Way Down Dark

by J. P. Smythe

  “I’m here to trade,” I told her.

  “What you got?” And of course I didn’t have anything, because anything that I could have traded had already gone. Then I remembered: the gloves. Your grandfather’s handiwork meant that they were practical and beautiful in equal measure, delicate stitching that held up under incredible amounts of pressure. We never asked where the leather came from, but we all knew. Everything on the ship is recycled; nothing can be wasted. He made miracles with the material he had access to. Climbing through the ship—admittedly, there was less to climb, because there were still quite a few stairwells intact back then—was so much easier with the gloves on. But I was there on a mission, and I knew that if I found your mother’s body, your grandfather would give me another pair. If I brought her back, dead or alive, he would give me pretty much anything I asked for. So I held them up.

  “Good leather,” I told her, “and I want to give them to your king. In tribute.” I wasn’t sure that it would work—they were just as likely to try to take the gloves off me there and then, which would have led to blood—but they relented and let me through.

  I made my way down to the fifth floor, where the leader was. He was a nasty piece of work, that one. Leaders tended to last a year or so, no more, but he had four years under his belt. Perhaps he’s the reason that the Lows grew so quickly. When I think on that, I think about how this could have ended. Maybe I could have saved more people on the ship by doing something different. But your mother . . .

  He smiled when I showed him the picture. It stretched across his face, bending his flesh, making the scars around his lips stretch into an exaggeration of a grin.

  “That girl,” he said, “I have her.” As simple as that.

  “Alive?” I asked. I wasn’t expecting his admission.

  “You want?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You can’t have.” Everything about him was broken. I remember stories about back home, back on Earth, about how we were in the oldest days: like animals, scrabbling in the mud, beating each other with the bones left over after our hunts. He spoke like he wasn’t even raised by humans: the words the same as anybody else would use but hollow, like there was nothing behind them. They might as well have been nothing more than noises. “She’s mine.”

  “She’s not yours,” I said. “I want to trade for her.” He held out his hands, and I peeled the gloves off. “They’re leather,” I said, “and very strong. Good gloves. The best.”

  It wasn’t enough. I knew that. I had never bought a person on the ship, but I knew that they went for a lot more than a pair of well-made gloves. “There’s more where that comes from,” I told him. “So much more. You give me the girl, I’ll get you many pairs of gloves. Boots, as well.” He stayed quiet, turning my gloves over in his hands. He pulled at them, tugging them larger, and then forced his big fingers into them one by one. The soft skin stretched over his own skin—it didn’t tear even though his hands were much bigger than mine, and I thanked your grandfather’s skills for that—and then he flexed them, and he watched his fingers as he did it.

  I looked around. She wouldn’t be far; I knew that. I looked, and I listened, and I heard something coming from below. Mewling, I thought. Your mother was ten; she would have been terrified. What they would have done to her . . . What might already have been done to her. I didn’t know.

  “No good,” their leader said. “No deal.” I was worried: The situation was just as likely to end badly for me as for your mother. The room was swarming with Lows. You’ve never been to their section of the ship—thank God—but it’s not like the threat of them when they wander into our territory. It’s far closer. Like a change in the atmosphere. I couldn’t take them, not that many.

  “Get out,” he said, “or I kill you,” and he waved his hand. It’s a miracle he let me leave. His minions escorted me, leaving me at the edge of their section. I climbed up the ship through the other sections, all the while knowing that your grandparents were watching me returning empty-handed. When I got back to them, their eyes told me everything I needed to know. They were done, despairing. They assumed the worst. When I said that your mother was still alive, that changed. Your grandfather pulled a weapon from his bunk, a knife he’d carved himself. Huge thing. I told him to wait, that it wouldn’t help and he would just get himself killed. We needed a plan, I said. I don’t know why I helped them then: I had done my part. But they cared, Chan. They wanted your mother back more than anything else in the world. Seeing your grandfather’s face when I said that he would die in saving her . . . He didn’t care.

  It was your grandmother who decided what we should do. She wasn’t a fighter and never had been. She’d had no need for it. All the stories about your family and their witchcraft, Chan: they came from her, and her mother before her, and back, and back. I didn’t believe them, but only just. Some of the stories were persuasive. That’s when she told me how she did what she did, the tricks that she knew. She told me how her witchcraft worked, and she gave me some of the pellets that she crafted. They were how she made smoke come from her fingers: a trick, a lie—nothing more. They were made from parts of the soil, from sugars that we otherwise used for cooking, with a piece of rope. I had never seen anything like them before. She said that the smoke would confuse them, that using the pellets would allow me to pass into Low territory and get your mother before they even knew that I was there. I would have to go to the bottom of the ship, of course—to the Pit, which I sincerely hope you never have to visit. But I agreed. It was important to me by then. Your grandmother gave me the pellets, and your grandfather his knife. I promised them that I would return with you, and I could see in their eyes that they believed me. They had faith in me.

  The plan was this: I would climb straight down to the Pit, then cross it to sneak into the Lows’ section. It was a stupid idea, which was why I thought it might work. No one ever goes down into the Pit. They would never see me coming.

  I went that evening. The bottom of the ship was a sad, lonely place. No lights; all of them were broken because that served those who lived down there better. The floors closest to the Pit have always been where the true degenerates live, because we wouldn’t allow them up here. They tried—lying about what they were, their . . . tastes—but we knew. So we made them stay down there, and they stayed. And I went down, slipping through their floors, to the Pit.

  Chan, I can’t even describe traveling through that. Pushing through the remnants of those we’d lost: their clothes, their bones, their blood. Nothing can prepare you for it. But nobody was watching me, and when I climbed out on the Lows’ side, they didn’t see me. There were no guards, nobody to set off alarms. Just some older Lows, fast asleep, but I made it past them. I knew from my visit earlier that your mother was being kept one floor up. It almost seemed too easy.

  Of course, I was a fool. I was young and stupid and full of myself. When I reached the berth where your mother was being kept—her and three other children, all just as terrified, all mewling because their throats were sore from the crying that they had been doing—the Lows attacked. I was untying the ropes that held the metal cage front to the berth, and they ambushed me. Flames lit up all around us, and in their glow I could see their leader smiling. He had known that I would come for them.

  They rushed me, and I fell to my knees, huddled into a ball. They kicked at me, and I made the right noises to let them think that they were winning, that I was done. In truth, I was fumbling with the pellets that your grandmother had given me. As I felt my ribs cracking under the Lows’ feet, I shouted at your mother to cover her eyes, and I slammed my hand down onto the gantry. The pellet exploded and the room filled, a cloud of thick gray powder swarming over everything. The Lows coughed and sputtered and panicked, and I had my chance. I have never been in so much pain as when I stood, then, and when I tried to breathe, to gasp for air, I took in only a lungful of that cloud. But that didn’t stop me. I grabbed your mother and bundled her into my arms,
holding her close to my body, and I ran. I kicked and fought my way out, clutching her to me, and I slashed with your grandfather’s knife, and I escaped. Still, to this day, I’m not sure exactly how. When I try to picture it, all I remember is the smoke. I don’t know how we got off that floor, away from them, or how I got your mother back to her parents. All I remember is putting her down as we approached and their tears as she ran toward them. How grateful they were.

  I left them. I went back to my life. I went back to whatever I was doing before. And then, a week later, your grandmother tracked me down.

  “She’s been asking for you,” she said. “Riadne wants to thank you in person.”

  How could I refuse that?

  3

  At the very beginning, none of the gangs had names. The Lows, for example, weren’t called that. They were just people until they became something more structured. They lived at the bottom of the ship, so the name got bandied around by those who were afraid of them, and over time it just stuck. Apparently, the worst of the worst banded together, and they decided to try to run the ship the way they saw fit. Evil likes evil, Agatha used to say when I asked about them. I’m sure that I asked about them a lot. It’s natural to want to know more about what you’re afraid of. Originally they took a part of the ship, section II, and turned it into their own private hell. And over time that hell grew.

  Some people—the Pale Women mostly but some others with their own faiths (whatever they might be)—think that this ship is a hell anyway. That in time it will be revealed that we died in whatever happened to the Earth and that this is our punishment. I don’t believe that. I think that we’ll get somewhere eventually. We have to.

  The Lows assimilated anybody who wanted to side with them. I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to, but Agatha said that it was because they offered protection of a sort. She said that after a while, everybody they took in began to dress the same and act the same. After a while, they sort of lost who they were before. They lost who they were and became something else. Seeing them now, it seems like conformity came pretty naturally to those they took. They survived, for one thing. You put up a fight, there’s a good chance you’d be dead already.

  I’m good at waking up when there’s something wrong. Noises, people in the berth, even just a change in the atmosphere—I’m good at sensing that, my brain kicking me out of my dreams. Now I wake up after only a couple of hours of sleep. They’re coming. There’s something in their breathing that’s distinctive, individual to the Lows. They inhale in these abrupt little gasps, short bursts of sucking in air, and they cough their breath out. They always wheeze. It’s because of where they live. There are six oxygen generators—one in each section—but where we’ve tried to maintain ours, they’ve abandoned theirs, leaving the air to choke its way out in darkened plumes. And they live so close to the Pit, which is nearly as bad. The fumes from it—the gases—must affect them. It’s still breathable, just; doesn’t matter what it does to them. And for the rest of the ship, the side effects are useful, because thanks to their screwed-up breathing, you can always hear them coming. I hear them and it wakes me: that nasty cough, rattling to signify that they’re close.

  They’re closer than they should be, as well. There are unspoken rules about their territory. They’ve taken half the ship now, and that’s theirs. Nothing we can do about it. Others have tried over the years—about five years back, the Bells attempted to take another section for their own and failed, and that was only one of who knows how many attempts. And still the Lows grow. And yet this part of Australia is ours, not theirs. It belongs to those of us still trying to survive.

  The trespassing Lows are somewhere directly below me. Cough, cough, that’s all I can hear, and then, also, crying: a man, a child’s voice. I strain to listen. I was wrong: two children’s voices.

  I sit on the edge of my bunk and pull my new shoes on, and I rub my head, the back of my neck. I’m aching, which isn’t a good start. Sometimes—doesn’t matter how much sleep you’ve had—you can wake up and feel amazing, like you can take the whole ship on. And other times you’re stuck with a pain in your skull and a feeling that all you want to do is lie on your back and not move an inch. My hair is growing out, I realize as I run my hand over the stubble. I need to shave my head again before the lice get me.

  The crying gets louder, and the coughing keeps collapsing into laughter, which then turns to coughing again. A cycle.

  Somebody get involved, I think. Somebody else, please get involved.

  I pull my knife out from underneath my pillow, and I lift up one of the boards that I’ve got covering the floor. Through the thick iron grating underneath, I can see right through. Two Lows—nothing special about them. Furs and skins and thick red tattoos on their faces, their hair shaved blunt and fast to their heads. Their targets are the man who lives below me and his sons. I don’t know what the Lows are doing here, and I don’t care. They shouldn’t be here.

  One of the Lows is holding the man’s youngest child. I don’t know where their mother is. She’s never apart from them. I like her. We say hello, and sometimes I give her fruit that I can’t eat before it goes rotten, and she turns it into whatever she can, things that she can preserve and eat over time. I love the smell that comes from their berth when she’s cooking.

  She’s probably dead already, I know. That’s how the Lows work. They pick you apart, and they separate you from everyone else, and eventually you go the same way as everybody else.

  The man is sobbing. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s one of the people in charge of the arboretum, and he’s strong. He’s a good fighter as well. One time I saw him kill a Bell who was trying to steal from somebody, and he did it pretty efficiently. He’s not a man who’s easy to scare. But to see him now, you’d never be able to tell that.

  “Please,” he begs, “please let them go, please let them go. Take me instead.” He’s on his knees, shuffling forward, his hands held out. There’s no use in begging, I know. Hell, he knows that. But he’s overwhelmed. That’s what comes from having people to care for. My mother made me promise to be selfish for exactly this reason. “You’ll be okay,” he says to his son, the one being held by the Low, and he sounds like he believes it. I wonder if he actually does. The other boy is behind him, cowering. If they tried—if they let the Lows have the one child—they might be able to escape. I’m impressed that the father hasn’t tried to run already. He could, he totally could. He could take his other son, find somewhere safe. That’s what most people in his situation would do. They’d cut their losses and start again.

  That’s what I’d do.

  I put the panel back on the floor. They can’t be helped now, and this is not my fight. Mother’s rules, and her voice in my head as if her ghost is actually here with me, whispering into my ear: Stay out of trouble. Be selfish. Don’t die.

  I remember Agatha’s story about finding my mother. I hear the child crying. I hear the Lows wheezing.

  Be selfish.

  I promised her I would be, but then . . . I need to sleep. And I can’t sleep with that noise happening. I can’t sleep unless I know how this ends.

  Screw it. I have to do something.

  I leave my berth and run to the closest stairwell, and I jump down to the forty-ninth floor. I could try to distract the Lows, give the man a chance to grab his boys and run. They might make it. Or I could pile in, fight them. Maybe that would give the father the confidence to join in, and maybe we could beat them. I wait, hiding in the shadows, watching them. I’m breathing hard, so I try to control that. Don’t want them to hear me; that would ruin any chance I have of taking them by surprise.

  I don’t know what the best choice is. I can’t tell.

  I don’t get the chance to decide. It all happens in an instant. The Low who’s holding the boy laughs and throws the child over the side of the balcony. The kid screams as he goes, and the father rushes forward, charging the Low. There’s a sickly crunch, a blade going thro
ugh flesh—through bone—and then the father stops crying. I see him fall forward, his face smacking the gantry floor, his eyes already empty. That just leaves the other boy, and he screams in one terrifyingly loud burst before falling suddenly silent. I can’t see what happens to him, and I don’t go any closer. They’re done.

  I was too slow.

  I shut my eyes for a second and try to calm down, holding my breath until my heart stops hammering, and when I open my eyes I’m calm. I climb back up to the fiftieth floor and I’m in my berth, on my bunk, listening. Usually you can hear your neighbors moving, talking, having sex. But now no one is making a sound, and the ship’s engines, the sounds that are all there always, they fade into the background, fade away completely.

  The silence that’s left is so deep, it’s overwhelming.

  It’s morning. Agatha listens to me talk about what happened and doesn’t say a word. She isn’t one for interrupting. When I’m finished telling her about the family I didn’t manage to save, she sits down on the grass. In her hands there’s a basket of berries. We’ve been picking them together. I don’t like picking berries—it’s time-consuming, and there’s no peace, swarms of people around the bushes—but I wanted to speak with her. From the minute I woke up this morning—and I’m amazed that I managed to get back to sleep after what happened—I didn’t want to be alone. She scoops a handful of the berries out and examines them for damage, finding an overripe one and popping it into her mouth. She hands another to me.