Episode LXXXII - Fracture

            There was a rhythmic pulsing sound, like hammers on metal, only distant, muted, watery.  The world blurred in and out, revealing faces, sometimes; rooms, equipment and decorations, bright lights, dim, flickering lights, then blackness.  The sound was constant, however, varying only in intensity from time to time.  It pervaded both the real world and the dark world of dreams which ruled in between brief bouts of consciousness.

            Is it an engine?  A piston?  Someone pacing?  My heart?  Siren pondered these things in foggy meditation, sometimes forgetting why she was doing it, other times just focussed enough to be desperate for an answer, any answer, she could cling to.  Is it a pump?  A torture machine?  Am I going to die?

            It was the kind of question that would not have bothered her much had she been fully conscious.  She’d have worked out the general source pretty quickly and moved on to other things, but in the half-dazed world after blacking out from pressure sickness it became all that mattered.  I must know!

            Pound-pound-pound-pound-pound…

            When she finally came to properly she found she was lying in a decompression chamber, staring through its thick glass at an ornate ceiling of carved wood with a lit glass dome in the centre revealing the smoky darkness of the deep above her.  I’m inside the city, she realised, her first clear, coherent thought.  Her second was in response to the feeling of constriction around her wrists and ankles.  Manacles!  She struggled against them, but the were tight, made of some kind of hypostatickally reinforced brass, and there wasn’t enough room in the chamber for her to move in anyway.

She let herself roll to a stop, took a deep breath to calm herself and then stared back at that ornate ceiling, preparing to wait, the distant pounding – Engines, surely? – her only companion.

As it happened she didn’t have to wait long, which was just as well.  The ceiling was beautiful, but it couldn’t hold her attention for long and, despite the apparent prospect of enjoying the mysterious sights of the undersea world, nothing swam or drifted past the domed ‘skylight’ except one small, dull, brown fish, which appeared to be following a patch of colourless slime mould.  She was getting pretty close to her boredom threshold within just a few minutes.

So, when a young woman first leaned over her decompression chamber and peered down at her, Siren found she was actually relieved.  It didn’t matter that the girl was probably her jailer, or that she worked for Marveille.  What mattered was that she was another human being and that, if asked enough questions, she would probably divulge some information.

“Oh,” the young woman said with some surprise as she realised that Siren was staring up at her, “you’re awake.  I wasn’t expecting that.”  She glanced off to the side, as if checking for reassurance from someone else, or she could have just been checking the time.  Either way, she nodded and then glanced down again.  “Well, it’s probably a good sign.  I’ll still need to do some tests of course.”

She spoke like a Philosopher.  Siren wasn’t sure if she was the kind she should trust with her health, but since she was still bound and sealed within a decompression chamber, it seemed her opinion on the issue wasn’t going to be taken into account.

“Can you speak?” the young woman asked.

“Last time I tried,” Siren replied, then added, “this time too, it seems.”

“Sense of humour,” the woman responded slowly, apparently jotting it down on a clipboard she had picked up from somewhere just out of Siren’s field of view, “another good sign, unless it shows signs of heading towards hysteria.”

“I’m not that funny.”

The young woman flashed a slightly patronising smile, then disappeared from view.  She came back moments later carrying a pinhole lantern which she shone directly into Siren’s eyes.

“Try not to blink,” she said, as Siren did just that, then, after a few seconds, she put the lantern down and made another couple of notes.

“Responses seem good,” she continued, although Siren wasn’t sure whether it was for her benefit or not, “and your hypostatick energy readings are healthy.  Yes,” she smiled down through the glass, “I think it’s safe for you to come out now.”

Rather than take direct action to release her, however, the young woman gestured off to the side and two large, burly men dressed in what looked to be brass armour appeared to either side of the decompression chamber.

“Make sure she can’t escape when I activate the release, then take her to the Academy.”

The men nodded and Siren found herself tensing up, wondering if she could be quick enough to escape, or not.  As the woman activated the release with a hiss of air and the sides of her chamber began to lift open, she suddenly relaxed.  There’s no point trying to escape just yet, she realised, besides, I might be able to learn something useful before I do.

The decompression chamber slowly opened and Siren lay patiently waiting, much to the approval of the young Philosopher woman, who smiled and said, “Very good”.  Despite this the two armoured men grabbed Siren’s arms and hauled her roughly to her feet before she could do it herself.  She had just a moment to get her bearings and see that they were in a wood-panelled medical suite, before they spun her around towards the door.

“We’ve heard about you,” the one on her right said in a thick accent Siren couldn’t quite place, “so don’t be trying anything.  Come on!”  Together the two thugs dragged her out through the door and into a long corridor carpeted with lush, red wool.  The walls here were finished in alternating wood panelling and marble and lit by the warm glow of gas lamps in brass sconces.  There were doors at regular intervals and, equally regularly, though less often, were corridor junctions beneath glass domes which appeared held up by golden caryatids.  It was clear that Marveille had spared no expense with this city beneath the sea.

Groups of well-dressed men and women tended to gather in the crossroads areas, admiring the view above them.  One or two seemed to be waiting impatiently for something and there we others sitting on benches between the statues, reading, or staring into space.  The corridors were not empty either, but various figures, including some who resembled nurses, hurried along them from one room to another and Siren began to wonder if she had, in fact, been held in some kind of hospital.

The guards took several turns and eventually they passed through a large atrium with a long glass roof braced with lead.  This was the busiest area she had seen so far and it was full of wealthy-looking (if not always healthy-looking) patients, visitors, doctors and nurses, confirming her suspicions.  Not a one of them seemed to pay her or her guards the least bit of notice and so they passed out of the hospital and into an enormous domed plaza that must have covered at least  two or three square miles of the ocean floor.

Siren gazed about her in wonder, her feet trying to slow even as the guards pushed her to make her go faster.  Here the city could be seen at its most grandiose, its most impossible, for the dome was filled with all kinds of  buildings and parks.  There were actual streets here as well, resembling many a street in the city above.  All was lit with ornate gas lanterns, the sky above the eternal midnight of the oceans.  She could see into that darkness, however, as the gigantic spotlights that had led her to the city in the first place lit up the many domes and spires of the rest of the city and the walls of the underwater canyon it resided in.

There was no shortage of people in this city.  Siren did not know where they had all come from but they seemed quite happy bustling about in the streets, doing the kind of things that citizens of Shadow from across the planet would be doing on any normal day.  There was one difference she noted, however, and that was the lack of truly poor people.  There were servants, certainly, and shop workers and machinists, but this city had no beggars, no orphaned urchins picking pockets, no slums.  It ought to be ideal, but for some reason it sent a chill down Siren’s spine when she realised it, dulling the glamour of everything she saw thereafter.

At last her guards brought her up to a large stone façade at the edge of the dome which, apart from the lack of grime, or evidence of wear and tear, might had been standing there for centuries.  It seemed so solid and its ornate carving, large windows and pillared doorways spoke of  tradition and great importance.  Siren could just make out the ghost of another dome beyond, assumedly housing the rest of the building.

Her guards dragged her up the main steps, into a spacious and well-appointed reception area and brought her to a desk where a sharp-nosed clerk looked up from a ledger and eyed her suspiciously.

“This one was just discharged from the decompression chamber,” one of the guards said, making the clerk glance his way, “we were told to bring her straight here.”

“Oh, really?” the clerk asked, his voice as sharp as his nose, “I’ll have to check to see if she’s expected by anyone.”  He began to flicked through the ledger, “What is her name?”

“It’s Siren,” Siren said, before any of the guards could make the attempt.  “I assume I’m here to see Marveille.”

The clerk stared at her in surprise for a moment, before flicking the ledger forward a few pages and smiling, “Ah, yes.  And not just Marveille, it seems.  You must be very special indeed.  Why, I can’t think of anyone in all of Fracture who would merit an audience like this one.”

Siren felt her heart beat faster.

“Why?  Who am I to see?”

“No less a personage than the president herself!”

“The president of what?”

The clerk raised an eyebrow, his expression clearly readable.  This one’s a bit dense, he was thinking.  Siren made a note of it for later.

“The president of the Noble Society,” he said eventually with marked impatience, “you’re here to see Doctor Barkham!”

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