He watched comprehension dawn on her face, slowly. “Oh Jesus. Not you guys too.”

  “It’s the way we’re built. We’re about as close to him, right now, as we can get.”

  “But it’s also that we won’t,” said Petrie.

  There was a sudden jangling, trilling sound from the front of the diner. They looked over at Harold, who was putting coins in the pinball machine. He pulled back the plunger, released it. The sound of clacking flippers and firing bumpers, zaps and dings, filled the diner.

  Janikowski looked at the boy, who was craning his neck over the table now, watching the machine. His eyes were alight with curiosity.

  “Go on,” said Helen.

  The boy glanced at her, at the machine, then back at her.

  “It’s ok,” she said.

  He hesitated a moment more, desire warring with fear, then slid off the bench and under the table. He emerged on the other end, and walked slowly toward the demon and the pinball machine. He gave both a wide berth, at first, then began to inch closer, until he was pressed against the side of the machine, standing on tiptoe, peering through the glass into the playfield.

  “Why don’t you take care of him?” said Petrie. “You brought him out.”

  Janikowski rounded on him. “Shut up,” he hissed.

  “What? Why’s she trying to fob it off on us? She’s the one who . . .”

  “Petrie. Shut. The fuck. Up.”

  There was something hard in Janikowski’s voice. Petrie looked over, uncertainly, and fell silent.

  “Language,” said Helen, distantly. She’d been around as long as any mortal Janikowski knew. She might have been one of the first to make purgatory her home, and she was certainly the first to turn down heaven for the resistance. There had been others since, many of them ushered into the middle regions—and then recruited—by Janikowski himself. But there was no one quite like Helen. She had the kind of purity of heart that mortals mistakenly attributed to angels—a hedged, conditional purity that shunned absolutes and set its course not by poles but by an instinctive grasp of the shifting terrain of right and wrong. She was the best person he knew.

  The pinball machine made a forlorn blooping sound. Harold let his hands fall to his side, waited for the score to finish tallying, and sighed—a clickity, chattering sound, like a swarm of cicadas exhaling all at once—then turned and went behind the bar.

  He returned a moment later, holding a milk crate. He inverted it, and put it down in front of the machine, and stepped back, and looked at the boy.

  There was a small silence. And then the boy edged down to the front of the machine, his eyes on the demon, and clambered onto the crate. He settled his hands near the flipper buttons and watched Harold reach past him and drop a coin in the slot. The machine lit up and began to chatter happily. Harold pulled the plunger, and sent a ball into play.

  Janikowski watched Helen watching. She’d probably had to make decisions like this a hundred times over the millennia. And she’d always chosen the same way. There’s nothing that throws off your moral compass like love.

  The boy leaned over the pinball machine, his eyes following the ball as it sped across the board, hands fluttering wildly over the buttons. The machine erupted into a paroxysm of flashing lights and stuttering bloops, reached some sort of crescendo—and then collapsed, in a downward spiral of increasingly forlorn notes. The lights blinked off.

  The boy looked up at Harold, who looked back, solemnly, then slapped his forehead with the heel of one red hand.

  The boy did something with his mouth that looked a little like a smile. He pulled back the plunger, and sent another ball into play.

  Helen looked at Janikowski, a question in her eyes. He nodded. “Harold’s been here for a while.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. But he tried to bring his family out with him.”

  “Demons can have families?”

  “Yeah. You can always have families.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The hordes got to them at the border, right before they crossed.”

  She nodded. In silence, they watched the demon and the child.

  Finally, Janikowski turned away and nudged Petrie. “Ok.”

  Petrie started. He’d been staring moodily out the window. “What? We done?”

  “Yeah.” Janikowski stood up, looked at Helen. “You staying for a while?”

  She nodded.

  “Get in touch if you need anything. You know how to find me.”

  “Ok”, she said, and smiled: a sad, watered-down thing, barely a smile at all. She’d already made her decision, he realized.

  Petrie picked up his howitzer. “You’re better off getting in touch with me, actually. I know how to protect the damsels.”

  “I should mention,” said Janikowski, “that he was ready to blow you to pieces an hour ago, because it was more convenient than not blowing you to pieces.”

  Petrie shrugged. “That’s before I knew you were hot.”

  Helen looked up, a real grin on her face now. “You sure like to talk,” she said, and reached out and grabbed the smooth, round, uninterrupted curvature of his crotch.

  Petrie looked down at her hand, then back up at her. He reddened. Angels are emanations of the Father. He, and only He, decides when there should be more of them.

  “So what happens when you stop talking?” she said. “Anything? Anything at all?”

  Janikowski barked out a laugh. Petrie didn’t seem angry, or even annoyed. He looked abashed. “Try me sometime,” he said, sheepishly.

  “Ok, enough sweet talk,” said Janikowski. He grabbed Petrie’s arm and ushered him toward the door, raising a hand to Harold. Harold nodded in return, and did that thing with his mandibles, then went back to watching the boy play.

  They went outside. The air was suffocating. The straggled remains of the demon horde wandered disconsolately across the barren landscape, nursing their wounds.

  “Where to?” said Petrie.

  “Back home. There’s a bunch of rogue angels going around harvesting people before they’re supposed to die.” He wiped the sweat off his brow. “We should grab more ammo for your cannon.”

  But Petrie wasn’t listening. He was watching Helen, through the window, his face unsettled. “You think she likes me?” he said.

  “Shut up Petrie,” said Janikowski, and unfurled his wings.

  * * * *

  Ramsey Shehadeh splits his time between writing code and writing stories. His fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as in Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s Steampunk Reloaded anthology. He’s a graduate of Clarion 2007. He tweets as @lapsedcannibal and blogs at doodleplex.com. This is his third appearance in Weird Tales.

  JAGANNATH, by Karin Tidbeck

  Another child was born in the great Mother, excreted from the tube protruding from the Nursery ceiling. It landed with a wet thud on the organic bedding underneath. Papa shuffled over to the birthing tube and picked the baby up in his wizened hands. He stuck two fingers in the baby’s mouth to clear the cavity of oil and mucus, and then slapped its bottom. The baby gave a faint cry.

  “Ah,” said Papa. “She lives.” He counted fingers and toes with a satisfied nod. “Your name will be Rak,” he told the baby.

  Papa tucked her into one of the little niches in the wall where babies of varying sizes were nestled. Cables and flesh moved slightly, accommodating the baby’s shape. A teat extended itself from the niche, grazing her cheek; Rak automatically turned and sucked at it. Papa patted the soft little head, sniffing at the hairless scalp. The metallic scent of Mother’s innards still clung to it. A tiny flailing hand closed around one of his fingers.

  “Good grip. You’ll be a good worker,” mumbled Papa.

  * * * *

  Rak’s early memories were of rocking movement, of Papa’s voice whispering to her as she sucked her sustenance, the background gurgle of Mother’s abdominal walls. Later, she was let down from the niche to the older children, a handful of plump bodies walking bow-legged on the undulating floor, bathed in the soft light from luminescent growths in the wall and ceiling. They slept in a pile, jostling bodies slick in the damp heat and the comforting rich smell of raw oil and blood.

  Papa gathered them around his feet to tell them stories.

  “What is Mother?” Papa would say. “She took us up when our world failed. She is our protection and our home. We are her helpers and beloved children.” Papa held up a finger, peering at them with eyes almost lost in the wrinkles of his face. “We make sure Her machinery runs smoothly. Without us, She cannot live. We only live if Mother lives.”

  Rak learned that she was a female, a worker, destined to be big and strong. She would help drive the peristaltic engine in Mother’s belly, or work the locomotion of Her legs. Only one of the children, Ziz, was male. He was smaller than the others, with spindly limbs and bulging eyes in a domed head. Ziz would eventually go to the Ovary and fertilize Mother’s eggs. Then he would take his place in Mother’s head as pilot.

  “Why can’t we go to Mother’s head?” said Rak.

  “It’s not for you,” said Papa. “Only males can do that. That’s the order of things: females work the engines and pistons so that Mother can move forward. For that, you are big and strong. Males fertilize Mother’s eggs and guide her. They need to be small and smart. Look at Ziz.” Papa indicated the boy’s thin arms. “He will never have the strength you have. He would never survive in the Belly. And you, Rak, will be too big to go to Mother’s head.”

  * * * *

  Every now and then, Papa would open the Nursery door and talk to someone outside. Then he would collect the biggest of the children, give it a tight hug and then usher it out the door. The children never came back. They had begun work. Soon after, a new baby would be excreted from the tube.

  When Rak was big enough, Papa opened the Nursery’s sphincter door. On the other side stood a hulking female. She dwarfed Papa, muscles rolling under a layer of firm blubber.

  “This is Hap, your caretaker,” said Papa.

  Hap held out an enormous hand.

  “You’ll come with me now,” she said.

  Rak followed her new caretaker through a series of corridors connected by openings that dilated at a touch. Dull metal cabling veined the smooth pink flesh underfoot and around them. The tunnel was lit here and there by luminous growths, similar to the Nursery, but the light more reddish. The air became progressively warmer and thicker, gaining an undertone of something unfamiliar that stuck to the roof of Rak’s mouth. Gurgling and humming noises reverberated through the walls, becoming stronger as they walked.

  “I’m hungry,” said Rak.

  Hap scraped at the wall, stringy goop sloughing off into her hand.

  “Here,” she said. “This is what you’ll eat now. It’s Mother’s food for us. You can eat it whenever you like.”

  It tasted thick and sweet sliding down her throat. After a few swallows Rak was pleasantly full. She was licking her lips as they entered the Belly.

  It was much bigger than the Nursery, criss-crossed by bulging pipes of flesh looping through and around the chamber. Six workers were evenly spaced out in the chamber. They were kneading the flesh or straining at great valves set into the tubes. The light was a stronger yellow here.

  “This is the Belly,” said Hap. “We move the food Mother eats through her entrails.”

  “Where does it go?” asked Rak.

  Hap pointed to the far end of the chamber, where the bulges were smaller.

  “Mother absorbs it. Turns it into food for us.”

  Rak nodded. “And that?” She pointed at the small apertures dotting the walls.

  Hap walked over to the closest one and poked it. It dilated, and Rak was looking into a tube running left to right along the inside of the wall. A low grunting sound came from somewhere inside. A sinewy worker crawled past, filling up the space from wall to wall. She didn’t pause to look at the open aperture.

  “That’s a Leg worker,” said Hap. She let the aperture close and stretched.

  “Do they ever come out?” said Rak.

  “Only when they’re going to die. So we can put them in the engine. Now. No more talking. You start over there.” Hap steered Rak toward the end of the chamber. “Easy work.”

  * * * *

  Rak grew, putting on muscle and fat. She was one of twelve workers in the Belly. They worked and slept in shifts. One worked until one was tired, then ate, and then curled up in the sleeping niche next to whoever was there. Rak learned work songs to sing in time with the kneading Mother’s intestines, the turning of the valves. The eldest worker, an enormous female called Poi, usually led the chorus. They sung stories of how Mother saved their people. They sang of the parts of Her glorious body, the movement of Her myriad legs.

  “What is outside Mother?” Rak asked once, curled up next to Hap, wrapped in the scent of sweat and oil.

  “The horrible place that Mother saved us from,” mumbled Hap. “Go to sleep.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  Hap scoffed. “No, and I don’t want to. Neither do you. Now quiet.”

  Rak closed her eyes, thinking of what kind of world might be outside Mother’s body, but could only imagine darkness. The thought made a chill run down her back. She crept closer to Hap, nestling against her back.

  * * * *

  The workload was never constant. It had to do with where Mother went and what she ate. Times of plenty meant hard work, the peristaltic engine swelling with food. But during those times, the females also ate well; the mucus coating Mother’s walls grew thick and fragrant, and Rak would put on a good layer of fat. Then Mother would move on and the food become less plentiful, Her innards thinning out and the mucus drying and caking. The workers would slow down, sleep more, and wait for a change. Regardless of how much there was to eat, Rak still grew, until she looked up and realized she was no longer so small compared to the others.

  * * * *

  Poi died in her sleep. Rak woke up next to her cooling body, confused that Poi wasn’t breathing. Hap had to explain that she was dead. Rak had never seen a dead person before. Poi just lay there, her body marked from the lean time, folds of skin hanging from her frame.

  The workers carried Poi to a sphincter near the top of the chamber, and dropped her into Mother’s intestine. They took turns kneading the body through Mother’s flesh, the bulge becoming smaller and smaller until Poi was consumed altogether.

  “Go to the Nursery, Rak,” said Hap. “Get a new worker.”

  Rak made her way up the tubes. It was her first time outside the Belly since leaving the Nursery. The corridors looked just like they had when Hap had led her through them long ago.

  The Nursery looked much smaller. Rak towered in the opening, looking down at the tiny niches in the walls and the birthing tube bending down from the ceiling. Papa sat on his cot, crumpled and wrinkly. He stood up when Rak came in, barely reaching her shoulder.

  “Rak, is it?” he said. He reached up and patted her arm. “You’re big and strong. Good, good.”

  “I’ve come for a new worker, Papa,” said Rak.

  “Of course you have.” Papa looked sideways, wringing his hands.

  “Where are the babies?” she said.

  “There are none,” Papa replied. He shook his head. “There haven’t been any… viable children, for a long time.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Rak.

  “I’m sorry, Rak.” Papa shrank back against the wall. “I have no worker to give you.”

  “What’s happening, Papa? Why are there no babies?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it is because of the lean times. But there have been lean times before, and there were babies then. And no visits from the Head, either. The Head would know. But no-one comes. I have been all alone.” Papa reached out for Rak, stroking her arm. “All alone.”

  Rak looked down at his hand. It was dry and light. “Did you go to the Head and ask?”

  Papa blinked. “I couldn’t do that. My place is in the Nursery. Only the pilots go to the Head.”

  The birthing tube gurgled. Something landed on the bedding with a splat. Rak craned her neck to look.

  “But look, there’s a baby,” she said.

  The lumpy shape was raw and red. Stubby limbs stuck out here and there. The head was too big. There were no eyes or nose, just a misshapen mouth. As Rak and Papa stared in silence, it opened its mouth and wailed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” whispered Papa. “All the time, they come out like this.”

  He gently gathered up the malformed thing, covering its mouth with a hand until it stopped breathing. Tears rolled down his lined cheeks.

  “My poor babies,” said Papa.

  As Rak left, Papa rocked the lump in his arms, weeping.

  * * * *

  Rak didn’t return to the Belly. She went forward. The corridor quickly narrowed, forcing Rak to a slow crawl on all fours. The rumble and sway of Mother’s movement, so different from the gentle roll of the Belly, pressed her against the walls. Eventually, the tunnel widened into a round chamber. At the opposite end sat a puckered opening. On her right, a large round metallic plate was set into the flesh of the wall, the bulges ringing it glowing brightly red. Rak crossed the chamber to the opening on the other side. She touched it, and it moved with a groaning noise.

  It was a tiny space: a hammock wrapped in cabling and tubes in front of two circular panes. Rak sat down in the hammock. The seat flexed around her, moulding itself to her shape. The panes were streaked with mucus and oil, but she could faintly see light and movement on the other side. It made her eyes hurt. A tube snaked down from above, nudging her cheek. Rak automatically turned her head and opened her mouth. The tube thrust into her right nostril. Pain shot up between Rak’s eyes. Her vision went dark. When it cleared, she let out a scream.

  Above, a blinding point of light shone in an expanse of vibrant blue. Below, a blur of browns and yellows rolled past with alarming speed.

  Who are you? a voice said. It was soft and heavy. I was so lonely.

 

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