“They should be here today,” Cobble said as he sat down in one of the chairs. “Probably quite soon.”
This surprised Constance, It hadn’t been long enough for Smoke to have handed the packages over and still give the people enough time to get up the lifts, especially if the lifts had already made a passage upward. “What about the lifts?” She asked.
Cobble let out a little sigh, showing her that he was getting mildly annoyed with all the questions. If she had been anyone else he probably would have lost his temper by now, but since she was technically his boss he could only sigh and explain, “The Nagara and the Worms as well as the Cartel have the power to control the lift drivers,” he said, not looking up from his papers. “We decide when they come and go. They’d have been on strict orders to wait for the representatives and go up when instructed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Worm and Nagara representatives took the same lift from the fifth below.”
Constance didn’t think anything more needed to be said or asked so she took a seat beside Cobble and began reading the documents. They were very detailed outlines of both the meeting and the plan. She read and made sure everything was going to work for her and not harm anyone from the surface as Cobble had promised. When she saw everything was alright she placed the papers back on the table and walked to the food table.
She grabbed one of the sweet cakes and put it in her mouth. She didn’t know what they sweetened it with but the taste was exquisite. The cooks down on the fourth below were some of the best she’d ever seen. They were able to make her meals that reminded her of home and sent her on a taste adventure as they used ingredients she’d never heard of.
She moved to a giant metal container. The words COFFEE was written along the side. “What’s coffee?” Constance asked.
“It’s a dark bitter liquid that is served hot,” Cobble replied as he continued to read the documents for what Constance could only assume as the fifth time, It’s a rarity in these parts, but we have a supplier that comes by once a year and drops off a few decent sized bags of it. It’s not something everyone enjoys, but it keeps people awake and full of energy.”
Constance shrugged and grabbed one of the four plaster mugs from the table. She poured herself a cup of the hot black liquid. The steam rose as she brought it to her nose. It didn’t smell awful by any means, though she wasn’t quite sure just what to make of the odor. She placed the cup to her lips and took a drink. The hot brew almost scalded her tongue as it filled her mouth. She swallowed quickly feeling the heat pass down her throat and into her stomach.
She blew on the beverage to cool it and took another sip hoping to get more of the flavour and less of the heat. Cobble was correct when he had said coffee was bitter. She didn’t typically enjoy bitter things, with the exception of surface ale. Coffee was good though. She couldn’t explain the taste or as to why she thought it was good - all she knew was that she enjoyed it.
She took the mug and sat back down at the table. She sipped her coffee in silence until the door opened and two men walked into the room. One of the men was dressed in faux leather attire with his hair cut in a strange manor, while the other man was large and dark skinned with several white dots running down his face. They each grabbed a mug of the coffee and took seats in front of their papers and waited for Cobble to look up. When he finally did he grinned and said, “Let’s get this meeting in order,” he stood and gestured towards the dark skinned man. “From the sixth below I present Mister Blaze Pox of the Nagara slave trade,” he then gestured towards the leather wearing man, “This is Mister Homer Thatcher, leader of the Worms of the fifth below. I am Cobble Raw, current representative of the fourth below Cartel after the tragic death of our previous leader and the absence of our current boss. And this is Miss Constance Ibot of the surface.”
Each of the men as well as Constance exchanged greetings towards one another. The Nagara and the Worm gave her a strange look as they made their greetings. She could tell the two new men didn’t see as to why she was there, though they didn’t question it. “Alright,” Cobble said as he flipped through his papers, “Just so everyone is clear as to what the plan is and to prevent any cockups, we will go through the plan. The first step is to properly evacuate the entire underground. The surface will be a bit more crowded than what any of us are used to, but there’s less than a thousand people in all the underground and the surface.
“Next, we go after the tower. We gain access to their lift and place boomers around. We will be met with a considerable resistance and thus we will have to be ready to fight. Hell, it may be a fight just getting to the lift.”
“There is another problem,” Constance said, when she saw all eyes on her she continued, “The lift in the tower is controlled by access cards on the surface. They only allow you to go as high as the access card allows. Those who live in the tower are capable of going anywhere; they have what they need implanted in their arms.”
“How is that possible?” Homer asked, stunned.
“The tower is home to a lot of people who invent things. They had found a way to make their home one of the safest places imaginable and it’s going to be very difficult to get inside. There is another way to get the lift to open, but someone on the inside would have to be running the control panel beside the lift. I can teach someone how to do it.”
“Is there another way inside?” Cobble asked.
“Potentially,” Constance said. “I have to take a look. Once I’m there I’ll know for sure, but I don’t want to say any more until I know. You three I’m sure can find other ways to get in if this doesn’t work.”
The three men seemed satisfied with her explanation. Cobble continued, “First order of business is the assurance that the seventh, eighth and ninth bellows are filled in of our plan. They have to be on the same page before anything goes underway.”
The Nagara man, Blaze, spoke up, “My people have already emptied out the seventh below and lower already. They are making their way to the fifth below and up as we speak. You can expect them to be here any time now; a half dozen came up with Homer and I. We’ve also halted the slave trade for the time being until we‘ve achieved our objective, provided that we actually reopen the trade afterwards. I had to tell Smoke a few lies, but all is well.”
Constance looked the man up and down, “Excuse me Mister Blaze,” she said quietly, “I’m from the surface so excuse my ignorance, but I had been told that the Nagara spoke in their own language. I just didn’t expect you to speak so… clearly.”
Blaze seemed to have taken no offence to her comment, “You’re not mistaken,” he said with a grin, “Even our closest friends think we only speak with our language. They are under the impression that only a handful of us actually learned the Common language and that’s only to be liaisons to the upper floors and the towers.”
“Also,” Constance continued, “Why would destroying the lower floors help in taking out the tower?”
“It’s simple,” Cobble said before Blaze had been given the opportunity to answer. “When we destroy the lower floors, or the whole underground for that matter, it gives us nowhere else to go but the surface. That means the prices on the surface will change to accommodate the massive expansion of the population. From there we can use our combined power to destroy the tower once and for all.”
Constance nodded as he spoke, “Alright, sorry for the interruption.”
“Not at all,” the Nagara man said.
“Moving on,” Cobble said with what Constance assumed was his best attempt at hiding his irritation, “with the mass migration it is inevitable the lift drivers are going to be going non-stop for quite some time to get everyone topside. That said - have we trained several lift drivers, enough to last for an entire day?”
“Yeah,” Homer said as he leaned back in his chair. “The Worms have been training people non-stop. We’ve made sure all the lift drivers know what’s going on and that they’re not going to be replaced… At least not until the boomers are set to
go off.”
“Have all the boomers been placed?” Cobble asked Blaze.
“Yeah,” he said almost as if he hadn’t been listening. “We’ve made sure everything from the ninth to the sixth will collapse. All the floors above will be spared, only the opening to the first below will be affected. We ran the math and if we collapsed every floor we’d be left with a sizeable crater that’d kill us all. ”
“What about Smoke?” Constance asked as she thought of Smoke being trapped in the underground forever, slowly suffocating to death if the weight of the earth didn’t kill him first in the event he were caught within the lower floors.
Blaze gave her a friendly grin while Homer continued to look uninterested in anything she had to say. Cobble shot her a scowl, though it may have been for interrupting the meeting again. “The lift drivers know to watch for Smoke, they also know to not let him in on what is going on. They are to give him false information so he will continue on his mission. Smoke’s mission is important to our plan for reasons you don’t need to know. I almost think it’s hilarious that of all the people in the underground, at least in our area, he’s the one man I know who would do his damndest to prevent us from tearing down the fucking towers. It’s hard to know for sure, but it’s better safe than sorry,” Blaze said with the friendly smile plastered across his face.
“But he’s going to be alright?” Constance asked pointedly at Blaze.
Blaze nodded, “We’re going to be behind from the rest of the areas, and they may think we’ve failed in our mission, but yeah, he’s going to be alright.”
“That said,” Cobble said purposely interrupting Blaze and Constance’s back and forth, “waiting for this one man could cost us dearly. We can still get the tower down, but our waiting until Smoke returns could cost us a lot in the way of respect from the other Worms, Nagara and Cartel.”
“And that’s bad?” Constance asked.
“Bad? No it’s not bad,” Cobble said sarcastically. “Why don’t we just scream out at the sky until someone puts a bullet in our heads. Respect is everything for us, without it we have nothing.”
Blaze and Homer gave each other knowingly worried expressions. “He’s right,” Homer finally said. “I’ve run the Worms for a long time through wit and smarts. Even going as far as using brutality when necessary. I can’t afford to look weak when the rest of the Worms are looking on.”
“Same goes for the Cartel and the Nagara,” Cobble said with a sly though nervous grin.
“Still,” Constance said with a sneer, “Smoke is your leader. You could easily say you were waiting for your boss. That would give you credibility from the rest of the Cartel. The rest of you could say that you held on out of respect. For the first time, I’m assuming, the three floors are finally working together towards a common goal. This should not be something that is thrown away by something as irrelevant as a deadline.
You outnumber the tower and their guards a hundred to one. I’ve been there, I know. Plus you’ll have the advantage of not being closed in and over a hundred feet in the air. That’s where the first above begins. You could easily hold them off and prevent them from escaping while we wait.
So, when people start asking questions as to why you haven’t blown the tower, because we’re not doing either until Smoke gets back because he’s your leader and you can’t go forward without your boss, you can tell them that your boss was on an errand of great importance and they should leave you alone.”
Homer, Blaze and Cobble looked at Constance with a look showing mixtures of confusion and admiration. “Since when did you become a tactician?” Cobble asked. His face said he wasn’t quite sure if he should be angry or pleased.
“I’m not, I just know enough from watching the politics of the tower as a kid. They taught me to think outside the box and to know when to hold your ground. I am holding my ground on this because I know we have a way to get away with waiting.”
“Alright,” Cobble said showing his anger once again. “The boomers will destroy the underground, only once Smoke has returned.” The last part he said while shifting his glance towards Constance. “After that we will be able to disband or continue on with the Cartel criminal organization, the Worm’s gang and the Nagara slave trade. Undoubtedly there will be other crime syndicates but we will be able to police and impose law and order upon those who would disrupt our new government. The three factions will be the most powerful of all.”
“Do we have a leader in mind?” Homer asked.
“Someone from a different area,” Cobble responded. “He should be around before the rest of the areas blow their towers.”
“Alright,” Homer said, sounding as if he weren’t too impressed with the decision.
“So,” Cobble continued, “The deadline is in one month from today. I don’t think Smoke will make us late; he must be just leaving the seventh below by now, but just in case something is delaying him we can also only wait so long. I want to make a motion that if he’s a week later than the deadline we collapse the underground. There’s a chance he may be dead and we can’t wait forever for a dead man.”
“All in favour,” Homer said making the vote official. “We wait only a week after the deadline for Smoke to contact us. Otherwise we blow the whole place up regardless if Smoke is still alive or not.”
She watched as Homer, Cobble and Blaze put their hands in the air. It was a common way of voting, finally an action she recognized. She as well raised her hand. It wasn’t out of fear of being the odd man out or dismay at being the only person who thought otherwise. Constance had raised her hand to make sure they all agreed to wait. If she needed to halt the boomers longer she’d cross that bridge when she got there. She didn’t think it’d come to that, but she didn’t want to take the chance.
“Let it show the voting was unanimous for us waiting a week after the deadline to hear anything from Smoke. The lift drivers will be told to wait for him until such a time. From there we will begin.”
“Back to the subject of lift drivers,” Cobble said, “I need to know that we will have a maintenance crew ready to repair the lift as they go. The last thing we need is everyone trapped between levels with no way to fix anything.”
Blaze lifted his chin, “I have a maintenance crew ready after every fifth trip to do the necessary repairs and to do a full inspection. If anything and I do mean anything looks suspicious we will halt the lifts until it’s been fixed. Once the time has come the lift drivers have instructions to come up to the surface so we can boom the place.”
Cobble nodded in glee as Blaze told him exactly what he wanted to be told. The meeting continued on for hours. After the three hour mark Constance could feel herself getting bored of all the tactical talk and the ways they were going to tear down the towers without jeopardizing the town that sat almost directly beneath it.
“I guess this meeting is adjourned,” Cobble finally said after five hours of the three men talking.
Constance hadn’t said much after the first little bit, she didn’t think she really needed to. The talks about Smoke and how they would go about his mission had been what concerned her most, when it was made clear he wouldn’t be left down there unless necessary her worries had eased. Anything else she had to say was virtually moot - by the time she had thought it, it had already come up in their conversation. She’d made some points about the town that the men agreed with for the most part.
As the three men stood to leave the large Nagara man looked at Constance and said, “I’d like to speak with you in private.”
Constance said, “Okay.” She proceeded to follow the man out of the meeting hall. An agreement only because she really needed to stretch her legs and the fact that the Nagara man fascinated her.
As soon as they were out of any possible earshot of Homer or Cobble he asked, “So how did you come to be the representative of the surface? From my understanding they were unable to send a representative down in time for the meeting.”
“It’s a really lo
ng story as to how I got to become the representative,” Constance said. “One that I do not really want to tell, if it’s all the same to you.”
Blaze shook his hand, “No problem. So what’s your connection to Smoke? You seemed really eager to make sure he came out of this alive. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a long-time friend, but he’s still on Nagara language terms with me. I’ve never spoken actual Common to him. I’m certainly not willing to sacrifice everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
“He’s the man who brought me down to the underground. I’m on… a mission of my own, one could say,” Constance said trying her best to not give too much away. She expected the question the moment Blaze had asked to meet with her. “I owe him a lot for what he’s done for me. It may not seem like a lot, but it means the world to me.”
“I can understand,” Blaze said after taking a moment’s silence to think.
“I do have to ask though,” Constance said, “why is it so important that Smoke doesn’t know anything about the plans? I mean, he’s only one guy. There’s really not much he can do against the greater scheme. Especially as far along as you are now.”
“Smoke’s a talker,” Blaze said with a straight face.
“Bullshit,’ Constance said with a grin, “I’ve hardly been able to get him to say anything in the time I’d been with him.”
“He’s gotten quieter with age; though there was a time we couldn’t get the asshole to shut up. Anyway, that’s not really what I meant. What I mean is he has a way with words that can change a person’s mind. He could be the one person who could just as easily tear this whole operation down just by talking to people. After that his message would spread and we really will have failed. He has abilities that are not very common in this day and age.”
The Engine What Runs the World Page 15