by Oisin McGann
“But it doesn’t suit what you think, right, Dad?”
“I think the world’s what you make it, son. You’re on your own, and you make the best of it. Sometimes, though, Sol, when things get really bad, I think they might have a point. The ones who speak for the DDF, they seem to have more peace than the rest of us. Maybe they really do have some of the answers.”
Sol sat on the tram, the memories playing in his head. He should have been on his way to the police station with Ana, but he wanted to check something out first. If Gregor had harbored any ideas of joining the DDF, he wanted to know.
He didn’t really have a plan. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what the DDF was about; he knew that they believed the Machine would not last forever, and that people had to find other ways, but as far as he knew they weren’t offering any solutions. There seemed to be a quasi-religious aspect to their organization, but what form it took, he couldn’t begin to guess. Gregor was definitely not religious; Sol remembered the fierce and long-running argument between his mother and father about whether Sol should become a bar mitzvah. Gregor had lost that particular argument, and Sol’s ceremony had gone ahead. When it came to God, his mother could be every bit as pigheaded as his father.
The chapter of the DDF cult nearest their apartment block was one of the biggest in the city. Known as “sanctums,” these meeting places were quiet, hidden buildings off the main streets. The tram took him to within three blocks of the sanctum, and he walked the rest. His school bag was light on his back, carrying only enough books to hide the gun in the bottom of it. He had tried to carry the weapon in his waistband, like he’d seen in the films, but it wasn’t comfortable, and kept slipping out, or down into his trousers. One encounter with the debt collector was enough to make an impression; he was not about to be caught unarmed again.
There was a sign over the door; it read:
THE DARK-DAY FATALISTS
THIRD QUADRANT CHAPTER
“Nature will always be the victor”
Over the sign was their symbol: three lines spiraling into nothing. It was meant to stand for the converging of life energies or some crap like that. Sol rang the buzzer.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Solomon Wheat.” Sol spoke up. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Have you come to discuss matters relating to your immortal soul?” the querulous voice asked.
“No.”
“Then come in,” said the man, sounding somewhat relieved.
The lock on the door clicked, and Sol pushed it open. The hallway inside was cool and dark, and the first thing that struck him was the smell of old paper. Straight down the hall through a door at the end, he could see what looked like a library. Despite his cynicism, he found himself drawn toward the room, itching to see what they had. That room alone would have been enough to attract Gregor to this place.
“I’m afraid the library is off-limits to visitors,” a man said to him, coming out from a side door. “You need to arrange permission in advance.”
“I…I was just curious,” Sol told him, pulling down his hood. “It’s not why I’m here.”
“I am Mr. Hessel. I’m one of the clerics for this chapter. What can we do for you?”
The man was dressed in the simple black tunic and slacks of the DDF. His hair was long and dyed black, hanging loose over his pale, slightly spotty face. He could have been in his midtwenties, but his long, hollow-cheeked look made him seem much older. His morose figure fit well within the gloomy walls, the space enclosed by dark gray concrete and fake wood paneling.
“I’m looking for my father, Gregor Wheat,” Sol continued. “He’s about my height, stocky, dark hair. Looks like me, but older and more beaten up. I think he might have come here recently.”
“Was he an initiate?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Did he join up?”
“No. Or, at least…I don’t think so. But he may have been interested. He’s gone missing, and I just wanted to check all the places he might have been to in the last few weeks.”
“We have had nobody of that name here,” Mr. Hessel told him. “But then, people don’t often tell us their real names—or even tell us their names at all. It’s not required, you see. We are only interested in sharing a philosophy; beyond that, it’s each to his own. What kind of man was your father?”
“Independent and stubborn,” Sol said bluntly. “Look, if you haven’t seen him, then you haven’t seen him. I just—”
“People go missing in this city all the time, Mr. Wheat. Some want to; some don’t. I’m just trying to ascertain which category your father fell into.”
“What are you getting at?”
“There are times when individuals decide they want to remove themselves from the life they are leading—even from their families—and take a different route. This Machine that we live in is lubricated with the bodies of its victims. People who’ve got too caught up in the workings. Here in the Dark-Day Fatalist Order, we can offer help to such people. Among the officiates of our order we have experts in many fields—”
“My dad wouldn’t kill himself. He was no victim!”
“I wasn’t suggesting—”
“He’s wanted for murder. He’s on the freakin’ run, okay? Did he come here or not?”
The cleric put his hands up opposite sleeves and regarded Sol with a patient expression.
“No. We’ve had no one stay here in the last few weeks other than our officiates. And our open meetings are held on the platforms. He might have been present at one of them, but I couldn’t be sure. We get large numbers turning up these days.”
“Okay, thanks.” Sol pulled up his hood and started for the door.
“Mr. Wheat?” Mr. Hessel called after him.
“Yeah?” Sol turned back to look at him from under the edge of his hood.
“If your father hasn’t told you where he is, perhaps it’s because he doesn’t want you to find him. Have you considered that?”
“Sure. But who says he’s got the right to leave me in the lurch?” Sol replied.
“Maybe he’s trying to protect you as well as himself.”
Sol thought about all that had happened over the last week. “Well, then he’s doing a crap job of it.” He grunted and walked out.
When he emerged from the sanctum into the alley, he was feeling pent up and frustrated. He set off at an easy jog, eager for some exercise. He ran to relax, to empty himself out, losing himself in the flow of adrenaline and the hypnotic rhythm of his feet on the walkway.
When he felt as if he had cleared his head out enough, he made for a nearby elevator. While he stood in front of the doors waiting for the elevator to arrive, he let his breathing return to normal, and his eyes fell on the webscreen on the wall next to the elevator doors. It was flickering, and the ad that had been looping disappeared, replaced by a message in heavy block capitals against a plain white background. It read:
WHO ARE THE CLOCKWORKERS?
WHY DO WE FEAR THEM?
DO YOU CARE ENOUGH TO FIND OUT?
Looking out over the railings at the city below, Sol could even see the message on some of the giant screens in the main shopping streets. He shook his head in complete bewilderment.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Where is he, Ms. Kiroa?” Inspector Mercier asked.
“I don’t know. He disappeared after the funeral; he knew we were supposed to be talking to you.”
Ana folded her arms across her chest and stuck her chin out, unwilling to be intimidated by the inspector. He wasn’t very threatening, anyway—more tired and bureaucratic. They had caught up with her outside the school.
“Where did you last see him?” Mercier was gazing patiently at her.
“At the Earth Center. He went outside before the ceremony was over.”
Mercier looked to his sergeant, Baiev, and the other man nodded and moved away to speak into the commlink on his wrist. Merci
er smoothed his little mustache and said nothing for a moment.
“Ms. Kiroa, I believe Sol is staying with you at the moment; is that correct?”
“Yes. His apartment was broken into, and he was attacked. And since you lot seem intent on ignoring his civil rights, I thought it would be safer if he stayed with me until his father was found. He doesn’t have any other family.”
She felt suddenly uncomfortable, conscious of how it might look to a stranger for a young female teacher to have one of her male students staying in her apartment.
“Quite.” Mercier put his hands behind his back. “I wonder if we might go there now and have a look through his things. To see if there’s anything that might help us find him.”
“No, we can’t,” Ana snapped. “You need a warrant for that and you know it. He’s barely been gone an hour. It’s not like he’s ‘absconded’—”
“Ms. Kiroa, I’m afraid that that is exactly what he has done.” The inspector sighed. “He knew he was to meet the police at a certain time, and he has willfully avoided us. ‘Absconded’ is the appropriate word. We can get a warrant if we have to; I was hoping you’d cooperate. The Industrial Security Section is still letting me handle this part of the investigation, you understand. If they take over completely, things are going to get a lot more complicated. And we are not the only people looking for Sol. It would be better if we took him in before others did.”
“What are you talking about?” Ana frowned suspiciously.
“Before Gregor Wheat disappeared, he made some kind of bizarre wager with a man by the name of Cortez, a man who has some very violent people working for him. One of his enforcers was seen at the Earth Center today. His name is Enrique Romanos.”
The police officer took a palmtop from his pocket and pulled up a display. He showed the picture to Ana. It was a head-and-shoulders shot of a man with a neck that was thicker than his head.
“He is known as ‘Necktie’ Romanos, because of his favorite method of killing.”
“A necktie?”
“A garrotte, Ms. Kiroa. Now, could we please see Sol’s things?”
Back at Ana’s apartment, Sol stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. His nose was still a bit swollen, but the faint bruising around his eyes was going down, turning a sickly yellow. His dark hair was getting quite long, coming down over his ears, and he had the beginnings of a downy mustache that he had never got around to shaving. He looked pathetic. The teenage punk staring back at him had the face of a victim—the kind of kid who always got pummeled in the boxing ring.
On an impulse, he reached for his wash bag. He had brought his father’s straight razor with him. Taking it out, he unfolded it and scraped the edge down over part of the hair on his upper lip. The blade was well honed, and the hair came away clean. He shaved away the rest of his adolescent mustache. The skin felt bare and tender underneath, but it made his face look better, cleaner. More intense too. This was what he needed—to alter his appearance to match the changes he felt happening within him.
Continuing to stare at his reflection, his gaze wandered to the tousled black hair on his head. There was a pair of scissors in the cupboard behind the mirror, and he took them down. Holding tufts of hair out between two fingers, he started snipping. When he had cut it all close to the scalp, he covered the top of his head with soap lather. Pulling the razor over his scalp in slow, awkward strokes, he scraped one swath of hair after another from his head. The blade cut his skin several times, and he winced as blood mixed with the soap and water, but he kept shaving. Slowly, he took all the hair off his head. He rinsed it clean until the water came away without blood in it, and then dried his bare scalp. After cleaning up the hair clippings, he wiped down the sink before studying himself in the mirror once more; he nodded with satisfaction. He was no longer just a schoolkid. He definitely looked older now—harder too. Like somebody you didn’t want to mess with.
Out in the living room, he opened the bag that held all the stuff he had brought from his apartment. The webscreen in the corner of the room was asleep, just showing the time: 4:28 P.M. He had missed his meeting with the ISS. Too bad, he decided. He pulled out a heavy jacket, the kind rarely worn in the upper levels of the city, and put it on. He needed big, baggy pockets. Taking the gun from his school bag, he slipped it into the jacket and tried drawing it quickly from the pocket several times. Good enough. He checked to see that he could take the safety catch off with his thumb without looking at it, and then put it away.
Sol could feel the change in himself: a new sense of determination. He knew the names of three different gambling dens that his father frequented. Two of them were in the Filipino District. He was going down there to find out what he could, and if anybody tried to get rough with him, he was going to shoot them.
When Ana got to her apartment with the two police officers, there was a man walking away down the corridor toward the exit on the other side of the building. His head looked as if it had been shaved with a power sander. She glanced at him again for a moment, then went to unlock her door. Mercier and Baiev seemed to pay him no attention.
Inside the apartment, the two men walked through to the living room. Ana showed them Sol’s bag, and Baiev started going through it.
“I’ll just use your toilet, if I may,” Mercier said to her, and she pointed him toward the bathroom.
The inspector seemed less interested in using the facilities than in perusing the finer points of the décor. He had left the door open, and Ana peered in to see what he was doing. She could feel moisture in the air, and there was condensation on the mirror. Mercier ran his finger around the rim of the drain and looked at it.
“Baiev!” he shouted, pushing past Ana. “That was him outside! He’s shaved his head. He’s definitely on the run—call for back-up!”
They charged out into the corridor with Ana chasing after them. A sense of outrage kept her on their heels; they were chasing Sol as if he were the criminal. Hissing through her teeth, she ran with the police as they crashed through the fire doors and into the side street. They split up, each taking a different direction, but there was no sign of Sol. Standing where she had come out, Ana took panting breaths.
The fact that Sol had escaped brought her a little gleam of satisfaction. The younger, rebellious side of her enjoyed seeing the police evaded. Even if it was for the wrong reasons.
“Unfortunate.” Inspector Mercier sighed, walking back to her. “If he’s still in the vicinity, we’ll catch him. Otherwise, our young Mr. Wheat is on his own.”
Section 9/24: FEAR
AFTER LEAVING THE building, Sol descended some steps to a lower street level, intent on catching a tram toward the city center. He wasn’t very familiar with the Filipino District, and he wanted to take the main route in. It was after five P.M., and the streets on this level were clouded in shadow. Water was draining from a leaking pipe somewhere, the sound loud in these narrow, echoing spaces. Bats’ droppings coated the ground beneath a low bridge. A homeless drunk was lying wrapped in a foil blanket, propped up in the doorway of a closed-down nightclub. There was graffiti on the walls: the usual complaints about life, as well as tags from the young hoods competing for territory.
A tram passed overhead, and somewhere nearby, a mechanical press was thumping in time with the shudder of a conveyor belt. Sol passed an open window and saw a factory floor where overalled workers were standing at benches operating hand-cranked machines that broke down and recycled the soles of shoes. The men and women chatted as they worked; dirty jokes and petty small talk passed across the worktops over the whirring clank of the machines. People content to be busy.
Seeing the people at work, he was reminded of how many jobs had been taken over by machines in the past. Now muscle and bone were becoming valuable again, since so much of what was made had to be salvaged from something else. He started to run at an easy pace, enjoying his strength, light on his feet. Jabbing the air with quick, loose fists, he mixed combinations, working on his b
reathing and his timing.
His mind was in the ring, sizing up his opponent, circling, doing the little dance like Muhammad Ali used to. He wished Ana would come to one of his fights; then she might see him as something more than a student. His imagination filled the hall, lit the floodlights, called his name from the speaker, and sat Ana in the front row.
That was why he didn’t notice the car pulling up behind him or see the two figures waiting under the shadow of a walkway arching over the street. The car swept past him and he looked up, surprised. He was walking past the two men at that moment, and one of them stepped out in front of him, swinging a punch at his face. Already psyched up, Sol blocked it and was about to counter when the other man slammed something hard and heavy against the back of his head. Lights exploded in his vision, and the world spun over on its side. His left arm went up to guard reflexively much too late. But he wasn’t out of it yet. His right hand went into his pocket even as he fell. One of the men bent to hit him again, and he untangled the gun from his jacket and fired without aiming. His head was filled with dark confusion, his vision gone crazy. The gunshot was deafening, and the recoil kicked the weapon right out of his limp fingers. He heard a cry of pain, which he had time to register with satisfaction before something hit his head again and—
The first thing to register was the pain in his wrists. Then the pain in his head introduced itself as an old acquaintance who had returned to visit. His head was hanging forward on his chest, and when he lifted it, the pain raised its voice. As soon as he realized his position, he tried to support himself on his feet. He was hanging from his wrists, bound in what must be handcuffs. The metal bit into the flesh and bone, and he gripped the cuffs to try to ease the pressure. His toes pressed against the ground, taking some of the strain off his arms, but he was hanging too high to get his feet all the way down. He tried raising one foot to feel around, and discovered his ankles were chained to the floor. Sol opened heavy eyes but saw nothing. There was some kind of material over his face; he could feel it tied around his neck.