The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  Alania chewed on her lower lip. “Once we’re in there, we won’t get out again until it opens itself or someone opens it for us. And we won’t have any way of knowing where we’re going.”

  “I know,” Danyl said. He spread his hands. “But what choice do we have? There’s nowhere to hide. The Provosts will track us down soon enough if we stay here. Some hidden camera has probably already spotted us standing at this gate. We can’t go back to the River People—they don’t exist anymore. We can’t go back to the Middens. And we can’t get into the City . . . well, maybe you could, if you turned yourself in.”

  “No,” Alania said instantly. “Not anymore. Not after what we’ve learned. And anyway, I wouldn’t do that to you.” She grinned at him. “Brother.”

  His face reddened; it was endearing. “Thanks . . . Sister.”

  “You’re welcome.” She turned back to the transport. “Two days ago, I would have said it doesn’t look very comfortable,” she commented, “but after last night, it actually looks pretty great. At least it’s clean and dry.” She walked up the ramp.

  Danyl followed. The moment he was inside, the hatch swung smoothly closed. Alania half expected to be plunged into darkness, but the lights stayed on.

  The transport started to move. Alania sat down against the wall, Danyl beside her.

  A few minutes in, the transport turned left, presumably off of the side road they had followed to the gated Estate and back onto the main road. That meant they had turned north, but after that there was little sensation of movement at all, and Alania knew she wouldn’t be able to feel a more gradual turn. They could end up heading in literally any direction.

  “Do you know how fast these things move?” Danyl asked her.

  She thought about it. She’d studied the Heartland transportation system, but the details were fuzzy. “I’m not entirely sure . . . Eighty kilometers an hour, maybe? They’re designed to go a lot faster, but I know the roads have deteriorated so much that they keep the speeds down.”

  “A few hours in here, and we could end up anywhere in the Heartland, then,” Danyl said.

  Alania nodded without speaking. She found her eyelids growing heavy now that they were safely out of sight . . . well, presumably safely. She also found that she was surprisingly comfortable leaning up against the wall of the transport. Well, why not? she thought. She rested her head on Danyl’s shoulder and let herself doze off.

  She woke disoriented. Something had changed. She straightened. Danyl blinked at her; from his confused, rather frazzled expression, she gathered that he’d slept, too. “We’ve stopped,” he said. He looked at his watch. “More than three hours since we boarded. It’s late afternoon.”

  Alania stretched, opening her mouth wide in a yawn that snapped shut abruptly as something banged against the outside of the container. Heart pounding, she leaped to her feet, Danyl scrambling up beside her. Together they faced the end of the container through which they’d entered.

  Naturally, the opposite end opened this time, letting in a flood of daylight and cool air along with a strange nose-tingling, invigorating scent Alania didn’t recognize. She spun.

  Two robots waited at the bottom of the ramp. They were almost identical to the Beruthi gardening robot they’d seen earlier . . . except each of these robots’ four arms ended in weapon barrels, not gardening tools.

  Beyond them a short driveway led to a large house with walls of natural stone, windows framed by rough-hewn timber, and a steeply pitched roof supported by massive beams of the same golden wood as the window frames. Smoke drifted from a tall stone chimney. Behind the house rose a steep slope covered with forest, and beyond that slope, more hills marched away, each ridge higher than the last, toward the awe-inspiring wall of the Iron Ring. Whisps of cloud clung to its steel-gray face, below the massive glaciers that topped its sawtoothed peaks. The shadows of the robots and the house stretched to their right, which meant the sun was sinking off to their left. They had to be at the northernmost edge of the Heartland . . . but why?

  It didn’t seem to be a good idea to move while killer robots were staring at them, and Danyl apparently concurred, since he stood as stock-still as she as they waited for whatever would happen next.

  What happened next was that a third robot appeared, coming into sight from their left, moving on wheels instead of legs. Taller and more slender than the others, it had only two arms, ending in simple claw-like manipulators. It rolled up the ramp and stopped a couple of meters away.

  “My apologies for the rather unfriendly greeting,” said a deep voice. “I had to be certain of who was in the transport.”

  Alania’s mouth fell open. She knew that voice. It can’t be . . . !

  “Welcome to Retreat Beruthi,” said her former guardian.

  TWENTY-ONE

  DANYL WAS JUST starting to realize what that name meant when Alania grabbed his arm so hard it hurt.

  “It’s a trap!”

  “Please don’t be alarmed,” the robot said, or rather the man speaking through it said. Alania squeezed Danyl’s arm even tighter. Her face had gone pale, but two spots of red flamed in her cheeks, and he realized she was more furious than afraid.

  “Why not?” she snarled at the robot.

  “I understand that you find this disconcerting, Alania, but you are in absolutely no danger.” A pause. “I see you’re armed, Danyl. I would appreciate it if you would place that slugthrower on the ground before I approach in person.”

  Danyl looked at Alania. “Your guardian?”

  She nodded. “I’d know that voice anywhere!”

  Danyl turned back to the robot. “I don’t think so,” he said. He put his hand on the sidearm. “If I’m in no danger, there’ll be no reason for me to shoot you. But you’ll understand why I don’t want to take your word for that.”

  Another pause. “Very well. I suppose that after the past two days, asking you to disarm yourself unilaterally is rather tone-deaf. One moment.”

  “Don’t trust him,” Alania said in a low whisper to Danyl. “He’ll hand you over to the Provosts and me over to Kranz.”

  Danyl’s hand tightened on the slugthrower’s grip. “Not if I can help it.”

  The robot rolled away from them, down the ramp and off to one side. Then the door of the house opened, and a figure came down the half-dozen stone steps: tall, thin, tanned, black hair just beginning to go gray at the temples. He wore simple work clothes: a plaid shirt above black pants and sturdy boots. He held his hands slightly outspread, palms up, and approached slowly.

  “That’s far enough,” Danyl said as he reached the top of the ramp. The man stopped. “Is that him?” Danyl asked Alania.

  “Yes,” Alania said. “My guardian.” She made the word sound like a curse. “Lieutenant Ipsil Beruthi.”

  “Lieutenant Commander,” the man said mildly. “I was promoted for taking such good care of you.”

  “Taking such good care of . . .” Alania pulled her hand free from Danyl’s and stepped toward Beruthi. “You never showed me affection. And you spied on me. My whole life! There were cameras in my room! Guardian? More like a warden.”

  “Kranz insisted on the cameras,” Beruthi said. “I had no choice. And I could not show you affection, because it would have raised suspicion, and I couldn’t afford that. My position was too important for us to risk.”

  “Us?” Danyl said sharply.

  “The Free Citizens. The organization dedicated to overthrowing the tyranny of the Officers forever.”

  Alania gaped at him. “You’re saying you’re part of the revolution?”

  “A rather important part,” Beruthi said. “They call me Prime.”

  Danyl blinked. Alania, after a moment’s shocked silence, whispered, “You’re lying.”

  “No,” Beruthi said. “I’m not.”

  “Can you prove it?” Danyl asked. />
  “Other than the fact you followed the instructions Erl was given by Prime to take you to Prime, and here I am, I don’t suppose I can,” Beruthi said. “It’s not like I keep a special ID badge lying around that says, ‘Hello, my name is Ipsil, and I’ll be your revolutionary leader today.’” He smiled. “But if you will come into the house, I can at least offer evidence I speak truth.” The smile faded as he looked from Danyl to Alania and back again. “And I can tell you what this is all about: why you were born, why Yvelle did what she did, what Kranz wants Alania for, why the Provosts have been sent to kill and die to get you back. I can tell you all of that, if you’ll trust me.”

  “What if we say no?” Danyl asked.

  “Don’t say no,” Beruthi said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I rather think it is.”

  Danyl frowned; then he realized what Beruthi’s response must mean. He looked past the Lieutenant Commander to the sentry robots.

  “They won’t kill you,” Beruthi said. “No one wants you dead, myself least of all. But if you try to draw your weapon, they will incapacitate you, temporarily but quite painfully.”

  “And if we refuse to accompany you?” Danyl asked.

  “The same result. Then they will carry you into the house, and we will continue this discussion once you have recovered. That would delay our talk by a good hour, though, and, frankly, I need to get back to the City as soon as possible to help obfuscate the Provosts’ search for you.”

  “They don’t think we’re dead?” Alania asked.

  “Apparently not,” Beruthi said. “All owners of Estates near the City have received orders from Kranz to keep our eyes peeled for two young but dangerous renegades who must be detained and returned to the City at all costs. There’s a considerable reward attached to you, albeit with stern warnings that if you cannot be captured safely, you should simply be reported so the Provosts can arrest you. You are not to be harmed.”

  Danyl looked at Alania. “Your call,” he said. “You know him.”

  “Apparently not,” Alania muttered. She looked at the security robots, then back at Beruthi. “All right,” she said. “We’ll come with you.”

  “But I’m not giving up my weapon,” Danyl said.

  “As I’ve already indicated,” Beruthi said, “I can live with that.” His mouth twitched. “At least, I hope so. this way.”

  He turned and started toward the house. Danyl glanced at Alania. She still looked pale, but she stepped forward, and side by side they followed the Lieutenant Commander.

  Once out of the transport, Danyl could see more of the house’s surroundings. Two ridges of the mountain behind it embraced it like arms so that it nestled comfortably in a sheltered hollow. Does Beruthi have servants with him here? he wondered. He doubted it—Alania had told him she’d grown up surrounded by robots, and why would Beruthi, whose family had built robots since the founding of the City, risk allowing anyone living to see or hear something that might betray him? No, he thought, Beruthi had almost certainly waited alone for their arrival.

  Something to remember, should things go badly, Danyl thought. Then his gaze slid to the robot sentries they were passing between. Things would have to go very badly indeed before he would risk facing armed robots. Occasionally a robot from the City would descend into the Middens on a scavenging mission. No one ever knew who sent them or what they were looking for, but Erl had impressed on Danyl from childhood that the technical term for attacking an armed robot, barring its instant destruction with more firepower than anyone in the Middens possessed, was “suicide.” That warning had been in the back of his mind during their adventure on the Rim, and seeing the Guardians in action against the Provosts’ helicopter had reinforced it mightily.

  Since the only weapon he had was a slugthrower that probably wouldn’t even dent their armored hides, “instant destruction” seemed unlikely. Which left the “suicide” part.

  They climbed the stone steps and passed through the open door into the interior of the house: a large open space three stories tall with the underside of the roof forming a steeply pitched canopy of golden wood high overhead. Directly in front of them, a stairway led up to an overlooking balcony with doors at either end and two in the middle leading into the back of the house.

  On their own level, four archways led out of the big living space: one on either side of the stairs, the others to the right and left. Ahead and to the right, Danyl glimpsed gleaming pots and an oven: the kitchen. The room ahead and to the left he guessed might therefore be the dining room. To their right, the archway led into a comfortable-looking room with chairs and couches covered with dark-red synthileather (or more likely, real leather) and a massive fireplace, flames leaping within it to ward off the chill of the mountain air. The room to their left contained multiple video screens, looking strangely out of place in the otherwise rustic dwelling and surrounding a stone-topped desk whose base appeared to have been made from a single massive tree trunk. The archway into that room was the only one with a door.

  A deep silence hung over everything, broken only by the crackle of the fire in the room to their right, where Beruthi led them now. The south wall boasted a giant window. The view beyond was so breathtaking that Danyl forgot all about Beruthi for a moment, instead moving to the window as though drawn by a magnet, Alania beside him.

  They had climbed a long, long way. Below the plateau where Beruthi’s house stood, wooded hills rolled away, the road winding through them and down to the forests and farms and valleys and villages of the Heartland. Off to their left a ravine emerged from the mountains, growing ever-deeper as it curved its way across the Heartland: the Canyon. Danyl followed its long zigzagging scar into the misty blue distance, and there, just at the edge of his vision before the horizon fell away, saw a glint of light, a tiny egg shape: the City. He stared at it. It seemed incredible that that barely visible structure could contain tens of thousands of people, the Captain, the Officers, the Provosts. It looked completely insignificant, and yet it loomed larger in his mind and his life than ever before.

  He tore his gaze from it and looked east and west. The Iron Ring curved toward the south in both directions, encircling the Heartland below: a vast, vast space, and yet that tiny speck in the distance ruled it all. The checkered fields, the distant villages, the forests—all of it belonged to the Officers, who ruled with absolute authority. And still, competition for the jobs and accompanying living space in those tightly controlled communities was fierce, for who wouldn’t rather live in the country—even in indentured servitude—than in the squalor of the lower Tiers?

  The Officers have everything, and most people have next to nothing, Danyl thought. That’s not right.

  But this Officer claimed he wanted to change that.

  Danyl was reserving judgment.

  He turned away from the window and looked at Beruthi, who stood beside the fireplace. Above it and to either side hung paintings of mountain scenery. Though they weren’t bad, they had a certain amateurish quality to them that made Danyl suspect Beruthi had painted them himself. Unless he has a robot do it for him.

  As Alania, too, tore herself away from the view, Beruthi indicated one of the two hide-covered couches. “Please, sit,” he said.

  Danyl glanced at Alania, who shrugged. Together they crossed to the couch. Alania sat down first; Danyl took a second to slip his arms out of the straps of his backpack and place it on the floor at his feet. Then he sat beside Alania, though he didn’t sit comfortably, holding himself as close to the edge as he could so he could still reach the slugthrower on his hip if need be. He sensed similar tension in Alania, whose hip touched his.

  Beruthi sat on the couch opposite them across a low, stone-topped table. He studied them for a long moment. “Before I begin,” he said at last, “I need to know: what has Erl told you?”

  “Not much,” Danyl said. He didn�
��t try to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I didn’t even know he used to be an Officer until the day before yesterday.” He bent down and opened the backpack, reaching inside to pull out the data crystal. The leaping flames in the fireplace cast red-blue sparks off its faceted sides as he held it up. “He gave me this and a reader, but the reader got wrecked before I could use it. We were a little too busy running for our lives.”

  “Ah.” Beruthi got up from the couch. “I have a reader in my office across the hall. One moment.”

  He went out. Danyl looked at Alania. “All right?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head. “Not really,” she replied, her voice barely audible. “It’s a lot to process. Of all the people for Prime to be . . . How can I trust him now after . . .” Her words faded into silence, and her gaze dropped.

  Danyl put a hand on her knee, and she looked up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears. “I can’t really understand, I know,” he said, keeping his voice low. “But we’ve both had a lot of shocks the past couple of days. One thing I do know: we’re family. Whatever we decide to do from here on out, we decide it together. Agreed, sister?”

  A smile played across her lips—a small smile, but he felt as if he’d won a prize. She put her hand on his and gave it a small squeeze. “Agreed, brother.”

  “Here we are,” Beruthi said, coming back into the room. He carried a reader identical to the one Erl had provided. He put it on the low table and pressed a button, and a screen unfolded. Below it, a hexagonal opening just the right size to accept the crystal glowed green. “Listen to what Erl has to tell you,” Beruthi said. “I’m going back to my office, where I won’t be able to hear. Once you’ve listened to him, come talk to me. Ask me any questions you want. That way you’ll know I’m not just parroting Erl.”

  He turned and went out again, crossing to his office and closing the door behind him.

  Danyl reached forward and slid the blue crystal into the receptacle.

  The screen lit, and Erl looked out at them. Danyl recognized the background as Erl’s bedroom. He looked slightly younger than he had the last time Danyl had seen him.