by Eric Brown
The ‘chute terminated at Level Fifteen. She was forced to get out, consult her map-book, and make her way to another ‘chute station a kilometre away. Like this, in a series of steps, she made her way up the Station and eventually, two hours after setting out, she was riding in a cage towards the top level. She was surrounded by rich people in smart new clothes, businesswomen, and handsome men talking into handsets.
Excitement fluttered like something living in her chest.
Ten minutes later she stepped from the upchute cage into the amazingly fresh air and bright sunlight of the upper deck.
She stood rooted to the spot. She could only stare about her in awe. She felt tears stinging her eyes. She was buffeted from behind by the passengers leaving the upchute cage. She pushed her way through the crowd and hurried along the sidewalk until she came to...
Well, she knew what it was because she’d seen it—or one like it—on holo-vision. It was called a park, and the green stuff was grass, and it was alive, like some of the plants she’d seen down below.
And amazingly, the open space was not crowded. People walked across the park, and rich kids played with toys she’d never seen before, but every metre of the grass wasn’t crowded with noisy citizens.
Her chest felt as if it were filled with bubbles like a bottle of pop. She stepped off the sidewalk and trod on the grass. Beneath her thongs, the grass was soft, spongy. She kicked off her right thong and, warily, placed her foot on the grass—then withdrew it quickly. The grass tickled her!
She replaced her thong and looked around. Not far away, on the edge of the grass, was a bench. She hurried across to it and sat down, amazed that she had the seat to herself. On Level Twenty, she would have been crushed by other people, until she submitted and gave up her seat.
She stared about her, open-mouthed. Far, far away was a line of buildings, great towering needles. She turned. They were all around, filling the horizon with long, piled up houses where people lived and worked.
Then, remembering, she looked up, and gasped with wonder.
The sky was blue and it was hard to tell where it began and where it ended. It seemed to go on forever. The only things in the sky were clouds—and it was hard to tell how big they were: were they the size of a feather, close to her, or great white sheets, far away?— and air-cars zooming along red and blue lanes that criss-crossed the sky like a child’s crazy pattern.
Pham knew, suddenly, that she had done the right thing.
Confident, full of hope for her new future, she left the park bench to explore the upper deck.
* * * *
“You’re new here.”
Pham turned quickly. She had been staring into the window of Patel’s Sweet Centre, at the trays piled with pyramids of gulab jamons, idli, and a hundred other sweets, wondering whether to treat herself, when the voice sounded loud in her ear.
The boy was taller than her, perhaps ten years old. He was a Muslim with a white lace skullcap and only one arm. The stump of his left arm poked from his T-shirt like a nub of dough.
She was immediately defensive. “So?”
“So... it isn’t often we see new kids up here.” He spoke Hindi with bits of Thai here and there. He squinted at her. “Where you from?”
She stared back. “Where are you from?”
“I asked first.”
“If I tell you where I’m from, you tell me where you’re from, okay?”
He nodded. “Ah-cha.”
“I’m from Level Twenty,” Pham told him with something like pride in her voice. “It’s my first time on the upper deck.”
The boy stared at her. “Level Twenty?” he gasped. “And you’ve never been up here before?” He seemed to find that hard to believe.
Pham nodded. “I came all the way up on my own. I’d had enough of life down there.”
The boy was shaking his head. “All the way by yourself. What did you do on Level Twenty? You were a beggar, right?”
She pulled a disgusted face. “A beggar? Do I look like beggar? I worked in a factory, operating a Siemman’s Nylon Extrusion Press.”
“You had a job, and you left it to come up here?” He obviously thought her mad.
“I wanted to see the world,” she told him. “Anyway, I’ve told you where I came from. Where are you from?”
He puffed his skinny chest. “I live on a spaceship between Levels Eleven and Twelve.”
Pham wished that she hadn’t told the boy the truth about herself, because he was obviously lying to her.
“A spaceship?” she scoffed. “I might be from Level Twenty, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The boy laughed. “No, really. Many years ago, when Level Eleven was the upper deck, this spaceship crash-landed, ah-cha? Rather than move it, they built around it. And it’s still there, owned by Dr Rao.”
The way he said the doctor’s name made Pham think that she should have heard of him. “Who’s Dr Rao?” she asked.
“Don’t you know anything? Dr Rao is a very famous man on Bengal Station. He is a doctor with a Big Heart. I work for him.”
Pham cocked her head and regarded the boy dubiously. His lies were getting bigger and bigger. “So what are you,” she asked, “a junior doctor?”
He didn’t understand her humour. “Why do you think I’m a doctor?”
“Forget it. So, what do you do?”
He grinned. “I beg. This is my patch, all the way from Nazruddin’s to Patel’s. I give half the money I make to Dr Rao.”
She said, “Haven’t you ever had a proper job?”
He shook his head, matter-of-factly. “Who needs a proper job when I can beg?”
She wanted to ask him what he would do when he grew up. Would he still beg on the streets then?
He was watching her closely. “How long are you staying up here?”
She shrugged, casual. “Oh, forever, I think. I like it better than down there. More space, more to see. I’ll get a job, rent an apartment, go up in the world.”
He was trying not to laugh. “But you’re only... what? Six?”
“I’m seven,” she said.
“So you’re seven. And you think you’ll get work, just like that? And an apartment?”
“Why not? I can work hard and save money.”
He was shaking his head. “Things are hard up here,” he said. “It isn’t like in the movies. Kids can’t get good jobs, only begging.” He paused, thinking, then said, “Where will you sleep tonight?”
She’d already decided that rather than spend money on a hotel room, she would sleep in a park on Level Two. “Ketsuwan Park,” she told him.
He was shaking his head like a wise old man. “Dangerous. Bad men go to the parks, looking for kids.”
She peered at him through her fringe. “They do?”
“Murder them for baht, sometimes do other things. Look,” he went on, “why don’t you come with me? I’ll show you the ship, introduce you to Dr Rao. He’ll let you stay for a couple of nights.”
“He won’t try to make me beg for him?” she asked.
The boy looked away, shrugging. “Well, he might ask. But you can always say you’ve got a job.”
“I don’t know...”
“So come with me and look at the ship, ah-cha? It really is amazing.”
She still didn’t believe him, but she nodded anyway.
“Great!” He held out his right hand. “I’m Abdul.”
“Pham,” she told him, shaking his hand very formally and laughing. Abdul might be a big liar, but there was something about him which she liked.
“Follow me! We’ll cut across the upper deck and I’ll show you a few things on the way!”
He scooted into the crowd, pushing aside bodies, and Pham gave chase.
They crossed the crowded street and came to a crossroads, and Pham found herself holding Abdul’s hand, frightened of losing him in the crush.
“Tell you what,” he shouted in her ear as an air-car screamed low overhead. “We’ll go t
o Kandalay by train. We’ll see the spaceport then. You ever seen the spaceport?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Only on holo-vision. Where’s Kandalay?”
“Central Station. There’s a big amusement park there, only it’s closed down now. From Kandalay we’ll take a ladder right down to the spaceship.”
The spaceship, again. He really was trying to make her believe that he lived in a crash-landed spaceship!
He dragged her across the street towards the Chandi Road railway station and bought two tickets at the kiosk. A minute later Pham found herself sucked aboard a carriage with what seemed like a million other citizens.
Abdul pulled her along the corridor to a window. They pressed their faces against the glass and stared out as the train pulled from the station.
The sun was going down, making a big red sky in the west. “Look!” Abdul cried with excitement.
Pham gasped. A massive voidliner was coming in over the sea, a dark shape against the sunset, its lighted viewscreens showing the crew going about their business inside. Pham wondered what it must be like to be a spacer, to see all the wonderful alien worlds out there.
The train rattled past the spaceport, and Pham stared down across the apron at the dozens of ships lined up in neat rows. They were all shapes and sizes and colours, and Pham decided that when she earned her first wage on the upper level she would find a shop that sold model spaceships and buy one.
The train pulled away from the spaceport and passed a massive park, with acres and acres of grass and big trees, and families walking back and forth in the twilight. Pham saw a girl of about her age, holding hands with her mother and father, and she felt a moment of sadness and a swift stab of jealousy.
“Himachal Park,” Abdul was saying. “It’s the biggest park on the Station. Two square kilometres!”
Pham just nodded.
“Are you okay?” Abdul looked at her, concerned.
“I’m fine. Do you really live on a spaceship?”
Abdul slapped his cheek. “I swear, Pham! You’ll see... Okay, we get off at the next stop.”
They squirmed their way through the packed bodies as the train slowed at Kandalay. Abdul took her hand again, and Pham felt pleased and safe as he tugged her off the train, along the platform and out into a noisy street.
It was dark now, and the street was alight with a thousand signs advertising shops and restaurants. The sidewalk was crowded with food-stalls. Pham saw one selling idli. She bought two big sticky lattices and passed one to Abdul, earning a big grin of thanks.
The only trouble now was that Abdul didn’t have a free hand to hold on to Pham, so she had to be extra careful as she followed him across the busy street and down a dark alleyway.
They came to a high tattered polycarbon wall, covered with peeling posters of holo-movie stars and skyball players.
Abdul ducked through a loose flap in the wall, and Pham bent down and pushed her way through after him, then stood up and stared about her in wonder.
She had never seen anything like it in her life, not even in the holo-movies.
She was surrounded by a hundred rides and stalls and things that she couldn’t even describe—massive wheels with seats all around them, slides with rocket ships ready for take-off, oval shapes like little fliers hanging by wires from tall frames. Okay, so some of the attractions were old and faded, and some had been ripped apart—and none were working—but, even so, Pham could imagine how wonderful it must have been, and walking through the amusement park even now was a magical experience.
“My favourite is the ghost train,” Abdul said. “Have you ever seen one?”
She shook her head. “A train that’s really a ghost?” she asked, confused.
Abdul laughed. “No! Come on, I’ll show you. The cars don’t work anymore, but we can still walk through it.”
He’d finished his idli now, and he grabbed her hand with sticky fingers and dragged her through the faded glory of the park.
Five minutes later they came to an open area surrounded by tumbledown food kiosks, with the ghost train at one end and a starship ride at the other.
They hurried across the concourse and stared up at the fa ç ade of the ghost train. It was the shape of a castle, covered with paintings of ghosts and ghouls, vampire bats and zombies. There were two openings, where the little cars went in and came out, and these openings were the mouths of screaming banshees.
Abdul ran up a short flight of steps, pulling Pham after him. She dragged him back as he made to enter the first screaming mouth. It was dark in there, and she could see something green and luminous and scary lurking just inside.
“I’m not sure...”
He turned and stared at her. “Are you scared?”
“No. It’s just that... I thought you were taking me to see the starship?”
“You are scared! Look, there’s nothing to be frightened about. They’re just mechanical monsters. And you’ll be with me. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
That persuaded her. She felt comfortable with Abdul. Nothing would go wrong while she was with him. All this was his world, the upper deck, and if she stuck close to him she would be fine.
But even so, as she timorously stepped into the dark maw of the ghoul’s slavering mouth, she felt her tummy flutter with fear. She grabbed Abdul’s hand with both of hers and squeezed.
Something green was dangling from the ceiling: it was a hanged man, who’d been there too long. His flesh was rotten and his eyeballs had fallen out.
“Yech!” Pham said, shivering and pressing close to Abdul.
They hurried past the hanged man. They were walking between two rails where the car would have run, years ago. It took them further into the make-believe castle, leaving behind the little light that spilled through the mouth-shaped entrance. Pham could feel the hairs on the back of her neck bristling in fear, and she wanted to scream out loud and run back the way she had come.
She did scream when something leapt out of the darkness and yelled in her face. It was a disembodied head, blood spilling from its open mouth.
She yelled at the top of her lungs and almost jumped into Abdul’s arms.
“It’s okay!” he laughed. “It’s only a hologram.”
She knew that, but somehow it didn’t make the experience any the less frightening.
Next, a ghostly laugh crept up on them and Pham felt fingers brush the back of her head. She turned, but couldn’t see anything. When she faced forward again, a vampire bat was flying straight at them. This time, even Abdul yelled out and ducked.
For what seemed like an hour, though it was probably only minutes, Pham gripped Abdul’s hand, squeezed her eyes tight shut and hurried around the rest of the castle. She heard all kinds of horrible noises, and felt bony hands plucking at her clothing, but at least she couldn’t see anything now.
“There,” Abdul said. “What did you think of that?”
She opened her eyes. They were standing just inside the exit. Outside was the familiar, reassuring park. Pham wanted nothing more than to leave the ghost train and continue their journey to the star-ship—if it existed.
In a small voice, she said, “I didn’t like it.”
Abdul smiled at her, and she liked him for what he said then. “It is scary, isn’t it? Even though you know it’s all machinery, it’s still frightening.”
He was about to duck out of the open mouth when he stopped suddenly and pulled back into the shadows.
“What?” Pham said, her heart beating fast with new alarm.
“Shhh. There’s someone out there.”
Pham peered past him. At first she didn’t see anyone. Then, on the other side of the concourse, she saw a man in a black suit walk straight towards the ghost train.
They ducked and drew back. “Maybe it’s the owner of the park,” Pham whispered.
Abdul was silent. He found Pham’s hand and squeezed.
The man paced across to the ghost train, then stopped and turned. He glanced
at his watch, then looked around the concourse.
Pham felt relieved. He hadn’t seen them. He hadn’t come to arrest them for trespassing.