TRILLED THE SOUNDS OF TINY BELLS
1563 4D
The door to the liftway passage at their backs, Andrew, Martin, Ezzar and Grendel stood in a dark understreet lit only by small red fires. Gathered in groups to their left and right, staring at them, stood dozens of children of all sizes. The light of the fires flickered off their faces, gleamed in their eyes, glowed off the smoke that clouded the ceiling.
The children wore rags, old shifts, coveralls, bits of body armor and carapieces, chunks of metal dangling from ears and necks and waists and genitals, woven beaded wire, hacked pieces of chitin joined with metal cord, fashion helms, furstripes, lizardskin, skull sections plated together, knotted and knitted sheets of hair of all colors, shriveled dried bits of flesh cast into amulets, poster sheets stiffened and shining with dried slime, braided and tooled leathers, board-mounted pictures of smiling faces, thick layers of spray-on ornamental hair, and still-growing vines and ropes of syntissue in veined and mottled fleshtones, with reaches of filthy skin of all shades showing underneath the rest.
“Hello,” Andrew said. The quiet that followed was punctuated only by the popping and crackling of the fires and the sound of a three-year-old boy urinating near Andrew‘s feet. A small hand reached out and grabbed the little one away. Without a word, the children began to move as one organism, contracting around the four intruders. Knives glistened in the firelight. “Stop,” he said, stepping back. He aimed his gun at the ceiling and gestured a shot. They stopped. “Who talks for you?”
“Dis Steels talk you.” A boy stepped forward, five feet tall, dressed in glassarmor, with nipples painted like flames flashing underneath. His head was shaved and olive brown. One of his eyes shone silver and pupilless, an infravid; the other showed only a dark empty socket. He shifted out of slang. “We gon ki' you and tak you guns and you bones. And tak that spook.” He pointed at Grendel, smiled, and began to chant in slang,
We tak you gun, we tak you bone,
We tak dat spook behin’ you,
We stick you soul way up you hole,
And the rest joined in, banging knives and tools against the hard bits of junk they wore,
We tak you hand an mak you sand,
We tak you hair an leave you bare,
We tak you skin an leave you thin,
We eat you fat an leave you flat,
We suck you brain an roll you eye,
We crack you bone an call de flies,
We shove you soul up stinkin’ hole
They advanced, continuing the chant. Andrew, Ezzar, Martin and Grendel backed into the doorway.
“I’m gonna shoot him,” Martin said to Andrew. His face worked. He blinked sweat from his eyes.
“No, don’t do that,” Andrew muttered. “They’ll—“
“Well, damn it, what else can we do?” The children were within a few steps.
“Stop!” Ezzar called to the boy in glassarmor. He grinned and kept coming.
Martin fired his gun. The glassarmor shattered in a white flash; its colliding fragments trilled the sounds of tiny bells. As the roar died through the tinkling, the chanting stopped.
“Please,” Ezzar said.
A girl about ten years old stepped forward. A cap made of finger bones and wire, anchored to a skull-post at its center, splayed over her shaved scalp. She wore a dark flexible pullover made of woven crystal fiber. Without a trace of accent, she said, “I speak for us. You can’t kill all of us. We’ll kill you first.” She raised a long transparent blade. Martin swiveled his gun toward her.
“No!” Ezzar stepped in front of Martin and said to her, “Do you want to protect the lives of your own?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re wiser than he… Steels was.”
“Yes. But you don’t belong. We kill everyone who comes here.”
“Wait,” Andrew said. “We didn’t want to come here. The liftway broke and dropped us here.”
“The liftway broke?” The girl’s eyes opened wide; momentarily she lost her clear speech. “It don work any?” She lowered her weapon slightly.
“No,” Andrew said.
The girl raised her chin and swallowed. “You’re lying. Show me. You, come with me,” she said to Andrew. Then, turning to the children, she dropped into slang again, “Alla you hol fa me.” Ezzar, Martin and Grendel moved aside. The girl took a burning stick as a torch and with the long knife in her other hand went with Andrew into the corridor.
“Who are you?” the girl asked Andrew as they walked.
“Andrew. Who are you?” Andrew watched the girl walk in a floating silent gait.
“They call me Mama Bones. That’s my name now.”
“Who were you before?”
“I’m Mama Bones. That’s all.” The girl stuck out her jaw.
They arrived at the liftway. The girl ran forward and inspected the liftcar and the bodies. She looked up the shaft and began to cry. “Come here,” Andrew said, extending his arm. “We’ll get you out.” He moved nearer and put his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
The girl spun and beat his arm away. “Go fuck a snake.” She whirled away from Andrew and ran back. He hurried after her.
