A Princess of The Linear Jungle

emerging more than once from the big rope locker, with her hair and expensive clothing mussed, followed out the locker door at a hypocritical interval by either Troutwine or Pivot.
    Now the liquor man turned toward her. “Your savantical friend neglected to mention the oddest thing about the Jungle Blocks.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The Discontinuity. Down below Broadway the Subway judders when you cross the line into Vayavirunga. Motion seems unaffected. But everything goes black outside the windows—blacker even than inside a simple Subway tunnel with its utility lights, that is. One imagines a similar un-witnessed transition occurs with all the utilities, pipes, cables, whatnot. On the Uptown end, likewise.”
    “Are you saying the Jungle is somehow rooted deep below Broadway, and the Discontinuity veers strangely around it?”
    Now Troutwine made his move, a play Merritt did not resist. He sidled closer and placed an arm low down around her waist, his hand ending up on a hip he plainly did not find distastefully broad.
    Troutwine’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Many things run deeper than their surface appearance would indicate, my dear. Including, I suspect, demure female students of polypolisology.”
    Merritt experienced palpitations of her heart and a faltering of speech. “I—I’m not a student anymore…Not since the semester ended….”
    “Shall we go below for a demonstration of your new maturity?”
    “Yes—yes!”
    In the cramped belowdecks, Merritt and Troutwine made for the women’s cabin.
    “I’ve got a pessary,” said Merritt.
    “Splendid,” said Troutwine.
    But outside the door they were halted by energetic rutting noises. Cady Rachis and Ransome Pivot had established their claim first.
    “No matter,” Troutwine whispered. “I’m prepared.” He dug out a whole lithographed tin of Bettie Blaze -brand sheaths and showed it to Merritt. She wondered how many encounters he had in mind.
    They moved a short distance away to the men’s cabin. But somehow Dan Peart had beaten them there. Shirtless, huffing, he was performing sit-ups with his toes hooked under a bunk.
    Troutwine’s hand on her rump induced vertigo. More than a week’s celibacy disinclined Merritt to hesitate longer.
    The rope locker proved not unpleasantly aromatic, smelling like hemp and tar, albeit a bit cramped for anything other than the most rudimentary positions. And Merritt was left with mild abrasions on knees and palms.
    Eventually, towards dusk, the five passengers found themselves again on deck, all rather whiffy and disarrayed from their various exertions.
    Merritt was the first to see Captain Canebrake approach across the brilliantly white holystoned deck. The barrel-bellied, nattily jacketed skipper puffed heavily on his pipe.
    “Hello, Captain! Where do we eat tonight?”
    “Tonight? Why, right here on the Smallhorne ! Would you have me put ashore in the Jungle, for hippogriff steaks? Tonight, and the next two, we make do with what’s in our larders.”
    No one had really anticipated this necessity before now.
    “No hot baths?” Cady Rachis peevishly exclaimed.
    “Not unless you jump overboard into the impeller waste stream. Or perhaps you want to put in at the Other Shore, for the delicate attentions of the Fisherwives?”
    Everyone looked instinctively toward the misty afterlife precincts and shivered. Discussion was effectively ended.
    The three days it took to crawl past the Jungle seemed endless. At the end of that interval, when the Uptown Borough of Hakelight appeared beyond its Wall, Merritt was thoroughly tired of the exotic scenery of Vayavirunga.
    And after a further two days of travel, she was heartily wearied of the attentions of Balsam Troutwine.
    Thank Manasa she’d never have to see either again!

2.
    BOTTOM RUNG

    THE NIKOLAI MILYUTIN PINAKOTHEK AND WUNDERKAMMER occupied a six-story building in the 73rd Block of Wharton, on the Trackside stretch of Broadway. Besides being one of the tallest structures in Wharton, the museum was one of the most expansive, stretching all the way back to the Tracks, and the entire distance from Cross Street 73 to Cross Street 74. Rife with all the architectural gimcracks beloved of its old-school designer, Rufo Guereschi, from architraves to aedicules, vermiculations to verandas, the elderly edifice resembled the wedding cake enjoyed by the goblin bride and groom in Patchen’s Eyebrows of the Extramundane . From its rear to its front, the