Veniss Underground Read online

  He stumbled, almost fell, and decided to sit down, with his back against the tunnel wall, his feet resting against the opposite wall. Roaring out of the morass of pity, terror, happiness, joy, sadness, elation that he had inherited—shooting forth from this void, the single sharp thought: She does not love me. It was almost more than he could take. But he was not the kind of person to fold, to crack, to be broken, and so instead, in those moments after the realization, he bent—and bent, and kept on bending beneath the pressure of this new and terrible knowledge. Soon he would bend into a totally new shape altogether. He welcomed that. He wanted that. Maybe the new thing he would become would no longer hurt, would no longer fear, would no longer look back down into the void and wonder what was left of him.

  She did not love him. It made him laugh as he sat there—great belly laughs that doubled him over in the dust, where he lay for a long moment, recovering. It was funny beyond bearing. He had fought through a dozen terrors all for love of her. And she did not love him. He felt like a character in a holovid—the jester, the clown, the fool.

  He righted himself, brushed the dust from his shoulders. He took John the Baptist out of his pocket, set the head down beside him.

  “How much longer do you have?” he asked the meerkat.

  John the Baptist had lost his sullen aggression. The meerkat sounded tired. “Less than twenty-four hours. I can feel myself dying. My organs are shutting down.”

  “You don't have any organs. Do you still want to kill me?”

  The meerkat stared up at him in the wan light. “All I want is to live, like anyone.”

  “Then you shouldn't have tried to kill Nicola. You attacked her.”

  “She had found our sacred place. Would you have me sacrifice my own people for a human?”

  “Yes! You're practically a machine, John. Machines don't have rights. You do what Quin says. You don't have free will.”

  “Why are you bothering this poor machine with insults, then? Why not find a sentient being to torture? I think you'll find it much more rewarding.”

  “Tell me, then, meerkat—do you have a family? Quin made you from a vat. Quin made you. Me, I come from a long line of ancestors. I can trace my heritage.”

  “Pointless, pointless. I know what I feel. I know who I am. Quin made me, but I am not a machine.”

  “What is your creator like, then? Is he a kind god?”

  “He's a kinder god than you—he'd never cut off my head and leave my limbs to fend for themselves.”

  “Soon you will be dead, limbs and all.”

  “As will you. I heard everything. You will try to kill Quin. You might as well commit suicide.”

  “You have such a cheery outlook, John.”

  “If you were in my position, you would understand. I hope you will someday be in my position. Even if I don't live to see it, the thought comforts me.”

  Shadrach found himself admiring the dying animal, this head on a plate, this assassin who knew who he was, who had no doubts, or did not show them. He laughed again.

  Now he would find out who he was in the absence of her love. Now he would find out if he could love someone who truly did not love him back.

  With a mighty effort, he tried to cast out all thoughts that did not center on Quin.

  “It's time to find someone you know,” he said as he picked up John the Baptist, put him back in his pocket, and got to his feet.

  CHAPTER 5

  The garbage zone was a revolving beast that ate its own dark trail and was never fully gorged on what it found there. Once it had been AI, but now it was just an old beast, and a slow beast, and it had no eyes to see the dim white, the dim black, rags of flesh that traversed the piles, the mountains, of its movable feast. The beast formed a circle, and at the far end of the circle—farthest from where Shadrach entered its entrails—the maw of the beast chomped down on the stinking offal, the rotted food, the ever-present stream of used plastics with its rusted metal jaws. With a grinding of gears, it swallowed ton after ton, some of it burned, some of it expelled from its gullet down into a deep hole where it was crushed flat. But most of it was reduced down into raw materials and expelled by eruption from the beast's blowhole, to be used by above level, which would in turn send its products below level to the captive commercial market waiting to use them, and once used, once more thrown out, so that the beast not only ate itself, it ate the leavings of its leavings: It ate the world forever. Lucky, then, that it had no sense of smell, nor even a brain, nor could sense the weak scraps of flesh that stole from its very innards still smaller scraps for themselves.

  Shadrach cared nothing for the beast, but only for the folk who had taken up residence on the tenth level. They were protective of their garbage on the tenth level—it was like gold to them, for every day some wastrel tossed a thousand useful items into the trash, down the chute into the beast. And every day, scavengers sorted through the mess of discarded soup pouches, banana peels, dead animals, exhausted hologram sets, paper plates, bones, meat, vegetables, forks, stray coins, used travel cards, the occasional husk of a book. Sometimes, when the beast grew slow and lazy in its chewing, the garbage stood forty feet high and each clan or family would stake out a hill and protect it against all comers.

  So Shadrach stuck to the valleys where lay strewn a torn dress, a soiled teddy bear, used coffee grounds. The ceiling of the tenth floor was uneven, carved from solid rock, but averaged sixty feet, while below his boots squished down on a hundred moist, gelid substances. The smell of burning came faintly to him from the distant maw of the beast—once he even thought, although this was ridiculous, that he could hear a faint chewing sound—and he welcomed this harshness, for his nose told him terrible tales indeed, none with happy endings.

  Even as he called Nicholas's name, now faintly, now loudly, he saw the clans on their hills, armed with guns, lasers, and spears made from steel they had found while rummaging amongst the rubbish. These clans had neither close ties nor were related in any racial sense, but they stood tall and united as he approached, ominous in their silence, and only resumed their febrile salvaging when he had safely passed their particular hill. The smell so sickened him that he prayed he would find Nicholas sooner rather than later; even John the Baptist gasped and sneezed in his pocket. He also did not like the way the floor constantly moved forward—it was hard to find his balance, and it made the world seem impermanent.

  FINALLY, AFTER four hours, by the light of a fire set as a warning, Shadrach saw the shadows of men and women with spears jabbing at something that stood at the base of their trash heap. It flinched and whined. He heard a voice as he approached. It said, “Please—leave me alone. Please,” in a tone beyond panic: flat and dead and unmistakable.

  Shadrach pulled out his gun and fired a warning shot into the air. The trash folk turned to look at him quizzically, shrugged as if to say, “It isn't trash—why should we fight for it?” and retreated to the top of their hill. They stood there laughing as Shadrach approached their victim. One man called out to him, “If you find out what it be, let us know.”

  Shadrach ignored him. He stood where the trash folk had stood and peered into the darkness. He saw a form, hunched low against the wall. The flickering of the fire did not reach far enough to see what lay hidden there. A sudden shiver of fear. Something was not right here. Something was very wrong.

  The shadow moved, came toward the light, only to shuffle back into the darkness again. Shadrach caught a hint of a gauntness at odds with another impression: that of ponderous weight. The shadow made a moist licking sound, followed by a sinuous wriggling, a broken cough.

  “Nicholas? Nicholas, is that you?” Shadrach wondered at the control in his voice.

  The shadow turned unsteadily in Shadrach's direction.

  “Do you want to hear a story?” said the sibilant voice. “I know a lot of stories. Let me tell you a story about the city. Because it's very important. The city is a cliché performed with cardboard and painted sparkly colo
rs . . .” The voice became unclear, indistinct, almost lisping.

  “No, Nick,” Shadrach said. “I don't want to hear a story. You know who I am.”

  Silence. Then: “Hello, Shad. Imagine this. Shad here. In the flesh.” A snort. A despairing chuckle. “I don't suppose you have any drugs on you? Any painkillers?”

  Shadrach ran into the darkness. He kicked Nicholas hard, but retreated; his boot had met a mushiness that revolted him.

  “My God, Nick, what's happened to you?”

  The shadow cringed against the wall. “Thanks, Shad. Thanks for the kick. You've split my lip. I'm bleeding, Shad.”

  “And I'll hit you again—harder—if you don't tell me what I need to know.”

  “Why don't you just go away. Just . . . go away. Please.”

  “I can't go away until I know some things.”

  Shadrach heard Nicholas slide farther down the wall, until he was sitting. And yet the shadow occupied the same space.

  The hairs rose on Shadrach's arms.

  “Come out into the light, Nick.”

  “No. Not even one pill? Not even a single pill?”

  “Come out where I can see you.”

  “Oh Shad, you really don't want me to do that.”

  Shadrach aimed his gun into the darkness. “You have two choices and five seconds.”

  “I'm not myself, Shad. I'm just not.”

  “Three seconds.”

  A long, moist sigh, then, with stealthy ponderousness, a sly thickness, Nicholas came out of the darkness. He met Shadrach's disbelieving stare with his enigmatic, blue-tinted compound eyes.

  Shadrach choked back his nausea. “My God, Nick. My God.”

  Nicholas resembled nothing so much as the kitten creature he had made as a boy, the creature Nicola had put out of its misery. The compound eyes, yes, and the five legs, the lizard's tail, the oversized human ear erupting from the top of his furry head, and from the catlike ears writhing bloodred tongues. Nicholas had wrapped a gray robe around his body, but from the holes in its frayed fabric things protruded and things poked. He was half-naked and dirty and all that remained to mark him as human were his nose and his fanged mouth, which made his speech difficult. It was also Nicola's mouth, Nicola's nose.

  “Let me go back into the darkness,” the creature said. “It might be easier for you.”

  Shadrach nodded. When he no longer felt that presence near him, he got to his feet, walked over to the wall, and sat down beside Nicholas, still unable to look at him.

  “I wasn't expecting . . .”

  A harsh laugh. “Neither was I.”

  “Who did this?”

  “Who do you think? Quin. He had good ideas once, I think. Now he's dead. Dead but alive. No Living Art in him. But I have to admit, Shad, you got me in with him, all right. I can't deny that.”

  “Are you okay?”

  The massive head swung toward him, the compound eyes glittering. “Is that a joke? Because I don't find it very funny. I'm not okay. I'm a . . . what was it he said? . . . a reflection of my own failure. That's what he said. I just wish it didn't hurt so much.”

  “What did you do when I sent you to Quin's?”

  “I . . . I tried to buy a meerkat. Are you sure you don't have any drugs? Nothing?”

  “I don't have any drugs. You're going to exhaust me with that question. What did you do then—at Quin's?”

  “He didn't have any meerkats, so I said thanks anyway and I left and went—”

  Shadrach hit Nicholas across the face with his gun hand. His hand went into Nicholas's face. Nicholas cried out and made a gurgling sound.

  “Why did you do that, Shad? Why?”

  “Tell me what really happened at Quin's. What did you do that I told you specifically not to do?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about. Honest, I don't.”

  Shadrach faced Nicholas, on his knees in the garbage, the lambent compound eyes reflecting his image back at him.

  “Nicholas. Nick. I don't want to hurt you. But if you don't tell me what I need to know, I'm going to kill you. Why lie now, Nick? Or is it just that you can't stop lying? I mean, look at you—you're finished. You're through. Why should I even threaten to kill you? You're already dead.”

  A rage was building in him. He thought he might kill Nicholas anyway.

  “That's not true,” Nicholas said. “If I can just get out of this place, there're things I can have done. Maybe get it reversed.”

  Shadrach shook his head, slumped back against the wall. “You and I both know you'll be dead in a week. You've the life span of a mayfly. If you don't die, someone's going to see you and kill you. Now: What did you really do at Quin's?”

  “I tried to make a deal.”

  “Which I told you not to do, right?”

  “I'm sorry, Shadrach. I'm sorry.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He had me drugged. He did things to me. He said he'd kill me. He put things into me—flesh that flowered and took root. It didn't hurt at first. Not at first. He told me . . .” Nicholas choked on the words, spat up a green-gray slime.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me I would be his Living Art. How could I refuse? My career was over, but here he was, still giving me a chance to be”—a sort of awe entered his voice, a kind of love—“immortal. To be remembered.” The tone hardened. “Really fucking nice friends you've got, Shadrach.”

  “He's no friend of mine.”

  “You work for him.”

  “I hardly know him. So, what did you do after he redesigned you?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Let me guess. You did jobs for him. Tell me about the jobs you did for him. Quickly.”

  “I smuggled body parts for him across district lines. I carried drugs for him.”

  “Did you kill anyone for him?”

  “No!”

  Shadrach pulled John the Baptist from his pocket and addressed him with mock seriousness. “Is that right, John? Nicholas didn't kill anyone for Quin? Nicholas, you remember John. Maybe he didn't go by that name when you knew him.”

  Nicholas said nothing, just looked at John the Baptist in shock.

  John the Baptist said, “He killed seven or eight people. Mostly bioneers who tried to take a piece of Quin's business. Hello, Nicholas.”

  “Hello,” Nicholas said in a flat, dead tone.

  “John,” Shadrach said. “I know you tried to kill Nicola. Do you know who did kill her?”

  Nicholas started to weep. Great glistening tears rolled down his multiple eyes. “Put him away,” he said. “Please—get rid of him.”

  “I hope you both die in extreme agony,” John the Baptist said as Shadrach stuffed the meerkat back in his pocket.

  “I killed myself,” Nicholas said. “I killed myself. I knocked on the door and she opened it and I killed myself. It was like I was looking in the mirror and I just wanted to end it all and I strangled her to death, and the Ganeshas came in and took her away . . .”

  Shadrach felt John the Baptist twitching in irritation. He stuck his finger in the pocket, shoved it in John the Baptist's mouth, winced at the toothless bite. The pain helped him to focus.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I wanted to kill myself. I was coerced. I was already changing . . . into this.” Nicholas flinched in the shadows, as if scared of himself.

  “No you weren't,” Shadrach said. “No. You didn't start to change into this, this . . . what you are now . . . until Quin raped Nicola's memories after you strangled her. You killed her—you did it. Out of fear, out of cowardice.”

  “You're lying,” Nicholas said. “You're lying. I was already changing, I was already—”

  “Shut up!”

  Nicholas sobbed, head bowed into his multiple appendages.

  “And Quin asked you to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  He was on Nicholas before the “yes” was out of his mouth. His hands reached around the creat
ure's thorny throat, cutting off all sound, all sense. Except that Nicholas, even now, looked too much like her—the cheekbones, the nose, the mouth—and the irrational thought came to him that he was murdering his beloved. Choking her to death. He wrenched his hands away and sucked in great gulps of air.

  “Damn it. It should be so easy to kill you.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I can't.”

  And then the vain, the calculating, words: “I look . . . like her, don't I?”

  He ignored Nicholas. His fingers, claws, cut into his palms. What to do? What to do?

  “Will you try to kill Quin?” Nicholas asked, almost indifferently.

  “Yes.”

  “He won't let you, you know, unless it's part of his plan.”

  “He won't have a choice.”

  “Quin rules the world, Shad. Don't you know that? He's like a god.”

  “What is his plan?”

  Nicholas laughed. “You work for Quin and you don't know what he's been planning?”

  “No, I don't. I take orders. I visit the estates of old women and discuss the weather. I don't ask questions.”

  Nicholas coughed up blood. He bent over, let the blood loop down to the ground, wiped his mouth, stared at Shadrach. “Just as well. I asked questions and look what happened to me.”

  “What's this plan?”

  “Simplicity itself—to allow the meerkats to no longer worship at the altar of Quin. To let them become themselves. Make their own decisions. You should ask your friend on a plate. He ought to know.”

  “He won't tell me.”

  “And you can't make him?”

  “He's just a head. It's hard to even make him talk. Why does Quin want to do this?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “I don't know. I know how it will happen, though—gradually. Not suddenly. So as to be even more complete. There will be signs. There will be symbols. Certain events, certain actions, some as subtle as the way the light strikes a stretch of sidewalk, or the flight of a lone bird across the sky—all of these things will flick ever more switches until gradually, gradually, the meerkats will become independent and rise up against their human oppressors.”