Balzac's War: A Tale of Veniss Underground

“Cold. Very cold. I can’t feel my legs. I think I’m dying. I think I’m already dead, Balzac. Why else should I feel so cold?”

  Balzac flinched, and Jeffer thought: Think? Feel? Can it do either?

  “It’s a cold night,” Balzac told her. “You need a blanket. I wish I had a blanket for you, my love.”

  “Cold. Very cold,” she said, in a dreamy, far-off voice.

  “I’ll find something for you,” Balzac said, his voice cracking with grief. “Jeffer, I’m going to look through the supplies downstairs – maybe there’s a blanket. Watch her for me?”

  “She’s almost . . . I mean, I don’t think we have a blanket.”

  “I know! I know that. Just watch her.”

  Balzac scrambled to his feet and fled through the ruined doorway, leaving Jeffer with the enemy. As he circled her, he wondered if he should kill her.

  “Who is there?” Jamie said. “Are you cold too?”

  At the sound of that voice, Jeffer stepped away from her, made sure she couldn’t see him. What if she recognized him? What if she spoke his name again? What then?

  In the corner, Con Fegman stirred and said, in a singsong voice, “The sand toad told the sand itself and the sand told the toads and the toads told the sand and . . . and . . . and . . . ” He faded back into unconsciousness, the myth trapped between his withered lips.

  Jeffer tried to ignore Con Fegman. He had so resigned himself to the old man’s death that he sometimes started in surprise during Con Fegman’s moments of lucidity, as if a ghost had drawn breath.

  “I want to get up,” Jamie said, face tightening as she strained to move the flesh dog’s leg muscles. “I can’t seem to get up.”

  Jeffer knew better than to interrogate her. If he couldn’t shoot her, he would have to content himself with watching her.

  In the early days, before the full-fledged invasion, he had volunteered to help capture and interrogate such surgically altered specimens. They never had much to say and, anyhow, who could tell if what the prisoners said was authentic or preprogrammed? The heads when separated from the bodies would live on unimpaired for two or three hours, and perhaps there was a hint of miracles in this delayed mortality, but surely nothing more.

  Locklin, the subject of Jeffer’s final interrogation, had believed in miracles, and as Jeffer stared at Jamie he could not help but see Locklin’s face superimposed over hers.

  Locklin had laughed at him even during those moments of the interrogation that most resembled torture. When asked a question, the creature would say its name and make a low, bubbling laugh through its flesh dog and human mouths. The violet eyes would widen, his craggy, heavily tanned and scarred face sprawled across the flesh dog’s forehead. “I am Locklin today, but tomorrow? You will all be me.”

  Locklin claimed to come from a crèche located in the far north, nestled against a frozen sea. Cliffs four hundred meters high sheltered them from the cruel winds, and from these same cliffs came the enemy in great numbers, on a winter’s day when many of the crèche were dying from cold; the heaters had failed and the crèche’s leadership had wavered on whether to wait out the weather or to abandon the crèche.

  “But the m’kat,” Locklin offered near the end, contempt for Jeffer poisoning his voice, “they fixed us up! Ho! They surely did. Immortality in return for service – a fine, fine body that will run forever, and we said yes! We said yes, all of us shivering in that frozen place . . . as most of you will say yes in your turn.”

  Always it was flesh dogs fashioned from members of this particular crèche that Jeffer found least like a poorly animated holovid. If some responded like sand through a sieve to his questioning, then these hardened types were steel traps. For they had not just pledged allegiance to the “m’kat” but worshipped them, giving up their children to immortality and abandoning their old religions. This betrayal of species terrified Jeffer. Among the Con members it was the greatest of all fears: to be captured by an enemy that did not know mercy as humans knew it, an enemy unparalleled in the art of psychological warfare. To be sent back in the guise of a flesh dog, mouthing your own name or the name of your beloved as the creature fought you.

  Only now did Jeffer realize he had talked to Locklin too much, for as he watched Jamie, Locklin’s hypnotic words drifted in and out of his thoughts: “You could live forever this way, if you would only submit . . . ” A great sadness welled up inside Jeffer, for he and his brother had become estranged; it was there in Balzac’s words, in his face: that the love he had for Jamie had become monstrous, had taken him over and eaten him from the inside out. Did Balzac sense a truth to Locklin’s words that escaped him? A chill crept into Jeffer’s skin. He could already foresee an outcome monstrous beyond imagination and he told himself he would not help in that way – he could not – and he tried to convince himself this was because he loved his brother, not because he stood alone in the same room with a creature so familiar to him and yet so alien.

  Mindle had been Balzac’s hateful shadow as he rummaged through their meager cache of supplies for a blanket. The boy had said nothing, had followed almost without sound, but Balzac could feel that gaze blasting the back of his head, scorching his scalp. He didn’t mind; better to know where Mindle was than not. At times on his miniquest, he even tried talking to Mindle, and took a perverse pleasure in his facade of cheeriness, knowing it must make the boy burn even brighter. Burn, then. Burn up.

  But there was no blanket, and with each step back up the stairs, the facade faded a little more until he could barely walk for the weariness that pulled at him. On the third-floor landing, Balzac heard Mindle’s retreating footsteps and was glad of it, not wasting time with a taunt, but ducking into the room where Jamie still lay in the autodoc’s blue light. Jeffer stood to one side.

  “I couldn’t find a blanket. You can go back to the window.”

  Jeffer gave Balzac a wan smile, but Balzac only slumped down beside Jamie.

  “Jamie,” he said when Jeffer had gone back out onto the balcony.

  “I’m cold.” A voice like an echo, rich with phlegm or blood.

  “Cold like the oasis lakes – do you remember the oasis lakes?”

  He thought he saw her mouth curl upward. She gave a little hiccupping laugh.

  “I remember. I remember the cold. It makes me sneeze.” Then, doubtful: “That was a long time ago . . . ”

  The water had been cold. They’d dived in together, into the hardness of the water, swum through it, their muscles aching. They’d snorted water, gurgled it, luxuriating in the decadence of so much water, and surfaced to kiss, breathlessly, under the stars. Her lips had tasted of passion fruit and he had pressed her into the shallows where they could stand, then moved away from her shyly, only to find her pulling him back toward her and putting his hand between her legs; making sharp, quiet sounds of pleasure as his hands moved lightly on her.

  But, faced with her in the flesh, he could not hold onto the memory of the emotion. It dissipated into the grime and darkness: a dimly glittering jewel against whose sharp edges he could only bleed.

  “We made love there,” he said.

  Silence.

  Dawn would come soon and they would have to move on while they had the chance.

  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 which 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 sid
e.

  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? Some place 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, and 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 hand-held 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 and 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.

  “Goodbye,” 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. r />
  “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.