The Chamber in the Sky (8 page)

S
everal hours after they left the crashed extraction station, the three kids came upon a docking facility that stuck out into the artery. There were a few subs clamped to it already. Men in diving suits were making repairs.

Gregory steered the dinghy into a berth and shut off the engine.

This time when they stepped through the hatch, the signs were good: A Norumbegan harbormaster greeted them and led them through a long tunnel.

They had landed in a village called Wellbridge, in a side-chamber of the stomach of Two-Gut. The village was surrounded by huge, feathery, frilled growths that towered hundreds of feet into the air. They looked like fungi or molded wax, but they were called gut fingers. The locals figured that when there was food moving through the alien stomach, these structures somehow combed something out of it or absorbed something or spewed something out.

The village itself was carved into the gut fingers. There were windows and doors and even gargoyles carved into the flesh.

The kids decided to stay overnight at a hotel there. There was one diner in town, up in a tower of a gut finger, and they went there to get a square meal. They hadn't eaten for more than a day.

It turned out that the flesh of the gut fingers was the main dish in Wellbridge. The waiter served it to the kids in huge red bowls. It was orange and spongy, and came with tomato sauce.

It wasn't so bad when they tasted it.

“So,” said Gregory through a full mouth, “what's the plan?”

“I think we head for the Jejunum,” said Brian. “The town of Turnstile. The Ellyllyn Inn. That's the last place the Umpire Capsule sent a postcard from. We need to trace it from there.”

Gwynyfer said, “That's on the way to the family estates. The Globular Colon. Wouldn't it be delish to relax for a few days? I, for one, would be glad of a dip in the reflecting pool and a maidservant to rub my feet with pumice stone.”

“I'm not sure we have time to, you know, sit by the pool,” said Brian. “We don't know how fast time is passing on Earth. Or how quickly the Thusser are spreading there.”

“Or here,” Gregory added.

“
There's
a terrible thought,” said Gwynyfer. “Thusser
in my reflecting pool! Here's hoping that the musketry of the Globular Colon was brave enough to keep them out.”

They asked the waiter how far it was to Turnstile. He hadn't heard of the town, but he said the journey across the stomach to the intestines, which were called the Volutes, was about four days. Near the Volutes, they'd find the Jejunum. The roads down that way were well marked.

“A few hours ago, there was a big tidal wave of blood in the artery,” Gregory said. “Does that always happen?”

The waiter shook his head. “No. Hasn't happened in a hundred years or more. Used to be it happened more often. We'd set the shipping out on the floods and they'd get pulled along. They'd shoot up to the hearts in the veins, come back down in the arteries. Didn't even have to use their engines. But them hearts haven't beat for decades.”

“A heartbeat?” Brian said. “That's what happened?”

“That's what's on the far end of this artery. Number Four Heart. McRiddle's Plum. I don't know for sure. We haven't got no news, because the telegraph lines were all tore up when the flood hit. But I reckon it's Number Four Heart.” He nodded. “Strange times, milady.”

“Strange times indeed,” said Gwynyfer, “when a waiter expects a tip and yet doesn't bring a girl's lime fizz.”

The waiter flushed and bowed low. Brian couldn't stand to watch a grown man bow to Gwynyfer after she was so rude.

But he saw Gregory grin. He could tell Gregory was impressed by her self-confidence. Her aristocratic command. How much she was already like an adult.

After dinner, they went back to their hotel. It was in another growth. Their rooms were small and warm and hollowed out. They lay down in their burrows, nestled in piles of animal skins, and fell asleep for many, many hours.

The next morning, they left Tom Darlmore's dinghy in Wellbridge, realizing they would probably never be back for it. They set out on the sky tram that led off through the forest. The sky tram was a big brass pot they sat in, suspended by cables on tall poles. The pot creaked along, forty or fifty feet above the ground. They were protected from the glaring light of the electrified veins by a paper umbrella. They squatted uncomfortably in the pot and swayed along through the towering gut fingers.

“I feel like I'm a mixed drink,” muttered Gregory as the paper umbrella flapped above them in the hot breeze blowing from the Fundus of Dacre.

Every two hours or so, they'd come to an engine station where the cables were cranked by a machine that shot out clouds of diesel smoke. They'd have to get out and switch to the next sky tram for the next leg of their journey.

They passed out of the forest and traveled above a toothy mountain range, the Rugose Hills. The heat from the lux effluvium in the veins above them was overwhelming.

That night, they slept near one of the engine stations. They'd bought food in Wellbridge: more gut finger. They cooked a few slabs over a campfire.

As they cooked, two eyes so deep and green they were almost black watched them from behind a hillock. The kids did not notice.

They talked easily among themselves. Gregory and Gwynyfer had started to call each other G.

Gregory, lying back with his ankles crossed, said, “You know what the sky tram reminds me of, G?”

“No, G. I am simply all ears. Do tell.”

“You
are
all ears, G.”

“Don't sulk, human G. Someday yours might get pointed, too. You could do it with paper clips.”

“Well, G, what I was saying … you know what the sky tram reminds me of?”

Brian thought he heard something move in the low scrub. He looked into the blue darkness, but could see nothing.

Gregory explained, “It reminds me of skiing. The ski lift. Has the Honorable Gwynyfer Gwarnmore ever been skiing, G?”

“Why, yes she has, G,” said Gwynyfer. “In the Sputum Rifts.”

“You know, G, I'm not a bad skier myself,” Gregory boasted. “I go up to New Hampshire.”

“How nice for you, G. Imagine: New Hampshire.” She kicked at a stone near the fire. “Does Bri-Bri go with you to New Hampshire?”

Brian did not, in fact, go skiing with Gregory in New Hampshire. His parents didn't want to pay a hundred dollars a day for the equipment rental and the lift ticket. This year, Gregory had gone with other kids, part of the ski club, and they'd come back with stories of almost crashing into trees and meeting cute girls at fifty miles per hour. Those weekends, Brian had spent his time doodling ideas for his round of the Game — which now would never happen — and practicing his cello.

“No,” said Gregory. “Bri-Bri didn't go skiing, G. Bri-Bri was no fun. He stayed at home and did nothing.”

Brian wanted to say something, but he was worried that he heard another movement outside the light of their campfire.

“Bri-Bri!” Gwynyfer exclaimed. “Why no fun?”

“It's really expensive,” said Brian quietly.

Gwynyfer started to tell a story about a skiing holiday with many noble youths and maidens, the flower of Norumbegan chivalry — a complicated story about running in and out of a sauna with the door flapping — but as she told it, Brian caught sight of something slinking toward their campfire. It was serpentine and low to the ground.

“Hey!” he hissed, and pointed.

“You may interrupt to make a jest or express admiration,” said Gwynyfer. “Which will it be?”

Gregory cracked up at this, throwing his head back — then yelped as something darted across his legs.

It looked like a cross between a dragon and an insect and a dachshund. It was long and tubular, and had six
short legs and lots of antennae or whiskers. It grabbed their food bag and dashed for the hills.

“What was that?!” Gregory protested. “It ran across my legs!”

It stared at them from a safe distance. They could see its blackish-green eyes reflecting the light of the fire.

Gregory tried to throw stones at it.

It ducked and disappeared.

All night, when one of them woke up, they could hear it munching.

The next day, they set off without food. The sky-tram operator at the station told them there was a town a few hours ahead. They could purchase more supplies there.

Gregory was hot and hungry. While they waited to step into the next tram, Gregory said, “Why can't we just call the capsule on the telephone?”

Brian said eagerly, “That's right! There was a phone at the Court! You have phones! Can't we just call down to the inn?”

“Of course we have
phones
,” said Gwynyfer. “What do you think we are?”

Brian said, “Oh, I'm sorry … it's just … just, sometimes the Norumbegans seem to have stuff from the past, and sometimes you have stuff from the future, and, you know, I never know which is which.”

“Sorry, Bri-Bri: All human culture is just a dream of Norumbegan culture. We make things, and then you
people have some sort of hazy vision of them later and pat yourselves on the back for invention. Your whole culture is just our culture remembered badly.”

“That's funny, G,” teased Gregory, “because I thought that Norumbegan culture was just
our
culture remembered badly. You know, G, because Norumbegan culture seems like a big wreck made out of our stuff.”

“Human G, that's the kind of thought that gets you a quick, smart slap on the cheek in some circles.”

The two kept up their cute fighting while Brian said, “So, Gwynyfer — Gwynyfer? Can't we call that inn down in the Jejunum? In the town of Turnstile? And ask about the capsule? Couldn't we just call down there?”

The future mistress of the Globular Colon gave him the stink-eye. “We have phones. Four or five in the empire. It's not
everyone
who can afford a phone. Just a few of them. One organ to another. For important Imperial business. Who'd want to
chat
, anyway, with people in the Jejunum? Who'd want to know what they ate for breakfast, or what they planned on wearing?”

Brian exhaled. “I thought it was worth a try,” he said. “If everyone had a phone.”

“Everyone? A phone? What possible use would that be? Most people, one really doesn't want to talk to.”

In twenty minutes, a new bucket arrived on the sky tram, and they crawled in.

Brian was miserable. The two Gs were still talking about skiing. They didn't seem to care that their route was uncertain and led toward the enemy. The three of them creaked over the red, rutted terrain with Gregory
telling stories about flirting with girls in lift lines. It made Brian feel lonelier than ever. Now he wished even more he'd been with the ski club over the winter. But he knew that even if he had been, he wouldn't have been very much fun. He'd have been falling over all the time and getting tangled up in fencing.

“So I pretended to spill hot chocolate all over her,” Gregory was saying.

There was a clank.

The pot swung dangerously.

“What's that?” Brian said.

There was another clank. Something was clawing the bottom of the pot.

A dragon head thrust itself over the side.

Gregory swore and swung his hands around.

“There's nothing to throw!” he said. “I want rocks!”

Gwynyfer lamented, “All the rocks are on the ground!”

Gregory swung a fist, but the thing opened its beak and snapped at him. Then it ducked back.

“Don't!” said Brian. “He just wants food.”

“He
got
food!” said Gregory. “
All
our food!”

“So he thinks we have more!” said Brian.

“That's
not
a reason to let him follow us!”

“Well, he thinks it is,” said Brian.