‘Then you can have her to play with, too.’
It was hard to tell through her mask, but the girl might have smiled.
‘So, what happens next?’
‘Now? We continue as planned.’
‘We’re still going ahead, then? With tomorrow’s … disruption?’
‘Absolutely.’ Gregor studied the girl closely. ‘Why do you ask? I thought you of all people would be keen to—’
‘I am, but …’ She hesitated. ‘Word came down this morning, early. Something’s happened in DGAP.’
‘Shi!’ The scarred man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do we have any idea what?’
‘Nothing. Just suspicion. You know how sketchy our penetration is in there, but the Manns were in well before the start of first shift and haven’t been seen since.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yeah. The father arrived around 0300 and two of our boys saw the son leaving his apartment soon after.’
‘Anything on the webs?’
‘Nothing. But they’ve amped up security in the DGAP building, too.’
Gregor pushed back his cowl and scratched his bald head, a thoughtful expression on his face.
‘They haven’t done that in years.’
‘I know. I told one of the recyc guys to get in and find out what was going on, but he got bailed up in the foyer. Didn’t even get as far as the internal lifts.’
‘Strange.’
Gregor walked back out into the common. ‘Come on.’
The masked girl fell into step beside him, and, as they stepped into the throng, four large men formed up around them. Together, the group strode out, the crowd parting around them. At the hub they stopped and the girl produced two wrist bands from somewhere inside her robe.
‘Who are we today?’ Gregor asked, as she waved them, one after another, across the allocation plate.
‘A couple of mid-level hydroponics techs. Where are we going?’
‘Down.’
She nodded and spoke the appropriate commands into the allocator. Within seconds a maglift arrived and, after dismissing their guards with a brief nod, Gregor and the girl stepped inside and took their handgrips. Neither spoke as the lift navigated through the system, constantly dropping lower in the process. The newspanel burbled a story about a power outage in a mid-level section of the city.
‘Was that one of ours?’ Gregor enquired, raising an eyebrow.
‘Nah. Not us.’
‘Strange. Seems to be happening more and more above mid level, lately.’
‘It’s nothing new, though. The lower levels have had outages as long as I can remember.’
‘True.’ Gregor nodded. ‘But when it happens down here it doesn’t make the webs. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
Portal 87, Ground Level Use caution beyond this point, the lift controller intoned.
‘Let’s go.’
The doors slid open and they stepped out into the darkness.
The lift hummed back up into the network and the two stood, letting their eyes adapt to the gloom. For most citizens of Port City, stepping into the underworld from the cosseted security of a maglift would be as unthinkable as stepping onto the moon. Gregor had seen grown men reduced to blubbering messes when forced through the lift doors, out into the dim, haunted world that they’d lived above their entire lives.
Not Gregor, though. For him there was something strangely liberating about coming down here. Something that made his body relax and his face smooth into a genuine smile. He crouched and picked up a handful of the grey, grainy gravel that crunched underfoot, letting it trickle slowly between his fingers, enjoying its cold dustiness before turning to the girl again.
‘You all set?’
‘Just a moment.’ In one fluid motion she pulled the mask from her face. Her features were striking – dark eyes and skin the colour of light caf. Her scalp was covered in short, dark hair that clung in tight curls. ‘That feels better.’
She looks so young, Gregor thought. And it was true – with her mask on the girl seemed somehow older, harder. Removing it revealed a pretty face with high, wide cheeks and a broad but small nose. Her eyes, though, were cold. And there was the tattoo, small but still obvious, etched in ink on the side of her neck …
The girl stretched her hands and looked up into the tangle of conduits, domes and shafts that crazed the sky. A slight breeze, cold and dusty, slithered between the ancient, blackened buildings and immediately she turned her face to it. As she did, she looked just like any other twelve-year-old girl.
‘That feels so good.’
Gregor’s smile broadened. ‘You’re your mother’s daughter, all right.’
Abruptly she lowered her arms and the gleam of pleasure that had lit her face faded.
‘You know I hate it when you say things like that.’
‘Fact remains, though. When you do that, you look just like her.’
The girl sighed. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Her wristband chimed gently. ‘We’d better stick to the shadows. It’s still too early to be out. Even down here.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
‘Lead on, Dad.’
The two melted into the gloom.
‘Here.’ The man pulled a panel up from the floor to reveal a tight, narrow space beneath.
‘What is it?’ Kes asked.
‘An old wiring conduit, disused now. Runs across to a low-level res dome. From there, your clearances will work without attracting attention.’
They’d followed the man through a series of dark, narrow gaps between buildings until they reached the outer wall of the dome. There, he’d led them down a tightly winding staircase into a maintenance level almost identical to the one in Lari’s dome. Even down here, the thump of music reverberated through the walls.
‘Watch your heads,’ the man muttered, as he climbed into the narrow pipe. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the darkness. Kes looked at Lari with a resigned expression.
It was a tight squeeze in the hot, dark space and the air tasted musty. After a short time the thumping pulse of the res-rec dome faded behind and the only sound was their breathing. Sweat poured off Lari. He concentrated on moving his arms and legs and tried to ignore the fact that he was squeezing through an old tube in pitch darkness an unknown distance above the ground.
The crawl seemed to last forever, until, with a clang, the man shoved another panel aside and dim light trickled into the tube ahead. Relieved, Lari followed Kes out into another maintenance space.
‘You’re on your own from here,’ the man said. ‘Stairs are over that way. Try not to attract any attention and you’ll have no problems.’
Then he jumped back into the tube and pulled the hatch shut behind him.
‘That was amazing!’ Kes’s eyes gleamed. ‘I had no idea you could get between domes like that! Did you?’
‘No.’ His reply was sharper than he’d intended, and Kes looked surprised.
‘Listen, I’m sorry it got so crazy, Lari. I didn’t think a res-rec dome would be so wild. I just thought it’d be kind of fun.’
‘You didn’t think at all,’ Lari retorted, and he stalked towards the access stairs, Kes scurrying after him. Neither said a word as they climbed up and cautiously opened the upper door.
When the man said they’d end up in a residential dome, Lari imagined something like his own, so it was a surprise to emerge from the stairwell into a dome only slightly better lit than the one they’d just escaped from.
‘I thought this dome was residental.’
‘It is.’
‘The autotint isn’t working, then. It’s too dark.’
‘It’s working fine. Look up, Lari. This is as bright as it gets down here.’
Lari did so, and was again shocked by the extent to which the tangled web of the city choked the sky.
‘Wow. Makes you glad we don’t have to live like this, eh?’
Kes didn’t answer.
They made their w
ay across to the common and over towards the hub. Somewhere, high up in one of the four res towers, a baby screamed, its thin wail echoing around and off the plascrete walls. Apart from that, the dome was eerily deserted. There was no movement or life anywhere.
‘Where is everyone?’
‘Working, I imagine. It must be second shift by now.’
They waved their wristbands over the plate, giving Port North Central as their intended destination, and Lari took a longer look around. He’d never been in a low-level residential dome before. Along with the disconcerting lack of light, everything was cramped and grubby. The common was small, and the four towers had more levels and windows than the ones in 3327, and climbed a lot closer to the top of the dome.
‘It’s cosy, I’ll say that for it. Makes you wonder about the people who live here.’
‘Wonder what?’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be this crowded, for one thing. Not if they’ve followed the reproduction protocols.’
‘Like you can talk,’ Kes snorted.
‘No. Think about it, Kes. The city hasn’t built new domes in hundreds of years – hasn’t needed to. Plascrete doesn’t break down, and the extrusion process burns up too many resources to justify it. That’s why we have the population protocols in place. So there should be a stable number of people, and a stable amount of accommodation.’
‘That’s the theory.’ Kes was looking at him strangely, but Lari didn’t take the hint.
‘But clearly, domes like this have been modified to take more people than their intended capacity. I mean, just look at those res towers …’ He pointed at one of the grey structures, peppered with dark windows. ‘They must hold twice as many people as yours or mine. So obviously, someone, somewhere, is completely ignoring the protocols.’
Kes turned her back on him and walked away a few steps.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ She refused to meet his eye. ‘Let’s just get back up top. You really don’t want to get into this with me at the moment, Lari.’
‘You’re just tetchy because you almost got us busted back there.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with that!’ she snapped.
‘Then what? You have to admit that this dome is strange, and that you’re pleased you don’t have to live down here like this.’
‘Strange? You think it’s strange? Only to you. This is how the other ninety percent live, Lari.’
‘It wouldn’t be that many.’
‘Want to put a bet on that? “Concentration of aptitude”, isn’t that what they call it? Well, if you’ve got no aptitude, down here is where you get concentrated.’
The lift chimed and their names appeared on the readout. Once under way, it took Kes only a couple of minutes to reassign the lift back to her own dome and delog the original allocation.
‘There. No harm done.’
‘We hope.’
‘We’re headed back, aren’t we? Back up to where you can mope around feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t want to be a scientist, while other people live down there in the filth and drink the bad water and work themselves to death to keep people like you happy in the sun.’
‘Don’t you think you’re being a little over-dramatic?’
‘Why don’t you just try and get past your own importance, Larinan Mann? Hasn’t it occurred to you that being you isn’t the worst thing in the sky? That perhaps some people would be happy to swap lives with yours?’
‘It’s not my fault I’ve had opportunities. All they have to do is work a little harder and the system will recognise them for it. Look at you …’
‘Me?’ Kes gave him a hard stare and Lari knew he was on dangerous ground, but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘You’re a classic example. Your parents are both mid-level recyc technicians, and they live in a mixed-use dome, but they worked hard to give you every opportunity. They put off their second child until their first was well and truly developed and on her way to productivity and self-sufficiency, and the city realised that. That’s why you were admitted to the advanced school, and now you’re going to be able to make something of your life.’
‘Are you saying’ – Kes’s voice was quiet now – ‘that you don’t think my parents have achieved anything for themselves in their lives?’
‘Of course I’m not. They’ve achieved you. And if a few of the people who lived down there were prepared to take on the same sort of responsibility, then perhaps those domes wouldn’t be quite so crowded or their lives quite so tough.’
‘You really think that? Then you should take the time to imagine what life must be like down there.’ She pointed through the floor. ‘Actually stop and think about what happened this morning.’
‘I’m thinking about it, all right.’
‘No, you’re not. We were lucky this morning, Lari. We got a look at another world down there. The world beneath our feet. We got to see real people living real lives, but all you notice is that it’s dirty and crowded and dangerous. Well, welcome to reality, Lari.’
‘It’s no more real than my world, Kes.’
‘That’s shi! Get over yourself, copygen!’
The word hit like a slap. Lari opened his mouth but nothing came out. Even in their worst arguments Kes had never used that word, but when she’d flung it at him then, she’d almost spat it, like … like she meant it.
Kes froze the instant it left her lips. ‘Lari … I’m sorry …’
Lari shook his head. ‘No, you’re not, so save it, Kes.’
He didn’t say another word. He didn’t even look at her. He just let the silence grow until the lift finally slowed into Kes’s dome and they stepped out into her common. They stood awkwardly until Kes broke the silence.
‘I’m going home. You’d better do the same.’
‘Fine.’ He turned on his heel and walked over and joined the line at the allocation plate. Only then did he look back, expecting to see Kes heading towards her building. To his surprise, though, she was still beside him.
‘Lari, I really am sorry. I’m sorry I used that word. It was just me getting angry, not trying to hurt you, okay? But you’ve gotta think about this stuff. It’s important.’
‘Whatever, Kes.’
The queue shuffled forward and Lari summoned a lift.
‘Dome 3327 North.’
The reader chimed and seconds later his lift arrived.
‘Bye, Kesra.’
She was still staring after him when the closing doors of the maglift doors hid her from view.
Alone in the maglift, Lari glared up at the newspanel, trying to take his mind from the argument. It didn’t work. The worst thing was that he knew she was right. Compared with those poor shi down on the lower levels, he really had nothing to complain about. But that didn’t change the fact that she’d dragged him down there, almost gotten them both killed, and then had the nerve to insult him for not being thrilled about it. Even now, thinking about Gregor’s whispered reminder – as of now, you both owe me – Lari couldn’t shake the sensation of fear that swept over him.
The maglift surged up towards the hub of Lari’s dome and he felt the familiar acceleration though the soles of his feet. If he listened carefully, he could hear the faint rush of the shaft whizzing past outside, even over the newspanel. This was his world. These were the sounds he was used to – not the concussive pounding of bass music and the smell and press of crowded humanity.
The lift doors opened and Lari stepped out into the clean, filtered light of another sky.
She wakes.
Or she thinks she does.
It’s hard to be certain.
It’s white.
It’s cold.
It’s closed.
Somewhere above, light glares down. Cold, bright light. It feels strange on her skin, somehow … wrong.
Her eyes are open, but the brightness dazzles them, and spots dance across her vision.
And she feels so exposed.
Rising, she pushe
s back the surging bile that heaves at her gorge and slowly turns around.
The room is white. Round. Perfect. It has no edges, no seams, no corners, no windows, no gaps.
No escape.
Just perfect, flawless, cold white, rising from the floor into the brightness.
Somewhere high in the brilliance, she can hear the murmur of voices.
She closes her eyes. She reaches down …
Into …
Nothing.
Cold.
Whiteness.
A soft hiss fills the silence, and for a moment the air tastes like old tin.
And then she’s falling again …
The ref was packed with the usual throng of shift changeover, but Kes managed to squeeze herself onto the end of a long bench. The guy behind the counter was the same one who’d been on that morning and he acknowledged her order with a quick nod; she was a regular, after all.
Copygen.
She cursed herself for letting him get to her like that, but sometimes with Lari it was just so difficult to stay focused. He had no perspective.
It wasn’t his fault, though. She knew that. All the upper-level kids were the same, and Kes had been dealing with them from the moment she’d set foot in the advanced school.
‘People who only ever see the world from above soon forget to look up, Kesra. Don’t let yourself become one of them, will you, darling? Go to their school, learn anything they can teach you, but never forget where you come from, sweetheart…’
Her father’s voice still rang clear in her memory. She’d been so excited to get accepted, so pleased with herself. Everyone knew that mixed-use kids didn’t get into the advanced school, but she had. She was the first one ever. Everyone else had been thrilled, too. Everyone except her father.
‘The higher you go, the thinner the air.’
At the time she’d been furious with him for – as she saw it then – ruining her big moment. But now, looking back …
‘Excuse me, Miss? May I take this seat?’
Without waiting for permission, a man in a rumpled worksuit slid onto the bench alongside her. He was in his mid-twenties, perhaps. Despite the heat in the ref, he hadn’t removed his jacket, and a sheen of sweat gleamed on his forehead as he shoved his way onto the bench. People grumbled, but they shuffled along to make room.
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