Blightborn (3 page)

Only took a minute or two to really get the raft zipping along.

The tracks ahead of them are a steely blur. Individual railroad
ties smear together in a single dark streak. The corn, too, is just a blend of green, like so much spilled paint.

Ahead, a shuck rat squeaks in terror and hurries across the tracks.

Lane fishes in the food bag, plucks a carrot, sticks it into his mouth like a cigar, and fake-puffs on it as the air tousles his dark hair.

Then Cael sees—ahead, the corn disappears. Drops off the map. The earth sinks. The Heartland isn’t much for topography—a few hills here, a shallow valley there—but for the most part everything is as flat as a sheet of hammered tin. The train tracks continue over the gulf.

He knows what it is even before they get close.

It’s a slurry river.

Corn-processing plants dot the Heartland. Pop’s explained the process a few times, but mostly Cael just tuned out—he didn’t like hearing about breaking down protein bonds or microbial fuel cells or whatever else Pop tried to tell him. Talking about corn was about as much fun as talking about dirt, and Cael used that time to let his mind wander and think about Gwennie and her sweet-smelling soap and the smooth roundness of her freckled skin on the rare occasions that they managed to find time together and get each other out of their clothes—

But one thing he knows for sure is that the processing plants make one helluva lot of waste. Silage and starchy soups and chemical syrups—anything that can’t be used from the corn is pumped out of the plants in rivers of gray-brown slurry that end up in massive, concrete holding tanks, which are eventually filled up, capped, and buried.

He’s seen them up close before when he was out scavenging with his crew. Bubbling muck crawling. A stink that’s both sweet and sickly,
wrong
in a way that the mind knows but can’t properly put together.

They’re going to pass over just such a river in . . . about thirty seconds, he figures. He points, calls it out: “Slurry river ahead!” Lane gives him a shrug, and Rigo peeks between the fingers of his hands.

Lane says, “Should be all right. Tracks go over it on a trestle.”

“Maybe we should slow down anyway,” Rigo says.

“I said we’ll be all right, so we’ll be all right,” Lane yells.

“I’m kinda scared.”

Lane waves him off. “That’s life in the Heartland. Besides, being scared usually means you’re experiencing a life worth living, so shut your jabber-jaw and enjoy the—”

“Oh shit,” Cael says.

He doesn’t need to explain.

They all see it.

The chrome reflects the sun; the black steel just eats it. Ahead it’s a small thing, a dark square in the distance. If it were only a stationary object, Cael wouldn’t feel as if he was about to piss his britches. But it’s an auto-train, one of the motorvator locomotives. Which means it’s coming
fast
.

Which means it’s going to meet them on the bridge.

Rigo yells one word:
“Traaaaaain!”

Cael and Lane move fast, grabbing the cornstalk oar-poles and jamming them against the hard earth—the stalks are tough but brittle, and they begin to disintegrate as soon as they meet
the dirt. Cael tosses his and grabs his rifle—he thrusts it into Lane’s hand.

“We gotta bail,” he says to Lane.

Lane’s eyes go as wide as moons.

“Tuck and roll,” Cael says, and gives Lane a hard shove off the raft.

His friend disappears into the corn—the stalks shudder and shake; he sees a glimpse of Lane’s heels, and then he’s gone.

Rigo babbles a steady stream of entreaties: “Lord-and-Lady-Lord-and-Lady-
Lord-and-Lady
.” Spit so fast the words start to lose meaning.

“We gotta jump!” Cael yells.

“I don’t want to jump.”

“On three! One . . .”

“I don’t want to jump!”

“. . . two . . .”

“The food! We need the food!”

Rigo reaches for the bag.

“. . . three!”

Cael leaps backward off the raft.

Rigo jumps, too, getting hold of the bag’s strap as he does so—

But the strap catches on the front corner of the raft.

The raft launches out onto the trestle over the slurry river. Cael catches sight of Rigo still clutching the bag-strap, dangling over open air as the raft hurtles forward—

And then Cael’s world goes dizzy, spinning end over end as his shoulder hits the ground, and he rolls forward, crashing through cornstalks that reach for him and slice him with quick
cuts of thin leaves. The ground beneath him starts to slope, and he begins to roll. Cael reaches for stalks, but his hands fail to find a grip. In the back of his mind he realizes why the ground slopes suddenly downward.
I’m heading for the slurry.

But then his hand finally catches a stalk, fingers hooking into the brace roots and halting his fall—

His legs dangle over the edge of a crumbling earthen lip, a crusty berm of dry ground bulging with broken stalks and tentacular roots—

Cael looks up at the trestle extending out over the river, one hundred feet up from the churn of chemical molasses—

He sees the train coming.

He sees the rail-raft flying toward it.

He sees Rigo dangling from the raft by the strap.

Let go let go let go—

Cael’s fingers slip—he loses his grip, starts to fall, catches himself again—and by the time he looks up once more, the train’s toothy cattle-catcher smashes into the raft, turning it into a shower of splinters.

THE PAINTED LADY

“
WHAT
PARTY?” GWENNIE ASKS
.

Balastair freezes in place. She knows he’s thinking because he does this thing—his pupils flit and twitch, back and forth, back and forth, as if he’s surveying data in the dark of his mind. His eyes—as green as leaves—suddenly lock on to hers again, and he says quietly, “I didn’t tell you about the party?”

“No!” she barks, suddenly confused, panicked, and more than a little angry. “I don’t want to go to some party.”

“It’s the Architect’s Party,” he says. “It happens once a year on every flotilla—it’s held by the architect of that flotilla. Or the architect’s family if the architect has, ah, passed on.” He suddenly looks uncomfortable. Pink cheeks gone white. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. It’s today. On the Halcyon Balcony. In an hour.
In an hour.
And you’re not even dressed!”

He runs his hands through his hair—and the once-tamed wisps of blond lift and rise again.

“I’m dressed,” she says.

“Not for a party. Certainly not for the Architect’s Party. You’re barely dressed for a carousal of vagrants. I . . . I never sent a dress down?”

“No!”

“It must still be upstairs then. Come on.
Come on
.”

“Come on!” Erasmus the grackle cackles.

“I’m not going to the party,” she says as she hurries after Balastair, his long strides carrying them around the filthy, trash-swept hallway toward the elevator. There, the elevator sits behind a metal accordion gate. It’s a gate she’s tried to open many times on her own, a gate kept shut by—

“
Hello, Balastair Harrington
,” chirps the auto-mate from the tinny round speaker that serves as its “mouth.” The mechanical half man stands on a pillar, two pairs of long, disjointed arms hanging from the bell-shaped torso. The creature blinks copper lids over stained glass eyes,
click click click
. “
Are we going up today?
”

“Yes, Elevator Man,” Balastair says. “And she’s coming with me.”

“
Hello
—” Here the auto-mate pauses, and she hears a sound inside the bell of its body like cards being shuffled. “
Heartlander Gwendolyn Shawcatch
.” Except it mispronounces her name:
gwen-DO-LINN shewkitch
.

“Shut up, tinbody,” she hisses.

Balastair shoots her a look. “You’re terribly angry; has anybody told you that? It’s very off-putting.”

The mechanical mimes the act of pulling back the accordion
gate, though it’s just an automated illusion—the gate pulls back as part of its own chain-driven mechanism.

Inside, the elevator is gleaming: diamonds of dark wood alternating with tiled squares of copper discolored with a green patina. It is the opposite of everything that exists down here in the Undermost. Everything at this strata is dirty and falling apart—the lights flickering from dim to bright, a strobe effect that leaves streaks across her vision.

Balastair is already in the elevator, and he’s pinching the fabric at her elbow and pulling her in. “Hurry, we don’t have much time to transform . . .”—he waggles his fingers at her—“
this
into . . . something else.”

“Something else!” the grackle mimics.

The gate slams shut—
click-click-click-BOOM
.

A brass plate next to the door pops open on a spring, revealing a screen not unlike a visidex; it shimmers and distorts, and suddenly a face appears on it, the face of the Elevator Man with his bulging speaker mouth and his stained glass eyes.

“
Where to, Balastair Harrington?
”

“Home,” he says.

“
Home it shall be
.”

Behind the walls, something whirrs and rattles. Suddenly the elevator shudders and moves—Gwennie’s feet feel unmoored, and dizziness threatens to pull her to the ground. She gets the sense of flying through the air, the way her stomach seems disconnected from her body.

“Home,” she says, the word bitter on her lips.

“I’m sorry?” he asks, distracted.

“I want to see my family.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“
Make
it possible.”

He laughs—not a happy laugh but a laugh of truth, of irony—the kind of laugh that comes out because if it doesn’t, something worse will struggle free. “I don’t have that power.”

“You’re . . . the Grand . . . whatever you are.”

“I’m one of many Grand Geneticists.” He grumbles under his breath: “It’s not as wonderful as it sounds.”

“You’re making flying horses for them.”
And I’m cleaning up after them. If only Heartlanders knew that’s what winning the Lottery got you
.

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do.”

She scowls. “Wait, you’re saying you don’t
want
to . . . cook up these flying horses? You’re young. I thought it was some kind of privilege.”

“It is. Of course it is.” Those words come out through stiffened lips. In fact, all parts of him stiffen and bristle—his back gets straighter; his arms lie flat by his side. “It is a great privilege.”

“Whenever we’re Obligated to people we don’t want down in the Heartland, we’re supposed to act grateful, too. Sounds like a bucket of corn slurry to me.” Her jaw pops as she chews on her own frustration. “I want to see my family.”

Balastair sighs, then says, “Elevator Man, stop the elevator.”

“
Yes, Balastair Harrington
.”

The elevator grinds to a halt—
chung chung chunnnng
.

He flips the brass panel closed and turns to face Gwennie. Nose to nose. She smells his breath: a whiff of strong mint. His eyes sparkle.

“I don’t know where your family is,” he says softly. “If I did,
I’d tell you. Not that either of us could do anything about it anyway. I am . . . sympathetic to your plight. I know . . . you Heartlanders have it hard, and I know this isn’t what you envisioned would happen when you won the Lottery.” He pauses, then speaks more frankly: “I’ll try. Okay? I’ll try to find out some information. But I need you to be . . . patient.”

She seethes. “I don’t want to be patient. They’re my family. As soon as we set foot on this damned flying city, they ripped us apart!” All the Shawcatches, taken their separate ways. Screaming. Crying. Scooter was the worst—all the muscle tension gone out of him, sagging like a scarecrow off its pole, wailing in a way she hadn’t heard since he was knee-high. “It was horrible. You don’t understand.”

“My mother and I—” he starts to say, then tightens his mouth. “We all have difficulty.”

“I hate you. I hate all of you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Damn right I do.”

He pulls back. His hands clasp in front of him defensively.

“We’re good people,” he says. “Some of us. Most of us.”

“You’re all monsters to me,” she says. “Monsters who never knew a day of real work in your lives.”

“Work is beneath us,” he says, but it sounds rote, like something an auto-mate might be programmed to say. As if he doesn’t quite believe it.

“I know. I
lived
beneath you and still do.”

He flips open the brass plate and tells the Elevator Man to continue.

The elevators do not merely go up and down. The ascent slows, then after more banging and clicking, the elevator begins to slide right. Then up again. Then both up and to the right.

Eventually the Elevator Man chirps: “
Home of Balastair Harrington
.”

The accordion gate opens.

Outside, an identical mechanical man pivots on its pillar and uses one of its spindly arms to point the way.