Penult (The Liminality, Part Four)

Chapter 16: Below

As far as I could see across what had been the pitted plains I could see no end to the destruction. The ripples were arranged in overlapping circles, mounding up wherever two waves had met. At the center of each circle stood a patch of intact plain, standing tall over the collapsed ground surrounding them.

“Man. What kind of bomb does this?”

“No bomb. Crackers,” said Kitt.

“Huh?” I grew up in Florida where a cracker was white trash. Somehow, I don’t think that was what she meant.

“See that pole over there? She pointed at one of the free-standing remnants of the original plain. “They drive ‘em into the ground and when they activate them they send these huge ripples spreading all directions. Cracks the ground wide open and stirs it all up and the damage gets worse the farther out you go, peaks at about a mile then fades. It brought down the city right on top of our heads.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know. Our Seraph prisoner calls them harmonic dissonance engines. No one knows how they work. Maybe … magic?”

We struck out across the rubble. More dust devils popped up, forming an arc around the base of the valley. I could only assume that each was associated with another group of those strange cherubic soldiers.

More Seraphim had appeared in the sky along with some larger, more angular contraptions, too slow and clumsy to be mantids or dragonflies. Other than that lone honeybee in the hollow, the only flying insects I had seen so far had been dead on the ground.

Kitt saw me staring. “They won’t bother us. They’re busy sealing off the valley.”

We came to the base of one of the intact islands, whose walls were draped with sheets of tangled roots. She pulled back a flap and slipped behind it.

I followed her down a deep and slanting cleft so narrow we had to turn sidewise to squeeze through. At its base, we found ourselves in a dark chamber dark lit only by the occasional bead of light passing down the length of some of the intact roots. Several narrow tunnels branched out from this node.

“These little tubes are Reaper-proof,” said Kitt. “But we gotta watch the bigger junctions. They like to sit and set ambushes there.”

She led me into a tunnel the diameter of a truck tire. On hands and knees, we continued down a gentle spiral. When it too, leveled out, Kitt knifed her arms into the wall and we crawled into a tangle of unconsolidated roots as dense as a mangrove forest. We bushwhacked a good fifty yards or so before we broke through to one of the big, smooth-walled tunnels that I knew from my early days in Root.

These were Reaper superhighways, their tops bristling with the stalks of long-harvested pods, well lit by with glowing conduits shuttling globular beads of colored light in cryptic patterns.

The patterns seemed coherent. I suspected they conveyed information via some code, but to whom and about what no one could ever tell me. I doubt it could be the Reapers messaging each other. They were way too dumb.

We came to a place where the big tunnel had collapsed and twisted shut. Several impromptu bypasses had been torn into the root matrix around it.

We clambered over the bypass and continued onward. The tunnel here was dark and still, as if the damage had interrupted the transmission of those light-borne messages.

The darkness here was absolute. We stumbled along. I bumped my head against an occupied pod, eliciting groans from its occupant. Kitt didn’t bother to rescue him. She took my hand and pulled me through another weak spot in the tunnel wall.

We passed through another loosely consolidated section, this one dimly lit by roots that gave off a static faint, blue glow, like those phosphorescent jellyfish. We made our way towards a huge black dome, one of those hollow tumors or ‘bubbles’ in the root structure, some created by natural processes, others engineered by master Weavers. An enormous one of Luther’s creation had housed the original Burg and Karla had resided in a much smaller but Reaper-proof chamber when I first met her.

“What happen to the old Luthersburg? Crackers wreck it?”

“No. It was gone long before that,” said Kitt. “It was left undefended when we moved up to the surface. A bunch of Reapers broke in and destroyed everything, gobbled the stragglers.”

“I thought these things are Reaper-proof.”

“They generally are,” said Kitt. “But they need tending and mending or else they get weak spots.”

“Like fences with goats. I know what you mean.”

She pressed her palm against a dark spot in the wall and a hole appeared. The roots separated, dilating until it was large enough to step through.

“I have to warn you, things are kind of rough inside. We haven’t had a chance to weave it up good and pretty.”

The interior of the dome looked like a construction zone for a movie set. Roots were being shaped, crudely in some cases, into the general outlines of houses and buildings with walls that were lopsided and warped. Only a few had finished exteriors of clapboard, stucco or stone.

“Things are going slow this time. Luther’s making us do all the weaving ourselves. He says we need to learn. But once we’re done with the village, he says he’ll do the sky for us. He’s good at skies.”

“I know.” I remembered the arc of artificial sky he had created for the first Luthersburg. It was almost as good as the real thing, with puffy clouds that floated by and morphed into dreamy shapes and at night, constellations and a moon more compelling than anything you’d see at a planetarium.

“So make yourself at home,” said Kitt. “Or make yourself … a home … I should say. There’s lots of vacant space on the fringes. First come, first served, is the rule.”

“Are you going to see Luther now? Any chance I could go with you?”

“Well, duh. Of course. He’s gonna want to see you. I mean. You’re ‘the’ James.” She winked.

We passed through the thick of the construction zone, way more chaotic and ramshackle than the Hemisoul shantytowns that ringed the Sanctuary of Frelsi. I just happened to notice a perfect little cabin with a thatched roof and stucco walls painted robin egg blue. A thin wisp of smoke trailed out of a chimney fashioned from rounded river stone.

“Hey! That … that looks like….”

I took off running.

“Hey!” said Kitt. “Where are you going? What about Luther?”

I came to a white picket fence and there was Bern standing in the middle of what he obviously intended to be a garden, but for now was just flock of stray roots he was attempting to marshal with his cane until they stood at attention.

“Lille! They’re being stubborn again. They refuse to turn green.”

“Oh, give it a rest, darling,” said Lille, from the porch. “This is virgin territory, they’re not used to being shaped.”

Lille saw me standing by the picket fence and her eyes lit up like beacons.

“What are you gawking at?” said Bern.

“Look behind you, dear.”

Bern wheeled around, and when he saw me, he lost hold of his cane and stumbled.

“James?”