Undercity - eARC

by Catherine Asaro

  “Enough,” I said.

  Jak glanced at me. “Of what?”

  Unbidden and unwanted, words tore out from deep within me, jagged like shards of broken glass. “The criminals aren’t the dust rats or the riders or the punkers. It’s everyone up here living their magical lives, oblivious to the children dying in the dark.”

  It was a long time before Jak answered. Finally he said, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” I wanted to shake him. “How can you say ‘maybe’?”

  “We let the system break,” he said. “Us. The undercity. We don’t need the above-city to fix us. It’s our world to make better, not theirs.”

  “Asking for help isn’t a crime.”

  “They ‘help’ by stealing our children. What do you think they would do if we kidnapped theirs?” Anger edged his voice. “Our children always come back. You did. You came home.”

  I didn’t want to hear him. “It’s home because we don’t goddamned know any better.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Why, because you think you know better?” He spoke in perfect above-city speech, contrary to the prejudice in Cries that our language was the result of stupidity and poor education rather than the evolution of an ancient dialect. “The aqueducts won’t stop being home because you say they should. Why do you want the above-city? People here, in those rare times they deign to notice us, claim they know us. They don’t know shit. They discount our lives, our histories, what we feel, they even tell us, when we recount our experiences, that those experiences aren’t valid. No matter what they say, that won’t stop the undercity from being our home.”

  “And it’s such a great home.” I rounded on him, shaking with that terrifying anger I had always channeled into anything else so I wouldn’t feel it crushing me. “Dying in secret. For what? The only way I could ask for your help tonight was to send out a spy beetle, which found a dust ganger who helps Gourd, who found Gourd, who had to search you out because you’re so damn secretive, lately even I can’t find you. What the bloody hell are we all hiding from?”

  “It’s not hiding,” Jak said. “It’s a way of life.” His voice was unrelenting. “Yours, too. You can leave the physical aqueducts, Bhaaj, but you can never take them out of your heart.”

  “I never wanted to come back.”

  He looked away, his expression shuttered.

  I exhaled. I had left him, too, that day I walked out of the aqueducts. We were talking in above-city speech because it was too difficult to say these things in the undercity dialect. But for this moment, I needed the language of our youth. In its lack of words, it would speak volumes.

  “Got one reason to come back,” I told him. “One damn good reason.”

  He looked at me, the hint of a smile curving his lips. “Yah, Bhaajo.”

  That nickname brought a flood of memories. He had called me Bhaajo the first time we made love, the two of us twelve years old. I had loved Jak, and denied that love, for my entire life.

  We sat together, staring across the park at the glowing lanterns that bobbed in the breezes.

  After a while, Jak said, “You find anything about Scorch in the Alcove?”

  I shook my head. “Just some artifact. Plumbing.”

  “Yah.” He didn’t sound surprised.

  “Seen the pipes?” I asked.

  “Heard about. Never cared to look.” He shrugged. “Ruins are all over Cries. Dying cities, dying world.”

  And dying mothers. I felt so tired. “Got to go home,” I said in a low voice. The penthouse wasn’t truly home, and it never would be, but I couldn’t go back to the aqueducts. I needed this night to push away the shadows, and I knew only one way to defeat them. I spoke softly. “Come with?”

  Jak smiled then, that terrifying smile, the one he never showed anyone else. It wasn’t cocky or smug or any other part of the Black Mark’s owner. This smile was gentle.

  “Yah,” he murmured. “I come with.”

  * * *

  The dawn lined the horizon for what seemed like forever. It had been there when Jak left this morning, after our many warm hours together, and it was still here an hour later. Raylicon turned too slowly for the sun to rise in any sensible manner.

  I sat sprawled on the couch with a virtual terminal floating above the table in front of me. “EI,” I said.

  The penthouse EI answered. “Yes?”

  “I have a name for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Interface.”

  “Is that a command or the name?”

  “The name.” It still didn’t feel right, but it was the best I had come up with.

  “Why do you want to call me Interface?” it asked.

  “It’s what you are,” I said. “My interface with the above-city world. With Cries.”

  “I don’t think it fits.”

  I blinked. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t believe it is an appropriate name.”

  For flaming sake. The EI was arguing with me. “Why not?”

  “It refers to a single technical aspect of my functions.”

  I supposed it had a point. “All right. I’ll think some more.”

  “What can I do for you this morning?”

  Good question. “Yesterday Max sent you a recording of an artifact in the ruins.”

  “Yes, I have it. I did a preliminary analysis on the symbols etched onto its surface.”

  Although I had thought of asking it for an analysis, I hadn’t yet. This EI wasn’t designed for that sort of investigation. “Why did you do that?”

  “In case you weren’t logical enough to ask me to do it.”

  Maybe I should name it Annoying. “What did you find?”

  “The hieroglyphics are ancient Iotic, the labels for a plumbing system.”

  “Well, that’s exciting.”

  “My voice analysis suggests you are speaking with irony.”

  I smiled. “You think?”

  “Not literally. I simulate thought.”

  I sighed. I didn’t believe General Vaj Majda had programmed this EI. She had far more subtlety. “Tell me something. Who designed you? I don’t mean who specified the parameters, but who actually set up your programming?”

  “Captain Takkar and her techs.”

  That made sense. However, it also made me wonder. The EI could be irksome, sure, but it wasn’t unreasonable. It tried to help. If Takkar had wanted to bedevil me, she could have done a lot worse. My view of the chief shifted like an optical illusion where stairs going in one direction suddenly appeared as if they were going the other way. Maybe Dayj was right that Takkar had no link to Scorch’s operation. I wasn’t ready to give her a pass yet, but it made me think.

  “What I don’t get,” I said, “is why anyone thought I’d find something useful in the Alcove.”

  “Perhaps the evidence was removed before you went there.”

  My gut said no, and so did Max’s analysis of the dirt in the Alcove. “No one has disturbed that cave since before we rescued Dayj.”

  “Then I don’t know the answer to your query,” the EI said.

  I sat watching the horizon, a red line below the dark sky. “This is what I know. Scorch was funneling weapons through the undercity for some arms dealer whose main operation is offworld. Now Scorch is dead.” A strange feeling came over me. Remorse? It couldn’t be. She had tried to kill me, she’d tortured and assaulted Dayj, and someday she might have sold him. The Traders would pay an unimaginable price for a Skolian prince, a man whose looks would make him a top pleasure slave and whose Kyle abilities would let them steal access to the Kyle net.

  Even so. Something was off. “It doesn’t add up,” I said. “Scorch’s operation was one cog in a much larger ring with no other links in the undercity. My job here is almost done. I just need to find the missing weapons. And that drug punker had a nice, new carbine. So the Kajada cartel probably stole the weapons. That explains why they didn’t act against me or
Jak. Dig would never shoot us.”

  “It sounds like it adds up quite well,” the EI said.

  “I feel like I’m missing something.”

  “You still have to recover the weapons.”

  “Yah.” But that wasn’t what bothered me. “Gourd said something was in the Alcove.”

  “Gourds do not speak.”

  I sighed. “It’s a name. A man.”

  “Ah. What did he say was there?”

  “He didn’t know.” I sat pondering. “What’s unique about the Alcove? Really old plumbing, but who would care except a scientist?” An unwelcome thought formed in my mind. “EI, bring up the images of that plumbing system.”

  Holos of the artifact appeared, floating above my table. They rotated slowly, showing me the silvery curve from various angles.

  “You know,” I said. “That pipe is intact.”

  “What we can see,” the EI said. “Most of it is hidden in the rock ceiling.”

  “If the rest of it is like what we see, it probably still works.”

  “Works?”

  “As plumbing. It could bring water to the Alcove.”

  “Possibly. The artifact appears sound. It’s designed from a material known for its durability.”

  Indeed. “So Scorch could have imprisoned someone in the Alcove and used the pipes to provide water.” Tightly I added, “Or to withhold it.” That offered a way to control her prisoner.

  “Do you think she kept Prince Dayjarind there?”

  “No, actually not.” It still wasn’t adding up. “He was in a cave two levels above the Alcove.”

  “Then who?”

  “I have no clue.” Maybe I was just talking into the wind. Or the sunrise. Out across the dead ocean, the sun was finally lifting its golden orb above the horizon.

  “I’ve been wondering something,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me that Dayj and his father were full empaths, and that most of the Majdas were psions to some degree or another?”

  “It isn’t data they wish made known.”

  “You shouldn’t withhold facts. You never know what might turn out to be useful.”

  “I will file your response with the Majdas.”

  So it did report back to them. No surprise there. I picked up a tumbler of kava I had poured for Jak and took a swallow. It went through me like a jolt of fire. Ah yes, that was good.

  “Tell me about this empath thing,” I said. “Do the Majda’s breed it into their line?”

  “Most native Raylicans carry traces of Kyle DNA. Probably including you.”

  “Yeah, right.” I was as empathic as a rock. “The army tested me. I don’t manifest any traits.”

  “You descend from the original Raylicans. They were all psions.”

  “Hardly anyone here is now.” The occurrence wasn’t any higher in the general Raylicon population than anywhere else. “What happened to them all?”

  “Genetic drift. Natural selection. Many negative mutations are associated with the Kyle traits.” Then it added, “However, two populations here have bred for them over the millennia.”

  “The Majdas.”

  “That is correct. Also, the Abaj Tacalique.”

  “Huh.” I had heard the Abaj were psions. That was why they kept to themselves, living out in the desert. I supposed it also made sense about the Majdas. It wasn’t only them, but all the noble Houses and the Ruby Dynasty as well. Royalty and the aristocracy could be compulsive about who they married, with reasons that rarely seemed connected to love.

  * * *

  I sent my beetle bots to scour the Alcove, and I searched the cave where Scorch had stored her cache of stolen guns. I even lay on my stomach at the back and mapped out the warren of cracks, crevices, and rocks there, hoping to find any stray debris left behind. No luck. I couldn’t unearth a single clue about who had lifted the weapons or where they took the crates.

  Finally I stood up, rubbing an ache in the small of my back. That was when I realized I had company. A dust gang stood a few paces away, two girls and two boys. The taller girl looked familiar. Yes, I remembered. She had spied on me yesterday, then run off with the sandwich and snap bottle I left her.

  “Ho,” I said, for want of a better response. At least they weren’t trying to shoot me, like the punkers yesterday. I wasn’t wearing my jacket, so my holster with its pulse gun was in full view.

  “Find any stuff?” the water-bottle girl asked. Blue are red powder dusted her dark hair.

  “No stuff,” I said. “You know where it went?”

  “Gone,” one of the boys said.

  “Gone where?” I asked.

  “Gone,” the second girl said.

  “Fast,” the second boy added.

  “Gone fast, yah,” I agreed.

  “Not the crates,” the water-bottle girl said. “Jump fast.” She leapt to one side, snapping up her fists, then stood and regarded me as if waiting for an answer.

  I squinted at her. “Jump?”

  The first boy repeated the sequence, jumping and then waiting. I wasn’t sure, but I thought they were mimicking my moves in the canal yesterday when I had fought the punkers.

  “Yah, jump,” I said. “Fast.” This was so odd. Not only weren’t they hiding or trying to mug me, they seemed to expect something. They looked at me, and I looked back at them.

  Then it hit me. Of course. The way they stood at attention, like troops ready for training—we had done that in my youth, too, choosing leaders who drilled us in fighting moves.

  I thumped my abdomen. “Got biomech. That’s why I’m fast.”

  “Biomech?” the first boy asked.

  “Like a Jagernaut,” I said.

  Their eyes widened. They might not be familiar with the military, but everyone knew about Jagernauts, the elite fighter pilots of ISC.

  The second boy nodded with approval. “Good mech.”

  “Yah,” I said. “Good mech.” I kicked out my leg to the side in a tykado move, a form of martial arts I had learned as a grunt and studied for years, both in and later out of the army. My leg moved in a blur. The thick heal of my boot slammed into a stalactite and knocked off the stone tip. Even before it clattered to the floor, I had pulled my leg back. I stood there and held back my grin while they gaped at me, at the broken cone of rock, and at me again.

  “Eh,” the water-bottle girl said. She kicked her leg to the side in a much slower version of what I had just done. It wasn’t bad, actually. She wasn’t using enough force and her technique needed work, but she had good height and flexibility.

  I nodded, acknowledging her effort. Then I spoke to the others. “You do.”

  They all tried the same kick. The first boy gave it more force but less height, and the second boy moved awkwardly, but with more speed. The second girl lost her balance and fell against the cone of rock. The others laughed and she glared at them.

  “Good start,” I told them. I glanced at the girl who had stumbled. “All of you.”

  “Not rough-tumble,” she said.

  She had a point. The rough-tumble was what we called gang fighting. These four were good at it, judged by their ability to move, but it wasn’t the same as formalized martial arts.

  “Tykado is harder than the rough-tumble,” I said.

  “Teach us,” the water girl said.

  They all stood watching me with expectation.

  Well, hell. I supposed I could drill them on a few moves.

  “Need more control,” I told them. “Got to warm up, too.”

  So began the tykado lesson.

  * * *

  I had lunch on the Concourse. Tourists strolled along the shops, all thinking they were experiencing the exotic underside of Cries. Yah, right. The Concourse was a glossy cheat. It ran one level below ground, and its skylights let sunlight stream over the restaurants, shops, and boutiques. I didn’t visit often, but the Sand Shadow Café up here served the best kava in the city, no to mention those succulent rolls crammed with peppered meat and drench
ed in pizo sauces. We all had our weaknesses. So today I indulged mine while I pondered Scorch. What had she hidden in the Alcove? A person? If so, I had no clues as to who they were or what had happened to them.

  The café was on a raised walkway above the Concourse, and I sat on the terrace outside so I could watch people go by in their colorful clothes, tunics fringed in tassels and blowsy trousers. The delicious smell of spices saturated the air. No wonder I was hungry. You could practically eat the mouth-watering aromas. Content, I sat back and enjoyed my meat roll.

  A shadow fell across my table from behind. I stayed in the same position as if I hadn’t noticed, but I tensed, ready to spring up and defend myself.

  A tall woman with the look of a seasoned fighter walked around the table and sat across from me. She was my age, but without the advantages of age-delaying nanomeds. Grey showed at the temples of her black hair and lines creased the corners of her eyes. A gnarled scar ran along her neck, as if someone had tried to cut off her head. Given their spectacular failure, I doubted they were still alive. She wore dark trousers with a heavy belt and a muscle shirt that did nothing to hide her lean, well-built physique. Simple clothes, yes, but not cheap. They were designed from smart-cloth, able to warm or cool her body, clever enough to change color if needed, and supple enough to aide her movements. She wore the outfit with the casual disregard of someone who didn’t care about its quality, a rare trait in the undercity. The years had changed her almost beyond recognition, but I would know her anywhere.

  “Dig,” I said.

  She nodded. “Bhaaj.”

  “Met your punks.”

  She said only, “Yah. Dumb punks,” but that was enough, an apology, undercity style. It was also her admission that yes, they were her punks, which meant she now ran the Kajada cartel. No surprise there, but I wished it weren’t true.

  “Long time,” she said.

  I nodded. How else could I answer? Dig was the last person I had seen before I enlisted. We had stood together by the exit from the undercity into the Concourse, and in all the years since, I had tried to forget our bitter argument that morning.

  Today she said only, “You done with the army?”

  “Yah,” I said. “I work private.”

  “Heard.” Her dark gaze remained impassive. “Whisper says Majda.”