Mhendu

Chapter 9 of the science fiction novel Elis Royd

Elis Royd

Chapter Nine

Mhendu

Lacking a backbone, Administration’s front-line command went fairly quickly.

The moment shots were heard in the courtyard the Councilmen hiked up their skirts and scampered down to the vast Warehouses complex, where they were safe to nurse their aperitifs and processed cheese, monitor breaking news, and roundly damn those bungling cowards shot to pieces defending the Gate. The Head Administrator, now de facto Prime Custodian and Commander In Chief, immediately ordered all priceless objets d’art moved to his personal quarters for safekeeping, and relocated Grand Hall’s Administration Guard to the Warehouses Gateway, thereby making certain no savage royd hordes could raid the official pantry. Organization is always key.

The Coalition was wholly ignorant of EarthAd’s means of electronic surveillance and communication; without a blueprint or vanguard royds were forced to learn as they went. Yet the ill-equipped and all but unregulated Civilian Guard proved far more formidable than the regular troops--these guys knew every nook and cranny, and freely employed tactics that were surreptitious, untoward, and downright dirty. The campaign to take, as well as to defend Earth Administration, quickly devolved to the very ballsiest kind of street fighting.

All that night the sides battled throughout Administration. Earthmen had access to limitless supplies--to food, to ammunition, to medical aid--but they were an inherently soft opponent. Royds, by contrast, were pretty much on their own, yet they had heart and grit, and an enemy on the ropes. The first truce came at noon the following day, though not by pact or visual agreement: the humans had simply up-and disappeared, regrouping in underground halls and storehouses constructed at Elis Royd’s physical inception.

Mhendu and his Closest used homes, outbuildings, and a series of abandoned shops as walled bivouacs. By this time his Next were basically non-combatants--cripples, minors, and the unassigned used as ever-revolving couriers. The news was the one constant: puppet commanders were running Administration’s military; the real ruler of EarthAd was some intellectual shadow going by a variety of titles, but most commonly tagged as ‘The Administrator’. Mhendu realized that, whoever and wherever this mystery figure was, it was his, Mhendu’s, personal and patriotic duty to make sure he received the same treatment as Emra, Queen of Royds. Mhendu meant to take this idea literally: he intended to drag the human leader up York Peak, hoist him on a battery of spears from Terra Tower, and slowly run him through in view of every Earthman prisoner of war. And after that--?

There would be one hell of a party; he’d make sure of it. The Warehouses would be appropriated, and if they contained anything resembling the brochures’ claims, well, royds would be feasting for years to come. EarthAd would become Coalition property, plain and simple. Humans would be locked out, and only let back in when they’d learned some manners. Maybe. Mhendu saw no reason they couldn’t, with a little discipline and a whole lot of time, learn to fall in love with a staple diet of gnawed roots and recycled radioactive condensation. Sparkling water, indeed. And naturalization? The propagandized dream drummed into every starving royd, cradle to grave? This was it: this was as far as anyone could go.

All that next day the Coalition fought in the streets and fields, on foot and on horseback, with little sleep--forever chasing opponents that appeared to vanish exhausted and depleted, only to reappear fresh and replenished. At nightfall their dark ‘Administrator’ was still an elusive figure, but logic dictated human leadership must be holed up somewhere in the administrative complex, back near the West Gate entrance. They’d tried everywhere else.

Mhendu patiently led his Closest down the quiet roads.

The whole vicinity was sacked, shot, and burned out, though a number of smallish fires occasionally cropped up here and there almost as afterthoughts. Most of the dead royd combatants had been dragged off, presumably to be stored underground for post-combat bounties. Human corpses--guards, soldiers, and civilians--were everywhere.

Mhendu’s party galloped up to the Grand Hall’s entrance, his most faithful, his Closest, forming a phalanx and fanning out…the group dismounted atop the final flight, left their steeds with an auxiliary, and carefully worked their way around the front. Mhendu peeked inside--the Guard were long gone. The Hall itself had been looted by Earthmen, and the forced doors to Council Chambers thrown wide. The party inched along the high walls, pausing every few feet to listen: the place was quiet as a morgue. They moved into the high-windowed Council Chambers, now lit eerily by a building just catching fire. All the adjoining rooms had been violated; broken into, ransacked. Yet one door, secreted behind an iron staircase, was only half-open; something inside had spooked the looters. Mhendu and his Closest placed their backs against the wall, and one by one squeezed through.

Behind was a dark stairwell, quite cool and drafty. Despite the ventilation, a strong charnel smell clung to the walls and steps. They tiptoed down, and so came into the bleak interrogation crypt. Just inside the crypt door were a raggedy man and his two raggedy sons, nailed to standing beams. The weight of their bodies had caused their fingers and wrists to tear through the nails, and they were now crumpled in a touching family embrace. A crushed wall accounted for the draft. There was no point in checking the dozens of royds racked, impaled, flayed, scalded, and hanged. The stench of rotting bodies was so nauseating, even in that drafty place, that the Closest found themselves incapable of basic sympathy. They were just turning to leave when one noticed the little Cept sitting alone in the largest cell.

The boy looked up as Mhendu walked in.

“How’d you get in here? Through that door, or through that wall?”

The boy nodded.

Mhendu went down on one knee. “What’re you doing here, son? Where’re your parents?” The boy shrugged. “Don’t you have a mother?” The boy shrugged again. “Then where’s your father?” The boy looked up at the huge gristle-tipped hook.

Mhendu winced as he rose. He’d lost his own father as a child, and was himself childless--the depressing atmosphere, all the corpses about them, the many lost in battle--he’d never felt so cut off. On impulse he reached down, lifted the Cept, and rocked him on his shoulder. “You’re not alone any more, boy.” He gestured with his free hand. “A pretty shabby family, to be sure, but…you’re coming with us.” He carried him up the steps and set him down in Chambers. “How’d you find your way into EarthAd? Were you here before all the fighting started?”

The boy shook his head.

“Well, you sure didn’t fly in.”

The boy grinned and thumped his little tail on the floor. He gestured downward repeatedly. “Under.”

“So. You’re not a mute, anyway. But what do you mean by ‘under’?”

“Bridge.”

“What bridge?”

“Tunnel.”

“There’s a tunnel under us? A bridge in a tunnel? Do you think you can show me?”

The stubby tail thumped harder. And so the Cept boy led the group across the city, sometimes riding on Mhendu’s broad shoulders, sometimes running ahead. The party moved on foot, as circuitously as possible, keeping low in the shadows. They snuck into the warehouse, crept through the jumble, and one by one dropped onto the ledge. Mhendu listened with all his senses.

“That sound…way far away--it’s machinery. Those are the pumps.” He gripped the Cept by the shoulders. “Are those the city’s pumps?” The boy shrugged. “It’s their power plant, isn’t it? The one that runs the whole place, re-circulates the air and water, makes all the lights and appliances work?” The boy shrugged along with each clause, an idiotic grin on his bobbing face. Mhendu turned to his Closest.

“They’re dead without light and power. We’ve got to follow that sound.”

Now, royds aren’t particularly squeamish about cockroaches, having shared their hit-and-run existence for so long. The little party quickly forsook the sturdy main ledge for a series of descending wall outgrowths, crossed a spiraling bridge, and began shinnying down columns. The maters came out to meet them. It grew more active the deeper they climbed: the royds had never imagined maters anywhere near as massive as these acrobatic purple monsters--the things were responding to the party’s clambering vibrations by looping their tentacles around bridges in anticipation, hoping to exploit any wayward footfalls. And suddenly they were everywhere, emboldened by the pheromonal fear-scent, only beaten back by bullets and well-placed shafts. The group voiced the creeps as a unit, unusual for royds--they couldn’t have known that wilderness maters, recognized as mere corpse-sucking vermin in the broader scheme of things, had evolved, in this spacious, mildly radioactive realm, into bloodsucking predators accustomed to raiding Administration for infirm humans, unsupervised children, and injured animals. It just got worse and worse: larger specimens came out of the dark like hammerheads, while grandmaters watched motionlessly, their many suckerlips smacking with impatience. And there were a variety of long-established, completely unknown species inhabiting EarthAd’s underworld: there was some kind of living ooze that preyed upon sick and crippled roaches while showing an unnerving curiosity about these new, much larger visitors; there were blind leapers that immediately swarmed any unfortunate party caught hosting one of their own--the royds had to quickly beat them off each others’ backs or risk infection; there were very, very dark things that at first seemed shadows, relentlessly stalking the climbers, parting and reforming as they moved. The fuzzy sallow light was stronger in some places, paralleled by an increased clarity in the thudding of machinery, so that the royds’ meandering course was set more by circumstances than foresight. Sometimes the way became almost horizontal, branching eastward for what seemed miles, only to drop by degrees, circle back, drop some more, and branch again. Eventually the roar of water grew universal; and a slimy condensation was felt on the porous rock. Something in its composition brought on a common complaint of nausea and malaise, compelling the explorers to monitor their breathing and to occasionally wipe down.

The party set foot on a narrow, perfectly level rocky bank. What appeared to be an underground sea stretched before them--actually a regulated body of water contained in an artificial basin some hundred feet deep, perhaps five hundred yards wide, and with a breadth lost in a backlit, oddly sparkling haze. The thumping and wheezing came from beyond that haze. And from places far away came the sound of massive volumes of cascading water, landing in basins at progressively deeper levels.

The walls of this particular basin were fabricated, making it actually more a room than a cavern. A sickly violet-green algae ran around the rim, partway up the facing walls, and deep into the still water. There was nowhere to stand other than the ledge they presently occupied; it was wall-to-wall water. Those cavernous side-walls were actually great components housings, holding technological mysteries of no interest whatsoever to the royds--what did interest them was a nearby 12x12 aluminum cover, hanging at an angle by a single huge bolt. Its surface was unbroken, and once they’d torn it free it proved a good three feet deep, and more than capable of supporting them all. There was no current; without oars, they were forced to use their hands and rifle butts. They pushed off hard, and the raft moved freely into the mist.

It was very slow, very disquieting going: that heavy thudding vibrated the water’s pea-soup surface, and made the depressing mist seem to heave and roll. Soon they were fogbound. The royds, in no hurry to paddle into complete obscurity, sat back on their haunches and spoke with their eyes. The raft slid to a stop.

In a bit the water just to port showed bubbles along the surface. That little event was quickly mirrored by another to starboard, and another directly ahead. The Closest leaned down, studying these disturbances like cats. Other than the gentle sounds of percolation, it was dead quiet.

Something thumped the bottom.

The raft turned gently and bobbed. The royds fingered their weapons.

And the raft kicked up three feet. A thorny brown tentacle slapped over the side. Another rolled up from behind, pinning a royd by the legs. Two more tentacles then locked the raft in place, and seconds later a long conical trunk split the surface, dripping dirty pearls in the murk. The thing swayed hypnotically, all sucker-ringed mouth and heaving gills. It came in like a snake, intuitively going for the pinned royd.

Mhendu’s first shot caught it dead-on. The head shook madly, dipped and rose, jerked back and forth. His second and third, made errant by the raft’s motion, caught the neck just above the waterline, then everybody was up and firing. The head splattered like a ripe melon, the tentacles flew off the raft, and the whole ghastly thing shot flapping below the surface. Excited by the bucking of the raft, those maters following overhead blindly thrust and swept their graspers, only to be snagged, yanked free of their holds, and shot thrashing in the water.

“Enough!” Mhendu whispered. He used his rifle’s barrel as a stirrer. The ripples spread and passed; the surface remained unbroken. Those maters still attached to the rock ceiling receded into the mist.

The royds carefully resumed paddling. The fog, dissipating, was gradually replaced by a soft amber light. A kind of brooding backdrop became apparent, and at last the raft kissed the basin’s far side.

Elis Royd’s vaunted atomic plant squatted on twenty thousand square feet of reinforced concrete, two hundred feet deep and locked into the pocked asteroid’s natural substructure. The whole area was overshadowed by massive conical tanks, heaving pumps, and strangely wrought machines, all winking with the system’s perpetually rock-steady pulse. The command station itself was igloo-shaped, battleship gray; surprisingly unimposing. There was no door, just a broad portal revealing a sparsely lit interior. While they were staring, something pallid and long lurched across the dock and slid into the water without leaving a ripple. The royds crept up in single file, not sure what to expect. Inside they found countless racks and gauges, feeders and faders, cables and bays--an unbelievably sophisticated system to these simple wilderness folks.

Mhendu set down the Cept boy. “Now what?” He ran his fingers over the glass-fronted meters with secret admiration. “This tells me nothing.” He tapped a bank of pulsing touch pads. The pads glowed softly in response. “This tells me less.”

“Mathematics,” muttered a Closest. “Gibberish.”

The boy scampered beneath the equipment. In a minute he jumped up on a table and began gleefully hammering a rack of meters with a fire extinguisher. Mhendu threw out a restraining arm, then looked closer.

“Maybe he’s onto something.” He wrestled the extinguisher from the boy, said, “Only one way to tame a monster,” and smashed it against a row of meters. Nothing happened. He tried elsewhere, again and again. The place was solid.

“Allow me,” said a Closest, and shot three rounds into the wall-to-wall motherboard. Everybody jumped outside. Ten seconds later they were all blasting away, weaving side to side while their bullets ricocheted like popping corn.

The station lights flickered and quit, followed immediately by the dock lamps. The pumps labored and wheezed, the big machinery kicked and stalled. The housings’ seams burned brilliant white, some kind of alarm bleated twice, and just like that the whole cavern went absolutely dark.

After an uncertain pause the triumphant royds whooped and threw themselves into a blind victory embrace. But their spontaneous celebration was short-lived: high overhead, punctuated by the groans of some large straining device, there came the oddest rumbling.

Black streams began pouring off the ceiling, cascading down the walls--the pumped surface water was smashing level to level, overflowing basins, spilling into progressively deeper wells. The royds had to duck back inside and wait it out--there was no telling how high the water would rise, and no hope of finding an escape route in the utter darkness.

Gradually the thunder diminished.

The cascades thinned.

Somewhere a buzzer kicked in, emitting an endless series of harsh triple blasts.

A ruby glow appeared in the basin, accompanied by a slowly growing whine.

The water began to steam, a hairline crack raced across the dock. The glow, pulsing as it grew, played upon the walls and turned the algae purple-brown.

Mhendu and his Closest crept to the basin’s edge; tiny bunched silhouettes on a platform in Hell--the entire cavern was throbbing in a dull red haze. A number of rocks dropped into the basin, throwing up broad pink fountains. The glow intensified and the water began to boil.

They ran looking for an exit, only to find the lift’s car locked in place at the top. There were no doors or hatches. The walls were polished concrete, without handholds.

And that low background whine surged and rose until it became a non-stop, ululating howl. The cavern shook. With a resounding crack, a huge piece of ceiling plummeted onto the dock, broke off the lip, and crashed into the water. The royds huddled and embraced, calling back and forth while chunk after chunk rained on the basin. And the dock broke up, and the walls cracked like glass. The pylons gave, the struts collapsed, and a second later the ceiling came screaming down.

* * *

The Administrator watched another piece of real estate vanish: kicked round the rim, caved at the center, sucked into the asteroid’s bowels. The world was coming apart.

Without power, the only source of illumination was firelight, but there was plenty of that: lots of homes and shops were still on fire, and a number of burning farmsteads showed as pinpoints of light. Even as he stared, an enormous chunk not far from the complex broke up, appearing to revolve slightly before pouring into a new abysm.

To an observant man, the pattern was evident: subsurface columns and bridges that made up the asteroid’s exoskeleton were holding fast, but the highly-compacted crust was collapsing in sections--this could only be due to some profound subterranean disturbance. Land farthest from the bridges, lacking any deeper support, was going quickly, while the gigantic cliffs of packed earth at the perimeters only gradually slid from view. The result was a growing latticework of column-supported bridges overlooking the world’s seething interior. As each burning sector passed into oblivion, so passed the dwindling light.

The Administrator, watching coolly from Terra Tower’s circular observation deck, was moved in a way he hadn’t experienced since childhood. He was no geologist, and no physicist, but as the only living man with access to Application’s thorough records banks, he was the only one with a pretty good idea of the catastrophe’s true nature; he knew the atomic plant’s location, realized the power was dead, and had no problem putting two and two together.

Earthmen and royds were done fighting; they could be seen running about willy-nilly, many desperately scrambling up banks of caving earth. The thickest succumbed in the centers, while the more intelligent stuck to the rims, and so eventually worked their way to the safety of bridges. The Administrator’s vantage was 360: he could clearly make out innumerable panic-stricken citizens, unable to escape through the blocked turnstiles, fighting to weigh down the fences. The fences were too tough to fall, but the initial eviscerated scalers provided excellent flesh cushions for their followers. Those managing to squeeze out the turnstiles never looked back.

York Peak gave a warning tremble. The Administrator quietly descended the Tower’s outer spiral staircase, pausing meaningfully on each step. He’d outwitted every foe he’d ever met, mastered a career, honed his strengths and tamed his weaknesses, dreamed and schemed his way to the very top. But like any man secure in his prowess, he hadn’t given a thought to the business of dying.

* * *

The Great Roach has always been an opportunist.

When death is in the air, it’s able to determine the breadth of that tragedy, locate the source from miles away, and use a number of adaptive tricks to gauge its victims’ ability to retaliate against swarms, teams, and individual raiders.

Its many feelers--cross-evolved appendages contributed by hundreds of imported species--are able to function as remote sensory equipment. Thus the Great Roach utilizes a kind of radar to zero in on tremors of profound agony (the GR is all but useless in cadaver scrounging, a feat largely monopolized by the mater, its grudging symbiotic partner). The Great Roach can also mark and relocate its kills with personalized pheromone trails for return snacks, and emit a mild electric charge to rouse any unconscious prey saved for a chaser (there’s nothing like horrified thrashing and screaming to get the digestive juices flowing).

First inside West Gate were the smaller, hit-and-run grave robbers that have always competed with the perimeter roach. Small and inefficient though these robbers are (generally under five feet, and unable to manage anything larger than a child without first dissolving it in salivary extracts), they are true Great Roaches, with compound guts adapted for humans as well as royds. This distinction is important, as it explains just how those ravening leviathans of the canyons were able to exploit the bloody trauma of Earth Administration. To wit: the unusual liveliness of grave robbers at the Gate was manifested in intense vibrations of their foremost dorsal antennae, creating an atmospheric disturbance readable by the highly sensitive feelers of the canyon Great Roaches. The latter made for the compound post-haste, and within hours arrived in swarms numbering in the several thousands.

By that time their excitement was an unstoppable thing.

West Gate was well guarded, though it had never been repaired due to the near-constant influx of royds late to battle (a mixed blessing for EarthAd, as plenty of those marching royd soldiers-to-be ended up as appetizers for the first wave of rapacious Great Roaches). In their horror, the shocked Gate Guards fired hardly a shot, but the minor noise and resulting confusion sent the bulk of the Roaches up and over the wall, and once in the courtyard they found plenty to keep them busy. Even so: though the perimeter fences were designed solely to prevent royd access, they proved impenetrable to the Great Roach. Many of these monsters were sliced to ribbons on razor wire, only to be dragged back down and devoured piecemeal by their fellows.

At any rate, there wasn’t a whole lot left to protect, and most of the Gate Guards had already bailed, going for brute survival in the wilderness over being sucked into the rapidly evolving black hole of Administration. These earliest fleeing guards soon met their ends in the Great Roach juggernaut, as did the reluctant defenders, the straggling royds and deserting Civilian Guard, the mortified mothers and their terrified children, the shopkeepers and civil servants, the homeowners and the homeless, the farmers and the tradesmen, the wounded and the infirm, the sane and the insane, the newborn and the elderly, and pretty much anything else that was out of doors, out of time, out of ammo, and…edible.