The City in the Middle of the Night

by Anders, Charlie Jane

“But the profit,” Susana says. “The profit margin, it just blows everything else away. Our ancestors had drones! They had shuttles, scoutships, survival suits. They had computers! And most of it is just sitting out there, where it got crashed by the weather, or the wildlife.”

  “The Gelet,” I mutter, too low to hear. “The Gelet broke that stuff on purpose, to keep people away.”

  “One day we’ll find a whole all-terrain cruiser, and I’ll die fat and rich,” Susana says.

  “Our equipment is crap,” Pedro says. “I’m just going to come out and say that right away. We have garbage protective gear that we scraped together from a dozen sources, and we only survive if we remember that we’re relying on shit.” Something in Pedro’s tone tells me this is a recruitment pitch, and they already want me to join.

  I can’t pronounce this group’s name no matter how I try, but it means “Glacier Fools.” Whenever Pedro takes the game pieces and fluff, I notice he’s careful with his damaged hand.

  Reynold’s lived in every neighborhood in Argelo, including the Narrows, Khartoumtown, the Snake District, and even the bottom of the Pit. But he likes it here, in Little Merida, where the scents of sopa de lima and poc-chuk rise up from every stairwell, and embroidered wall hangings depict the shining launch bays of the Merida Space Center, where they crafted the engines and avionics of the Mothership. All the scavengers live upstairs from this gameroom.

  After I lose a few more games without ever understanding all the rules, Pedro formally invites me to join their next expedition. I toss my head. Everyone warns me again: this is deadly work, with a high death rate, and I’ll probably die. I give another head-toss. Then Pedro hands me a little metal rectangle that’ll display an odd shape when they need me.

  Reynold walks me outside. Back on the stoop, under the merciless glare, I touch his arm. “Uh. How much do you remember about what happened, after the pirates attacked?”

  He rolls his head. “I was pissing blood, from all over my body. Next thing I know, I’m in Argelo, where they have this miraculous wound care.” He pauses. “I feel like we went into the night for a moment.”

  This is going to be harder than I thought, but I have to find a way to talk about this, or I’m done. I look him in the eyes. “I can communicate with the, uh … the crocodiles. They’re my … friends. I call them the Gelet. They’re intelligent and technological, and they want to be friends with everyone. I might be able to teach the rest of you how to talk to them, maybe. But either way, they won’t bother you as long as I’m there. The most important thing is, if you see one of them, don’t start shooting.”

  “Honestly,” he said. “If we run into a crocodile, we usually just run the other way. If we even see it in time. But I’ll tell the others. I mean, if we could have the crocodiles on our side, or even if they just leave us alone, that would make our job twice as easy. Uh … so how do you talk to them, anyway?”

  I explain three times, squeezing my own thumbs inside my fingers. The whole thing sounds weird when I say it aloud.

  Reynold’s eyes get wider and he sucks in breath. “Whoa. I don’t think I’m drunk enough to even contemplate doing that. I have a feeling that’s going to be a hard no, for most of us. But I’ll tell the others about this. And for sure, we won’t attack any crocodiles if they approach.” Then he goes back inside to play another confusing game.

  * * *

  I carry on conversations with Bianca in my head all the time: as I cut across town along the tiny lanes that avoid the traffic around the Knife, as I watch pickpockets work their way through the crowds, as I see the slow corrosion in the girders supporting the big covered walkway. I talk to my imaginary Bianca about impermanence, and how the lack of Timefulness here only makes everything appear more temporary. Like, without small units of time, I’m more aware of the big units of time, the city inhaling the sun-spiked air and exhaling decay. The only thing that never disappears is the past.

  This is the sort of conversation that Bianca and I never have anymore, except in my mind. Back in school, we used to talk about everything from big ideas to stupid peeves, but we never discussed our relationship. Now, everything’s backward: we profess our undying sisterhood, but we never talk. I find myself going to the dark café, with Abraham’s donuts, just to eavesdrop in the starchy, smoky air as the students bicker about the meaning of existence. Sometimes one of the girls who seems about my age looks at me and smiles. Sometimes I even smile back, and feel a different shyness from my normal kind.

  Dash and Bianca are both waiting for me when I arrive at the vegetarian restaurant, where the walls and ceiling are made of some kind of artificial diamond that refracts into endless swirls of color. Bianca is leaning toward Dash, lips parted and nostrils flared.

  Dash and Bianca have seen a lot of each other since the last time I saw either of them. They ran into each other at an art gallery opening, and then Dash took Bianca to a fondue place, and they went shopping, and toured all the most memorable buildings. The architecture isn’t as stunning as Xiosphant’s, but there was a revival of Zagreb-style vaulted ceilings and wide towers, and some very fine glasswork and wrought iron, during the era of the Great Argelan Prosperity Company.

  “You should have seen it.” Bianca looks at Dash the way she used to look at Matthew in the Progressive Students. Except that she also has an involuntary twitch in her left eye, and some redness, from lack of sleep.

  I realize that I’ve never seen any of the things Bianca’s wearing, and they don’t look like they came from a secondhand store or from the seamstress Katrina sent us to for that ball. The sleeve of her white dress hangs in a shimmering line, and her crystal necklace picks up all the colors coming off the walls. She couldn’t have afforded these things with the marks we got from the Couriers—and then I understand what she means when she says she and Dash went shopping: he bought her a new wardrobe. She looks more than ever like one of the pictures of Xiosphanti aristocrats in the silly storybooks that everyone here in Argelo loves.

  Dash says, “I grew up famous, and I have a million issues. I should probably try that exhaustion therapy that everyone’s talking about. But you two, you’re in the spotlight for the first time, aren’t you? You can so easily get a kind of false self-image.”

  One of Dash’s favorite tactics is to confess how vulnerable or insecure he is, so everyone else lets their guard down.

  “Except”—Bianca helps herself to some kind of lentil paste on flatbread—“Sophie doesn’t care what anybody thinks of her. That’s one reason she’s such a hero.” I squirm, but only on the inside. On the outside, I try to look bored.

  “Is that true?” Dash leans toward me. “Sophie, do you really not care about anybody’s opinion of you? I’m so jealous I’m practically dying.”

  I just stare at him and fashion my lips into a smile. I try to imagine that I’m standing on the tundra, a hundred kilometers from the nearest light source.

  Bianca asked if I trusted her, and I said yes, and I meant it. This thing with Dash is just part of whatever she’s planning, and she’s in control of the whole situation. I look at the taut line of her pale neck and exposed back, as she leans toward Dash, and I choose to see a harpoon gun, aimed and cocked.

  * * *

  I lie in the storage room, knees to face, half dreaming of all the usual terrors, but half thinking about Bianca and Dash. He’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, but he’s also charming, which is something different. And his charm doesn’t work on me, which bothers him. Why does he care what I think? I figure none of this out, but I fall into a short dream in which I’m on the Old Mother and the Xiosphanti police are shooting a Gelet, so its blood sprays onto me.

  The signal device wakes me up, with a funny little squiggle. Time to go back to the game lounge and put on some inadequate safety gear with the Glacier Fools.

  When I reach the front steps of the gameroom, Mouth is standing out front, cradling a helmet in her hands. She keeps looking downward, with wide-o
pen eyes. “Reynold told me what you were doing, and I asked if I could come along. I still owe you my life.”

  I toss my head and walk inside.

  In the gameroom, Reynold hands me my own survival suit. “You saw Mouth, right?” I toss my head again, then concentrate on arranging these straps and buckles the right way. This looks like a child’s drawing of a spacesuit, huge and bulky, with a million pieces that don’t quite fit together. Strap bricks to every inch of my body, and I’d move more easily.

  Once we’re suited up except for helmets, Pedro calls the six of us together, including Susana, Reynold, Mouth, and a laughing blue-eyed girl named Laura. “I cannot emphasize this enough for the newcomers,” Pedro said. “Visibility is shit out there. Watch the readouts. Keep track of the person to your immediate right, so you don’t lose the group.” He talks about the cumbersome procedures, once we find some ancient tech, for freeing it from the ice without causing further damage.

  “So, you guys remember what I said before,” Reynold says, “about Sophie and the crocodiles.”

  “We were all pretty drunk,” Susana says.

  Pedro shushes them and turns to me. “I want to hear this from the source. Reynold says you have some technique for communicating with one of the deadliest predators in the night, and even getting them to help you. And you can teach the rest of us?”

  “I was there when she did it,” Mouth says. “Couldn’t believe how amazing.”

  “What part of ‘I want to hear this from Sophie’ did you not understand?” Pedro grunts.

  I have that buzzing-under-the-skin feeling that hits whenever I have to talk to strangers, or to a whole group of people at once. But I make myself overcome it, because if this works, if these people can learn to understand the Gelet, then maybe this could be the beginning of other people forming relationships with them, even trading and sharing technology. People will understand that they’re friendly, and advanced, and stop trying to eat them all the time. So I talk the Glacier Fools through it, taking time to make sure everything sinks in.

  “They’ll shield you from the cold,” I say. “You won’t freeze. Just expose your face and throat to the little tongues. You’ll see their memories, except not with your eyes.”

  The others, even Reynold, are making remarks and nudging each other. But Pedro glares until they shut up. “We’ll follow your lead,” Pedro says. “If this works, it could be huge for us.”

  When I step away from the group, Mouth follows, walking heavily in her suit. “The secret that you’ve shared,” she says, “it’s the most precious thing in the world. And you’re just opening it to us. I thought everyone was selfish. I thought, that’s the world we live in. But then you go and offer this to us. I can’t tell you what it means.”

  “If you try to tell me I’m a saint again,” I whisper, “I’m going to bite your face.”

  Mouth backs away a little, gloved hands raised. “I won’t. I know you’re just a person. That’s what makes this so extraordinary. I know you don’t want to see me, but I need to thank you anyway. I keep thinking I’ve lost all my faith, and then I lose some faith that I forgot I still had. So, thank you.”

  I turn away and go back to Reynold, who’s fastening the last of his suit.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I told Mouth about your plan to join our crew,” he says. “I still can’t get past that shitty stunt she pulled the last time we were in Xiosphant. And yet, she’s one of the best people to have around in a bloody situation.”

  I realize I don’t hate Mouth anymore. I want to keep hating her, but the hatred just won’t come, as though I’ve used it all up. I look at her struggling to tie the boots on her environment suit with her gloves already on, sweat gleaming on the shaved sides of her scarred head.

  The Glacier Fools use a very particular route from their game salon to the edge of night, to minimize the chance someone will see this valuable protective gear just walking around and try to rob us. We weave and jag, go down into disused rail tunnels, and squeeze our bulky bodies through narrow spaces between buildings.

  At last the city fades out. I put on my helmet, and I might as well be in space.

  The helmet has a visor with a tiny strip of reinforced plastic, so I can see the void outside. There’s also a “night vision” display, which shows just lumps of topography; every now and then, a fuzzy shape glows orange or yellow at the edge of my range. The third display has a handful of dots, representing the other Glacier Fools’ transponders, plus a little blip at the bottom, which shows that daylight is behind us. My bracelet wakes up.

  My own body sounds so loud inside this suit, and I think of my mother saying, You are an orchestra.

  Once we’re walking into the night, the scavengers start talking like kids on a sugar high.

  “Did you ever try that kebab place over by the Spoon?”

  “It was okay. The kebabs were about half swamp turtle. And nobody calls that neighborhood the Spoon. Just because we have the Knife doesn’t mean we also need a neighborhood called the Spoon.”

  “It makes sense, though. It’s actually shaped like a spoon.”

  “You know what I’ve been missing lately? Those stuffed mushrooms they used to sell halfway down the Pit. Those were nice.”

  Every step chills and weakens me, until I’m half dead. The insulation on these suits is worn thin, patched with tape. I can barely move, and I hear nothing over my own deafening breathing, and my fingers go numb. I’ve never gone this far into the night, and the night vision just swims. The blobs indicating the other scavengers turn blurry and faint. I could walk off a cliff right now. A snowdrift could fall and crush me to death. I feel my heart drumming, and try to slow my breathing, counting the way I did at the Illyrian Parlour.

  Pedro says something about promising readings eighty meters ahead, but a scream tears through the intercom. Then stops. No way to tell who screamed, from which direction, or what happened.

  “Laura, was that you?” Pedro says.

  “I’m here. I think that was Susana.”

  “Susana? You there?”

  One of the dots on the screen showing our crewmates is fading. No, it’s gone.

  “Shit. I think it was a bison,” Reynold says. “Not that I saw anything, of course. But they come out of nowhere like that.”

  “It could have been a sinkhole,” Mouth volunteers.

  “No point standing here, arguing about cause of death, unless we want to be next,” Pedro says. “Fucking hell. Susana.”

  We keep going. My bracelet vibrates so hard I feel like it’s yanking my wrist. Stumbling and sweeping my legs, I make my frozen body move in that direction.

  “Uh, Sophie. Please stay with the group. I see your transponder, you’re going the wrong—”

  I ignore Pedro and keep kicking forward. Each step costs twice as much as the last.

  My flickering night vision fills with a huge shape, straight ahead. I stop and look up at the rounded body in motion. I look for a pincer, or writhing tentacles. Instead, my screen slowly paints a picture of a bison’s open maw, sharp threads pulled taut, ready to slice me into chunks. The mouth grows so big I can’t see anything else. Everyone calls my name, but I just freeze.

  Nothing happens. And then I realize the bison isn’t moving. An eyeblink later, it’s gone from my night vision, like something just tore it to pieces.

  But, wait—my night vision hasn’t gone empty. Tentacles move in the darkness. A pincer snaps open right next to me.

  “Damn,” Reynold growls. “That is an awful lot of giant, tentacled killer monsters. Trying to remember why this was a good idea.”

  “They’re surrounding us.” Laura sounds ready to lose her stomach.

  The Gelet make us tiny by comparison, raised on their hind legs. They could embrace each other over our heads, and make a tent for us to cower inside. I feel fear radiate off everyone else. They make little squirming, whimpering noises over the intercom.

  I breathe slow, stay in the moment.<
br />
  Then I realize one of these Gelet is holding something in its front legs: one of those mossy blankets. I move inside, and she and I are wrapped in a cocoon together. Still, the moment I loosen the neck strap on my suit, I feel the wind trying to cut my throat. I show my exposed skin, to prove we’re here to listen.

  “We went over this.” Pedro tries to restore calm. “Everybody, follow Sophie’s lead. Let them wrap you up. Show them your throats. That’s a fucking order.”

  I hear them breathing and grumbling as they each get right inside a Gelet’s kill radius and unsnap their protective gear. They let in the cold, and brace themselves to let in something else. They can’t hear my reassurance over their own moaning.

  “I can’t.” Reynold sounds like he’s fumbling with his harpoon gun. “I can’t, this is—”

  “Trust,” I say as loud as my weak voice can go. “I’ve done this a thousand times.”

  Then I hear all of them breathing heavier as the other Gelet make contact. I sigh, because they’ve done it, it’s happening. Now they’ll understand for themselves. I don’t have to be the only one to carry this anymore.

  The Gelet inside my “cocoon” comes closer, so I feel the warmth of its tendrils. They touch my face, just for a moment, and—

  —I’m with all the Gelet in their city, long before humans first arrived. We had technology that shaped the rivers of water and fire, deep beneath the mantle, and ways to reshape living flesh, and we shared these techniques with everyone. We had music, and poetry, and the belief that you could own history but not the future. We had complicated mating dances, a dozen Gelet at a time joining together at the heart of a mountain, carapaces opening to let fleshy appendages come out and mingle together. Some looked like blades, others like fingers, or strange flowers. All the Gelet tremble in ecstasy, and here and now, I shake with them, as the essence pours out of us all, and into all of us—

  —I experience all of this in an eyeblink, and then I pull away, because something’s wrong. Loud noises blow out my intercom’s speaker. Screams, wails, and curses. And then the crack-neck sound of a harpoon gun discharging.