Steel Sky (31 page)

“His son,” Edward says. “It didn’t work, though. There were too many people.”

Astrid looks through him, eyes still blurry from the musth. “They say it was a giant party. They say there were hundreds of guests in one great glass room, fifty meters across.”

“It’s bigger than that, actually.”

“What does the Chandelier look like?”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“No.”

“But surely you must have come up to Deck One sometime . . . Isn’t there some way you can get to the upper levels? A pass you can get?”

“No. There’s no way.” She looks irritated. “I was born down, looking up.”

“Then I’ll take you,” he says suddenly. He is not sure why he says it, but it feels right. He leans closer to her. The air mattress sinks beneath his weight, pulling them together in a little valley. The pain in his side glows, then ebbs away. “I can take you up as my guest. When I’m better.”

“You don’t understand. This is my life. Here. This room.”

“What’s the problem? Don’t you want to get out of here, just for a little while?”

“Of course I do,” she says, her voice rising in anger. “I don’t think you understand how things work down here, Edward. Maybe you can keep your pride and your freedom upstairs, but it’s a different story down here. Take a look outside that door.”

Edward looks at the thin doorway. “Outside?”

“Go ahead. Don’t bother getting dressed. Just look.”

He stands, noticing that the pain is less; the wound in his side is healing quickly. Accelerated regeneration is a beneficial side effect of the serum. He walks to the door and pulls it open. Beyond the doorway is a dark hall, so narrow he would have to walk sideways to get through it. Numbered doors stretch away in either direction, each one exactly the same, each one claustrophobically close to the one next to it. The only light comes from narrow glowbands that run along the seams where the walls meet the floor. In the distance he sees other hallways intersecting with this one. There is nothing else but halls and doors.

“That’s what life is like for a quaternary, Edward. The government doesn’t know what to do with us, so they push us down here. They want to kill us off, but they’re afraid we’ll riot if they try. Besides, they need the meat. And the milk.”

Edward closes the door. He had been wondering why a childless woman would have a breast pump. Like most people of his class, he has tried not to think where these things come from. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Sorry I don’t need,” she says. “Money . . . now that I could use.”

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

“Let’s stop here for a while,” one of the Rakehells says.

Orel turns and looks back at the others. They are lagging behind. The sweat on their faces glistens in the lights of their helmets. Orel has never thought of himself as being in good physical shape, but he is barely breathing hard while the Rakehells look exhausted already. Even the leader, Thraso, who is built like an athlete, is taking small delicate steps. “Don’t fall behind,” Orel says. “You don’t know how easy it is to get lost in here.”

“We’ll stop here and regroup,” Thraso says.

“Are you sure?” Orel asks. “We haven’t come that far.”

“We’ve come far enough that we can stop for a centichron.” Thraso seats himself carefully on a broken limestone formation, reluctant to let his expensive uniform touch the dusty surface. The other Rakehells gratefully collapse to the floor. Some tear off their respirators and guzzle their water rations.

Thraso undoes his laces and rubs his calves. “These things you have us wearing,” he says to Orel, “they’re killing me.”

“They’re called ‘boots.’ You need sturdy footwear in here. The rock would have torn your slippers to shreds by now.”

Thraso yanks one boot off and massages his foot. “Instead, the reverse is happening,” he growls. “The boots are tearing my feet to shreds.”

Orel shakes his head. “I don’t understand what you’re complaining about. We wear boots in the waterworks every day.”

“Who cares what trogs wear!” Thraso snaps. He pulls off his sock and looks at the blisters forming on the sides of his feet.

Orel turns away in disgust.
If these people worked in Hydroponics,
he thinks,
we’d all starve to death.

Their voices reverberate loudly in the narrow tunnel. They each have their lights turned up to the maximum. Orel wonders if they will ever even see a single Rat, or if the Rakehells’ continuous commotion will frighten them all away.

Orel notices two of the Rakehells looking at him intently, as if they have never been this close to one of the unprivileged. They turn away when he tries to meet their gaze, but he notices other Rakehells studying him when they think he isn’t looking. They are fascinated by his cloracne scars, the way his jowls hang off his cheeks. Not a single one of them is overweight or has the slightest blemish. Despite his best efforts, Orel finds he is becoming angry and depressed in their company. When he is with Bernie, Orel can forget how awkward he is. He can feel confident, even charismatic. The Rakehells’ guarded glances remind him of what he really is: a fat, ugly trog with no social graces.

He looks at Eno Selachian. “If your father didn’t want you to come,” Thraso is asking him, “why are you here?”

Eno smiles slightly, knowing that many people are listening in on their conversation. “Because I wanted to test myself,” he says. “I wanted to face a physical challenge to see how I could handle it. I need to prove to my father, and to myself, what stuff I’m made of.”

“
Survival of the fittest
,” Thraso interjects.

“I’m sorry?” Eno asks.

“
Survival of the fittest
,” Thraso repeats. “It’s the Rakehell motto. We believe in promoting excellence throughout the Hypogeum. We are only interested in those people who have proven themselves in some sort of struggle — be it physical, political, or economic. We cannot dilute the strength of our society with pity for those who cannot jump life’s many hurdles. It’s a natural selection. The strong survive, the weak perish.”

Eno falters as he looks into Thraso’s blood-red eyes. Though Eno is supposedly the highest-ranking citizen in the group, it seems to Orel that Thraso is the natural leader.

Orel takes advantage of the silence. He stands and moves closer to them. “Your understanding of the principle of natural selection is inexact,” he says. “Which is another way of saying that you are completely wrong. When the Founders said ‘fittest,’ they did not mean the strongest or the fastest, or even the wealthiest. Being ‘fit’ is defined only by survival. It’s almost a tautology.”

“Fitness is survival,” Thraso agrees, leaning forward. “And only the strong survive. For example, if I were to get up and fight you right now — if we were to battle to the death — which one of us do you think would survive?” The other Rakehells, who have been listening with rapt attention, laugh and hoot.

“The real world is more complicated than that,” Orel says, raising his voice. “A better example of the principle would be the food shortages that followed the Eternity Riots. On an individual basis, the physically strong people beat the weak ones in the fight for food. But in the long run, it was the weak who survived while the strong perished, because the smaller people didn’t require as much food, and they weren’t as proud about what they ate. That’s why the population today is on average six centimeters shorter than it was during the days of the Founders.”

Thraso makes an impatient gesture. “I’m not just talking about physical strength. Any idiot can exercise and build muscle. I’m talking about
will
, about strength of spirit.
Will
is what truly separates the strong from the weak.”

Orel thinks of Bernie, who stayed behind because he was afraid. “That’s not the way it works,” he says. “Or if it is, it shouldn’t be.”

DEATH WATCH

Dancer brushes her hand across her father’s brow. She can feel his pulse beneath her fingertips, but only faintly. The drugs they have pumped into him have brought his blood pressure down far below normal. A clear plastic tube runs out of one nostril. A monitor above his head records his heartbeat.
You are surrounded by machines, as always,
Dancer thinks.
But this time they are controlling you.

Orcus stirs in his sleep and swats her hand away. A look of confusion and irritation passes over his face, then disappears. She suppresses the urge to reach out to him again, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her coverup.

“You were never interested in intimacy or emotions, were you, Father?” she says. “You only wanted information — data you could use, facts or half-facts you could twist into whatever shape you needed.”

His face grows calm. He seems to enjoy the sound of her voice. It is otherwise too quiet in this sterile room.

“The Prime Medium votes tomorrow on the question of the Winnower’s divinity.” Dancer realizes she’s talking as much for her own comfort as for her father’s. “I’ve been trying to gather votes the way you wanted, but I think we’re going to lose. The funny thing is, I think the Winnower is dead. He hasn’t been seen for days.

“I’ve decided that the best way to shore up our position is to convince the populace how important the monitors are. I’ve contacted our agents among the Levellers. They’ll be trying to convince the Leveller leaders to demonstrate. If we’re lucky, that will lead to a riot. If the people are afraid, then the security the monitors provide will look more attractive. Second Son is going to help me. He’s completely under my control now.”

She looks down at her father. His breathing is deep and even, his face untroubled. She has never seen him look so peaceful. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, to make this desiccated stranger bring her real father back.

If only the heart attack had killed you
, she thinks,
then at least I’d know where I stood
.

THE WITNESS

In the examination booth, Amarantha recalls the moment, not long after she met Cadell, when she finally told Second Son face to face that she did not want to see him again. Seeing the episode replayed on the tiny monitor, she is surprised by how much it differs from her memory. She had thought she had acted firmly. In reality, she sees, she was less aggressive, trying to let him off easy.
I was too polite
, she thinks. Still, the point is made, the motive for the crime established: he was interested in her, and she turned him down.

“Notice how she smiles at me, despite her words,” Second Son’s tiny face says from the other monitor. “Notice how she touches my hand.”

“I felt sorry for him,” Amarantha says hotly.

Second Son shrugs, as if the matter is of no importance.

For her second episode, Amarantha calls up the moments shortly after the arrival of the Winnower, when she stumbled out of the hallway to the Discroom. She watches herself shivering in a corner, wrapped in Second Son’s cloak, blood spattered in her hair.

“Take a good look at the rips in her clothing,” Second Son says. “Those were not made with a knife, but by claws.”

“What?” Amarantha cries incredulously.

“The Winnower came to that party looking for one of my servants,” he continues. “This servant had a criminal past, unknown to me. Amarantha and I tried to stop him from assaulting this man, and were ourselves attacked. That is the source of Miss Kirton’s injuries.”

“That’s insane! Image, can’t you stop him from saying such ridiculous things?”

“He has the right to offer his own interpretation,” Image replies.

“But why would I make up a story like that? It’s ridiculous!”

Second Son raps his finger against the wall of his booth. “The reason she is saying that I attacked her is that she doesn’t want to admit to her boyfriend that she went off with me.”

“I would never do such a thing, you inbred piece of filth! Do you understand me? You disgust me!”

A thin smile stretches across Second Son’s doughy face. Amarantha wants to ram her fist through the monitor. With an effort, she controls her temper.

“I would like to call a witness,” she says.

“What?” Now it is Second Son’s turn to be outraged. “What do you think this is? The first century?”

The look of anger and fear on his face is marvelously satisfying. “By a strange coincidence, the camera that could have recorded this event was out for repair. If no record of a critical moment is available, then I am permitted to call a witness. Isn’t that right, Image?”

“That is the law.”

“Then I call the Winnower.”

Second Son leans forward, his angry face filling the screen. “You little bitch,” he hisses. “What sort of game are you playing?”

“Didn’t you consult the forensic subroutine before you came here, Hump? I did.”

“How can you call him? You don’t even know who he is!”