by Linda Nagata
Kona nodded, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. “That will be for the voters to decide.”
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” URBAN SCREAMED AT HIM. “Why did you bring Jupiter into it? Is that supposed to convince the real people to trust you?”
Kona’s image had winked out. Now ados swarmed over the gazebo’s railings and roof. Lot slouched in his chair, feeling embarrassed by Urban’s bout of hysteria. “They needed to hear it. They wanted to hear it. No one’s ever called them to account for what happened that day. It’s been festering.”
“And you just had to slit open the gutter doggie tonight.”
Lot shrugged. “A lot of real people believed Jupiter. They trusted him. They’ll trust me too. I have that power. I want the initiatives to pass. So they will pass. Trust me, Urban. Believe in me.”
“You and the angels and the fairies?”
“It’ll be okay.”
Urban shook his head. “Look at yourself, fury. Crazy cult leader. You finally get to play the role. But for how long? If you don’t pull yourself together, you’ll be back in the monkey house tomorrow.”
Lot smiled at him. Even Urban could not shake his confidence tonight. “Wait a bit. You’ll see that things have changed.”
“Yeah. I’m sure it’s nice to think so.”
LOT STILL PRESIDED FROM HIS CHAIR within the gazebo when the vote was taken. It would have been possible to display the tally on the soccer fields’ scoreboards, as city authority compiled the results, but real people liked to keep certain privileges for themselves. So the results were tabulated privately, and broadcast first through the atrial net.
Little groups of real people were scattered among the ados on the fields. Lot watched them closely as the results arrived. He saw them murmur in surprise, saw the sudden blossoming of relief on their faces. Some of them started to laugh. Not in any mean way, but as if a child had done something cute though unadvisable and now it was over and they were delighted with the harmless performance. They looked at Lot and they looked at Urban and that kind of laugh was on their faces.
“It’s over,” Urban said.
Lot felt his guts twist. The flowing silver current that had carried him all night finally began to break up, patches of turbulence rocking his surety. Perspiration broke out across his cheeks as he tried to convince himself he misunderstood. He wiped his face on his sleeve. His hands were wet, his skin a slick, brassy color. He stood slowly, and walked to the edge of the gazebo’s deck. Seconds later the tally appeared on the scoreboards, while a booming male voice read off the results. First the new council, nine seats. Two point nine million ballots had been cast, producing eight clear winners and lastly the chair and that was Kona Lukamosch again, no surprise.
“The initiatives,” Urban growled. Lot felt suddenly dizzy. Ord shifted nervously under his hair as the results of the first initiative appeared:
On lowering the voting age from one hundred years to twenty years: 219 for, 2,924,339 against. The measure fails.
For a moment the park was utterly silent. Lot could hear his breath whistling in and out of his lungs. Two hundred nineteen. He looked at Urban. Two hundred nineteen had to be statistically less than they could have expected from the inadvertent votes of drunkards. A low babble of disbelief erupted from the ado mob.
The results concluded: On adjusting the citizenship requirement of Level 1 psychological profile to Level 2.5: 187 for, 2,924,371 against. The measure fails.
Lot swayed on his feet.
Statistically less than voter error.
The clustered knots of real people on the lawn smiled encouragement at him. Such a bright child. Wait until he grows up.
Around him, ados whispered his name. They climbed the gazebo railings, crowded the stairs, bumped against him. Foul language and loyal sentiments. A display of bigotry to cement their devotion to him. He felt Urban’s grip on his arm, on his shoulder, “Come on, Lot. Let’s get out of here.”
“No.”
He felt the city around him, like an entity. Felt the brush of its cells against his skin as a hundred fingers touched him. Felt the wash of its breath across his face. He’d tried to knit this city to his will, just as Sypaon, in her endless silver circuits, had sought to bind the ring. Like Sypaon, he’d failed. He couldn’t touch every cell at once.
Time for another rule change?
War is change. Sypaon had said that.
“Come on,” Urban commanded, but Lot planted his feet solidly against his paternal tug.
Ados whispered his name. He could feel the sweep of their presence like an extension of his body, silver tendrils winding around the hard, dead knots of the real. “We are nothing!” he shouted to them.
The whispers subsided to silence. In the sudden stillness the night air seemed to shiver with infinitesimal specks of silver, a glittering, self-replicating storm that roiled across the upturned faces, dividing and rebounding against lips and eyes and the moist cavities of open mouths that were desirous of this contact. Lot beheld the phenomenon in a state of awe. Chemical sight: reason told him he must be watching the crowd-fed spread of an aggressive charismata.
He leaned forward. His voice carried in hard tones across the entranced ado faces. “In the eyes of the real people, we are nothing. How many times have you heard it? Ados don’t think. We are despised.” For a moment his perspective shifted, and he saw himself through eyes that weren’t his. Was he inside them? Nurturing their frustrations.
The volume of his voice rose: “We live at the discretion of a people ruled by fear. Time to change that. Sooth. The time is here.” Their readiness touched him, moist against his sensory tears, and he loosed himself into that receptive space and roared: “The real people will never give us what we want! If we are to be real too, we must take what is ours. Against objections. Against resistance. We will have our rights.”
The words were an artificial structure, a gross formality strung together for the benefit of the real people. The ados didn’t need words; the ados were already far beyond words, requiring only his presence to see inside themselves and know their own wills.
From the edge of the crowd came a shattering crash like a great weight of stone thrown down and rebounding in a thousand broken pieces. A terrorized scream followed. On the distant courtyard fronting Old Guard Heights a sluggish spire of flame erupted, rising slowly against the face of the Heights, its light reflected a thousand times in the banks of rectangular windows. Lot reached a hand toward it, the lurid orange glow playing off his fingertips. People shoved past him, streaming down the steps of the gazebo to join a sudden torrent of human motion across the lawn. A hysteria of voices arose on all sides. He felt he could take the column of fire in his hand, that he could hold it, close his fist around it and absorb it into his body, let it fill him, tip all systems far past maximum until he could—
Something struck him across the face. Pain flared in his mind, and then he was down on the gazebo’s deck, on hands and knees, perspiration dripping off his nose, or maybe it was blood, his hair lank, stuck against his cheeks. Urban crouched beside him screaming, completely hysterical, bruised fist pressed against his chin. “Do you know what you’re doing, fury? Do you know what you’ve done?”
Lot wasn’t sure, but he could count more fires on the perimeter of the park and that was crazy, because the buildings wouldn’t burn … though maybe the sump pipes would? The city’s resources becoming volatiles and ash.
Already the air was thick with a vile smoke. Security officers had appeared on the seething, screaming promenade. Stun wands for the running ados. Loudspeakers advising everyone to be calm, to go home. Inciting to riot was a serious violation of city law.
“Come on,” Urban growled, and he pulled on Lot’s arm until Lot was faced with the choice of losing it, or of standing up.
He stood, and let Urban drag him down the stairs and across the soccer fields, unsure if this was the proper next step in the drama, or if something more was expected of him tonight. Th
e silver tide had shattered into fragments, and for the moment anyway he couldn’t perceive its will.
He was still puzzling over this when a security officer spotted them. She yelled at them to stop right now, then brought up her trank gun without waiting for them to comply. Urban froze before she could fire. Lot stopped too. Cool, minute explosions touched his cheeks, like droplets of mist that evaporate in the instant of contact. He lowered his chin. “Be very sure,” he warned her.
A look of confusion passed over her face. Her gun hand lowered a bit. Lot felt her determination collapse. He turned his back on her, walking away across the fields while Urban hurried to catch up, leaping after him in quick, deerlike bounds. “Shit, fury, what are we doing?”
How could Lot answer that? He wasn’t sure himself.
They skirted the rising face of Old Guard Heights until they reached the line of trees that marked the boundary with the neighborhood of Spoken Verities. They could hear shouts and concussions in the distance, up on the Heights. But here not even a night breeze disturbed the quiet.
Passing under the trees, they stepped out on the luminescent street. Gent was waiting for them. His face looked eerie in the upwelling light. “You’ve crossed over,” he said softly. “They won’t forgive you now.”
“Shit!” Urban hissed. He was shaking. “Dammit, Lot, you know he’s right. It’s over. It’s the monkey house now … or cold storage. For all of us. After tonight, they won’t let us out in the life of this city.”
Which might not be too long, Lot reflected. He looked at Gent, and saw in his eyes a quiet expectation. They had only one option left. “We’re leaving the city tonight.”
Urban blinked. “Fury?”
Triumph gleamed in Gent’s eyes. Lot nodded, feeling detached, as if instinct alone was moving him through the patterns of a dance that had been written for him long ago. “We’re going down the Well.”
CHAPTER
20
THOUGH THE SILKENS TRIED TO PLAN FOR DISASTER, TWICE NOW they’d failed to predict the form of its appearance. Ten years ago Captain Aceret’s assault on lift control had taken them by surprise, immediately overwhelming their slim security forces. Tonight’s riot had done the same thing—every trained officer must have been called out to restore order in Splendid Peace. Lot suspected that even if authority was aware of their flight, no officers would be diverted to pursue them. After all, Silk was a closed city. There was no place to run, and miscreants could be gathered up at authority’s convenience.
Gent opened a doggie-door on a side street in Vibrant Harmony. The old tunnel had a sour, rotting smell. Gent crawled inside. Lot shooed Ord off his back, then squatted down to look. The tunnel walls glistened with reflected light from the street. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, but he got down on his hands and knees and followed Gent, his shoulders scraping the tunnel walls while his hair rubbed at dew beaded on the ceiling. Behind him, Urban swore softly at the reek.
They found the doggie at home, spread in a thin membrane across the side walls and ceiling as its carry pouches emptied into nanodrizzles that skittered away deeper into the unlit tunnel. The doggie watched them with dull, dark eyes. Its body felt squishy and wet as Lot scraped by beneath it. The odor of rot grew briefly stronger. For one giddy moment he felt sure the doggie would drop on him, wrap him up in a putrid cocoon and hold him until his body had been converted to nanodrizzle.
“God,” Urban said, as he pressed up close to Lot. “Was that its tongue?”
Then Lot was past and Urban behind him. At the end of the doggie’s crawlway he followed Gent through a thick gel membrane, into a maintenance tunnel on the other side.
The gray-walled corridor was ablaze with lights for sixty feet in both directions. Pipes ribbed the ceiling. Shimmering nanodrizzles scurried along the walls. Ord crawled out of the doggie’s tunnel and climbed up a wall, causing turbulence among the nanodrizzles as the tracks swiftly shifted direction to get around him.
Lot got to his feet. He sniffed at the air, finding it cold, and suspiciously thin. Urban burst through the membrane behind him. “This is crazy!” he shouted. His fist pounded the wall in frustration. “You know we’re not going anywhere. The elevator system doesn’t work.”
Lot’s gaze cut to Gent. “Not taking the elevator, huh?”
“Course not.” Gent seemed anxious now. “Come on. We’ve got to be long gone before they have time to look.”
He set the pace: a fast run that left no breath for questions. Lights flashed on as they advanced; flashed off behind them. Gent led them a long way down the maintenance tunnel, past numerous cross corridors, each one sealed with an opaque white gel membrane, numbers etched into the walls beside them. The maintenance tunnel was built on a slow curve, limiting their view. So Lot sensed her before she came into sight. Alta. He quickened his pace and pushed past Gent.
She waited at one of the sealed cross corridors, dressed in an odd, skintight coverall that gleamed dull gray in the tunnel lights. A pile of equipment lay at her feet. Her dark eyes watched him uncertainly. Caution and anxiety braided her mood. Lot took that as a challenge.
Jumping over the piled equipment, he caught her up in his arms, using his momentum to swing her around, his mouth on her neck, just over the hard, rasping collar of her coverall. She tried to push him away but to his satisfaction she started laughing too, pounding at his shoulder with half-force and ragging him: “You idiot! Put me down. Now.”
He obeyed, and she backpedaled, suddenly nervous, her burst of humor gone. Wariness lay in her eyes now. He could feel her thoughts clicking over, could almost hear the voicing of her doubts. Doubt like rot, black rust in his silver armor. Anger stirred in him. But he held on to his humor, a mask to hide the deeper processes. He dropped his chin low, a tight smile on his face as he began to stalk her. She stepped back in sudden alarm. “Lot, stop it!”
Gent clapped a rough hand on his shoulder. He yanked him off balance, then sent him stumbling hard against a wall. Lot was so surprised that for a moment he couldn’t react. “Gent?”
“You want to be that kind?” Gent shouted at him. “You like scaring people? You like twisting them?”
Lot’s gaze cut to Alta. He didn’t try to hide his resentment. She glowered at him in return, her dark eyes furious. His sensory tears caught the taste of her mood. He cooked it for a second, then threw it back at her. “You want me to be like the old man! So I am.”
Gent crossed his arms over his broad chest, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. Lot could feel him gathering himself. Urban stood a few paces back, hangdog, embarrassed and scared. Alta had adopted a defensive posture, her shoulder turned to Lot. “You’re not like him,” she said. “Jupiter invited love. He didn’t coerce it.”
“I don’t remember it that way.”
Her brows rose. “How then?”
Lot shook his head. He didn’t want to say it. But Alta pressed him, stalking him now. “How’d you feel back then? Tell me, Lot. I want to know.”
His gaze cut away. “Scared all the time.”
She frowned. “Scared of what? He loved us.”
“Sure. Long as we believed.”
“You never stopped believing.”
“I don’t know. He thought so.”
“Uh-uh. He loved you.”
Lot shrugged. Maybe he had. But it had never felt like any kind of permanent state. Scared all the time. He’d been a kid, but he’d understood the situation. He’d felt it. Jupiter could shuck the bonds of love as easily as a doggie could empty its pockets. Let it all run away in darting nanodrizzles. Every day, Lot had dreaded that possibility. If Jupiter got angry, or unhappy, or just found something that interested him more, he would turn away. Lot had felt it. He would be gone.
And isn’t that what finally happened? Jupiter had disappeared that day, leaving his army twitching behind him like the severed tail of a lizard pretending it was whole.
Lot shoved off from the wall, annoyed with himself, because he’d let Alta get
inside him. He scowled at Gent. “We going?”
“Yes.” Gent was cool now. He bent over the pile of stuff and selected a cylindrical gray pouch, about the length of his forearm. He reached in, pulled it inside out, and shook it until it unfurled into a coverall like Alta’s. He tossed it to Lot. “Strip and put that on. If you’ve got to piss, save it until you’re in the suit. It can recycle the waste, and we’ll be glad to have it before we reach the bottom.” He repeated the procedure with another pouch, and tossed the resulting coverall to Urban. “You can still back out.”
“Hell.”
Urban dropped the coverall on the floor and started to strip, his anger like a slow, persistent pressure wave pounding against Lot’s senses. Lot dragged off his own clothes and stepped into the suit, feeling it pull snug around him. The feet and calves had an odd, spongy feel to them. The knees were heavily padded. A hood dangled at the neck.
Gent handed him a soft-sided backpack. It was heavy, and Lot hefted it uncertainly. He could feel himself coming down fast from the high he’d been riding all day. Nutritional deprivation leads to imbalanced body chemistry. “Gent, I’m hungry.” Seriously hungry. He could feel a hollowness inside him, an unhealthy languor spreading like dark syrup through his veins.
Urban squinted at him. “Crash time.”
Gent growled something unintelligible. He took Lot’s pack again, and fished out of it a cylindrical bottle. A flexible tube extended from the bottle’s base. Gent snapped that off, then popped off the bottle’s top. “Drink this. But come on. We’ve got to move.”
Lot tossed it down: a mildly sweet, unremarkable brew. Alta was winding her hair up into a bun at the back of her neck. She caught him watching, and smiled. He could get no trace of anger from her. But then, why should she be angry? She’d beaten him this time, and that victory had allowed her volatile mood to shift back to a charitable affection. A needling voice whispered that she would not be playing these games with Jupiter.