A.R.Yngve
DARC AGES:
City Of Masks
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Chapter 12
Meanwhile, several levels beneath the ruined palace...
Awonso puffed and wheezed as he carried the dwarf through seemingly endless vaults and passages, toward the city's power plant. They followed dripping copper ducts and the few scattered electric lights that were still working. The air was humid, hot and acrid with ozone.
"How much do they feed you?" Awonso asked, and leaned against an ancient brick wall. "You weigh almost as much as I do!"
"Let me carry you!" the dwarf said, tapping Awonso's head. "Onward, fatty! Do you want to see your friends fried by those giant guns?"
Awonso pushed himself off the wall and continued, down a stone staircase, through mists of leaking steam. "Is it getting hotter?"
The dwarf wiped sweat off his own face, and then wiped Awonso's forehead. "It is."
"I fear that..." Awonso breathed heavier. "The power plant is under too much strain to power the gun tower. It might shut down itself if the strain does not ease."
"And what makes you the expert?"
"I come from a long line of engineers. Where do you come from, little man?"
"I happen to be the son of..." the dwarf hesitated. "Who am I fooling? The son of nobody in particular. I was the court jester, there was no other work for me. I took on the part of the former counselor, and his mask, and imitated his manners.
"It was an act, to amuse the old city lord, the big-nosed one, and let him dream that an old friend was still alive. I used stilts to make myself taller, and sculpted a larger head to fit the counselor's mask, and I put the false head on my shoulders.
"My act was good, all too good. The old city lord made my act his new counselor. I had no name, so I made one up... and 'Sarastos' was born, the perfect advisor, the man with no past and therefore no weaknesses."
Awonso stopped and glanced up at the dwarf, who peered down from above Awonso's head. "You are telling me... that no one suspected why you were never seen in the same room with Sarastos? All those years?"
"That is what Vanitians do."
"They talk to the mask. I know. How did this crazy game begin? Were they all Lepers from the beginning?"
"I have been trying to find out, and not get my throat slit in the process. According to city records, a section of the ancient catacombs caved in during an earthquake some ninety years ago. A band of Leper nomads found the exposed passage and made their way straight into this city. The official version says that the city fought back the intruders, and the contagion was destroyed.
"But I have pieced together another version, if you can believe it. Can you imagine how lucky those misshapen marauders must have felt, when they found the passage? All that wealth and security which had been denied them now lay at their feet!
"But they were shrewd enough to know they could not simply storm Vanitia and slaughter the citizenry. If the outside world found out, armies from other cities would lay siege to Vanitia and torch it into oblivion.
"So they devised a diabolical plan for their tribe to infiltrate the population. They sent out spies at night, disguised as normal citizens, scouted out the tunnels and streets. They learned of the great masquerades which occurred regularly four times a year. And a New Year's masque gave them a perfect opportunity. Cloaked and wearing the masks of the other unsuspecting citizens, they arrived in force and tainted the city's water supply with the Plague.
"It could have been done in any sort of manner. Perhaps they dumped their own dead into the reservoir, I do not know.
"Then all they had to do was wait while the next generation, the grandparents of today's Vanitians, were born Lepers. Imagine the horror, the shock!
"And then came a group of masked Lepers from the outside, walked straight into the city lord's palace, and said: 'This is our city now. Wear your masks at all times, let your children wear them, and we can live together with you, in peace. If you refuse, we shall tell your neighbors, and you know what that means.'
"The rest, as the saying goes, is history."
Awonso put the dwarf down; they had arrived. "Your story... it is too contrived. Too perfect. It couldn't have been that well planned."
The dwarf shrugged and gave Awonso a wry smile. "I admit, it is pure speculation. Would you rather believe the Lepers stumbled into Vanitia on New Year's Eve and made their plans up as they went along?"
"Yes. Now show me the entrance to the city's reactor."
They were quite near now, crossing a stone and metal walkway across a huge water reservoir. Beneath them, the boiling water cast an eerie blue glow. They came to a locked steel door in the rock wall, marked with an engraved skull and a faded bas-relief message in Old Aenglich: DANGER! NEUTRON RADIATION. The dwarf picked a key from his belt and unlocked the door. They pushed the half-stuck door open and went in.
Awonso's mouth fell open. "Great Goddess."
The walkway on which they stood encircled a metal cylinder some sixty meters tall and twenty meters wide. The cylinder hung halfway sunk into the glowing reservoir; white layers of mineral deposits covered its pitted surface. From the top of the cylinder went the ducts that pumped fuel into the reactor, and the tubes that pumped byproducts out of it.
The cylinder emitted a constant low hum. Solid, self-sustaining, built by forgotten engineers hundreds of years ago, this device had provided power for Vanitia and other cities through the dark ages. It could not be switched off.
Awonso felt as if he had intruded on some sacred site, where only the proper guild workers should be allowed. His skin tickled in the hot air, and he feared he was being poisoned by invisible radiation.
"The fuel ducts!" Awonso shouted over the rumble of boiling water, and pointed upward. "All we have to do is cut off the flow of fuel, and the reactor stops churning out heat for the electric turbines. We can stop the gun turrets without leaving your city defenseless. And I can get my radio working... damn! Let's get out of here."
Soaked with sweat, they fled and shut the door. Awonso lifted the dwarf onto his back and they started to follow the ducts toward the source of the nuclear fuel.
Suddenly they heard approaching steps and hid themselves in a niche. A familiar voice spoke, and Awonso waved from his cover. "Don't shoot! It's me. Help us follow the fuel duct, so we can shut it off."
The dwarf began to speak, but Okono and Threo were not in the mood to listen. "I think I know where it is," Okono said. "Follow your nose."
"Eh?"
She looked sternly at Awonso, and wiped her sweaty forehead; her robe clung to her curves and revealed what lay underneath.
"In your city and my city, the power plants run on hydrogen. But with the poor safety of this place, and the open arc-lamps, the catacombs could be blown sky high if they pumped pure hydrogen gas through these leaky ducts. So they use a less flammable byproduct of the city sewage system."
" She knocked on a dripping duct and wrinkled her small, flat nose. "Methane... with a whiff of sulfur. Such a waste of good waste! It ought to be used for manure."
The dwarf made a loud whistle and pointed to a door. "Hey! Here are the private quarters of the old city lord, if you wanted to know."
"The man with the big nose we saw pass by here yesterday?" asked Threo.
"The same."
"He lived down here?"
"Only when his replacement was using his official rooms. They traded sleeping-quarters now and then."
Okono ignored them and headed for another doorway. She shouted for the dwarf to unlock it. They entered the other great secret of the city: the sewer central. The stench was overpowering.
"I can never stay here long," the dwarf said and pinched his nose. "I faint, you see." He retreated through the door.
The only faint illumination in the vast underground room came from shafts in the ceiling. There had to be thick windows at the bottom of the canals, through which the tinted sunlight could shine down.
Okono pointed to the giant funnels that went into the pools of raw sewage. A warm draft came from the mouths of the funnels and sucked heavier-than-air methane gas into connecting ducts.
On the metal wall next to the door was a row of control levers. Threo reached for them. He saw a faded sign: DRAIN.
"I have it! I just pull these levers and drain the flow of sewage to the funnels, and the gas stops coming."
"How long does it take before the reactor shuts down?" asked Awonso. "I would guess hours, at least."
"Get out of here," Okono said, and slammed a fresh cartridge into her rifle. "There is a quicker way."
"Stop!" Awonso flailed his arms at her. "If you ignite this whole roomful of methane, we all die! Even if the combustion isn't hot enough to burn us to death, it will suck the oxygen out of the catacombs and suffocate us!"
"Will you be my friend?"
They turned to the source of the synthetic voice, and saw the dwarf enter with Kiti-Mo grabbing his collar.
"Get this thing away from me!" the dwarf asked.
"Kiti-Mo! Release the little man and come here. Shut the door, little man."
With a hurt stare in Okono's direction, the dwarf pushed the door shut. Kiti-Mo walked over to its owner and stood to attention. Okono bent down and said: "Kiti-Mo, I want you to take this rifle and wait here for five minutes. Then you press the trigger and shoot the beam at those ducts over there..." – she pointed – "...until you hear a great noise. Then you can walk out of here and I will find you. Can you do that?"
The robot's voice sounded almost human. "Will you come back for me?"
"I promise." Okono frowned briefly, swallowed and handed the rifle to the robot. She stroked the shiny metal head. "Start in five minutes from... now."
"Counting," the robot said. Threo grabbed the dwarf, and they ran for the exit.
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DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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