The Broken God Machine (18 page)

Pehr’s eyes couldn’t seem to find a place to rest, moving constantly over
the skeletal remains of this once-great metropolis. There were bridges and
arches, buildings of all shapes and sizes. Near the center of the city was a
gigantic domed structure topped with a statue that couldn't have been less than
ten times Pehr’s height. It portrayed a man in a long coat, pointing with one
outstretched finger toward the heavens.

To the west there was a series of low buildings with arched roofs
constructed from metal grid work. Two of these roofs had caved in at their
centers, the metal beams corroded, twisting inward as if bashed by gigantic
fists from the sky. To the east was a wide, flat expanse of grey – a basin of
some sort. There was water collected at its bottom.

He was surprised that in all this time, the city hadn't been overtaken by
vegetation; its streets seemed largely clear of grass or vines, and the only
trees he could see were huddled together in one large, green triangle near the
center of the city grid.

“See the garden, there, in the center?” Pehr asked, pointing. “How has it
not overrun everything else?”

“Who can say?” Tasha replied. “The people who built this place knew many
things that have been lost.”

“What if they’re still here?” Pehr asked her. “Just because we can’t see
any, it doesn’t mean …”

He let his own voice fade away, aware of how foolish he sounded. This place
had been deserted since a time so long ago that it made his head spin just to
contemplate it. How many generations had lived in the city’s shadow, oblivious
to its existence?”

“There is nothing down there that lives … or, at least, nothing human,”
Tasha said. “This ‘greatest work of man since the Great Destruction’ has been
in ruins for ages.”

“What terrible thing could have driven man away from this place?” Pehr
asked.

“That is the very question we have come to answer.”

Pehr feared the answer to that question, but it was impossible to look down
upon the city and not desire further explanation, impossible to contemplate the
ruins without wondering how they had come to reach this point. How had it come
to be abandoned?

“Where did they go?” he mused aloud.

“Could it have been your Lagos?” Tasha asked him.

“I don’t think so. If the Lagos had ever found this place, they would be
here still. I don’t believe they have ever gotten past the guardians.

Tasha stretched, hands balled into fists and arms reaching for the heavens,
her back arched, belly sticking out. She yawned and said, “We won’t find the
answer up here. We should make for the building with the statue.”

Tempted though he was by the prospect of learning more about this
fascinating place, Pehr was also deeply concerned about walking into it
unprepared. He said, “There may be animals, or any number of terrible things
waiting for us down there.”

“Terrible things like what?”

Pehr knew that if he mentioned ghosts or spirits, demons or goblins, she
would simply laugh it off, so he only shrugged. “I didn’t believe in the Lagos
until I saw one face to face, but they’re real, and they’re terrible
things.”

“You just said that there could be no Lagos down there.”

Pehr shook his head, unsure if Tasha was being obtuse on purpose. “What I’m
saying, Tasha, is that we are walking into the unknown.”

“You’ve done that twice before,” she reminded him. “First into the jungle,
and then into the plains. You’ve survived both times.”

“Those who traveled with me were not always so fortunate.”

“I told you, Pehr, I do not fear dying in this place. I fear only missing
things that I must not miss. I am going, whether you will come or not. If you
don’t want to go, I won’t blame you. You can wait for me here, I suppose. I do
not think any more of the guardians will bother me.”

“I’m not letting you go into that place alone, whether you fear it or not,”
Pehr said. Tasha favored him with a cool grin, having expected this answer.

The road down to the city was steep and winding, and there were large sheets
of metal posted along its edges, covered in all sorts of characters, some of
them obscured by blooms of lichen. Neither could read them; Pehr’s people had
no writing, and Tasha’s used only a very basic set of symbols to represent
common things like tral or grass.

Had they been able to read the signs, they might have chosen a more direct
course through the city and thus been spared some of its wonders and its
horrors alike. But they couldn't read the signs, and so after a moment more of
quiet contemplation, they began to make their way down to the buildings below,
walking side by side. Somewhere in the city a bird of prey gave a long,
shrieking cry that faded off into the air. There was no answer; this place was
dead, and had been dead for thousands upon thousands of years.

The streets on the outskirts of the city were not the clean, concise grid
that made up its innermost sections, but instead a haphazard maze of twists and
turns. Even to Pehr’s uneducated eye, the structures that lined these streets
seemed slipshod and hastily built.

Many of these lesser buildings were made not of metal but rather a curious
material that seemed a strange fusion of sand and stone. Pehr saw that this was
only a coating, however, and in many places it had flaked away from the
substructure entirely. Most of the buildings had collapsed in upon themselves
long ago, and of those that still stood he suspected there were few that would
bear his weight should he attempt to explore them.

Tasha left him no time to consider this course of action, moving comfortably
through the twisting streets as if she had lived her entire life in this place.
She seemed disinterested in this part of the city, though Pehr thought they
could learn a great deal about its former inhabitants simply by peering into a
few darkened interiors. When he suggested this to Tasha, she told him it didn’t
matter; the people who had inhabited these buildings could not provide her with
the answers she sought.

“Can you not tell, Pehr? Those who lived here … they didn’t build this city.
They came after, when the decline had already begun. That’s why there is no
planning, no sense to the way the streets are laid out. After the real builders
stopped their work, others came into the city like parasites to use what was
left behind.”

“Why didn’t they inhabit the places that already stood?”

Tasha shrugged. “I do not know.”

“But where did the builders go? Where did these ‘parasites’ go? How do you
know
all of this?” Pehr asked, striding along beside her and trying to
take in the overwhelming amount of visual information with which the city was
assaulting him. To his right there was some sort of covered cart, made of
metal, that stood in the black and crumbled remains of what Pehr supposed must
once have been its wheels. To his left there was a pile of corroded metal
chunks in all shapes and sizes, so large that it dwarfed the one nearby
structure that still stood. Tall poles of metal lined both sides of the road,
capped by curious, bulbous protrusions.

“Some by observation, some by guess,” Tasha said. “The rest we will need
provided for us, but we will find out what happened to the inhabitants. Or the
builders, at any rate. I don’t care about the parasites – no doubt they
squandered what was left and moved on. That’s what parasites do.”

“What a lovely vision,” Pehr said. Dusk was imminent, and the idea of being
trapped for the night in this city with its countless ghosts was not doing
anything for his mood.

“I’m not here to make up pretty stories,” Tasha said. “Our legends said that
the city of the Gods lay in these mountains, and truly, those who built this
place would seem like gods to us … but they were only people, Pehr, and so were
the parasites that came after. People do not always behave in ways that are
pretty.”

Pehr knew that this was true and he grunted an acknowledgment, continuing to
walk and watch. The streets were becoming more orderly now, and some of the
buildings were in much better shape. Some were tall, others squat. Most had
large windows, their coverings long-since gone, and through some of these Pehr
could see objects that he understood – here was a chair, there a table – even
though they were shaped from materials that he did not know. On the side of one
building, faded almost to the point of invisibility, Pehr could make out the
image of what seemed a gigantic woman, mostly naked, drinking from what must
once have been a brightly colored container.

“We’ll not reach the center of the city before dark,” he said.

“No.”

“We have no way of making torches, and I’ve not seen a single piece of wood
in this place. We can’t burn metal.”

“Nor stone,” Tasha agreed. “I don’t think we will need torches, Pehr.”

“Why not?”

She pointed up to one of the metal poles that lined the street, or more
specifically to the bulb at its tip, and Pehr stopped in his tracks, taking
conscious notice of something he had become peripherally aware of at some
earlier time. As the sun continued to set and the dusk became heavier, the
bulbs were glowing with an increasingly bright, slightly purple light.

“Gods …” Pehr said in amazement.

“No. Not gods and not magic. Just man, in some past when man was something
closer to a god than he is now.”

“How can we have left such miracles behind? Light without fire that comes
with the setting of the sun? How can we have fallen so far?”

“Help me find the answer,” Tasha said.

“Where would you go?” Pehr asked her, and Tasha shrugged.

“In my dreams, this place is … not like this. I think it is younger, and I
think there are others. The memories are blurred and fuzzy except in those
moments just after I wake.”

“So you have no destination?”

“I’ve been making for the building with the giant atop it.”

“Do you recognize it?”

Tasha gave him a small smile. “Only in that I recognize everything here, in
some way. Pehr … would you build a giant stone man atop a building in the
center of your city if whatever lay within was unimportant?”

Pehr thought he would not. “Very well, so we make for the building with the
dome.”

“Yes, I think that’s the best idea,” Tasha said, and she turned her eyes
ahead to the road they were following and began again to walk.

Thus far, it hadn't been a difficult journey, and Pehr hoped that would
remain the case. As they walked, though, questions began to spring into his
mind, one after another. Why was the city not infested with wildlife? Why were
there no signs that it had ever burned, despite what must have been countless
lightning strikes during its long, slow decay? How were the glow-bulbs –
whatever arcane workings they might contain – still functional after all these
years? Why had the parasites, as Tasha called them, left so much lying unused
and forgotten when they abandoned the city?

This last question troubled him deeply. Everything he knew of human nature
told him that the people would not lightly leave this place behind. Pehr
himself had been willing to sacrifice his life to save his home, and the
village from which he had come was little more than a collection of mud-brick
huts clustered around a stone altar. This city was so far beyond the scope of
his experience that he couldn't picture what sort of men and women might call
it home, but neither could he imagine a scenario in which the entire group of
them suddenly abandoned it.

“Something is not right here,” Tasha murmured, as if echoing Pehr’s own
thoughts.

“Oh, many things, I think,” Pehr said.

“Where are the birds and the animals? Is … is the city poisoned, like you
said the circle of bone seemed to be?”

“I don’t think so. We have seen plants – look, there is grass growing, and
small trees. Tasha, don’t tell me nothing lives here.”

“Pehr—”

“Something dwells within this city. Something is tending it.”

“I don’t think anything
lives
here, Pehr. I think that is the
problem.”

Pehr came to a halt in the middle of the street, and after a few more paces
Tasha stopped as well, turning to look at him in confusion.

“I’ve had enough of being kept in the dark,” Pehr told her. “If you know
anything, tell me what it is so that we can face whatever’s ahead
together.”

Tasha looked pained. She turned away from him, surveying the city, and then
looked back. “You’re asking me to explain things that are like … like distant
forms in a downpour. Things that I dreamed when I was only a child!”

“I'm asking you to tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know
anything
!” Tasha cried. “I feel things. I see things
that spark some small memory. I do not know if we should turn left or right at
any given crossing … except for the times when I do. I thought I would know
everything. I thought it would become clear when I reached the mountains, but
it hasn’t. I hate this. I hate it!”

Of course she did; logical Tasha, trapped and held at the whim of some force
she did not understand. Pehr put a hand to his face, rubbing it in
frustration.

“Pehr, I have told you everything I know as soon as I have known it. There
is nothing alive in this city, except perhaps in the middle where the trees
are. I don’t know what’s keeping the city groomed!”

“Tasha … I believe you.” Pehr could hear the tiredness in her voice; not
sleepiness, exactly, but instead a kind of deep exhaustion that seemed to be
eating at the very core of her. There had been too many hours of traveling
followed by the great strain of absorbing all that they had seen this day; he
could feel it in his bones.

“Pehr, we have to go.” Tasha was near tears, pacing and clearly frantic in
her desire to keep moving. She was frightened, but frightened of what?

We’re going to find out
, Pehr thought, the knowledge coming to him
in the same way, he supposed, that Tasha’s did.
When the last glow of
sunset falls behind the mountains and the city lies in darkness save the
glow-bulbs, we’re going to find out, and it will be terrible
.

“I thought you were not afraid of dying here.”

“I’m not.”

“But you
are
afraid. Of what?”

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling, took a breath, and looked
up at him. “I am afraid for you.”

There it was. Pehr already knew it, but he’d wanted to hear it from her
mouth. Whatever dreams Tasha had been granted, whatever it was that she had
seen, there was a chance yet that the city would kill him, and she knew it.
That
was why she was so panicked.

“Can we reach the domed building before the last of the sunset goes?” he
asked her.

“Not if you keep
standing
there!” she said, and she took a step
forward, glancing back over her shoulder. “Come on, Pehr! We can run if we have
to.”

“No, we can’t run yet,” Pehr said, but he began to walk with her again. “I
don’t want you missing something you should see and losing track of where we
are.”

“Then let us at least keep walking,” Tasha pleaded, and Pehr nodded.

Side by side, the two continued their journey to the center of the city. As
they walked, the last vestiges of sunset began to fade from the sky.

* * *

When the first of the things appeared before them, both Pehr and Tasha
stopped short – not in fear or awe, but simply out of curiosity.

Only moments after the last of the sunset faded behind the edge of the
mountains, something scurried from a low, dark hole in the gutter at the edge
of the street. It was small, perhaps the size of a rabbit, and made of metal,
but it had six spindly legs. These limbs moved asynchronously, and Pehr found
the effect oddly organic and highly disturbing; spiders moved like this, their
legs not really in sync, and there was something about it that was profoundly
alien and repulsive to him.

Tasha must have felt it, too; standing beside him, she drew in a quick
breath and, in a voice barely more than the sound of air passing her lips,
whispered, “Oh … how awful!”

The thing took no notice of them, at least not to begin with, and Pehr
watched as it clambered up, skittering across the stone expanse between the
street’s edge and the grass that surrounded the nearest structure. When it
reached the grass it stopped, its body bobbing gently up and down on its long
legs. Short, sharp blades sprung out from its underside. These began to whirl,
creating first a faint hum and then a high-pitched whine.

The thing began marching in a straight line along what must have been the
edge of the property. Any blade of grass that had reached a height greater than
that of the thing’s thorax – Pehr couldn't stop thinking of it as some strange
metal insect – was lopped off and cast aside. As they watched, it reached the
end of its march, turned, sidestepped, and made its way back toward them,
moving neatly alongside the swatch it had already cut.

This went on for a minute or two, the thing lumbering back and forth, and
then Tasha turned to Pehr and said, “I don’t think it cares about us …”

Before she had even finished her sentence, Pehr knew it was a mistake. At
her first word, the thing stopped dead in its tracks, legs bent, body held low
to the ground. It swiveled to face them and began making a high-pitched
chirruping noise that clearly communicated disapproval.

“Oh, no,” Tasha said, and then the little metal bug charged them, its blades
still spinning furiously. When it reached the edge of the curb, it leapt. It
flew through the air, legs thrown back, leading with the sharp blades that
whirled below its belly. Pehr found himself scrambling backward, pulling with
frantic urgency at the cord that would release the club bound to his back.

The club came lose and Pehr grasped its handle with his right hand. Just as
the thing began its descent from the apex of its leap, he brought the club
around in a wide arc from behind his back, catching the creature. The thing’s
chassis caved inward. Pehr saw a flash of light come from inside it and smelled
something acrid in the air even before the creature hit the ground and
shattered into dozens of pieces. One of its tiny metal blades went whickering
past Pehr and he heard Tasha cry out. Turning to check on her, he saw that the
piece of metal had sliced open the side of her throat. It was not a vital
wound, but he did not doubt that it was painful.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

Tasha nodded, holding her hand against her neck. Pehr could see blood
seeping through her fingers. “It hurts, but better this than having that … that
thing
land on my face!”

“There will be more of them,” Pehr said, and even as he spoke he heard the
first chirrups of others, coming from every direction. These first sounds were
soon answered by others, and still others, and the creatures’ alarm was
evident. Intruders had been discovered and they represented a threat.