The Chamber in the Sky (16 page)

But even Brian couldn't work out a scheme to escape.

All night, he lay kinked up in the corner of the cell, and he felt the goopy Great Body all around him. He felt the cold, hollow passages and squelching systems unfurling in all directions through all of time and space — and he himself was nothing but a little wad of organs and quivering muscles in the midst of those vaster innards. There was no wall behind which something was dry and safe. There was nothing but ruin and corrupted body: his own weary and scratched flesh, his empty stomach, and then the stomach around him, the Volutes wound around it like clouds around a globe — and the unimaginable distances that had to be traveled before the dead, dry heart could be found again.

There was one scrap of good news. As Brian ate the flatbread that was shoved through a slot in the morning, he heard a clatter at the window. A dragony face looked in.

“Eew!” cried Lord Dainsplint. “An heraldic bacterium! Filthy!”

Brian ran over to Tars Tarkas and petted his nose through the bars on the window. He said, “That's funny, coming from someone who wets other people's beds.”
Brian tore off a small piece of bread and fed the bacterium. “He followed me all the way from the Volutes. He's a
good boy
. Occasionally, I saw him, but he could never get to me. Once, these soldiers all fired at him.”

“Pity they don't train true marksmen anymore.”

Brian crooned, “How are you doing, boy? Huh? How are you doing?”

The animal made a weird, cute noise and licked the boy's hand. He tried to force his way into the cell. His shoulders didn't fit. He made frustrated little whimpers and scratched at the bars with the first couple of sets of claws.

Tars couldn't get in, and Brian couldn't get out. They stared at each other through the window. Tars's eyes were deep and green, and seemed to know everything Brian thought and felt. The creature leaned down and licked Brian's knuckle again — then turned with a flick of the tail and flew off toward the crags of dry sputum.

Early that morning, on an empty street of row houses, Thusser in top hats knelt, polishing long Alpine horns.

Gregory and Gwynyfer were eating breakfast when the horns sounded.

All over the city, on balconies and towers and bridges, Thusser wearing bright red sashes blasted out one long, urgent note. One horn took it up, then another, then another, then another. The sound rebounded across the frozen cataract of snot and echoed in the swamps.

Immediately, there was activity. Thusser soldiers turned out of houses where they'd been sleeping. They rushed into formation in the city squares.

Word passed from mouth to mouth: General Herla, commander of the Thusser forces in the Great Body, had finally ordered the submarine assault on New Norumbega. It was time at last. The waiting was over. Regiments were on the march to the valves. In two hours, the subs were going to set off into their various circulatory systems, all of them converging on the Dry Heart.

A sergeant came by to tell the Young Horde scouts that they weren't going anywhere. They were going to help staff the fortress while the army fought this last, great battle.

No one thought it would take long.

“What I've heard is that New Norumbega has no walls,” said Aelfward. “The army'll be back in a day and a half.”

The kids were tremendously excited. They left their breakfasts half eaten and ran for the overpasses where they could watch the soldiers marching toward their subs. The Thusser did not cheer, but they made a strange rasping noise in their throats. The soldiers turned and smiled.

Giant elevators deep within the fortress dropped the soldiers down through the thick layers of the stomach. They crawled into subs of all descriptions: from a few military subs left from the Mannequin Resistance to merchant ships that had been outfitted with guns and torpedoes.

One by one, the subs arrived, docked, were filled, and set themselves loose.

The engine screws started to turn. The flux was filled with muck kicked up from all the commotion.

The Thusser subaquatic force set out for the Dry Heart.

Meanwhile, Gregory and Gwynyfer ran down toward the factory where the disabled mannequins were stored.

“This is exactly the right time to break in,” said Gregory. “No one's paying attention.”

“Topping,” said Gwynyfer, playing leapfrog with a bollard.

They slowed down and fell silent when they reached the factory's grim, soot-streaked walls.

There was only one guard out front.

“Okay,” said Gregory. “It will be amazing if the Umpire is in there. We'll just wind the three guys up, go inside the capsule, and start figuring out the controls.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah. Just think: Single-handedly, we'll be saving New Norumbega. Can you imagine how angry the Thusser will be when they do all this trumpet
BLAH, BLAH!
and all their subs leave, and then they hear that the Rules Keepers are kicking their butts on Earth? Give me five, lady! Give me five!”

“Noise.”

“You're right.” Gregory led them back along an alley. “Okay. You go and talk to the guard. Distract him. I'm going to climb into one of the broken windows. Give me a hand up.”

“How will you get out?”

“Problem for later.”

Gregory tested his shoe against the brick. Gwynyfer came to his side, and just when he thought she was going to lock her hands together to give him a hand, she pulled him to her and kissed him on the mouth.

Gregory breathed in sharply with surprise. He smelled the scent of her. He felt how soft her lips were and how strong her arms were.

Then it was over, and she'd woven her fingers into a basket for him to step on.

He leaped up, pushing off against her hands. He grabbed the brick sill of the window. He struggled upward. When he'd pulled his legs up, he gave her a thumbs-up.

Gwynyfer sauntered around front. She walked over to the single guard.

“Hi-ho. You must be one sorry soldier, stuck here when everyone else is off to paint the town red. I call that a too pitiful predicament. Where the blood and glory?”

Meanwhile, Gregory found himself crouching above what looked like a crammed waxworks museum. Hundreds of mannequin citizens stood motionless, uncranked, in whatever pose they'd struck before they'd wound down and dropped off.

He surveyed the crowd. No giants. No obvious capsule. He'd have to search more thoroughly.

He sidled over and grabbed on to a heating pipe that ran up beside the window. The paint flaked off in his hands. He shimmied down to the floor.

He made his way through the silent, eerie storeroom of persons. Hands were caught mid-gesture. Mouths were making words. Eyes stared at him. He had to duck to squeeze under arms.

Nothing. He saw butlers, maids, pilots, a string quartet. No giants. He pushed open some large swinging doors and discovered an even larger gallery of motionless mechanicals. He climbed up an iron staircase to a walk-way where he could see all of the mannequins at once. He passed a set of actresses frozen in poses as witches. Or maybe, he considered, they were actual witches.

And then he saw motion.

Just to his right.

He froze.

Nothing moved.

There was no sound. Two vast storerooms of people stood silently.

Gregory slowly turned his head.

Past a couple of newspaper reporters, there was another window.

It was his own reflection that had startled him.

He let out his breath.
Idiot
, he thought, shaking his head at himself.

But then he really panicked.

He pushed toward the window, pressing at his face.

There were no rings around his eyes. He was not wearing a long, black coat. His ears were human. His disguise was gone. The batteries had died.

And if his batteries had died, then Gwynyfer …

Gwynyfer chatted happily with the guard. She had told him the usual story about having bumped off her parents on Earth. Then the conversation lagged, so they talked about downhill skiing.

Gwynyfer was saying, “In fact, that is the one thing that is happy-making about moving to Earth. The skiing. You may have done psionic skiing in the Tenebron, floating and flying and what not, but do you know, have you ever tried
substance
? I mean a mountain, a physical mountain, and snow? It's terribly exciting. They have mountains there on Earth. In a place called New Hampshire. And you use gravity. It is too, too thrilling.”

For some reason, as she made this speech, the Thusser guard looked at her with surprise, then suspicion, and finally amusement.

Gwynyfer decided the best thing for it was just to push on. “You know, when we rule all of the Great Body, there's also skiing here. Sludgier than on Earth, but still. Yes? … Long live the Horde and all?”

A band of soldiers was walking past. The guard whistled between his fingers and called them over.

“Friends?” said Gwynyfer. “How too delightful.”

She was surrounded by soldiers. They looked her up and down.

“While a girl always appreciates the glances of a crowd,” said Gwynyfer, “you do know it's not polite to gawk? Perhaps I'll just skip along.”

“Mademoiselle,” said one of the officers, “we were just judging a lady of quality. You're of a radiance not often seen in these war-torn, gastric wastelands. We'd like to serve as your escort up the hill.”

Gwynyfer didn't like the sound of this. She smiled prettily at them. “Why, though your offer recalls an age of chivalry long past, and while I deeply appreciate it, I regret I'm not headed up the hill.”

“Mademoiselle, you'll find that exercise livens up your limbs and promotes circulation. And we offer you perhaps the last exercise you'll enjoy for a while.”

“I call that a little ominous, officer.”

“Accept my apology for any undertone of hostility or brutish command. Of course I would not wish to cast a shadow over your last day, mademoiselle.”

“My
last
day? Why my last …?”

Then she looked down.