The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  ’Tronics? Maybe. Weapons, datadots, jewelry . . . anything could end up falling into the Middens in a Direct Drop from Twelfth.

  My City Pass, Danyl thought.

  The hatch was fully dilated. The Drop Ramp emerged, suspended on cables, red lights flashing from its lower end. And then . . .

  With a thunderous, scraping tumult, the Drop began.

  This Drop was better organized than most; everything seemed to be encased in giant plastic bags the color of moldy bread. There was no way to tell what was in any of them, and Danyl felt a jolt of dismay. Digging through those would take time, time he almost certainly didn’t have, not when the Rustbloods had to be gearing up even as he—

  Then something slid from the chute that wasn’t encased in plastic: a giant bundle of cloth. Curtains, bedding, carpet, or all three—he couldn’t tell. The cloth caught the air and slowed as it fell, billowing like a parachute.

  And from the middle of that falling mass of cloth, Danyl heard the last thing he’d ever expected to hear, the one thing that could make him forget about ’tronics or jewelry or all the other possible riches this fresh Drop from high atop the City might contain.

  He heard a girl’s scream.

  SIX

  ALANIA SLEPT POORLY the night after Kranz’s unexpected appearance at her birthday party. She was rather surprised she slept at all, but her body’s need for rest eventually overcame even the churning resistance of her troubled mind, which kept turning the events of the day over and over and over . . . to no avail, of course. The deed was done. She was the ward of First Officer Kranz now, and clearly that had always been the plan, the subject of that strange overheard conversation four years before, after Kranz’s son died in the aircar crash.

  Unsatisfactory as she had found her life in Quarters Beruthi, the more she thought of abandoning the only home she had ever known for the company of the First Officer, the more the prospect terrified her. When she did sleep, her dreams were of the trapped-in-a-dark-room-with-a-noisily-breathing-monster-and-unable-to-find-the-way-out variety, from which she kept waking with a pounding heart and sweating body, only to fall back asleep and experience it all over again.

  Sala came into her room in the morning far earlier than usual. She turned on the lamp in the corner by the door, put down the silver breakfast tray she carried, then opened the shutters, letting in the wan glow of imitation predawn twilight. Alania sat up and blinked blearily at the clock. 0600. She never got up that early.

  Sala turned back from the windows. “I’m afraid it’s time to rise, miss. I’ve brought your breakfast.”

  She’d done just that every morning Alania could remember—but this morning, without warning, she suddenly dropped into a chair against the dark-paneled wall and buried her head in her hands, sobbing.

  Alania was up out of bed in a moment and kneeling beside her. “Sal, what’s wrong?”

  “You’re leaving, miss,” Sala choked out. “And so am I.”

  For a moment Alania’s heart leaped with hope. “You’re coming with me?”

  But Sala looked up at her, face chalk-white, eyes red with weeping, and shook her head mutely.

  “Oh, Sala.” Alania’s heart suddenly jolted. Beruthi’s fired her! “But there’s no cause for that! He could give you other duties—” But of course Beruthi’s robots did all other duties, and she knew it. Barefoot in her thin pink nightgown, she suddenly felt very cold. She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’ve always . . . You said you needed this job, for your family . . .”

  “It’s all right, miss. I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry about me. It’s just . . . I’ll miss you.” Sala’s sobs suddenly stopped. A red spot flamed on each white cheek. “But before I go . . . before you go . . .” She stood up so suddenly Alania took a step back.

  “What?”

  Sala didn’t say anything, just extended her arms. Confused, Alania accepted the proffered hug. Sala’s lips brushed her right ear. “Look in the corbels,” she barely breathed. Then she stepped back again. “Thank you, miss.” She turned away and busied herself with the breakfast tray.

  Look in the . . . ? Alania knew what corbels were: the carved, ornamental brackets that pretended to support each end of the gold-painted ceiling beams. In fact, as she knew from the detailed lessons in the City’s construction that she’d begun at Beruthi’s insistence after the aborted trip to Fifth Tier, the beams were steel with a thin overlay of expensive wood from the forests of the Iron Ring. There were twelve of them in her room, running lengthwise. She looked up at them. They were identical . . .

  . . . except for the one in the center, at the end of the beam that ran directly over her bed. In that one, almost invisible in the dark furrow between two ridges of wood, there was a small black circle. She’d stared up at it many times and always thought it was nothing more than a flaw in the wood. After all, what else could it be?

  I have long been observing you, Kranz had told her.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  Oh, no, she thought. No. Lieutenant Beruthi would never have . . . Kranz wouldn’t . . .

  Long been observing you. And Sala didn’t want to say anything out loud.

  A small round hole . . .

  The truth hit her like a bucket of ice water to the face. There’s a camera in my room. Someone has been watching me. When I’m sleeping. When I’m eating.

  When I change clothes.

  When I come out of the bath.

  My whole life.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw up. But if she reacted at all, Sala would get into trouble. Maybe permanent trouble. If the rumors about Kranz were true, maybe even fatal trouble.

  Alania stood. She didn’t look at the incriminating corbel again. But she didn’t unfold her arms from her chest, either. “I’m going to get dressed,” she said. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “Yes, miss,” Sala said, still not looking at Alania. “I’m to tell you your escort will arrive at 0730. And not to worry about your things. I’ll pack them up and have them sent after you.”

  Alania nodded. She went over to her dresser and carefully but casually kept her back to the suspicious corbel, trying not to hunch her shoulders—though the urge was strong—as she slipped off her nightgown and pulled on her most modest, ordinary clothes: tough, dark-blue duracloth pants, soft, black, calf-high leather boots, and a red long-sleeved pseudosilk blouse. She brushed her long brown hair and tied it up in a sensible ponytail. Only then did she turn around and make her way over to the waiting breakfast.

  She forced herself to eat, though she still felt ill. Whatever happened to her today, she wanted the energy to face it.

  Once she’d finished breakfast, she went to the door, intending to take a last walk around Quarters Beruthi before her escort arrived.

  It wouldn’t open.

  She turned back to Sala, who was putting the breakfast dishes back on the tray. “Why is the door locked?” Alania asked. Despite her best efforts, her voice rose in both pitch and volume.

  Sala didn’t look at her and most definitely did not look at that suspicious corbel. “I don’t know, miss.”

  Except you do, don’t you? Alania looked at her servant—until today, she would also have called her her friend and confidante—with narrowed eyes. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if the arrival of Kranz had been as big a surprise to Sala as it had been to her. Sala, who had obviously known about the hidden camera and had never told her.

  Rage suddenly swept through her like a wall of red flame racing across a slick of oil. She wanted to attack Sala, scream at her, demand to know why she was being spied on, how Sala could have known about it but never told her . . . but she forced her fury down under the surface. She couldn’t do that to Sala. How could Sala have told her? She had a family, friends, people who might be in danger. First Officer Kranz had to be behind the su
rveillance, and no one crossed him with impunity. If she revealed that Sala had finally told her at the last possible moment, innocent people might suffer.

  I’m innocent, she thought angrily. I’m suffering. Why shouldn’t others? I’ve been in prison my whole life, watched and guarded and manipulated. But why?

  She had no answer, and however much she wanted to, she couldn’t demand answers of Sala and still live with herself once her anger finally faded.

  Sala turned with the breakfast tray. “Excuse me, miss,” she said, and Alania moved aside to let her reach the door.

  For her, it opened. Alania glimpsed a bulky man in a white uniform on the other side. He closed the door firmly again in Sala’s wake. When Alania tried it a moment later, it once more refused to budge.

  Alania prowled her room for the next three-quarters of an hour like the caged bloodweasel from the Iron Ring she had once seen displayed in the drawing room of a great house during a Winter Festival dance. In the end, she dragged a chair directly under the camera, hopefully out of its field of view—though who knows how many others are hidden elsewhere, she thought bitterly—folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

  At precisely 0730 hours, as promised, the door opened, and her escort entered to take her to Quarters Kranz.

  There were two Provosts. Rather than wearing their usual dark-blue duty uniforms, they were resplendent in white dress uniforms with red piping on their trousers and caps and gilded, glittering body armor. Kranz wants to convince me they’re honor guards, not prison guards, Alania thought sourly. They each wore a slugthrower on one hip and a sword on the other, and their eyes were invisible behind the mirrored visors of their golden helmets.

  “Come with us,” said the one who was slightly shorter, though both were tall enough to tower over Alania even after she clambered to her feet.

  She looked past them at the open door. It might as well have been a million kilometers away. There was nowhere to run, and she had no doubt one of them would simply pick her up and sling her over his shoulder if she resisted in any way.

  She’d been humiliated enough. She stood straight, brushed her red blouse smooth with hands that only trembled a little, and nodded.

  The taller of the Provosts stepped to one side and motioned her through the door. Head high, she left her room at Quarters Beruthi for the last time.

  The hall was empty. She led the Provosts—she refused to let them lead her—past the discreet door to the servants’ stairs where she and Sandi and Lissa had hidden from the watchbot she’d thought she’d disabled all those years ago. She descended the red-carpeted treads of the stairs down which the watchbot had tumbled, trailing her fingers along the gleaming brass of the banister. In the marble-floored entrance hall, she glanced one last time into the dining room where her birthday party had been the evening before. The decorations had vanished as though they had never existed; no stars twinkled on the high vaulted ceiling.

  But at the far end of the room, behind the table where Alania had been sitting when First Officer Kranz had so unexpectedly inserted himself in her life, she saw Sala watching her. Their eyes met. Alania gave her a long, cold stare, then deliberately looked away and walked on toward the foyer and the tall double doors of the main entrance.

  One of the Provosts increased his pace and moved past her to open them for her. “Thank you,” she said, the first words she had said to them, and stepped out onto the portico.

  Imitation sunlight poured through illumination panels far above, making the just-watered greenery sparkle in the garden-courtyard Quarters Beruthi fronted. The air breezing in through the man-high ventilation pipes hidden among the bushes smelled moist and fresh. In the world outside, it must have been a beautiful autumn morning.

  But Alania had never visited the world outside the City. Now it seemed likely she never would.

  Together, she and her taciturn escorts walked through the park, out through its ornate iron gate, and into the street. Two black-clad servants hurrying by gave the Provosts and Alania a wide berth. The Provosts turned in the opposite direction from the servants. Alania didn’t look back to see if they were staring after her; she was sure that they were.

  They passed the homes of many of the girls who had been at her party. Quarters Smilkoni: that was Lissa’s house. It had windows overlooking the street, but though Alania looked up, she didn’t see anyone watching from them.

  Quarters Eltha. Quarters Praterus, Sandi’s house. Quarters Jonquille, home of the odious Bacrivia. No one looked out of those windows, either.

  They emerged into the Grand Circle. There were no illumination panels here. Instead, a holographic sky mimicked the pale blue of early morning. At the center of the Circle rose the vast round pillar of the Core, whose multiple elevators took travelers down into the lower Tiers, brought up goods from the City’s factories and artisans, and carried away the trash of the elite. The roads that ran between the various Quarters and other buildings of the Tier radiated out from the Grand Circle like spokes from a wheel. Around the Grand Circle were expensive shops and fancy restaurants, all still closed this early in the day.

  One of the big freight elevators stood open, revealing a cavernous interior stuffed with giant green plastic bags and a mass of old cloth. There were also a few bits of furniture—ratty old chairs and a lone sofa—which made Alania think the rubbish must have come from someone’s Quarters. From the looks of it, it should have been discarded long ago, but people often hung onto things they didn’t need.

  Like hope, Alania thought.

  Two workers lugged a mattress toward the open elevator as Alana and her escorts approached. The Provosts ignored them. Focused on guiding Alania around the edge of the Grand Circle to the tall gate that led to Quarters Kranz, they also ignored the flash of green light and the soft two-tone chime signaling the arrival of one of the smaller personnel lifts.

  Then the lift’s door opened, light flashed, and the head of the Provost next to Alania exploded into gray-red mist. His body crumpled to the ground. Alania stared down at the steam rising from the massive hole in the back of his half-melted helmet, too shocked to even process what she was seeing. A black scorch mark on the wall beyond him showed where a second beamer, fired an instant after the other, had missed her second escort, who had flung himself to safety around the corner of one of the radiating streets.

  A siren began whooping, a frantic sound. The workers who had been loading the freight elevator ran for cover. Four men burst out of the newly arrived personnel lift. They wore black from head to foot. Masks and goggles hid their faces. Three of them spread out, kneeling, beamer rifles raised, covering the roads on this side of the Core. The fourth ran straight for Alania. She backed up, terrified, tripped over the body of the dead Provost, and stumbled, her back slamming hard against the brick wall of the shop where she had bought her birthday dress.

  “Come with—” the black-clad man began, his voice distorted by an electronic filter, but he didn’t finish the sentence. Holes stitched themselves across his chest, and blood spattered Alania’s pseudosilk blouse, a darker shade of scarlet against the red. He collapsed at her feet.

  Four new Provosts burst out of the street into which her surviving escort had ducked. Slugthrowers spat flame. Brick shattered by Alania’s head, a fragment scoring her cheek. The pain broke her shocked immobility, and she ran for the only cover she could see: the freight elevator stuffed with rubbish. She dashed into it, then turned and punched the red button on the wall. The door slammed shut with startling force, and the elevator began to descend rapidly, far more rapidly than the genteel Officers-only Core lift she had ridden to parties on Eleventh Tier, faster even than the secret elevator in Quarters Beruthi she and her friends had ridden to Fifth.

  Something in the Core squawked as if in outrage, the elevator car vibrating with the noise. It rocked, throwing Alania from her feet into the pile of bedding. She stayed there, bre
athing hard, trying to process what had just happened, wondering what would happen next.

  Where would the elevator stop? Whichever Tier it ended up on, all she’d have to do was report to the nearest Provost post. They’d . . .

  They’d what?

  Take her back to Quarters Kranz, that’s what.

  It suddenly dawned on her that when that door opened, she would be, for the very first time in her life, free to decide for herself what she should do next.

  You can’t run from the Provosts. They’re everywhere.

  Maybe so. But maybe she could evade them for a little bit, see something of the rest of the City before she was locked up again, spied on, imprisoned. The worst that could happen was that she’d be taken back to Kranz.

  Or was it?

  The attack on the Provosts couldn’t have been a coincidence. Those black-clad attackers had wanted her, wanted her alive, and wanted her badly enough to kill to get her. But why? To hold her for ransom? Or something worse?

  The elevator jerked to a stop. Alania’s heart, which had calmed a little, started pounding again. She held her breath, listening.

  For several minutes, nothing happened. Then, without warning, the lights went out, plunging her into sudden darkness. She bit back a scream. Horrendous clanging and banging sounded outside the car. Something struck it a mighty blow that rang it like a bell. Then she felt it rotate. It traveled sideways. It stopped. It sank again. Metal shrieked on metal.

  Finally, the door opened—and an instant later, the whole car tilted sharply.

  This time Alania did scream as she, the cloth, the plastic bags, and everything else in the car began to slide, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  She kept screaming as she slid through the doors, onto a giant bronze-colored chute. Above her, a vast ceiling of filthy black metal oozing oil, lit by a rotating red strobe, slid by and shrank away.

  And then, still screaming, she plummeted into empty air.