Undercity - eARC

by Catherine Asaro

  I finally spoke, stunned, but finally understanding. “Our ancestors went under the city because their minds couldn’t take the flood of human emotions drowning them. They withdrew from the rest of humanity. “Yes, I saw now. The isolation protected us. Over the ages, deep within the canals, my ancestors had lived, loved, and interbred, concentrating the psionic traits of the ancient Raylican people.

  Lavinda spoke quietly. “I don’t know if this is the greatest crime ever committed on our world or our greatest miracle.”

  Both, I thought.

  A silence fell over the Center. Conversations died down and even the small children went silent as people looked toward the doorway. I turned—and stiffened.

  A woman had walked into the room. She resembled the drug punkers, but in the way that a grown desert-lion resembled its cubs. This was no throwback to the barbarian queens of our past, this was the real thing. She stood as tall as Lavinda, as muscled as Singer, as scarred as Ruzik, and as implacable as Scorch. She looked like she had been through hell. Her clothes were burned, her right arm was obviously broken in several places, and gashes covered her body, crusted with dried blood, purpled by bruises. She held a primed carbine in her hand, ready to shoot, with the snout pointed at the ceiling. She had a tangler in her other hand, also drawn, pointing at the floor between mine and Lavinda’s feet. She stood there like an avenging demon come to exact her price for the devastation of her empire.

  Dig had survived.

  The soldiers did what, for them, was the only logical action. Two moved to guard the table with the guns, preventing anyone from retrieving them. That meant Dig was the only openly armed cartel member in a room with both Vakaars and Kajadas. Either the cartels had been larger than we thought or not as many had died as the army believed, because I counted the insignia of at least five Vakaars, including Singer, and four Kajadas, including Digjan. Right now, with one violent sweep of her carbine, Dig could slaughter the surviving Vakaars before they had a chance to move. The soldiers would fire, but I had no doubt Dig had better biomech than any of us. She could move fast enough to achieve her goal before she died. That she would kill many other people in the process wouldn’t stop her if she were furious enough over the destruction of her cartel.

  Lavinda tapped her comm and spoke in a low, fast voice. “Takkar, get me a unit—”

  “No.” I laid my hand on her wrist and prayed people didn’t get court-marshaled for touching Majda royalty without permission.

  Lavinda moved away her arm, but she stopped speaking.

  “Colonel?” Takkar’s voice came out of the comm. “A unit of what?”

  With her gaze on Dig, Lavinda said, “Wait, Captain.”

  Dig continued watching us. I tilted my head toward the wall where her daughter stood with the other two Kajada punkers. Dig glanced that way, and Digjan nodded to her mother, her body tensed. Dig inclined her head, and I understood her unspoken message to her daughter. Wait.

  We all waited. The soldiers in the room kept their hands on their guns.

  Dig walked forward, limping badly. It looked like only sheer determination kept her going. She came on, approaching Lavinda and me. One of the soldiers stepped closer to Lavinda, but the colonel shook her head and the soldier stopped. Everyone was watching that carbine Dig had aimed at the ceiling and the tangler pointed between our feet.

  Dig approached steadily despite her limp, but I knew what it cost her. I knew her tells. She was in excruciating pain. Gods only know what had happened to her when the canal collapsed or how long she had been down there before she crawled free.

  She didn’t come directly to us. Instead she went to the table with the guns. A soldier stood in front of the piled weapons, blocking her way. She looked at him, her face hard. We all tensed as she lowered her carbine—

  And handed it to the soldier.

  Gods above. Had that actually happened? I watched with disbelief as Dig also gave him her tangler. I hoped the people here realized the freaking miracle they had just witnessed, that Dig Kajada willingly surrendered her weapons.

  Dig turned and spoke to Lavinda in her rasping voice, her words strained and careful, for she was doing her best to use above-city speech rather than undercity dialect.

  “Colonel,” Dig said. “I understand that anyone who comes here, for this one day, has got sanctuary. No matter who they are.”

  I could almost feel how badly Lavinda wanted to deny those words, how much she wanted to clap Dig into the technological version of irons.

  The colonel said only, “That is correct.”

  Dig tapped a panel on her gauntlet and spoke into her comm. “Bring them.”

  In response, a Center volunteer from outside walked through the sunlight streaming into the center—and he brought with him three children, a boy and two girls ranging in age from about six to twelve. Canal dust covered them, their clothes crusted with blue and red powder as if an avalanche had buried them. Bruises and gashes covered their skin, but none of them looked seriously hurt. Someone had protected them from a rock fall, and though I couldn’t have said how I knew, I had no doubt that person had thrown her own body across theirs, taking the brunt of the rocks.

  Digjan inhaled sharply, and the children glanced at her. The smallest, the boy, gave a cry of recognition and started toward her, but the volunteer holding his hand drew him back. Instead, he brought the children to us and they all stood with there with Dig.

  “These are my children,” Dig told Lavinda. “Do I have your word that you will treat them as you treat everyone else here?”

  “Yes,” Lavinda said. “You have my word.”

  Dig continued in her ragged above-city speech. “They were taken by Vakaar during the combat and caught in the collapse of the canals. I ask that you see to their medical condition. Feed them.” She took a rattling breath. “And you test them for the emotion and thought hearing. All of them. Completely.”

  “We will do that,” Lavinda said. “For you, too, if you wish.”

  Dig nodded. Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed like a great stone column in the aqueducts crashing to the ground.

  “Dig,” I shouted, dropping to my knees next to her body.

  People were running to us. Digjan called her mother’s name, and then she was at my side, crouched next to Dig. Medics pushed their way past us and lifted up the cartel queen. I followed as they carried her to a pallet at one of the medical stations. People were everywhere, hooking Dig to monitors, paramedics calling, the doctor injecting her with gods only knew what.

  “She’s failing,” someone yelled.

  I stood back with Digjan, barely breathing while the medics worked. Gourd came up on Digjan’s other side and Jak stood with me. I felt as if I was seeing it through a haze, everything slowed down.

  A voice cut through the chaos, low, rasping, unmistakable. “Fuck that, let me die in peace.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I grabbed Digjan’s arm and we pushed our way forward. As we knelt next to the pallet where Dig was hooked up to monitors and lines, Gourd and Jak crouched on the other side. Dig’s other daughters knelt by Jak, near their mother, and the boy squeezed between the two of them.

  Dig looked up at her oldest daughter. Then she looked as me. She took Digjan’s hand and crossed it with mine, laying her daughter’s palm on top of my knuckles. She spoke to Digjan, her words barely audible. “You see this Bhaajan person? Great pain in my ass.”

  “Stop talking,” Digjan told her. “You need to rest. Recover.”

  Dig scowled. “Not argue with me, just once, daughter.” She shook our joined hands. “Bhaaj is a great ass pain, yah. Bhaaj is also good. You be like her, Digjan. Like her. Not me.”

  Digjan gripped her hand. “You won’t die.”

  Dig glowered at her. “You won’t argue.” Se glanced at me. “Always, this jan argues.” Her voice was fading and her eyes closed, but nothing hid her satisfaction as she said, “Vakaar is gone.”

  �
��Hammer is dead?” Digjan asked.

  “I kill.” Dig opened her eyes. “Your father is avenged.”

  Digjan’s voice cracked. “Mother—”

  “No more cartel,” Dig told her. “You take it over, I’ll come back from the dead and whoop your damn ass.”

  “Don’t die,” Digjan whispered.

  “Little son, little jans.” Dig reached for her other children and they clutched her fingers. Dig let out a breath, sighed once, and closed her eyes. The monitors stopped beeping and gave that horrible siren scream of death.

  I was vaguely aware of the medics pushing me away so they could work on Dig. I rose to my feet and stumbled back, but nothing changed. The machines kept up their death wail. Digjan and her sisters and brother stayed with their mother until the other two Kajada punkers drew them away. The medics pulled a sheet over Dig, covering her entire body, including her head. Digjan was kneeling on the ground, rocking back and forth, holding her brother and sisters. The other punkers knelt with them, holding Digjan and the children.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. Dig had been a monster. Why was I breaking apart? I spun around and strode away from them all. I was aware of Lavinda in front of me. She was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear. I shook my head and kept going. What could I say? Oh sorry, Colonel, I neglected to tell you that my oldest friend, the blood sister I swore my life to when I was three years old, also happened to be one of the undercity’s worst criminals.

  I walked into the light streaming through the doorway. Then I was outside, among the others who had come up from the undercity. Many had crowded around the door, watching the scene unfold. They parted and I strode past them, past the doctors treating patients, past the testers doing exams. Soon I was running in long strides that took me away from the Center. I had to escape. I followed side streets that wound between market stalls, then went farther, past shops closed for the noon sleep, until the sounds of the Center faded behind me. When I reached the wall of the Concourse, I sunk down with my back against the white stone barrier, an empty shop on either side, and sat with my knees drawn up to my chest and my forehead on my knees.

  A rustle came from nearby. I looked up to see Jak settling next to me. Gourd dropped down on my other side. We sat there together, leaning against one another.

  “Damn Dig,” I whispered.

  “A greater ass pain even than Bhaaj.” Jak’s ironic tone was ruined when his voice cracked.

  I gave a ragged laugh that threatened to end with a sob. “Yah.”

  “She argued even more than Digjan,” Gourd said.

  “She saved my life more than once,” I said.

  “Dig was my first,” Gourd said. “Good first.”

  “You’re Digjan’s father?” I asked. That didn’t fit with what I had just heard.

  He shook his head. “Dig and me, we were just kids. Later she had a bigger love.”

  “Same father, all four children,” Jak said. “Vakaar killed him.”

  So the cartel war had been about more than drugs. Dig was avenging the death of her children’s father. I put my forehead back on my knees and closed my eyes. Too much had happened. So many emotions, so much grief and triumph, pain and joy, fighting, killing and birth, children laughing and children dying, starvation and freedom, the freedom simply to stand in the sunlight. I couldn’t absorb it all, even comprehend what it felt like to walk up the Concourse with four hundred people following me. I didn’t know whether to mourn or rejoice. My mind couldn’t hold all these emotions. I was drowning.

  The knees of my trousers must have taken a spill from the water in someone’s snap-bottle. Those weren’t tears on my face, sliding down my cheeks, soaking into my clothes.

  We sat there, me and Gourd and Mean Jak clumped together. Jak put his arm around my shoulders and I put mine around his waist. Gourd put his big arm over Jak’s on my shoulders, and I put my other one around Gourd’s waist.

  And then we did what dust rats never did.

  We cried.

  XXIII

  The Children

  I had expected, when I received a summons to the palace, to meet Lavinda in her office or one of those round alcoves with tall windows that were like polished jewel boxes. Instead, the pilot who picked me up at the penthouse landed his flyer in a vast garden behind the palace, a place of many plants on terraces. After he left, I stood on the highest terrace at the end of a path paved in stones that were a wimpy purple color.

  Lavender, Max thought.

  What? I couldn’t concentrate.

  The color of the stones. It’s called lavender.

  Yah, good. I was trying with no success to stop feeling nervous. The garden was far more lush than anything that grew naturally in this desert. The few trees were sculptures. The one nearest to where I stood looked like a great flying lizard, its leafy wings outstretched, its double trunk like two legs braided around each other. A fountain burbled beyond it, and flowers bloomed everywhere, big orchids, blue, pink, and red. The terraced gardens descended in huge steps to a meadow below, and beyond the meadow, the mountains rose into the sky.

  I couldn’t see on other side of the palace, but I knew the mountains there descended down to the desert. On that side, I could have seen Cries in the distance, but here I saw nothing except blue and red peaks with no foliage. A stark view, yes, but spectacularly beautiful in its barren majesty. I needed that view today. The sight eased the ragged edges of my mind. It was hard to believe only a day had passed since we of the undercity walked the Concourse and changed the history of Cries.

  After a while, I wondered what had happened to Lavinda. I had never known her to be late. Just as I was about to go in search of her, footsteps sounded behind me. I turned—and blinked. Four guards were approaching along the path from the palace. A man walked in their midst. It wasn’t Lavinda who had come to see me, but her husband.

  Prince Paulo wore simple clothes, no gems or gold, just a blue shirt and dark trousers. As he drew closer, I realized the cloth was imported Haverian silk, a fabric woven by tinarian spiders on the planet Haveria. I had never actually seen anyone wealthy enough to wear clothes made from that silk. What unsettled me even more, though, was that he didn’t have on his robe. Within the palace, Majda men didn’t have to go robed, but they also didn’t usually talk to outsiders.

  When Paolo reached me, I bowed, acutely self-conscious. “My greetings, your Highness.”

  “Major.” He lifted his hand, indicating a bench under the tree. “Would you care to sit?”

  “Uh, yah, sure,” Gods, I sounded like an idiot. Majda men did that to me. Their mere presence was enough to leave us mere mortals tongue-tied.

  We settled on the bench, he on one end and me on the other, with two of his guards standing behind the bench, the third on the side next to Paolo, and the fourth a few meters to the front, checking out the terraces, as if gods forbid, a tiny flying lizard might trespass on the Majda prince he guarded. I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, so I waited.

  “I often come to this garden to think,” Paolo said. “I find it soothing.”

  “It’s beautiful.” I couldn’t imagine why I was here.

  “The army architects sent me their records of the collapsed canals,” Paolo said. “Along with reports from the university detailing the historical value and structure of the ruins.”

  It seemed bizarre they would send him all that information, but what did I know. I said only, “Part of two canals fell.” Wry I added, “They made a lot of noise.”

  He smiled. “I imagine so. Have you had a good look at them since then?”

  “Several times.” I was still puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

  “The engineers could rebuild them,” he said, “but they don’t feel they can do the canals justice. Repairing a ruin that ancient is no easy task.”

  I wondered why he cared. Then it hit me. Good gods. “You’re going to direct the repair.”

  “Why does that surprise you?”


  I had expected the Anthropology Department at the university to spearhead the work. The canals were marvels, and of course Cries would want them preserved. But no one would expect a prince of the realm to do the job, especially one of Paolo’s standing. Were I a diplomat with expertise in verbal nuance, I could have soft-pedaled my response, but I was just inarticulate me. So I said, “I’m surprised you agreed to fix a slum, even one with historical value. You’re one of the top architects in the Imperialate. And you live in seclusion.”

  “I saw the records of your procession on the Concourse.” His voice had an odd sound, as if it were hollowed out. “We have much to answer for.”

  “We?”

  “Majda. Cries. Anyone who stood by and did nothing when we could helped.”

  I couldn’t answer. That touched too close to the scorched places in my heart. The irony was that my people would shy away from his help, wary of royalty setting their hand onto our lives. But the Majdas weren’t what I expected. Yes, they were wealthy and privileged, and they took their lives for granted, oblivious to the bitter truths of life below their shimmering city. The gap between their sphere and ours was so big, we might never truly understand each other. Yet both Lavinda and her husband were willing to try bridging that gap.

  I had to say something. This wasn’t the time for undercity silence. “Having you design the repair means a great deal.”

  He inclined his head, a response not so different from how we acknowledged such statements in the undercity. Then he said, “I can’t, however, visit the ruins.”

  “Can you work from holographic recordings?”

  “If they are done well.” He considered me. “I need someone who knows the canals to make the recordings.”

  That couldn’t be what it sounded like. “Are you asking me?”

  “If you have the time.” With a look of apology, he added, “It will be a lot of work. But you would be compensated.”