"Since when?" Dillon asked.
"I saw it in a news feed," Katie explained. "Remember, down the stairs, across the restaurant, knock over as many bots as you can, and then up that main staircase -- " She pointed at a wide set of stairs leading to the games arcade -- "and into the arcade. Once you get in with the crowd, drop the glasses and peel off the tats on your cheeks."
The two youngsters nodded.
"Katie," Jamerson began. He reached out once more, but she fled from him, ran to a stairway where a single mall cop stood with his back to the railing, arms crossed over his chest. Dillon rushed down the nearest set of steps. The youngsters, holding hands, ran to a different staircase.
Jamerson watched. He knew what Katie wanted. He looked at the police lounging on the fringes of the deep bowl-like depression, some leaning back against the railing and others just standing near it.
Overhead, drones congregated. The cops in the green jackets moved to the walkway from where they'd been standing in the street. Katie's friends reached the bottom, where they ran into the robots. Katie stumbled on the stairs. She stopped to bend down and rub her ankle. Jamerson rushed after her, ran alongside the protective railing, past two mall cops who looked startled when he passed them.
He raced down the steps. Katie limped, but kept going, as though determined to run despite the pain in her ankle.
The robots moved aside. A few toppled over. Dillon cheered. The youngsters ran up the wide staircase, which soon filled with diners escaping the mayhem. Lights flashed. Drones bathed the area in a hard white light that stung Jamerson's eyes when he looked up. He tried to help Katie.
"Damn," she groaned.
"This way," Jamerson said, and turned to the staircase.
"I can walk," Katie said, though she winced in pain.
Jamerson didn't think anyone noticed she was part of the disrupting trio escaping from the chaos they'd caused. No one grabbed them. No one approached. He pulled the glasses from Katie's face and let them fall. He crushed them, stepping on them.
"The tats," he said, and tried to scratch the black-and-white temporary tattoos from Katie's cheeks.
"Stop!"
Jamerson kept going. He tugged on Katie, helping her to her feet when she staggered. He heard the command to stop once more, but didn't think it was aimed at him.
He reached the top of the staircase. Several police in short green jackets, two with pistols drawn and two others holding extensible steel clubs surrounded him. One tattoo remained on Katie's cheek.
Jamerson felt something ram his stomach. He doubled over. Katie stumbled forward and one of the cops hit her across the forehead with his metal club.
"Stop," they said, like a chorus of demanding voices that fell on Jamerson like an iron web of tightly woven wires.
Part Four : Triptych
Chapter Ten
Summer peeked from behind heavy, gray clouds, the sun teasing the city with the promise of warm weather to come after a winter of ice storms, and snow driven by heavy winds, and freezing temperatures most mornings, most nights.
For much of the winter, Jamerson served time at the Water Works, where he'd been sent prior to exile. The only evidence against him as a disruptor was his physical presence in the area when Katie Shaw was arrested. No one saw him touch a robot. No video existed to condemn him. Except for his relationship with Katie, Jamerson was innocent.
According to his lawyer, a one-year sentence was as good as escaping punishment altogether. Katie went to the Water Works for five years. Jamerson served four months of his penalty, having earned early release for good behavior. At the Works he didn't suffer any of the laborious and humiliating jobs usually heaped on newcomers. He didn't dig out latrines. He didn't walk the wheel, a punishment taken from a medieval text on torture, though the wheel itself served a good purpose by filling the purification ponds. He didn't paddle out into the lake for what he always thought were senseless assignments taking water samples. He sometimes worked in the kitchen, sometimes scrubbed floors or cleaned walls, and sometimes he pushed steel barrels of newly treated water to a flatbed truck, an old-fashioned vehicle that used diesel fuel, which stank and hurt his eyes.
The best job came during his last couple of weeks, when he worked in the factory where the barrels were made. There, he operated a press that stamped the Water Works logo, two letters -- WW --inside a square in the middle of the circular sheet metal plates that went on the tops and bottoms of the barrels. Not much labor at all. Just endless repetition, during which his mind roamed and he sometimes imagined Katie enduring much harder labor than he, committed to the depths of the prison, living with thugs and murderers.
Once released, Jamerson found a place to live in an apartment building north of the Chicago River, not too far from the wall that cut off Chicago-proper from Outside. Oliver Griffin soon sent him a message that he'd arranged to get him a job as a pedicab driver.
The only drawback to this new life, Jamerson found, was having to gaze into the distance and look at Lakeshore Towers, where he once lived a much more luxurious life. He didn't know how he'd get back to the towers, or back inside the city, or back to full citizenship. But he would, he vowed.
He pedaled slowly across the Michigan Avenue bridge, alongside the enclosed road he once took on his excursion north to Fort Sheridan. This side street curved away from the old avenue, headed for the wall, and then ran close to it for a mile. His passenger, an elderly woman he'd driven several times before, kept up a steady chatter, commenting on his skill at avoiding potholes, the upkeep of the cinder block wall, which crumbled at the base in some places, the enclosed avenue used by the military, and the sun peeking out from behind the clouds.
A gentle incline took him to the circular driveway of an old stone edifice, its large first floor windows long gone, long ago replaced with slabs of wood. A guard dressed in calf-high black boots, his khaki shirt stained with paint or coffee or something dark brown, stood in the vestibule. The old woman eased herself out of the passenger compartment, wheezing, her huge body seemingly too much for her. Jamerson helped her, grabbing her three canvas shopping bags by their wooden handles and taking them to the building's front door.
"Jeremy," he said in greeting to the guard, who looked to be as old as the woman he'd just driven home. The guard touched two fingers to the brim of his ball cap, a grimy article of clothing with a faded insignia on the crown. A couple of kids, skinny bare legs sticking out from one-piece shirts that went down to their knobby knees, scampered out from behind a counter in the lobby, each one bidding to carry the old woman's bags.
Jamerson collected his fare, along with a one-ogre tip, and watched as the old lady negotiated with the kids, laughing with them and then hiring both to help her to her apartment. A couple strolled into view, stopped to chat with the woman, cast stern gazes at Jamerson as though he were an interloper, someone who didn't belong. In the near-month since his release from the Water Works, since beginning his new life Outside, he'd discovered that every building had its clique, its tribal identity. People from other buildings, visitors, drivers, and the like were subject to scrutiny, sometimes chased away, always suspected of being up to something that didn't bode well for the residents. In his own building, where he'd taken residence, he was only now close to being accepted by the other renters.
Once back on the street, Jamerson pedaled down the ramp to the street, slowly maneuvered onto the curved thoroughfare that brought him to an open space where the remnants of several buildings littered the ground. A few shacks dotted the area, stuck between old stone walls, stacks of discarded goods that scavengers didn't want, and a wrecked car that took up space like a museum piece.
Jamerson got into a line of pedicabs like his own. Another line was comprised of quadricycles, which took two men to operate. Six ragged men emerged from the shacks and makeshift lodgings that dotted the nearby lots. They bypassed the three-wheeler pedicabs, and piled into one of the larger four-wheeled wagons.
After a
while, Jamerson pedaled out of the line and worked his way back to Michigan Avenue. Though it was late afternoon, he thought he still had time for at least one more fare. Come evening, he'd return his vehicle to the North Side Cab Barn. He didn't have a license for nighttime work, though his friend, Oliver Griffin, had promised to get him a 24x7 permit very soon.
#
Potter ignored the cracks in the plaster walls, the crumbling grout in the shower stall, and the dripping water that stained the tiles in the bathroom. He paid no attention to the defects of the quarters he'd been given for himself, his wife, and their daughter. He told himself, be happy with what you've got and don't wish for anything better. To Lydia, his wife, he promised they'd find a way to move up and out of this poverty. To his brash child, Carol, he vowed he'd find a way out. He didn't tell either of them that living in the shadows in the middle of Chicago-proper was better than scratching out a livelihood Outside.
After they'd survived the winter, he thought summer would be easier. There'd be no need to huddle together in the one room apartment, under blankets and coats, shivering to keep warm. In summer, they'd swelter, but the hot air didn't bring threats of frostbite. Hot air might make breathing difficult for the old, the sick; but Potter thought he and his family tough enough to put up with sweating through a night.
Dressed in the blue jumpsuit that marked him as a Stern-employed security agent, Potter tapped the sides of his high tops, which he'd loosely laced to a point above his ankles. Another tap tightened the binding. Lydia stirred in bed, her naked, frail legs sticking out from a white sheet draped across her torso, the soft chocolate tone of her skin blending into the crinkly cloth.
Carol stirred in the corner, next to the compact kitchen. She opened her eyes. "Going out, Dad?"
"Work," he whispered. "Get up for school."
The girl turned onto her side, her face to the plastered wall, a thin cover pulled to her chin covering her completely. At age thirteen, she'd discovered modesty. She often complained about the tight quarters, complained that she missed having her own room, the privacy she enjoyed when she didn't even know what privacy meant.
Potter still promised he'd fix things, get better quarters, perhaps a small house, though not as large as the one they abandoned. No, houses like that didn't exist anywhere in the inner city. But perhaps an apartment with several little rooms, places where a maturing young woman could hide when she needed privacy.
He left the room, assured of his family's safety by the audible click of the lock. He listened and, as he expected, Lydia rose from the bed and turned the dead bolt. She'd only pretended to be asleep. As usual. A feint so she didn't have to interact with him.
He took the stairs up from the sub-basement to the one-time parking lot's sub-ground floor. No longer stuffed full of cars and small trucks, it now was home to hundreds of people, with men on one side and women on the other, some in small rented tents. and others on piles of rags or mats woven from discarded hemp rope, stalks from the vines that grew in the empty lots, or twisted pieces of paper culled from the trash.
"There's a popper crew outside," a kid whispered. Potter recognized him as Whizzy, a fifteen-year-old who got school credit working for Jake Stern in the early morning hours before school. Whizzy delivered messages, sounded warnings when police were spotted nearby, and sometimes knocked on Potter's door to rouse him when Stern had a sudden need for extra security.
"Where are they now?" Potter asked.
"Out there. All over. Somewhere." Whizzy pointed and loped off in the direction of the building's sentry post, where drivers used to stop to pay to park.
Potter considered going back to his apartment. Popper crews scoured the streets early in the morning, after sunrise, when individuals were easily picked off, when people without proper IDs couldn't merge with a crowd, dip into pedestrian traffic. But Potter considered himself safe. As a Stern employee, he'd been guaranteed a secure identity. It couldn't be rescinded. It couldn't be compromised. For Lydia, he paid two ogres a week for that protection. Carol cost him another ogre, plus one more weekly payment so she could attend school. Luckily, Lydia found work as a clerk at the Grand Bazaar, working at one of Jake Stern's stalls selling used house wares one night a week. It covered her and Carol's protection money.
Some of the tent dwellers stirred. They gathered up bags full of their belongings and skulked off into a tunnel, where they could hide. Potter didn't expect the poppers to venture into the old parking garage. They weren't that brave.
Outside, he hesitated, but then assured him that the blue jumpsuit meant something. Even poppers, who worked as freelance ID checkers, knew enough to leave Stern employees alone. They preyed on the vulnerable ones, people who only recently escaped exile, only recently took up this underground life.
A three-wheeled taxi stood at the corner, the driver asleep. The black-and-white metal medallion on the hood of his vehicle showed that he worked for the city, or, at least, the taxi was registered. Someone approach, shone a red beam on the medallion, nodded, and then moved on. A popper, Potter thought, and watched the man join two hooded individuals walking alongside a building across the street.
When the poppers disappeared around the corner, Potter set out, arms pumping as he forced himself to trot, his breath coming in deep draughts that he pictured filling his lungs, his chest widening in his imagination, growing stronger, like his legs. Since going underground, he'd lost a lot of body fat and gained new muscle. He felt young again. Except for his balding scalp and the fuzzy hair across the sides of his head, he was on his way to regaining the lean and able man he'd been twenty years earlier.
The door to Jake Stern's repair shop opened automatically when he approached, the reader on the frame flashing green, like an eye blinking at him. He dashed inside, through the dark front room that, later, would be crowded with men and women repairing old products for resale, into the back room, the Ready Room, where he'd get the day's assignment.
Crisp greeted him. The sight of that man brought back memories of Ginny, reminding him of what he'd given up.
"You're Outside today," Crisp said. "The old man stayed overnight, so he needs an escort back in."
Good, Potter thought. Outside duty paid a bonus.
#
What Barrington learned in the past year far exceeded the education he received during his two-year stint of post-high school. While he couldn't build new control boards for the racing roaches from scratch, he'd learned how to connect them, control the insects, and tinker with the software. Though he didn't need to do any of that. The race concession was his to manage, thanks to Jake Stern, who'd backed him when he bought out the Raft brothers. He had only to keep the bettors coming, keep the original tech-types busy catching roaches and attaching control boards to their bodies and the insects' nervous systems, and making the races more exciting. He had only to do his job and make sure Stern got his weekly cut.
From where he sat on the top level of the Promenade Cafe, in the private section reserved for Stern employees, Barrington sipped his hot spiced cider and watched the sunrise on the other side of Lake Michigan's dark waters. Behind him, night still bathed Lakeshore and the walled-in city-proper with its tall spires and block-after-block of squat brick buildings. Below, workmen scrubbed floors, swept walks, and stacked garbage cubes bundled and tied by a hand-worked compactor, all under a wide circle of artificial light powered by a bank of batteries.
Barrington reflected on what one of Jake Stern's accountants had claimed at last night's meeting. The old man made irregular trips to Grant's Promenade, venturing from Chicago-proper to inspect his holdings Outside. Based on the accountant's calculations, there were fewer races reported than mathematically probable. He suspected cheating. By extension, Jake Stern now harbored the same suspicions.
"I trust you," Stern said to Barrington. The old man's wrinkled face didn't brighten, nor did his large light colored eyes twinkle as they sometimes did when he put on an avuncular facade. At that moment, stand
ing in the counting room near the gambling tables, Stern looked as formidable in old age as Barrington imagined he had decades earlier. Except the old man didn't do his own fighting, his own killing. Not anymore. Just as he didn't do his own counting. He had people to call on for a variety of jobs.
"I'll find out who's cheating us," Barrington said, careful to use the word "us" to show the old man that they were in this together.
"You want to keep this concession?" Stern asked.
Barrington nodded, wetting his lips because they'd gone suddenly dry. He couldn't speak just then.
"Set it right," Stern said. "All right?"
Now, turning in his seat so he could look out at the lake, Barrington wondered which of his employees skimmed the take. Three of them were techie-types, smart boys who understood the electronics behind the racing beasts they'd created. One of the three, Hawks, had an entrepreneurial streak. The racing cockroaches were his conception, along with the electronics that made the races palpable to discerning gamblers. When Barrington took over, Hawks, a partner in the existing enterprise, seemed glad to stay on, take orders, and take home a share of the proceeds.
Did he want even more? Or did Stern's accountant just want to stir up trouble?
The bright orange hull of a coast guard cutter sparkled in the water, coming into view as it moved closer to shore, its lights bathing its carbon-filament sails. Goods coming in from Michigan and further north had been impacted over the past month because naval patrols had increased in number and frequency. Somebody, Barrington assumed, hadn't gotten an expected payoff.
He finished most of his cider, leaving a thin puddle at the bottom of his metal cup. The busboys would salvage it, he knew, and add his leavings to what they'd accumulated while cleaning up. Maybe they'd drink it themselves. Maybe they'd sell it.
He walked downstairs, setting a brisk pace, hand-slapping the metal railing, propelling himself past the second floor dining room. and looked out at the park's lush trees and shrubbery. Dirt paths led deeper into the large beachfront park, with some lanes going into the bushes where lovers huddled and kissed and enjoyed a semblance of privacy. Barrington often toyed with the idea of taking pictures and videos that he'd use for blackmail or sell as online delights. Lots of possibilities, he thought. He just needed a low-light camera mounted on a large cockroach or perhaps a nano-tech mechanical insect instead of a real one.
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