Greg Bear - Blood Music

“Check for water,” she said. She looked between the Men’s and Women’s and giggled, then chose the Men’s. Shining the flashlight over the mirrors and fixtures, she gave in to curiosity and walked the length of the lavatory. She had never before seen the tall white porcelain fixtures lining the wall. She had even forgotten what they were called. She looked under the stalls and froze, fear tangling and twisting with perverse laughter inside.

A pile of clothes lined the floor in one of the stalls. “Got sucked right down the toilet,” she murmured, straightening and wiping tears from her eyes. “Poor guy. Goddammit.” She dabbed at her eyes with her rolled-up sleeves and twisted the hot-water knob on the sink. A trickle of water came out. More came when she turned the cold knob, but it didn’t look promising.

She left the lavatory and sauntered down a hallway. Behind a big double wood door with Japanese-sounding names on it was a waiting room, plush velvet couches and glass tables with a big desk near the back wall. There was no receptionist behind the desk, and no pile of clothes, either. Nothing for her there.

From the waiting room, she looked down on the plaza. The concrete was completely covered with brown now. “Climb,” she told herself. Stairway to heaven. Die at the top and be closer. But climb.

It’s like crawling down a throat” John said.

“Jesus, you’re morbid.”

“It is, though, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. He grunted and stooped lower. “We’re behaving like idiots. Why this mound, and why now?”

“You picked it out”

“And I don’t know why. Maybe no reason at all.”

“Good as any, I suppose.”

The tunnel walls were changing as they walked farther along. Big fleshy pipes gave way to fine, glistening net, like spray-painted tripe. John poked his face and the light up close to the surface and saw each little dimple in the net filled with tiny disks and cubes and balls, stacked atop each other in a jumble. The floor was narrowing, the spongy purple rising up in ridges, the ridges running parallel with the tunnel. “Drainage,” Jerry said, pointing.

They passed the light back and forth to share its comfort, sometimes shining it at each other’s faces, or inspecting their skin and clothing to see that nothing was clinging to them.

The tunnel widened abruptly and the thick sweet fog drifted around them. “We’ve walked far enough to be under another mound,” Jerry said. He stopped and pulled his boot from something sticky. “There’s stuff all over the floor.”

John trained the light on Jerry’s boot. Brownish-red goo covered the sole. “Doesn’t look too deep,” he said.

“Not yet, anyway.” The fog smelled faintly like fertilizer, or like the sea. Alive. It circulated in thin, high veils, as if caught between curtains of air.

“Which way now? We don’t want to just walk in circles,” Jerry said.

“You’re the leader,” John said. “Don’t ask me for initiative.”

“Smells like someone left seaweed in a candy store,” Jerry said. “Makes you gag.”

“Mushrooms,” John said, pointing the light down. White capped objects about two inches wide lay all around their feet, popping beneath them as they walked. He aimed the light higher and saw vertical and horizontal lines through the fog ahead.

“Shelving,” Jerry said. “Shelves with things growing on them.” The shelves were less than a quarter-inch thick, supported by irregularly spaced brackets, all made from a hard white substance that glistened in the beam. On the shelves were stacks of what looked like burned paper—wet burned paper.

“Yucch,” Jerry commented, feeling one of the stacks with a curled finger.

“Wouldn’t touch anything if I was you,” John said.

“Hell, you are me, brother. Minor differences.”

“I’m still not touching anything.”

“Yeah. Probably a smart idea.”

They proceeded along the length of the shelving and came to a wall covered with pipes. The pipes grew out onto the shelves and diverged into smaller clusters, leading to the glistening brown stacks. “What is this stuff, plastic or what?” Jerry asked, feeling one of the shelf braces.

“Doesn’t look like plastic,” John said. “Looks more like clean white bone.” They stared at each other.

“I hope not,” Jerry said, turning away. Walking through the fog and swirling air to the other end of the shelving, they found a foamlike white matrix, resembling a rubbery honeycomb, pocked with open bubbles filled to the rim with purple syrup. Some of the bubbles dripped purple onto the floor, where each drop hissed and smoked on impact.

John held back an urge to gag and mumbled something about having to get out

“Sure,” Jerry said, bending down to peer at the bubbles. “Look at this, first.”

John reluctantly bent, hands on knees, and looked at the bubble his brother had indicated.

“Look at all those little wires,” Jerry said. “Little beads traveling on wires, above the purple. Red beads. Looks like blood, don’t it?”

John nodded. He dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife he had found under the torn-up seats of the British jeep. He used his fingernails to withdraw a small magnifying glass from the knife handle. “Shine the light on it.” With the beam filling the bubble, he peered through the glass at the purple liquid and the tiny wires with red drops.

The closer he looked, the more detailed it became. Nothing he could identify, but the purple fluid’s surface was composed of thousands of pyramids. The white material resembled foam plastic or cork.

He gritted his teeth. “Very pretty,” he said. He took hold of the edge of a bubble and tore it away. The liquid splashed at his feet and the fog thickened. “They’re not here.”

“Why’d you do that?” Jerry asked.

John slugged the soft honeycomb and pulled his hand away glistening with purple. “Because they’re not here.”

“Who?”

“Ruth and Loren. They’re just gone.”

“Hold on-” Jerry admonished, but John swung with both hands now, tearing the lattice of bubbles apart. They could hardly see each other for the sweet, cloying fog. Jerry grabbed his brother’s shoulder and tried to pull him back. “Stop it, stop it, John, goddammit!”

“They took “em!” John screamed. His throat spasmed and he clutched it with one hand, still gripping and tearing and punching with the other. “They’re not in here, Jerry!”

The rolled in the goo until Jerry pinned both his brother’s arms. The light fell with its beam tilting upward behind them. John shook his head, sweat flying, and began a long, silent sob eyes scrunched shut mouth stretched wide. Jerry hugged his brother tightly and looked over his shoulder at the beam-lit, swirling fog. “Shh,” he said over and over. They were covered with the smelly brown muck. “Shh.”

“I been holdin’ it in,” John said after sucking a deep, tremulous breath, “Jerry, let me go. I been holdin’ it in too long. Let’s get out of here. Nobody’s here. There’s nobody down here.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Not here. Maybe somewhere, but not here.”

“I can feel them, Jerry.”

“I know. But not here.”

“Then where the hell— “

“Shhhh.” They lay in the muck, listening to the soft hiss of the fog and the curtains of air. Jerry could feel his eyes opening as wide as a cat’s in the dark. “Sh. There’s something—”

“Oh, Christ,” John said, struggling from his brother’s arms. They stood, dripping muck, facing the direction of the lantern’s beam. The fog roiled and puffed in the light.