by Leahy, R. J.
I leave through the tunnel and up the steps wondering how long she’ll wait. There’s only enough food for a couple of days. Same for the propane. I hate to do it this way—just run out—but maybe it’s for the best. She’ll leave eventually, cursing me for the rest of her undoubtedly short life, but it might be worth it if she never has to learn the truth. Then she can go on believing her sister is out there somewhere, alive, even if she’ll never see her again.
Being sent to any precinct house is bad enough; a windowless granite interrogation chamber where confessions are extracted and people are shipped off to work camps. But the One Twenty Seven isn’t your typical precinct. The One Twenty Seven is a crematorium.
TWO
I don’t like this time of day. There aren’t nearly enough people up and moving about yet. Crowds are what you look for when you’re a shade. The more tag signals around you, the better. Not that anyone’s sitting around a room full of monitors, matching every tag to every person in the city, but if you show up all alone and there’s no signal, well, that’s a little hard to explain.
It’s early enough that the scrap boys are still out, rawboned and emaciated, rooting through the newer trash piles, the older ones having been pilfered of anything worth taking long ago. They’ve been at it since before dawn: ashen-faced kids—bobbies—standing against a dark-colored mass of waste, some already showing the black nose. Their breath leaves them as a white fog in the cold air. Silhouetted against the dim light, they look almost surreal, like charcoal sketches.
It’s peaceful now, each gang digging through the debris in silence, but that will change in an instant if something valuable is found. Then they’ll turn on each other with a ferocity that’s shocking the first time you see it and only the strongest will get to keep what they find. It’s hard to imagine looking at them, small and vulnerable, but the fiercest and most brutal of these kids will get a chance at a different life. They’ll get a chance to be Counselors.
The sun rises slowly as I make my way west. More people take to the streets: day laborers in grimy clothes, low-level office help in threadbare, wrinkled suits, cleaning women. No one speaks; nothing but the occasional cough breaks the silence of the morning commute. Dirty, pockmarked, diseased, all slowly rotting from the inside, like the mountains of trash surrounding us. About half are wearing paper facemasks over their mouths and noses; protection against the plague. Like that would help.
A few rickshaws sit idle on one side of the street, their drivers pacing next to them, occasionally blowing into their hands for warmth and eying everyone hungrily for any sign of a fare. Too old to work the scrap heaps, too young for regular employment, there’s little for them in this quarter.
Looks like there’ll be no takers today. The charge for a ride isn’t much but it isn’t free either, and here not a cent goes a wasted. Unless it’s for dust. I can afford it, but riding would set me apart from the crowd and I don’t risk unwanted attention.
I integrate myself within a group of dark-suited men, middle managers headed toward another day’s drudgery. Jobs are scarce everywhere, but especially in the poorer quarters and the Bonifrei is one of the poorest. If you’re lucky enough to be employed here, you cling to that job like a life raft and take whatever they give you. No one asks if you like your work. It’s considered a child’s question.
My trench coat makes them nervous—probably what made Pen nervous. Looks like a Counselor’s uniform, but too worn and frayed for one of them to be caught wearing. Natty dressers, the Cosags. Part of the image. You learn at an early age to keep your head down when one is near. No reason to draw attention to yourself, even if you have nothing to hide. And everyone has something to hide. The laws make certain of that. So you keep your mouth shut and your eyes down.
Heading to Devon’s place, I have to cross from the Bonifrei into the Chojo quarter, but no one gives me any grief. I’ve been around so long I’m no longer considered a threat. Besides, it’s a myth they cut the heads off anyone they don’t know. Be hard to get any business done that way, wouldn’t it? But the story’s enough to keep most kids from wandering anywhere in the lower nineties and that’s not a bad idea. Because even myths have a basis in fact.
The city is divided into six quarters, roughly segregated by ethnicity. The government didn’t create them and doesn’t recognize them officially, but they have an interest in maintaining them. Nothing just happens in the city. The Ministry has a reason for everything it does. And the reason is control. It’s always about control.
The separation helps keep the peace. There’s no love lost between the people of the various quarters. Most live their entire lives within blocks of where they were born, venturing further out only when need drives them. Some say the hatreds date to before the founding of the city itself, back when we were all just tribes roaming the wastes, killing one another to stay alive. Who knows? There’s no history before the city, at least nothing you’ll find in any government-sanctioned book.
Whatever the cause of the bad blood, the system’s not perfect. There are still groups within each quarter with an ancestral hatred of each other. Entire clans have been known to go after one another on occasion and you don’t want to be anywhere around when that happens. Stupid. All it does is give the Council for Internal Security more reason to crack down.
Officially, the city is divided into two hundred and seventy-three precincts, grouped into twenty-two districts. There are two out-districts as well—walled expanses of land hanging off the east and west ends of the city like the lopsided ears of a mangy dog: the Eastside and the Westside. The Eastside is zoned exclusively for manufacturing; the Westside, agriculture, where food for the city is grown. Both are worked by criminals, political prisoners, the insane and anyone else the Ministry deems “unfit”. And beyond the city? Nothing. At least that’s what the maps show. They might as well stamp, “here there be dragons”, on the margins.
Another forty minutes and the streets are so dense with people we’re shoulder-to-shoulder; right side of the street going in one direction, left side going the other. Reed says we’re all like lemmings but I’m not sure what a lemming is. I doubt Reed is entirely sure either.
With every block, we pass another scanner. Three foot tall, three foot off the ground, usually imbedded in a wall or a post, like a fluorescent light hung lengthwise. They’re dark now. They’ll start flashing about an hour before curfew, the flashing getting faster as time runs out. Once the flashing stops, you better run. If you’re tagged. I smile at the thought of what would happen if one of them suddenly burst on right now. Maybe not so funny, as I’m in the crowd.
The scanners enforce the curfew without having to put Blueshirts and Counselors on every corner. It’s the fear of the technology that keeps people in line, not the technology itself. The scanners are good, but they aren’t perfect. What is? Older ones can sometimes be tricked with certain clothing. It’s why Pen stripped. She knew that and wanted to impress me by letting me know she knew.
Thinking of her makes me think of Devon, which reminds me I have business of my own. I’ve been carrying this bracelet around for two days. I want to get rid of it before the meeting. Especially before the meeting. His men don’t search me every time, but why risk it?
By the end of the next block, I’m into the ninety-third precinct. Not exactly upscale, but the poverty isn’t as obvious. This is where people living in the mid seventies dream of living. At the end of the street, I push my way through the crowd to a corner jewelry store. Not much to look at, but in this quarter it’s as high-end as it gets.
The sales girl glances my way and smiles for a moment before ringing up a customer. The only other person in the store is an elderly woman who takes one look and pushes past me—respectfully—to get out. I pretend to purvey the wares and ignore the cameras. Just simple security devices with no tag sensors, but still, you never know who might be watching.
A short time later, I glimpse up at the sales girl standing behind the coun
ter. Alabaster skin; dark eyes with hair to match falling in a single layer to her shoulders.
“Can I show you something in particular?” she asks.
“Hello Reed,” I say softly, still bent over the glass. I straighten up and smile for the camera. “Yes, I’m interested in a bracelet.”
She smiles back and leads me to another counter, one I could find on my own even if I was blindfolded. Reed is my favorite fence.
“What type of stone?” she asks, as though I’d come into a place like this looking for diamonds.
“Turquoise, please.”
She pulls out a tray with a dozen or so turquoise bracelets. Most are crap, but mine’s no better.
Taking my hand out of my pocket, I lift one up and examine it, making “uh-huh” and “ah-hah” sounds before putting the bracelet back—along with the one I was palming.
“How much for the other one?” I ask, pointing out the bracelet I just left her.
“Oh, that is nice, but of less quality. I could let you have it for say, one hundred.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Really? I saw one like it in a store just the other day and the man wanted two hundred. Can you believe the mack of him?”
She shakes her head. “That man was robbing you. Even at full mark-up, this bracelet should never go for more than one-thirty—tops.”
“One-thirty?”
“Absolute top price.”
“I see. Well then, I’m very glad I came in here. Your price is reasonable. May I come in later to close the deal?”
“Of course,” she says, still smiling. “I’ll hold it for you.”
I get back to the street and squeeze into the crowd. A hundred and thirty isn’t bad. I would have taken the hundred. I’ll stop by after hours and pick up my money. There’s always the chance that once a fence has your jewelry, he could refuse to pay later, but he wouldn’t be in the business very long if he tried. Some who have tried have ended up missing. But I don’t have that problem with Reed.
Thirty minutes later and I’ve reached the corner of Calypso and 129th Street, the far western limit of the Chojo and the location of Devon’s nest. From here, I can just make out the uncompleted wall that will soon divide the city, towering above the surrounding buildings. Two transfer gates, allowing entry to the Huenta and Aramaic quarters, should be finished before the end of the month. The Ministry claims it’s to regulate pedestrian traffic, but everyone knows its real purpose is to cut down on the violence between the quarters. People think it’s funny that the same ministry that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the quarters, chooses to build the wall right on the boundaries.
But it isn’t funny. Like Pen, the joke is on them and like Pen, they aren’t in on it. I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
It doesn’t take me long to spy Devon’s people; four big men in khaki jackets hanging around on the other side of the street, trying to look inconspicuous while watching everyone who crosses into their territory. All have the black nose.
The biggest one sees me and gives a signal so subtle it never happened. I cross the street and look around aimlessly, my hands in my pockets, not paying attention to anything for more than a few seconds, yet all the while following. We only go a short way when he ducks into an alley. I’m right behind and follow him through a side door into an abandoned building.
Dim light filters in through a row of grease-smeared windows. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. I’m in a foul-smelling room strewn with trash. In one corner a shirtless man sits cross-legged, his eyes glazed, sniffing coal dust. A woman straddles the center of the floor on her hands and knees, naked, as a second man rhythmically slaps his pelvis into her buttocks. No one looks up as we walk over them and into the next room.
My guide pulls aside a nasty, piss-stained rug and draws up the hidden door in the floor, moving quickly down the steps. It leads to a tunnel and after only a few dozen yards, another door. He holds it open as I enter. Two men are on me as soon as I step through, rifling through my pockets, hands up and down my legs, cupping my crotch. Frisking is unavoidably personal. All they find is my gun, a cigarette lighter and some loose coins. The gun and lighter I’ll get back. The money is gone. Makes me glad I dumped the bracelet.
The room is large, fifty feet across at least, and just as deep. Carpets on the floor, chairs and some long tables along the walls. There are three doors on the far wall and another on the left. I have no doubt each leads to a maze of other tunnels heading in every direction and probably booby-trapped along the way. Even a Counselor would think twice about running after someone through that.
In the center of the room is a large table filled with food, enough food to feed every bobby working the seventy-first’s trash heaps until he was sick. Only one person is at the table though, Devon. I wonder if he was eating like that when he met with Pen. I wonder if he made her watch.
He breaks out in a huge grin when he sees me. “Ha Ha! What did I say, huh? By nine thirty, I said. Send that kid to him and he’s here by nine thirty, didn’t I say it? And look at the clock—just past nine. Ha!” He slaps the table with the palm of his hand. “Pay up you slags.”
Three large and decidedly unfriendly-looking men step out from the shadows and toss a few bills each on the table. Devon’s bodyguards.
“They don’t know you,” he says, tapping his index finger against the side of his head. “Not like I do.”
He wipes his mouth on a napkin and comes around the table to me. He’s about my size and build. Maybe a little softer, but I wouldn’t want to test that. He’s wearing some sort of robe; silk, I think, with drapes of cloth hanging from both arms. Even though he’s younger than me by a few years, he’s already losing his hair. He compensates by growing what’s left long and braiding it so it hangs over his shoulders. He’s no darker than I am. Except his nose. It’s black as coal.
He walks around me, grinning the whole time. When he gets behind me, he puts his hand on my head and I let him. I feel him pushing away the short hair, feeling for the scar. He does it every time we meet, like he still doesn’t believe it.
“Crazy son-of-a-bitch,” he says, coming around to face me. “Crazy son-of-a-bitch.”
He reaches into a pocket somewhere in the flowing robes and pulls out a tiny silver case. He opens it and pours a fine black powder on the back of his left hand; holds it to his nose and sniffs. The action causes him to snort and cough several times. When he’s finished, he shakes the case in my direction, offering, but he knows I don’t use.
Coal dust, or coal, has been around so long no one can remember what people abused before it. A synthetic hallucinogen, it’s as illegal as breaking curfew and if you’re found with any you’ll face the same punishment. But it’s easy enough to get. Easier than food.
The case disappears into his robes. “So, you figured out how to get the kid’s sister yet?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m going to ring the bell and ask for the urn.”
He laughs, his hands and fingers animated, flittering around in the air; touching his face repeatedly. Effects of the coal. “Bet it pissed you off when you heard where she was, huh? Bet when you heard I was sending the girl to you, you weren’t expecting that.”
“No, I wasn’t. How did Pen even get in to see you?”
“Who?”
“The girl,” I say patiently.
“Oh, her.” He taps his head rapidly, as though trying to remember. “Faisal, a Blueshirt I own in the eighty-ninth. He drags her in here, tells me she’s got a story I should hear: the Counselors picked up her sister. I think to myself, so what? Counselors grab people every day. What’s this prick Faisal up to? But then she keeps talking. Turns out her sister ain’t just some nobody.” He grins. “You know them symbols all over the city? The white A’s in a circle?”
“Sure.”
“Know what it means?”
“Yeah, it means some kid is risking a bullet to the head to impress his friends.”
He laughs. “
Ain’t that the truth? They want a cheap thrill, they should stick with dust, eh?” He draws a letter A in the air with his finger. “A is for angel.” He makes a circle. “The circle, the city. Angel of the City, get it? That kid’s sister, the one the Counselors took? That’s her. She’s the Angel.”
I started hearing the rumors about a year ago: a new resistance movement lead by someone calling herself, the Angel of the City. Nothing unusual about that. Resistance movements pop up now and then. What’s surprising about this one is how long they’ve been allowed to operate. Resistance leaders usually quietly disappear after a few months—Counselors see to that. Not only is this Angel still around, but her reputation has grown throughout the city. They say she’s unaligned with any quarter or tribe. How that’s possible, I have no idea. Few people have actually seen her, but that doesn’t stop every quarter from going out its way to lay claim to her, like she’s some kind of savior.
Devon keeps grinning at me, waiting for a reaction, but all I say is, “What’s an angel?”
He throws his head back and laughs, then goes to the table and lifts up an ancient book covered in cracked, black leather. There’s a large letter “t” in gold on the cover. “You know this book?”
I shake my head.
“Ain’t many left around. Counselors burned them all years ago, before you even. But it talks about souls; about heaven; about things called angels. These angels, they do good, see? They come down from heaven and they help people, just like this girl’s been doing, the one the Counselors grabbed. I been hearing about her for a while now, going from quarter to quarter trying to get the tribes to work together.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and draws me near. His eyes are dilated and blood-shot. I think he sleeps less than I do. “I got things to atone to,” he says, solemnly. “If she really is an angel, then I want to talk with her.”