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"Hold it!"
"What?"
"The wheel!"
"What?"
"Hold it! Oh, moons!"
A strongly-built man, wrapped in duct tape from head to toe, let go of the wheel, and the acceleration immediately threw him backward, cracking his head on the back seat. But the harness that held his feet in the pedals kept the inertia from tearing him out of his seat. The aircycle continued its descent between bridges and pipes, skipping the busy quarters of the middle tier and plunging swiftly into the darkness of the Salt Works.
The vehicle dived, hitting drums, signs, and buckets of salt hanging here and there, at the risk of crashing in the air, tore down flaming sailcloth, and dashed like a comet between a freight train and the frightened faces of the machinists. The wheel was intercepted by a blue-colored octopus in flying goggles, who at the last moment managed to yank it toward him and roll it away from the stonework of the warehouse wall – and the aircycle dived into the alley between the factory pipes, knocking down a sign quoting The Last Poet: "Don't spill salt! That's your role!"[C1] [MK2]
"Damn it! Careful!" the big guy wailed as he tried, in his unusual position, to pull the doll stuck in the second motor. His fingers kept slipping off the smooth surface of the blades, and the duct tape slid off his body in the wind, covering his eyes and obstructing his vision. The aircycle punched through another pipe and bounced, causing the man to shout:
"I do have a spine, remember that!"
"I remember more than I want to!" the octopus shouted back with a stream of bursting bubbles that immediately hit the big man's nose. He sneezed, which added vibration to the aircycle, and the octopus grasped the shaking wheel more tightly, trying with all his tentacles to keep the right direction. The big guy all wriggled uncomfortably into the gap where the doll's limbs were caught in the twisting mechanism of the motor, and shouted:
"I'm not comfortable doing it upside down!"
The octopus yanked something under the wheel and the aircycle flipped 180 degrees, so the man had to grab the engine with his hands to keep from falling:
"Raud! You! Ashkarashana! Turn it back! Aaah! Idiot!"
"Who's an idiot?"
"What?"
"Nothing!"
"Turn it back over!"
"What?"
Raud jerked the wheel upward, and the flying motorcycle, in a loop, dodged a police flying boat at the last moment. [3] The big man's head, like the ticker of a clock, made a treacherous acceleration, and then struck and cracked the helmet of the policeman, who had unluckily leaned over the side of the boat. Before that, the big guy still managed to yank something in the engine – the doll flew out of it, hit the exhaust pipe with a loud thud, and disappeared into the spinning vortex of space. The big guy, rubbing his jingling forehead, pulled himself up to the wheel and pushed the octopus away:
"Go to the machine gun."
The octopus squinted his eyes at the blood that covered the man's face, but moved to the back of the motorcycle. And the big man, maneuvering between the buildings, let the motorcycle go even lower, into the steam sector of the tiers where the sunlight didn't penetrate.[C4] [MK5]
The headlights slid through the web of pipes as if through a cave riddled with streams, taking by surprise the ropes, chains, valves, and ancient, heartforsaken spider-like mechanisms that watched over the state of this dark realm. Frightened, they hid and scattered, caught in the trembling cone of light, dropping their instruments that were eager to hit the fugitives on the head. There was nothing to breathe because of the soot and smoke from the furnaces, but worst of all was the steam – it suddenly rose in hot streams from one side to the other, burning and almost blinding the big man. Blood ran down into the man's eyes, and the ringing in his head grew stronger and stronger. The aircycle crawled slowly through the labyrinth, where the infernal sound of a steam boiler could be heard in the depths.[C6]
The hum of the twin engines alarmed the octopus, so he turned on the searchlight and settled behind the machine gun. However, it was not the police boat that appeared in his crosshairs, but [C7] another flying motorcycle, driven by a small wooden monkey wearing a ragged sailor's cap with a pink pompom and ears sticking out from under it. She stared anxiously into the light in front of her, squinting and covering her painted face with her paw. An unknown artist had painted big eyes and mouth, a big belly button, and bright pink pants on her completely wooden body. With her rope tail, she clung tightly to the saddle of the aircycle.
"Slow down!" the octopus turned to the big man, who had just dodged another burst of steam. The man hit the brakes, and the monkey came alongside them. In the machine-gun seat, hastily secured with a seat belt, sat the very doll the big man had thrown out.
"Lila, what do you need it for? That useless dummy almost killed us!" he shouted, wiping the blood from his eyes.
"Father will fix it!" the monkey shouted back with her painted mouth, dodging another frightened "spider".
"You're crazy!" the man shouted. "Is Rune with you?"[C8]
"Yes!"
"Let's split up. I'll lead them to the east wall! You go through the canals!"
The monkey nodded, and at that moment a line of tracer bullets whizzed over her head, ricocheting off the pipe behind her.
"Oh dear!" the octopus shouted and clutched at the machine gun, firing back into the darkness.
The big guy let the aircycle with the monkey go ahead, giving the octopus time to fire, and followed her out of the steam sector into the Salt Works drainage well.
It was a huge stone pipe, through which the factory's waste flowed in a series of waterfalls from pipes protruding from the walls into the lower drain of the city canal. Throwing an anxious glance at the monkey, the man gripped the squeaky rubber on the wheel tightly and, pedaling, sped the aircycle upward toward the sky that glinted like a white dot at the top of the well. Lila yanked the wheel down and flew into the main drain, where all the water was accumulating. A moment later, a whole swarm of police air scooters emerged from the cobweb of the steam sector. And behind them, came two big boats. Almost the entire group of crafts spiraled upward, where they were immediately met by Raud's machine-gun fire. However, flickering with their engines' nozzles, several of the pursuers ducked into the pipe where Lila had disappeared. Only the third boat, with the policeman in the broken helmet, who was hanging off the side, remained on watch in the well.
There was an incredible rumble and crackle in the pipe from the engines. Lila could barely make out the twists and turns in the glow of the dancing headlights. The pipe was getting narrower and narrower, diving in and out, curving left and right. The aircycle was beating with its engines against the edges and was about to fail. But at last, a light appeared in the distance, and space widened. The monkey rejoiced at the glimmer of hope and put the pedal to the metal. The flying motorcycle sprinted forward, but a beam protruding from the wall appeared in its path. The right engine hit it and tore off, so the aircycle spun and struck first one wall and then the other. Tumbling and crunching against the metal with a bright blast of sparks, it scraped down the pipe almost to the exit and stopped at the thick stone rim, which resembled an open mouth, from which the water plunged and fell into the darkness of the canal.
Lila woke up to the roar of the approaching engines. Her eyes were blurry. She lifted her head sharply, looked back at the dim light, jerked toward it, but couldn't get up – her wooden legs stuck in the mangled casing. With a helpless groan, she made an attempt to throw the aircycle away from her, but it didn't work; it was too heavy. The pile of iron just jammed her with its wreckage. The hum was coming closer. She reached for the bag hanging from the wheel, her small wooden paws struggled to open the clasp, and a bright, gleaming red shard fell into the drainage stream. As if alive, it glowed pink and purple.
The water where it had fallen turned scarlet and blue, and sparks of azure fireflies began to rise from its surface as they twirled and danced, unaware of the impending danger. Lila stared at it tensely, unsure of what to do. Then she looked around and saw the very doll that the fugitives had hooked as they fell off the University building. She grabbed the shard and crawled as close to the doll as she could. It had a metal skeleton that covered its chest and stomach like a knight's armor. From the fall it opened, exposing a vault of heart dust in a small glass ball surrounded by an intricate mechanics of gears. The monkey plucked the ball and, turning around, tossed it out of the pipe. Then she grabbed the shard and began shoving it inside the doll. The gears and wheels crunched like cookies, and springs popped out of the depths with a vibrating sound, but Lila managed to shove the shard inside.
When the roar of the air scooters was quite close, Lila slammed the doll's chest shut and collapsed into the muddy stream, breathing heavily with her entire wooden body.
At the same moment, the police scooter hovered directly above her with their engine running, so that the glowing red nozzles almost blinded her. From behind them, separated from the darkness of the back seat, a creature resembling a dog jumped onto the monkey. It was all covered in a scaly metal shell, with some protruding valves painted in black matte paint. As it seemed to Lila, it resembled a mixture of a rhinoceros and a hound dog assembled in a tank factory. The creature pressed Lila into the pipe with its heavy mechanical paws with sharp claws that went deep into the monkey's wooden chest, so that the muddy stream almost covered her face and her eyes were under the water. Through the murky water, black smoke billowed from the creature's nostrils, and the red lights of its eyes lit up deep within its skull.
In a floating motion, a policeman in a dirty, blue uniform, disheveled from the chase, jumped off the air scooter and began yanking Lila's legs from the wreckage of the flying motorcycle. She let out a yell that rose in drawn bubbles to the surface of the stream. But the creature above her roared with its mechanical gut and blew more smoke from its nostrils, making even Lila's imagined pain go away.
Further on, it was dark, shaking, and her head banged against the trunk lid. The monkey's consciousness shrank to a dot. Somehow the wind whistled particularly wildly, scraping against the hull of the flying machine. Anxiety replaced sadness, and sadness replaced anxiety. Lila kept mentally scolding herself. She remembered her sisters and the old house, the eyes of the girl she lived with, and she felt little painted tears flowing from her painted eyes. The monkey felt the doll close by. That one, too, was beating against the lid as they maneuvered but gave no sign of life. There was hope, of course, but it was completely impossible to see it in all the chaos.
Again and again, the monkey closed her eyes with her paws being angry at herself. After a while, the vibration of the scooter became smoother. Lila thought that it must have gained altitude and was now going on a marked track somewhere on the second tier.
The steady vibration caused Lila’s eyes to close and her head to feel heavy. It was dark, but then her inner eye began to discern rainbow-shimmering shapes. They took on the appearance of tall, thick columns in rows going off into the darkness. She couldn't quite figure out where the light was coming from. It turned out to be from herself. There was a hum in the ears, like a jet engine running in her head. The tiles on the stone floor alternated their pattern as soon as one looked away, appearing alternately as cages, waves, darts, and snakes. Puddles could be seen here and there behind the delicate moldings at the base of the columns. Lila walked over and peered cautiously into one of them at her reflection. A wooden monkey was staring at her from the floor, only instead of eyes, the reflection was black with emptiness. Frightened, Lila took a step back and, falling, cried out a loud, unrealistically muffled, repeatedly reverberating echo. Breathing heavily, she grabbed the capital at the base of the column and rose from the floor. Toward her, from behind another column that seemed thinner than the others, ran out a familiar old man in overalls. He stopped and looked at Lila in confusion, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
191Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhOwHeTmGt2
