From below their feet, a voice asked, “How about extending a fresh invitation?”
Mauro chuckled. “Come on up, Madlie.”
The door swung open, and the pale-faced woman from the night before climbed up and perched on the rim of the hole, her mask hanging down around her neck. “Your department’s closing tomorrow,” she said.
Seph held his gloved hand out to help her to her feet, and she stared at it for a long moment, seemingly baffled, before accepting it. “I hadn’t realized it would be so soon,” he said. “How do you know this?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t tell me up here, right?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, but there was a meaningful grin gracing one corner of her mouth.
“So,” Seph asked, “will you take me down there?”
Madlie turned to Mauro. “Will you witness that this Paintclad went down below of his own free will?”
“Not only that,” Mauro said, “but I’ll even testify that it was his own suggestion to do so.”
It was a meaningless gesture between these two outcasts, but it still sent a shiver up Seph’s spine. What he was doing could get him punished.
He should have done something like this a long time ago.
“Take off the paint,” Madlie said. “And you’ll want to leave the jacket and gloves topside so you don’t drown in your own sweat.”
A few minutes later, Seph, bare-faced and bare-armed, followed Madlie down the access hole and began his climb down the long ladder. “If you don’t like what you hear, you’d better not change your tune and say I abducted you, ground-walker. You have no idea—”
“I’m fucking an Adorned, so actually, I do.”
“Hunh. Well.”
They climbed further down into the clanking, chugging, gurgling maze of machinery that ran the City. Seph felt his scalp break into a sweat, and the first trickle slithered down his spine, stopped only by the waistband of his pants.
At the base of the ladder, the air was so thick with moisture that it was like breathing through a wet cloth. Madlie stripped off her coverall and mask and slung both over her arm. Beneath, she was wearing drab cut-off shorts that would have fallen off of her bony hips were it not for her rope belt, and a threadbare hammer and sickle shirt that was far from its original vibrant red glory. “We need to get out from under Old Town if we want to hear anything from up high. Come on.” She led him to a two-person tricycle, pitched her discarded clothes in its basket, and took the handlebar as they pedaled through corridors that cut through the City’s machines and the people trapped down with them.
He’d never complain about his blue-tinged existence again.
The corridors were mostly deserted, the few people walking them as gaunt and scraggly as Madlie. He heard a burst of giggles and turned to see a very young child streaking naked out from between two pipes. He smiled at her exuberance, but his face fell as he saw her older sister chasing after her. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years older than the toddler, but in those few years, the child had obviously come to realize how little joy her future held. She looked almost elderly in her despair.
If the Masked ever figured out a covert way to grow their own food and purify their own water down here, everyone topside would be doomed. He couldn’t imagine them continuing to service the castes above if their lives didn’t depend on it.
And if this was what the Makers had truly intended for this caste, then he wasn’t capable of hating them enough.
“Here we are,” Madlie said as she brought the tricycle to a halt several meters from a thick cluster of pipes. There was already a decent-sized crowd around it, each person jockeying for a good position to hear for themselves what was going on above. Madlie winced. “Maybe I should have had you keep on your paint so we could get you to the front of the line.”
“No, this is your home,” Seph said. “I’ll wait my turn.”
A few people turned to look at the newcomers. Eyes wide, they stepped aside and whispered to the people in front of them, who did the same, until there was a clear path between Seph and the pipes.
Seph looked down at his brand new Sagrada Familia T-shirt and freshly pressed black trousers, then looked at everyone else in their dingy cast-offs from above, and knew instantly how they’d figured it out.
Madlie lead Seph up the cleared path, and he was careful to thank everyone he walked past.
She put her ear against one large pipe, then another, then waved him over. “This one. Quickly.”
He leaned in, pressing his ear against the warm metal, and put his finger in his other ear to block out the murmurs around him.
“…we are still awaiting word from the Skinless Empress, all bless Her name, on what, if anything to tell the lower castes has happened to the Earth. She has made it clear that they are not to know the truth, as they are too emotional to handle the news with the same fortitude as those of us living up above the clouds. Experts believe that She may be waiting for guidance from the Takers, as they were the ones to point Her predecessor to the broadcasts in the first place. Meanwhile, efforts to wean the lower castes away from total media dependence on our former sister planet continue, despite grumblings from below on the darker tone of the repeats being broadcast…”
“Former sister planet?” Seph asked.
Another Masked gestured to a nearby pipe, and Seph stepped over and pressed his ear against it.
“…apparently had little warning that the Yellowstone supervolcano was going to erupt, and thus had no way to prepare for its devastating effect on the planet as a whole. Repeated attempts to mine even the faintest messages from Earth have been fruitless, and according to what little scientific data was broadcast in the first hours after the eruption, there seems to be no hope for the survival of the human race on planet Earth. Clearly, the Takers must have seen this coming all those centuries ago when they brought us here in their bid to ensure that the work of the Makers wouldn’t be lost forever if something happened to Earth. All praise to the Makers and Takers.”
Seph pulled his ear away and stared emptily into space for a long moment before asking, “Supervolcano?”
“The cloudscrapers have known about it for weeks,” Madlie said, “but they were sitting on a large enough transmissions backlog that no one below them had a clue anything was wrong. At least, not at first.”
Seph sagged against the pipe and tried to process the news, but it was too big. “Earth’s gone?”
“The planet’s still there,” Madlie said. “But we’re probably all that’s left of the human race.”
The people he’d been watching on the Wall his entire life, the planet he’d admired, with its wide open spaces, its unstratified life. Gone.
Billions had died. And all that was left were a few thousand people crammed into a walled City on a distant planet that the people on Earth hadn’t even known existed.
And the cloudscrapers weren’t even going to tell anyone what had happened.
But how could he possibly spread the news far enough to make a difference? They’d capture him long before—
It didn’t matter. He had to do something.
“Take me back.”
Madlie steered again as they pedaled the tricycle back to the ladder. Topside, Mauro’s painted face waited for him. “What did they say?”
“Earth’s dead,” Seph said. “Everyone on it, dead.”
Mauro pressed a bulb of hot mulled juice into Seph’s hands and asked, “What did you hear down there?”
Seph told him everything. “We need to get word out. The people need to know.”
“What, that Earth is gone, or that the castes above are lying to them?”
“I think they already know the latter, but they could use the reminder.”
“You’re right on both counts,” Mauro said. “Leave it to me.”
“No, absolutely not. I’m going out there with you—”
“No. You’ve done your part
by bringing me the information. Now let me do the rest.”
“But—”
Mauro handed Seph his coat and gloves. “You can use my Face Maker before leaving.”
“They’ll kill you.”
Mauro held up his metal hands, staring at them with a ghost of a smile on his face. “They started the job a couple of years ago. I can’t think of any good reason not to let them finish it. Go. Stay home. Be safe. The future’s going to need people like you.”
He opened his mouth to protest, and Mauro smiled even wider. “Say hello to your ‘coworker’ for me.”
That did it. He sighed, and let Mauro lead him back to the Face Painter. Then he caught the first crawler back to his apartment block, feeling like the biggest coward in the universe as he sat there silently, not telling any of the people around him the devastating news.
So many light years away, the billions of people of Earth had been dead for centuries, and they’d only now found out.
They’d been dead long before the City had started picking up the transmissions. They’d redefined their culture around a ghost planet.
Would the City mourn them, now that they knew they were dead?
He walked into the apartment and saw Lenore staring at the Wall, flipping through all three channels as the Hindenburg explosion played on each one. “They’ve been showing this on an endless loop for the past few minutes. It’s weird.”
Mauro must have worked fast.
“When are they going to give you guys some new work so we can watch fun stuff again?”
“Never,” Seph said.
“What?”
Well, at least he could be the one to tell his wife the news.
“Lenore, Earth’s gone. They’re all dead.”
She gaped at Seph, then her eyes flashed with seeming understanding. “Good one. That’s really funny.”
“I’m serious, Lenore. The entire population of Earth has died. There aren’t going to be any more broadcasts.”
“That’s…” She turned to the Wall and flipped through all three channels again. “No, it’d be the top story.”
“They’re not going to tell us about it, Lenore. They’re going to keep us in the dark about the whole thing, just like they always do.”
Lenore clutched her hands to her chest. “Seph, no. Tell me you didn’t sneak up above the seventh floor.”
“I went down, Lenore. They can hear everything down there.”
A small squeak escaped Lenore’s throat, and she dashed for the washroom. He ran after her, but she slammed and locked the door before he had a chance to stop her.
“Lenore? You can’t hide from this. Lenore?”
He could hear murmuring, heard her spelling his name, and their address.
“Lenore!” He pounded on the door. “Lenore, don’t!”
But it was too late.
Adrenaline spiked through his veins, and he threw himself at the front door in a desperate attempt to escape.
It was locked.
Seph smacked it in frustration, and stood back, shaking, hands balled into fists by his sides, waiting for the inevitable to happen as Lenore sobbed and apologized from the washroom.
It didn’t take the Caste Police long to arrive. “Seph Allele, you’re under arrest for disseminating information unauthorized to your caste.”
Before he could say a word in his defense, they fired a stun blast at him and the world went black.
* * * *
“Well, well. So you’re the foolhardy little Paintclad who went down below.”
Seph struggled toward consciousness and blinked into the blinding light. His arms and legs were strapped down, and when he tried to open his mouth, his lips would not come apart.
He drew in a ragged breath, and with a shock, realized it was pulling into his lungs through a hole in his throat.
A shadow fell over him, and he stared in horror at the naked form of an Unadorned staring down at him.
In a panic, he cast his gaze away, knowing it was too late.
“That’s all right,” the Unadorned said. “We allow a bit of latitude on these occasions.”
Seph stared pointedly at the far wall and probed at his lips with his tongue.
They were sealed shut.
“You shouldn’t have talked,” the Unadorned said. “You certainly won’t be talking anymore.”
Seph felt panic rising in his chest and tugged helplessly at his restraints.
“You really thought it was up to you to spread information to your caste that the Empress above, all bless Her name, had decided was not appropriate for you to know? We expect this kind of behavior from the Masked. They have no more discernment than children. But you Paintclad, you dependable, industrious Paintclad, we expect more from you.”
In the edge of his vision, Seph saw the Unadorned turn away, and he flicked a quick glance in his direction, his curiosity getting the better of him. He’d never seen an Unadorned in person. His body was nude, hairless, the light glimmering off of his oiled skin, throwing the planes of his body into sharp relief.
Seph looked away, terrified his latitude might have already expired.
“Mauro Oligo is dead,” the Unadorned said. “We had to make an example of him. His body will be displayed prominently on all Walls until tomorrow’s Evening Bells, along with constant news reports denouncing him as a traitor to the Skinless Empress. However, the Empress has decided to let his story stand. In Her wisdom, She has decided that all the castes get to know the same information about the demise of Earth.” He leaned in, his face mere centimeters from Seph’s, his hot breath reeking of berry water. “But don’t let that swell your head, Paintclad. We both know She couldn’t have been influenced by someone as low caste as you.”
The Unadorned stepped back and ran his hand along his scalp. “The access hatch in Oligo’s shop has been permanently sealed to keep any other Paintclad from getting the bright idea to head down a level to spy on their betters. And we performed a thorough sweep of Old Town and sealed several other hatches that had also been illegally uncovered. We killed a dozen random Masked as well for good measure, starting with the woman who led you to the pipes, and deafened most of the adults. That will give us time to figure out how to sound-proof the pipes before a new generation of troublemakers reaches adulthood.”
Madlie was dead. Because of him. Mauro, he’d wanted to die, but Madlie… And they’d deafened how many… He felt his stomach heave and fought it down before its contents spilled out of his throat.
“You will report to Mauro Oligo’s shop by Dawn Bells tomorrow morning,” the Unadorned said. “People must see you in your new state. An example must be made. And you will put your special talents to good use in reminding the Paintclad both to honor their station, and to remember the price for insurrection.”
The Unadorned left the room, and a Paintclad woman entered and loosened Seph’s restraints. She gestured to her throat, to the hole in it that mirrored Seph’s, and pointed to a small, metal device strapped just under her chin. A tinny voice emerged from it. “I’ll show you how to feed yourself. Talking again will take practice.”
He was given a feeding tube and shown how to lower it down to his stomach through the hole in his throat and pour mash through it. He was given his own talk box and shown how to work his mouth behind his sealed lips to transmit the proper impulses to the box to generate speech. And he was taken by police escort through the curfew-emptied streets, Mauro’s bloodied face gaping at him from every Wall, to his apartment.
Seph stood in the doorway, his gloved hands pressed to his sealed lips, and started shaking.
And then he saw the black-clad man on the sofa, his shoulders hunched beneath the fabric of the high-collared jacket.
The man turned, his paint smeared beyond recognition, but there was no mistaking the face beneath it.
Roland held up his gloved hands, gloves that were covered in paint. “How the hell am I supposed to do this? I can’t even touch my face. I can’t—
”
Seph dropped his hands from his lips, and Roland’s mouth fell open.
“What did they do to you?”
Seph shook his head, hands balled into fists, his talk box making impotent squawks as his breath whistled out of his neck.
Roland staggered to his feet. “By the Makers, Seph. I—” He tore off his gloves and reached out to touch Seph’s sealed lips.
Seph flinched back, and Roland yanked his hand away.
“Sorry. Sorry.”
Seph gingerly fingered the hole in his throat, then slid down the wall as his knees gave out.
Roland knelt beside him, his blue eyes peering out from the painted mess that was his face. “Some Paintclad ratted me out. Your face was splattered all over the Walls, and they went to the Caste Police and said that they’d seen us fucking every night in Old Town. They said they’d demote my entire family if I didn’t talk. Does that…does that hurt?”
Seph wrapped his hand protectively around his throat, then dropped it in revulsion when he felt his moist exhalation against his gloved palm.
Roland poked his own face, and stared at the fresh paint smudge on his fingertip. “We can take this off inside, right?”
Roland helped Seph to his feet, and they stood together under the sonics. As the paint was sung off of both of their faces, Roland smiled sadly and said, “I was right about what you looked like under all that paint.”
Seph ran a finger along Roland’s lower lip. They’d taken his jewelry, leaving him with tiny holes on either side of his mouth, like the string of tiny, empty holes in both of his earlobes.
Such a stupid thing to fixate on, considering.
They spent the night curled up around each other in Seph’s too-small sleep cloud, Seph drifting in and out of sleep, his dreams filled with mouthless screams.
Order woke them a few hours later, well before Dawn Bells.
The first day of his public humiliation was about to begin.
Roland tapped his own earbug and paled. “Order says I have to go with you.”
So Roland was to be publicly humiliated as well.
The sleep cloud descended to the floor, and Seph took a deep breath through the hole in his neck and walked to the washroom to take his first good, hard look at his new face, at the thick band of scar tissue cementing his lips together, at the gaping hole in his neck.
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