The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam Read Online Free Page A

became disorientated again. It felt like whichever window he stood at – however many storeys he ascended or descended – he gazed down at yet more red-tile rooftops, either blazing in the sunlight or gleaming coldly by the light of the moons. And he gazed up at yet more buildings soaring upwards, away from him, culminating in spires and spindles or messy knots of metal pipework. The architecture looked impossible.
    In another attempt to take stock of his location he tried to get to the bottom of the building he was in, but the deeper he went, the darker the interiors grew, and he became unnerved. The less light made it through the windows, the more moss and mould dampened the floors, ceilings and walls. Large, dull beetles scuttled from his footsteps. But he kept on going until, at the topof one stairwell, he heard a strange noise echoing up from the green, dripping depths; metal scraping metal, and something like laughter. He turned and fled.
    He had expected to meet more people. Once he saw somebody several rooftops away, sitting on top of a chimney pot, wearing a large, outlandish hat, smoking, and sipping from a shiny hip-flask, as if there was nothing to be afraid of. Alan almost dived from the windowsill he was leaning over, shouting ‘Hello! Hello!’ but by the time he’d lowered himself down into a small paved courtyard and then climbed up a drainpipe onto the top of the building that the stranger had been sitting on, the stranger had disappeared.
    As he continued on his aimless journey, though, he saw more and more people. Just never close up. The ones he wanted to speak to all avoided him, and he ran or hid from the ones who tried to approach him. They were all grimy and skinny and desperate. Who knew what they wanted, or what weapons they carried?
    Alan’s diet of snails grew tedious and, despite his best efforts, he fell sick. He put it down to drinking bad water. The little food he managed to eat went right through him, and whenever he did manage to fall sleep he was woken in short order by the urge to vomit. He considered returning to the Pyramid – but no. He wasn’t going back until he could do something good for his family. Returning now would be bad for them. He wouldn’t fuck things up for them any more.
    A week or two later, he was still unable to hold any food in his belly. He was dehydrated and his head felt like it was on fire. His skin was dry in some places, greasy in others, and he stank. He was encountering many more people now, but they kept well away. Traders selling dried meat and vegetables and whisky from backpacks went past but he didn’t have the bugs. He remembered bugs – a species of iridescent beetle, their bodies varnished – from Modest Mills, but he had no idea how to lay his hands on any now.
    Had he been wrong about the Discard all this time? Maybe the Pyramidders were right. Maybe it was just a hellish labyrinth, offering nothing but a variety of ways to die. If you were
born
out here, well, then maybe you had a chance, but if you were a Pyramidder …
    But he
had
been born out here. He was
not
a Pyramidder. He kept going.
    He almost forgot that Snapper was a musical instrument until one night he heard somebody else singing. The man was drunken and not very good, but he followed the sound of it. The air was warm. He crawled, exhausted and emaciated, to an ancient-looking archway wreathed in soft, shaggy moss. Beyond it, occupying one corner of some kind of ruined plaza, there was a large wooden shack. Golden light spilled from its windows. A gigantic hairy bull of a man stood in front of it, arms folded. A sign hung above its door, and the sign read ‘THE WAXY NUT’. The song ended, and there was a moment’s silencebefore a cacophony of voices suddenly erupted – loud shouting, laughing and cheering.
    Then somebody else sang a different song.
    Alan approached the shack. The bouncer glanced over him. He did not look impressed, but his eyes were not cruel.
    ‘I was