Zen City Read Online Free Page A

millipedes—became a serious project, until the pitch sloped down sharply and we were knee-deep in reeking, soupy water. It was alive with tiny white worms.
    I had checked this way out before. I had been wearing boots then, and traversing a dry, narrow ledge along one wall that was not navigable by bare, tender feet. There was nothing at the end but a dripstone curtain, waves of columns thin as straw, fused together. There were gaps big enough for pale beetles, bloodsucking flies, worms and slugs to slime through, but not a human being. When Pirate and I reached it, Angela was gone.
    Clusters of tiny grey bats hung from the rock dome at the edge of the light, a living ceiling of eyes, teeth, tongues, and folded, furry leather that rained urine down on us along with mites and feces. Is that how it would be when the crows came? “Come on. I’m going back,” I said. “I know how to sit. I don’t need this.”
    “Go by yourself,” Pirate said. “She’s got me interested. I’m sticking with the lady.” Most of the time, you don’t really see your friends, the real ones, the fast buddies who’ve held you while you shake and cry. They’re like your own body—you don’t have to look, just answer grip for grip, a hand up or a shoulder to their shoulder. That’s what it was for me with Pirate until he said that. Dark as it was, I looked at the man. I had never noticed what an ugly mouth he had; I could hardly believe I’d ever trusted that mouth.
    I heard a ghost splashing toward us on the far side of the stone drapery, but I couldn’t see a thing. Then Angela’s voice: “Hurry up. Duck under.” Pirate laughed and dived in. A minute later I heard him surface on the other side. He stuck his forefinger through a chink in the curtain and curled it to call me along.
    I thought of the City, of the purity and rest and goodness of the City, of the innocence of its zens, the elect, the completed, those with nothing further to accomplish. And I dived into the teeming pool of shit. Worms and water filled my ears, dark, grainy, brown water, quiet except for the rumble of my own blood and the humming of my own spine. I felt an opening underneath, like a row of broken teeth, and I wriggled through, emerging beside Pirate, who kissed me loudly on the mouth. On the other side of the curtain, the side we’d come from, bats fell into the dark air, thickening and swirling, or else my eyes were closed, and it was me.
    Somewhere up ahead Angela whispered, “C’mon. Keep movin’,” and I felt as if I were in her throat, the way her voice came up at me from the water and the walls. We sloshed forward, naked, into the dark. The unguent held to our skin, and as the water receded, the eucalyptus smell took over from the ammonia of the bats’ piss and the stink of decaying guano and mite-infested silt.
    “Someone’s following us,” Pirate said. “I hear him. Angela was right.” But I couldn’t tell what sound came from where.
    My sense is sight, and it was nearly pitch dark. The passage rose away from the slime and narrowed until I could stretch my arms to support myself all around and above. It was still smooth flowstone, slick as a whale’s throat. What light there was diminished steadily as the cave narrowed, farther from the zendo. It was hard to imagine that there was a full moon outside.
    Then the passage took an abrupt turn, and we were bathed in soft, greenish light. Angela was right there. I bumped into Pirate when he bumped into her. “Brush yourself off if you want to see good,” she said. The light was coming from us, from the unguent. “It only shines when it’s real dark. If there’s even a little twinkle, it don’t work. The zendors don’t even know it.” I didn’t bother to ask her how she knew.
    We pushed on, stooping more as the tube narrowed. Wecrouched, then crawled, then squirmed on our sides and bellies as the passage corkscrewed down. I reached a squeeze that I could only make by twisting onto