Gillespie"s voice came from somewhere above. "You b.l.o.o.d.y idiot."
A bead of sweat made its way across Jack"s brow, and then trickled down his cheek and neck. Beyond the faceplate he could see nothing but a sliver of red brick illuminated by some overhead source of light. He struggled to raise his head up towards the voice, but the helmet remained firmly locked where it was.
"Now you"re really stuffed," Gillespie said. "How do you expect to get out of there?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Jack said.
"Why didn"t you listen to what I was saying?" Gillespie remarked. "I told you we"ll get the b.l.o.o.d.y banker through absorption."
Absorption? Gillespie had mentioned something about that, now that Jack thought about it.
"How do you think you ended up here?" Gillespie said. "You didn"t just wake up here, fully formed, by accident. This building absorbed your soul. The collective absorbed your soul. It"s how like minds end up together. Your spirit latched on to us, we accepted you at some subconscious level, and so you started to grow among us. And that"s how we"ll get Sill. Once we find him, the collective will accept him. Because we outnumber him, we"ll absorb his whole d.a.m.n building, trap it in here with us."
"And then what?"
"Then we get out the sledgehammers."
Jack struggled to move, but soon gave up again. "How do you plan to find him in the first place?"
Gillespie grunted. "What was it you told me? You are your own surroundings. Sill"s soul won"t be tangled up in a Midden full of commoners. Who would have him? So we look for an individual structure, a solitary design. It"s likely to be something grand, the sort of place a banker would imagine for himself. You didn"t have to go and get yourself crushed."
"Sorry."
He heard Gillespie sigh. "Do you feel strong enough to push the walls back? Can you get yourself out?"
"I don"t think so."
Gillespie sighed again. "I"ll have to speak to Dunnings. This is going to take a combined effort."
Jack waited for what felt like hours, listening to the sound of his own cavernous breathing inside his helmet. The gla.s.s faceplate steamed up, until he could see nothing at all through it. His nose itched, but he couldn"t reach up to scratch it, so he rubbed it against the inside of his helmet. And all the while he could feel the texture of the surrounding bricks through this living metal prison he"d created. He sensation was akin to sensing pressure through one"s teeth.
Eventually, he heard Gillespie"s voice again. "You"ll be pleased to know that Dunnings is p.i.s.sing himself," he said. "He thinks it"s hilarious."
"Will he help get me out?"
"He"ll do it, but there"s a condition. He doesn"t want you next door to him any more. You"ve made this suit of armour, so you"re stuck with it now. He wants you out of the building."
"That was my plan."
Gillespie was silent for a long moment, then spoke in a kinder voice: "That suit"s not going to offer you much protection out there," he said. "The metal is full of nerves, or whatever pa.s.ses for nerves down here. You"d have been better off sticking with us."
"It"s becoming hard to breathe."
"Just a minute."
Jack flexed his muscles, readying them to move. Moments later he felt the pressure outside his suit begin to relax. Suddenly he could move his arm. His foot shifted. And then light poured in. He saw the wall behind his faceplate retract. It leaned away from him. He slid down several feet, then stopped. Gillespie had been right about the armour. It was merely an extension of his own skin. Jack could feel the wall grating against him through his metal boots. But he found that he was able to turn his shoulders. Through the foggy gla.s.s he saw that he was in a brick defile, or a narrow cave. Ten feet away, a thin, leaf-shaped opening looked out upon the steaming labyrinth of h.e.l.l. Carefully, he made his way towards it.
Gillespie was standing on his balcony, to the left of the cave entrance. "You"ve just undergone a major transformation," he said. "You should get some rest before you try growing another room for yourself."
Jack gazed out at the endless expanse of b.l.o.o.d.y ca.n.a.ls. "I"m fine the way I am."
"Don"t be mad. We"re not kicking you out. You can create another place among us."
"But Dunnings said-"
The other man made a hissing noise. "Only an idiot would expect you to keep that promise," he said. "What"s he going to do if you stay?" He shook his head. "Get yourself up on the roof, son, and start thinking about some proper protection."
The brickwork to Jack"s left began to bubble, and a score of small protrusions popped out of its uneven surface. The protrusions reformed into the rungs of a ladder, leading up to the roof of Gillespie"s dwelling.
"I"ll stay with you until we find him," Jack said. "That"s all."
Gillespie simply shook his head again.
And so it came to pa.s.s that Jack found himself atop what Doctor Shula had called a Midden, a conglomeration of souls crawling across the surface of h.e.l.l. He sat there in his skin metal suit and watched the ever-changing naphtha skies and the tortuous red fluidways and he listened to the crackle and grind of the building"s foundations and the gurgle of liquids pa.s.sing through hollow s.p.a.ces. The pulsing crimson knot that was not a sun never moved from its position in the centre of the heavens, and yet over time it grew steadily darker and then lighter again. Jack accepted these fluctuations as days and nights, although it never became truly dark. h.e.l.l simply cycled between degrees of twilight.
The Midden"s roof s.p.a.ce, like its facades, was a mash of different styles, with slopes of brick and pebble stones and odd little ramps of slate that collided in wavelike crests and troughs. You could see the lines where the residents" consciousnesses met. There were chimneys that seemed to breathe and mutter when Jack stooped to listen closely. The whole jumble reacted to his presence in subtle ways, sometimes bending, sometimes bruising under his boots, sometimes shifting violently as though it meant to pitch him off altogether.
He watched it all from the confines of his suit, which he never really got used to. He soon discovered that scratching his nose with his hand was impossible, even with his limbs now free. The sound of his breathing constantly hissed and boomed in his own ears. Metal clanked whenever he walked, and yet he dimly sensed the texture of his surroundings under his metalled palm and through the soles of his boots. He found himself sweating a lot, and was forced to suffer the countless trickles of perspiration with flinching eyes.
Often he sat on the edge of the Midden and chatted with Gillespie, who came out on to his balcony to relay progress and gossip. No one had spotted an individual dwelling thought likely to contain the errant banker, but Jack nevertheless took these opportunities to learn more about his neighbours. Gillespie had owned a small business in Port Sellen making wooden frames for paintings and lithographs. He"d never married, but had narrowly escaped it twice, he claimed. He"d had a dog called Ginger, a Reiger Spaniel, whom he talked about with great affection. Dunnings had been a tax collector, which explained much of Gillespie"s (and, indeed, the whole group"s) animosity towards him. Clementine had hoped to study drama at one of the city theatres and begged her parents to borrow the necessary funds, with tragic consequences. The spinster Ariel had lost her fortune, along with her house in Highcliffe, mere days after her husband, Max, had died in suspicious circ.u.mstances. She hadn"t poisoned him, she swore. Charley had been all set on a naval career, joining the Port Sellen Cadets some months before his mother"s unfortunate dealings with the bank changed things. Doctor Shula specialised in repairing bones and made miniature locomotives from sheets of tin. He"d lived on Hill Wynd with a young actor called Michael.
Jack wondered if Carol was down here somewhere, too. Part of him yearned to abandon his desire to see justice done, and use his new found freedom to search for her. But yet another part of him rejected this idea, for it was this aspect of h.e.l.l more than any other that made any future he might have here unbearable. Even if he could find her, they would never truly be together again. They"d simply exist as two imprisoned souls, unable to touch, to hold hands, condemned to simply gaze at each other from behind their own defences. To do otherwise would be a painful violation of the other person.
Would oblivion be preferable? He would think on that some more.
His attempt to gain liberty through the suit of armour had not been a complete failure. After all, he could now move around outside the Midden, even if it had left him more vulnerable than he"d antic.i.p.ated. The protection of a more substantial dwelling was all very well, if one accepted that existence was nothing more than a series of rooms.
It was shortly before twilight on the seventeenth day when Gillespie called up excitedly from his balcony: "Jack? Are you up there? Look to the north."
"Which way is north?"
"Towards the sun. It has to be Sill"s home."
Jack wandered over to the edge of the Midden and looked out. Out there in the distance, he could see a dark grey tower rising above the tangled bloodwork. It was by far the largest structure in sight: smooth-walled, but with a p.r.o.nounced list to one side as though it might topple over and come crashing to the ground at any moment. A bulb of stone adorned its summit (featureless but for a single narrow window, or murderhole), while from its base extruded two small, compact structures that Jack took to be gatehouses.
Gillespie called from below: "Do you see it?"
"How do you know it"s his?" Jack shouted back.
Gillespie sputtered. "Are you serious?"
Jack bit down on his lip. Henry Sill might indeed have imagined such an edifice to protect his soul, for it exuded not just strength and power, but a vulgar sort of dominance over the surrounding landscape. The crown was fist-like, threatening, its murderhole dark, and yet seemingly watchful-as though it might at any moment eject some vile and poisonous fluid upon the glutinous soils of h.e.l.l.
"It"s possible," Jack conceded.
He heard Gillespie mutter something in response, but he could not make out the words.
It took them two more days to reach the tower. During that time, Jack watched it grow until it filled the sky. The whole edifice sat back from all of the surrounding ca.n.a.ls, in its own flooded quadrangle. As they drew nearer, Jack spotted a coat of arms carved into the lower wall, and his heart quickened as he recognised the stylised coin and garrotte of the Henry Sill Banking Corporation. The gatehouses, he now saw, possessed no gates or openings in them at all, but had been fortified with thousands of vicious iron spikes. And it appeared that a battle had taken place around it, for the walls, temples and arches so prevalent in other parts of h.e.l.l were not in evidence here; leaving in their place a wasteland of b.l.o.o.d.y pools and shattered rock.
The Midden came to a stop about a hundred yards from the tower, whereupon Gillespie summoned Jack over to the edge of the roof. He looked troubled.
"There"s been some discussion about the whole...absorption process," he said. "The long and short of it is..." He hesitated, leaning back against his balcony bal.u.s.trade. "Well, it seems that most of the residents are cooling to the whole idea. They"re not entirely convinced it"s going to work."
"You want me to go in alone?" Jack said.
Gillespie shook his head. "Give me some time with them. It"s just cold feet, you know-"
"I"m happy to go in alone."
Gillespie looked up at him. "That place isn"t like the others down here," he said. "It"s simply too ma.s.sive to have been created by a single man"s soul. I think-the group thinks-that someone down here helped him."
"You mean King Menoa?"
Gillespie nodded. "If Sill came here to do business with the Mesmerists, then it may be that he succeeded. Menoa"s Icarates rip through whatever defences we create to capture the minds hiding inside. The king then subjugates those minds and uses them to sculpt vast, living citadels." He inclined his head towards the tower. "If he"s done the same thing here for our Mr Sill, then you"re not going to stand a chance in there. That tower might contain half a million souls, all enslaved to the banker"s own will. If he detects an intruder, he"ll use those souls to tear you apart."
Jack thought about this. If Gillespie was right, then the planned absorption wouldn"t work either. The souls inside that listing tower must vastly outnumber their own, which meant that it would be the Midden residents themselves who"d end up absorbed and trapped inside Henry Sill"s defences. They would be at his mercy, rather than the other way around.
He couldn"t allow that to happen.
But he couldn"t turn away, either.
There had to be a way to penetrate the banker"s defences. h.e.l.l was just a system like any other-complex, insane, and unfair, but a system nevertheless. And Jack had worked with systems all of his life. He gazed up at the ma.s.sive structure, at the smooth, unscalable walls unbroken by door or window, at the ghastly iron defences.
"Thank the others for me," he said.
"What are you doing, Jack?"
"I"m going to find Mr Henry Sill, and bring him back."
And then he walked over to the edge of the roof and started climbing down.
THE LEANING TOWER.
ACK WADED THROUGH THE flooded quadrangle under the shadow of Henry Sill"s tower. He could feel the chill red fluid through his steelskin boots; it sucked at his ankles and shins with an almost sentient insistence, causing him to shudder with every step. Occasionally he sensed objects shift underfoot-broken sc.r.a.ps of stone, or perhaps the bone of a long dead combatant-but he did not linger to investigate.
He pa.s.sed between the gatehouses, huffing inside his metal suit, and strolled right up to the main shaft of the tower itself.
This facade afforded him no obvious entrance. Its stones were so precisely cut and arrayed that even the keenest of knives would not have found pa.s.sage between them. Jack ran the back of his gauntlet across the featureless grey surface. Every nerve within the living steel informed him of the wall"s near perfect lubricity. But he could also sense the myriad souls within it, the tremor of a million thoughts racing through the structure. He gazed up, past the coat of arms, to the great fist of stone atop its leaning summit. He could not see the murderhole from down here, but the hairs p.r.i.c.kling on the back of his neck insisted he was being watched. A vast silence hung over this place, so dense and pregnant with expectation that it might have been a pause in h.e.l.l"s own heartbeat.
Jack turned around, leaned back against the tower, and took a deep breath. This edifice had been built to keep the likes of him outside the banker"s soul. It would not accept him, not in his current form.
He remade his armoured suit, turning it from steel to gold.
The tower reacted instantaneously. Jack"s vision darkened as the wall behind him flowed outwards, enveloping his arms, torso and legs. It swallowed him entirely, sucking him deep inside. For a moment it seemed to Jack that a mult.i.tude of hands were clutching l.u.s.tily at his body. He sensed their overwhelming desire to possess him, and understood that it was Sill"s own greed transmitted through their enslaved minds. He resisted the urge to fight, allowing himself to be drawn deeper into the bubbling ma.s.s of the banker"s defences.
And then, quite suddenly, golden light filled his faceplate. The grasping hands retreated, leaving him standing in a s.p.a.ce so bright and vast that his head rolled with vertigo. He closed his eyes and flung out his arms, and stood there for a long dizzy moment before his lurching nerves finally steadied themselves.
The interior of the tower glittered with gold. Gold coins covered the entire floor, rising up to form bluffs and hills and then vast shimmering mountains. In places the coins had been stacked into towers, some four or five feet high, but the huge bulk of this treasure simply lay in great gleaming heaps several storeys high. Jack stooped to pick up a coin.
Emblazoned upon its yellow surface was the image of a coin. He turned it over, only to discover an identical design imprinted on the other side. It seemed to Jack that these designs were representations of the actual coin he now held in his hand, for they themselves each depicted a coin emblazoned with a coin. If you looked closely enough, the cycle repeated again: coins within coins within coins, the designs becoming ever smaller and smaller until they vanished beyond the limits of sight.
He sensed something in the coin...
A thought?
Jack shivered, and let it drop from his hand.
Yellow valleys bisected the piles of coins, meandering away in several directions. Jack chose one at random and set off, his golden boots crunching through the golden ground. Coins clicked and shifted underfoot. Beyond this sparkling landscape, grey stone walls rose upwards at the same steep angle as the tower"s exterior, eventually blurring into giddy heights. He looked up to see a single column of light depending from the murderhole far overhead. The sheer scale of it all afflicted him with awe.
He walked around one shining mound, and pa.s.sed between two others, heading for what he judged to be the centre of the tower. He found that it was difficult to keep his balance as he walked. His boots crunched into the yielding ground or else slid across it. He displaced coins constantly, often staggering down shallow slopes with rivulets of metal trickling down behind him.
After a while he heard a faint moaning sound.
Jack followed the noise until it lead him to a broad expanse of open ground between the mountains of currency.
In the centre of this s.p.a.ce stood a simple wooden table. On a stool behind this table sat the founder of the Henry Sill Banking Corporation.
He wore the same dark suit his own corpse had worn. This incarnation of the man, like the desiccated one still lying on the bed in the Hotel Margareta, possessed no hands. However, during his time in h.e.l.l, it appeared that Henry Sill had suffered an additional and equally gruesome alteration to his person, for the man Jack saw before him now lacked a mouth. The part of his face beneath his nose was completely smooth, without any opening through which he might eat or speak. These adaptations to his physical form were clearly causing him much distress, as he hunched over a wooden bowl set on the table before him. He was trying to use a knife he"d somehow managed to clamp between the stumps of his wrists to shovels coins from the bowl towards the place where his mouth had once been.
Jack walked towards him.
Henry Sill glanced up in Jack"s direction, perhaps alerted by the clinking currency beneath the approaching man"s boots. The banker managed to emit a stifled moan, and yet his eyes remained completely blank, seemingly oblivious to Jack"s presence. He lowered his head again, and went back to his knife and his bowl of coins.
Jack stood nearby and watched with a kind of morbid fascination. For every hundred attempts the banker made to lift a coin towards his sealed jaw, he must have failed ninety nine times-his efforts endlessly frustrated by both his lack of hands, and the difficulty of using such an unsuitable implement for the job. Either he dropped the knife, and had to fumble around for an eternity to retrieve it, or he successfully managed to hold the knife but failed time and again to balance a coin upon its narrow blade. And even when he finally managed to accomplish both feats together, he often dropped the coin before he could get it anywhere near his jaw. After each failed attempt, he wailed miserably and beat his stumps against the table.
It was only in those rare instances where stump, knife and coin all came together through a mixture of determination and lucky happenstance that the banker managed to raise the coin all the way up to his face. Whenever that happened, something extraordinary occurred. The knife punctured the flesh where his mouth ought to have been. By tilting his head back, balancing the coin against his nose, and working the knife deeper into his jaw, Henry Sill was able to create a wide enough opening in which to deposit the coin. He gave a grunt of pleasure through this newly made facsimile of a mouth, then promptly swallowed the coin.
At which point his opening in his face vanished once more.
Jack watched this bizarre sequence of events for a while. If the cuts Sill made with the knife caused him any pain, he didn"t show it. There was certainly no blood or scars-no indication of lasting damage-and yet the flesh looked real enough.
He approached the table and crouched down until his faceplate was mere inches from Mr Sill"s mouthless visage. Even now, the banker seemed blissfully unaware of Jack"s presence. Indeed, he still seemed buoyed by his last successful attempt to swallow the coin, for he hummed a merry tune.
"Mr Henry Sill?" Jack said.
Sill looked up. He stared straight through Jack for a moment, then returned to his meal.
Jack knocked the bowl from the table, scattering coins everywhere.
Henry Sill gave a grunt of surprise. Without even a glance in Jack"s direction, he leapt from his stool and loped across the ground to retrieve the bowl. Once he had it gripped in the crook of his arm, he used his other stump to scoop in more coins from the endless mounds all around. After the bowl was near enough full again, he bounded back to the table, flopped down once more, and resumed his earlier efforts with the knife.
Jack knocked the bowl from the table, and then watched the banker retrieve it a second time.
"Mr Sill?"
This time the he didn"t even look up.
"Mr Sill!"