Daylight Runner (7 page)

The depot where his father worked was relatively quiet. There were a few men in the workshops where the tools were fixed or recycled and a couple of people in the canteen. But the man he was looking for was on the exit floor. The highest area on the West Wall of the city, this was where the men and women went up through the air lock to the outside skin of the dome. Harley Wasserstein was a huge man, with a full, white blond beard of curly hair that helped compensate for his polished cranium. Two wings of curls rose up on either side of his bald pate, giving him a comical look that alleviated his otherwise fearsome appearance.

He sat on a bench, having just come down from the job. His safesuit was pulled down to his waist, and he had taken off the fleece he wore underneath to cool his huge, sweating torso. Hard labor under direct sunlight on glass could heat you up despite the Arctic temperatures. Around him, the twenty-nine men and women of his team were stripping off and changing back into normal clothes. Shovels, picks, and barrows and other tools sat neatly in racks; heat-hoses lay coiled on their rigs; and pneumatic charges were packed against the wall.

Sol stole a glance at the webscreen that showed the weather conditions outside. The outside temperature—without windchill—read –85
^º
C. Positively balmy. In
weather like this, the daylighters from the four depots could clear nearly half the dome in a day. In an ice storm, the temperature could drop to –180
^º
C or more. Even in a safesuit, a man could freeze solid in minutes. Harley waved wearily to Sol, beckoning him over.

“Come about your dad, I expect,” he boomed. “We haven't seen 'im. You any idea where he might be?”

Sol shook his head. “I was hoping you could tell me. You know he's…They've accused him—”

“Don't you mind that crap.” Harley grimaced. “There's no way Gregor killed Tommy. Hold on there while I change and we'll go down to the cafeteria. I need to get some food in me.”

The food hall was filling up, and the background sound of voices meant Harley and Sol had to speak loudly to be heard even across the table. The smell of cooking oil, fish, onions, and overcooked vegetables pervaded everything. The walls, once white, were a seedy yellow.

“Haven't seen your dad since Wednesday,” Harley said over a large plate piled high with vegetables and steamed carp, fresh from the fish farm. “We were out on the glass, and he just up and left. Didn't even tell me he was going, simply unhitched his safety line and slid down to the air lock. He's never done that before. Your dad's a reliable man—one of my best. Tommy was working nearby; he saw your old man take off and followed after him. Something must have got Gregor worked up, but I
couldn't tell you what. That was the last time I saw either of them.”

“Didn't you go after them to find out what was going on?”

“Sure I did. You don't cut out in the middle of a job. Not on my watch. But by the time I got in, they were both gone. Just dumped their gear where they came in and bolted.”

He shoveled some fish into his mouth, chewing as he talked. “It's just not like your old man to do that, Sol. I mean, he's got his interests outside work, you know….” He looked anxiously across the table.

“I know about the gambling,” Sol told him.

“Right. Well, that's his own business, y'know? It's never got in the way before. But if this is down to some debt or somethin'…”

Sol thought about the betting slips he had found in his father's room. “I don't know,” he said quietly.

His mind turned to the man Gregor was supposed to have killed. “What kind of man was this guy Hyung?” he asked. “Was he into gambling?”

“Tommy?” Harley looked at the ceiling. “Not sure. Didn't know him too well; he was fairly new. Bit of a tough guy, I think. Kept to himself mostly. He and your dad got on well, though. When the two of them ran off at the same time like that, I just assumed Tommy was going after Gregor to see what was wrong.”

Sol nodded. “Where were you working?” he asked. “When they cut out?”

“Third Quadrant, halfway up the grid.” Harley stuck a whole potato in his mouth. “Didn't see where he actually stopped. It'll be on his marker. Go on up and have a look if you want.”

Sol thanked him and got up to leave. Harley reached across and grabbed his arm. His huge hand made Sol's upper arm look like an infant's.

“Sol, if you know where he is—or if you find him—tell him to come to me if he's in trouble. I'll see 'im right. It doesn't matter what he's done. Debts can be settled, y'know? There's no need for him to get hurt over money.”

“Yeah, thanks, Harley,” Sol replied. “Appreciate it. But, to be honest, I just want to know what's happened to him. It's drivin' me nuts, not knowing.”

The big man nodded, staring into Sol's face. “You need any help, just ask.”

Sol left the cafeteria and went up to the changing room. Punching up his father's marker program on the webscreen, he entered Gregor's password,
Southpaw
, and brought up the last record. It showed a stylized display of the dome and his father's path across it on the Wednesday afternoon. It stopped at section D63 in the Third Quadrant. It meant nothing to him. He used the cursor to turn the display so that the image of the dome spun
around, showing all 360 degrees of the structure. It didn't tell him anything.

He logged out and sat down on the nearest bench. This was starting to get him down. A thought occurred to him, and he stood up and walked over to his father's locker. Tapping in the combination, he opened it and looked inside. It was in a state. Things had been thrown in; clothes, boots, and hats were stuffed in as if in a rush.

The old books that Gregor read while he was on standby had been crushed in at the back, their pages crumpled. Sol took one out, straightening it up and smoothing the pages. It was a real paper book. A copy of
A Clockwork Orange
. There were a couple of Gregor's other favorites in here too:
The Name of the Rose
and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Sol was shocked at the way they had been creased. Gregor would never have done this, not in a million years. And he never left his locker in this kind of disarray. Somebody else had been through his things. Sol examined the lock, but it showed no signs of having been forced. Maybe Harley had put some of Gregor's gear back in, making the mess in the process, but Sol suspected what had happened.

The men who had turned their apartment over had gone through the locker as well, he was sure of it. Sol smoothed out the books and put them carefully back on the shelf, placing a heavy box of nuts and bolts on top of them to help flatten the pages. Closing the locker, he
tested the door, but it was shut tight. Whoever these men were, they had no problem with combination locks. Sol strode out of the depot, following a walkway that skirted the rim of the crater, just below the dome's base. From here, he could see clear across the city. The four huge tower cranes from each of the four quadrants were moving, their various arms swinging loads with delicate precision. On the massive gantries that stretched across the top of the city, smaller cranes swept along rails and, above them, he could see people gathering on the sun platforms. Pigeons wheeled in among them.

These platforms offered the best exposure to the cherished daylight, and a lottery decided who would get the opportunity to spend a few sweet hours on the public spaces. Sometimes they were even used by thrill-seekers for BASE jumping with homemade parachutes. Not all the chutes worked.

The government was being forced to sell off these platforms as it struggled with the higher costs of running the public services. Most of the platforms were privately owned now. The one closest to Sol was one of these; it belonged to the Dark-Day Fatalists. He gazed up at the dark-clad figures in disdain. Every Sunday, they gathered to offer up prayers to the elements. He didn't know an awful lot about them, but the gist of their philosophy seemed to be that the Machine was an abomination, that nature would win out, and that Ash Harbor was just
postponing the inevitable. The platforms had railings, but some of the more despairing DDF members would use the height to make a final, dramatic statement—by throwing themselves off the edges of the platforms. Prices for property directly below DDF platforms tended to be lower than average.

In fact, high falls had become such a popular choice for anybody committing suicide that police had taken to routinely questioning anybody on the upper levels. The DDF maintained that they did not encourage people to take their own lives. But there were those who said that when the Fatalists gathered up on those platforms, they prayed for a disaster that would split open the dome and destroy life in the city. There were always rumors about what the DDF did in their secret sanctums. Some said that they even started false rumors themselves, to give their movement an air of mystery.

Sol just thought they were a sad bunch of losers.

He watched them for a little while longer, then shook his head and walked toward the nearest elevator. The only threat the DDF posed was the damage caused by their falling bodies.

C
LEO STOPPED AND
looked back the way she had come. In the dim light from the gas lamps, all the walkways looked the same. In front of her, the path forked off in three different directions. None of them seemed to lead upward. Biting her lip, she looked back again. She was lost. Somewhere nearby, a bank of pistons pumped away, and all around her was the rubbery stink of cat pee. Seeing a reflective sign with grid numbers on it, she walked up to it, staring at the numbers and trying to work out where she was. But she was no good with the grid system; she needed street names and buildings to find her way around. If she could see the dome, it would help. But there was just the damp, musky darkness.

Off to her left, she heard the sound of voices. The
left-hand walkway led into a corridor that would take her in that direction. She put her hand in her pocket, her fingers closing around the little canister of pepper spray. This was a rough part of the city, and people were known to disappear down here in the darker sections. A young girl lost in the works would be an easy victim for the kinds of people who hunted in the shadows. But she could wander around the lower levels for days if she didn't find her way up. Fervently wishing there was more light, she gripped the pepper spray and edged forward toward the dark corridor.

The corridor led out onto an observation balcony that looked down on the level below, three lines of large sewage-treatment tanks. Two men and a woman were dressed in sewage workers' overalls with tool belts and head flashlights and were manhandling a large bundle toward the intake hopper of a grinding rig—its massive wheels used to crush any solids in the system into slurry. Cleo crouched close to the floor, her gaze glued to the scene below her. The more she looked at it, the more the indistinct bundle seemed to have a decidedly
body
-shaped appearance.

They heaved the body over the edge and into the hopper. One of the men—a ghostly looking man with white hair, white skin, and pale eyes—slapped the big button to start the machine. It didn't start. He pressed the button again. Nothing. They all leaned over the edge to look into the bottom of the hopper.

“It's not working,” he announced.

“Do ya think?” the woman said sarcastically. She was an Asian with the gray pallor of somebody who rarely saw daylight. “I can
see
it's not working! We'll have to try another one.”

“How we going to get it out of there?” the white-haired man asked.

“You're going to have to go down there and get it.”

“The hell I am. I've seen what happens to bodies in that thing. Human jelly, that's what you get. Bolognese. If you want to get it out, you go down there!”

“You turn it off again, you moron!” the woman snapped. “Now get your ass down there and get that damn thing up here before somebody sees us!”

“And what if it's the switch that's faulty?” he retorted.

“I could get down there, it turns on, and suddenly I'm toast. I'm not doing it—”

Cleo shuffled farther back from the edge…and the balcony creaked beneath her. Suddenly the shouting stopped. She pulled her head away from the edge, but it was too late.

“There's somebody up there!” she heard the woman bark.

“Damn it!” another voice spat. “How long do you think they were there?”

“It doesn't matter. They saw us here; they'll be able to identify us when news breaks about the job. Split up—find them!”

Nothing more was said. Soft footsteps took off in either direction along the catwalk leading off the platform. Cleo crawled back into the corridor and stood up, her pulse throbbing through her body, her limbs trembling. She continued to stand there, frozen against the wall, while her mind tried to make sense of what was happening.

“Run,” she whispered to herself, willing herself to move. “They're coming. Run!”

Almost as if she needed a push, she shoved off from the wall and set off at a sprint. She had to assume that, whoever they were, they knew their way around. They would find a route up to her, and then…She didn't want to think about it. It didn't matter who they were. All that mattered was that they were after her and they dumped bodies in sewage grinders.

Her footsteps were painfully loud, echoing down the narrow corridor, signaling to her hunters. She slowed down, softening her footfalls. The route along which she had come was too long and straight; if they had guns, they could shoot her from a hundred meters away. What she needed were some corners. Off one branch of the corridor, she spotted a ladder beside a gas lamp. Hurrying up to it, she grabbed the rungs and started to climb. Stopping for a moment, she reached over and turned the valve on the lamp, switching it off. Maybe now they wouldn't see the ladder, and at least she could climb in darkness.

Running footsteps approached below, and she winced
as the ladder squeaked with every rung she climbed. The footsteps slowed and advanced more carefully. All around her was pitch darkness. To her right, she could feel the breeze from a ventilation duct. Cleo went completely still as somebody reached the bottom of the ladder. A flashlight was switched on, and the beam played across the floor of the corridor below her, then found the foot of the ladder. It swept upward, but stopped just short of her shoes. Then it shone away and down the corridor. In its glow she could see a white face, white hair, and the dull shine of a gray gun barrel. The man began to move away, but then he sniffed at the air and turned back. He felt the body of the gas lamp, and pulled his hand away quickly. It was still hot. His flashlight beam came back up the ladder, and this time it found Cleo.

His gun came up, and as it did so, she jumped out into the darkness. The shot came as a dull thumping sound, not loud at all. The bullet hitting the ladder was louder, spitting sparks at her. Her knees scraped off the top of the ventilation duct, and she nearly fell over the other side, but caught herself in time. Clambering along the top of the duct, every movement amplified by the hollow plastex, she tried to find another way out. The man was coming up the ladder behind her. She couldn't see a thing, and nearly fell again when the duct turned tightly to the right, and then left again. There was a ceiling a little more than a meter above her, holding the struts for the duct, but it was
too low for her to stand up. She kept casting out with her hands on either side for some way off the vent, but there was nothing but empty space on either side. Then she hit a wall.

It was solid concrete. The duct went straight into it, without so much as a finger's width of a gap around it. There was no way into the vent; plastex was tough, made to last for centuries. She stifled a cry of despair. The man was coming along the duct after her. Reaching out into the darkness, she sought some kind of escape. But there was nothing.

The sound of the man approaching grew louder, and she could see the flashlight strapped to his head, bobbing as he crawled. It was pointing down so that he could see where he was putting his hands. Her mind grasped at something, a faint hope. With the flashlight pointing downward, he couldn't see anything above him. She reached back quietly and felt the nearest struts that hung from the ceiling. There was a bar crossing between them. It was strong enough to hold her. With painstaking care, she silently lifted herself onto the bar, getting her stomach up and over it. The man was getting closer. Gripping the struts on either side, she balanced herself on her stomach and straightened out her body, lifting her head and feet as high as she could. The pressure of the bar on her abdomen was almost unbearable.

The man's light came closer, closer, until he was
crawling by underneath her. He saw the wall ahead of him and stopped. With his bigger body, he moved with difficulty along the duct, and when he turned to look behind him, he had to hold on to the edges to keep his balance. The bar dug into Cleo's stomach, and she held her breath until it felt as if her lungs would burst. The man was still looking down at the surface ahead of him. Taking one hand off the duct, he leaned back on his knees so that he could look up. For an instant their eyes met, and Cleo did the only thing she could. She swung her legs down and kicked out at him with all her might.

One of her feet caught his head, and he toppled forward. His gun fell clattering into the darkness and, for a second, she thought he would follow it, but he caught the bottom of the strut and hung on, dangling below her. Her balance gone, she fell back onto the top of the vent. The man was starting to climb back up, with murder written on his face. Pulling the pepper spray from her pocket, she gave him a long blast in the eyes, and he roared in pain, pulling his head away. She tore the flashlight from his head, and fell back on her side. In desperation, she kicked at his fingers, hammering at them with her feet until his grip failed and he fell with a scream into the gloom. Somewhere below, there was a muffled thud.

She listened for a while, but heard nothing more. He could be dead. If he was, she wasn't sure what to do. Her whole body was shaking, but she knew she mustn't lose
her head now. Strapping the flashlight onto her head, she made her way carefully back along the duct, making as little noise as possible. There was no sign of anybody else. When she got close to the ladder, she turned off the flashlight and slid along on her belly. Waiting as long as she dared, she listened for any sound of the others, but there was nothing. Climbing out onto the rungs, she scaled up to a catwalk that was illuminated by electric lights. Sounds carried down it: voices in conversation, whirring flywheels, music and noise from computer games.

It was a pedal station. People. Normal, chatty, ordinary, unarmed people. She smiled in relief as she walked into the hall where nearly three dozen people were sitting astride cycling machines, pedaling power into the city's system. Collapsing on a rest couch, she buried her face in her knees, comforted by the drab, dull familiarity of it all.

 

Sol was on a tram, making his way back to Ana's and pondering his next move. He knew a few of the places his father went gambling, but he was wary of visiting any of them if Gregor really had run up a big debt.

He thought back to that cop, Mercier, and wondered what he knew. But it was the other one who was in charge. Ponderosa, from the ISS. Sol decided that if these were the men investigating his father, he should find out what he could about them. The tram was stopping near a
café, so he jumped off and went inside. He took the nearest available webscreen, where he did a search on Ponderosa. The only information on him was his list of awards; it was impressive. The single picture of him was one where he was shaking hands with Mayor Haddad as she presented him with a medal for Distinguished Service. There was nothing else recorded about him. That figured. Your business was ISS's business, but their business was their own.

Mercier scored a direct match, though. His past came up, displayed in text files and compressed images. There was nothing remarkable about him; his career had been mediocre, judging by the few medals and awards he had received. Sol decided to check his mail while he was online, and his father's too.

Sol's in-box reflected his loner lifestyle. There was a single new message highlighted; he didn't recognize the address. It looked like a one-off send, the kind people used to remain anonymous. Opening it, he found a short note.

Sol looked around warily. Memorizing the address, just in case, he quickly deleted the message and closed down the mailbox. He was standing up to leave when the screen suddenly flashed white, and words in large, black block capitals began to float into view. At first he thought this message was being aimed directly at him, but all around the café, people were giving exclamations of surprise or disgust. The message was appearing on every screen:
THE MACHINE IS DYING
, it read.
IT IS BEING EATEN FROM WITHIN. DO YOU CARE ENOUGH TO ASK WHY
?

Sol looked out the windows of the café and saw that the same message was on the adscreens on the street outside. That meant it must be all over the city. Then, all at once, it flickered and was gone. Another message appeared, this one a standard screen-card from the Online Police with the city's crest; accompanied by an authoritative voice, it informed everybody that the city's web systems had just been subject to a virus attack. Normal service would be resumed presently, and the culprits would be tracked down and prosecuted.

In a machine city coordinated by computers, viruses were a big deal. Anybody caught writing or sending them could expect a long stretch in prison. The Online Police could shut down whole sections of the city in search of a suspect if they needed to. It made the illegally posted message all the more intriguing. What did it mean? Sol
thought. “Being eaten from within”? Hefting his bag onto his shoulder, he made for the tram stop.

 

Ana was in the apartment when he got back, making a lunch of spirulina pie and promeat. She had made enough for him, and he mumbled his thanks as he took the plate. Avoiding his overattentive gaze, she coughed and sat down on the couch with her own food.

“The funeral for the two men in the crane accident is tomorrow,” she told him. “I thought you and the others might want to go.”

Sol nodded. He didn't care much about the men who had been killed, and he hated the Earth Center ever since his mother's and sister's funeral, but he might be able to find out more to help put his mind at rest about what had caused the accident. The image of the smashed crane carriage was still fresh, and the incident ate away at his brain.