Alien Blues (17 page)

A bloodstained dish towel had been jammed into the grey grit of dirt beneath the board. David unwrapped the cloth.

The toogim was circular, and about the size of a belly button. It was streaked with dried blood. David unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt sleeve, and pressed the toogim to his wrist. The talisman burrowed into his flesh. David held his breath, wondering if his body chemistry was a close enough match to his mother's.

Why, he wondered, did she kill herself now? She didn't need to worry about money anymore. Why did she give up now? He would never know. But he missed her; yes, he missed her very much.

And yes, he was his mother's son. The toogim began to glow—not the vibrant emerald green he had seen on his mother's wrist, but a dark, dreary, black-streaked shade of green.

It could only help. Like it or not, it was time to go back. Home to Little Saigo. Common wisdom said you could never go home. The thought comforted him.

TWENTY-FIVE

Little saigo was a carnival in the summer. David had forgotten the color, the noise, the throb of life. The sidewalks radiated heat, and the air was full of dry, gritty dust. People spilled out of the tunnels, like flies at the moist mouth of a garbage can. Women and men wore red and purple and yellow. They yelled, laughed, cursed—all at the top of their lungs.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, wondering if the looks he got were too long, too knowing. He hadn't showered, shaved, or changed his clothes. The worse he looked, the more likely he'd blend in.

Three men played guitars next to the steps that led down to the main tunnel entrance. David leaned against a streetlight and listened. He was surprised by the surge of
good
memories. He and Gregorio Alonso had spent hours out front here, listening to the music, looking at the girls. God knows, some of them had been worth looking at.

He tried to remember the name of the girl who refused to tie her shoes. Maybelle? Yeah, Maybelle. How could he forget? She had let him put it all the way in before she got interested in that boy from Arlin Street. He had come afterward about a million times just thinking about it.

A little boy wandered up and stared at David. The child was dirty, his knees were covered with scabs, and he wore nothing but a sagging soiled diaper. He was a beautiful child, in spite of the dirt, and David smiled at him. The child cocked his head to one side, then toddled away. David felt dismissed.

Little Saigo had been excavated in the late 1990s during the hysterical skin cancer years, when sunscreens and sunblocks were found to be carcinogenic, as well as the cause of some nasty allergies. Little Saigo was intended to be an underground city for the elite, a grand scheme that called for elegant apartments clustered around a spiraling skylight that reached down five levels. There would be stores, restaurants, and apartments grouped near the light, and offices, artificially lit, in the farther recesses. Everything would be connected by a mag lev tram system, and nothing would show at ground level except a large glass bubble, and the various entrances to and from. But construction costs escalated, people settled to the simple, time-honored solution of protective clothing and intelligent exposure, and one by one the backers balked.

The original contractor persevered. Official AMA policy still held that no sunshine was the best sunshine. There would be people to buy. The telling complication came when hammering through the rock proved to be three times as expensive as estimated. The contractor disappeared halfway through construction, one step ahead of a posse of debt.

Little Saigo had been abandoned, though not for long. Soon it was infiltrated by the down and out, the people with their backs to the wall. Like David and his mother had been, after his father disappeared.

David studied all three entrances to Little Saigo. He could use the main one, of course, where the men played their guitars. Might as well throw money in the air, he'd get about as much attention. The east entrance looked like the new teen hangout. That left the south tunnel—and the hummers.

There were, of course, countless small ways in and out, some of them secret ones leading into buildings miles away. But the odds of meeting somebody you didn't want to meet were higher there, and it would be easy to get lost. It would have to be the hummers.

The streetlight over his head lit up, though it wasn't dark yet. David edged past the sidewalk, into the weedy dirt field that would take him to the south tunnel. A scrawny tiger-striped cat approached him. David stopped and held out his hand. The cat veered left and ran away.

David, his hand still out, crouched and listened. He could already hear the slow, heavy murmurs.

It was dark in the tunnel, and he had to duck to get in. The bare flesh of his arms puckered with chill bumps. He had forgotten how cool it was inside, the temperature a steady fifty-three degrees.

The humming was soft but intense, and though David could see little in the thick darkness, he could feel the press of people crouched close, lining both sides of the arched rock walls. They could not be unaware of him, in the middle of the tunnel, temporarily blind and very out of place; but there was no ripple of that knowledge in their song.

He had worked with the hummers only once, knowing his mother would make him sorry if she found out. Once had been enough—back-straining, mind-numbing labor. Huge piggyback freight trucks pulled up at the south entrance, and merchandise was passed down the line of hummers to the armed-to-the-teeth tunnel rats.

Sometimes there were mysterious shipments from unmarked trucks manned by heavily armed drivers. Other times there were donations from the city, or the Salvation Army, or food from the community kitchen. Businesses often sent their surplus, and took an inflated donation off on their tax returns.

And after the merchandise was delivered down to the rats, each hummer got their packet of choice. Yammers, a hard, down-pulling pill; dolpins, endorphins of happiness in a syringe; Jackie, a box of Jack Daniel's; or the grub bag, which was food, and David's packet of choice.

One of the hummers had opened a box, the night that David worked the wall. David had held his breath, terrified a tunnel rat would see and shoot them all. The man had not seemed disappointed to find a gross of lavender hair nets. He had put one on his head, stuffed a handful in his shirt, then passed the box on down. Three other hummers had furtively helped themselves.

Working as a hummer was step one into the province of the tunnel rats—dangerous, when he and his mother had already cast their lot with the Maid. The work was mindless and the pay a pittance. Tunnel rats were volatile, some of them hard-core sociopaths, capable of killing on a whim.

But the main reason he hadn't gone back was the smell.

David put his handkerchief over his nose.

The humming swelled and rose around him. His vision adjusted to the blue-purple darkness, and he could see the hopeless eyes and twisted mouths of the people who lined the walls. Some of them, he knew, never left their place on the wall, afraid to miss a shipment, and a chance at their packet of choice.

A breeze wafted through the tunnel, carrying the hot oily smell of exhaust mingled with the human muskiness of sweat and urine. David got a light from his pocket and focused it to a thin point of reddish illumination.

He walked.

The hummers lined the tunnel for almost half a mile. No sunlight for these tired faces—the wind would suck them dry. Their music rolled over him in loose easy waves. It was a spiritual, a chant, a litany. His blood pulsed with each wail of music and he thought of a beehive. Did the humming join the people on the wall into one central intelligence? Did it share pain, spread pain, relieve pain?

David turned a corner and edged into a blessedly silent section of tunnel. The turns were familiar—he could get where he was going if he didn't think too much, and trusted to the worn grooves of memory and instinct. The tunnel got narrow, and he had to stoop. The passages had not seemed so tight before, but he had been a child, then, and smaller. The path ought to intersect with a main tunnel very soon.

He was afraid, here in the darkness, he could not be anything else. He had seen things, in the tight, twisted passageways. Though he had been a child, watching with an imperfect understanding, there had been a sure sense of menace, wrongness, vulnerability.

He had been stalked in these tunnels. He had run, sobbing, up and down the passageways, and been ashamed of the flight. Would his father have run away? Was he dead because he had
not
run away?

Awash as he was in memories of flight, it was no surprise to hear the sliding scuffle of a footstep. David paused, and heard it again—no memory this. The way ahead was clear, and David saw himself running, shrinking smaller and smaller, until he became, again, the frightened child.

David stopped, and the footsteps stopped. He turned around and pointed the red tip of his light into the tunnel behind him.

Suiters. They stalked their prey outside the tunnels and in, and had forged an uneasy alliance with the Maid.

Their dress was modeled after one they called First Victim. Funny, he'd thought, the first time he had seen them. They wore identical black slacks, vests but no shirts, and suit coats with the sleeves neatly removed. Their hair was long and banded back, and their shoes were shiny black lace-ups. They rouged their lips and powdered their faces, and there were three of them there in the darkness, watching.

He would not run, though his knees trembled, and his stomach was tight, and he smelled his own sweat and fear. He could not, would not, be the frightened child again.

One of them smiled, the one in the middle, his red lips a parody of friendliness. His white-powdered face was luminous in the darkness and moving slowly closer. David braced himself, legs apart. Marion tolerated the suiters, but just barely, and such things could always change. David lifted his left arm, showing the glowing toogim on his wrist. Sweat welled on his face and neck.

The suiter stopped. David laid a hand on his gun. He waited and the suiters watched him, making no move to come closer. David backed away finally, deeper into the dark tunnel. He turned a corner, and passed out of sight. His heart was pounding, his hands slippery. He drew his gun and leaned against the wall, listening. No one followed. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, then turned the penlight to the face of his watch.

He was going to be late. He hoped Maid Marion would wait.

TWENTY-SIX

David crept out of the back tunnel into a main branch. Violet light glowed in a tube along the wall. Maid Marion was waiting for him.

She was an old woman—had been old when he was a child. Her skin had faded from black to grey, and her hair was white and wooly. Her eyes were brown, the whites yellowed and bloodshot. Her striped cotton dress hung loosely from her shoulders, and David realized she'd lost weight. She turned her head in his direction, though he crept up quietly enough, and her sightless eyes stared past his left shoulder.

“Do I know you?” Her voice sent memories shivering up and down his spine. “It's David Silver, isn't it? Boy, it's been a long time. Hello, David Silver.”

“Good to see you, Marion.”

“Now
hear
your voice, son,
hear your voice
. I can see you're grown and been places. Come here, let me touch you.”

Her bony hand stretched toward him and he ducked closer. Her fingertips, dry and cool, swept over his head like a summer breeze, flowing to the contours of his cheeks, lips, and eyes.

“You growing a beard, boy?”

“No ma'am.”

She sank to the cool stone floor. “Tell me, David. 'Bout yourself.”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“We're safe, hon. Nobody bother Marion.”

That, at least, was true.

“Be comfortable, David Silver. Sit down now.”

He sat beside her, cross-legged. She sat with her knees up, covering them over with the loose skirt of her dress. The stone floor was cool. He thought of the tons of dirt pressing over their heads. The walls were damp. He could hear a trickle, somewhere down in the tunnel, where water wore its way down.

He talked about Rose, and his girls, and the hurt animals they raised. She liked hearing about the farm, so he closed his eyes and told her how the grass smelled in the heat, how cool the barn was when a breeze flowed through the cracks, and how his children used a pile of field stone for a fort. And as he talked, he could see his girls, sitting under the ash tree with a canteen and a sack lunch. In his mind he hugged them close, and smelled the hay smell of their fine baby hair.

Marion listened closely, and he knew what he said would be woven into her stories. Marion snagged everything and everyone who came her way, feeding on their lives, weaving them into her master work. She recorded her tales on tape at night, leaving her door open for those who would gather close and listen.

Marion tapped his arm.

“What about
her
? You haven't mentioned your mama. She still got that limp? I always feel bad on that. I set that ankle best I could, but it was broke worse than anything I seen.”

“Doesn't matter. She's dead now.”

“What happened?”

“She hung herself.”

Marion patted David's hand. “Bless your heart, son. Bless your heart.”

“She left her soul down here, Marion.”

“Naw, David. Your mama's troubles come before Little Saigo.”

“This place didn't help.”

“That I grant you. How was she livin' when she died?”

“How?”

“Where she live? What she working on?”

David scratched the stubble of beard on his chin. “She was peaceful enough, after she left the bank. She had money. But she lived in empty rooms. Not even curtains on the windows.”

“You gone have to quit being mad at her, David. She couldn't help what she was.”

David rubbed his thumb on the stone floor.