by Linda Nagata
He stared at his image. The cream coffee eyes staring back at him seemed guarded, anxious. The faintly gleaming beads of his sensory tears were only a surface manifestation of a more profound difference that lay tangled up inside his brain. Stirring in his fixed memory, an image of Dr. Alloin once again acknowledged defeat:
“We like to think we can do anything, but of course it isn’t true.” That had been less than a year after that day. Kona Lukamosch had come for her report, while Lot huddled in a corner chair, his knees pulled up to his chin, waiting for judgment to fall.
Dr. Alloin offered the facts as she saw them: “Lot’s brain tissue is netted with a filamentous structure, similar in its gross design to a common communications atrium, yet with details that are . . . unique. Mechanical more than biological, though it doesn’t respond to EM signals. Only chemical stimuli. And it’s directly parasitic on the cells to which it’s attached.” She shook her head. “I’ve tried to dislodge it, but I can’t.”
Kona’s scowl had been fierce. He’d made it clear when he walked into the room that he’d come for better news than this. “If he’s a hazard—”
“I don’t think he is.”
“Then your recommendation?”
“We learn to live with him.”
“That’s all?”
“He’s not a bad kid.”
“So just turn him loose?”
“Why not? What could he do?”
“Nothing,” Lot whispered to his image. He looked like Jupiter but he was not Jupiter, and most days that felt like a safe line to walk though he was not always proud of it.
The apartment door slipped open. In the dead silence the unexpected click made him flinch. “Lot!” Urban called. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” He did not look at his image again as he pulled on a black shirt and stepped out of the toilet hutch.
Urban was crouched on the floor, tapping his finger across the sticky paddles of a sundew. Urban hadn’t changed much in the ten years Lot had known him. Sure, he’d gotten taller, he’d put on muscle. He was twenty-three now; not a boy anymore. But his thick black hair was still bound into small braids that reached to just below his ears and bounced when he moved, and he was still an ado. He grinned up at Lot. “There’s a camera bee buzzing outside your door.”
“Did you bring it with you?”
Urban laughed. “I didn’t have to. The mediots know you’re a factor in this election. Even if you don’t.”
“Maybe that’s because you never stop telling them.”
Urban had drafted two initiatives on ado and refugee rights, and was presently engaged in gathering enough support to force them onto the ballot of the next election. They’d been tailored to get Lot citizenship, and everybody knew it.
“I don’t care if I ever vote in a Silken election,” Lot said.
“That’s hardly the point.” And before Lot could argue, “Netta’s saving a table for us. Let’s go before I starve.”
Ord followed them out of the breather, clinging to the wall with its tentacular limbs. The little robot might not show itself again all day, but it would be there, observing, ready to intercede if Lot showed signs of emotional intemperance. Dr. Alloin mistrusted his emotions.
The apartment door had hardly closed when Lot heard the low drone of the camera bee. The device cruised down the shadowed hall, slowing as it passed him. Lot glared at it, wondering what mediot rode behind its bulbous eye. “Leave us alone,” he growled.
“Be nice,” Urban chided. “You’re a public figure now.”
But the bee didn’t go away as it was supposed to when dismissed, and it was then Lot noticed the two green stripes encircling the body. “It’s city security.” And why were they harassing him? “Hey Clemantine,” he said, stepping toward the hovering camera. “I haven’t done anything. You know it, so leave me alone.”
“Easy fury,” Urban said and Lot felt the cold sting of his concern. “We don’t want trouble.”
The way he said it, Lot knew something was up, but he also knew better than to ask. “Sooth, it’s just a joke.”
Curious and a little worried now, he followed Urban to the end of the hall. Open-air stairs led down to the street, but it was easier to vault the railing. The drop was only a few feet, and they landed with soft slaps on a street aglow with a dim white light. It was still early, and dawn light had not yet begun to compete with the faint, milky haze of Kheth’s nebula that washed the night sky beyond the vault of the city’s transparent canopy. Muted stars gleamed through the nebula’s veil, some of them members of the Committee where Jupiter had gathered his army long before Lot was born.
Within the nebula’s coarse dust, the Silkens had discovered tiny entities of artificial origin called butterfly gnomes, after their minute, winglike solar panels. The butterfly gnomes were capable of storing an electric charge, which they would use to blast apart chunks of nebular material that had accreted to an ounce or so in size. Lot had seen them in a display of preserved specimens in the city library. For gnomes they were uncommonly large, being just visible with unenhanced optics.
Many other varieties of gnomes were found within the Well itself. All of these were microscopic in size. Rare specimens had even been discovered within the city—though these were felt to be isolated populations left over from the years when there had been traffic with the planet. The city gnomes were elusive and fragile, tending to collapse under extremes of heat or cold, or upon contact with molecular-scale analytical tools, so that attempts to study the details of their structure and function had produced few results. Indeed, their populations seemed to be in decline as their own micron-scaled ecosystem was gradually overwhelmed by Makers of human origin.
A sudden bright flare drew Lot’s gaze as a chunk of nebular material—probably no larger than his fist—vanished under the invisible beam of one of the city’s meteor-defense lasers. Even the butterfly gnomes could not attend to every pebbled mass.
“Lot.”
He flinched, aware of her a moment before she spoke. Clemantine. He would have picked up her presence earlier if he’d been paying attention, and then he would have left from the other side of the apartment complex.
She stepped away from the dark, columnar form of a pillared banyan tree. He caught her amusement, but it was mixed with a touch of anger. “Did you want to talk to me?”
A flush of heat touched his cheeks. “Not really. No.” Urban stood close behind him, shedding uneasiness into the air.
“Oh,” Clemantine said. “I must have misunderstood.”
Lot felt embroiled in helpless anger. Why had she come here? He’d done nothing wrong. He did everything he was supposed to do, and nothing he was not, and still they harassed him. “I’m innocent. Why don’t you leave me alone?”
He saw her tense; anxiety rolled off her. “Do you want to do that?” she asked softly.
He averted his gaze, suddenly scared. He’d let himself get angry. Dr. Alloin wouldn’t tolerate that. She claimed his influence seeped out around him. Charismata: that was the romantic term she’d coined for the elusive pheromonal agents she claimed Lot generated through the chemically sensitive “atrium” in his head. When he gave into anger his body produced a charismata that went straight to the fear center of most people’s brains. Even Clemantine could feel it. But for now, his retreat seemed to have satisfied her. “You’re a good boy, Lot,” she said. “Don’t start trouble.”
She turned to Urban. The light from the street glinted on her face in broken triangles that split apart when she smiled. “Urban. I was surprised to see you in the refugee quarter tonight.”
The words were not addressed to Lot, though perhaps they were meant for him. The camera bee swept close, capturing his surprise. City authority never allowed him within the walls of the refugee quarter. Sometimes, though, the refugees would be allowed out, carrying a pass to conduct business in the city. Lot had seen Alta that way. He’d tried to talk to her once, but Ord had tranked him. It had been
Lot’s fault, yet they’d punished Alta, confining her to the quarter for most of a year. Lot had been bounced back into the monkey house, where he’d feigned interest in Dr. Alloin’s tired explanation of how his charismata would have a destabilizing effect on the refugees. As if anyone was stable.
“I go down there sometimes,” Urban said. The chill that rolled off him did not have much in common with the casual shrug he showed Clemantine. “Some of the girls are pretty.”
“Sooth. They are, aren’t they? But you weren’t with the girls tonight. Or is it this morning? Whichever. It was a strange sight to see you drinking coffee with Gent Romer, though I’m sure it’s nice to make new friends. Let me guess what you and Gent have in common. Could it be . . . Lot?”
Lot felt a flush of heat, like the fever he’d once had when his mother had given him a new Maker to quicken his muscular response. He turned to Urban, fighting hard against a sense of betrayal. Gent Romer had been the youngest spouse in Jupiter’s group marriage; of Lot’s family he was the last living member. Gent had survived that day, though he’d spent a week in a body bag, recovering. He’d emerged into the vacuum of leadership left by Captain Antigua’s defection, still preaching Jupiter’s philosophy of Communion. City authority considered him a troublemaker; they’d waited years for an excuse to seal him in cold storage. Lot knew this, because Dr. Alloin had told him.
Urban leaned close. Lot could feel his dark confidence like a bead, chewing through his skull. “Take it easy. She’s just trying to rattle you.”
She’d done a fine job of it. Lot guessed that Gent had given his approval to the initiatives. But what else had he done for Urban?
A gutter doggie waddled into the silence, shuffling on its short paws, its closed carry pouches bulging beneath squishy-looking brown skin. It looked them over with baleful eyes, determined they were not on its list of objects to be cleaned, then walked on. Lot felt a sudden, squirming impatience to be gone. “Hey Urban, I’m hungry.”
Urban said, “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
Clemantine smiled, letting them know she’d accomplished her purpose. “Have fun, boys. I expect we’ll be seeing one another again soon.”
Chapter 5
In the neighborhood of Ado Town the buildings were mostly low-rise, no more than three or four stories, ugly stacked apartments built less than a hundred years ago as a concession to the city’s growing population of adolescents.
Lot and Urban trotted uphill, negotiating the winding streets. After a few minutes, Lot thought it was probably safe to ask questions, but Urban raised a hand, shaking his head. Not yet. Lot nodded, and fell into step behind him. It felt natural; he’d tagged at Urban’s heels since he was nine. Then, Urban had been an awe-inspiring fourteen and already living like a crazy ado. He’d rescued Lot from the sanctimonious baby-sitter city authority had assigned him. He taught Lot the city, and the difference between ados like themselves, and the real people, those over a hundred, who were old enough to vote. We outnumber them, Urban said. But they make every real choice in our lives.
Most ados didn’t care. But it was everything to Urban. He wanted his fair share of political power, and the fastest way to get it was to get the vote and vote an ado into office. He had his candidate already chosen: People like you, fury. They’re drawn to you, just like they were drawn to your old man.
Lot denied it, but Urban only laughed.
They breakfasted at a small, open-air restaurant on the grand walk—the highest, narrowest level in the conical city, closely encircling the walled core that housed the elevator cable. Here, the transparent canopy arched barely a hundred feet overhead, held up by the pressure of air. The nebula glowed in a thin, milky wash across the night.
A sparse crowd decorated the grand walk, ghostly forms adrift beneath the sprawling branches of bougainvillea trees that leaned this way and that from the anchoring cubes of their planter boxes. Patience had replaced Lot’s initial curiosity; he didn’t try again to question Urban. There would be time to talk later, after they’d eaten and satisfied at least briefly the demands of enhanced physiologies that burned energy almost faster than it could be taken in.
Netta greeted them at the restaurant gate, in a dress that left the smooth curve of her shoulders exposed. She smiled gaily, so it startled Lot to feel an acute shard of unhappiness embedded in her aura. “Netta?” he asked, his brow furrowing in concern. “Are you okay?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “You always know.”
“Don’t let him hurt you.”
She looked down at the gate, using both hands to push it against a clasp that held it open. “Real people want too much.”
“They want it all,” Urban agreed.
“I’ll only see ado boys from now on.”
Lot said, “You know you’ll never be lonely.”
Her smile caught the faint light and slowed it. She touched Lot’s hand. “It feels good to be around you.”
He felt good too. In the soft warmth of her fingers he could touch the simple pattern of days, dawn to dusk to dawn in Silk, a circular flow of food and sex and fellowship that seemed at once both ancient and timeless. So naturally did the Silkens inhabit their city that it startled him to remember they had not built it, that they were refugees, just like us, with no way out. The ancient people who’d made the elevator and hung the city of Silk upon it were long gone, taken by plague less than ten years after they’d reached the Well . . . over five hundred years ago now. For half that time the city had been empty, its automatic systems recycling air, water and nutrients for the sole benefit of rampant gardens and overgrown parks—until refugees from the Chenzeme-ruined world of Heyertori had been force-landed at the end of the elevator column.
“What are you thinking about?” Netta asked him as they walked between the tables.
“The Old Silkens.”
For some reason, that impressed her. “Oh. My mama says that when she and her sisters were little, they could still find bones under the thickets in Splendid Peace Park.”
“Why would anyone crawl into the thickets to die?” Urban asked.
Netta thought about it. “I don’t know. I never found any bones.”
“You looked?” Lot flashed on an image of Netta thrashing through the thickets in one of her filmy dresses, digging down through five centuries of humus with her soft clean hands . . . and grinned.
“What are you laughing about?” she demanded.
“Nothing.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Oh I do.”
“Maybe they were making love.”
Lot frowned, lost by this sudden twist. “Who?”
“Under the bushes. When they died.”
“If they died,” Lot said, wondering how the fate of the Old Silkens fit into Jupiter’s teachings. He had never mentioned them.
“Of course they died,” Urban said. “Their bones were all over the city.”
But how could they have died? The Old Silkens had moved freely between the city and the planet below. They should have been sheltered by the Communion. Instead, the Well had killed them.
Netta passed a hand in front of his eyes. “Hello, hello. Are you still there?”
“Huh? Sorry.”
Sudden humor sparkled in her aura. “I think I’d better feed you quick, before you drift away from us altogether.”
She left them at a table by the railing, where the view was best. Lot stood, looking out over the slope of the city. Silk hung like a conical bead on the string of the elevator cable. Only the outer slopes of the bead were inhabited; the interior was given to industrial space.
Below him, the braided, luminescent streets of Ado Town glowed like a capillary network, infusing the slope with light. Ado Town split the circle of better neighborhoods like a visible stress fracture, zigzagging all the way from the grand walk down to the encircling belt of Splendid Peace Park, some two thousand feet below. Beyond that, past the transparent canopy, he could see the dark curve of Decep
tion Well.
Silk was a city of over six million people, yet it was only a tiny realm perched above a closed world. No one was allowed down the elevator; neither was there any point in going up—no ships waited at the end of the cable to carry people away. Silk was a trap, with both ends sealed. And still it seemed big enough to Lot.
He sat down, just as a group of boys came in. Urban waved them over. Netta brought coffee and they chatted about unimportant things and ate, until finally Urban checked his watch and said that it was time.
They left the restaurant just as dawn light began to wrap itself in a pearly crescent around the Well’s eastern rim. Lot could feel Urban’s anticipation rising as they negotiated the growing crowd on the grand walk. “You’re up to something,” he said. “And it’s to do with Gent. What is it?”
Urban half-turned, glancing back over his shoulder. His stride slowed, but he didn’t lose his distinctive gait: a half-liquid flow, as if momentum was constantly shuttling on a long path through all the muscles of his lean body. A discerning smile rode his lips. “I could tell you. But maybe you’d report us to city authority. You’re such a good boy.”
“Fuck you.”
Urban laughed and took off. Lot swore some more, then bolted in pursuit. It was an old game between them, and they ran down the grand walk in a silent charge for two hundred yards until Urban suddenly changed directions and vaulted an ornate, waist-high fence surrounding a restaurant that wouldn’t open until well after dawn. Lot leaped after him, cutting madly through the maze of tables. He’d almost caught him when Urban ducked around a carefully disciplined hedge, disappearing into one of the restaurant’s private alcoves.