“I heard they tapped you to help Old Merrie,” Niko whispered at her. “I know you can’t be late but just stop for a minute or two.”
“I can’t,” she told him, and started to trudge on, carrying two heavy canvas totes that said Emilio’s Friendly Market in faded red letters.
He took the steps two at a time to catch up as she reached the next landing where he tried to take the bags from her.
“Let me carry them for you,” he offered.
She shook her head and disappeared above him.
He followed, stopping a few steps just below her, and looked up at her firm calves. He reached out and placed his fingers around her ankle in a caress.
“Don’t go.” He said it softly, gently. He’d watched her climb these steps before to deliver food to the more affluent squatters on the top floors. They paid her enough to survive and she did other chores for them. He sometimes thought about the rewards he’d receive if . . . but he couldn’t let his mind wander far. Not before he knew if he’d be the one. So he lingered there, his hand on her ankle.
Now she lowered the heavy bags to the concrete landing and turned slightly to look at him as his hand moved up her calf and he moved to the next step closer to her. He watched her intently for any signal at all, but she didn’t move. He took one more step up, now only a step away from where she stood. Still his hand moved up, sliding around to the inside of her thigh. And he stepped up next to her.
That was when she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him away.
“You just told me you know I can’t be late. They’re always watching everywhere. Do you want to get us both arrested and sent to a camp for interfering with The Race?” She backed away from him, but he moved toward her.
“There are no cameras here,” he said, and looked around to verify the claim. “No one to see us. El, this may be the last time we’ll ever be together. After tonight . . .” His voice had dropped to almost no sound, and a choke caught in his throat. He reached out and took her hand.
Off to one side of the landing was a small space that had probably been designed to house electrical equipment. But since none had ever been installed, it was just an empty room with a small doorway. Niko pulled her inside. The door was long gone. There were no windows and no cameras or InCom screens.
“I know,” she said. “After tonight . . . Oh, Niko, it’s too horrible.”
“But we have now,” he told her, and softly twirled a lock of her hair between his fingers. “We have each other for a few moments. It may be all we have.”
“You’re much braver than I am,” she said. “And I promised the sisters. They made me swear before God.”
“Do you think God would want me to die never knowing someone loved me?”
He moved closer, almost touching her with his body.
“Please, Niko. Please, don’t say such things. It can’t happen. Not you. Not now.”
He leaned in and pressed himself lightly against her, and his hand once again moved to her thigh. He whispered her name, and his hand wandered up and up until she gave in and slid her arms around his shoulders.
“El, my lovely El,” he said, and moved them as one against the back wall, where it was darkest.
And then they heard a clang. And another. Someone was coming up the steps. Clang, clang, clang.
“The bags,” she whispered, suddenly petrified. “My bags are on the landing. I must continue up the steps. You hide here. I’ll go.”
And with a hurried rearranging of her skirt, she was gone.
Niko slumped against the wall.
El lifted the bags and began climbing again. Then there was another voice and El talked about how hard the climb had been, and how she’d had to rest before making the final push to the top.
He had to concentrate and hurried away from the stairwell down a long wall on the inside with nothing but a loose steel railing on the outside to guard against falling into the chasm of street far below. From up there, everything on the ground was a miniature: stunted as if squashed down from the top, or slanted at a crazy angle. He didn’t look down but kept his gaze straight ahead until the wall ended at what had once been a doorway. By then, it was just a gaping hole, neither rectangular nor round but an amorphous shape, as if chewed by some great animal, huge chunks taken out at a time, and then left, abandoned like the rest of the building, to rot in the sun and wind.
He could see through the hole to the cavernous roof, one cracked cement wall, rusted girders holding up the building’s frame, and down at the other end, thirteen motorcycles in perfect condition were lined up like soldiers between pillars: shiny, black, each front wheel tilted in the same direction as if at a showroom from long ago. He scanned the pitted wall with dangling rebar, looked behind the girders for signs of others, then walked slowly to the bikes, sauntered around each one, touched a seat here, caressed a handle bar there. Each had a key hanging from the ignition.
He swung a leg over the seat of the first one and leaned into the handlebars as if riding. He repeated this with each one. He dared not touch any of the keys, dared not start any of them. The sound would reverberate and bring others. Starting the machines would be later. Now only the electronic eye saw from the walls, but Niko had an in with the Watchers today. He’d brought them bruyaha leaves for a tea that made them temporarily forget their duties. He’d spent many dark nights collecting the leaves, but the bribe was worth it. He had to see these bikes for himself before they were hauled to the roof and placed in the final lineup.
Talk to me, he thought. Tell me which one of you will get me through this night.
On the twentieth floor, Old Merrie waited for the girl to bring the supplies. She sharpened a long, slender knife by methodically sliding the blade against a whetstone as she sang softly to herself. A squat woman of indeterminate age (but certainly old), her white hair was wrapped with a brightly colored scarf tucked into itself behind her ears, wisps of curls like a halo escaping all around the edges. Her dark eyes were never still and darted here and there, watching the floor for rats, the walls for roaches, the high ceiling overhead for spiders; her head tilted, she listened for any sound she couldn’t immediately identify as normal.
Her bare feet told the story of her life. Wide, with the fat pads of soles spilling out, gnarled toes and calloused nails unclipped and yellow, thick and cracked lengthwise. Next to her were open-toed sandals made from an old tire with heavy treads, held together by rope wedged between horizontal slits in the front and back that she pulled and tied around her ankles to keep them on. Her ankles scarred where the rope had chafed over years of wear. Her dress, or whatever was covering her, hung loosely around her ample, bulging middle, like a sheet she’d wrapped sari-like. It was a heavy, bright-green material. On closer inspection, it might have once been an awning, judging by the faint flower pattern and the words, almost disappeared, that said Bouquets, Baskets, Gifts. Old Merrie had survived all this time by making food for the Tower units—and especially for the hot solstice. She was the most requested food purveyor, and rival units had tried unsuccessfully to steal her away.
She wielded the knife, deftly cutting up fresh vegetables. There were onions, leeks, potatoes, yams, ocas, cassavas, fat green beans, all piled into a huge battered steel bowl rescued from a burnt-out factory where once it could hold dough for fifteen loaves of bread at a time. Next to her, on a pitted slab of dark stone about eight feet long, were lettuces, fruits, and nuts, all in oversized wooden bowls. A cat lay under the slab, curled into a round ball of orange fur, its nose hidden between its front paws. It seemed peaceful, except one ear was missing a wedge, and one front paw was mangled so its pads splayed like leaves from a branch.
Merrie sang and hummed now and then, breaking into choruses of poetic rhymes about days gone by. She swayed slightly as if a breeze was rushing by her as she sliced and sang. Outside, the sun was bright, halfway to its zenith. She stood back and peered under the table.
“Tonight it will happen,” she said
to the cat. “First night. Full moon. No clouds. The summer solstice. Little cat, you best stay where you are. The food will be plenty, drink will be flowing. Dancing and cheering. Have I seen it before? Many first nights. Many dances with death. Many losers. One victor. Being a woman is hard. Being a man is harder. Being a cat is best.”
She poked at the cat with her toe, but he did not budge. She finished cutting the vegetables, slid her wide feet into the sandals, tied them around her ankles until they were tight, and waddled off to another space where she found a dilapidated industrial-sized grocery cart with one wheel permanently off the ground and turned at a right angle to the post that held it. She pushed it to the table on its three good wheels, lowered the bowls into the basket, and wiped the table, using a ragged towel with the “H” insignia of a once-famous hotel chain. She swiped the knife clean against her dress and left it on the table beside the whetstone she used for sharpening.
She glanced one last time at the cat before she and the cart disappeared around the corner of an outside corridor, the one broken wheel of the cart wobbling crazily, its squeak echoing off the pitted walls. On this floor, most of the outside walls still stood, but all the glass windows had long since crashed to the street below. What was left were gaping squares that allowed air and weather to whoosh through the building. She no longer sang. Later, on the roof, she would serve the food. Later still, she would dance with the others.
There were clusters of ten- to twelve-story, nondescript building hulks left, but only the taller ones in The Ring were now inhabited. The rest were prey to the Leftovers, who scavenged mostly in the dark for food and water. The landscape was sparse, flat, interrupted only by the hulks of these crumbling, abandoned high-rises like planetary mountain formations that had been eaten away by galactic forces. They rose in clusters toward the sky, numbered according to their order of designated demise, which put them off-limits for habitation. When they had first been condemned, shifts of workers in pale orange suits circulated through the city, boarding up and painting “No Trespassing” signs on the doors and windows. These faded and rotted over the years. Scavengers tore them down to burn for heat on cold nights and, when there was any food to prepare, for cooking.
Yet far off, almost beyond the naked eye’s ability to see, something in the distance glimmered. Not a mirage, for it had colors that were faintly iridescent green and a blue so deep it seemed to have no end. At times it appeared to lift off the ground and float as if pure light; at these times, it was bright white silver. Yet at other times it appeared wavy, like the far horizon of a great sea. That is when it seemed as blue as the deepest ocean. Only the Watchers could see this phenomenon from their perch in The Globe. But there was one particular spot at one far corner of the flat roof of the Tower of David. There, on certain bright, sun-filled days, at the very apex of the sun’s path, by leaning so far over that a person felt in peril of falling and being lost forever to the ground below, a tantalizing glimmer appeared. It was mesmerizing, frightening, beckoning, enthralling.
Niko had seen it. He could not put it out of his mind. It reminded him of something in the ghost of general memory left after The Cleanse, something the elders whispered about when they were sure the Watchers couldn’t hear.
“There is a better place,” some of them said, nodding knowingly. “We still remember.” Niko had heard them whisper, “A place called Zamora.”
Some of The Cleansing had gone awry and had failed to fully wipe out all memory. It was said that, in The Globe, there were small machines that contained all the memories of past times. These were hooked up to the cleansing machines used to delete memory. Facts, dates, numbers, events, places, even the history from far beyond Infinius were stored. Hidden cameras acted as eyes. Sometimes, if a camera went blank, a robot was dispatched to repair the break.
Robots also repositioned listening and visual recording devices that were so small they were almost undetectable. With the buildings in constant disrepair, devices were easy to hide in the debris. That was an accepted part of life. If anyone happened to pick up one while sifting through trash for something to trade for food or drugs or drink, an alarm told the Protectors to shut that one down and send out a bot to replace it. Interfering with a bot was punishable by death. The people feared the bots almost as much as they feared the Protectors.
A small army of bots worked constantly underground to build new devices for the Protectors to dispatch. Bots had no loyalty, no conscience, no fear. And no love. They also had no greed and no cunning. They operated on whatever program had been installed.
From The Globe, a loudspeaker blasted orders for work and reports of infractions and punishments meted out to transgressors. These were called “Messages and Humiliations for a Better Day.” On this day, the loudspeakers also announced The Race.
Floodlights will illuminate the city from dusk until dawn.
Bleachers have been installed on all roofs. Banks of seating face the Tower where The Race will be held. All viewers are required to be in their preassigned seats by first bell.
A hologram projection allowed people a close-up look. The messages repeated throughout the day, with new information added at random. This year’s innovations were heralded broadly.
During this past year our trusted Overseers have assembled a list of prizes to be bestowed upon the populace of Infinius by aid of a random drawing. At the conclusion of The Race, a list of recipients will be read for all to hear. Cameras will pick out winners from the audience to broadcast over InCom to begin the celebration at the culmination of our glorious yearly Race, where the victor will receive his rewards. Good fortune to all contestants this night.
Once Niko had seen the bikes and touched them all, he took the stairs quickly. Now he knew what he had to do. Someone would survive. No matter what it cost later, it had to be him.
With the image of El’s delicate, oval face in mind, down, down, down he fairly glided, almost exultant, flight after flight. He would either be the one who lived or he would be dead when the solstice sun disappeared. There was nothing more he could do about it.
Except this one last thing. In a perverse way, this freed him.
Moving fast, heading to Building Twelve, as he reached the cracked and pitted sidewalk, a woman with a toddler balanced in one arm, a baby strapped to her chest, and tattered bags full of fresh foods hanging from each arm had just reached what was once a doorway and was now a gaping hole with sharp, twisted, and rusty rebar sticking out of the cement frame. He made the sharp turn at the end of the stairwell, colliding into her. They all fell in a heap. The toddler began to howl, and the fruits and vegetables splayed out around them. The woman didn’t know what to save first.
As he regained his footing, Niko saw fear in the woman’s eyes. At that moment what came to him was the little picture he’d traded with El. The picture of Jesus. And all the thoughts he’d had about the idea of being a servant to others. At another time he might have brushed himself off and hurried away. At another time he might have left the woman to cope on her own with her burdens. But in this moment, the little boy he couldn’t help came back to him.
“You’re okay,” he told the toddler, and picked him up. He held the child so they could look into each other’s eyes. A few seconds before he’d been thinking of The Race and of his own survival, but in that moment he smiled at the child and gave him a hug. “See, let’s help your mama.”
They gathered the produce, and the toddler came to his side and handed him an apple and a banana. He giggled and Niko poked him playfully.
As Niko helped, the woman picked up her sacks and looked again at Niko. She smiled. “You are a kind boy,” she said. “I hope my boy will be kind like you.” She reached up and cupped his cheek in her palm. “Bless you,” she said.
Niko hurried on, the sensation of the woman’s caress staying on his cheek until he reached Building Twelve.
At the third-floor landing, a corridor led to an interior maze of marred walls and battered doors. F
arthest away from cracked windows and tenuous stairways inside the maze was a solid metal door with a heavy bolt and a round device halfway down. It looked much like a vault. There was a buzzer and a small window where visitors were approved or turned away.
On his sixteenth birthday, the Protector named Huston had summoned Niko to this door and told him to use the code word “dragonfly.” Even though he was suspicious of all Protectors, having no alternative, he’d done what he was told. The door swung open to a world most of the populace would never see. Thinking back to that day, along with an anxious hope that his fate would not be death, Niko’s anticipation of The Race grew. Gone was the cavalier attitude of just a little while earlier.
At the door now, he remembered that day and the world he had been allowed to glimpse exactly two years earlier, for The Race always fell on the birthday he had been given. No one, not even the Center where he’d been deposited, knew for sure when or where he’d actually been born. He was sure that world still existed behind this door and that if he knocked, he would be allowed entry.
The little window clicked open, and a pair of eyes took him in. It was a recognition device that had stored his face, and even though he had grown and changed since then, his eyes were the same. The door swung wide, and Niko stepped across the threshold.
Unlike the rest of Infinius—where one was always aware either of the baking sun, or heat rising from the streets at night, or the acrid scent when black clouds let loose with sheets of toxic rain—the entry hall was cool. Inside these walls there was the faint perfume of . . . what? Lilac or jasmine, delightful scents to lull the visitor. In the semi-darkness, Niko noted leather couches along one wall, expensive-looking rugs from another time, and a vaulted ceiling with recessed lighting that created a soft, pleasant glow. It was soothing, almost.
A young woman emerged clad in a silk robe that outlined her voluptuous body. She wore golden sandals with high spiked heels. Her nails were long, painted a deep red that matched the color of her lips.
A Place Called Zamora Page 5