The Inexplicables

by Cherie Priest

Page 30

 

  “Where are these carts you promised me?” Rector asked, looking around and seeing nothing but the same excavated, unfinished tunnels he’d seen so much of already.

  “This way,” Houjin said, lighting his lamp and leading with it.

  Angeline looked behind them, glancing at the freshly locked and sealed doors above. It seemed to Rector that she didn’t trust them, as though she wanted to climb up and give them a yank to remind herself they were secure. Instead, she rejoined the small group, this time falling into line behind Rector.

  As they walked through the dank, squishy tunnel with its square beam braces, no one talked. It was as if the habit of whispering or staying quiet was sticking with them, even there beneath the city where there were no rotters to lure.

  Finally they reached a bend in the tunnel that revealed a set of carts, as promised. Just like the one that had taken them up the hill and under the city, these two were parked off on a short, dead-end side track. Rector said, “Hey, look! We get to ride back home. ”

  Zeke told him, “Most of the way. And pumping’s easier, going downhill. ”

  “And we’ve got four of us this time. ” He nodded at the princess. “Now it won’t be uneven, side to side. ”

  Angeline laughed and slapped him on the back. “I think I like you just fine, Red. Half the men in this city would be god-awful horrified at the thought of a woman working alongside ’em, much less a woman of my years. But you didn’t even think twice about it—just assumed I was along for the working. I like that. ”

  Huey sighed. “He’s not noble. He’s lazy. ”

  “Lazy, noble, I don’t care. Me and him will sit on this side and crank, and you two younger fellows can take the other. Between us, we’ll be back in the Vaults in no time, won’t we?” She kicked away the nearest cart’s brake block and shoved it along its rails until it reached the main track a few feet away. “Hop on board, boys. Let’s get you home, and get these masks off. Then we can have ourselves a chat. ”

  When they’d finally reached the Vaults and the big round door had spun and sealed shut behind them, all the masks came off. Everyone stood there panting, feeling the air on their faces. It wasn’t fresh air, and it wasn’t particularly sweet-smelling, but Rector was sure it was the best damn air he’d ever felt, and he’d fight to the death anyone who tried to tell him otherwise. Or at least he’d argue like hell until he felt like stopping.

  “Boys, I’ve got a thought. ” Miss Angeline told them. “Let’s go the back way down to Chinatown and eat there. I want something hot. None of the men down here have taken to cookery, and I don’t smell anything to suggest Mercy or your momma”—she said with a nod at Zeke—“is downstairs experimenting. I might want some assistance from you tomorrow, so I suppose buying you supper is about the least I can do. ”

  “Assistance? From us?” Zeke positively pranced at the notion.

  Rector didn’t roll his eyes, only because without the mask everyone could see him too clearly. That damn kid, so desperate for approval all the damn time. It was downright embarrassing.

  She replied, “Walk with me, and I’ll tell you all about it. But first, we’re stopping by the storeroom and picking up a set of spectacles. I don’t know about you three, but I’m sick to death of wearing that damn mask. Let’s see if we can’t air out our faces a little on the way. ”

  The storeroom was stacked from floor to ceiling with crates, barrels, boxes, shelves, and drawers. Some were labeled, and Rector picked up the highlights even with his limited reading skills. Coffee, gunpowder, socks, leather scraps, single shoes (to be mixed and matched), stray pieces of paper (printed and blank, retrieved from books and book endpapers), maps, fragments of material for patches, copper wire, assorted metal bits (one drawer for lead, one for steel, one for iron), gas masks and filters, a variety of oils and other lubricants for industrial use, hand tools, electrical tools, strips of waxed canvas to repair the great tubes that brought fresh air to the city below the streets …

  … and that was only the beginning.

  Angeline hunted until she found the cabinet she wanted, from which she retrieved a set of small spectacles. The lenses didn’t match—one was round, one more rectangular—and the frames had clearly been bent together without regard for aesthetics from whatever sturdy wire had been most readily available at the time.

  “These’ll do!” she declared, sticking them on her face. She tweaked the bends around her ears and adjusted the fit until they looked like they’d stay on. “It’s funny, looking through ’em. But they’ll tell us where there’s gas, and that’s the important bit. How do I look?”

  Zeke laughed, and Houjin gave her a solemn nod that just barely hid a smile.

  Rector answered, “Like a million bucks!”

  “A million bucks! I don’t have that much, even if I look it. But I’ve got enough to feed us, so let’s head down the back tunnels and see if they’re stable enough to let us breathe like civilized people. ”

  The lenses in the makeshift spectacles were made from polarized glass, so they cast oddly shaped rainbows around the tunnels when the lantern light hit them just right. Angeline occasionally held her hands out in front of herself, sometimes purely to look at them. She announced, “It sure is strange, how putting glass up to your face makes the whole world look like magic. ”

  “Like magic? Really?” Zeke asked, visibly restraining himself from asking for a chance to wear them himself.

  “The world wobbles a bit, and when I walk, I feel like I’m stepping forward into a big hole. ”

  Houjin stepped around an eddy of fallen rocks, holding out a lantern to light the way ahead. Somewhere not too far away, machinery hummed to life and the dull, resonant buzz of a mechanical crank rose to a roar. Close behind this noise came a gust of air; it billowed down the tunnel, pulling at tousled hair and unrolled sleeves. It flapped and swelled like the breath of some leviathan deep in the earth’s bowels.

  Rector shivered. “Miss Angeline?” He touched her arm.

  She stared straight ahead, through the light of Houjin’s lantern and into the darkness beyond, as if she could see the wind itself, and judge it.

  After a moment of concentration, she patted his hand and said, “Don’t worry. The glass isn’t showing me anything. This air’s clean. ” She gave him a smile big enough to show she was missing one tooth, so far back in her mouth that he hadn’t seen it before. “Of course, it ought to be clean. You hear that sound?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. ”

  “That’s the nearest pump room, starting up its engines. Must be coming up on suppertime. You can set your watch by the pumps in Chinatown, and I know because I’ve done it before. ”

  When they arrived at their subterranean destination, Angeline whipped off her gas-detecting glasses and stuffed them into a pocket. “Here we are, boys. Mind your manners, would you? Can’t have you getting up to any mischief on my watch. ”

  Rector heard men shouting back and forth, and the regular percussion of hammers augmented with the dragging, scraping whine of saws. At the end of the tunnel a hint of light came in several colors. When they all emerged into an underground street, he saw that the way was strung with lanterns that were shaded with colored paper. A handful of men sat before a storefront that offered bagged rice and samples of unknown herbs for sale, stacked and sorted in the open, glassless window. They looked up curiously at the newcomers, but smiled and nodded to see Angeline, who smiled and nodded back.

  Here in Chinatown, the streets were wider and—in Rector’s private opinion—better kept, with proper curbs and wooden sidewalks lifting the walkways off the perpetually dampened dirt. Rather than having one large structure full of apartments like the Vaults, many individual homes were installed between the tiny businesses and in otherwise unsettled spaces. Laundry was strung and cooking fires dotted the thoroughfares with warmth, feeding their smoke and ash up through great metal tub
es that disappeared into the ceiling.

  “What are those?” Rector asked, pointing like a tourist.

  Houjin said, “Vents. They all join up in the level above. Sometimes when you’re topside, you can see the exit pipes smoking like chimneys. ”

  “Oh. There sure are a lot of people down here,” he observed as another group of men passed them, and a few individuals looked out of windows or stepped into doorways to get a gander at the outsiders.

  Zeke smiled and waved like he was leading a parade and everyone there had come out to see him. He told Rector, “There are a lot more Chinamen than Doornails, that’s for sure. ”

  Huey said, “About four Chinese to every white person. ”

  “And even fewer of us natives,” Angeline added. “Most of my kin had better sense than to stick around. They’ve gone up north, or out to the islands. ”

  “Then why’d you stay?” Rector asked.

  She was silent for a few seconds. She looked at Zeke and Huey, who clearly knew something about this story that Rector didn’t. Then she said, “This city was named for my father. After he was gone, I stayed here. I was raised by these folks, more than not. We may not look it on the skin, but I consider them family. And I had other family here who died, same as the rest of you lot. I even had a daughter once. ”

  “Did she die in the gas?”

  She cleared her throat. “She died before that. Bad husband, bad marriage. Either he killed her, or he drove her to do it herself. Either way, it was a bad time for me, and for my grandson, too. He was only a tiny boy when his momma passed, so I took him on. His daddy didn’t want him, anyway. So my no-good son-in-law stuck around like nothing had happened. ”

  Rector frowned. “And no one ever punished him?”

  “No, that didn’t happen. He had two things about him what made him more important than my daughter so far as the law was concerned. One, he was a man. Two, he was white. And my daughter wasn’t neither of them things. ”