Oh God, how could this be?
She was on her knees, trembling, even as the other two came into the room and stood up. They looked at her oddly and then took in where they were. It was, very definitely, a room. This was not a space in a monster that just happened to be large enough to stand up in. The music and the warm glow put paid to that idea. The walls curved round, but the floor was flat. There were broad ledges and pedestals wide enough to sit or lie upon. One feature in particular drew their eyes.
On the other side of the room, facing the curving wall, was a chair. It appeared to have grown out of the floor and was the most unsettling piece of furniture ever seen. It was wide and high and made up of struts and ridges that were unmistakably bones, covered with padding that looked like muscle and skin. From the roof dangled a mass of tendrils, some fleshy and others glistening like plastic tubes. Their ends vanished behind the chair back.
On one side of the chair, a pale white hand hung down as if it had slipped from an armrest.
As they all took in the presence of that hand, Odette heard two sharp intakes of breath, one on either side of her, and the two Checquy men moved into fighting stances. She heard the snaps of their wrist knives springing out, and Codman held up his coring tool, its little blades spinning. The air around Pawn Wharton suddenly grew hot and dry.
“You needn’t bother,” Odette said dully. “’S already dead.” Underlying the smell of oranges and salt water was the unmistakable smell of rot. She got to her feet and led them around the chair. She knew what she would see. She’d seen it before.
It was a naked body, slumped and white. White nodules covered its bald head, and the tendrils from the ceiling seemed to have grown into the nodules as well as into points along its arms and spine. It didn’t appear to have a gender. Odette peeled off a glove and reached out to the body’s neck.
“Don’t!” gasped Codman.
“It’s fine,” she said. The skin was cold, icy cold. She felt for a pulse, found none, and then lifted up the head. Memories flooded back, punching her in the heart: the last time she’d been with her friends, when they were torn out of her life. She snatched her hand away.
*
Felicity was not happy.
After a while, she’d calmed down. At first, she held out some hope that she would be freed, but after reaching four hundred thirty hippopotamuses, she’d given up counting. Then she’d thought things through and concluded that the creature had come back to life, and that was why she could no longer move. She hung there and brooded.
She had no doubt that the Checquy would kill it eventually, but the potential for disaster was still huge. There was no telling the kind of damage a creature that size could do. Scores of Checquy personnel were in the hangar — the casualties could be horrendous. Leliefeld, with her amazing ability to get into trouble, might get injured or killed.
And there was the stomach-turning knowledge that Felicity had left her own body right next to the creature. Of all the locations that lent themselves to getting one’s catatonic body smeared into paste, right below a gigantic monster’s chin seemed the riskiest.
I was so close! Felicity fretted. I bet I’m not ten meters from my body, if it’s still there and hasn’t been crushed. All she could do was resolve that once the opportunity arose, she would be ready to escape.
And then the sound came. Though she normally could not register sound with her powers, the vibrations hummed right through her, and she felt a sudden horror. She had heard that tune before.
Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8.
*
“So, this is a pilot?” asked Wharton warily. “This person was controlling the monster?”
“I think so,” said Odette. “See these cords and tendrils? They are like the material you find in spinal columns, but with a sort of transparent cuticle grown over them to protect them. I think they’re plumbed into the monster’s sensory organs and muscles. If there’s a brain in this monster, then it would probably be completely subjugated.”
“And without the pilot, the monster might have gone into some sort of coma or fugue,” suggested Wharton.
“Just turned off,” said Odette.
“But what is the pilot?” asked Codman. “Do you think it’s a merperson?”
“Are there such things as merpeople?” asked Odette in fascination.
“We don’t know,” said Wharton. “No one in the Checquy has ever found one, but we know that the oceans are far less safe than people think.” He was peering closely at the body. “I don’t see any gills,” he said. “Nothing on the neck, behind the ears, or on the abdomen.”
“Would merpeople be listening to classical music?” asked Odette doubtfully.
“I expect they could listen to whatever they wanted,” said the marine biologist. “But plumbing a stereo system into an animal seems a little odd.”
Codman shrugged. “Just because something’s supernatural or ab-human doesn’t mean it doesn’t have contact with our society. I know there was a flesh-eating ghoul in South Kensington that had an account at Fortnum’s.”
“Fortnum’s was delivering human flesh?” asked Odette in fascinated horror.
“No, I think the ghoul got spices from them,” said the zoologist. “And some conserves.”
“This is a riveting aside,” said Wharton, “but let’s focus on where we are.”
“You know,” said Odette, “I don’t think the monster is actually doing anything now.”
“What?” asked the marine biologist.
“It’s too stable in here,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, we can stand up without any difficulty. I don’t care what kind of suspension system this thing has, if the monster were moving around, if it had broken free, we would be flat on our backs.” She walked over to one of the ledges and pressed against it. “See how this gives? It’s cushioning, for when it’s moving.”
“But all those tremors, and the opening of the tunnel? If it’s not doing something, why did those happen?”
“Maybe it reacted to us coming in,” said Odette. “Like automatic doors, or an automatic security system. I doubt that we came in the front door. Maybe the monster was reactivating, waking up, and now it’s just idling.”
“Waiting for instructions,” said Wharton.
“Then maybe you should stop messing around with the dead pilot,” suggested Codman. “In case he gives a death spasm and accidentally orders the monster to make a break for it.”
“Do we know for sure he’s dead?” asked the marine biologist. They both looked at Odette.
“I’m fairly certain,” she said. “He’s cold, has no discernible pulse, and smells of rotting meat.”
“I dated someone like that once,” remarked Codman. “A graduate student, a medieval historian.”
“Do you think we should make sure he’s dead?” asked the marine biologist. “Like slit his throat? Or cut off his head?” He held up his little government-issue chain saw.
“No!” exclaimed Odette. “Cutting off his head might send all sorts of insane signals to the beast.”
“I suppose we couldn’t just cut through those linkage cords, then?” asked Wharton regretfully. Odette was beginning to suspect that he really wanted to use his chain saw.
“Probably best not. But I have an idea. We don’t know how long the Checquy will take to get us out. Presumably there’s a way out of here that isn’t the way we came in. So let’s see if we can’t find it.” The men agreed, although Wharton looked a little disappointed. “We may have to cut the entrance open,” she added, and he brightened visibly.