Slabscape: Dammit

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Slabscape: Dammit Page 15

by S. Spencer Baker


  ‘Are we talking or drinking?’ said a third woman behind them. ‘Because I’ve a thirst on me that will not be diverted by either of you two bandying semantics.’

  People flooded into the arena from every alley, archway and door. They pushed and jostled for plates which they piled high. They elbowed and shoved and snuck and sidled until every one of them had a mound of food and a goblet of beer or wine.

  That’s when the talking started.

  Dielle had never heard so many people talking at each other all at the same time. Nobody seemed to be paying him much attention, and he was hungry, so he grabbed a plate and helped himself. The wine was excellent. The fruit was succulent. The slice of an animal was tender and delicious. He sampled everything he could get close to and it all tasted great. All the time he kept an eye out for a certain head of shining red hair. She moved around the gorging throng like an iridescent humming bird, flitting from group to group. Her easy smile and flashing eyes never resting long on any person or thing, she fed and was fed through every visit, every casual exchange, and when she moved on, she left an echo like an eddy in a stream.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She knew, of course. Even though she hadn’t looked at him once since the feast began, she knew he was looking at her. She knew like she knew to draw breath. He had to and she had to. There was nothing more to it.

  Eventually, the hubbub lowered to a dull roar. Even the Unkos had to stop talking long enough to chew and swallow.

  She tripped over to where he was trying to prise a part of a wing off a barrel-chested bird. It wasn’t giving itself up easily and things were getting messy.

  ‘What d’you think of the fare?’ she smiled.

  ‘Um,’ said Dielle.

  ‘I bet you’ve never had anything so real up there, have you?’

  ‘Huh?’ said Dielle, winningly.

  ‘Real as in not grown in a feckin’ tank of bioment and never knew its mudder.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That shite they make you eat up there that’s soaked with chemicals and taste enhancers and so feckin’ toxic they have to fill you full of antidotes so you don’t get poisoned and fall down stone dead all the time.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Ah never mind. You look healthy enough to me anyway. I expect you think you enjoy it, don’t you now?’

  ‘Enjoy what?’

  She shook her head. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me you know. So d’you want to know my name or not?’

  Dielle wanted to know her name more than anything he had ever wanted in his entire re-fammed life. ‘Maybe,’ he said. He tried to raise an eyebrow but wound up squinting.

  ‘Then I won’t tell you,’ she said with a flash of her eyes. ‘But I will tell you two things that you definitely don’t know.’

  That didn’t narrow things down much.

  ‘I am twenty five real Earth years old and I was born from a real mudder, not one of your gestation tanks. I’m the first of a new generation of real people.’

  ‘What do you mean real? Isn’t everybody real?’

  She bounced on her toes. ‘Not like me,’ she said. She was broadcasting an energy that resonated with something deep inside himself. As she got closer he could detect a part of her extended aura interacting with his. It was tangible, unfiltered and utterly exciting.

  ‘In what way?’ said Dielle. He could hardly breathe.

  She got close and stood on her toe tips. Her hair brushed the side of his face. The cloth covering her breast made the softest contact against his arm. She put her lips a fraction from his ear, so close he could feel her warm, moist breath.

  ‘I’m fertile,’ she whispered. She stayed poised like that for an eternity while Dielle’s brain figured out what that meant and then what that really meant, then she rolled back onto the soles of her feet. She looked up at him with wide eyes and raised eyebrows.

  ‘Enough of that now hinny,’ said the man who had led them here. ‘There is business to discuss.’ He grabbed her arm and dragged her away. Dielle was half a step behind.

  They pushed through the garrulous feasters and into a covered alley that led to a heavy door with an arched top. The man put his shoulder to the door and it opened with a sound of metal on metal that made Dielle’s teeth hurt. Inside, all was calm. Polished obsidian covered the floor and lined the walls of a long, curved corridor. Diffused lighting filtered through overhead slats and cool, dry air displaced the dusty humidity of the arena outside. So far, Dielle had been given the impression that the Unkos lived in some form of anti-tech time-warp of enforced primitivism, but this place forced him to think again.

  ‘We’re going to meet the matriarch,’ said the man, striding ahead. ‘You’ll show some respect if you don’t want to feel me boot on yer arse.’

  They came to a large, ceremonial door. It had dark arwood panels carved with ornate roundels and a smaller door inset into it. The man rapped firmly on the small door, opened it and stepped over the high threshold. The woman stood aside to let Dielle go next. What did he say? thought Dielle. Hinny? Seemed like an odd name. It didn’t fit her at all.

  The meeting chamber was cool and muted. Sturdy lattice partitions lent against the walls with a hundred heavy cushions piled against them. A knee-high platform in the centre of the oval room was inset with a dozen round ottomans that formed a semi circle around a low table. The ceiling was draped in thick, green velvet that was drawn into a central metal hoop suspended above the platform. An intricate mobile of lights and lenses rotated slowly, invisibly suspended from the hoop, casting multiple shadows around the vacant room.

  Dielle watched a lumpy, vaguely conical shape emerge from behind a side screen. It was an old, worn-out looking woman with ratty, rust-coloured hair, bloated, rubbery lips, bags and wrinkles under her piggy eyes and puffy, blotchy cheeks that matched her nose and chin. She was, thought Dielle, the ugliest person he had ever seen. He was right. She smiled and Dielle wished she hadn’t.

  She handed him an empty glass. ‘Hullo Dielle,’ she said. ‘I expect you want to know why we brought you here.’

  He looked at Hinny who was standing behind him to his right. She was swaying, almost imperceptibly, to an internal tune. It looked to Dielle like a very pretty tune. He thought he’d already been given the answer to that question.

  ‘Spit,’ said the woman, gesturing at the glass.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need a sample. Spit or I’ll ask our man here to think of an alternative method of extracting one.’

  Dielle spat into the glass and handed it back. The woman inspected it briefly and put it down on a side table. The glass disappeared. She reached inside a fold of her baggy cloak and pulled out a small printed pamphlet.

  ‘Read this,’ she said.

  Dielle read it. It was an instruction booklet for something called a Hyper3D New Lifestyle Maxi-range Galaxy SX 201(i)x with XiHTFE and multi-tetra-core aphasic processing (rev 9.1.8). He’d read half a page and still had no idea what the device was supposed to do when the man prodded him painfully in the ribs.

  ‘Out loud you moron,’ he said. The matriarch smiled coolly at the man.

  Dielle complied. ‘The manufacturers disclaim any responsibility for any loss or damage caused through owner actions leading to the voiding of the warranty such action not limited to the use of the…’

  ‘OK, OK you can read,’ said the man grumpily. ‘Clever boy.’

  The matriarch took the leaflet back and waved at the other two. ‘Alright you can go. Thanks.’

  The man hesitated. ‘I’ll be fine,’ said the matriarch, ‘I’ll call you if I need you.’

  He nodded and left, jerking the door open as if it had done something to harm his family in the past. Dielle watched the last trace of Hinny’s leg disappear over the threshold with a sense of deep loss and even deeper regret.

  ‘Does he do everything as if he hates it?’ asked Dielle.

  ‘Oh don’t mind him, he�
�s a good man. You’ll warm to him once you get to know him.’

  Dielle seriously doubted that.

  ‘Tea?’

  Dielle couldn’t figure out if he was a guest or a prisoner. ‘Sorry, I don’t like tea.’

  ‘Come and sit down,’ said the matriarch. ‘I’ll make you some tea you do like.’ She hauled her misshapen body onto to the platform and sat down by the low table, arranging cushions around her.

  The table was similar to the kTables that were ubiquitous back ‘home’ – as Dielle realised he had started thinking of the Slabscape high above them – but the difference here was that the Unko’s system didn’t allow him access. Within a few seconds, the table was covered with glass cups and containers, a flask of boiling water and some fine metal nets the matriarch used to infuse her chosen selection of coloured dried flakes. She talked as she worked.

  ‘The first thing I have to tell you is that whatever you’ve been told about the Unkos or the Naturalists is almost certainly not true.’

  ‘Nobody has told me anything,’ said Dielle. ‘But I’ve already had some dealings with an Unko called The Man. He wasn’t particularly friendly but he didn’t harm me and I’m pretty sure he could have if he’d wanted to.’

  ‘We know of him. He’s not one of us. He prefers to infiltrate and subvert the myrmidon from within. We choose a different way of life here. One where we are free to build our own community and live by our own values. He’s not invested in any future except his own.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Can you guess why I’m called the matriarch?’

  Dielle didn’t feel like showing his ignorance any more than he had already.

  ‘I’m the geneticist. I’m the one who’s responsible for organising the genes of our extended family to try to shape a better future for us all. By hand! Not by some bloody optimisation algorithm. By hand!’ Her bloated face reddened, she was sweating heavily and her eyes had watered. Her hand darted inside the folds of her clothing to retrieve an embroidered handkerchief. She wiped her face. ‘Don’t be alarmed. Oestrogen fluctuation. Perfectly normal. Normal!’ she said, and thumped the table. ‘You won’t see anyone like me up where you’ve come from.’

  Dielle knew she was right.

  ‘We do things differently here. Human beings are not supposed to be perfect. It’s the variation that gives us our strength so we can adapt to whatever is thrown at us. You lot up there seem to have forgotten this.’

  She poured steaming green liquid into a glass cup and handed it to him. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘try this.’

  It was hot and scalded the tiny sliver of skin behind his front teeth. ‘Ow!’ he said. He rubbed the sore spot with his tongue.

  ‘You see?’ said the matriarch. ‘You didn’t expect that because up there you never get given a drink that might be too hot for you. Everything is controlled. Everything is sanitised. You are never put at risk, nothing bad ever happens and above all, no one is ever born with anything but the best possible set of genes.’

  Dielle thought that sounded like a good idea but wasn’t about to say so. He blew on the tea and sipped again. ‘Hey! This is delicious!’

  ‘Yes of course it’s delicious. And it’s delicious because it’s been made from real dried tea leaves and herbs and the reason it tastes good is because it really does taste good and not because it’s coloured water with chemicals in it that have been engineered to react with your tastebuds to trick you into thinking it tastes good.’

  In fact, the tea was coloured water infused with chemicals that reacted with Dielle’s tastebuds to give him a pleasurable experience of flavour. The only difference was where those chemicals had originated. If Dielle had still been connected to Sis, he would have been able to make a cogent counter-argument – which he would still not have won.

  ‘We are not savages. We have very similar technology here to the technology you use up there,’ she continued. ‘But we choose to use it differently and we will not let the machines determine our lives. Most of all, we will not cooperate with the whole pretence that everything is wonderful and beautiful and no one ever dies.’

  Dielle sipped his tea and waited.

  ‘Down here, people die,’ she said. Her face contorted and he thought she was going to start crying again. ‘People die and it’s perfectly natural. People are supposed to die.’ She wiped her eyes, blew her bulbous nose and inspected the contents of her handkerchief.

  Dielle thought he should probably say something supportive. He could tell she took this matriarchal role very seriously but he couldn’t think what to say and Milli wasn’t available.

  He opened his mouth, hoping that something appropriate might occur to him at the last moment but she checked him with a raised palm. She longazed for a couple of minutes, her eyes darting from side to side as she processed information.

  ‘So it’s true,’ she said when she’d refocussed on his face. ‘You are pre-stop-gene.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ said Dielle. He felt like he was about to be dissected and placed in a million test-tubes. ‘Is that why you’ve brought me here? You want to steal my genes?’

  ‘Menzies’ balls!’ said the matriarch, horrified. ‘Your genes are the only real things you ever truly own. Those and your opinions of course. We wouldn’t dream of violating your personal rights.’

  Dielle couldn’t control himself. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You kidnap me on my way to the most important gig of my life and refuse to let me communicate with my band. You make me trudge over piles of rusty knives for bloody hours, you threaten me with violence if I don’t comply, you analyse my spit and then you tell me you have no intention of violating my rights! What do you think you’ve been doing? Courting?’

  ‘We haven’t violated your rights. We had the right to do everything we’ve done under the terms of our constitution. Except for the DNA analysis. You can have your spit back if you like.’

  ‘You had the right to kidnap me?’

  ‘Absolutely. We needed you for a specific purpose which were are constitutionally entitled to.’

  ‘What purpose?’

  ‘We need you to read to the Naturalists.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our previous reader has recently passed away,’ said the matriarch. Out came the handkerchief again. ‘He was a friend of mine.’

  ‘I thought the Naturalists were disgusting and despicable people.’

  ‘Naturalists are exactly the same as you and me. The only difference is they reject the use of modern technology. They don’t use body-tech, they don’t have neural implants and they only consume what they can grow and make themselves. Who told you they were disgusting?’

  Kiki hadn’t exactly told him that in so many words, but every time she’d used the ‘N’ word she’d looked as if she was trying to suppress a gag-reflex. She’d left him in no doubt that he would want to avoid Naturalists at all costs.

  ‘The man and woman who brought you here are both Naturalists,’ said the matriarch. ‘They weren’t disgusting were they?’

  ‘No!’ said Dielle a little too quickly. ‘Although Hinny did spit quite a lot.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. Those allergy genes are little bastards. They’re almost impossible to separate from the really useful stuff. Her name’s not Hinny by the way, that’s a general pet name people around here use for young girls.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Dielle trying to feign a casual curiosity. ‘What is her name then?’

  ‘It’s hers and she’ll tell you when she’s good and ready. She’s our treasure and you had better treat her with respect or there will be more than trouble. More tea?’

  He held out his cup. ‘Am I a prisoner here or a guest?’

  ‘You are a guest who couldn’t survive in the outside environment if you tried to leave. How does that sound?’

  ‘Like a prisoner.’

  ‘But it’s no bloody different to what your were before, is it? Anyway, the Naturalists have a right to a reader if they ask for one,
and you’re the only one we could track. Readers are scarce these days and those few who can read never sodding go anywhere.’

  ‘What are these rights that you keep referring to?’

  ‘The rights that were enshrined in the Initial Design. It’s a set of constitutional laws which make up the moral and structural framework for the running of Slab and describes the rights of all of its citizens. ALL of them, not just the perfectly protected pawns that you play among. We have as much right to exist as they do and we don’t need their permission to do anything.’

  ‘Except read.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s not usually a problem.’

  ‘But now it is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you need my help.’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘And if I do?’

  ‘I don’t care, you’re doing it.’

  Dielle wished he knew how Louie would handle this. Louie was naturally belligerent. Maybe he could try that. Threaten them with massive retribution from above or start a rebellion or something. Then he remembered the hinny with the silky curls of red hair and the flashing green eyes.

  ‘What is it I have to read?’

  ‘We don’t know, they won’t tell us. I think it must be something they’ve just scavenged, they’re always finding something out there, but this is something they think is important, something they don’t want to share with us. They’re a secretive bunch and they’re instinctively mistrustful of our tech so they won’t let us read it for them.

  ‘You need to understand that the relationship between us is complex and fluid. It’s evolved over generations into a type of semi-antagonistic symbiosis. They provide all of our food and most of our clothing and we share a drinking water resource. We provide information and schooling and even the option of becoming Unkos but they rarely do, in fact it’s more common for some of us to go natural. They don’t need body-tech maintenance and that means they can exist relatively comfortably outside Up Haven so they also act as our security.’

 

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