Listen, we can figure all that shit out later. Right now we
need to come up with a plan.”

“Maybe
we can break Sophia out,” said Frankie.

Vassas
glared at him. “Did you see what the Octs did
in the next room
? And that was just one of the bastards, with one
weapon. No way are we attacking their stronghold.”

“Boss
is right,” Galesh said, predictably. “We can’t attack them at their factory.
But maybe we can attack them outside of it. Wait them out.”

“If
we wait, Sophia dies,” Tavlin said. He drew down a long pull on his pipe, and
thoughts started to take shape in his head. “But maybe we can
coax
them out.”

“Coax?”
Frankie said skeptically.

“You
don’t coax Octunggen,” Vassas agreed.

Tavlin
looked him in the eye. “I have a plan.”

Mist
swirled around Tavlin as he approached the factory, and he spat at the acrid
taste.
This is not a good idea
. Of
course, he had no one else to blame for it. The idea was his. Gritting his
teeth, he stepped nearer the factory. It had no windows, only a solid bank wall
of stone and mortar, poorly laid, with a thick metal door set within it. The
setting was rough, and Tavlin could see rugged stone glistening in the mist around
the door. The door itself was thick and heavy, coated with brilliant verdigris.

He
rapped on it experimentally.

There
came a pause, then pops as locks were thrown, and at last the great metal door
ground open, and amber light spilled out from the interior. Shapes stood
silhouetted against the light. The lead one was bald and square-shouldered.

“You
made it,” issued the deep voice. “I was beginning to worry. For her sake, of
course.”

“Of
course,” Tavlin said.

He
removed a gun from his pocket. The bald man—Havictus—did not move. In one
motion, Tavlin pointed the gun at his own head and pressed it to his temple.

“Release
her or I spatter the coordinates of the canister all over the ground.”

“I
don’t think any of us want that,” Havictus said, his voice without inflection.
He drew back, and the other shadows pulled back with him. “Please, come in.”

Gathering
his resolve, Tavlin stepped through the entrance and into a sort of receiving
room. The walls were irregularly-spaced stone overgrown by lichen. Slugs sucked
and slithered all around. One glowed with a pink-red light. Lamps hung down,
illuminating the cold stone halls. Tavlin received the impression of large
rooms adjacent to this one, huge dark spaces filled with strange machinery just
barely hinted at by the faint light coming from this room. A dozen men occupied
the chamber with him, and they gave him plenty of space.

They
did not look particularly Octunggen. A few boasted the black hair and gray eyes
of the Octunggen ideal, but many had brown hair, or blond, and there was even a
man with bushy red hair and beard. They were a hard-looking lot, anyway, and
Tavlin wouldn’t want to cross any of them.

They
all seemed to defer to Havictus. “Welcome to our humble home,” the bald man
said.

Tavlin
stepped into the center of the room, gun still pressed to his head. He was all
too conscious of the cold metal digging into the flesh of his temple.

“Where’s
Sophia?” he said.

“You
will see her only when you have shown us where the canister is.”

“I
can draw you a map right now.”

Havictus
shook his large head, once. His full lips pursed and he said, “No, that will
not do. We must have the canister in our hands before your woman is released.”

“What
assurance do I have that you’ll do as you say?”

“Well,
there is that gun.”

“You
want me to actually take you
to
the
canister?”

“But
of course.” Havictus spread his hands. “When that is done, your woman and you
will be released.”

“To
feed the fish-things, I suppose.”

“You
will have to trust us. It is the best I can do.”

Tavlin
nodded. He had expected as much, but he didn’t want to let on. “Then let’s get
this over with. And don’t anyone try to get too close.”

“You’re
not afraid your arm will tire?”

Tavlin
smiled grimly. “Not at all.” The truth was that his gun arm was already beginning
to grow weary. Oh well.
Sophia had better
appreciate this.

Havictus
and the other Octunggen showed Tavlin down a hall to a large room whose lights
were off. The beam of light from the hallway illuminated the trapdoor. One of
the men opened it, and others descended the ladder to ready the boats below.
Soon Tavlin heard motors chugging, and then he was motioned toward the
trapdoor. He made the Octunggen back off several yards—he would have to use
both hands on the ladder—then climbed down to the docks. A boat waited for him,
and he stepped into it, feeling the rocking movement below his feet, smelling
the brine and stink of the lake. It was warmer down here. Sultry.

He
placed the muzzle back to his temple.

Havictus
and the others scaled the ladder and stepped into their own boats. At last a
hooded and bound figure was forced down the ladder and into a boat—far from
Tavlin.

“Sophia!”

She
cried something back at him, but her voice was muffled by some gag.
Nevertheless, he recognized her voice. Some part of him relaxed, but only
barely.
She’s alive.
He held onto
this thought with fixed determination.

Havictus
took up position at the bow of Tavlin’s boat. The engine idled, and smoke
curled out.

“Where
to?” Havictus said.

Tavlin
pointed. “That way.”

Havictus
nodded at the boatman, who manned the motor, and the boat sped off in the
indicated direction. The others trailed along behind, Sophia’s boat at the
rear. The stink of the sewers enveloped Tavlin as the alchemical lanterns that
subdued the stench faded behind. Some of the men broke out nosegays, but none
offered him one and he wished had had thought to bring one along. The old ways
of the sewers had really left him, it seemed.

He
pointed down a certain hallway, and the boatman took it. He pointed down
another and another. Soon he felt disoriented. He only knew certain routes down
here, and in his haste he had left them. He asked the boatman to travel down a
particular channel, and from there it was easier. The motors roared loudly off
the tight stone walls, and when they moved through the larger spaces flails
would whip around them, dripping mucus and slime. Occasionally some white thing
breached the dark waters, expelling vapor or tainted fluid.

Tavlin’s
gun arm grew even heavier, and he had to alternate hands. Sometimes he would
sit down on the boat’s bench, propping his elbow on his knee and shoving the
gun up under his chin. Havictus sometimes glanced at him worriedly when the
boat took an especially sharp corner, and he would give the boatman stern
looks. After that the boat would move more smoothly for a time.

Frequently
a man in the second boat called the others to a halt. He would stand up,
cradling a device with several complicated-looking antennae sticking up from
it. It beeped and buzzed, and he would shake his head or nod.

“He
can tell when we’re getting closer,” Havictus explained. “We’ve been combing
the sewers for days without finding it, but we’ll know if you’re leading us
wrong.”

“It
never crossed my mind,” Tavlin said. Actually, it had, but he had been
afraid—rightly, apparently—that they would know if he lied.

The
convoy resumed moving, and Tavlin continued giving directions. At one point, he
shouted over the roar of the engines, “What
is
it? What is
in
the damned canister?”

Havictus
turned from facing front to look back at him. The bald man’s bushy eyebrows
rose, but there was no humor in his icy blue eyes. “Death,” he said. “Only
death.”

“What
does that mean?”

Havictus
hesitated, then sort of shrugged, and Tavlin could guess his thoughts; Havictus
was already planning to kill Tavlin anyway, so why not pass the time by
talking?

“It’s
a formula,” Havictus said.

Tavlin
screwed up his face. “A …
formula
?
Like in math or science?"

"I
guess."

"But
it’s a container for a liquid!”

“It’s
like no formula you’ve ever heard of, Tavlin Two-Bit, or could conceive of. But
it will destroy all you know.”

Tavlin
smacked his lips. His mouth had gone dry. “And the worshippers of Magoth are
helping you, what, develop it?”

“Oh,
no. The people of Magoth have lost the technology, the resources, to develop
the formula, but we have them. But only Magoth itself can activate it.”

“
Magoth
…” Tavlin shook his head.
Havictus spoke as if the god were real. “Why are you giving cultists some
formula?”

“Their
gods and ours are allies. No more talking.”

“Don’t
want to waste any more words on a dead man?”

Havictus
gave him a look, and it was so cold that Tavlin shuddered. In that moment he
knew he was right, that the Octunggen had no plans to release him and Sophia.
Not alive, at any rate. This came as no surprise.

“Just
point the way,” Havictus said, and his voice could have withered a rose.

Tavlin
pointed. The beeping of the machine grew louder, but it often hissed and
fizzed, and sometimes the beeps would become warbles, and sometimes they would
fade altogether. The machine clearly was encountering interference from
something, or perhaps it simply didn’t work very well. Nonetheless, if one
listened closely, one could hear it steadily marking the proximity of the
canister. Tavlin supposed it could sense the canister’s extradimensional
signature or some such thing.

Tavlin
guided the fleet forward until at last he reached the intersection he’d been
looking for.

“This
is it,” he called to Havictus over the roar of the engines.

Havictus
made cutting motions to the other boats. The Octunggen stopped their engines,
and the boats idled forward into the intersection. Mist rolled slowly away from
the boats, the whitish swirls illuminated only by feeble lamps. The whole place
stank of ammonia and waste, and something unnatural breached the surface of the
water fifty feet away, hooted, then went under again. Tavlin received the
impression of many stalks and fins, and eyes where there should be no eyes.

“We’re
here,” he said. “It should be right below us.”

Havictus
raised a bushy eyebrow at the man with the divining machine, who analyzed his
gadget and said, “I think he’s telling the truth.”

Havictus
ordered the others to begin the search. Several lifted long metal poles with
hooks on the end of them and dredged the water, hoping to snare the handle of
the briefcase, while others swept the area with nets. Tavlin tensed in the
stern of the boat, shooting frequent looks at Sophia. She was still and quiet,
and too far away for his liking.

At
last an Octunggen hauled up a dripping, reeking briefcase, and the rest let out
cheers. A broad smile spread across Havictus’s pocked face, and he turned
shining eyes on Tavlin.

“Now,”
Tavlin said. “Release Sophia.”

Havictus
raised a pistol and pointed it at Tavlin’s face. He started to squeeze the
trigger.

Tavlin,
who had expected this, knocked the gun wide and in the same motion brought his
own gun up. Havictus chopped the wrist of Tavlin’s gun hand with a
stiff-fingered motion, and Tavlin’s gun whirled away. Tavlin sprang forward and
tackled the other man to the deck of the boat.

Around
him, battle broke out.

Boss
Vassas and his men had waited, lurking in the darkness beyond the intersection
just as Tavlin had instructed, and now they burst out of the shadows, their boats
shoved by oars, men and women standing in the bows firing long bursts into the
Octunggen with rattling machine guns. Arcing shells ejected into the water.
Several Octunggen pitched over the sides, blood spurting from their wounds. One
of these was the man holding the dredged-up briefcase. When he fell into the
channel, he dropped the briefcase and it vanished back into the water.

The
Octunggen leapt toward their weapons and fired back. Gunfire echoed off the
tight stone walls, and the intersection quickly filled with gun smoke to mix
with the exhaust of the engines.

Tavlin
wrestled with Havictus. He kneed the bald man in the groin. Clubbed him on the
head. Havictus elbowed him in the face and punched him in the throat. If Tavlin
hadn’t drawn back at the last second, the blow would have crushed his larynx.

Each man grabbed the gun and tried to shove it
toward the other. Tavlin grunted and strained, feeling every muscle tense in
his body, feeling sweat ooze from every pore. He could smell the beef and cabbage
that Havictus had had for lunch.

Finally
Tavlin bit into Havictus’s gun-hand wrist as hard as he could. He sank his
teeth into Havictus until he could feel his teeth clamping bone, until pain
filled his jaw and blood flooded his mouth.

Havictus
arched his head back and screamed. The hand loosened. The gun flew over the
edge of the boat into the water. With pain-fueled strength, Havictus struck
Tavlin across the face with his left elbow, launching Tavlin backwards.
Havictus rose to his feet, glaring wildly around, clutching his bleeding wrist.
Blood pumped through his fingers.

Tavlin searched for a weapon. The Octunggen
manning the engine had been shot, and he had crumpled over, bleeding to death.
Tavlin rooted through the man’s jacket for his gun.

Havictus
whistled and gestured, and a boat roared over to him. He scrambled aboard and
barked orders in Octunggen. Even as the boat jettisoned off into the darkness,
he wrested a submachine gun away from one of his people and turned to fire at
Tavlin, even as Tavlin fired at him with his liberated pistol. Havictus fired
first, and his rounds tore stitching through the boat. Gouts of water shot up
from the holes. Tavlin flung himself to the side. His shot went wild.