The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

leather straps just as Angelique had been at the Institute, naked, bodies obscured by a sickening nest of slick black hoses. Each woman’s face was completely covered by a black mask fitted with smaller hoses—for each ear, each eye, the nose and mouth—and their hair completely wrapped in a dark cloth, so that despite their nudity Chang could not begin to guess who might be on which table. Only the woman nearest to the turret, who he could barely glimpse from his angle of sight, was distinguished from the others, for the soles of her feet were discolored blue in an identical manner to Robert Vandaariff’s hands.
    Next to her stood d’Orkancz, with the same leather apron and gauntlets he’d worn at the Institute and the same brass-bound helmet, to which he’d attached another hose, hooking it into the metal box that made the mask’s mouth. Into this hose the Comte was speaking, and somehow through its engine his voice was magnified, like a very god’s, to crash against every distant corner of the vast chamber. Behind d’Orkancz stood at least four more men, identically dressed, their faces hidden. Men from the Institute, like Gray and Lorenz? Or could one of these be Oskar Veilandt—present either as prisoner or slave? Chang could not see the very base of the tower. Where were the guards? Where was Svenson? Which table held Celeste? None of the women seemed awake—how could he carry her away?
    Chang spun at a sound behind him—a clanking from the staircase itself. The stairs wound around an iron pillar—the noise came from within it. He reached across and felt a vibration. The clanking made him think at once of a hotel’s dumbwaiter…could the pillar be hollow? How else to get things quickly from the top to the bottom? But what was being delivered? This was his chance. When whatever was being sent reached the bottom, someone was going to have to open the tower door to get it—and that would be his moment to break through. He shoved his glasses back into place, set the pillowcase down against the wall and threw himself forward.
    The Comte was still speaking. Chang didn’t care—it was all the same nonsense—another stage of the circus act to dazzle the customers. Whatever the real effects of this “transformation”, he didn’t doubt it was but a veil for another unseen web of exploitation and greed. The clanking stopped. As Chang swept around the final curve he saw two men wearing the aprons and gauntlets and helmets bending over the open dumbwaiter, just sliding an iron-bound crate from it and into a wheeled cart. Behind them was the open door to the chamber platform, to either side of it a Macklenburg trooper. Chang ignored the men and the cart and vaulted from the steps at the nearest Macklenburger with a cry, slamming the man across the jaw with his forearm and driving a knee into his ribs, knocking him sprawling. Before the second man could draw his weapon Chang stabbed the stick into his stomach, doubling him over (the man’s face falling near enough to Chang that he heard the brusque click of the fellow’s teeth). He drove the dagger up under the man’s open jaw and just as quickly wrenched it free. He stood—the dead trooper sinking like a timed counterweight—and wheeled back to the first man, planting a deliberate kick to the side of his head. Both troopers were still. The two men in the masks stared at him with the dumb incomprehension of inhabitants from the moon first witnessing the savagery of mankind.
    Chang spun to the open door. The Comte had stopped speaking. He was staring at Chang. Before Chang could react he heard a noise behind and without looking threw his body forward out the door—just as the two men in helmets shoved the trolley at his back. The corner clipped him sharply across his right thigh—drawing blood, but not enough to run him down. Chang stumbled onto the platform, the sudden enormity of the cathedral-like void above staggering him with a spasm of vertigo. He groped for his bearings. The platform held four more Macklenburgers—three troopers, who as he watched swept out their sabers in one glittering movement, and Major Blach, calmly drawing his black pistol. Chang glanced wildly around him—absolutely no sign of Svenson or which, if any, of the brass-masked men might be Veilandt—and then up to the dizzying heights and the clustered ring of masked faces peering down in rapt attention. There was no time. Chang’s only path away from the soldiers led