The Inferior (21 page)

He still felt a bit groggy and wondered if he really had dreamed the whole episode or if the ancestors had sent him a vision. Indrani bit into one of the last scraps of Skeleton flesh and smiled beautifully. ‘Well, this is real enough!’

His face reddened. ‘It is good, isn’t it?’

Apart from a portion they were saving for Rockface, no more than a few bites of food remained and Stopmouth regretted all the good flesh they’d abandoned on the way back. ‘If you don’t believe me about the humans,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to go and visit them. I know it wasn’t a dream. I’ve been feverish before, remember?’

‘I do remember,’ she said wistfully. ‘You looked so much like a child then! An innocent among savages. The first flesh I willingly allowed past my lips was the food I chewed for you.’

Stopmouth laughed. ‘Oh, come now. What did you eat before you came to us? Air? Rooflight?’

‘Only savages,’ she said, ‘eat flesh.
Civilized
beings eat other things made from plants.’

‘You can’t live on moss and trees! They’d make you sick!’

‘I never said we did!’ She seemed exasperated. ‘There are other plants besides those.
Rice
, fruit,
vegetables
. To kill a being and eat its flesh is the most evil and terrible thing a creature can do! It’s obscene!’

Stopmouth offered her the last morsel of Skeleton flesh. She swiped it from his hand.

‘I know,’ she said, stuffing her mouth. ‘I know!’

They lay down in silence while they digested their meal. From here the humans could look back over some of the great distance they’d travelled. The air rippled in the morning heat and a light mist, soon to burn off, hung over the Wetlane. Tiny grey shapes, probably buildings, dotted the horizon. Stopmouth imagined them sinking into the Digger-riddled earth and shuddered.

He didn’t feel well. His head was spinning and he began to question again whether he’d really seen the humans or if his wounds had induced a fever in him. Yet there was something in the way Indrani sat, the way her eyes darted about, that suggested she wasn’t entirely sure of her own point of view either. She looked like a woman who insisted her child still lived in spite of the puddle of blood on her floor.

‘You came from the Roof,’ he said at last. ‘Why couldn’t other people have done the same? They certainly looked more like you than me.’

‘People don’t come here from the Roof,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, every thousand days or so we get an idiot who feels more holy for having beasts eat him…But groups? Never.’

‘And yet—’

‘Even if a group did come, a big group…The world is vast, Stopmouth. Huge. What are the chances that we’d run into them? It’s impossible.’

‘It’s not impossible,’ he said. ‘They could have placed themselves in our path on purpose. Like…like an ambush or something.’

The idea seemed to throw her off completely. She stared at him for a dozen heartbeats before a look of pure horror came over her face. ‘Or someone else…’ she whispered. ‘Someone else could have sent them here, right where we are. Oh, by all the gods!’ She scrambled to her knees. ‘We’ve got to go! Quickly!’

‘We can’t,’ said Stopmouth. ‘Well, Rockface can’t and I won’t leave him here. We all need rest. Another day, Indrani, please. They’ll still be there tomorrow. We’ll be stronger then, I promise.’

She looked at the wound she’d bound herself only the previous evening. Blood still oozed into the moss bandage and sweat beaded Stopmouth’s brow.

Indrani nodded and sat down, but he could see the tension in every muscle of her body. Surely, he thought, the idea of finding humans right where they needed them was the best possible news? And yet she looked so frightened.

There was so much about her he didn’t know, whereas she seemed to know everything about him and his people.

‘Indrani, why did you call my ancestors “Deserters” the other night?’

‘I…I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Because it’s not true?’

‘Stopmouth…’ She was still staring at the horizon, dragging her hands through the stony soil of the ridge.

‘Please find some question other than that,’ she said finally. ‘Please. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you things. I do. More than you can imagine. Sometimes I look at you, at your cleverness, all that strength and energy, and I think…I almost think you could be one of us. And then I see you killing. You enjoy it. Don’t deny it! I see you kill, and in your own way you’re magnificent, but you could never, never be civilized.’

‘Because I hunt for food?’

‘Partly, yes.’

‘You have hunted for food.’

‘I know,’ she whispered.

‘And ten heartbeats past, you grabbed a piece of flesh out of my hands. Didn’t you like the taste? Because if you can be a savage, maybe I could be civilized. It’s possible, isn’t it?’

They looked each other in the eye and he saw tears in hers. But she didn’t flinch away from his gaze. She nodded and wiped the back of one hand across her face.

‘And anyway, what has my being civilized got to do with the “Deserters”?’

‘I…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I insulted your ancestors the other night. I’m sorry. Your people have your stories, like we have ours, all right? It’s just that my stories would stop you wanting to come to the Roof with me. They could even make us enemies—’

‘Never!’

‘You say that, but if it happened, I’m not sure I could—’

‘It can’t happen,’ he said. ‘I just want to know.’

She leaned forward towards him, almost as if she wanted to kiss him, and his heart beat faster, waiting for that moment of joy. Her face paused a handspan from his own.

‘All humans, Stopmouth, came from the same world. And bad things happened there. But it was a long time ago and you are so far above all that, so…’ Her eyes were fixed on his for the longest of moments. Then she jerked her head back as if she’d just caught herself before stepping over the edge of a tower. She sighed, rubbed her face, then looked up once more.

‘You’ve done everything for me, Stopmouth. It has cost you your home and probably your life.’ Her eyes began to tear up again and he fought hard to keep his own from responding. ‘Even so, I will beg this one last thing from you, dearest Stopmouth. Please…Please don’t ask me to tell you this story. And if we live to meet other humans, if they’re real…I’m begging you, don’t ask them either. I can’t offer you anything in return, but—’

‘I don’t want anything, Indrani. I lo—’

She touched his lips with a finger. ‘Thank you.’

And then she was in his arms, bawling like a whipped child, until she closed her eyes and he laid her down beside Rockface.

He couldn’t sleep himself afterwards for all the thoughts she’d stirred up in him. The story Indrani was keeping from him fascinated him and he wondered how she thought that simply telling it would make him hate her. But more amazing still was the sight of Indrani lying so near and the recent feel of her in his arms. He’d sacrifice everything for that. He already had and he knew that nothing could ever make him break his promise to her.

17.

ALLEY FIGHT

T
he Bloodskin tattooed on Rockface’s back was as realistic a depiction as Stopmouth had ever seen. It was charging in for the kill, baring a mass of tangled teeth. As the big man limped down the slope in front of him, Stopmouth felt a flash of fear. He remembered clinging to that broad back, a Bloodskin just like that one reaching for him. Rockface had saved his life then, and not for the last time. But today the beast would have caught him easily: the big man was limping, his normally cheerful mouth twisted in pain that remained private except for the odd escaping grunt.

All around the little party, morning mist was fading with growing heat from the Roof. Clumps of coloured moss fought eternal battles over brittle crumbles of stone. A moss-beast whizzed by on tiny wings. It hovered for a moment at Stopmouth’s ear. Then it swung away off down the ridge and out of sight. Looking for food, he thought, his own stomach rumbling. His wound stung a bit beneath its bandage, but it was healing quickly under Indrani’s care.

Her touch was always so gentle with him, even when she spoke bad things against his Tribe. He couldn’t blame her for that, after what she’d been through. But he hoped her sufferings would soon fade from her memory and she would come to his arms again for more than crying.

She stopped for a moment to drink from their only remaining water skin and caught him looking.

‘You’re not angry with me, Stopmouth?’

‘No!’

‘It’s just when you scowl at me like that…’

‘I wasn’t—I mean, I didn’t know—’

She smiled and handed over the water skin. ‘We’re still friends, right?’

If only she knew! It was all he could do to nod without reaching for her and scaring her off again.

They set off along the ridge until they came in sight of the fire that seemed to burn constantly down by the river. They followed its smoke, as Stopmouth had before, moving downhill from cover to cover.

More beasts roamed the area today. Not skeletons this time. These ones ran on four legs, although they looked as if they could rise to a head-height above a man if they wanted to travel on two. They had tiny eyes perched atop pointy skulls and rust-coloured, scaly skin. Human body parts dangled from hide ropes tied to their backs. They must have had good hearing, for when Indrani gasped in horror, they stopped. She managed to keep quiet long enough for the beasts to decide they’d heard nothing and move off again downriver. Nor were these the last danger between the three humans and their goal. All the land around seemed to swarm with enemies. Only a dozen heartbeats after the first sighting, Stopmouth spotted a hunting party of Skeletons in the distance. They too appeared to have been successful, dragging dead women behind them by the ankles.

‘I told you there were humans here,’ said Stopmouth. Indrani didn’t reply. Her face had turned white. ‘They’re not much good at defending themselves,’ he added. He told her about the pathetic weapons the two hunters had faced two days previously, and the equally pathetic fighter.

They tiptoed through the forest until they reached the first, unguarded walls. The road here had been barricaded a long time before, but hadn’t seen repairs in generations. They climbed over it easily and stepped into the empty street beyond.

Everything about the houses here screamed ‘old’. Older by far than those Stopmouth had grown up in. Many were dressed in a loincloth of their own rubble, and moss blanketed every wall as far as the second or third storey. It grew thickly here, bunching around cracks and forming little mounds over fallen-in roofs. Where two varieties met, red with purple or deep green, little eddies of colour would form, each apparently trying to grow over the top of the other. Throughout the area, narrow streets crossed with even tighter alleys. Most of the latter were impassable, blocked by generations of dying buildings. In one case, two houses leaned across the gap towards each other, making a bridge of their outer walls.

The party moved from door to door, careful of ambush. They saw no one. Finally they heard crying. A child no higher than Stopmouth’s waist sobbed and wailed. She stopped for a minute when she saw them. Then she started up again.

‘Hush,’ said Indrani. ‘Hush! Where’s your mother?’

Dried blood smeared the child’s forehead although she didn’t look injured. In fact, red splashes decorated most of the street. When the girl made no answer, Indrani took her by the hand and pulled her along as they walked towards the river. Soon they heard more crying; the keening of grown women. Almost every corner boasted human bones or pools of blood. Even Rockface woke from the stupor he’d been in to ask, ‘How could this happen? How?’

The way opened up into a wide square where hundreds, maybe thousands of humans lay jammed together around a bonfire, crowding even nearby roofs. Stopmouth gaped in wonder at the bizarre and beautiful colours worn by these people. Not even the mossbeasts of the Diggers’ forest had been so brilliant. In particular, the women seemed to shimmer in skins that covered them from neck to foot. But the heat must have been terrible, for only their arms and faces felt the air. Stopmouth couldn’t tell one person from another at first. Maybe he didn’t want to, for when his eyes finally began catching on details, the pity was nearly enough to make him turn and run. A woman, her limbs like sticks, crawled on all fours as if searching for her missing eyes. A haggard boy prayed loudly to spirits Stopmouth had never heard of. He had the look of madness on his face. Nearby an infant clutched vainly at the legs of a man who, it seemed, could not look down; could only stare ahead, unblinking. Volunteers ready for the pot.

There were many others like this, weeping or fighting over trifles, wailing or begging. All looked terrified, and no amount of coloured cloth could hide it.

The hubbub died down at the approach of the newcomers. A woman next to Stopmouth whispered in his hearing: ‘It’s the witch! This is her fault!’

‘You!’ The bald man who’d attacked Stopmouth two days before pushed through the crowd, stepping on people who couldn’t move away fast enough. He sweated heavily and stumbled as he emerged. Hair grew on his face and it almost looked to Stopmouth as if his head were on upside down. Like many of the other men (but none of the women), he had stripped himself to the waist. He had so little muscle that his skin seemed to hang about him in flaps without so much as a single tattoo to relieve the ugliness.

‘He mustn’t have eaten lately,’ whispered Stopmouth. ‘Maybe none of them have.’

‘But,’ asked Indrani, ‘why are they even here?’ She too was sweating.

The bald man pointed dramatically at Stopmouth and spoke loudly enough for the whole square to hear him. ‘I told you lot not to come back with your savage ways! We will not descend to your level! We will not waver!’ He turned to Indrani. ‘As for you,’ he sneered. ‘Witch! You have my pity. You will never leave this place! Not if you die a thousand times!’

Rockface roared and stepped forward. Indrani grabbed his shoulder, making him wince. ‘We’re going now,’ she said. ‘We’ve seen enough.’ She pushed Rockface back in the direction from which they’d come. Then she took Stopmouth by the hand and began dragging him and the child with her.

‘Wait!’ Stopmouth freed himself from her grip and turned to the crowd. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘The savage has a Talker!’ somebody exclaimed.

He ignored them. ‘We found this little girl with no mother. You left her in the streets to die! What must your ancestors think of you?’

Many of the watchers looked ashamed, but the balding man scowled. ‘We will not be staying here, savage! Death will save us, and the girl too if you would just let her be!’

‘Yes!’ said somebody at the back to approving murmurs. ‘Let her be!’

‘No!’ said somebody else.

The balding man looked around for the rebellious voice. A young woman on a rooftop, every bit as beautiful as Indrani and large with child, stood up.

‘I shouldn’t be here in the first place!’ she cried. ‘I never believed any of your drivel.’ And then she stumbled backwards. ‘Ow! Let me go, Grandmother!’

Stopmouth didn’t know whether to be more shocked by the fact that an adult had a living grandmother or by the sight of the old woman herself: bone-white hair over skin as wrinkled as a brain.

‘You’re ready for cremation already!’ the young woman said. ‘Why did I have to die for your beliefs?’

A riot ensued up on the roof as other family members pulled her down and tried to shut her up. She continued to shriek insults until the others beat her into silence.

‘We’re going now!’ said Indrani. Stopmouth allowed her to drag him as far as the next street, still with the little girl in tow and Rockface limping along behind.

‘Who are these people?’ he asked her. ‘This is madness!’

‘They’re a group that prays a lot to spirits. I’ll tell you more when we stop.’

They picked out a building and sat in the shade of its lintel. A curtain of moss helped keep the glare away and was still damp and cool with the remnants of last night’s Roofsweat. All around them, the buzz and whirr of insects soothed away the human sounds of the square. Stopmouth gave the little girl a drink of water and she curled up and went to sleep immediately. Rockface moved to sit beside her, resting one hand gently on her back. He was breathing heavily, exhausted by his wounds and the short trip they’d made to get here.

‘Who were those people?’ asked Stopmouth again.

Indrani didn’t answer at first. She looked sick and afraid, as if her worst nightmares had all come true at once. ‘There are plenty who think like them where I come from, Stopmouth. They are people who claim to love spirits more than they love themselves. Some of the fools even mean it, I suppose…We have a special word for them:
religious
.’ She pronounced it the way she pronounced the word ‘savage’, as if it hurt to speak it. ‘Some of them were the ones who rebelled up on the Roof–that’s when you saw the Globes start fighting. But these ones are the kind that don’t like to fight, or say they don’t. Their legends tell them that if they eat the flesh of another living creature, they must be eaten themselves one day. That’s why they don’t defend themselves.’

Stopmouth was still mystified. ‘They’re going to be eaten anyway. Every creature is eaten in the end, so they might as well start defending themselves and live a bit longer, am I right?’

‘Of course he’s right,’ said Rockface. He patted the other hunter weakly on the back as if to say:
See how well I trained him?

Indrani sighed. ‘Stopmouth, I don’t know how to explain this to you, really I don’t. But it’s not this life those people are worried about. If they eat flesh, then when they’re reborn they—’

‘What do you mean, “reborn”?’ Stopmouth wondered if the Talker, unable to give the appropriate meaning, had thrown in the first word it could find.

She sighed again. ‘Just trust me on this, all right? It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, or don’t believe it. Just accept that
religious
people imagine they will have other lives after they die—’

‘As ancestors?’

‘No, Stopmouth. As people, or beasts or trees. Don’t look at me like that! That’s what their idiot leader meant when he said I’d never leave here. I have eaten flesh, so he thinks I’ll be reborn here and devoured here again and again until I learn not to consume others. He’s sure that if he dies without flesh passing his lips, he’ll pay off whatever crime against the spirits condemned him to be here in the first place. The next time he’s born, it will be to a kinder fate.’

This was just about the most amazing thing Stopmouth had ever heard. He had questions, lots of questions. He didn’t get to ask them.

A band of men and women more than a dozen strong found them. The boy, Yama, who’d recognized Stopmouth and Rockface when they’d fought the Skeletons two days before, smiled and stepped forward out of the group. He still carried his stick, but he looked more haggard and the scars on his cheeks were crusted with blood. The others hovered at his back, men twice his size, as if they thought Yama would protect them.

‘Great hunters’–he dropped the tree branch and bowed with his palms flat against each other and raised in front of his face–‘I’ve watched your people my whole life, although the elders told me not to. Ha ha, I bet they all wish they’d watched you now! None of the stinking cowards have eaten for days.’

‘And what have you eaten, Yama?’ asked Stopmouth.

The boy ignored the question. ‘You’re quite good,’ he said. ‘At hunting, I mean. I know I’d be good too if I had a proper spear like you do. Then I could feed myself and any wives I had.’

‘Good boy!’ said Rockface. ‘You hear him, hey? Stopmouth?’

Another man stepped forward. He was one of the grey ones with scraggly hair sprouting strangely from the front of his face and a voice like two stones scraping together.

‘Oh, enough of this!’ said the grey man. ‘I am Kubar, one of the elders this little fool has been mocking. We need your help, savages. You murder for food and we have women here, starving people who need you two to feed them.’

Stopmouth felt his face grow hot. He was sick of being called a ‘savage’. Also he noticed that some of the group before him cast hateful glances towards Indrani. He’d heard people call her a witch earlier and didn’t like that either.

‘We need to get going,’ he said.

‘Ridiculous!’ said Kubar. ‘Have you no feeling for your fellow humans? No feeling at all? The beasts are here every day, picking us off. But at night’–he shuddered–‘at night they come in big groups. The white ones with four arms. The ones with tongues that will wrap around a child and snatch her away. The red ones that can run on four legs or two. They herd away hundreds of us at a time and butcher them in a street nearby where we can hear everything! Sometimes they just run at us with their knives and kill and kill until they grow tired. And you…you refuse to help us? There were ten thousand of us only a few days ago, and now we are a fifth of that. In a few more days we will all be dead.’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’ asked Stopmouth. ‘To be reborn?’