With muted breath flesh in rags flash eyes acutely aware. Flesh and rags pull closer, their hope-lessness uncomfortably bare. Paladins scan these tramps and hags, catch gleams of intelligence in the eyes of the decimated faces behind the filthy hanging hair. Feeling uneasy they move on, leaving the huddled damned behind as they enter a crumbling labyrinth smelling of every foul odour imaginable, and a few far removed from the imagination. With a rapid studiousness born of disciplined training they cautiously inspect a flux of ill-lit alleys that rush at them from all directions.
Dark unformed shapes move swiftly across penumbral edges, fending off dull glows draining from rectangular yellow lights hanging watchful from stunted stalks of stone. A web-woven silence stifles with its eerie gloom, perhaps presaging things the paladins would rather not know. It smothers any wish they may have to produce a sound and acknowledge the existence of something more than just the rustle of decay, the whisper of death, the anxious heartbeat of cruelty and fear. Their footfalls are silent, their thin mouths set grim. They cannot hear themselves breathe.
And then a tortured scream explodes in the ears of one of them, with such short speed and sharp intensity that he wonders if he imagined it. Second Leader notes that the others walk on without reaction, eyes left, eyes right, left again, right again. The stillness beckons them on. The alleys hug their secrets like dark mouths. They peer down each one but see nothing except the occasional glimpse of........
they can never be sure.
For those that live in the labyrinth, the alleys have snuffed out any sparks of observance; sparks that may shatter the hollowness within the folds of blackness. A blackness that eases the burden of having too many years and no means to fulfil the obligations of their dreams. If the tramps had mirrors, thinks Second Leader, would they soon destroy them? He wonders if they destroy each other when their pain becomes intolerable; or does it bind them closer together?
Down down they walk into the stinking core of this forgotten catacomb, this unexplored maze of utter despair. The stench of necrobiosis fills their mouths like someone else's vomit. Two of the squad put on filter-vents, awkward masks that cut down vision and labour the breathing. First Leader turns to the others, holds up one finger, points ahead then to his nose. One hour more and fresh air. They've forgotten what fresh air smells like.
They continue, weapons slung too casually but their eyes very alert. They notice that the floor is devoid of rubbish, with not even a scrap of paper, a curl of plastic, a crumb or dead insect; only concrete coated in dark olive filth and puddles of contaminated water. Broken lights become frequent. Total blackness is soon reached.
They switch on helmet lamps, the sudden brightness stark and penetrative, scratching at the concrete, diving into the yellow slime on the walls. Second Leader feels that he can almost see the stench hovering in the light like wisps of smoke. He touches his filter-vent for reassurance, more interested in his ability to withstand the fetor without recourse to the mask.
As the descent grows deeper they shine their lamps down the alleys, curious to see what they hold, but their blackness is so total that the light barely travels forward for more than a few paces.
The slope of the tunnel they travel flattens out, curves then rises. Soon they will emerge from the cliff-face that towers above the eastern side of the city like a forbidding wall of impenetrable rock built by a giant. As they ascend the air freshens. They walk quickly, eager to be gone. They grow careless with their new enthusiasm, hardly glancing at the tramps and hags lining the approach, as they line every entrance and exit, living on the periphery of the labyrinth in order, it is assumed, to maintain a balance in their lives between light and dark, life and death.
Or perhaps there is something in the labyrinth they need to contain.
The paladins' emergence is almost a surprise. No opaque glow strengthening slowly, just a blast of fresh air into their lungs and a breeze slapping their faces. Then the sight of the spangled city glinting in the after-dusk. They stare down, across and up, mindful of the unknown dangers that lurk behind them, thankful for the sight of sequinned columns tickling the belly of the moon, itself almost dwarfed by another giant's wall opposite them.
They press on, across crumbling walkways born of gutter planning and littered with the crude detritus of exhausted techno-masochism. When these stark concrete fingers were first built - so long ago that the year is lost - they were hailed as an imaginative innovation, convenient and well-lit, suggestive of good crowd control management. Now they are aerial eyesores and the city waits for their spindly metal legs to weaken and snap.
They progress along a third finger, complacent within the familiar, not evaluating immediately the sudden changes: pockets of darkness where there had been illumination; strange rubied flashes in the leaden sky; a plastic scent hugging the air; the distant wail of sirens and the gentle touch of tremors. Above all else it is cold, and in the coldness of the night there is a hollow ringing. This they hear, and only then do they see, and smell, and feel.
With the exception of the First Leader moving point (as the holder of such a privileged position is always expected to) and the Second Leader trailing (for it pays to be watchful) the paladins glance continuously at each other as they descend to ground level and connect with the streets expecting mayhem. Surprisingly they appear empty, as if the city has been evacuated.
Cadaverous metal hulks gleam fulvous-argent as drizzle falls like acid vapour. Sidewalks and asphalt suggest liquid density where none exist. Structures with square eyes darkened by dreams and built by mortals for the worship of greater aspirations stand like sentinels from an aeon long gone but still not buried in history.
First Leader stops abruptly and they take up positions behind him, their weapons no longer slung casually from their shoulders. They stare back at the secret eyes of the past, ready to blind if necessary. First Leader listens to a Palace Transmission in his helmet radio. He turns and orders them back to the labyrinth. As usual he gives no explanation, not even to Second Leader; and as usual all obey and ask no questions.
Suddenly a twisted scream pierces the nerves of the city. And is ignored. It is a scream impossible to identify the source of, and the paladins hurry on for it is too close for them to want involvement.
From the sky fall two mangled bodies. They land in front of First Leader with a sound like breaking eggs, splattering his boots and black combats with rich blood. He halts and all look up, then around and down, their nerves one with the city. They acknowledge something more than just a slow drastic change: they acknowledge the Shift. And with the Shift comes fear. The fear once felt by ancestors, and now drying the mouths of the élite paladins of the Guard of the Ruling Committee; a fear that mocks their previously held apathy to the quasi-religious theories of the Shift.
Across the street a ghostly shadow walks through a battered steel door. Vented muzzles point, trigger fingers tighten, First Leader beckons.
They resume walking, retracing their steps. Light the colour of bile splashes over a junk-fiend lost in a temporary entertainment amidst the remains of a dream that has never been realized. They pause, watch the wretched figure unravel lengths of wire and tubing from the shattered fuselage of a flying machine that, like all of them, never made it beyond take-off. Wounds striate his pale flesh and drip truth oven-fresh. Soon he will die with the agony of a million dawns.
Graffiti is scribbled on the firmament, confused reflections with a waft of bloody sewage. Static crackles eerily between the towers, each of the ten thousand square eyes blinking ruefully.
It is the Shift. A rupture of vessels. A rupture of worlds. A temporal leakage. Natural. Unnatural. Proof. Proof of nothing. The Shift is all things to all citizens.
As the paladins walk, Second Leader occupies himself with matters that the Ruling Committee regard as trivial, even treacherous. Will I live or die? What should I fear more, the Shift or the labyrinth? Do I care? Should I care? These questions are not his alone.
They recross the walkways and confront the cliff. It reflects nothing of the Shift, stays aloof, a power unto itself. They look back at the city. It still sparkles but its jewelled presence is fragmenting. Something invisible and brazen is mincing the gems, scattering and smothering at random. They turn away not wishing to see more, and enter the labyrinth.
Fangs, claws, snarls: at first sight Second Leader thinks it a dog moving at his heels, but a second look confirms that it is not. And of course it wouldn't be, not here in the labyrinth. The dog is a tramp. There now seem to be many more than before. Second Leader watches them carefully as he moves and with muted breath, their flesh in rags, they flash eyes acutely aware. The tramps pull themselves close to their hags.
Down down the paladins walk, the stench of the core filling their noses, their mouths, forcing its way down their throats and curdling their stomachs. The main tunnel will soon level and curve and return to the eastern cliff-face as if some secret rock-hidden barrier exists within the core, but before it does they stop to put on filter-vents, Second Leader sensing something behind him and turning. They are being followed silently not only by the tramps but also their hags. They stop a short distance away from Second Leader, the tramps licking their lips, hungry in some unknown anticipation. First Leader shouts out and Second Leader looks in his direction, unsure of what he said, the words muffled, stifled. Lamps explode stark light and Second Leader clicks his on.
More tramps block their passage and others approach from the dark alleys that join the main tunnel. Second Leader turns back to those behind him in time to hear the hags mutter excitedly. He catches a few words, tightens his grip on the gun and thinks of the deserter they have been searching half-heartedly for.
First Leader barks out his rank. "What are they saying?" he shouts.
"They're looking forward to the smell of roasting meat," Second Leader shouts back as blades flash up and down.
First Leader falls without sound, viciously precise arcs slashing his combats, slashing his flesh. Second Leader glances the other way, alarmed by his own possible death, but is surprised to see the tramps and their hags standing motionless. Unarmed. The other paladins jerk and sway in undecided little gestures, their weapons useless in such a confined space unless they wish to shoot each other. They switch their confused attention to the alleys but those spawned by the dark mouths stand impassively, only their bloodshot eyes moving.
First Leader lies still, blood the colour of dully glowing oil staining his combats. The bloody blades have vanished and the assassins, as still as the body before them, regard the paladins with curious stares, the light a jaundice upon all their features.
Second Leader fingers his weapon nervously. Under Military Decree he is now in command and would be justified in giving the order for the annihilation of the tramps and their hags and anyone or anything else that lives in the labyrinth; yet he does nothing but stare at them. And those now under his command stare at him, a strange gleam in their eyes, as if the First Leader's death is more than just an opportunity for slaughter, more even than an unexpected watershed.
The tramps and hags back away. Second Leader shakes his head, removes his filter-vent and feels sick as the stench leeches the clean air from his lungs. Those in the alleys to the left and right disappear into the blackness, those near the First Leader drag his body away, leaving his weapon, their eyes never leaving the paladins. Those that followed move back, drift away, no longer interested. The paladins stand alone, ghastly yellow in the salivating concrete that binds the stench. Second Leader is conscious of the others waiting for him to say something. He replaces the filter-vent over his face, thinking quickly. When he talks his voice sounds muffled, as if his mouth is gagged.
"We go back," he repeats.
The reaction to his order is curious. The strange gleam in the eyes of the paladins reappears. He switches the radio in his helmet to standby but does nothing more, for the cliff swallows transmissions as it swallows the dispossessed of the city.
Without appointing a trailer he leads his men back without hindrance, until the cliff is behind them and the concrete walkways before them. Broken. Their spindly metal legs snapped and buckled, their spines of gravel and cement end in mid-air or lie like monstrous slug trails on the ground below them, far far below them. The city is scarred by hot crimson bolts and hairy with electrically-hued swirling clouds, but there is more darkness within its grid of streets than ever before.
They watch in silence a skyscraper fall away from the belly of the moon, snap in its middle and crash on to the buildings beneath it. Shattered glass erupts like an explosion of rubies, a shower of blood. They barely hear it, barely feel the impact. Perhaps they don't; perhaps they only sense the rapid beating of their hearts.
The Shift captivates them. Soon it will end, leaving a few buildings, pockets of survivors, patches of earth not burned entirely black. And the city will be rebuilt. Then destroyed again. Then rebuilt. Destroyed. Rebuilt. Until perfection of society is reached. Or so say the members and appointees of the Ruling Committee. But everyone knows that no one really knows anything about the Shift. It is a convenient enigma, a tool, an excuse.
As the Shift destroys, Second Leader is struck suddenly by the futility of life in the city, the blue funk of the Ruling Committee who rather than having reached out for answers had instead huddled in their coldly functional meeting rooms and weaved laws and etiquettes from the memories and menace of the Shift. Had laid down parameters to govern the movement and development of society, parameters explained in countless words on countless pieces of paper and enforced by the élite Guard of the Ruling Committee, élite because of the paladins' adequate intelligence and controllable attitudes, and an inbred overwhelming sense of loyalty. But individuality can often know no parameters.
Second Leader glances up at the cliff behind him. Parameters of ink and paper are nothing compared to the impregnable parameters of the enormous cliffs that except for one side surround the city. He glances to his right, north, the open side that leads into a long valley that spreads slowly, the cliffs always following. It appears that ultimately it will lead to a vast openness beyond the imaginations of all, the cliffs curving away into the distance and disappearing. He grimaces at a memory. He knows the empty vista is eventually filled with a final cliff.
What is on and beyond the cliffs? wonders Second Leader. Were the walkways and the labyrinth an attempt by our forefathers to find out? He cranes his neck and looks up and round, sensing their formidableness, their absoluteness. The hard black rock that reflects nothing seems to threaten him, to suggest that his thoughts would be better placed elsewhere.
"Daunting, aren't they?" whispers a voice in his ear.
He turns, lifting his weapon. A gloved hand slaps back the barrel, keeps it firmly against his chest. It is another paladin, the one they have been looking for, the deserter. His face is unshaven, his combats crumpled, his weapon slung casually from his shoulder. His expression shows no fear.
"Had you the courage to ignore Military Decree and investigate those alleys that lead off from the main tunnel, you would have discovered that some of their ceilings grow higher until beyond the reach of hands. In those ceilings you would have seen large holes. Those holes are the beginnings of other tunnels that travel upwards."
For a moment the implication of what he has said doesn't sink in, only his voice, calm and very assured.
"The tramps have not the intelligence or strength to reach the holes. I do. As do you and your men."
Second Leader looks at the black rock behind him. Then looks up. And up. Until he thinks he might fall backwards. "It is possible?"
"Those that lived long before us carved the tunnels. Within them there are bellies full of their relics. I have seen no human bones."
Second Leader narrows his eyes warily. "How did you manage if the holes are beyond the reach of hands?"
The deserter's mouth stretches thin and humourless. "A small pile of dead tramps was enough. The holes have indents to facilitate entry."
"You killed them for theory, for curiosity?"
"And for food for those that live."
Second Leader thinks of First Leader and resists the urge to shudder. "The tramps did not resist you before you killed them?"
The deserter frowns. "Strangely, no."
The answer confounds. "Did you reach the top?"
"I am short of rations, but have smelt the air. It is unlike anything you have smelt. It is pure, a food in itself, but alas, not food enough," and he smiles the smile of an old friend.
"We each have rations for a week. How long to the top?"
"I stopped after three days, too weak to continue. The end climbs steeply. I think four days will do it. It took me only one day to return, sliding most of the way."
Second Leader looks back at the city, its rubific evisceration lighting the sky. It dances to the tune of a tremor, its lights blinking out one by one as the Shift sucks it apart. There is no hope there now, or will there be later.
"There is nowhere for you to go," says the deserter looking down at the smashed walkways, "except back inside and up to the top."
"To what?"
He shrugs. "Can it be worse than rebuilding the city and reliving the past? Or living with the tramps?"
"A new future can be built." And then in a whisper: "Without the Ruling Committee."
"To be destroyed by the Shift?"
"What if the Shift also destroys what is on and beyond the cliffs?"
"There is only one way to find out. If you do not wish to come with me, at least give me a week's rations so that I can accomplish what I must do."
Second Leader scrutinizes his pale face, peers into his reddened eyes, still a little uncertain. The man is a deserter. Once he was also a comrade. The enormity of the choice is as daunting as the Shift and the cliffs.
"The Ruling Committee are probably dead," says the deserter, "or at best hiding powerless under the ground like frightened grubs."
"You are sure about this?"
"Do not mock my intelligence. I am like you, moulded by their ways but not entirely without my own thoughts. Thoughts that, I hasten to remind you, are shared by many others within the Guard," and his eyes narrow, remembering past veiled conversations with Second Leader. He reinforces his point by glancing at the other paladins. "The Ruling Committee tried to mould us to their ways. They failed. Let us be true to ourselves."
Second Leader nods his head. The deserter is right. If he was not then they would have slaughtered the tramps and hags at the time of First Leader's murder. Even without an order from himself it would have been within the more extraordinary provisions of Military Decree for the paladins to have acted on their own initiative. But they didn't because.......because First Leader was military and not like them. He had no thoughts of his own. And the tramps were hungry and Second Leader had felt something for them, and they in turn seemed to feel something for the paladins. The tramps had had the advantage in numbers and positioning, yet they hadn't capitalized on it. Why? Was it because they also had their own thoughts and recognized the signs?
"Who are the tramps?" Second Leader asks. "What were they before they came here?"
"Ask them that and they look at you with a great sadness in their eyes. And they never answer."
Second Leader regards his men who have been listening intently. He asks them what they want to do. At first they are hesitant, reluctant to speak. He presses them one by one, and one by one they agree to go back inside and up, up to the top and whatever waits for them there.
"Then let us go," snaps the deserter as he turns to lead the way.
They follow, into the cliff-face, into the labyrinth, Second Leader trailing. Tramps and hags line the passageway, their faces upturned, their eyes acutely aware. Second Leader watches them closely, knowing that he would rather rebuild the city and relive the past than live as they do. Even the unknown horror of the Shift would be preferable to having the tumoured body of a starved dog with teeth like rotten bones and hair like melded mat.
A tramp mutters something about the paladins going to the holes. Second Leader strains his ears and catches something that sounds like a woeful tut. He assumes it is a sound of regret that they cannot follow the paladins' endeavour. As he nears the last of them his blood freezes with the words of a hag mumbling to her companion.
"They don't know we're the lucky ones returned from where they go." His legs move of their own accord as he realizes that they were once like him; capable of climbing to the top. "Only here can you escape the Shift," she says, "only here."
As he passes her he sees her lick her shrivelled lips and start to chew on her companion's filthy nails. Warm liquid fills his crotch and trickles down the insides of his thighs. Only when a single word reverberates in his ears does he realize that he has screamed out 'NO' to those moving before him. The line of paladins stop and turn with weapons ready. The tramps and hags sit motionless and the paladins' stares become baleful when they see the fear on Second Leader's face.
"No, no," he whispers, shaking his head, unable to elucidate. "No!"
The deserter attempts to move along the line but an arm shoots out and bars his way. He respects the gesture and stops. Second Leader falls to his knees and pulls off his helmet, banging it down on the concrete floor.
He gazes up, his face older than his years. "There is no escape. It is futile." His voice is heavy, as heavy as the rock above them. "Others have done it before and failed. The proof is here before you," and he scans the expressionless faces of the tramps and hags. "They know."
"They know nothing," says the deserter.
"They know," repeats Second Leader. "I heard one mutter.
They have seen and returned. The top is no escape from the Shift."
"The Shift does not last forever and the envy of the incapable should be no deterrent.
Stay if you wish, it is of no consequence to us," and the deserter retraces his steps to the front of the line, the paladins turning to follow him.
Second Leader shouts at them as they move off. "You don't understand."
The last paladin glances back at him and smiles.
And then they are gone in gloom and silence.
"Why didn't you say something?" he demands of the tramps and hags.
A tramp gargles saliva and scratches a wild beard, flicks a few strands of hair from his face and leans forward with contemptuous eyes and an ugly sneer. "What of you now, pallor-din?" The question draws rheumy cackling from the others. "Scared to go up," continues the tramp, "and unable to go back." He turns to the others. "Does this coward think he can thrid the labyrinth at our expense?"
Second Leader moves off his knees and squats, his hands taking a military grip on his weapon, his heart thumping too loudly in his blood.
"Thridding, thridding, thridding," croaks a rocking hag with manic eyes.
"To thrid with us one has to have paid the price."
Before Second Leader can stand, silver arcs flash and slash with practised ease.