by Clay Gilbert
“What did happen down there? Who knows. The question was on everybody’s mind back then.Some people said it was the Providers’ curse on us for turning against them. A lot of those people ended up getting out of the City altogether, just going Beyond, not trusting us or Them. We didn’t laugh at the idea of a curse, though. We promised we’d work toward finding the reason why that shelter had been put there, and what happened to its people. After Ace got killed, the whole curse thing kicked up again, and we lost more of our people. It did seem, then, that we were under somebody’s curse.” Eternity shook his head. “I don’t buy it. A gang of domes from the City killed Ace, and that’s it.”
“Gang of domes doing the Providers’ work, maybe,” Brain said. “No. Why would gods kill? People kill—scared people. I’m sick of people being so brainwashed by their own fear that theydon’t ask themselves what’s reallygoingon. The domes think they’re doing some holy work when they kill us? They’re not thinking at all.
Eternity looked to the other streetriders. “The only way this is gonna be over for any of usis if someone stops them. Somehow, some way, I’m gonna do that. You want to help, Brain?”
“Sure thing.”
“Shadow?”
“You know it, man.”
There was silence for a moment, then Brain spoke. “Just remember, though, Eternity. The ones we lost—the ones who disappeared—they made the same promise.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN “Greetings, citizens! The Providers have spoken today from the great Towers, issuing a warning to the rebels against further action and imploring all true patriots of the City to help seek out the hiding place of this cancer of rebellion and to burn it from the body of our great City. Thousands of Citizens gathered below the Towers to hear the Providers speak. According to City records, it was the first time in more than a century that such a statement was issued by the Providers themselves. Let traitors beware them! Good evening, citizens, and live well!”
I was there, Isaac thought. The grey-robed, dark-eyed youth thought back to that moment. The announcement had been mere rumor, albeit a rumor that swept the City in only an hour’s time. His parents had rushed home in a frenzy, and the three of them boarded a skycar from Central Station to the Towers that veryhour. The rumor, it turned out, had been true.
Isaac’s heart burned within him as their voices washed over the attendant crowd in a vast, holy tide. In his mind, he’d seen the evil things the desecrators had done, all their useless attempts to harm the Towers and the other sacred constructs of the Government. Isaac had smiled then, even while the very core of him burned with anger. He heard their voices. He knew that, while the rebels might harm their buildings, they would never harm them. They had spoken. They would work their will through the people, and the people would strike as one. The people would be the hand of the Providers. They would be satisfied. He would make sure they were.
Seek out the hiding place, the Providers said. Burn it from our City’s body.
That’s it, Isaac thought. Seek and burn. Burn them all. Even when their voices ceased to ring down from the Towers, echoing over the assembled masses, Isaac heard them. They spoke in whispers, a message meant only for him. His dark eyesburnedlike his heart as he listened to their voices in his head.
Find them. Do whatever you must. Die if you must, for if you die, we will see you live forever. You are chosen, Isaac. Serve us.
As quickly as they came, the voices were gone. Isaac knew what he had to do. He took a piece of paper from a drawer, and on it, hands and heart racing, he wrote:
Dear Mother and Father, I’m going to find the rebels. It’s something They want me to do. Don’t worry about me, even if I don’t come back. They will Provide.
Your faithful son,
Isaac He left the letter where he knew it’d be seen. Don’t worry, he told them, and he wouldn’t either. The Providers had spoken, and They would Provide.
A single thought remained as he set out into the City: Seek them. Seek and burn. * * * *
Jonathan’s father had heard Them.
“Burn them from the City?”
How can I? His own son had vanished, and no holy voice, no holylaw hadbrought him back. How was heto feel hatred for a face he did not know, for people—children, he reminded himself, most of them are only children—whom he had never even seen? Would hate bring back his son? Would one act of blood sacrifice, one blind stab at revenge, show him where his son hid?
Or where he is held , a voice whispered in his mind, recalling the days-ago news report. No blood will do that. Only time— if even that. More and more, he found himself in sympathy with those he was supposed to hate. More and more, he opposed the ones he was supposed to revere. He didn’t know why.
I fear the Providers. I don’t want to oppose them, but in this, I’ve got no choice. My son’s out there somewhere, and I can’t hate or kill those who are merely other fathers’ sons. All I can do is wait and pray, but I won’t pray to them any longer, even if it means my death. All they care about is blood and vengeance, and that won’t bring back my son.
He would watch, and wait, and pray for his son’s return, or if that could not be, for his son’s safety. Jacob sat, head in his hands, resuming his long and lonely vigil.
* * * * The City’s Northern Sector was the farthest Emily had ever been from home. It was, indeed, quieter than the Eastern Sector—the Busisec—that housed Studio Block. Or had been, until the glass wall set up nearthe station so that people who were traveling could get their news had sprung to life.
“Cancer of rebellion,” they’d said. “Burn them from the City.” Emily thought of what the rebels had done to her parents, and felt her anger flare again. How would we even know who they are? It could be anyone—any of us. She looked around her at the crowd just now dispersing after the screencast. The people here don’t look any different from the ones back in Western, and I don’t look any different from them. But I feel different.
She wondered if Their voices would be able to find her here, if they’d still seek her to speak for them. And yet, she knew they wouldn’t. The voices only spoke to her when she sat in the chair before the screencast cameras, when she wore the electrodes that connected her to the dedicated transmission signal carrying their words. They might be able to read her thoughts—though she hoped not—but her mind would be her own from now on.
* * * *
The stone marker standing in Oldtimer Town might have been agravestone. Insome ways, it was. Itmarked, in silence and anonymity, the deaths of the nameless whose bodies had been found in the underground chamber. It also marked the entrance to the Underground.
As earth and stone gave way to the steel and concrete of the Underground, Eternity thought that some of the secrets on which the Providers lived might be hidden here—secrets he might use one day to bring them down.
The elevator docked with a sudden shudder, causing Eternity, Shadow, and Brain to lose their balance for a moment as they tried to board their cycles. The large doors opened, revealing the entrance to a vast concrete tunnel before them.
Brain started his cycle first. “Follow me. We’re on my turf now.” The three sped through tunnels, silent except for the humming of their cycles’ generators rising and falling with the arcs of their speed. It seemed to Eternity that the tunnels were endless, until, finally, a pinpoint of light shone in the distance, like the glass wall humming to life before the evening screencast, or the digital eye of a computer interface. The light gradually widened into the entrance of another chamber.
“This is it,” Brain said, his cycle hovering in place just short of the chamber entrance. Then he guided them inside. There was nothing in the chamber to give a clue to its storied past. Not a trace of its historyremained to tell the tale. Barren concrete walls and the sheer size of the chamber blinded Eternity’s eyes, and he could tell from Shadow’s expression that he was equally overcome. Eternity knew the size of the chamber alone would have made its discovery a s
hock, even without the bodies. Indeed, he thought, the bodies could’ve been explained away in the Black City with relative ease: rebels, dissidents caught and punished by the Providers. In the City, such a punishment would have been taken for granted, and the stone chamber would have been seen as merely a tomb for traitors.
But in the Forgotten City, where people professed to have rejected the Providers, it might have caused people to lose faith in their cause altogether. According to Brain, exactly that had happened. To those who remained, the chamber, and its fateful contents were a mystery easier forgotten than explained. To those who chose not to forget, the explanation had come no easier. If it hadn’t been the Providers, then who had caused the deaths of the people in that chamber?
And, thought Eternity, the question of its very existence remains. Why was it built? Was it an early rebel outpost, predating even the earliest settlement of the Forgotten City? Then a new voice spoke, and Eternity was grateful he had no more time to think.
The voice belonged to a tall, dark-skinned man who greeted the three youths from a scaffolding high in the chamber. He wore a pair of dark pants and an elegant-looking white shirt. He had curly, collar-length black hair and a slender build. When he turned to look at the three of them, his eyes, sparkling from behind round-rimmed glasses, told Eternity who he was even before Brain called out to him.
“Father!” The tall, black man nodded. “Hi, son. Hello, Shadow,” he added, noticing the boy next to Brain. “Who’s your new friend?”
“This is Eternity,” Brain replied.
“Pleased to meet you,” Brain’s father said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll come down and join you all.” A few moments later, Brain’s father led the three youths toward a steel platform near the far end of the chamber. “Now just stand still.”
“It’s a transport platform,” Brain explained in a whisper. The platform lifted, and as it separated from the floor of the chamber, steel bars pushed up from its sides to form a guardrail around them.
“Remarkable, eh?” said Brain’s father. Even Shadow had to admit that it was. Though he’d known Brain for some time, he’d never been in the Underground before.
“We in the Underground have made many technological advances that have benefited both ourselves and the Forgotten City in general. As a matter of principle, however, werefuseto use our knowledge fordestructive purposes, and we’ve developed no weaponry, whether defensive or offensive. It was our wish that, despite our advancements and knowledge, we would remain a peaceful part of the Forgotten City. Happily, the other Elders have always supported our decision.”
“That’s what the Oldtimers call each other,” Brain whispered to his two friends. The platform reached the top of a mechanized ramp, which moved automatically down toward another level of the Underground. Brain, Eternity, and Shadow stepped off, leaving just Brain’s father behind.
“Return,” Brain’s father told the platform, and it obeyed, giving him just time enough to step onto the ramp and descend, with the others, still further below ground.
The ramp came to an end whereit joined the floor of another, larger chamber, this one made entirely of steel from floor to ceiling,andlit on all sidesbyglowing, crackling,neon tubes. It seemed to Eternity that, while they traveled, they had passed from the earth into another realm entirely, one where the new magic of science and technology were supreme. Another set of gigantic elevator doors opened, shuttingagain behind its passengers when they were inside.
“What level, sir?” a disembodied voice asked.
“Residential,” replied Brain’s father.
“Thank you, sir,” the phantom voice responded, in a mechanical parody of gratitude. This one’s faster, Eternity thought. It seemed to him as though he could actually feel the passing of each level in its turn.
“Residential level, sir,” the ghost-voice piped up.
When the elevator doors opened, the first sight that greeted Eternity’s eyes was a great hall of chromium steel. The grey expanse stretched before the four of them as they stepped into the chamber, a stark landscape broken only by a multitude of doors lining either side like neatly blowtorched squares adorning a metal shield. Each doorway was sealed by a panel with no visible means to open it. Eternity, along with Brain and Shadow, followed Brain’s father as he made his way halfway down the hall, then paused before one of the doorways.
“Open.”
“Code please,” another mechanized voice requested. “Voice analysis required.”
“Paladin,” Brain’s father intoned.
“Paladin. Voice code checked and qualified,” the mechanical voice informed him. “Proceed.”
“If I frightened you,” Brain’s father said, “I’m sorry. That chamber’s a place of many memories. Bad ones.” “Father,” Brain interrupted him, “they know about the chamber already.”
“Ah. Then they know why no one goes there anymore.” Eternity shook his head. Brain gave him a stern look, but it didn’t stop him from speaking. “No. I don’t understand that at all. It’s a dead place, Paladin, no matter what it might have been. It’s empty, can’t you see that?”
“That chamber will never be empty,” Paladin said.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room until Paladin spoke again. “I forget, Eternity, that we haven’t been formally introduced. My name, as you guessed, is Paladin. It’s an old word meaning ‘knight’, and we of the Underground are the knights who guard the Forgotten City’s survival. Its silent defenders, its peasant kings.”
“Father likes to be theatrical sometimes,”Brain said. It broke the tension, and Shadow and Eternity both laughed. Paladin gave a wry smile. “That may be true, but so is what I say. And if my son will permit me one further moment of ‘theater,’ we are also the keepers of the Forgotten City’s secrets. The chamber’s sealed now. I should’ve kept it that way. It’s just that it doesn’t usually need to be sealed to keep people out. Most of our people have no wish to enter. My son had no business—”
“Your son had every right,” Eternity spoke up.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“Oh, come on, man! I know what you want to say. I’m just a boy, so what I think doesn’t matter. That might work in the City,but not here. Hereeveryone’s supposed to be equal. We all checked out of their machine, remember? We all put ourselves on the line. We’re supposed to be different here! We’re supposed to be people, not robots or scared animals!”
“Sometimes it’s smart to be scared, Eternity,” Paladin said. “You may learn that when you get a little older.” “Who says I’m not scared? It isn’t them I’m scared of, though—it’s what they’ve done to us and the whole Cityand of what they might do if no one has the guts to stop them!”
Brain stood between Eternity and Paladin. “Come on, man,” he told Eternity. “Calm down. He’s on our side. He knows what’s goin’ on.”
“I won’t calm down! Not ‘til I finish. Paladin, you’re not sealingoff a room. You’resealingoffamemory—amemory you hate. One you can’t explain. You’re right, you know. That chamber will never be empty until you can come out of this steel tomb and look yourselves in the eye. That’s what those domes,” Eternity noted Paladin’s discomfort at his use of streetrider slang, “in the City are. They’re you. You’re no different. Your clothes, your looks, your names—none of it matters, because they still own you. Brain told me those of you who were here from the beginning promised to find out why that chamber was built. You never could, could you?”
Paladin didn’t answer. “And when you couldn’t,” Eternity went on, “you took the bodies out, gave them a nice quiet burial, and sealed the place off. And you let people think it was okay to just avoid the place. You sold out, man. They own you.”
The other two youths stood in shocked silence, watching. “Don’t you remember anything?” Eternity asked Brain. “Well, remember this. Ace didn’t sell out. He died, but he never sold out. They never owned him, and they don’t own me.”
“Y
ou’re wayout of line, man!” said Brain, grabbing Eternity by the shoulder.
Eternity spun to face him. “Am I?” “That’s my father you’re talking to,” Brain said. “He’s been here longer than either of us. He hates the Providers as much as anybody.”
“Maybe. But if he won’t do anything about it, then he’s just in the way.” Brain was still grippingEternity’s shoulder with one hand, and as he drew back the other one, Eternity thought Brain might be about to hit him. Shadow and Paladin were silent throughout the whole exchange. Then Paladin spoke.
“Let him go, son. He’s your friend, after all. And he’s right. I’ve let my fear get in the way of my promise for too long.” “We made a promise, too, Brain,” Eternity said, looking him straight in the eye. Brain let go of Eternity’s shoulder, thinking of that night in the small back room of the arcade— the night they’d all promised to help Eternity put an end to the Providers, if they could.
“I remember,” Brain replied.
“So do I,” said Shadow.
“Friends again?” Brain said, offering his hand to Eternity, palm up. Eternity smiled, and they clasped hands in the streetrider salute.
“We weren’t ever anything else,” Eternity said.
“Now,” said Paladin, “if you’ll come with me, there’s something I can show you that might help.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Network level,” Paladin responded to the prompting of the ghost-voice from the elevator. The elevator sped downward through layers of rock and steel toward the center of the Underground’s technological achievement: the point of origin for their access to the City’s Net. Paladin had agreed to take them there in the hopes that some of the questions the four of them shared might be answered. “But,” he warned them, “we aren’t the first to ask these questions—and there haven’t been any answers yet.”
Eternity thought that maybe that was because no one really wanted to know. The sight that greeted Eternitywhen the fourof themstepped off the elevator was a vision out of legend, a relic of a time before the Providers. The Underground’s Net center was a vast chamber housing what Eternity recognized from dim thoughtfeed memories as hundreds of ancient computing terminals arranged in a ring around a larger central unit. Ordinarily, the chamber would have been filled with people seeking informational readouts, checking data, or performing other tasks at the various terminals. Now, however, there was only one man in the chamber, seated at the console of the chamber’s central unit.