Convergence

by David M Henley

  ‘You could take the stairs, but we are fourteen flights up.’

  He looked around at the number of people waiting for the lifts to open for them. ‘Right. I think I’ll do that.’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. When you get out, make sure you turn all the way around to your right. You should be able to see the rank through the archway.’

  ‘Through the archway. Thank you,’ he said and pushed through the crowd to the emergency stairs.

  When the door eased shut behind him, it cut off the hubbub and left him in an echo chamber that amplified his every movement.

  There was still no access, but he added an auto-responder into his stream to apologise for the delay, in case people were trying to contact him.

  He was breathless by the time he made it out — fourteen flights turned out to be about thirty steps per level — and something was blocking the exit door from opening. He shoved harder and it opened just enough for him to get through sideways.

  ‘I’m sorry. Sorry. Excuse me,’ he said to the people he had displaced. The stairwell had let him out into an even denser crowd than he had left above. They were looking at a Serviceman who was standing on a raised garden bed and directing people where to go. ‘How do I get to Corona?’ someone called out. The Serviceman tapped at his handscreen and pointed behind him.

  ‘Take the northbound tracks. Track ten for fifteen minutes, then watch the signs.’

  ‘I’m meant to be meeting my daughter here. How can I find her?’

  ‘When was she due to arrive?’

  ‘Seven minutes ago. From Lima.’

  ‘Take the southeast tower to the seventh level. Arrivals are being asked to stay at their gates. You should find her there. Next?’

  Humbolt fought his way forward. ‘Excuse me. Excuse me, Services.’

  ‘Could everyone please take a step back. I’ll get to each of you in turn.’

  ‘Excuse me, Services,’ Humbolt said again.

  ‘It’s not your turn, Citizen. Yes, miz?’ He turned to the next in line.

  ‘I just want to know how long you think this is going to go on,’ Humbolt said.

  ‘As I said not two minutes ago, I don’t know. Now, if you’ll please just wait your turn.’

  Humbolt let it go and stepped back. He apologised every time he pushed himself through a small opening in the mass of people. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He could see the archway the woman had mentioned and moved towards it. A short tunnel went under the main wall of the plaza, a hundred-pace stretch of kiosks and vending walls. People were arguing over how to pay for goods — as only the eccentric carried cash.

  On the far side, there was a vast paved boulevard leading around the hub. At the front of the ranks, the crowd was thick, as negotiations slowed down the process.

  Humbolt kicked the ground in frustration.

  ‘Were you wanting a ride, mister?’ An old man in a wrinkled gratuit jacket and a veteran’s cap was standing watching the scene, puffing on a steamer.

  ‘Yeah, but look at it. It’s hopeless.’ He indicated towards the mob.

  ‘I’ll take ya.’

  ‘You have a squib?’

  ‘Yep.’ He dropped the small blue tube on the ground and crushed it with his foot. ‘And it looks like I’ve got nothing better to do.’

  Humbolt thanked him profusely and they began making their way across the boulevard towards the man’s squib, dodging departing taxis. The first walls of the city rose up to the sky above him, cliffs of grey and tan stone, with ageing plexi fittings and crannies where plants were determined to grow.

  The old man had parked at the back of the lot and Humbolt was feeling scorched and sweaty by the time they stopped at an old … thing.

  ‘I thought you said you had a squib?’ he said.

  ‘This is a squib. The squib Lightning, the one point zero.’

  ‘Does it fly?’

  ‘Yes, it flies. How do you think it got here? Just get in.’

  Humbolt looked at the passenger door. ‘How?’

  ‘With the handle,’ the old man said, exasperated. He made a crude motion with his hand, up and down.

  Humbolt looked at the door and saw a rectangle over an indent in the hull. ‘Oh, I see.’ It released smoothly, exhaling some gas that made him step back. ‘I saw one of these when I was a boy.’

  Inside the cabin the man had donned an eeg helmet with a cord that plugged into the ceiling dash.

  ‘Stop staring and get in.’

  ‘Ah, before we do that we should discuss … um … well, I’m not sure how to pay you.’ He gesticulated vaguely, referring to the current situation.

  ‘No bother. I figure we can just swap details and it will square up later.’

  ‘Okay, that sounds fine.’ Humbolt climbed in. The pilot grabbed his bag from his lap and shoved it behind the seats.

  ‘No loose objects. Now where did I put that …?’ He began rummaging through his storage net. ‘Pull the door shut, will you?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Humbolt leant out and grabbed the handle. It closed with a different gasp than it had on opening. ‘I’ve never done that before.’ He smiled at the novelty.

  ‘Here it is,’ the old man said. He untwisted and held a notebook and pen out towards his passenger. ‘Just write down your name and number, and I’ll give you mine.’

  ‘Right.’ Humbolt looked at the things in the man’s hands. ‘I’m sorry … I never learnt.’

  ‘Huh?’ the old man grunted, then realised what he meant. ‘Okay, just tell me your name and number.’

  Humbolt leant forward and watched with fascination as the man unfolded the notebook and pushed the pages over until he found a blank space. ‘It’s Humbolt Schaff. No, two efs. My CN is MA478 75990 GF56D.’ The man turned it around for him to read. The letters were curvy and irregular but he recognised them. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  The man found another blank page and pushed his pen around it for a while. He tore it loose from the book, which Humbolt found rather ghastly, and handed it to him.

  ‘Ronald Sarazy?’

  ‘Call me Ron.’

  ‘Okay. I just prefer Humbolt if that’s okay.’

  ‘Fine by me. Now where to?’

  Humbolt recalled the address from his symbiot, but couldn’t ping it to the driver for him to see. ‘West North, Services block four hundred and sixty-seven, deck three.’

  ‘Over the rift?’ Ron asked.

  ‘Is that a problem?’ Humbolt knew about the rift, everyone knew about the rift, even though he wasn’t aware of it in a geographical sense.

  Architecturally, West was like a wounded animal with scars that would never disappear. All of the great American cities had suffered in the wars: some survived and rebuilt, joining together into connected ecosystems, others emptied and withered.

  During one of the wars — Humbolt couldn’t remember which and couldn’t look it up — a nano and chemical attack had cut the city in two, forming the long rift and creating a north–south division in the megapolis.

  Someday the rift will be healed, they said, but for now it was a weeping valley, a gouge of barren rock, irradiated swamp and ruins of past centuries, that began at the coast and stabbed all the way to the spine of the mountains. Toxic with biological and nano pollution, living beings were advised to stay away, but its edges were being nibbled by new buildings and regeneration zones — a slow but defiant scab creeping over the cut.

  ‘No problem for me, but you should have taken a train. Never mind that now. Hold on,’ Ron said. ‘This old girl lets through a bit more gee than you’re used to.’

  The squib shuddered and then hoisted itself into the sky. Humbolt’s throat fell to his stomach. They spiralled gradually up to the flight level and Humbolt could see the crowds below milling around the ranks. As they got higher he could see into the central plaza of Magnus Towers. The famous faces — Humaneness, Justice, Civility and Integrity — twitched in confusion from lack of data. The broken tower, Knowledge, was
a jagged and blackened stump, its face still resting, cracked, where it had fallen.

  Ronald flicked on the headlights and proximity lumens. ‘There’s no centralised control. We’re flying on manual today.’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  Ron shrugged. ‘Safe enough if everyone keeps their eyes open. I’ll go higher, try to stay above the thick of it.’ He continued the spiralling ascent, passing the thirtieth and fortieth floors, and rising above the top stratum needles.

  Magnus Towers wasn’t the centre of West; it was in the south, but as the major transport hub, its surroundings had thickened and built up over the decades. Humbolt knew from his system engineering studies that there had always been a peculiar balance in the development of the West ecosystem — a ‘tension’ as his teacher had put it. The battle between the curve and the linear. Neither philosophy dominated for long in West and the result was a blessed mess of circular buildings and parks, traffic lanes that swerved like rivers — and arrow-straight avenues, ziggurats and blocks of multi-scrapers.

  Huge screens and motioning billboards were everywhere. The faces of Ryu Shima, Charlotte Betts or Abercrombie Pinter — now Prime — stared out calmly and confidently in hundreds of replications. West liked the big names. In Dixie, where Humbolt came from, they liked locals.

  After some minutes in the air, they began flying over a black area where there was no lighting. ‘Is that the rift?’

  ‘The start of it. It gets wider towards the ocean. Don’t worry. We’re high enough above it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So, where are you from?’ Ron asked.

  ‘Oh, um, I’m from Texas.’

  ‘First time in West?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really? What’s a young tuck like you been doing? You don’t like big cities?’

  ‘I find it easier to work in quiet places.’

  ‘Then what are you doing coming here?’

  ‘SE,’ he answered.

  The driver mumbled acknowledgement. He was obviously familiar with Social Engineering protocols. ‘Did you leave anyone behind?’

  ‘My partner and I dissolved our union.’

  ‘Oh.’ The old man seemed deflated by the fact. His was a sentimental generation. Humbolt was happy the driver didn’t pursue the matter any further.

  They were approaching the buildings north of the divide, leaving the dark of the rift behind. Humbolt was again looking down to the streets below and saw a large crowd congregating on the ground.

  ‘What do you think that is?’ he asked.

  Ronald glanced at him and then poked around the buttons on the ceiling until a screen on the dash fuzzed, then showed a zoomed-in view of the scene below. About fifty people were moving towards a central point, pushing and pulling others out of their way. Some fighting had broken out in the middle around a container that people were grabbing things out of.

  ‘What are they doing …?’ Humbolt asked slowly. ‘What are they fighting over?’

  The driver held position and rolled the ground cameras over the gathering. He went past and then centred the frame on an aqua-teal Services box which had been opened.

  ‘Emergency packs,’ Ron said. ‘They’re fighting over emergency packs.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. The Weave hasn’t even been offline for an hour yet. There is no reason to panic.’

  ‘No,’ Ron agreed a little, ‘unless they know something we don’t.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Ronald hesitated to answer, then whistled through his teeth and said, ‘There have been some strange incidents lately. I’m not saying we should worry, but we’ve already had one psi attack here in West …’

  They drifted on for a minute, letting their minds digest the scene in relative silence. Just the whoosh of cutting air and low bass of the engines. As they flew they didn’t relax. The scene had unsettled them both.

  ‘Do you mind if we make a detour?’ Ronald asked, though he didn’t wait for an answer before dipping the squib downwards.

  ‘I really should try to get to the depot as fast as I can. People are waiting for me.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Humbolt looked out as they came down amongst the buildings, then straightened up to glide along the fifth-level concourse.

  ‘They have those caches at all the major intersections. If everyone else is grabbing emergency packs, I think I should do the same.’

  ‘Surely, we don’t need to do that,’ Humbolt said. ‘I really think you’re overreacting.’

  The pilot didn’t answer, and kept looking for one of the aqua-teal metal boxes that were so ubiquitous they usually went unseen. He found one quickly and landed close.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he asked as he lifted the door and jumped out.

  Humbolt looked for the lever handle and twisted it to open his door. ‘Look, I really don’t think this is necessary.’

  Ronald stopped and looked back at him. ‘But you don’t know, do you?’ Seeing Humbolt had no reply, he went on towards the box. It was sealed with a sensor lock which Ronald palmed and then punched in his Citizen number. The doors sprang loose and he pulled them open.

  The packs were whitish, square-cornered canvas backpacks, striped in blue or orange. On the back of the doors were instructions to only take one per person, and to choose orange for warm conditions and blue for cold.

  The old man pulled out one of each. ‘One for the wife.’ They were heavy and made walking ungainly. He didn’t wait for Humbolt, who looked at the packs and chose an orange one before shutting the doors.

  ‘I feel ridiculous,’ he said when they were back in the cockpit, the emergency packs stored in the rear compartment.

  ‘You’re probably right. But, then again, it has been an hour and … twenty minutes.’

  Humbolt didn’t want to think that the other man was right. They launched again. He closed his eyes as they struggled back into the sky, only opening them when that sucking feeling disappeared. The city below was eerily still and silent. People seemed to move erratically and in groups. A light trail of squibs dashed hither and thither.

  What if it was the time to panic? Humbolt asked himself. What if the Weave was down everywhere? And if the Weave was gone, had it taken the Will of the people with it? What would become of them? What rules would unite them? What system of interaction would they use? What laws would be maintained?

  The thought that kept bothering him was that someone had foreseen this. That was why he, and millions of others, had been reassigned recently. This was why there were thousands of Services boxes with emergency packs for any Citizen to take. They were always ready for this.

  ‘Should we be panicking?’ Humbolt asked.

  Services block 467 was in a thoroughly modern area. It housed mostly Servicemen and their families on the upper floors, and Services offices were on third, second and ground, with shuffle rooms for associated enterprises as they were needed.

  The landing pad on the third deck was a large semicircle attached to the side of the building, with a connecting skyway for carousels to the neighbouring towers and airbridges for pedestrians. The guide rails were subtly decorative, made of a moulded pale material displaying an embossed foliage design. Stretching the width of the building’s roof was a large billboard-screen showing a loop of Colonel Abercrombie Pinter enjoying a cup of caf. Beside his smile was a rotation of historical quotes and sayings from the Scorpion’s stream: ‘Pinterisms’ as they were known in Dixie.

  ‘Don’t react. Respond.’ ‘Strike once, or not at all.’ ‘Inaction is action.’ ‘Impossible is just a question of how.’

  Humbolt watched the screen for a while in fascination. Where he had come from, the screens were more supportive of tolerance and the signage was either from the Betts camp or from Parents of Psis … or the Anti-Psi League, when they made enough conversions.

  ‘I got sick of those the last time he was popular,’ Ron snorted. ‘Are you okay, Humbolt?’

/>   ‘I’m fine, thank you. Just thinking.’

  ‘Well, then … I must be going. I feel the need to check on my wife.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you again for bringing me all the way out here. I’ll compensate you when I can.’

  Ron nodded humbly.

  Parting seemed awkward. Neither was able to predict how the next twenty-four hours would go. ‘You have my details?’ the old man asked.

  Humbolt patted his top pocket where he had folded the paper away. His first memento of what was already a curious trip.

  ‘I’m sure this will sort itself out,’ he said again.

  ‘I assume it will. Alright. Bye then.’ With a wave and a judder of degravitation, the taxi lifted and flew away.

  Humbolt looked around him. Where were the servitors? he wondered. Through his symbiot he detected a subnet in the building, but it wouldn’t allow him access.

  He went to stand by the edge of the landing pad and looked over the side. Below, he could see, and hear, the tug and swirl of a large crowd on the ground, perhaps a thousand people milling outside the Services cordon. Humbolt turned away, shouldering the heavy emergency pack and carrying his suitcase with his other arm.

  The doors parted for him and he walked under the big Pinter sign — ‘We can’t do anything about the past or the present. Only the future is in our hands.’ — and set his load down in the empty reception area.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out.

  The reception desk was unattended. Behind the glass wall he could see an office area with rows of empty desks and couches. He called out again a little louder and a head appeared, a teenage girl with a floppy cap over her ears and brown hair spraying out from underneath. The edges of her ears were painted with fluorescent green liner that matched her lip gloss. She mouthed something, one word, but he couldn’t hear her through the glass.

  From a side door a woman in uniform rushed out. When she saw Humbolt waiting, she came through into the welcome area to meet him.

  ‘Hello, Citizen. How can I help you?’

  ‘I am Humbolt Schaff, reporting for duty …’ She was looking at him quizzically. ‘I was meant to arrive earlier but …’