‘The interior of a Behemoth,’ breathed Vintage. ‘By all the gods, it’s more or less intact. I never thought I – it must have crashed at the end of the Eighth Rain with such violence that this entire section was torn off. Extraordinary.’
Noon caught Tor’s eye. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile, although there was no humour in it. ‘Yes, we’re very happy for you, Vintage. Shall we keep moving?’
Trees and fungus had grown up in the gap between the head of the Behemoth and its main body, which, Noon realised as they stepped through, was even larger than the front. Part of it had collapsed, the strange green-black material falling over the exposed innards like a flap of gangrenous skin, leaving a low, tunnel-like entrance to its insides. Vintage made straight for it.
‘I’m not sure that that’s a good idea,’ said Noon. She glanced up at the sky, grey clouds indifferent over their heads.
‘Nonsense. Esiah Godwort, remember, has been in and out of these ruins for years, gradually delving deeper and deeper, and he has always survived. It’s probably safer in there than it is out here.’ Vintage nodded back the way they had come. Noon turned to see the shifting amorphous form of a parasite spirit moving just beyond the trees in front of the Behemoth’s head. The creature had six spindly legs, the bulk of its body suspended like a balloon over them, but its long neck twisted round, six glittering lights like eyes seeming to focus on their small group. It lifted one spindly leg, taking a step towards them.
‘All right,’ Tor waved them back, ‘let’s get inside and out of sight. Perhaps it will forget we’re here at all.’
Glancing up at the sky once more, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time she saw it, Noon ducked under the flap of oddly organic metal and followed Vintage into the interior of the Behemoth. The floor underfoot was soft and grey and somehow slightly warm, as though they walked across the living flesh of a giant. She supposed they did, in a way. They found themselves in a circular corridor, the walls streaked with a deep greenish substance that looked like a form of rust, next to strange geometric shapes etched in silver lines. There was a smell, sweet and sickly, like old meat, while nodules burst from the walls every few feet or so, twisted bunches of string-like membrane; each one glowing with a faint, yellow-white light.
‘Interior lighting!’ cried Vintage, peering closely at one such nodule. ‘How long has this been burning? Can you imagine what sort of power source could be responsible for it? There is too much here, too much. I should have negotiated for a month in this place, or even a year’s extended study.’
‘For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Master Godwort would care much either way,’ said Tor. This seemed to lessen some of Vintage’s glee and they moved back off up the rounded corridor. The sound of their footfalls echoed strangely, becoming an odd discordant heartbeat, and, inevitably, Noon returned to the idea that they were walking around inside the body of a giant beast – not dead, despite all its torn pieces, but sleeping.
‘Godwort and his team were studying here for years. Look at this.’ The corridor had widened slightly and Vintage stopped by a piece of wall that was raised from the rest and covered with the silvery geometric patterns. Here, someone had constructed a wooden frame, on which rested several oil lamps, long since extinguished. They were covered in a thick layer of dust. Not sure what drove her to do it, Noon pressed her fingers into the dust and smoothed it between her finger pads. It was faintly greasy, and there was no life force to it at all. She didn’t know why she had thought there might be. ‘They wanted as much light as possible, do you see?’ Vintage was saying. ‘Some of these passages have only recently become accessible, you know, as parts of the Behemoth’s body degraded and fell apart naturally. Godwort was always very keen that the thing be kept as intact as possible.’
‘I don’t know why we’ve bothered coming here, Vintage,’ said Tor. He was peering at the oil lamps with a faint expression of distaste. ‘You already know all there is to know about the place.’
Further up the corridor they came across more evidence that the space had been thoroughly explored: rope ladders led to empty alcoves in the ceiling; boot prints in the greasy dust; a single empty ink bottle. They reached a place where the corridor grew wider, and in the strange alcoves were several shining orbs, made of greenish-gold metal. Each had a clear section, like glass, and inside it was possible to see a viscous golden fluid.
‘Look at this!’ cried Vintage. ‘This is what we found in the Shroom Flats, only intact.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘The substance that makes vegetation grow. Imagine what you could do with this much of it! Esiah Godwort is sitting on a fortune.’
‘Do you want to take it with us?’ asked Tor.
For the briefest moment, Vintage looked tempted, but then she shook her head.
‘I could not break Esiah’s trust so soon after gaining it.’ She coughed lightly into her hand. ‘Come on, there is much more to see.’
Eventually the corridor ended, and they were in a cavernous chamber, the shadowed ceiling stretching high above them, unseen. Here, there were more alcoves in the walls, all filled with strangely organic-looking tubes – Noon was reminded of the stringy roots on the bottom of the tubers her mother would boil for dinner when she was a child – and there was a persistent humming noise, just discordant enough to cause discomfort. Noon winced.
‘This place is still alive,’ she said, not wanting to speak the words aloud but unable to keep it in. She was thinking of her dream at the Winnowry, how the Behemoths had hung in the sky over Mushenska. Had she ever thought she would be walking around inside one? ‘It’s still alive, this thing. Can’t you feel it?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Vintage firmly. ‘This Behemoth crashed generations back and it has been rotting ever since. No, my dear, you must think of it as a piece of clockwork still winding down, or a stone out under the sun all day that is gradually losing its heat.’
Noon nodded, but she crouched and briefly brushed her fingertips to the clammy floor, probing for a sense of life. There was nothing, but she didn’t feel any safer for it.
‘What’s this in the centre here?’ Tor led them across the floor. In the middle of the tall chamber there was a soft greyish mound rising from the ground. As they got closer, Noon saw that it was made from large, translucent lumps of material, all pressed in together to form the gently rounded structure. Some of the lumps, which were almost cube-like in shape, had more of the stringy tubes, like those in the alcoves.