Dangerous Offspring (15 page)

Cyan didn’t seem as repelled by them as I was. She seemed entranced. One of them, by a refreshment stand, was picking cave ferns off the wall and putting them in sandwiches. He had beer bottles, brown and frothy, labelled ‘sump water’. He sold white mousse made from the twiggy foam that clings to the roofs of flooded passages. He had boxes of immature stalagmite bumps that looked like fried eggs, breccia cake, talus cones, and crunchy tufa toffee.

Cyan paused at a jewellery stall and examined the cave pearls for sale. She put on a necklace made from broken straw stalactites and looked at her reflection in the mirror-polished shell of a moleusk–one of the metre-long shellfish that burrow far underground.

She didn’t know that, as a visitor to the Shift, she could project herself as any image she wanted, so she appeared the way she imagined herself. Like most female Shift tourists Cyan’s self-image was nothing like her real body. She was a bit taller, more muscular and plumper, and she wore casual clothes. She looked like a young, unattached fyrd recruit spending her day off in any Hacilith bar. She was slightly less pretty here than in the Fourlands; I suppose that meant she lacked confidence in her looks.

For once, I couldn’t alter my appearance. I was here in the body and I planned to take it home intact.

Some stalls sold stencils and crayons for cave paintings. Some displayed everyday objects that ‘petrifying water’ had turned into stone. Mice with three legs (called trice) ran under the rows and cats very good at catching trice (called trousers) ran after them.

Neon Bugs illuminated beautiful constructions of silk. Replete Spiders hung from the ceiling on spindly, hairless legs, their huge, round abdomens full of treacly slime. It dripped, now and then, on the awnings of the stalls and the tops of our heads. The noisome things lived suspended all the time, and other bugs and centipedes as long as my arm swarmed over the cave walls to bring them morsels and feed them in return for the taste of the sweet gunge they exuded.

The smell of wet pebbles rose from the cavern floor, which descended in a series of dented ripplestone steps to a pool so neatly circular it looked like a hand basin. A waterfall cascaded down a slippery chute, gushing into it. Its roar echoed to us across the immense chamber as a quiet susurration.

Naked gley children were sliding down the chute and splashing into the water where Living Fossil fish swam; the play of their luminous eyes lit up the pool. It was screened by thick, lumpy tallow-yellow stalactites so long they reached the ground and were creeping out over it like wax over a candleholder. Between them chambers and passages led off, descending in different directions into the depths. Most were natural but some were like mine shafts, with timber props and iron rails.

Tortuoise with huge shells crawled frustratingly slowly up and down between the stalls, towing baskets on wheels. There were Silvans, child-shaped shadows who live only in the shade of cave mouths and tree-throws in the forest. At the furthest end of the cavern, where the subterranean denizens who prefer to stay away from the light shop and sell their wares, hibernating Cave Elephants had worn hollows in the velvet sediment.

‘Call her back!’ the Vermiform chorused. ‘The Gabbleratchet could be here any second!’

I glanced at the cave mouth.

The Vermiform said, ‘It doesn’t need an entrance. It can go anywhere! It can go places you can’t, where the atmosphere is poisonous: hydrogen, phosphorus, baked beans. You saw that solid rock is nothing to it. It can run straight through a planet without noticing.’

A big, lumpen Vadose was standing by a stall. Cyan realised that the man was made of clay. She sank her fingers into his thigh, pulled out a handful and started moulding it into a ball. The Vadose turned round. ‘Excuse me, would you return that, please?’

‘It’s my dream and I can do what I want!’

‘Dream?’ articulated the Vadose. ‘I assure you, poppet, this is no oneiric episode.’

The ball of clay in Cyan’s hands puffed up into a tiny version of the Vadose–it tittered and waved at her. She yelped and dropped it. It ran on little feet to one of the Vadose’s thick legs and merged smoothly with it. Cyan slapped his round belly, leaving a palm imprint.

He cried out bashfully and caught the attention of a Doggerel guard stalking past. It was a big bloodhound, bipedal on its hock-kneed back legs, wearing a constable’s coat and the helmet of a market guard, black with a gold spike on top. The chin strap was lost in its drooping jowls. It rhymed:

‘Shall I remove this silly lass

Who seems to be doing no sort of good?

In fact, you seem in some impasse.’

The Vadose said, ‘Yes, if you would.’

It placed its paw on Cyan’s shoulder but she wasn’t perturbed. She gave it a kick. Its hackles raised; it picked her up, tucked her under one arm and carried her to us. It set Cyan down in front of me:

‘Here is your rowdy friend,

Please keep her close.

Otherwise she may offend

One more dangerous than Vadose.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Talk in rhyme

All the time,’ insisted the Doggerel.

‘First we are chased, then we are irritated,’ the Vermiform complained.

‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘I can do it…Thanks for being so lenient

For my friend is no deviant

She’s a tourist here for the first time

From now on she’ll behave just fine.’

The Doggerel sniggered. ‘Only a tourist and she looks so boring?

I’ll leave in case she has me snoring.’ It strode away with dignity, sturdy tail waving.

Cyan said, ‘If this is a jook dream I’m going to do it all the time.’ She set off towards the pool but the Vermiform snared her round the waist. She beat her fists at the worms reeling her in. ‘Hey! Get off me!’

A small black puppy was trailing her. When she stopped, it sat down on its haunches and looked at her intently. It had pointed ears and alert, intelligent eyes. ‘It’s following me,’ she said. ‘It’s cute. Makes a change from everything else in here.’

‘It’s just a Yirn Hound,’ the Vermiform said dismissively and pushed it out of the way. It took a couple of steps to the side, resumed staring at Cyan.

‘Can I pick it up?’ she asked, and as she was speaking another dog padded towards her from under the nearest stall. It sat down and regarded her. She looked puzzled. Another two followed it, clustered close and stared up plaintively. Three more materialised from behind the corner of the next row and joined them.

The Vermiform’s surface rippled in a sigh. ‘They’re desire made manifest. For every want or desire that a young woman has, a Yirn Hound pops into existence. If you stay in this world you won’t be able to get rid of them. They will follow you around forever, watching you. Most girls grow accustomed to them, but otherwise Yirn Hounds drive them mad, because until you grow old they’ll do nothing but stare at you. You could kill them, but more will appear to fill the space.’

At least twenty little terriers had arrived while the Vermiform was talking. They sat in a rough circle around Cyan’s feet and continued to regard her.

‘Well, I like them,’ she said, bent down to the nearest one and caressed its ears. It allowed itself to be stroked and waggled its head with pleasure. Their crowd thickened, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from–just trotting in from nowhere and taking their places at the edge of the pack.

Their inevitable steady increase repulsed me. I said, ‘God, girl, you have a lot of wants.’

‘Compared to you? I bet you’d be buried in a pile by now!’

Sparks began to crackle in the tunnels at the far end. I caught a glimpse of the Gabbleratchet thundering in their depths. It more than filled every passage and morphing beasts charged half-in, half-out of the bedrock. Their backs and the tips of their ears projected from the floors: for them, the rock didn’t exist. Skeleton horses, rotting horses, horses glowing with rude health reached the tunnel mouths. Paws and pasterns projected from the wall–they burst out! The front of the screeching column came down the cavern in a red and black wave.

‘The ‘Ratchet!’

I couldn’t look away. Their screaming was so deafening Cyan and I clamped our hands to our ears. They tore everybody in their path to shreds–obliterated the Neon Bugs on the walls as they passed, and the lights went out.

The Vermiform wrenched us backwards–

–Bright sunlight burst upon us. I squeezed my eyes shut, blinked, and tasted clean, fresh air. A warm breeze buffed my skin…We were on a beach. Cyan yelled, disorientated.

‘Precambria!’ said the Vermiform. We tumbled out of its grasp onto the yielding sand.

‘Good Shift,’ I said.

‘The Gabbleratchet
is
chasing us!’ It quivered. ‘We doubt we have thrown it off. We will take you on again.’ It pooled down around us, its worms moving fitfully, trying to summon up the energy.

A barren spit curved away into the distance. The aquamarine sea washed on the outside edge, moulding the compact sand into corrugations. Low, green stromatolite mounds made a marsh all along its inside. Behind us, on an expanse of featureless dunes, nothing grew at all. I looked down the spit, out to sea.

A splashing started within its curve. The water began to froth as if it was boiling. Creatures like lobsters were jumping out and falling back, lobes along their sides flapping. They had huge black eyes like doorknobs. One flipped up, and in an instant I saw ranked gills and an iris-diaphragm mouth whisk open and gnash shut.

Hundreds of crab-things scuttled out of the waters’ edge; their pointed feet stepping from under blue-grey shells with arthropod finesse. There were long, spiny worms too, undulating on seven pairs of tentacle-legs.

‘Something’s chasing them,’ said the Vermiform. ‘Oh no. No!
It’s
here already!’

The patch of frothing water surged closer. Cyan and I stared but the Vermiform started knitting itself around us frantically. Different parts of it were gabbling different things at once: ‘Eat the damn trilobites–hallucigenia–eat the anomalocaris–but LEAVE US ALONE!’

Straight out of the froth the Gabbleratchet rode, without disturbing the water’s surface by so much as a ripple. Dry hooves flying, the stream of hunters arced up against the sun. Red eyes and empty sockets turned to us–

–Endless salt flats. The vast ruins of a city stood on the horizon, its precarious tower blocks and sand-choked streets little more than rearing rock formations in the crusted desert that was once the ocean bed.

‘I’ve been here before,’ I said. ‘It’s Vista.’

‘What’s that in the distance?’ Cyan said, pointing at a bright flash.

‘Probably a Bacchante tribe.’

‘They’re coming closer.’

‘They doubtless want to know what the fuck we are.’

After Vista Marchan fell to the Insects, its society transformed again and again and eventually collapsed completely. At first the people inhabited the city’s ruins, but little by little they left in search of food, surviving as nomads in the desert. Bacchante tribes are either all male or all female and they meet together only once a year in a great festivity. The desert can’t sustain them and their numbers are dwindling, but they roam in and out of Epsilon over the great Insect bridge to survive.

I remembered the only Bacchante I had met. ‘Is Mimosa still fighting the Insects?’

‘Yes, with Dunlin,’ The Vermiform concurred.

‘
King
Dunlin,’ I said.

The Vermiform produced its woman’s head, and shook it.

‘No. Just Dunlin. He has renounced being king. He now presents himself as simply a travelling wise man. He advises many worlds in their struggle against the Insects.’

‘Oh.’

‘It seems to be a phase he’s going through. He is growing very sagacious, but he hasn’t yet realised the true extent of his power.’

‘Their horses are
shiny
,’ said Cyan.

The Bacchantes galloped closer. The four polished legs of each mount flickered, moving much faster than destriers with a chillingly smooth movement and no noise but a distant hum.

‘They’re horse-shaped machines,’ I said. ‘They don’t have real heads, and no tails at all. They’re made of metal.’

‘They’re made of solar panels,’ the Vermiform said.

High over the ruined city, the Gabbleratchet burst through.

The Bacchantes halted in confusion. The black hunters were so much worse against the bright sky. They cast no shadow. Dull, cream-yellow jaws gaped, sewn with white molars. The Bacchantes stared, hypnotised.

The Vermiform screamed at the riders, ‘Run!’

The Gabbleratchet plunged down and–

–Splash! Splash!

Freezing muddy water swirled up around me. I sank in a chaos of bubbles. Something tugged me and I broke the surface, spluttering. Up came Cyan, and the Vermiform held us above the algae of a stinking, misty swamp.

The sky was monochrome grey, filled with cloud and a hazy halo where the sun was trying to break through.

‘Infusoria Swamp.’

Cyan wiped slime off her face and hair. ‘Hey! This is my dream and I want to go somewhere nice!’

‘Shut up!’ The Vermiform seethed in fury. ‘All for you, little girl! We don’t see why we have to do this and now we’re being chased! We don’t know how to get rid of it. We don’t know where to go next that won’t kill you!’

She shrieked in frustration, grabbed handfuls of worms and tried to squash them but they forced her fists open and crawled out.

‘Shifting is sapping our strength,’ said the worms.

‘Come on!’ I shouted at it. ‘Let’s go.’

‘It’s my dream so get off me!’

‘Stop squeezing us.’

‘Piss off and keep pissing off, piss-worms!’

A colossal blob of gel flowed towards us on the water’s surface. Flecks and granules churned inside it as if it was a denser portion of the swamp; it extended pseudopodia and started to wrap around the outlying worms.

‘What’s that?’ said Cyan.

‘Amoeba.’ The Vermiform pulled its worms out and hoisted us up higher with a sucking noise.