“You’ve got strong arms,” the oarsman observed, “want to help me row?”
It was, Osmond reminds himself, the only position offered.
In his new employment, Osmond has found his life forever changed. The gondoliers rarely leave their boats. Bathroom functions are completed by going over the side—an acrobatic feat for a paralytic, but Osmond is gaining new skills all the time—and they live on foodstuffs bartered to them by fares. Sleeping twelve fathoms deep, in hulls that rock like cradles, they are safe from the dragons, safe from the sun, safe from the wind. Safe as men long buried in their graves. That suits Osmond just fine. He doesn’t even mind the smell much anymore, though he isn’t a fan of the gators.
“During my training, Joshua referred to them as ‘floaters,’ leading me to believe they were vast coagulations of human excrement, gnarled and lumpbacked through the sculpting of the waves,” he reminisces now. “Imagine my surprise when I nudged one with my pole, only to have it gape jaw and bare its fangs. It struck me as a nightmare begging for psychoanalysis. To be consumed by one’s own leavings is truly to vanish from history.”
“That’s pretty gross, mister,” says the kid. “Are we there yet?”
“Nearly,” Osmond replies, after sniffing the air. His senses, once refined to sample craft brews and the cruelest varieties of foie, are now his nervous system’s fine-tuned GPS.
He arrives at Port 41, where Gondolier Hugh is waiting to take the late philanderer’s son on the next leg of his voyage. Hugh, a stooped albino with oozing face sores, grudgingly offers Osmond a packet of jerky and a quart of fresh water to fortify him for the return trip.
“Be well.” Osmond bestows naught but a fervent handclasp in return.
The brotherhood of workingmen is less unpleasant than he imagined, Osmond reflects on the way home, deftly plungering his way around an intractable clog in the middle of the pipe. There is something to be said for sharing one’s labor and one’s profits. A blessing and a curse—at least unfortunates are never alone.
The runaway boy tonight reminds Osmond, perhaps inevitably, of his own wayward nephew and his mind drifts back to Duncan, his only relation possibly still dwelling upon this much-emptied globe. As he docks the skiff back at his home station (a block of stained concrete beneath the embers of his family estate—a headstone marking below what lies above), he finds himself humming and, in time, belting out, a familiar tune from that beloved timeworn classic Back There Again, the lone work of valuable literature he had once imagined Humphrey’s offspring capable of comprehending:
“Under the City, within the cave,
Dwarves mine and hoard what all men crave.
The great Machines hunger for fuel:
An ugly ore, Earth’s darkest jewel!
The dwarves carve out the space below
Another city, one hollow.
Above, mills whir, furnaces roar
Beneath, dwarves near the molten core.
Horrid beasts lurk in tunnels deep
Who, once awakened, never sleep.
They crack through the land’s thin, frail crust,
Reduce all they see to ash and dust.
Oh men of Earth, do hide and flee!
Our race’s time has ceased to be.
Leave Fallen City far behind,
Lest like Uncle here, you lose your…miiiiiiiind…”
Though applause might not have shocked him at the end of his performance, he could not be more surprised to hear the response his serenade does receive: an astonished shriek from above the manhole.
“Uncle Osmond! You’re alive?”
* * *
It takes some convincing to lure Duncan down into the sewer, but once he descends Osmond does his best to make him comfortable. He lights another lantern and offers his nephew his new gondoliering cloak, an ingeniously constructed fleece blanket—with sleeves!—which he won in a riddling competition against one of yesterday’s patrons.
“And I thought Hoover Island was bad,” Ripple observes, taking in his surroundings. He’s changed since they last saw each other. His face, once characterized only by the untroubled serenity of the developmentally delayed, shows signs now of existential consciousness, even humanity. Also, he’s acquired the musculature of a male ecdysiast. Perhaps he’s followed in his mother’s footsteps these last weeks? But one does what one must to survive, Osmond reflects, regarding his own unnaturally tautened biceps.
“I didn’t know there were enough people left in the city to make all this ass fudge,” Ripple adds.
“Fewer than there used to be.” Osmond uses his oar to tap a high-water mark on the curving wall of the pipe, several feet above the current flow. “Once upon a time, these pipes gushed with the man mud of millions, perilous yellow-water ‘crapids’ that required a speedboat to subdue. Alas, that mighty tide has weakened to a trickle.”
“Too bad, I guess.”
“I find it difficult to cultivate much nostalgia for the bowels of strangers, now that our entire family is dead. You do know that our family is dead, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I didn’t really believe it till I saw the house.”
“The same fate awaits us all. We are but tinder, burning in the fires of time, one generation after the next. Which reminds me: after you come into your inheritance, we’ll need to discuss the terms of my bequest. As I recall, your father left you everything with the explicit stipulation that I live out my later years in the comfort and splendor of my ancestral home. Clearly that ship has sailed.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
“A cosmic irony, yes. Sometimes evolution selects the non-breeding male.”
“I don’t think evolution’s got anything to do with it.”
“What are you insinuating?! In my darkest hours, I will confess, the thought of fratricide did at times dangle, a bauble for the jealous mind. But I always knew that without Humphrey’s sanity and protection, I would fall prey to my own worst impulses—be made to wander the Earth decrepit and alone. And so it shall ever be. Meanwhile, the thought of expending a murderous effort on your mother is patently absurd; even if I’d wanted to, she was adept at a sexy array of ninja kicks and ate next to nothing, which rules out poison. Show me a single profit I’ve made from their demise—then and only then I’ll dignify your accusation with a response.”
“Uh, I didn’t mean you killed them. It would be pretty dumb for you to burn down our house.”
“Of course.” Osmond colors slightly, the shameful warmth of guilt alive and spreading under his skin.
“I mean the whole situation,” Ripple continues. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I don’t think I could even keep going if I didn’t have a goal.”
“A goal?”
“I’m gonna take out the dragons,” Ripple explains, by all appearances entirely serious, “and I need your help.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I’ve trod this path before, nephew.”