Art Pact 20

Something weird happened earlier. I was in one of the lower tunnels, cleaning the walls. It's been my main duty for the last several cycles - it's boring but necessary, and some of the others who are doing the same job tell me that it's a staging post. Several of the older wall cleaners, ones who were working here when my current colleagues started, got rotated up to the entrance tunnels when they'd got enough experience wall-cleaning below. It doesn't make much difference where you clean walls, of course - scrubbing is scrubbing - but once you've been moved up to the surface levels you get to see a bit of the world around the city. Lots of people never get that - they work at comfortable jobs in the innards, never have to scratch moss off a tunnel wall for hours on end, but on the other hand they never get to do anything exciting either. Never get to be in a fight, never get to see the sky, all of those things. I'd rather do a bit of hard work and climb the ladder than sit in some nice warm chamber for the rest of my life slowly becoming part of the furniture. Anyway, I was working on my own in one of the old tunnels that run up against the rock. The moss that grows down there grows slowly, but it's such a tenacious species that it takes an age to scrape off. My hands were numb from scratching the stuff off, and the floor behind me was littered with little flakes of green and blue mush that I was leaving behind me to collect in one big batch. I was boiling hot. Partly the work, but mainly the normal heat of the rock. But I started to feel chilly, a sort of sluggishness at first, then a definite feeling of cold, like a breeze. I looked up and down the tunnel for breathers, although normally the wind given off by a breather would be warm. There was nothing, but I saw that the little flecks of colour I'd left on the floor behind me were moving, sliding and occasionally tumbling into little drifts. Just when I was wondering about that, a chapter queen appeared at the end of the corridor. I genuflected immediately, but even as I did so I felt there was something odd about her. She was definitely a queen, but... "No, wait." she said. I heard her footsteps as she hopped towards me. "It's okay." "I'm waiting," I responded. "There's one right in front of me," she said. I walked forwards and swept the moss out of her path. "I apologise." "No need," she told me. "I told you, it's ok. It's working. Hey you, look up." I looked up, then back down. Then I forced the nausea away and looked up again. She was wrong somehow - she was definitely a chapter queen, but her body was wrong - I realised that she had been terribly wounded. Two of her legs had been torn off, and her arms ended in stubby blocks. Her head was small, crushed and rounded like a rock. I tried to look around rather than directly at her, focussing on the comforting normalcy of her voice and scent. "Can I help you, Lady?" I asked. "Yes. Yes, you can." she held one of her stubby hands up to the side of her ugly head. "Yes, it's working. It thinks I'm one of them. I'll move further into the tunnel." I didn't understand most of what she had said, but I understood moving further into the tunnel. I gestured towards the mouth of the access tunnel. "That's the direction to the main colony?" she asked. "Of course." "Good. You can lead me in there. To the nursery.. uh, to the second-stage nursery." "Of course," I agreed, confused. She stepped up beside me - small and twisted, yet amazingly agile on her two remaining legs. She moved one of her ugly stubby hands to my back, and I recoiled in case I accidentally brushed against her - but to my amazement she intercepted me, touching me on my neck. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" I genuflected again, backing away. "What? Oh, right. Never mind. It's okay, stand down. I forgot the taboo. Yes yes," she said testily. "Do you want to come in here and do this?" "I'm already here," I said, even more confused. "Not you," she told me. "Come on, let's get going. The nursery, remember?" I nodded, and began to lead the deformed queen to the heart of the city.

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