by James Axler
Kane hurried along the corridor, glancing into each of the open doorways as he passed, careful not to slow his pace. He passed a communal room featuring plain furniture; a sink beside which stood a handful of mugs that had been placed upside down to drain; two toilet stalls, separate, doors open; a darkened cloakroom with lockers at one end and pegs lining both walls on which hung a half-dozen coats.
At the end of the corridor was a closed door that opened onto a lobby. The lobby featured a single elevator, beside which was a stairwell running upward. Kane recognized the elevator design—it was the same type that they had used in Cobaltville.
He took the stairs, preferring to see where he was going and to keep his options open.
The first level was a long way up and it opened onto a maintenance area of low ceilings and twisting pipes: the inner workings of the ville.
Above that, a further maintenance level, this one featuring a wide service road that ran in a tunnel beneath the ville proper. A Sandcat moved steadily along the tunnel, painted white and with headlights on to illuminate the darkened tunnel.
Kane ducked back into the stairwell before he was spotted, and hurried up the next flight of stairs.
Two more flights—meeting no one along the way—and he ducked out at last on a familiar-looking level. He was on Epsilon Level of the central tower, called the Administrative Monolith. Villes adhered to a strict hierarchical system, with each level of the monolith named after a Greek letter of the alphabet. Administration was conducted in the highest—or Alpha—level, above where the baron dwelled alone and unapproachable. Beneath this was Beta Level, where the Historical Division was located, then Cappa Level, which housed the Magistrate Division, including their training and medical facilities. Beneath that was Delta, which was dedicated to the preservation, preparation and distribution of food, then Epsilon, where the construction and manufacturing facilities were located.
In the standard design, the lowest level below this was known as the Tartarus Pits, a level of semi-lawlessness where cheap labor could be procured and the possibilities of the wilder side of life—prostitution, illegal literature, recreational drugs—remained available for those brave enough to look.
That did not appear to be the case here, however. Kane should have passed from the maintenance levels through Tartarus—and any movement between the Enclaves of the ville and the Pits should be tightly controlled and restricted by the ville Magistrates. But this ville had no Tartarus Level, which in itself was not objectionable—just odd. Barons were creatures of careful design, and each had controlled the human populations under them by enforcing the same strict system of levels. To deviate from that suggested that something was different about this ville.
Kane stepped out and strode down the warren-like corridor, keeping his head down and eyes wary, moving quickly and with purpose. The walls were blank, painted in a bland, oatmeal gray-white.
Beyond this, a wider walkway emerged with windows running along one side. Kane slowed, gazing out the windows. Snow was falling out there and it covered the towers of the ville. The towers still gleamed beneath their frosty white covering, metallic silvers and golds, windows gleaming as they reflected the falling snowflakes. It was marvelous. What was more, it felt a lot like coming home.
Despite his exile from Cobaltville following dismissal from his role as Magistrate, Kane had revisited his home ville on several occasions, most recently to deal with a virus outbreak that had threatened to cull the entire population. Even so, he never grew bored with the feeling of being back—it always felt exciting and familiar and comfortable all at once.
As he looked out the vast bank of windows, Kane engaged his Commtact and hailed his partners hopefully. “Grant, Baptiste—I’ve entered a ville hidden in the snow. Do you copy?”
The response was nothing but dead air.
He tried again. “Cerberus? Do you copy? Please acknowledge.”
Nothing. It seemed that wherever he had wound up, he had no comms and no backup. He could only hope that Grant and Brigid were all right.
There was a certain eeriness to the ville that he had noticed subliminally from the moment he had entered Epsilon Level. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first, but within a few minutes it dawned on him just how quiet the place was. There were mechanical noises, of course, emanating from the various construction areas that littered this level. But there were no voices, no clip-clop of running feet or strains of music or carrying laughter. It was strangely bereft of those normal sounds of human life.
For now at least, it seemed that Kane had entered into the ville undetected. He was on a major thoroughfare, however, and a group of people were coming along the walkway toward him. There were thirty people in all, walking in step, eyes forward, shoulders sagging. Kane eyed them swiftly, assessing the level of threat they might pose. They were dressed in utilitarian clothes, gray on white, overalls and buttoned-down shirts with high, stiff collars. They looked bored.
Kane watched as the group filed into one of the grand doorways to his right, along the opposite wall to the windows. He peered inside as he strode past, saw them queuing for entry into what looked like a decontamination chamber. That made sense—if this was the manufacturing level then sometimes it was necessary to decontaminate before handling sensitive components or machinery.
Kane wondered what it was they were constructing out here in the British Columbia wilderness. More snow machines maybe?
He carried on, consulting with a map affixed to the wall for a sense of direction. The map gave the name of the ville—
Ioville.
He had never heard of it. He wished Brigid was with him right now—with her freak-show memory she would no doubt produce a whole raft of facts and figures about Io, Ioville and E-I-E-I-O-ville. Damn, that woman was smart.
According to the map, he could either carry on along Epsilon, maybe get a sense of what kind of stuff was being constructed here, or he could reach a nearby bank of elevators and ascend farther. But without communications he was on his own, and he knew it was only a matter of time before someone challenged him and the authorities got involved. What he needed right now was a bolt hole, somewhere to hide out and figure out his next step—then he could maybe locate a comms unit that could broadcast to Cerberus through this abysmal weather.
Kane turned, memorizing the location of the nearest residential block, and hurried along the walkway that led to it.
* * *
IT TOOK FOUR minutes for Kane to reach the residential units. White-walled, they stood on a broad passageway that was wide enough to accommodate a Sandcat, but that seemed cramped because of the seemingly endless walls of apartments and the lack of natural light. Kane guessed this level alone could house three hundred people.
He stood beside a lamppost, watching the doors to the residential blocks for a few minutes while he calculated his next move. The doors, like the walls, were a washed-out white, like day-old snow.
The introduction of the Program of Unification years before had ensured that no property had a locked door, and Kane suspected he could just walk into any one of the apartments. But he wanted one that he knew had an occupant—that way he could place them somewhere secure and be reasonably certain no one else would surprise him.
He waited, watching the street as a likely group of people arrived in an electric trolleybus. The bus’s movement was accompanied by the sound of the electric motor, a kind of cheery “yeaaah” noise. Its side had an open doorway and as it pulled to a halt at a designated stop, Kane saw a group of people shuffling to disembark. They were uniformly dressed in gray and white, and Kane watched as they filed from the trolleybus before it took off on its route again.
Twenty feet away, Kane watched, trying to decide who would be the easiest to pin down and deal with. There were three women in the group of eight, two young and one older with graying hair cut in a
short bob that framed her face. Kane figured the older woman would be easy to control, but the younger women boded more chance of living alone and hence not being interrupted. The younger women wore hats over their heads, pulled low to keep their hair back. The hats, like their clothes, were gray. He would watch to see how they split up, to see where each person went.
None of them spoke. That was unusual. Maybe they had had a long shift at the manufacturing plants, or maybe they just didn’t know one another, but still, it struck Kane as odd.
But as he watched, something even more odd caught his eye. One group had paired off from the others and initially Kane had ignored them, not wanting to take on two people at once for the risk that one might escape and raise an alarm. Then he looked at them again and realized that one of the men was directing the other to an apartment. The man doing the directing was five foot eight with close-cropped blond hair and the familiar gray shirt and slacks.
The other man was Grant.
Designated Task #002: Intake
Ioville is self-sufficient. However, not all materials can be created on-site. Some require input from items found farther afield, in the barony that the ville inhabits.
Mineral deposits including metals have been brought in by the thousands of tons, and await smelting and molding into the many machines that we construct and rely upon. This raw material is stored deep below the ville itself, in a sublevel called Iota. Iota is carved out of bedrock, its walls like a cavern, and is piled high with deposits awaiting transportation to manufacture. There is also a great well here, which supplies much of the water for the ville. The remainder comes from rainwater gathered on the roofs of the towers, and distilled until it may be drunk.
I am asked to attend this deep basement level, known as Intake, only once, better to appreciate the hard work that is performed here by the diligent team of citizens. My attendance is overseen by Magistrates, and I am asked to wear a helmet over my head at all times. The helmet protects my face and covers my ears, and it produces a baffle sound loud enough to combat the roar of the water and other noises down here. It is the first place where I have seen color since I came to Ioville and it makes me feel anxious. The walls here are not gray or white.
My visit is brief. I report my sense of anxiousness to the proper authority. I am assured that this reaction is normal.
—From the journal of Citizen 619F.
Chapter 12
Kane watched as the blond-haired man guided Grant into one of the residential blocks. Grant was dressed in the same gray overalls as the blond man, and Kane guessed he was undercover, having reached the ville before him. That was the trouble with having their Commtacts offline—he could not discuss tactics and neither of them could inform the other of their movements.
He would get the full story as soon as Grant was alone—he just needed to wait for the other man to leave his partner’s side. Kane watched as the two men entered an apartment block together and disappeared from sight.
Kane waited ten minutes, twenty, hanging around the artificially lit street, pacing its length and stopping now and then in an effort to draw less attention to himself. Another trolleybus came after about twenty minutes, dropping off a half-dozen passengers before trundling away on its automated circuit. The people seemed bored and listless as they filed away to their respective dwelling units, moving in silence.
Finally, Blondie left the apartment building and Kane watched him go. He walked a few doors down before entering another building. Kane waited a little longer, making sure that the man was not coming back, then he trotted across the street toward the building where Grant had disappeared.
In a moment, Kane was through the lobby door and inside the residential block itself. The gray-walled lobby was illuminated by dim lighting, set high on the walls. There were eight doors feeding off from this communal entryway. Kane paced forward, selecting which door to try.
Be bold, he reminded himself. He may not be a Magistrate anymore but he could still carry himself like one if he needed to.
He tried the first door, pushing it gently until he could see inside the main area of the residential unit. The door opened straight onto a living area which featured a dining table with a single chair molded into it, a kitchenette positioned before it with a low counter backing directly onto the table. An open door to the right showed a compact, neatly kept bedroom area with a single bed and a low table containing a lone glass of water. The unit appeared empty, and Kane took just a moment to listen for sounds of a shower or bath running, a toilet being flushed. Nothing caught his ear.
Satisfied that there was no one here, Kane pulled the door closed and made his way to the next unit, peering inside. With the advent of the Program of Unification, no door here was locked, which made searching for Grant a little easier.
The next apartment featured a gray-looking man with bags under his eyes and a dull expression. The man was sitting in a low seat, staring at a glowing panel on the wall.
“’Scuse me, wrong door,” Kane bluffed, stepping out and pulling the door closed.
The man didn’t even look up.
Kane tried three more doors before finally locating Grant in the sixth apartment. Two of them had residents within, one a pretty young woman eating a bowl of what looked like gruel from the countertop, the other a young man with spiky hair that seemed at odds with his blank expression. Neither resident challenged Kane.
When he opened the sixth door and saw Grant, Kane stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Grant was in the bedroom, standing before the open wardrobe where empty hangers were fixed to the rail.
“Grant,” Kane began. “Hey, buddy.”
It took a few seconds for Grant to turn, and when he did there was a look of confusion on his furrowed brow.
“So you got here before me,” Kane barreled on, marching across to his friend. “How did you get here? I hitched a ride on that juggernaut that almost ran us down, ended up in a garage area way, way downstairs. How about you?”
Grant looked at Kane with that same bemused expression.
“Grant...?” Kane asked, waving a hand before his partner’s eyes. “You okay? Cat got your crotch?”
Grant looked Kane over slowly. “You don’t belong here,” he pronounced in his low rumble.
“Say what?”
“You must be returned to Processing, I think,” Grant explained. “You shouldn’t be walking around like that.”
“Processing?” Kane spit. “What the hell are you talking—?”
Grant stepped behind Kane in an instant, the old Magistrate training as strong as ever. He grabbed Kane from behind, pinning one of his arms tightly behind his back. “Come with me,” Grant said emotionlessly. “I’ll get you some help.”
Kane struggled against the grip, recalling his own training and breaking Grant’s lock with a roll of his shoulders.
“Help?” Kane barked, glaring at his buddy. “I don’t need help. What the hell has got into you? Look, partner—”
Grant swung for him then, right fist whipping out like a ball from a cannon, cutting the air to strike solidly against Kane’s jaw.
Kane saw the blow coming and he responded without conscious thought, dropping back and rolling with the punch. He was up in a second, but Grant stalked toward him across the bedroom, a look of intolerance and determination on his face.
Kane leaped out of the way of Grant’s next attack, slipping to the side of his partner before stepping in closer and grabbing him around the shoulder. Now the two men were face-to-face.
“Look, Grant,” Kane whispered, keeping his voice low. “If this is some act, just give me the sign.”
Grant didn’t give Kane any signal. Instead he shoved Kane away so that the younger man slammed against the nearby wall with a crash.
Okay, Kane realized. Something’s going on here and I do
n’t have one clue what.
He figured that Grant had some answers, but getting to them may take time—and he didn’t relish fighting his brother-in-arms to get to those answers right now, not until he had a better idea of what he had walked into. Instead, Kane weaved past Grant, leaping over the single bed and springing from it to the open door to the room.
Grant stalked after him, lumbering and slow as if his energy level was low.
Kane grabbed the front door handle and pulled the door open, stepping outside. Grant was a few paces behind him and losing ground quickly. Kane ran through the lobby area of the residential block and out through the main door, his mind racing as he wondered where to go now.
On the one hand, he wanted to stick with Grant—if his partner was in trouble, then abandoning him felt like a traitorous thing to do. On the other hand, while Grant was like this there was little benefit in Kane fighting with the man and potentially drawing attention to them both with the commotion. It seemed that this apartment had been—assigned maybe?—to Grant, perhaps by the blond man. The way Grant was fiddling with the empty wardrobe certainly suggested so. Which meant that Grant should still be here when Kane came to look for him again—only the next time, Kane would be prepared to restrain his buddy before things escalated out of hand.
Kane thought all of this as he dashed through the door and out into the covered street beyond. But as he ran, another trolleybus pulled up and something else caught his eye. No, not something—someone. There, sitting on the bus with her head against the window, was Brigid Baptiste.
Designated Task #001: Air Monitoring
Why is Air Monitoring so critical to the running of Ioville? This is a question which has haunted me since my experience in training and observing the monitoring area on Cappa Level. I know of no ville that has a history of problems with air circulation, and yet the precautions here seem unduly stringent and meticulous.
The obvious way to learn more is blocked to me, because asking questions is discouraged. Furthermore, I suspect that few in my circle of experience would know the answers. Thus, I shall need to employ the resources I have at hand in a more imaginative way, albeit with discretion.