CHAPTER TWELVE
Windows, walls or doors
A forceful jolt rumbles through the car, rattling their bodies and bones. The soot whips off the windshield, leaving a trail of prismatic powder suspended as a stretching splash through the air behind them. She turns on the wipers to see in the seconds long blizzard. The sound of whipping wind washing over surfaces resurfaces to her ears, and making her have to squeeze the wheel to steer. Gravity returns and so does the friction of the tires rubber gripping the ground. Along with the smell of smoke and sweat to their noses, and the taste of their dried mouths. The car drifts harshly to the left and she swerves to stay on the bumpy road.
“Did we blow a tire?” she asks.
“I don't think so,” he says. She rolls down the window sticking her head out to check. Feeling fresh air fill her lungs and sweep the fumes from the cabin. Refreshed to feel it wash across her face, then driving with her hand hanging out of the car to touch it with her fingers.
“What is that?” she asks pointing to a large ring floating a mile above the tallest buildings of a brick city, with electric blue around it’s center, but oranges, yellows and white glows disappearing miles from the middle of the halo.
“Looks like an up halo,” he says.
“Why do they call it that?” she asks.
“This is a split dimension, top and bottom. The people from the top jump from up, the people down here jump from down.”
“So two are connected into one Alto?”
“Existing as one Alto,” he corrects her “and maybe, but probably a parallel, this usually happens when parallels cross paths.”
“That doesn’t sound possible.”
“It's right there,” he says pointing to the slowly spinning ring resembling smoke flowing in light floating miles above ground level.
“Oh, whatever. You think there's a station here,” she asks.
“Hope so, or up there.”
“I have a bad feeling about this place. Everything looks so close together, like it's condensed?” she says.
“Yeah,” The massive atmospheric halo sits like a crown above the brick and mortar mega-metropolis of multilayered monolithic structures rising from the horizon. The buildings are packed densely next to and atop each other, conforming to overall mismatching three dimensional puzzle of massive brick rectangles standing erect. Most of them are floating within ten feet of the building next to it. The main level is all concrete roadways lit by of street lights spread in the shadows of the many more layers and clusters of structures stacked alongside and floating above and below one another.
They come to a destroyed section of road at the city's limits. Unable to drive any further they leave the car behind, and march over hills of dirt into dour looking forgotten villages built over each other up thousand foot steep hillsides. The further they go the higher and more tightly packed the windows stacked one atop the other become. Until everywhere they look, up and down, all they see is they're enveloped on any side by wall and windows. The whole of the city slowly hovers circularly around it’s center where the stacks of structures are highest, not touching the halo high above. The only way to move about is to navigate a multitude of metropolitan multilayered clusters of structures through narrow passageways interconnected by stairways, ladders and smaller causeways leading to fire escapes, catwalks and windows. The windows here are used as doors, to go into one and out of another and running through apartments and hallways is commonplace, actually a part of their culture. The inhabitants don't mind, it’s just how they know how to get around.
After walking fruitlessly up and down for nearly an hour they figure walking up a couple more stories they may be at least be able to go straight for more than thirty feet on a flat surface. Down a few long alleys and climbing tens of small separated stairways and ladders. The walls of one structure are so close to the other they're barely an arm’s length from the window sill of the other side. She scrapes her fingernails along the bricks as she passes, welcoming it's coarse feel compared to the textureless place she’d just come from. Now hundreds and sometimes thousands of feet off ground level they climb every stairway and ladder they come across, higher and higher, leaving the ground far below. The air starts getting thicker and more humid as moisture condenses at the top of a space contained on six sides by brick structures. The two meander mindlessly tired, looking for a place to sleep, traveling through twisting narrow paths of fire escapes and catwalks. She loses her sense of north and south, senseless from constantly going up and down and over and across. The wind whispers, though sometimes shoves them off their feet with sporadic gusts funneling through the carelessly constructed narrow brick canyons and crevices.
They're surrounded at all times by footsteps of people they can't see, as any sound carries for miles from its source through the narrows. This place is filled with people dressed in a strange sort of nineteen seventies fashions. Fur coats, gaudy jewelry, bell bottoms and big belts and glasses are everywhere. They put cologne and perfume on themselves like bathwater, and creep around, popping out of one window onto the catwalks only to quickly disappear through another. The walls open wider until they spread wide enough to show the two a panoramic view of miles of open air of a massive a cavern contrasting the suffocating paths they've been squeezing their shoulders through. Walled by the colossal facades of excessive urbanization rising miles high. Causing the air to pressurize and condense into a drizzle while waiting for the city’s slowly rotating configuration to open a path and allow it to drain through passageways. The atmosphere and the people follow the same paths, the same yearly patterns, changing so gradually one who gets used to taking a certain route, can get stuck between the buildings without noticing how much they've narrowed. There are thousands of these cavernous pockets spread through the Alto, all growing and popping as the city slowly rotates. The open space they’re staring at dwarfs the height of the Grand Canyon.
“What a beautiful thing to see,” she says.
“The rain?”
“Sure, good eye weather chaser,” she laughs.
“I really do like the weather.”
“Why do you think it was built like this?” she asks.
“I dunno,” he answers, and they continue along the terraces and walkways. Staying close to the open air as long as they can, but often having to dive back into the claustrophobic brick maze to keep moving. Each building has halls and rooms just as the city itself has streets and structures. A few hours later the configuration changes enough for a gap to pop a cavern with a deafening supersonic boom blasting the wind a hundred of miles per hour from one side of the city to the other. Anna jumps up scared, almost falling over a metal handrail, and Cider laughs, hanging at the waist over the same rail.
“Hahaha keep it down,” he laughs. A window slides open then another and another, more open radially outward from the first opened window.
“Yeah keep it down will ya,” a voice yells.
“Keep it down,” is shouted in a domino effect from the first open window to each subsequent window opened, then all briskly slam shut in the same radial order they opened. He pulls her from the rail and brushes off her shoulders, then licks his thumb as though to wipe a smudge from her face like a child, she swats his hand away.
“Stop it!” she shouts, followed by a wave of “Shh’s,” then the chops of closing windows.
“You could've done that sooner?” she whispers.
“Naah,” he snickers and she smacks his smoke from his lips.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Rule number one when in a new Alto, find a place to sleep. Preferably a place with a pillow, right,” he says.
“Yeah but where?” she fusses, then the two stand idle, confused and directionless, utterly lost.
“We'll have to find a place,” he says.
“We've been walking for hours, it's been all windows and walls the whole way. I haven’t seen a store or anything since we got here.”
“Bea
ts that senseless green desert right?”
“Yeah but, I dunno. This place is very...congested,” she says.
“Hey! Hey! get outta the street with that ruckus will ya,” a woman yells from a window.
“What?” Cider asks.
“Get out of the street already, you’re a damn public nuisance,” another window shouts.
“You’re complaining about us whispering when the winds are colliding way louder than we've been talking,” he says.
“Just keep it moving will ya.”
“Out of towner's,” another woman shouts from another window, each of their shouts sparking a radial cascade of shouting people and windows chopping shut.
“Down,” a mile away shouts another.
“It’s down three hundred forty and up forty eight.” yells a man.
“By down you mean?” she asks.
“Down you fools, now forward, you, you imbeciles.”
“Let's go,” she pulls his sleeve. They come to an open terrace with trees and benches, and a yellow music note humming like a streetlamp hanging next to an open window.
“There's a bed,” he says sighing with relief.
“How do you know that?”
“A versalis key is always for a place to rest,” he says.
“You mean a music note,” she says.
“Maybe where you’re from, but that looks like a versalis key to me, and universally means a place to rest your head. Either way it's an open window at this point.”
“I guess so,” she sighs. The two cross the small open court passing the first living tree she's seen in days, it’s even casting its own shadow she thinks.
“Ladies first,” he says holding a yellow lace window curtain open for her. She's first to see that it's actually quite spacious inside, with vaulted four story lobby of a large four star hotel, though at least forty years past its prime. The carpets are water stained and the walls are spotted by moss. Dust coats everything but the clerk’s desk, and a well polished call bell. It's unkempt she thinks, but clean as a clinic compared to Mickey’s filthy little dwelling. Cider backs through the window, nearly pulling the curtains down falling and rolling to the floor.
“You alright?” he asks, facedown to the hardwood.
“Yes, are you ? Mr. dexterity,” she laughs.
“Yes, thank you for asking.”
“Good, get up,” she nudges his side with her sneaker.
“Hey, don't kick me,” he says.
“I didn't, stop being a baby.”
“Oww,” he groans holding his stomach, then rolling onto his side to face his attacker.
“Ohh I didn't kick you that hard. Get up people are staring” she says.
“Why? am I embarrassing you” he asks.
“You're laying on the floor like a drunk.”
“I'm usually one of those,” he says.
“Which is it today?” she says. He jumps to his feet, lighting a smoke, but before he can finish a drag the desk clerk sternly shouts “No smoking!”
“Oh hello,” he says moving toward the desk girl entrenched behind a large brown desk.
“Put that out,” she demands.
“What?” He acts like he can’t hear the blonde woman’s voice to steal a few more quick puffs.
“Out I said!” commands the clerk.
“US?” she asks.
“No the smoke sir,” the woman ignores Anna.
“Oh this? okay,” he says, dropping the butt in a water glass in the hand of an unknowing patron reading a paper.
“These are really nice ceilings,” she says.
“What’cha mean, it's the same as all the halls and rooms through the lot of this place,” the black clad caramel skinned desk clerk says coldly. Having small blue eyes and a tilted bellhops cap opposite a big blonde braid, and black painted thorn cornered lips smirking a frown at the both of them.
“The whole and in the Inn?” she asks.
“No, are you daft or something, through the whole interior. Of the city,” the clerk says after a few seconds of the three exchanging silent blinks.
“By interior you mean in the streets or structures?” she asks. Cider nudges her, whispering “Walk fast,” in her ear. “Never ask about how they talk.”
“Why?”
“They may think that you’re not from here, that your green and try to take some hue from you,” he says.
“No, a street is a catwalk, a structure is a building,” the arrogant clerk says casting Anna a look of confusion.
“What's with this place anyway?
“Are you getting a room?” the clerk cuts at the weary two. Anna looks to Cider and he says, “yes.”
“What’s with this place?” Anna asks.
“What do you mean? this Inn’s fine for a tired head, like yours I see,” the clerk says between chews of gum.
“So how much,” Cider says seductively, to tease the both of them, and each glaring at him for different reasons.
“How much ya got?” the clerk asks with a hagglers grime.
“What? right in front of me?” Anna barks, her face boiling red, as Cider and the girl start laughing.
“Relax, for a room, I wouldn’t touch him in any way anyway,” the clerk says.
“I'd touch you,” he laughs.
“So what's the price?” Anna asks.
“I can tell you aren’t from here. We barter here so it’s about what you have?”
“What's accepted?” he asks.
“Anything we can auction. If it's worth anything, and by the looks of you two,” the clerk rolls her eyes.
“What?” Anna scoffs, already disliking the clerk's disposition.
“You look...well weathered” the clerk says. Giving Anna an odd sense of satisfaction, in that she looks like she lives, that the girl must see them as more adventurous then herself. As living closer to the cold, closer to the bone.
“I guess,” she says.
“Where do you sell it, the stuff you get?” he asks.
“Here, we keep most of the stuff somewhere else.”
“Just vague enough huh,” he laughs. Anna pinches the lint from her pockets, that are otherwise empty but for a half loaded handgun.
“Oh yeah,” he says taking a pillowcase from his belt line and pouring its contents onto the counter, spilling out tens of ticking metal pocket and wristwatches. Anna drops out of the clerk's view to pick up a few watches that fell to the floor, then tossing them like coins clinking onto the pile.
“What are these?” why do they have a sound?” the confused clerk asks.
“Those are little clocks, pocket and wristwatches, they’re very valuable,” Cider says.
“I don't know, never seen anything like it,” she shakes her head.
“You've never seen a watch? a clock? how do you tell time? Wait how old are you?” Anna asks.
“Old, now you’re talking gibberish. I’ll get a guy who could take a look at this, okay,” the clerk says.
“Sounds fair,” he agrees.
“Monswabba!” the girl shouts down a vaulted hall.
“It is a nice place for a hole in the wall,” Anna says.
“Thanks, I guess. I’m sure your accommodations will be to your comfort,” the girl answers more with her tone than her words.
“I'm just glad it's not a cathouse,” Anna teases him with her arms folded.
“He takes you to cathouses, huh?” the girl shrugs looking away, attempting to salt Anna's sore spot.
“It's not what you think,” she scowls at the clerk.
“What’s with you Carrots?” he asks, unsure whether the girls condescending tone or flattering his self that his flirting is fanning her flames.
“We could stay somewhere nicer for a change,” Anna sneers to Cider's male sense of providing and the quality of the clerks inn.
“Monswabba!” the girl shouts cupping her mouth “Damn it Monswabba!!” she screams, and a fork drops on a porcelain plate from behind a closed wooden door half down the
hall. That creaks opens a moment later for a stubby fat man to emerge sloppily dressed in a opera singer's suit. Without shoes or socks, and slobbering, with gray hair as a laurel around his bald unpolished head. He's wiping crumbs from his mouth and sweat from his forehead as the three watch his wobbling approach.
“What is it?” He grumbles toward the desk girl.
“This fella here needs a price on these,” she points to Cider then to the ticking pile of metal sprawled across her counter. The man wipes his hands down his stomach, and puts on a taped up pair of glasses. Inspecting one watch then another, and another.
“Hmm interesting,” he mumbles.
“What is?” Cider asks.
“What are they?” he asks spraying spittle onto the clerks finely creased uniform.
“I thought you'd know, they said satches,” the clerk says.
“Watches” Anna corrects the girl.
“Oh right, watches.”
“And what are those?” Monswabba asks.
“To tell...time?” Cider says.
“Time, and what is that? Are you mad or something. A little bit maybe?” Monswabba says to the girl, who shares his baffled sentiment with a shrug.
“Okay, alright how much for the metal?” Cider asks, Anna thinks this clever and smiles behind his back.
“For the metal, oh I don’t know. What types of metal are they?” Monswabba asks.
“Silver, gold and steel and bronze, mostly silver though,” he answers.
“Silver is a dog,” the clerk says, popping a bubble with her gum.
“Silver's good metal,” he says.
“No, silver is a dog, this is pale gold,” Monswabba says.
“Whatever, there's a bunch of ‘em, so how much for the lot of em?” he asks. The fat man looks over the chunks of metal and their bands, peering into their ticking faces.
“Why are they making that noise?” he asks.
“Thats how they tell time,” Anna says.
“And you understand what they’re saying?” the clerk asks. Anna can't help but giggle at the auctioneer and the girls ignorance to something so simple to her, as a watch is.
The Altonevers Page 15