by Liam Clay
The line going into the Underworld is much smaller, however, and I’ve barely pulled up my credentials before I’m being called forward by a bored staffer.
“Purpose of trip?” She mumbles into a scratchy microphone.
“Volunteer work for Doctors Without Borders.” I reply, blinking my creds into a reader. The officer nods, although how she can hear me is anyone’s guess. (Between the bawling children, the pleading parents, the cat-calling hookers and let’s not forget the straight up insane, it’s hard to even hear myself think.)
“And are you carrying any illicit drugs, firearms, technologies or fruits and vegetables?”
Given that this entire exchange is just for show (the bribe for my downward passage was paid months ago) I decide to have a little fun.
“I’ve got a grapefruit with a shitty attitude, does that count? Oh, and some contraband kidney beans, but then I suppose those are more of a legume...”
The woman glowers at me. “You’re one smartass comment away from a full rectal search, boy.”
“Ah. Nothing to declare then, officer.”
“That’s what I thought. Now get into the scanner, you’re holding up the line.”
A buzzer sounds, and I push through a barred turnstile into a scanning booth that reeks of industrial solvent and boiled cabbage. The machine has just given me the green light when the lights flicker and die. I freeze up. Everything else down here craps out on the regular, but the electricity never fails. (No juice means no media, and Korezon knows that bored poor folk are prone to rioting.) I’m near panic when the fluorescents spark back to life. Shaking my head, I step into the chain link corridor that leads to the exit.
The asylum seekers must smell credit on me, because dirty hands reach through the links, begging for donations as I pass. None of the children are what you’d call robust, and many are seriously malnourished, but this isn’t the sort of thing I can afford to notice. I hurry forward. But before I can escape, a woman manages to grab hold of my arm. She might have been pretty once, but hard drugs and rough living have whittled her features down almost to the bone. Only her eyes remain sharp and predatory.
“Hey mister, looks like you’re headed the wrong way.”
“I’m going down to work with one of the non-profits.” I murmur.
She imitates delighted surprise. “Oh, how wonderful! And what is your field of expertise: physician, hydroponics expert, water treatment specialist?”
My first instinct is to pull away without replying. But she’s already drawn the mob’s attention, which has brought the cameras swinging our way as well. And since we haven’t bribed the eyes in the sky, I do my best to play the part.
“None of those. Just a volunteer ready to help any way I can.”
Her gargled laugh carries a strong whiff of death. “What a shocker! And where will you be living while you’re slumming it down in the depths?”
I blink owlishly, as though this detail had never occurred to me. “I assume the organization will provide special accommodations for us while -”
“- you soothe your upper levels guilt.” She finishes for me. “Well let me give you some advice real quick. Instead of making the NGOs babysit your ass while you dick around getting in their way, why don’t you go back to your Topside condo, take a hot shower and then sponsor an underprivileged kid like all of your friends.” A sound issues from her throat, and she hawks a generous sum of phlegm onto my chest. “That, or go learn a trade someone can actually use.”
Feeling that I’ve been adequately chastised, I wrench my arm free and dart for the exit.
At 30 I hit the foundations. When the old government decided to build Opacity, there was already a pesky little city on this land. The existing infrastructure wasn’t fit for their purposes, but instead of paying for demolitions they just built right over it. The architectural concept was crude yet inspired. Buy four buildings around an intersection and fill their innards with concrete. Place a slab over the roofs, and build a mammoth skyscraper on top of the entire business. Enough of these things go up and the older buildings start to lose the sun. Green space dies off, and the bourgeoisie flock for higher climes. (Evil) Geniuses, those old timers.
A final flight of stairs ends in an unmarked steel door. I blink the camera above it and after a drawn out interval, hear the sound of a lock disengaging. The door swings open and I step into darkness. Then I’m descending in fits and starts to the sound of a struggling motor. The elevator grinds to a ponderous halt. The door slides back, and I’m hit by a double wall of intense sound and humid, recycled air.
CHAPTER 6
I’ve been dropped into the middle of a cracked asphalt intersection/dance floor. Pre-Korezon high rises occupy each corner, grainy holo swirling over their glass facades. The outgoing roads have been blocked off to create an enclosed X with the vaulted slab as a roof. If you look closely, yellow traffic lines can still be seen under the tread of stoned feet. Welcome to Church.
It’s Sunday night - or possibly Monday morning - and the place isn’t at capacity, but Five will be dead in the cold hard ground before he turns the music down. The current track is just a heavy bass line run through with a pure saxophone solo. Stripping my mask off, I blink-capture enough so that I can hunt the song down later. (There’s an upper levels subculture that is obsessed with Underworld beats, and will pay good credit for new stuff.) Then I strike out through the crowd.
Five is the Church’s majority shareholder, and my best friend. Although he hasn’t got much competition for the latter title, in fairness. When you make a habit of vanishing Topside for six months at a time, people tend to forget about you. Another reality of the business, I guess.
I find him in his usual spot. He’s holding court in the excavated lobby of the quadrant’s largest building, hidden from the crowd by a gargantuan speaker bank. I claim a nearby chair, order a beer from a passing waiter and settle in to wait. One of the groupies notices me and edges away, but I tell myself it’s just my unfortunate aroma.
If I was allowed one word to describe Five, it would be big. This isn’t a physical commentary though, much as he wishes it was. No, it’s because he’s an ideas man. That’s where his nickname comes from, actually. As a kid, if you offered him one of something, he would ask for five and promise to give you twenty back later. And he would deliver, according to the stories, maybe nine times out of ten.
He’s also just one of those guys people want to be around, you know? Five has a way of making you feel included and special, even if he barely knows you. It bites at me sometimes, to tell you the truth. We’ve been friends since my first career, when we were both teenagers selling fake social profiles off the back of a leaky skiff. And when I see him show the same love for strangers as he does me, it stings. But then, I always was an insecure piece of shit.
So anyway, Five is usually great company. But not tonight, it soon becomes clear. My friend is firmly in the grip of both his vices. One is alcohol. Nothing much to explain there, we’ve all seen it. He can stay sober as long as he likes, but get one drink down him and there’s no turning back. The other is power. Like I said, Five’s not a big guy, and that fact haunts him to the point where he pursues physical respect at all costs. So at a time like this, it doesn’t pay to be built and near Five.
“What did you just say?” He’s shouting as I sit down, pointing at an oversized hipster who has made the mistake of asking a question. Kid’s probably been trying to get backstage for months, and this is what he gets for his troubles.
“N-Nothing.”
“My ass, nothing. Tell me or you’re out of here.”
You would think these occasional outbursts would alienate Five’s groupies, but in fact it’s just the opposite. The possibility that he might turn nasty makes them cling all the harder. They will do anything to stay in his good graces, and take a sick fascination in watching him tear others down. It’s a tiresome game to watch.
The hipster finds his balls somewhere. “I just aske
d if you were planning to answer the call.” He says loudly. The crowd, conversely, goes quiet - they want to hear Five’s response. I have no idea what the guy’s talking about, but suddenly I do too.
My friend’s expression darkens. “Of course I will.” He says thickly. “When the Constant invites you to an emergency council, you don’t say no, do you?”
I must shift in my seat at this, because Five turns and sees me. He’s got me in a hug a second later, the scar tissue where his right ear should be pressed against my chest. It’s nice to see my presence have a calming effect on him.
“Fallen back to earth again, have we?” He says, pulling away.
“What’s going on?” Much as I hate to admit ignorance in front of the groupies, I’m too curious not to ask.
He laughs. “God, you climbers are out of touch. The boss has called a meeting, to be attended by every human asset in the Kaleidoscope portfolio. No one knows why.”
“But that’s like... jesus, how many people are we talking about?” In addition to owning one of the Underworld’s infamous submerged casinos, my employer - an individual commonly known as the Form Constant - is also the undisputed master of the West End’s illegal economy. And drugs are just the tip of the iceberg. Half the district is probably on payroll one way or another.
Five shrugs. “Not sure, but the bookies are already giving odds on final numbers.” (You can bet on anything down here.) Grabbing me by the arm, he steers us away into a corner. I take the opportunity to see if six months have produced any changes in his appearance.
He claims Southeast Asian heritage, and although it’s a rare person who truly knows their background anymore, his features do support that. Smooth caramel skin, round face, a glossy mop of tight black curls and no beard to speak of. His largish eyes are a little bloodshot, cheeks a boozy red. His absent ear makes the remaining one seem grotesquely large.
“Before we get down to business,” I ask, “do you mind telling me what that kid did to piss you off?”
Five’s lip curls in anger, but I hold his gaze until the drunken veneer rolls back.
“I just didn’t like the look of him.” He says offhandedly. Which is Five-speak for ‘he was bigger than me’.
“Well lay off a bit, will you? Poor guy looked like he was about to turn on the waterworks.”
Five grins, more himself now. “Have it your way, you benevolent son of a bitch. Now, do you want to know what’s going on, or are there some other losers you’re keen to defend first?”
“Just spit it out.”
“Okay, so you know that power outage? Well the networks are calling it a systems glitch, but I’ve heard whispers to the contrary. Something’s happened up top, they say, and whatever it is has the boss worried. You practically live up there, though. Heard anything?”
I’m about to reply in the negative, but then I take stock of the last 24 hours. Five reads my face.
“You’ve got something, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure, but some seriously weird shit happened to me last night. Might be connected, might not. But either way, I - I need to speak with the Constant.”
He snorts. “Last I checked, you weren’t exactly a welcome sight around the Kaleidoscope. Not after last time. You sure your info will be enough to win an audience?”
“No idea, but I have to try. What are the odds of getting in there before the meeting?”
“Basically zero. The entire complex is on lockdown; they’re not letting anyone close.”
Shit. There is a way around this problem, but it involves doing something I’ve been dreading ever since I agreed to Red’s offer. There is no avoiding it now, however.
“And does anyone include Kalana?”
A pause from Five. And then, “Are you sure that’s a good idea, man? You know she’ll think it’s just an excuse to see her and Sophie again.”
Turning away from him, I take a deep breath and try to think. Surprisingly, Five manages to keep his mouth on a leash until the decision’s been made.
“Just tell me where she is.”
“Alright, but this better be legit.” He rests a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve stayed away for seven years, cold turkey. Don’t fuck it up now.”
He doesn’t need to add that the Constant might kill me if I do.
“It will be strictly business.” I tell him. “And I won’t even mention Sophie.”
Five isn’t buying it, but he gives me the address anyway.
CHAPTER 7
Going outside in the Underworld is like jumping into a volcano. It’s hot as hell, everything smells of sulfur and you can’t see more than a few meters in any direction. The Topsiders call it street level, imagining the old roads of the city Opacity was built on. The reality is a lot wetter. The seas rose and the levies broke long decades ago, and canals run between the primeval buildings now. Poled skiffs make up the majority of traffic.
The door I’ve exited through has let me onto a creaking fire escape. It used to give access to the second floor, but presently sits just above the water line. I flag a passing hire boat and jump down into its flat bottom.
“Beach Tower.” I tell the elderly poler. Or I think she’s elderly, anyway. Like most people who spend a lot of time in the soup, she wears a hooded mask that covers her entire head and neck. It looks freaky, but I suppose it’s either that or gradually cough your lungs out into sludgy canal water. She nods, points to a seat in the bow and pushes off.
The closer we get, the more my anxiety grows. I’m just not ready to see Kalana again. When we first washed up here, still dripping from our swim across the Gulf, we entered into a pact together. We pledged to do anything, take advantage of anyone, if it helped us gain upward mobility in this town. We only placed one caveat on our covenant. No matter what happened we would never, for any reason, betray one another.
For eight years we both kept our promises. But that ended the day Sophie was born. I remember standing in what passes for a hospital in the Underworld, gazing in dumb awe at my newborn child. She was so small, so new, with pudgy limbs and a full head of tawny hair. I reached out to take her in my arms for the first time. But instead of giving her to me, Kalana told me we were through. I wasn’t completely surprised, to be fair. My second career was in full swing back then, and it made drug dealing seem child-friendly by comparison. What I couldn’t understand was the timing. Why wait until she was born, I asked - to torture me? Her answer has kept me up nights ever since. Kalana said she’d been waiting for me to do the right thing by stepping aside of my own accord. But I had missed my chance.
Our keel scuffs against a submerged sculpture as we round a corner. The soup is thinner here, and I can see dead filaments inside the shattered shells of antique streetlights overhead. But there’s no one around, nothing to take my mind off the past.
There are certain questions a man asks when he’s getting dumped. I ran through all of them and Kalana answered, truthfully and without hesitation. Is there someone else? Yes. Who is it? The Constant. No fucking way. Believe it. What can that bastard offer that I can’t? (Although I could have answered that one for her: stability, emotional support, the credit to feed and clothe a child and the discipline to help raise her.)
A relationship of equals, was Kalana’s actual response.
And finally, once all my tears were spent, the real questions emerged. Would I get to see Sophie? Yes, but when she was older, and not as her father. I could be a family friend. What would happen to me? Nothing - I would continue to work for the Constant as before. Then, just before I left the hospital room, I asked one last question. What about our pact, I wanted to know. She responded that it had been a promise made between two people, and that Sophie would now be taking my place in the arrangement. To this day, I don’t know why that statement was the one to set me off. But it did, and I lashed out verbally in response. She told me to fuck off, I said gladly, and that’s the way things have stood ever since.
But as messed up as all of that is, it�
�s actually a common story in the Underworld. Survival is what matters; relationships are secondary; love doesn’t factor. Rotten fruit gets pared away for the greater good all the time, and if you asked ten Underworlders if Kalana did the right thing by leaving me, you would get ten affirmatives. Of course, if you asked those same people if I was right to walk away quite so readily, you would get a slightly different ratio.
We round a final corner, and I catch a glimpse of Beach Tower through the fog ahead. It must have been a notable residence in its day, with spacious decks and an unobstructed view of the ocean. The water is more turbulent here. Gulf garbage swirls around the old buildings, plastic bags clinging to the pilings of their makeshift docks. I find it strange that Kalana would choose to live this close to the ocean. I return there most nights in my dreams, and that’s more than enough for me.
Apparently the tower retains some marginal prestige, because the elevator actually works. I press the button for the sixteenth floor. The wait gives me a final chance to control my breathing and heart rate, but it’s a lost cause. It might help if she knew I was coming. But talk and text conversations are so easy to hack that phones have become dead tech for anyone with something to hide. (So pretty much everyone.) These days, direct blink and tech-monitored link are considered the only secure means of transferring information.
The door looks just like all the others: beige, heavily reinforced, with numbers stenciled on in black marker. But my child is behind it. According to Five, Kalana is something of a recluse these days, sticking mostly to her apartment and rarely consenting to visit the Kaleidoscope. It actually provides me with a perverse measure of pride, knowing my ex-girlfriend can dictate terms to the Form Constant. I prepare myself to knock.
But the door opens before I can. She looks much as I remember. A little older, more fatigue around the eyes, but still one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Flowing chestnut hair frames a perfectly oval face, almost alien in its symmetry. Eyes a deep hazel - one gold flecked, one pure. Tall, slender, with olive-toned skin and swept back shoulder blades. Aware that I’m staring, I look down at my feet.