A Princess of The Linear Jungle (7 page)

Chambless handed her the tablet, and Merritt studied it.

“Lower Marmolejo, perhaps? Three centuries old?”

Chambless took the tablet back. Without warning, he dashed it to the tile floor! It crashed and shattered.

“Try ‘the forgers of Orsinwalls, six months ago.’ Let this be a lesson in appearances for you, Miss Abraham. The authentic and the fake are often hard to tell apart.”

Merritt nodded humbly. Chambless began to rummage among the litter of his desk.

“Now, where is that gift I had for you? I put it right down here just a week ago….”

He came up with a scabbarded dagger, exhibiting richly worked case and handle, and tendered it to Merritt.

“I took this myself off a native of Breviary Minor fifty years ago. He generously embedded it in my shoulder before I cracked his skull. Still twinges in wet weather. My shoulder, not the blade or even his putative skull. It’s yours. Methinks it might stand you in good stead where you’re going.”

Merritt’s eyes grew wet. She embraced the old polypolisologist. He felt like a sheet wrapped around sticks and ropes.

“All right, all right, on your way now. And don’t come back missing any of your delightful parts.”

Merritt threaded the scabbard onto her belt. “No, sir!”

She recounted the visit to Art that evening. He chuckled and shook his head. “Edgar’s seen a lot. But I expect he’s grown overcautious.”

Merritt wondered.

Eventually Spring came. The first week in April marked the slightly premature end to Arturo Scoria’s last class. All the preparations for their trip had been made.

Or so Merritt believed.

Art approached her late one afternoon and said, “We have a business dinner tonight. Dress nicely, because it’s at the Petaluma.”

Seated at the chic restaurant that evening, laughing and sipping champagne, Merritt knew herself to be on top of the world.

Then in strolled Ransome Pivot and Cady Rachis.

They headed straight for Merritt’s table. Scoria rose to greet them heartily. Merritt found herself stuttering her hello. The pair sat down, Pivot pulling out Cady’s chair for her, and Scoria extemporized.

“Merritt, it’s like this. We really should have a medico along on this expedition, and I’ve been unable to secure one from the WMA-approved ranks. Seems the Wharton Medical Association doesn’t license its members to practice out-of-Borough. I suppose I could’ve scouted for a competent sawbones in Hakelight or elsewhere. No guarantee of success there either, though. But then I thought, we don’t need a brain surgeon for this romp, just someone reasonably competent in first aid. So I hit upon your old Borough-mate here. I like his character. He made a mistake in his choice of pals when he was starting his career, but he was blinded by his quest for knowledge. We can all empathize with that, I think. And he didn’t rat out his friends or plead ignorance. He’s smart, and he just needs a chance to rehabilitate himself, which this expedition can offer. Plus, he’s a big bruiser who looks like he can take care of himself in a punch-up. I want to bring him onboard. Do you object?”

Merritt studied Ransome Pivot’s pared-down lineaments. She sensed that all his boyish bumblepuppy innocence had been burned away, leaving him wiser and humbler, with a core of suffering. How could she refuse?

“No, of course not, Arturo.”

Cady Rachis spoke in her torch singer’s throaty purr. “You won’t have cause to regret our presence, dear.”

Merritt turned google-eyed toward Arturo, who had the good graces at least to look chagrined.

“Sex appeal and show business, Mer! The final touch! ‘Gorgeous nightclub singer lulls savages with song!’ Can’t you just see the headlines?”

Merritt fumed silently for a moment, then burst out laughing. She raised her champagne flute and said, “Vayavirunga, beware!”

The spanking-new cherry-colored and impeller-powered charabanc from Roger Kynard & Progeny was easily eighteen feet long, and featured six rows of padded bench seats.

A hired uniformed driver occupied the first row behind the steering wheel.

The second bench hosted Arturo Scoria, Durian Vinnagar and Merritt, with Merritt in the middle as buffer between the rivals.

In the third rank sat Ransome Pivot and Cady Rachis, holding hands.

Balsam Troutwine lolled alone in the fourth row with easy imperiousness.

The last two benches were jammed with six bike messenger boys, looking like a family of slightly disreputable cousins.

The well-stuffed, strapped-down boot of the charabanc was laden with essential items which Scoria felt uncertain of purchasing in Hakelight.

The charabanc could make fifteen miles-per-hour with no strain. So whereas the
Samuel Smallhorne
needed twelve hours to traverse the hundred Blocks of a Borough (and so had set out two days ago), the motorcar could cover that same distance in under two hours. Thus, the trip from Block 70 in Wharton, through the adjacent Borough of Colglazier, and right up to the Wall at the Downtown end of Hake-light, could theoretically be traversed in under six hours. But Scoria had determined they should proceed more slowly, to allow the maximum publicity and attention from crowds along the way.

If the turnout now lining both sides of Broadway here in Wharton was any accurate indication, their slow progress would be justified. The crowds tooted horns and threw confetti and shouted good luck messages.

Dan Peart stood alongside the charabanc, straddling his beloved Calloway Tempesta. The empty seat beside Troutwine had been reserved for him, but he had declined.

“Got to stretch the old hamstrings. Won’t get a chance when we’re wading through those damn weeds.”

Mayor Milorad Hastings of Wharton gave a brief, albeit pompous speech, President Ogallala fired a compressed-air starter’s pistol with a loud
pop!
, and the expedition was off!

Merritt considered how her departure from Wharton compared to her arrival, and was not displeased with what she had accomplished so far in her young life.

Arturo Scoria was standing up in the moving vehicle, waving boisterously to the crowd. Merritt yanked him down. He boldly kissed her, evoking a tongue-clucking from Vinnagar.

Merritt turned around and stuck out a sliver of tongue at Cad Rachis.

So far, so fine!

7.

INTO VAYAVIRUNGA!

DAN PEART TOSSED ANOTHER NAIL-STUDDED WASTE PLANK into the dancing flames contained in the big battered metal oil drum, sending a gout of sparks leaping upward into the night sky. Merritt thought to see a Pompatic swooping unnaturally low over their camp. The sight made her shiver, but she tried not to interpret it as an ill omen. Death was the one unavoidable outcome for everyone, and random reminders of it meant nothing.

“Cold for April,” Peart said. “But I bet the Jungle Blocks ‘are steamier.”

The entire crew of the Scoria-Vinnagar Vayavirunga Expedition sat on wooden crates set close around the industrial-style campfire. The fire disclosed four large tents pitched in an urban interzone deliberately stripped of all other structures. This barren swatch of territory, half a Block wide across the whole Borough, intervened between Hakelight proper and the enormous Wall that protected them from Vayavirunga.

Merritt could sense the incredible mass of the Wall looming beyond their tiny sphere of illumination. The first time she had seen it up close, just this very day, she had been flummoxed. The top of the Wall seemed a thin line rulered against the blue of the sky. But the bottom of the wall, she knew, measured twenty feet thick! Composed of hewn granite blocks, so precisely shaven that no mortar had been necessary in their mating, the Wall dominated both the nearest buildings and any people daring to approach it, like a living stone creature poised to leap. Running from deep into the trashlands beyond the Tracks right up to the lapping River, the Wall cleaved the Linear City, here and, by counterpart, three ex-Boroughs distant, enclosing some seventy-five miles of unknown vegetation-fecund territory: the former Boroughs of Coconino, Fogtown and Gramercy. The base of the structure was a palimpsest of graffiti and wheat pasted posters from the ground up to about the height of one man standing on another’s shoulders. The texts varied from rude to worshipful, from germane to generic, from commercial to idiosyncratic.

Merritt had rested a hand on the cold, implacable stones. “Who built this, and how?”

Scoria replied, “Records are scanty. The period of construction was some three centuries ago, after all. The vegetable plague began, cause unknown, in the middle Borough, the old Fogtown, and started to spread inexorably, both Uptown and Downtown, at the rate of roughly three Blocks per year. The citizens of Hakelight did not believe in the threat immediately, so construction of the Wall did not commence right away. Yet when the Wall was finally finished, people say, the Jungle already lapped right up against the lowest courses of stone. So if you do the math, you see that it must have taken, um, thirty or forty years to finish the Wall.”

Professor Durian Vinnagar chimed in. “Comparative studies of chisel marks between the bottommost and topmost courses, taking into account metallurgical advances and shifting masonry styles, seem to indicate a period of construction equalling thirty-seven-point-eight years, plus or minus one-point-five.”

Scoria rolled his eyes. “Yes, as I said, between thirty and forty years!”

Arturo Scoria’s touchiness was hard for him to sustain, however, even when subtly needled by his rival. For their procession down Broadway, through Colglazier and Hakelight, had been an undeniable triumph. Over the course of about twelve hours, with frequent sanitary, alimentary and ceremonial stops, the Expeditionary force had been seen and cheered by hundreds of thousands of citizens. The acclaim was like heady wine to Scoria, and to Merritt and the others as well. Even Cady Rachis, used to being the center of applause, had revelled in the outpourings.

The charabanc had delivered the party to this barren interzone, to the surprise of everyone save their leader.

“I’ve determined,” said Scoria, “that we’ll camp out here for the next few days, until our supplies are all accumulated, rather than take upresidence in any hotel. I want us to get used to roughing it, and also to build up some psychic affinity with our destination. This is as close as we can get until the
Samuel Smallhorne
delivers us into the actual Jungle Blocks.”

That vessel had made good time, and now bobbed placidly at the Slip closest to the interzone. Captain Canebrake stood gamely ready to perform his part of the mission, registering neither approbation nor disdain for the dangerous assault.

Four tents had been erected. One for the cyclists, one for Cady and Ransome, one for Peart and Vinnagar, and one for Scoria and Merritt.

Balsam Troutwine, however, had secured—with Swazeycape monies—a luxury suite at the nearby Heatherlake Hotel. The practical-minded victualler was not planning to accompany them any further; after all, what use would his commercial skills and contacts be, after he had outfitted them with provisions here?

Troutwine had sidled up to Merritt in a moment of semi-isolation during the organized chaos of arrival at the interzone and whispered to her, “The splendid beds at the Heatherlake are reputed to confer enormous energies when used properly. May I suggest—
oof!
”

Troutwine’s grunt was occasioned by Merritt’s savage stiff-fingered jab into his ribs. Rubbing his injured area while maintaining a cosmopolitan smile, Troutwine bowed to her and retreated.

Good riddance! thought Merritt.

Peart and Ransome had assembled a simple but satisfying supper of ham and roast beef sandwiches, soup and fruit, and now the party sat contemplatively around their rude, nighted hearth, the true enormity of what they intended finally sinking in.

Peart’s remark on the weather was not met with any great discussion, and Merritt sensed that the rest of the group shared her tiredness. It had been a long, exhiliratingexhilarating day. Even though they were a mere sixty or seventy miles from Wharton, they seemed transported to the legendary Low-Hundreds.

Merritt stood up and stretched, intending to kick off a general retreat to their foam mattresses.

At that moment a savage drumming filled the air, punctured within human whoops and wails! The rapid beats of the barbaric alien music sent Merritt’s pulse racing.

Clutching Ransome, Cady Rachis said, “Are we hearing the savages beyond the Wall?”

Dan Peart cocked his ear, then said, “Naw. It’s just the dancehall over yonder. Shinetaupe’s Cotillion. Saw it on the way in. Guess they don’t start really hopping till late.”

Balsam Troutwine waved from the shore and shouted. “Go safely! I’ll have a case of Kriel’s Prosecco awaiting your return!”

The
Samuel Smallhorne
pulled away from its Hakelight Slip. Merritt watched the shore recede with mingled feelings of trepidation and excitement. At long last, they had truly embarked on this milestone mission to one of the incontestably unknown districts of the Linear City. No matter what lurked in those green precincts—fame or disgrace, knowledge or enigmas, life or death—the waiting was over. Merritt rested one hand on the haft of her holstered knife, gift of her mentor Chambless, securely belted around her waist. She leaned in to Arturo Scoria’s comforting bulk, noticing that Cady and Ransome were likewise entwined. Peart looked longingly at the shrinking sight of his abandoned bicycle. Durian Vinnagar consulted charts of the River’s currents in a pocket almanac. The bike-messenger boys chucked pebbles into the water, striving to outdo each other’s ripples.

“It’s comical, really,” said Scoria. “The trip’s just a mile, but it might as well be millions of Blocks.”

Prior scouting by Captain Canebrake, cruising slowly offshore from the ruined Slips of Vayavirunga, revealed that just four Blocks away a halfway decent mooring could be obtained. There all would be offloaded.

Scoria doffed the canvas backpack he wore, in common with the others. From it he removed a radio transceiver big as the whole set of Diego Patchen’s triple-decker novel
Jesper’s Follies
. He activated the set and unlimbered a microphone.