Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes Read Online Free PDF Page A

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    The causeway ended at another that ran along the inner edge of the belt. The city began a stone’s throw away.
    Its foundation rose like a cliff out of the water, a wall of shattered masonry with iron beams sticking out like the ribs of a crushed victim, all stained with rust-streaks like dried blood and littered with heaps of trash. Braided viaducts ran its length, borne on pylons whose feet were sunk deep in the putrid water. Rail-cars moved along them with screeches and hisses that drifted down to the swamp.
    I crossed a metal footbridge suspended from iron posts. On the far side a tunnel continued straight ahead into the pile, while rusty stairs climbed to a place where one of the viaducts branched off into the city over a dark dead end. The breath of the tunnel was humid and rank, so I chose the stairs.
    Higher and higher I went, back and forth around the corner of a tower. Soon I could see clear over the wetlands to the moss-forest and the peaks piled one behind another to the sky.
    There was a chained gate at the top. A low rumble came from the other side. I crept up and put my eye to a chink, and saw a grated walkway that ran along the tracks into the city. It was crowded with people.
    For a long time I stood there, transfixed by the torrent of detail. For they were graceful, the great ones of Enoch, their limbs swathed in flowing silk, their skin covered with ornate tattoos or dyed blue or saffron or pink, their cheeks pierced by delicate, ruby-hung chains. Some bore tusks or horns. Others loped on long, splayed toes. But each was beautiful, flawless in his or her own way. They reminded me somehow of the clay figures on my uncle’s chessboard; perhaps it was their eyes, which were large yet unseeing, as though shuttered from within.
    There are some who hesitate over every decision. I am not one of them. For me, to see a branching of ways is to pick one and dash down it, dealing with whatever comes. So I climbed the gate and leaped over.
    The people closest to me swerved and passed by. No one spoke to me or even looked at me. I was like a stone cast into a swift, shallow stream.
    I went up to a woman with pale pink hair. “I’m a stranger here,” I began. She seemed not to see me. I tried the man behind her: “I looked out from a high place,” I said. Again I was rebuffed.
    I was in the middle of the walkway now, with people rushing past on every side. I was invisible to them. If they had taken any action at all I would have picked my way as seemed best, but as it was I didn’t know what to do. So I climbed back over the gate and descended to the platform.
    Maruch and Gehud were coming along the causeway. “Dung gods!” cried Maruch. “What is it, my friend?”
    “No one sees me here.”
    “ Aiee! That’s what I was just saying to Gehud! ‘We’d better go see how he’s doing,’ I said. ‘Those phylites, they might not be too helpful.’“
    “I don’t understand,” I said. I met the helots on the bridge.
    “It’s just how they are, my friend,” said Maruch. “Each belongs to his own phyle. Phylites from different phyles don’t notice each other, except in the Cheiropt.”
    “Cheiropt? What’s the Cheiropt?”
    “The Cheiropt—why, the Cheiropt is everywhere. It’s everything.”
    “How am I to obtain their help if they won’t notice me?”
    “I was just coming to that. Gehud and I, we’re only simple helots, but we know people. We have a friend who might be able to help you get across to Bel.” He patted my arm in a friendly way.
    “What is Bel?”
    “Bel is the tower in the middle of Tethys, the sea. It’s how you get to Narva.”
    I considered the offer. “Very well,” I said at length. “Thank you. Lead the way.”
    “Wonderful, wonderful!” cried Maruch, cracking his knuckles with glee. He went past me with Gehud stalking behind. Together they entered the mouth of the tunnel.
    I hung back, reluctant to follow. The air