by Oisin McGann
The air temperature dropped suddenly around them; Sol couldn’t feel it, but he watched it on the readout on the inside of his mask: 10º…–5º…–20º…–40º…–60º…It stopped at –73º. A soft alarm chimed, and the external door opened. Even with the tinting of the smart-lens, they walked out into a world of blinding white….
Sol awoke from his daydream as Maslow peered around the door and waved him inside. They were in a small maintenance depot on the west side of the wall, one Sol didn’t know existed. Its entrance was about five hundred meters from the West Dome Depot, where Gregor worked. Inside was a rack of safesuits, some equipment rigs, and a little-used airlock.
“The daylighters are done for the afternoon,” Maslow told him. “They’ll all be heading back in. We have maybe another hour of daylight, but after that, the temperature’s going to drop….”
Sol nodded. They would have to be quick. Finding a suit his size, he pulled it out and dismantled it, carefully fitting on each piece as his father had shown him. He had been out on the dome six times since then, but he still got the shivers now as he got dressed. Maslow was already half dressed, and Sol was surprised at his practiced ease. So he had been outside before too.
“The open airlock will register on the dome-controller’s board,” Maslow told him. “But they probably won’t pay it much attention. With the shifts finishing up, all the airlocks will be busy. Don’t use the radio unless you absolutely have to. You know the hand signals, yeah? You ready?”
Sol clipped on the mask, and checked the lens readout to see if it showed any leaks. Picking up his plastic-coated ice ax, he gave Maslow the thumbs-up. Maslow punched the access code into the airlock’s oversized keypad, and the internal door slid open. On a bad day, snow would pile against the external door, and they would have had to dig their way out, but not today.
Outside, they quickly scanned around for anybody who might still be out on the glass. In their fluorescent orange suits, they would be clearly visible to anybody this side of the dome’s horizon. Moving ponderously in the heavy gear, they started out for the sector that Gregor had left in such a hurry: D63 in the Third Quadrant.
There had originally been machines to clear the dome’s surface, but they had lasted about thirty years, as the need for parts was overtaken by the city’s hunger for dwindling resources. And so people had been sent up to take over the machines’ jobs. Even with safety precautions, one or two daylighters died each year in avalanches and falls.
Looking up into the clear, darkening blue above him, Sol felt the exhilaration of being below such sheer emptiness. It was as if he could fall straight up into it, and it set his heart racing. A feathery frosting was already starting to coat the hexagonal slabs of diamond-hard concraglass, but Sol could see the city lights coming on beneath his feet. They climbed an arcing, slippery denceramic stair up the curve of the dome, then branched off to one side, swinging from one piton ring to another and clinging to hand-holds until his readout told him he was in the right place. He was already breathing hard, burdened by the weight of the suit, and his gasps were loud in his ears. Even with the variable tinting of the lens, the white was hard on his eyes.
All the daylighters’ tools were made so as not to damage the concraglass’s surface, but it still had a slight glaze of erosion because of its age. It was level enough here for Sol to kneel down. After scraping away at the surface coating of new ice with his ice ax, he cupped his hands around his mask and put his face to the glass, squinting at the city below.
Underneath him, most of Ash Harbor’s people were going home. From this height, slightly distorted by the two half-meter-thick layers of glass, it was possible to observe the clockwise motion of the city: its streets, trams, moving bridges, slanting escalators, and counterweighted elevators all moving in a perfect cohesion that provided power—life—to the city. And in the middle was the triangular building that housed the three massive turbines of the Heart Engine, which continuously charged all the other systems. But what caught his attention was directly below him, protruding into his view below the gantry grid: the Third Quadrant tower crane. The crane he had been on the day his life had started to go down the toilet, where he and his class had watched Francis Walden and that other man, Falyadi, plunge to their deaths from the giant’s arm.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He pretended to keep looking, unsure if he wanted Maslow to know what he’d found. Standing again, he scanned around him, as if searching for clues. Beyond the edge of the dome and the precipice that dropped down the side of the mountain, there was only a white landscape, broken by the odd peak of what had once been nearby islands. Now the sea around Ash Harbor was covered in several meters of solid ice.
“Do you know what those turret things are around the edges of the cliff?” Sol asked, pointing, his voice hollow behind the mask. “They’ve always been covered in snow every time I’ve been up here.”
“Gun emplacements,” Maslow answered. “Back when this place was being built—before the weather finished off everybody outside—some of the people who didn’t make the list tried to force their way in. Soldiers would cut them down from up here. I heard that once somebody actually ran an oil tanker aground down there. After the attackers were dealt with, the ship got sliced up and recycled.”
“Do you think there’s anybody else alive out there?” Sol wondered aloud.
“We lost contact with Cheyenne Mountain about twenty years ago,” Maslow said. “The last reports said there was a famine. Everybody was fighting over what was left of the food. None of the other enclaves even lasted that long. I think we’re all that’s left.”
“Fighting over the food.” Sol sniffed. “You’d think they’d want to put all their effort into growing more, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not the way people think,” Maslow replied.
“The sun’s going down. Let’s get inside.”
They made their way back to the steps, and carefully descended toward the airlock with Sol leading the way.
“Well, that was a waste of time.” Sol moaned loudly.
“Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here. We know Dad owed someone money—”
“Cortez,” Maslow said. “Necktie Romanos works for Cortez.”
“Right. Well, maybe we should talk to Cortez, then.”
“That’s looking for trouble, Sol.”
Sol turned to face him. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To keep me safe?”
“That’s why we’re not going near Cortez.”
“So I just have to wait until this guy Necktie finds me, yeah? ’Cos that is what these guys do. You got any money?”
Breath hissed from Maslow’s valves. “All right, we’ll do it,” he snapped. “But only because this is one problem we can solve with cash. If Cortez decides you’re worth more as a hostage, we’re going to be in it up to our necks.”
Section 11/24: PARTY
IT WAS THE WEEKEND after Sol Wheat had gone missing, and Cleo was holding a party. Their class’s high spirits were not a poor reflection on Sol’s popularity; in fact, his street-cred had taken a substantial leap upward since his disappearance. Where once he had been a surly loner with no real friends, now he was a fugitive on the run from the law. But the party, despite being named after him, was more for the benefit of his peers. Cleo took party themes seriously; she considered them a vital element in maintaining her sanity.
Living in a city surrounded by crater walls and roofed with a dome, teenagers faced a life that offered no wider horizons, no travel, no escape from life in the Machine. They all feared the onset of the dreary life of drudgery that would begin as soon as they left school—unless they happened to be among the lucky few who would get a few years’ postponement in college. Cleo was certain that this was their most important time, before they were dragged into that abyss of work and routine. It was their only chance to be themselves with all their might.
Wild parties were a citywide p
henomenon, a natural reaction to a life where people’s very survival depended on the bulk of their species getting up and going to work every day. But Cleo knew that even parties could become routine. If their celebrations every week were reduced to getting drunk and falling home in a near stupor, they would cease to serve their therapeutic purpose. So she tried to give each party an identity. This way, whenever they were telling their post-party stories, the event under discussion could be referred to by name—like when Faisal had accidentally hooked up with a transvestite at the “Suicidal Student Teacher Party,” or the time Amanda had thrown a full punch bowl over the head of that guy who had called her a slut at the “Ten Days of Darkness Party.” Great times.
This was the “Where’s Sol? Party.” Everyone had to bring a means of finding Sol. People came with binoculars, or a magnifying glass, or a web-search list of ratting dens. Amanda had even brought a disc of late-twentieth-century boxing matches to see if Sol had somehow traveled back in time and was in the audience. With the rest of the Matsumura family away visiting relatives, Cleo had provided the venue—the roof of her apartment block—and some stem soup with boxing-glove-shaped croutons. Enough of that and anybody who really wanted to see Sol probably would. Most people brought gulp as well; the mixture of the two drugs could very well stop them from being able to see anyone ever again.
Having finished playing a good session with the rest of the band, Cleo and the other members of Freak Soup had handed over to another local group, and she had immersed herself in a very drunk conversation with Ubertino. Dressed in a singlet and baggy trousers, with her hair hanging loose and her feet bare, she was sitting with her legs dangling off the ledge of the roof while he sat with his back to the dizzying view, huddled in the folds of his long khaki trench coat.
“That’s exactly right!” she declared over the music, jabbing his leg hard to make her point. “That’s exactly right! Exactly! Iced Breeze has never, ever had anything to say with their music. That’s why the damn Internal…whassernames—”
“Climate,” Ube supplied.
“Freakin’ Internal Climate want them. Because they’re no threat. We’re a threat. They’re scared of us—of anyone with attitude! If Freak Soup got up on that stage, we’d wipe the…the…the—”
“Floor.”
“The floor. We’d wipe the floor with those snot-nosed, boy-band posers. I mean, what do they even sing about? Love? Heartache songs? What do they know about heartache? They’re fourteen! It’s like toddlers moaning about puberty!”
Ube exploded into laughter just as he was going to take a sip of his drink. It splashed over his face, and he wiped it away with his sleeve, grinning. She stared at him with her hazel Asian eyes and giggled. She loved it when it was like this. If he wasn’t more into boys, she’d have dragged Ube off to the dark end of the roof any number of times. But this was great, the way they were.
“That’s right!” He nodded, turning serious. “We sing about stuff that affects people. Real stuff. That’s what we’re about. About life.”
“Right!” Cleo jabbed his leg again.
Ube was sure there would be a bruise on his thigh in the morning. He moved it a little farther away, because she was only getting into her stride.
“We’re a voice of the people! And if Internal Climate doesn’t want some conflict…Well, they’re goin’ to get it! We pay them to provide us with a service, and then they sell us a line about how we should be grateful for them, and they try telling us how we’re supposed to live our lives, just ’cos…’cos…’cos…”
“Just ’cos they own everything.”
“Right! This is a democracy, and just ’cos they own everything in this whole damn city doesn’t mean they can own people! And they sure as hell can’t own me right? And they can’t tell me what to play or what not to sing or…or…or…tell my band that we can’t play at our own end-of-year ball! I’m not freakin’ standin’ for it!”
“That’s it!” Ube yelled. “You’re right! So what are we goin’ to do about it?”
They gazed at each other for a few moments.
“I don’t know,” Cleo said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “I’m getting another drink. Want one?”
Cleo was on her knees, praying to the porcelain god, and swearing that she would never drink again. As she threw up the last of the contents of her stomach, she tried to calm down, and lifted her head out of the toilet bowl. A sudden gag caught her by surprise, but there was nothing more coming out, so she closed the lid, flushed, and sat down wearily on the seat.
“Oh, God,” she muttered for the fifth or sixth time.
It was after four in the morning, and she should have been comatose in bed, but she had been tormented by a nightmare about the man she had pushed off the ventilation duct, the one she had seen dumping the body. The mixture of guilt, drugs, and alcohol had woken her from her sleep and sent her running to the toilet to be sick. As a result, she was suffering the initial offensive of her weekly hangover before she had enjoyed the benefit of a morning’s sleep. Drinking just wasn’t worth this. She stood up instead and looked in the mirror. She was looking pale and haggard. To hell with it, she decided. If you couldn’t do parties, what was the point of looking good?
A sound in the darkness of the empty apartment beyond the bathroom door turned her head, and she stood silently, her keen ears searching where her eyes could not. A door squeaked quietly: the living room door. Her mind was back in the gloom of the lower levels, being hunted by nameless armed men with guns. Her breath caught in her chest, and she looked around quickly for some kind of weapon. Her pepper spray was in her bedroom. Casting her eyes over the contents of the bathroom, she found her father’s straight razor. She would have preferred something with more reach, but it would have to do.
Opening the blade, she crept out of the bathroom and along the hallway toward the living room. The smart thing to do would have been to hide and wait for them to go away—she was too hungover to be taking on intruders—but her instinct told her that they wouldn’t be going away until they found her. Cleo gritted her teeth and kept walking, sure that it would be better to attack than be caught in a corner.
She passed the front door. It was still locked, and showed no signs of being forced. All their windows had bars that they closed at night. Whoever it was had no problem with locks. Holding the razor out in front of her in tightly gripped, trembling hands, she advanced toward the living room door. There was no sound from the room, but the door was wide open. She jabbed around the door frame with the blade, and then jumped into the room, brandishing the weapon. But the place was empty.
An arm came from behind her, and a hand clamped over her mouth. She let out a muffled scream and slashed at the hand with her blade. It cut through her attacker’s sleeve and drew blood.
“Ahh! Damn it, Cleo!” the assailant yelped.
He let her go, and she spun around to see a guy with a butchered haircut and bruises around his eyes standing behind her. He had come in after her, obviously from one of the other rooms. Still gripping the weapon, she squinted in the gloom.
“Sol?”
“Yeah.” He winced, tenderly peeling back his sleeve and pressing his hand to the shallow wound. “Sorry. I just didn’t want you to scream, that’s all.”
“Then why didn’t you just say ‘Don’t scream,’ you freakin’ idiot?” she hissed at him. “You scared the crap out of me! What the hell are you doing in my apartment in the middle of the night? How did you get in?”
“I’ll fill you in on everything, all right? But I need to bandage this up with something. And don’t turn on any lights—they might be watching the front of the building.”
There was a first-aid kit in the kitchen, and Cleo, veteran of a thousand parties, was well used to patching up minor injuries. It was only a shallow cut, nothing serious.
Despite her burgeoning headache, she put on the stereo, but with the volume turned down. Her body did not function properly without musical accompaniment.
While she worked, Sol told her what had happened to him the day of the funeral.
“Holy crap.” She shook her head. “This…this is a lot to take in. So where is this guy Maslow now?” she asked.
“He’s the shy type, doesn’t like showing his face much. Thinks I shouldn’t have come here at all. I have to meet him back on the roof. That’s the way we came in. I got right in your front door; he showed me how to work locks.”
“If some hoods kidnapped you and…and went to torture you, I mean, that’s pretty illegal, right? Just go to the police.”
“Maslow says a lot of the police are in on it. It’s not safe.”
“In on what? What’s goin’ on?” It was all fascinating stuff, but Cleo couldn’t take her eyes off the top of Sol’s head. “You make it sound like there’s a big conspiracy—”
“There is some kind of conspiracy. I just don’t know what. Maslow doesn’t talk much, but I know he’s the one who gave me the gun—”
“What gun?”
He took it from his pocket and showed her.
“Jesus, Sol. That looks real!”
“It is real. Anyway…” He paused. “What? Why do you keep looking at my head?”
“Well, it’s your hair, honey. It’s just not right. Did you do that yourself?” She was trying not to smile.
“Yeah. What about it?” he snapped defensively.
She glanced at the razor on the kitchen counter. “I think you better let me finish it off for you.”
His attempt to shave his head had not gone well, and nearly a week’s growth had made it worse. Patches of stubble and fluff stuck out over the top and back of his head, where he couldn’t see it from the front.