by Alex London
Blood. Syd couldn’t tell if he was lightheaded from giving away half his blood or if he was lightheaded from shame, but he definitely needed to lie down.
Instead, he stared at the public projection of the day’s lesson in front of him. Thompson had moved on to the Nigerian Trade Embargo.
“Hey, Syd,” Egan whispered again. “Syd!” He was not about to let Syd just tune out and pass the time in peace.
“Why are you even here today?” Syd whispered back at him. “I thought you paid Thompson off every week?”
“It’s not all about grades,” Egan said, wrinkling his eyebrows at Syd’s tone. “And don’t get snippy with me, princess. I came to school for you.”
“To ruin my life?”
“To make your day,” Egan smiled. “Tonight. Upper City party. Mega lux. Patrons only. Supposed to be insane. Party of the year.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious. It’s exclusive.”
“So how are you going to get in?”
Egan glanced up at the robot pacing in the front of the class. He leaned closer to Syd. “You mean we. How are we going to get in?” He smiled a fiend’s smile. “I know a patron. Guy can get me inside and he’s got a hookup for two ID patches that’ll get us past the scanners. My treat.”
“I’ve got to work.”
“It doesn’t even start until midnight. I know you’re not working at midnight.”
“You know dancing’s not really my thing,” Syd tried, but Egan was relentless when he got an idea in his head.
“Not your thing? You ever been to a patron’s party before? Everyone’s beautiful, Syd. Everyone. And they don’t have hangups like in the Valve. They’re Upper City. They’re all, like, NeoHumanists or something. You can be as eleven as you wanna be. No one’ll judge the lust of your loins.”
Syd’s face flushed. “You’re disgusting.”
“I’m desperate,” said Egan. “You gotta come with me.”
“Why do you care so much if I’m there?”
“Because girls love a Chapter 11 guy,” he said, as if it were obvious. “I need you to be my sidekick.”
“Pass.”
“Oh, you cannot leave me hanging. You. Can. Not.” Egan looked serious. Furious. This was a matter of principle. Not going would be an unforgivable breach of Egan’s unwritten contract for their friendship, signed in so much blood over so many years.
“Fine.” Syd caved, sighing.
“Good,” said Egan and turned back toward the front of the classroom, acting as if he were looking at the graph that Mr. Thompson had displayed on a public projection. “Come by my place at ten,” he whispered. “I’ll give you clothes. You can’t wear those run-down Valve rags. People expect a certain standard from a homosexual.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Syd smirked.
“Like I said: You wish.” Egan smirked back. “Just don’t be late. I don’t want all the girls taken by the time we get there.”
Syd shut his eyes. The day just kept getting longer. Now, in addition to helping pathetic Tom Sawyer fix his broken transmitter and figuring out how to avoid Atticus Finch for the rest of his life, he had to get ready for some lux happening in the Upper City that, like all of Egan’s schemes, was sure to be more trouble than it was worth.
How was it not even noon?
[4]
MR. BARAM’S SHOP WAS on the left bank of what used to be the South Platte River. It’d been dammed for a few years now. People in the Valve couldn’t draw their drinking water from it for free anymore, nor could they bathe or wash their clothes for free. Which was kind of the point: basic economics. Scarcity creates value.
Syd’s workroom/bedroom was a windowless closet in the back. Not pretty, but it did have its own entrance from the alley, which he often left propped open. Mr. Baram spent a fortune on wasted coolant, but Syd liked the fresh air, even when it was hot and humid. He liked the idea of fresh air.
The early evening had cooled off a bit and a tiny, putrid breeze whipped up the garbage in the alley. Syd watched the trash dance by the open door while he put his feet up on the workbench and leaned back on the high stool.
He heard the Changs arguing across the alley, shouting about the latest recycling numbers. Mrs. Chang did most of the shouting. Mr. Chang did most of the apologizing. There wasn’t enough scrap metal in the world to satisfy Mrs. Chang. She had plans for her children and not a bit of debt and she aimed to keep it that way.
“It’s all I found,” Mr. Chang said. “I tried.”
“You can buy a ticket to Lagos with trying now?” Mrs. Chang groaned. “The Nigerians open their border up again just for trying? No money, sir, but we tried! Ha! And ask my mother if trying will treat her melanoma, eh? You want bad blood for her? You trying to kill my mother? Is that your kind of trying? I’ll tell you, you are trying my patience is what you’re trying!”
Syd peered out the door and made eye contact with Mr. Chang, who smiled meekly. Mrs. Chang spat and shut their door, yelling all the while.
Syd closed his eyes. His fingers ran back to the birthmark again. He rubbed it, but felt nothing. It was smooth and flat. He tapped on it, doing his own trying. He was trying not to worry about what the mark might mean, what kind of blood work he might have to buy to treat it. He was trying to make the thumping of his finger match his heartbeat. Deep breaths. Put the horrible day at school behind him.
He couldn’t believe the perverted hacks that his classmates had blasted into his datastream all day. Whenever his projector came on, some filthy image would appear, complete with hi-fi sound, and he’d have to debug and delete before the EduCorp PicturePeeper software noticed. Porno on the holos in school? That would mean fines for sure, and maybe a bribe to avoid getting expelled.
Egan would probably be happy getting expelled. Syd, however, did not want to find himself at the mercy of the streets or Egan’s neophyte criminal enterprises. He knew exactly what became of guys like him outside the system.
The advos had caught on too, trying to sell him new things to match his public humiliation. Suddenly he was seeing hair products and eyelash extenders and colognes. The advos were as insulting as they were pointless. He didn’t intend to buy any of it.
He spent most of the day at school ignoring the holos and trying not to pass out from blood loss. It’d been a relief to get to work. Mr. Baram gave him a juice—real fruit juice from who knows where—and his body felt better almost instantly. As for his anxious mind, there was plenty of work to keep that occupied.
When the South Platte got dammed up, there had been unintended consequences. Toxic sludge pooled where the water once flowed and pestilent mosquitoes flourished in the pools; there had been a brief outbreak of malaria, followed by a longer problem with cholera and some unidentified brain fever. Health deteriorated and debts increased. Thousands died. The squatter settlements on the banks disappeared.
The consequences probably weren’t unintended at all.
The squatters had to go somewhere. Housing blocks—giant concrete cruciplexes—were built. The squatters were rounded up and resettled. Some formed new settlements and tried to stay one step ahead of the private security companies paid to shut them down. The threat of eviction hung over everyone below.
The security companies also enforced minor contracts, coerced new customers for whatever enterprise had hired them, and retrieved payment for unredeemed debts. All of these companies needed cheap parts and repairs and that’s where Mr. Baram and Syd came in.
The shop wasn’t licensed, so Syd never got to fix any of the high-end stuff. He didn’t really even fix anything new. But Mr. Baram’s shop was the place to go to get junk working again, whether it was spider-sized scanner bots or mechanized holding cells the size of garbage bins. They’d refurbish, repair, and rebuild with no questions asked. They bought and sold parts too, also no questions asked. Syd took care of most of the repairing while Mr. Baram took care of the buying and selling and not asking questions.
Mr. Baram also had a room off to the side where local kids who didn’t go to school gamed on his old holo sets in the cool of his climate-controlled shop. Some of the kids might have even been his. No one knew for sure. He didn’t charge the young ones for the hours they spent playing games. He took his payment from them in other ways. There were feral kids running around all over the Valve and no one paid them any attention.
That made them useful to Mr. Baram.
He used them to gather information and to run messages, to warn him if any of the private security thugs were coming around. Everyone paid somebody for protection, and the security companies targeted one another’s clients as a matter of policy. Businesses often paid three or four different gangs at the same time, but Mr. Baram paid none. He did business with everyone and everyone needed his skills. He also had a concrete storefront with heavy bars on the windows and a military-grade fracture cannon behind the counter. You’d need an army to lay siege to his store. As far as places to live went, it wasn’t so bad at all.
If it weren’t for the nightmares, Syd could have slept easy inside Baram’s.
“Tell me something, Sydney.” Mr. Baram surprised Syd, appearing in the open door to the back alley. Syd dropped his finger from behind his ear. He didn’t like revealing his personal tics. Mr. Baram raised his eyebrows for a quick instant, then took a drag on one of the expensive Upper City cigarettes he always seemed to have a carton of.
“Yes, sir?” Syd took his feet off the workbench and sat up straight.
“Is it true you are giving away more repairs to the needy urchins of this forsaken city?” Mr. Baram chuckled to himself because he already knew the answer. He always already knew the answer.
“I’ll keep track of anything I use,” said Syd. “You can take it out of my pay.”
“Ah, who would I be to punish a boy for his charity?” He stubbed his cigarette out with his toe just outside the doorway. He stepped inside. “But you should keep your kindness in a harder place. You wear it in your hair and every schnorrer from here to the Upper City can smell it.”
“They can smell it in my hair?” Syd ribbed him. “Is that some kind of saying?”
Mr. Baram was always making up little turns of phrase as if everyone said them. Half the time they made no sense. He claimed his great-grandfather Amichai was a chief rabbi in the Holy Land, before the wars. He claimed he had the blood of sages in his veins. And he figured if he threw some of his old language into it, it made the saying authentic.
“It could be a saying,” Mr. Baram declared. “I just said it, didn’t I? And what do you know about proverbs? Your people were goat herders in the Holy Land.”
“Who says my people were ever in the Holy Land? You don’t know who my people were. I don’t know who my people were. No one knows who my people were.”
“I can tell these things.”
“Because I’m brown?”
“Because, my ignorant young friend, we are kindred spirits. Somewhere, long ago, I think your people were in the Holy Land. Backwards, goat-herding idol worshippers, but there in the mix, certainly. Why else do you think I hired you?”
“Because I have small hands and I don’t steal.”
“These things are all true,” Mr. Baram answered. “But that doesn’t make them my reasons. Perhaps not even I know my reasons.”
“I’m sure your reasons are as noble as your visage,” Syd joked.
“My visage, eh?” Mr. Baram chuckled. “You’ve been reading through my library.”
“You should password protect it if you don’t want readers.”
“Oh, I want readers, my boy.” Mr. Baram sighed. “A world of readers I want, and yet, all I have is you. You want information, mere data, just like everyone else. That’s not reading. Wisdom? Inspiration? Phfft! Their time has passed, eh?” He waved his hand in the air. “You cannot nourish the soul with data!”
“You’re worried about something, huh?” Syd asked. Mr. Baram only got philosophical when he was nervous.
“The world being what it is, only a fool is not worried about something.”
“Yeah, but you’re not worried about earthquakes or solar flares or Sino-Nigerian arms pacts,” said Syd. “You’ve got a new worry.”
“And how do you know?” Mr. Baram leaned on the table. He’d taught Syd how to cold-read people and now he was testing him.
“Well, first off, you were spouting deep nonsense about the Holy Land and goat herders and nourishing the soul, which you only do when you’re nervous. Second, you put your cigarette out outside, which you only do when you don’t want the store to smell like smoke, which you only want when someone important is coming by. Third, you’re wearing a new shirt. And fourth, you stood totally still when I said you were worried about something, and every muscle in your face froze, which was you trying not to give anything away, and which gave everything away.”
Mr. Baram looked at him for a long minute. His nostrils flared and his eyes blazed. Syd thought he might get hit. It wouldn’t be the first time. Mr. Baram could be moody, especially when he was nervous.
But he broke out in a wide smile and put his hand on Syd’s shoulder. “You’ve learned very well,” he said, laughing. “I knew you weren’t a hopeless case. Ever since you were a little boy, I knew! You see? Kindred spirits, Syd! My mishpucha! Well done!”
“So what’s the worry? A big deal? Something good or bad?”
“Good or bad, who can say until Messiah comes and all our debts are forgiven?” Mr. Baram cleaned his glasses with his shirt.
“You sound like a Rebooter,” said Syd. “Praying for the forgiveness of debts.”
“There are worse things than forgiveness, no?” Mr. Baram shrugged. “We should all get a little forgiveness—without it, there can be no kindness.”
“Kindness is expensive,” Syd said.
“And yet, you are going to help out this sewer boy.”
“Sawyer,” said Syd. “Tom Sawyer.”
“These orphan names, I’ll never understand.”
“They get them from old books,” said Syd.
“I wonder if they read any of them.”
“Doubt it. It’s just a database.”
Mr. Baram rolled his eyes. “So, Sydney, I gather that you are helping this Tom Sawyer with no compensation in return?”
Syd shrugged. “Like I said. Kindness is expensive.”
Mr. Baram smiled. “So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
“That another of your sayings?” Syd asked.
“Ach!” Mr. Baram threw his hands up in the air, muttering to himself. “You don’t know Shakespeare?” He shook his head. “They teach you nothing in that school you pay so much for. Next time you use my library, read something beyond the dictionary. My visage? Phfft.”
“So what’s your worry? Anything I can do to help?”
“Now, Syd, I don’t go prying into your personal business, do I?” His tone was friendly, but he wasn’t joking.
“No, sir.”
Mr. Baram nodded and went toward the inner door that led back to the rest of the shop. “Use what you need with this charity case of yours . . . with my blessings.” His eyes lingered on Syd for a moment, then he left the room and shut the door.
Syd watched one of the holos on the wall. It showed Mr. Baram walking into the front of the shop and sitting on his usual stool with his hands resting on his belly. He looked like a lazy old man taking a nap, but he was certainly looking at his datastream on his glasses, getting feeds from informants all over the city about parts to sell and parts to buy. He could broker entire deals through his glasses without ever appearing to do a thing except blink and wiggle his fingers.
Syd watched him for a while, trying to get a clue about what could have Mr. Baram on edge, when he saw Tom come in the front door and linger nervously, looking around for Syd.
“Come in, bubeleh, come in.” Syd heard Mr. Baram’s muffled voice through the door. He used his old language much more whenever a ne
w customer came in. He called it Yiddish, and said it was a language of great history, texture, and richness and a shame that nobody bothered with it anymore. “Nu, you must be Tom?”
Tom nodded and said something, but it was too quiet for Syd to hear.
“Welcome, welcome. You can go right through the shop back there.” Mr. Baram pointed. “You’ll find Syd. You’re a lucky young man. He’s quite a mensch. Not a lot of those left in the world.”
Tom looked as confused as a fish off the farm (another of Mr. Baram’s sayings), but he went to the door and Syd opened it for him, letting Tom into the workroom.
“Leave the door cracked open a bit,” Mr. Baram called in a forced casual tone. That was his way of saying he knew about the Atticus Finch disaster at school today and he didn’t want anything untoward happening under his roof, but he’d never embarrass Syd by bringing that sort of thing up directly. Or maybe he’d known about Syd for years. Sometimes an open door was just an open door.
[5]
“I BROUGHT THE . . . UH . . . projector,” Tom said, keeping his distance from Syd, as if he were contagious.
“Well? You gonna give it to me?”
“Right, yeah,” Tom said and pulled the small device from his tattered canvas bag. Syd took it from him and went back to his bench. The kid didn’t move.
The projector was smooth gray plastic, about an inch thick and three inches long. It had a small slot for the battery and another for the lens. The receiver in the middle picked up its owner’s datastream and transmitted to the lens. This model had all kinds of problems with interference from background radiation. Even new, it hadn’t been very high quality, and it was very far from new.
Syd set it in a cradle and fired a laser into it. The specs popped up in a holo in the air and he grabbed his micro tools and set to work. He removed the cover and the sensor inlay. He pulled apart the processor and looked at the power supply. He studied the parts under different beams and magnifications. He tested the signal strength one more time, and set the whole mess down and started to rummage for something to repair it with that might at least get Tom through exams.