The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [102]
He swam to the edge and hauled himself out, and for a long moment he remained lying on the ground, catching his breath, not daring to move for fear of what would happen. When he rose at last he could see, amidst the lizards, the cowering shapes of human beings. And he thought, My family. The idea was bitter to him.
He made to move, and the nearest lizard darted at him, and he stopped. The lizard's tongue snaked out and tasted his skin.
Then, startling Orphan so much that he nearly fell back in the water, the lizard spoke.
"Ssssss…" it said, and flicked its tail. "Sssservant…" It moved away from him then, losing interest. The others, too, returned gradually to their previous activities. The humans (he did not recognise any of them) cast nervous, fearful glances at him and moved between their charges.
Orphan accepted the unspoken message.
Soon, he knew, the soldiers would come for him; and if not them, the lizards themselves might come, to see who it was who dared threaten their get with his presence, and this he feared even more. He remembered the sight of the two lizards fighting each other to the death, back in the King's Arms in Drury Lane. He did not think himself capable of this kind of fight.
He felt lost then, and almost gave up the fight altogether; when he felt something hard against his hip and, startled for a moment, reached out and realised it was his mother's book. No, he thought. It was the Bookman's, and it made him frightened.
But he was not like the others of his family, he thought. He, at least, would not fear books. He opened the book, wondering if some of its power remained, if some of the Bookman's artifice was yet in it, but… the book remained empty and old. It did not come alive, and the pages remained stained-yellow and otherwise blank. He leafed through it again, nevertheless, until he reached the end, and the small, fading inscription left there long ago by his mother: Under the Nursery, the mushrooms grow flat.
How had she managed to escape? In one end of the Nursery he could now hear shouts, and knew the soldiers had come for him. It was almost dark now, and the cannon's payload would be launched soon, the attempt would be made to reach the stars.
And he would most likely be dead.
Is that how you want to be remembered? he thought. As a saboteur? He looked around him at the lizard young. Could he take their life in his hands? What would the probe have meant? He was too late asking himself these questions.
Instead, he ran. He ran away from the soldiers, away from the Nursery, towards the sea. The giant cave he was in opened about him like a fan, the ground sloping gently until the pools of water almost poured down into the sea.
There are no defences here, he thought. Not this close to the babies. There would be no monstrous worms in the sand, no giant insects to suck out blood. I hope.
Down by the shore the ceiling abruptly disappeared above his head, and in its stead were stars. He took a deep lungful of night air. It tasted fresh and welcoming, homely almost. It escaped from him then in a shuddered breath and he jumped from the ledge of the cave onto the fine black sand below.
They were after him, coming, but slowly, hampered by their fear of harming these babies, the most precious in the whole of the empire. But they were coming, and would not be long in catching up to him.
He wandered off along the beach. He felt suddenly free, his purpose at last fulfilled. He thought of Lucy.
Before him rose the mushrooms.
Gigantic, they were nevertheless different to the ones in the caves. Sleek and fleshy, they spread out in concentric circles, a forest of low-lying, flat surfaces suspended on thick shafts.
Where the mushrooms grow flat… A wild idea took hold of Orphan, and he followed it. Putting the book back in his pocket, he attacked the largest of the mushrooms. There was something strange about them…
The shouts were coming closer – much closer. Then, a gunshot. He ducked,