He could hear a steady patter of rain in the darkness.
“We made it,” he shouted.
His only answer was another outbreak of grunted curses.
Dariat pushed the filthy pillows and their tangled cords over the edge, hearing them splash into the water. Then he was sliding himself over.
The main ingestion tract into which the sewer tubule emptied ran vertically up the entire height of the starscraper. It collected the human waste, discarded organic matter, and dirty water from every floor and carried it down to the large purification organs at the base of the starscraper. They filtered out organic compounds which were pumped back to the principal nutrient organs inside the southern endcap via their own web of specialist tubules. Poisons and toxins were disposed of directly into space. Fresh water was recirculated up to the habitat’s storage reservoirs and parkland rivers.
Normally the main ingestion tract was a continual waterfall. Now, though, Rubra had closed the inlet channels and reversed the flow from the purification organs, allowing the water level to rise up the tract until it was level with the fiftieth floor.
The cold surface closed over Dariat’s head, and he felt his feet clear the tubule. A couple of swift kicks and he surfaced, puffing a spray of droplets from his mouth. Thankfully this water was clean—relatively.
He held an arm up in the air, a sharp blue flame flickering up from his fingertips. Its light showed the true extent of the tract: twenty metres in diameter, with walls of neutral grey polyp that had the same crinkly surface texture as granite. Sewer tubule outlets formed black portals all around, their muscle-membrane rims flexing like fish mouths. The pillows were bobbing about a few metres away.
Tatiana had pushed her shoulders past the tubule’s muscle membrane, and was craning her head back to look around. The tract’s height defeated the illumination thrown out by Dariat’s small flame, revealing barely fifteen metres of the walls above the water level. A heavy shower was falling out of the darkness which roofed them, chopping up the water’s surface with small ripples.
“Come on, out you come,” Dariat said. He swam back to her and helped ease her through the opening. She gasped at the water’s chilly grip, arms thrashing about for a moment.
Dariat retrieved the two sets of pillows and strapped himself into the harness. He had to tie Tatiana’s cords for her, the cold had numbed her fingers. When he was finished, the sewer tubules all started to close silently.
“Where are we going now?” Tatiana asked nervously.
“Straight up.” He grinned. “Rubra will pump fresh water back into the base of the tract. It should take about twenty minutes to reach the top. But expect an interruption.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Stanyon arrived at the fiftieth floor to find it in turmoil. The vestibule was packed with excitable possessed. None of them seemed to know what was going on.
“Anybody seen him?” Stanyon shouted. Nobody had.
“Search around, there must be some trace. I want the teams that were searching floors thirty-eight and thirty-nine to go down to fifty-one and check it out.”
“What’s happening?” Bonney’s voice asked from the walkie-talkie; there was a lot of crackling interference.
Stanyon held the unit to his face, pulling out more aerial. “He’s dodged us again. But we know he’s here. We’ll have him any minute now.”
“Make sure you stick with procedure. Remember it’s not just Dariat we’re up against.”
“You’re not the only council member left. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m a minute away from the lobby. I’ll join you as fast as I can.”
He gave the walkie-talkie a disgusted look and switched it off. “Terrific.”
“Stanyon,” someone called from the other end of the vestibule. “Stanyon, we’ve found something.”
It was the troll, the faerie prince, and both of the cyber-ninjas who had broken into the apartment. They were hanging around the bathroom door when Stanyon arrived. He pushed his way past them impatiently.
The sides of the ruptured toilet sphincter had sagged, squeezing more of the yellow fluid out. It was running down the outside of the cone to smear the surrounding dune of polyp chippings. Water from the fractured pipe was sloshing over the floor.
Stanyon edged forwards, and peered cautiously over the crater’s lip. There was nothing to see, nothing to sense. He pointed at the smaller of the two cyber-ninjas. “You, go see where it leads to.”
The cyber-ninja looked at him. Red LEDs on his visor flashed slowly, an indolent blinking to mirror the thoughts they fronted.
“Go on,” Stanyon said impatiently.
After a brief rebellious moment, the cyber-ninja dematerialized his flak jacket and lowered himself down into the sewer tubule.
Dariat had been worried about the undercurrents. Needlessly, as it turned out. They were rising fast up the giant tract with only the occasional swirl of bubbles twisting around them. It was still raining heavily, but the whole process was eerily silent.
He maintained the small flame burning coldly from his fingers, mainly for Tatiana’s benefit. There was nothing to see above them, only the empty blackness. They slid smoothly past the intermittent circlets of closed tubules with monotonous regularity, their only real measure of progress.
Dariat was warm enough, circulating heat through his skin to hold the water’s numbing encroachment at bay. But he did worry about Tatiana. She’d stopped talking, and her chittering teeth were clearly audible. That left him alone with his own thoughts of what was to come. And the whispers of the damned, they were always there.
Rubra, have you ever heard of someone called Alkad Mzu?he asked.
No. Why?
Capone is very interested in finding her. I think she’s some kind of weapons expert.
How the hell do you know what Capone wants?
I can hear it. The souls in the beyond are calling for her. They’re quite desperate to find her for the Organization.
Affinity suddenly gave him a sense of space opening around him. Then an astonishingly resolute presence emerged from the new distance. Dariat was at once fearful and amazed by its belief in itself, a contentment which was almost the opposite of hubris; it knew and accepted itself too well for arrogance. There was a nobility about it which he had never experienced, certainly not during the life he had led. Yet he knew exactly what it was.
Hello, Dariat,it said.
The Kohistan Consensus. I’m flattered.
It is intriguing for us to communicate with you. It is a rare opportunity to talk to any non-Edenist, and you are a possessor as well.
Make the most of it, I won’t be around for much longer.
The action you and Rubra are undertaking is an honourable one, we applaud your courage. It cannot have been easy for either of you.
It was realistic.
His answer was accompanied by Rubra’s emission of irony.
We would like to ask a question,consensus said. Several, in fact.
On the nature of possession, I assume. Fair enough.
Your current viewpoint is unique, and extremely valuable to us.
It’s going to have to wait a minute,rubra said. They’ve found the toilet.
