The Empire of Gut and Bone (4 page)

Dantsig dropped a gangplank and crept ashore. He told them to pull the gangplank up. They did. He motioned them to go below. They stayed put and watched him creep behind a building.

They sat on either side of Kalgrash, staring at the little huts on little islands. There were bridges and steep roofs and torn nets hanging between telegraph poles. Punctured tanks stood on high pedestals like statues of some robot god.

“I do not like this. Bad, bad, bad,” said Kalgrash. The gloom seemed particularly dense. Brian wondered how much was darkness and how much was smoke.

Off in the ruins, where Dantsig had stalked off, there was a cry.

“What was that?” hissed Gregory.

Neither of the other two bothered to answer him.

Crouched forward, they waited. Occasionally, they heard something crack or splash. The fire popped. The air smelled of burning diesel.

Forms shifted in the dark … Kalgrash rattled, stepping into battle position.

“Hey!” he said. “Who goes there?”

Dantsig appeared in the midst of the smoke. “Me, Kalgrash. And one of the miners.” Beside him was a man bent with trouble, dressed in a padded, grease-smeared miner’s suit.

Gregory and Brian lowered the gangplank and the two men came aboard.

“He’s the only one they didn’t get,” said Dantsig. “We’re taking him with us.”

“What happened?” Gregory asked.

Dantsig didn’t bother to answer him. He spoke to the miner in their language and sent the man below. Then he goaded the beasts into motion. The sleigh pulled away from the dock. Dantsig still kept his eye on the ruins they passed. He still kept the rifle by his side.

They were heading back out into the plains.

Gregory asked, “Where are you taking us?”

“Pflundt.”

“Did you just hawk a loogie?”

No one laughed. Kalgrash rolled his eyes.

“Who destroyed the town?” Brian asked.

“The Norumbegans. They wanted samples for study. They came in and captured everyone. Took them away.”

Brian asked what he meant by “samples for study.”

Dantsig said, “They’ve forgotten how to do a lot of things. A lot of them died when they got here, to the Great Body. And they’re lazy. I mean, they have other interests. For generations, mannequins had made mannequins. Suddenly, we wouldn’t make any more for them. They don’t recall how to put us together. They don’t have any more of us. We left. For their own good.” His jaw twitched to the side and locked, tic. He closed his eyes and fiddled with his goatee. “Their own good.” He opened his eyes and mashed his mouth around to loosen his jaw. Then he said, “Last few years, they’ve been raiding. When they can be bothered. When there isn’t a concert or a whiskey tasting. They come down here and destroy a village. Hunt the people who escape as they struggle away through the muck. Chase them across the plains. It’s a sport. Tickles their lordships’ fancy.” He surveyed the horizon from side to side. He said, “This is the worst raid I’ve ever seen. They came in, he said — came in and just grabbed everyone. No one could stand up against them. When they order you … it’s …” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter that they’ve forgotten so much. They’re descended from gods. They’re like nothing else. But they can be —” He stopped speaking, as if he couldn’t say more.
Finally, he concluded, “The old guff thinks they disassembled everyone before they took them away.”

“Disassembled?” Kalgrash said, fear in his voice.

Dantsig didn’t answer, but a few minutes later, he nodded and pointed.

They saw bodies mired in the goo. Jumpsuits and calico dresses. Hands coming out of sleeves. Feet with boots.

“The memory is in the head,” said Dantsig. “All the delicate stuff.” He tapped his own temple. “That’s what they can’t get anymore. Without our craftsmen. They can’t design thought. They have mechanicals now — they call them drones — just machines. No thought. No emotion. Just simple commands. Standard format. Hardly any grammar.”

He looked at the dark horizon. “They want to build more of us. They want servants who they can hurt.” And then he blinked slowly, and finished by saying, “May they have long lives, of course, and may the veins of heaven shine upon all their endeavors.”

And Brian realized that Dantsig couldn’t say much that was bad about the Norumbegans. Because he was built to serve them.

Brian was horrified. He couldn’t stand the thought of all those mannequins being disassembled by their former masters. Maybe having to watch, standing in lines, while others before them were taken apart.

“They can be put back together again, can’t they?” asked Kalgrash. “I mean, someone has taken off my head before and put it on a different body, and I feel like a jillion bucks.”

“Sure, that’s beautiful, troll. But you need the heads.”

Brian suggested, “If you take us to see the Emperor, maybe we could petition for the heads to be returned. So the people can be reconstructed.”

Dantsig looked at him evenly. “Sure, squirt. That’s just what the Norumbegans will do.” He glared off into the belly’s dark evening.

“That’s great!” said Brian. “We have to see him about alerting the Rules Keepers that the Thusser are cheating in the Game. So if you could take us to him, that would be …” He realized a second too late that Dantsig was being sarcastic, and he felt stupid. Like he was chirping in the dark. Like he was an idiot, whiffling away. He fell silent.

As soon as possible, Brian, Gregory, and Kalgrash went below.

The miner was curled on the floor. He did not look well. He gripped his own arms and stared into the tangle of mechanical junk.

“We need to do something for him,” said Brian. He asked the man if he was okay. If he needed anything. If there was anything they could do. The old man didn’t speak English — just the language of Norumbega. He shook his head and laid it back on the floor.

Gregory sat with his arms crossed on the bunk. He looked irritably at the stove.

“That was awful,” said Brian softly. “I can’t believe they just came and took the whole town.”

Gregory shrugged. “They’re the Norumbegans’ automatons. So the Norumbegans can do whatever they want with them. And plus, the townspeople can be put back together again. Dantsig said so. What’s the big deal?”

Brian glanced quickly at Kalgrash.

The troll was clearly angry.

Gently, but with incredible rage, Kalgrash said, “I could take you apart. And see how well you go back together.”

Gregory did not laugh. He didn’t make a joke. They glared at each other. There was anger in their eyes.

And the sleigh carried on, dragged over the slime, pulled through the stomach’s dim night toward the fortress of Pflundt.

A
day later, they reached Pflundt. The terrain rose into an infinite gray slope, rough and cut with channels. Coursing down the cliff was a fortress like a floe of ice, a waterfall of wax. It might have been built, or features might have been carved into some ancient deposit there — a weird citadel of blobby towers cut with windows, deep hollow gateways, and cannons mounted on frozen sluices.

The sleigh sped through the great arch and into a vast stable, a cavern soaring with Gothic pillars made of something that looked like it once had been molten, now gray, translucent, and lit with crystal lanterns. There were wooden stalls for the beasts of burden. Dantsig pulled up beside a stall and dismounted. He unharnessed his steeds so he could wash them down and curry their pimpled flesh. The stall was filled with gravel. Dantsig’s beasts hunkered down in it and covered themselves, delighted.

When he was done, Dantsig led the boys and the troll into the fortress and its stone town. Hungry and thirsty,
they were overwhelmed with Pflundt’s activity. Men in black frock coats rode along the rutted avenues on bicycles with baskets of old gears and cranks. Peddlers offered robotic hands, slim and beautifully carved, inlaid with brass and mother-of-pearl. One old woman at a bench sold only springs. An optician sold eyes.

The keyhole could not be seen on all of them, but on many it was planted clearly between their shoulders. Some of the people were simplified, their faces a series of smooth planes with black, crystalline eyeballs. Some were built like harlequins, some like knights, and some had extra arms for heavy lifting. Most were dressed soberly in dark clothes of bygone eras.

Gregory and Brian were dazzled by all the automatons climbing up staircases and bustling through courtyards. Dantsig smiled. “Pflundt,” he said. “Carved right out of the living phlegm.”

He led them to the headquarters of the Mannequin Resistance, which was in a tall, gray house that towered above the metallic bustle of the streets and alleys. He told the boys and Kalgrash to sit, and headed off to speak to some official. They waited for a while on a wooden bench.

A secretary appeared in a black coat and bid them follow him. He took them to a long table, where they were served food. Though no one in the city ate, many had cooked for centuries before they’d left the service of the Norumbegans. They knew how to whip up a dinner. The food — steaks of some three-legged animal — was delicious, seasoned to perfection. The boys took a long
time eating, cramming their mouths with salad and squash.

“At least,” said Gregory, stopping his gorging long enough to be repelled, “I
hope
it’s squash. And not something carved right out of the living phlegm.”

They lay down to sleep on the benches. An hour and a half later, they were called into the presence of someone named General Malark.

The general was upstairs, in a cold, whitewashed chamber high above a courtyard. He waited with Dantsig. The general was a thin, glowering automaton, once built to look like a lined old man — now disfigured by thick slices hacked out of his head in ancient battles. His workings were visible through the cuts. As he spoke, the boys could see the gears within him spin, the spindles reset and retract to pucker his brow or give him dimples.

Those dimples were friendly as he shook the boys’ hands and bowed to the troll.

Behind him, on the wall, was a banner with a message in the Norumbegans’ runic language. Beside it, another, smaller, which read: N
ON
S
ERVIAM
— I S
HALL
N
OT
S
ERVE
.

“You came through the portal in the Ruins of Entry,” he said to the boys.

Neither of the boys knew what to say to that.

“You came from Old Norumbega. From the City of Gargoyles.”

“Yes, sir,” said Brian.

“You wish to see the Emperor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Regarding the Game.”

Brian and Gregory nodded.

“The Emperor has abdicated. He has been replaced by his child.” The general sat behind his desk. “You are strangers.”

Brian said, “Yes, sir,” as politely as he could.

“Breathers,” the general said.

Gregory pinched the skin on the back of his hand and showed it to General Malark. “Look. It’s real.”

The general said, “You might simply be convincingly designed. We can eat, if designed to eat. We may be pinched. We can even feel pain at pinching.”

Kalgrash nodded fervently.

The general asked the troll, “You, sir, are an automaton?”

“Yes indeedy.”

“Welcome. I am General Malark of the Mannequin Resistance. I was constructed several hundred years ago during the Third War of Thusserian Aggression. I defended Old Norumbega from the invader. Until,” he said sourly, “my masters decided to give up and flee.”

Brian asked eagerly, “Was that when they started the Game?”

Malark grimaced. “The Game. Yes. The Game. We forfeited the kingdom for a Game.” He picked up the stapler from his desk. “You know that we here are now in a state of revolt against our former masters.”

“The Norumbegans, right?” Gregory clarified. “You’re fighting against the Norumbegans?”

“The Norumbegans of
flesh.”
The general smiled tightly. “For we are all Norumbegans. Whether organic or
mechanical.” He looked down at the stapler in his hands. He rubbed his thumb against the two fangs of the staple that projected from the carriage, as if caressing a cobra to charm it. When he pulled his thumb away, the skin was white where the tines had pressed.

“There are only rarely open hostilities with our masters,” he said. “Over the last century, we have all abandoned their capital and spread throughout the Great Body. We will not go back to serve them. They are angry that we have deserted them, but they cannot do anything about it. Occasionally, they send out a force to try to reclaim us, but we resist them. They stew in their palaces alone.

“But. As you have seen …” He idly opened the stapler and closed it, the spring twanging as he shut the cover. When he continued, he said, “Delge Crossing. They shut off and kidnapped everyone in Delge. This is new. Descending on a larger town like that. Openly. It calls for a new strategy. This,” he said, smiling, “is where you come in.”

He sat forward.

“We are considering whether we might trade you in exchange for some of the heads of the citizens of Delge. We do not know yet whether you and your message will be considered important enough by the Emperor to merit a trade.” He sighed and put down the stapler. “For one thing, the Imperial Court will not pick up the phone.”

Brian asked, “Did you say that the Emperor isn’t the Emperor anymore? The blond man? With the beautiful queen?”

“He abdicated. Gave the crown to his son.”

“Why did he do that?” Brian asked.

The general frowned. “Emperor Fendritch wished to be at leisure. Emperor Fendritch likes his leisure — his golf, his tennis, the foxtrot, downhill skiing. Emperor Fendritch … one cannot say anything against Emperor Fendritch — no — one cannot say a word against one’s former master — one cannot — one cannot say a thing against Emperor Fendritch because we all have been designed never to —” (Here the general’s mouth flapped shut, and he grimaced.) “We cannot … so let me say instead that the Emperor was so variously gifted with talents and enthusiasms — quite splendid, really — that he did not find it convenient to reign. So he abdicated in favor of his child.” He quivered, then added, “Long may he live.”

“So his kid’s Emperor now,” said Gregory. “So it’s his kid we need to talk to.”

General Malark and Dantsig exchanged glances. “Not precisely,” said General Malark. “The boy is too young to reign. He has an elected regent who rules in his place. But this is immaterial. We need to hear your story so that we can convey to the Emperor’s Court who you are and try to arrange an exchange.”

So Brian, Kalgrash, and Gregory told their story. They explained how they had, the year before, played the Game, not knowing what they were part of, traipsing through the woods and encountering puzzles and elves and trolls. They told the general that it had turned out that Brian was playing for the Norumbegans (though he didn’t know it) and Gregory for the Thusser Horde, which waited to
spill out across the landscape. They explained that Brian had won, scoring a victory for the Norumbegans.

Brian said, “I realized at the last minute that we weren’t both playing for the same team. Without knowing it, we were rivals.”

“So I let Brian win,” said Gregory. “He was being held down by a Thusser assassin at the time. So I could have just won, but we made an agreement that I would let him win.”

“I see,” said the general. “To confirm: The Norumbegan side
did
win?”

“Sure,” said Gregory. “Because I let him win. Really, either one of us could have won. I mean, either one of us, except that I was the one who wasn’t being strangled by the assassin. So I could have won more easily, technically. If we’d been playing fair.” He shifted on his seat and stuck his hands between his knees. “But Brian won. As it happened.”

“He won for the Norumbegans,” said the general.

The boys nodded.

They told how they’d gone home, back to Boston, and how Brian, as the winner, had been designated to make up the next round of the Game. They explained that Brian had started to work out a whole story about gangsters and detectives that some players would stumble into, in a few years’ time.

And then everything had gone wrong. Gregory’s cousin Prudence, the last winner, had disappeared. The Thusser had tried to kill Brian. Brian and Gregory had traveled up to Gerenford, Vermont, where they’d played
the Game the year before, only to discover that the forest where they’d had their magical adventure was now an interdimensional suburb waiting for Thusser invasion.

Kalgrash said, “The Thusser might even be there by now. They’re bad, bad, bad. I don’t like them at all.”

“But if the Norumbegan side were to win, the Emperor and his Court would be able to return to Earth,” said the general.

Brian shrugged and nodded. Gregory said, “Sure.”

“That might be an unexpected boon,” said the general. He smiled. Gears turned behind his eyes. He and Captain Dantsig spoke in Norumbegan.

“Now,” said the General. “We must call the Emperor’s Court again.”

He went to a worn wooden cabinet and lifted out an old Edwardian phone with a speaking piece and a whole complicated tree of dangling mouths on wires. He brought the contraption over to his desk and set it down. Pulling the speaking piece to his lips, he made a demand for a call to be put through and waited while the mouths all whispered, “Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.”

After a long time, one of the mouths perked up and drawled some alien greeting.

General Malark and the mouth spoke for some time. His eyes were guarded, careful, waiting to see whether the mouth would barter.

He turned to the boys. “It is the Regent. He wishes to speak to you directly.”

“Where are the little cubs?” said the mouth in English. “Tell them to talk.”

“We’re here, sir,” said Brian. “We’ve come —”

“From the old kingdom, is it? Grand. Just grand. We miss the old place. I suppose it’s all Thussery now.”

“They’re breaking the Rules of the Game,” said Brian. “You’ve got to stop them. They’re settling in your —”

“Yes, plenty of time for that, little chap. Malark, might you adjust the loupe so I could get a gander at the squirts? Be a good fellow.”

General Malark pulled out a small lens on a retractable cord and pointed it at the boys. There was a brief interchange where the mouth made demands and Malark responded, occasionally translating orders to the boys: “Put up your arms. Turn around. Pull down your lips and show your gums.

“The fat one in the armor isn’t human, though, is it? Rum thing, but I recall humans being less spiky and green.”

“I’m not fat,” said the troll. “I’m big-boned.”

General Malark confirmed, “He’s an automaton. Built as a troll.”

“I see.”

“I come with the other guys,” said Kalgrash. “We’re a package. Three for the price of two.”

“Bully for you,” said the mouth lazily. “Now, Malark, why don’t you send them up here? You’ve no use for them.”

General Malark pulled himself to his full height. “We have a list of noncombatants recently captured at Delge. We demand their release in return.”

“You have the names?”

“I do.”

“Blast. I don’t have a pencil handy. Well, you just tell me and I’ll try my level best to remember.”

Malark delivered a list of thirty names, all of them unpronounceable.

He and the mouth continued to haggle.

Eventually, he hung up.

He turned to Dantsig, the boys, and the troll with a tight smile.

“It is agreed,” he said. “A trade. Ten of the automatons for each one of you. The Court is anxious to hear your story.” He lifted the phone and mouth-tree from his desk and replaced it in the cabinet. “You are on your way to New Norumbega and the palace of the Emperor!”