The Outsiders

by L. J. LaBarthe

  Fluorescent light globes hummed as they came to life, a crackling sound joining with the hum. Matty thought for a minute that nothing would work. Light began to flicker and suddenly the room was illuminated in the harsh white light that was often used in libraries. Matty let out a soft whoop, even as Arkady murmured, "Thank goodness," and he looked around the room.

  There were maps all right—maps everywhere. They littered the tables, which were surrounded by chairs, some of which lay on their sides and backs, mute testament to whoever had sat in them rising in a great rush. Shelves, cabinets and cases, some of the drawers of the map cabinets were half open, their contents revealed to the curious eye. What drew Matty's attention the most was a computer at the opposite end of the room, sitting beyond the table piled high with maps and the strewn chairs. The computer that was on, to judge by the blinking cursor he could see.

  He moved without a word, passing the chairs, the tables and the maps, going straight to the computer. He pulled up a nearby seat and sat, looking carefully at the computer, noting its make and operating system. He flexed his fingers and typed out the command line for DOS. The screen stayed black for a moment and finally flickered to life, DOS running smoothly, if a little slowly. Matty sat back, delighted, only absently noting that Arkady had joined him.

  "It works?" Arkady's voice was hushed.

  "So far. Basic Windows operating system. I'm going in through DOS."

  The computer finished what it was doing and the familiar image of Windows lit up the screen. It flickered to a wallpaper of a country scene and Matty clicked the mouse. That faded away to bring up the desktop.

  "No password," Matty murmured.

  "It's likely there is nothing here of value," Arkady said.

  "Let's not jump the gun, huh?" Matty clicked on the documents folder.

  It was slow to load, but it did eventually show him what was in the folder. There were lists for the catalogue, which might be helpful later, Matty thought, and lists of the staff, which he didn't think would really be important. A log of works done on the library was in there as well, and Matty was about to pass that, when Arkady jabbed his index finger at the file icon.

  "Open that."

  "Why?"

  "I have a hunch. I want to see what's in that folder before I tell it, though."

  Matty shrugged and double clicked the icon and the folder obligingly opened. He opened the last log document, together he and Arkady read through it.

  "I was right," Arkady muttered.

  "They closed off a lot of the subway," Matty said, as he slowly scrolled down the page. "They sealed off a lot of the tunnels, especially those near the water, to make sure the rest of it wouldn't flood."

  "Here, see, they reconnected necessary maintenance, like sewerage, clean water, ventilation, to those tunnels that were left intact." Arkady's voice was excited.

  "I think I can guess your hunch now. You thought that a lot of the tunnels had been sealed in some way, I bet that was because with the war and what we knew was happening with rising sea levels anyway—"

  "Because that is why we came together in the first place, to try to stop the disasters we as a species were inflicting upon ourselves—"

  "The library staff and the City decided to take action on their own terms first."

  Arkady nodded. Matty shot him a sidelong glance. "It fits."

  "I wonder if other cities had the same idea?"

  "We won't know unless we go to them. See if there is any way to leave the subway here and move around."

  "I don't know that we'll find that, we might have to do that the old way and look through the paper maps."

  "Perhaps. Let us look here first since we are here anyway."

  "Okay." Matty closed the file and went back into the documents folder. He scanned the names of each documents icon and stopped at one that caught his eye. Simply titled "Contingencies," it seemed to him to be something worth looking at, even if it was just a new way to do the recycling and organize garbage collection.

  He double clicked the folder icon and it opened for him. There was only one file inside it, a long document he guessed, by the size of it, nearly five megs. So he opened it and the computer made a loud whirring noise as it began to read the file so that he could see what was in it.

  "Interesting," murmured Arkady.

  "Big file," Matty said.

  "Which is interesting."

  After what felt like forever, the document opened and Matty began to read. It was a plan for survival, all laid out in neat, precise, unemotional words, graphs and charts included. As he and Arkady read, Matty had the growing feeling that somehow, the people who had written this and stored it on this computer had known that the bombardment was coming.

  "When is this dated?" Arkady asked.

  Matty checked. "About two months before we went into cryo."

  "Just before you were shot?"

  Matty quickly calculated. "Yeah."

  "They already knew."

  Matty turned to face him. "What?"

  "The governments of the world—this is a government seal—knew what was coming. Whoever betrayed us and what we were doing, to lead the way back from a dependence on dirty energy, dirty money, dirty politicking, they knew that war was coming. Perhaps whoever betrayed us also betrayed the world and their own government, their own people and started the chain of events that set this off."

  Matty didn't like that idea one little bit. It had more than enough credibility for him to be thinking hard. "If that's the case, whoever it was would've been in North Korea before I got shot, before we even were in Tasmania. They would have had the ear of the government there."

  Arkady was grim. "That puts myself and Pei Ling in first place of suspects as our governments were not as unfriendly to North Korea as the rest of our friends. Yet Pei Ling died."

  "You've never given me any reason to think you were behind any of this." Matty gripped his shoulder. "Seriously, Arkady, I don't think this was you. I don't believe it was you. Anyway, it couldn't be you, because you were with me the whole time after we left the meeting with Paul and the others. Unless you've suddenly invented a way to be in two places at once, it wasn't you."

  Arkady sagged beneath Matty's hand. The tension drained out of him like water out of a flooding dam. He nodded once and scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands. He sighed and gave Matty a wan little smile. "Thank you. I fear I did begin to suspect myself."

  Matty gave his shoulder a light squeeze. "It's okay. No, I don't think it was any of the group who met and agreed on what we had to do."

  "Who was it who had the idea to have us go to Tasmania?" Arkady asked.

  "Why?"

  "Well, it occurs to me that sending both Russia and China to Tasmania with Australia—a spy who is seen to be unimpeachable—is a good way to keep us out of the way."

  Matty blinked. He hadn't thought about that. "Where was everyone else?"

  "Paul and Gina were in Scotland with Lucy. Nisha, Louis, and Britte were in Jerusalem."

  Matty pounded his fist on his thigh. "We need to get Paul to lay it all out, where everyone was, what they were doing, all of it. He needs to use that nifty device of his that blocks anyone from listening in and tell us the whole bloody lot."

  "You do not think Paul is involved?" Arkady was shocked, Matty could see it on his face.

  "No, I don't. Paul will remember where the others were and what they were doing when they died, because it was all reported to him. We can cross reference and figure out who was nearest North Korea."

  "That is sound reasoning. I don't like that we are now suspecting one of our own, though."

  "We're spooks." Matty chuckled. "It's in the job description."

  Arkady snorted. "In this job, we were all spooks working together on a common goal. The usual job descriptions don't apply."

  "There's that." Matty turned back to the computer screen. "Let's see what else we can find. We can't stay down here too much longer. Someone will miss us
soon, we'll have to come up with a reason for our absence."

  "We were borrowing books to read." Arkady shrugged. "No one down here reads books anymore. Just the paper and that's it. I miss books, Matty. Books are wonderful."

  Matty shot him a quick grin. "That they are. All right, we'll go with that. We came to borrow some books to read, lost track of time because this library is one of the largest in the world, the range is amazing."

  "Excellent. Now let us find a map of the subway, since that's why we're here. We can do everything else after that."

  *~*~*

  Matty had found a folded map that fit into a book he decided to borrow, and when he and Arkady left the library via another door that led out into a more populated area of the underground city, they behaved like two men who had spent an enjoyable afternoon indulging in one of their favorite hobbies. They talked loudly and excitedly about the books they'd seen and the ones they wanted to borrow, laughed and joked about needing a library cart to get all the books they wanted back to their homes, lamented at their decision to only borrow several books each. Residents of the underground who passed them looked at them with amusement, as if Matty and Arkady were strange beings who needed to be coddled and have the way of things gently explained to them. Not once did anyone stop them or ask them where they had been, or more importantly, ask to inspect the books they'd borrowed.

  The book holding the hidden map felt hot in Matty's hands, as if it contained a live wire or a burning snake. He was aware that the map of the subway wasn't something he was supposed to have, more so now as they walked, because he could see the spaces where maps of the old lines had been. They had been carefully covered over with tiles and with heavy wooden frames that held the advertisements, so cheerful in color and design, that extolled the virtues of this or that food product and the great debt owed to the City's government and the agriculture sector.

  The roof of the subway was curved here, it was like walking through a great cathedral, one where trains had been the musicians of the time, commuters the worshippers. Now, it housed people who didn't have any need for rail transport and used the area for houses, shops, schools. Here and there were benches and large concrete planters with small solar units attached, filled with fruit trees or edible flowers. It was pretty, in a cavernous sort of way, though Matty still yearned to see the sky and feel the wind on his skin.

  It was nearing dinner time when they arrived back at the part of the subway where they lived. Arkady stopped and smiled at Matty.

  "Here I will leave you and return home."

  "All right." Matty felt sadness at Arkady's words. He'd wanted to spend more time with him. "When are we meeting the others?"

  "I will call Paul and we will come and see you tonight with Nisha. Your place is roughly in the center of all of our homes."

  "Okay, cool." Matty raised his hand and waved farewell. "I'll see you tonight."

  "Around 8."

  "No problem." Matty continued on his way. A few short minutes later, he was home and unlocking his front door. Once inside his apartment, he put the books he'd borrowed down on the coffee table, then he returned to the door and locked it securely.

  He looked back at the books, and went to them, opening the one in which he'd hidden the folded-up map of the subway system. He'd need that this evening, he knew, an instinct that he'd honed over years working in shady areas of his government's secret services told him to hide it in a better spot.

  Matty went to the radio and turned it around so he could get to the back of it. With a butter knife he quickly grabbed from the kitchen, he undid the screws that held the plastic in place, then he put the map into the body of the radio, keeping it well away from the valves and cables that were its innards. He replaced the plastic backing and turned the radio around again.

  He took the knife back into the kitchen and washed it, went to the fridge and got himself an apple. He ate it in the living room with the radio on, listening with interest to the program that talked about the state of the agriculture unit and what new plants were going to be trialed in the spring. It seemed that the seed bank had housed some heirloom variety tomatoes and the agriculture unit had been preparing a greenhouse especially for them, to try to grow them. It was interesting listening, and Matty ate with gusto, enjoying his apple more than he'd thought he would.

  After he'd had a second apple, he went to relax on the sofa with a tall glass of cool water. He felt pleasantly comfortable when he heard a knock at the door. He frowned as he glanced at the clock—it was too early for his visitor to be Arkady, Paul, and Nisha. He got to his feet with a grunt and went to answer the knock.

  On the threshold, once again, was Linda. Matty blinked, surprised as he had been the previous evening, when he'd seen her exactly as she was now.

  "Hi. How are you? I thought I'd come see you after work and see if you were okay, how you were settling in. Have you got a job yet?"

  Matty stood aside and ushered her into his apartment. "Hi," he said. "I'm fine. How are you?"

  "I'm great." Linda sat down on the sofa.

  "Well that's good." Matty sat down as well.

  "Have you got a job? I told Dad you'd find one real quick, he said that you probably would, that you sounded like a nice young man who'd do real well here in the city."

  Matty nodded. "Yeah, I start work next week. Part-time for now, which is good, it gives me a chance to get to know the city better and figure out my way around."

  "Yay! I knew you would. What are you doing?"

  "I'm working over at the newspaper."

  Linda's face fell. "Not in agriculture? I was so hoping you'd come work with Mr. Paul and me. He's really awesome, isn't he?"

  Matty stifled a laugh behind a cough. "I think the paper's a better fit for me. I don't know much about gardening, I even killed cacti. Yeah, Paul's a nice guy."

  "Oh. Well, each to their own, I suppose. Mr. Paul's a great boss. You've known him for ages, huh. How do you know him?"

  Careful, careful. Matty gave Linda what he hoped was a casual smile. He didn't have any reason not to trust her, although there was something about her that set him on edge, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. "Before we ended up in cryo, Paul and I used to work together in research."

  "That place where you guys know Mr. Arkady and that lady from?"

  "Nisha. Right. It was an international firm. They had offices all over the world."

  "What did they sell?"

  "They sold computers," Matty said. It wasn't technically a lie. Everything he and his friends did involve computer tech and the Internet in one way or another.

  Linda rolled her eyes. "Boring. I swear, it's a good thing we don't have those anymore. Well, apart from the ones we need to keep monitoring agriculture and the solar and wind power. Those don't do anything else, not like the ones before the Event. I remember that from school. It was really scary how you could use a computer to access anyone and anything anywhere in the world."

  Matty shrugged. "That's how life was," he said noncommittally.

  "Sounds super scary."

  "What does your dad do?" Matty asked, steering the conversation away to another topic.

  "Dad works in the municipal area. He's a counselor, helps figure out the laws and all of that. His job is really amazing, it's people like him that we have to thank for being able to live and survive after the Event."

  "Oh wow. That must be interesting work for him." Matty wondered if Paul knew this. "What about your mum?"

  She giggled. "The way you Australians say 'mum' instead of 'mom' is really cute. Mom stays at home. She cooks and cleans and takes care of us. There's me, my big brother Stephen, who works with Dad, and Dad. Stephen's got a fiancée, she works in the money market."

  "I see. Big family. When's your brother getting married?"

  "Next month. It'll be a huge celebration, Miss Deanna has a large family and ours isn't small either. Lots of uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews. Hey, you should come. I could get you
an invitation from Dad."

  Matty held up his hands. "No, no, I couldn't. Honestly, Linda, no. It's a family event and it should stay a celebration for family. Thank you for thinking so kindly, though."

  She shrugged. "If you say so." She looked around and her eyes fell on the pile of books on the coffee table. Her expression became one of distaste, her eyes narrowing, her lips thinning to a moue. "Books? Really? Ugh."

  "What? I love books."

  "Why? They're so… so boring. What can you get out of a book that you can't get from the newspaper? That has everything we need to know in it. Books don't have anything."

  Matty bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from snapping a reply. "I enjoy reading. I've always enjoyed reading. I borrowed some fiction to keep myself entertained when I'm not at work or exploring."

  "Weird." Linda drew the word out in a sing-song tone. "What did you borrow? Books about spies? Yuck. I don't know what that is, it sounds gross. What's a Tutankhamun?"

  "He was the king of Egypt many centuries ago," Matty said.

  "Ugh, boring again. Well at least you're not boring, even though this hobby is."

  Matty wondered if she was aware of how much her words were irritating him. It seemed she wasn't as she continued.

  "No good comes of reading that stuff. Dad says they might have to burn the books in the library one day, I mean, no one goes in there anyway, that building could be used for heaps of things, like expanding the agriculture unit so we could grow more food. That'd be a really good use of it. There's nothing of any value in there."

  "What about museums or art galleries?" Matty asked her, horrified at the idea of burning the books.

  She waved a hand. "Those were cleared out ages ago, long before I was born. Dad says that when people first started living here, just after the Event, like a day after, they needed to keep warm so a lot of stuff was burnt and some of the buildings were torn down to use to build things in here and to block off a lot of the old tunnels. Too much water was coming in and no one wants to die drowning in poisonous water, that'd be the worst thing ever."