The trick in here is to stay alive without doing anything to make anyone dead. Because, if you do that, you never get to leave. I know more about the HydroFarm from the whisper-stream than ever I knew from being here before. I was, once. Twelve cycles, that’s what you get for what I did.
My name is Charm, and I’m Leader of the Dancing Girls. I got my name because I had none. Not name, charm. I was not charming. But I could dance the best. Everybody knew that. Even those crazy Game Boys, the ones with the little pistols, they stepped aside for us. The pistols aren’t that good. You have to be real close for them to work. And if we get close enough to dance, you’re going to die. Razors never miss.
They’re better for scaring people, too. A lot of people, they didn’t know what the pistols were, or what they could do. But everyone knows a razor. Everyone gets afraid when they see the thin blue edge. Everyone knows how easy it goes through flesh. Everyone who knows me knows how much I like that.
A thick, heavy blanket of water comes down from above where we have to work. I don’t know how they make it. One of the old men told us once that Outside, before the Terror brought everything Underground, the water came from above too, but nobody made it, it just came. Those old men are insane.
Not as mad as Radioman, though. The one who says I love him. He hears it in his head. That I love him. A boy. So crazy. I don’t love anyone. I don’t even know the word that they use. I know it doesn’t mean sex. I mean, people who say they love, they have sex. But you never hear the word in the Sex Tunnels. Some of the Dancing Girls work there, for credits. A long time ago, the whisper-stream said, you had to live in the Sex Tunnels if you wanted to work there for credits. But it’s not that way now. You just go into the main gate and tell them you want to work, and they measure you and capture your image. Then they ask you what kind of sex you will do and they put you in the right subtunnel. When you’re done, you just walk out and collect the credits you earned. If you ever come back, anytime at all, they have your image and your other stuff and you can go right through the gate.
Radioman never tried to sex me. He was a Game Boy, when they still had their pistols. They were the ones who started the whole thing. With marks, I mean. You got a mark for every life you took. I had a lot of them too. I wore them on my thigh, hiding the secret. But not the secret the boys thought.
It didn’t get crazy until two things happened:
The first one was the idea that if you killed someone with marks, then their marks belonged to you. So people stopped going after the easy ones and went after the ones who already had marks—you could get maybe a dozen marks for one kill that way.
But crews aren’t allowed to fight each other. So a lot of people in crews got put Outside. The Rulers were confused at first, thinking everybody was breaking the Rules. But then they figured it out.
The second thing that happened, the bums made their own crew. Nobody thought this would ever happen. It wasn’t such a big thing to the other crews, but it made the Rulers very upset. You could tell because they changed the Rules. The new Rules were even more tricky.
Most of the crews stopped wearing their costumes. And when they did, even then, it had to be on the fringes, near the Uncharted Zone. That wasn’t much fun. People don’t recognize you’re moving all together in a fan if you’re not dressed the same. So they don’t get out of the way like they used to.
Radioman was a Game Boy. They said he heard signals in his head all the time. But he never got a signal to take a mark, so he never did. That meant he was the lowest in the crew, but he didn’t care.
When he said he loved me, I just laughed at him. If he had tried to sex me, I would have sliced him. But he didn’t. One of the other Game Boys did—laugh, I mean—so I ripped him. We were all going for marks back then, but the other Game Boys were scared to shoot, because the Rulers don’t let crews fight and they were afraid it would look like that. We never did fight. Not as crews.
But the Rulers got it wrong. They didn’t know it was about marks. And it didn’t matter who you took them from.
There has to be a way to get people there. To the HydroFarm. Where they have my girl. Charm. I have to rescue her. They must have a way to get them there, and it has to be a conveyor. It’s too far to walk and, anyway, the ones who come back always say it took a long time to make the trip. They couldn’t see anything, but they were moving. And there’s new ones back here every day. I asked a couple of them but they wouldn’t tell me. After a while, I figured it out. They wouldn’t tell me because they didn’t know. And if a conveyor goes there, it has to be through the Charted Zone, because the Rulers couldn’t have something as important as the HydroFarm out of the Zone. All the power for Underground has to come from the HydroFarm—they could never risk it.
I know who to ask. I just don’t know how to ask. But the voices will tell me when they’re ready.
The way they make you work here is they use what you make on you. Electricity. That works. Nobody wants it on them. And being wet all the time, it doesn’t take much.
If you escape, they give you double whatever time you had left. It’s easy to get away, but not many even try. Twelve cycles doesn’t take long, because you can have Zoners for free on the Farm. Some of the people here, they don’t feel anything, they just smile. They can still work, though, so nobody gets mad at them.
Even if you could get away, where would you go? If you have a crew, you can’t go there. The Rulers will take them all for hiding you. Harboring, that’s breaking a Major Rule. If you want to go back as Leader, you can’t get the others in that kind of trouble. Actually, if you think about it, if you brought them that kind of trouble, there wouldn’t be any of them to come back to. They wouldn’t want you.
If I wait until my time is done, I can go back and be Leader again. There’ll be a new girl, and we’ll dance. I can’t wait. That’s the worst thing about being here—you can’t dance.
I have a tiny little slice of nuim just under my thumbnail. It cost me a lot. Not credits, they don’t have any in here. If you’re caught with credits, they think you’re getting ready to escape. And then you get the electricity. If you get too much, it’s like you’re on Zoners all the time, always smiling. But you can’t even eat. They have to feed you with tubes. I paid for the nuim with sex. One of the Guards. I didn’t even have to look at him while he did it.
I used the nuim and cut another straight, thin line across the front of my left thigh. The pain was wonderful. I felt something. I never usually feel anything. Except when I’m dancing. I love to cut myself, but I have to be careful, not let anyone see. And never deep. The blood dries quickly, and the moisture keeps it clean. The cuts look like painted lines now—tattoos, like some of them get. Even when the Scanners check us, they don’t pay attention to the cuts. They’re like marks, because I made them myself. Marks on me.
I know where it is now. I’m going there.
There’s other Dancing Girls here. You’re not allowed to even talk to another crew member while you’re on the HydroFarm. Everything is on video. In the dark, they have infra and thermal—they can see your coding day or night. So there’s no way to hook up.
But this . . . I can’t believe it could be so easy. I mean, how could I even know how hard it was supposed to be unless somebody told me? A guard told me. They always want the same thing. The Rulers know the Guards are going to want sex. So they do things to them to make them not want it. But those things don’t work. They don’t erase things, they just bury them. You have to know how to dig down deep. The nuim helps. I do it anytime I want. The most important thing is never to let them know. I only have three cycles left now.
Charm is in my head. She will come with me. Sometimes I get a voice that says she won’t. That it won’t be Charm anymore. I remember once, when I was a Game Boy, she said she wasn’t my girlfriend. She said it in front of some of the others too. I didn’t mind, because I know Charm and me is supposed to be a secret. And that was Charm, so it didn’t scare me. Wh
at scares me is the voice that says she won’t be Charm anymore. The HydroFarm changes people, the voices say. I have never been there, so I don’t know. But the voices know.
There’s no perimeter here. You could just walk off. Back into one of the deep tunnels. I heard they don’t even chase you. But you can’t live out here. So I guess some people just die. If you make it back to the hub, they will video you sooner or later. That’s how you get brought back.
I see Charm. I don’t know if she sees me. I have to wait until she does before I take her away. I have to be quick and quiet.
Radioman has been here for three turns now. I see him, standing just outside the perimeter. He wants me to go with him. I have what he needs. He has what I need, too. On my next turn, I’m going to go across. I can’t wait anymore.
Here she comes. To be with me.
He even brought my razor.
I’m myself now.
Radioman was good.
for Anastasia Volkonsky
GAMBLERS
The whisper-stream says they used to have fights—sporting contests, I mean—like this all the time. A long time ago. Outside, before the Terror brought everyone down here. Way before I was born.
You can check out stuff like that—I mean, stuff that happened Before—if you really want to, but that costs credits. A lot of credits. And even then, you don’t know if it’s really true. The only truth in Underground is free—when the Book Boys write on the walls. Everyone knows that. If it’s written in blue, it must be true. And only the Book Boys can write in that special blue everyone recognizes.
I don’t care about any of that anyway. I don’t need ancient Info, I need credits. Without credits—heavy credits—I can’t play. And if I can’t play, I can’t get anything I want. That’s my job, to play.
Most of the players aren’t like me. They’re not professionals. They don’t think about the odds, they don’t do the research—they just go with their blood, with their feelings. That’s my edge.
You can’t fix these fights. There’s always rumors—about drugs and stuff—but it would be real hard to drug a Traxyl. You couldn’t get a needle into them, and they only eat Zone Rats, those huge things that mostly stay out in the Uncharted Zone. I guess you could maybe drug one of the rats; then, when the Traxyl ate it . . . But I don’t think it would work. It wouldn’t be slick enough—everyone could tell.
That would be very bad. There’s a rule against gambling on the Traxyl fights, but it’s not a Major Rule, and the only thing they do is fine you when they catch you. That’s part of the cost of doing business—it doesn’t bother me. Anyway, one thing I learned for myself: everyone gambles, one way or the other.
And there’s other rules too. Not the ones the Rulers make, but everybody knows and obeys them anyway. And if one of the Traxyl handlers tried to fix a fight, that would be the end. I saw it happen once. A handler cut his Traxyl’s eye with a razor ring just before he sent him out. Traxyls can’t smell or anything. And I don’t know if they can hear too good either. But they need their eyes—big, huge eyes, so they can see in the dark when they go after the Zone Rats. The other Traxyl locked on to the one with the cut eye and it was over quick.
Traxyls don’t eat each other. They kill for territory. Hunting space. If one comes into another’s space, they fight. Everybody knows that’s how they work. That’s how the pit fights started, I guess. I wasn’t the only one who saw what the handler had done. They just threw him into the pit and he was gone real quick.
No human would have a chance against a Traxyl. They’re not that big—even the biggest ones are only about thirty kilos—but they’re all armor-plated, and once they lock their jaws, there’s no way to open them. Every once in a while, one gets loose, and the Police have to kill it. Shooting doesn’t usually stop them. You’d have to hit them right in the eye to do that. And even then, it has to be one of the Superslugs—regular bullets won’t make it all the way into their brains. So the Police have to blow them up. Anyone around gets killed when they do that. It’s a Rule that no Traxyls can run loose. If people get killed to stop one, that would be sanctioned—not breaking a Rule. Besides, anything the Police do is not against the Rules.
The Rulers don’t like it when a Traxyl gets loose, so the places where they hold the fights keep getting moved. Farther and farther away from the Central Tunnels. Some are so far away that you need to hire one of the Guides to take you there and bring you back. It’s a funny thing about the Guides—they’re all skin/shade 20+, almost a reddish color—and that doesn’t make sense. I mean, if they know the Deep Tunnels—the ones far away from Central—so well, you’d think they’d be real pale from spending so much time there. But they’re not.
Now almost all the fights happen near the Border, just this side of the Uncharted Zone.
Traxyls live in the Uncharted Zone. Trappers go in there to bring them back. A good fighting Traxyl is worth enough credits to live for a few years. Live nice, I mean, not just get by. Most of the Trappers don’t succeed, which is why Traxyls are so rare. We know the Trappers don’t succeed when they don’t come back. So, in a way, they’re just like me. I mean, people call them “gamblers” for going in there, but it’s only the true professionals who go out and come back—the ones who make a living at it.
There’s always rumors—that’s what the whisper-stream is for, to carry them along—about people living in the Uncharted Zone. Living there, not just going in and coming out. I don’t know if the rumors are true. And if they are, what would those people do about the Traxyls? I even heard the Traxyls guard the people from the rats, but that sounds so crazy—I mean, what’s the odds on that? I check the walls every day, the same way everyone does. And, one time, the Book Boys wrote it in blue:
One of the girls in the Sex Tunnels told me that meant the people who live in the Uncharted Zone bred the Traxyls to protect them from the rats. But girls in the Sex Tunnels say anything. This one said she was going to go out to the Uncharted Zone herself one day. To “join them.” When I asked her what she meant, she just went back to work on me. Xyla was her name—that was about all I remembered.
But I did remember I liked her. So, next time I was in the Sex Tunnels, I asked for her. They told me she was gone. That happens all the time—I didn’t pay much attention.
The only thing I really pay attention to is the Traxyl sheet. It costs fifty credits, and it comes out about a week before the fight card. It doesn’t give you a won-lost record—that would be pretty stupid for Traxyls—the loser always dies, that’s how they tell when it’s over. The sheet tells you how many fights each one had before, weight and height, any crippling injuries—they fight Traxyls even if they’re crippled, and some of them win that way for a while too—the name of the handler, stuff like that. The sheet never tells you where the fights are going to be. You have to buy that info too, but it’s always hand-to-hand, and you can only get it at the last minute. The sheet gives you their records. The Traxyls, I mean. Every one has an alphanumeric burned into its side. This doesn’t hurt them, just makes a mark on their armor. The hardest thing to guess is when a new one’s going to be good. They don’t train Traxyls or anything. Soon as they bring one back from the tunnels, they put it into the pit to fight.
You can’t tell anything about how good they’re going to fight by looking at them. I had to learn that for myself. At first, I would bet on the biggest one, but that wasn’t . . . consistent. It wasn’t a good system. In fact, nothing was good until I realized what the trick was: You can’t tell anything about a Traxyl. There was one—M29X4—that won eleven in a row. That was a record. No Traxyl had ever done that. When I came to the fights that night, I saw he was matched against a Traxyl that had only fought once before. So the odds on the one-win Traxyl were about 50 to 1. And I found a Taker who was offering 75 to 1 just before the fight started, and I put up a thousand credits. And my Traxyl won. I bet I was about the only one who did win that night.
So that’s my system. Once I real
ized that any Traxyl can kill another anytime, I just go with the ones at the longest odds. Now, if the odds are close, then I think about it a lot. I have to bet on every single match, otherwise the Takers would catch on to my system and I couldn’t get any of them to do business with me. One of the hardest things about being a professional is to look like an amateur.
I’m not the only one with a system. When M29X4 got killed, a lot of people figured eleven wins was the maximum. So, the more a Traxyl won, the more people would bet on it—until it got close to eleven, and then they would back off. But when J44B8 won thirteen before it was killed, that theory got killed too.
I always wondered about the handlers too. It seems as if some of them even liked their Traxyls. I could never be sure, because you can’t touch one or anything, but it looked that way. I saw one handler crying when his Traxyl died. But I figured he was probably upset because he lost so much money.
It doesn’t matter now, anyway. First it was on the InfoBoard. A message from the Rulers that Traxyl-fighting had been upgraded to a Major Rule infraction. That meant a year on the HydroFarm if you were caught. But it wasn’t clear about gamblers. I mean, fighting Traxyls was against a Major Rule, but was betting on the fights? So, in a way, I guess everyone who did it was gambling twice. You’d think that would scare people away, but it didn’t.
Then the whisper-stream started flowing. It said the people in the Uncharted Zone were going to stop the Traxyl-fighting by themselves. That was crazy. I mean, it was a rumor inside of a rumor. Nobody even knows if there were people in the Uncharted Zone.
Everybody Pays Page 9