The Glass Republic: The Skyscraper Throne: Book II by Tom Pollock Page A

herself up. Vaulted brick tunnels stretched off in five directions. The walls were riddled with roughly shaped alcoves that gave off a sickly, variegated light, like the weird deep-ocean creatures she’d seen on the BBC nature documentaries her dad loved. She figured they must be in a sewer, but there was no dripping of leaking pipes, no scuttle of rodents. Instead, the tunnels were like the halls of a brick palace, long buried and forgotten. Their footsteps echoed as Johnny led down one of the halls, but that was the only sound. The whole place felt weirdly hermetic.
    Johnny began to murmur, reciting nonsense in a terse, concentrated tone. He gestured vaguely to alcoves, as if naming them: ‘Horssefly, wanderlussst, ssweat and ssusspicion, loathesssome allegory, Pylon Venom, charge, charm, charred bisscuit, an old noble-lamp’ss tearsss …’
    They swung left, then right, then right again. Pen thought she could hear tension creeping into his voice – or maybe it was excitement?
    ‘Pet’ss tooth, an old puzzle, comfortable bread …’ He hesitated where the tunnel branched.
    Claustrophobia clung to Pen, heavy as an oil-soaked blanket. She wondered how far this warren must reach if it could confuse even its master. She’d completely lost track of the turns.
    ‘Falsssehood, falsssehood and hope – come on now, Naphtha, think, you ssubsssist on your recollectionsss – Falsssehood and hope, and …
time
, hah!’ He put one hand on the wall and swung himself with gusto down the right fork.
    ‘Falsssehood and hope and time leadss to memory.’
    ‘Oh.’ Pen said it in a small voice, but it echoed. A soft breeze fluttered a stray hair against her cheek. In front of her, the tunnel fed out into empty space. Opposite was a wall, perhaps only twenty feet from where the floor ended, but the
depth
of that gulf seemed immeasurable. The wall opposite was speckled unevenly with coloured lights. Pen nervously toed the edge of the precipice and craned her neck, but she could see no end to this ocean of bricks andgently glowing alcoves. It extended to vertical horizons on either side. It was like being up-close to the night sky. The sounds of wings echoed in the emptiness. Little flitting shapes crossed the wall, oil-soaked pigeons cooing as they tended the synod’s stores.
    ‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, in a stunned voice.
    ‘It … hass itsss momentsss,’ Johnny Naphtha admitted.
    ‘What is it?’
    He raised his lighter as he answered, ‘Ssselfishnesss, greed, sssyrupy sssentiment, commemorationss of a few fumbling firsst romancess, an irrational love of peanut butter and an equally inssane loathing of arachnidss’ – he pointed at individual lights as he spoke, naming constellations on the wall. ‘Courage, compossure, a confection of courtesssy. Ssentiensse, or ass passsable a ssubbsstitute as we have thusss far ssuccceded in compossing. You are looking at our besst current sssynthessiss of a mind.’
    ‘A mind?’ Pen breathed. ‘What’s it for?’
    ‘To patch the perceptionss of a prissoner – a client whose cognition iss sso corroded by hisss long languisshing, he doess not yet know that he needss it.’ Johnny Naphtha grinned wickedly. ‘Bussinessss development. It iss almosst complete.
Almossst
.’ He looked at Pen with predatory appraisal. ‘But not quite.’
    Pen felt her hands flinch upwards instinctively, as if she could protect herself from that look, that possessive intent, with her fists.
    Johnny’s smile became almost pitying. ‘Sspare yourssself your anxiety,’ he said. ‘The ssupplementary ssubstancess weneed are not in your psssyche. Ssstill, for what you asssk, we will accept nothing lesss.’
    ‘I won’t hurt anyone else,’ Pen insisted again.
    Johnny inclined his head as if to say,
You said that already.
    Four other heads mirrored his.
    ‘We would not asssk you to. A long way behind ussss, at the intersssection of the sstoress of electromagnetissm and ephemerality there iss a