The capital city was far, far away, in a clutch of hearts that hung in the distant reaches of the Great Body. The sled was too slow, and in any case, the ducts that led to the capital never connected directly to the gut that cradled Pflundt. The boys were told they would have to travel through the flux. They were given a picnic hamper for the ride.
Surrounded by a set of guards in metal helmets, Dantsig led them deep into a cavern. Lanterns lit the walls of a great shaft that dropped straight down beneath the city. A platform was suspended by ropes. When they stepped on, Dantsig pulled a lever, and they all descended.
“There’s a valve,” he explained, “so we can get into the flux.”
“Flux?” said Kalgrash. “What’s flux?”
“There are seven major fluids in the Great Body,” said Dantsig. “Ichor, yellow bile, the hard aliment, the sublime aliment, flux, lux effluvium, and brunch.
“No one knows what any of them are or what any of them do. Some of them might be food. Some of them might be blood or saliva. I don’t know. Who cares? The flux doesn’t move anymore. People say it used to. Maybe because the Great Body is dead. Or we might just be between heartbeats. Or flux might not be blood at all.” Dantsig shrugged and spat over the edge of the descending platform.
“Adding your own fluids to the mix?” Gregory said.
Dantsig smiled lazily. “I generate liquid,” he said. “It condenses in my mouthbox. Design flaw.”
Brian asked politely, “What were you made for?”
Dantsig shrugged. “Exploration. What about you?” Dantsig grinned wolfishly at the boy.
Kalgrash offered, “I was made to ask riddles and smite.”
“Crazy.”
The platform had reached the bottom of the pit.
They’d come to rest next to a huge brass dome — the valve into the flux. They entered the dome through reinforced doors.
They were in an air lock, a docking bay for submarines. The walls were riveted together. Small capsules with propellers and rudders hung from brackets. Men and women in old diving suits clanked around by hatches. Portholes looked out into some green mess in which the beams from electric lights slowly bumbled.
The guards accompanied them to a gangway. It led down through a tube and into a sub: a cramped space filled with tanks and pipes and spigots and dials and nozzles. Marines, frowning, took up positions around the cabin. Dantsig offered the boys benches upholstered in torn red plastic. A few of the crew, dressed in blue bodysuits and finned helmets, ran past calling unintelligibly to one another.
In a few minutes, there was a jolt, and the submarine moved out into the flux. The deck hummed.
“Whoa,” said Gregory, pressing his palms against the metal wall. “It tickles. The vibration.” He put his hand to his mouth. “It makes my teeth itch.”
Kalgrash offered, “I could remove them for you.”
“Naw,” said Gregory. “What would you do without my winning grin? It would be like the sun had gone out in your heart.”
Dantsig asked Brian over the din of the engine, “What’s with them?”
“They fight a lot.” Brian was too embarrassed to explain that Gregory made fun of Kalgrash for being an automaton. He didn’t want Dantsig to know and to hate Gregory.
The sub nosed through the darkness of the vein, its lights picking out growths and shy, slithering things.
Brian pointed at something finny doing backflips to escape the illumination. “Are they part of the body? Or are they like parasites?”
“Uh, yeah, kid, we’re all like parasites. Hey, will you let me spit in here?”
Gregory said, “Let’s keep the liquid outside.”
“You’re the one who’s seventy-eight percent water, squirt.”
“But the other twenty-two percent is charm.”
“He can add,” muttered Kalgrash in surprise.
Brian was worried that his two friends no longer even pretended to like each other. It made him miserable. He wanted everyone to work together. Everyone should be a unit. Like superheroes. Each with his own power. One can turn things into ice, another can melt them with his thermal fist. As a gang, they’re unstoppable. That was how it was supposed to be.
Instead, he thought of the detective novels he loved, in which everyone was always double-crossing each other. They were always telling each other lies out of the corner of their mouths and hiding things from each other in train lockers. They were telling women they’d love them forever and then turning them right in to the police for fraud. That wasn’t how he wanted his friends to be.
Even worse: He knew that Gregory was really the problem. Kalgrash was incredibly nice — well, when he wasn’t smiting. It was Gregory who persisted in baiting the troll.
Brian wondered why.
He had a long time to wonder. The submarine whirred through miles of duct. It followed hidden routes up veins or down arteries. Once, it passed a huge domed city in the flux, lit with a thousand little brass lanterns.
“When we get to the capital,” said Dantsig, “and you’re in the presence of the Emperor and the Regent, try to class yourselves up a little, got it?”
“What do you mean?” said Gregory. “Brian is already stunningly debonair. Look at those track shoes, that bowl cut….”
“The track shoes are kind of dirty,” said Brian, kind of miffed, “because I wore them while I was crawling through the dungeons of Norumbega, trying to free you.”
“Hey — hey! None of that, for instance,” Dantsig demanded. “This is the Emperor you’re seeing. There are rules. You can’t turn your back to him. Even if he’s … surprising.”
“What’s surprising about him?” asked Brian.
Gregory said, “He’s a kid, right?”
“Never speak until you’re spoken to,” Dantsig said. “Wait to be presented to people. You’re lower in rank, so you’ll be presented to the nobility. Not the other way around.”
“What’re you talking about?” Gregory said. “I thought you hated the Emperor’s Court. Why are you suddenly getting all Emily Post on us?”
Dantsig looked strained. “The Emperor,” he said, blinking rapidly, “is due some respect.”
“Who’s Emily Post?” asked Kalgrash.
“She wrote about manners,” said Brian. He asked Dantsig, “Can’t you say anything bad about the Emperor? Is it because you’re programmed?”
Dantsig leaned forward. “I can say whatever I want! You got that?” he answered angrily. “I’m just telling you, the palace is a tony kind of rig, and you can’t act like you’ve just stumbled in from the snot-fields of Cheln.”
“Kalgrash did,” said Gregory. “He’s a banjo-plucking hick from the dark side of the gallbladder.”
“I like the banjo,” said Kalgrash. “In reality.”
“Gregory,” said Brian, “we should probably … you know … stop making jokes … with …”
“What? Does Emily Post have rules about this, too? In her chapter describing what you can talk about with a troll in a submarine in someone’s artery? ‘Bluegrass music is never a suitable topic for trolls, in or out of submarines.’ ”
And then the troll was shouting and Gregory was laughing and Dantsig was threatening to put out his own eyes with a screwdriver if they didn’t shut up.
Finally, they just turned to the windows and all stared out at the passing duct. Gregory had a slight smile on his lips. Brian looked anxious.
The sub hummed on toward New Norumbega.
The boys were asleep when the submarine docked. It was many hours later, and thousands of leagues of dull green had smeared past the portholes.
Clamps locked down the sub. The boys could feel the sound of screws and winches through their feet. The hide of the sub rattled.
“New Norumbega,” said Dantsig, draped casually over some oxygen tanks. He rose. “Time for the exchange, kids. Put on your best smiles and your bow ties.”
Sailors in finned helmets pulled down a ladder and released the hatch. They led Dantsig, Gregory, Brian, and Kalgrash up into a clammy circular stairwell. The stairs were rusted. The little party ascended.
“Prepare yourselves,” said Dantsig. “Keep your cool. Sure, New Norumbega’s fancy. But they want to hear what you have to say. Hold your chins up high and keep your hands in the open.”
At the top, there was another hatch. Dantsig unscrewed it and raised himself up into brilliant light. The others followed.
It took some moments for their eyes to adjust. They were standing on a bright, salty plain. The overwhelming light came from seams in the sky shining whitely. Distantly, several figures labored toward them across the granules.
There, beneath the harsh light of strange veins, was a shantytown made of planks, old iron, and what looked to be clippings of flesh. Rising up in the middle was a great lumpy tower the color of beef jerky, with wooden gantries hanging on the side of it and uneven turrets sprouting out of the top. It looked like a potbellied stove with five chimneys.
“There it is,” Dantsig announced. “New Norumbega. Home of the Emperor. Capital of the Empire of the Innards.”