Steel Sky (15 page)

“Neither you nor any member of this family will ever marry into a lesser house. It hasn’t been done in a hundred years.”

“But surely you can’t intend for me to become an old maid?” Her voice trembles just a little with anger or sorrow, Second Son cannot tell which.

He turns and looks at her steadily. “Of course not, Pinky. I would never do that to you. When Dancer and I have sons you can marry one of them.”

Pinky’s hand, which had been about to touch his shoulder, drops to her side. It balls into a plump fist. She stands with her head bowed and her eyes closed.

Second Son touches her chin to raise her head. He brushes the hair away from her eyes and regards her tenderly. “Don’t worry, Pinky,” he whispers. “I’ll always take care of you.”

BREATHER

Yawning, Edward Penn steps out of his building onto a walk-way. The city around him is alive, as always, with the perpetual movement of citizens. Some are in the middle of their days, some are relaxing after work, and some — like Edward — have just struggled out of bed.

One particularly energetic group is standing by one of the tube entrances, arguing. Edward catches snippets of the conversation as he passes.

“It’s gotten so you can’t walk out of your door without some drongo hassling you.”

“But who is this guy? What makes you think we can trust him?”

“Who cares? I say let him kill them all, and let decent people live their lives in peace.”

Edward pushes past them and flashes his ident across the access screen. With a pneumatic sigh, the tube lifts him upward.
Isn’t it funny
, he thinks as the levels drop past him,
how everybody you talk to always thinks somebody
else
is the cause of the problem.

A crowd has gathered on the main causeway. Since the Winnower disrupted the Orcus celebration, the city has slipped into a higher gear, fibrillating with a frenetic edge. The populace is spending more time out of doors. The causeways are choked with persons of all ages, wandering quickly but aimlessly, eyes bright, knotting in small crowds, then unraveling. Edward smells a riot in the wind.

He almost steps back into the tube, with the intention of taking the long route to work, but on closer inspection this crowd seems relatively calm. The people are all facing inward, focused on something at their center. Moving closer, Edward sees a clear area among them, with a group of clops holding the crowd back. On a ledge two stories up, a man with a knife is threatening a clop who is trying to get to him. The man lunges every time the clop moves forward, forcing him back. The man is not wearing a respirator.

“Damn,” Edward mutters. The man is a “breather” — a suicide who has decided to do himself in simply by stepping outside.

The man weaves on the ledge as if drunk. With his head thrown back he sucks in great lungfuls of air. His face is the unnaturally bright pink of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Edward pushes through the crowd to the side of one of the clops. “I’m a doctor,” he says. “Can I be of any assistance?”

The clop keeps his face turned toward the breather. Edward can only see a quarter of his face. “The situation is under control, citizen. Please move back.”

Edward tries to move closer, but he is hemmed in by the crowd. “Are you going to try to pull him in?”

“Can’t. He’s got a weapon, and he’s strong. We’re going to hit him with a tranquilizer dart.”

“You can’t do that!” Edward says. “You’ll kill him!”

The man lurches to the edge of the ledge, his toes protruding over the ten-meter drop. The crowd hushes, sensing that he is about to speak. “Wake up, people!” the man shouts, his voice raw from the poisonous air. “Can’t you see what they’re doing to us? That it doesn’t have to be this way?”

Edward hears the spit of a hermetic rifle. A feathered dart appears, embedded in the man’s arm. He pulls it out and throws it away. “Bastards!” he shouts. Then, facing the crowd, “The experiment is a failure! We’re all sacrifices!” His speech is slurred and barely audible.

Edward inches closer to the clop in front of him. “Listen,” he says desperately, “that man is hypoxemic, and at the same time he’s burning energy at a tremendous rate. If you depress his system further with tranquilizers, he’ll go into cardiac arrest.”

A second dart pierces the man’s chest. He swats at it, unable to coordinate his movements. He sinks to his knees and grabs the edge, as if straining to leap into the crowd. “It’s all mixed up,” he shouts, his voice failing. “If we tried, we could change the whole world! We’re selling water by the side of a river . . .”

Edward pushes as close as he can to the clop. “At least let me through,” he says. “I can treat him.”

The clop says nothing. His face is still turned away. All Edward can see is the crimson band running around his close-shaven head.

“Damn it,” Edward says. “You could at least look at me!”

The clop chuckles. “I
am
looking at you.”

On the ledge, the man collapses. The clops move in and drag him away.

THE CALLING

The world is a soup of indistinct, green-tinted shapes floating in gray fog. Orel Fortigan stumbles through the void, his head spinning from the weird perspective. In the sonar world, he is much smaller. He sees himself on his screen as a clumsy stone puppet. He can distinguish his own limbs from the rock around him only by their motion.

He turns his head awkwardly. Ten kilos of apparatus swing with him. Bernie is little more than a bright green blob at his side. The sonar helmets aren’t much good at detail.

“Are you getting all this?” Orel asks.

“Yeah,” Bernie replies. “And I’m downloading it to my ident every centichron for backup.” Bernie’s helmet is plugged directly into his cerebral interface. Every tunnel they pass through is recorded as part of a three-dimensional map growing inside Bernie’s head. Without it they would be hopelessly lost.

Sweat and condensation fog their respirators and make their jumpsuits cling to their bodies. Orel’s fingers tingle with the cold as he bends down and feels the slick rock floor. The stone here is smoother than in other passages, indicating that this way is well traveled. Turning the gain up to full on his helmet, Orel can hear far-away scuffling noises over the perpetual patter of dripping water.

He feels Bernie’s hand on his arm. “Stop here for a minichron,” Bernie whispers.

“What is it?”

“I feel something. I’m going to turn on my lamp.”

“Don’t!” Orel whispers fiercely. “They’ll see it. They’ll know we’re here.”

“Relax. Do you ‘see’ anyone around?”

Orel turns his head. His scanners, which project their data onto the inside of his goggles, show no movement within range of his sonar. “No,” he admits, “but it’s too risky.”

“I’ll keep the light low.” Bernie activates the lamp on his helmet. He flicks the switch off, then on again.

“Did you check the lights before we left?” he asks.

“Of course.” Orel is distracted, watching for any motion on the edges of his sonar screen.

“My light isn’t working.”

Orel notices an edge of fear is creeping into Bernie’s voice. “Of course it’s working,” he says. “Try it again.”

Bernie turns the dial to maximum and flicks the switch a few more times. “It’s not working, Orel. My light’s not working.”

“Keep your voice down. Do you want them to know we’re here?”

“We’re dead anyway, if we can’t see! Try yours.”

Orel flicks his switch. All he can see is the same indistinct network of tunnels, with Bernie and himself as two bright green blobs at the center. He flicks it again. Still nothing. Bernie’s fear begins to infect him. “Shit,” he whispers. “Mine’s out, too.”

“Gloss sent us out into the caves with defective helmets! We’re dead!”

“
Quiet
,” Orel hisses. “Let me think.”

“Think? What is there to think about? We’re
dead
.”

Orel tries to put his hand to his forehead. His knuckles bounce off the helmet with a dull
thunk
. He gives up and bows his head, thinking furiously. Their labored breathing fills the narrow passage.

“The goggles,” Orel says finally, snapping his fingers.

“What?”

“We’re still wearing the goggles!”

Orel reaches under the helmet and pulls his goggles up to his forehead. Thin beams of light shine from either side of his helmet, swirling through the mist to illuminate a glistening curtain of white and rust-colored stalagmites. His eyes sting at the sudden luminescence. Orel laughs weakly.

“Is it working?” Bernie asks.

“Yeah. It’s working.”

“Sorry,” Bernie says.

“This is pretty interesting. Why don’t you take off your goggles?”

“No thanks. I’m keeping my sonic eyes open, in case something hears us and decides to investigate.” The helmet makes Bernie’s voice sound very far away. “What do you see?”

“Hanging gardens.” The wall nearest Orel is covered with life. Frilled mushrooms grow from the wall like curved shelves. Along the root-like rhizoids beneath the mushrooms are nodules filled with lithotrophic archaea that absorb energy directly from the rock itself, stripping the electrons from its very atoms. The frills of the mushrooms form a cup filled with a soup of condensation and waste matter secreted by the fungus.

Floating in the liquid is a third life form, a plant that lives off the nutrients secreted by the other two. It has thick, rust-colored petals and long, fibrous tendrils that hang over the edges of the mushroom frills. This plant, called the dreadlock vine, contains every vitamin needed for human survival. This unique, three-way symbiosis of mushroom, prokaryote, and vine was genetically engineered by the scientists of the Hypogeum in the first century to supplement the food production of Hydroponics. Clearly the symbiosis has thrived, and spread out into the caves beyond the Hypogeum.

A thin, high-pitched squeal echoes through the tunnels. Orel and Bernie freeze. A second cry follows the first. Orel kills the light and slips on his goggles. He returns to the fuzzy, green and gray world.

New cries at different pitches join the first, issuing from all directions. The cries race up and down the scale, an inhuman chorus whirling around their heads. A shiver runs up Orel’s spine. “It’s a calling,” he says. “They’re calling to one another.”

The eerie song continues, with new voices entering and augmenting the melody as the original voices drop out. Finally, the squeals drop in pitch and begin to fade out, one after another, as if by some prearranged choreography. The high, haunting notes echo for a long time. In the emptiness that follows, they hear the distant shuffling of hands and feet.

“This way.” Orel pulls Bernie toward the sounds.

The tunnels become wider and more traveled, branching outward at all angles. They watch for signs of movement, but the tunnels are deserted. Occasionally they see a warm signature of recent passage in the air, but always the Rats have moved on.

Orel and Bernie pass streams and pools, invisible in their stillness, and more hanging gardens, as well as other plants and fungi they do not recognize. They crawl through the smallest tunnels they can find, avoiding the main passages, but always following the worn paths. They are nearing the center of the cavern complex, the nexus of the tunnels. The air is heavy now with the smell of sweat and the breath of Rats. They can hear the Rats hurrying past, their calloused feet and hands padding lightly across the rock. The creatures move in small packs, all converging on a large space just beyond the sonar’s reach.

Bernie and Orel squeeze into a niche formed by collapsed dolomite slabs. “It’s a meeting of some kind,” Orel whispers. “In a gallery about twenty meters away, just around the bend. I can’t get a clear image. There’s too many of them, too much rock around us.”

“I can almost see it,” Bernie says, his voice low. “They’re huddling together. Koba’s ghost, there’s so many of them!”

“What are they doing? Why are they there?”

“They’re gathered around something, focusing on it. Something huge.”

“What? What is it?”

“I can’t tell. It’s not organic . . . too many straight lines. It looks man-made.”

“It can’t be. Not here.” Orel adjusts his headset, trying to focus on the room beyond the rock. All he can see are tiny green shapes, scores of them, huddling in a mass.

“They’re moving,” Bernie whispers. “Now one of them is separating from the others, standing in front of them. It’s raising its arms. It’s throwing back its head and . . .”

A high, angry squeal cuts through the silence, louder and sharp. Orel puts his hands over his ears. The squeal echoes and fades into utter silence.

Orel looks up at Bernie. “What’s he doing?”

The figure squeals again. Echoes ricochet from the walls. They can almost feel the sound cutting through them.

“Maybe it’s echolocation,” Bernie says.