Ninth City Burning

by J. Patrick Black

  Trenchers, also known as U-55 entrenchment tools, are sort of like lazels, only you use them to build things instead of blow things up. If you’ve got the right materials and know what you’re doing, you can make your own shelter pretty much anywhere, including outer space. You can even make things float, mostly rocks and logs and so forth, if you don’t have anywhere good to build. I figured we’d be doing something like that, maybe making floating blocks to build this floating fortress, but I was way off.

  Once we all suited up, Mersh told us we’d be going to the South Piazza. We’d all been there a couple of times since we finished our first four weeks of training and they started letting us out on recreation. South Piazza is one of the few places in Ninth City where people go just to relax. When we got there, though, it was totally empty, except for people in D-87s like us. Our job, Mersh said, was to draw lines. We were supposed to set our trenchers to make contrasting marks, then draw all over South Piazza. Not just anywhere, of course. Each squad had a square twenty meters across to work on, and we had to make the lines according to this very specific diagram. It wasn’t easy, because you couldn’t really tell if you were doing it right, and if the Immunes decided your line wasn’t exactly perfect, you had to start over. Spammers got the hang of it pretty quick, but the rest of us made a lot of mistakes. As soon as we finished one twenty-meter square, the Immunes would come in and start drawing even more things, mostly weird-looking symbols and little pictures, like of animals and people and whatnot. Meanwhile, we’d get another twenty-meter square of Piazza and have to draw all over that.

  It all had to do with thelemity, obviously, but none of us could figure out how. We heard about other squads going down to the main city shelters and just gutting the place, pulling out all the beds and supplies and everything until it was all just a big empty space, then, when that was all done, the Immunes told them to cut their thumbs and leave one fingerprint in blood on the wall. Seriously. The Immunes never told us why we had to do all this stuff, or if they did, they’d say something pretty unhelpful, like “this is going to be an ocularoclastic node” or “we need to redirect the cephaloparisic flow through this area.” It became a sort of joke in some of the squads. Whenever we had to go take a piss, we’d say something like “I need to flobnob the groobinwhistler.”

  It took two days to finish the whole Piazza, and as soon as we were done, they sent us to this big flowery field just outside the city and told us to start burying little statues of animals. Like, we got boxes and boxes filled with these figurines of cows and pigs and whatnot, and a map of the field with marks all over it telling us where to dig and how deep to bury each one. It was a little like assembling something at a factory, how precise everything had to be, only instead of a 1.25cm screw or whatever, you had a statue of a chicken. After that, we went to a lake, and they gave us all cups filled with some liquid, oil if you were a girl and water if you were a guy, and had us walk around the place in a big circle exactly seventy-nine times. That was it. Next they had us lighting candles and putting them on tree branches. Every day it was like we had some new crazy thing to do.

  This one time they brought us all to some great big field and taught us a game called football. It’s a little like dash, a game we used to play at old S-225, only there was no punching or eye-gouging allowed. We played all day, and it was actually pretty fun, up until the end, anyway. When we were all tired enough to drop, the Immunes had us play one last round, only this time they told us exactly how it was supposed to go, like who was going to win and by how much and so forth. Spammers nearly messed the whole thing up by scoring when he wasn’t supposed to. It turned out he was pretty good at football, and I guess he didn’t like throwing the game, even if it was for the preservation of humanity. Or maybe it was because Mersh was on the side that was supposed to win and he was being kind of a turd about it. Anyway, the Immunes made us start over, and I guess that time we got it right because now here we are burning down houses.

  The trenchers actually make the whole job pretty easy, relatively speaking. They look sort of like giant-sized spoons, the trenchers do, and in addition to drawing really nice-looking lines, they can move and reshape just about anything you want. For example, if you’ve got a block of stone, and you want it to be shaped like something else, a cone or a ball or a little truck or whatever, your trencher can do it in about a minute, less if you really know what you’re doing. So building a house isn’t anything like as hard as it would be back at Granite Shore, where you’d have to dig the foundation and nail together the walls and shingle the roof and so forth. Here you just sort of wave your trencher, kind of like you’re spreading something out, and the walls practically build themselves. The Immunes give us all the materials. We just have to reshape them and put them together according to the plans. We use wood, mostly, so the houses will burn. Our trenchers can set the fires, too. They really are handy little things. You can even use them to fight, if you happen to lose your lazel. It’s only the little fussy parts you have to do by hand.

  “Why do you think they have us make the beds?” I ask Spammers as we’re doing just that. Each cottage is a little different, but there are always a few bedrooms and a few beds to make.

  “No idea,” Spammers says. “Good thing we’re trained for this kind of sophisticated and demanding work, though.”

  We all got a lot of practice making beds at Limit Camp. On your first day, they teach you this very specific way of doing it, and after that, they’re always real like persnickety about it. I doubt we were actually preparing for something like this, but it certainly didn’t hurt. “But I mean, what’s the point,” I say to Spammers. “If they’re going to burn the whole thing down anyway, why make the beds?”

  Spammers rolls his eyes. “The thing you’ve gotta understand about this thelemity crap, kiddo, is there’s no understanding it. It’s strictly for crazies.”

  I kind of agree. If thelemity is about building invisible machines, then this one has to be the screwiest machine of all time. Most machines, you can look at them and at least sort of tell what they’re doing. Like you have a machine that takes cans and fish, and it makes canned fish. But if there’s some way burned-down houses and buried pig statues come out to be a flying island, I don’t know what it is. “At least we’re doing something to help, right?” I say.

  “You sure about that, boyo?” Spammers says, doing the old skeptical eyebrow raise. His enthusiasm for the Legion hasn’t really stood up to working on the IMEC, especially since he came down with that case of IED. We’ve had to go in and out of the city’s umbris a lot, and that hasn’t been good for some people. A few days back, just before lights out, Spammers was lying on his bed and suddenly he started sprouting big, shiny green flies. They just came out of his skin like bubbles out of boiling water, and in no time there was a huge cloud of them buzzing all over the place. All he had to do was go take some pill and he was fine, but it was pretty uncomfortable for a while, and ever since, he’s been real grumpy. I don’t think that’s a very unusual way to feel, though, when flies start coming out of your skin.

  He’s not the only one getting kind of irritable, either. We all are. They feed us all right, but we’re lucky to get four hours of sleep at night. If you get too tired, they give you this drink called raspalji. It’s about the most awful thing you’ve ever tasted, but it makes you feel like you could pull up a mountain and grind it to bits with your teeth. You’re not allowed more than one dose every two days, though, and we’re all still tired most of the time.

  “Think about it,” Spammers is saying. “Say we really are done. Old Romeo’s coming, and there’s no way to stop him. You think those Prips are gonna tell us? No way. Everyone’d panic. But if they give us a whole bunch of pointless things to do, keep us tired and distracted, well, maybe they’ll be able to evacuate everyone important before Romeo gets here. Because you know they don’t have enough of those great big flying machines to take everyone along
, especially turds like us.”

  “If that’s what they’re doing, why tell us Romeo’s coming at all?” I ask. “Why not just pretend everything’s fine and sneak off when no one’s looking?”

  “Too late for that,” Spammers says. He doesn’t sound that concerned, though. “Everyone already saw Romeo coming in here and kicking the crap out of us. If the Prips tried to get away now, people would know something was up.”

  It isn’t completely implausible, that’s for sure. But I really do think this IMEC business is for real, however crazy it seems. The Prips may be a fat bunch of liars, but if they were planning to screw us, I know Naomi would tell me, like she told me about Granite Shore.

  It was still pretty soon after the attack, and I was in real bad shape. The work hadn’t gotten too tiring yet. I was just so worried. I’d been thinking about how we’d all just skipped up into the Legion, and how that was probably to make room for a lot of new recruits, which meant there were probably going to be a lot more extra drafts or whatever Ghalo called them out in the settlements. And that got me thinking about Camareen, and whether she was safe, and I thought about how a bunch of cities had been destroyed, like completely blown out of existence, and how that probably meant some settlements were gone, too. There wasn’t really anyone around to ask, but I got one of the Immunes talking, and he said some settlements really had been destroyed. He couldn’t tell me which ones, though, only that there were a lot, and he definitely didn’t remember whether Settlement 225 was one of them. By the end of the day, when they sent us off to our new barracks, I was going pretty berserk. And then I heard someone say my name, real quiet, right behind me. I turned around, and there was little Naomi.

  “Your home is safe.” She just came right out and said it, like she could guess what I was thinking. “Settlement 225 survived the battle.”

  I said, “How did you know I—?” I was going to say, “How did you know I was worried?” but I couldn’t even finish, I was so surprised.

  “You cannot rest easy while people you care for are in danger,” she said. “I have seen enough of you to know that.”

  “Thanks, then,” I said.

  “You would do the same if I needed something it was in your power to give. Please, convey what I have told you to your kiddos, with my regards.” It was funny hearing her say “kiddos,” since that wasn’t how she usually talked. It made me think of that night back on Granite Shore, when we all threw in to bring her people that food. I guess this was sort of the same thing. I was going to thank her again, but she’d already disappeared, just like that.

  “Well, if they were going to make up some big distraction,” I say to Spammers, “don’t you think the fake jobs they gave us’d make a little more sense? And hey, tuck in those sheets, boyo. You’re getting sloppy on the corners!”

  We’re just finishing up when we hear Hexi yelling from the hall. “What are you two doing in here?” A second later she’s at the door, looking annoyed. “Hurry up, will you? We’re falling way behind Second Squad. Mersh is getting ready to blow an artery or something.”

  “You mean Decurio Mezzivish?” Spammers says. Out of all of us, Spammers is having the most trouble accepting Mersh as dek. Listening to Mersh order him around bothers Spams even more than being all lousy with green flies. I can relate. Mersh is a pretty good dek, except you can tell he enjoys it a little too much.

  “That’s exactly who I mean,” Hexi says, all curt and whatnot. “Now get those corners straightened, and let’s burn this place.”

  Mersh is waiting downstairs with the rest of the squad. When Hexi tells him we’re done, all he says is “We’re going to have to do better on the next cottage. I want four more completed by the end of the day. No more horsing around, got it? Miles Spammachen! What are you doing?”

  The minute Mersh gave the order not to horse around, Spammers immediately started horsing around. There’s this big bowl of fruit on the cottage’s kitchen table, and Spammers’d been reaching for an apple sitting right on the top. He obviously wasn’t going to take it, like he was making this jokey-looking face and everything, but Mersh decided to yell at him anyway.

  “That apple looked a little out of place, sir,” Spammers says, real casual. “I was just going to rearrange it a bit.”

  “Leave that to the Immunes,” Mersh snaps. “You have your orders. Now get moving.”

  Spammers makes a very crisp salute. “Yes, sir!” I’m pretty sure he’s making fun of Mersh a little, but Mersh doesn’t notice.

  FORTY-NINE

  TORRO

  We actually do get five more cottages up before another squad finally comes to relieve us. Mersh yells at everyone the whole time, the way our squad leaders did back in settlement militia, and you can just tell he’s enjoying himself like anything. They let us have a few hours’ sleep, then we’re back at it before sunup, but we’ve only done two more cottages when the Immunes come through and tell us to report back to the staging area, the place where they keep all the different building materials like wood and shingles and bedsheets and bowls of fruit.

  Old Sorril’s waiting for us, looking about how I feel, which is to say totally exhausted. She’s smiling, too, though. When the whole century is gathered up, she tells us we’ve done it. IMEC-1 is ready for launch. There’ll be plenty more to do once it’s up and flying, but we’re finished with the really hard part. They’re giving us the rest of the day off, but we’ll probably want to stick around to watch the launch, since it’ll be the first time anything like this has happened in the history of humanity and whatnot.

  Everybody’s pretty excited, not just because it’s some big historic event but because we’ve hardly had any time to ourselves since the IMEC got started. Sorril’s got us all some beer and aquavee, and I’m a little inclined to just get completely drunk, but instead I end up hanging around with Hexi and Spammers. There’s a lot of food left over from the cottages, mostly apples and pears and so forth, and even though I’m not all that hungry, I feel obliged to have some, since until now we’ve hardly been allowed to touch this stuff except to stack it neatly in bowls.

  So I sit there like compulsively eating fruit while Hexi gives Spammers a hard time for not believing in the IMEC. Legionaries are supposed to give each other a hard time every so often, and Hexi’s been practicing. She’s not so great at it just yet.

  “Still think the IMEC’s all a hoax?” she says, trying to elbow Spammers in the ribs but getting his shoulder. Lately, he’s been pretty vocal about that theory of his, the IMEC being a sham, I mean. We’ve all heard it.

  Spammers has this orange he’s been cutting up with his trencher, and he squirts it at her. “Maybe. Maybe it won’t take off at all. Maybe the Prips just want us all in one place so they can sneak away somewhere else. We’d all feel pretty dumb, then, wouldn’t we, waiting for a floating island that doesn’t even exist?”

  “Not as dumb as you will when it actually happens.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  We sit around all morning, and nothing happens, but then about noontime Sorril shows up and tells us the launch’ll be starting soon. We can watch from the fields where we were building those cottages, only we’re advised to stay at least fifty meters back from the burned-down wreckage unless we want to end up with the world’s worst case of IED. Our whole century sets off in a big rambunctious pack, though Spammers is pretty quiet, probably thinking about those green flies.

  There’s plenty of space to watch, since we had to clear out all the trees to make room for the cottages, and the cottages were all built in this big, long trail, like you can look left or right, and the piles of blackened and collapsed cottages seem to go on forever. Hexi and Spammers and I get a spot near where we’d been working the other day, and the rest of our squad comes along, including Mersh, even though he doesn’t seem to enjoy the idea of like fraternizing with legionaries under his command. There are
a couple other squads around, but mostly the place is pretty empty.

  No one says much of anything. I think we’re all a little nervous. And then Spammers blurts out, “So what exactly is supposed to happen?”

  “Be quiet!” Hexi says. She’s already getting upset. Spammers has a lot easier time upsetting her than the other way around.

  “What? It’s not like I’m going to break the IMEC by being too loud.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “They built something under the city,” Mersh says. He’s drinking a beer, the same kind with the red can you’d see back at S-225, and smiling this real smug smile. “You remember how they cleared out all the main shelters? There’s a whole complex down there now. Artifices and stuff everywhere. They call it the Myria Engine.”

  “At least it’s got a better name than IMEC-1,” Spammers says. “Was that really all they could come up with? IMEC-1 sounds pretty dumb, if you ask me.”

  Mersh doesn’t even look at him. He just takes a sip of beer and keeps talking. “The Myria Engine runs the whole thing. They’ll get that working first, then start up the rest of the IMEC.”

  “How’d you find that out?” I say. I’d been peeling a banana I brought with me, getting ready to eat it, but now I’m interested.

  “Need-to-know basis, boyo,” Mersh says. “Couldn’t always be stopping work to explain things, could we?”

  That gets me pretty irritated. Like, how can anyone tell what I need to know? It would have been quite helpful if someone’d thought to tell me Granite Shore hadn’t been blasted to a million pieces, for instance. And like, maybe if the Prips’d told us all from the beginning what was really going on with this war, things would be different now. Maybe Spammers wouldn’t be so mad about working here, or so suspicious about this plan with the IMEC. I think that goes for just about everyone from the settlements. It’s hard not to be suspicious of the Prips, even though it turned out there’s all this like firm and convincing evidence the war is really real after all.