Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Author:Jeff VanderMeer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553901993
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Shadrach regained consciousness to the soft caress of the parachute silk, which had settled across his face like a shroud. The smell of dirt and plastic. A coldness to the air. A stillness. He opened his eyes to complete darkness. He was already prepared for death, ready for the afterworld. Somewhere nearby, water lapped gently. He wondered if he should move. It was peaceful under the shroud. The shroud allowed him to relinquish all responsibility. He had not known such peace since he had left the sunlight.

But then John the Baptist began to squirm in his pocket, and he remembered what he had come here to do. He sat up, still covered by the parachute. His throat was sore and his limbs creaky, stiff, but he had sustained no serious injuries. His shoulder throbbed and he had a terrible, piercing headache. Nothing like the loss of a hand, or an eye.

He fumbled his way out of the parachute, released the straps, and stood up. He pulled his gun out of his belt, thankful it hadn't discharged on impact. Carefully, he reached into the other pocket, brought out John the Baptist, held him up to eye level.

“Now that there's only darkness, you can come out. Are you okay?”

The meerkat made a derisive sound, astonishingly human. “I'm not okay. I'm dying. And it's not dark—your eyes are just pathetically bad at retaining light. It's midafternoon under a blue sky in here. For me. You—you'll adjust eventually. By then I'll be dead.”

“I hope you're right, John. But not out of any malice. If I could save you now, I think I would.”

The meerkat sneered. “Because we have grown so close. Because we've learned to live together, despite our differences.”

“No. Because I'm beginning to understand you. We'll talk again later.”

He stuck John the Baptist back in his pocket.

He still heard water behind him, but rather than fumble toward it blind, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The darkness was ignorant of time; it ate time as indiscriminately as it ate the light. Eventually, the darkness gave way to something that was not exactly light, but through which he could see, tinged a pale purple, the outline of rocks—a greater darkness—ahead of him. A faint suggestion of craggy ground.

He swiveled around—to face the flickers and flashes of a vast inland sea. The shoreline lay a scant twenty meters from him. He sniffed the air: a tangy scent that spoke of summer gales and worm-riddled ships. A smell not unlike the briny scent of the canals. Slowly, the glints and ripples were revealed as the tips of luminous fins as slippery, bejeweled sea creatures slid through the water, followed at times by a length of luminous tentacle, suckers edged in gold. Beyond them, the water stretched to a horizon of black on black. There appeared to be no far shore.

Sitting there, in the dark, he could almost fool himself into believing that he was above level, at dusk, with the canals all around him.

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