Read Online Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer - Free Book Online Page A

it: You are a ghost of a ghost, a memory fast fading. The smell of nothing on the breeze—the pale limbs of trees on the holoscreens, the memories of sounds upon the walkway, the clarity of the echo of your hand upon the railing. The emotion that comes to you is so clear, so simple, as if a painter has managed, using translucent paints, to penetrate to the core of a canvas, and you its reflection. No fear. No hatred. No frustration. No anxiety. No love. No envy.
    When you turn for protection from this insanity, from the mirrors, the glass, the only solace is found in the shadows—and it is in shadows that you once again sense Nicholas.
Two as one.
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    THE NEXT night, you go to bed early. You lock your bedroom door, change from work clothes to black pants, black blouse, and black boots, with a blue jacket thrown over the blouse. You place the gun in a pocket on the inside of the jacket. You put a holographic mapfinder in an outside pocket.
    Then you wait.
    For a while, all you hear is the clack of dishes as Salvador puts them in the washer. This sound is followed by silence. You become tired. You feel a bit foolish—since when were you cut out for spying? But then you hear the familiar click of the door, and you check your watch: two in the morning. You wait a moment, quickly leave the bedroom, and are out the door—onto the seventy-fifth floor of your apartment building. The elevator is empty. You take it to ground level and walk onto the street, hoping you've not already lost him.
    Free market traders crowd the streets in their makeshift hovercraft shops. Neon flashes over everything in garish shades of pink and purple and green and blue. Almost blinded, you put on sunglasses. People press against you in all variety of clothes, from the opaque to black robes with headdress. The smell of a thousand drugs rises in your nostrils: a melange of addiction. A man spills his drink against you. A woman shouts out, “You Dead Art fucking bitch whores!” Above, the walls of the city, highlighted with green lights, rise two hundred feet, lit also by the warring fires of the wall guards, the tied-up dirigibles casting shadows down onto the crowds.
    For a moment, overwhelmed by the city in a way you had not thought possible, you stop walking and glance desperately from side to side. You curse your stupidity. Have you already lost him?
    Profound relief washes over you as you catch a glimpse of a familiar furry tail and hindquarters getting on an escalator walkway not twenty meters ahead. You press through the crowd, jostle the man who spilled his drink on you, and manage to get on the escalator, thirty meters behind Salvador, who is a tuft, a spray of fur, through the welter of legs. The laser gun suddenly is much too small a weight in your jacket pocket, not nearly enough to defend you from the city. You are alone. None of your friends know about Nicholas's disappearance. The police don't know either. If you disappear, Nicholas disappears with you: You are not one, after all, but two, and the city is the only infinite—a maze, a crystal mirror, a shattered toy, a palate of undigested time.
    â€”and the meerkat you hope is Salvador jumps off the escalator, and you frantically elbow pedestrians aside, manage to disembark at just the right spot and enter the press of the cracked concrete walkway. Ahead, the familiar shape of Salvador turns a corner.
    When you turn that same corner, you find yourself in an empty dead-end alley.
    You let out a little laugh, a snort, a chuckle. You just stand there, staring at the far end of the alley, unable to think yourself past this point. A quiet grows inside you unlike anything you have ever known. The crowd noises, the soft hiss of hovercraft, the crackle of meat in a sidewalk grill—they all fade away, and all that is left is the pounding in your ears, the glistening drops of water on a culvert, the flash of lights behind your