The Chamber in the Sky (9 page)

The monster retracted its head and disappeared. They could hear it settling itself on the wheels under the bucket.

Gregory peered over the edge. The tram tipped.

“I can't see it. It's way under there.” He asked Gwynyfer, “What is it?”

“A heraldic bacterium,” she answered.

Both the boys looked at her in confusion. “A
what
?!” said Gregory.

“It's a bacterium. Like a germ. It lives in the Great Body's stomach. But it's heraldic. As in heraldry. Yes? As in the symbols knights wear on their shields and their banners to identify themselves. Back on Earth, we used the creatures of Earth: you know, lions, gryphons, leopards, unicorns, basilisks … but none of those creatures live here. So when we have to make up a new coat of arms for someone newly knighted, the College of Heralds chooses some of the bacteria that looks particularly noble as
heraldic
bacteria.” She made a face. “It's too
awful
, some of the things the new families have on their coats of arms. Lord Attleborough-Stoughton, the railroad baron, has a kind of a … ew … some sort of twenty-legged
Bacillus
passant on a field vert — a green background — and the whole thing fairly makes one want to puke.”

“So that thing,” said Gregory, pointing through the floor, “appears on someone's coat of arms?”

“It's better than most. At least its legs don't hang down creepily.”

It stuck with them when they got to the next town. It fluttered up to the roof of the store on translucent wings and waited for them to buy grub. It danced along beside them once they had a few new sacks of food.

Gregory tried to push it away when they got into the next sky gondola. Brian said, “Hey! Don't!” And he held out a chunk of smoked meat.

The heraldic bacterium snatched it out of his fingers, quickly licked his fingertips, and flitted away.

“Now you've torn it,” said Gwynyfer. “The thing will never leave us.”

It perched most of the time under the carriage of the sky tram. Otherwise, it flew by their sides.

It followed them when they reached the other side of the Rugose Hills and boarded a barge going down the Pyloric Canal.

It slept on the roof of the barge at night while they drifted past fields of alien grains.

It romped beside Brian when they got off at the town of Turnstile to look for the Ellyllyn Inn. He threw the bacterium a stick. It could not have been happier. It pranced over on its six short legs, snatched the stick in its beak, waved it triumphantly, and began to eat it.

Gwynyfer rolled her eyes.

The town of Turnstile was a column of houses and churches and shops that towered above the Pyloric Canal. The Ellyllyn Inn stood off to the side in a grove of weeping willows. It was run by a young couple with plenty of tattoos.

“Welcome to the Ellyllyn Inn,” said the inked-up innkeeper. “Your gateway to the Jejunum. May I help you?”

Brian said, “We're looking for some friends.”

“Well,” said the young man, extending a hand, “you've found a friend in me, kid.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks. But our friend is three big mannequins carrying a capsule. They're called the Umpire.”

The innkeeper smiled. “Sure, they came through. Great guys. Stayed for a week in an alleyway in town, then I let them use the barn for a while. They're off again.”

“Do you know where, sir?”

“Sure. They said they were heading into Three-Gut. Mannequin territory. They said they were lonely. They wanted more clockwork acquaintances. Don't suppose you're windup yourself?”

“No. I'm human.”

“Well, that's extraordinary.”

“They've gone into Three-Gut?”

“That's right.”

“But the Thusser are in Three-Gut! They've invaded!”

“Yeah, this was before that. The Umpire Capsule really didn't seem very happy in the barn. Very mopey set of machines. So they're off. Anything else I can help you with?”

“Which way did they go? Into Three-Gut?”

“Through the Volutes. Downriver, then maybe heading off into the side passages at Bloxham. That's where they were heading when they left here. I let them stay in the barn for free.”

“How long since they left?”

“Ohhhh … maybe three weeks.”

“Do you know
where
in Three-Gut they went?”

“They said they were going to visit the town where all the heads of the mannequin people are from.”

“Pflundt,” whispered Brian. “They're going to Pflundt. It's a fortress. We were there.”

“Okay, cool,” said the innkeeper. “Cool.”

Brian said to himself, “No. It's awful. The Thusser took Pflundt a couple of weeks ago.”

“I'm sorry,” said the innkeeper. “Maybe you should find different friends.”

Brian turned to the two Gs. “We're going to be heading straight into Thusser territory.”

Gwynyfer smiled. “Unless we sensibly don't go at all.”

They were back on the barge, heading down the broad canal to Bloxham.

Gwynyfer was bored now, and didn't want to go stomping through the weirder Volutes to stumble into Three-Gut and fall prey to the Thusser Horde. She voted loudly and often that they just continue down through the Volutes to the Globular Colon, where they could spend the season wading in the reflecting pool, playing billiards, and riding thombulants through the pasturelands.

Brian said, “Obviously, we can't do that. We don't have time.”

Gwynyfer rolled her eyes. “If the awful Thusser are going to win
anyway
, why not just enjoy the last few weeks of freedom? Maybe by the time we stick our heads out again, the war'll be over and we will have won. Ticker-tape parades and congratters all round!”

This kind of thing made Brian crazy.

He didn't answer. He figured that the best thing he could do was not say anything. If he argued with her, he could tell she was only going to be more stubborn.

The heraldic bacterium sat curled up by his feet on the barge.

Brian watched the high grasses go by on either side of the canal. The paddle wheel spluttered. And they drew ever closer to enemy territory.

The first assault on the town of Wellbridge came about two days after the kids had left on the trams. Subs captured by the Thusser battered at the docks and forced their way to the landing hatches. Thusser soldiers poured up the passageways that led into Two-Gut.

A Thusser lieutenant stood and watched his men throw firebombs into the graceful gut fingers. Homes and storehouses and the town's hotel blasted into flame. Huge joints of burned gut finger toppled to the ground. Norumbegans ran screaming from the blaze. The Thusser beat them, knocked them out, struck them again and again on their skulls, and dragged them away.

The Horde had come to seize the docked subs. They were building their fleet. Soon they'd be able to attack the Dry Heart itself.

They kicked in doors and ransacked houses. They did not ask any questions. They killed if they needed to. They gathered prisoners for hypnotism.

They did not know that the greatest threat to their invasion was three kids who'd passed through this very town a few days before. They didn't realize that the little dinghy they requisitioned from the docks had recently held the only hope for the Norumbegan Empire.

The Thusser left ten hours later through the hatches. The town was rubble and half-melted gastric comb. It was empty of people.

Heraldic bacteria settled in at nightfall to eat what meat had cooked in the explosion. They blinked silently at each other, wolfing down orange loafs.

A hot wind blew through the forest from somewhere else, and did not stop blowing till morning.

F
or a day and a half, the three kids floated down the Pyloric Canal on a crowded barge. The towns that passed on shore were ancient-looking places. Their red towers and gables were misshapen, creased, and streaked with black, as if the stone itself was melting. In fact, they were quarried from the flesh of the stomach, which was not as durable as the muscle of the Dry Heart. It decayed faster and drooped, and so the towns of Two-Gut all had the look of antiquity.

As the barge puttered through the lower chambers of the stomach toward the Volutes, passengers got on and off in little villages, driving sheep to market or wheeling bicycles bearing huge spheres of fluff tied with twine. They traded stories of invasion loudly and with fear.

The spell that allowed Brian and Gregory to understand the language of the Norumbegans was under some strain. Apparently, this far down in Two-Gut, people spoke differently than they did in the Imperial Court of the Dry Heart, and so the translation stretched and
warped to try to catch new accents and words. Voices ended up sounding more American to the boys now, but, as Gregory said, sort of like cowboys in those Westerns that were made in Spain by Italian directors.

The people sitting on the deck of the barge with their suitcases and their crates of squawking branf told stories of Thusser raids far down in the intestines. The homesteaders and frontiersmen in remote corners of the winding labyrinths that connected Two-Gut with Three-Gut said that the Thusser Horde had sent out brutal expeditions, appearing out of the winding darkness and dragging captives off into another stomach. Many Norumbegans were afraid.

“Where you folks headed?” a woman asked them while she knitted.

“Three-Gut,” Brian answered. “We're going to Pflundt. Where the heads of the Mannequin Resistance used to be. We're looking for a capsule carried by three mechanical giants.”

“Darlings!” The woman looked up from her knitting. “You ain't smart to go to Pflundt. You going to walk right into Three-Gut, looking like you look? A Norumbegan noble girl — miss, if I can say — and two humans? It's all full of Thusser now. They'll eat you like cheesecake.”

Now that she'd said it, it did sound a little stupid.

Gregory touched his head. “Our ears are a giveaway.”

“Dag's flush! Of course your ears are a giveaway. And your thinking. We can feel you ain't right. The Thusser, they's sharp as needle-nose pliers. They'll figure you out in seconds.”

“We need disguises,” said Gregory. “Thusser suits.”

Gwynyfer said, “That sounds rather jolly. Maybe we could purchase enchantments.”

“That's a good idea!” said Brian.

Gregory boasted to the woman, “We've already run into Thusser. One actually tried to kill us. On a sinking … factory thing.” He held up a fist and flexed his arm muscle. “But we triumphed! Yes, ma'am! Victory!”

He started jerking his head and singing electric-guitar power chords, until Gwynyfer explained to the woman, “It was actually Bri-Bri here who was the hero. He grabbed a knife and stabbed the Thusser. If he hadn't, we'd all have been wallpaper by now. The blond personage there making fists slept through the whole event.”

She laughed, and Gregory frowned, and Brian looked at his feet.

A few minutes later, when she got up to stand by the railing and watch the fields go past, Gregory followed her.

“Could you not do that?” he said. “Cut me down? I mean, since we're going out?”

“Are we ‘going out'?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

She cocked her head. “I didn't think so.”

Gregory stumbled back a step. He thought quickly about how beautiful she was, how he wanted to show her off at school, how they liked to call each other G.

He said, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, we are.”

She shook her head. “Gregory, we're different
species
. You don't understand what it's
like
with us. Your species
cares
too very much. We …” She shrugged.

Gregory was stunned. He said, “What? You what?”

She thought for a second. Then she said lightly, “Forgot!” She laughed and scampered off sideways.

Gregory stood by the rail of the boat, stinging.

He glanced over at her. She was inspecting him carefully, as if even the forgetting and the running away had just been to teach him a lesson.

Brian didn't know what had happened. He only knew that Gregory and Gwynyfer were suddenly not being as cute with each other. Gwynyfer kept chattering away happily, but Gregory sat miserably, surrounded by crates of restless branf. He hardly spoke either to Gwynyfer or to Brian. In the evening, he ate alone.

The boat passed the market town of Bury Pete with its green fields of vinch, and later, the cathedral town of Buttercross with its towering meat church rising on huge, powerful arches above the canal. As the barge drifted through the passages beneath the cathedral dome and steeple, Brian and Gregory saw the intricate carvings that had been engraved on the walls there: little monsters embracing and saints floating through the clouds.

A little downriver, they passed a long boat rowed by two farm boys. It looked like it had a whole family's belongings on it: chairs, tables, and a stack of dresses and coats. One of the boys waved his paddle at the ferry and grinned at the passengers.

Gwynyfer murmured, “Look at those arms. Those are true arms.”

Gregory demanded, “What do you mean by that?”

She said, “Just, the boy has nice arms.”

Brian looked at Gregory's arms. They were pretty thin. He wondered whether Gwynyfer was trying to make Gregory jealous. She didn't seem to be, though. She didn't seem to be paying Gregory any attention at all. She gazed out at the farm boy and muttered, “He fills a shirt nicely.”

Gregory crossed his arms and sat back. “So what? You can fill a shirt with pig dung.” He got up and walked away.

Brian followed him and found him near the prow of the boat. Brian told him, “You shouldn't worry about Gwynyfer and what she thinks.”

“It's only a matter of time. The world-famous Gregory Stoffle charm never fails. I just need to keep trying.”

“They're not like us. They just aren't.”

Gregory snorted. “What do you know about girls?”

“I meant Norumbegans,” said Brian angrily. He looked down at the canal for a minute. “You know, you've been kind of mean to me since we got here.”

“So what? You've been different, too,” Gregory said sharply, and they both stopped talking while the boat puttered on.

The last stop on the line was Bloxham, where the canal broadened out into a huge swamp. The veins of lux effluvium no longer traveled through the roof of the gut here; instead, they wobbled down the walls and across the floor. They flowed beneath the swamp so it glowed a brilliant blue. The town was built on bridges over the electrified veins, illuminated from below. Several hundred feet
above, the ceiling was a dull, shadowed gray. Steam floated in the air between the island houses.

From Bloxham, there were portals into the tangle of the Volutes.

The kids walked down the boat's gangplank. The heraldic bacterium scampered along by Brian's feet. Gwynyfer gave the little monster an evil look.

She knew the town. She and her parents passed through it each time they traveled to their estates in the Globular Colon. Usually, she explained, they traveled on from here with a caravan in a coach drawn by thombulants. The caravan protected them from highwaymen on the Gastric Causeway.

She led the boys (and their bacterium) across the town square to the master of caravans. The man sat outside on the steps of his shop beneath a carving of himself. He was a broad man, bald, with a beard. The statue above him, being made of the stomach's rotting stone, had aged faster than he. Its eyes were holes, and its cheeks were pitted and wrinkled.

He saw Gwynyfer coming and bowed his head. “Your Grace,” he said.

She greeted him formally and asked him whether they could hire a covered wagon and thombulants to take them into the Volutes toward Three-Gut.

“With all respect, Your Grace, you don't want to go that direction to play your lady games. We've been hearing stories of Thusser. Bad stories.”

Hot steam blew across the square.

He suggested, “Why don't you head down to the Globular Colon, as per regular? No reports of anything happening there, my lady. You and these fellows can run down to the Colons and kick off your shoes.”

Gwynyfer nodded. “I think that is an excellent idea.”

Brian interrupted, “But what we'd like to hire is a wagon to go to Three-Gut.”

Gwynyfer rolled her eyes.

Gregory looked uncomfortable.

The master of caravans puffed out his breath. “It is hot,” he complained. The square was filled with sparkling, warm mist. “Something's wrong,” he said. “The lux effluvium is too hot and bright. Usually, you know, they pump it full of electricity to brighten it during the day. But it's getting so it's overpowering. Just these last few days.” He took out a clipboard and made some marks on forms. “Whole empire is falling to pieces.” He squinted. “I heard one of the hearts has started beating again.”

“It's true,” said Gregory. “The heartbeat kicked us, like, a hundred miles down the artery.”

The master of caravans shook his head again. “Well, if you want to ride off into the Volutes toward Three-Gut right now, my lady, it's your flaming funeral. But you'd better take everything you need with you: food, tents, everything. Supplies aren't reaching out that way right now. Haven't sent anyone out there for a week.”

Brian thought of something, and asked, “Did you hear any rumors — I mean, a couple of weeks ago — of a big capsule of some kind being carried through the Volutes by three giant mannequins? Called the Umpire? They
stayed for a while at Turnstile and then came down here and headed for Three-Gut.”

The master of caravans considered. “Sure. Heard about that. Some bounty hunters tried to shut them down and sell them for parts. One of the big mannequins turned on them and — I guess threw some punches. Flattened them all.”

“Was there any word where
exactly
the giants and their capsule were headed?”

“No one was asking. Big, unhappy things. So. My lady. What can I do for you? A covered wagon and two thombulants? A three-legged and a five-legged? And supplies? Maybe I can interest you in a tent? Or a tent for your servants here, and for yourself, a silk pavilion? With your coat of arms? And cloth of damask to lay on the ground? And you'll want some sweetmeats? And …”

Brian didn't speak as Gwynyfer purchased a crazy list of supplies — until she suggested a trumpeteer to announce their arrival in each new village. Then he gently said that he wasn't sure that they needed their own private elfin herald.

Gwynyfer grumbled, “The boys want to rough it.”

The master of caravans told them to give him a few hours, and they'd be ready to head off into the low corridors and weird turnings of the lesser Volutes.

“Now,” said Gwynyfer, “for disguises. Thusser fancy dress.” She made inquiries after local wizards.

There was one enchantment shop in town. Brian was excited to see what it looked like. He'd never been in a store that sold spells before.

Gregory didn't seem that excited about the magic shop. He followed Brian and Gwynyfer by several steps, as if he wasn't with them at all.

The shop was disappointing. The shelves were empty. It was just a big empty storefront with a woman in an apron sitting behind a counter, reading a gardening magazine.

They told her they needed Thusser disguises. Something to make them look like the Horde.

“Going to a party?” she said. “It's all the rage with the kids right now. Thusser and prisoner theme parties. They call it Horde and Veg. With couples, one goes as the Thusser and the other goes as the brain-dead.” She reached down by her feet and pulled out three tiny little machines with clips. She went over to a drawer and fished out three little cannisters of some kind to install in the clip-on devices. She plunked the three units down on the counter. “There you are,” she said.

Gregory picked up one of the little devices, looking it over suspiciously.

“Attach it to your belt, love,” the woman said. “Then click it on.”

Gwynyfer picked one up and flicked the toggle switch.

Instantly, she was more dismal looking. She had on a long coat and had dark circles around her eyes, and her eyeballs themselves were black.

“What happened to your eyes?” Gregory said.

“That's what the Thusser eyes look like,” the wizard-woman explained. “They only wear normal eyes to be polite.”

“
Hm.
That's funny, because I haven't really found them to be very polite,” Gregory said. “And what about our, you know, brain waves or whatever?”

“It's a fancy-dress disguise,” said the wizard-woman. “It hides who you are. But they'll be able to tell you're hiding who you are, if they ever bother to check. It's more to trick the eye than the brain.”

Gwynyfer clicked off her disguise. “Marvelous,” she said. “It even makes my hair less honey-ripe and gorgeously buoyant. Which really is a tremendous feat.” She reached into her pocket for her wallet. “One wouldn't think the technology existed to de-volumize these golden locks.”

Brian asked, “How long do these disguises last?”

The wizard shrugged. “Till the batteries give out, love. Like all of us.”

They went to a restaurant and sat at a table outside. They stared at menus. Their silence was awkward. Normally, Gregory would have been cheerful. He loved the adult feeling of going to a restaurant and selecting items off the menu without his mother and father looking over his shoulder. But it was different because Gwynyfer wasn't going out with him. It could have been great, them sitting there together outside and ordering whatever they wanted, and laughing and making private jokes and explaining their jokes to Brian, like they were all in Paris or something, except they were in entrails.