Atomic Underworld: Part One (4 page)

He
didn’t want to look at himself for long—it was too painful—so he reclined in
the window seat and went about the motions of stuffing his pipe. He lit the
bowl, drew the alchemically-treated tobacco smoke into his mouth, swirled it
about his teeth and gums, prodded the smoke with his tongue, enjoying the faint
lift it brought to his mind as it was absorbed into his bloodstream, and blew
it out the window in a fragrant green cloud, which rose up and out. The great
cistern chamber was large enough to produce breezes, and a faint acrid gust
tore the smoke apart. In its place was revealed the panorama of Muscud.

Lights
blazed from shabby houses and shops, and mysterious alleys emitted weird noises
and shadows. It was quite late—early morning, really—but time didn’t mean as
much down here, in this place forsaken by the sun. To the left stretched shops
and homes, ragged apartment complexes, while directly before him sprawled the
business district, merging with the industrial sector, such as it was, on the
right, a rash of smoking factories and listing aluminum warehouses, some
surprisingly large, and throughout it all, right, left and center, sprouting
like mushrooms, the various churches and temples. Just ahead loomed the Temple
of the Three Sisters with its white towers and silver dome, and Tavlin found it
odd that an underground community, whose members rarely saw the sky, would
worship the moons. However, it was a very popular religion up top and many of
the dwellers of the sewers had been raised in its faith, so it was not too
shocking that they continued in it even after becoming infected and moving
below. Other churches dominated, however. Several were devoted to the worship
of slug god Caryth, or Vorgost, the mythical giant white squid of the deep
sewers, or Meblang, the Queen Flail. But there were darker places of worship,
more sinister ones: the churches to the variously named gods sometimes known as
the
Ung’zain
, or sometimes the R'loth, those awful
beings that mutants had worshipped after the Withdraw, during the Dark Times.
It had disturbed Tavlin years ago when he’d learned some mutants still
worshipped them, and it still did. He didn’t like it, but he understood it.

What
he didn’t understand were the new churches he saw, the ones he couldn’t name.
He supposed one must be the Church of Magoth. What others might there be? Had
the mutants taken to worshipping all the bogeymen of the sewers? He knew the
undercities were only tiny points of light in a vast, alien darkness, a system
of tunnels ancient and strange and massive, and there were all sorts of things
reportedly living out there in the darkness, but to worship them seemed ...
what? Wrong? Insane? He was not particularly religious himself, but he
understood the need for it. Life was chaos, and religion gave it order,
meaning.

Speaking of which …

The
attack tonight—what was the meaning behind
it
?
He turned his mind to the problem, tried to understand what might have done
that to the bodies. Some strange technology? Some weapon? Had some
thing
done it? And why had the
perpetrator/perpetrators taken the jewel?

He
decided he would talk to Vassas’s men, surreptitiously, see if they’d noticed
anything out of the ordinary. Then he would research the jewel itself and the
race it came from. There was a decent library on Lovell Street, or had been. If
it was still there, it might hold some helpful information. Perhaps if he knew
more about the jewel, and the strange alchemy that apparently went into its
making—
Like it was alive,
Frankie had
said—he could figure out what the thieves wanted with it, and where/who they
might be. If the Lovell library didn’t help, he would ascend to Hissig proper
and its great library on
Haslehg
Blvd.

He
finished his pipe and paused before refilling it. It was late. He should sleep.
He wanted to send down for an overnight kit, a toothbrush, razor and so on, but
he was too tired. He did manage to leave the room briefly, find one of the
public toilets—the one for the johns—and use it. At the urinal a man was
bragging about his just-finished tryst with the Eel Twins. Tavlin tuned him
out. Wearily he washed and made his way back to his room.

Just
as he turned the knob, Tavlin heard a long, terrified scream.

*

He stood
stock-still.

The
scream came again.

Blood
pounding, Tavlin ran toward it, up a flight of stairs, then another.
Prostitutes surged around him, crying out to each other in confusion.

“What
was that?”

“It
sounded like the Madam!”

“Could
it be?”

“Maybe
we should get some help.”

“Get
to her room!”

Breathless,
fighting his way through the tide, Tavlin emerged onto the fourth and highest
floor and flowed along with the women toward Madam Elana’s rooms at the end of
the hall. She didn’t possess half the floor like Boss Vassas did, but she did
have a large suite (Tavlin had seen it before, when it was Saraja’s) and a
large, elaborately-worked door.

The
girls banged on it. When no one answered, two of the larger women kicked it
down. Tavlin volunteered to help, but they pushed him aside.

As
the door splintered, the girls rushed inside. Tavlin reached for the knife he
always kept in his jacket pocket, although usually it was just for show. With
it in hand, he entered the Madam’s suite. Elana had kept much of Saraja’s
belongings, the lacy curtains and delicate lanterns, but she had added a
profusion of figurines of toads and toadstools, and she had many surprisingly
lovely paintings of swamps.

Her
body lay in the middle of the room. Like the ones at Boss Vassas’s place, it
had been transformed into an inhuman mass of whitish, translucent material,
blown apart as if by great force so that, in addition to the main mass oozing
on the floor, pieces of the jellyfish-like flesh hung on couch and lantern,
dripped off wall and overhead chandelier. It all stank of sulfur and ammonia.
Tavlin placed his free hand over his mouth and nose and tried to breathe
shallow. Several of the girls made gagging noises, and two rushed from the
room. Others knelt over the Madam’s body, or stood carefully away from it,
exclaiming in horror.

“Is
that the
Madam
?”

“What
could have done this?”

A
gentle breeze stirred Tavlin’s hair. He looked to the window, which was large
and elaborately framed.

And
open.

Without
thinking, he moved to it and peered outside. Rooftops and rooftops. Nothing
else save for a swirl of down-sweeping flails, slippery and glistening in the
light of a streetlamp. Whoever had done this must still be nearby.

He
placed his hands on the windowsill, swung a leg over it, feeling the chipped
edge dig into his thigh through his corduroy pants, and carefully lowered
himself onto the thin ledge that was the window’s bottom edge and that ran in
both directions, becoming the bottom edge of the next window and wrapping
around the house. At its corners, mismatched gargoyles glared out over the
little city.

“What
are you
doing
?”

The
words, so close to Tavlin’s ear, made him jump so that he nearly fell off the
ledge. He turned to see Maya looking grief-stricken and shocked.

“Going
after him,” Tavlin said.

“You’re
crazy.”

He
wanted to say it’s what he’d been hired to do, and the murderer had possibly
just saved him a good deal of time and effort—not perhaps the most charitable
thought, he admitted to himself—but instead he concentrated on stepping
sideways along the narrow ledge. A flail swished past him, its mucus spattering
his cheek and its wings making thick wet
wack-wack
noises. When Tavlin
reached the corner, he was able to brace himself against the gargoyle there,
turn about and use the crenellations and ornamentation in the walls as
handholds and toeholds. He used to be a thief, and though those skills had long
ago rusted they were still present, if atrophied. With a grunt, he hauled
himself up, hand over hand, foot over foot, until he could heave himself over
the edge. He flopped onto the roof, braced against the gutter that channeled
the ever-present drip from above, and lay gasping. He had only climbed a few
feet and already he was out of breath.
You’re
getting old, Tav.

He
forced himself to his feet, climbed the peaked roof of the Twirling Skirt and
swept his gaze over the surrounding rooftops. All the buildings in this section
of town were pressed up against each other—the columns that supported the
platforms on which they stood being thick and ancient—and it would be easy for
a thief to navigate roof-to-roof. Tavlin had done so back in the old days, and
that had been in the city above where it wasn’t as easy. Many of the residents
of Muscud kept rooftop gardens, and weird fungus, pale ferns and lichenous
growths sprouted from the darkness, lit only by the few lights still blazing in
the buildings and by the occasional street lamp below, each one beset with
moths and other, slimier things. The lights shifted and swayed as the clouds of
moths and other creatures became denser, then more fluid.

Among
all this Tavlin did not at first see the slim dark shape speeding away from the
whorehouse, but he had good eyes, used to seeing in the darkness, and at last
he saw it. He swore. The shape was already far away.

He
crossed to the next rooftop, moving in the direction of the killer, but lost
his footing and stumbled.
Shit!
He
caught himself at the last moment. Gasping, he stared down at the pavement he
would have landed on.
Too close
.
Gathering his resolve, he pressed on.

A
gun cracked.

He
was just passing a crumbling brick chimney, and chips of brick exploded under
the bullet’s impact. The shrapnel sliced his cheek. He ducked behind the
smokestack.

When
a second gunshot did not immediately follow, he grabbed a loose brick and stuck
it out. Nothing. He rushed out, ran to the next chimney and threw himself
behind the low wall that bordered the rooftop garden. He could smell the ozone
stench of the albino ferns and the pine of the mulch.

No
gunshots. He swore. He was breathing heavily and sweating. Part of him would
have been relieved if he’d had to go back.

Instead,
he hauled himself to his feet and continued pursuing the assassin. He couldn’t
see the figure but went on in the direction he’d seen it go. He found it odd
that the killer would be armed with both a pistol and whatever had slain Madam
Elana.
Maybe the unconventional weapon
has little ammunition—that or it’s expensive.

The
enemy moved into the open. Darting from one chimney to another, the assassin
picked his way over rooftops, scrambled up a peak, then half slid, half
scurried down the other side, almost vaulting over this rooftop to another.

Tavlin
ran after him.

The
killer swiveled. A flash of fire signaled another gunshot, an instant before
the crack reached Tavlin’s ears. Even as the assassin spun, Tavlin flung
himself to the roof. The bullet whizzed overhead.

Then
Tavlin was up and moving again, the killer disappearing and then reappearing
between chimneys and peaks and walls. Tavlin followed. The assassin made his
way into the industrial sector. Here the roofs were further apart, and the man
scaled down the walls and alit on the streets. Tavlin clambered down a fire
escape and followed. He could smell the stink of the sewers now; they were on
the edge of the city, close to the shore, where the influence of the scented
alchemical lamps was weakest.

The
assassin emerged from the cover of the buildings and ran along the docks, down
Eyersly
Blvd., which bordered the shore and encircled much
of the city. Warehouses and factories still lined one side. As soon as Tavlin
went after him, the killer turned and fired again. Tavlin reeled back. When he
judged the killer too far away to fire accurately, he reemerged.

A
tentacle rose from the black water and curled toward his leg. The huge suckered
limb attempted to lasso his ankle. He leapt it, barely.
What the hell?

Another
tentacle rose, then another. Huge fleshy bodies strained against encrusted bars
that just breached the lake’s surface. Someone was transporting
illegally-caught giant squid from the Atomic Sea, probably for use as either
circus fodder or expensive menu items.

Tavlin
swore and ran on. At last he saw the killer stop at a gate in a fence
surrounding a particular factory, show some I.D., then be admitted through. The
man spoke with a figure at the gate, pointing back.

The
figure withdrew a pistol and started for Tavlin.

Shit
, thought Tavlin, and stopped.
Panting, sweating, joints aching, he watched the dark shape approach. As the
light of a passing streetlamp revealed it, Tavlin saw glistening black flesh,
huge black eyes and a thrusting snout. It was one of the Suulm, a
salamander-like race that lived in underground caverns, typically dwelling near
black lakes. They were creatures that loved the water and disdained man and
man’s technology, thus it surprised Tavlin to see one near the foul sewer
water, carrying a pistol and clearly cooperating with men.