Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  The student union feels large, like a cocoon. Academia takes care of me.

  My hand closes around the key, becoming its own fist-sized envirosuit, and I walk toward the lockers on the other side of the building.

  ~ ~ ~

  Up, down, left, right—you never know which way you’re pointing when you’re traveling inside the arm of giant walking city…

  Cop Killer

  I always thought the poison apples were an urban legend. They say we humans are lice in our fair White Snow’s hair and when she feels particularly overrun by her parasites, she makes us culling “gifts.” We chew, sleep the eternal sleep, and the clean-up crews dump our dead bodies out the disposal hatches along the sides of our walking world’s great toes.

  But it’s a childish scare. One meant to represent the subsumed fear we all feel here, crammed together inside our mountain-sized, walking god-cities.

  That’s what I believed—until we got the call about a pretty boy in a rich woman’s garden.

  “There!” In one graceful movement, my partner Jensen throws open our vehicle’s passenger side door and rolls out onto the corridor’s flat surface. He’s a big bear-like man of a detective, and with his bear-brown hair and his bear-brown eyes, he’s deceptively sweet looking. But like all bears, he’s agile and could scare the crap out of even the most fearless when he bares his teeth, which makes him a particularly useful partner.

  Perps cooperate when they see him behind me, his beefy arms crossed over his chest and his gaze piercing as he watches over my shoulder. Little old me looks nice by comparison, with my goldilocks curls and sweet eyes, and the bad guys act nice when the big guy stays back.

  Jensen’s out in front of me, his smart-tether latching onto the nearest pier support. Posh neighborhoods like this one built into the tip of White Snow’s mech ring finger are a web of spherical gardens and hanging houses. The new rich living out here—young ones who thought it would be an adventure to have a house in one of White Snow’s hands—can afford the extra equipment needed to stomach the g-force acceleration and the gripping and the strains of living inside the hand of a colossus.

  Us, not so much. But we have our smart tethers and we’re mostly safe from the pitch and yaw of a world moving in three dimensions.

  The strain, though, tends to be more than even the rich can tolerate. The last I’d heard, a lot of these places were being sold off to time-share and bed-and-breakfasts. The area, though bright, did look empty. And empty always caused trouble. Unsavory trouble, like the sensor phantom we’re chasing.

  I look toward where Jensen points and see a kid scramble over the corridor’s cushioned supports. White Snow’s fingernail diffuses outside light here and the entire space—the suspended travel corridor, the anchor piers holding its twisting path through the huge servos and pistons, the hanging houses and their gardens—all glimmer as if someone dusted the tip of White Snow’s ring finger with fairy dust.

  Jensen’s off, springing after the kid, his tether lengthening and contracting as it moves with him from one pier branch to another. He’s a man-bear ninja, my partner, and all I can do is marvel at his leaps and bounds.

  I hear yelling. Branches rustle and a dove takes flight. Scents of oranges and other citrus fruits waft from the billion dollar garden sphere hanging above my head.

  The prettiest boy I have ever seen drops out of the leaves, swaying on his tether, right in front of my face.

  He blinks beautiful green eyes. They twinkle like opals and catch the light just right when he tilts his head, like he’d been augmented for the entertainment complexes in White Snow’s left shoulder blade.

  “Take it,” he says, and holds out the apple.

  “Drop it!” I draw my gun on instinct. The next moment, it’s pointing at the kid’s nose. He holds a damned fruit, not a weapon, but sometimes the urban legends get into your gut. Even the gut of a cop.

  He blinks, his pretty gaze moving from my face, to the apple, and back again. “Could I set it down instead? It might bruise.” His voice is like honey, smooth and soothing, and I’m absolutely sure I’m dealing with an augmented performer from the Blades. “Or it might roll away.”

  The pretty boy holds out the apple, batting his pretty eyes at me. “It’s from…” He glances up. “It’s from that garden.”

  “What are you doing out here?” I flick my gun side to side, indicating the entire Nail.

  He doesn’t move or try to set down the apple. “It can’t roll away. She moves and it might roll into her workings. It’s not for her.”

  “You out here stealing food?” I nod toward the apple. He’s a crazy pretty kid and if he’s hungry too, breaking and entering in a semi-deserted neighborhood might seem like a good idea.

  Jensen drops out of the garden to the side of the kid, standing on a loop of his tether. He’s running diagnostics and identifications on both the kid and his tether, and his link unit shimmers slightly in the Nail’s haze. The kid’s probably the phantom in the sensor system, which means he’d set a cloak. People do it all the time; it’s not like it’s illegal. But most people are smart enough to drop it the second they’re approached by a cop.

  The pretty boy bats his lovely eyes. He yanks on his tether, obviously wondering why he’s still hanging. There’s surface under him and it should have set him down, but I suspect Jensen froze the kid’s controls.

  “Answer my question.” I don’t move closer. Even a frozen tether still has give and he could swing into me at any time.

  “Here. Take it.” He holds out the apple again, but his skinny hand jitters.

  Jensen sees it too and his gun arm comes up. “Why are you out here without proper tags?”

  The pretty boy bats his eyes again. “What?”

  Jensen’s back is rigid and I see his hips tightening up. My body responds, mirroring his posture. We’ve been partners long enough our bodies work together, no matter how I try to keep my own wits about me.

  “Set the apple on the surface. Slowly.” I swing to the side as first Jensen’s the then kid’s feet hit the corridor’s flat side.

  The pretty boy blinks his cartoon eyes and his arms go limp, like he’s got some sort of early warning system. I’d heard rumors of new augmentations. Advances in subsonic sound detection similar to what lets the dogs and snakes in the Feet hear earthquakes before they happen.

  The pretty boy’s tether bows between him and the corridor’s flat surface, which, right now, is at a slight angle to what gravity says is down. Our vehicle sits at the same angle, as much a part of the flat as the infrastructure suspending the corridor between the mansions and their art-sphere gardens.

  Above our heads, a shadow flexes over White Snow’s nail. I fight the desire to look up, to see the arc of our city’s middle finger as it moves next to her ring, where we are. Instead, I relax my body, praying like I do every time she moves that my tether and my harness will hold.

  When the acceleration of our mech city’s hand gesture hits me, I slam toward the cushioned surface of our car.

  The pretty boy slams toward me.

  ***

  The legends say that the mechs are alive. That humans are parasites and our five hundred story tall city won’t tolerate bugs in her guts or lice in the fine solar array tentacles of her raven-black hair. She walks and talks to others cities but White Snow is the fairest of them all and she’s too beautiful to be infested.

  I know our history: The five were the pinnacle of entertainment technology. Hotels, theme parks, industries—hell, an entire ecosystem, all within a low mountain of fairy tale character. Giant fairy tale characters dancing their way through the Mohave Desert! It’s brilliant! It’s fun! You will only find the meaning of life inside a dancing, singing city.

  The cities roamed. They were clean and stable, and they grew their own food. The multinationals investing in the architecture and infrastructure ran the interior trains on time and did very well fleecing tourists of their hard-earned vacation stashes.

>   So life in White Snow, or Rella, or Princetown quickly became the most sought after work. When Wei-Ling and Baba opened on their continents, the same followed. The multinationals cashed in—until the Space Agencies didn’t see the Big One coming. After The Hit, living inside became a necessity, not privilege. Or maybe it stayed a privilege. I try not to think too much about it.

  But I know the city pilots aren’t really pilots. And I know the crew isn’t really a crew. White Snow twists and flutters her giant skirt while batting her eyelashes at Princetown without any guidance at all from the people “in charge.”

  She really may not like her lice. I don’t know, but sometimes I do wonder if the urban legends are true.

  Now, she moves her hand and my tether snaps taut and the vibration works from my muscles to my bones and into my teeth. My head swings and the pressure against my inner ear pushes left to up and up to in front of me. I’m hanging from our vehicle between two cloud supports, both as soft and sickly sweet-colored as cotton candy. My body re-orients to gravity, but it takes a second.

  The pretty boy swings by, arcing his tether like a magician, and vanishes into the garden supports, the apple with him.

  Behind me, Jensen swears. He’s looped his tether around the bottom of both his feet and is standing on the line, acrobat-style. He might be big and broad-chested, but the man can move.

  “Where did that little shit go?” Jensen’s swinging around, scanning all the other supports, holding to the line with his feet so he can aim his gun.

  I see no movement. White Snow changes her hand position again and we swing away, our car now over our heads. I drop.

  My smart-tether looks for a solid surface oriented as under. My feet hit the interior membrane under the Nail—the translucent pillow people jokingly refers to as the “subdermal fatty deposits.” They can call it what they want, but it buffers the outside and it keeps our life blood—air and water—inside.

  I sink in up to my knees and the membrane sucks at my legs, keeping me from moving deeper while at the same time holding me safely still. Jensen’s doing his acrobat thing again, and he’s off the membrane. The pretty boy is nowhere in sight.

  “He must have climbed.” I catch a flicker between cross piers. It’s the pretty boy and I yank my tether to key it to retract.

  Jensen swings wide, toward the house. His smart-tether wraps around one of the piers anchoring a particularly egregious house to its even more egregious garden sphere. Out here, up and down regularly become down and up, and the building’s design reflects the spinning nature of life in the hands. Roof means nothing, basement even less, and walls become floors more often than the owners take a piss.

  More shifts and the membrane rolls to up and right. My tether contracts and the vibration sends sensations into my hands—it’s swinging me toward the garden.

  I hit with a thud. The owner padded the supports only to legal minimum. The rich don’t care about protection. They pay for sleek lines and prettiness, which is what they get.

  Like the kid. He’s skinny, but in a cheetah sort of way. I’ve seen real cats, all augmented to make them safe for little children to fondle, and this kid has that “I’d rip out your intestines if I didn’t have this damned chip in my head” look.

  Crazy, like I thought.

  There’s no noise, not rustling in the leaves. White Snow must be reaching out her hand, and everything moves—and stays—in one direction at the same rate. The g-force flattens me against one of the hard supports and I suck in my breath, praying she’ll get through this fast and I won’t black out.

  In the center of the garden, the tree trunks meet. Their branches mingle and where one starts and the next stops is anyone’s guess. The big bushy orange and lemon trees in here give off the citrus scent I’d smelled before.

  A human-shaped shadow moves from one suspended trunk to another. The kid leans into the g-force, his grip-soled feet hugging a branch as he crawls toward me, one hand on his tether, the other holding his apple.

  The g-force holds me flat against the support, but somehow, the kid doesn’t seem affected.

  “Your genes look natural.” Pretty boy moves quickly. He’s in my face, smelling just as tasty as the fruit, but in a pheromone-laced way. He sniffs at my neck. This close I see the extent of his augmentations. The opal of his eyes is really a nictitating membrane. He slides it out, blinking, and cocks his head at me again, like a puppy. “Not many unaugmented.”

  I’m still flat against the support. A ridge digs into my back and it hurts, throwing another distraction onto this moment. It’s getting hard to breathe.

  The pretty boy’s face is square and handsome, like a prince. His dark hair is so black it gleams violet, and I wonder if he’s not a boy but one of the automatons from the plays on the Blades. But his breath smells nice, warm and masculine, and I immediately think pheromones again. He’s not from the entertainment complexes in the Blades. He’s from the other district. The one lower down.

  “You are a long way from home,” I croak out.

  Blinking again, his nictitating membrane sliding fully over his eyes, he pulls back suddenly. Into the g-force.

  He’s strong, too.

  “How did you know?” Pretty boy’s face wiggles with puzzlement, his eyebrows dancing and his mouth tightening into a thin line.

  Oh yeah. Card-carrying crazy.

  “My partner is nearby. You saw him move. You won’t get away.”

  He’s blinking still, but my words seem to push through his confusion. “Did you know they still bring in soil and water and people from outside? That’s how I got in.”

  No, there weren’t. White Snow, Rella, and Princetown stayed together, trading and moving as a unit across what was left of the world—we’d all seen the vids—but we’re a closed system of three. No need to bring in contamination.

  “It’s not dead.” He sniffs like he read my mind. “Quite the contrary. Not dead at all.”

  It didn’t matter if Outside lived or not. The problem was that humans couldn’t live in it, so we stayed Inside. Even if White Snow wanted to rid herself of us.

  Which I don’t believe. I’ve never believed the stories. It’s fear mongering, only.

  The acceleration slows and I breathe better, but I still can’t move fast enough to pull my gun arm up.

  Again like he’s read my mind, pretty boy glances at my hand. “Are you going to shoot me?” He has that apple still. The fruit of dreams, inside White Snow. It’s still as beautiful as him, and still unmarred by the forces around it.

  A Cheshire smile spreads across his handsome face. “I’ve never been shot before.”

  For the first time, fear mingles with my guts’ flattening and I want to throw up. I want to puke on the pretty boy and his crazy and make him get the hell away from me.

  “You can have it,” he says, holding the apple in front of my nose. Crispness tickles both my nostrils and my lips and I want to take a bite in the same pheromone-laced way I want to be next to the pretty boy.

  “It’s okay. It’s not poison. It will help. It will help all of you. You can live outside again. Isn’t that what your kind wants? To walk your world again?” He’s blinks in an unnatural rhythm and I can’t help but think frog. But he’s not a frog. He’s lovely.

  “We had a malfunction. We didn’t mean to crash into your world. We’re very sorry.” The apple rubs against my lips.

  I want it, even with my stomach pressing into my throat. Even as White Snow twists her hand and we roll forward, up becoming front and down becoming back.

  Pretty boy and I hang, but he clutches the branch with his grip-soles and seems less perturbed by the shift than even the best free climbers. I don’t drop away from the support—the g-force cranks on my neck and my gut pushes toward my feet. I slid down the surface, held to it by the g-force, but facing downward. Untethered, I’d bounce through the piers and the corridors, a bag of meat falling and falling.

  My muscles cinch. My tether contracts with
a hiss and I know I won’t fall, but the fear is still there. And for a moment, I forget about the pretty boy and his apple.

  Below me, the diffuse pinkness of the Nail abruptly shifts blue. Through the garden’s sphere, I glimpse strips of violet shadow falling across this rich person’s neighborhood. White Snow is about to place her hand on Princetown’s shoulder.

  We’re going to dock to the other city, if only for a quick moment, probably to do data exchange. Maybe an energy trade. But there’s always potential for crossing when these quick touches happen. Conduits always open.

  My mind snaps back to the pretty boy. He’s eyeing the subdermal fatty layer, watching for, I assume, a pore to open.

  Damn it, I think. That’s why he’s here. Crossings at the Nethers are strictly controlled. But most pores open and close too fast for people to cross. Unless they’re crazy. And strong.

  “You are under arrest for assaulting an officer.” Maybe I can scare him into not moving.

  He blinks at me again, his brow knitting.

  A clunk reverberates through the neighborhood, more a quake than a sound, and the g-force stops with sudden, jarring intensity.

  I drop away from the support, expecting my tether to hold me in open space, hanging safely.

  Except I don’t stop. The pretty boy must have done something. Panic spasms my muscles and I drop my gun but not my training. I don’t let out the scream sticking in my throat. I dive. I twist. But I don’t scream.

  I’m through branches and between supports before I breathe again, rolling first left, then right. My body can’t be distracted. The tether will work. It’s whipping and—

  The pretty boy snatches me. I jerk upward, my tether finding its control and snaking around his, taking hold. I’m above the fatty layer, swinging, safe for the moment.

  The pretty boy’s arm wraps around my waist and he’s staring at my face, his weird eyes gleaming. “You were born like this, right? No augmentations to meddle?”