The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 26

The voices hit harder as I neared the end of the passage. A pale light smudged the far side of the gloom. And when I reached the light, I leaned against the rock, trying to catch my breath, but the view stole my breath clear away.

The sloppy gray pit I’d landed in was at the base of a crater. Mud belched and smoked in the pit, and above it, rock walls funneled all the way up to daylight. It was like looking at the sky through a chimney, only you never seen a chimney this big. Thing must have been a half-mile wide and a half-mile deep, and curved around the walls was a swirl of steps and stone ledges that spiraled from the top of the crater all the way down.

People were climbing those steps and switchbacks, winding around the ledges within the crater’s walls. And it weren’t just people—the beasts were up there, too. I spied a whole herd of them four-legged animals, some of them almost black, others close to pink, but all of them some shade of purple. And I watched those shaggy great things, beneath the cold light of the faraway sun, until sweat and steam ran into my eyeballs and quit me from staring. I wiped my face, blinking, then started out along the rock path that rimmed the mud pit.

The path looped around the bottom of the crater all the way from one side of the pit to the other. And off from it, other passages led into the rock. Many of the openings were small, like the one I’d staggered out from, but some of them were huge, as tall and wide as those big purple critters, and a stench bulged out of the larger tunnels, punching inside the sour smell of the steam.

I kept groping along the wall, working my way around the pit, but before I found a tunnel I felt like starting down, my direction got picked for me. A gaggle of bodies came bursting out of the tunnel I’d just passed, and before I could even get turned around, their hands were grabbing at me, lifting me. They weren’t being rough about it, though, and I remember that surprised me—the softness in their voices, the gentle way they scooped up my limbs. It was like I was something they were afraid of breaking. As if I might shatter if I got clutched too tight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The room was lined with old hollowed-out televisions, and tiny fires flickered behind their glass screens, sending shadows across the walls and puffing smoke at the ceiling. When I coughed from the fumes, my ribs ached and my back pounded and my brain was just a rattle and throb.

I let my eyes get used to the flames as they thawed the darkness, the old world televisions making pretty pictures as they blazed. And I spotted more salvage at the far end of the room. Photographs in shattered glass. A toy piano and a plastic chess set. Everything painted orange by the oily flames. I huddled there, glancing about at the old scrap, the steam and smoke and stone. And I waited on the women to speak.

There were three of them, and the thrones they perched upon had seen much better days. The seats would once have been padded, but now they were just springs and steel. The women looked pretty comfy, though, as they stared down at me. One of them even had her seat wound back so it lifted in the front and stretched her legs out before her, supporting her bare feet on the rusty coils.

They wore purple fur and leather, and their dark skin glistened in the heat. The one who sat in the center with her feet up was a shriveled, pitted thing, her skin crinkled and chapped, eyes that took up half her face. She had to be old as anything. The woman’s hair weren’t so much white as translucent, and most of it was coming out of her ears.

On either side of that ancient face, the other two women looked shiny and new, but they were weather beat once you looked closer. And one was almost identical to the other—same face and hair, same dark skin—except the one on the right held her mouth stern, while the other’s eyes beamed bright. And the bright-eyed woman was the one I’d come awake to. The one who’d whispered to me when I’d first stirred again.

I became aware of how naked and thin I was before them, there on the stony ground. I tried to cover myself, felt my face turn fool red.

The old woman leaned forward a little, clacking and droning at me.

“The Elder welcomes you,” said the woman on the right, scowling as she translated. “The Elder is glad you’ve become awake.”

“Who the hell is the Elder?” I said. “And who the hell are you?”

“I am the Speaker. To you and all strangers. My sister is the Healer.” She pointed at the bright-eyed woman on the other side of the old crone. “To all who are sick.”

“But who are you people? What is this place?”

“Our people have many names.” Her accent bent the words in odd places. “You can call us Kalliq.”

“And you live here? Above the Rift?”

She frowned.

“The fire,” I said. “The lava. It’s close, I reckon. Making all this steam.”

“It is the Burning Wheel.”

I glanced at the Healer, and she just gazed down at me, her eyes full of wonder. Like I was as strange to her as she looked to me.

“And these things,” I went on, turning back to the Speaker. “These animals. Where did you find them?”

“Animals.” The woman smiled. “We did not find them. The mammoths were already here.”

“Mammoths,” I whispered, tasting the word on my tongue. “They lived before the Darkness? The twenty years of night?”

It took the woman a moment to understand what I was asking. “They were made here.” She pointed down at the stone and bent forward on her metal throne. “They were extinct. Hunted until there was nothing. But before the dark came, your chief brought them back.”

“What chief?” My voice cracked. “The Executive Chief?”

I pictured those thready beasts, all covered in purple, and I reckoned GenTech must have brought them back from the dead, all right. Much like they’d been trying to do with the trees. Only they’d brought back the mammoths more than a hundred years ago, before the Darkness. And then, after the twenty years of night, the only mammoths left had been trapped up here, north of the Rift.

“So GenTech made them,” I muttered, but at the mention of the name, the old woman began jabbering at the women on each side of her, and she looked all bent out of shape.

“The Elder says the mammoths were created for us.” The Speaker thumped her fist to her chest. “For Kalliq. And for Kalliq alone. A gift from your GenTech tribe, before the dark came. A gift to see us through.”

“Well, I ain’t asking for your gift back. The Elder can relax. GenTech ain’t my tribe.”

“You were wearing their symbol. Their clothing.”

“Me ending up in their clothes is a long story,” I said. “But how does the Elder know so damn much, anyway?”

“Because she has been here. Always,” said the Speaker. “Born before the skies turned black.”

“Since before the Darkness? That was a hundred years ago. Or more. That’s impossible.”

The Speaker suddenly rose from her seat and prodded a long finger down at where I sat huddled and naked. “So is what you have brought here,” she hissed, like she was accusing me of something wicked. “So is the future you bring.”

I stood up so I was level with her. Never mind her temper, or her accusations. And never mind that I was naked. I wanted answers.

“If she was alive then, tell me what happened,” I said. “What caused the Darkness? The twenty years of night?”

“The stars fell.” The Speaker clenched her fists, raised them over her head, then cast them down. “All the world over. A storm of rocks from beyond the sky, big as worlds split in two. They punched the moon closer. Ripped up our lands and the oceans, clouding the world with dust. Blocking the sun.”