Veniss Underground (22 page)

Jamie whimpered and moaned and cried out in her half death, half sleep. He was cruel (wasn't he?) to prolong her pain.

He could feel Jeffer staring at him. If not Jeffer, then Mindle. Mindle hated him. Jeffer loved him. But they both wanted the same thing.

Balzac let his gaze linger over Jamie's face, the thickness of it that had overtaken the grace, as if the architects that had put her back together could not quite re-create their source material. This was the woman who had worked side by side with him to rebuild the city, she planting trees as he excavated and drew plans. He had even grown to enjoy the planting—long hours, yes, and the work made his fingers bleed and blister, but he had liked the smell of dirt, enjoyed the rhythms of the work and the comfort of her presence at his side.

He thought of the times he had made love to her on the cool desert sand under the stars, and how they would sneak back to the crèche in the years before they were married, there to lie in bed for hours afterward, talking or telling stories. The sweet smell of her, the taste of her tongue in his mouth, these were
real,
as was the peace that came over him when he was inside her, so very close to her, as close to her as he could, to be inside her and looking into her eyes.

He owed it to her. If he loved her.

In agony, he ran to the balcony, pushing Jeffer aside, and beat his fists against the stone railing.

“Listen to me: It's better this way,” Jeffer whispered. “Come morning, there's a good chance we can come under the protection of a larger unit. If we can only survive—”

“Shut up!” Balzac hissed. “Shut up or I'll yell and
they'll
all hear us.”

“Should I leave?”

“Leave? No . . . but I don't want to talk. I just want to stand here for a moment.”

“That's fine. That's fine. I'm your brother, Balzac,
your brother
. I don't want to hurt you.”

Balzac tried to slow his breathing. He leaned on the railing and looked out across the city. Dawn soon, and still the dirigibles burned and still the darkness closed in around them. A hundred shades of darkness for a hundred different tasks—darkness to cover buildings; darkness to cover pain; darkness to cover thoughts; darkness to cover the light, and the light, when it came, only emphasized the darkness all the more. He could no longer hear the faint, ghostly shouts from the front lines; the darkness had swallowed the voices, too.

For the first time, looking out over not only the ruined city but also the ruins of his own ambition, Balzac felt the pull of that darkness, felt overpowered by it. He was tired. He was so tired. He began to weep. He could not bear it. He must bear it. He could not. He must.

Where into that darkness had she been taken? Where had the scuttling creature dragged her? Had it dragged her into the hole at the center of the amphitheater? Someplace underground where the darkness grew thick and unfettered—in the tunnels under the city, wherever
they
had their headquarters, where the creatures from nightmare used to live before the enemy displaced them. It hurt to think of such places. They scared him more than anything. All he could imagine was suffocating dirt, the tunnel imploding and burying him alive.

What sort of immortality had she found there? When they'd reawakened her, had she pleaded with them? Did she know, even now, exactly what had been done to her?

And if he took her back there, could they live together, in the darkness, all alone with only one another for company amongst the ghouls and ghosts . . .

“Help me to imagine it, Jeffer.”

“Imagine what?”

“Never mind.”

A red wound bled across the horizon. Balzac stared at Jeffer. Jeffer looked away.

“I know I have to do it,” Balzac said.

“You don't. I'll do it for you.”

“No. I have to do it.”

“Then do it.”

Balzac nodded and walked back to Jamie. He leaned over her, touched her face once again, smoothed back a strand of hair. Strange, the calm that settled over him.

“Balzac?” she said in such a questioning tone that he almost laughed with grief.

“Jamie. Jamie, I have to ask you something. Do you hurt, Jamie? Jamie, do you hurt a lot?”

“I'm so cold,” she said. Then something clicked behind her eyes and he thought he saw the old confidence.

“Close your eyes then, Jamie. I swear, Jamie. This won't hurt. Jamie, it won't hurt. I wouldn't lie. Not to you, Jamie.”

“I know, my love.”

He exchanged weapons with Jeffer: his rifle for Jeffer's laser. Then, hugging the flesh dog's head to him, he adjusted the setting on the laser for a needle-thin, ten-centimeter-long blade. If he cut the throat, she might last for a few minutes, in pain. But if he could spear her through the head . . . his hand wavered and for a moment every atom, every particle, that made him Balzac streaked in opposite, splintered directions. If only she wouldn't stare at him . . .

His hand steadied, and with it his resolve. Two smooth strokes and he had separated the node of tissue that contained Jamie. There was no blood; the laser cauterized the wound instantly. Her eyes still stared up at him though her lips did not move. He held her against him, closed her eyes, kept the rifle in his right hand, reactivated the normal settings.

He looked up at Jeffer, who was staring at him in horror.

Balzac's shoulders sagged, the weight of darkness too great, then he righted himself, found his legs.

Jeffer took a step forward, as if to block the door.

“Don't. Don't do that,” Balzac said.

“Balzac! Leave her be.”

Tears blurred Balzac's vision; he wiped them away viciously with his forearm. Seconds were as precious as water now; he could not waste them.

“I can't do it, Jeffer. I. Just. Can't.”

“You can! You know you can. You remember how I was after . . . after our parents died? You remember how I was? You brought me back.
You did that
. I can do that for you. I know I can.”

“And if you do? I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it.
I can't lose her, too
.”

“It's too late. You'll lose her anyway.”

“Not if I find them in time. I've got an hour. Two, maybe.”

Silent as an executioner, Mindle appeared at the door, his handheld laser aimed at Balzac.

“
Mindle, get out of here!
” Jeffer screamed, raising his own rifle. The barrel wavered between Balzac and Mindle.

Mindle's eyes had the fatal density of dead stars.

“Shut up, Jeffer,” he said. “If he moves, I'll shoot him.”

Into the deadly silence crept the first light of the sun. Grainy yellow rays revealed them all as tired, grime-smeared, gaunt figures frozen in time, while Con Fegman stared with sightless eyes directly into the sun. Balzac could hear his brother's muttered prayers, could sense the tension in Mindle's trigger finger. He looked first at one, then the other, their shadows flung against the far wall.

Looking down into her sleeping face, Balzac knew he was impervious to the other voices, the voices that were not hers. For her sake, he had to get past Mindle, make it to the doorway, and onto the street below. The odds were bad, and yet he felt at peace: The darkness was still with him, cloaking and protecting him.

Vaguely, he heard Jeffer tell him to put down his rifle and Mindle scream that if he took a single step, he was a dead man, but their words came from very far away. They could not touch him—not Mindle, not his brother. No one but Jamie. The darkness covered his face like a veil. He caressed Jamie's cold cheek with one trembling hand.

“Good-bye,” he said. He threw his rifle in Mindle's face. He ran toward the door. Behind him he heard Jeffer's slow, drawn-out shriek of loss, and then the ice-heat of Mindle's star exploded against his back. The force drove him forward, knocked the breath from his body, and he was falling through the doorway, falling into the darkness of the stairwell—and kept falling, a numbness enveloping his body, until the darkness was complete and it was no longer the stairwell but the black oasis lakes, and he was diving into and through them, the wet wave and wash licking blackly at his limbs, and just when he thought he might fall forever, he caught himself.

Sand, bright sand, beneath his feet, the grains like glittering jewels. He looked up—into the glare of late afternoon—and saw Jeffer staring down at him from the lip of the amphitheater. Jamie saw Jeffer a moment later and gasped in surprise.

Jeffer stalked down to them, cold-shouldered and stiff, sand spraying out around his boots. Balzac had risen from his position near the beast, thinking Jeffer would give them both a thrashing.

But instead, Jeffer became very quiet and asked them if they were all right. Balzac said yes and Jamie asked how he had found them.

“The zynagill,” Jeffer said, still staring at the beast. “I thought you might be dead.”

Before Balzac could speak, Jamie laughed and said, “No.
It
is. What do you think of it?”

“I think you should get away from it.” Jeffer walked closer.

“It came from underground,” Balzac said.

“It came from far away,” Jamie said. “Look at its paws.”

“It's like something from the old books,” Jeffer whispered, skirting the edge of the beast as if it were poison. “We should burn it.”

“Burn it?” Balzac said. “It's dead.”

“Burn it,” Jeffer said.

But it was too late. They heard a leathery, cracking sound and the flesh dog's bulbous forehead split open and out struggled a creature the size of a man's heart. It glistened with moisture and, seeming to grow larger, spread its blue-black wings over the ruins of the flesh. It had all the delicate and alien allure of a damselfly.

“It's beautiful,” Jamie said.

The creature gazed at them from one red-ringed eye (luminous amber, with a vertical black slit). The bone-thin legs ended in razor claws. The wings rose and fell with its breathing, which was steady and unruffled. The wings were those of a fallen angel, miraculous in that the black, shiny surface reflected greens and purples and blues. They were monstrously oversized for the body and the beast flapped them to keep its balance.

Jeffer moved first, fumbling for his gun. The creature, alarmed by the motion, moved its wings more vigorously.

Balzac put himself between Jamie and the creature, his swift embrace so tight she could not move, though she struggled against him.

Before Jeffer could aim, the creature launched itself into the air and spiraled up through the flock of hovering zynagill, scattering them in all directions. It made a swift pass over the amphitheater, still gaining altitude, then veered abruptly toward the west and began to pick up speed, soon out of sight.

Jamie wrenched herself from his grasp. “Why did you do that?”

“I didn't want it to hurt you.”

“I don't need your help,” she said, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw a sudden awareness of him that had not been there before. It sent a shiver through his body.

“What does it mean?” Balzac asked Jeffer, whose face was still clouded with thought.

“I don't know. We will have to tell the Con members.”

“Where do you think it went?” Jamie asked.

“I think . . . I think it was a messenger. A beacon. I don't know.”

“It was incredible,” Jamie said.

The afternoon shadows so emphasized the brazen lines of her eyes, nose, cheekbones, that her image burned its way into Balzac's heart. He would have willingly lost himself in her, if only for the mystery he could not unravel—that her beauty was as luminous and sharp-edged as that of the winged creature. He experienced a rush of vertigo, fought for his balance on the edge of a darkly glittering future that would bind her to him beyond any hope of untangling.

Then he was falling again, willingly, gripped by sudden happiness, laughing as he saw the adventure of their lives together spreading out before him.

         

JEFFER AND
Mindle stood side by side at the top of
the stairs, looking down through the early-morning gloom of dust motes. Mindle shook with spasms of tears, undoing all the savagery of his face. Below, on the landing, Balzac's body lay sprawled, a wide, black hole burned through his back. His hands were tightly clasped around the flame-distorted head of Jamie, whose lidless eyes stared sightless at them. Even in the shadows, Jeffer could see the thin, pale line of his brother's mouth fixed in a smile.

An emptiness Jeffer could not quantify or describe opened up inside of him. For a moment, he could not contain it, and he looked over at Mindle, intending to kill the boy should he discern even a trace of mockery upon that ancient face. But the tears had washed away the predatory sarcasm, the bloodlust, and he was almost vulnerable again, almost boyish again.

Jeffer slung the laser rifle over his shoulder and motioned to Mindle.

“Come on—if it's safe, we can bury them in the amphitheater,” he said.

Horror, yes, and pain, and sadness—and yet, this relief:
It was over.
It was finished. And this final thought, which overcame the guilt:
I'm alive. I survived it.

Mindle looked disoriented for a moment, as if he had been dreaming or listening to a distant and terrible music. Then the mask slid back over his face and he sneered, muttered a hollow “Yes,” and followed as Jeffer walked down the steps to the body of his brother, the sun warm on his back.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Ann VanderMeer, Brian Evenson, Eric Schaller, Jeffrey Thomas, Neil Williamson, Tom Winstead, and Tamar Yellin for their close readings of this novel in its various incarnations. Thanks also to Rick Hautala for his many kindnesses with regard to this novel. Thanks to Sean Wallace at Prime for publishing
Veniss
. Thanks to David Pringle and Sherry Decker for publishing excerpts from the novel. Thanks to Ann Kennedy at
The Silver Web,
Chris Reed at
BBR,
and Keith Brooke at
Infinity Plus
for publishing the short stories set in the same milieu as this novel. Thanks to Juliet Ulman at Bantam, and her staff. Finally, thanks to meerkats for being such empathic little buggers (although a real pain in the ass when mixed with gorilla and kangaroo genes).