by Clay Gilbert
Some thought that the emptyapartment rooms—the building itself was patterned after the residential apartments of the Black City—symbolized all those who would one day leave homes and lives to rise up against the Providers.
There was a door at the elevator end of the top floor, which opened into the block of rooms on that floor. This could only be opened by a key held by a few in close contact with the leader, and only by this key could the leader’s rooms be reached from the outside. This locked door was the one at which the sound of the boot was heard again.
Don’t go, Jacob mouthed at Rebecca, who’d already started toward the door. Even as she did, she wondered who was on the other side. If it wasn’t Eternity, or one of his friends, it had to be someone from the City, and if that was the case, how had they gotten this farinto the building? And wherewas her son? Therewas one small consolation, however—it appeared that the intruder didn’t have a key. But what if therewas another way to get in? The Providers or their people might know a way, as there were similar, though seldom-used, locks on floors in the buildings of the Black City’s Residential Sectors, and after all, They were gods, and …
Stop it! She told herself. They aren’t. They can’t be. Did gods wear boots and kick in doors? Did gods kill to keep people silent?
“Let me in!” The anguished cry brought both mother and father to the door. Inserting their key, they quicklyhad the door open, but were ill-prepared for the sight that greeted them. Eternity knelt in the doorway, cradlingthe bodyof a boythey’d never seen before. Eternity’s pants were ripped in several places, and he was bleeding from cuts on his forehead, cheeks, and legs, but the condition of the other boy—whom his parents presumed to be Shadow, the other youth identified in the screencast they’d seen—was far worse.
“Bring him inside,” Jacob said. He helped Eternity carry Shadow into one of the bedrooms of the block, and they laid him on the bed. Shadow was unconscious, and there was a small, red burn where his neck met his shoulder.
“Got him with a lasgun,” Eternity’s father said, and Eternity nodded. Eternity’s mother brought some water and a cloth, and while Eternity cleaned both his own wounds and those of his friend, his father looked the boy over.
“It’s just a flesh wound, looks like. The leather wouldn’t have even saved him if the gun had been on full strength. Looks like somebody was just trying to make a point.” He stood up, stepping awayfrom Shadow. “Now, while we wait for your friend to wake up, why don’t you tell us what happened?”
Eternity sat down in a chair across from the couch on which his parents were seated. “We decided to go into the City, just to see if things had gotten any worse. We thought we’d be safe. Most of the domes leave Govsec before eleven. It wasn’t as crowded, but there were enough people—guards probably—right in front of the Towers. We saw them, and we tried to get out, but there wasn’t time to get to a high enough altitude before …” Eternity’s voice choked for a moment, “before they had us. They surrounded the ‘cycle, dragged us both down. I got beat up some, and they shot Shadow in the shoulder. While they were busy with me, one of them got my key and that’s why we couldn’t get in.” Eternity’s tone was grim. “Whatever the screencrews said about it, they lied.”
“They know your names,” his mother said. “They called you a threat.”
“We didn’t threaten anybody!” Eternity said. “We were observers, that’s all. We didn’t know what it’d be like.” Our people, Eternity thought later, sitting at Shadow’s bedside and remembering his words. There shouldn’t be these divisions. Those people—even the ones who shot Shadow—they weren’t evil, they were just scared. Those are the people we’ve got to stop thinking of as the enemy if we want to get anything done. It’s the Providers. It’s got to be all of us—everyone in the City—against Them if this is ever going to end.
“Us against them,” he whispered.
“Us against them,” a groggy voice repeated beside him.
Eternity grinned as Shadow slowly openedhis eyes. “You okay, man?” he asked. Shadow gave a weak smile in response. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna be.” His voice sounded as though he had a throat-full of glass. “Did you get that guy? The one who shot me? Did you take him out? Did you?” Shadow shot up suddenly, then slumped back just as quickly, wincing in pain and clutching at his shoulder.
Eternity put a hand on Shadow’s good shoulder. “Lie back down, man. We need you at a hundred percent, so you gotta rest. No, I didn’t get him. He got away. And he got my key.”
Shadow looked concerned. “Well, you’ve got to find him, then.” Eternity shook his head. “We can’t go back there again, any of us. They’ll shoot on sight next time, and they’ll shoot to kill.”
“Can I help?”
“No, man, no. You just rest.”
Shadow closed his eyes, and Eternityhad started to make his way out of the room when a faint voice behind him called his name.
“Yeah?”
“Come here a minute,” Shadow said, his voice sounding a little stronger.
Eternity walked back to the side of the bed, and stood looking down at Shadow’s cut and bruised face. “Thanks a lot, man,” whispered Shadow, his words filled with more emotion than he would ever let slip through on the streets.
“No problem. Get some sleep.” Eternity smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him, thinking of how much he understood Shadow in ways Ace never could have. Heand Shadow had both known Ace, been closer to him than any of the other streetriders could claim. And now their friendship bonded them together. In the beginning, being friends had been a way they could each remember Ace. They’d just been acquaintances at first, certainly not equals. Eternity remembered the day he and Shadow first met. That day, and for a time after, he’d been in awe of Shadow. He wasn’t Ace, but he’d seemed to have inherited part of Ace’s magic, his look of freedom. And even when Eternity had seen that look in his own eyes, Shadow’s streetwise ease and smooth manner continued to dazzle him.
But after he heard Shadow’s story, the aura around him had seemed to fade, and Eternity was able to see Shadow’s true self beneath the polished veneer of street politics. He and Shadow were innocents in the embittered world that surrounded them. Neither really hated the people on the other side of the Wall. They’d never learned to hate those who were merely pawns. It made more sense to both of them that they should hate those they knew were behind the chaos in the City, rather than the innocents who were merely doing what they felt to be right.
Now an exchange of debts had taken place: Shadow had given Eternity safe passage into the Forgotten City, and in so doing, had likely saved his life. Now, he’d done the same thingforShadow. It was asacrificeof friendship and of love, and such sacrifices might be necessary again if the dark Towers at the City’s heart were ever to be captured, and the riddle of the Providers’ faceless reign to be answered at last.
* * * *
“Shadow?”
It was midday, and Eternity stood at the door where his friend lay, eyes only now opening.
“Huh?” the boy asked, still only half-awake. “Whadja want?”
“How you feelin’? Better?” Shadow smiled. “Yeah.” He rubbed his shoulder, where a small reddish spot was all that remained of what, only the night before, had been an angry red burn. “A little sore still, but I’m all right.”
“Good. I’ve called a meeting. The Prophet’s gonna let us use his place, since it’s bigger. We have to let people know what’s happening. We have to organize. You feel like coming with me?”
Shadow nodded. “Just give me a minute, man, and I’ll be there.”
* * * * Eternity’s parents looked down at the assembled people from their position high in the upper tier of seats in the old holohouse’s main screening room. All around them, faces shone with expectation in the darkness, eyes of Oldtimer and streetrider alike peering down at the stage in the center of the room, seated upon which the multitude of eyes could make out the figures of Eternity, t
he streetrider leader of the Forgotten City, and his right-hand advisor, the one called Shadow. The summons had gone out just an hour before, from Crown Avenue across the whole of the rebel community, to the very outskirts of Oldtimer town.
Meeting this afternoon! Eternity’s called a meeting! And they came, many remembering the meetings Ace had held, but knowing that Eternity was far different in his leadership. So, remembering the words he spoke the first time he called them together, they gathered and waited.
Whatever he says, it’ll be fair, many of them were thinking. Is it time to act, Eternity? Is it time? The whispers of conversation in the crowd ceased as the blond-haired, denim-clad figure on the stage held up his hand for silence. Eternity’s parents were stunned by the realization that this young man, on whom all the eyes in the room were fixed—including their own—was their son.
Maybe, they thought, everything we’ve heard is true. “Everyone— excuse me—” the last of the chatter quieted then, “the last time I spoke to this many of you, I told you we had to wait. No raids, no action. You listened, and if any of you didn’t, nothin’ got back to me about it.” Scatterings of laughter spread through the crowd, lessening the tension in the air for a moment before Eternity spoke again. “But now, you’ve gotta listen, and you’ve gotta do what Itell you. Shadow and I were in the City last night, at the Towers. Yeah, I know—” Eternity nodded at a couple of streetriders who made noises of outrage in the crowd, “I don’t take my own advice, but even that stops now. As you’ve probably figured out, Shadow got hurt. He was shot, and my key to the Hall was stolen.
“It was probably stupid of us to go in the first place, but we felt like we had to see what’s going on over there. And now we’ve seen. And now I’m tellin’ you: no one goes into the City. No one. I’m not sayin’ this ‘cause I’m the leader and I make the rules. From now on, the rules are for me, too. I’m sayin’ this ‘cause you could get killed, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“So what do we do?” a voice asked from the crowd. Eternity shook his head. “I don’t know, man. “I’ll be honest. I wish I did. All we can do is wait. And hope their people don’t get too stirred up.”
The crowd filed out of the holohouse. Manyof the Oldtimers went silently, faces intent with contemplation. Many of the streetriders stopped to talk, to clap Eternity on the back or shake his hand in solidarity. It was clear they understood what the plan had to be, and why it had to be. He just wished he’d had more to give them.
His parents were silent for a time after they returned home. They said nothing until Shadow went his way shortly after dark. Then they called Eternity back into the main room of the block.
“Sit down, son,” his fathersaid, looking serious, and Eternity knew what he was going to say before he began. He’d learned to read faces in the Forgotten City, and his father’s was no exception.
“Eternity,” his mother began, and he smiled when he heard no tremor in her voice when she said the name. “We’ve thought it over, and we’ve decided we can’t stay here with you anymore. We’re a liabilityto you as long as we stayhere in the Hall. We haven’t changed our names or our appearances, and they have records of both back in the City. We know what they can do now, and we think it’d be better for you—and we could do more to help—if we went to live with the Oldtimers. We don’t belong in the City anymore, but we don’t belong here either. We have to find our own place.”
“Let me go with you,” he said. “We’ll see Sentinel. He let me and Shadow stay with him for a while when I was first finding my feet here. I’m sure he’d let you—”
“All right,” his mother said.
As Eternity’s hovercycle sped toward Oldtimer town, he felt déjà vu overtake him. It feels like this is how it has to be. Like this is just another of the Prophet’s visions, frozen in time and waiting for its fulfillment.
And again the fire-ghost exploded behind his eyes, and again the scents and sounds from the burning City in the dream were so real, so clear he felt he might scream.
Was this all ordained somehow? His rebellion, the war, and finally, the Providers’ fall? Or was he the variable that set the plan in motion now instead of later; that turned the wheel that far ahead instead of letting it continue to spin in place?
He brought the hovercycle down into Oldtimer Town, feeling familiarity spread through him. This was where he’d had his first taste of real freedom. This was where he’d first made real contact with the people of the Forgotten City. He set his cycle down in a lot outside the ancient antique shop, and, motioning to his parents, walked up the steps to the door, and rapped on it, stopping when his eyes were met by Sentinel’s familiar gaze from the other side of the door.
“Come in, come in. Well, Eternity, you’ve grown into quite the young leader. And these—your parents, I presume? You must be proud of him after the meeting.”
They nodded.
“Well,” said Jacob “we were proud of him before. But that’s part of why we’re here now.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell me about it,” Sentinel said, starting toward the steps that led to the small room above the shop. * * * * Sentinel smiled when Eternity’s parents had finished the story of their arrival in the Forgotten City, and their decision following the meeting. “I see our young leader’s persuasion extends even to his parents. You are perfectly welcome here for as long as you wish to stay.”
“Thank you, Sentinel,” they both said.
“Thanks,” Eternity told Sentinel. “If I can ever—”
Sentinel silenced him with a look. “Good luck, Eternity, and good fortune.” It was a common Oldtimer farewell. “Good luck, and good fortune,” Eternity replied. “I’ll be seeing you around, Sentinel.”
“We love you, son,” said Eternity’s father, and then he and his wife both embraced the boy.
“I love you, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
His name was Eternity. That much she knew—the rest she could find out. Emily’s eyes burned with anger, an anger washed with tears as she remembered the looks of fear frozen on her parents’ dead faces. The images ran through her mind like a newsreel that might only stop spinning inside her skull once their killer was only a memory, too. .
He did it. Him and his people. And he has to pay. She’d seen him. She’d been there when he and his friend, the one the screencast called Shadow, had been attacked. She didn’t want to use the word, but as much as she hated the rebels for killing her parents, she hated the Providers and their government for making her sympathize with the rebels. She couldn’t conform, couldn’t take the disappearances. She slammed a door inside her mind against her weakness. She was on her own now. Neither the rebels nor the Providers could guide her—only her desire for revenge.
His key. They’d taken a key from him, and when, in the scramble after the rebels had taken to the air, the Citizen who’d taken it had dropped it, she’d picked it up. Now, if she only knew what it unlocked! The answer, Emily knew, was somewhere in the rebel stronghold, another piece of terra incognita to be filled in and charted on the map inside her mind. But she knew that with the key, she could reach him—and the spinning wheel of pain inside her might stop at last.
So she’d searched, and she’d remembered what she’d heard while still in Western Sector, while she’d still worked in the Busisec’s studio block.
“You know what I think,” someone had said (someone whose name had, she thought, probably been added to the list of the disappeared), “I think they’re here. Right here. And They just don’t want to see it.”
She hadn’t believed that, couldn’t believe it. The rebels would be smarter than that. Anyone who’d go against the Providers—they wouldn’t stay in the City. They’d have to go elsewhere. But where? Not Beyond. Or if Beyond, then not far. But she didn’t think that was the answer to her question. She remembered the oppression she felt in the time just before her parents were killed. She hadn’t wanted to leave the Cityentirely. She loved it, in a perverse way, as
her home, not as the seat of the government. She loved what she knew it could be, and what it meant to her, not what it had become. In some grief-encrusted, suppressed part of herself, she knew the rebels had to be much the same: people who dreamed, who remembered a time the only heard about in stories—or perhaps not at all—but felt a pull of faith as strong as gravity that said that it had existed, that it did exist. People like that wouldn’t have abandoned the City. They’d be somewhere close to the edge, just beyond—beyond the Wall.
That was it. She wanted to scream, and even as she shivered in the night air of the City, a cold as sharp as the black glass needles risingaround her,a strange fire bloomed in her belly, and she smiled.
Most decidedly non-Regulation, she thought an hour later, riding alone in a skycar across the City, and hoping this view of its ebony starkness would be her last.
She smiled to herself at the caprice of her plan. At this time of night, there were no ground guards at the landing stations to locate a straycar or even to wonder about its whereabouts. It would be missed, surely, but it would return just as soon as she was done with it. She moved to the front of the car to the console on which flickered and pulsated the dials and panels that controlled the car’s systems. She looked for the button she wanted, flipped open a panel on the side of the console, and found it—REDIRECT.
That was the ticket. She was only sixteen, but she’d had training in electronics and computer systems tech as preparation for her job in Studio Block. Screencasts were all automated these days, except for the newsperson, and she often wondered if that last allowance wasn’t just a nod to nostalgia. So she’d learned, and she’d had some aptitude of her own, and by the time her training was done, all she needed was time, and she could map any mess of wires and make it do what she wanted.