Steel Sky

by Andrew C. Murphy

  “In recognition of the importance of this expedition,” he says, hearing his voice echoing from dozens of tiny speakers in the other Mediaries’ desks, “and of the need for informed and judicious guidance, I offer to lead the search party.”

  Selachian stirs in his chair. He presses a button at his desk, and his face appears in a smaller rectangle at the bottom edge of the dome. “Thank you for the offer, Second Son, but . . .”

  “Orcus,” Second Son interrupts.

  “Yes. Excuse me, please.” Selachian tosses off the apology without enthusiasm. “Your offer is kind, but I don’t think it is appropriate for a person of your position to expose himself to dangers such as these.”

  “On the contrary,” Second Son replies, “having experienced so many tragedies in my own household recently, I understand how important a man’s family truly is — perhaps better than anyone else in this room.”

  “Yes,” Selachian says, grimacing. “I heard about your sister’s . . . accident.”

  “I promise you, Mister Culminant, that I will do everything in my power to bring your son safely home.”

  Selachian is about to respond when his adjutant leans over and taps him on the shoulder. Second Son watches, smiling secretly, as they converse in that ridiculous sign language they think no one has deciphered yet.

  Let him go, the adjutant signs. Make yourself look magnanimous.

  He doesn’t care about my son, Selachian signs quickly, embarrassed to be taking up the Prime Medium’s time with a private debate. He’s only looking for the publicity.

  Of course, the adjutant signs impatiently, but the tunnels are dangerous. He could have an accident.

  Second Son has to suppress an urge to laugh. They are so obvious, their thoughts so shallow. Selachian glances in Second Son’s direction.

  Second Son assumes his most serious yet casual demeanor. He raises his nonexistent eyebrows as if curious what all the commotion is about.

  Selachian looks at him intently. “Very well,” he says. “You may accompany the expedition in a supervisory capacity.”

  Second Son smiles. “Thank you Mister Culminant. You won’t regret putting your faith in me.”

  He leans back in his seat, thinking, By that time, you’ll have much bigger things to worry about.

  TECHNOLOGY

  In the gallery overlooking the Hall, Amarantha stands close to the edge and looks out over the Prime Medium. She puts one hand against the glass. It has been treated in some way; her fingers do not leave a mark on its surface.

  She lays her toolbox down on the ground and undoes the latch. The Hall is filled with the Hypogeum’s most advanced technology, the latest security instruments. All that technology doesn’t mean much, she thinks, when it’s not applied properly. She had walked right past the guards, smiling with a charm that had taken all of her nineteen years to perfect. They had smiled in return. She was a beautiful, young woman in a frumpy electrician’s uniform and cap. How could she be dangerous? They had waved her through without even opening her toolbox, much less rooting through it to the bottom compartment where the revolver was hidden.

  She reaches into the box and grips the handle of the revolver. She glances up. No one in the sparse crowd is watching her. No one seems to care why she is crouched here in this public place. She feels a sudden flash of hatred for their apathy.

  Amarantha looks down into the Hall. Second Son has just finished some sort of conversation with Selachian. He leans back in his seat, a smug look on his face. Selachian continues to talk, his lumpish face multiplied on the domed ceiling. A running transcript appears underneath his image, but Amarantha ignores it. She is oblivious to everything but Second Son.

  He is shifting restlessly in his seat, bored with the proceedings. He turns his head and, by chance, glances in Amarantha’s direction. Seeing her, he pauses, his hand halfway between his lap and his chin, but he makes no other sign of recognition. He is close enough that Amarantha can make out his expression. He is apparently neither surprised nor concerned by Amarantha’s appearance here. He rests his chin on his fist, watching her.

  She pulls the revolver from the toolbox. A pair of pliers is dislodged by the motion. They fall to the floor with a clatter. Moving quickly, she takes the revolver in both hands and points it at Second Son, the bore of the muzzle only centimeters from the glass. She takes a breath, steadying her aim. She expects someone in the crowd around her to cry out in alarm. She expects Second Son to dive for cover. Neither of these things happens. Second Son watches her coolly, his chin still resting on his fist, seemingly oblivious of the weapon trained on him. The passersby go on as before, absorbed in their own concerns. For a moment, Amarantha considers returning the revolver to the box. Perhaps no one would notice that she had taken it out. Perhaps she could return safely back home. At this instant she still has not gone so far that she cannot turn back. But she knows that she does not want to turn back.

  The recoil of the revolver surprises her when she pulls the trigger. The bullet explodes from the chamber with an ear-splitting roar, and the gun leaps in her hand as if trying to attack her. The force of it nearly breaks her wrist, or so it seems. The glass shatters into a thousand fragments. The people around her turn, frightened and confused. Seeing the gun, they scatter, stampeding away from her.

  Meanwhile, pandemonium erupts in the Hall below. Mediaries push for the exits, knocking into one another blindly. Second Son rises to his feet noticeably slower than the others, as if he is only playing a part. Amarantha is not sure where the bullet has gone, but it has not hit him.

  She cocks the hammer back, the way Gloss instructed her, and points the barrel at Second Son. This time there is no glass between them to deflect her shot. She tracks Second Son, swinging the barrel to follow him as he pushes away from his seat. She pulls the trigger. The hammer falls with a sharp click. She jumps, expecting the harsh explosion again, but the gun does not fire. She stands unbelieving for a moment, the weapon still held in her outstretched arms. She pulls the trigger again. Again the hammer falls without firing the bullet. For the first time, Amarantha hears the screams of the crowd, the ringing of alarms. Everything has gone wrong. She brings the gun up close to her face, examining it, but she realizes she is only wasting time. She has no knowledge on which to base her examination, no way to know what has gone wrong. She slams the gun against the wall, hoping it is only jammed and that she may be able to dislodge the obstruction.

  She raises the gun again, preparing to fire, but Second Son is gone. He has disappeared into the swarm of bodies pushing for the exits below. She hears footsteps and looks around. Clops are moving through the crowd on both sides of her, soft guns drawn. Their red eyebands glitter as they scan the crowd. Cursing to herself, Amarantha tucks the revolver inside her jacket. She runs.

  In the hallways, she joins the crowd and tries to act as confused as everybody else. She would be quickly lost in the jumble of bodies if not for her hair. Her heritage has never seemed more of a curse than it does at this moment. They are tracking her, she is sure. She is a bright green dot in a sea of black and brown.

  Squeezed into the narrow hallway, the panicking crowd becomes a riot. Amarantha stumbles along helplessly as they push through the gateway, knocking over the barriers and metal detectors. Suddenly they are out of the building. The crowd thins, spreading out across the causeway, blinking in the sunlight. Amarantha keeps moving, glad to be free of the crush, afraid because she is no longer protected by it.

  “I got her!” she hears a clop shout. Without slackening her pace, she turns and sees an older, green-haired woman raise her arms. The nimbus of a soft gun discharge surrounds her. She shakes as if seized by a fit and collapses to the ground. The clops race forward jubilantly to carry her away.

  I guess we all look alike, Amarantha thinks bitterly, disappearing around a corner.

  COLD COMFORT

  Orel’s knee strikes a rock. Pain shoots up his leg, the particularly maddening kind of pain that comes
when one hits a nerve on bone unprotected by muscle. His eyes snap open, looking out into blackness. He realizes he has been climbing in his sleep.

  He looks down. He cannot shake the habit of looking around him, though it is pointless. He can see nothing. It does not matter. He is high enough that he will die if he falls, but he is not as high as he needs to be. All other facts are irrelevant.

  He pulls himself up to the next girder. He wonders how long he has been climbing. Judging from the growth of his beard, he guesses it has been about a day. Ten chronons in this dark shaft, without stopping. Stone dust and blood from a dozen cuts mix to form a gritty paste on his hands that abrades his skin. His muscles ache as if they are on fire. But there is no question of resting.

  “Why are you still climbing?” Bernie asks.

  Orel grits his teeth, straining to reach the next girder. “I have to,” he says between labored breaths. “If I go back, I’ll be killed.”

  “But where do you think you’re going? What do you expect to find at the top?”

  “No one builds a shaft like this without something interesting at both ends,” Orel says without slackening his pace. “My guess is this tunnel was dug by the Founders themselves. It’s big enough and old enough to be the passage they took to enter the Hypogeum.”

  “Even if you’re right, Orel, how far do you think you’ll have to travel to reach it? A kilometer? Ten? A hundred?”

  “I have no idea. But I don’t have any choice. I have no food, no water. I’m not going to get any stronger. I can’t go back. And if I stay here, I’ll die.”

  Bernie says nothing. Orel turns toward him, and is surprised to see that Bernie is glowing with a soft, invisible light. Orel chuckles to himself, the laughter dying in his throat as he pulls himself up to the next girder.

  “What’s so funny?” Bernie asks.

  “It’s just . . .” Orel shakes his head, trying to jog his confused thoughts back into order. “I realized what’s happening here. You’re hallucinating. I’m a figment of your imagination.”

  “You mean you’re hallucinating, and I’m a figment of your imagination.”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  Bernie looks offended. Somehow he manages to keep pace with Orel, though he is not climbing. Orel could not say exactly what Bernie is doing: he seems to fade out whenever Orel looks at him directly. “I could go, if I’m bothering you,” Bernie says.

  “No!” Orel stops climbing for a moment. His fingers numbly grip rusted metal. He rests his forehead against the rock, which has grown colder as he has climbed. “Please stay,” he says. “I’ll go crazy if you leave me alone here.”

  “All right,” says Bernie. “I’ll stay. I’d like to help you climb, but you know I can’t.”

  “I know.” Orel pulls himself further up. He has traveled beyond pain. He does not feel his cuts or his strained muscles anymore. He only wishes it were not so cold. “I just need a reason to keep moving. Sometimes I think the guilt will kill me.”

  “You have no reason to feel guilty.”

  “All those men . . .” Orel’s shriveled stomach rolls at the thought of it. “I let the Rats kill them. I told the Rats to kill them. It’s my fault they’re dead.”

  “You had no choice.”

  “I could have stayed with them.”

  “And died with them. What good would that have done?”

  Orel shakes his head. “I don’t know. None, I suppose. But it isn’t right that I should still be alive.”

  “Right and wrong have nothing to do with it.” Bernie’s voice is emotionless and reassuring in its resolve. “If you were dead now, and Thraso was alive, he wouldn’t give you a second thought. He’d just write you off as one of the unfit.”

  “I know. But it’s still eating away at me, Bernie. I don’t understand why I can’t let it go.”

  “Because you understand how arbitrary it all is. He didn’t.”

  A low rumble travels through the tunnel, a deep vibration that he does not hear so much as feel in his hands and feet. The tunnel shakes, and bits of gravel clatter down the shaft. Orel clings to the rock, fearful it will shift and throw him loose. The rumble slowly fades in intensity, and the tunnel is still again. “What the hell was that?” he says.

  But Bernie is gone.

  FACES

  Edward walks down a maintenance tunnel somewhere on Deck Five. His boots clang in a slow rhythm against the metal floor, sending harsh echoes up and down the long corridor. Widely spaced glowglobes punctuate the darkness, their light diffused by the steam that hisses from junctions in fat pipes along the walls.

  Edward does not slacken his pace when he sees the waiting figure down the corridor. The figure is a sleek silhouette against the dim greenish light of the globes. The figure’s features fail to resolve themselves as Edward draws nearer. He remains a black hole, cut like a paper doll from the fabric of reality. His cloak sways gently in the steam from the pipes.

  Edward comes to a stop several meters away from him. The steam swirls around them both, condensing in tiny droplets on Edward’s armor. “So,” the Deathsman says quietly, “at last we meet, face to face, each as our true selves.”

  “You’ve been following me,” Edward says.

  “For a long time now.”

  “Why?”

  The Deathsman shifts from one foot to the other, as if embarrassed by the question. His stance becomes almost casual. “I told you once that we of the Brotherhood collect last words, Edward, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. You could say, we collect lives. We do not bring death indiscriminately. Each life we terminate is remembered and commemorated, some more than others. To bring a close to a unique and distinguished life is a great honor among us.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To kill me?”

  “No, no.” The Deathsman holds his hands out, palms forward. Then, realizing that the gesture could be considered threatening, he tucks them back into his cloak again. “It’s not your time yet, Edward. Each life has its own appropriate moment of termination. For a Deathsman to end a life prematurely . . . it’s a violation of our deepest principles.”

  “So why are you here? What do you want from me?”

  “Your end is approaching quickly, Edward. I want to hear your thoughts and feelings from your own lips, so that when your time comes — when you are gone — I can tell your story to the others with the depth and clarity it deserves.” The Deathsman’s atonal voice is breathless, almost gushing. Edward has never heard him talk like this before. “Your life, your story, will be remembered and recounted among the Deathsmen long after I pass on. And as long as they remember you, they will remember me.”

  “Why me? What’s so special about my life?”

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how different you are from the sheep around you? There hasn’t been a man like you in the Hypogeum for a hundred years. You are a visionary, Edward, a man of passion and intellect. It is your ideals and your fervent dedication to them that makes you unique.”

  Edward closes his eyes. Red spots swim in the darkness beneath his eyelids. “Obviously you haven’t been watching me very closely, or you’d know I’ve betrayed those ideals. I killed two people today, for no other reason than they got in my way.”

  “Of course I saw.” The Deathsman’s hands reappear from beneath his cloak, gripped into fists. Despite his featureless mask, the flatness of his voice, Edward can feel his earnestness, like a child’s. “Of course you killed innocent people. This is where you’ve been heading since the beginning. I saw it coming, even if you didn’t.”

  “You sound almost happy about it.”

  “Don’t you see the beauty of it? For a man of your character to fight so hard for his ideals, and then to betray them — don’t you see the irony? The pathos?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  The Deathsman pauses. “No, you wouldn’t see it. You’re too close. I apologize, Edward. I didn’t mean to appear insensitive to your pain.”
Edward bows his head. He looks down at his hands, at the blood caked on the sharp fingers of his gauntlets. He feels a shimmer of suppressed emotion run up his spine, through his arms. There is a weight on him, pushing him into the ground, and he is tired of bearing it. “Why couldn’t I make it work? What did I do wrong?”

  “You tried to reach too far, Edward. No philosophy, no matter how well reasoned, can ever encompass all the details of the world. Even our tiny city is too vast to be comprehended by a single mind, or even a single system.”

  “It’s all falling to pieces,” Edward says. “I only wanted . . . to make things better.”

  “People err, Edward. It’s their nature. Your philosophy is too harsh, too narrow; it leaves no room for error. Yours or others’.”

  “And you?” Edward asks. “How is it you can do what you do without repercussions? How do you avoid error?”

  The Deathsman tilts his head to one side. Edward is sure, somehow, that under the black mask, the Deathsman is smiling. “Documentation,” he says. “I cannot say I have never killed the wrong person, but I can honestly say I have never terminated a life without following proper procedure.”

  In the silence that follows this remark, Edward hears a loud noise from somewhere far away. He feels a tremor in the metal beneath his feet. It grows in intensity, then fades. Suddenly the floor bucks underneath them. A giant wave is passing through the deck. Metal groans and rivets pop. Edward can actually see the wave roaring toward them through the metal floor. The Deathsman rides with it, legs bent, but it nearly knocks Edward over. He clings to a pipe as the tremor passes, until the heat spreading through his armor finally makes him let go. The wave is followed by other, smaller undulations, and finally by a low hum. His armor carries the vibration though his body. It makes his teeth hurt.