The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (18 page)

‘The Builders probably got just as much wrong as you do, Alan,’ Churr said. ‘Maybe they didn’t account for everything people needed, or wanted. We’re not in the concrete at the moment, remember: we’re in brick. This came later.’

‘But we’re lower down. We were in the superstructure, and then we spiralled down, remember, and then we came out under the glass … but … everything was brick. We came out lower down, and everything was brick.’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘Am I making sense? My brain feels bad. Nora, are we close to water? How long since we ditched the bikes? How many days?’

‘The Oversight was once the top of a tower,’ Nora said. ‘Now the rest of Gleam has risen to its level. Yes, we came down, but we have moved sideways out of the superstructure into architecture that came later. Probably Old Green was not even a story when the Builders were placing Gleam’s foundations, let alone a god.’

‘Growth,’ Churr said. ‘Look, on the wall there. That’s
what it says, I bet.’ She pointed at one of the two long walls. The large letters ‘TH’ were visible from where they stood, but when Alan moved his bike lamp along the wall, they all saw the ‘W’ emerge from the gloom. The rest of the wall was coated with a fur of tiny black mushrooms.

Alan started sweeping them away and they turned to mush beneath his sleeve, splattering his face with bitter, foul-smelling droplets. But Churr was right. The word ‘GROWTH’ had been painted on the wall, and after further exploration, the long wall opposite revealed the word ‘GLEAM’, and both short walls bore the word ‘FOR’.

‘It says: “GROWTH FOR GLEAM FOR GROWTH FOR GLEAM FOR GROWTH”, repeated,’ Alan told Eyes.

Eyes nodded, grimaced, said nothing.

Later they found a large glass bottle full of a pale yellow liquid inside the once-locked drawer of a wooden desk now slowly turning to mush.

Alan picked the cork out with a penknife, getting increasingly agitated as it resisted. ‘Let it be whisky,’ he muttered, ‘not piss. Whisky, not piss.’ When he finally broke through the plug, the odour spilled out and he rolled over onto his back. ‘Oh, thank fuck,’ he said. ‘Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck.’ He sat back up and put the bottle to his lips.

Then he pulled it away again without tasting it. ‘Eyes,’ he said, ‘whisky.’ He went over to the old man and put the bottle in his hands.

Eyes sipped it gratefully, and winced, and sipped it again. ‘Thanks, lad,’ he said. His voice was hoarse.

Then Alan had a drink, the liquid burning his mouth and turning into hot mist inside him. He felt as if it were evaporating through his brain and clearing it out. He closed his eyes and shuddered with pleasure.

‘Everybody,’ he said, ‘fill your flasks.’

‘They’re full of water now,’ Spider replied.

‘Seal the bottle with a candle,’ Churr said. ‘Nora’s got candles.’

‘Here,’ said the Mapmaker, handing over a red one.

After drinking a little more, Eyes grabbed hold of Alan’s arm. ‘Lad,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to go down into that swamp.’

‘I know,’ Alan said. ‘I’m trying not to think about it.’

‘Aye,’ Eyes said. ‘You’re good at that, all right.’

‘We’re here,’ Nora said. ‘The swamp.’

The party stood in a room that looked like Maggie’s kitchen, though it was dark and damp.
Oh, how I want to be back in Maggie’s kitchen
, Alan thought,
with a pot of chilli bubbling away on the stove!
The glass had fallen from a long window, and a row of plant pots crowded the windowsill, from which had grown a thick mat of some kind of lemony herb. The thin wiry branches had wound around a pair of heavy, sagging shutters that kept the room mostly dark. However, cold light peeped in around the edges and through little holes everywhere, dappling everything with patches of silver.
Not red
, Alan thought. A long rotten table occupied the centre of the room, and the walls were lined with wooden cupboards, the tops covered with rusting pots and pans of all sizes. A huge black wood-burning stove sat dormant in a wide alcove. The door glass was cracked and ash had spilled out across the flagstone floor. The kitchen was far too big to have been
purely domestic: this must have been a tavern of some sort.

‘Doesn’t look much like a swamp.’

‘Look at you,’ Nora said. ‘You’ve got whisky back in you, and now you’re full of fight again. Shut yourself up and open that.’ She pointed at a door that looked much like the one they’d come through.

Alan did as she’d said and immediately recoiled at the stench. There was a ten-foot drop on the other side down to a smooth and featureless surface of thick green sludge. There was nothing else: no red brick, no glass ravens, no concrete superstructure, no hills or walls of cobble, not even any vegetation. Just the sludge, a blank and shiny green floor stretching off into the mist. Alan stared.

He turned back to his companions. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘Where’s everything gone?’

Spider and Churr ventured over to the doorway and looked out. From the middle of the room the doorway was just an opening into nothing; a void of white and green roiling together. Spider and Churr were silhouetted against it.

‘I feel like we’re at a high window, about to jump out,’ Alan said. ‘Like we’re high up – it doesn’t make sense.’

‘A lot of buildings in Gleam have grown together at their higher levels,’ Nora said. ‘They have slowly leant against each other, or people have stuck extra bits onto their sides. They all end up looking like mushrooms,
with other little buildings on top of their caps. Am I explaining it well?’

Alan nodded.

‘So the deeper you get, the more space there is.’

‘How does it all stay up?’

Nora smiled. ‘That is one of the mysteries of Gleam.’

Alan looked back out of the door. ‘How do we move through it?’

Nora’s voice came from behind him. ‘There is a Boatman coming.’

The words made Alan’s bones cold. ‘There are people down here?’

‘There are people everywhere.’

‘But they always said the swamp is hell.’

‘People adapt. And besides’ – Nora appeared at his side – ‘they say that about the Discard too, don’t they?’

At that moment, the sludge was disturbed. Something brushed the surface of it from beneath and slow ripples spread outwards. Small bubbles rose up and burst. Alan twisted the candle from the bottle of whisky and took a swig. He brushed flakes of wax from his hand. They floated down and settled onto the green and just lay there.

‘How are these regions illuminated?’ Spider asked.

‘The swamp itself gives light. See how there are no real shadows here? The light is too soft. But look at each other, look at the light on each other’s faces, see how it lands on the skin.’

Alan gazed at his companions. ‘It makes us look ill and ugly,’ he said.

‘Iller and uglier,’ Churr said.

‘There is something in it that glows,’ Nora said, ‘but we don’t know what it is.’

Perhaps half an hour later, a stronger light showed through the mist; a quiet sucking sound accompanied the light. An indistinct figure appeared. The Boatman was approaching.

‘How did you get a message down here, Nora?’

‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘The Boatman listens for visitors.’

‘Have you been here before?’

‘Yes. But I have never been further. I have never taken the boat.’

‘You know the way?’

‘I will find the way. So far I have been merely your guide, pointing this way, that way, that rooftop, this door. Now I will be working.’ She looked up at him. ‘I will change, now. My nightly meditations are preparation, like a creature in a cocoon, rearranging itself on the inside.’

‘And the outside,’ Alan said.

‘Yes, but I have mostly just changed my insides.’

The Boatman was more distinct now. He was very tall, and his bare arms and bald head were marble-white. The rest of him was cloaked in something rough and brown, like the potato sacks that had always ended up piled in the alleys of Market Top. He was punting a long, wide
raft – to call it a boat, Alan decided, was a little bit generous. It looked more like a big crate. His progress was slow.

Alan tried to quash a growing panic: the man’s flesh
was
glowing. His eyes were big and round and his gaze did not waver from Alan’s own. His face was gaunt, his fingers long and his ears were oddly sized, large and pointed. And he had a large wound in the side of his neck.

The raft bumped against the wall and the Boatman picked up a hooked ladder from the bottom of the craft and raised it so that it was hanging from the bottom of the doorway. Then he stood back and waited. Alan turned to descend, then whispered to Nora, ‘Can we trust him?’

‘You can trust me,’ said the Boatman. His voice was deep and somehow off: the sound of a broken bell.

‘Dammit,’ Alan said, and dropped down the ladder and sat down in the raft. The Boatman smiled at him, but it was an empty smile and Alan couldn’t return it. Then he realised that the wound in the Boatman’s neck was smiling as well. It was not a wound; it was a second mouth, with thin ragged lips and little teeth. The end of the dark wooden staff he used for punting was carved into the shape of a woman’s torso and, as Alan watched, he stroked the model’s disproportionately large breasts.

The others joined them on the raft. Nora came down last and unhooked the ladder.

‘Where?’ asked the Boatman. The word came from both mouths, saliva strung between all four lips. ‘Where?’ he asked again.

‘Dok,’ Alan said. ‘We want to go to Dok.’

The Boatman’s mouths both curled into something like sneers. ‘Dok?’ he said. He made the
k
sound long. ‘You are fools, then.’

‘No.’

The Boatman held up a hand. ‘I have no need to prove my assertion. I will take you as close as I can, and the consequences will be yours to face.’ He used the stick to push the raft away from the wall.

They passed strange trees that were nothing but knots of root, and then went through a huge, intricate mechanism that was battered and bent and dented and rusted into a single lump. ‘This fell from above,’ the Boatman said as they slid between cogs. They passed along a channel that wound between mounds of junk: furniture, tools, toys, swollen books, unidentifiable objects, general rotting matter, bones. And something passed by them; the same sinuous movement that had disturbed the sludge back at the doorway. Even after just a few hours, that kitchen felt like a world away.

‘What is it that lives in the swamp?’ he asked Nora.

‘What is it that lives in the swamp?’ she repeated. Her eyes were glassy. ‘Scales and teeth and tongues live in the swamp. Mouths with legs and molten birds live in the swamp. Dead things live in the swamp. Shells and slime and croaks and eyes and eggs and insects and slick fur and bloodied snouts and stones with ears and glass diseases and creatures with no brains and mistakes and failures
and discarded children live in the swamp. Old Green lives in the swamp. Broken objects live in the swamp. Algae and fungi and lichens and moulds live in the swamp.’ She dug her fingers into Alan’s wrist. ‘
We
live in the swamp. We live in the swamp.’ She fell silent, let go and sat back.

From out in the mist came a sound like that of a kettle coming to the boil.

Nora’s skin was clammy. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead and cheeks. Alan wiped her face with his sleeve, then he turned to Eyes and did the same. After wiping Eyes’ face his dirty sleeve was pink. He looked back at Nora. ‘The pink,’ he said. ‘The pink around your eyes? I thought it was some kind of powder, a dye …’

‘Needlestick,’ Nora said. ‘Needlestick, needlestick, lie still, don’t kick. Pinned down in the birthing wagon, my father with his needlestick, outside the wolves, crystals clicking, Corval and Satis wheeling, me kicking, screaming, the tip of the stick pink with ink from the abdomen of the needlestick beetles, the don’t-kick beetles, the click-click beetles, wind chimes singing the ghost song, knees on arms, a stranger’s palm on my brow, the needlestick changing my face, blood dribbling down, blood in my eyes and mouth, the taste of it going deep, deep, new to me, then, it was new to me and it was strong, the taste of it like a visitation, its spread throughout me like possession, the pain in my face making everything white, the needlestick moving across me, pricking and sticking, poking and piercing, setting fire …’ She drew up her
legs and rested her cheek on the tops of her knees, and lowered her voice. ‘Setting fire,’ she said again. ‘Setting fire to me.’

Spider was standing over Nora too, now. ‘A tattoo,’ he murmured. He bent down. ‘Quite splendid work. The graduation is remarkable. That intense colouring below the eyes, fading away to nothing lower down the cheek, with no discernible banding. And the colour has held remarkably well, considering the shade, the vividity. So vivid. It doesn’t look like a tattoo. It looks like mere paint.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Magnificent.’

‘Does nothing bother you?’ Alan asked. ‘Like, not the swamp, not Nora’s distress? Not anything?’

Spider put a hand on Alan’s shoulder. ‘I have a small, well-swaddled soul,’ he said. He patted Alan. ‘I could panic and quiver and gnaw at my fingernails if you prefer. But it would not help much, and it would be dishonest.’

‘You’re like her,’ Alan said, gesturing at Nora.

‘Maybe.’ Spider frowned. ‘Though I feel as if we do not know
what
Nora is like, not truly.’

Nora was talking still, but her words were too quiet and mumbled for her companions to make them out. She drew three crystals from her pack and clutched them tightly.

‘I don’t know the way,’ Alan said at last. ‘I don’t know where we’re going or how to get there. Nora is the one who knows everything.’

The mist was thicker now, and the raft moved through
the sludge smoothly and silently, except for the faint squelching sounds of the Boatman’s pole. The bottom of the craft scraped against something.

A frozen moment.

‘What was that?’ Eyes said. He turned his head one way then another, the bow of his bandage flopping against his neck.

‘Knives out,’ said the Boatman, his voice guttural, the words tolling.

All the drawn metal sounded sharp, but looked dull in the fog. The Boatman drew his pole up, revealing a vicious crosshead iron spike at the opposite end to the naked woman. The raft rocked gently from side to side and slid ever so slowly forward.

Nora was oblivious.

The something came again; a knocking, almost, from below. The sound was loud. A dark shape broke the surface, but sank again so quickly Alan couldn’t make out any detail. Slow ripples spread out.

‘A crocodile,’ whispered the Boatman. ‘A spike-backed beast.’

They waited for it to reappear. From a distance impossible to ascertain, a bird – Alan thought it was a bird – shrieked. The disturbance in the swamp had released a bad smell, of rotting vegetatation. Where the crocodile had been, the smooth green liquid was broken by brown swirls.

They waited a little longer.

‘We will continue,’ the Boatman said, ‘but keep your weapons to hand.’ He sank the pole into the sludge once more and pushed off.

The crocodile rose up out the murk almost silently, its great long head facing the front of the craft. Its head was as long as Alan was tall. He stared in horror. It looked as if it was smiling. Its skin was mostly dark green, but its snout, eyes and bumps were pale yellow, as if the creature was actually made out of bone and the green was just paint that was wearing off. Its eyes were bulbous, lime-green with vertical slits. Its crooked teeth were long and white and crossed over each other. Two black nostrils flared, and from them came that boiling-kettle hiss. The great mouth opened, revealing a smooth, soft-looking white interior, and suddenly Alan could hear the motorbikes again, the guttural roar of an engine, but it wasn’t that, it was the crocodile. The growl shook the ragged flaps of skin at the back of its throat and its foul breath rolled over the raft. It subsided back to a hiss and then rose in volume again. Then the crocodile launched itself forwards, leaping out of the water like something spring-loaded. Its thick forelegs landed on the front of the raft and the whole thing upended, tumbling its passengers forward towards those snapping jaws. All was noise. The Boatman’s pole looked very small and thin now. The beast’s mouth snapped shut as Alan fell towards it, but it was somebody else who screamed, not him, and instead of him landing between its teeth its snout caught him in
the stomach and knocked the wind from him; pain shot through him as he fell over the crocodile’s head and landed on its back. The long hard spikes raked his spine as he rolled off, and then he was in the sludge and the sludge was in him, in his mouth, and he felt something probing around his teeth, and it tasted like Bittewood’s fingers. And the cold
. The cold!
The cold was a vicious spirit moving through him.

He tried to swim, but the swamp was not water and forward motion was difficult. He wriggled and writhed, and things moved beneath his feet and pressed at his eyes. He did not know which way was up. The swamp was a living thing trying to force its way down his throat. Claws tore down his chest. Then pale scales were before him: a wall of crocodile flesh, flexing and pulsing. He grabbed it and pulled himself up into a maelstrom of foam, thunder, teeth and blades. Green slime poured from his mouth and the beast’s spikes pierced his stomach as it bucked. There were threads of blood in the whipped-up froth and bloody drool hanging from the crocodile’s mouth, leaving bloody smears in the boat. Alan found crevices in the reptile’s ancient skin and dug his fingers in. The thing bellowed and thrashed, its jaws repeatedly closing with a baleful snap, but on whom exactly, Alan couldn’t see. There was roaring coming not only from the crocodile but also from his companions. He still had his knife in his hand and the crocodile was still half on the raft, and Nora, Churr, Spider and the Boatman had all
fallen on their arses and were slashing and spearing whilst trying to shuffle backwards. Eyes wasn’t there.