Penult (18 page)

“
Well, good for you!
Managing to stay away for so long. That can only be a good thing.
Too bad you had to come back and see the place like
this.”

“
Yeah. Everything all torn
apart kind of sucks.”

“
I should take you down
below ASAP. They got falcons and condors patrolling all the time.
They go after anyone they see on the surface, doesn’t matter who.
They don’t bother us down below because that’s where they want us.
Penult wants the surface for themselves.”

“
So what are you doing up
here?”

“
I scout for Luther. Me and
the other scouts, we spend all day out and about checking on
things. We’re always back by sundown. ‘Cept when we’re not. If you
want I can take you to the new bubble. I’m pretty much good to go.
Finished my rounds a while ago. I was just waiting for the sun to
dip a little lower.”

The idea of heading down into those
stinky tunnels did not appeal to me in the least. But I knew how to
keep myself safe down there. This Penult thing was a whole new ball
of wax. I would need time to figure out what was what.

“
Um, sure,” I said. “That
would be great. Any chance there’s a guy a name Zhang down there.
I’m supposed to meet up with him.”

“
Zhang? You mean Master
Zhang?”

“
I guess.”

“
He and Yaqob are leading
the resistance. They’re up the valley at New Axum with their
armies.”

“
They’re still fighting …
on the surface?”

“
Oh yeah. And they seem to
be holding up quite well. They control both valleys and the head
waters. The Pennies only took the plains and the foothills. Their
offensive stalled about a week ago and ever since it’s been a
spitting contest.”

“
Cool,” I said. “Well,
that’s certainly good to hear. If I wanted to see them, is it
safe?”

“
No. Nuh-uh. But we might
be able to get you there at some point. Luther’s planning on
sending a contingent. We caught a Seraph a while back and we’ve
been keeping him down below in a pod. But Master Zhang wants us to
do a prisoner swap for Victoria. You know Victoria?”

I nodded. “The Weaver.”

She looked at me funny. “Not just a
Weaver. That’s like calling Usain Bolt a jogger. Heck, I’m a
Weaver. Victoria’s … special. But anyhow, she got taken when the
Pennies hit Frelsi. Luther’s not crazy about getting her back but
Yaqob and Zhang keep pressuring him to give up his Seraph. Zhang,
especially, is real anxious about getting this done.”

“
Victoria for a Seraph?
This guy must be special, too.”

Kitt smirked.

“
Well, he certainly seems
to think so. The bastard’s full of himself. Not the kind of person
you would think would ever end up in Heaven. Not that I’m saying
Penult is supposed to be Heaven.”

“
Doesn’t sound like an even
trade.”

“
You don’t know the half of
it. He’s a real loser. Snooty fucker. Good for nothing but
insults.”

“
But the Pennies want him
back?”

“
Yeah. Go figure. They
leave no soul behind, I guess. Or whatever.”

We watched the patrol of Cherubim
disappear towards what was left of the foothills that had flanked
the massif that had harbored Frelsi and several other ancient and
forgotten cities that had been founded by the Old Ones.

“
They’ll split into sevens
when they reach the hills. There’s still lots of half souls hiding
out in the woods and stuff. The Seraphim won’t rest until every
last one of them is exterminated or driven underground.”

“
Why do they care so
much?”

“
Because they think we’re
pests. Human cockroaches. In their eyes, Root was broken. They
think they’re fixing it.”

“
Broken?”

“
Well, yeah. Because Root
was always supposed to be a kind of sorting bin, not a final
resting place. Souls who come here were either supposed get taken
into the Deeps or returned to life. We’re not supposed to be
sticking around long term.”

“
Says who?”

“
Says them. Whoever they
are. They’re no angels, I’ll tell you that, if the one Luther’s got
is any indication.” The sun was hovering just above the horizon.
“Come on!” She flicked her chin and a shock of dark hair flew
across her face. “It’s quitting time. I’ll show you the way
down.”

Chapter 16:
Below

As far as I could see across what had
been the pitted plains I could see no end to the destruction. The
ripples were arranged in overlapping circles, mounding up wherever
two waves had met. At the center of each circle stood a patch of
intact plain, standing tall over the collapsed ground surrounding
them.

“
Man. What kind of bomb
does this?”

“
No bomb. Crackers,” said
Kitt.

I grew up in Florida where a cracker
meant a native Floridian of the redneck persuasion. White trash, in
other words. Somehow, I don’t think that was what she
meant.

“
See that pole over
there?”

She pointed at an intact chunk of the
original plain that had remained standing after the land
surrounding it had collapsed. Atop it stood a slender tower
buttressed at the base with spindly legs. It looked like a cross
between a totem pole and a macrophage—those lunar module like virus
particles that attack bacteria.

“
The Pennies drive these
things into the ground. When they’re activated, they send these
huge ripples spreading all directions. Cracks the ground wide open
and stirs it all up and the damage gets worse the farther out you
go, peaks at about a mile then fades. It brought down the city
right on top of our heads.”

“
But how?”

“
I don’t know. Our Seraph
prisoner calls them harmonic dissonance engines. No one knows how
they work. Maybe … magic?”

We struck out across the rubble. More
dust devils popped up, forming an arc around the base of the
valley. I could only assume that each was associated with another
group of those strange cherubic soldiers.

More Seraphim had appeared in the sky
along with some larger, more angular contraptions, too slow and
clumsy to be mantids or dragonflies. Other than that lone honeybee
in the hollow, the only flying insects I had seen so far had been
dead on the ground.

Kitt saw me staring. “They won’t
bother us. They’re busy sealing off the valley.”

We came to the base of one of the
intact islands, whose walls were draped with sheets of tangled
roots. She pulled back a flap and slipped behind it.

I followed her down a deep and
slanting cleft so narrow we had to turn sidewise to squeeze
through. At its base, we found ourselves in a dark chamber dark lit
only by the occasional bead of light passing down the length of
some of the intact roots. Several narrow tunnels branched out from
this node.

“
These little tubes are
Reaper-proof,” said Kitt. “Too small for them to squeeze through.
But we gotta watch the bigger junctions. That’s where they like to
sit and set ambushes.”

She led me into a tunnel the diameter
of a truck tire. On hands and knees, we continued down a gentle
spiral. When it too, leveled out, Kitt knifed her arms into the
wall and we crawled into a tangle of unconsolidated roots as dense
as a mangrove forest. We bushwhacked a good fifty yards or so
before we broke through to one of the big, smooth-walled tunnels
that I knew from my early days in Root.

These were Reaper superhighways, their
tops bristling with the stalks of long-harvested pods, well lit by
with glowing conduits shuttling globular beads of colored light in
cryptic patterns.

The patterns seemed coherent. I
suspected they conveyed information via some code, but to whom and
about what no one could ever tell me. I doubt it could be the
Reapers messaging each other. They were way too dumb.

We came to a place where the big
tunnel had collapsed and twisted shut. Several impromptu bypasses
had been torn into the root matrix around it.

We clambered over the bypass and
continued onward. The tunnel here was dark and still, as if the
damage had interrupted the transmission of those light-borne
messages.

The darkness here was absolute. We
stumbled along. I bumped my head against an occupied pod, eliciting
groans from its occupant. Kitt didn’t bother to rescue him. She
took my hand and pulled me through another weak spot in the tunnel
wall.

We passed through another loosely
consolidated section, this one dimly lit by roots that gave off a
static faint, blue glow, like those phosphorescent jellyfish. We
made our way towards a huge black dome, one of those hollow tumors
or ‘bubbles’ in the root structure, some created by natural
processes, others engineered by master Weavers. An enormous one of
Luther’s creation had housed the original Burg and Karla had
resided in a much smaller but Reaper-proof chamber when I first met
her.

“
What happen to the old
Luthersburg? Crackers wreck it?”

“
No. It was gone long
before that,” said Kitt. “It was left undefended when we moved up
to the surface. A bunch of Reapers broke in and destroyed
everything, gobbled the stragglers.”

“
I thought these things
were Reaper-proof.”

“
They generally are,” said
Kitt. “But they need tending and mending or else they get weak
spots.”

“
Like fences with goats. I
know what you mean.”

She pressed her palm against a dark
spot in the wall and a hole appeared. The roots separated, dilating
until it was large enough to step through.

“
I have to warn you, things
are kind of rough inside. We haven’t had a chance to weave it up
good and pretty.”

The interior of the dome looked like a
construction zone for a movie set. Roots were being shaped, crudely
in some cases, into the general outlines of houses and buildings
with walls that were lopsided and warped. Only a few had finished
exteriors of clapboard, stucco or stone.

“
Things are going slow this
time. Luther’s making us do all the weaving ourselves. He says we
need to learn. But once we’re done with the village, he says he’ll
do the sky for us. He’s good at skies.”

“
I know.” I remembered the
arc of artificial sky he had created for the first Luthersburg. It
was almost as good as the real thing, with puffy clouds that
floated by and morphed into dreamy shapes and at night,
constellations and a moon more compelling than anything you’d see
at a planetarium.

“
So make yourself at home,”
said Kitt. “Or make yourself … a home … I should say. There’s lots
of vacant space on the fringes. First come, first served, is the
rule.”

“
Are you going to see
Luther now? Any chance I could go with you?”

“
Well, duh. Of course. He’s
gonna want to see you. I mean. You’re ‘the’ James.” She
winked.

We passed through the thick of the
construction zone, way more chaotic and ramshackle than the
Hemisoul shantytowns that ringed the Sanctuary of Frelsi. I just
happened to notice a perfect little cabin with a thatched roof and
stucco walls painted robin egg blue. A thin wisp of smoke trailed
out of a chimney fashioned from rounded river stone.

“
Hey! That … that looks
like….”

I took off running.

“
Hey!” said Kitt. “Where
are you going? What about Luther?”

I came to a white picket fence and
there was Bern standing in the middle of what he obviously intended
to be a garden, but for now was just flock of stray roots he was
attempting to marshal with his cane until they stood at
attention.

“
Lille! They’re being
stubborn again. They refuse to turn green.”

“
Oh, give it a rest,
darling,” said Lille, from the porch. “This is virgin territory,
they’re not used to being shaped.”

Lille saw me standing by the picket
fence and her eyes lit up like beacons.

“
What are you gawking at?”
said Bern.

“
Look behind you,
dear.”

Bern wheeled around, and when he saw
me, he lost hold of his cane and stumbled.

“
James?”

Chapter 17: Old
Friends

Lille leapt out of her chair and flew
across the garden, trampling the roots Bern was attempting to tame.
She beat her partner to the fence, smothering me in hugs and pecks
across the pickets. The burn scars on her face once again evident.
All of the expert flesh-weaving she had received in Frelsi had
regressed.

“
I’d better go,” said Kitt,
backing away. “Luther wants us to see him anytime one of us comes
down from up top.”

“
Cool. Tell him I’ll drop
in later.”

“
Better make that sooner,”
she said, arching her eyebrows. She skipped away, slipping between
a pair of half-built hovels, roofless with walls of flattened and
matted root.

Lille reached over and pinched
me.