Chapter 116: Chapter 111

Against the far wall of the massive room, a light blue Sleem cube was hung, stretched to each corner of the room. It was paper thin and contained flat against the wall with a screen of visible lasers that appeared to emanate from the metal walls themselves. It vibrated and whistled faintly.

Three large orbs were suspended in translucent vats, the material barely visible to my eyes. The vats were elevated on pillars of the dull metal, slowly rotating around the contained star in the center of the room. Each pillar flowed along the floor without any sign of a track, neatly avoiding one another and keeping each vat aloft and in motion. The Sleem inside appeared to be in a state of deep panic and threw themselves against the walls of their prisons repeatedly.

An entire back portion of the room was dedicated to a raised pool of Sleem, where a small piece of the red birthing block Sleem swam in a marinade of liquified green oozes. Quadrum hovered over this last area, several eyestalk tentacles slowly waving and flowing over the red block. A pile of ooze had risen close to the beholder’s body and reached a dripping tendril upward to make contact with a ring.

Sparks erupted, and the Sleem pile splashed back down into the pool, washing over the birthing block. Quadrum blinked, a build up of flame crashing over their strange pupil. A screen of light appeared in front of the beholder, covered in arcane etchings. None of the lines, dots, and swirls that made up the beholder’s language meant anything to me, but Quadrum rapidly added several lines of text before turning away and allowing the window of energy to close.

“BEHOLD!” they roared, turning toward Axle and myself. We finished climbing down the stairs, and I followed Axle as we started walking toward the center of the room. “BE NOT AFRAID!”

“We come to dispose of the bodies, Quadrum,” Axle said. “And to install a feeder pipe head, with your blessing, of course.”

Quadrum hovered over and stared down at Axle, raising their large pupil to fixate on me. I felt a presence at the end of my mind, probing, pushing at my awareness.

“Hi, Quadrum. What can I help you with?” I asked, blinking away the headache that threatened.

“BEHOLD! MY DELVES!” the being roared.

Axle turned. “Quadrum wishes to hear from you why one of his delves yet lives. There is a question of secrecy, I think.”

I sighed. “He was unaligned. A slave. He’s no threat to anyone. As far as I can tell, he just wants to live in peace and take care of his spider. Besides, this coming from the entity that likes to zeppelin around off my balcony? Operational secrecy, huh?”

Axle narrowed his eyes. “Beholders are invisible to humans, hobbs, and most other forms of life, when they wish to be.”

I frowned. “Oh. Well, that kind of negates my point, never mind,” I huffed. “Look, I don’t think the guy will talk. He seems to understand self-preservation requires his silence. I didn’t see a point in killing him, and he might be able to help my affiliate,” I said, finishing with a shrug.

Axle turned back and leaned his snout up to Quadrum, squinting as one of the eye-stalks fixated on him.

“Agreed,” he said, relaxing. “Quadrum approves of the judgement you have displayed. They intimate that Dro’erja was always their favorite, as well.”

I nodded, and we reached the portal to the Sleem pit below. Several large carts were around it, stacked high with dead, nude delves. One held a delicate pile of three large, black pearls that glowed faintly at their cores. The carts were also made from the same metal as the floor and had no wheels. When Axle walked past one and shoved it aside, the metal bottom of the cart simply slid across the floor as if there was no resistance.

“Glad we agree,” I muttered. The Sleem pit had been covered completely by the strange metal, and I was nervous about where to go to avoid the inevitable reveal of the hole in the floor.

Instead, it became translucent, and the light from the contained star in the room washed down into the old cargo elevator shaft. The top of the shaft was clear, but much lower, in the dark, something squirmed. The floor opened next, sliding away into itself.

Axle produced a length of cable attached to a metal hook. A loop formed in the floor beside the hole at his feet, and the Knowle secured his hook, before checking the straps of his mesh upper garment.

“Okay, I’m good,” he said, producing a thick length of L-shaped pipe with a Dearth Conglomerate logo emblazoned on it. “I’ll go below and install the feeder pipe, you dump the bodies?”

I nodded, staring past him at the Sleem. The mass of them had grown to fill the entire cavern and was jellying their way up the shaft. Its movement was slow, but it made me nervous anyway.

Axle carefully lowered himself over the lip of the hole and descended, slowly, letting out rope until he was where he wanted to be; about fifteen feet below the surface. He had mounted the elevator shaft from the side, so he was flush with the wall, and began working with the pipe in his hands.

I shook out of my daze and went to dump the carts, deciding to do the pearls first, since they were close at hand. The first cart I grabbed moved even easier than I was expecting it to. It slid right up the edge and lifted easily to drop the pearls off the lip.

They bounced, with a sharp, echoing sound that caused Axle’s large ears to flicker with movement. I winced, expecting them to break, but the pearls proved to be stronger, simply bouncing and rolling down the slope until they vanished into the mass of Sleem with faint, wet, plopping sounds.

I moved onto the carts full of bodies. Those carts moved just as easily, in spite of being overloaded with bodies, and parts of bodies.  

Axle’s ears flinched again as the corpses hit the concrete and began rolling. The concrete shaft was steep, and the bodies traveled downward, slowly tumbling over and over while their limbs flapped against the concrete. I turned and grabbed the next cart.

When I turned back, the Sleem at the bottom was closer. A rush of hot, fetid air pushed up out of the shaft, as the mass of jellied Sleem at the bottom forced its bulk up the shaft. Wet fart sounds echoed up the elevator shaft, and Axle pinched his nose, a look of distress on his features.

“Disgusting,” he whined. Then he shook his head and focused on the pipe. He was holding it up to the wall, and the longer portion of it began to rain concrete dust as it began drilling into the concrete.

“Is this okay? Are you okay?” I asked, hesitant.

“Of course!” Axle shouted back up. “The mass is after the bodies, I strongly doubt it will climb this high and risk the beholder’s direct involvement again.”

“Ohhhkay,” I said. I shook my head and turned back to my task. The carts all moved easily, and the bodies fell into the pit in bunches, to roll and slap their way down toward the hungry slime puddle that lived in my basement.

Once I had finished, I moved to Axle’s position and leaned over to watch his progress. The massive puddle of Sleem moved upward again, shoving its bulk toward us with an echoing fart against the concrete and another rush of stinking air. It smelled like decomposition and bathroom cleaner.

The pipe inside the concrete glowed red, and I was relieved to see the puddle at the bottom relax and deflate, once it had claimed all the rolling delves. It retreated quickly, resuming its position near the bottom of the shaft, barely out of the light, and stayed there.

Axle finished and pushed away from the pipe on the wall. “Ready!” he shouted. I hauled him up, hand over hand, and as soon as he was clear, the hole in the floor sealed itself, before becoming opaque again. Each of the empty carts surrounding it collapsed into the floor, melting back into the structure of the room as if they had never existed.

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“Thank you, Quadrum. We shall leave you to your work. Summon me if you require anything, please,” Axle said. He gave the inattentive beholder a short bow and turned to leave. I followed my operations manager out of the room, back the way we had come. Once we left the room, the slab of metal covering it slid back into place without so much as a whisper.

“So what the hell are they doing down there?” I asked as we left.

Axle snorted. “Studying the Sleem, can’t you tell?” He chuckled, then shook his head. “I have no idea either. The room itself seems to be composed of a responsive polyalloy, perhaps even a solid nanite block, though that many under one operational computing device seems . . .” he drifted off, shaking his head.

“Okay, the tech is past you too, I get it,” I said. “But . . . that was an artificial star, right?”

Axle nodded grimly, his lips a thin line. “Miniaturized. I can only imagine the mortie value of a power source like that.”

I nodded and dropped it. Our mysterious beholder guest and their expensive toys were not my immediate concern. I kept thinking about Molls, and the church inquisition into her drugging. There was almost no chance they would rule in our favor at this point, but I was worried about her position.

As I thought about it, I realized Molls was another alien I might end up employing. She seemed determined to stay, even if she lost her job.

The route out of the underground was much easier, as the elevator had recently been completed, and hobbs were already working the crank to bring people and equipment below.

Axle and I got in line, and I was still lost in thoughts of Molls. When our turn came, Axle had to nudge me, and we piled on board next to a troupe of hobbs going topside to join the construction work detail. They seemed happy, and excited, even those wearing storage rags.

Once the elevator was hand cranked to the surface, slowly, we disembarked and separated from the lively group of hobbs.

“Order us another set of clothing, and furniture from Leahcim please,” I said.

Axle nodded and pulled up his BuyMort interface. “I agree, the hobbs from storage are upsetting. It is a place I hope to never see in person.”

I stopped, a scowl on my forehead. “Hey, what can you tell me about Storage? I keep hearing about it, and besides knowing that it’s a place where people keep coming from, I don’t know very much about it at all.”

Axle frowned and scratched at his ear with one paw. “Hmm. It’s odd, the things new people don’t know about BuyMort.” He sighed and shook his head before continuing, “Storage is the only place in the BuyMort system where you can spend morties if your account is in the negative. There are weekly limits, and everything adds to the debt, of course. Many become simply trapped. It is a large world, very large. Constructed, surrounding a gas giant. It is one of the oldest BuyMort facilities we have access to.”

“So anyone who goes into debt?” I started asking.

“Ends up in Storage. You can buy food, water, medicine, even basic clothing or bedding without any morties. Your account goes into the negative, and any morties you manage to make simply goes against your debt. But you can live, technically speaking.” Axle stopped to look around us at the hobbs. “Most major affiliates have a presence there.”

“Some make it a good place, like the hobbs. Many sections of Storage are only habitable at all because of good hobbs doing good work. There is a life to be lived in Storage, if only just,” he finished, licking his nose, and pointedly turning away. “I apologize, I do not enjoy discussing Storage, it brings up unpleasant memories.”

I looked around, and watched how slowly the elevator moved as we stood in silence. “Well now it’s all quiet and weird cause you’re just thinking of the bad memories on your own. I’m happy to listen if you want to vent a little.”

The hulking Knowle sighed, and his tail drooped. “I spent time living in Storage, once, years ago. Before Jada. I had a wife, we worked for an affiliate that went under, and we ended up in Storage with the rest of the people who lived and worked there.”

“We were good workers, and signed up right away with a work camp being run by Dearth. The wages were barely enough to survive on, but we were lucky, and lived in a good, safe section of the structure. For months, we scrimped and skipped meals to save up for passage out, to find another affiliate and make a new life.” There he paused and shook his head, whining faintly in the back of his throat.

“They had her repainting walls at remote outpost stations, after a local board shakeup led to a logo change. Meaningless work that paid barely enough to cover food each week, and had her transported to a new dangerous outpost every day. I had an education, so I worked in logistics. One day, I was confronted with an emergency. Two outposts near one another in an asteroid belt had been peppered by micrometeoroids. The only approved oxygen resources weren’t enough for both stations, so I chose the station with the higher overall population. Forty-three people suffocated because of that choice, including my wife. I didn’t know she was on board that station, or eighty-three people would have suffocated aboard the other station instead.”

I was silent, as was Axle. “The local Dearth board compensated me with a new position, away from Storage, after the incident. My productivity was affected by the tragedy, and they hoped a more comfortable position would assist in my healing process.” His teeth ground as his claws came out. “I still have the congratulatory card.”

“I’m sorry, Axle. I shouldn’t have pushed, but I’m grateful you told me. I’m happy to have you as an ally against Dearth.” I said.

Axle shook his shaggy head. His tail had reverted to a normal position, but his ears were still flattened against his head. “I hold no ill will against Dearth. They are like an animal, simply operating on instinct. It is more of a system than a person, who caused my tragedy. There is no point in fighting that.”

He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “Besides, I have found great comfort in the years since, and Jada. She is a strong, fiercely intelligent mate, and we are establishing our library together, as free Knowles. I cannot complain at my lot in life.”

Axle raised a finger. “That said, I will not mourn Dearth should you manage to take them down at all. But I strongly suggest you keep a close eye on your finances if you intend to survive this conflict.”

“Right,” I said. “Nobody wants to end up in Storage.”

Axle nodded slowly. “But so many of us do.”

“Sorry for bringing down the mood. What’s the story with that sewer hookup to feed the Sleem?” I asked.

As if happy to have a distraction, Axle panted. “It is installed, and the seal is good. I have a real time readout on my BuyMort display. An alarm will draw me if the seal is broken. Now all we must do is coordinate a dig to the other end and connect our sewer pipes. The extra liquid and nutriment will increase their growth rate considerably.”

The Knowle finished with a handshake. “If you’ll excuse me, I must go oversee the installation of the new freezers, after I swing by my place for a quick bite of lunch.”

I shook his oversized paw and nodded. “Thank you, Axle. Go. I have someone I need to see anyway.”

My operations manager turned and walked away, adjusting his belt as he went. It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon, and Molls should be done with her inquisition. I shook my head and went to go see my reptilian girlfriend.

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