Cryoburn

by Lois M. Bujold

  "Come along. The custodian is waiting to close up!"

  Reluctantly, with a backward glance over its brightly-patterned shoulder, the lizard allowed itself to be dragged away up the darkening street.

  Miles sank down, spine against the building wall, and sighed in exhaustion and despair. He opened his mouth to the thickening mist, but it did not relieve his thirst. The chill of the pavement and the wall bit through his thin clothing-just his shirt and gray trousers, pockets emptied, his belt also taken. It was going to get colder as night fell. This access road was unlighted. But at least the urban sky would hold a steady apricot glow, better than the endless dark below ground. Miles wondered how cold he would have to grow before he crawled back inside the shelter of that last door. A hell of a lot colder than this. And he hated cold.

  He sat there a long time, shivering, listening to the distant city sounds and the faint cries in his head. Was his plague of angels starting to melt back into formless streaks? He could hope. I shouldn't have sat down. His leg muscles were tightening and cramping, and he wasn't at all sure he could stand up again.

  He'd thought himself too uncomfortable to doze, but he woke with a start, some unknown time later, to a shy touch on his shoulder. Jin was kneeling at his side, looking a bit less reptilian than before.

  "If you want, mister," Jin whispered, "you can come along to my hide-out. I got some water bottles there. Yani won't see you, he's gone to bed."

  "That's," Miles gasped, "that sounds great." He struggled to his feet; a firm young grip caught his stumble.

  In a whining nimbus of whirling lights, Miles followed the friendly lizard.

  Jin checked back over his shoulder to make sure the funny-looking little man, no taller than himself, was still following all right. Even in the dusk it was clear that the druggie was a grownup, and not another kid as Jin had hoped at first glance. He had a grownup voice, his words precise and complicated despite their tired slur and his strange accent, low and rumbly. He moved almost as stiff and slow as old Yani. But when his fleeting smiles lifted the strain from his face it looked oddly kind, in an accustomed way, as if smiles were at home there. Grouchy Yani never smiled.

  Jin wondered if the little man had been beaten up, and why. Blood stained his torn trouser knees, and his white shirt bore browning smears. For a plain shirt, it looked pretty fancy, as if-before being rolled around in-it had been crisp and fine, but Jin couldn't figure out quite how that effect was done. Never mind. He had this novel creature all to himself, for now.

  When they came to the metal ladder running up the outside of the exchanger building, Jin looked at the bloodstains and stiffness and thought to ask, "Can you climb?"

  The little man stared upward. "It's not my favorite activity. How far up does this castle keep really go?"

  "Just to the top."

  "That would be, um, two stories?" He added in a low mutter, "Or twenty?"

  Jin said, "Just three. My hideout's on the roof."

  "The hideout part sounds good." The man licked at his cracked lips with a dry-looking tongue. He really did need water, Jin guessed. "Maybe you'd better go first. In case I slip."

  "I have to go last to raise the ladder."

  "Oh. All right." A small, square hand reached out to grip a rung. "Up. Up is good, right?" He paused, drew a breath, then lurched skyward.

  Jin followed as lightly as a lizard. Three meters up, he stopped to crank the ratchet that raised the ladder out of reach of the unauthorized and latch it. Up another three meters, he came to the place where the rungs were replaced by broad steel staples, bolted to the building's side. The little man had managed them, but now seemed stuck on the ledge.

  "Where am I now?" he called back to Jin in tense tones. "I can feel a drop, but I can't be sure how far down it really goes."

  What, it wasn't that dark. "Just roll over and fall, if you can't lift yourself. The edge-wall's only about half a meter high."

  "Ah." The sock feet swung out and disappeared. Jin heard a thump and a grunt. He popped over the parapet to find the little man sitting up on the flat rooftop, fingers scraping at the grit as if seeking a handhold on the surface.

  "Oh, are you afraid of heights?" Jin asked, feeling dumb for not asking sooner.

  "Not normally. Dizzy. Sorry."

  Jin helped him up. The man did not shrug off his hand, so Jin led him on around the twin exchanger towers, set atop the roof like big blocks. Hearing Jin's familiar step, Galli, Twig, and Mrs. Speck, and Mrs. Speck's six surviving children, ran around the blocks to greet him, clucking and chuckling.

  "Oh, God. Now I see chickens," said the man in a constricted voice, stopping short. "I suppose they could be related to the angels. Wings, after all."

  "Quit that, Twig," said Jin sternly to the brown hen, who seemed inclined to peck at his guest's trouser leg. Jin shoved her aside with his foot. "I didn't bring you any food yet. Later."

  "You see chickens, too?" the man inquired cautiously.

  "Yah, they're mine. The white one is Galli, the brown one is Twig, and the black-and-white speckled one is Mrs. Speck. Those are all her babies, though I guess they're not really babies any more." Half-grown and molting, the brood didn't look too appetizing, a fact Jin almost apologized for as the man continued to peer down into the shadows at their greeting party. "I named her Galli because the scientific name of the chicken is Gallus gallus, you know." A cheerful name, sounding like gallop-gallop, which always made Jin smile.

  "Makes . . . ​sense," the man said, and let Jin tug him onward.

  As they rounded the corner Jin automatically checked to be sure the roof of discarded tarps and drop cloths that he'd rigged on poles between the two exchanger towers was still holding firm, sheltering his animal family. The tent made a cozy space, bigger than his bedroom back before . . . ​he shied from that memory. He let go of the stranger long enough to jump up on the chair and switch on the hand light, hanging by a scrap of wire from the ridge-pole, which cast a bright circle of illumination over his secret kingdom as good as any ceiling fixture's. The man flung his arm up over his reddened eyes, and Jin dimmed the light to something softer.

  As Jin stepped back down, Lucky rose from the bedroll atop the mattress of shredded flimsies, stretched, and hopped toward him, meowing, then rose on her hind legs to place her one front paw imploringly on Jin's knee, kneading her claws. Jin bent and scratched her fuzzy gray ears. "No dinner yet, Lucky."

  "That cat does have three legs, right?" asked the man. He sounded nervous. Jin hoped he wasn't allergic to cats.

  "Yah, she caught one in a door when she was a kitten. I didn't name her. She was my mom's cat." Jin clenched his teeth. He didn't need to have added that last. "She's just a Felis domesticus."

  Gyre the Falcon gave one ear-splitting shriek from his perch, and the black-and-white rats rustled in their cages. Jin called greetings to them all. When food was not immediately forthcoming, they all settled back in a disgruntled way. "Do you like rats?" Jin eagerly asked his guest. "I'll let you hold Jinni, if you want. She's the friendliest."

  "Maybe later," said the man faintly, seemed to take in Jin's disappointed look, and after a squinting glance at the shelf of cages, added, "I like rats fine. I'm just afraid I'd drop her. I'm still a bit shaky. I was lost in the Cryocombs for rather a long time, today." After another moment, he offered, "I used to know a spacer who kept hamsters."

  This was encouraging; Jin brightened. "Oh, your water!"

  "Yes, please," said the man. "This is a chair, right?" He was gripping the back of Jin's late stepstool, leaning on it. The scratched round table beside it, discarded from some cafe and the prize of an alley scavenge, had been a bit wobbly, but Custodian Tenbury had showed Jin how to fix it with a few shims and tacks.

  "Yah, sit! I'm sorry there's only one, but usually I'm the only person who comes up here. You get it 'cause you're the guest." As the man dropped into the old plastic cafeteria chair, Jin rummaged on his shelves for his liter water bot
tle, uncapped it, and handed it over. "I'm sorry I don't have a cup. You don't mind drinking where my mouth was?"

  "Not at all," said the man, raised the bottle, and gulped thirstily. He stopped suddenly when it was about three-fourths empty to ask, "Wait, is this all your water?"

  "No, no. There's a tap on the outsides of each of these old heat exchanger towers. One's broken, but the custodian hooked up the other for me when I moved all my pets up here. He helped me rig my tent, too. The secretaries wouldn't let me keep my animals inside anymore, because the smell and noise bothered some folks. I like it better up here anyway. Drink all you want. I can just fill it up again."

  The little man drained the bottle and, taking Jin at his word, handed it back. "More, please?"

  Jin dashed out to the tap and refilled the bottle, taking a moment to rinse and top up the chickens' water pan at the same time. His guest drank another half-liter without stopping, then rested, his eyes sagging shut.

  Jin tried to figure out how old the man was. His face was pale and furrowed, with sprays of fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and his chin was shadowed with a day's beard stubble, but that could be from being lost Below, which would unsettle anybody. His dark hair was neatly cut, a few gleams of gray showing in the light. His body seemed more scaled-down than distorted, sturdy enough, though his head, set on a short neck, was a bit big for it. Jin decided to work around to his curiosity more sideways, to be polite. "What's your name, mister?"

  The man's eyes flew open; they were clear gray in color, and would probably be bright if they weren't so bloodshot. If the fellow had been bigger, his seedy looks might have alarmed Jin more. "Miles. Miles Vo-well, the rest is a mouthful no one here seems able to pronounce. You can just call me Miles. And what's your name, young . . . ​person?"

  "Jin Sato," said Jin.

  "Do you live on this roof?"

  Jin shrugged. "Pretty much. Nobody climbs up to bother me. The lift tubes inside don't work." He led on, "I'm almost twelve," and then, deciding he'd been polite enough, added, "How old are you?"

  "I'm almost thirty-eight. From the other direction."

  "Oh." Jin digested this. A disappointingly old person, therefore likely to be stodgy, if not so old as Yani, but then, it was hard to know how to count Yani's age. "You have a funny accent. Are you from around here?"

  "By no means. I'm from Barrayar."

  Jin's brow wrinkled. "Where's that? Is it a city?" It wasn't a Territorial Prefecture; Jin could name all twelve of those. "I never heard of it."

  "Not a city. A planet. A triplanetary empire, technically."

  "An off-worlder!" Jin's eyes widened with delight. "I never met an off-worlder before!" Tonight's scavenge suddenly seemed more fruitful. Though if the man was a tourist, he would likely leave as soon as he could call his hotel or his friends, which was a disheartening thought. "Did you get beaten up by robbers or something?" Robbers picked on druggies, drunks, and tourists, Jin had heard. He supposed they made easy targets.

  "Something like that." Miles squinted at Jin. "You hear much news in the past day?"

  Jin shook his head. "Only Suze the Secretary has a working comconsole, in here."

  "In here?"

  "This place. It was a cryofacility, but it was cleared out and abandoned, oh, way before I was born. A bunch of folks moved in who didn't have anywhere else to go. I suppose we're all sort of hiding out. Well, people living around here know there's people in here, but Suze-san says if we're all real careful not to bother anyone, they'll leave us be."

  "That, um, person you were with earlier, Yani. Who is he? A relative of yours?"

  Jin shook his head emphatically. "He just came here one day, the way most folks do. He's a revive." Jin gave the word its meaningful pronunciation, re-vive.

  "He was cryo-revived, you mean?"

  "Yah. He doesn't much like it, though. His contract with his corp was just for one hundred years-I guess he paid a lot for it, a long time ago. But he forgot to say he wasn't to be thawed out till folks had found a cure for being old. Since that's what his contract said, they brought him up, though I suppose his corp was sorry to lose his vote. This future wasn't what he was expecting, I guess-but he's too old and confused to work at anything and make enough money to get frozen again. He complains about it a lot."

  "I . . . ​see. I think." The little man squeezed his eyes shut, and open again, and rubbed his brow, as if it ached. "God, I wish my head would clear."

  "You could lie down in my bedroll, if you wanted," Jin suggested diffidently. "If you don't feel so good."

  "Indeed, young Jin, I don't feel so good. Well put." Miles tilted up the water bottle and drained it. "The more I can drink the better-wash this damned poison out of my system. What do you do for a loo?" At Jin's blank look he added, "Latrine, bathroom, lavatory, pissoir? Is there one inside the building?"

  "Oh! Not close, sorry. Usually when I'm up here for very long I sneak over and use the gutter in the corner, and slosh it down the drainpipe with a bucket of water. I don't tell the women, though. They'd complain, even though the chickens go all over the roof and nobody thinks anything of it. But it makes the grass down there really green."

  "Ah ha," said Miles. "Congratulations-you have reinvented the garderobe, my lizard-squire. Appropriate, for a castle."

  Jin didn't know what kind of clothes a guarding-robe might be, but half the things this druggie said made no sense anyway, so he decided not to worry about it.

  "And after your lie-down, I can come back with some food," Jin offered.

  "After a lie-down, my stomach might well be settled enough to take you up on that, yes."

  Jin smiled and jumped up. "Want any more water?"

  "Please."

  When Jin returned from the tap, he found the little man easing himself down in the bedroll, laid along the side wall of an exchanger tower. Lucky was helping him; he reached out and absently scritched her ears, then let his fingers massage expertly down either side of her spine, which arched under his hand. The cat deigned to emit a short purr, an unusual sign of approval. Miles grunted and lay back, accepting the water bottle and setting it beside his head. "Ah. God. That's so good." Lucky jumped up on his chest and sniffed his stubbly chin; he eyed her tolerantly.

  A new concern crossed Jin's mind. "If heights make you dizzy, the gutter could be a problem." An awful picture arose of his guest falling head-first over the parapet while trying to pee in the dark. His off-worlder guest. "See, chickens don't fly as well as you'd think, and baby chicks can't fly at all. I lost two of Mrs. Speck's children over the parapet, when they got big enough to clamber up to the ledge but not big enough to flutter down safely if they fell over. So for the in-between time, I tied a long string to each one's leg, to keep them from going too far. Maybe I could, like . . . ​tie a line around your ankle or something?"

  Miles stared up at him in a tilted fascination, and Jin was horribly afraid for a moment that he'd mortally offended the little man. But in a rusty voice, Miles finally said, "You know-under the circumstances-that might not be a bad idea, kid."

  Jin grinned relief, and hurried to find a bit of rope in his cache of supplies. He hitched one end firmly to the metal rail beside the tower door, made sure it paid out all the way to the corner gutter, and returned to affix the other end to his guest's ankle. The little man was already asleep, the water bottle tucked under one arm and the gray cat under the other. Jin looped the rope around twice and made a good knot. After, he climbed back onto the chair and dimmed the hand light to a soft night-light glow, trying not to think about his mother.

  Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.

  If I ever find bedbugs, I'll catch them and put them in my jars. What do bedbugs look like, anyway?

  I have no idea. It's just a silly rhyme for bedtimes. Go to sleep, Jin!

  The words had used to make him feel warm, but now they made him feel cold. He hated cold.

  Satisfied that he'd made all safe, and that
the intriguing off-worlder could not now abandon him, Jin returned to the parapet, swung over, and started down the rungs. If he hurried, he would still get to the back door of Ayako's Cafe before all the good scraps were thrown out at closing time.

  Chapter Two

  When Armsman Roic woke for the second time-or maybe it was the third-the opaque drug-mush in his head had cleared to a thin throbbing haze. He felt for his wristcom and found it, unsurprisingly, gone. Groaning, he turned on his musty mattress thrown on the floor of this . . . ​place, and opened his eyes to plain daylight and his first clear view of his prison.

  It was bare of furnishings. Some kind of old hotel room, he decided after a minute from the shape, stains, outlets, corroded-looking sprinkler overhead, and cheap light above the only door. His mattress lay in what might once have been a clothes niche, opposite a small working bathroom with the door removed. A chain bolted around his ankle led in turn to a bolt on the wall. The links were long enough to let him use the facilities, he remembered that from the blurry night, but not to reach the outer door.

  He visited them again, and, hoping to wash out more of the mush, drank thirstily from a flimsy plastic cup apparently left for his use. A long narrow window stretched above a stained bathtub. He stared out onto a featureless rise crowded with tall, arrow-shaped conifers, dark and tangled. He rapped on the glass; it gave back that dull tone that said unbreakable, at least by anyone not armed with a power drill or perhaps a plasma arc.

  He tested the length of his chain. It didn't go even halfway to the door, but by standing upright, he found he could see out the front picture window, unobscured by curtains or a polarizing filter. They must not expect visitors. This room seemed to open onto a second-storey gallery. The view beyond the railing ran downhill to a broad patch of flat scrub that curved out of sight, framed by more tangled taiga. Not another building to be seen.

  He wasn't in the city any more, that was certain. Had there been any urban glow on the horizon last night? He could only remember the night-light in the loo. He could be ten kilometers from Northbridge or ten thousand, for all he knew. Which could make a difference, later.