Chasm City

by Alastair Reynolds

  I understood then that the Mulch was less a district of the city than a stratification. It included perhaps the first six or seven storeys which rose above the flooded parts. It was a carpet of slum from which the great forest of the city rose.

  Looking up, craning my neck to peer around the rickshaw's roof, I saw the slab-sided structures ram skywards, perspective forcing them together at least a kilometre above my head. For most of that height, their geometries must have been much as their architects had intended: rectilinear, with parallel rows of windows, now dark, the edifices marred only by the occasional haphazard extrusion or limpetlike excresence. Up higher, though, the picture changed sickeningly. Although no two buildings had mutated in quite the same manner, there was something common to their shape-changing, a kind of uniform pathology which a surgeon might have recognised and diagnosed as stemming from the same cause. Some of the buildings split in two halfway up their length, while others bulged with unseemly obesity. Some sprouted tiny avatars of themselves, like the elbowed towers and oubliettes of fairytale castles. Higher, these structural growths bifurcated and bifurcated again, interpenetrating and linking like bronchioli, or some weird variant of brain coral, until what they formed was a kind of horizontal raft of fused branches, suspended a kilometre or two from the ground. I had seen it before, of course, from the sky, but the meaning of it-and its sheer, city-spanning scale-was only now apparent from this vantage point.

  Canopy.

  "Now you see why I no take you there, mister."

  "I'm beginning to. It covers the whole city, right?"

  Juan nodded. "Just like Mulch, only higher."

  The one thing that had not been really obvious from the behemoth was that the Canopy's dense entanglement of madly deformed buildings was confined to a relatively shallow vertical stratum; the Canopy was a kind of suspended ecology and below it was another world-another city-entirely. The complexity of it was obvious now. There were whole communities floating within it; sealed structures embedded in the Canopy like birds' nests, each as large as a palace. Fine as gossamer, a mass of weblike strands filled the spaces between the larger branches, dangling down almost to street level. It was difficult to tell if they had come with the mutations, or had been some intentional human addition.

  The effect was as if the Canopy had been cobwebbed by monstrous insects, invisible spiders larger than houses.

  "Who lives there?" I knew it wasn't a completely stupid question, since I had already seen lights burning in the branches; evidence that, no matter how distorted the geometries of those sick dead husks of buildings, they had been claimed for human habitation.

  "No one you wanna know, mister." Juan chewed on his statement before adding, "Or no one who wanna know you. That no insult, either."

  "None taken, but please answer my question."

  Juan was a long time responding, during which time our rickshaw continued to navigate the roots of the giant structures, wheels jumping over water-filled cracks in the road. The rain hadn't stopped of course, but when I pushed my head beyond the awning, what I felt was warm and soft; hardly a hardship at all. I wondered if it ever ended, or whether the pattern of condensation on the dome was diurnal; if it were all happening according to some schedule. I had the impression, though, that very little that happened in Chasm City was under anyone's direct control.

  "Them rich people," the kid said. "Real rich-not small-time rich like Madame Dominika." He knuckled his bony head. "Don't need Dominika, either."

  "You mean there are enclaves in the Canopy where the plague never reached?"

  "No, plague reach everywhere. But in Canopy, them clean it out, after building stop changing. Some rich, they stay in orbit. Some never leave CC, or come down after shit hit fan. Some get deported."

  "Why would anyone come here after the plague, if they didn't have to? Even if parts of the Canopy are safe from residual traces of the Melding Plague, I can't see why anyone would choose to live there rather than stay in the remaining habitats of the Rust Belt."

  "Them get deported no have big choice," said the kid.

  "No; I can understand that. But why would anyone else come here?"

  "Because them think thing got to get better, and them wanna be here when it happen. Plenty way to make money, when thing get better-but only few people gonna get serious rich. Plenty way to make money now, too-less p'lice here than upside."

  "You're saying there are no rules here, are there? Nothing that can't be bought? I'd imagine that must have been tempting, after the strictures of Demarchy."

  "Mister, you talk funny."

  My next question was obvious. "How do I get there? To the Canopy, I mean?"

  "You not already there, you don't."

  "You're saying I'm not rich enough, is that it?"

  "Rich not enough," the kid said. "Need connection. Gotta be tight with Canopy, or you ain't nobody."

  "Assuming I was, how would I get there? Are there routes through the buildings, old access shafts not sealed by the plague?" I figured this was the kind of street knowledge the kid would know backwards.

  "You no wanna take inside route, mister. Plenty dangerous. Special when hunt coming down."

  "Hunt?"

  "This place no good at night, mister."

  I looked around at the gloom. "How would you ever be able to tell? No; don't answer that. Just tell me how I'd get up there." I waited for an answer, and when it showed no sign of arriving I decided to recast my question. "Do Canopy people ever come down to the Mulch?"

  "Sometime. Special during hunt."

  Progress, I thought, even though it was like pulling a tooth. "And how do they get here? I've seen what look like flying vehicles, what we used to call volantors, but I can't imagine anyone could fly through the Canopy without hitting some of those webs."

  "We call them volantor too. Only rich got'em-difficult to fix, keep flying. No good in some part of city, either. Most Canopy kid, they come down in cable-car now."

  "Cable-car?"

  For a moment a look of helpfulness crossed his face, and I realised he was desperately trying to please me. It was just that my enquiries were so far outside of his usual parameters that it was causing him physical pain.

  "Those web, those cable? Hang between building?"

  "Can you show me a cable-car? I'd like to see one."

  "It not safe, mister."

  "Well, nor am I."

  I sugared the question with another bill, then settled back into the seat as we sped on through the soft interior rain, through the Mulch.

  Eventually Juan slowed and turned round to me. "There. Cable-car. Them often come down here. Want we go closer?"

  At first I wasn't sure what he meant. Parked diagonally across the shattered roadbed was one of the sleek private vehicles I'd seen in and around the concourse. One door was folded open from the side, like the wing of a gull, with two greatcoated individuals standing in the rain next to it, faces lost under wide-brimmed hats.

  I looked at them, wondering what I was going to do next.

  "Hey mister, I already ask you, you want we go closer?"

  One of the two people by the cable-car lit a cigarette and for a moment I saw the fire chase the shadows from his face-it was aristocratic, with a nobility I had not seen since arriving on the planet. His eyes were concealed behind complex goggles which emphasised the exaggerated sharpness of his cheekbones. His friend was a woman, her slender gloved hand holding a pair of toylike binoculars to her eyes. Pivoting on her knifelike heels, she scanned the street, until her gaze swept over me. I watched her flinch as it happened, though she tried to control it.

  "They nervous," Juan breathed. "Mostly, Mulch and Canopy keep far apart."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "Yeah, one good one." Now he was whispering so quietly I could barely hear him above the relentless hiss of the rain. "Mulch get too close, Mulch vanish."

  "Vanish?"

  He drew his finger across his throat, but discreetly. "Canopy
like games, mister. They bored. Immortal people, they all bored. So they play games. Trouble is, not everyone get asked they wanna take part."

  "Like the hunt you mentioned?"

  He nodded. "But no talk it now."

  "All right. Stop here then, Juan, if you'd be so good."

  The rickshaw lost what little forward momentum it had had, the primate showing agitation in every ridge of his back muscles. I observed the reactions on the faces of the two Canopy dwellers-trying to look cool, and almost achieving it.

  I stepped out of the rickshaw, my feet squelching as they made acquaintance with the sodden roadbed. "Mister," said Juan. "You be careful now. I ain't earned a fare home yet."

  "Don't go anywhere," I said, then thought better of it. "Listen, if this makes you nervous, leave and return in five minutes."

  This obviously struck him as excellent advice. The woman with the binoculars returned them to her exuberantly patterned greatcoat, while the goggled man reached up and made what was obviously a delicate readjustment of his optics. I walked calmly in their direction, paying more attention to their vehicle. It was a glossy black lozenge, resting on three retractable wheels. Through a tinted forward window I glimpsed upholstered seats facing complicated manual controls. What appeared to be three rotor blades were furled on the roof. But as I examined the mounting more closely, I saw that this wasn't any kind of helicopter. The blades were not attached to the body of the vehicle by a rotating axle, but vanished into three circular holes in a domelike hump which rose seamlessly from the hull itself. And, now that I looked closer, I saw that the blades were not really blades at all, but telescopic arms, each tipped with a scythelike hook.

  That was all the time I had for sightseeing.

  "Don't come any closer," the woman said. She backed up her words, spoken in flawless Canasian, by flourishing a tiny weapon, little larger than a brooch.

  "He's unarmed," the man said, loud enough for me to hear, intentionally, it seemed.

  "I don't mean you any harm." I spread my arms-slowly. "These are Mendicant clothes. I've just arrived on the planet. I wanted to know about reaching the Canopy."

  "The Canopy?" the man said, as if this was vastly amusing.

  "That's what they all want," the woman said. The weapon had not budged, and her grip on it was so steady that I wondered if it contained tiny gyroscopes, or some kind of biofeedback device which acted on the muscles in her wrist. "Why should we talk to you?"

  "Because I'm harmless-unarmed, as your partner observed-and curious, and it might amuse you."

  "You've no idea what amuses us."

  "No, I probably don't, but, as I said-I'm curious. I'm a man of means-" the remark sounded ridiculous as soon I had spoken it, but I soldiered on "-and I've had the misfortune to arrive in the Mulch with no contacts in the Canopy."

  "You speak Canasian reasonably well," the man observed, lowering his hand from his goggles. "Most Mulch can barely manage an insult in anything other than their native tongue." He threw away what remained of his cigarette.

  "But with an accent," the woman said. "I don't place it-it's offworld, but nothing I'm familiar with."

  "I'm from Sky's Edge. You may have met people from other parts of the planet who speak differently. It's been settled long enough for linguistic drift."

  "So had Yellowstone," said the man, feigning no real interest in this line of debate. "But most of us still live in Chasm City. Here, the only linguistic drift is vertical." He laughed, as if the remark were more than just a statement of fact.

  I wiped rain from my eyes, warm and viscous. "The driver said the only way to reach the Canopy was by cable-car."

  "An accurate statement, but that doesn't mean we can help you." The man removed his hat, revealing long blond hair tied back.

  His companion added, "We have no reason to trust you. A Mulch could have stolen Mendicant clothes and learnt a few words of Canasian. No sane person would arrive here without already establishing ties with Canopy."

  I took a calculated risk. "I've got some Dream Fuel. Does that interest you?"

  "Oh yes, and how in hell's name did a Mulch get hold of Dream Fuel?"

  "It's a long story." But I reached into Vadim's coat and removed the cache of Dream Fuel vials. "You'll have to take my word that is the genuine article, of course."

  "I'm not in the habit of taking anyone's word on anything," the man said. "Pass me one of those vials."

  Another calculated risk. The man might run off with the one, but that would still leave me with the others.

  "I'll throw you one. How does that sound?"

  The man took a few steps towards me. "Do it, then."

  I tossed him the vial. He caught it deftly and then vanished into the vehicle. The woman remained outside, still covering me with the little gun. A few moments passed, then the man emerged from the vehicle again, not bothering to don his hat. He held up the vial. "This . . . seems to be the genuine article."

  "What did you do?"

  "Shone a light through it, of course." He looked at me as if I was stupid. "Dream Fuel has a unique absorption spectrum."

  "Good. Now that you know it's real, throw the vial back to me and we'll negotiate terms."

  The man made a throwing gesture, but pulled at the last moment, holding the vial in front of him tauntingly. "No . . . let's not be hasty, shall we? You have more of these, you say? Dream Fuel's in short supply these days. At least the good stuff. You must have stumbled on quite a haul." He paused. "I've done you a favour, which we'll think of as fair payment for this vial. I've asked that another cable-car meet you here shortly. You'd better not have been lying about your means." He removed his goggles, revealing iron-grey eyes of extraordinary cruelty.

  "I'm grateful," I said. "But what would it matter if I had been lying?"

  "That's an odd question." The woman made her weapon vanish, like a well-rehearsed conjuring trick. Perhaps it had sprung back into a sleeve-holster.

  "I told you, I'm curious."

  "There is no law here," she said. "A kind of law, in the Canopy-but only that which suits us; that which conveniences us, like the playground law of children. But we're not in the Canopy now. Down here, anything goes. And we have very little patience with those who deceive us."

  "That's all right," I said. "I'm not a patient man myself."

  They both climbed into their vehicle, momentarily leaving the doors splayed open. "Perhaps we'll see you in the Canopy," the man said, and then smiled at me. It was not the kind of smile one relished. It was the kind of smile I had seen on snakes in the vivaria at the Reptile House.

  The doors clammed down and their vehicle came to life with a subliminal hum.

  The three telescopic arms on the roof of the cable-car swung outwards and upwards, and then continued extending outwards at blinding speed, doubling, tripling, quadrupling their length. They were reaching skywards. I looked up, shielding my eyes against the perpetual embalming rain. The rickshaw driver had pointed out that the cables spanning the gnarled structures of the Canopy occasionally draped down to the level of the Mulch, like hanging vines, but I hadn't paid enough attention to his remark. Now I saw the significance of it as one of the car's arms snagged the lowest line with its hooked claw. The other two arms extended even further, out to perhaps ten times their original length, until they found their own draping lines and made purchase.

  And then-smoothly, as if it were lifting on thrusters-the cable-car pulled itself aloft, accelerating all the time. The nearest arm released its grip on the cable, contracted and jerked, stabbing upwards with the speed of a chameleon's tongue, until it had locked around another cable. And while that happened, the car rose further still, and then another arm switched cables, and another, until the car was hundreds of metres above me and dwindling. Still the motion was eerily smooth, even though the vehicle always seemed to be on the point of missing its purchase altogether and plummeting back towards the Mulch.

  "Hey, mister. You still here."

 
At some point during the vehicle's ascent, the rickshaw had returned. I had expected the driver to do what seemed sensible and return to the concourse, more or less in profit. But Juan had kept his word, and would probably have been insulted if I registered any surprise.

  "Did you honestly think I wouldn't be?"

  "When Canopy come down, you never know. Hey, why you stand in rain?"

  "Because I'm not returning with you." He had barely had time to register disapointment-although the expression which had begun to form on his face suggested that I'd cast grave aspersions on his entire lineage-when I offered him a generous cancellation fee. "It's more than you'd have earned carrying me."

  He looked at the two seven-Ferris bills, glumly. "Mister, you no wanna stay here. This nowhere; not good part of Mulch."

  "I don't doubt it," I said, coming to terms with the idea that even somewhere as misbegotten and miserable as the Mulch had its good and bad neighbourhoods. Then I said, "The Canopy people said they'd send down a cable-car for me. It's possible they were lying, of course, but I imagine I'll find out sooner or later. And if they weren't, I'm just going to have to find my way up the inside of one of these buildings."

  "This not good, mister. Canopy, they never do favour."

  I decided not to mention the Dream Fuel. "They were probably not willing to rule out the possibility I was who I claimed. What if I was as powerful as I said I was? They wouldn't want to make an enemy of me."

  Juan shrugged, as if my point was a faint theoretical possibility, but no more than that. "Mister, I go now. No hurry stay here, you not coming."

  "That's all right," I said. "I understand. And I'm sorry I asked you to wait."

  That was the end of our relationship, Juan shaking his head but accepting that there was no way to persuade me otherwise. And then he went, the rickshaw clattering away into the distance, leaving me alone in the rain-genuinely alone, this time. The kid was not just around the corner, and I had lost-or more accurately got rid of-the closest thing I had yet found in Chasm City to an ally. It was an odd feeling, but I knew that what I had done was necessary.