Djinn City, page 17
Next to this space was another imaginary room called Cartography, which had maps etched on scales and bones, 3-D and beautifully carved. This room held endless fascination for Indelbed, not just because of the craftsmanship of the scrimshaw, but because the map room had a practical purpose. These were not flights of fancy or maps of distant galaxies Givaras purported to have knowledge of but, rather, maps of their prison, including a detailed 3-D working model.
Givaras had started this immediately upon his capture, with thoughts of tunneling out or at least exploring his environment. It had become clear early on that physical exploration in the wyrm tunnels was courting death, but he had fixed on an alternate, slightly safer method.
“You make the field a whisper, see, as faint as a cobweb, and you send it out like a tendril of smoke.” Givaras demonstrated, and Indelbed marveled at the precise control the mad djinn had of his field, as if he could stack the particles like bricks into intricate shapes of his choosing. His talent was not brute force, but infinite finesse, and it struck Indelbed that in its own way, it was as much a superpower as the raw force of Matteras, more so perhaps because it was so underrated.
“It’s hard,” he said, after failing many times. His extrusions were clumsy, like fat sausages, as likely to bring down the wyrms on them as anything else.
“Practice, my dear, and you will surely master it,” Givaras said. “For those of us without brute strength, precision is the path we must follow. If you cannot be the hammer, why then be the scalpel.”
They pored over the existing maps and worked on the ever-evolving escape plan from what Givaras dubbed as the Myrmidon Prison. His early work had mapped the tunnel network, and the structure of this revealed the extent of Matteras’s brilliance.
“You see, we are here, in the very central chamber. He has designed it so. The tunnels maze around us in irregular fashion, which indicates that the wyrms themselves made them. But look at the very outer rim.”
“They’re like ellipses.”
“Precisely. The outer boundary has been shaped by him to create a closed loop. Somehow he used the wyrms themselves to create this circuit, and then he reinforced the sides with constructs so that they could not break out. Thus, these Myrmidon wardens of his tunnel endlessly within a fixed point, like flies in a jar.”
“And to leave we have to break through the boundary.”
“Yes. Initially I thought we could just force our way up, but if you manage to ever master the art of the questing field, you will eventually encounter what I call the Iron Dome.”
“A construct?”
“Precisely, a very, very powerful one,” Givaras said. “It stretches over us, fixed in the sand above the tunnel network. It cannot be broken through, at least not by either of us. Even if it were punctured by some burst of power, its release would drop the earth on us, burying the chamber. Ingenious, really, almost like a self-destruct button for the hasty.”
“And trying it would bring the wyrms on us anyways.”
“Right, right,” Givaras said happily, “so you can see that the obvious way out, up, is certain death. Now the weakness of this prison, if any, is the soil. If we were inside pure rock, we’d be doomed. Luckily for us, the geology of the delta means we are in a very porous formation.”
“You called it an Iron Dome, not a sphere.”
“Clever. Yes, it is not a sphere. The construct is not present below us. Once I was done with the tunnels, I began to edge beyond the boundary, looking for natural fractures or passages in the earth. We are dealing with clay, sand, and boulders, mind you.”
“You thought you could tunnel out?”
“I thought that I could train the wyrms, like a Myrmidon army, to tunnel in a line perpendicular to the dome, following this fissure here.” Givaras pointed at a map. “I would goad them along the path of least resistance, until I reached the sea or the surface, whichever was quicker.”
“But it failed.”
“I couldn’t goad them; the wyrms were brainless.”
“God’s Eye is not.”
“No, so I propose we follow the same strategy. God’s Eye will drill, and we will use the field to prevent the hole from collapsing and also to keep the groundwater from flooding us.”
“What about the wyrms? Won’t they chase us in the tunnels?”
“We will have to hold them off. God’s Eye will repel them also, as the larvae will hesitate to attack a more advanced form, but will it be enough? We will be creating a terrific quantity of distortion in the field. In any case, we will pick a route where we cannot be attacked from multiple directions and thus prevent a convergence.”
“You said the outer boundary of tunnels was artificial.”
“I don’t understand how Matteras made them, but he is a clever djinn and very powerful too. It is probable that those tunnels are reinforced with something to stop us from escaping. We will see whether it can withstand the might of God’s Eye.”
“You’re really impressed with him, aren’t you?”
“My dear boy, you don’t know dragons. Nothing on this earth like them.”
“Well, this one is stupid, lazy, and smells horrible.”
“Shh! He’s looking right at us.”
CHAPTER 21
Wages of Sin
The submarine, it turned out, was perfect for hot-boxing. By dusk, they were cruising with the top down on the Meghna River. Boatmen greeted them hesitantly, puzzled by the open porthole with the two heads bobbing out. They didn’t care because they were high and everything seemed particularly amusing, even the dead cow carcass that floated past and nearly collided with them. The wind was rushing past their faces, birds were flying overhead, and the bottle of whiskey they were passing back and forth was still half full. It was as good as it was going to get.
“You know what I’ve realized?” Rais said with all the profundity of the completely stoned. “I’m not cut out for this.”
“Right, right, you’re a terrible captain,” Barabas said. “I mean the river is a mile wide and you keep bumping into corpses.”
“Not that.”
“Oh yes, you’re also a terrible emissary,” Barabas said. “I mean it’s Emissary 101 that you’re not supposed to flaunt this djinn stuff to the general public. But here you are, cruising down the river in a submarine for every villager to gawk at.”
“No, no, I meant the bigger thing. The meta-thing.”
“You’re even worse at explaining things then.”
“This whole heroic poseur thing,” Rais said. “I mean I’m basically a lazy coward.”
“Kaikobad was quite heroic,” Barabas said with sudden glumness.
“He was a drunk, I thought.”
“He was. But he was like a glamorous dark stranger.” Barabas belched. “You’re a drunk too, so at least you got that part right.”
“What I’m saying is that I don’t want to really do this fighting quest stuff.”
“What? You can’t just quit.”
“Well, I want to be paid,” Rais said, with the doggedness of the drunk.
“Paid?”
“Not with this dignatas crap. I’m not falling for that fakery,” Rais said. “I want material goods. Gold, dollars, pounds.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous. Kaikobad never even dreamed of such a thing. It’s an insult.”
“Look, Barabas, I’m tired of being poor, living in a shithole, driving a piece of shit, going out to only shit places with you and then picking up the tab. How is it you’ve lived this long and not earned a damn cent?”
“I thought we were going to the cool, hidden-gem-type places,” Barabas said, hurt.
“No, Barabas,” Rais said. “We’ve been going to pox-infested dives. The only reason you haven’t died of syphilis yet is because the fumes from the bathtub liquor you drink kill any germs within a five-meter proxitity. Proxicity. Whatever, you get the idea.”
“So Ekram isn’t a cool bohemian-artist guy?”
“He’s a political cadre and a pimp who’s illegally occupying housing in the university. So no, he’s not a cool guy. And he’s at least forty-five years old.”
“And his sister isn’t a student of human nature?”
“She’s not his sister, no, and I’d say she’s a hooker.”
“No!”
“Why do I say that? Because, Barabas, she’s presented me with an itemized monthly bill, which she expects me to clear.”
“Kaikobad was a real shit, wasn’t he?”
“What, for making you dress like a mullah, drink poisonous liquor, sleep with disease-ridden one-legged hookers, and hang out with the lowest underclass of criminals in the city? Maybe you should pay your emissaries.”
“All right, all right, I can see you’ve worked yourself up a little bit.” Barabas finished the bottle and sent it spinning into the darkness. It bounced off a dead dog and came right back. “Kaiko and I had a lot of good times. I suppose you can do better, eh, Mr. High and Mighty?”
“Considering that even the drug dealers in the fourth-class workers colony are a better society of people than you’re used to, yes,” Rais said. “I declare, I can do better.”
“All right, we’ll go and hang with your uptight asshole friends then.”
“Well, I’d take you, but… I’m actually so fucking broke that I no longer leave the house. And by house I mean the barely habitable dump in Mirpur.”
“Hmm, why don’t you move into Kaikobad’s house? That’s a bit of a mansion, eh?”
“What?!”
“He told me it was the best area in the city!” Barabas said, aggrieved.
“It was like thirty years ago.”
“You know what’s really irritating? The way you humans keep changing things around.”
“Anyway, that place is a dump of epic proportions.”
“Dump? The house is magnificent! I built parts of it myself. There are treasures there beyond human understanding!”
“What? It’s full of random junk!”
“Ha! Junk indeed. Let me tell you, there are some pretty amazing things there.”
“Barabas, are you trying to sell me my uncle’s old crap as wages?”
“You’ll see, my little friend,” Barabas said. “Kaikobad didn’t collect paper money, true. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a shrewd operator.”
“So people keep saying,” Rais snorted, unconvinced.
The next day, tormented by the stabbing toxic brain rot that only the cheapest alcohol could achieve, they made their way over to Wari. The house had been boarded up, and as Rais forced the front door open, he found the interior even more derelict than usual. He remembered that day many years ago, his mother cleaning up the place to receive the emissary Dargoman and Indelbed cheerfully packing, perfectly willing to leave with a stranger, and he felt a pang of regret. For all their progress, they had achieved nothing on that front.
“This place is full of wards!” Barabas said, looking around.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Djinn constructs. Spells, you can say,” Barabas said. “Protection.”
“Fat lot of good it did my uncle.”
“It’s puzzling,” Barabas said. “It would take a very high-level djinn to get Kaikobad in his own home.”
“Matteras.”
“Yes, but why would he bother? What was so important?”
“Perhaps he was pissed off with Uncle getting with his sister.”
“Perhaps. Ah, this is what I was looking for. Take this. I told you there was valuable loot here.”
Rais received the item and squinted at it in the dim light. It seemed like a pair of crude, rimless glasses, a simple steel frame affixed to thick circular blue lenses.
“Put it on,” Barabas said.
He did, and the world suddenly bloomed into a latticework of smudged black lines, a mad Archimedean landscape twisting his vision into a Möbius strip, complex geometry shimmering in each available space, hanging menace like clockwork spiders.
“Now you see what we see,” Barabas said smugly.
“Whoa. I’m tripping. What are these, like spells?”
“Crafters among us can use the distortion field to make stable structures of dark energy. These can be tied off and triggered by anyone, even complete humans. Kaikobad had a very faint power; he could sense the field and see the constructs, in a fashion—better with those glasses.”
“Did he make all these spells?” The glasses were making his head spin.
“He could only do the simple stuff after he started drinking, but these wards are higher order. I made some of them. The larger ones were made by master craftsmen who owed him favors. I told you he was rich.”
Rais was looking at Barabas, seeing for the first time the nebula of energy rippling around his corporeal form whenever he flexed his field. The djinn looked a lot less comical now.
“These glasses are pretty cool.”
“They’re a priceless artifact.”
“Could I use spells?”
“Yes, anyone can, if you know the trigger words.”
“And you can make spells?”
“Not very good ones. I’m not a master craftsman or anything.”
“Couldn’t you spell up a pile of cash?”
“No. Something cannot be created out of nothing. And before you ask me, the ancient alchemists can change things to gold, but I’m not one of them and they don’t go around sharing stuff like that.”
“Right. So there are djinns who can do a whole bunch of cool shit, but you aren’t one of them, is that the gist of it?”
“I’m taking the glasses back.”
“Okay, okay, sorry, jeez, way to be oversensitive.”
“Come on, let’s find some more goodies.”
They worked well into the night, fueled by copious amounts of cigarettes and kebabs from the corner shop. Kaikobad had been an odd creature. The most useless junk, not even worth thieving, turned out to be ensorcelled, sometimes baffling even the djinn. There were many things that emanated power stashed carelessly all over the place.
“I’m done,” Rais said finally, near dawn. “I can’t see anymore. My eyes are killing me.”
“Right, I should probably have warned you, those are experimental,” Barabas said. “One of a kind. Me and Kaiko made them. We have a patent pending for it.”
“And?”
“Well, prolonged use might burn out your occipital lobe. Kept happening to the monkeys we tried them on.”
“Great. What’s this pile of stuff?”
“Oh, bits and pieces I’m thinking of reclaiming.”
“Are you looting my uncle’s house?”
“Nonsense, these are all things I had loaned him at one time or another.”
“What does this pipe do?”
“Hrmm, it’s the Never-Ending Pipe. Very valuable artifact.”
“The what?”
“It makes a little quantum tunnel to the nearest smoking instrument and diverts it here,” Barabas said.
“Are you serious?”
“You can’t imagine the kind of weird shit you humans smoke. Kaiko once got a lungful of cow dung,” Barabas said. “And it came from the most harmless-looking old grandmother…”
“Okay, I’m definitely keeping that.”
“Now listen here—”
“Barabas, everything here is clearly Uncle Kaikobad’s property, and you’ve already stated that you intend to remunerate me with objects from this house, so I don’t think you have a leg to stand on.”
“That’s cheeky, coming from a fool who didn’t even know what any of this stuff was.”
“Do you want me to call my mother?”
“No, no, leave her out of it.”
“That’s right.”
The next morning, they packed their bags, had coffee at Gloria Jeans with the last of Rais’s monthly allowance (which was a beggarly amount given grudgingly by his father), smoked the grit out of their lungs with some tokes from the Never-Ending Pipe, and started off to find the reclusive djinn Risal.
“Last I heard, she was living in the clouds,” Barabas said.
“Like literally?”
“Yes, we need an airship.”
“I don’t suppose Kaikobad had one lying around?” Rais asked hopefully.
“No, the airship club doesn’t like unauthorized vehicles,” Barabas said. “We try to keep a low profile. Don’t want all your military folk getting uptight. And god forbid if Google gets wind of us.”
“So do we just take a regular airline? What do you mean in the clouds exactly?”
“Don’t worry. I know one housed in the old airport. Follow me.”
They wandered into the old airport without anyone really stopping them, although it was purportedly under the control of the Bangladesh Air Force. Barabas had some bogus civil aviation badge, which he flashed around unnecessarily a couple of times. Eventually they made their way to a dark, abandoned-looking hangar, which had a couple of forlorn Fokker death traps lined up under patchwork tarps, pools of ancient oil staining the ground.
“I’m not going on those,” Rais said, grabbing Barabas’s arm.
The djinn whistled a couple of times, and from the back another disreputable-looking character sauntered out. Rais snapped on his blue glasses and saw the same telltale distortion field coming off him.
“Emissary-in-training Rais, meet the djinn Golgoras, captain of the airship Sephiroth, destroyer class.”
“What do you want?”
Golgoras looked like a pirate. He had one normal eye. The other one had a brass telescopic eyepiece grafted on to the bone. He had four-inch walrus tusks growing out of his lower jaw. His hands were giant anvils of bone and gristle with a curved black talon on the end of each finger. He seemed ready to bite.
“He’s an exotic,” Barabas said, tapping his teeth. “Bit crazy, all the ones up there.”
“It’s an honor to meet you, Captain,” Rais said. “The renown of the airship Sephiroth precedes you.”
