by Linda Nagata
Within the nebula’s coarse dust, the Silkens had discovered tiny entities of artificial origin called butterfly gnomes, after their minute, winglike solar panels. The butterfly gnomes were capable of storing an electric charge, which they would use to blast apart chunks of nebular material that had accreted to an ounce or so in size. Lot had seen them in a display of preserved specimens in the city library. For gnomes they were uncommonly large, being just visible with unenhanced optics.
Many other varieties of gnomes were found within the Well itself. All of these were microscopic in size. Rare specimens had even been discovered within the city—though these were felt to be isolated populations left over from the years when there had been traffic with the planet. The city gnomes were elusive and fragile, tending to collapse under extremes of heat or cold, or upon contact with molecular-scale analytical tools, so that attempts to study the details of their structure and function had produced few results. Indeed, their populations seemed to be in decline as their own micron-scaled ecosystem was gradually overwhelmed by Makers of human origin.
A sudden bright flare drew Lot’s gaze as a chunk of nebular material—probably no larger than his fist—vanished under the invisible beam of one of the city’s meteor-defense lasers. Even the butterfly gnomes could not attend to every pebbled mass.
“Lot.”
He flinched, aware of her a moment before she spoke. Clemantine. He would have picked up her presence earlier if he’d been paying attention, and then he would have left from the other side of the apartment complex.
She stepped away from the dark, columnar form of a pillared banyan tree. He caught her amusement, but it was mixed with a touch of anger. “Did you want to talk to me?”
A flush of heat touched his cheeks. “Not really. No.” Urban stood close behind him, shedding uneasiness into the air.
“Oh,” Clemantine said. “I must have misunderstood.”
Lot felt embroiled in helpless anger. Why had she come here? He’d done nothing wrong. He did everything he was supposed to do, and nothing he was not, and still they harassed him. “I’m innocent. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
He saw her tense; anxiety rolled off her. “Do you want to do that?” she asked softly.
He averted his gaze, suddenly scared. He’d let himself get angry. Dr. Alloin wouldn’t tolerate that. She claimed his influence seeped out around him. Charismata: that was the romantic term she’d coined for the elusive pheromonal agents she claimed Lot generated through the chemically sensitive “atrium” in his head. When he gave into anger his body produced a charismata that went straight to the fear center of most people’s brains. Even Clemantine could feel it. But for now, his retreat seemed to have satisfied her. “You’re a good boy, Lot,” she said. “Don’t start trouble.”
She turned to Urban. The light from the street glinted on her face in broken triangles that split apart when she smiled. “Urban. I was surprised to see you in the refugee quarter tonight.”
The words were not addressed to Lot, though perhaps they were meant for him. The camera bee swept close, capturing his surprise. City authority never allowed him within the walls of the refugee quarter. Sometimes, though, the refugees would be allowed out, carrying a pass to conduct business in the city. Lot had seen Alta that way. He’d tried to talk to her once, but Ord had tranked him. It had been Lot’s fault, yet they’d punished Alta, confining her to the quarter for most of a year. Lot had been bounced back into the monkey house, where he’d feigned interest in Dr. Alloin’s tired explanation of how his charismata would have a destabilizing effect on the refugees. As if anyone was stable.
“I go down there sometimes,” Urban said. The chill that rolled off him did not have much in common with the casual shrug he showed Clemantine. “Some of the girls are pretty.”
“Sooth. They are, aren’t they? But you weren’t with the girls tonight. Or is it this morning? Whichever. It was a strange sight to see you drinking coffee with Gent Romer, though I’m sure it’s nice to make new friends. Let me guess what you and Gent have in common. Could it be … Lot?”
Lot felt a flush of heat, like the fever he’d once had when his mother had given him a new Maker to quicken his muscular response. He turned to Urban, fighting hard against a sense of betrayal. Gent Romer had been the youngest spouse in Jupiter’s group marriage; of Lot’s family he was the last living member. Gent had survived that day, though he’d spent a week in a body bag, recovering. He’d emerged into the vacuum of leadership left by Captain Antigua’s defection, still preaching Jupiter’s philosophy of Communion. City authority considered him a troublemaker; they’d waited years for an excuse to seal him in cold storage. Lot knew this, because Dr. Alloin had told him.
Urban leaned close. Lot could feel his dark confidence like a bead, chewing through his skull. “Take it easy. She’s just trying to rattle you.”
She’d done a fine job of it. Lot guessed that Gent had given his approval to the initiatives. But what else had he done for Urban?
A gutter doggie waddled into the silence, shuffling on its short paws, its closed carry pouches bulging beneath squishy-looking brown skin. It looked them over with baleful eyes, determined they were not on its list of objects to be cleaned, then walked on. Lot felt a sudden, squirming impatience to be gone. “Hey Urban, I’m hungry.”
Urban said, “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
Clemantine smiled, letting them know she’d accomplished her purpose. “Have fun, boys. I expect we’ll be seeing one another again soon.”
CHAPTER
5
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF ADO TOWN THE BUILDINGS were mostly low-rise, no more than three or four stories, ugly stacked apartments built less than a hundred years ago as a concession to the city’s growing population of adolescents.
Lot and Urban trotted uphill, negotiating the winding streets. After a few minutes, Lot thought it was probably safe to ask questions, but Urban raised a hand, shaking his head. Not yet. Lot nodded, and fell into step behind him. It felt natural; he’d tagged at Urban’s heels since he was nine. Then, Urban had been an awe-inspiring fourteen and already living like a crazy ado. He’d rescued Lot from the sanctimonious baby-sitter city authority had assigned him. He taught Lot the city, and the difference between ados like themselves, and the real people, those over a hundred, who were old enough to vote. We outnumber them, Urban said. But they make every real choice in our lives.
Most ados didn’t care. But it was everything to Urban. He wanted his fair share of political power, and the fastest way to get it was to get the vote and vote an ado into office. He had his candidate already chosen: People like you, fury. They’re drawn to you, just like they were drawn to your old man.
Lot denied it, but Urban only laughed.
THEY BREAKFASTED AT A SMALL, OPEN-AIR RESTAURANT on the grand walk—the highest, narrowest level in the conical city, closely encircling the walled core that housed the elevator cable. Here, the transparent canopy arched barely a hundred feet overhead, held up by the pressure of air. The nebula glowed in a thin, milky wash across the night.
A sparse crowd decorated the grand walk, ghostly forms adrift beneath the sprawling branches of bougainvillea trees that leaned this way and that from the anchoring cubes of their planter boxes. Patience had replaced Lot’s initial curiosity; he didn’t try again to question Urban. There would be time to talk later, after they’d eaten and satisfied at least briefly the demands of enhanced physiologies that burned energy almost faster than it could be taken in.
Netta greeted them at the restaurant gate, in a dress that left the smooth curve of her shoulders exposed. She smiled gaily, so it startled Lot to feel an acute shard of unhappiness embedded in her aura. “Netta?” he asked, his brow furrowing in concern. “Are you okay?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “You always know.”
“Don’t let him hurt you.”
She looked down at the gate, using both hands to push it against a clasp that held it open. “
Real people want too much.”
“They want it all,” Urban agreed.
“I’ll only see ado boys from now on.”
Lot said, “You know you’ll never be lonely.”
Her smile caught the faint light and slowed it. She touched Lot’s hand. “It feels good to be around you.”
He felt good too. In the soft warmth of her fingers he could touch the simple pattern of days, dawn to dusk to dawn in Silk, a circular flow of food and sex and fellowship that seemed at once both ancient and timeless. So naturally did the Silkens inhabit their city that it startled him to remember they had not built it, that they were refugees, just like us, with no way out. The ancient people who’d made the elevator and hung the city of Silk upon it were long gone, taken by plague less than ten years after they’d reached the Well … over five hundred years ago now. For half that time the city had been empty, its automatic systems recycling air, water and nutrients for the sole benefit of rampant gardens and overgrown parks—until refugees from the Chenzeme-ruined world of Heyertori had been force-landed at the end of the elevator column.
“What are you thinking about?” Netta asked him as they walked between the tables.
“The Old Silkens.”
For some reason, that impressed her. “Oh. My mama says that when she and her sisters were little, they could still find bones under the thickets in Splendid Peace Park.”
“Why would anyone crawl into the thickets to die?” Urban asked.
Netta thought about it. “I don’t know. I never found any bones.”
“You looked?” Lot flashed on an image of Netta thrashing through the thickets in one of her filmy dresses, digging down through five centuries of humus with her soft clean hands … and grinned.
“What are you laughing about?” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Oh I do.”
“Maybe they were making love.”
Lot frowned, lost by this sudden twist. “Who?”
“Under the bushes. When they died.”
“If they died,” Lot said, wondering how the fate of the Old Silkens fit into Jupiter’s teachings. He had never mentioned them.
“Of course they died,” Urban said. “Their bones were all over the city.”
But how could they have died? The Old Silkens had moved freely between the city and the planet below. They should have been sheltered by the Communion. Instead, the Well had killed them.
Netta passed a hand in front of his eyes. “Hello, hello. Are you still there?”
“Huh? Sorry.”
Sudden humor sparkled in her aura. “I think I’d better feed you quick, before you drift away from us altogether.”
SHE LEFT THEM AT A TABLE BY THE RAILING, where the view was best. Lot stood, looking out over the slope of the city. Silk hung like a conical bead on the string of the elevator cable. Only the outer slopes of the bead were inhabited; the interior was given to industrial space.
Below him, the braided, luminescent streets of Ado Town glowed like a capillary network, infusing the slope with light. Ado Town split the circle of better neighborhoods like a visible stress fracture, zigzagging all the way from the grand walk down to the encircling belt of Splendid Peace Park, some two thousand feet below. Beyond that, past the transparent canopy, he could see the dark curve of Deception Well.
Silk was a city of over six million people, yet it was only a tiny realm perched above a closed world. No one was allowed down the elevator; neither was there any point in going up—no ships waited at the end of the cable to carry people away. Silk was a trap, with both ends sealed. And still it seemed big enough to Lot.
He sat down, just as a group of boys came in. Urban waved them over. Netta brought coffee and they chatted about unimportant things and ate, until finally Urban checked his watch and said that it was time.
THEY LEFT THE RESTAURANT JUST AS DAWN LIGHT began to wrap itself in a pearly crescent around the Well’s eastern rim. Lot could feel Urban’s anticipation rising as they negotiated the growing crowd on the grand walk. “You’re up to something,” he said. “And it’s to do with Gent. What is it?”
Urban half-turned, glancing back over his shoulder. His stride slowed, but he didn’t lose his distinctive gait: a half-liquid flow, as if momentum was constantly shuttling on a long path through all the muscles of his lean body. A discerning smile rode his lips. “I could tell you. But maybe you’d report us to city authority. You’re such a good boy.”
“Fuck you.”
Urban laughed and took off. Lot swore some more, then bolted in pursuit. It was an old game between them, and they ran down the grand walk in a silent charge for two hundred yards until Urban suddenly changed directions and vaulted an ornate, waist-high fence surrounding a restaurant that wouldn’t open until well after dawn. Lot leaped after him, cutting madly through the maze of tables. He’d almost caught him when Urban ducked around a carefully disciplined hedge, disappearing into one of the restaurant’s private alcoves.
Lot stopped, put on guard by some inner sense. Walking slowly now, he edged around the end of the sheltering hedge.
Urban sat cross-legged on a banquet table, his back to Lot. He looked out on the city, or perhaps to the planet beyond. There in the Well, the first pale arc of dawn light had already brightened, smearing across the atmosphere in a searing white band.
Lot walked around the table and sat down on it too. “What have you gotten Gent into?”
Urban leaned back on his elbow, to regard Lot with a teasing smile. “Trouble. You guessed it. But hey, he’s not in it alone.”
Like that mattered.
“You think you’re sharing the risk? Authority will put him in cold storage. They told me. It’s not like he’s Silken. It’s not like his daddy runs the city council.”
“Hey fury. It’s not like he’s a coward either.”
Lot winced at the sharp edge of unpleasant truth. On the rim of the planet mountains stood in silhouette against the dawn light, like tiny, rasping teeth.
“You’ve let them scare you,” Urban insisted.
“It’s not a game. You weren’t there.”
“Life goes on. Gent knows that. He’s working for you now. Everything he does is for you—and you won’t even talk to him.”
“If I did they’d arrest him.”
“He’s willing to take the chance. So am I. Everything I do is for you, too. I wrote the initiatives for you.”
“I know.”
Urban’s first initiative would turn ados into adults by lowering the age of majority from one hundred years to twenty. His second initiative would ease the psychological standards for citizenship, allowing Lot to qualify despite the entangling net of his moods.
A spear of sunlight lanced the city. Urban’s gray shirt responded, flicking on in an iridescent rainbow of colors seen through a haze of smoke. “The real people are laughing at us, Lot. They know it’s all for you, yet you won’t give us one word of support.”
Lot hunched his shoulders. He didn’t want to say it out loud, that he was scared—and not just of being bounced back into the monkey house.
Gold glinted at the base of the hedge. Lot watched with a sense of fatalism as Ord slipped into sight, scuttling across the alcove’s floor.
Urban hadn’t seen the robot yet. “There’s a rally tonight,” he said. “The ados want you to come.”
Lot shook his head, as Ord disappeared under the table. “I can’t.”
Urban’s displeasure bittered the air. “Why? It’s not illegal.”
“That doesn’t matter. City authority doesn’t want me there. It’ll be trouble.”
Ord’s golden tentacles slid onto the table’s surface. Its body followed a moment later. Lot drew back. Stay calm, he urged himself. Stay calm.
Ord stood on its short legs, its optical disks fixed on Lot. “Lot’s tired?” it asked with gentle concern. “Come home.”
Urban stared at the thing, his dis
taste brushing Lot’s sensory tears. “What if you don’t speak?” he suggested. And for the first time, he sounded uncertain. “Just be there.”
“Why? What good would that do?”
Urban’s mouth was half-open, already forming an answer when abruptly, he stopped. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”
“Nothing,” Lot echoed softly, enjoying the shape of the word in his mouth. Nothing.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’re scared of what you might be able to do.”
Lot’s heart rate spiked. “That’s not it!” he lied. “I just don’t want to go back in the monkey house.”
Ord caught the change. Its tiny brow wrinkled in an imitation of concern as it reached out with a gold tentacle to softly tap-tap against the back of Lot’s hand, trying to extract a chemical measure of his emotional state. Lot slapped the tentacle away.
“What do you want?” Urban asked. “Have you ever thought about that?”
Lot didn’t answer. He stared at the emerging curve of Kheth’s searing face, his pupils stopped down so far against the light that the cityscape around him vanished behind a shroud of relative darkness, thinking I want to know what really happened. The grasping fingers of Deception Well’s northern continent raked at the expanding crescent of light. Scudding lanes of clouds ran perpendicular to the fingers of land.
What was happening down there? City authority had to know more than they were saying. They patrolled the surface constantly, via semiorganic wardens. The wardens could explore in both macro and molecular scale. The data they collected went into the library, and now and then a scholar would announce a tentative theory that sought to describe the structure of the Well’s elusive defensive gnomes: the “governors,” in popular parlance. The Silkens credited the governors with brewing new Chenzeme plagues. In Silken mythology, the governors were the villainous source of the mysterious plague that had destroyed the people of Old Silk while cannibalizing their biological data for the Well’s own growing library.