All text herein are property of Anh-Vu Doan, copyright 2003. Do not copy without written permission.
CHAPTER 1: OCCUPATION: MINDJACKER
Evryst smiled as he thought about what he?d buy when he got his money. He dragged the limp, cold body of a man into his apartment and began hooking up the cords. The man?s shoes were covered in blue and grey fluff from where they had picked up the peeling bits of carpeting as he dragged the body through the building. The man was still alive, of course. Evryst had hit him with a brainblaster that stunned most humans.
As the unconscious man sat limply in an ancient plastic chair, the machines behind him began to flicker on. Sharp bolts of electricity jumped back and forth through the wires that Evryst had taped to his temples and forehead. Evryst flipped down a pair of green-tinted ski goggles and carefully placed a thin, spidery-looking machine over the unconscious man?s head. Small panels placed on the insides of the thin metal arms of the device lit up, casting an eerie electric blue light over the man?s face. Evryst cracked his knuckles and turned his computer on.
The black display shone, and white letters appeared on the screen.
INPUT DIRECTIVE:
Evryst typed into the command code to load the brain download and encryption program. The computer replied:
COMMAND CODE RECEIVED. LOADING PROGRAM..
The apparatus behind the man began to hum slightly, and the arms of the machine mounted on his head twitched like a living spider made of metal. A cold blue light came from inside the machine, bound into a single sharp spot upon the man?s wet, grey flesh. Other little lights came flickering on, and the arms projected these onto certain exact locations with its frightening precision.
The blue dots tightened and, as always, the dark room, unlit by anything save for the light of the computer screen and the cold blue of the machine, began to smell of burning flesh. The computer screen displayed a 3d picture of the victim?s brain and head, cross-sections showing the steady progress as the arms burned through skin and bone to get at the precious tissue within. Shortly after, it stopped the progress, the arms having penetrated the skull. The machine sent out tiny fibrils, connecting itself to the man?s brain, and the computer displayed a single sentence.
CONNECTION COMPLETE, READY FOR TRANSFER
Evryst typed: input directive: commence transfer
TRANSFERRING..
The computer displayed a red progress bar that showed how much of the man?s brain functions had been turned into data. Suddenly, at 50%, it stopped, and Evryst muttered, ?Oh shit.?
activate manual mode, he typed. Normally the computer handled this, but sometimes there were special cases. Some people had antihacks in their heads, they?d usually give the comp? some trouble. He wondered?
Yes it was. A Namikon-90 by the looks of it. The new brain implants were getting harder and harder to crack, for every new model that came out. The Namikon-90 was one of the newest. It used the power of the implantee?s own brain to amplify its defenses. Hacking into a person?s head was becoming harder than hacking into computers ? the race was ever-escalating. This victim?s implant, however newfangled, took a lot longer than Evryst had expected it to in order to activate ? perhaps the man had gotten it implanted illegally, or obtained a secondhand copy. Evryst started to work on his assault.
Three hours later Evryst?s nerves were frazzled with his effort. A bead of sweat rolled down his face. He pressed the button and hoped he would finally get past the little silicon implant in the man?s head. The computer made a small beeping noise and the man jerked for a second, pulling on the wires connected to his head. Evryst sighed with relief and presently a small yellow-orange crystal disk popped out of the disk drive on the computer tower. The man woke up and looked straight forward, blankly, a line of drool coming down from the corner of his mouth. Evryst dragged his limp, senseless body over to the window and kicked the brainless idiot out, letting him plunge into the black abyss below.
Evryst pocketed the yellow crystal disk and, reaching inside his frayed old grey vest, took out a small pill which he popped into his mouth. All the ache and tiredness that he felt was washed away in a few minutes. The man in the alley had assured him that it would last for at least three hours, but Evryst had long ago learned not to trust the claims of half-drunk old alleyway salesmen. It didn?t matter. He?d get the new ?jacked mind to them before the effects came crashing back down again. He looked at his wristwatch. It was almost 3:30 in the morning.
Evryst walked out of his apartment and down the long corridor. It was lit with a sickly greenish-yellow light, and the badly painted, faded green walls only made it feel all the more nauseating. Here and there bits of the wall were crumbling down, large mats of insulation and wiring could be seen through the larger holes. The walls and the doors in them were badly marked, the decaying remnants of two hundred generations of taggers and vandals who had worked their entropic power on the building. The walls were covered in hundreds of graffiti; some were sprayed on, painted over, and sprayed on once more, others were more permanent, carved into the wall itself.
The cold darkness of the outside world hit Evryst like a leaden weight. It was heavy with the exhalations of a billion mouths. The raucous sound of autogyros whizzing about above echoed downwards through the cavernous darkness between the mile-high skyscrapers. Placed precariously around the air and buildings were long metal catwalks that connected the sidewalks on every floor. Now and then a shower of yellow-white sparks would illuminate the world around them, from the jury-rigged electrical connections that the poorer people used to power their apartments. As Evryst walked down the sidewalk he could see the multicoloured neon ads blinking on and off in the shadows. Everyone who needed money allowed the corporations to hook up ads to their houses for a minimal pay every month.
Evryst walked on. A fell wind howled through the cavernous darkness of the city, bringing with it the smell of strange foreign pollution. As he walked past the consecutive rows of cones of light, emanating from pale orangey-yellow sodium lamps, Evryst began once more to contemplate what he?d do with the money made from selling the stolen mind. Perhaps he?d buy himself a toygirl. Most didn?t come cheap these days, but it was only a small change compared to what toygirls could do these days. Evryst tried to remember the last time he was with a toygirl. He couldn?t.
It didn?t matter. After tonight he?d refresh his memory. Evryst fingered the hexagonal disk in his pocket. The hologram surface wasn?t exposed, of course. The mind contained within it would be used as an AI, perhaps. They would lock it with various programs, break its will. When the mind surrendered it?d be totally loyal, cold, and intelligent. People could never get the hang of creating artificial intelligences. It seemed as if people lacked the ingenuity to design the correct software architecture to support an artificial intelligence. So they did the next best thing. Evryst was only one of many of the freelance souls that companies turned to when they needed more AIs; the previous ones dying out eventually over a few generations of copies. It had been discovered that brain-made AIs, gotten from human minds, tended to decay after they had been duplicated several times. It was the reason why it was important to only get certain people, possessing robust minds.
That was good for Evryst. He?d probably never go out of business.
He arrived at his usual rendezvous place. It was a lonely little bar, crammed into the alley between two gigantic megaskyscrapers. The moment Evryst entered he was hit by a leviathan blow. The air reeked of the stench of men and the putrid smell of urine and beer. A single, yellow bulb at the center of the room, dangled precariously from an exposed wire, provided feeble lighting, and the motes around it danced in the air like insects. In one corner was a large brown discolouration. That was the place the patrons considered the restroom, as the old one with urinals and such other amenities was broken for as long as Evryst knew it. The paint, turned a sickly yellow from long years of smokers, was peeling from the wall. Some men, seeming to be permanent fixtures, like the tables and love seats, were covered in bits of peeling paint. They were all fat except for a tall, thin chap in one booth. This was the man Evryst was looking for.
The man looked up as Evryst approached him. He wore black sunglasses and a giant black hat, his black trenchcoat with its collar turned upwards, so as to conceal him in darkness. Evryst sat down and whispered, ?The rabbit is in the eggshell.? The Trenchcoat Man nodded his assent and out slid a black-gloved hand, a single transparent rectangle in its palm. Small red and green fibres were embedded within it. In this small chip was the fractal encryption code that would unlock the e-bank account that would allow Evryst to get his money.
?Now the holobyte disk?? asked the Trenchcoat Man, his voice a neutered artificial one, so as to conceal his identity.
?I got it right here,? Evryst said, taking out the yellow-orange disk. The Trenchcoat Man grabbed it as would a starving man grab a meager morsel of food.
?We have details on next assignment,? said the Trenchcoat Man.
?Really?? asked Evryst, ?Already??
?Indeed, and the rewards are also ? different?? said the Trenchcoat Man.
?Will I get my money??
?Far better. You see our scientists have found a way to replay the memories of encoded minds. Now we can replace virtual reality with a complete visual representation of someone?s real memories. Memories have been shown to have more physical clarity than VR programs. The first models have been sent out, and we?d like you to try out our new system.?
?I?m not gonna be your guinea pig.?
?But on the contrary! They?ve already been tested. We?d just like you to see the product as one of the few individuals who actually get it before mass shipping begins.?
?Hmm? sure. But I still want my money.?
?But of course. Here is the dossier,? the Trenchcoat Man took a thin piece of smart plastic from a pocket in his trenchcoat. Evryst studied it, wrinkling his brow.
?I want something in advance. Let?s say 20k.?
?Absurd. 5k?
?Look, man. I?m not gonna try and get this guy without insurance. The others were small-timers, but this is a major job.?
?Name your price, then.?
?20k now. 20 when the job?s done.?
?10k. I?m willing to pay 30 more, but only after you?re done.?
Evryst paused and considered it. Was it worth the risk??
?Alright? alright. You got a deal.?
?Excellent,? the Trenchcoat Man arched his fingers, ?Pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Evryst.?
The man left, leaving behind another small chip, and Evryst stayed a while after him before leaving with his money.
Evryst began to walk home when he suddenly turned around and began to walk in the opposite direction. The catwalks, sparks, and colourful neon signs seemed as if they would extend into infinity before him. As the putter of autogyros whizzed past, haphazardly avoiding metal catwalks and the loose cables of electric wires, Evryst could hear the ?whooom? sound of the noisier tubecars, soaring past in crystal-glass pneumatic tubes far above the poorer levels. Out of open windows everywhere flapped garments that people had set out to dry in the wind. A terribly stupid thing to do, as the air was cold and humid, and liquids from who-knows-where suspended in air, seemed to cling to all dry clothing so as to drench people in their inane filth. It came now, into Evryst?s lungs, filling his mouth and trachea with the oily taste of pollution built up over a millennium.
The neon signs changed subtly as Evryst walked on, and the sidewalk, attached to the 1,000th floor of a 6-mile tall skyscraper, seemed to be filled with somewhat more hustle and bustle of activity. Now and then, instead of the sickly urine colour of isolated sodium lamps, there would be bright greens of halogen lamps, most in the doorways where the toygirls and toyboys stood waiting for customers. People on the sidewalk seemed to Evryst as a mass of moving black forms, like flies clinging to a rotten piece of flesh, and Evryst knew that it was the drug. The effects were beginning to wear away, one hour earlier than its proprietor had declared it to last. At last he stopped, almost at the end of the giant skyscraper. A large red neon sign attached to the corner, read: L?H�tel Rouge. The Red Hotel in an ancient language, long forgotten.
There was a large glass window, displaying its wares. The naked toygirls inside smiled at him as he stood at the window, perfect teeth half-showing behind perfect rose-red lips. He went inside, and bought one from the salesman, and together they went upstairs for the night. There she, whom he knew only as Number Ten, worked her craft upon him. It was a good night and, with all his earthly worries banished with the help of the aphrodisiac drugs the toygirl gave him, Evryst slept soundly for the first time in what seemed to be ages.
**
That morning Evryst was woken by the vibrations of his wristwatch, which he didn?t take off last night. The toygirl was gone, and he lay naked in the bed. The only light came from the autolamp in the ceiling. He looked at it. It was about nine o?clock. Still dark outside, the shadows of countless miles-high skyscrapers obscuring the light of the morning sun. The levels in the shadows never saw the light of day except during high noon, when the sun was directly perpendicular to the ground, and even then it was difficult to find shafts of real sunlight because of the wiry maze of criss-crossing catwalks. Evryst dressed and paid the proprietor for his night?s stay.
Out in the dark sidewalk, Evryst scanned the plastic dossier. The corporation had chosen someone in high standing. Probably it wasn?t enough that they chose smart people to be their AIs, they had to start moving on to people in rival corporations. Oh well, it didn?t matter all that much to him. To Evryst the corporations were always just a fixture in life, too huge, remote, and intangible to be of any large object of concern. He made his way home. It was a cluttered mess, like any good room. He didn?t much care for neatness, it was much more comfortable just to let things go where they would. He grabbed the tools he needed for an average job. A 25mm Forcegun, a few clips of extra energy packs, and a Brainblaster Pistol. The forcegun created shockwaves of compressed air and sound, which caused most things that weighed less than a hundred pounds to be blasted a good distance off. The Brainblaster was a special weapon that projected a combination of sound, light, and negative alpha-brain waves which in sync, stunned most people exposed to it.
He returned once again to the thick blackness of the world outside. It enshrouded and smothered him like a great black blanket. Evryst felt fatigue start to claw at him once more, and he popped another one of the little white pills into his mouth. Bereft of any liquid, he gratingly chewed the dry drug between his teeth. It made his tongue burn with chemical fire, and he quickly swallowed the bits of drug.
Evryst often walked outside, aimlessly. It helped him think about the upcoming jobs. An aging police autogyro, painted in blue, black, and red, roared over him and landed on a helicopter pad nearby. Internally Evryst jerked. The police were overstretched. They were too bogged down with precinct rivalries, and numerous inefficiencies to keep control of the public. On average there were about five hundred thousand people for every one policeman. It wasn?t likely that he?d be caught, but nobody could know these days. Once Evryst saw a gang of police officers beat up, gang rape, and murder a toyboy on the street in public as the crowd walked on, uncaringly. He saw it happen, and was pretty sure others did too, but the great black mass continued onwards and so did he. He felt guilty for that.
A neon advertisement showing a massive blue and purple neon Jesus loomed over Evryst. The police on the helipad were smoking cigaweeds and drinking coffee, probably on their breaks. Evryst went over to the railing of the catwalk, minding the electrical wire that was looped around it. The city stretched out panoramically before him. This was one of the larger boulevards that the catwalk, painted in fading and peeled yellow paint, had crossed over. Down below and high above were the orange lights of passing autogyros and tubecars, and normal wheeled cars. They moved back and forth around the world like numerous fireflies and beetles, mindlessly going about their scuttling through a dark cave lit only by garish neon and flashing laser light, and the cold artificiality of sodium streetlamps. A fireball would periodically explode from a smokestack somewhere far off, burning off the excess slag produced from drawing oil and trash liquids or who-knows-what from down below. Evryst never saw the Bottom before, but he heard much about what it was like down there. Some said that there were rivers, great rivers of ancient oil and pollution. Others said that the Bottom was never seen, that the residual radiation of the radioactive slag would kill people long before they got there. Yet others said that there were swamps of methane gas, produced by trash that had piled up long ago, and the methane was what the great power plants drew up from so far below. No one knew for sure.
Evryst?s boots made a deep clanging noise as he walked with heavy feet on the metal grating of the catwalk. He was thinking about his next victim. The man was a corporate, a manager. He worked for the Nakhimov Corporation, and he was in relatively high standing. This would be difficult. In the distance Evryst could hear the pop-pop of distance gunfire being traded between two warring Corporation-clans. Corporations were no longer ways to make money together. Instead, over the ages, the stockholders and employees became more and more tightly knit. This was encouraged as corporations got larger and larger. Soon the word ?corporation? no longer meant a business, but a tribe of people. Tribalism re-emerged and so did vicious clan and inter-clan rivalry.
An advertisement dirigible floated by, its scintillating flashes of light and sound momentarily hypnotizing Evryst as it implanted messages in his brain in the form of brainwaves. Evryst had the sudden urge to buy Sani-Cola, the popular drugdrink that supposed cleansed one?s innards as one drank it. He shook it off. The companies would never stop pestering you, even when you went to sleep an autoradio would whisper advertisements into your ear. All of a sudden Evryst recoiled, something pale orange came across his face. It was bright and warm, not the cold yellows, greens and whites of streetlamps, nor the garish, vapid light of neon signs.
It was a sunbeam! The true, natural light seemed to illuminate Evryst, showing his nearly colourless complexion. It must have found its way down to this level somehow. He smiled and bathed himself in the yellow white warmth of sunlight, and people began to move out of shadows, attracted to the real light like blanche-white moths to a feeble candle. Then a dirigible moved, and blocked it, and a hummer ? a helicopter with twin rotors on either side, grabbed the misdirected light shaft. It carried the shaft back upwards, directing the precious sunlight back to the rich who deserved the light. The shadow people sighed a collective breath and continued their mindless movements, flickering black ghoul-forms in eternal shadow. Evryst slouched and turned his eyes downward again. Back to business.
There was a furtive moving on the catwalk above Evryst. Up there an animal thing crouched in the shadows. He climbed up the ladder to get a better look. It turned to him and he began to back away into the deeper darkness.
?Ok. Ok. Whatever you are, just stay there, OK?? Evryst said in a quavering voie.
What was this weird shadow creature? His slow backing turned into a jog, and then a run as the animal thing leapt toward him. He ran, pushing past the people on the catwalk, eliciting some derogatory gestures and mutterings of, ?Hey fuck you, asshole!? Evryst ran and the animal-thin ran after him. He was pursued down a blind alley. He could hear the tap-tap of the thing?s feet as it pursued him. In his terror, Evryst tripped over a trash can and, stumbling on the wet refuse, fell onto a cardboard box. As the thing came dashing down the alley, its form concealed by the steam from a manhole, its feet splashing stagnant pools of water, Evryst backed into a corner, screaming, ?Help! Help!?
Of course, no help came. People heard that almost daily in the city and thus were numb to the plea. His breath came in ragged gasps and Evryst could hear his blood singing through his ears. Then the animal was on top of him, its long legs spread over him, and Evryst could feel its hot breath in his face as it bent down to bite him. Its lips touched his.
He opened his eyes. A pale face, painted blue by the light from somewhere above. It was round, and had a small nose and large almond-shaped green eyes. Well-manicured fingers gripped around his face, and it sat itself on his stomach.
?NumberTen?? Evryst whispered as the girl turned her ear close to his face. A lock of her long jet-black hair fell over his eyes.
She nodded. She was wearing nothing except for a pair of black half-gloves that exposed her long fingers, and black knee-length boots. Shakily, NumberTen whispered.
?Me. E-escape.?
Naturally her cognitive functions were impaired by genetic engineering. Toygirls and toyboys didn?t need to be smart.
?You escaped? From the hotel??
NumberTen nodded.
?Why??
NumberTen smiled and cupped her left breast, perfect, but then she peeled an artificial skin patch off to reveal a blue-black bruise. She began to peel off other patches, but Evryst stopped her.
?He?d beat you, huh??
NumberTen smiled and nodded vigorously, ?Y-y-yah!?
?Me ? you,? said NumberTen leaning closer, pointing first to herself, then to Evryst. She grabbed his face again and whispered shakily, ?Live? To-to-to??
Her sentence broke off and she pouted, looking for the right word.
?Together?? finished Evryst.
NumberTen nodded. Evryst stood up, brushing himself off.
?Okay. I guess its alright if you stay with me for a while, but I?m very busy. Understand? I?ll need to be gone a lot, maybe for a long time. OK?? He punctuated his sentence in certain parts and talked slowly and clearly, as if to a child. NumberTen giggled with delight and fell into his arms, whispering into his ear,
?O ? K!?
?I?ll bring you to my place, ok??
?Ya.?
Evryst started to walk away and for a short moment, NumberTen paused as if in indecision. Then she ran after him and too his hand, like a little kid, smiling wide, showing a set of perfect white teeth. Evryst thought silently. An assignment to take out a corporate. Living with a toygirl. This might get interesting?
CHAPTER 2:DOCTOR,DOCTOR
The door flew open and NumberTen rushed in. She squealed and giggled, flying around Evryst?s apartment, looking around, somehow avoiding the piles of dusty electronics. NumberTen threw herself onto his bed, further rumpling his wrinkled and unmade covers, burying her face into the pillow. Presently she sat up, crossing her black booted feet under her, her pale, naked back illuminated from the only source, a blue-purple neon sign hanging perpendicular to the wall outside. She smiled up at Evryst but then heard a gurgle in her stomach, and she covered it with her hand, looking up at Evryst in askance.
?Hm. Hungry, huh? Alright, well I?m hungry too.? Evryst went to the refrigerator in the next room.
His apartment was rather large, as most apartments went, especially those on Midway, the level of city on which Evryst Lived. A whole two rooms. Some less fortunate folk had single-room apartments, the shower, toilet, and refrigerators placed on moving racks, able to be summoned up at a touch of a button. Evryst rooted through the refrigerator, trying to find something edible amidst the stale and rotten things sitting in there. He came a cross a small plastic container. He opened it and nearly fainted, the vapours coming from it making him giddy. In disgust Evryst tossed the container out the window and down to the Bottom. Maybe someday it would evolve into something that could be killed and eaten. He came across a package and opened it.
Inside was some tofu, made from one-hundred percent artificial vat-grown soybeans, or so claimed the label. He grabbed a handful of gelatinous white cubes and brought the container to NumberTen, who still sat cross-legged on the bed, midst the piles of electronic junk. Eagerly she bit into the soft white curds, and shoveled handfuls of the stuff into her mouth as she examined the bits of electronics and wiring.
Evryst started, ?So, well. This is my apt?. Hope you like it.?
NumberTen grabbed a soft white cube of tofu and offered it to Evryst.
?Mmm?? she mumbled, her cheeks comically bulging. He took it and chewed the curd thoughtfully. Evryst sat down beside her and leaned against the wall, eating tofu. He looked to the television on the cardboard box in the corner, and it turned on, sensing his sight. Evryst had stolen it years ago. The owner of the television shop, a gnarled old man, had let loose a long stream of curses at him, among other things, but he was a terrible shot and Evryst didn?t get hit by the bullets from his shotgun. Only six feet from the shop, the man tired of chasing Evryst and snarled, ?Gyaah. Take that damn TV. Hope it blows up.?
On TV was a message from The Mayor. In the background the city?s anthem, ?Our Land?, played with actual instruments, broadcasted its merry tune. The Mayor?s voice narrated as they were shown a series of scenes from Topland.
?This is our land. Our lovely city, beautiful and prosperous,? said The Mayor. On the screen was a group of Toplanders, all beautiful and young, dressed in pastel-coloured tunics, smiling and laughing as they walked through lovely groves of trees.
?We come with open arms to all,? as the screen showed two hands shaking, and a man, casting away his Midway rags for Topland tunics.
?To all who strive and work hard for their goals, Topland awaits you. Come! Work for money, and come to Topland.?
Children frolicked on vast open ceramic walkways as tubecars and hummers soared in the blue sky above. The old people sat on shady benches under the resplendent leaves of trees. All of the Toplanders were smiling, laughing, or talking animatedly.
?Paradise awaits only three miles up,? ended the benevolent voice of The Mayor.
Evryst turned the TV off. He hated that commercial. It was lies. All lies. Nobody believed it, of course. Everyone knew that if you were born in Midway, most likely you?d stay in Midway. If you were born in the Bottom you?d definitely stay in Bottom. But the Toplanders still aired that stupid commercial, perhaps, just to spite them. Evryst had never been to Topland but he knew it was just full of stupid rich people. And what was there to see up there anyway, other than a crystalline matrix of tubecar pneumaways and buzzing hummers?
They finished their meal of tofu and NumberTen was looking around, examining her new home. Evryst took a small tin from his pocket and opened it. He needed one of those pills. He looked within, and swore. There weren?t any more. Could he have gone through them that quickly? Evryst combed his apartment for a second, wondering if he had any more pills. Nope. He swore again, and suddenly there was a knock on the door. NumberTen jerked and hid in the shadow of a large stack of data tapes. Evryst went to the door, expecting the worst as always. And he was right. At the door was The Spanish Inquisition.
?Ugh. What d?you want now, Span?? asked Evryst in disgust.
The man with the strange name was a short, dour-looking Asian, just as pale as Evryst, but far from Evryst?s emaciation.
?My software. Do you have it?? A credit chip was in The Spanish Inquisition?s fingers.
?Yeah, yeah. Just wait a sec.?
Evryst rummaged through the junk in his apartment and found the small black chip containing the pirated data.
?Here you go,? Evryst reached out his hand and the Asian dropped the chip into it, ?Now leave me alone.?
The little fat man waddled down the green, graffiti-stained, corridor as Evryst shut the door.
Evryst glanced at his apt? as NumberTen got out from behind the electronics. His apartment seemed dismally dark, as if it were all melting into black ooze. He became aware of the peeling wallpaper, the holes in the old couch, leaking stuffing, the great piles of nearly useless electronics. They were gathering dust. To Evryst?s painfully aware senses it seemed as if the entire world would disappear into junk and dust. The people would continue to drop trash from the windows. Soon his apartment and all else would be covered in stinking useless crap. The Greater Sludge Sea to the north would expand and fill, its shores overflowing with industrial waste and acid rain that never evaporated. Someday all the city, Topland, Midway, and Bottom, would be covered in oily grey-black sludge, and he, NumberTen, The Mayor, the old drug dealer in the alley, The Spanish Inquisition ? all of them would be dry skeletons that would crumble to dust and blow away in the wind, with only the black ruins of a giant city and an immense sea of waste as sole testament to their legacy.
Evryst shook it off, and NumberTen was looking at him strangely. It was the effects of the drug. The withdrawal. Once he got more of the pills it?d all be better. But he?d need to get back to that alley, way down There. Evryst wondered how much money he had left. Checking it on the computer showed that he had five thousands left in his account. Buying drugs wouldn?t help that. But he needed a fix so badly right now. To get rid of this awful depression. He?d need to see Old Doc again.
?C?mon NumberTen. We need to go down. To the Bottom. It?s cold down there, you?ll need some clothes.?
She followed him to his ?closet? a run-down refrigerator box in the corner filled with clutter and unwashed, rumpled clothing. Evryst rooted around and found a great yellow raincoat that he didn?t know he had. Evryst had lots of stuff he had ferreted away at sometime or another and had forgotten about.
?Here, try this one,? he said as he tossed it to her.
Shaking her head, NumberTen said, ?No.?
?It?s really cold down there, you?ll need it.?
The same reply.
?Ok. Fine. Whatever,? Evryst said in resignation, ?Let?s go.?
The door locked behind them as they exited. NumberTen still clung to the raincoat, which was several sizes far too large for her slim body. She?d learn, thought Evryst. There was no direct route to Bottom from where Evryst was, so they?d have to walk down a bit before finding a public elevator. Sometimes Evryst envied the rich, and pictured himself owning a tubecar or a hummer. Then he?d come back to reality. He was born in Midway, and he?d never own a hummer. If he was lucky he might be able to buy an autogyro someday. That?d smooth the trip downwards. The day had proceeded onwards, and the cloying darkness was somewhat less cold, but it was nonetheless humid with the vapour of ages-old pollution.
NumberTen, on going outside, instinctively changed her attitude and assumed the casual, sensual walk of a toygirl. Obeying her genetic programming, she flirted with every person that happened to glance her way. Early on in her life she had tried to fight the devouring instinct, but in the end there was no suppressing the artificial instinct. So she had consigned herself to live with it. Sometimes it was immensely frustrating to her, to be who she was. She?d often try to convey an idea only to run up against the power of her atrophied frontal cortex, and could only make simple gestures and words. But there were some advantages. Her body would, on sensing cold, begin to burn fuel at a much higher rate. So NumberTen never felt cold, at least never on Midway. She had incredible control over her metabolic processes, which was why she had been able to catch up to Evryst when he ran from her, even though she was wearing high-heeled boots. That was one advantage, but it was sorely paid for.
They passed by another great neon Jesus, mounted on an adjacent catwalk. The neon Jesus? eyes seemed to follow them as they walked and they couldn?t help but to look back. The catwalk led downwards several levels and in a short time they were walking on good solid pavement again, no longer a harrowing view to the multicoloured Hades under their feet. In the distance flashing yellow orange pops of light could be seen as a company of autogyros engaged in an air battle.
Not far away the black, moving silhouettes of the dark people were illuminated by the glare of a giant TV screen, its twenty-four hour opalescence giving light and colour to the masses, showing them a tantalizing view of the utopia that lay three miles above. The constant shimmering glare of the TV seemed as if it were a great magnifying lens, casting its view upon the world, giving form and shape to the otherwise indistinguishable ant-people. The face of The Mayor came on, or at least his eyes did, and it was as if he were a cruel onlooker from above, examining the insects on their mindless hustle and bustle.
Evryst and NumberTen continued onwards to the Bottom. Just a few more levels now would bring them to the elevator which would take them down a part of the way, and it?d be back to walking again. NumberTen pulled at Evryst and pointed. A group of punks, their heads turned into colourful Day-Glow spikes, metal hanging from all parts of their faces. The leader was a giant, sporting artificial legs that increased his height. He wore a long bone in his nose and his left eye was the crimson circle of an ocular implant. The gang was messing with an old woman. Evryst began to yell ?Hey!? but the word was half finished when it died in his throat. NumberTen wailed a short, ?Aaa!? and Evryst leaned against the railing, watching in grim silence.
The old lady screamed, and batted at the youths with her cane. They grabbed her purse and she cried, ?Help!? or so thought Evryst, but the crowd muffled her call with their mass. The old woman flicked a button on her cane and a silvery-blue bolt of light zapped from it, and one punk fell down dead. The gang laughed at this feeble defiance and together they lifted the woman. The crowd parted unconsciously and went around the consternation, then the punks threw her over the side into the abyss. Her scream echoed in the dark and her voice was like a sole cry to the heavens from the throat of one damned. NumberTen burst into tears and Evryst took her by the shoulder.
?You couldn?t save her. Everyone?s too scare for their own lives to do anything about it; too busy saving their own skins to care.?
NumberTen stopped crying and thought a while. Then, stuttering, though Evryst didn?t know whether it was from crying or from her atrophied speech centers, or both, she began to talk.
?What. What. What if ? if. Some? day. We. Happen. Us??
?It won?t happen to us: we?re just two in two billion. What?s the chance? It won?t happen. There?s no chance. It won?t happen??
Evryst tried to comfort her, but he found he was just blindly repeating himself. Maybe he was going crazy. Nah. It couldn?t happen to him. It couldn?t. Not to him, or NumberTen. There was no chance. He kept saying that in a strange sing-song voice until NumberTen?s whimpering died and it was just an echo in his head. It kept echoing as they walked, two small dark shapes in a sea of blackness that had no form save for the heads in the glare of the TV screen. And in the distance the giant neon Jesus waved his finger back and forth, back and forth, as the thought-dirigibles sailed silently in the hum of bees that in the dark, were autogyros.
**
NumberTen grabbed her shoulders, covering large breasts that stood up and outwards, feeling the goose-pimples rise on her skin. Evryst said it was colder further down, away from the heat energy trapped by the pollution that lay at Midway where all the warmth of lights and electricity and fire kept the air a good sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Evryst wasn?t kidding. Yet NumberTen was still reluctant to wear the raincoat, even though the flood of black ant-people had dwindled to a trickle. She wasn?t used to wearing clothes, at least, not anything more substantial than gauzy, skimpy undergarments that probably didn?t even amount to the title.
?Oh for cryin? out loud. Here,? said Evryst finally. He took the raincoat from the crook of her elbow and opened it.
?Put your left arm in there. Good. Now the other arm in there.?
He fastened the Velcro and pulled the hood over NumberTen?s voluminous black hair.
NumberTen smiled. It was warmer. But she still felt odd. The cloth inside rubbed with her skin, and felt cloying and itchy. It was singularly strange, to wear clothes. She was glad it didn?t cover her legs, too. That would be far too uncomfortable. The strange Bottom made her curious, and as they descended farther into the depths of the smothering abyss, she became all the more fascinated by her surroundings. They had gone down several levels in an elevator, and NumberTen had giggled in delight of the feeling of vertigo as they went down. The world changed subtly. The apartments with their fraying garments fluttering in the updraft had all but disappeared. The moisture drifted down from the sky and it condensed into droplets everywhere. The neon and colour had become pipes. Massive pipes ran in crazy directions; up, down, left, right, diagonally ? criss-crossing in a confused tangle. Those few people who moved about were either furtive, creeping creatures, or destitute, brain-dead souls that moved aimlessly, bottles of beer in hands, and their clothes reeking of piss and vomit. The light became regular whites, urine yellows, and electric blues. The poorest of the poor looked out from habitation tubes everywhere.
Those who couldn?t afford apartments lived in cheap, city-owned tubes, hexagonal coffins. The coffins of the poor loomed on either side like the hives of sleeping bees. Yet the darkness still extended down like the cavernous maw of some enormous beast. NumberTen felt nervous. It was altogether too cold and moist. The oily pollution condensed and stuck like a greasy patina on all surfaces. NumberTen felt that she was, in midst of this foreboding darkness, in a world altogether alien; away from the streetlamps and red Chinese lanterns that lit the darkness. She preferred the colourful artificiality of Midway to this gloom. NumberTen turned around, hearing something, and her boots ceased to tap on the wet asphalt. A faraway sound, light at first, but getting louder. She caught up to Evryst and tapped him on the shoulder.
?What is it?? he asked.
?Me. H-hear.?
?What do you hear??
?Dunno?
Evryst shrugged. He began to walk again, being careful not to slip on the condensed, watery grease that seemed to permeate this place. He stopped all of a sudden, and turned to NumberTen who was beside him.
?I hear it too.?
They both stood there, looking around, listening. What could it be? There was nothing here. Nothing to make noise. Nothing? NumberTen had an idea. She put her hand to her chest. It was pleasant to feel living warmth on it. Then she pulled open Evryst?s tattered grey vest and listened, cupping her ear to him.
?What??
?Shh.? Evryst was still.
The sound was in her ear. She could hear the sound from Evryst?s chest. It was quiet at first. She moved her head. There. It was louder now. It was a deep sound, reverberating from within. A thump-thump sound. NumberTen smiled.
?Thump-thump-thump?? she asked, pointing to Evryst?s chest.
?That?s my heart,? he said.
NumberTen smiled again, pleased with her discovery. She skipped a bit, as best as she could, in her boots. Evryst followed. A mere toygirl figured it out. And he was a mindjacker! But though she had discovered it, she didn?t know what to interpret that as. She was just pleased, and not the pleasure of lovemaking either. It felt good to NumberTen. Evryst knew what it was that they had heard. It was the sound of silence. All that was left in the tranquil gloom of Bottom was the drip-drip of condensed water and vile fluids, the sound of Evryst?s feet, the clickety-clack of NumberTen?s boots, and the inner voice of their hearts in the somber silence of the night world.
There was electric organ music playing somewhere, faintly. In the distance, far from Evryst?s or NumberTen?s sign, a neon sign flickered over a door in the darkness, and a neon Jesus embraced the doorway. The people milled in, and there was faint gospel music as the poor prayed to an evangelist transmitting a hologram. It came from a network station somewhere, far away. At the door there was a clinking as the poor dropped their tokens in the slot and the coin-op church allowed them in to atone for their sins.
Evryst and NumberTen turned a corner and went down an alley. Pools of condensed water reflected their faces like a dozen mirrors and their reflections disappeared in ripples as they walked. Something crunched underneath Evryst?s feet and he looked more closely at the pavement. He drew in a sharp gasp of breath. They were ground bits of bone. NumberTen stifled the urge to throw up as she took in the horrifying scene. Bone fragments of small animals ? human children? ? lay here in this abandoned alley. In the background, somewhere, there was the plunk-plunk sound of dripping condensation from the maze of pipes above. NumberTen stifled a shout and it came out as a truncated squeak, and she took his arm, drawing close. Something had eyes in the darkness that glowed, and mandibles clicked for a moment before disappearing in a drumming of claws on booming vent metal. NumberTen?s eyes looked around like those of a hunted animal.
?Wan? go now,? she said.
?Yeah, I know. I?m scared too. We just gotta keep walking.?
?Some. Something. Live. In there.?
?I heard it. Can?t believe anything can live down here. It must be some sort of mutant. Maybe from the air or the waste factories, or something. Better not stay in one area.?
?Mm-hmm.?
They walked in silence, their feet grinding the bone fragments into dust. Soon they arrived at a door in the wall. Evryst knocked the big metal door that blocked the narrow alley. From within came an angry and crotchety voice that shouted,
?Go away! We don?t want any trouble!?
?It?s me, Evryst, Gill. I need more Stim.?
?Yeah, yeah. Ok. I?m comin? ?
With some groans and irritable sighs the old man came to the door. A thin wedge opened up and two sunken, baggy eyes peered out through the peep-hole. From inside, dozens of latches and metal dead bolts began sliding out of solid locks, and the deep rumble of cold iron could be heard. The door slid open on grating hinges.
?Well? Are you going to let an old man freeze to death in this cold air, or are you going to come in?? asked Gill, looking up at Evryst and NumberTen.
He was a bent old geezer, crooked like the root of some twisted bristlecone pine tree, and was clad only in an off-white nightgown. Two thick spectacles magnified his eyes and Gill seemed not unlike a frog. They entered and sat down at a table.
?Now then,? said Gill, adjusting his glasses by turning a squeaky brass knob mounted on the temple, ?What?s all the hullabaloo? And who is this lovely young lady??
?I gotta get more Stim. I need more, Gill. Oh ? this is NumberTen.?
NumberTen smiled at hearing her name. The old man seemed rather odd, hunched over and wrinkled, wearing brass spectacles with adjustable binocular lenses, and an enormous beak of a nose. He held his chin under his long white whiskers.
?Hmm? well okay, but it seems rather early. How long since you bought some from me??
?About four days.?
?Good God, boy! You?re goin? through ?em so fast! You?d better slow down some. It ain?t healthy for you.?
Evryst pounded the table he was sitting at, the sudden noise making NumberTen jump slightly.
?Damnit. I need some Stim now! Not some moral lecture from a goddamned old bastard! I can?t stand this awful depression!?
?It?s the addiction,? sighed Gill as he got up from the table, turning to the shelf behind, ?All right, son. If it helps you. I?m warnin? you though. Them pills are dangerous.?
?Just get me another tin,? said Evryst quietly.
Gill took a box from the top of the shelf, grabbing it with an extending bionic arm, and doled out a small tin of Stim pills.
?That?ll be five hundred.?
Evryst took out a credit chip and handed it to Gill, who snapped it into the transfer slot of a small black exchange device. It beeped once as the data was electronically transferred to the old man?s account.
?You?re gonna have to control yourself, boy, or you?ll end up wired for the rest of your life,? he said solemnly as he handed Evryst the credit chip. With shaking hands Evryst grabbed the chip and the tin. He got up to leave when he turned back to the old man and said, ?You take care, Gill.?
As they exited the tiny room, Gill felt an urge come over him, and he rushed to the window, seeing them walking down the dripping bone alley.
He yelled after them, ?You take care of yourselves now, y?hear??
NumberTen turned and waved, saying, ?Bye-bye!?
Gill watched the two go off into the distance and knew that they?d be destined to stick together. A curious rushing coursed through his body, and strange long-forgotten memories came flooding back to the old man. Suddenly he felt as if her was no longer a decrepit old geezer, but a bold young man, heedlessly running the ?Net to the ragged edge. It was glorious! He embarked on wild adventures without ever leaving his computer terminal; always staying one step ahead of the SysOps, raking in all the cash he could hack out of any account he happened to come by. He diminished. The exhilaration of netrunning faded, along with the flaming passions of long-ago youth. Someday, he knew, they too would fade, and vanish into the decrepitude and twilight of senescence. But how they?d get there was what counted, and that was the wonderful thing about youth. Those two were destined to experience something perhaps greater than the wild and reckless adventures of his heyday. He was sure of it.
CHAPTER 3:MEMORIES OF A BLACK WORLD
Evryst looked over to NumberTen, who was sitting on the bed, rapt in attention to a teledrama. He was at his computer, running a search for his victim. Nothing so far. But nowadays everything was hooked up to the ?Net, so some references would be bound to show up at some time or another. NumberTen?s mouth was slightly ajar, and her large liquid eyes were turned to the television screen, its kaleidoscopic light flickering in rapid hues over her face. Evryst smiled at her, but she didn?t look at him. NumberTen reminded him so much of his younger sister. So inquisitive and innocent.
In the gloom of the apartment, the sound of the computer?s clicking-humming noise as it ran the search program, Evryst?s eyes glazed over and he looked into his mind; bringing back memories of long ago.
He could remember a loving look. A woman with a round face and kind brown eyes that hid a deeper sadness. His mother. How Evryst loved his mother?s eyes. They were large and almond-shaped, with only the slightest indication of a fold at the corner; clear and shimmering with a certain indescribable sadness that flickered deep within. A quiet and introverted woman, she was nonetheless a kind and loving person who would sacrifice anything for her children. How true that would be.
Evryst remembered their one room apartment. It was spacious and inviting, though it only had a small hot plate for a kitchen and a large faucet over a metal grate which was supposed to be the shower. Despite the limitations, his mother nonetheless tried to make it a comfortable and clean place to live. There was a large hole in the wall in one corner with the mats that they slept on, that led into the apartment next door. Certain nights Evryst would be wakened by strange sounds that he heard from the hole. People sounds. Sometimes it was a quiet grunting and shallow breathing, other times it was a loud cursing that echoed around the bare green painted walls. He was too young, of course, to realize what was their source or reason.
Evryst was forgetting something. It was his sister. His mother had a baby when he was four. The baby never cried, indeed, when it was born it did not scream, but it took a deep breath and coughed, and looked around with bright eyes. It always looked out at the world, taking in everything she saw. She had large, beautiful almond eyes like her mother, and brown hair. Not at all like him. He was green eyed and blond haired, but looks didn?t matter to young Evryst. He loved his new sister, and never felt any jealousy towards her. When he stole some food, he?d always share the morsel with her. She grew up to be a quiet little girl, with eyes that sparkled with youthful inquisitiveness and love of life. Like her mother, she didn?t speak often, but manifested herself in her actions and expressions, and she could be extremely subtle at times. His younger sister seemed to never stop desiring knowledge, devouring it with greater hunger than that for food.
Neither knew anything about their father. He had left the apartment one day when Evryst was very young, and he never saw his father again. He remembered nothing about his father, except for vague references about him from his mother, who described him as being very cold and dark. She said that Evryst?s father never raised his voice in anger, or hit anyone. In fact his mother wasn?t quite sure if his father felt any emotion at all. He was strange and mysterious, perhaps more subtle than Evryst?s sister. Some said he was killed somewhere in Midway by a gang. Others said that he got tired of the city and stole an autogyro, taking it off far, far away into the desert around them, never to be seen again. Yet others said that he had jumped aboard a landship one day and went off to live with the Nomads.
Evryst had always associated cold and dark with the Bottom, so to his young mind, his father had gone Down. Down there. Into the tangled, labyrinthine tubes and chutes and the dripping hives of the poor. He did not know how his sister was born, and who conceived her, but it did not matter; she was his sister, his wonderfully precocious little sister, and that was all that he could want.
He would often take her on walks outside, showing her the world around her, inspiring her with tales of the vague Top world and the mysterious, clammy Bottom. She was always dazzled by the light of the lasers, criss-crossing through the eternal night of the city, and by the sparkling whirl of neon here and there, all around. Brother and sister would always wander the block around them, not daring to venture down or up on to other levels of the city, as their mother had warned them on the dangers of the outside world. One day, on one of such walks, his sister had stopped him.
?Evryst. Evryst. Look there,? she pointed at a destitute old homeless man, one of the people whose African lineage prevented their skin from becoming an off-white, who cradled a bottle of beer in a paper bag.
?So it?s a homeless guy. So what??
He was sleeping in the threshold of a doorway into the apartments.
?He seems so sad. Why is he so sad??
?I don?t know. He?s poor probably.?
?Why are people poor??
?I don?t know.?
?Are all poor people like him? Are they all smelly and dirty, and sad?? she asked, her large brown eyes turning up to him. She ran her small hand through her jet-black hair.
?Gee? I guess so. I really don?t know. Probably,? Evryst shrugged. It was his way of stopping her from asking silly questions. He was always truthful, though. He really didn?t know all that much about the world ? her questions were completely beyond his scope.
?It?s not fair,? she murmured.
?Yeah.?
They watched the homeless man for a moment, as the faceless sea of humanity rushed by. Evryst began taking her home, and they talked amicably, of many things, laughing all the way back. It was a nice life.
This ended when the men came to take his sister away.
They were dressed in dark blue suits of armour and bore the insignia of the Toplanders. Evryst?s mother was at the hot plate, cooking lunch, when they knocked and demanded that she give them his sister.
?What do you want with Sanabel?? asked his mother.
?She has been chosen for her talents. She deserves to be a Toplander. Just give her over peaceably and no one gets hurt,? said the blue suited officer.
?And if I refuse??
?Are you resisting??
?Yes! She?s my daughter; you can?t take her away from me!? screamed Evryst?s mother as she smashed a hot frying pan into one officer?s face. He screamed and there was the sssstttt sound of flesh burning. The officers pushed past his mother and stomped into the room. He shielded his sister, but one picked up his thin eight-year old frame and tossed him as if he were a rag doll. He landed with a sickening crunch in the corner and a bit of plaster dusted his hair. His sister screamed wildly, ?Evryst! Help! Mommy! Mommy! Don?t leave me!?
His mother was lying in the corner, a trickle of red blood from her forehead. She had been tossed into the sharp corner of the stove. Evryst charged after them, but they jumped into a waiting navy-blue hummer outside, its twin rotors making a window-shaking din as it hovered. Somehow they had found her, in all of the Midway people. They had found her. He wiped away blood from his eyes and screamed his sister?s name as the hummer roared upwards, dimming out his voice and that of his sister?s with the hum of the twin rotor blades, stirring up a whirl wind of garbage in its wake.
He never saw his younger sister again. The only consolation he had was, in Topland perhaps she would not starve to death, or be killed by one of the metalgangs.
After that, Evryst had run away. There was nothing left for him there. The apartment, deprived of life, began to fall into disrepair, the forces of entropy seizing and permeating it. The walls were crumbling, the holes in the plaster grew large, and the light fixtures ceased to function. The water gasket had squeaked to a puny drip of black ooze, and the peeling green wall paper began to fade. Dust took the old residence, and with it, the memories of a better time. For a long time afterward he had wandered the streets, living from morsel to moldy half-eaten morsel. Stealing was good. It kept him alive through that black period. Over time it became his obsession and he kept reaching for bigger and more rewarding steals. It led him straight to the Narken Foxes.
They had cornered him one day, in the lone corner of a dripping alley. He fingered the three credit chips in the pocket of the grey vest which was far too big for his skinny twelve-year old frame. He hadn?t known they were a gang. They looked just like everyone else, so he?d just done his regular pickpocketing trick on them. But they ran after him. Now the gangsters surrounded him. The leader was a huge skin head with a sickle-shaped tattoo on his left arm, whose muscles rippled with every movement. There was a hunch backed man with a gaunt, horsy face and a shining metal arm with two tubes linking it to the back of his skull. Two others, both wearing black trenchcoats and clothes that seemed to be made up of straps and buckles, held up large shiny black guns. The tough guys of the gang.
?W-what d?you want with me?? stammered Evryst.
?Our money back,? said the skinhead.
They took the credits from his pockets and the two toughs leveled their guns at him, the weapons automatically reloading with a ?chk-khtt?. Evryst raised his arm instinctively and turned away, awaiting the blasts that would paste his face on the wall of the alley behind him. The hunchback with the cybernetic arm stopped them by putting the steel arm over Evryst?s face, and the confused street-rat saw a white disk unfold like a blooming flower on the hand. It hummed and Evryst jerked back as the memories were transferred at fast forward into his head with a brainwave projector. A mnemonic device. He learned all about this gang in seconds, until this very moment, and a single memory of a thought suddenly popped up. Would you like to join us? We are in need of one with skills such as yours. The hunchback, whom Evryst now knew to be called Thorpe, smiled and it seemed to him as if he were a griming death?s head that hovered in front of him in the shadows between the skyscrapers. With the two guns leveled at him, there seemed to be no other choice. Slowly he nodded his assent. The leader looked down at this scrawny twelve-year old boy. He had skills, that was true. Thorpe had made a good assumption with that coldly logical head of his, filled with silicon and wires.
So Evryst became one of them. Just being part of a group, Evryst felt a strange something stir deep within him. This something he hadn?t felt since he was a little skin-and-bones waif clinging to a mother, a sister, and a father that wasn?t there. They didn?t say much to each other, but somehow they seemed to move as one, cutting their way through the ocean of humanity like a boat in an inky storm of faces. All of them were rather cold and distant, Thorpe the hunchback most of all.
He spent many an hour staring into space atop the pile of rags in the corner of their one room apartment, tiny coloured flickerings dancing across his eyes. All unreadable to anyone except him. Beads of cold sweat would appear on his bald white pate as he ran a search program. He couldn?t immerse himself in the ?Net ? that technology had not been invented ? but still, day after day, the old white goblin would perch atop the filthy rags for an hour or more. Sometimes after such sessions he?d sigh, ?Ah, Alyssa. My love. Where could you be?? Evryst often wondered what it was that so engrossed the man.
One day, after such a search, Thorpe took a coat and headed for the door. He bade Evryst to come with him, though no words were exchanged . Once outside they walked in the crowd of people, against the current. Above and below them the neon glowed in a wild efflorescence. The old hunchback sighed.
?Who are we?? he asked in his gravelly voice, to no-one at all.
?We?re the Narken Foxes.?
?No, not the gang, Evryst. Who are we? Us two. The people around us. What are we but insects??
Evryst said nothing.
?Just two in two billion. Look out, boy. Look around you. What are we but little fire flies and moths in a black world, dancing, dancing, dancing in a pointless ritual of violence and light.?
Evryst looked. All around him spread the world and the city. The colours drifted down from on high, bathing them in neon hues. Above, lighting the gloom, danced flickering lasers and faces of media angels on giant billboards, and crawling past on the grey skins of huge floating dirigibles. The immense valley of the dark world was lit by the zooming yellow and red lamps of the autogyros, buzzing around like a million fireflies in their eternal serenade. On the sidewalk was humanity in all its grandeur. Evryst and Thorpe walked side-by-side in an ocean of human faces, faces which were so unique and diverse that they became amalgamated into an anonymous horde. Around them drove rivulets of black-clad human bodies. The crowd eddied and flowed, taking no heed of the two small grey figures walking against the current. Here and there in the black ocean swam little coloured creatures, flickering pinpoints of radiance that danced in the gloom. The toygirls and boys doing their mindless ritual, things of barest instinct and physical form. Humanity was everywhere and everyone, all beating to the same rhythm, dwarfing in its immensity.
Evryst suddenly felt his breath catch in his throat. He was drowning! He was being buried in the onrush. It was swallowing him, binding him; it penetrated and violated his essence with its neon mass. He grabbed wildly and felt the reassuring coolness of Thorpe?s metal arm.
?Don?t let me go! Help! Don?t let me drown! Keep me safe. Keep me safe,? he tried to scream, but only ragged hissings came from his throat.
Thorpe said nothing. Around them the ocean stirred and continued its faceless onrushing. They were disappearing. Evryst felt as if he had begun to turn invisible. Eventually he?d be formless and they?d pass through him in the same manner as they passed around him. He was disappearing, vanishing into the crowd of inky blackness. Slowly he felt his fingers disappearing going numb, as if he could no longer feel that he had an arm there. The cold was going to take him. His eyes swam and Evryst tried to breathe. All he could smell was the rancid odor of pollution in his nostrils, and the warm, thick smell of human exhalation. He was falling, the blackness around him beginning to smother him in a blanket of dark.
It was the explosion that had brought him back to reality. With a crashing and a smash that sounded like all the glass in the world breaking at once, a fiery meteor from five miles? height came hurtling down into the building. The crowd parted for a moment and it was no longer a faceless black collective but a number of separate faces of fear and consternation. Evryst and Thorpe moved closer to see. It was a tubecar, roughly bullet-shaped, an array of magnetic engines in the back slowly dimming from what once was a bright light blue. It was silver and sleek, the surface was polished like a gem so that it sparkled even in the vapid neon glow. Yellow transmission fluid flowed from a rent like ichor and the places where the hull was torn asunder by its fall were like the twisted and broken wings of some insect.
A burnt and charred skeleton was inside, tatters of burnt grey garments still clinging feebly to the blackened flesh. Evryst wondered who this person could have been. What kind of a life could he (if indeed he was a he) have had up there, in Topland, in the world of true light? The crowd went on, uncaring, its human heart powering the buzz of its collective voice. Thorpe breathed deeply.
?Ahh? isn?t it wonderful?? he asked sarcastically, ?We?re living in paradise, you know. It?s just not my paradise.?
They turned back and headed in the same way the human river was flowing. Evryst felt a great relief. The current was easy, now that he didn?t have to fight it. Now he was just another faceless face in the multitude, and they could just let it sweep them away to wherever they would.
When they got back they saw the gang?s arsenal on display, and the three big guys were cleaning, polishing and rearming.
?What?s all this for?? asked Evryst.
?The Oonlaum. They?re back. Looks like Big Jimmy wants to repay me for the ?gift? we gave them last week,? the skinhead, named Dirk, chuckled as he slammed an ammunition cartridge into a massive rifle.
?Evryst, hack into the camera system,? said Thorpe quietly, but urgently.
?Can do,? said Evryst, jumping into the computer chair.
The screen lit up with a dozen square boxes showing the activity going on outside on their floor as seen by the unblinking eyes of security cameras. Mostly there was only emptiness and barren streets lit by solitary streetlamps, and only two or three people could be seen at a time, walking where they would and minding their own business. Suddenly there was a furtive movement on the fourth monitor. Like pale avenging ghosts the Oonlaum gangbangers slipped out of the concealing darkness. There were six of them, all decked in their gang?s pure white colour, except for Big Jimmy and his lieutenant, who were dressed in a purple suit and fedora and a pure white suit, respectively. A loud rap of an ammunition canister being snapped into a machine gun came from behind Evryst. One of the muscleheads, Butch, smiled as he hefted his gun. His face was streaked with black paint drawn into little swirls and intricate tattoos covered his arms. When he grinned the black of his face accented his pink gums and red lips. War had come.
A burst of machine gun fire and the dull thump of a grenade exploded and shattered glass somewhere . Evryst grabbed a propane torch and strapped the tanks of fuel to his back.
?Come on, gang. It?s time to fuck up these guys,? said the past-faced Dirk, decked in the black of the gang colours.
Thorpe hefted a wicked electrical coil and his cybernetic arm had mounted atop it a great black rectangle with a blinking red light. A brainjack stun device. It?d overwhelm the person it was targeted at with projected brainwaves.
There was a banging on the door at the end of the corridor. From outside a voice screamed in a crazy octave, ?C?mon, Dirk! C?mon out you motherfucking sonuvabitch! It?s me, Jimmy, and I?ve got a little present for you!?
They broke down the front door, blowing fragments of debris all around. A choking smoke from the explosion began to fly down the corridor. The lights, one after another, went dim. The gang moved back to their room and Dirk opened the window.
?This way. C?mon, hurry the fuck up!?
They hurried the fuck up and landed two feet down on a metal catwalk. Inside there was a muffled explosion and the rattling ululations of heavy machine guns. Bullets flew from the Oonlaum guns, rocketing down the corridor and impacting on the wall at the other end, making deep holes and tearing down further the crumbling wall. The Foxes crept down the catwalk and on to the pavement. The corner was coming up. Evryst?s face was drawn in concentration, and the butt of his flamethrower waved from side to side in his tension. The musclehead, Butch, looked carefully around the corner of the giant skyscraper. The Oonlaum had mostly entered the building and were probably searching it for them. There was a woman, decked in a pure white jumpsuit, wielding a rocket launcher. A guard for their flank. She had a glint on her eyes and it seemed as if she was wearing sunglasses. On closer inspection she had the lenses, which flickered with glowing ?Net information and readouts, implanted into her sockets. They glinted in the neon lights that swam all around, and she seemed to mutter something.
?Shit!? cursed Dirk.
?They?ve seen us,? Thorpe murmured darkly.
?All right, everybody back!? shouted Dirk.
They retreated as a micro-missile streaked by, its colourful red smoke trail strangely appropriate for the swarm of red neon around it, exploding harmlessly in the air. It was followed by the orangey-yellow of ?driver bullets, the trailers lighting up what darkness wasn?t penetrated by darkness, silvery four-inch long bullets cloaked in colour. They returned fire, bullets spraying from their guns. Evryst hid in shadows, only the small blue flare at the tip of his flamethrower lighting up the gloom. The Two Muscleheads gave cover fire, and there was a flash as Dirk threw a stun grenade. He ducked and crawled past the wild spray of bullets, climbing an ancient ladder to the catwalk just above. A stray bullet caught Butch in the gut, drips of red spurting out on his black shirt, and he growled like a wounded animal. Dirk was running along the catwalk, holding two big machine pistols that were burnished with chrome, so they reflected the wild yellows and reds behind him, and he was blasting them one after another, yellow flashes lighting up the darkness with noise and discord.
A smoke grenade came bursting through and landed near them. It released a cloud of grey-black fog. Evryst heard a call through the choking smoke, and the sound of many booted feet on the pavement, wet with moisture. Dirk shot two of the Oonlaum with his fat plastic mesh covered bullets, spraying their intestines out on the pavement, colouring it red with their guts. Bullet fire made sparks on the catwalk under him. He screamed and unleashed his wrath at them. Suddenly the woman with the lenses shot off a burst of micro-missiles, and Dirk was consumed in a reddish-orange blaze. Pieces of gore fell from the broken catwalk and there was a fine pink miasma in the air from his blood.
The muscleheads shot through the smoke, igniting a flurry of colour and sound with their great machine cannons. They gunned down two Oonlaum that had rushed, before a deadly hail of micro-missiles caught them. Fang, the second musclehead had caught a missile in his chest, and he blew up, throwing pieces of his flesh around. Butch was incinerated. Evryst could hear the whine of Thorpe?s electric gun powering up.
?Take cover,? said the old hunchback.
Evryst retreated slowly. The gangbangers, what were left of them, rounded the corner. The woman with the lenses was in front of Big Jimmy, the leader. His purple suit and green tie were covered in flecks of drying blood, and the green feather sticking from his hat was partly blown off. In his hands were held a pair of shredder pistols, guns that shot bullets covered in a sticky plastic, designed to blow messy holes through people.
Big Jimmy raised his pistol at them.
?Get away, Jimmy,? said Thorpe, ?We?ve got no quarrel with you. We didn?t shoot at all.?
?So what? You?re one of the Foxes anyway.?
?What about him? He?s just a boy for goodness sake!?
?I don?t care.?
?I won?t let you hurt him.?
?Fine,? and with that Big Jimmy shot at Thorpe. The last thing he did was wink at Evryst, before the shredder bullet tore through his brain. A piece of flying skull scraped Evryst on the forehead, and he was flecked with bits of pink-rimmed grey matter. Gore was everywhere, in the air, on the ground; blood soaked through Evryst?s clothes. A patina of red coated his face and it dribbled down his chin, painting him in a mask of blood. His vision went crimson as blood from the cut on his forehead rolled down.
No, he thought. This couldn?t be happening. Something snapped within him, down from the deepest recesses of his mind, boiling up from his bowels. He let loose a roar, it was bitter and primal, like the scream of an angry, wounded tiger. He ignited his flamethrower, consuming in flame the awestruck gangsters.
He burned. The blue flame of propane jetted out, curling their skin. They screamed and rolled on the pavement as the flesh was cooked, stripped by the flames from their bones. Cleansing flame, flame that washed all away. Flame consumed all, everything, completely, and all that would be left was ashes and dust. Yes, clean. He pictured the blue flame like a blast of cleansing water that would purify the sins of the world. The blood was washed from his face with the sweat of his brow. The flame consumed all. It would burn them. Burn the tainted ground. Burn it. Burn it. Burn it all, burn, burn, burn! Flames of passion, flames of his hatred. Inside was pent up all the rage and adolescent hate in him, and as the gangsters? bodies ceased to roll, screaming, on the grey concrete, it seemed that for a moment a great weight had been lifted from his soul.
The blue dragon?s roar of the flamethrower ceased. Big Jimmy?s body was a charred skeleton on the pavement, the woman?s skeleton lay beside him in an agonized position. There was a glint in her skull from the lenses. They had survived. A bit of charred meat lay clinging to Big Jimmy?s skeleton. A spark kindled behind Evryst?s eyes, and he took in a quick breath. He cranked it up to full power and burnt them, his reedy thirteen-year old scream drowned out by the roar of the flamethrower. He burnt for Thorpe. He burnt for the Foxes. He burnt for his mother and lost father. He burnt for his abducted sister. Finally he burnt for himself.
The flamethrower shut off, expended. The rage was burnt out, and the skeletons were reduced to ashes that began to blow away in the wind. He cast the flamethrower down. A dawning consciousness came upon him. He had vaporized two people who were once living and breathing, to dust in just minutes.
Oh my God, he thought, What have I done?
He breathed hard, almost hyperventilating, and started to run. He just ran in no real direction. He was running from the world. A world of fear and hate. A black world?.
**
Evryst snapped back to the real world. NumberTen lay curled up on the bed, her chest gently rising and falling. Her long lashes were down, and she slept with all the peaceful abandon of a child. He feminine curves were folded in fetal position. Evryst smiled and pulled his wrinkled, faded covers over her. There was a brown spot on it. He?d have to wash it one of these days. The computer was flashing. It had finished the search. Evryst printed out the results and looked at the information on his next assignment.
No major moves scheduled. Relatively well-paying job. Outdoor cafes and parks were his to-be victim?s usual haunts. It shouldn?t be too hard to get him. At least, it wouldn?t be if he were a Midwayer. But he was a Toplander. Evryst didn?t know much about the Toplanders, except that they were protected by their police: the Sentinels. Nobody got in to Topland, nobody got out. It would be getting there that would be the trick. He might have to hitch a ride on something, as there were no catwalks or elevators to Topland. Evryst had tried once, to get as far up as he could inside the skyscraper, but at a certain point the elevator hit as far as it would go. The stairs outside the elevator shaft went into bare ceiling.
It seemed as if the rich had sealed themselves off completely. He?d have to find some way to do it. Weariness took over him and, casting aside the papers and turning off his computer, Evryst lay down in the bed beside NumberTen. He draped his arm over her slim, supple waist, and soon fell asleep under the flashing blue and purple of the neon light outside the window. The world could wait.
CHAPTER 4:MOOT POINT
Captain Arvet Sarn put the binoculars to his eyes and squinted. He stepped forward, heavy black boots clanging on the metal grating, and leaned against the railway. The subsonic rumble echoed through the landship, an all-pervasive noise made by the grinding of the machinery inside working and the axles of the giant treads turning. As they roared over another dune the view shifted and with the new altitude Arvet could descry in the distance what he sought.
?All stop,? he murmured.
The first mate Landris Tarnell relayed the message to the bosun who, in his deep leonine rumble, shouted the order to the engineering section through the communicator. Slowly the massive construct of jury-rigged parts and rumbling machinery ground to a halt at the top of the dune. In the distance, through the great tinted viewing window, the captain could see the towering metal sandwall rear up from the torn and blasted landscape around. It rose around the city for nearly three miles into the air, gleaming like a giant diamond in the noonday sun. The tops of the vast skyscrapers still poked up from the barrier, though. Arvet magnified the focus of the binoculars. He could distinguish a thread of silver, glimmering with its metallic opalescence, stretching high into the heavens. The space elevator was descending now, Arvet could see the large metal disk come down from the sky. At the very top, in near earth orbit, the richest of the rich lived a life of luxury amongst the stars.
?There they are, captain. The city-dwellers,? grumbled the bosun.
?What?d their traders say?? asked Captain Sarn.
?Their excuse was that certain ?irregularities in their schedule? arose before they could get the scrap shipments out. Yeah right,? said first mate Tarnell. He was a pale chap that walked with a slight lurch from a childhood accident. Arvet Sarn scratched his bearded chin thoughtfully.
?Captain?? asked the navigator. She was a grim-faced blonde that wore a baggy grey jumpsuit, ?What shall we do, sir? They?ve been shirking their shipments for the last two seasons. Our landships need more metal ? now.?
?I know!? snapped Arvet, ?I?m just thinking about how we?re going to get it.?
?We should attack them!? said the red-faced tactical officer fiercely. ?Demolish the sandwall and take the scraps of it ourselves! It?s about damn time we started taking care of ourselves, instead of depending on these damnable cities!?
?And what? And become a pirate clan? Destroy any trust we?ve spent so many years trying to build? Never!? shouted the first mate.
?We have no choice! Our crawlers are grinding to a halt as we speak, and we need more purifiers! The UV is baking our hulls faster than we can repair them. Think of our people!? implored the navigator.
?I?ll be taken by the Dunewraiths before I let the fleets die from metal starvation caused by incompetence!? roared the tactical officer, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth. His red beard seemed to stick out like a tongue of curling flame.
?Will you all shut up?? shouted the bosun, seeming to vibrate the deck with his low rumble.
As they argued the captain stood in midst of them, still thinking about the nature of their plight.
?Captain, we cannot risk it!? wailed the Manager of Resources, ?The costs of assaulting a city directly is far too great, and what if it fails? Where shall we be then??
?Are you doubting the readiness and power of our military? That, Sharshek Tarthyst, is a direct assault on my place!? roared the tactical officer, his face a beet red.
?Think about the children!?
?Sit down you damnable whore of a woman!?
?Shut up! All of you! Let the captain decide!?
?Oh put a stopper in it, Turthast! I don?t see you coming up with any good ideas!?
?We can?t risk an attack!?
?We must!?
Around him the argument raged, neither side gaining or losing any ground. With a sweeping gesture, Arvet Sarn silenced them, the long yellow blue-lined sleeves of his jacket causing the bickering to cease immediately.
?We must deliberate this very carefully. The Sandwall of any city is immensely thick and incalculably strong. A direct attack would be nigh to impossible. We must concentrate on preserving what we have now, without waste, whilst we establish communications with other landships. Then we must assess our holdings: what we have presently, what we need, how much of it, and how long can we go on with what we have now. Deliberation is the only way we can hope to do anything.
Now I?ll have no more of this puerile bickering. You, the finest officers ever to serve on the Hawk of Babylon, are all acting like cr�che infants. Now go!?
They saluted him and with just a few grumbles, the officers all went to their posts. The bosun yelled the command and slowly, like an awakening beast of massive proportions, the gigantic landship came roaring and howling to life.
?Set course for the nearest landship. Comm. officer, call an assembly at the Amanas Dune to all landships in range. First Mate Tarnell, you have the bridge.?
Arvet walked tiredly down the long metal corridor, lit by a string of white halogen mine lamps, feeling the tremble of the mighty engines under his feet; and the sound of various squeaks and whirrs of the landship rang like music in his ears. He left the main bridge and control centers in the front and proceeded onwards to the habitation module. By far the largest, the habitation module contained all the living quarters, mess halls, schools, workplaces and recreational centers for the people living within. About sixty families ranging from solitary couples to bourgeoning litters lived in the landship. The greater whole of them had no other life than that of the Nomadic one in the massive vehicle. Some, though, were the rare escapees from the megacities, or from the desolate and now abandoned mining and salvaging colony that overlooked the southern shore of the Greater Sludge Sea to the north. They were outcasts, nomads who lived peaceful lives trading over the dunes, and the city people (who were a measurable degree less civilized in some ways, than they) looked down upon them. It made no difference. The cities, despite their superiour attitude towards the Nomads, were dependent upon them for many reasons.
Foremost was that Nomads brought with them news of the outside world and strange foreign trade goods that could not be bought elsewhere. Certain Nomad Tribes were mercenaries, like Arvet?s, who would keep the trade routes between megacities free from pirates ? for a small price, of course. But now they were getting desperate. The cities had begun to rely less and less over land and air-based trade routes, and they refused the Nomads harbour in their cities. Without more scrap metal to make repairs with, the Nomads? way of life would end quickly. What could have caused this strange shift? Arvet wondered. He decided to go Topside. Not completely outside, of course, as the UV light would almost instantly begin to burn skin and create cancerous moles. It was an effect of the Ecocide, long ago. The Ancients, in pursuit of their wealth and science, had stopped producing ozone deprivating gases far too late. The ozone later decayed dangerously, but was not wiped away completely. Or so told the lore of the Nomads. Arvet did not believe those old tales completely, and was disdainful of their value. Why bemoan ancient (and perhaps fictional) histories, when there were more pressing matters in the present?
Arvet climbed up a metal ladder and went into the stifling walkway. Here the full power of the sun blasted the landship and, cooled as it was, the UV-tinted glass of the corridor seem intensely hot. Beads of sweat burst out on Arvet?s forehead. He walked. The corridor, which stretched from the fore of the habitation module to the great smoke stacks at the very end, was articulated, and it bucked up and down slightly as the landship turned away from the city and hauled over the dunes. Outside Arvet could see coloured clothing hung on a long line strung from a communications antenna. Ultraviolet radiation murdered fragile human flesh, but it worked marvels on clothing, though it did tend to fade colours rather quickly.
The landship was huge, indeed. And it had to be huge, to house entire family groups, along with their food production vats and hydroponics, and the large factory plants that produced parts from melted-down scrap. Scrap was their lifeblood in the Great Desert. A landship this large was dozens of generations old, and immensely different from what it originally looked like, and nearly all of it made from scrap bought from cities or fished out from the giant wrecks of metal that floated in the sludge seas. A landship would start as a bare frame, not much more than a few Spartan quarters, an engine and a hull, but as it ?matured?, the Nomads inside would add new sections and widen and expand its capabilities as they saw fit. In less than a hundred years landships that had originally started out identical would be completely unrecognizable. The ?Hawk of Babylon?, Arvet?s clan?s landship, was one of the most mature ones that still roamed the desert. Others had settled in spots, as they had become far too large to move anymore. Others had grown too dense in population, and were broken into two smaller landships. Some Nomads, in that desperation, had forsaken the Nomadic life and fled to the black decadence of the cities. Still others were explorers, venturing deep into the desert and were never heard from again.
Arvet sighed and leaned against the hot railing. He had reached the end of the rickety corridor, and the three great smokestacks of the foundry were looming upwards now, immense and imposing columns of steel, burnished a bright burgundy from long exposure to the effects of the sun and sand. The paint was flaking off in multitudes of places, some parts were completely naked, showing the tarnished grey of the hull. The sun beat down constantly like an off-yellow whip of light, the great eye staring down from on high, blasting the landships with all its fiery malice. Arvet chuckled a bit. He had heard rumours of people in the city, sick and tired of the darkness between the skyscrapers. People so desperate that they often risked their lives simply to see the sun. Out here they couldn?t seem to get less of it during the long day. It was about noon, now, and the banal blast of drenching sunlight bathed all at a perpendicular angle to the earth. Arvet went back down quickly. Temperatures even inside the highly-cooled landship could escalate to over thirty-five degrees Celsius at midday.
Presently a thin, haunted-looking man came up to meet Arvet as he descended metal ladder. They were remarkably different from each other. Where Arvet was medium-sized, adequately heavyset, and had an authoritative black beard that was only slightly graying ? the man was dressed in green robes, and was quite tall and thin, and not the most calm-looking of people. He wore a tall miter of white and green, and there was the silhouette of a tree in a green circle on his robe. The symbol of an Ecologist.
?Ahh, there you are, Captain. I just wanted to thank you on your calmness and excellent skills in negotiation,? he stuttered. His voice was high-pitched and jittery, ?You clearly demonstrate great reverence for the Green Code.?
?Go preach your ecological prattle somewhere else, Yarnok. I?ve had far too much of your boot-licking ? enough to last me a lifetime.?
?Yes. Y-y-yes, of course, Captain. As you wish!? he bowed and stammered as he retreated into an adjacent corridor.
The Ecologists served as the quasi-religious propagandists on landships. Every landship had a proportionate population of Ecologists to remind them of the results of wanton ecological exploitation and preach to them the lore from thousands of years hence. Though Arvet had always despised their sniveling voices, their whispered notions and self-righteous attitudes, he did not dispute the fact that the Ecologists were there for a reason, namely, to enforce the Green Code and thus their way of life. It was an unwritten code of laws stressing conservation and strict recycling. Ecologists were always there, influencing Nomad life with their subtle, sibilant whisperings. In their own way they kept the great landships running. The Ecologists would look at the cities and the giant seas of ashen-grey pollution that they produced, and the Ecologists would scream at the city-dwellers? horrendous living conditions and applaud the soundly ecological efficiency of Nomadic life. By frightening people away from the cities, they kept the Nomads? way of life going. All Nomads, including Arvet, grew up with a paralyzing fear of pollution and waste. Polluting, wasteful, inefficient city-dwellers were the blame for scorching the world and drowning it, the Ecologists proclaimed. Then they would gather people ?round, every evening when the landship was parked in the shade of a large dune, and read from the Book of Narn-Sek-Landhol, of a time many thousands of years ago, when the earth was lush and green, and animals of all kinds roamed its living skin, and fish of all varieties swam deep in untainted oceans.
Someday, the Ecologists said, the Nomads would grow powerful enough to destroy the cities for good, or build great rocket ships to escape from burnt earth forever. Some Ecologists were fanatics, pushing for Nomads all over the world to band together and destroy all cities, somehow, and kill the polluters. But some still clung with unflagging literalism, to the words of the Commandments in the Books. Thou shalt escape from Nomadic life one day. They interpreted that as meaning that one day the Nomads would be able to fly from their desert life, perhaps by attaching great rocket engines to their landships, and fly into the endless void above. Close landship life would train them for life in space, and there in the untainted vacuum, they would be free to explore the universe; and perhaps, should chance arise, they would discover a new planet to live on. Arvet shared neither of these dreams. Ecologists were dreamers and thinkers, forever dwelling in their imaginations, and he had no love for idle thought. Why spend your time sitting and thinking and preaching when there was work to be done?
The rhythmic pumping and rumbling sounds of the engine room was louder now. He had wandered into engineering. Two of the crew were here, in a small control platform overlooking the vast stack of engines and machinery that transmitted energy from the solar panels outside to the rest of the landship. They saluted him as he came onto the platform.
?Engineering Chief Nadjal at your service,? droned the grizzled engineer. He was middle-aged but was already graying. He had a dull look, as if nothing could interest him, and his clothes were stained with biogrease from working with large engine components.
?Hello Captain Arvet! Engineering Second Officer Xylena reporting,? said a chipper young woman. Like the Chief Engineer, she too was stained with brown spots of grease, but she wore a blue cap over her brown hair and smiled at him.
?Is everything in order?? Arvet asked.
?There?s sand in the vents and dust in the screws,? said Nadjal glumly with a lopsided grin. It was an old, old engineering joke, but Xylena chuckled anyway. There was always dust and sand everywhere in the ship, and no matter how hard they tried to ventilate and screen it out, everyone still had to empty out their clothes and shoes at the end of the day.
?So what brings you to our lonely little corner of the landship?? asked Xylena.
?Just thinking. About the future. About our fate,? replied the captain.
?Oh.?
?Captain, while you?re here, could I ask one thing?? inquired Nadjal.
?What is it??
?The engines. The transmission needs new shafts, our gears are worn out from the sand. We need scrap!?
?I know!? snapped Arvet ?Don?t you think, as captain of this ship, that I don?t know that? That is exactly what I have been trying to decide: what we should do to get more scrap. Just try to hold out for a while longer, please.?
?Beah. Alright whatever you say, you?re the big captain and all. But if this thing breaks down in the middle of the Eastwaith, don?t blame me!? Nadjal grumbled and turned back to the control panel and made some adjustments. No effect, the machinery and turbines still ground out their deafening roar.
?I apologise for poor Nadjal. He?s just overworked. He?s usually much more friendly,? implored Xylena. Behind her Nadjal grunted.
Arvet smiled and went on, this time taking the corridors back to the hab-module. As he walked through the metal corridors, cool and devoid of people ? they were all working on their rest shifts ? he placed his hand on the wall. It cast very few shadows, the corridor was lit by many white halogen mining lamps, connected in parallel with cables in rubber coating. The wall?s metal was cool to the touch, but dry. Immensely dry. It was a property of the desert that all moisture was sucked from anything that had it. Sometimes, Arvet reflected, the Ecologists? fanatical devotion to recycling and conservation was very beneficial. From behind: the rumble of the engines grinding on sand, continuing the crawler?s steady movement through the dunes, like a ship over a shifting sea of yellow water and beating sun.
He banged the bottom of his clenched fist into the wall, creating a solid, booming thud. What could they do? They could not possibly attack the city directly, by themselves, the Hawk of Babylon did not carry very many weapons. The cities had no more care or need for Nomads anymore, for some reason, and they would not talk with such ?sand-beggars? or so they called Nomads. It was impossible! Unless?
Arvet jogged down the metal corridor, passing by dark faces and children with large, waif-like eyes. The Nomads had cousins who also roamed the desert. They were mercenaries, pirates that would ransack and ravage landships without a moment?s notice. They would not help, of course, but they had weapons and lighter, faster landships. The Sand Pirates were divided into rival clans, not unified families working in confederacy like the Nomads. Perhaps they could play upon those clan rivalries and get a rising army of pirates and an arsenal of weapons. Then they might conduct a raid against the cities and get all the metal they?d need for their landships. By carrying away the Sandwall itself.
?What?!? fumed tactical officer Korlis, his bearded face starting to turn red, ?Ally ourselves with the Savages? Never!?
?It?s the only way!? argued Arvet, ?Do you think that any other landships have weapons? We can?t make our own, we have hardly enough to keep our own engines running.?
?What?s to keep them from stealing our scrap, and taking our people, and ravaging the Hawk?? asked Navigator Varst, her brows knit in cold hatred, ?They?re dirty Waithmongrels ? all of them.?
?Captain! How can you even think of this? Not only is it economically infeasible,? said Tarthyst, the Manager of Resources, ?Any attack on a city ? however small ? is futile!?
?All of you bring up good points, but what else is there to do?? shouted Arvet over the din, ?What would you do? Do we have any other choice? Do we??
?Negotiations- ? started Tarthyst.
?You?ve seen how the city people look at us! Negotiation! Ha! I?d have more success negotiating with the dunes of the Westwaith to move,? spat Korliss, ?As for the Pirates, let?s not forget what they did to your grandfather.?
Hot anger flared up within Arvet at the mention of it. His grandfather was close to him as a child, he had never known his parents. It happened one day, forty years ago, that day he?d never forget.
He was ten years old, or so was reckoned by the Nomad calendar. The landship, Agamemnon?s Hope, was cruising over the small dunes and ergs and dusty sand moguls of the Westwaith. His grandfather Arvyn, son of Arvorkh, was at the bridge. Arvet ran up to him and tugged on his brown linen tunic. His grandfather chuckled at seeing him and asked, ?What is it, Arvet?? kneeling down and looking deep into Arvet with his shimmering brown eyes.
?It?s Sanya, grandfather.?
?She giving you trouble again?? Arvyn took his large hands off the helm and placed them on Arvet?s shoulders.
?Yup.?
Arvyn gave Arvet a strong hug. As he buried his face into the soft, thick cloth of his grandfather?s shoulder, he could feel the strength of the old muscles rippling underneath. His neck tickled from Arvyn?s beard, black with swatches of grey running through. His grandfather broke off and smiled at him, making great crease lines in his cheeks.
?Let?s go talk to that girl, then, Arvet.?
?Are you gonna mess her up real good??
?Ohohoho, no!? Arvyn chuckled, ?But I give a better tongue-lashing than a round of fisticuffs. Little Sanya?s going to regret pushing around my grandson. Sandor, Kiri, take the helm.?
Arvet smiled and took his grandfather?s strong calloused hand. They began to walk down the corridor when there came a dull roar from far off and a voice on the commlink crackled, disrupted by static, but none the less harsh and grating. It spoke with a strange drawl.
?Attention puny Nomad landship. This is the pirate vessel ?Kara?s Revenge?. Do not attempt to escape. By the edicts of the Pirate King, you and your vessel are now the property of the Marshag-Abul Clan. We have your vessel completely surrounded. Do not try to escape. Surrender now and we might spare your women and children till we are through with them. Resist and we shall destroy you,? the captain of the Pirate vessel sneered.
Arvyn grabbed the comm. microphone and spoke clearly.
?You must not do this! Please, have mercy! We will give you our scrap shipments and the trade goods we got from the cities. Just do not destroy us. We have no weapons!?
?No weapons? Well all the better for us,? rasped the harsh, drawling voice. A definite Pirate accent, ?As for the scrap, what is the worth of a few seasons? paltry shipments when an entire landship could furnish us for generations? Now will you accept our terms and surrender??
?You won?t get us, Pirate! This is our home, and you can?t scare us away!?
?You?ll regret those words, old man.?
The commlink went dead and Arvyn shouted, ?Full reverse! Where are they??
?Off to port, sir.?
?Turn ninety degrees, keep our broadsides away. We?ll present a smaller target that way.?
The landship began to shift its course as engines spun into quick action, grinding harder now, and the rumbling in the floor became a roar in the distance. Something silvery flashed past and exploded near them, throwing up a billowing cloud of sand and dust.
?The pirates are firing on us, sir!?
?Now is not an ideal time to demonstrate your skills in telling the obvious, Jarsnaal.?
Arvyn turned to Arvet and grabbed him by the shoulders. Anger was smouldering behind Arvet?s grandfather?s eyes; anger mixed with terrible fear.
?Now Arvet listen to me. These will be the most important words you will hear in your life. You must leave me now. It is no longer safe. Go with Keirre, with the rest. In the bay at the very end is a machine ? a flying machine ? which should be able to carry most of you. The command crew will leave in two smaller flying machines later, but we must stay longer to draw the pirates off. Do you understand??
?But what about you?? Arvet asked, tears rolling down his cheeks.
?Don?t worry Arvet. I?m old, and we Nomads live a very long time. I feel? as if it is my time now. Go!? the old man punctuated his last word with a severity that forced Arvet, unwillingly, as if his feet were that of a wooden puppet?s, pulled on strings by a puppeteer.
?Come, young one. Take my hand!? said a graying, motherly woman.
?But grandfather! No!?
Keirre took Arvet in her arms, and over her right shoulder, his tears soaking into a coarse blue-grey vest, Arvet called for his grandfather. The landship shook with immense violence, and a buzzing sound outside could be heard. Strange helicopters zoomed around like predatory birds, pecking at the landship with volleys of bullets that sank deeper with every pass. A conduit came down, belching a fog of white smoke, and Keirre dodged it with the sobbing Arvet in her arms.
The last he saw of his grandfather was the silhouette of his grandfather, hands clenching the helm like a vice, screaming against the deafening roar of the explosions around. He was loaded on to a large machine of iron grid work and translucent, reflective chrome rotors, mounted on either side. A compartment hung from the framework like the distended belly of some strange metal fish. He was ushered inside. There was an explosion outside and the screech of metal tearing asunder. Sparks flew and the air was choking with the fumes of the seeping vital fluids of the landship. A coolant pipe ruptured in the ceiling of the launch bay, adding a white vapour that smelled like bleach. A pinwheel of fire exploded from the corridor, tongues of flame licking at the vehicle. A strong hand grabbed Arvet?s and a voice screamed:
?Come on! Get in!?
He boarded the hummer and it took off, the canopy opening and the glaring light of Outside streamed in. Protective screens slid down and Arvet could see the haunted-looking eyes of people and children, glittering like jewels in the darkness. He pressed his nose against the tinted screen. Around and around the pirate helicopters buzzed, the sun reflecting off their UV tinted canopies still dazzled Arvet?s eyes through the screen. There was a column of black smoke coming from the back end. A pair of smaller hummers took off before an explosion pushed the landship completely over and, with a resounding thud, it lay smoking on its side, rent with many holes. The pirate crawler, smaller and more heavily armored, rolled over the dune. It stopped near the wreck and out of it came an army of pirates in shiny UV-protection suits, carrying rifles, and their visors glowed a venomous green in the light. They crawled over the wrecked landship like rats, ripping strips of metal from the hull. Some were clinging to it, climbing into the superstructure like flies, in their search for scrap.
Tears were streaking down Arvet?s face as he sobbed silently. An oil-streaked hand patted his shoulder, leaving a brown mark, as the shoulder jerked up and down. The compartments reeked of the close scent of sweat and fear and bodies long unwashed for want of water.
?Captain??
With a strained voice, Arvet said ?We must have truce with the Pirates- ?
?But sir!?
?Not all Pirates are the same, you know. Their outlook varies from tribe to tribe.?
?Nonsense! They are all filthy murdering mongrels and they deserve death! Every one of them, and the bitches of mothers that whelped them! Their entire race should pay for the crimes of their ancestors!?
?Then how shall we fight the cities? Look around you! We may be a mercenary clan, but what weapons do we have other than a few old knives and swords, some battered rifles and one rust-ridden autogyro whose only pilot spends his time sleeping and eating??
The tactical officer was silent.
?Now if we have finished,? Arvet cast his gaze around the bridge, ?Perhaps we can begin to plan this.
?I know of a clan of pirates,? Arvet continued, ?Who live far to the North, deep in the barrens of the Northwaith, beyond the Cracked Wastes. Our ?copters landed there on our flight from the Pirates when I was younger. We ran out of spare metal, and since the machines were only partly finished, they kept breaking down. Our trek over the desert took us many leagues and we encountered dust storms ? the like of which you may have only heard of in the legends told by the Ecologists. Our copters were grounded in the Wastes, and we gave up all hope when we were found by a pure-white landship that flew a white banner with a black Pirate letter.
We were healed and they gave us food and water. They were Pirates of course, but they were merciful to people such as we. They demanded, once we had lived with them for some seasons, only for us to join them. If we declined they would leave us near Nomad City with ample supplies and spare vehicles. These Pirates were as savage as any when in combat, but whenever they encountered landships belonging to Nomads, they would first attempt to convince them to surrender some of their spare scrap, and then merely frighten them with a show of force. The Pirates never wantonly killed Nomads, but they actively hunted Raiders for their scrap.
?We must seek their aid, if we are to defeat the cities. I believe that the Pirates of the White Ship are not a single clan, but an entirely different breed of peoples, as different as Nomads from Pirates, and Pirates from city-dwellers.
?They call themselves the White Corsairs, I believe. Once we mobilize our people and establish contact with them, we will have enough power to face the Pirates. Then, when we have expanded our army, we should be able to wage war upon the cities. They shall fall to our blade!?
His crew gave a hurrah (and not to mention a few rude comments) and dutifully went to their posts. The bosun shouted, the engineers grumbled, and the technicians wailed. Word of the quest northward soon got to the people in their grimy quarters through corridors that smelled of human sweat, machine, oil and desert grime. They headed northeast, taking a course across the Eastwaith, near to the southern tip of the Greater Sludge Sea. There were some scattered settlements overlooking the Sea, most were friendly to Nomads, and one could often trade goods such as vat-grown food and hydroponic curry for decent scrap ? fished directly from the floating wrecks in the Sea. There they would be able to repair and build up for the long journey North, to the strange lands in the mysterious Northwaith.
**
The chopper?s blades kept up a din, overpowering voices with their rhythmic beat. Arvet looked down from the spotter?s seat, placing his binoculars protective goggles, signaled the thumbs-down to descend. They flew over the yellow expanse of the dunes, the mounds of dust and sand rushing past in a monotonous moving carpet of bumps and gentle curves. Arvet pressed a button and his seat extended on a strong metal beam, the articulated UV canopy unfolding to protect him from the searching rays of the late noon sun. Through the purple tint the sun looked orange over the horizon, and its yellow beams made the shadows of the dunes long and solemn. The chopper descended a dozen metres and Arvet strained his eyes for a sign from the ground.
They had left the Hawk of Babylon far behind in their search and the pilot signaled to Arvet that the batteries were running low and the dust was beginning to grind on the propeller shafts. Arvet signaled for a bit more time. He checked his watch and looked at the fuel monitor. It was in the yellow and he calculated that they would have about five more minutes. Good enough. Five minutes would matter more than none, and especially in the light that was receding all too fast.
He looked again through the binocs, at full magnification, the yellow ground seeming to leap up at him. Any time now? There! A movement on the ground! He signaled to turn around again. It was there, not just a shimmer of mirage ? which could still happen though it was late in the day. A rising little mound of sand signaled the scrapgeyser getting ready to blow. He flashed his hand three times. I?ve found it! I?ve found it! The pilot gave him a smile, and Arvet got his beacon rifle ready. In a barely audible puff of air and a jerking recoil, he fired the beacon close to where the bubble was rising. He signaled the thumbs-back in the direction of the landship and the pilot nodded, turning the chopper. Almost out of juice, read the indicator. Soon they would be running on the backup batteries. Arvet did a small calculation in his mind.
The scrapgeyser, if it was like most other geysers, would blow in an average of about twenty minutes. Sometimes they would happen earlier, other times they would blow later, but a scrapgeyser, no matter how long it took to blow, would be a welcome thing.
Scrapgeysers were an unnatural phenomenon, created by humans and all their filth. Trash was buried in numerous places under the sand, moved there by the city-dwellers or dumped by the wasteful Ancients. Bacteria trapped underground, would gnaw at the decomposable waste and certain genetically engineered or mutant ones would decompose plastics or metals. The byproduct of their metabolism would be a variety of volatile gases, primarily methane. Over long periods of time the methane would grow more and more compressed, growing in pressure until it became a bubble of gas, trapped by the sand. Eventually this bubble would rise and as it got closer, would travel faster through the lighter sand. Eventually the methane would touch air, and a spark would be struck by the charged gases? movement through the ground, and explode violently, throwing out in a wide radius, all the debris that was carried with it from the bottom. This explosion brought vast deluges of valuable scrap metal and debris, and it called to it every Nomad in sensor range. Much wealth would go to the Nomad clan who claimed it first, but scrapgeysers could also be very dangerous.
The dense concentrations of Nomads would attract pirates, who would circle them like scavenger birds or hyenas, waiting to strike at unwary stragglers on the outside. For better or for worse, the scrapgeysers were becoming more and more rare now ? the Ecologists, who recorded all history, would tell of a time when scrapgeysers would blow often enough for all Nomads to have some to themselves, and the gathering of scrap was much safer.
They landed in the air bay of the Hawk of Babylon, though they had been far in the red. When word spread, the atmosphere was festive and joyous, like that of anticipation of a delicious well-earned feast, and the people of the landship were like a colony of ants roused by food. The mighty grinding engines roared to life and the landship sped over the dunes to the blow. A short time later the rumble in the desert was felt by trailing seismographs. It had taken forty minutes to blow, which meant a smaller geyser, as the speed of blows was equal to their power: generally larger bubbles rose faster and blew with more force.
?Coming up on the blowspot, Captain,? said the Mate.
?Ahh. Excellent. How much??
?About a thirty-metre radius, Captain. Pretty decent blow, though it took a while.?
?Well it depends on more factors than the size of the bubble. The sand density and weight are also factors,? said a florid-looking female Ecologist, whose pale skin betrayed her city-dweller lineage.
The Hawk of Babylon stopped on the trailing edge of a sand dune. It was nighttime and the people who gathered the scrap eagerly cast off their reflective suits for lighter, but more insulating garments. At night the desert was freezing cold, the bitter tang of frosty air feeling welcome to Arvet as he walked outside in his light parka. The moon was high in the sky, it seemed like a beautiful round orb of eerie iridescence, casting a gentle white glow on the backs of the Nomads who worked quickly in case another landship or Pirate clan came. The stars encompassed the great dome of the heavens, twinkling brightly like distant, intangible fireflies engaging in a scintillating nighttime ballet. The great white sash of the Milky Way cut across the sky like a glowing belt of lights stretching into infinity. And to the North, a star glowed ? Polaris ? twinkling, ever a beacon for travelers. Arvet felt a smile grow on his face, cracking frown lines, straining muscles long unused for such a purpose. He felt as if he could dance, simply twirl, twirl, twirl till he fell fulfilled upon the ground and simply look up with shining eyes at the awe-inspiring majesty of the stars far above. They shimmered, forever calling to him.
He felt privileged. Long ago, during the worst tumults of the Ecocide, it was told, none could see the stars for all but the brightest were blocked out by the thick of pollution and the clouds of the world-encompassing storm. After the weather?s fury had subsided, all earthly artifices washed away into the seas and the carbon dioxide reabsorbed into the oceans by a vast flourishing of phytoplankton and algae, then the stars shone bright over shifting and rolling dune. It was the gift of beautiful night, said the Ecologists, that the Nomads and all that lived in the desert had been given. Yet they were doomed to wander, often involved in bitter and bloody conflicts of water and battles of horrendous carnage over scrap. Such was the way of life of such people like us, thought Arvet.
?Captain, we?ve gathered all the scrap we could, and are returning it to the landships,? said the First Mate, his long, horsy face coloured a night blue with the light of the moon and stars.
?Let us camp somewhere north of here. Not far from this place ? we do not want to waste battery power ? but far enough.?
?Aye sir.?
They got onboard. Perhaps, thought Arvet, Perhaps there was hope after all. The landship roared over the night dunes, heading north, towards the scintillation of Polaris.
CHAPTER 5:NIGHT RIDE
The lights - the dull greens and vapid, sodium yellows, the electric blues and garish, glaring neons ? they flashed by as streaks of colour as the rocking, clanking rail bus rumbled through the city, headed westward. The single rail clanked loudly, the wheels throwing sparks off the metal and letting out an ear-piercing screech wherever it stopped at a station or turned at a bend. Inside the rail bus rolled back and forth gently, the old fluorescent tubes flickering on and off every time it shook. Evryst sat with his arm over NumberTen?s pale, smooth shoulder. She sat with her head against his shoulder, sleeping peacefully, her black locks reflecting the flickering lights of the night world outside. With his free hand he picked at the duct tape on the overstuffed and faded chair. On the hard plastic that covered the inside the train was scrawled gang symbols, and the marks and tags of those who had passed by. The train was washed every day with a mop and a bucket of dirty water, yet it always smelled of piss and sweat and, in some spots, blood. The thin yellow-brown carpeting was fading, thinning to the floor in some spots. The chairs were ragged, spongy yellow stuffing pouring out from rips in the green faux-pas leather. Some were so badly tattered that they seemed to be mummified in bandages of duct tape. A homeless man, reeking of beer and cigarettes and his own bodily filth, lay sleeping on a row of seats.
Evryst envied NumberTen. She could fall asleep in any place, and especially on the musty, gently-rocking train, whilst he stayed wide awake, the Stim flowing through his veins like cool liquid fire. Outside the black ooze of the human sea flowed, but was blurred by the speed of the rail bus. It was actually pleasant, for all its mustiness and filth and mold, preferable to Evryst over the engulfing mass of humanity. Yet the rail bus was lonely, and only a few people rode in every car. It rocked, the mono wheel thud-thudding in the track, and NumberTen awoke drowsily from her slumber.
?We ? w ? we, there yet?? she asked haltingly.
?Nah. Soon though. About four more stops. It?s a long way from the Inner City to the Suburbs.?
They got off at a station, named sensibly enough, ?Suburb Station?. Actually there wasn?t much difference between the suburbs and the Inner City; the population was about as dense and the skyscrapers no less immense. The main difference was that most large corporate headquarters were housed in the Inner City.
?Evryst? Why we here??
?I found this guy on a messageboard. He had an ad there, said he?d rent out autogyros to people. He lives out here in the Suburbs.?
?Oh,? said NumberTen. Evryst knew, of course, that she didn?t have a clue as to what a messageboard was.
When they disembarked from the station, not much more than an elevated metal platform with few unused (save for a few destitute individuals), the petty little details came flooding back. When Evryst was on the train he couldn?t see the old black stains of chewing gum on the sidewalk, the brown marks of spilt liquids, the unused wrappers of junk food and paper littered about that would fly around whenever an updraft of warm air came howling from between the buildings. One the train it was all blurred together, so the bullet holes and brown marks of dried blood were invisible. Evryst wanted to get back on the rail bus and just go, far-far away, away from the little details, just let the AI pilot drive him from here to ? to? wherever. But he had to stay. He had a job to do.
?C?mon, NumberTen, let?s go.?
They walked a short distance and allowed the slowly moving crowd to sweep them away.
Evryst passed a toygirl and looked at her. Her hair, ash blonde, was cut short and made into little spikes. She had green eyes and red, shiny lips. The toygirl wore a short leather miniskirt that would?ve creaked had it not been for the single human voice of the masses, bubbling its gibberish - tiny conversations becoming an entirely incomprehensible hum. The toygirl?s eyes were different, however, from NumberTen?s. They stared forward, the mouth flat, as glassy and emotionless as a doll?s or a bird?s. She resembled every Toygirl he had ever seen ? except NumberTen. NumberTen?s eyes sparkled, filled with youthful delight and innocence, her voice was high and musical, like a robin?s, different from the low, sultry voice of other toygirls.
The voice of a media angel, digitally enhanced and laden with techno effects, singing in some mutated descendant of an Asian language, came filtering down from on high. The angel was on a giant screen, slowly shifting back and forth, dressed in nothing but plastic stickers, as the background faded from a blurry white to a wildly shifting, colourful landscape that could have only been the product of an epileptic on methamphetamines during a seizure. The strange beats of modern pop culture assaulted Evryst?s ears with its rhythm. It was a commercial for a concert, with a subvocal slogan in it. It brought no words, or pictures, only feelings. Yet another trick of the media angels, the cultural icons of the world. They dominated the minds of their fans and aroused the interests of those who weren?t. Evryst grunted. If the media angels could influence even through television ads, imagine the power of a live concert. He attended a concert, once, with Thorpe. That day he was taught what a media angel was, and what they could do.
?Put these,? said Thorpe, handing him a pair of electronic nullifier plugs, ?in your ears when we get in range. Even at a distance the media angels are dangerous.?
Evryst had stolen the ID?s for a pair of tickets to Mechelle Anoraga-Tufstane?s concert that night. When they arrived the music was already throbbing.
?When we get in there, I?ll talk to you with the mnemonic device. We want to be able to hear each other, the plugs block all sound. Brace yourself,? warned Thorpe.
Young Evryst braced himself.
A figure was on the stage, dancing ? or copulating - depending on how you looked at it. The crowd was around him, all of them drunk or high from the designer drugs that were given out at the beginning of the concert. The throbbing of the giant speakers made Evryst?s insides churn. The screaming of the crowd saturated the air; so much that Evryst could feel the hairs on his arms and back of his neck rising. Lasers cut through the resinous smoke of tobacco and a myriad of foul toxins, and the amplified grunts and heavy breathing of the media angels along with the noise that passed for music, blared, throbbing through the ground like an earthquake of deafening sound.
The lights danced and twinkled, lasers flickered like shards of cutting energy through the air. Fire crackers kindled and burned, and all through the media angel sang her song. A brainwave tower was raised behind the stage and it poked up like a phallic example of the domination of pop culture. The screaming subsided into an echo of the media angel?s amplified signing and breathing as the crowd came under the influence of the brainwave projector. Evryst?s brow wrinkled and he looked at Thorpe, who pointed at the mnemonic device. It was set to nullify incoming frequencies and tune out the suggestive influence of the tower with neural white noise.
The crowed shouted with a single voice, a thick, drug-induced upwelling of sound resounding from a hundred thousand throats. It came from their diaphragms and sounded more like the primal shout of some animal. Their faces were half-lidded, it seemed as though they were entranced. The crowed rocked back and forth slowly as they chanted, the rapidly flickering light passing swathes of colour over their faces. The stamping of the crowd?s feet and the collective clapping of their hands was like an ancient subhuman beat, accompanied by the high-tech soporifics and aphrodisiacs, the high-pitched techno music only an entr�e to the thumping of the collective human beat and drum roll.
?Look at them, Evryst,? said Thorpe in his mind, ?It?s their form of release. It?s comfort in groups, in this world people need to feel together, think together, to feel secure. And that?s how the media angels get rich. Remember that, boy. The media angels have power. Power to move the masses. Remember that.?
Evryst and NumberTen came to a garage, inundated with a bright white light. Blue-purple sparks came from it. It was open to the sidewalk, the green garage door with its flecking paint pulled up and over, forming an awning. Unused metal drums of oil sat in front and a figure sat, bent double over a metal contraption, a welder?s helmet over its face, the arc welder illuminating it and casting dancing shadows at the back of the room.
Evryst shouted over the ?fooommm? of the arc-welder.
?Hey! Hey Mannon! Hey!?
The figure spotted Evryst, and NumberTen hiding behind, large black eyes looking over his shoulder, and it flipped up the welding mask. Gregory Mannon cut off the welder and shouted, ?Who the fuck are you??
?I?m Evryst. You met me on that ?board, remember??
?Oh, yeah. Well what do you want?? He scratched his unshaven chin. Mannon had an immense flab of flesh under his chin, and a heavy apron laden with tools hung over his hefty beer-given paunch. A wet sheen of sweat was covering his face from the heat of the welder and a shock of matted graying hair was combed unevenly over his shiny bald pate. He reeked of sweat.
?I need to get to Topland. Do you have anything here that can do that??
?Well yeah, sure,? drawled Mannon, ?But how?d you wanna get there?s what matters. D?you wanna sneak or speed??
?The way that?s least likely to get me killed.?
NumberTen was shy of strange men, especially those that looked like Mannon. He seemed to her like a strange ogre, sitting hunched over a contraption that sprayed sparks and flecks of molten metal, drenched in sweat. Yet now, with the heavy welder?s mask flipped up over his sweaty bald pate, NumberTen saw that he was just a decrepit man under his bloodshot eyes. This drew her forward. The shope was filled with strange machines, and she tentatively touched one of the odd devices hung over the entrance. It rocked back and forth and as it did, a queer clicking came from within it. It was shaped like an iron wrench, and was covered in reddish-brown rust, yet somehow it produced an eerie music, like the somber whisper of wind at night over rolling dunes or gently lapping waves. It was fascinating.
?Well both are good ways to get yourself killed, it?s up to you to how you wanna do it.?
?Alright just screw that. I?d probably want to sneak in.?
?Fine. I can rig up a ?gyro to produce a Topland signal, so the robots won?t getcha. Also got a nice mimetic sheath too, makes you look like the background. In fact I think I got one back here. C?mon. I?ll show it to you.?
NumberTen followed Evryst in the shoddy little metal shop. A variety of machines lined the walls, intricate ones and rugged ones, devices of all kinds, displayed like macabre wall hanging and pieces of art. They walked past a curtain made from a sheet of stained brown burlap. Over the door way was a plague, embossed in shining brass, which read, ?Deus Ex Machina ? God from a machine.? NumberTen wondered what that meant. She had only a vague understanding of what God was, and no idea why he?d come from a machine. She walked behind Evryst, past two huge stacks of electronic junk, like a pair of doorwards standing straight and silent, into a large room. It extended two floors upward and led out again, like a backwards ?C?. Inside were a pair of machines, sitting like solemn riding animals, shiny propeller blades folded down at their sides, reflecting the light of the floodlamps above. Around the perimeter of the room, adjacent to the walls, were piles of machinery; old engines, shiny wheels, masses of rusted iron, steel plates, iron bars, great old hunks of industrial machinery that belonged in a factory, and mountains of useless electronics.
?This, my friend, is the Double ?R? two,? said Mannon, resting a proud hand on the left machine. ?And this is the Tee-Twenty Eight Mark Two. They?re both good autogyros.?
?What?re they powered by??
?Methane. They burn the stuff damn fast ? only about a day?s worth - , but they give you a lot for it.?
?Which do I want??
?The Tee-Twenty Eight for sure! It?s equipped with a mimetic coat ? buncha sensitive smartcells that replay their background to camouflage you ?, a top-of-the-line Kyrex/Hauptmann jamming suite and a smooth inertial compensator. You won?t feel any jolts or turbulence in this baby, I tell you that!?
?Whoa. Sounds good. Exactly what I need,? Mannon started to unlock it when Evryst said, ?Just one thing: how much is this gonna cost me??
?Twenty thousand, if ya wanna buy it.?
Evryst whistled as Mannon named the price.
?Shit, man!? Evryst cursed, ?What if I just wanna rent it??
?Ten per hour, plus five hundred for any damage.?
?Good deal, but how do I know it?s not gonna fall apart, just so you can get that extra five hun? ??
?See it for yourself then, if you wanna be anal about it.?
Evryst gave it a kick here and there and tested some screws. He took out a personal scanner and passed it over the autogyro. Nothing. The thing was as solid as if it were forged from one slab of metal.
?Five hundred down payment,? said Mannon.
Evryst gave the man the money and he and NumberTen got into the autogyro. Mannon started to give Evryst a briefing on the controls.
?That one controls pitch and yaw, and-?
?I know how to pilot one. Simulators at the Arcade.?
?Simulators can?t simulate everything, you know. This one tends to lean to the right more. That little grey switch there controls the mimetic coat and this dial,? Mannon pointed to a small red dial knob, ?Controls the frequency of the jammer. Alright??
?Yeah.?
?Don?t wreck my ?gyro, kid.? Mannon slapped Evryst on the shoulder as Evryst slid into the shiny black seat. It was warm, and there was grey duct tape over sections that had burst open. The control stick was wrapped in a grey rag that smelled of many years of sweaty palms. NumberTen sat in the back seat, the plastic covering feeling warm and tacky to her naked buttocks. Mannon had run back to a control panel, sticky with coffee, and pressed some buttons to disconnect tubes that fed into the autogyro, A spot of white vapour and the bleach smell of coolant filled the air as the gyrocopter powered up, the rotor blades sliding into position with an audible click. The computers and displays in front of Evryst lit up, scattering yellows, reds, and greens across his pale, grim face. Behind, NumberTen felt a rumble and a low whine that raised slowly in volume and pitch, and she smiled with the pleasant feeling. Often she saw the buzzing autogyros flit by like metal dragonflies, but never had she ridden in one.
A grinding sound filled the room as the garage door opened in the second level of the hangar.
?Hey Mannon,? shouted Evryst over the noise.
?Yeah??
?I?ll have it back in a ?couple days, alright?? Don?t stress.?
?Yeah, sure.?
The autogyro hovered a few feet in the air for a second and flew up and out into the wild buzz of autogyros. As Evryst engaged the mimetic coat it shimmered and became invisible, a mere ripple, like a column of heated air. Gregory Siegfried/Alice/Frederick Mannon turned back and opened a door in the back of the hangar bay. He closed his drooping lids and brushed a shock of brown hair away from the antenna. He concentrated, and the ghostly whispers of their thoughts came flooding back to him, embracing him with their minds. Mannon walked into the small room lit by a single bulb around which mutilated white insects flittered. The others were there, this area?s cadre.
A woman, her face long and thin ? almost gaunt ? with sunken, dark eyes and a venomous gaze between long locks of pale yellow hair. A heavyset mustachioed man, with a ruddy face and a wild halo of glossy jet black around his head. A bald man, his face pure white with piercing blue eyes and an enormous beak-like nose with a pair of thick spectacles perched at their peak. Each sported an antenna on their temple. Some, like Mannon himself, wore strips of metal exposed in their flesh. Others sported neck braces and glowing pumps and cylinders strapped to their backs. Together they formed the core leaders of the Movement.
?Why have we been summoned?? thought the bald man, Siegfried.
?We must discuss-? started Mannon.
?-The matters of Our upcoming activities,? finished Alice.
?To deliberate our next moves-? thought Frederick, the heavyset man.
?-And complete our plans. Finally all our-? thought Mannon.
?-work shall come to fruition.? Siegfried smiled.
They often thought-spoke to each other in this manner, each adding his or her own thoughts to end the sentence the moment the idea was formed. It was a particularly useful aspect of their antenna linkups. Together they achieved a sort of telepathy, through radio and brainwave signals.
?There is need, now, for us to-? began Frederick.
?-reveal ourselves as a full-blown movement,? finished Alice.
?We must mobilize the people-? thought/spoke Mannon.
?-immediately. But how? They cannot all be-?
?-implanted with the uplinks. Nay, I do not think-?
?-that they will achieve the Group Thought in that manner.?
?So we must find a temporary-?
?-solution to this problem. They must be influenced. Once we-?
?-get them under our control, the implantation-?
?-process can begin. But how do we do it?? asked Mannon.
?Humans are at states that are extremely vulnerable to suggestion, certain times. When properly stimulated and under the correct conditions, the human acts as a group entity,? explained Alice.
?A media-angel concert. The soporifics, lights, and brainjack signals lower the defences-?
?-of hundreds of thousands of people at once. We could-?
?-implant a subliminal message in the song.?
Frederick closed his eyes and accessed a nearby computer with his uplink. ?Arma Ishtar?s upcoming concert. Its due to begin in two days.?
?That does not-?
?-give use much time. We must move-?
?-quickly to inform the other members of Our Movement.?
?Assemble the cadres. Inform-?
?-every member of the new assignment.?
?It is-?
?-to induct Arma Ishtar into the fold.?
?She will not join of our own will,? thought Alice.
?She is a media angel, and has no brain to-?
?-comprehend Our Movement. But she will-?
?-resist. Thus we must induct her forcefully.?
?Can it be done?? asked Siegfried.
?Twice in the past, however-?
?-both attempts were unsuccessful.?
?We shall refine our methods. Evolution through technology.?
?We concur. Evolution through technology! Deus Ex Machina.?
They thought in unison, the motto of the Mannonites.
?We are the Mannonites. We will prevail.?
?Our minds are one. We shall-?
?-Improve ourselves through technology and take comfort-?
?-in the Group Thought. We are One.?
?All hail Ismaren Mannon!?
The meeting adjourned and the Mannonites parted, leaving through the front door. Mannon felt a surge of pride flow through his body, and communicated it to the others. He felt superlatively gifted to be the descendant of the woman who began the Mannonite Movement. Ismaren Elishah/Francise/Haiger Mannon. He smiled. For nearly two hundred years the Mannonites plotted and schemed, spreading their influence through the city, subtly gaining power as they infiltrated the ranks of the corporations. At last they would reveal themselves. The Machine Uprising had begun its first stirrings.
?Deus Ex Machina,? recited Mannon. It was the greatest of all Mannonite slogans, coined by Ismaren Mannon herself. ?God from a machine.?
The neon and holograms whizzed by as the autogyro ascended. Evryst checked the mimetic coat and jamming device. They were working fine. NumberTen felt her blood rushing downwards as they ascended higher and higher. She looked out of the window. The catwalks formed an intricate interconnecting web of metal pylons and grates. The holograms and flashing advertisements drifted by, their kaleidoscopic light playing across the autogyro. NumberTen smiled. Evryst had said that they would go to Topland, and she was very excited ? she had never been to Topland before. A curious groan and a pop jerked her away from the window.
?What? that?? she asked.
Another pop.
?It?s probably the pressure changing. The air inside places ? it?s expanding as the air gets thinner.?
?Air gets thinner,? she breathed.
NumberTen noticed something strange. It seemed to be somewhat brighter outside, mid-night growing to twilight. Still the autogyros flitted past, glowing orbs of yellow and orange lighting up the darkness, making the vehicles into glowing beacons of colour and form.
?Buy Som-Som?s Tofu! It is happygood ? all vatgrown!? shouted a passing robot blimp, advertisements flickering on and off on its side.
NumberTen poked Evryst, who was sitting, like she, in fascination at the world outside.
?What is it??
?Go faster??
?No, we can?t. The mimic coat won?t adjust fast enough. They?ll see us.?
NumberTen mouthed a silent oh-h-h. Something orange-yellow danced over them. Evryst thought it was a wayward headlight until he saw its source. ?Oh my God,? he thought.
The light came from a long tube which led upwards. A light well. It piped sunlight down from far above, bringing the bright, wholesome face of the sun down to cast its warming glow in the cloying darkness. As he looked ?round, he saw numerous other tubes creeping up the wall like metal vines in a steel and concrete jungle, and he knew that he was in Topland. No Midwayer was allowed (by custom and sheer consequence of design) to have light wells. It still looked like Midway, though; the same all-pervasive gloom pierced by the ringing cries of advertisements and the colourful fish-swimming of flying machines. NumberTen was leaning forward, her hands gripping the shoulders of Evryst?s seat, her face and eyes sparkling with wonder. This was a new world. It was brighter, and there was real light. There were many shops open in this part of Topland. They had wares in beautiful displays behind solid metalglas windows, and the lights from inside the shops were bright yellow and orange ? warm colours, perhaps in vain attempt to make the oppressive twilight gloom seem somewhat less cold.
The dance of the people on the sidewalks was somewhat different. No toygirls or boys. They dressed in strange fashions: clothes cut off at the top, magnetic coats with pieces of fabric sticking to bare skin, boots that were twelve inches above the ground, coats of red and gold and aquamarine made of silksteel and polyvinyl. And they did not move in the same direction as each other. There was hustle and bustle as opposing currents of people strove against one another ? people could be singled out. As the rented, invisible autogyro passed by, NumberTen could see the faces of the Toplanders. A teenage girl wearing nothing but body paint, a child with a pink coat whose stiff collar rose up around its head like a shell, a rich old lecher clutching the waists of two beautiful young courtiers.
Something cruised by. It was painted in ochre and black, like a giant wasp, and had a pair of huge, circular turbine propellers mounted on either side, a pair of autogyro rotors inside curved metal rings. A hummer. Inside were rich men wearing fashionable suits who clinked glasses of liquor together in celebration and had perky young girls squirming in their laps.
As the autogyro rose, the world became brighter, more indulgent and lively. Around, the rich flocked and swarmed to the latest spas and pleasure domes and zero-g boutiques, their whirling ebb and flow a vibrant human whirlpool of all sizes, shapes, and colours. Something glittering crossed by them and NumberTen asked Evryst to hover here for a moment. It was a tube of shining glass that crossed the gap between the immense skyscrapers. Inside, making loud thrumming sounds as they blew through the tube, the multicoloured streaks of tubecars could be seen. Not many this far down, but as Evryst looked up he could see them high above ? a crisscrossing web of iridescent silver and glass, like the catwalks that intertwined in Midway, made cleaner, elegant and polished. The jewel-like matrix of tubecar pneumaways and polycrete walkways shone in the blue-white light of the sun ceiling far above and the fluorescence of the numerous wall screens plastered to the sides of the skyscrapers that rose like mighty trees from a deep canyon.
The ads shouted like giant television merchants with disembodied faces across the wide chasm of the skyscrapers. One shouted, ?Get Decked! Jenjris silkiplast pants for a new generation!? Another bellowed, ?Enjoy Sani-Cola, the drink that gives that clean feeling with none of the calories!? Around and around the dancing, flickering faces and shapes on the walls howled their wares. Yet the lights, colours, and sounds were nothing to the presence of the atmosphere. The world around seemed to be suffused with a strange blue white light, and sunbeams played over prime real estate. Evryst piloted the autogyro toward an abandoned alley.
?We?re here, NumberTen,? said Evryst as the toygirl eagerly reached towards the door.
?Wait!? he cried, ?If we just go out there we?ll stick out. Those Toplanders don?t dress the same as us. We need different clothes.?
Evryst took some clothes out of the back. They were old Topland garments, slightly faded and quite out of fashion. A blue one-piece suit for himself and a green shirt and short skirt with slits cut out on the sides. In the rapidly-changing world of Topland fashion these clothes were archaic, though Evryst had only bought them three years earlier in preparation for some future occasion. They would stand out, but not as much as he would in his khaki pants, green goggles, black gloves and faded grey vest, and NumberTen wearing nothing at all except high black boots. Rather, they?d look like Toplanders that were either attempting to bring back a fashion or hopelessly outdated. They got dressed in the alley.
?C?mon NumberTen. Let?s go find this guy.?
He took her hand and they plunged into the colourful, chaotic mass of people. ?Remember,? he said over the babble of voices and the roar of flying machines, ?Act unique. You?re absolutely unique, just like everyone else.? They went off.
* * *
Arma Ishtar adjusted her hair. It was platinum blonde, she had been genetically altered to be blonde, as light hair was very uncommon amongst Midwayers, who were mostly brown or black haired. Her face was lit a sodium orange by the lights of the vanity table. There was muffled music outside, the thumping and shouting of the concert. Her concert was two days from now, but she made a visit to Markel Enviggis? performance. He was a well-known media angel, almost as famous as she, and an old friend of hers.
She wore a tiny black leather corselet, barely covering her breasts, and her large eyes were accented by light blue eye shadow. The orange light of the room gave her pale off-white skin a bronze glow. Ishtar remembered something. Out of a drawer she pulled a small pistol ? a silvery Three-Arrow .25 millimetre gun ? and put it in her handbag. She yawned and scratched her bare bottom, and left out of the back door. The concert was boring, and it was winding down anyway. The back of the concert hall opened into a dark alley, wet with moisture, debris and mounds of rotting garbage hither and thither. Ishtar?s high heels glittered in the urine yellow of the single overhanging lamp, and for a brief moment she lit up a cigaweed, thick, resinous smoke curling in languid, ghostly coils before vanishing like grey specters in the air. She walked out of the alley, clutching her handbag, humming a tuneless song to herself over the loud roar of aircraft passing by and the echoing calls of blimp ads. An old, faded poster that read ?Paradise is yours three miles up!? fluttered in the wind as she passed it by, still humming that tune.
* * *
Mannon opened his eyes with a click from the aural implant in his head, the vision of the Shadower agent fading from his mind. Nothing unusual to report. Ishtar was walking home. Just a few more days, and then they could carry out their master plan. Mannon sat in the back of his shop, in his room, and he was peeling artificial potatoes while sitting atop a mound of junk and rubbish. He cast the half-peeled potato away and reached for the signal amplifier. It would carry the transmission further, relaying it to a great boosting station ? if he needed to talk to someone far away. Yet he didn?t use its full potential. He plugged a wire into the aural implant and thought, ?Alice, report to my office, please.?
She came quickly, though it took ten minutes. A knock came at the front door.
?Yes??
?May I come in?? asked Alice.
?Go ahead.?
She entered. She wore her drab grey jumpsuit, and looked more grim and pinched than ever. A red light flickered on and off on her left temple.
?You wanted me??
?How goes the mobilization? Your sector??
?Our people are informed, yet I get the feeling that a progress report is not why you summoned me here.?
?Let us celebrate!?
?What??
?Our victory, of course!?
?But it hasn?t even started yet!?
?Come now. How can you think that it could not be a victory? Two hundred years of manipulation, of planning, of cloaks and daggers, have gone into this,? said/thought Mannon, a glint in his eye, ?Do you know how easily influenced a crowd is under the conditions of a media angel concert? Whisper some words in their ears and implant subliminal messages in their brains and you?ve got them! Victory, Alice, is assured.?
?Still??
?Nonsense! Now, come. Bond with me.?
Alice, of course, had been asked by many other Mannonites before him to engage in mental intercourse ? the Director of the Mannonites was no different. Looks didn?t matter either, it was the quality of their minds.
They activated their aural implants, standing facing each other, eyes closed with concentration. The frequencies locked and their minds clove unto one another. A scintillating web of shapeless form and lightless colour. Swarms of feelings and sights and sounds surrounded their minds like droves of rainbow butterflies. Bursts of blue light marked the firing of synapses in the swirling spectral background. As their consciousnesses melded, the could feel each other?s emotions and memories, and caressed them, bringing pink waves of reassurance and warmth as endorphins surged through their brains.
A glittering web, lines of light extending and unfolding in an impossible matrix into infinity. A shimmering wall, transparent, clear as cellophane, rose up in front of Mannon and he penetrated it. Their minds linked, they began to laugh, a gay and merry laugh, as waves of mental ecstasy passed over their brains. Alice?s laugh was like the tintinnabulation of a thousand tiny silver bells, and his was like the rumble of distant summer thunder over fields of wheat. Their minds danced in the infinite void of thought and they were aware, so blissfully aware.
The moment faded. A great weariness came over them, and the fell down on their backs. Mannon?s leg ached, terrible jolts of pain leaping up from the cramp. He checked his watch. It was almost two hours later from when they had started. Alice was panting, beads of sweat on her brow, Mannon?s body was soaked from the intense concentration over such a long period. He lay back down and closed his eyes, willing the cyberware in his body to relax the cramps and loosen the knots form his muscles. Soon, he thought. Soon he would get revenge for what they did to him.
* * *
Evryst referred to the dossier again. His target lived in this area, somewhere in the Nakhimov Corporation Towers. The Towers themselves only started at the first or second level of Topland, further down they were just nameless Midway buildings. A curious buzzing sound came from behind. Evryst swore and grabbed NumberTen?s hand, pulling her into an alley. A robot rolled past, sided by two Authority policemen in blue and white armour suits/ The robot?s black orbicular head scanned the retinas of those who passed by, making sure that they were Toplanders and not ?possibly dangerous? Midwayers. Sentinels. They walked with a calm, self-assured swagger as they pushed their way through the crowd. It was no less dense than the crowds of Midway. The only real difference was that Topland was so much smaller than Midway. Evryst crouched, his back facing the entrance to the alley. His eyes glinted in the dark as he looked out carefully. NumberTen?s warmth could be felt through her clothing, her rising and lowering chest exhaling sweet breath. They huddled there in the shadows as the Sentinels passed by.
A great advertising blimp, quasi holograms encircling its girth like a belt of colour and three-d symbols. Evryst hunched over and ravenously popped a pill into his mouth. His spittle soon dissolved the chalky white pill into fiery, bubbly liquid. Colour returned slightly to his white flesh, and his eyes became somewhat less sunken as blood shot through them. Desire and release. That was his world, the Midway world, and the Midway style of life. He wondered what the pattern was for the Toplanders.
?Let?s go,? he took NumberTen?s hand and they went off again.
They were walking down a long sidewalk. There was a railing on the side facing the other skyscraper, an actual railing, unlike the rusty short chain-link fence in the better parts of Midway, and nothing at all in most others. Around them the people swarmed, a blank faceless mob, talking of politics and business and relations with strange, far-off places with foreign names like Rotovilla and Rydderdome and Kronotron. The babble was like that of a crowded restaurant, with the dim rumble and buzz of passing hummers. The smell of strange cooking awoke Evryst?s nostrils.
Something caught his eye, and he looked to the left. It was a tiny shop, wedged between a designer clothing store and a computer store and an outdoor caf� and every other kind of famous chain establishment imaginable. The Toplanders surged around it, not even casting a single glance at the polished glass window, as if it was not even there at all. With its wood paneling and soft dark green lining and carved wooden sign, it seemed strangely out of place between the snazzy designer stores. In the window there were stacked piles and piles of books. Not videodisks on hologram tapes or VR sets, but real books. Even through the glass Evryst could see the thick blankets of grey dust on the fading book covers; even from outside the little shop seemed to make NumberTen want to sneeze.
The sign above read: Marcius? Used Books. Circa 2027. Wow, thought Evryst. That was almost three or four thousand years ago. Unlike the designer stores with their shiny chrome and immaculately clean green and blue-tinted glass and concrete, there were no people crowding in to the bookstore. It almost seemed to belong more in ancient England that Evryst once read about, than in their century and time period.
?Hey, let?s check this place out,? he said, feeling unusually cheerful. Must be the pill, thought Evryst. They went inside.
The bookstore was stuffy, musty and warm, with the strange, thick stench of oft-read old books. The moment NumberTen entered she felt as if she had aged fifty years or more, such was the incredible oldness that this place radiated. It felt as if inside time had stopped completely, and the only thing left to do was to get older. Books were stacked haphazard on tall wooden shelves that seemed to be sagging, like all the rest of the store, with the weight of time and the Herculean task of keeping the heavy books aloft. A small circular window at the back of the store cast an orange-yellow light over the cramped and stuffy bookstore, piping in light from a small well, catching the dust motes and making them glow white with sunlight as they drifted gently in the slowly stirring air. It was old and musty and cramped, and yet strangely comfortable, and NumberTen felt as if she could stay here and read, or browse quietly, or even just nap in the old mahogany rocking chair in the corner, and the afternoon would just last for ever and ever. And the books! Real books, of paper and ink and leather and plastic. They lay everywhere, heaped in piles and stacked like rising ladders to heaven, and towering over on giant shelves, and piled on chairs, desks, tables and stools. All of the, covered in a patina of soft grey dust. As Evryst and NumberTen pushed through the door, turning a time-worn brass handle, a smart little bell rang and the place seemed to wake up like a creaky old man from a long summer?s nap. On top of an armchair, piled with books, directly in the middle of the sunbeam, a large grey cat awoke from slumber and mewled at the visitors.
?Eh? What is it Mollie?? asked a soft, accented voice from behind the big wooden counter, piled high with books, ?Oh, visitors is it? That hasn?t happened for a long time. Well let?s see who it is.?
A strange whir came from behind the counter and something flickered that Evryst and NumberTen hadn?t noticed when they came in. It was a translucent crystal screen, opaque with dust and the passage of time. An old man, his sad and yet timid face turning to them, showing a pair of small black spectacles perched ridiculously on his large beak of a nose.
?Hello there, he said with a soft English accent, ?Excuse me a moment, please.?
The man on the slab of crystal took his spectacles off his nose and, minding his brown suspenders, wiped them on a white shirt.
?Are ? are you an AI?? asked Evryst.
?Hmm? No, no. Just an old man that wanted to cheat death,? he pointed toward an unlighted corner where a human brain was kept in a gurgling container of nourishing red liquid, black wires hanging from the disembodied brain like a wild mane woven from strands of the night.
?The pinnacle of the twenty-second century,? the old man murmured with a small smile creasing his lined face, ?And it cannot even keep an old body from crumbling to pieces. I don?t think we?ve been introduced. My name is Edward Grant. I?m the last in a long line of bookstore owners. None of us left in the world, I?m afraid.?
NumberTen fidgeted.
?Oh? Am I rambling on? I tend to do that sometimes ? it?s a tendency of the old to talk to the most knowledgeable person in the room ? themselves. Anyway, I don?t recall ever seeing (and I recall much, you know. Comes from ?living? for thousands of years) you here? Who are you and who is your lovely lady friend??
?I?m Evryst, this is NumberTen. We?re just ? um ? browsing.?
?Oh. Pleased to make your acquaintance. If you?re browsing, please feel free to look around, at any book you like. Be gentle with them, though. I?m sorry for the mess, Father Time has not been kind to this little shop.?
The old grey cat yawned and made a sleepy, ?Meow?.
?And that little fellow there, is Mollie, last of a long line of cats.?
?What is ?cat??? asked NumberTen.
?You don?t know what cats are??
?It?s an animal, right?? said Evryst, pronouncing the strange word animal.
?Correct. And a dying species, perhaps the last of the old animals to die out. Mollie here is the last of her kind, at least I think she is,? said Grant.
NumberTen walked off to a shelf and took an old tome with red covers and faded gold letters, and blew off a thick covering of dust. Edward turned to her, fixing his virtual spectacles on his nose in a faintly aristocratic manner.
?Ahh, my young friend, that is an excellent book. The Odyssey if I remember correctly.?
NumberTen wrinkled her forehead, squinting at the strange pictures ? words and letters ? on the yellow paper of the book.
?What this?? she asked, pointing at a paragraph?
?Can?t you read it?? asked Edward,
NumberTen shook her head. She didn?t know what reading was.
?My dear, this is a terrible thing! You?ve been deprived a wonderful privilege! Entire worlds are contained in books, volumes and tomes of stories and adventures and tales! Knowledge immeasurable is contained between two covers.?
?Oh.?
?She?s a Toygirl,? said Evryst, ?They?ve got reduced brains.?
Edward Grant sighed softly and nodded and started to reaffix his spectacles when he stopped himself.
?It?s such a silly habit. I keep forgetting that I am no more flesh and blood (or at least, mostly so) than you are a brain in a jar,? Grant chuckled softly, ?I had my body for five hundred years, until at last it crumbled to dust. When that happened, my brain was almost fully into the preservation tank, so I had nothing to worry about. Now I can live for as long as there is still energy in the world for using, or the sun still warms the skin of this planet, and the nutrients in my tank get refilled every now and then. Yet it gets so lonely here sometimes, even with Mollie. Fewer and fewer people are interested in books these days, and I have read every book in my shop one hundred times over, and every time I try to go out, I only remember that I am but a brain in a jar and a three-d picture on a slab of smartglas.? He sighed softly. ?Ah well. Such is the price for immortality, eh??
Evryst nodded, not pretending to understand the old man?s banter. Suddenly an idea came to him unbidden.
?Hey Edward, do you have any books about the world?s history??
?Many. But from what time period??
?This one. I want to know how the cities came and how the world got like it is.?
?No, no,? said Grant slowly, ?I?m afraid not. You see, at the end of the twenty first century people stopped writing on paper. It was all digital. Digital everything: digital cars, digital houses - digital lives in a digital world. Computers in clothing and in hands and feet and heads. By twenty one hundred it was all digitized. But they stopped translating books to information. Eventually there were so many new things to be written that all the old just stopped being passed on. For ages, you see, people have been passing down stories, from word of mouth to the next mouth. From that to paper. But that?s where it ended.
So many old things were lost. Nobody liked history anymore. It was all a waste of time, they said. Nobody liked old things, they were too shabby and moldy and decrepit ? why study things long lost and useless and boring when there was everything new to see? New science, new politics, new ideas and thoughts and entertainments and all the money to be made. Only a few old men kept on translating the books, and when they died, that?s where it all ended. That?s what stole the people away. It wasn?t anything made by any government or group, they simply chose to forget it all. So you see, no more records exist very far past the twenty second or third centuries.?
?Oh. Well a book on the world before that, then.?
?I can do that,? said Grant, brightening up, ?But what I have is mostly large, thick tomes.?
?Can I get one on pad??
?Yes, I suppose. I have a transliterator here. Yet I?ve always found reading from a VR display or a hologram tape or digital screen to be less fulfilling than from a book. I like the feeling of something there, something tangible that you can smell and touch and weigh.?
?I?ve never read from ? those things ? it?s always been a computer for me, so I wouldn?t know. Thanks.? Evryst said as the old man behind the counter handed him a small blue rectangle, popping out of a slot on the crystal slab. Evryst gave him some money and called to NumberTen. She came out holding a book with large pages of thick pulp paper and a grey and black cover stenciled with the name, ?Art of the 21st Century.? She flashed Edward Grant a radiant smile.
?Oh, art eh? Very beautiful pictures in that, but they all have that twenty-first century gloomy touch to them.? Evryst started to take out his credit chip again, but Grant stopped him.
?Oh just take it! I insist. How could I take money from such a charming young woman like you?? his lined, sad face cracked a smile that was gentle and joyous, yet still with a distant shimmer of strange sadness deep inside, like a shiny rock at the bottom of a well.
They left the shop, NumberTen delicately holding a book of colourful squiggles and lines. Evryst took her hand.
?Don?t get lost, ?Ten. This city?s big, and you don?t know Topland,? he said, thinking a moment after, I don?t know Topland much, either.
They headed in the direction of a monumental arcology far away. It rose like a shining glass pillar, topped with a blue-tinted dome, with smaller columns of blue glass half-buried in the main shaft. It was hard to believe that the great beautiful column of blue glass, sparkling high above in the poisoned blue-ash sky, was also that black and neon abomination far below. A Sentinel hummer, like a snub-nosed navy blue beetle, its twin turbine wings rigid on either side, flew past, in the same direction.
CHAPTER 6:OVERLOOK
Arvet scanned through the tinted visor, his voice muffled by a thick scarf, dwarfed by the howling of the wind.
?Tie those flaps down! We don?t want them being torn off!?
?Captain!? said a visor masked face, ?Captain we?ve got to stop here! Let?s put down the anchors!?
?No! The storm?s small ? if we keep moving, we?ll get out!?
?Captain, with your permission: if we don?t stop now the crawler will tear itself to pieces!?
?We?ll be immobilized with sand if we stay!?
?How do you know?? The voice cried over the roaring, twisting yellow fog.
?When you get as old a captain as I,? roared Arvet, ?You learn a few things about the desert.?
He turned to another person who had just stepped across the sand-carven expanse of the landcrawler?s top.
?Are all the hatches sealed?? Arvet yelled.
?Yes, captain!?
?Good. Let?s go down, this sand will eat us away!?
They descended into a large airlock, hermetically sealed, and shut the outer door, a torrent of fine curry coloured sand following them. A soft hiss came from all around and as the softly lit white room pressurized, their ears popped for a moment, and Arvet swallowed some spit to clear them. The sand was then vented out with a whir of blowers and they took off the suits, shaking out large handfuls of sand into the metal grating.
As they entered, the first sound that became apparent was the tired roaring of the engines and the rumble that was now a groan like an old soul receiving blows undeserved. The howling sandstorm, despite the tight hermetic seal, was still audible if one overcame the rumble. Arvet ran to engineering, where a crew of engineers worked like roused ants, frantically trying to preserve the engine. There was a fine yellow dust in the air, and Chief Engineer Nadjal was wearing a filter mask, another in his hand. Arvet took it.
?Captain, how much longer will this last?? he asked.
?About two or three more hours is my experience.?
?We?ll be frozen up with sand by then! The transmission is already locking up! The engine ? I don?t know how long we can keep her intact ? she?s getting overheated!?
?Try to manage ? please.?
?How? We can?t melt down the scrap because we?ve sealed the smokestacks, and the more oil we put on, the more the sand sticks to it, and if we pour on the oilbreak fluid the axles grind!?
Arvet looked at the huge turning cylinders of metal. They were black and yellow, glistening with sand that had stuck to the oil. It was a vicious cycle.
?The engines won?t take more of this.?
An idea struck Arvet. ?We can?t sit idle, the sand will bury us, but we probably could stop long enough for you to slough off the oil and then renew it, couldn?t we??
?It might work,? said Nadjal thoughtfully, ?But oil changes take time, even with the full engineering team.?
?We can?t take the time to stop for long, but it?s the only choice we have. How fast can you do it??
?If I had more help, perhaps five to ten minutes.?
?Good. I?ll inform the crew.?
Arvet spoke into the commlink on the wall.
?Attention, this is Captain Arvet Sarn, all off-duty crew are to report to engineering and standby. All civilian personnel are to assist.?
He spoke his commands to the bridge crew and then shouted, his voice on the commlink booming across the landship, ?All stop!?
With a jolt the landship halted. Steam was coming off in billows from where the axles and gears had overheated. A flurry of people worked frantically to cool the assemblage down, wash the sand-imbibed oil off and replace it with pure oil. The sand-stuck black fluid was sent to filtration tanks to be purified. As the people and crew rushed to engineering the work became easier and more efficient with more hands to help it. No one disobeyed Arvet?s orders, though many were confused because of the urgency of the storm. Arvet quickly got to the controlled chaos and flashing screens of the bridge, running at top speed through all of the short cuts. Someday, he thought, we will have to get an elevator system.
?Sir, engineering reports ready,? said the First Mate.
?All start,? ordered Arvet.
The bosun echoed him with a deep throated bellow that seemed to resonate through the entire vastness of the landship, unaided even by the commlink.
?Where are we?? Arvet asked the navigations officer.
?Sir, we are not sure. The sensors are being blurred by the storm. The gyroscopes indicate that we are heading in the correct direction, though.?
?Bring up the map.?
A map appeared on the vast viewscreen at the front of the command room. The landship was an icon of blue on a grid of green, with blue circles as the known fringe towns. They headed in the correct direction, yes, but there was something tugging at the back of Arvet?s mind.
?Sensors, bring up the latest map of this area. Superimpose the dunes and formations.?
A map came on showing a rat?s nest of squiggles and concentric lines in shapes, and sand movement directions. They were coming up on a region of flatter sand, a dunepan. It dawned on him.
?What?s the approximate severity of this storm??
?About five point two ? no ?four,? said a stone-faced brunette.
Five point four, five point four. Where had he heard such a thing happening before?
?Sir,? said the meteorologist, a young man, ?The storm has increased. It is now reading at six point five.?
?Any dunes here??
?No, sir!?
The wind had picked up. All the energy was bled off in networks of dunes, but on the light sand of the pans, they were vulnerable to its hand, and the storm had flattened the dunes. Then he remembered.
?Quick! Turn, forty-five degrees north-northwest!?
The wind was from the east.
?Sir, what is it??
?The size of this pan? What is it??
?Last recorded at twelve point three kiloms in radius?
?To the northwest??
?Arramorti Dunes.?
?Arvet swore and grabbed the commlink mic and bellowed, ?All personnel, brace for impact!?
The air was still, as if the entire population had held their breaths ? even in the engineering bay faces haggard and oily looked up from their work. And then the impacts hit. The landship was caught by a wave of sand, still heading forty-five degrees northwest. The sand blasted the side, causing the metal to groan and creak. If anyone could have been flying in an autogyro outside they would have seen a dune, moving like a wave of water, pass over the little crawler, tossing it slightly over, like a toy boat in a child?s bathtub.
Inside untied objects flew across the rooms, and the crew gripped handrails, bolted chairs, and metal bulkheads, trying not to fall over. With a rumble the landship reset its treads on the sand.
A doctor, his overcrowded clinic rocking, clung to an operating table and wondered at what was happening outside. In the bridge the crew blinked bleary eyes and slowly got up from crouched, cowering positions.
?What was that?? asked the Second Mate.
?A moving dune. Light sand like this gives way to larger dunes. They travel in waves, bleeding little momentum on the sandpans. Usually in denser places the dunes only shift a small amount, but out here, the light dunes are carried away by the sand. Dune waves. If we were fully sideways we?d have been blown over,? said Arvet.
?Will there be more?? asked a young officer.
?Yes.?
Another wave of yellow sand lapped over the landship.
?Keep course steady!? A call came in from Engineering.
?The generators! The axles ? they?re grinding away!? came Nadjal?s gravelly voice, tight with anxiety.
?We?ve got no choice, Damnit! If we stop now the waves?ll turn us over!? cried Arvet.
A rushing sound and a boom marked the attack of another sandwave. The landship rocked violently from the weight of the sand and the power of the wind on its side, sparks flew from broken cables and the lights dimmed to emergency power, becoming a bright red, casting a glow over their haggard faces. A klaxon began to wail.
?Sir! We?ve lost the secondary and tertiary comm. antennas. The rear sensors are all out.?
A sudden crack and groan of metal, and a rumble like an artificial earthquake created by one of the Ancients? great seismic weapons, came rolling through the ship. A call came in through the comm., the voice was tight and strained with worry.
?Captain, this is Secondary Officer Xylena. Nadjal?s been struck on his head, we?re taking him to the medical bay. We?ve lost the second rear treads and the others are going critical!?
Arvet paused, his finger on the talk button, the words seeming to die in his throat, his eyes were fixed on the static-crossed display.
?Sir??
Then in a quiet voice, he said, ?Acknowledged. Continue on course. The storm will pass soon.?
?But Captain Arve-? she was cut off. Arvet walked towards the command pit, his attention absorbed by the displays that flickered with colour, a hundred separate screens showing a thousand rapidly-moving series of data from all sources. He was like an island of calm in the midst of the chaos around him.
?Sensors, bring up the rear cameras,? he said.
?Bringing cameras on-line. Three banks of them are down.?
He squinted at the main screens, a special glass pane that was rigged with electronics to as to become opaque with sensor displays or transparent to provide a visual outlook on the desert ahead. Something moved in that yellow fog. Three ? no ? four small ships were coming up, fast, cutting through the storm of yellow sand and sandwaves as if they were water.
?Magnify.?
?We will risk damaging the cameras, Captain Arvet. Are you -??
?I said magnify goddamnit!?
The images grew in clarity and he could make out the shapes. Small things, stubbly wings placed over the sides, rocket engines that seemed to glow with blue, and a long slim cutting blade that drove like a knife through the sand. An awful realization dawned upon Arvet. The vehicles were unmarked by any Nomad sign. They were coming for the landship.
* * *