Daylight Runner (6 page)

S
ITTING ON THE EDGE
of her bed in her T-shirt, cradling her guitar, Cleo was plucking out a tune that had come to her in her sleep. She struggled to remember it, trying different notes as she sought out the melody. She still had not learned musical notation, so she used a digicorder to record the tune once she had worked it out on the guitar. The lyrics would get written down later, with the chords scrawled above the words. Her sister, Victoria, who shared the room with her, eventually woke at the sound of the experimental notes, turned to look over at her, and scowled. She put her face in her arms, covering her ears.

“It's Sunday morning!” she protested. “Do that somewhere else!”

“Bite me,” Cleo retorted.

“Stick it up your ass!” Vicky snapped back, with a grin on her face.

“When I'm famous, you're going to have to show me some respect.”

“When you're famous, I'm going to have to
wake you up
and show you you're dreamin'.”

“I'm going to make some breakfast,” Cleo announced, prodding her sister's huddled figure. “You want some?”

“No, thanks. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to
sleep
!”

Cleo giggled and took her guitar with her, through to the kitchen. Her mother was reading some old book while her father watched the sports on the web.

“Cleopatra, darling, put on something warm. You'll catch your death,” her mother told her.

“I'm fine, Mom. Is there any water?”

“Yes, it came back on this morning…eventually.”

After a breakfast of papery waffles and egg sauce, Cleo sat down on the couch beside her father, humming to herself and searching for the elusive tune on her guitar. Ever since losing the end-of-year gig, she had been playing with some new lyrics. She sang them haltingly as she put the riffs together.

“Damn it!”

The A string broke with a twang, and she sighed in exasperation. It was her last one.

“Should get a synth one,” her father murmured, referring to the electronic guitar synthesizers, his attention still focused on the basketball.

“It's not the same, Dad,” she told him for the hundredth time.

“No strings, though,” he replied.

“Well, who'd pay for it if I did?” she said, and then immediately regretted it.

He had lost his job in Plumbing Maintenance three months previously, in a “streamlining drive,” and had not been able to find more work. Now they lived on her mother's wages from the part-time library job and his welfare payments. They never had enough money now, and his pride had been hard hit.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

Cleo undid the broken string and wound the two pieces around her fingers, tying them into a coil. She would need to get some more—and there was only one place to do that.

 

The trams did not descend into the guts of the city. To reach the lowest levels, you had to take a tram to a point
above your desired destination and take steps or an elevator down. Cleo preferred the stairs—the elevators were becoming unreliable. From her tram stop, she descended one hundred and fifty-eight steps to Sub-Level Three of the Fourth Quadrant, one of the several levels occupied by the Filipino District.

On the way down, Cleo passed the exposed workings of the city. Driveshafts carrying the city's power whirred, causing the steps to tremble beneath her feet; pneumatic shock absorbers caught much of the vibration from the engineering, and the heated air was drawn out and along radiators that kept the air temperature at the required level. Pipes wove through the infrastructure, carrying hot water, near-freezing water, steam, or sewage; contaminated air and carbon monoxide, as well as methane from the sewers. Heavily insulated electricity cables followed the catwalks and stairs for ease of maintenance. In more concealed areas, Cleo knew, enterprising individuals tapped the lines, drawing illegal power from the city for personal use.

It got dark as she descended. There was little light from the dome down here. Dust grew thicker, with no winds or rain to clear it, and cockroaches thrived. The walls were thick in the sub-levels: load-bearing reinforced concrete and denceramic architecture. Ash Harbor's most abundant mammal, rats, had made homes in the countless nooks and crannies. Cleo had learned once in history that the rat had conquered the world right alongside humans.
If the elements won out, rats, not humans, would be the last mammal to die. And the cockroaches would be around a long time after that.

Ash Harbor was in what had once been the South Pacific, before most of the ocean had become a vast plain of pack ice. The Philippines had been one of the last refuges of the Old World as the city was built, and the Filipinos had wielded a huge amount of influence in the last years before people moved in. As the richer countries slowly became frozen wastelands, Southeast Asia had found itself host to its more affluent neighbors, and when the rich and the influential booked their places in Ash Harbor's safe confines, the workers who had built it begged, bribed, bargained, and cheated their way in. Many, many more were turned away by force.

In the years that followed, many of those who had been rich on the outside used up what they had to trade, and affluence took on a new shape in those who could affect the running of the city's machinery. But there were still many thousands who had come in on the bottom rung and were forced to stay there. The majority were Filipino, and their culture dominated the sub-levels of the Fourth Quadrant. Of all the cultures that had taken refuge in Ash Harbor, only the Pinoy, as they called themselves, had managed to keep a semblance of their original culture. They had also established a new one; the bulk of the black market in Ash Harbor was run by
Filipino gangs, and that was what had drawn Cleo to this area on a Sunday morning.

The Filipino District was her favorite place in the whole city. The same smells always hit her as she drew near: dust, grilled fish, spices, and closely packed people. An eclectic mix of stalls and arcades filled the collection of alleys and streets before her, all under the roof of the heavy machinery above.

Cortez's store was a small, incredibly cluttered stall on Sub-Level Three. It was filled with all manner of merchandise, from handmade toys to fertility cures. A webscreen sat on the counter, with a pornographic animated screen saver cycling through a lewd liaison. Behind the counter, a mountainous Pinoy man with a scarred face sat, dozing fitfully. Cleo knew there would be other, more watchful sentries nearby.

Cortez himself was a chubby man in his sixties who wore old-fashioned half-moon glasses and dressed as if he was always cold. This morning he had a woman's shawl draped over his shoulders and a thick cotton hat on his balding head. His flat, wide face split into a smile when he saw Cleo, and he stood up from his little stool.

“Ahhh! Little Cleo, come to warm an old man's heart!
Mabúhay!
Come in, come in!” He turned to a little girl with a small mouth and big eyes who was hugging the frame of the door that led to the back room. “Gátas! Bring some tea for our guest. Be quick now!”

Cleo knew better than to refuse the tea, although she did not want to stay long. “Morning, Cortez,” she said confidently. “I'm looking for some strings.”

“Of course, of course.” He waved at her to slow down, as if she were in danger of hurting herself if she spoke any faster. “All in good time. First, you have to tell me how you've been. I haven't seen you in an age. You've grown since you were last here!”

Given that it had only been about a month since her last visit, Cleo thought that unlikely, but she smiled gratefully. She reluctantly took a stool beside him and asked how business was. He always had her make some conversation when she came, and she suspected that he harbored some romantic ideas about her.

“Life is always the same down here, in the depths,” Cortez told her. “We wait for visitors to brighten our day. Tell me, how is young Estella? Such a sweet girl.”

Estella was a Filipino hippy-chick Cleo had gone out with for a while, just to see what it was like. She had needled Cleo constantly to give up the gulp and the stem and, for the love of God, to please stay away from Cortez. Cleo had broken it off, deciding that she only needed one mother and she was more attracted to boys. But they had stayed friends.

“She's fine,” she replied. “Feisty as ever.”

Cortez nodded.

“And your family? How are they?”

“Very well, thank you.” Cleo was wary of telling him too much about her family. She certainly didn't want him to know that her father was out of a job.

The little girl, Gátas, came in with two mugs of fragrant jasmine tea. Cortez could provide the best of everything, for a price. But he took hospitality seriously. Cleo took a mug and breathed in the fine aroma. Gátas handed the other cup to Cortez and then returned to her position, hugging the door frame and watching the new arrival. Cleo smiled at her, but the girl did not return the gesture, merely looking the other way, into the storeroom.

“I'm looking for some guitar strings,” Cleo urged Cortez gently. “I'm completely out of As, and I'm running low on Ds too. Do you have any?”

“Not here, at the moment,” he replied, taking a sip of his tea. “But one of my boys can fetch some. Quiroz, down the way, looks after my musical supplies. Just a moment.”

Without moving from his chair, he shouted into the storeroom, rattling off some Tagalog at some unseen person inside. A tired, overworked voice replied, and there was the sound of a door opening and closing.

“It'll just be a few minutes,” Cortez assured her. “How is the music coming along?”

“Great,” she responded, warming to her favorite subject. “I'm working on a new song now. The band's really coming together…. We were lined up for the end-of-year ball, but the principal pulled us.”

“That's terrible! How could he turn down such an excellent band?”

To the best of her knowledge, Cortez had never heard her play, but it was nice of him to say it.

“The sponsor, Internal Climate, said our lyrics were inflammatory.”

“Aren't young people's lyrics
supposed
to be inflammatory?”

Cleo beamed, despite herself.

“Is there anything else you'd like while you're here?” he asked. “Some stem perhaps?”

Cleo shook her head, thanking him with a smile. She didn't have enough money for both the strings and the drugs. Sipping the hot tea, she tried not to think of her dwindling supply of stem at home, hidden up on the roof of the apartment block.

“Is it the money?” he persisted. “I could give you some on credit.”

“No, thank you.”

Estella said that Cortez was no small-time hustler. Cleo knew that his little store was just a front for his black-market operation. But even that was only the tip of Cortez's personal iceberg. Estella claimed that Cortez was head of the Fourth Quadrant Family, the gang that ran most of the Filipino District. It was not a good idea to be in debt to a man in his position. He shrugged, giving her a flat grin.

“It's there if you want it,” he said.

The door in the back of the store opened and closed again, and a young man came out to the front. He had some guitar strings in his hand, but leaned down to whisper something in Cortez's ear. The old man nodded, took the strings, and dismissed him.

“I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you, my dear,” he told her. “Here are your strings. Let's call it twelve credits, if you please.”

She handed him three plastic, five-credit coins, and he opened his till to give her change. As he put the money in her hand, she felt a small rice-paper bag folded around the coins. Without opening it, she knew it would be a “sample” of the flaky brown powder her friends coveted. She was always able to impress them with her street contacts.

“Give my respects to your family,” he told her, knowing she wouldn't. “I'm sorry I have to rush off, but duty calls. I'll see you again soon, Cleo.”

And he knew he would.

Cleo decided to take the elevator back up to the lowest tram level. She should not have taken the stem. That was a mistake. She had to come here for the strings—metal was a precious resource in Ash Harbor, and nonessential items like guitar strings could only be had on the black market. But taking the stem without paying for it was a bad move. Now she was in Cortez's debt.

The first elevator she tried was out of order. So was the
next. And the next one after that. Heaving a sigh, she found a flight of stairs and started climbing. When she came to the first walkway, she looked out on the level she had just left. Something was wrong. Water was pouring down the main street, washing around the ankles of the people, causing them to stumble for higher ground—a dirty, foamy water that had some kind of debris floating in it. One of the drainage pipes in the levels above must have burst. As she watched, the electric lights of the stalls flickered and went out. The water had knocked out the electricity supply. Only the gaslights remained, giving the area a haunting glow.

“What the hell's happening to this city?”

 

Sol looked down on the city from the elevator. White light burned down from the dome, its hexagonal lattice of girders casting a delicate weblike shadow over the cityscape. The daylighters would be on normal maintenance duty, with no snow and ice to clear. That would mean they'd be in a more welcoming mood, and more likely to help him find answers. The workers would scrape the dome clear one day, and the next day the ice would be back. If it was just the freezing air, it would start as a feathery coating that would grow slowly, like a rock-hard fungus. But a blizzard could bury the glass in snow in a matter of hours. And when the temperatures had risen back to a manageable level—say, around –70
^º
C on a good day—the day
lighters would get back out there to clean it off once more and give Ash Harbor what little sun there was to be had.