“Oh. That’s bad.”
I declined to comment on his penchant for stating the obvious, because to do so would make me guilty of exactly that.
“So what do we do?”
“I’m open… to suggestions…”
“Ohhh, sure, now he wants my advice. Yeah, let’s ask the guy who’s been alive for, like, three hours to come up with a plan. Great idea!”
Two hundred yards ahead, the roof of the sewer burst into flame, burning so hot and fast that molten gobbets of burning cement cascaded into the sewer, blasting a wall of superheated steam toward us.
“Can’t you fight them?”
“I can,” I panted grimly. “Just not today.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Same… as before. You… shut up and I… run.”
If there are guardian spirits of fortune somewhere in creation, they must have been smiling upon me then; just ahead was a dump valve.
When hurricanes blow in across the Sea of Unknowing, the huge surge in rainfall can overfill the standard sluice pits around Tidehollow in less than an hour. The sewers are designed with dump valves that can be triggered from the city service center above to divert some of the billions of gallons of water and sewage that otherwise might drown the slums altogether. This was not from any concern for the residents, but only to avoid poisoning the fisheries that are Vectis’s main source of protein.
“What? You’re stopping? Why are you stopping?”
“Shut up.”
I reached up to the gearing of the valve control and sent a shining thread of etherium up along my arm and gave it half a second to spread through the mechanism. I yield to none in my skill with devices; what another being can design, I can subvert, which I proved by causing an earsplitting screech of half-rusted metal as the valve into the dump shaft ground itself open. The etherium was warm to the touch as it trailed back up my arm, almost as though pleased with a job well done.
“Great work!” But when I looked down, Doc discovered why it was called a dump shaft as opposed to, say, a dump tunnel-it is, in fact, vertical. “Um… really? Isn’t that kinda steep?”
“Yes,” I said, and dived headfirst into darkness.
Doc’s reply, “YeeeaaaAAAHHHH!” screeched in my ear as we hurtled downward, free-falling for some seconds. This was enough time for me to recover a bit of my breath, which would become vital, according to my best estimate, in a minute or so. Give or take ten seconds.
“Hey…” he said uncertainly when he finally gave up screaming. “There aren’t any witchlight globes in here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then where is that light coming from?” He was referring to the rosy glow that now began to catch highlights on the shaft walls.
I said, “Where do you think?”
“Oh, come on! Really?”
“Yes.”
“I’m starting to see why nobody likes you.”
“Not now,” I said, tucking my knees while I reached out and brushed the shaft wall with my fingertips, just enough to flip myself feet-downward. “This is going to hurt.”
“See, that’s exactly what I’m-”
This was as much as he managed to get out before we hit the slant at the bottom of the vertical shaft. I was wrong about it hurting; the impact was a shattering blast that whited out my vision for a second or two. It would hurt later. After I came out of shock.
If I lived that long.
The slant was wet and covered with thick oilmoss, which meant that we slid along it not much more slowly than we had fallen. I had plenty of time to peer backward and see the following magma scorpion hit the slant-and set the oil moss instantly ablaze.
Flames licked down toward us even faster than we could slide “What, fire?” Doc said. “You knew it was gonna catch fire?”
“No.” I chalked it up to the exigencies of planning a clever escape while running for one’s life. “Take it as a lesson to shut up when I need to think.”
“It’s not much of a lesson if learning it kills me!”
“We’re not dead yet,” I said. “Chum.”
At which point we burst down from the shaft through a cavern ceiling to the terminal chute of the spillway, whose semi-radical angle was shallow enough to send us skipping across the surface of the semicoagulated goo of the collection pool instead of burying us in it.
“Hey, not bad,” Doc said as our spinning slowed. “Maybe you are a Giant Brain after all.”
“I believe the appropriate phrase is, under the circumstances,” I said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
I turned so that I could start sculling us toward the shore, just as several tons of burning magma scorpion hurtled out of the terminal chute. Straight for us.
“This was your plan?”
“Yes.”
“You are completely-”
The rest of his assessment was lost as the magma scorpion splashed down into the collection pool; instead of skipping across the surface as we had, the magma scorpion detonated with the titanic BOOM of a catastrophic volcanic event. White-hot stone went everywhere, and entire segments of scorpion armor flew shrieking like a lobster in the pot through the dank Tidehollow gloom. A huge swelling shock wave picked us up and hurled us onto the bank. I scuttled back from the muck, which had now caught fire with an odor very much like one would expect from well-fermented burning sewage.
“Did you do that?” Doc sounded awed. “Sweet mother of petrified dingleberries…! How did you do that?”
“That steam-burst effect,” I said with what I felt was, under the circumstances, entirely justified satisfaction, “works both ways.”
“Wow. I mean, wow. Good plan!”
“Thank you.” I jogged away from the collection pool even as people from the surrounding hovels began to stream out to see what the noise had been.
“Where we going now?”
“Tide caves.”
“Tide caves?”
“They lead to open sea.”
“You’re saying-”
“I’m not saying. Here, watch.” I stopped and looked back. In the uplight from the burning collection pool, I could clearly see one magma scorpion scuttling sideways across the cavern wall below the dump shaft. Even as I looked, the other one came out and went the other direction.
“I believe what they’re going for is called, excuse the expression,” I said, “a pincers maneuver.”
“Ah, I, ah…” Doc stammered. “Um, all right. We can run now.”
“Thank you.” But when I started to run, the battering I’d taken these past few minutes finally announced its presence. Vigorously. Though it didn’t hurt nearly as much as a shot from Doctor Jest, it was enough to slash my foot speed to a limping stumble. “Can you do anything about the pain?”
“Without doing permanent damage? Only this,” he said, and my whole back from neck to heels burst into flame. Metaphorically, but nonetheless vividly.
This cleared up my running problem admirably. Not that I was in any way grateful for Doc’s assistance.
“The human pain system,” he said conversationally, “is an interesting place. Ever notice that when you break your toe, you forget all about your headache?”
