Atomic Underworld: Part One Read Online Free Page A

crumpled it up and threw it away at the next fly-covered trashcan … which
needed emptying.
    A
man that looked like a great anthropomorphic clam, his white skin glistening,
sold fish that must be diseased on a street corner, and Tavlin blanched at the
sight. Diseased fish from the Atomic Sea was what contaminated most people in
the first place—that and unprotected sex with an infected person, or birth from
same. Seafood had to be carefully processed to be safe, but some were too poor
or too hungry to care, and so they ate black market seafood regardless of the
risk. The result was mutation or death, sometimes both. Once they were mutated,
they didn’t seem to care anymore, and they would eat diseased food willingly,
perhaps even preferring it to clean food, but the sight turned Tavlin’s
stomach. Of course, the infected down here were different in some ways; many
were descendents of the original mutants from the Dark Times, and as such they
held themselves with more pride than first-generation mutants and would exalt
in thumbing their noses (if they had them) at an uninfected.
    Here
and there throughout the city he saw them—normal people, uninfected, true
humans like himself. They were people who for one reason or another had left
mainstream society and joined the mutants. Most were on the run from the law,
debt collectors, the sanitarium, or some combination of the three. Tavlin
couldn’t remember what exactly had driven him down here all those years ago.
He’d been a junkie and a thief and he thought he remembered having some vague
notion of getting clean and starting over again. He hadn’t believed in the
cities in the sewers—like most people he thought them an urban myth, though one
that had lasted for hundreds of years—but his underworld connections had led
him to Muscud, and there he had stayed. He’d gotten clean like he’d promised
himself, had even found a respectable job, by his standards, and he had found a
lot more besides. Until ... Jameson.
    He
sighed, kept going.
    At
one point he nearly collided with an unusual form clad in a trench coat, but he
quickly saw that the coat was merely to hide the being’s true shape. It was one
of the Ualissi, the gelatinous pre-human race that occupied its own ghetto of
Muscud. Its mucus had penetrated the trench coat, making it sticky, and Tavlin
wiped his hands on his pants as he gave the creature space to pass on by. Above
and below the trench coat the being pulsed with bioluminescence, and Tavlin had
to admit it was beautiful in its own way, if eerie. And sticky. Mostly the Ualissi
kept to their own quarter, and he was surprised to see this one out and about,
but then they did have errands that took them beyond their area of town, and who
knows, maybe they had become more outgoing since he’d been away. Then again …
    The ruby.
    As
casually as he could, Tavlin scanned the thing’s pockets for any suspicious
bulges. They were all wet and pasted against its swollen form. If there had
been any pre-human gems hidden upon the creature’s being, Tavlin would see
them. He could find nothing, though. The creature was innocent—of this, at
least.
    Tavlin
pressed on. Soon he found himself before a tall building crammed between two
others. It had a gabled roof and a wide front porch. Music drifted out from it,
something swinging and light, and there were lights and the sounds of laughter.
A wooden sign proclaimed THE
TWIRLING SKIRT.
    He
mounted the front porch, passed a couple necking on the swing bench, its chains
creaking, and crossed into the parlor where people danced on hardwood floors
and others reclined on sofas or chaise lounges, while a jazzy band played on a
dais, their saxophones flashing like molten gold, violins sawing like
grasshoppers. The women dressed scantily, some barely dressed at all.
    A
pretty young woman with iridescent scales on half of her face approached Tavlin
and stroked his arm. “And how are you doing this fine evening,