City Under the Stars

7

THERE WERE TEN HEAVILY armed mounted soldiers, plus Delgardo. They had brought an extra horse for Hanson, and laughed openly at him when he failed at his first two attempts to mount it, sliding to the ground while the horse snorted and moved about uneasily, as if it didn’t like his smell. At last, painfully, he hauled himself into the saddle. The beast rolled an eye back at him and snorted again, but then settled down resignedly. Hanson had only had a couple of occasions to ride a horse in his entire life, and he’d forgotten the strange feeling of all that breathing, moving muscle under him that he was somehow supposed to control; it took him a few tries to get the horse moving in the right direction, eliciting more laughter all around, but at last they set off.

It was strange, very strange, to be riding across the meadow he’d studied from his window for so long, watching the little marmoset-like creatures scatter and dive into their holes in the rocks to hide at their approach, and Hanson experienced a wave of dizziness and unreality that almost made him fall from his horse, and it took him a moment to convince himself that this wasn’t a dream, that it was really happening, that he was outside, and let the world settle again around him.

At the bottom of the meadow, they turned onto the road where the firefight had happened, and which the refugees from some battle somewhere had streamed down, and he turned in his saddle to watch until the grim bulk of the prison disappeared from sight. As it did, he felt another wave of unreality, and then, the last thing he’d ever expected to feel, a surge of hope, and he prayed that he’d never see that place again in his life. The thought of returning and being interned again in its airless depths filled him with horror. He realized that Delgardo was right—better to take his chances with whatever destiny had in store for him in the City. Even if it killed him, maybe it would at least be a quick death. Better that than going back to where he’d rotted for so long.

As he became more comfortable with the unfamiliarity of riding, he began to pay less attention to controlling his mount and more attention to breathing in the world around him, an unbelievable luxury he’d almost forgotten during the time when all he could experience of life was a slit-window in a stone wall. A breeze had come up from the south, smelling of spring, the first wildflowers were opening to either side of the road, and there was a kind of tree growing in clusters here that he was unfamiliar with, leaves a bright vivid red, as though it was burning, flaming with life. Even the pungent smell of his horse’s sweat was welcome.

He was still convinced that they were all headed for their deaths—but Death was not here yet; there was still time to enjoy a few more heartbeats, a few more breaths, luxuriate in the sultry breeze rich with the smell of life. Life, for however long it lasted, was its own reward, its own reason for being, and Hanson thought again about his poor stunted tree, trying somehow to grow in inhospitable soil in a niche in a ruined rock wall; if it could think, would it rather it had never existed, or would it be grateful for whatever time it had been given? Existence was the greatest gift imaginable. Maybe that was why life was so filled with misery and heartbreak—because something so valuable required the highest price imaginable, just so it could be properly appreciated.

As their party approached another stand of the flametrees, they flushed a small herd of hoppers, who bounded across the road in front of them with prodigious leaps. Delgardo stood up in his stirrups, stretching his arms wide to either side in a flamboyant, look-at-me gesture, then drew a long-barreled pistol from a saddle holster and snapped off a seemingly casual and unaimed shot that nevertheless caught one of the hoppers in mid-leap and sent it crashing to the ground, where it twitched and gasped among the dust of the road. “Fresh meat tonight, boys!” he crowed, well-pleased with himself, and dispatched two of the soldiers to finish off the dying hopper, dress and quarter it, and store the hurriedly wrapped meat behind their saddles. While this was going on, Delgardo, still standing in his stirrups, grinning broadly, made his horse prance in a little circle, as though he were waiting for applause, and it didn’t seem to bother him that none came.

He couldn’t be more pleased with himself, Hanson thought, shaken out of his philosophical musings. He doesn’t need anybody else to applaud for him, he’ll do it for himself. Hanson had run across men like this a few times before, usually members of the aristocracy, with the unquestioned assumption of superiority that growing up rich gave you. With a chill, Hanson realized that Delgardo’s ego was so vast and swollen that not only did he think he was the most important person in the world, expecting acknowledgment and admiration from everyone else for that fact, but he thought that he was the only person in the world, the only real person, with everyone and everything else reduced to the role of unimportant spear-carriers in the unique and miraculous drama of his life. Such people were dangerous. He’d already known that Delgardo was dangerous, of course—he’d cut his throat, after all, even if he wasn’t really expecting Hanson to die—but now the realization set deeper in that Delgardo would sacrifice him, or anybody else, in a heartbeat if it enabled him to get what he wanted. He’d have to be very cautious with how he behaved toward Delgardo if he wanted to get out of this alive—but then, he realized, with a curious kind of relief, that really didn’t matter. The City would kill them all anyway.

After an hour or so on the road, they turned east, toward the City of God.

The road leading to the City of God had been considerably widened since Hanson had seen it last. Back then, when he was marched to captivity, hands tied behind his back, it had been little more than a track in the forest. Now it was big enough to accommodate a constant flow of mule-drawn army wagons, those headed inward loaded with food and supplies, those outward mostly empty, though some few were heavily laden and those few covered with heavy canvas tarps and guarded by more armed soldiers than seemed necessary.

“The fewer questions you ask, the less you’ll have to regret,” Delgardo said when he caught Hanson staring at one of those wagons. But Hanson had known better than to ask questions out of simple curiosity for longer than he cared to remember. It was one of the first things that got beaten out of you in school. He simply looked away—away from the wagons, away from the guards, away from Delgardo’s hard stare. He heard a snort of scornful amusement from the man as he did so, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

A few miles later, from the top of a small rise, they got their first look at the Wall of the City of God. Hanson had seen it at a distance every day of his working life, as he slaved away up on an outdoor platform at the State Factory in Orange, and, to his sorrow, he had seen it close-up once before—but it was still a breathtaking sight, beautiful and terrible, so that his emotions snagged in his throat as he looked at it. The Wall, hundreds of feet high, stretched out of sight in either direction, extending more than five hundred miles from south to north. It glowed, smoldering with pinks and coral reds, and Hanson well remembered the heat it generated, like walking into a furnace if you got too close.

The shining immensity of the wall had a black gap in it, directly ahead, as if someone had knocked out a great beast’s two bottom front teeth—marking the place where, long ago, Hanson had shut down that section of the Wall, allowing humans entry to the City of God beyond.

Hanson had a wild moment of panic where he considered turning his horse around and making a break for it, galloping as fast as he could go—but it was hopeless. Delgardo would bring him down as easily as he had the hopper, or some of the other, much more experienced horsemen would catch up with him. Reluctantly, he followed the others down the hill toward the City, his fear growing as the Wall rose higher and higher above them.

Since he’d last been here, an Army encampment had been built alongside the gap in the Wall, hundreds of tents clustered close around a few plain, obviously hastily slapped-together wooden buildings. As they rode up, Hanson saw detachments of soldiers working to raise a wooden palisade to replace the section of Wall that had been taken down. A second palisade surrounded the camp. Nearby was a cemetery and there were soldiers working there too, digging graves for canvas-wrapped corpses and filling them in again. Delgardo noticed him looking and said, “That’s right, Hanson. There was a big incursion from the South only three days ago, soldiers trying to drive us out and take over control of the City. There was a pitched battle in which hundreds died on either side. These are the poor bastards who lingered for a while in the hospital tents. See what you’ve wrought, eh? If you’d never opened up the City of God, those men wouldn’t have died.” He smiled gently at the graves. “And a lot more men are going to die in the future! All because of you.” He sounded oddly pleased at the prospect. Hanson tightened his jaw, but said nothing.

In the camp, they surrendered their mounts to the quartermaster. Hanson learned that horses went mad with fear if you tried to take them into the City, and refused to go no matter how much you whipped them, even if you whipped them to death. They’d have to walk from here on. Nor were horses the only ones afflicted. When the soldiers stayed too long in the City, they had horrible dreams which grew worse with every passing night until they refused to sleep for fear of what they would see, grew rebellious and hard to command, and even—some of them—went mad. So, after a few abortive attempts to build a base inside the Wall resulted in an untold number of deaths and suicides and one near-mutiny, the officers had given in and raised the camp outside, at a respectful distance from the City of God, and, they hoped, from the malign influences it seemed to radiate.

While their sergeant—a man with the unlikely name of Barker, usually appropriate enough for a sergeant, although Barker was a quiet man with tired, pouched eyes that had seen too much and knew that they were going to see more—went to arrange tents for them, they sat around in a rest area. Hanson was struck by what a glum and dispirited camp it was, lacking the horseplay and jocular shouted insults that would usually characterize a bunch of off-duty soldiers with nothing to do but wait for the mess hall to open as dusk came on.

Once, when Hanson was a boy, he saw a “gorilla,” although it was more likely to have actually been one of those half-human hybrids that the ramshackle little nations to the west kept trying to use as soldiers. It was in a cage on a wagon in a pathetic little carnival that had passed through town, and all the children had come running out to jeer at it and poke at it with sticks between the bars. The ape had ignored them all, enduring everything, simply sitting and staring at nothing.

That was how the soldiers sat, empty-eyed and uncaring, not looking at anything, nor so far as could be determined thinking anything either. Marshaling their strength for the next battle.

It occurred to Hanson to wonder if York was losing this war. Then it occurred to him to wonder if there even was such a nation as the State of York anymore, or if it had been swallowed by the Stabilities of Portland or some other nation, or reorganized into some other political entity altogether. He had lost touch with the world in the years he’d rotted in prison, and the world hadn’t waited for him. So much had changed. Was there anyplace where he belonged anymore?

That night, alone in his pup tent, the Wall smoldered through Hanson’s dreams, and for the first time in years, he felt the key move within his chest, as though the nearness to the City of God were bringing it back to life.

The next morning, they marched into the City of God, the hair rising on the back of Hanson’s neck as they crossed through the palisade’s gate and into the City itself. The land before them had originally looked like a vast lawn or meadow, freckled with occasional pairs of silver dots—the plates that the Utopians had used to transport themselves instantaneously from place to place—now, however, encased in crude cages of metal bars so that nobody would blunder across them to be transported who-knew-where and, more likely than not, never be seen again. The land gracefully swelled and ebbed, a park essentially, with the occasional copse of flametrees. It should have been beautiful—it had been beautiful once. But it was scarred with pits and trenches hacked into the land and there were black smears where stands of trees had been chopped down and burned, for what purpose Hanson could not guess. To one side, a cluster of graceful buildings or machines or whatever-they-were intruded into the parkland and they looked wrong too, some of them streaked with soot, suggesting that the Army had tried to blast them open with explosives, others ashen and wilting, like dying plants.

Down the center of the meadow was a dirt track that led straight from the camp then suddenly jogged to one side and, after a bit, abruptly to the other before driving straight into another grouping of maybe-buildings. Those earlier soldiers who had come to loot the City of God, it appeared, had undergone their share of unpleasant adventures.

The soldiers were mostly quiet as they walked, even Delgardo seeming a bit overawed by the alien strangeness all around them, although there was some nervous speculation among the men about whether the old Utopians were somewhere inside the buildings—if buildings they were—staring ominously out at them, preparing to strike. Hanson knew better. There were no Utopians here, not in any form he understood or could recognize, anyway. But they had left thousands of their toys behind, still working, and most of them could be deadly if you blundered into them. One of the youngest soldiers, a pock-faced boy named Lopez, one cheek heavily scarred by a radiation burn, was the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself, enthusing about how beautiful and wonderful and strange everything was, until at last Sergeant Barker glumly told him, “Shut up, Lopez. You’re not on fucking vacation.” And Hanson surprised himself by adding, “Ai, it’s pretty, but anything here can kill you in a second, without any Goddamned warning. Don’t touch anything. Don’t go through anything. Don’t go under anything. And keep on the Goddamned path.”

Delgardo glanced back at him, and then gestured for Hanson to take the lead, although Hanson could see it hurt his pride to surrender it. “Silly to bring the only one who’s been here before and then not use him as a guide, eh?” he said, and you could almost hear the unspoken words he shared with the rest of the men: Let him be the first one to die, if something goes wrong.

Hanson walked at the front of the group thereafter. They traveled nearly five miles that day, cautiously but steadily, along ways that had been mapped out as safe by previous incursions into the City. Bringing up the rear of their party was the Stumper, a tremendous pair of metal elephant legs which had been fitted with a wooden wagon, wheels and axles excised, atop what would have been its waist had there been more of it. It looked like a walking basket piled high with food rations, barrels of water, and other supplies and was led by a soldier tugging it along at the end of a rope.

Hanson had laughed involuntarily when he first saw the thing, and of course Delgardo demanded to know why. “Well, just look at it,” Hanson said. The Stumper was made of hundreds of sliding parts that eased in and out of each other so that in motion its gleaming surface seemed to flow like water. The basket-wagon atop it was crudely designed and clumsily built. “Whatever that thing is for, it for sure a’n’t just for humping cargo about. But this is the best your sort can do with it. You’re like a manshogger that’s found a rifle and all he can think to do with it is use it as a club.”

To his surprise, Delgardo laughed, and though there were sneering overtones to it, on the whole the laughter sounded genuine. “You’re one hundred percent right, Hanson, we’re dealing with technology that’s unfathomably beyond our comprehension, and our very best uses of it are nothing but jury-rigged kludges. Yet, for all that, a manshogger with a club has a distinct advantage over a manshogger without one.”

As dusk began to fall, they made camp at the edge of an open area where multicolored tentacles of light rose from a tangle of gently swaying mists, closed ends to form shimmering rings, dwindled as they ascended, and finally disappeared with soft, musical chimes. The spectacle was probably just for looks; nevertheless, Hanson was glad that there was a stream between them and it. The soldiers got to work pitching tents and digging a slit latrine. While they did, Hanson, who had been assigned no duties, stood apart from the rest, looking at the rising loops of prismatic mists. The buildings had closed around them and then opened up again into what he thought of as a park, though God only knew what function it might actually have served. The “park” was probably safe; he’d passed through its like many a time before and never been hurt by one. But there were structures in every direction that hurt his brain if he tried to make sense of their shapes: a twisted disk taller than the Courthouse in Orange, with a square hole punched through the left half of it; a braided noodle of bright red and yellow tubes that unraveled at the top and flopped downward without quite reaching the ground; an inverted pyramid made up of rotating rectangles that Hanson almost couldn’t pry his eyes away from. On the horizon, one structure soared high above the others, a series of intersecting arches with steep spires, like the sharp wings of bats hanging from a cave ceiling only reversed, which seemed to challenge the sky itself. It glowed the same eerie red-pink-gold as did the Wall itself, and that frightened him very much indeed.

The longer he stared at the thing, the more convinced he became that it—or something within it, but most likely the building itself—was staring back at him, studying him, analyzing him. Making plans.

It was making plans for Hanson specifically because he had the key within him. Delgardo believed in little healing machines because little healing machines were something a man could believe in and almost understand. But Hanson knew better. The truth was not only stranger than a man might believe, it was stranger than a man could believe. Somehow the key was protecting him and, for whatever unfathomable reasons, Delgardo as well.

Periodically, Hanson would remember with a sudden rush of dread and loathing that was almost a seizure, the moment the key had seized him, a metal rod bursting out of Boone’s dead chest, unfolding several joints, and then plunging into Hanson’s chest, passing through skin and muscle and cloth as if they didn’t exist, sinking out of sight within his body and leaving no trace of its existence behind.

Since then, it had always been with him, although sometimes when it was quiet inside him months and months would go by without him thinking of it at all. It was the key that had enabled him to pass alive through the Wall of the City of God, it was the key that had enabled him to seize control of the City for a critical moment, it was the key that had enabled him to shut down a section of the Wall, thus giving birth to the present they lived in now, it was the key that provided his limited “immortality,” that had cured his Crab, that kept him seemingly the same age no matter how much time had gone by, maybe by creating and replenishing the little machines in his blood that Delgardo believed in but more likely by some other process, one he would never be smart enough to understand.

Throughout all the interrogations he’d endured at the prison, through all the torture and pain and mutilation and horror and humiliation, the one thing he’d never mentioned about his trip inside the City of God was the key. Sometimes it seemed as if the key itself was somehow keeping him from saying anything about it, since when they were ripping his fingernails out with red-hot tongs, and he was trying to come up with anything he could say to make them stop, and he tried to tell them about the key to see if that would please them, the words disappeared from his throat somehow, and he found himself unable to speak them no matter how cruelly his interrogators abused his flesh.

Thank all the gods that might exist that he hadn’t told them, he thought now. If he had, then Overton would have written it down in his notes, and Delgardo would know about it. And if Delgardo knew… He was an intelligent man. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that it was the key inside Hanson’s body that was replenishing his health, that was the real origin of Hanson’s “immortality.” And he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to rip it out of Hanson’s body and claim it for his own.

And suppose that Delgardo did claim the key? Suppose that made it possible somehow for him to somehow seize control of the City?

That mustn’t happen.

There was no way that Delgardo would relinquish the godlike power that Hanson had once refused. No, he would use it instead. Use it for his own ends, to achieve his every selfish desire and grandiose wish. He’d extend his power to affect the world outside the Wall, as Hanson had declined to do, shape it however he wanted, bend it to his will. His use of the power would grow more and more extravagant, until, with his ego, he’d try to make people worship him as a god. Which in a way, he would be―a vain, petty, cruel, ruthless god.

Most of his life, Hanson had passively drifted with the tide, doing what he was supposed to do, asking no questions, making no trouble. Even him being back in the City again was the result of being swept along by the tide of someone else’s will; Delgardo had willed it, Delgardo had made it happen. All he’d done, however reluctantly, was do what he was told. Only twice in his life had he ever initiated and taken decisive action, when he’d killed Oristano the foreman, and when he opened a section of the City of God to the world. No, not even twice, because he’d been swept along on a tide of rage and pride and despair when he’d killed Oristano, unable to stop himself, hardly aware of what he was doing until it was over; there had been no planning or foresight involved, no conscious decision. So then, only one time in his miserable life had he ever decided to do something on his own, something that was his own idea, and had the will to actually make himself do it―when he’d taken down the Wall. That hadn’t turned out exactly as he’d hoped that it would. But at least he’d tried. At least he’d taken action.

He couldn’t afford to be passively swept along any longer. He had to do something, not only to get out of this situation and save his own life, but to keep Delgardo from making the world an even more horrible place than it already was.

He had to do something.

But what?

The soaring golden structure continued to leer down at him, silently, mockingly. At last, with a shiver, Hanson turned his back on the thing and trudged into the center of the camp, to reserve himself a place on the ground before the newly built fire and wait for food to be cooked and served.

That night, Hanson dreamed of his wife, Becky, carried away in the White Winter all those unhappy years ago. She was young and beautiful, with the dewy blush of youth on her skin, the way she had looked when he first met her and seen in her everything he’d ever wanted or dreamed of. After she died, he’d locked away all memories of her in the deepest recesses of his mind, but they leaked out from time to time still. Looking at her, he began to weep for all they had once had and all he had lost forever. “Hanson,” she said. “This can’t go on. You’ve got to fight back.”

“I know, Becky, I know, but… I can’t. I just can’t.”

“You’ll be judged in the Cathedral. If you love me, you’ll—”

But abruptly, he found himself in the military cemetery, searching among the graves for the body of his dead wife, unwrapping the canvas from corpse after corpse and searching the faces for her features. One canvas wrapping moved slightly as he approached and, suddenly filled with the certainty that she was after all still alive, he ripped open the cloth. Rats swarmed out, black and diseased, and when he flinched away in disgust, the corpse beneath them opened its eyes and was his old friend Boone, whose lipless mouth grinned madly and said, “Now it’s your turn to die. Ha! See how you like it!”

Nobody talked about it in morning, but from the sour expressions on their faces, Hanson was sure that he wasn’t the only one who’d suffered nightmares. After a cold breakfast, they broke camp and resumed their cautious march into the City. They hadn’t gone more than a mile when Hanson realized that Sergeant Barker had matched strides with him and they were walking abreast. Quietly, without looking his way, Barker said, “Stop baiting Delgardo.”

“Eh?” Hanson did not look at Barker either but continued walking along, scanning the City ahead, looking for trouble.

“Standing up to his kind don’t get y’nothing but trouble. He’s the commander. He’s got the law on his side, he’s got guns on his side, he’s got me on his side. You got nothing, an’ a man with nothing had best keep his head down. Hear what I’m saying?”

“Ai.”

“’Nuff said, then.” Barker slowed his pace, drifting back along the line. It touched Hanson that the sergeant would be looking out after him like that, though he doubted it was done out of any altruistic impulse. Men like Barker believed in keeping things calm, in damping things down before trouble had a chance to flare up. Hanson doubted very much that Barker could prevent the trouble that was brewing between him and Delgardo. But he admired him for trying.

Not long after, the stream curved to block their way. Luckily, there was a lacquered red bridge: wooden, arched, with railings to either side, looking perfectly out of place in its ordinariness. After a brief consultation with Delgardo, Hanson went over it by himself, each plank making a musical sound as he trod on it. When he reached the far side safely, he waved and the others ran across in a storm of bridge-song.

They were now beyond the previous explored areas, so there was no path to follow. Hanson asked Delgardo what they were looking for, and how he was supposed to find it when he didn’t know where they were going, but Delgardo had just looked scornful and said, “I’ll know it when I see it!,” although Hanson got the feeling that the smug air of superiority was only a facade to cover his own uncertainty. As Hanson had feared they would, they were heading toward the golden building-thing that had filled him with unease the night before. The Cathedral, he thought, and wondered where he had heard that name before. But at least it still seemed a good way off.

They had stopped for a break when they were startled by a sudden cry of fear. One of the soldiers―Miller? Fiske? Hanson was still having difficulty remembering who was who―had wandered a bit ahead and was pointing at a stand of flowering dwarf sequoias. A dark silhouette no thicker than his hand and as large as an elephant was picking its way daintily out of the trees. It had five long legs, all of different sizes, that tapered to points at the bottom and joined to form a hunched, headless torso at the top. The soldier raised his rifle to shoot at it.

Running with a speed he was amazed he was still capable of, Hanson managed to reach the soldier before he could fire and roughly seized the rifle barrel, pushing it to the side. “You don’t need to do that. It’s harmless. It’s a… a… a gardener. It plants seeds and trims trees, that’s all.” As they watched, the gardener paused to scoop a hole in the turf and then, with another limb, plucked a seedling from within its shadowy interior, and gently settled it into place. “A’n’t nothing to be afraid of.” Except, Hanson thought, for some other device, lurking unseen, that might take action to protect the gardener, if they looked like they might damage it. He’d run afoul of one such, before, and didn’t look forward to a second bout.

“I’m not afraid of nothing!” the boy snapped. He snatched away his rifle and indignantly started back toward the others. His path, though, was different from the meandering way he had come for, with shocking abruptness, something seized him and slammed him to the ground. Struggling weakly, pressed flat to the ground, obviously unable to rise, he cried, “Help! Help! It’s crushing me!”

The soldiers came running. At a barked order from Delgardo, two of them flung themselves down on the ground and crawled rapidly forward on their elbows to seize Dawkins—Hanson had decided it was neither Miller or Fiske, but rather Dawkins—by the ankles. Four more soldiers seized the legs of those two and pulled, so that, almost effortlessly, Dawkins was slid backward and out of the crushing zone, where gravity was, apparently, many times greater than it was in the ordinary world.

Sergeant Barker unbuttoned Dawkins’s shirt and examined his torso with a gentleness that could not have been bettered by the boy’s own mother before pronouncing him shaken but fundamentally unhurt. “There’ll be bruising,” he said, “that’s all.”

Hanson put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You’re lucky,” he said. “That’s good. Lucky is a good thing to be.” He paused, thought better of what he was about to say, and then thought better of not saying it. “Don’t push that luck too far, though, a’right?” Turning away, he shouted, “Somebody fetch me a sack of flour!”

When one of the soldiers―Chan? Phillips? Marini?—had passed the flour to Hanson from the supplies on the Stumper, he dug a hand deep inside it and then flung the hand outward. White dust floated in the air. He took three steps forward and flung another handful. It too floated away. Two steps forward, a third fist of flour. This time, however, the flour drifted on the air—and then suddenly slammed to the ground.

Hanson grunted in satisfaction. The other times he had tried this trick, he’d had to use sand. Flour was much better. He flung further handfuls to either side of the stain. They too slammed downward.

Systematically, with meticulous caution, Hanson walked up and down the sharp-edged line of white, until it was clear that it was wider in one direction than the other. He continued to fling flour and follow the narrow white triangle he was creating until its two sides fined down to a point, touching a small, glowing purple tile set in the ground. It could have been covered by a thumb. “A’right. It’s marked now. Just go ’round by the front and you’ll be fine.”

Delgardo, smiling, turned to Hanson. “Is this something you saw before?”

“Ai.”

“Did it never occur to you to dig there, when you found one of these spots?”

“No,” Hanson answered, not seeing the point, “it never did. Sir.”

“Manshogger!” Delgardo said, almost fondly. Then, turning back to his men, he commanded, “Shovels out! Dig here!”

Several minutes’ painstaking work unearthed… something. It was deep red, the size of a man’s forearm, slick-surfaced, and smelled of cinnamon. Delgardo passed a hand over its surface and it turned emerald green. “It’s off now,” he said, and tossed it to one of his men. “Wrap that up and stow it away in the Stumper.” Then, raising his voice, “We made our first find, boys!”

They cheered.

To his horror, Hanson heard himself ask, “What is it?”

“No idea,” Delgardo said cheerily, giving him a hearty whack between the shoulder blades. “Down at the front, they’ve figured out how to put it to good use and they call it a gravity gun. But I seriously doubt it was ever intended to be used as a weapon, don’t you?”

Hanson shrugged.

“We manshoggers, though… We can turn almost anything into a weapon. That’s our gift. It’s what separates you and me from the animals.” Without transition, Delgardo pointed toward the distant golden building. “We’ve been walking for hours and the Cathedral hasn’t gotten any closer. How far away do you think it is? How big do you think it is?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about that thing. I don’t think we should go there,” Hanson said, remembering only at the last instant to add, “sir.” He did not mention the sensation, which he could not shake, that it was studying him, nor his suspicion that it was keeping its distance, moving on enormous legs, perhaps, the way some of the structures in the City could, while it made up its mind what to do about them. Nor did he ask how Delgardo knew its name.

Delgardo laughed. “You want to live forever, Hanson?” he said sarcastically. Then he shouted to the soldiers, “Get your asses in gear, boys! I bet we can reach that sumbitch by sundown.”

Not long after that conversation, they lost their first soldier.