Luc became aware of a slow, dragging shuffle, echoing from some way further down the corridor. Peering ahead, he saw the very creature he’d come looking for disappear into a shadowed alcove, not far from where the corridor came to an end.
Part of him wanted to turn back, to the world of daylight and air that didn’t smell of mould and disinfectant and death. His heart thundered inside his chest at the thought of going any farther. Worse, he had no idea how de Almeida might react if she discovered he had come down here.
But he had to know.
Making his way quickly to the same alcove into which the stooped figure had disappeared, Luc found himself at the entrance to a wide, low-ceilinged room. Instantly he was bathed in a blast of heat emanating from an open furnace at the opposite end of the room from him, the air shimmering violently from the heat. Rubbish was piled up on either side of the furnace door, while several more of de Almeida’s eyeless monstrosities worked steadily at shovelling it all into the flames.
He saw the stooped creature he had followed, outlined by the flames dancing in the heart of the furnace. At first he thought it would pick up a shovel and join its companions, but instead, to his unending horror, it climbed in through the open furnace door, burning like a torch as the flames caught at its ragged clothes. Apparently impervious to pain, it continued to move deeper into the furnace before slowly pitching forward.
The roar of the furnace grew incrementally louder for a second or two.
Luc heard a sound like the cry of an animal caught in a trap, then realized it had come from his own throat.
He took several steps backwards and stumbled against the wall of the passageway. His lungs felt like they had turned to ice despite the intensity of the heat.
The next thing he knew, he was back upstairs and halfway through the greenhouse attached to de Almeida’s laboratory. He kept going until he was outside, then collapsed against a low wall bordering a garden before again throwing up over some artfully arranged flowers.
As de Almeida had promised, a flier stood waiting for him, a blunt-nosed affair with a more utilitarian appearance than most, meaning it was probably used primarily as a goods vehicle. He staggered towards it as if drunk, climbing on board and barely noticing when it lifted up into clear blue skies.
He closed his eyes, but all he could see was that same stooped figure pitching forward into an inferno.
And maybe one day de Almeida will get tired of trying to help you, and turn you into another one of her monsters.
As he hugged himself, and the flier boosted high into the atmosphere, it came to him that he was going to have to try and save himself, although how he might do that remained beyond him. De Almeida was quite possibly psychotic, and the rest of the Council – those same people he’d given a lifetime of service to – were, judging by what he’d seen and heard, even worse.
But that didn’t mean he had any choice but to play along for the moment. He thought again of those terrible bright flames, and felt as if strips of gauze had been lifted from his eyes. The world seemed different now, had taken on a new and sinister edge.
Between that – and the long, painful quest to find out what purpose might lie behind Antonov’s surgery on him – all he could do was wait.
TWELVE
A couple of hours after rescuing Jacob, Jonathan Kulic guided his horse and cart into a small settlement on the edge of the forest, just as the sky began to redden towards dusk.
Jacob watched the landscape pass by from under the carpet Kulic had thrown over him in the rear of the cart. He kept the case he had recovered from his ship clutched tight against his chest. The settlement that Kulic called home was, to Jacob’s eyes, astoundingly primitive. Smoke spiralled upwards from thatched-roof dwellings, while candles and lanterns flickered from inside windows formed from heavy, puddled glass. There were farm animals in pens, and a stable with horses. It was a stark contrast to the spires of one of Darwin’s cities, glittering on the far horizon.
Kulic guided his horse and cart into a barn, then led Jacob into his home through an adjoining door. Kulic’s residence proved to be a single-storey affair of brick and plaster, with wooden floorboards that creaked with every step.
Jacob’s duty was to hide himself in one of these Left-Behind communities, and take advantage of the Coalition’s incomprehensible willingness to allow them to continue existing. From his conversation with Kulic throughout their journey from the coast, he had learned that the Left-Behind had become considerably more militant in their beliefs over the decades, having come to reject nearly every form of technology imaginable, up to and including previously accepted technologies such as the internal-combustion engine and electricity. The electric torch Kulic had used to aid him in his search through the deep forest was something he was forced to keep secret from his neighbours.
The only source of heat in Kulic’s hovel came from a heavy iron stove, with flames licking behind a narrow grate. Pots and pans hung from steel hooks above a table scattered with the ruins of chopped vegetables. Jacob stood close by the stove, warming his hands before the grate and trying hard not to breathe too deeply, since everything smelled of mould and animal shit. He wondered what the Darwinians, living as they did in their shining silver cities, made of it all when they gazed down at these disease-ridden hovels, clustered together in the mud and filth.
‘Once the beacon told me you were here, I spread it about that a cousin might come to visit me from New Jerusalem,’ Kulic explained as he closed the latch on the front door. ‘That settlement’s a long way away from here, a good four or five days’ journey on horseback. I thought it’d make as good a story as anything else.’
‘It’ll do,’ said Jacob, his attention still focused on getting warm. ‘It’s called a transceiver, by the way, not a beacon. Where do you keep it?’
‘Downstairs,’ Kulic replied, ‘in the cellar.’
‘I would like to see it, please,’ said Jacob, looking around. He hadn’t seen any sign of steps or a staircase leading down.
Kulic stepped towards the centre of the room, reaching down to pull a faded, hand-woven rug to one side and revealing a trapdoor with an iron ring set into it. Kulic pulled the trapdoor up with a grunt, revealing a short ladder leading downwards. A foul miasma rose from below, and Jacob covered his mouth, thinking that even the cave in the woods had been better than this.
Kulic climbed down the steps and out of sight. With a sigh, Jacob wrenched himself away from the stove’s welcoming heat and followed the old man down.
Farming implements hung from hooks all around the walls of the stone-floored cellar. Kulic lit a gas lantern hanging from a hook in the ceiling then, as Jacob watched, stepped over to a barrel that had been pushed into a corner, a rusted kettle and several dirty-looking rags dumped on top of it.
Kulic brushed all of this junk onto the floor, then lifted the lid from the barrel, which proved to be full of oily-looking water. He took hold of an almost invisibly thin thread hanging over the side of the barrel and pulled on it with extreme care, soon drawing a package wrapped in heavy oilskins up from the barrel’s depths before depositing it on the floor. Jacob watched as the old man carefully unwrapped the package to reveal a large wooden box.