We were falling swiftly, and came into an area where the lamps were brighter. Now I saw that there were other golden wayships above us or below or to either side, some crowded with glass rowboats clinging to their hulls like remora clinging to a shark, some with larger containers, and others bare of cargo. Here and there on the ribbon, like motorcyclists threading through a convoy of eighteen-wheelers, were rowboat-sized or yacht-sized bullets of blue glass traveling by themselves.
You are probably seeing in your mind’s eye traffic on a highway. That is not a bad picture, but remove any visible drivers and passengers, plate over all the car windows, put it through a tunnel of darkness guarded by gold monuments, shut off all the headlights and taillights, and in your mind’s ear, you should be hearing no noise aside from the whistle of wind. Machines roar and clang and stink, and well-tuned machines purr, but all this traffic was as silent as a caravan of ghosts falling toward the core of the world.
The whole thing looked like a vertical conveyer belt, but it was not: the surface of the road-sized vertical ribbon, seen up close, looked like a hairy carpet made of zillions of tiny centipede legs, which rippled in hypnotic and silent waves of motion. It was made of the living metal, and it certainly writhed like it was alive. I wonder if each tiny hair were passing all these loads from one to the next, sort of like the way a crowd surfer who throws himself into a mosh pit is passed from hand to hand, no one dancer ever bearing his whole weight.
The other two vertical ribbons must have been local or express tracks, because after a moment, we came to a spot where the three ribbons were connected by a horizontal series of ramps as baffling as any cloverleaf our highway engineers back on Earth ever erected. The wayship curved to follow the living metal road through a horizontal slant to reach an on ramp. We crossed a narrower thread of metal to a faster-moving ribbon, the express.
There was considerable jostling as we were slung at high speed from a straight vertical fall to a sideways circular slide to a second straight vertical faster-speed fall, so I put my arms around Abby again and let the hull of the rowboat slam me, not her.
2. Untouchable
“This sucks!” I said. “In my world, you step into a car the size of a closet, and push a button with a number on it, and go up or down without any discomfort. And there is soft, annoying music playing in the background.”
Abby squirmed uncomfortably. Her voice issued from somewhere in my armpit. “Comforts adorn the stream-paths for the high slaves, freeborn, and nobles. Where we are now, this stream-path, is for lepers and mummies, kinslayers and Unclean folk. Do your people really play music for them in your world?”
“Yeah. We have a special kind of music for the Unclean folk. It’s called heavy metal. But even for freight, this glass rowboat thingie is not a very elegant engineering solution. And does everyone have to carry around a dead man’s hand?”
She said, “I was raised by a corpse-handling family. You are not to touch me.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said and let her go. She kind of slid out of my hands into the stern of the boat, which was acting as the floor now. She probably thought I was a child molester or something. “Look, I did not mean to invade your personal space, I thought you might get slapped against the hull if…”
She said, “When we find Master Ossifrage, he can cleanse you.”
“Cleanse me from wha– Oh, Good God! You did NOT just say that!” Because I realized only then what she meant. She did not object to me touching her; she objected to my being touched by her.
Her stupid world had taught her that she was contaminated.
She flinched when I raised my voice. I reminded myself not to raise my voice to her ever again. Stupid world.
I said gently, “Little sister, you asked me if what I said before was make-believe. It is not. In my land, we hold the truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“But you would not shake hands with me before…”
“That was because my hands were covered in blood! I did not want to dirty your mittens.”
Behind her lenses, her big brown eyes were big with astonishment. “You thought you would taint me?”
“Never be ashamed to ask me for help. Never hesitate to ask me to protect you. I am your own private Abomination, and I am not more or less unclean than you or anyone else. You understand?”
“How can I understand? Some men are born noble, and others born base. Is a king the same as a swineherd? Don’t they have untouchables in your world?”
“Not in the civilized parts. In my country, the Untouchables are heroic lawmen who gun down rumrunners with roaring Tommy-guns during the Roaring Twenties. They’re heroes.”
“Unbelievable!”
“It is one of those unbelievable things humans have to believe to be human.”
“It has never been thus in the Dark Tower.”
I wondered how long never was. “Who built this stupid Dark Tower? Where did it come from?”
“Nimrod the Mighty established the foundations by virtue of lore he learned of the magician Janus. There was a time when a great flood swallowed the land. The waters stood fifteen cubits higher than Mount Argaeus in Antitaurus. When the seas receded, the magicians resolved to build the tower higher than all mountains, and great enough to hold all the people, that no deluge should ever again have the power to destroy us.”
I blinked. Something about what she said sounded familiar, as if I had seen it in an episode of some sci-fi show I watched as a kid, but I could not place it.
There were flood myths from all around the world in my world, so many of them that some people used that as an argument to prove it had never happened, I guess on the theory that tribes of people on different continents with no communication with each other will always, naturally, tell the same stories about the same event. Other people used the prevalence of flood myths as an argument that it did happen, on the theory that people would tend to remember worldwide disasters, and on slow news days, talk about it and tell their children about it.
But I had never heard a story of people trying to survive the next flood by preventative skyscraper construction. “Sounds like a wise precaution.”
“Nor could we be scattered by catastrophe, and whatever our lords imagined in their hearts to do, they could accomplish.” An uncharacteristic note of pride crept into her voice, which was a little ironic, considering who was talking.
I wondered if black slaves in the antebellum South ever boasted about the glories of Southern cotton production, or eunuchs in Turkey ever boasted about how many Harem guards the great Sultan had unmanned. It is a natural thing to do, I guess, but still…
She continued: “It was not hundreds of years, but thousands, ere the Dark Tower reached to its full measure. The blood of numberless slaves toiling under the lash is said to mortar every stone.”
“Don’t gross me out.”
“Whole generations of workmen were born and lived and died in the upper work camps during the building, never having set foot on the ground.”
“Enough about your stupid tower. I told Emmy-Drinky I would knock it down, and I will, even if I have to ram it with an asteroid.”
“Do you have that power?” Her voice echoed astonishment.
“No, not anything remotely like that.”
“Then why do you boast that you can….”
“Because hope springs eternal where angels fear to tread and I am an optimist. Or an idiot. Or both. An idioptimist. I’ll find a way.”
One of the corpses in a glass vessel near us slowly turned its head. Empty eyesockets glared at me, and fleshless teeth grimaced.
“Is that dead guy– supposed to be moving like that?” I muttered to Abby, but I grinned back at the moving corpse and gave him a nonchalant wave of my hand.
3. Heliography
It’s not impossible to nap standing up, slumped against the sid
e of a giant beer-bottle-shaped elevator. I woke with a laugh to the sight of lights flashing in my eyes.
“Why are you laughing?” said Abby, who was crouched, no doubt in less comfort than I was, but also complaining less than I had been. (I have not written down all the bellyaching and whining I did, because I am the one telling the story. To make up for that, just picture in your mind that a lot more grousing went on.)
“I had a dream I was in a great glass elevator in a chocolate factory run by a nutbag hermit with a tribe of pygmy slaves—and, lo and behold, I wake up! And things are even weirder. What are those lights?” Because a beam as if from a lighthouse flashed up the endless, titanic well down which we were still descending.
A moment later, we passed what looked like a sideways lighthouse, and an apparatus that looked like a parabolic mirror with a ball of wood at the focus. The wood was blazing like a bonfire, but not being burned, and flags made of glass or of canvas were passing quickly before it. As it receded behind, I saw the colored lights blinking rapidly. Looking down, I saw at the edge of sight another lighthouse just like it.
“Heliograph messages,” I said. “Makes sense in a place where radios don’t work, I guess. Darned clever, your people.”
Abby was staring through the glass of the floor. “You speak as if we are the barbarians from the wild and you from the city. If magicians were not clever, they would not be feared.” She spoke without turning her head.
“Hey, this is not my universe, little sister. I don’t know what to expect. For example, I did not expect anyone to discover my birdcage was empty. Those signals might be alarms about us.”
She was staring down thoughtfully. “The Tower is very large. Very. We are not the only ones the magicians and their slaves might be seeking. Brother Barley, the Big Man, told me this many times. I was told not to flee from alarms, not to show guilt nor fear if guards walked by.” I could not tell if Se’u-Ahu (barley brother) was a title or a name.
“Good advice, but Emmy-Drinky’s plan was to have me hauled to where Penny was, and have me cut up in front of her. It’s one of those tortures that you can only do to guys who can’t die, I guess.”
“What planets in which houses?”
“Are you asking what time was this supposed to happen?”
“Yes. Did he mention the hour?”
“No. I don’t know. I really wish I knew what was happening to her right now. Can you read their signals?”
She straightened up. “No, but I know the red-red-green-white is a signal to the Exarch patrols, who are only used to hunt Otherworldlies. When the police lamps are lit, any low slaves below the middle rank are supposed to halt where they are, and high slaves can continue until they come to a door or gate or grating.”
“So you’ve been in a drill like this before, when they light the alarms?”
“I saw such lights when they were lit for me.” Her voice was haunted. “My woes began because I spared the life of a slave, gave her gold from my hand, and told her to flee.”
I had to coax the tale out of her. Whether I should have or not, I still don’t know.
4. Hope’s Tale
“It was not always thus. I was born a shanukkatu etellutu, a princess among princesses, one step below the royal families. I was Bashtubaraquin, of the high clan of Cygnus, and my name was called Puqqut’alu.” (Her original name meant Steadfast-in-Hope. From the sound of it, Pagutu, She-Monkey, was a cruel mockery of that name.) “In the Court of the Crown of Crowns, my Court-Name was Elmessil and the seneschal bowed his face to the floor when he spoke it.” (It meant Amber, or any precious colored stone.)
“This is how I came to lose my names.
“Until my seventh summer, the year of the opposition of Saturn and Venus, I was adored and adorned, and fed on honey and thick cream and fed on fruit from the trees that grow in lands where no man walks, beyond the southern sea, brought by soaring ship or sailing ship of those flotillas my father commanded, for he was high in fortune and rich in wealth, and benevolent stars shone on him. No harsh word ever touched my ear, nor unlovely sight my eye, nor whip my back.”
Abby continued, “I had thirty maidservants whose loyalty I was given, and sixty slave-girls whose lives I owned. That year my birthday anniversary fell on a great feastday called the Feast of Immensities, where all the lesser houses and chambers renewed their vows of fealty to my father’s house, and made their sacrifices.
“In the watches of the night before the feast, as no more than a girlish prank, it was predicted I would sneak away from my handmaidens, and see the servile reaches of the Tower, the narrow warrens of the lower orders, the lazarets of the sick, the pits of the slaves.
“Of course the episode was known for years in advance, but my father and the star-mages permitted it, thinking it would bring me the needed pride and scorn I lacked, and so I would know that I was born high among the highest, and other peoples low among the low.
“Instead I saw a mother weeping for her child whose death had come unexpectedly, the family being too poor to pay a mage to cast their horoscope. I saw an old man who did not know the day and hour of his death. And I saw corpses lying in the corridors like dogs, with none to haul the bodies away, for no mortician had foretold to the untouchables where and when to go to take the dead away.
“The cunning slave-girl who was my closest playmate in my childhood had disguised me in rags, and by stealthy ways led me out the servant’s doors into these low places. Her lip quivered, and she was sad as we walked, for it was fated that when we were caught, as is the custom, she and not I would be lashed for it.
“I soon understood why she went ever lower into the warrens, despite her fear of the lash, for she had a second purpose in coming. One of those poor wretches wasted with disease I saw that hour was her own mother, claimed by fever. In pain and torment, raving, not seeing her own daughter, she breathed her dying breath. The simplest of herbs to cure her would have cost less than the smallest ring on my slenderest finger.
“My slave-girl wept, clutching her mother’s shrunken corpse upon a filthy mat in a crowded ward. It did not seem right that my slave-girl must go from her mother’s funeral to the whipping post. Often she had told me tales of her people: their home world had been destroyed by the Dark Tower, and they wandered through the twilight from world to world, in houses carried on the backs of carts, as singers for the poor and petty thieves, but free as a bird flying. My heart was filled with compassion, and so I freed her, and told her to run away and find her people, and be free.
“Her name was Hadu.” (The name meant Brings-Joy.) “And hers was the only escape in endless years of history no starmage foresaw, and no slavedriver prevented.
“In the small hours of the night, when Jupiter was at the zenith, I came alone back to my rooms, happy that I had done good for another, and pleased to doff my rags and adorn myself once more in fineness.
“That same evening when I came to the Feast of Immensities, there was no place set for me. When the Master Cook consulted with the Governor of the Feast, it was discovered that there was no mention of me on the horoscope cast for that feast, which told how many places to set and whom to seat where.
“But, earlier, my Stewardess of Handmaidens had laid out the proper attire for me, a summer tunic white as fullers can whiten, a shawl with a purple hem embroidered by gold thread and beads of nacre, and a skirt with tiered fringe alternately dyed crimson, jet, saffron, and lavender, a wide belt tied in the back with a bow whose tails were so long a servant girl must carry them; and on my hair a scarf bedizened with gold bezants and silver shells that chimed and rang when I tossed my head.
“I recall this dress well, for I was never to wear fine linen again.
“But the horoscope for the wardrobe had been cast the day before, whereas the feast horoscope had been cast that day, and it was the midnight between when I told Joy to depart from me forever, and seek her people and her freedom.
“One of my tutors was at the feast, seated
at the mid-rank servant’s table. I recall how he spoke kindly to me, his face wrinkled with puzzlement, asking of my wellbeing, for he had only that hour, before the feast bell rang, cast a horoscope for his roster of students, and seen I was not listed, and assumed I would be sick or perhaps slain on the morrow and therefore absent from lessons.
“I saw my mother, her face was the only white face in the chamber, and it was a face filled with great fear. She arose from her seat without being excused, and tried to catch me in her arms and flee from that place, but was prevented. At the highest table, the Astrologers and Chaldeans had heard the whispers running through the room, and brought out their golden compasses, and read them.
“And as suddenly as a candle is snuffed, my life was ended. My mother was pulled weeping from my arms, nor was my father present, being away on a sea voyage. The eyes of every man and woman, lord and high servant, low servant and slave, even the lowest potboy peering through the kitchen doors were filled with loathing and fear, for I had become an abomination.
“I was ordered to report to the Chambers of Inquiry, and I walked from the feast hall, and then walked quickly, and then ran.
“Lord Astute started up and shouted, and called every man there a fool. But the word he said, escape, was not known to any but the scholars in the room, so I fled from his voice while he called after me, hoping none would understand his warning.
“You see, only he realized that the Inquiry Chamber horoscope would have no prediction of my going there, and the guards no prediction of where I would go if I hid, and therefore some man would have to escort me.
“But they understood. I was not the only foreverborn our world has known. Within the minute, the lamps were lit, the doors of all the corridors were sealed. The main doors to the local stairwell swung to with a terrible noise before my nose, and I was trapped.