Filaria - Brent Hayward [69]
At least he could see the exterior of the great shaft, still visible, serving as vortex to their travels. Pale, wrinkled, it seemed rather sickly looking from the outside as they corkscrewed slowly upwards around it. Once or twice, the group had no choice but to take a path that meandered some distance from the shaft — where he had lived his entire life — so to Mereziah it appeared as though the group were suspended above insubstance, with neither end nor beginning in sight, without anchor. These times, he felt like he was floating, utterly adrift.
Hurrying as fast as he could go, he hoped to escape both the girl and his thoughts, but whenever he glanced over his shoulder he saw those twelve faces, bobbing along after him . . .
Moments later, nudging him again, Crystal broke into his reverie by hissing, “I don’t understand what this old bag is saying. Can’t you get her to shut up?”
Sweating, pressing on, always pressing on, despite growing protest from his limbs and aching heart, despite his almost desperate mental state, Mereziah had never even heard the squalling. But he did now: the noise rose above the general din in a wavering language of gibberish he could not understand or ignore again.
He turned to look. Ever since being carried down from the giant pod, the loud and rather round lady in question had been prone to these fits of hysteria. But old bag? Had Crystal really said that? The woman was elderly, certainly, but nowhere near as old as him. I’m positively ancient by comparison. How old, he wondered, do I seem to her?
Probably didn’t help matters that after bringing Crystal out of the opening in the shaft wall, he had stood, bent at the waist, rasping and wheezing for a long time, trying to catch his breath while she rubbed at his back.
The others had to save themselves.
Crystal mentioned that the screamer was virtually silent when trapped inside the pod, so Mereziah was forced to consider that the lady must be having a breakdown. He also feared the outbursts might attract attentions of the mysterious giant soldiers, who he imagined were lurking out here, hiding in the thick steam or behind the next bank of toiling machinery.
Others in the group were grumbling now, pleading or demanding that the old lady fall silent. Mereziah’s gaze fell upon Crystal’s beautiful sneer, drawn to it. With effort, he looked away, at each of the scared, angry people in the dubious parade. Halfway back, the screaming lady — her own eyes pained and wild — had paused, at least, for now, to gather breath. Behind her stood the dark-skinned man who had carried most of the others to safety while Mereziah had been wheezing and coughing; at the very end of the line waited a half-dressed brute with narrow black eyes and a set of symmetrical scars on both cheeks.
Most of these people spoke a different language than Mereziah. One — a dusky woman in a veil — had not spoken a word the entire time. The array of faces caused Mereziah a stab of professional embarrassment, both from his ignorance of their cultural origins and from his now growing wish to rid himself of their dependence upon him; part of him wanted to learn about these people while another malicious part fantasized about pushing them all (except for Crystal Max) right off the damn catwalk.
He needed to rest. Honestly, where in the world were these ideas coming from? Unpleasant and meandering thoughts, the results of being in love? Were lust and want sicknesses to infect his brain?
The screaming, which had started up once more, didn’t help matters.
On the move again, Crystal Max announced, “Lookie there, more moss.”
And, suddenly, an idea