Dell crossed his mind when he thought of the lovers still sleeping in the park. She'd still be at the Academy, he imagined. Still hoping for a bright future. Sometimes he scanned everyone he passed in the Promenade, at the gambling tables, the dining rooms, the small cafes, always looking for someone he knew from when he lived in the city, always hoping he'd come across Rita he-couldn't-remember-the-last-name, Dell's birth mother. The woman was a lawyer. She could have clients Outside.
At the roach-race pit he found Drake and Sweeny, two technologists who'd come with the concession. Public interest in these races had mushroomed because of these youngsters, who put into practice Barrington's inspirations, one of which was to augment the roaches with video feeds that offered a first-person point-of-view. That led to jockeys who paid to sit at a control panel tuned to a selected roach and race it around a twisting, maze-like course. The jockeys won prizes. Bettors raked in winnings. The House -- mainly, Barrington and Stern -- took in much more.
He stood watching the two boys put a pair of roaches through the maze, racing one another. Like the jockeys, they had both a first person POV and a top-down view of the course, with a bright blue dot atop their particular insect. A joystick let them control direction. Foot pedals gave them authority over speed. The thin board and its electronics mounted on the roaches' backs provided stimulation of their nervous system.
Barrington sometimes thought he'd get the boys to rig the software that monitored everything. Cheat the customers. But if the bettors caught on, his concession would be ruined. It was better to pay out on the winners and reward the jockeys paying for the privilege to race. Stern didn't like cheating customers. The old man insisted on integrity.
With a nod, he passed Sweeny and Drake, leaving them to their early morning fun. Young and energetic, they sometimes went for two or three days without sleep. He walked further on, to where the original racing concession still stood, still attracted gamblers. A simple affair, it never went beyond the size it had been when Barrington first encountered it. Roaches raced from the center of a round disk, the electronics registering which one fell off the edge first.
Of the two Raft brothers, Andy smuggled himself back into Chicago, Barrington had heard. In his place, Kenny had hired one helper after another. When Barrington took over, Kenny disappeared from the Promenade, flush with what Barrington had given him. No doubt, he'd found his way back into Chicago, back to his brother. Maybe the pair had started a similar concession in the city, at some arcade or other venue.
Hawks swept the dirt floor surrounding the table. Wrappers and leftover scraps of food littered the ground, along with crushed plastic cups and paper plates, all the usual refuse.
"You skimming from me?" Barrington asked. He stepped towards Hawks, put a foot on the man's broom. An oversized man, with a scraggly beard, he smelled faintly of the spices he ate with his food and in his drink. His tiny eyes darted sideways.
"Ain't doing that."
"You're my partner, Larry." Barrington liked to remind his employee that he was more than just a wage earner. "Don't you know what partner means?"
"Ain't skimming."
"Jake Stern's accountant thinks someone is. He didn't say it was you. But that guy's smart and he'll figure it out. You report eight races for every ten?"
Hawks dropped his broom. His angular face went white, his close-set brown eyes tearing up. His thick frame quivered, fingers shaking at his sides. The toes of his sandals dug into the loose dirt, turning one way and then the other.
"Eight out of ten?" Barrington repeated, sensing he'd soon get the truth.
"Seven," Hawks said. "I register seven. Sometimes eight. I pocket the rest."
"And you thought you'd get away with that?"
"You never caught on, did you? Took Stern's guy, huh?"
Barrington sighed, shook his head. "We've got to keep this under wraps. Maybe be a bit less aggressive. Maybe report nine races for every ten."
Hawks stared back.
"Do you understand?" Barrington asked. If Stern found out what was going on they'd both be dead. The old man suspected everyone of cheating him, but killed only those proved guilty.
#
Jamerson saw the odd looking security detail lingering near a sally port used by officials on business Outside. Ramshackle buildings, some of them little more than lean-tos made of corrugated metal mixed with slabs of wood, lined the tall cinderblock wall. The security types stood in a small group. Five, Jamerson counted. Each with a short tan jacket and stripped black-and-white trousers that served as a uniform. Floppy hats kept in place by thin bands around their heads.
In his former life -- the one he'd been forced to abandon -- Jamerson thought he'd become an astute observer of all things municipal. He knew the various uniforms and badges of the different police departments in the city, including the private security corps that served the mercantile community. These stripe-pants examples had to be private cops. They looked like a motley crew. They didn't look disciplined.
He pedaled on, eager to find a fare back, willing to accept even a short ride to the Water Works, perhaps for an exile with a job at the prison complex that served as the city's clean water supplier. Or somebody needing a lift to Belmont Harbor, where the fishing boats lay; or the Belmont cannery. Anything and anywhere. The past few days had given him a paltry take. He'd be forced to borrow from one of Jake Stern's sharks or find extra work to cover his expenses.
A drone buzzed overhead. Not the military type. Those flew too high to be heard. This was a four motor unit, a quadricopter, its propellers spinning madly as it dipped and rose, staying overhead. Directly. Jamerson assumed it to be a surveillance drone, privately owned, gathering intelligence for resale to the city. He ignored it, pedaled on, looked for passengers at a flag station where people gathered to wave down rides. Triangular concrete islands jutted into the street, most offering shelter from the rain or blistering sun with an overhead canvas or plastic roof, and walls as a respite from the wind when it whipped up. Water carriers and food vendors of various sort staked out turf near the islands. Private guards, paid by the merchants, offered protection.
The drone followed him. He saw it with his periphery vision, but then it disappeared. He heard it at his back. He guessed it focused on the QR code on his rear license plate. Maybe the pedicab company operating in this area needed permit updates. Jamerson didn't worry. Oliver Griffin had taken care of that. Although he had to pay the lease on the vehicle, he didn't need to buy a monthly permit.
The drone flew over him. It lowered to a point where he'd intercept it if he didn't change course. But when he swerved into the next lane, the drone blocked him.
"Slow for ID," boomed a voice from the four-engine chopper.
Jamerson slowed. He looked at the drone, imagined it focusing a laser scan on his face, reading his retina print. He wondered why, but he didn't resist. The drone hovered just ahead, but then flew away, its incessant buzz blurring with the rest of the street noise.
Jamerson picked up speed, moved onto an access ramp leading to a row of old buildings facing the wide avenue running alongside the lake. Ships plied the lake's waters far out in this inland sea, their sails merging like strange animals mating, and then parting, like friends leaving one another.
A group of men and women in round hats moved like a pack of feral dogs in between the buildings. They broke apart and individuals looked into open doorways, peeked into windows. Rounders, Jamerson said to himself. Local police. When he worked for the city, these gangs of freelance thugs were always upsetting the simulations he ran when assessing conditions outside Chicago-proper. Sometimes, Rounders took orders from the city police. Sometimes, they roamed without purpose, helping people one moment and robbing them the next. Rounders were unpredictable. Best to avoid them.
Jamerson steered away from the buildings and the possible fare he'd find there. He returned to the flag station, which he found empty save for a motorized wagon smelling of cooking grease. Some enter
prising mechanic had developed a workable internal combustion engine that ran on used cooking oil. It didn't need petrol like an army jeep or diesel like a military truck. Rationing from the Federal Energy Reserve didn't affect these vehicles, which provided a fast trip in a spring-suspended platform capable of seating twelve good-sized people.
Jamerson continued back towards the river, the main branch that grew from the lake. He considered following its finger-like tributaries. Or perhaps pedal parallel to the north branch, which wended its way as far as Highland and the city's northern gated communities. Maybe the motor-wagon went faster than a foot-powered bike, and perhaps it could seat up to twelve people, but if nobody waited at the flag station, the driver was as put out as anyone. Even more so, he thought with a smirk of delight. Jamerson didn't have to buy used grease from anybody.
He passed the spot where the striped-trouser clad police stood earlier. Only now they sat astride two-wheeled bikes with large solar panels rising from their seats. Bulky boxes lay athwart the small rear wheel. Electric motors whirred and sputtered. Two of the cops, gloved hands on the high, curved handlebars, slanted sideways a bit and then roared down the hill and onto the street where Jamerson rode, his pedaling slowing as he wondered if he needed to find somewhere safe, where these motorbikes couldn't get to him.
The two strangers approached, thin scarves across their faces, plastic helmets on their heads, their cloth hats dangling from a band around their necks. He didn't see any weapons, but assumed they carried telescoping steel batons, perhaps under the military style tan jackets.
They signaled for him to stop. One bike dipped around him, the rider slanting sideways. The other turned sideways, blocking his route. Jamerson glanced quickly at the slope leading to the wall, to where the other Striped Pants waited at the sally port. The three sat astride their bikes. He felt their eyes on him. To his left, a field of broken cement and asphalt, the remnants of a parking lot, offered a semblance of escape. A laughable idea. Which made him grin. But the humor on his face instantly vanished and he gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw, and realized, he had nowhere to run. He couldn't maneuver across the broken parking lot any better than these bikers. He couldn't pedal uphill to the road running alongside the wall. That was a ludicrous idea.
"What do you want?" he said to the biker in front of him.
"Jamerson?"
"What?" He didn't think, how do you know my name? Not immediately. But then he thought about that drone he'd encountered and it made sense. Somebody had hired these goons to find him. Somebody had hired a security firm to send in a drone to track him down.
"Oliver Griffin wants to talk to you," the biker said.
#
Potter hated the fear he saw on Lydia's dark face, her eyes wide, tears on her cheeks, spittle pooling at the corners of her small mouth. Since moving underground, she'd reverted to the mousey child-like woman she'd been when he married her. All the grooming she'd enjoyed, and the aristocratic airs she'd learned, as well as the poise that made her sometimes an aloof companion: all gone.
She looked up from the corner where she sat, lean legs crossed, her plain brown dress forming a soft lap in front of her, on which she placed her folded hands. Her thin hair, gray now that she'd let it grow out and she no longer treated it, fell across her high forehead, across her eyes and her nose, covering her face.
"It's not a permanent assignment," Potter assured her. He'd been promised by Crisp.
"And what about me? And Carol?"
"No change. You keep the apartment. Carol stays in school. Someone from Stern's -- " he wouldn't name him, because Lydia didn't like Crisp -- "will make sure money's put in the account, that you get the ogres you need, for food and everything else."
"I don't like it. You promised me, Kyle. You promised you wouldn't leave me. Wouldn't abandon -- "
"I'm not leaving. You're not being abandoned."
"I could've filed for divorce and been in better shape than this." She shook her fist at him. A weak gesture. Whenever she got angry she said the same thing, told him how a divorce would have left her better off. Potter long ago stopped reasoning with her. Divorced, she would have had three months to find a job and get her own residency permit. Divorced, she would've failed to save herself; she'd most likely be exiled. Carol wouldn't be in school. Lydia would be reduced to scavenging for a livelihood, like many of the emaciated females he saw whenever he ventured Outside on Jake Stern Business, as he termed the work he did for the old man.
"Will you visit?" she asked.
Potter decided to lie. "Yes. Not right away. But I can visit. I can wrangle that." He stepped closer, held out his hands. Her cold fingers settled into his palms and he tightened his grip and lifted Lydia to her feet. So light. She'd lost so much weight in the past year. She'd lost so much else, including her self-respect.
He hugged her, in spite of what he really wanted to do, in spite of wanting to flee the one-room apartment, to get away from the sadness evident in the cracks in the walls, the sadness in his wife's brown eyes, the sorrow that invaded his body and threatened to overwhelm him, just as it had overwhelmed Lydia.
"Go," she said. "I can tell you want to."
"In a few minutes."
"Do I have to keep my job at the Bazaar?"
Potter nodded. "Best that you do. The extra income. It helps."
"What if someone comes along who wants to rescue me from all this?" Her face lit up. Something mischievous danced in her dark eyes. They swayed together. Potter felt himself led to their bed. The sheet lay crumbled on the floor, along with the flat pillow they shared.
Potter didn't know how to reassure her. He didn't know that he wanted to. No one would come along and steal her away from him. He'd go Outside, on assignment for Stern, do what he's told to do, and then come back, probably with the onset of winter, months from now, and Lydia would still be the frowning, worried, simpleton he left behind.
When she kissed him on the cheek, he thought he should be kind and kiss her back and spend a few moments pretending he still loved her. Because he sometimes did love her. When she sparkled like the dignified woman she became during the first few years of their married life. When she snapped her words with an authority she'd learned from the sophisticated friends she'd made. When she strutted about the house, a regal princess in charge of her domicile.
They kissed, and Potter forgot how much he disliked this shadow of the Lydia he'd grown to love, the woman he took for granted when he came home, the woman he'd betrayed by taking Ginny for a mistress.
They kissed, and Potter wondered about Ginny and the life she'd acquired. He'd never gone looking for her, never tried to renew what they once had.
In some ways, he told himself, he deserved no happiness. He deserved to work hard, merely to survive each day. He deserved nothing more.
#
Jamerson waited in a small room. Pipes ran overhead, several of them, painted white like the walls, white like the linoleum floor. With no chair or desk or other furnishings available, Jamerson sat on a ledge by a boarded-up window, the plywood also painted white. He hoped the Stripe Pants did as they'd promised and kept his pedicab safe. He had to turn it in at the end of the day and he couldn't afford to pay a late fee or, worse, buy the vehicle because he'd lost it.
He stared at the door. The room, one of several he'd noticed when they brought him to the this building on the city side of the wall, grew hot. Perhaps because he'd been sitting and waiting, for how long he didn't know.
He calmed himself. Oliver Griffin had been a friend, a co-worker. Griffin had helped him. Griffin got him an early release, he was sure. Griffin arranged for his job Outside. Griffin paid for the pedicab permit.
When the door swung inward, opening to reveal a blaze of light, he rose to his feet and held out his arms, ready to embrace the man who entered.
Another Striped Pants. A different one than any of the five lean men -- men with scarred and angry faces, thick muscles where their neck met torso, grim v
isages designed to scare people -- who'd brought him through the sally port.
"I need to search you," Striped Pants said. Only then did Jamerson realize, this was a woman. As rugged as any of the male versions. Short hair and steely gray eyes and a mannish manner in how she moved, how she contorted her thin lips.
When she approached, she said, "I'm Captain Isaacs. There's nothing to be nervous about, so stop shaking."
"I'm not," Jamerson protested.
She made a mocking sound and quickly ran her hands between his legs, up his back, across his stomach and chest, and then at his ankles and his calves. She checked him as thoroughly as if he were dressed like a soldier or a militiaman.
Then she left, without closing the door.
"Griffin," Jamerson mouthed when his former co-worker filled the narrow doorway. Then he repeated the name out loud. Griffin's blonde hair, much longer than Jamerson recalled, fell to his shoulders. He'd brushed it to a high sheen and it blended with his pale yellow jacket. When his chiseled face broke into a smile, and when his blue eyes sparkled, Jamerson stepped towards him.
They clasped hands.
"You look better than I expected," Griffin said.
Jamerson didn't remark on what he deemed a "left-handed" compliment. Questions piled up in his mind; so many, he couldn't voice any of them. His brain roiled with confusion. He didn't know what to say. He felt tears in his eyes and turned his face to one side.
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