Mortal Lock

by Andrew Vachss

  FYYAH

  (standing on her toes, whispering to Hexon)

  He means a woman’s cycle. About twenty-four days.

  HEXON

  (walking toward the Tall Man, hands open)

  Done.

  FYYAH

  Hexon! You can’t—

  HEXON

  (to Fyyah, just short of commanding)

  Take your sister and go. We made a bargain; sealed. They have to let me go when my time is over. Figure it’ll take me ten, maybe twelve 24’s to get back out. Take my pack. It’s got the sleep-tube and plenty of freeze-dry. My card’s in there, too. It’s my Trader’s Card, so it has about six hundred credits on it. Bring the kid to the West-Orange Medical Tunnel, get her a checkup.

  FYYAH

  But …

  HEXON

  (as if she had not spoken; one eye on the Tall Man)

  You know you can’t bring a child to the Dancing Girls—you have to protect her yourself. My blaster’s in there, too.

  I can’t know exactly how long it will take, so you keep watch for me by the Merchant Boys. When I come back, we can both keep your sister safe.

  As Fyyah starts to say something, Hexon turns his back on her, ending any “discussion.” He strides away from her toward the Tall Man, dropping his duffel on the ground behind him, as if distancing himself from it. The Tall Man has not moved. Hexon steps close to him, holding out his wrists as if he expects to be cuffed.

  TALL MAN

  (holding up his palm like a traffic cop)

  Both of you. One cycle.

  HEXON

  (to Fyyah, without turning his head)

  Pull out my blaster, quick! Cover me!

  HEXON

  (to the Tall Man)

  We made a bargain. Now let them go.

  TALL MAN

  You offered a bargain. You are a Merchant Boy. It is one of your tricks to seal a bargain before you have heard the other man’s terms. I just told you mine.

  HEXON

  (nodding ruefully, acknowledging he’s been caught)

  Okay. But I’m all you’re getting. Look, I’ll just double my time. Two cycles. Deal?

  TALL MAN

  No. (deliberately staring at Hexon’s blaster, which Fyyah now has trained on his chest) I am not ready to die yet, but that isn’t important. This is: if you kill me, you will never leave. (He points a long finger at the furry mass behind them) You cannot frighten animals with weapons. And you cannot bargain with them, either.

  FYYAH

  (louder than a whisper, but very quietly)

  Hexon, he’s right!

  TALL MAN

  Both of you. No bargaining, no dealing, no negotiating. Both of you, one full cycle. Yes or No?

  FADE TO BLACK

  Gradually open on the honeycomb of tunnels.

  HEXON

  (V/O)

  That was about a year ago. We learned the truth in those caves, and not from the Book Boys—we learned it by living it. This is a family, not a spray. The tall man never did tell us his name. He never talked much at all, except for one time. But some of the little ones called him Father, and we kind of got into the habit too.

  Father knows the Outlaw Tunnels better than anyone. He showed me, a little at a time. Some of them run so close to the Charted Zone that you can just step across and step back, before anyone even knows.

  I do that now. To get things we need. Sometimes I trade, sometimes I steal. It doesn’t matter. I’m not a Merchant Boy anymore—their rules don’t matter. Only my family does.

  After a while, Father showed us how he gets the babies. It’s easy. Real easy.

  FLASHBACK TO:

  INT: Separate cave

  Sparsely furnished, clearly, Father’s private headquarters. No children are present. Father is a man in perhaps his early fifties. He moves with the intuitive grace of a martial artist, but has no trace of “guru” in his mannerisms or affects.

  FATHER

  (speaking to Hexon and Fyyah together)

  I began by simply buying the Bad Babies. They weren’t worth much once the Word got out that all the transplants were failing. Then the Rulers ordered the implants, and fathers couldn’t make babies with their own daughters anymore.

  The Book Boys wrote there are no Bad Babies. And that was true: the babies weren’t the bad ones; the bad one were the fathers who made them. And I knew, if there are bad fathers, there must be bad mothers, too.

  Those are Closed Hearts. I began to take their children from them. Sometimes, I took their hearts, too. For that task, I had to learn many skills.

  The Voice connects—it is now clear that Father was the Charter in previous scenes.

  FYYAH

  (respectfully)

  You were one of those … cage-fighters? I thought that whole thing was just one of the Myths.

  FATHER

  It was no myth, child. Even before the Rulers started calling children born of a girl and her own father the Bad Babies, there were others who carried that brand. Others like me. We were bad at birth. That’s what the Trainers said when they beat us. They started when we were very young. The first test was to stop crying. If you learned not to cry, they increased the pain—then you had to learn not to scream. After that, they used sticks. Clubs. Rocks. Anything that could tear flesh or break bone.

  FYYAH

  That’s—

  FATHER

  Yes. Whatever you were going to say would be true, but words don’t tell. Behavior is the only truth. The fathers who made the Bad Babies, didn’t they say they “loved” their daughters?

  The Trainers always told us they were teaching us special skills. But, first, we had to learn pain tolerance. Only the ones who learned it all were allowed to remain. The others were disposed of. The Trainers called that “culling.” Only those who survived to the end of the teachings were permitted to fight in the cages.

  HEXON

  People bet on those fights?

  FATHER

  (mildly, but firmly)

  Just as they bet on Traxyl fights now. Only Traxyls don’t have to be trained to attack each other. They don’t have to be … motivated. We were taught fighting skills, yes. But we always understood that the winner lives and the loser dies.

  FYYAH

  If they were … evil enough to do that. To do that to babies, what ever made them stop?

  FATHER

  They swallowed their own poison. Cage-fighters often escaped. Usually, it would be because they went mad. They would just run amok until the Police Squad executed them. But some ran in the other direction. They ran for the deep tunnels. And no one ever followed.

  I don’t know what happened to any of the others who ran. I was somewhere in the Uncharted Zone when people from the Temple found me.

  FYYAH

  The Temple?

  FATHER

  The Temple is where the Book Boys are. They had older people there. Old, but with great skills. They taught me. I spent a long time there. Then it was my task to teach others. Every Book Boy knows capture looms each time they write. So none may leave the Temple to write until they know how to do … certain things.

  HEXON

  But you didn’t stop the cage-fighting … not all by yourself, did you? I mean, how could …?

  FATHER

  I stopped nothing. The Rulers did. Every time they captured a Book Boy, they learned a truth of their own. It wasn’t only what the Book Boys wrote on the walls that made them dangerous; every Book Boy is dangerous, too. The Analysts did their calculations. They reasoned it out. They understood they could never find the Temple; it cannot be found, because it is not a place … it is wherever we are. But they did learn that the Book Boys were being trained in the death arts. And who best to train them but the escaped cage-fighters?

  The Rulers could never stop the cage-fighters from escaping. Most, but not all. They tried having them fight inside their prisons, but nobody would bet on the matches unless they could see the fights up close. It
cost too much to train a cage-fighter, and it wasn’t returning the investment. So the Rulers killed them all. Every one.

  The Rulers know: if you don’t pull out the root, more will grow. So they killed everyone in the chain: breeders, inflicters, cullers … and the Trainers—they were the first to go.

  The Rulers know: no matter how high the risk, some people will take it if the possible reward is high enough. If the reward sought is a pure one, death is no deterrent. But if the reward is credits, death works perfectly. After the Rulers finished the killing, no one ever tried to start the cage-fighting business up again.

  FYYAH

  Why didn’t they just make a Rule?

  FATHER

  There is no need for a Rule against suicide. How do you punish the person who breaks it?

  FADE OUT

  COME IN ON Hexon, carrying a huge duffel over one shoulder, present tense:

  HEXON

  (V/O)

  When I come back from the Charted Zone, I bring the things we need. And I know ways to get credits that I never dreamed of when I was a Merchant Boy.

  Soon we are going to buy children. The ones in Year 8 that their parents want to sell to the work sites. All we have to do to get those Bad Babies is offer them more credits.

  Fyyah cut the implant out of her own thigh. She said it was supposed to stop working after her Year 17, but she didn’t trust that. I told her that was crazy, but she wouldn’t listen:

  CUT TO:

  Fyyah, dressed only in a T-shirt and underpants, one leg braced on a low table, a gleaming razor in her hand.

  FYYAH

  I don’t want them in my body, Hexon. Not any part of them. It’s time for what I do want. Just hold my hand; it’ll be quick.

  FADE OUT

  FADE IN

  INT: Fyyah and Hexon walking together. Fyyah is obviously pregnant. The children around them are visibly older.

  HEXON

  (V/O)

  When I step across, I bring messages, too. Fyyah already knows three Dancing Girls who want to come and be with us. I know only one Merchant Boy so far, but there have to be others.

  We’ll find them. They’ll find others.

  By the time the Book Boys get to write about us on the walls, we’ll be too strong.

  There will be too many of us.

  The Rulers won’t come back here. And Father says he knows a way Outside.

  FADE TO BLACK

  BACK TO:

  AXEL

  This was once a Traveler’s Tale called “The Journey of Hexon and Fyyah.” It is now the Book of Obligations. Mine (touching his heart) and yours (pointing at the audience, somewhere between a message and a threat).

  FADE TO BLACK

  (Characteristic) Humming Sound in the blackness, then:

  OPEN ON INT: Gathering Hall

  This time the podium is empty. A very tall, very slender, pale-skinned woman makes her way to the front. Her most striking feature is spiky jet-black hair streaked in red slashes. She turns to face the audience.

  WOMAN

  (bowing slightly)

  My name is Tech. I come before you to speak from the Book of Connection.

  FADE OUT as she beings to speak …

  OPEN SLOWLY TO …

  EXT: Wide shot of what had once been a city close in on windowless brick building. Remnants of signage indicate it was once a factory of some kind.

  INT: Open space on the top floor of the factory.

  A young woman with long, straight blonde hair is speaking into what looks like a jury-rigged microphone.…

  YOUNG WOMAN

  I hope you get this, Lynny. The cyber-link up here is real old, three or even four spans. We don’t have generators like you do. But we have panels that store energy. Big ones, too. Most of them were broken, but there’s quite a few good ones left. Besides, there aren’t many people up here, so we usually have power, but it doesn’t last.

  I know that sounds crazy, but I’ll try and explain. Anyway, if you’re listening to this, you know I made it.

  Nobody thinks much about Outside. I mean, not really. It was too many spans ago. I heard that some of the Ancients were even born Outside, but I never believed it—people just don’t live that long.

  CUT TO:

  Shots of the destruction of newspaper office, government hunter-killer teams executing individual journalists, bloggers being cyber-tracked by government agents (of all races)—uniformed soldiers ripping them from their computer terminals. World leaders banning news broadcasting, demonstrators mowed down by soldiers who act as emotionlessly as if harvesting wheat. Finally, even graffiti taggers being “sprayed” with machine-gun fire.

  Finally, scenes of total planetary destruction, progressing in a loop from jungle combat to urban guerilla warfare to ICBMs. Show a radically shrinking Arctic ice cap to rainforests disappearing. Humans end up fighting with the crudest of weapons.

  YOUNG WOMAN

  The Rulers say it was the Terror that brought us all Underground. They said that people couldn’t live Outside anymore. If that’s true, they must have known it was coming, because it took a long time for Underground to be built. I guess most of the Originals died while they were still digging the tunnels.

  I don’t know if you ever think of me, Lynny. I left when you were only Year 4. I know you cried. You yelled that you hated me. But I had to go.

  I don’t know if you even think about Outside, but I always did. I got up to Learn-Rite/Seven before I had to go to work, so I had plenty of programs. But none of them ever said what the Terror was. They just said that Outside had something in the air. Like chemicals, or even radioactive stuff. All the programs say that; I was only in Learn-Rite/Two when I first heard it.

  If it wasn’t for the Book Boys, I never would have heard anything else.

  CUT TO:

  ON A TUNNEL WALL:

  THEY TEACH US LIES ABOUT OUTSIDE

  IF THEY TOLD THE TRUTH, THEY’D ALL DIE

  YOUNG WOMAN

  (into the microphone)

  That was the truth, sister-of-my-spray. There’s nothing wrong with the air up here—at least not where I am. The only thing is, I don’t know where I am, not exactly. See, there is no Outside. I mean, it’s not a … destination. It’s not a place you can go to, like going to the Medical Tunnel. It’s … too big to see. Or maybe even imagine.

  The Travelers come through here all the time. They come to trade. Some of them trade stories.

  SHOW:

  Various individuals passing through clusters of destroyed buildings. Some carry sacks, some a musical instrument, some weapons … not invaders, mercenaries looking for work.

  Transactions taking place.

  A Traveler standing before a few dozen seated people, clearly narrating a story, complete with hand gestures.

  YOUNG WOMAN

  They tell us, in some places, it’s warm all the time. And in others, believe it or not, it’s cold all the time. And where I am, it’s both. Not at the same time, but at different times. It’s about three slice-turns for each change. When I got here, it was very warm. Hot, sometimes. Then it got cooler. Then real cold. Then warmer a bit. Then it was back to where it was when I got here.

  The slice is way above us. You can see it when it gets dark. It gets dark, and then it gets light. Every day. Not like home … I mean, not like Underground.

  Anyway, sometimes the slice is round, like a ball. And sometimes it’s so skinny you can barely see it.

  Things … change up here, Lynny. One Traveler even told us there aren’t any Rulers anymore. Nothing happened to him when he said that, so maybe … maybe it’s even true. But I’ll have to wait until I see that one again. If I do, then I’ll know for sure he was telling the truth.

  I sure hope so. Otherwise, there’s no way to really know anything—there’s no Book Boys here.

  She pauses, checks a soft red light on a makeshift console. It throbs weakly, like the pulse of a man struggling to live. She looks out the broken wi
ndow to a sundial on the ground. She nods grimly, as if she understands she will not have much more time.

  YOUNG WOMAN

  You should be in your Year 12 pretty soon, Lynny. I don’t think things have changed that much. People still wonder about Outside, don’t they?

  Wondering, that isn’t the same as thinking. If you think about it, there’s only two things that could be true. Either everyone the Rulers put Outside died because the air was so bad … or they didn’t die at all.

  Remember what I said about the air here? I always thought that was a lie. I mean, if the Rulers wanted to kill someone, why wouldn’t they just do it right there, instead of sending them away? Then I thought, maybe the Rulers were scaring us for our own good. Maybe the Terror was still here, and they wanted to protect us.

  Now that I know the air up here is safe, either the Rulers are lying, or they just don’t know the truth.

  Unaware that her actions are underscoring her words, she takes a deep breath. Holds it for a long time, then exhales very slowly before she picks up the microphone again:

  YOUNG WOMAN

  Cain was my boy, Lynny. When the Drover came to our sector, he said I had to go to the Sex Tunnels. I was just in my Year 14. Cain told the Drover they can’t make you go until your Year 16, that was the Rule.

  The Drover told Cain the Rule had been changed. Cain stabbed him and the Drover died.

  The camera shows the above as the young woman continues to narrate over it, as if it were a silent movie. The drover is wearing a cattleman’s duster, with a thick leather strap over one shoulder, to which rings are attached. Cain is wearing a crew uniform, a snow-white jacket with a red lightning bolt across the back. His hands are empty as they argue: the knife appears in Cain’s hand so quickly that it is obvious he has used it many times before.