The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (6 page)

Down in the sheltered streets where the stagnant air gathered,  the  only  air  movement  felt  was  during a 'venting', when the Tallmen opened tiny worm holes to different dimensions, hoping that  the  difference  in air pressures would cleanse the  atmosphere.  Often  it did, but the atmospheric violence which often accompanied it had traumatised the population into the act of sprinting in terror for shelter if  anything  more than   a   breeze   was   experienced at street level.

                            Jonathon breathed deeply, the relatively fresh air up here enriching his blood and finding its way to his cramped muscles. He slowly took in the new view of the sprawling metropolis which stretched out all around him.

From this elevated vantage point on a large block which was raised high above the others, the roof tops fell away from him towards the black river which encircled most of the Upper City. Behind its dividing walls, the dwellings of the Caste of the Skilled, the Meks, rose gently to nestle under the eaves of the huge, sooty domes of the Halls of Machines. Flax was there, thought Jonathon. In those Halls he moved, lived, schemed. He felt him. They would never be apart now they had been so close, now that he had touched that mind, now that he had tottered at the edge of that well of darkness. They had marked one another for all eternity.

                            Jonathon's mind was now attached to Silus Flax in a way which resembled his attachment to Cornelius's mind used to be. Their destinies had begun to become intertwined. He would always know where Flax was and, if he wished, what he did, but Jonathon would  never  reach into that poisoned, putrid abyss  again  unless absolutely necessary, because next time he might not return. Jonathon turned his thoughts away from  Flax and returned his attention to the view of Dubh. The Halls of  Machines  dominated  the  city.  They   were immense, crouching like huge volcanic beasts demanding respect from the attentive city. From their summits thick, swirling

blue-grey exhaust gases poured into the atmosphere, darkening the sky, half-obscuring the Towers of the Tallmen beyond the Upper City, in a great stagnant cloud that hung over the Tallmens’ abode.

                            Turning away from the Halls, Jonathon scrambled to the top of the roof above the Whisperer's home and was staggered at the view which greeted him. The roof dropped straight down into the street below, so far was the drop that he could barely make out the crowds whose voices drifted up to him.

                            Gasping and slightly dizzy, Jonathon crept back from the edge of the roof and looked up. Vast expanses of roof tops were visible from here too. Stretching out for miles upon miles the multi-tiered slums and hovels of the Lower City grew upwards, literally a few more feet each day as new living space was needed, towards the glowing Field Wall which was Dubh’s sky.

In some places groups of buildings, like the one upon which he stood, surged upwards like hills above a plain of blackened tile, brick and concrete. A world of metropolitan hills and valleys, buttes and mesas, had evolved out of the undulating mass of brick, tile, concrete and steel.

Jonathon knew that Dubh had many levels beneath the ground, but thought that they stopped at the surface, but it was evident that it did not. It continued upwards, each new level or building precariously perched on the previous one, overhanging the network of gorge- like streets as if they might suddenly plunge down on the milling hordes below; and they often did.

                            Sitting on the mossy tiles above the Whisperer’s abode, Jonathon felt relaxed and safe. It was so different from life in his Grandfather's subterranean refuge where terror and fear had always surrounded them.

Here it was almost beautiful, enveloped as he was by the calmness of this roof top world way above the masses below and under the soothing openness of the pseudo sky. But Jonathon would not relax; he had learned that lesson with his recent experiences on the street. He closed his eyes and stretched his consciousness out across the roof tops, searching for the minds of those who might do him harm.

                            He quickly established that the Whisperers were not the only inhabitants of this roof top world, other small groups and individuals lived amongst the mossy tiles and the damp concrete.

                            Jonathon detected the presence of huddled forms sleeping or idling, waiting for the onset of night when they would descend into the pits of darkness below to seek out a living. They were thieves, pickpockets - scavengers who found refuge on the roofs here from the Tans. Many were as spiritually sick as the mass of the population below, yet many unconsciously had sought a sanctuary from the forces which preyed upon their human kin on the crowded streets of Dubh.They were not suited to the world which ebbed and flowed with corruption and so sought a refuge and found it in the sea of calm which enveloped the highest points of Dubh most of the time.

                            The rooftops seemed a safer alternative to the street. Even the dark souls his mind  had  touched here  were  strangely  restrained.   For   reasons   he could not fathom, Dubh's spirit of corruption could not motivate them as it did others below, could  not physically reach them here. Or perhaps they were just not worth its effort.

Just as Jonathon was about to return to the shack, he spotted two figures moving rapidly in the distance on a route that would bring them right upon him.

                            At this distance they were merely dark specks, yet moved at an incredible pace. These individuals did not move  around  in  the  tentative  manner  he  had  done   to reach this vantage point, they ran and bounded across the irregular terrain, steep roofs and street chasms seeming to present no obstacle.

                            They came closer. With giant inhuman leaps they cleared the ridges of the highest buildings  until  soon  they bore down on him. Now only the wide sheer  drop  to  the street was between them and him. Surely they would stop now, Jonathon thought.

                            At this closer distance he saw that they looked human despite their superhuman performances. He expected them to stop or at least divert from their suicidal path, but they did not. They charged on regardless, hurling themselves towards the edge of the ravine before leaping high into the air above the street to what seemed an unnaturally obtainable height. Once in the air they stretched out their arms to reveal wing-like membranes tied tautly between wrist and ankle. These 'wings' stalled their natural fall helping them to glide easily across the open space and land before a gaping Jonathon, who gazed in awe, astonished at their feat.

                            On landing, their heavily gloved hands, complete with talon like hooks, clattered loudly, seeking purchase between the algae and moss covered tiles. The first recovered himself and stood awaiting his companion on the ridge where Jonathon lay.

                            He was  indeed  human.  His  body  was  bound  in a mummified fashion in leather and padded heavily at the knees and elbows to lessen the  force  of  impact. This man's face, except for the  eyes,  was  swathed and hidden in dark cloth. The flying man turned and studied Jonathon with his intense blue eyes before moving to sit beside him.

                            Removing his heavy cloth headgear he smiled a toothless, but reassuring grin at the startled youth who sat on the roof top beside him. He was breathing heavily and rested for a while, continuing to study Jonathon intently while he recovered. Then he spoke, but he did not whisper with the wind as Milly had done.

“Had a good sleep Jonny-Boy..........you feel better now?" his voice remarkably soft and deep, like velvet Jonathon thought, so much like his Grandfather's voice. Jonathon, still struck dumb by the two men's impressive acrobatic performances, merely nodded in reply. The toothless man nodded back and sucked in air, he stretched out his taloned glove to Jonathon.

“I’m Tefkin, it was me who collected you on Bridge Street..........sorry I was a little late, or perhaps in the nick of time depending on which way you look at it. Still, at least there was something left to collect. Sorry to tear you away from your new friend though." he laughed, his sense of humour confusing Jonathon and forcing him to remember the humourless episode in the hands of the wild woman and then Flax himself.

“Thank you." Jonathon managed in reply. Tefkin shook his head.

“No, thank Dale here, he threw the brick. Good shot eh?" he turned to his companion who sat a few feet away on the ridge of coping stones, staring across the Lower City.

                            Dale turned and muttered something unintelligible to Tefkin and waved a friendly greeting to Jonathon. “Doesn’t speak a lot, our Dale, but he's a good friend to have around."

                            Tefkin looked across the roofs he and Dale had just crossed, taking in a few deep breaths to control his breathing, then asked with some enthusiasm.

“Do you wanna eat now our Jonny boy?”

                            Jonathon suddenly realised how hungry he was, but did not need to answer Tefkin as his stomach chose that moment to answer for him. It groaned pleadingly and both Tefkin and Dale laughed out loud.

A short while later, inside the shack, Jonathon, Tefkin, Dale and Milly sat down to eat the succulent hams that been part of the booty from a roof top foray into the Upper City. Then, after a meal in silence, they sat sipping strong tea brewed by Dale over an open fire in the floor.

                            Tefkin, minus his flying gear, revealed himself as a wiry and humorous, thirty year old with a weather-beaten face topped by a mat of thin, blonde hair and accompanied by an almost permanent, toothless grin. Dale was a man of a similar age who said little.

He was slightly heavier built than Tefkin, and his long black, but grey streaked hair, having the effect of narrowing his chubby, reddened face  and  deepening his dark brown eyes. A melancholy man Jonathon thought, a troubled man he felt.

                            Milly was a pretty, dark haired girl with sad, tired blue eyes to which Jonathon's attention had immediately been drawn to when they had first met had. She continually reprimanded the men for speaking out loud, for failing to comply with the speaking conventions of the Whisperer, but her efforts had little effect.

“Don’t worry little sister, the Tans will never hear us, we're safer her than anywhere else” he laughed. “There’s no way they can fly here like us."

                            Jonathon found it easy to talk to the roof top trio, although Dale, who never seemed to smile, only contributed in a minimal way to the conversation. His expression was always one of deep sadness which caused uneasiness in Jonathon. Despite his mental powers, Jonathon found the route into Dale's mind blocked. The memory of whatever caused the shadow to be cast onto his spirit was buried deep inside him and had been made inaccessible to someone like Jonathon.

                            But there was something more to Dale, Jonathon perceived. He was deliberately concealing something, he had the mental abilities to do so, someone had trained him and his powers of concealment were good enough to thwart Jonathon's gentle probing.

Dale knew that such an attempt was being made and he knew who was doing it, but, despite an uncomfortable sideways glance at Jonathon, he said nothing.

                            Tefkin, Milly and Jonathon talked of their lives and past while Dale listened politely, entering the conversation only when spoken to or when there was a memory to be shared. Tefkin informed Jonathon that all three Whisperers, as Milly insisted they were called, had been born and lived most of their lives on the roof tops of the city. Once there had been many more, but one by one they had fallen victim to accident or illness.

                            Now these three survived by stealing into the dwellings of Tans or Meks, anyone who managed to rise above the desperate, poverty stricken mires  in  which the majority of the population where submerged. In Dubh wealth and power were shown by the vertical distance an individual lived  above  the  street.  There they where vulnerable to the Whisperer's activities, Tefkin had told Jonathon, and there were rich, easy pickings to be had from the highest dwellings.

                            But perhaps the Whisperers were the  richest and most powerful of all the inhabitants of Dubh, Jonathon suggested, that  their  wealth  and  powers were to be measured, not in material terms, but by their freedom from the  forces  which  ruled  the  city and its society, and because of  their  uncorrupted natures, which brought broad smiles from them from Tefkin and Milly. Dale merely nodded.

                            The Tans knew of the  Flyers,  as  they  called  the  roof top dwellers, and of the others who sought  refuge there  beyond  the  limits  of  their  domain,  but  could  do little about it.

                            Occasionally concerted efforts were made to bring the roof tops under their jurisdiction, but always ended in death and despair for those not physically or psychologically adapted to the alien environment which was the world of the Whisperer.

                            Physically life here was very demanding, journeys across the vast hills, valleys and roof top plains, crisscrossed with the maze of street crevasses, needing a special athleticism which was evident in the physiques of Jonathon's three new friends.