The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  Alania applauded far more out of relief than appreciation. She looked down at her plate. Half of her honeyberry sorbet, a palate cleanser served after the initial overly complicated salad, remained uneaten. It no longer looked the least bit appetizing, having puddled into muddy-gold syrup in the glassy pink bottom of her silver-trimmed bowl.

  She turned to speak to Sala, hovering as always just over her left shoulder. “The main course now, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sala, far more deferential in public than she ever was in private, curtsied, removed Alania’s bowl, turned, and vanished into the kitchen, moving upstream against the outflowing tide of robots coming to clear away the sorbet dishes. Each wheeled, multiarmed machine rolled out of her way so she never had to sidestep at all. Alania watched her go and wished she could go with her, and then maybe sneak out a side door into the street . . .

  Of course, if she did, she would immediately be fetched by the same watchbot she had pretend-disabled all those years ago, which had saved her and Lissa and Sandi from the gang on Fifth Tier. A terrifying experience at the time, and she didn’t really want a repeat of it . . . and yet, on a day like today, she kind of did.

  But of course it was impossible for her to sneak off anywhere, since she was putatively the guest of honor and the center of attention for this whole odious, tedious affair.

  Stagehands in black began removing the magician’s props and setting up for the next bit of “entertainment,” the Seventh-Tier Acrobats’ Association (whose act was enjoyable enough but whom Alania had seen so many times at other girls’ birthday parties that she almost thought she could fill in for an injured acrobat should the need arise). Alania stared gloomily down from the head table’s dais at the elaborately coiffed heads of twenty-three young women more or less her own age. Clad in long formal gowns of red and green and silver and gold, they chatted and gossiped animatedly amongst themselves, because that was what one did at these affairs; that was the real entertainment, after all.

  Overhead, projected stars twinkled among scudding, holographic clouds, designed to give the room the appearance of a walled outdoor patio at night. Alania looked up at them and wished they were real and that she could fly away into them. When she was a little girl, these obligatory parties had at least included games. Now they were tediously adult affairs.

  Some of the other young women were fortunate only children, which meant they would inherit their fathers’ or mothers’ ranks and take over their families’ Quarters, Estates, and for the wealthiest, like her own guardian, Retreats. They were the only ones who could truly hope to enjoy themselves at parties like this. Others had older siblings and could only remain on Eleventh or Twelfth if they married into other Officer families. For those girls, marriage prospects were everything, and they understandably resented being stuck at a party where there were no young men. If they failed to marry into other Officer families, they would be shipped off to their families’ Estates to help manage farms or mines that supplied the City: a social fate worse than death.

  Alania, on the other hand, was in the very strange position of being the ward of Lieutenant Beruthi, not his daughter. He had never so much as hinted that she would inherit his business, Quarters, Estate, or Retreat. She had no idea what her future held . . . except for that overheard snatch of conversation between Beruthi and First Officer Kranz in the entrance hall all those years ago. She’d half convinced herself she’d misunderstood and that they couldn’t really have been talking about her . . . but what if they had?

  The four years were up. Would something happen?

  Captain, I hope so, she thought, staring at the sea of simpering socialites. Otherwise, what would become of her? It appeared she couldn’t inherit, and yet she could not marry into an Officer family either—her status as a ward rather than daughter ensured that no Officers would allow their precious sons to waste time on her. The only boys she’d ever seen had been at the Lieutenant’s midwinter balls, and they’d studiously ignored her. She saw no possibility that she would be shipped off to Beruthi’s Estate, since she’d never been formally allowed to leave Twelfth Tier. And anyway, as she understood it, the Estate was even more automated than the household, without any living people there at all unless the Lieutenant was in residence and had invited guests. Perhaps that was to be expected of the Officer whose family made almost all the City’s robots.

  Which left . . . what?

  She thought back again to that long-ago escape with Lissa and Sandi and the strange conversation she’d had with the Lieutenant afterward. He’d been as good as his word. She’d learned so much since then, things she knew, from talking to her two friends, that other girls were not learning. She knew the structure of the City inside and out from detailed plans she’d been made to memorize; its history—or what there was of it, since it had simply begun, without explanation of what had come before, with the awakening of the First Citizens; the organization, recruitment methods, training, and weaponry of the Provosts; the hierarchy of the Officers, and who was responsible for what. She knew it all, but she didn’t know why she knew it. It was all useless trivia. She couldn’t change any of it. She had no say in how the City was run. She didn’t even have anyone she could talk to about what she knew. Lissa and Sandi, much as she loved them, simply stared at her, uncomprehending, while the Lieutenant . . .

  . . . well, if she’d hoped that that moment of communication after the watchbot had rescued the three of them on Fifth Tier was a sign of a greater rapport to come—and she had—it had proved a fool’s hope. He’d remained as distant and cold as ever.

  She still didn’t understand exactly what had happened that day. Certainly no similar opportunity to escape the Tier—or even the Quarters—had ever presented itself again. While she had indeed disabled the watchbot’s sensors when she’d disconnected the wires inside its metal skull, it had repaired them itself the moment she was out of sight; she’d learned that, too, when her education had suddenly accelerated. She knew now that the watchbot’s tumble down the stairs had been nothing but stage dressing for the theater of her supposed escape. She even suspected the Lieutenant had hired the young gangsters on Fifth to threaten them; they had been so suspiciously close at hand and the courtyard otherwise so utterly deserted . . .

  Alania shook her head. One of the hazards of spending so much time in her own mind was a tendency to overthink.

  In any event, the restrictions on her movement were as tight as ever. Whereas all the girls in the dining room were also forced to hold formal parties like this one for their birthdays, afterward they traveled to their families’ Estates in the country for more celebrations with their closest friends, young men included. Or they received gifts like water-breathing lessons in Lake Glass or balloon trips to the Green Plateau.

  She held her formal party and then returned alone to her room to bury herself in books or music or video plays. She had never been water-breathing or ballooning. The closest she had come to leaving the City was standing on a balcony cut into the City’s curving side and staring down at the mysterious white Cubes, five meters on a side, which lay in massive geometric piles to the east and west of the City. She had looked past them at the checkerboard of fields and plantations and workers’ villages in the Heartland and finally at the distant, glittering glimmer of the ice-capped Iron Ring, wondering if she would ever be allowed to travel those open spaces herself.

  For twenty years, she had been caged like a pet animal. A pampered pet, she had to admit—Quarters Beruthi was hardly Tenth-Tier Prison—but however lavish it might be, a cage was still a cage. The holographic stars overhead were the only stars she had ever seen.

  Lissa and Sandi, seated together on her right, had been engrossed in whispered conversation since the Amazing Belgrani had finished his act. Now they glanced her way. Then they gave each other what Alania instantly recognized as a Significant Look.

  Oh, no. They’re going to try to make m
e feel better.

  Sure enough, Lissa, closest to her, leaned in. “Millicred for your thoughts. You look like you’re a thousand kilometers away.”

  Alania didn’t want to feel better. She wanted to brood—having practiced brooding her whole life, she was very, very good at it—but she didn’t want to hurt her friends’ feelings, either, so she did her best to imitate the smile on Lissa’s round brown face. “Just thinking. Sorry.”

  “You can’t blame her for looking like she’s at a funeral,” Sandi put in. With her golden hair and snow-white complexion, made up to the hilt like every other young woman in the room, she looked more like a porcelain doll than a real person. “After all, a funeral would be more fun. Why our mothers put us through this . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as Lissa lasered her with a look. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  Alania sighed. “It’s hardly news to me that I don’t have a mother, Sandi,” she said. “Or a father. I have noticed their absence from time to time over the past twenty years.” She managed to dredge up another smile to take the sting out of her words. “I’m living proof that these horrible traditions exist independently of parents. Maybe they’re Captain’s Orders.”

  “May she live forever,” Lissa and Sandi said in unison. Although in private they used the Captain’s name in vain often enough, as Alania well knew, in public they were circumspect and careful to provide the properly-brought-up girl’s automatic response to any reference to the Captain. Considering the Captain had supposedly ruled the City for some five centuries, Alania wondered why She needed benedictions from the beneficiaries of her beneficence.

  Her unspoken alliteration pleased her enough to turn her smile genuine. She took her amusement where she could find it.

  “There,” Lissa said triumphantly. “You can enjoy yourself.”

  “If you could do whatever you wanted for your birthday instead of hosting these stupid parties, what would it be?” Sandi asked.

  “I’d go horseback riding,” Lissa said instantly. “I only got to go that once, last summer out at our Retreat, and it was incandescent.”

  “Incandescent” was the current word of choice for something wonderful. Alania thought it a silly choice, but no one had asked her.

  “I’d go paragliding off the Silver Cliffs,” Sandi said dreamily. “What about you, Alania?”

  “Me?” Her mouth quirked. “I don’t know. Maybe a quick trip to Fifth?”

  “Urgh,” Sandi said. “No.”

  “Definitely no,” Lissa added.

  Alania laughed and felt better for it. “Well, since we’re all stuck here instead, I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it.” Plates and platters were entering the room, borne by robots. Sala, in the vanguard, carried a silver tray covered with an opalescent dome, reminiscent of the dome atop Thirteenth Tier, beneath which the Captain supposedly lived. “I programmed our Master Chef to make my favorite: candied vatham with mashed sweebers and red gravy.”

  “Incandescent!” Sandi and Lissa said together, and Alania laughed again.

  But the laugh died on her lips as a deep gong sounded, announcing a new arrival and interrupting the spangle-clad Seventh Tier Acrobats in the act of rushing into the room. The one in front pulled up short, and the others piled into her, knocking her to her hands and knees. She scrambled to her bare feet just as the dining room’s main door slid silently open, its gold-trimmed black lacquer disappearing inside the matching walls.

  Two men stood in the foyer beyond, both in the crisp white dress uniforms of Officers. Alania had been expecting Lieutenant Beruthi—more with resignation than the excitement she had felt when she was little and hadn’t yet realized her childish affection for him was sadly misplaced. But the second man . . . !

  The second man was First Officer Kranz.

  Conversation around the tables died when the gong sounded. Everyone turned to look as the two men entered. Now, with a collective intake of breath, all the girls rose to their feet, the movement starting in those nearest the door and rippling through the ranks. The acrobats backed out of the room in even greater disarray than that in which they had entered.

  The ripple reached Sandi and Lissa, who jumped up. Alania stood last, much more slowly, the overheard words of the Lieutenant suddenly echoing in her mind: You just have to wait and keep yourself safe for four more years, sir. Just four more years.

  Kranz, an easy smile on his face, flicked his left hand. “Please, ladies, be seated, be seated.” Though he was not a large man, his deep, resonant voice effortlessly filled the big room. “Go on with your festivities.”

  The girls exchanged glances, then sat rather hesitantly. A few excited whispers broke out, and jewels glittered as tiara-bound heads tilted toward each other, but most of the guests watched wide-eyed as Kranz and Beruthi picked their way through the tables toward the dais, the robots deferentially rolling out of their way. Alania remained standing, watching them, and stepped back from the table to face them as they came up onto the dais to her right. Sala and Lissa quickly removed themselves to the far-left end of the table, hands folded and heads bowed.

  “Guardian. First Officer,” Alania heard herself say, years of drilling in protocol and politeness somehow carrying her through her astonishment. “So kind of you to come.”

  “Happy birthday, Alania,” Beruthi said. He didn’t offer a hug or even a handshake; he never had, that she could remember.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Yes, happy birthday,” Kranz said. He was several centimeters shorter than Beruthi and much slimmer, and had an ordinary face framed by steel-gray hair, only a hint of brown remaining in it. He smiled, but it was a mere flexing of muscles; his ice-blue eyes did not warm. He held out his hand as he spoke, and Alania took it hesitantly. His palm was smooth and dry, his grip firm.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, because she didn’t have anything else to say.

  Just four more years . . .

  “I’m sorry to take you away from your dinner,” Kranz went on as a robot lifted the dome covering the platter it had just set on the table in front of Alania. A savory-sweet smell rose from the pink mound of vatham, surrounded by scarlet mounds of mashed roots. “It looks delicious.” He glanced toward the door through which the performers had retreated. “And the entertainment. The Seventh-Tier Acrobats are excellent.”

  “Lieutenant Beruthi hired them,” Alania said.

  “I know,” Kranz said. “I recommended them to him.” He turned back to Alania. “Unfortunately, however, I have another meeting this evening and can only stay a few moments, and I’d very much like to have a word with you, if I may?”

  He made it sound like a request, but Alania knew it was nothing of the sort. “Of course, sir.” She glanced at her guardian.

  “The music room, Alania,” he said. “I will fulfill your duties as host until you return.”

  Alania had a sudden incongruous image of Beruthi attempting to make small talk with Sandi and Lissa, and despite her bewilderment, her mouth twitched with amusement. She turned to Kranz. “If you’ll follow me, sir?” Fierce curiosity had replaced her initial alarm, and she had to admit that she enjoyed leading the First Officer—the First Officer!—past her wide-eyed guests, especially the ones she couldn’t stand, like Bacrivia Jonquille, who looked like she’d just bitten into a puckerberry.

  The music room contained a glittering white concert knabe, which Alania was spectacularly mediocre at playing; the instrument’s three keyboards—plus foot pedals!—had defeated her. There were also enough string, brass, woodwind, and synth instruments to outfit an orchestra. None of them, so far as Alania knew, had ever been taken from the ceiling-high glass cabinets for dusting, much less playing. Apparently one of the previous Lieutenant Beruthis (or his or her spouse or offspring) had been musically inclined; the current one had no interest.

  A rather spindly gold-colored c
ouch and a matching chair huddled beside a low glass-topped table in the center of the black-and-white checkerboard-tiled floor. “Please have a seat,” Kranz said, indicating the couch, and Alania settled herself primly on the very edge of the cushions. To her relief, Kranz remained standing; she’d been afraid he’d sit beside her and found the idea rather horrifying. He looked down at her, hands behind his back. “I won’t keep you long. I know how anxious you must be to return to your party.”

  I doubt it, thought Alania. “I am entirely at your service, First Officer,” she said demurely.

  His gaze never wavered; she found it uncomfortable. “I remember when you were born,” he said after a moment.

  This, Alania thought, is beyond weird. He remembered when she was born? Why?

  “You’re too kind,” she murmured, because she had to say something.

  Kranz’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t much, but it was closer to a real smile than the one he’d pasted onto his face back in the dining room. “And you’ve been very well brought up. Because I know perfectly well that what you really want to know is what in the Captain’s Name I’m talking about.”

  Alania had been well brought up. It was one thing for her friends to take the Captain’s name in vain in private, but to hear the First Officer do it so casually startled her despite herself. Something must have showed on her face, because Kranz’s almost-smile broadened by perhaps a millimeter. “Pardon my language. I’m not used to the company of young ladies.” He shrugged. “But that’s about to change.”

  Alania took a giant mental step away from bemused and toward alarmed. “Sir?”

  Kranz shook his head, the almost-smile melting into an irritated frown. “I’m not making inappropriate advances, Alania. I’m here to tell you that your circumstances are about to change for the better.”