The Machine (An Ethan Stone Thriller) (47 page)

A Gateway Made Of Bone

IDIX

Celandine Brey, Disciple Cleric of the Course of Divine Liminis sat alone in the café at Bayan Street Station and waited for Barbegris’ guests to arrive. A can of Sula Soda, half-drunk and now flat, sat on the table before her, next to it a small stone statuette of a squirrel, carved from glassy black oneirium. A fan turned sluggishly above her head, too slowly to do anything about the stiflingly hot air.

Out on the platform, people fought each other for a seat on the last train out of Idix. Even before the steam locomotive had come to a halt, the crowd surged towards the doors, hands outstretched and shoulders hunched. Young men climbed onto the roof or attempted to squeeze through the small sash windows. Children were held aloft, either to be offered to those closer to the train or to protect them from the suffocating press of bodies. The weak, the elderly and the simply polite were pushed aside or trampled underfoot.

Suitcases became shields. Trunks became barricades. Elbows and feet became weapons. People cried, shouted, screamed and bled.

The window pane between Celandine and the platform muffled the noise of the crowd and made their frantic struggles seem less real, less tragic. She watched the people with as much concern as she showed for the Seelie soap opera playing silently on the teleoptic screen on the corner of the bar. It had no more meaning than a dream.

She wasn’t a heartless or unfeeling person but in Idix, in recent times, everyone had to find a means of coping with the hardships of life or else simply break down in despair. When the gatemakers diverted the Largesse River into Agrium, the people coped. When the floodwaters did not come and the crops failed, the people coped. When the gatemakers began closing the gateways between Idix and the rest of the empire claiming that Idix was no longer a profitable enterprise and the rare oneirium gateways were needed elsewhere, still most people coped.

Most people. The people on the platform were trying to escape the dying world. Few of them would make it. Those who did probably wouldn’t get any further than Junction or Facto.

Celandine put her hand in her pinafore pocket, withdrew the crumpled note that Father Aldiss Barbegris had given her and read it again.

1230. 3 Rectors. Bayan St Station from Junction. Bring to Dv Azerro’s ASAP.

There was no sign of the men yet. Barbegris had given Celandine five rouples to pay for a motorcab for the journey back to the church. Celandine had already spent one of them on the Sula Soda. The waiter had given her change in Idixian cents. The worthless coins clinked as she stuffed the note back into her pocket.

The waiter came by her table for the third time in ten minutes and tutted openly when he saw that she still had not finished her drink.

“You can’t sit there forever,” he remarked.

Celandine took a tiny sip of her drink to show that she was at least drinking it and gave the waiter a dirty look.

“What’s that thing?” said the waiter, nodding at the oneirium statuette.

Despite his smart uniform and carefully waxed hair, the waiter was probably no more than a year or two older than Celandine, eighteen at most.

“Do you talk to all your customers like that?” she said, raising her head so that he could clearly see the blue tilak powder on her forehead, the tilak mark of a Cleric.

“Just asking,” replied the waiter tartly. He wore no tilak mark, had not been to church recently, but he was probably a member of the esclave class, a merciant at best. “So what is it?” he said.

“He’s called Ardilla,” she replied. “And he’s mine before you ask.”

She held her hand out flat and the stone squirrel twitched into life, coming down onto all fours and crawling across the table top and into Celandine’s palm.

The waiter pulled a face and shuddered.

“You’re a gatemaker?”

“Apprenticed to one. Can’t actually make gateways yet myself but…”

Celandine concentrated and Ardilla ran up her arm, down onto her lap and snuggled into the folds of her dress. The waiter was torn between amazement and revulsion. He raised his chin haughtily.

“Well, gatemakers aren’t so popular around here anymore,” he said and he strode swiftly away to rearranged the cruet sets on the other tables and stare at Celandine from a distance.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “You’d know all about popularity.”

Eventually, unhurriedly, the train pulled out of the station once more. The carriages were filled far beyond capacity. Other people sat on the roofs, hung on the outside of doors and even balanced precariously on the buffers between carriages. There were tears and howls amongst those left behind as hopes were dashed and families were neatly ripped apart.

Some stumbled after the train but were very quickly left far behind. Ultimately, those left at the platform or standing bewildered on the tracks had nowhere to go but back into the crumbling and dusty city of Casario. The crowd slowly dispersed. Many items of luggage had been left behind by those lucky few on the train. A few opportunists scavenged for valuables amongst the baggage, hoping to recoup some small amount from the disappointing day. But even they departed eventually.

Celandine looked at the clock on the café wall. It was two minutes after half past twelve. She finished her soda and went out onto the platform.

Three men stood around a fourth fallen figure at the end of the platform. A third of a mile beyond them was the gateway to Junction. The gateway was a tall, pointed arch of black oneirium through which the gatemakers had punched a hole between this world and the next. It was nighttime in Junction and through the gateway, Celandine could just make out the blue and orange twinkle of electric street lighting.

As Celandine walked down towards the gathered men, she could see the gatemakers in Junction swiftly closing the gateway to Idix for good. The aperture of the gateway gradually folded in on itself, the streetlights going out one by one. Then the arch itself caved in too, shrinking down, losing its shape until finally the last of the oneirium was pulled back into Junction and the gateway had vanished completely, the only evidence that it had ever existed being a set of railway lines that now came to an abrupt end in front of the twisted sticks of a dried up mangrove swamp. It hadn’t been the last gateway in Idix. The last was now the gateway to Scylla, a seagate beyond the harbour wall of Muchmiel and over three hundred miles away.

The three men stood at the platform end were identically dressed, shining black boots, dark frock coats with twin rows of polished gold buttons worn open on account of the heat. Celandine saw the sabres and pistols that hung at each of their belts. The man lying unconscious on the ground was a local. He had a deep gash in his forehead and one of his arms hung awkwardly over the platform edge. His shirt was ripped open and one of his shoes was missing.

“Fell from the train as it set off,” said one of the uniformed men.

“And then someone stole his wallet, sir,” said a second, a swarthy man with a poorly shaved, bristle covered chin and teeth the colour of ripe Idixian bananas.

“And one shoe,” said the first, finally turning to face Celandine. She immediately noted the tattoo on the back of his hand, a shield design executed in Rector red and depicting a serpent impaled upon a lance. He was a slim man, maybe thirty-something, maybe forty-something but with the white skin and milk blonde hair of a child. Intelligent looking and quite handsome, Celandine decided.

“You’re Barbegris’ lackey?” he asked.

“I was sent to fetch you,” she conceded. “And I’m a disciple cleric, not a lackey.”

“My apologies, madam cleric,” he said sarcastically.

The third man, the tallest of the three, giggled at this, his ice blue eyes dancing with laughter.

“Shouldn’t we do something for him?” said Celandine, indicating the comatose man.

“With pleasure,” said the third man, drawing his pistol and aiming it at the fallen man’s head, his hips thrust forward in an aggressively brash stance.

“Wait!” cried Celandine. “I didn’t mean…”

“Didn’t you?” said the tattooed man. “Then I’m not sure what else we can do for him.”

“Perhaps we should just go.”

Tattoo indulged in a self-satisfied smile.

“Indeed. Do lead on.”

They did not tell her their names. They did not talk to her. Sitting in the back of the wagon they spoke freely to one another, mostly to make disparaging remarks about what had become of the once green and fertile world of Idix but they did not talk to Celandine.

Divine Azerro’s church was some miles from Casario, in an abandoned town on the other side of the Largesse. They crossed over via the Marquez Bridge. In the middle of the wide, dry riverbed beneath them sat the beached paddle steamer Missy Lou, its hull and paddles buried deeply into the rock hard earth like the foundations of a small wooden castle. It was currently home to dozens of displaced plantation workers and their families. Children played on its upper deck. Men dismantled its railings to sell for scrap. Women hung washing on lines that ran from the ship’s prow up to its single smokestack.

On the far side of the river, the roads were uneven and potholed and the wagon shook fiercely as it rolled along. Celandine wished she had been able to locate a better vehicle for Barbegris’ guests, something with an engine at least, but the best she could find was an open top wagon, pulled by a tired old nag and driven by a young esclave boy in a straw hat and no shoes. The boy, who was more accustomed to transporting bananas than people, had demanded six rouples for his services but Celandine had bullied him down to three.

The journey lasted more than an hour and took them out into the newly formed desert. The sun beat down on them from an utterly blue sky. The wagon was uncovered and there was not the slightest shade for the travellers. Nonetheless, there were no grumbles from the men and when they reached their destination, they climbed down carefully, stretching aching limbs, brushing dust and creases from their uniforms and surveyed the place they had been brought to.

“Where the divinities are we?” said the yellow-toothed one.

“A ghost town,” replied Tattoo.

The place had been deserted for some time. The main street, which had never been overly prosperous or charming, was now reduced to a series of smashed windows, rotting timbers and fallen shop signs. Wind, dust and time had faded everything to the same earthy colour as the surrounding desert, as though the town through sheer embarrassment was attempting to become invisible.

After the river dried up and the crops failed, the town’s population had, in the space of a year, dwindled from over a thousand to zero, a level at which it had remained until three months ago when it rose sharply again to two.

“You live here?” said the tall one, Blue Eyes.

“Just about,” Celandine replied. “Over this way.”

Celandine led them through the town towards the church as the boy turned his wagon round and set off back towards Casario.

“There’d better be something to drink,” said Yellow Teeth, hawking up phlegm from the back of his throat.

“Altar wine,” chuckled Blue Eyes to himself.

“Cheap grog, if I know Aldiss,” said Tattoo.

Dv Azerro’s church was a small sandstone building that squatted like a toad at the edge of the town square. It was an unexceptional church with a dome that rose no more than forty feet above street level. The three soldiers had to duck down to get through the doorway as they followed Celandine into the porch and then had to wait some time for their eyes to adjust to the dim candlelit interior.

“Oi! Father,” Celandine called out. “Your guests are here.”

There was a mumble and clatter from behind the screen and Father Aldiss Barbegris Venerable Cleric of the Course of Divine Liminis emerged. Celandine had faintly hoped that he would have made an effort to tidy the place before his guests arrived but, of course, he hadn’t. The floor was still strewn with the scrolls, church records and smashed reliquary chests that he had been rummaging aimlessly amongst for the past week or more. His one concession to his visitors was to clear a table and put four chairs, all different, around it. Celandine saw that he had unwisely decided to use a mouldy, moth-eaten drape as a tablecloth.

At least she had assumed he would make himself look presentable for his visitors but he had done nothing of the sort. He was still wearing the same brown robes he had worn all summer. His grey beard was still untrimmed and, on close inspection, seen to be dotted with crumbs of food. The band of his ragged eyepatch still cut awkwardly across the top of his head, making half of his hair stand upright like a hedgehog’s spines. And, naturally, his manner had improved none since that morning.

“What took you so long?” he demanded, hobbling forward, a pot of red tilak in his hand.

Tattoo smiled.

“Father,” he said, touching his head in obeisance but twisting the word to make it an insult rather than an honorific. “How pleasant to see you.”

Barbegris gave each man the briefest, most cursory blessing and anointed each of their foreheads with the red powder. Tattoo raised his eyes to inspect the building. He was understandably unimpressed.

“And what a fine hole you’ve hidden yourself in this time.”

“Homph,” Barbegris grunted graciously, either failing to spot the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “I was stationed in this town when we built the rivergate from here to Agrium.”

“Mmmm,” Tattoo nodded. “Yes, we saw the wonders your gateway had wrought on our way here. You must be very proud.”

“Homph. Haven’t you heard? This in the end of days, when worlds fail. You thirsty?”

“Parched.”

“Drinks then.”

Barbegris, wiped the red tilak from his hands onto his robes, clicked his fingers at Celandine and gestured to the balcony above. Celandine dutifully climbed the stairs and set about finding food and drink that she would not be embarrassed to serve to others.

The wide upper level balcony ran around the entire wall of the church building. In the days when it was a functioning church, the balcony was used to house any members of the congregation who could find no space below. Now, it was Celandine and Barbegris’ living space. Barbegris had built himself a bed out of pew seats with a mattress formed from hundreds of hymn books, topped with an altar cloth blanket. Celandine slept on a pile of old cleric vestments round the other side, far from Barbegris’ snores. Between the two sleeping spaces was their meagre store of provisions and what Barbegris laughably referred to as the kitchen.