The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

Surely Erl hadn’t meant for this to happen. Had he not known about the waterfall? Or had they misunderstood his instructions? Were they supposed to have gone the other way, into those shadowy mineshafts dug into the bottom of the Middens? Or had there been some other place they were supposed to disembark, some landing spot they’d overlooked . . . ?

  They swept ever closer to the bend. The roar grew louder. Sunlight raced down the western wall of the Canyon with astonishing speed, and just as they reached the bend, it cleared the eastern wall and lit up the River like a spotlight. It wasn’t an improvement; the water suddenly looked black as ink, covered with an iridescent sheen of poisonous colors.

  Then they rounded the bend, and Alania’s heart leaped into her throat and fluttered there like a trapped bird when she saw the waterfall a hundred meters away. They swept toward it at a terrifying velocity, but as they neared the spot where the River plunged out of sight, a smooth, curving drop-off where the sun had turned the water the purple-black of an old bruise, something exploded into view in a cloud of spray.

  Danyl yelped, and Alania screamed, convinced for a terrifying instant that some nightmarish creature, all dripping tentacles and antennae, had burst from the water to seize them. But then suddenly her brain reinterpreted what her eyes were registering, and she realized it wasn’t a creature at all, but a net—a vast net strung from one side of the Canyon to the other.

  And then they slammed into it.

  The impact pitched Alania forward. She grabbed the slimy netting—rope with a core of wire—and climbed up it, trying to avoid the rushing water. Danyl clung to the net just below her, the capsized boat bobbing beneath his feet.

  Then the netting began to move, carrying them up and away from the water, tightening at the same time. In a moment they were no longer hanging like insects in a spider’s web but instead lay on a kind of mesh bridge, staring down at the depths into which the River plunged, carrying the boat with it. It tumbled into a swirling black pool full of multicolored foams and giant shimmering bubbles, vanished from sight for a few seconds, then bobbed to the surface in the calmer water several meters downstream.

  “What’s happening?” Alania cried to Danyl.

  “How would I know?” he shouted back.

  “Hold still!” a new voice called. Alania raised her head, staring along the length of the netting instead of down into the Canyon depths. The net, she saw now, was attached to a post, and the post to a wheel whose axle was set in a slot. The net could clearly be raised, lowered, and tilted, which meant that if the operators wanted to, they could rotate the net back to a vertical position—or flip it over completely and dump both of them to their deaths.

  Apparently they didn’t want to. Three figures covered head to toe in shining black, gloved, booted, and helmeted, eyes encased in bubble-like goggles, had clambered out onto the netting from the eastern wall and were swiftly approaching, looking for all the world like four-legged spiders . . .

  Now there was an image Alania could have done without.

  Trapped in a web, she thought. Of course, it seemed she’d been trapped in a web her whole life, a web of intrigue and secrets and lies with Lieutenant Beruthi and the First Officer at the center of it. Maybe that was why she’d always hated spiders: she’d somehow sensed she was nothing more than an insect at the center of a web, waiting to be devoured.

  Now the metaphor had become literal. She twisted her head around and wasn’t surprised to see two more black-clad figures skittering over the net toward them from the other direction. “We were sent to meet Yvelle!” Danyl shouted at them. “She’s expecting us!”

  No answer from the approaching spider-people. The trio from the eastern end of the net and the duo from the west arrived at the same moment. The three grabbed Danyl. He tried to struggle, yelling curses, but the net provided no purchase, and in moments they had relieved him of the beamer rifle, bound him hand and foot with black cords, and gagged him with a strip of white cloth . . . all of which Alania saw only in flashes, since the duo who had come up behind her were busily trussing her in the same fashion, minus the gag. Feeling more like a spider’s prey than ever, unable to struggle, she was dragged over the net in Danyl’s wake toward the eastern wall.

  Just as they reached it, the sunlight vanished as the sun slipped behind the western rim of the Canyon.

  Her captors dumped Alania unceremoniously onto a cold floor. Her cheek was not pressed against rough stone, as she might have expected, but ceramic tiles that formed an intricate mosaic of blue and green and gold. Though cracked in places and missing tiles in others, it was still the kind of floor that would not have looked out of place in the Twelfth-Tier residence of one of her girlhood “friends,” or in Quarters Beruthi, for that matter, though Beruthi’s taste in floors ran more to stark black and white.

  The mechanism for lowering and rotating the net, on the other hand, was exactly what she would have expected: rough wooden beams, wooden gears, and a capstan—was that the word?—to power it all.

  Her captors rolled her over, the backpack a painful lump beneath her back, and untied her feet, though not her hands. The smallest of them hauled her upright, then reached up and pulled off her black helmet—greased synthileather, it looked to be made of—and goggles, tucking both into a pouch at her belt.

  Alania found herself looking at a young woman about her own age with blond hair cut severely short. “Did you get wet?” the stranger asked urgently. Her eyes went to Alania’s forehead and widened. “A cut? Did it get wet?”

  “I . . . maybe? A little?”

  “This one, too,” said another of their . . . rescuers? Captors? Both? He held the beamer rifle and had just pulled Danyl, still gagged, to his feet. The rest of their captors removed their helmets and goggles in turn, revealing two women and three men. Alania’s interlocutor was the youngest woman, though the male who had confiscated the beamer looked like a teenager. The other woman had gray in her hair, as did one of the men. The third was bald as a boulder.

  “Ungag him,” the young woman said. Despite her youth, she seemed to be in charge. “That really wasn’t necessary, Nobu.”

  “He was swearing at us,” the teen said.

  “I’m sure you’ve been sworn at before,” the young woman replied dryly. “I seem to remember doing it myself.”

  Nobu grinned. “I remember that, too. Fair enough.” He undid Danyl’s gag.

  Danyl spat fluff from his mouth, glared at the boy, then turned toward the woman. “We were sent here to see Yvelle. By Erl.”

  “We know,” said the woman. “We were watching for you. And I will take you to see Yvelle. But first you have to be decontaminated, and any wounds must be cleaned and sterilized immediately. Come with me. Nobu, take Danyl.”

  “There’s no time for this,” Danyl said. “There are Provosts after us.” Then he blinked. “You know my name?”

  “We know both your names,” the young woman said. “And there is time. Well, assuming you want to live.”

  “So you know our names,” Alania said. “What’s yours?”

  “Chrima,” the young woman said.

  “What do I do with this?” Nobu said, holding up the beamer rifle.

  “I’ll take it to Yvelle,” Chrima said. Nobu passed it over to her, and she hefted it. “Nice.” She slung it over her shoulder, then led Alania across the tiled floor to . . . Alania blinked. Elevator doors, of all things, mirrored gold framed in white marble, set into a tiled wall that shaded from dark blue near the floor to light blue as it met the white ceiling. A crystal chandelier hung dark above them.

  Chrima pushed the single button to the right of the elevator. The doors opened at once. Inside, an eternal had been bolted into a metal box in the ceiling clearly intended for a much larger fixture, filling the elevator with its green light. Alania was heartily sick of that color and of the eternals. Why do they have to be green? In that light, e
very one of them—the five whoever-they-were, Danyl, and undoubtedly Alania herself—looked like they had been dead for a week.

  In a week we may have been dead for a week, Alania thought, then wished she hadn’t.

  She half expected music to play as they descended; had the elevator been better lit, it might have been in one of the multistory Twelfth-Tier shops near the Core or in the home of one of the richer girls whose birthday parties she was forced to attend year after year. (Quarters Beruthi had an elevator in addition to the secret one she, Sandi, and Lissa had ridden down to Fifth, but it was strictly utilitarian, used by the robot staff. Beruthi had always forbidden Alania from using it, supposedly to ensure that she didn’t accidentally get hurt by a robot but also, she suspected, because he thought climbing stairs built character as well as calf muscles.)

  No one said anything as they descended. When the elevator stopped at last and the door opened, she gasped.

  They stepped out into a vast semicircular space, the far side enclosed with glass so clear she thought it was open to the outside air until a slight reflection revealed the truth a moment later. Beyond the glass was the pool, gray and foaming, into which the waterfall plunged. On the far side of the pool, Alania saw another opening in the Canyon wall, though it didn’t look like it was glassed in like this one. Pillars were spaced along the curving wall in which the elevator was centered, other doors and arches lurking between them. On the tiled floor, concentric semicircles of blue and green ran from the pillared wall to the glass one.

  “What is this place?” Alania almost whispered.

  “Later,” Chrima said. While three of the escort members departed, she and Nobu led Alania and Danyl through one of the archways to the left into a blue-and-green hallway lit by more annoying eternals. The corridor ended after ten or fifteen meters in a white-tiled wall holding a golden basin with a spigot above it. Clearly water had once poured into it for decoration, though it was now dry as dust.

  A sign above the bowl read, simply, “The Pool.” To either side of it were doors, the one to the left labeled “Men,” the one to the right labeled “Women.” Chrima took Alania through the women’s door as Nobu took Danyl through the men’s.

  Inside the swimming pool changing room, Chrima carefully set aside Danyl’s beamer. She stripped off her outer rubbery suit and dumped it into a wheeled bin of blue metal, then without a trace of shyness pulled off the underwear that was all she wore beneath it and put that in another bin. Her nude body looked painfully thin to Alania.

  Feeling self-conscious—Alania had rarely been naked in the company of anyone (other than whoever was watching me through those cameras in my room! she thought with a surge of anger)—she took off her backpack, set it next to the beamer, and stripped off the green pants and black shirt and boys’ underwear Danyl had given her. At Chrima’s instruction, she put them in the second bin. Then Chrima led her into the next room, tiled green, where there were eight showerheads set into the wall, each with a knurled knob beneath it. She pointed Alania to one and stood under another, facing the wall. “Keep your eyes closed,” she said over her shoulder. “This isn’t just water, and it stings even unbroken skin. It’s going to hurt like hell in any cuts.” Her lips curved in a small smile. “It also tastes terrible, so keep your mouth shut tight, too.” She twisted the faucet knob.

  Alania turned on her own shower, squeezing her eyes shut as she did so. She gasped as liquid, heated to just below the threshold of being unbearable, doused her body. The fluid had an acrid, acidic smell to it, and despite holding her lips pressed tight, Alania got a mouth-puckering taste of its bitterness. But remembering the foul water of the River, she welcomed its astringent touch, turning this way and that to be sure it reached every square centimeter of skin. Chrima hadn’t been kidding—it burned like hot metal in every scrape and cut. But she embraced that pain as a small price to feel truly clean again.

  “It will switch to water in a second,” Chrima said, and sure enough, the spray suddenly lost its strange smell. Alania raised her face to it, and when it ended a couple of minutes later, she opened her eyes and brushed lank hair from her forehead.

  “That felt wonderful,” Alania said. Second bath today, she thought. Being really filthy was something of a new experience for her; it just didn’t happen on Twelfth Tier.

  Chrima smiled. It made her look like a teenager. “Even when I’ve been wearing that dry suit I’m glad to get decontaminated after net duty,” she said. “Mining is even worse.” She led Alania back into the room where they had stripped. Lockers lined the walls, and from one she took out clean clothes for herself; she offered Alania clothes from another. Chrima’s, black pants and a black vest over a dark-green turtleneck, were obviously her own. Alania’s didn’t fit nearly as well and had clearly been sewn and patched multiple times, but she donned them gratefully all the same, beginning with proper underwear. Over that, she pulled on khaki-colored pants, rolled up at the cuffs because they were too long, a rather baggy long-sleeved blue shirt, and thick gray socks. There were several pairs of shoes to choose from: she found some comfortable canvas ones that fit, though she gave her own fouled boots a fleeting glance of regret—she’d loved those boots.

  “Now let me look at that cut on your head.”

  Obediently, Alania sat on a worn wooden bench. Chrima opened yet another locker and took out a metal box. “We keep a first aid kit in here so we can treat any minor wounds as soon as possible,” she said. She leaned forward, frowning. “That’s . . . odd. When did you get that?”

  “A couple of hours ago,” Alania said. “In the stairwell.”

  Chrima’s eyes widened. “But it’s almost healed. Kind of red, but it’s closed.”

  Alania shrugged. “I’ve always healed fast.” She touched her cheek; the synthiskin there had fallen off. The piece on her forehead covering the cut she’d sustained when she’d landed in the Middens was still in place, but it, too, had started to peel away. She took hold of one edge and pulled it off completely. “How’s that wound look?”

  “What wound?” Chrima said. She bent closer. “A faint scar . . . When did that happen?”

  “This morning.” Alania pointed at her unmarked cheek. “I was cut here, too.”

  “That’s not just fast, that’s miraculous,” Chrima muttered. She shook her head. “Well, just to be safe, I’m going to treat the one that’s still red.” She rummaged in the first aid kit and drew out a small spray can. “Hold still.”

  Alania obeyed. She heard the hiss of the can and yelped; the decontamination shower had burned like fire, but this stuff burned like ice. “Antiseptic,” Chrima said. “And an analgesic, too.” Sure enough, the pain had already vanished. Chrima dug around in the kit some more, pulled out another synthiskin patch, and stuck it over the cut. “There,” Chrima said. “I hope this fast-healing trick of yours helps prevent infection, too.” She closed the kit. “You’re lucky—right now we have medical supplies, thanks to Erl. We don’t always.”

  “What happens if the cut becomes infected?” Alania asked.

  “Don’t think about it,” Chrima advised. She stowed the first aid kit back in its locker, then picked up the beamer rifle. “Grab your backpack.”

  Rather reluctantly, since the pack still looked gray from being dunked in the River and hadn’t gone through decontamination, Alania obeyed. Then Chrima led her out of the change room and back down the hall to the pillared, semicircular chamber into which the elevator had originally deposited them. Danyl was already there, dressed in black pants and a faded red shirt. “Now,” Chrima said, “you can see Yvelle.”

  She turned left and walked across the semicircular room to a hallway that opened where the curving wall met the long window, so that one wall of the corridor beyond was also made of glass. Like the rest of this very odd place, the hallway was strangely ornate, though the blue carpet had worn to nothing but gray rubber down the middle. Nude st
atues in athletic poses, each about fifteen centimeters tall and carved from pale green stone, graced gilded alcoves on the inside wall, although about half of the alcoves were empty and in one or two only half a statue remained, a pair of muscular legs cut off at the thigh or a woman missing both arms. Outside the glass wall, the waterfall pool stretched, less turbulent this far from the cascade. The odd thing was that the River didn’t seem to continue past the pool; the southern wall of the vast open space into which it plunged was solid. Concrete balconies and black, blank windows stretched several stories up it. But the water has to go somewhere, Alania thought. It must plunge underground.

  She glanced back at Danyl. He stared back with a slight scowl, though she didn’t think that had anything to do with her. He’s worried about Erl.

  So was she. And she was still wondering what was going on.

  Maybe Yvelle would tell them . . . something.

  The corridor ended in a door marked “Administration.” Chrima knocked, and it swung open from inside. The glass wall continued into the office beyond, which Alania could only glimpse past the tall, thin, dark-skinned woman dressed in black who blocked the way. She wore a sheathed knife on her left hip.

  “Hello, Idell,” Chrima said. “I’ve brought them.”

  Idell nodded and stepped aside. “Yvelle is in the inner office,” she said.

  The antechamber Idell guarded had the same threadbare blue carpet as the hallway. Gold-speckled white stone sheathed the three walls that weren’t made of glass. Instead of statues on the inside wall, there were paintings. One showed the Canyon, the River rushing over rocks, the water sparkling blue and white in the sunshine streaming down from high overhead. Another showed the City perched above the Canyon, likewise sparkling in morning sunlight. No garbage filled the chasm below it, the walls of the lower Tiers weren’t stained with rust and oil and nameless gunk, and it didn’t smoke and steam the way the real City did.

  Dull metallic letters bearing flecks of gold paint stretched across the farthest wall behind a curved desk of scarred dark wood. “Whitewater Resort,” Alania read, though some of the letters were only outlines marking their former placements; the remaining characters really read “hite ate sort.” The desk beneath the crumbling sign bore its own sign: “Rec ptio.”