Tim Lebbon - Echo city

Nadielle did not turn around. But she knows, he thought, and that was the moment he realized she was beyond him forever.

The room was small and dusty, its corners soft with cobwebs. A table was pushed against a wall, one large book and a pile of loose sheets splayed across its surface. On the floor was another book, the cover ripped from its spine like a bird's broken wing.

"The thing my mother made to send Rufus into the Bonelands," Nadielle said, indicating the papers on the table, but she was not interested in this room. She went to the far corner and used her knife to scratch at the wall. She soon found what she was looking for and scraped the blade across the jambs and head of a door shape set into the wall.

"This," she said, "is my real library." She tugged at the door. It groaned, not eager to open, and Gorham went to help. The door ground across grit and its hinges squealed, and Gorham caught a breath of old books, hidden things, and something else. He'd never believed that eternal darkness could have a smell, but his time in the Echoes had told him otherwise.

"I'll bring them out," Nadielle said. "You go into my rooms and clear the table. Just sweep everything onto the floor; this is all that matters now."

"I'll come in and help," he said, but she looked back at him, close enough to kiss but so far away.

"Only me," she said. "This is Baker stuff."

Gorham left the small room and found breathing much easier in her bedroom. He'd never before felt claustrophobic; perhaps it was another way the Echoes had changed him forever.

He pushed everything from the table as she'd instructed, enjoying the brashness of it, liking the sound of crockery smashing when it hit the floor and the haze of dust thrown up by protesting books and sheafs of unsorted papers. He caught sight of some of what was written on the papers and recognized her writing. Numbers and formulae, sketches of things he had never seen, notes in some sort of personal code, and he realized once again just how far removed from the normal world she was. Perhaps genius was enough to do that to someone.

"Cleared a space?" She emerged carrying several large old books and twitching her nose as if trying to hold back a sneeze. "Take them, will you?" As Gorham lifted the books from her arms, the sneeze came, and she held both hands to her nose.

The door crashed open against the wall, and a black creature streaked in with bladed arms raised.

"No!" Nadielle shouted, and the creature settled like a cowed dog. It shuffled from the room without turning its back to her, and its long, waving tail caught the door and gently closed it.

"Remind me not to make you laugh," Gorham said, heart thundering. "Or cough. Or fart."

She chuckled, and it was a good sound.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked.

She instructed Gorham to spread the books flat on the table. They were bound in old, cracked leather, but they did not look damaged or fragile. To Gorham they appeared timeless.

"Well, I don't know about you," she said, "but I could eat a spitted swine and drink a vineyard."

So they sat together, eating cheese, dried meats, and stale bread, drinking good wine like water, and Gorham felt tiredness closing over him. Fear grew distant, held back behind veils of drunkenness. Nadielle drank at his pace, but she became more morose as time went on, talking less and spending more time paging through the books.

"I need to start," she said at last. "Need to look, understand. Find something."

"A way to kill it," Gorham said, nodding. Nadielle stared at him, her face a blank.

"Perhaps a way to slow it down," she said. She stared past him into a dusty corner, and beyond. "I think that's all we can hope for."

Gorham closed his eyes to blink, saw images of teeth and swimming things, and then exhaustion took him away for a long while.

When he awoke, Nadielle was slumped over the table. Her head rested on one of the old open books, hair hiding her face. One arm was slung across the table, the other hanging down beside her, and in that hand she clasped a pen. She breathed deeply and steadily, and her sleep seemed to be peaceful.

Gorham stood and stretched. He needed to urinate, his head thumped from the wine he'd drunk, and there was no way of telling how much time had passed. How can she live down here in the dark? he thought. He craved sunlight and vowed that, when she awoke, he would try to take her up, just for a while.

Then he remembered what she was doing and why, and he paused and closed his eyes to listen and feel. He could hear no sounds from below and feel no vibration. The Vex must still be climbing the Falls.

Nadielle stirred and sat up quickly, splaying her fingers over the page she had been writing on and glaring at Gorham.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Bad dreams."

"How long have-"

"I don't know. I drifted off, and… I can't sleep. There's too much to do. Too much! I've started, but we don't have any time at all. None!"

"Calm down; I'll help."

"Then go and help. Outside. Three vats need watering."

"Vats?"

"I was busy while you slept." She leafed through the book, her face made ugly by a deep frown. She muttered to herself, "I was looking for the seed, the root, the fucking root of it all."

"Nadielle?"

She looked up as if surprised he was still there. "Water. That's all. There's a pipe coiled beneath each vat." And she returned to her book and notes, effectively dismissing him.

When he opened the door, one of the blade creatures was standing there. It scuttled aside slowly, watching him with several sets of alien black eyes. He counted ten blades at least, stabbing things-spikes, thorns-and a sickly gleam to its dark skin that might have been poison. And teeth.

Another Baker creation with teeth.

The thing let him pass and he moved out into the vat room, enjoying the feel of the wide illuminated space. Three of the vats were dripping with condensation and issuing a hazy steam from their unseen upper surfaces. He heard faint scratching and something smoother, like thick fur stroking against the insides. Remembering what he had seen when Neph was birthed, he looked at these womb vats now with different eyes. They appeared solid, but they could flex and shift to the Baker's desires.

Shadows moved around the hall, most of them sharp.

He approached the first working womb vat, found the pipe curled at its base like a sleeping snake, slung it over his shoulder, and began to climb the wooden ladder strapped to the side. Something thumped against the vat's insides-a strangely intimate sound that transmitted through the ladder as a stroke across his palms. The air was becoming damp as he breathed in the haze of steam and mist, and it left a familiarly arousing taste on his tongue. It grew warmer, and though he did his best not to touch the vat's walls, he could feel the heat exuding from them.

He stood on the third rung from the ladder's top. Before him lay the surface of the vat's innards. It seemed innocuous and unremarkable-an undisturbed fluid whose level was an arm's reach below the vat's lip. It was dark, heavy, and slick, and small bubbles rose and popped with thick, slow explosions. Whatever gas formed the bubbles was noxious, but the smell quickly dispersed to the air.

Gorham aimed the pipe's nozzle and turned it on. The water barely caused a ripple where it hit, as if something deep below the surface was drawing it down. He aimed it elsewhere, trying to cause splashes but seeing little disturbance.

"What the crap are you doing here, Nadielle?" he muttered.

He repeated the procedure for the other two active vats, where the water had the same effect. When he'd finished descending the third ladder, several bladed creatures were waiting for him. They were relaxed, close to the ground with their blades averted, and he felt no threat from them. But one of them licked its thin lips, another seemed to be staring at the pipe, and when Gorham raised it they instantly became animated.