Steel Sky (18 page)

Kitt glances at the comm panel. None of the hologram lights are active. He is really here. And yet the security signal is still lit. How did he get in?

“Your liver is probably the color of day-old protyburger by now,” the Winnower says.

“My liver I don’t care about.” She pulls the wrap tighter, determined not to be intimidated. “I can always get another one.”

“And the possibility of hearing loss? Doesn’t that frighten you?”

“Not really.”

“You’re not really frightened of anything, are you, Ms. Marburg?”

“Should I be?” Keeping her eyes on his face, she inches her hand toward the hidden button that will summon the clops.

“Oh, yes.”

She feels the button beneath her finger, but hesitates before pressing it.

The Winnower leans back in the chair. She hears the soft ripping sound of stitches popping. “If you press that button,” he says, “you’ll miss out on a very interesting chat.”

She hesitates. In her profession it is essential to be able to judge a person instantly. She does so now, studying his mouth, his body language. It is difficult for her to be sure, because she cannot see his eyes, but somehow she feels certain this man is not dangerous.

At least, not at the moment.

“All right,” she says, moving her hand away from the button. She knots the wrap around her body and stretches her arms out across the back of the couch. With the musth pulsing through her system it’s impossible for her to feel anything but confident and content. “What can I do for you?”

The Winnower leans forward. His armor, she sees, is tarnished and scratched. Grit has collected in the hollows between the plates. “I’ve heard that you’re the best chatter in the Hypogeum,” he says. “That you have the best sources.”

“I try.”

“I want to form an arrangement with you. I want you to tell me when crimes are being committed, who is committing them, and where the criminals can be found. At present, I am hunting criminals at random, and I suspect that I am only catching the most careless or the most obvious offenders. I want to be more selective. You can help me.”

“So you’re not an all-knowing spirit. You’re not supernatural.”

“Of course not. I’m a man, like any other.”

“I doubt that.” Her right ear is still ringing from the musth. She turns her head to hear him better. “Suppose I do help you — what do I get out of it?”

“The satisfaction of knowing that justice is being served.”

Kitt waits to see if he has anything more to add to this paltry incentive. He remains unnaturally still, like an image in a jammed holovid. Finally she says, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“I’m afraid I’ll need a little more than that,” she says. “A girl’s got to make a living, you know. Let me make you a proposition: I give you the information you’re asking for, and in return, you give me the details of your exploits, tell me your story, why it is you do what you do.”

“No. You will receive nothing from me.” His voice is low, unperturbed by emotion. “In addition, you will tell no one of our arrangement. At least, not while I am alive.”

“You say that as if you don’t expect to be around a long time.”

“This is no game, Miss Marburg. Can I rely on you?”

Kitt studies him, wishing she could see his eyes. “Suppose I do help you. If you die, or disappear, then you would have no objections to my talking about you?”

The Winnower’s lips part, revealing white, even teeth. “How could I?”

With a sudden sense of confusion, Kitt realizes that this man, this killer, has the most beautiful smile she has ever seen.

THE STRANGER

After repeated scenes of concern and reassurance, Cadell has finally left for the ghost cells. Amarantha looks at the door, still seeing the reluctant way he had looked at her as he shut it behind him. For the past few days, he has walked her to work and been waiting for her when she left to come home. At first Amarantha had appreciated his solicitude, but she had since come to realize it makes her uncomfortable. This morning, when she saw him getting ready to leave with her, not even bothering to ask if she wanted him there, something had snapped inside her.

“Leave me alone!” she’d said. “Stop treating me like a child!”

“I’m sorry,” he’d replied automatically, looking at her with that helpless, hurt expression he assumed so easily. He was incapable of understanding how any action of his could ever offend anyone. “I was only trying to help.”

“I don’t need help! I’m not crippled!”

Slipping on her shoes, Amarantha feels a pang of regret. Her frustration is not his fault, really. The fact is, she
wants
his help, and she is angry at herself for wanting it. There had been a time when she was completely self-reliant, when she took pride in neither wanting nor receiving assistance from anyone. Now that she is living with Cadell, with his more prestigious job, and his null-class friends, she is losing her sense of identity. Every time he regards her with that concerned expression of his, she is reminded that she’s become dependent, careless enough to be cornered by Second Son.

As she reaches to open the door, she sees her hands are shaking. Her knuckles stand out. She is too thin. She has hardly eaten anything since the incident.

She slaps her palm against the access plate. The door shudders and slides open, revealing the long, dark hallway.

She steps out onto the threadbare carpet. For the first time, she is struck by the sterility of the architecture of her building, its unsympathetic functionality. The fluorescent lights cast double shadows on the rough walls, indigo ghosts in the corners of her vision. She takes a step forward, and the door snaps shut behind her. The sudden sound makes her jump.

She looks back at the door, feeling an urge to run back into the room. She could call in sick, spend the day at home. No one would blame her.

She moves forward down the hall, her jaw tight. If there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s self-pity.

The hiss of the vents is like an insistent whisper in her ear, growing louder as she walks forward. The air smells of cooked algae, making her stomach churn. Each step is an effort of will. The hallway stretches endless and empty in front of her. It’s easy for her to imagine she is the only living person in the Hypogeum.

As if in answer to her thoughts, a door creaks open somewhere. Footsteps echo down the hall. Amarantha stops. She finds herself listening, hoping the stranger is headed in another direction. But the sounds grow louder, coming closer. The footsteps are soft and evenly spaced. The stranger is moving toward her at an unhurried pace, neither tarrying nor impatient. Amarantha listens carefully, trying to discern if it’s a man or a woman. Is it someone she knows?

She shakes her head, suddenly self-conscious. Of course there are other people walking down the halls. Why should she care who they are? She begins to walk again.

The stranger rounds a corner. Now she can see him: he is a middle-aged man, in a dull fuscous coverup. He is no one she recognizes, but this isn’t surprising. There are so many people in her building, it’s impossible to get to know them all. He may be a resident, or he could be an outsider, visiting for reasons of his own. He continues walking toward her with that same unhurried, inexorable pace.

Unconsciously, Amarantha takes a step backward. Blood is pounding in her ears. The stranger is moving quickly, while she is trapped in slow motion. He is close enough now that she can see freckles on his scalp through his thinning hair. His eyes are cast down, focusing on the carpet in front of his feet. It seems impossible that he is not aware of her.

She takes another step backward. He is going to pass much too close. She steps back again, feeling frantically behind her for the door, terrified that he will touch her. He is only a few meters away now, close enough that she could smell him if she could only remember how to breathe again. Keeping her eyes on him, she stretches her arm backward along the rough wall. Her heart sinks as she realizes she cannot feel the doorjamb. She does not know how to get back.

Slowly, without altering his stride, the stranger raises his head, seemingly aware of Amarantha for the first time. Before his eyes can meet hers, Amarantha turns and runs. The door is right where it is supposed to be, just behind her. She slams her ident against the panel. The light does not come on, and for a moment she is afraid she has damaged the mechanism, the door will not open. She pulls at the door, her hands slick with sweat. But it does open, sliding in its groove, shuddering slightly. Amarantha pushes through the gap, scraping her shoulders against the edges.

Inside, she leans against the wall. Her breath comes out in ragged bursts. The light, she realizes, is still on. She never turned off the light.

As she reaches to pull the door shut, she looks back through the gap into the hallway. The stranger is walking past, still moving at the same unhurried pace. He glances at her idly as he passes, his eyes half-lidded. His only expression is one of slight confusion as to what all the commotion was about.

ALWAYS FALLING

Edward hangs his respirator by the door, making a mental note to replace the filter next time he goes out. Edward’s domus consists of a narrow pair of rooms with a single window at one end. The Sun shines opalescent through the tinted glass. It casts a long shadow as he removes his coverup and washes fumatory grit from the upper half of his face.

The rooms are largely undecorated, with more bookcases than furniture. A cobalt blue vase sits alone on a pedestal by the window, greedily absorbing the light, releasing only bits and pieces, long slashes of color across the walls.

Several pictures of his mother watch him from the walls. Color photographs. A charcoal rendering. An animation.
Close-up. She turns, sees the camera. A slow, wise smile spreads across her face. Eyes narrow. Fade. Repeat.
His father is also in one or two of the pictures. Edward does not remember his father. He had left when Edward was a child.
To find someone easier to handle
, his mother said, with that thin smile on her lips.

Turn. Smile. Fade. Repeat.

His mother, Renata, was a handsome woman with a narrow face and straight hair with streaks of white that she refused to dye. Her eyes were her most striking feature. They were slightly overlarge, dark, smoldering — the sort whose fierce magic makes any woman twice as attractive as she would otherwise be. She used that piercing gaze and a brutal wit to dominate conversations with her many friends and clients. Renata was a psychoanalyst, one of the last in the Hypogeum, though she preferred to call herself a social metaphysician. Men and women who didn’t trust the bland efficiency of Image or the glib assurances of chatters came to her for advice and consultation. But Edward suspected that people would have flocked to her no matter what her profession. She was one of those people who become famous in their circles simply for who they are, for how their minds work.

Repeat.

Her friends were radical thinkers. Very few of them had jobs, and Edward was never sure how they kept the Deathsmen from coming to take them away. A few were Levellers, but most were simple malcontents and nonconformists. They liked to try to shock one another, asking questions like,
Where did the Founders come from?
and
Are there other cities in the rock?
When Edward was still quite young, one of his mother’s guests had frightened him by suggesting that, just as the Hypogeum was a bubble in the rock, so the rock itself was only a solid bubble in a much greater expanse of emptiness.
What keeps it from falling?
young Edward had asked.
Nothing,
the man replied. I
t’s always falling, only there’s nothing else around it for it to hit.
The unpleasant notion had lodged in Edward’s head like a piece of gristle caught between his teeth, and to this day it still irritates his thoughts. Always falling.

His mother’s guests would sit in her small domus, in chairs, on the floor, on the bed, and talk and drink after the lights went out. His mother would dim the window and light candles. Koba knew where she got them. The ceiling of her domus was black and shiny with the smoke of burning fat. As the evening wore on, the talk would become more abstract, the opinions more vehement. Sometimes the men would actually come to blows over some dispute of ideology. Other times the talk would grow quiet and couples would pair off, disappearing into the corners. A stranger would put his hand on his mother’s knee, and then it would be time for Edward to go to bed, whether he was tired or not.

Edward’s mother always insisted he attend her soirées, hoping to impress upon him her love of conversation and intellectual combat. She hoped that he, too, would become an analyst and perpetuate the dying breed. When he announced his intention to become a medical doctor, she was not angry, only perplexed. Medicine seemed so . . . material.

Nonetheless, when he studied he would often notice a book missing. He found that she was borrowing his materials, studying them herself. She learned medical terminology and argued about the latest medical theories with him. When he graduated and joined the hospital, she bragged about his achievements to her friends. He was her crowning creation, her best argument.