Steel Sky (35 page)

The first thing Orel thinks when he opens his eyes is,
blackout!

He sits up, feeling cold stone beneath his hands and against his back. The air is heavy and still, filled with alien smells. He hears echoes of dripping water, muffled footsteps, and intermittent squealing in a vast, empty space.

He looks at his wrist, reading the time from the gently glowing chronometer face, and realizes he is unsure what time it was when last he checked, or where he was when he checked. His body aches from having slept in an awkward position, and his joints are numb with cold. As his eyes adjust to the darkness he realizes he has been stripped to the waist. His respirator and even his scarf have been taken away, leaving only a patchy growth of beard to cover his cloracne-ravaged cheeks and chin. He has a feeling that he’s been asleep for a long time.

“I’m hungry,” he says, uncertain who or what may hear him.

Someone laughs — a subdued, bitter laugh. Focusing on the sound, Orel realizes he can see figures near him, silhouetted against a faint, flickering glow from the cavern beyond. They are crouched and half-naked, huddled together in a narrow channel that seems to be a dry stream bed.

“What’d he say?” someone else mumbles.

The figure nearest to Orel repeats his complaint. “I’m huuuungry,” he whines. The others laugh. Like the first man, their laughter is angry, but quiet, as if they are afraid of being overheard.

Orel stumbles to his feet. Looking over the edge, Orel sees that they are at one end of a large cavern hung with thick stalactites. Twenty meters away, by the light of a dozen small fires, he can see what looks to be a hundred Rats squealing and rubbing past one another. Most are naked, but some wear stolen coverups or jackets. From the smell of the smoke, the fuel they are burning can only be dried excrement.

“Get down! They’ll see you!” the voice whispers.

With a start, Orel recognizes Eno Selachian crouching nearby. He sounds tired and weak. Orel leans forward to discern Eno’s haggard face in the grainy darkness. His eyes are white wheels. He looks frightened to death.

“By the Stone,” Orel whispers. He touches his own face again, wondering if he looks as bad as Eno. He realizes there is blood on his face, dried in drip lines from a large lump on his forehead. His respirator is also missing.

Finally, Orel begins to remember bits and pieces of what has happened: the dark, rushing bodies, the ear-piercing screams, the sudden light that exploded behind his eyes. He feels the back of his head, where a gigantic lump strenuously objects to being touched. “They captured us,” he says, letting himself slide back down into the pit. Eno shakes his head. “They captured
some
of us. The rest they killed and ate.” He giggles. “That’s what so funny about what you said before.
They’re
not hungry. Not any more.”

“Quiet! Hush up over there!” A new voice intrudes on the conversation. It is authoritative, more confident than any voice has any right to be in the situation. Orel sees someone new pushing his way past the others. “We mustn’t lose control!”

The man stops in front of Orel, peering down at him. He can just make out Thraso’s handsome, vicious face in the darkness.

“You!” Thraso whispers fiercely. “I thought they killed you.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, you can just go back to sleep, trog. I’m going to get us out of here. Let me climb up past you.”

“You can’t seriously intend to go up there,” Orel says incredulously. “There are hundreds of them up there! They’ll tear you to pieces!”

“I’m not going to fight them. I’m going to talk to them.”

“You can’t talk to them, Thraso. They don’t talk.
They’re not human.
”

“I think I can make an impression on them,” Thraso says evenly.

“Wait. Listen to me before you go. There’s a theory that human consciousness is a result of our ability to manipulate symbols; we can understand the world because we hold an analog of it in our heads. If the theory is true, then language is the origin of thought, rather than the other way around. You can’t make an impression on creatures that don’t have a language, Thraso. They don’t even know you exist.”

“I’ll take that chance. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

Orel’s suppresses the urge to laugh. “Is this more of your ‘survival of the fittest’ shit?”

“If you like. A triumph of the spirit. Of the will.”

“They don’t give a damn about your spirit, Thraso. They’ll eat you alive.”

Abruptly, Thraso lifts his foot and slams the heel of his boot against Orel’s chin. The kick is not that powerful, but Orel is backed up against the wall of the pit, and his head bounces against the rock. Warm pain, like liquid fire, shoots through his brain. Blood seeps into his mouth.

“That’s for not warning us when the Rats attacked,” Thraso says.

Orel shakes his head to clear the aurora of pain. He does not want to cry out, so he keeps his mouth shut and swallows the blood. Already he can feel his lip swelling.

“No more smart words, coward?”

Orel puts his head between his knees and takes long, deep breaths, willing the pain in his head to go away.

“I didn’t think so.” Thraso climbs past Orel, up the side of the pit.

After a little while, Orel raises his head. Eno Selachian is leaning over him, peering over the side of the pit. The other Rakehells are also standing and watching.

“What’s he doing?” somebody whispers.

“He’s going to get us out of here,” someone else replies.

Orel staggers to his feet and looks out into the cave. The flickering fires highlight Thraso’s every muscle as he strides toward the Rats. His skin looks like oiled bronze. A few small Rats stand in his way, but they squeak and scurry aside as he approaches. He stops in the center of the cave, his feet planted far apart. He raises his chin and surveys the lumbering, squealing mass of Rats before him. “Who’s in charge here?” he bellows.

At the sound of his voice, many of the Rats retreat. Others grunt incoherently. They feint toward him, then jump back, reluctant to stay within his reach.

Orel grips the edge of the pit tightly, astounded by Thraso’s audacity. He almost believes Thraso can pull it off — free them all by the sheer force of his personality.

The Rats shift position, and the crowd parts down the middle. A new Rat, larger than the rest, moves through them. Strips of cloth hang from its thighs and upper arms.
Decoration
, Orel thinks.
A sort of uniform.
Red scars are cut diagonally across its cheeks and forehead. Its teeth are longer and thicker than any Orel has seen so far. It carries a weapon: a long, pointed axe. The blade is carved from basalt. The handle appears to be a human femur.

“Are you in charge?” Thraso says loudly. “Are you the leader?”

The Rat growls something in reply. To Orel, it sounds as if the Rat is trying to duplicate Thraso’s words. “Arr arro arrarr!” it shouts. “Arr arro arrarrarr!”

“What did he say?” Eno whispers.

“It didn’t say anything,” Orel mutters. “It thinks Thraso is making a display. The words don’t matter, only the tone of voice. It thinks Thraso is challenging it.”

“We did not mean to intrude in your world,” says Thraso, speaking slowly and clearly. He stands ramrod straight, his head high so all the Rats can hear him. “We only wish to return to our city.”

The Rat repeats the gibberish it spoke before. This time its voice is louder and more hostile. It punctuates its challenge by baring its long, yellow teeth and hissing. The sound makes the hairs on the back of Orel’s neck go up.

“I do not wish to fight you, but I will if I must,” Thraso says. “If you insist on hostility, you will find that we are not without defenses.”

The Rat tilts its head to one side, as if trying to make sense of Thraso’s speech. Its tiny, black eyes blink. It slides one foot forward slightly and leans toward Thraso. Encouraged, Thraso also leans forward and extends his hand, as if hoping to shake hands. The Rat twitches and, with an ear-piercing scream, leaps forward. Faster than Orel would have believed possible, it swings the axe up around its head and brings it down into Thraso’s shoulder.

Without making a sound, Thraso staggers backward. The Rat pulls the axe loose. There is very little blood; it is all happening too fast. The Rat swings the axe forward again, burying it sideways in Thraso’s chest. This time Thraso screams and frantically tries to pull the weapon out even as his legs collapse under him.

Watching him fall, Orel thinks he can see the humiliated, surprised look on Thraso’s face: the wide eyes, the slack jaw. But the cave is too dim, and Thraso is too far away. It must only be Orel’s imagination.

The Rat plunges the axe into Thraso’s chest again and again. Because of the curve in the cave floor, Orel cannot see what is happening very well, but the wet crunching sound carries clearly. The Rakehells turn their heads in disgust and dismay. One of them vomits over the side of the pit. The Rat stops swinging the axe and nudges Thraso with its feet. Satisfied that he is dead, it throws the axe to one side. It reaches into Thraso’s mutilated chest and pulls out what Orel can only assume must be the heart. Squealing loudly, holding the heart above its head, it steps aside. The other large Rats move in with their crude knives, hacking at the dead man’s flesh and stripping the meat from the bones.

Orel watches the process with bitter fascination.
So much
, he thinks,
for survival of the fittest
.

THE BREATH OF THE HYPOGEUM

“Are you all right?” Edward asks, gripping Astrid’s hand.

Astrid nods and takes another wobbly step across the observation deck. Edward can hear her heavy breathing, but her face is almost invisible under the black rubber mask. On a whim, she had pulled these antique models out of Edward’s closet instead of modern respirators. She thought they were “delightfully ugly.” Like Edward’s coverup, which she is also wearing, the mask is too large for her. It envelops her head in warm, heavy plastic. Black corrugated straps dangle from her hair.

“You don’t have to come any further,” Edward says, his voice echoing in the hollow of his own mask. “We can always come back some other time. You don’t have to do everything today.”

“I want to see it now,” Astrid replies firmly. “Who knows what could happen between today and tomorrow? I want to enjoy it while I can.”

She takes another step. Their proximity to the edge is beginning to make even Edward nervous. He cannot imagine how Astrid, from so many levels down, can handle it.

Almost the entire Hypogeum can be seen from here, though the furthest buildings disappear in a poisonous blue haze. The domestic sector of the city is below, the buildings jumbled together like salt crystals. To their left, the Chandelier towers above them, impossibly huge, yet graceful. In the distance stands the giant statue of Koba, eternally supporting the steel Sky. The fluorescent Sun shines steadily down.

Astrid takes another step forward. Vertigo causes her to pitch to one side, and she tumbles onto the rough concrete, laughing. She rests on one elbow, breathing heavily through the thick mask. She stretches her free hand out toward the city, as if to grasp the scenery in her fingers.

Edwards sits beside her, carefully checking his balance. The metal guardrail that once ran along the edge was long ago taken away for scrap and never replaced. “Do you like it?” he asks.

“I love it! What’s that I feel?”

“What?”

“The air,” she says, waving her hand back and forth. “I can feel it moving across my hand, as if I were standing in front of a ventilator.”

“Wind,” Edward says. “It’s called wind.”

“I like the feel of it. Where does it come from?”

“Well . . .” Edward struggles to remember. It’s been so long since he has stepped out of doors voluntarily. “I think it’s caused by warm air rising from the city, then falling when it hits the cold panels of the Sky. That’s part of it. The river has something to do with it, too: the way it makes one end of the Hypogeum colder than the other. Someone explained it to me once, but I’ve forgotten exactly how it works.”

Astrid stretches her body in a sensuous, rolling wave of motion. “Mmm . . . This is too good to pass up.” She stands and begins to unsnap her coverup. Nervously, Edward glances back at the hatchway, afraid that someone else will come through and see them even though he knows that he is being overcautious. No one comes up here any more.

Astrid shucks off the coverup and swings it over her head. She lets it go. It wafts in the breeze for a moment, then dips and goes over the side. Edward watches it float downward, tumbling end over end, sleeves waving.

Astrid rises to her knees, swaying. She is still dizzy with vertigo. Edward cannot see her mouth behind the snout of the filtration canister, but he can tell by the crinkle of her eyes that she is smiling. She runs her hands up her rib cage and over her breasts, then raises them as high into the air as she can, fingers spread wide. Her hair lifts gently in the wind, the breath of the Hypogeum.