"Jake, you shouldn't have," Susan said as we moved away.
"I know. I did enjoy it, though."
I drove into the mouth of the beast.
15
The throat was a yawning cavity that narrowed into an esophageal tube tunneling downward into the bowels of the island-beast. The walls of the passage were pale and sweaty, heaving with peristaltic motion. It was slippery going, but the rollers handled it fairly well. After a quarter klick or so the tube opened onto a vast dark chamber. There were hundreds of vehicles already parked here, many others in the process, their headbeams moving in the darkness a long way from the entrance. I followed the line of buggies heading toward them.
"I'll be…" Sam began. Then he said, "I can't think of anything that fits the occasion. I'm speechless."
We all were. It took a good while to get to the parking area, and we spent it in silence. Finally we could see sailors in white tops with red and white striped bell-bottoms directing traffic, slicing the gloom with powerful torches. I pulled alongside one of them, a skinny, baby-faced kid, and cracked the port. A faint odor of decayed fish came through, plus a whiff of brackish stagnant water, but the overall smell of the place wasn't hard to deal with. It simply smelled like the sea.
''Where to, sailor? Looks like you're running out of room."
"Over against the wall, starrigger!" the sailor yelled, playing the torchbeam against a glistening area of greenish-white tissue.
I eased the rig forward until the front of the engine housing kissed the wall. The tissue quivered and drew back slightly, then slowly came back to meet the rig and began oozing over the housing, then stopped.
"Drive into it!" the kid shouted over the din of engine sounds. "Push it back!"
I did. The wall receded before us, billowing out like a giant curtain. Before long I felt it resist, and I hit the brake.
"Go ahead," the kid told me in a high voice. "It'll stretch a klick before it tears a c-meter. C'mon, move that punkin' pigmobile!"
"Aye, aye, Cap'n!" I gunned it, and the wall shivered and yielded. I rammed the rig forward until I heard "Ho-o-o!"
"Are we the main course, or just the appetizer?" John wanted to know.
"There must be five hundred vehicles in here," Roland said.
"More," I ventured.
Somebody rapped smartly on the hatch. I turned to have a torchbeam stab my retinas. "Hey, swabbie!" I growled. "Want me to show you how that thing doubles as a suppository?"
"Take it easy, truckle." It was the same sailor who'd directed us. She was young, very young ― no more than sixteen or so. Antigeronics can't give you that kind of baby-skin. She wore her hair cropped short under a traditional Dixiecup hat, but the hat was gold, not white. And she wasn't all that skinny, either. She was blooming under that deckhand outfit.
"You can't stay here, you know," she said.
Blinking, I looked around. "What about non-oxy breathers?"
"Them we don't care about, but all humans go topside. Insurance regs." She started to leave.
"Wait a minute," I called after her. "Don't get testy, now. Just a few questions."
"Make 'em short. We're way behind schedule."
"Consolidated Outworlds ― is that a human-occupied maze?"
"Mostly."
"Hmm. Okay, now, are we actually in the stomach of this thing?"
"No, a predigestive sac. Fiona's got two of these and twelve stomachs, but we don't like to use those unless we have to.
Have to spray 'em down with gastric inhibitors ― and they smell bad."
"Fiona? It's a female?"
"Hard to say one way or the other."
"Huh? Oh…"
"Is that it?"
"That's it, except to ask if all the deckhands are as good-looking as you."
"Ah, shut up." She turned on her heel and stalked away.
"Hey! One more thing."
"What?" she answered impatiently.
"How do we get topside?"
"Elevator!"
"Elevator?"
Elevator.
And there it was, a circular metal-framed shaft rising through a hole in the roof. The juncture of frame and roof was sealed by a white spongy collar that seemed to be there to protect the surrounding organ-tissue. The elevator car was bullet-shaped and transparent, suspended by thick metal cables.
"Any construction you'd do inside this beastie," Roland said as we boarded the car, "would be more like a surgical procedure."
"Yeah, but the patient's sturdy enough to withstand it," I said, then added sotto voce, "Did you plant that transponder?"
"Yes, at the base of the frame."
"You agree it'll shoot Sam's signal up this shaft?"
"Don't see why not. But how do you get it out of the shaft and through the doors? ― if there're doors."
"We put another one up top, of course."
The car was filling up, and we got scrunched to the back. A tall, blue, webfooted alien trod on my instep as he backed up, then turned his piscine head and wheezed something that sounded apologetic.
The trip up was a long one. The outer door at the top of the shaft was an ornate gilt folding gate which opened onto what looked like the plush lobby of an ancient Terran hotel. There were red leather settees and armchairs, matching ottomans, coffee tables, freestanding ashtrays, and potted plants. The walls were done up in red and gold fabric. It was a scene out of the past ― tastefully done too, nothing like the usual quickie/functional decor you see back in the Maze. It was a big place, packed with sentient flesh.
"Ah, atmosphere," John said.
I turned to Darla. "Spot anybody?"
She took a long look around the place. "No."
"Yeah, but they're here, or will be. Everybody who was chasing us. Maybe even Wilkes."
"He'll be here," she said, as if she knew. Maybe she did.
Another long wait, this time to get a cabin, and that was after standing in line at the purser's office. I gave Darla back her coins and traded about a quarter of my gold stash for consols, paid C-38.5 for the fare, and gave John some cash in partial payment for the hospital bill he'd picked up back on Goliath. When it came time to register for the cabin, I had my fake ID in hand, but the clerk waved it off.
"Don't need your ID, sir, just your name. This is a free society."
I looked at the plasticard, which stated that I was one T. Boggston Fisk, Esq., and I thought, there's a time to run and a time to stop running. Time for the fox to turn and face the dogs, come what may. I put the card away.
"Jake McGraw, and friends."
He bent over the keyboard, then straightened up quickly and looked at me. "Did you say… Jake McGraw?"
"That's right."
"Glad to have you aboard the Laputa, sir."
"Glad to be anywhere right now. Tell me, when do we get where we're going? And where are we going?"
"We should make Seahome by tomorrow afternoon, sir. That's the biggest town here on Splash."
"Splash? That's what the planet's called?"
"Well, it isn't really called anything officially, and every language group seems to have its own name, but in Intersystem it's called Akwaterra."
"Straightforward enough. I take it there are large land masses then?"
"Big enough, but not continent-size."
Welcome to Splash, but don't go near the water.
The Laputa?
Carrying my bag only (Darla had opted to keep hers), a steward led us to another elevator. We went up to B Deck, where we followed him through a maze of corridors. Roland lagged behind, planting more transponders at various strategic and inconspicuous locations.
Our adjoining staterooms were lavish, the crappers positively palatial, with sunken tubs made of a gold-veined stone that looked something like marble. There were few modern conveniences, but the charm more than made up for the lack. I tried to think of the last time I'd used a bathtub.