A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 17

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I found this image online while I was writing the novel, and it fits The Urbille perfectly. I wish I could find the name of the artist who created it, but my efforts to do so have been futile.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11  Chapter12  

Chapter13  Chapter14   Chapter15

Chapter 16

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Welcome back!

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s no original illustration from me for this week’s chapter. To be frank, I no longer have the time and energy to do such illustrations. Why? Because I’ve decided to write a new novel this summer–beginning now. So for Chapters 17-22, I’m going to post images that inspired me while was I was writing A FEW ODD SOULS. I don’t think anyone who’s read this far will mind–my writing skills greatly exceed my illustration skills. 

Thanks again for reading! –JF

PS. A special thanks to the keen-eyed Robert Massey for helping me find and destroy any typos that might have slipped by me during the editing process. 

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Chapter 17.

Silver and Brass

The DISTENDED BLADDER was mostly empty this early in the morning. A few bored Beatifics sat in pairs here and there, holdovers from the night before. A Doxie turned her porcelain smile at Crag as he came through the entrance, but lost interest as soon as she saw Caroline. Crag led her into the establishment by the hand, like guiding a sleepy child.

The rage that had consumed him in the judging hall still simmered in the coils of his belly. He would let it burst free later, when some pinhead gendarme hauled him in to see the Tribune again. He’d have a bullet ready for the Tribune’s skull next time.

Wail is a Surgeon.

He can help her.

If he survived the plan he’d set in motion.

By now Skiptrain and the two hired guns had done their part. The wailing of distant sirens confirmed his estimation. If everything went as planned, Skiptrain would meet Crag here and they’d get Caroline out of the Urbille before sunset.

Keep her hidden until then. Don’t give them a chance to take her back.

By now they know their prize is lost.

Crag wondered who would find him here first: Skiptrain with an exit plan or gendarmes aiming to drag him back to the Ministere. He chose a curtained booth in the back of the tavern, where the morning sun hadn’t reached yet. Crag needed the shadows. He couldn’t stand look at the sun today. He sat across from Caroline and held her hands.

He ordered two expensive lubricants and a bowl of soapy water. He took a napkin, dipped it, and wiped at the grime on Caroline’s porcelain face. His fingers moved lightly, careful not to put stress on the fracture that ran from her left forehead to the top of her delicate nose.

“This one was always my favorite,” he told her. He restored the face’s shine as much as possible. Caroline’s opticals focused on him, but she still hadn’t said a word. He used another napkin to polish her lenses. Their color had faded from green to grey.

Wail can fix her.

He wondered how Wail could fix a broken mind. A murdered spirit.

He held a cup of warm lubricant to Caroline’s lips, helped her drink it down. He whispered sweet words, but he didn’t know if she understood him.

“Say something,” he begged. “Anything. Say my name, sweetheart. Do you know me? Who am I? Say my name.”

Caroline squeezed his hands and her opticals swiveled. She looked down at the table, saw her reflection in a tiny puddle of oil. She trembled fiercely, like her body would shake itself apart. Still she said nothing. Crag slipped over to her side of the booth and took her in his arms.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said. “It’s okay.” He kept saying it until she stopped shaking. She lay in his arms helpless as a baby. The slight weight of her head on his shoulder and her arms around his neck, these things let him know: she recognized him.

“You don’t have to talk. It’s okay.”

An gaudily dressed Beatific with a burgundy coat and powdered wig pulled back the booth’s curtain. He slid into the empty side of the booth. Crag didn’t know his face, but his voice was unmistakable.

“Hello, Crag,” said Wail. “Caroline…” He doffed his top hat in her honor. Caroline raised her head, looked at Wail, and returned her cheek to Crag’s shoulder.

“Nice disguise,” Crag said. “I was expecting Skiptrain.”

“He’s working on our exit plan,” Wail said. “How is she?”

“Look at her,” Crag said. “See what they did to her. She won’t say a word.”

Wail leaned across the table, inspecting her face and neck. “Hmmm,” he said. “She’s suffering from physical and mental trauma. Very common among those who survive the labyrinth. Most of the prisoners down there never see the light of day again. She’s one of the lucky ones. Let’s get her back to my workshop, where I can give her a full exam.”

“Fix her, Wail,” Crag said.

The Surgeon nodded. He called for a private carriage and they left through the back door of the tavern. Wail slipped a ruby brilliant into the barkeep’s hand on his way out. The carriage was completely enclosed and driven by a Beatific, so the gendarmes wouldn’t stop it for inspection unless there was an accident. Another brilliant in the Beatific driver’s hand secured his silence as they reached a row of dilapidated warehouses.

Crag lifted Caroline in his arms as the coach rumbled away. He followed Wail through the wreckage to the hidden grate and carried her down into the highwayman’s hidden lab. The big reptoid was sleeping again, and the Organic girl sat in the corner sharpening her long blade. Skiptrain hadn’t returned yet. Crag hoped he would arrive soon. Things were heating up and the Ministere would want Crag to play the fall guy. If he didn’t get Caroline through the gate soon, they might never make it out of the Urbille.

Caroline lay on her back atop one of the workbenches. Wail began to gently examine her while Crag observed. Wail pealed back the elastic skin covering her arms and legs, treated her joints with high-grade oil and sprayed her gears with rust-away. Wherever her silver bones were visible, including her naked skull, he applied a solution that restored luster to the metal. He replaced her faded opticals with new lenses of bright green glass. He pulled her flexible skin back into place with the skill of a master artisan, repairing holes and rips with a honey-like epoxy. He made all her wounds disappear. Except the ones he couldn’t see.

When Wail pulled back her breastbone to check her coils, heart, and torso gears, Crag couldn’t watch anymore. He went to sit on the other side of the chamber with the reptoid and the girl. The scaly warrior had woken up and was devouring the last of Wail’s canned food. Crag sat on an iron chair and stared at the big stone face carved into the wall.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” Svetlana said.

Crag nodded.

“I keep waiting for it to say something,” she said. She was trying to lighten his mood, but failing at it. From her lithe limbs, windburned cheeks, and the weapons she carried, he guessed she was a professional mercenary. He had no idea where Wail found her and the lizard, but they must have been good choices because the operation had gone off without a hitch. So far anyway.

“How is your wife?” the reptoid asked. He had the face of a blunt-nosed crocodile.

Crag sighed. Wail had pulled a plastic curtain across his workspace to protect Caroline’s modesty.

“She’s dead,” Crag said. “We both are. We died when we gave our bodies to the Potentates.”

“How can you say this?” Svetlana asked. “She’s here and you’re here. You are together and obviously you’re both alive.” She leaned forward, sliding her sword back into its scabbard and laying it on the cot behind her.

Crag shook his head. He remembered feeling like this when he was a child crying his eyes out over something. He hadn’t wept in hundreds of years, not since his fleshy opticals were replaced with glassy ones. He couldn’t weep anymore, but the words poured out of his mouth like tears. They fell one by one and he let them. He was tired of fighting the flood.

“I work for the Potentates,” he said. “The Potentates, can you believe that? They took my body, my flesh and blood. My bones. They took my wife’s flesh and bones. My parents, my friends, everyone I ever knew. The Potentates took their living bodies and replaced them with these machines. Do you know what they did with all of that stolen flesh? Thousands of years of discarded bodies?”

Bruno and Svetlana exchanged a look. The reptoid knew more than the girl, but he didn’t know the ultimate secret.

“They ate us,” Crag said. He almost laughed. “They’re carnivores, flesh-eaters. It’s all a big scam. Or a joke. Maybe both. They tell us we’re alive inside these mechanical frames and we believe them because the alternative is too horrible to consider. But it’s the truth…”

Svetlana took his hand. It was strange: an adult-sized Organic hand holding his five-fingered mechanism. Her hand would be a tasty tidbit for the Potentates.

“I’ve been working for monsters who feed on the human race,” said Crag.

Svetlana and Bruno said nothing.

“The thing is… I wouldn’t mind it,” Crag said. “I’d forgive all these terrible sins, all this consumption of flesh, all their petty laws and cruel punishments. I’d forgive all of it if they had just left Caroline alone. I’d still be working for them. They took everything from us, and then they took her from me. See what’s left of her? They only gave her back as a reminder that we’re all dead anyway. We always have been, we just deny it. We can’t admit it to ourselves or to each other because it’s…too obscene. Too awful.”

“All masters devour their servants in one way or another,” Bruno said.

Crag shook his head. “It’s not right,” he said. “What they did to her. They already took her body. Now they’ve taken her soul.”

“Maybe not,” Svetlana said. “Maybe Wail can help her.”

“She can’t even say my name,” Crag said. “I’m not even sure she knows who I am. And I let them do it to her. I should have taken her and ran twenty years ago. It’s all my fault, but I’ll make them pay for it. Somehow, someday…”

Svetlana embraced him, but he couldn’t feel her soft and firm arms. Not after he’d felt Caroline’s frail and wiry ones.

Wail moved the partition aside and removed his rubber gloves.

“Is she?” Crag couldn’t say the rest of the words.

“She’s in much better shape now,” Wail said. He took a seat beside Crag, handing him Caroline’s heart-key. It gleamed like new-minted brass after his varnishments. “I’ve examined her heart and central workings.”

“And?” Crag stared at the key.

“As I suspected, her organs have been damaged by a prolonged period of stasis. I believe that, at some point during the first few years of her sentence, they confiscated her heart-key and let her wind down. Perhaps she was causing a commotion, or telling them things they didn’t want to hear. In any case, they let her wind down. That in itself is not deadly as the Potentates would have you believe. However, we’re talking about a dormant period of at least fifteen years. Lying in a damp stone dungeon. All that disuse and inactivity led to rust, calcification, and dehydration. I’ve been able to fix most of those problems. However, I recommend a complete rebuild as soon as the opportunity presents itself. For now I’ve repaired her as well as can be expected. She’ll be able to walk steadily and independently. Even run, if she has to.”

Crag looked into Wail’s gleaming opticals. “What about her mind? Tell me her mind will come back. Tell me she’ll speak again.”

Wail sighed. “What she needs is peace, calm, and rest. In a place where she can begin to forget what happened. Once she processes the trauma of her ordeal, once she comes to grips with it, her full sense of self should return. Along with her memories and personality.”

“Are you sure, Wail?”

“Nothing’s for certain,” Wail said. “She will never be the same. You don’t go through something like that and come out unscathed. She’ll be someone new, someone wiser and stronger. It will take a while, but she will get better. She will improve day by day once we can get her out of here.”

“But nothing’s for certain,” Crag said.

“That’s right.”

“Except for that fact that we’re all dead in this place,” Crag said. “Beatifics, Clatterpox, we’re all just spirits trapped inside walking prisons. We’re dead machines playing at being alive.”

Wail gave no response. Svetlana wrapped her arms about her knees and leaned back into the corner. Lost in her own thoughts, maybe disturbed by Crag’s truth. The reptoid opened another can of food with the talon of his finger.

“Who’s to say what is truly alive and what is not?” A voice spoke from behind the partition. A Beatific hand spread it aside, and one of Skiptrain’s porcelain faces looked at them. It sported a slight smile in the form of painted purple lips.

“Based on what I’ve seen today, I know I can’t answer that question,” Skiptrain said. His usual bohemian garb had been replaced with a businessman’s waistcoat and top hat. He moved through the city like a chameleon. So did Wail. They were experts at hiding right under the noses of the Potentates. But how long could it last? Now that the Surgeon was at large inside the Urbille, the gendarmes would be out in full force. Of course they were too stupid to know that the highwayman had been living among them all along, moving in the shadows, hiding in this sunken grotto.

Crag admired Wail’s skill at remaining unnoticed almost as much as he admired the man’s courage. Nobody openly defied the Potentates of Urbille. Nobody but the Surgeon. It took guts. Even if those guts were mechanical.

“I do know that love matters,” Skiptrain said. “It might be the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s real. Do you love her, Crag?”

Crag’s fingers trembled. The shaking travelled up through his arms, planting itself deep inside his chest. His cogs slipped and rattled. He nodded his head, unable to say it out loud.

Yes, I love her.

“Then she is real, and so are you,” Skiptrain said. “Your love survived the loss of your original bodies. It will survive this too. By your ability to give and accept love–and nothing else–you must know that you are a living being. No matter that cogs and springs fill your breast instead of meat-muscle.”

“He’s right,” Wail said. “These bodies of silver and brass are only vehicles for the spiritual essence that inhabits them–the smoky residue of what we used to be. We are fragmented, torn, and diminished. Yet we live. We love. We exist.”

“Conversion takes away our flesh,” Skiptrain said, “but not our souls.”

Crag pulled the plastic tarp aside and looked at Caroline. She lay quiet on the table, her freshened skin gleaming a light brown. Wail had replaced her broken face with a new one that he must have pulled out of a cabinet somewhere. It was beautiful, a sculpted masterpiece with enticing red lips and arching black eyebrows. She wore a simple shift of white linen. Her green opticals stared at him as she lifted her head. He took her hand again, and she pulled him close. They held each other in perfect silence for what seemed like far too long. Now that Skiptrain was back, they had to get moving. Wail had given him a shred of hope, and that was enough for now.

Wail stood before the great stone face on the wall. Its eyes were still closed, but its lips were moving slowly. Wail listened to its deep whispers. Its voice seemed to rise up from somewhere deep within the earth.

“Yes, I believe they will be of great service,” Wail said to the face.

The grinding of stone rose from the chamber’s floor.

Wail turned to address the room.

“The StoneFathers invite all of you to Gaeya,” he said. “A world beyond the reach of the Urbille.”

“How is that possible?” Bruno asked.

“It lies outside the Nexus,” Skiptrain said.

“It’s where my son is,” Svetlana said. “When can we go?”

“Now,” Wail said.

Caroline stood beside Crag now, and her joints did not creak or squeal at all when she moved. Crag still wished she would speak. Maybe Wail was right. Maybe she just needed time.

Wail turned to Crag. “On Gaeya they will never find her,” he said. “The New Organics will keep her safe, and HearthHome will do wonders for her. From there you can go anywhere you want. You might even decide to stay.”

Crag nodded. It was a chance. More than he’d had the week before.

“I heard them…” The words fell softly from Caroline’s mouth.

Crag leaned in and listened. “Talk to me, sweetheart…”

“The voices,” Caroline said. Her voice was barely audible, as if speaking at a proper volume might shatter her brittle bones. “Voices inside the stones. Down in the dark. They told me secrets…”

“What did they say?” Crag asked.

Let her say anything. Anything at all.

Maybe she will be all right, if she can just talk about it.

“I don’t remember,” Caroline said. “It was cold. I was so lonely.”

She wrapped her arms about Crag’s neck and squeezed him hard.

“Is it time to go home?” she asked.

“Yes, baby,” Crag said. “It’s time.”

 

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Less than an hour later the Rude Mechanicals marched through an Urbille porte onto the Lesser Thoroughfare. There were fewer of them than the last time they’d hit the road. Skiptrain walked in the front as usual. His gaudy robes and showman’s cane were on full display. The ostrich feathers of his hat bobbed up and down with each step. Noemi, whom everyone in the Urbille knew was his beloved consort, walked near to him. Today she seemed a bit taller than normal, and she wore a long blonde wig tied into a single braid.

Two lesser-known members of the troupe sat on the back of the steam carriage, a pair of Beatifics who cuddled and whispered like lovers. And there went Old Albertus in his bronze face and motley travel tunic. He had traded in his long rifle for the musket on his hip and the greatsword beneath his cloak. Most interesting of all was the troupe’s new bodyguard: A hulking reptoid in argent armor with a black visor that hid his ugly face from the gendarmes. Reptoids were common mercenaries and guns-for-hire along the Nexus, but this was the first time anyone had seen the Rude Mechanicals hiring outside protection. These were dangerous times, after all.

“Special engagement in the Outer Affinities,” Skiptrain told the gate captain.

“Only five of you this time?” the captain asked. His nine black opticals scanned the caravan for anything illegal.

Skiptrain slipped him a tiny pouch full of brilliants. “We’re meeting additional players on the road,” he said. “Enlisting some new blood for the troupe.”

“Ah, scouting for talent,” said the gate captain. “Wish I had the life of an actor. All that travelling must be nice.” He tucked the clinking pouch into his belt.

“Wearisome,” said Skiptrain. “Often exhausting. Be glad you have a job where you don’t have to leave the comfort of the Urbille.”

The gate captain laughed. “Be careful on the road. They say the highwayman is up to his old tricks again.”

“We shall remain ever vigilant,” Skiptrain said. He doffed his hat, gave a quick bow, and strolled through gate.

The troupe rolled through after him. The Lesser Thoroughfare ran through a wilderness of brambles and tangled trees. The route Wail had chosen was designed to throw any investigators or gendarmes off the trail. They wouldn’t expect the Surgeon or his accomplices to take the Lesser Thoroughfare. Wail said he could bring them to Gaeya using either road.

When the Urbille was far enough behind them, the troupe stopped near a pile of ruins smothered by moss and ivy. Svetlana and Wail removed the costumes that made them resemble Noemi and Albertus enough to fool the gate captain. Although it was probably Skiptrain’s bribe that did the real trick.

“Your disguises worked, Skiptrain” Wail said. “You don’t have to come any farther. Go back to the Urbille if you want.”

“Not a chance,” Skiptrain said. “It’s been ten years since I’ve seen Harmona and the boys. We have postponed this visit far too long.”

“We?” Wail asked.

Skiptrain turned his opticals toward a dirt path leading from the road into the woods. A hooded figured walked from the trees toward the road. Noemi pulled back the hood of her cloak to reveal her familiar porcelain face. She hugged Skiptrain and looked to Crag and Caroline on the back of the steam carriage.

“Inspector Crag,” she said. “Do I have the pleasure of meeting your wife today?”

Noemi took Caroline’s hand with subtle grace. She offered a brief curtsey, mocking the formality of Beatific society. “I’m deeply honored, Madame,” she said.

Caroline nodded, but said nothing. She would whisper sometimes to Crag, mostly things that didn’t make much sense. She wouldn’t talk to anyone else either, but at least she was talking. That was an improvement.

“They did a number on her,” Crag said, filling the silence between the two women. “But Wail fixed her up.”

“Of course he did,” Noemi said. “The man is a marvel. Who do you think rebuilt Albertus and myself ten years ago?”

“It was the least he could do,” Skiptrain said.

Noemi put her arm around Skiptrain. “And yet he’s done so much more.”

Skiptrain introduced Svetlana and Bruno. The reptoid lifted his visor to greet Noemi properly. He wasn’t entirely a brute, just built like one. Svetlana smiled but said little. She carried herself in the manner of a warrior prone to silence. Crag wondered if she came from a world full of adult Organics, and how long it would be until the Potentates claimed every last one of them. He decided not to ask.

The troupe marched on.

When a few more Affinities lay behind them, Wail called a stop.

“If Gaeya lies outside the Nexus,” Bruno asked. “How do we reach it?”

“A vacuity,” Wail said.

Bruno turned his big head toward the doctor. “You want us to jump through a vacuity? There’s no way back from those things.”

“The Hidden Gate is a special kind of vacuity,” Wail explained. “It’s been stabilized, and it works in two directions.”

“Is that even possible?” Bruno said.

“It is,” Wail said. “The Potentates and their servants have the power to create vacuities inside the Nexus. That’s how the Harvesters move from world to world so fast, while the rest of us crawl along the Thoroughfares. Yet they have no real control over the random vacuities that manifest in the Urbille during severe weather. These cracks in reality are natural, transdimensional phenomena, the results of aligning so many worlds along the same matrix. Entropy will not be denied.”

“You lost me,” said Bruno. Crag listened. He was lost too. Caroline relaxed with her head in his lap. His legs dangled from the back of the steam carriage.

Wail laughed. “What I’m trying to say is the Potentates have the technology to travel across the Nexus by taking shortcuts. These shortcuts across the Affinities are a special type of vacuity, cultivated deliberately and brought into existence by this technology. I stole an important piece of this ‘shortcut’ tech, and with the help of the StoneFathers I took it apart, learned how it worked, and used it to create something even better. A stabilized hole in space/time leading to dimensions outside the Nexus. Gaeya is the world we chose for the New Organics. A place where they can thrive.”

“Where do we find this gateway?” Svetlana asked.

“We summon it,” Wail said. “At any point along the Nexus that displays a low level of interdimensional cohesion. In other words, we find a weak spot in the fabric of the Nexus, and we use it to open a door to the worlds beyond. In this case a specific world that exists not only in a different Affinity, but also in the remote past.”

“You’re taking us into the past?” Bruno said.

“Not our past,” Wail said. “The past of a parallel dimension.”

“One that’s outside the Nexus.”

“Precisely! You’ve got it, Bruno.”

“Don’t patronize me, Wail. I’m not a stupid lizard.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wail said.

Crag interrupted from the back of the wagon. “How much longer until we find one of these weak spots?”

Wail looked into the tangled forest on either side of the road. A dozen rose-quartz moons hung in the sky above a range of needle-peaked mountains.

“This place will work fine,” he said. “We’ll have to leave the steam carriage here.”

Bruno and Skiptrain led the carriage to the side of the road and hid it behind a copse of trees. They covered it with leaves and branches so that nobody would see it from the road. When they returned, Wail was standing in the middle of the Thoroughfare chanting an incantation. A bright glow lit up his skull from the inside.

There shouldn’t be light glowing like that inside a Beatific body, but Wail was far more than a standard Beatific. If he could rebuild entire bodies and steal the Potentates’ technology, what else could the man do?

Wail chanted and glowed until the air above the road exploded into a fissure of swirling radiance. It expanded slowly, pulling at the hem of his cloak with its innate gravity. The vacuity widened until it stood taller than anyone on the road. Crag peered through the breach into a garden of giant purple orchids.

Wail motioned for someone to walk through the vacuity first.

“If I go first, it will close behind me,” Wail said.

Crag held Caroline’s hand as they stepped across time and space. The others came through one by one after him. When Wail stepped into the garden, the fissure closed behind him. A ten-foot arch of graven stone marked the place where the vacuity had been. On this side the Hidden Gate was locked into place. One pinpoint moment chosen from the vastness of eternity. Outside the Nexus. Beyond the reach of the Potentates.

Crag wondered if this was real or not. It might only be a dream. He could be lying in his own dark cell inside the labyrinth, imagining Caroline’s escape. He felt dizzy in the soft light of this new world. Caroline’s hand in his was the only thing he could trust.

Six moons hung in the sky above a collection of stone towers. Three moons rising, three moons setting. The horizon gleamed bright and green beneath a rush of violet clouds.

“Welcome to HearthHome,” Wail said.

 

NEXT: “Kill Or Be Killed”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

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—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —