gods were weaving through the gaps in the wall of reality.
And there was something else she could sense — on the surface, not underground — something pure and deadly stalking the earth. It was well hidden, but, however hard it screened itself, to the earth the entity’s invisible passage was like the tip of a knife teased across her sensitive skin. Molly was becoming a butterfly, but her body, her chrysalis, was still there to remind her of the urges of the race of man. She realized she was starving. Without thinking she changed course, led herself and Slowstack out of the tunnel they were following — an old micro- atmospheric connecting the estate of a Chimecan priest lord to one of their cities — and through a crevice in the wall into a cavern.
Above them buildings grew down from the ceiling like stalactites, tiered inverted ziggurats. Stone streets divided the cavern floor, raised, and — apart from the cracks of age and ceiling falls — so well preserved that it was easy to think the Chimecans had just left the city a couple of minutes ago. Fields of swaying stalks with bulbous heads grew in the shadows of the raised streets, a clear crystal pyramid in the centre of each field flaring up as lightning forks exchanged between their tips and the ceiling crystals above; energy drawn from the earthflow and dispersed by the pyramid structures to the crops.
Molly sprinted along one of the empty streets towards the pit-like fields. ‘Food, Slowstack, a whole cavern of it.’
The steamman accelerated to keep up, his tracks crunching the dusty flagstones. ‘Molly softbody, you must not feed from this.’
She waved at the pits, the tall crops shivering as they sucked energy from the pyramids. ‘The crops have been waiting here for a thousand years. Nobody is here to stop us.’
‘Use your senses, Molly softbody. Touch the stalks with your mind, feel all of the crop’s essence, not just its surface.’
She did as the steamman bid and recoiled in disgust, fighting to keep from gagging. Her hunger had vanished.
‘If you fed from this crop you would end up like Tzlayloc, Molly softbody, mad and consumed with a terrible unending hunger. When the coldtime came, the states that would become the empire of Chimeca fed their masses with the most abundant resource their flesh mages had to draw upon.’
‘People,’ said Molly. ‘Sweet Circle, those crops used to be people.’
‘It was simple to change their pattern using the empire’s dark sorceries,’ said Slowstack. ‘There were millions on the surface who would have died from the cold anyway. The imperial legions took the seed crop as tribute from the nations of the surface.’
She could see it now. Legs, arms and body fused into a single stalk, the indentations on the bulb where a face used to be, their essence blended with moss and lichen so they could divide and be fruitful. For a hundred generations this harvest of people-plants had grown in the artificial light of a fallen empire, fed by the life force of the rotating world. The people-plants were not just the descendants of her race, either. Some of the fields had been graspers, lashlites and craynarbians; the Chimecans needed variety in their diet. No wonder the Hexmachina had abandoned the contemptible race of man to warm her body in the core of the earth.
‘These plants may be unfit to consume, Molly softbody, but the water that feeds them will be drawn from the fallen empire’s holds under the seabed, purified by miles of filter glass. We need to replenish our boiler system, as do you.’
The steamman led them down the raised street to a ramp cut into the stone. Molly did not want to enter the field pit, but her thirst got the better of her. Row upon row of the fleshy plants lay formed up in front of her, the green skin of their stalks felted in a light covering of fur, the bulbs crowned in a husk that had looked like an acorn shell from a distance, but appeared like a matted crust of human hair now that she was closer.
Slowstack discovered the reservoir mouth feeding the irrigation channels, a statue in the shape of a swollen beetle. He opened his panel and drained as much water from the emerald beetle carving as his tanks would allow. Molly had been relying on his boiler for her water, so now she took the opportunity to slake her thirst. The liquid was as cold and as pure as any water she had tasted above ground — a cut above what came out of the taps in the public baths of Middlesteel for sure. Her feet crunched on something on the ground; Molly bent down to examine it. There was a scent on the husks. Where had she smelt that musk before?
‘Slowstack…’
The steamman shifted his attention from the flow of water and towards Molly.
‘Slowstack, if we are alone down here, why are there dried husks broken up next to the water supply?’
‘We fear there is no reassuring answer to that question, Molly softbody. Let us leave as quickly as we can.’
Slowstack was halfway up the ramp of the harvest pit when a bolt of energy cut past his torso and ricocheted off a pyramid in the next field over, the dispersion mechanism singing in anger and burning the people-stalks nearby with a storm of lightning. At the other end of the cavern two figures were leaping down stairs leading from the inverted ziggurats, their bodies glowing with a black radiation, radiant with the hideous glory of the Wildcaotyl. Their hunters!
‘The crevice,’ called Slowstack, his voicebox tinny at its maximum volume. ‘Back to the tunnel.’
‘No, Slowstack.’ Molly pulled the steamman back down the ramp. ‘If you trust me, old steamer, then follow me now.’
She sprinted along the walls of the pit then ducked through the irrigation channel, submerging herself below the surface of the cold water.
‘Molly softbody, have you taken leave of your senses?’
She climbed out of the channel, her clothes soaking. ‘Through the plants and out of the cavern at the other side.’
‘That is the longest route out of the chamber.’
She grabbed his manipulator hand. ‘I know.’
Her feet tingled as they plunged into the harvest, the energy feeding the people-plants through the soil grid trickling up into her legs, making her calf muscles prickle and twitch. Stalks sprang back from the steamman’s tracks, the bulbs swaying in mute agony above her head as the two of them carved an impromptu path through the crops. They lost sight of the pit walls and the raised streets, but Molly trusted Slowstack’s metal-born navigation sense to keep their path true.
To their left the bulbs of the plants erupted in a shower of fleshy pulp as an ebony bolt from one of their pursuer’s glowing fists expended its violence. The two convicts were firing blind and the Chimecan crops were absorbing the worst of it.
‘I’m going to hold you down, girl,’ shouted one of the hunters, his voice still faint in the distance. ‘Push you in the dirt while I chew pieces of your flesh off.’
Another bolt sent a cloud of stalk heads flying into the air.
‘Faster, Molly softbody.’ Slowstack’s vision plate was flaring as the nearby pyramid’s energy disturbed his own mechanisms.
‘You keep on shouting,’ muttered Molly to their pursuers. ‘Work yourself up into a nice hot sweat.’
The crops fell back. They had reached the far side of the plantation pit. Slowstack seized Molly and with a sudden burst of acceleration mounted the slope of the pit and sent them into the air over the raised roadway, landing with a crunch of protest on the street as his track-treads cycled in fury. Molly glanced back towards the plantation. The pair of convicts were two-thirds of the way across the harvest pit, oblivious to the vectors of swaying crops arrowing in on their position.
‘Molly softbody, we-’
‘Wait a second,’ said Molly, brushing the water from her dripping red hair.
A clamour rose from the crops, a clucking of rattle-like clicks, followed by a storm of white furred bodies leaping towards the men.
‘Wild pecks,’ said Slowstack, his head tracking the hunting cries of the lizard mammals.
Attracted by the blood frenzy more packs of the albino creatures were pulling themselves from the neighbouring harvest pits and drumming the flagstones with the wicked-looking claws on their right feet. They were clever, cleverer than the outlaws of Grimhope had realized. Molly could feel the waves of information contained in that drumming. These packs nested in the tunnels, near-blind, but all too aware of the value of the crop of meat tended by the Chimecan automatics. Nothing must be allowed to intrude on their rightful territory.
